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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Live in fragments no longer

Live in fragments no longer

Have you felt like you are living in fragments in recent days?

A little bit restless and hard to focus?

Losing track of what day it is?

Are you getting a lot of stimulating ideas and making connections quickly?

Maybe you feel like you have strong extraverted intuition even though you normally don’t?

Have you received any surprise communications?

Perhaps you’ve noticed a dramatic headline or two?

Are you having an easier time communicating your thoughts, although possibly not always with a great amount of tact?

Are you a little bit more open-minded?

Welcome to Mercury in Taurus conjunct Uranus!

This goes exact today and has been in the air, so to speak, all week.

And how appropriate that hexagram 23 of the I Ching, which is associated with this part of Taurus, is called Splitting Apart!

Speaking of fragments, I’ve always loved the E.M. Forster quote, “Live in fragments no longer. Only connect.”

Mercury enters Gemini on Monday so some of this fragmented feeling might continue, because Mercury likes to roll that way.

Jupiter is there now for the next year, however, and will help with the “connect” part. Jupiter brings cohesion and makes things whole. It brings complete and full devotion. Jupiter is like a deeply wise sage, or crone, who encourages you to sort out what is you and what is not you. And helps you discover that the more you embrace your uniqueness the more you are connected to everyone else.

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Contemplation gives you true power

Contemplation gives you true power

I love that Hexagram 20: Contemplation of the I Ching correlates with the beginning of Gemini season.

As I wrote about last year, Mercury’s sign of Gemini has a lot more depth than one might think. It is perfectly suited to help us with the three levels of contemplation that Richard Rudd describes in his commentary on this hexagram in The 64 Ways.

The first level is simply viewing. We have to learn to train our lens on the present and on our current life situation. This helps us to make the connection that “our outer life is built upon the foundation of our inner life.”

The second level “is about viewing oneself in relation to the world. The self awareness really deepens now.” Seeing the effects of our actions has a preventative effect in us. Bad habits start to fall away. As we start to become more integrated in the world it brings a sense of calm. Note that it is becoming more integrated in- and not detached from – the world that brings this calm. “Allow this calm to settle deeply into your soul.” Cultivate it and make space for it to grow.

The third level is when the contemplation ceases of its own accord. “Everything you do or feel becomes an aspect of your contemplation. You use everything that happens in your life. This is the subtle art of contemplation.”

Using everything that happens in your life reminds me of what Jungian analyst Robert A. Johnson said:

Becoming whole is a game in which you get rid of nothing; you cannot do without these diverse energies any more than you can do without one of the physical organs that make up your body. You need to draw upon everything that is available to you.

Living Your Unlived Life by Robert A. Johnson

Isn’t that a wonderful alternative to the all-too prevalent notion that you have broken parts that need fixing?

Jupiter entered Gemini yesterday and will spend a year there. I look forward to having that in the background as we move through all the zodiacal seasons. It will be in Hexagram 20 for several months.

Jupiter, combined with the Mercurial nature of Gemini, brings a positive outlook, eloquent communication skills, ability to see the big picture, and ability to synthesize a lot of ideas. It will also help remind us that, as Rudd says, “Contemplation gives you true power.”

From a personality type perspective, hexagram 64 contains Earth (extraverted sensation) and Wind (extraverted feeling). You can see this combination in our closing quote:

When you learn the art of contemplation you have more influence on the direction of humanity than the President of the United States. You may not see this on the surface, but it’s true. A person living in presence affects the very air around them. They send off radiations of harmony that touches all quadrants of the universe. They are like the gentle wind blowing across the earth.

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Complete and full devotion

Complete and full devotion

The Sun just entered Gemini, which marks something of a milestone for me.

This begins my second year of blogging around the zodiac using the I Ching in a devotional way as a sort of lectionary, with a dash of depth psychology quotes.

A little bit eclectic, which is how my Gemini self likes it.

It was a year ago that I decided to do weekly blog posts like this. I’m excited to continue.

Today the Sun is still in hexagram 8: Holding Together, which I wrote about last time during the final week of Taurus season.

Now it is in line 6 of this hexagram (each hexagram has six lines), which adds additional nuance.

The sixth line is the top of the hexagram. In Hexagram 8 it reminds us:

The head is in the beginning. If the beginning is not right, there is no hope of a right ending. If we have missed the right moment for union and go on hesitating to give complete and full devotion, we shall regret the error when it is too late.

The I Ching by Richard Wilhelm

Gemini is a mutable air sign ruled by Mercury. The upside to its mutability is adaptability. The downside is the hesitation to give complete and full devotion.

The Mercury of Gemini is curious and loves to explore areas others do not. It can get bored quickly and move on. But us Gemini types need to remember that complete and full devotion, a Jupiterian quality, is sometimes warranted.

Even if you don’t have Gemini planets in your natal chart, the area of life Gemini represents for you is now lit up by the Sun and other planets will be zipping through in the coming weeks.

Here are a few things to ponder during Gemini season in light of Hexagram 8, line 6:

Reflect on a recent experience where you hesitated to fully commit or devote yourself. How did this hesitation impact the outcome?

Explore a time when your curiosity led you to explore new territories or ideas. How did this curiosity manifest, and what did you learn from the experience?

Consider the areas of your life currently illuminated by the Sun’s transit through Gemini. How can you harness the adaptability of this mutable air sign to navigate any changes or challenges you may encounter?

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Leaders as cultural therapists

Leaders as cultural therapists

For insights on leadership, I often turn to the ancient Chinese book Tao Te Ching.

In measuring out rewards, wise rulers act like mother birds. While seeing into every corner, they are unobtrusive. While protecting the people, they do not control them. They are motherly and fatherly, but not domineering. They persuade with words, not weapons. This is their crowning virtue.

Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu

What passes for leadership these days tends to not resemble this more introverted, intuitive, and feeling approach at all.

As John Beebe has said, our culture is imbalanced, with a heavy emphasis on extraverted thinking, extraverted sensation, and extraverted intuition.

This brings us to our hexagram host for this final week of Taurus: Hexagram 8: Holding Together.

The unity described in this hexagram, per Wilhelm’s translation, “calls for a central figure around whom other persons may unite…It requires greatness of spirit, consistency, and strength.”

Jennifer Leigh Selig’s book about Civil Rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., written from a depth psychology perspective, emphasizes how leaders should engage in “cultural therapy”:

I also hope that others will take up this notion of “cultural therapy,” of looking at our leaders and activists as cultural therapists, and will consider ways they can work with more psychological effectiveness and effectiveness toward cultural healing, transformation, and integration. The keys to the kingdom of psychological transformation needn’t lie only in the inner chamber of the therapy room; they have the power to unlock groups, cultures, even nations, and unleash healing en masse.

Integration by Jennifer Leigh Selig

Sagely Jupiter in Taurus will experience a rebirth moment this week as it conjoins the Sun and begins a new one-year cycle. This comes in the wake of Jupiter’s recent conjunction with Uranus

Therefore this “power to unlock” is there for all of us to tune into.

With Jupiter in Taurus experiencing a rebirth moment, reflect on a personal or professional goal where you can embody the qualities of “greatness of spirit, consistency, and strength” described in Hexagram 8: Holding Together.

How might you become a central figure around whom others can unite, fostering unity and resilience in pursuit of shared objectives?

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†

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New seed in the empty places

New seed in the empty places

Some problems can’t be solved; you simply have to wait until you outgrow them.

That Jungian theme came to mind as I read Hexagram 23: Splitting Apart of the I Ching, our hexagram host for this next week of Taurus.

The image is of a mountain on top of the earth. Just as a mountain experiences continuous erosion, the old ways of living must be stripped away.

It’s not good, at such times, to imagine the future and make plans. You need to bring your energy back to the centre and honour the process: this is a time to be transformed, not to act.

Moreover, until the old is so utterly stripped from you that you have no choice but to think in new ways, you will only be able to re-create the old patterns.

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

In the book The Faithful Gardener by Clarissa Pinkola Estés, which is perfect reading for Taurus season, she describes a time during her childhood when the local government stripped their land bare to build a highway near their property.

It was heartbreaking to lose all the trees and plants. Estés’ uncle instructed the family to leave the land bare and unseeded, as this is the best way to attract seeds of new life. The seeds would know how to find the bare, scorched earth.

Sure enough, the seeds arrived, and a small forest of hardwood trees grew over a long period of time. To Estés and her uncle they felt like they were in Eden.

I learned from my dear people as much about the grave, about facing the demons, and about rebirth as I have learned in all my psychoanalytic training and all my twenty-five years of clinical practice. I know that those who are in some ways and for some time shorn of belief in life itself—that they ultimately are the ones who will come to know best that Eden lies underneath the empty field, that the new seed goes first to the empty and open places—even when the open place is a grieving heart, a tortured mind, or a devasted spirit.

The Faithful Gardener by Clarissa Pinkola Estés

An important insight to ponder in the wake of the recent New Moon in Taurus.

Everything that is built up – power, or achievement, or the edifice of self and identity – must continually erode away. It leaves behind an enriched inner world, and a quiet sense of being at home here.

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

What is eroding away in your life?

How is your inner life being enriched as a result?

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Transformation by doing nothing

Transformation by doing nothing

It couldn’t possibly get more earthy and Taurus-y than Hexagram 2: Earth (The Receptive), our hexagram host for this next week.

The opposite of Hexagram 2 is Hexagram 1: The Creative, directly across the zodiacal wheel from Taurus in Scorpio. Both work as partners in creation. Hexagram 2 describes Earth’s role, with its receptivity being a form of strength:

Through the power of the land, Earth is heaven’s partner in bringing the world into being. The sun needs a place to shine, rain a place to fall, and seeds need soil to grow in; flashes of inspiration need space and time to expand and take shape; great ideas need work to be realized.

The power of the land is to provide everything needed for all things to find their shape. A noble one embodies this power in the deep generosity of her character. She certainly need never worry about the limits of her strength.

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

With the New Moon in Taurus next week, alongside Venus and Jupiter in Taurus, you should start feeling that needed space and time opening up, along with a sense of groundedness and connection to the natural world.

To be receptive is to surrender and become more oriented:

The more we surrender to everything, to every moment as perfect, the more oriented we become. The more we drop our agendas, our trying, our incessant concerns about our lives and those around us, the more we radiate the presence inside us. Then the magic occurs. Our aura, our vibration, animates our environment. It opens up the currents of the quantum field; it catalyses transformation. We become a force of orientation for all life forms. Simply by doing nothing we become a field of transformational forces.

The 64 Ways by Richard Rudd

Transformation by doing nothing! Isn’t that nice to ponder instead of all the emphasis out there on productivity?

When I meet with astrology clients, I try to serve as an orienteer. I emphasize attuning ourselves to the present energies indicated in the chart.

Nothing is broken. There is no to-do list and nothing that needs fixing.

To orient another person correctly, and I mean truly correctly, is to not give them advice. Advice we can get anywhere. To orient someone is to love them. It’s to be with them. It’s to be ourself with them. It’s to let them see our weakness s well as our strength. It’s to be empty like water, and yet to be full. It’s to be intuitive, to trust, to soften, to yield, to flow. People don’t need help. People need love.

The 64 Ways by Richard Rudd

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A moment to be still and turn inward

A moment to be still and turn inward

Isn’t it nice to have cosmic permission to pause during this busy zodiacal spring and return to one’s center?

After that Aries eclipse and Jupiter-Uranus conjunction, whew, I’m ready for some rest!

Hexagram 24: Return (The Turning Point) from the I Ching describes how our journey has turning points along the way:

By walking constantly to and from your source, you participate in a two-way flow of creation. You go out and rediscover your own way; you return through an open door to your home and relationships. This is a living motion, like breathing, that revitalizes and restores. Relaxed and spacious, it allows time for the path’s natural meanderings, never creating resistance.

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

I also like its description of how ancient kings cared for their people “as the earth covers a dormant seed. They contained people’s impulse to rush out and resume business as usual, so that the energy for growth would not be squandered…”

This ties in very well with Taurus season. Taurus is a feminine earth associated with stability and determination.

Taurus provides a turning point for setting practical goals and recommitting to them. Like steady Taurus, Hexagram 24 suggests a return to what is essential and reliable, emphasizing patience and persistence in achieving long-term objectives:

“This is the turning point on your path, a moment to be still and turn inward to listen for little glimmerings and inklings of awareness, to nurture the seeds of a personal sense of direction.”

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You are known by your nourishment

You are known by your nourishment

The words you speak are like food – they go out into the collective stream and nourish others.

You draw nourishment from this same stream and therefore need to be discriminating about what you ingest.

Hexagram 27 of the I Ching, The Corners of the Mouth (Providing Nourishment) is our hexagram host for this next week of Taurus.

Taurus, a feminine earth sign ruled by Venus, is closely aligned with food and nourishment. The Empress is the tarot card associated with Taurus (note the Venus symbol to the left of her chair). See how she reclines and is not in a hurry. She looks ready to receive and provide nourishment in a discerning way.

The nourishment of this hexagram is more than just food. It includes physical, intellectual, spiritual, social, and more.

Even your shadow is a form of nourishment. Robert Bly wrote about how we should “eat” our shadows:

So the person who has eaten his shadow spreads calmness, and shows more grief than anger. If the ancients were right that darkness contains intelligence and nourishment and even information, then the person who has eaten some of his or her shadow is more energetic as well as more intelligent.

A Little Book of the Human Shadow by Robert Bly

The nourishment you both provide and take in also speaks to your character:

If we wish to know what anyone is like, we have only to observe on whom he bestows his care and what sides of his own nature he cultivates and nourishes.

The I Ching or Book of Changes translated by Richard Wilhelm

Your tranquillity depends on it:

For tranquillity keeps the words that come out of the mouth from exceeding proper measure, and keeps the food that goes into the mouth from exceeding its proper measure, and keeps the food that goes into the mouth from exceeding its proper measure. Thus character is cultivated.

The I Ching or Book of Changes translated by Richard Wilhelm

This coming week is a suitable time to find some Empress moments and reflect, especially as we are winding down these last few days of Mercury retrograde in Aries:

What nourishment are you hungry for?

If you take in this nourishment, which sides of your nature will it cultivate and nourish?

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