The influenza of the Sun

The influenza of the Sun

Have you ever tried to imitate the influence of the Sun?

That is what scientists in the Middle Ages tried to do through alchemy. They thought they could turn base metals into gold:

They wanted to imitate the influence of the Sun, which was traditionally thought responsible, under God, for making all the gold that already existed in the Earth. This, we might say, was the original understanding of ‘solar power.’

–The Narnia Code: C.S. Lewis and the Secret of the Seven Heavens by Michael Ward

It’s currently Leo season. Leo is the temple of the Sun and symbolized by the lion. As James Hillman describes it:

The heart of the lion is like the sun: round and full and whole. The classical symbolisms of this heart are gold, king, redness, sol, sulfur, heat. It glows in the center of our being and radiates outward, magnaminous, paternal, encouraging.

The Thought of the Heart and the Soul of the World by James Hillman

That brings us to the current Full Moon in Aquarius. Full Moons are polarities, with the Moon in Aquarius opposite the Sun in Leo.

When we consider Leo, with its focus on a heart-centered personal journey, we also need to take into consideration Aquarius, its opposite sign, which is the temple of Saturn and emphasizes the intellect and the collective.

Carl Jung was born under a Leo Sun and an Aquarius rising sign. One of the major themes in his work is that we should not capitulate to collective norms and should instead strive towards our own individuation.

By contrast, a major emphasis of James Hillman’s work was that if we focus too much on the inner soul and neglect the outer soul, we contribute to the decline of the world. Hillman had Jupiter and Mars – the Sage and the Warrior – in Aquarius in his natal chart.

Another example of this Leo-Aquarius polarity comes from The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C.S. Lewis, which is a book drenched in Sun symbolism. In a subtle reference to alchemy, Eustace gets greedy when he discovers a pool that turns everything it touches into gold. Suddenly he wants to turn all the things into gold and rake in the money.

Of course that doesn’t work out so well for Eustace. His greed turns him into a dragon and he desperately tries to remove the dragon skin, but is unsuccessful.

Aslan the lion – a solar figure – appears and removes it for him. Eustace says, “The first tear he made was so deep that I thought it had gone right into my heart.”

After this, Eustace evolves from a self-absorbed individual to someone who embodies more Aquarian traits, with a greater focus on the collective and a more cooperative approach to life.

There will never be perfect balance between the Aquarius-Leo axis in our lives, but we can regularly remind ourselves that, as James Hollis says, “group action can be no more efficacious than the sum of individual consciousness brought to it.” A deeper understanding of the Sun’s placement in your astrology chart, and of your Aquarius-Leo axis, are two practical ways astrology can begin to assist with this.

C.S. Lewis prefered the metaphorical use of the word influence in astrological passages, which was influenza. Therefore the change in Eustace was brought about by the influenza of the Sun through Aslan.

Rather than trying to imitate the Sun’s influence like the alchemists, we should instead allow its “influenza” to transform us from within, letting its light guide our personal growth while also illuminating our contributions to the collective.

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What makes you roar?

What makes you roar?

When you were a child did anyone ask you “How do you want to be when you grow up?”

My guess is probably not!

Calling is more how you do something than about what you do. That is a key insight I learned years ago from my favorite James Hillman book, The Soul’s Code.

We tend to find ourselves going through the first half of life focused more on what we want to be when we grow up.

Leo season presents the opportunity to revisit and reflect more deeply on the Hero archetype:

In reflecting on the archetypal gestalt of the hero, Jung notes how each of us has an innate cluster of energy whose task it is to overthrow the dark powers that threaten, whether outer or inner. The outer threats are the powers and principalities of this earth that confront us and generate fear.

Each of us knows this well, for more of our reflexive, patterning behaviors arise out of fear management, or rather our being managed by fear, than any other motive. And yet, each of us also knows a summons to show up in life as ourselves, no matter how deeply buried that impulse is.

–Living Between Worlds: Finding Personal Resilience in Changing Times by James Hollis

For a clue as to that “innate cluster of energy” within you, consider the Hero function of your personality type.

One indicator of the “summons to show up in life as ourselves” is the location of the Sun in your natal chart. The Sun shows us the manner in which we respond to that call; or, the how, not just the what.

Because the Sun is the host of Leo, the location of Leo in your chart also gives clues about that summons, even if there are no planets in Leo in your chart.

During the New Moon in Leo tomorrow, the Sun will be in the Retreat section of Leo (per the I Ching). Retreat is about a leader remaining at a distance from their people – an advisor rather than a friend. It takes the 10,000 foot view and practices caring detachment.

The lion is the symbol of Leo. The roar of a lion can be heard from great distances and establishes the lion’s presence without physical confrontation. A roar is used strategically; a lion never says more than is necessary. The roar of a lion captures the essence of Leo’s confident, expressive energy and Retreat’s strategic wisdom.

When you speak from your core and show up fully as yourself, it is like roaring. Roaring helps you reconnect with the essence of how you want to be in life, beyond just what you want to do. The deeper the summons to show up as your true self is buried, the louder you might need to roar!

What makes you roar?

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A Wild and Wise Inner Mother

A Wild and Wise Inner Mother

A branch fell off the top of a large maple tree in our backyard a few days ago, narrowly missing the power line and family members in the yard at the time. The day was sunny with no wind.

It was yet another jolt from Mars-Uranus in Taurus.

There were many other such zaps in the air last week, especially the aptly named CrowdStrike, which is the largest IT outage in history.

To top off the fun, we get some Full Moon energy this weekend!

It’s the second Full Moon in Capricorn in a row. The Sun was just barely into Cancer during the first Full Moon – now it is at the tail end of Cancer.

Cancer and Capricorn are opposite each other on the zodiac. It’s a polarity of the archetypes of The Great Mother and Wise Old Man (Senex).

I have been contemplating the below quote during Cancer season, and it seems fitting to share it now under this Full Moon:

Rather than disengaging from the mother, we are seeking a wild and wise mother. We are not, cannot be, separate from her. Our relationship to this soulful mother is meant to turn and turn, and to change and change, and it is a paradox. This mother is a school we are born into, a school we are students in, a school we are teachers at, all at the same time, and for the rest of our lives. Whether we have children or not, whether we nourish the garden, the sciences, or the thunderworld of poetics, we always brush against the wild mother on our way to anywhere else. And this is as it should be.

Women Who Run With the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estés

Capricorn would have us disengage from the mother.

Such disengagement is necessary when it focuses on withdrawing projections from the personal mother, or an idealized image of mothering, and developing one’s own inner mother.

With the Sun entering Leo the day after the full Moon, the focus shifts to the father archetype, as Leo is the home sign of the Sun. It provides an opportunity to reflect more on becoming father to your own life:

One becomes a father to one’s own life by becoming intimately acquainted with it and by daring to traverse its waters. I’m talking here about a deep father figure that settles into the soul to provide a sense of authority, the feeling that you are the author of your own life, that you are the head of the household in your own affairs.

Care of the Soul by Thomas Moore

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How you can influence the archetypes…and the world

How you can influence the archetypes…and the world

Astrology, personality typology, and working with dreams and the I Ching can all lead to a dead end of passive introspection if we aren’t careful.

That’s not necessarily a fun thing for my introverted intuitive self to contemplate! But it must be done. After all, it’s immoral to focus on individuation and not pay it back, as Jung wrote in The Symbolic Life.

Or as James Hillman said, “You make soul by living life, not by retreating from the world into ‘inner work’ or beyond the world in spiritual disciplines and meditation.”

Currently the terrain we are navigating as a collective includes a dynamite-like Mars Uranus conjunction in Taurus, which perfects on Monday.

The Mars-Uranus archetype is the Rebel. Its themes include sudden urges for freedom and independence, recklessness, sudden breakthroughs, angry outbursts, and erratic behavior.

Unfortunately, here in the United States we already have one major Mars-Uranus event at the collective level, which is in the headlines all over the world.

Passively thinking about a transit like this, especially in regards to one’s own chart, can lead to anxiety and viewing the energies as a threat.

An alternative is to instead view this Mars-Uranus Rebel as an invited guest that comes “in the service of health and wholeness,” the same way dreams do, per Jeremy Taylor.

You could totally flip the script and actually have an influence on the Rebel (or any other archetype):

“Each time an individual overcomes fear and creatively embodies the Willing Sacrifice in his or her dreams and waking life, the archetypal energies themselves are influenced and helped to change and evolve. … Whether or not we can measure either aspect of this influence doesn’t matter; at its worst, this is a useful way to imagine the “unknowable,” and at best it is true.”

Where People Fly and Water Runs Uphill by Jeremy Taylor

The language of the I Ching helps describe the type of situations we likely might face as we hang out with this Rebel: the polarity of Conflict and Holding Together.

For those of us in the United States, the type of culture in which this is happening is ESTJ, top-heavy in extraverted thinking, with extraverted feeling in the deepest recesses of its shadow.

“Beebe notes that extraverted feeling is oriented towards connecting with the emotions of others. When differentiated at a group level, it fosters ‘mutual trust and the harmonious working of groups’. Authentic empathy for the moral injury of identity groups other than one’s own is the necessary foundation for coordinated political action.”

Mark Hunziker and Peter Dunlap, Journal of Analytical Psychology, November 2021 issue

Fortunately, within the Conflict there is always the seed of Holding Together. We could have an influence on the Rebel archetype by bringing out our individual and collective extraverted thinking to help us Hold Together.

Then we can start to think beyond just my personality type, Mars-Uranus in my chart, my dream, my Conflict, to include our type, our Mars-Uranus experience, and seeing the collective elements in our dreams. This is how we become psychological citizens.

Mark Hunziker writes about how many psychological citizens engage in “Listening and empathy circles, ‘one-on-ones’ that invite activists to share their stories with one another. and many other practices.”

Jeremy Taylor wrote about the power of dream groups: “Working with dreams in groups helps us overcome the sense of isolation that we all feel from time to time, bringing us into more meaningful contact with one another. This renewal of community has an effect on the shape of society as a whole.”

The journey towards individuation is not merely an inward quest, but a call to engage with the world and its challenges, embracing both our inner and outer Rebels.

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The value of adversity

The value of adversity

Could you use a breather and an emotional reset?

That’s what the energy indicated by today’s New Moon in Cancer invites us to do.

As a small example of this, last week my local community received the abrupt news that this will be the final year of our local July 4th festival, which has run every year for almost 60 years.

Immediately a grassroots effort began to save the festival. Many residents didn’t know the festival is run by volunteers and that there is a dire shortage of them. That, combined with lack of funding, caused an Obstruction.

It has been heartwarming to see many people in the community come together to volunteer and raise money to save this charming festival, especially during these times when there is so much polarity at the national level.

It is the epitome of a Cancer type of activity – a community banding together to preserve one of its important traditions.

Today’s New Moon in Cancer occurs in the Obstruction part of Cancer, which is hexagram 39 of the I Ching.

Through introspection an external obstacle becomes “an occasion for inner enrichment and education. … An obstruction that lasts only for a time is useful for self-development. This is the value of adversity.” (The I Ching, Richard Wilhelm translation).

The New Moon in Cancer creates a brief, nurturing pause before the action-packed Mars-Uranus conjunction in Taurus perfects on July 15.

I admit I’m not looking forward what some of the headlines will be like during those several days.

But the reflections and intentions set during the New Moon in Cancer can be grounded in Taurus’s earthy energy, which will provide emotional resilience and practical readiness.to face the Mars-Uranus conjunction.

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The art of letting yourself go

The art of letting yourself go

No, not that kind of “letting yourself go,” which is a phrase used to disparage someone who pays less attention to their appearance than they used to.

We’re in the Keeping Still section of Cancer season, so I’ve been reflecting on the Chinese wu wei sort of letting go. Jung described wu wei as “the art of letting things happen, action through non-action, letting go of oneself.”

The Keeping Still hexagram of the I Ching is a doubling of the mountain trigram. It correlates with introverted feeling (Fi) per Chinese Jungian analyst Chenghou Cai: “For Fi, deep feelings are seldom articulated, but are powerful when they are expressed. At this level of introverted feeling, one is like the person who has mastered the art of Keeping Still as taught by the I Ching.”

One is at rest, not merely in a small, circumscribed way in regard to matters of detail, but one has also a general resignation in regard to life as a whole, and this confers peace and good fortune in relation to every individual matter.

The I Ching translated by Richard Wilhelm

The opposite of introverted feeling is extraverted thinking. The United States is an ESTJ culture and one-sided in extraverted thinking. Jung said extraverted thinking is the only kind of thinking recognized by Western culture.

Extraverted thinking (Te), which compares to Thunder in the I Ching, acts with directness and authority and has little use for wu wei and Keeping Still.

Since the Aries eclipse this spring, followed by the Jupiter-Uranus conjunction in Taurus, and then all the Gemini energy, it sometimes felt like it has been a never-ending parade of extraverted thinking, extraverted sensation, and extraverted intuition.

Now that it’s Cancer season with its introverted feeling energy, hopefully some of how we let ourselves go can be in the “Calgon, Take Me Away!” kind of way.

If the waters of Cancer ever get too choppy, here’s Marion Woodman’s reminder about stillness, with its introverted feeling undertones:

To find the stillness at the center of the whirlpool, the eye of the hurricane, and not hold onto it with the rigidity born of fear, is what in analysis we struggle to reach. That center I call Sophia, the feminine Wisdom of God. It is not the masculine standpoint, the highly-principled “Here I stand.” … It is an invisible center encountered only in a creative process, at first not consciously recognized, but gradually revealed as the process unfolds.

Addiction to Perfection by Marion Woodman

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The summer snooze…I mean solstice

The summer snooze…I mean solstice

Here we are at the summer solstice and the official beginning of Cancer season.

It seems like just yesterday it was the winter solstice and I was standing in the front yard watching Santa go by on a fire truck. Today I’m in the front yard tending – and talking to – pumpkin plants and petunias.

I felt waterlogged most of this week. The moment Venus and Mercury entered Cancer on Monday, the shift from the air of Gemini to the waters of Cancer found me taking as many as two naps a day.

Because Cancer has caretaking qualities I’ve even find myself looking up recipes online, which normally isn’t my thing.

The best way to understand a sign is to compare it to its opposite, which in this case is Capricorn.

With the Capricorn full moon happening tommorow, this is a perfect time to reflect on what has been happening in the Capricorn area of your life since the winter solstice.

Because I’m an introverted intuitive type and tend to focus on the future, I have developed an appreciation for the winter solstice and its promise of increasing light that builds up to the summer solstice.

Now that the summer solstice is here, which correlates with hexagram 15: Moderation, I want to slow down. I like using astrology as a way to process the present and better understand what is unfolding moment to moment.

A noble one is inwardly as self-sufficient as a mountain and firm as bedrock; she has quietly built up the inner resources to sustain an intelligent, centred generosity. She reduces exaggeration and brings things back to a state of equilibrium, weighing up what is needed from moment to moment, and always referring back to that inner balance point.

I Ching: Walking Your Path, Creating Your Future by Hilary Barrett

That quote is a wonderful way to describe the energy of Cancer in constrast to Gemini season.

Which inner resources are you quietly building up?

As fun as the exaggerations in Gemini may have been, which ones will you start reducing and bring back to a state of equilibrium?

What does your inner balance point feel like in your body?

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The real cause of stagnation

The real cause of stagnation

On the surface, Gemini is the last place one would expect Stagnation.

Yet here we are in the Stagnation section of Gemini, per hexagram 12 of the I Ching, which is where today’s Mercury’s cazimi with the Sun is happening.

That’s a fancy way of saying it’s a rebirth moment for Mercury, who has been hidden under the beams of the Sun in recent days. This can feel a lot like Stagnation, especially with Saturn in Pisces having an influence.

Mercury in Gemini is curious, witty, and multi-faceted. Being under the beams may slow it down externally, but Stagnation gives us an opportunity to turn inward. As someone who is an introvert and also has three planets in Gemini (something of an oxymoron), I heartily endorse this introverted version of Gemini.

In the I Ching, Stagnation immediately follows the Peace hexagram. It shows how Peace can rapidly turn to Stagnation. It’s a 63 hexagram journey back to Peace, yet, paradoxically, that can also happen in the blink of an eye. Especially if we follow Clarissa Pinkola Estes’ advice about getting over stagnation:

It is not the failure that holds us back but the reluctance to begin over again that causes us to stagnate. If you’re scared, so what? If you’re afraid something’s going to leap out and bite you, then for heaven’s sake, get it over with already.

Women Who Run With the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Speaking of something leaping out and biting you, Mars entered Taurus earlier this week. As I’ve written about before, the children’s book Ferdinand the Bull is one of my favorite books with a Taurus vibe. Ferdinand accidentally sits on a bee and he momentarily overcomes some inertia (see my Reel if you need a refresh).

As we Stagnate for a bit in Gemini, may the wake up call from sitting on a bee help lead us back to Peace

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Joy as an absolute need

Joy as an absolute need

There is a party going on in Gemini right now and I’m here for it.

The New Moon in Gemini is today and it is happening near Jupiter, Venus, and Mercury. Five planets total in Gemini!

For those of you feeling a bit overwhelmed by this airy, social, analytical, and clever energy, it will dissipitate soon once Cancer throws some water on it after the festivities move there.

Jupiter remains in Gemini for another year, however, which, as a Gemini myself, I’m happy about.

Therefore I’ve decided that, for me, this will be the year of living more playfully. Play is one of Gemini’s attributes, because Mercury is its planetary host.

The late humor columnist Erma Bombeck was my biggest inspiration as a teenager and young adult.

She said that it is easier to make someone cry than it is to make them laugh.

She made me laugh a lot when I was in high school, which was much needed during that time period. I exchanged a few letters with her which remain among my prized possessions.

When I was a young mother I listened again and again to an old cassette tape from the library that had a Writer’s Digest interview with Erma. Thankfully it is available online. I bookmarked it and will listen to it again.

I even wrote dozens of humor columns for local newspapers myself, on a freelance/hobby basis. My passion for writing short copy has carried over into blogging.

Although that Scorpio Moon energy of mine isn’t going anywhere, you’ll continue to see a bit more of my Gemini dry wit in these posts, as one of my ways to live more playfully. Let’s face it, astrology and Jungian psychology need some humor once in a while!

Anyway, that (finally) brings us to Hexagram 35: Progress, line 6, which is our hexagram host for the New Moon.

You tap into your strongest motivation, throw your whole self into the effort and charge headlong for your goal. You may not have any very clear idea of how to direct your energy, but you hold fast to your objective and refuse to let it go. At least you will not miss any opportunity for lack of trying.

I Ching: Walking Your Path, Creating Your Future by Hilary Barrett

Saturn in Pisces, the grown-up in the room, is keeping an eye on the New Moon in Gemini, and Jupiter’s yearlong stay in Gemini, so that means support is available for directing your energy. Saturn draws out Gemini’s practical, logical, and resourceful potential. Dare I say it can even help us with the focus needed that can result in joy:

Once the ego opens itself, however, once that forgotten energy begins to flow through dancing, painting, singing, joy is not experienced as selfish or luxurious, but as an absolute need. …Then the danger is to want too much too soon. The important thing is to focus, not on the goal, but on the process. Be in the present. Let the unconscious play.

Addiction to Perfection by Marion Woodman

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8 Things I Learned From Ashok Bedi, M.D.

8 Things I Learned From Ashok Bedi, M.D.

It’s a good thing I’ve been doing wrist strengthening exercises lately (for pickleball) because I took notes almost constantly as Jungian analyst and psychiatrist Ashok Bedi spoke to our Jungian Studies group at the Jung Institute of Chicago.

The topic was individuation , which he defined as: “The process of becoming oneself, whole, indivisible and differentiated from the collective but worthy of merger with the collective in one’s uniqueness.”

Here are eight things I learned during those four hours:

  1. Individuation is immoral unless you pay it back. Might as well start out with the one that pulls no punches! Focusing on individuation cuts you off from conformity and collectivity. After a while you should emerge and serve the community that chooses you to serve it. This is a summary of Jung’s thoughts in The Symbolic Life.
  2. The 4 types of people and how to handle them (based on the Yoga Sutras):
    • Unhappy people – Show them compassion, but not too much. You rob them of necessary suffering if you are too compassionate. Suffering is needed for individuation.
    • Happy people – Be mildly joyful towards them, but not too much, because you don’t know how they got their success.
    • Wicked people – Avoid them. If they are a family member and you can’t avoid them, put them on a maintenance list, such as only seeing them on holidays.
    • Virtuous/soulful people – Stay with them and follow them to the end of life.
  3. Live your authentic nature in balance. He used the analogy of Lion and Lamb. If you are a lion, be a lion most of the time. But there are times for a lion to be a lamb and vice versa. Sometimes a lamb must speak and act from greater strength and there are times for lions to focus on healing, forgiving, and not holding grudges.
  4. All our transactions are one of the following (I’ll let you guess which one is the most preferable):
    • Both lose.
    • I win, you lose.
    • You win, I lose.
    • Both win.
  5. Is Jungian psychology spirituality or psychology? Per Bedi it is on the edges of science. The “edge of science is always spirit.” As one of our instructors put it, Jungian psychology is “psychological understanding of how spirit works in human beings.”
  6. Absence of proof is not absence of truth.
  7. You are everything. The universe is one. As above, so below. You are god, human, animal, vegetable, and mineral. In small group sessions we had fun discussing which animal, vegetable, and mineral we are. If you must know, for mineral, I’m an amethyst, because that was once a nickname given to me by a friend who thought I was multi-faceted. For animal, I’m a white-throated sparrow, my favorite bird. A flock of them spends a few weeks in our backyard every spring before migrating north. I love their unique and charming whistles and the stipes on their heads. If you look closely at them, and listen carefully, you will see they aren’t “just a sparrow.” For vegetable, I’m a potato: I like the underworld connotations. They are boring to look at, yet multi-purpose (French fries are my favorite of their forms), nourishing, easy to cook, and abundant in tough times.

Which animal, vegetable, and mineral are you?

Did someone say French fries?

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