House guest

Saturn’s station on March 2 at 23° Scorpio is within a degree of my natal Ascendant. There is nothing like the grim reaper so close by to bring death to the doorstep.

I know several people who have passed over this week, not just an older friend, but also a few heartbreaking endings for two people in their youth.

Censoring myself, a worthy Saturn trait, I thought I cannot write about death again for the blog.

Happily, the perfect antidote arrived — astrologer Don Cerow, who is in Ashland as part of an extended tour. He is the guest speaker at our NCGR meeting tonight.

I was on the phone with a family member (experiencing both a sudden, devastating loss and a very surprising and hopeful turn in his life) when Don showed up, handing me a pink flower-laden blossom from the cherry tree. It was a beautiful gesture of the rebirth and renewal that always comes, that will come, after death.

The Moon had just entered Libra when we looked at the chart of the moment to begin orienting ourselves to the current picture.

The Moon moving through Libra will be triggering the cardinal square today: Moon squares Jupiter at 2:03 p.m., opposes Uranus at 3:49 p.m., and squares Pluto at 7:12 p.m. (All times PDT)

Although the necessity and immediacy of the surprising changes inherent in the symbolism of the cardinal signs is in sharp focus today, Don talked about this celestial pattern forming as a step, a shock point, one of many, as we move towards the future.

Don has a long view. His book, When the Dragon Wore the Crown, is the basis for the presentations he is giving on the tour. (1) For 40 years he has studied two ways to orient ourselves against the backdrop of the heavens (what he refers to as the Center and the Circle): the slowly changing North Star and the Vernal Equinox point moving over time, i.e. the precession of the equinoxes.

Precession is allowing the Spring Equinox point to drift back through the constellations, giving us the different ages, i.e., Gemini, Taurus, Aries, Pisces, Aquarius, etc. His work traces cultures (beginning in 5000 BC) and includes Chinese, Sumerian, Babylonian, Phoenician, Hindu, Norse, Native American, and Mayan myths, artifacts, archeological pieces, and natural phenomena. He sees the constellations as they are echoed on Earth via the records of history and as they are concurrently marked in the stars at different epochs of time. When we went out to see the (cloudy) sky, Don said that with clear skies you could see 7000 years of history across the night sky. Now, that’s a view that can put things in a different perspective.

For thousands of years the astronomical marker of the North Celestial Pole was Theban, a star in Draco the Dragon. The Dragon (also drawn as a snake in constellation maps) crawls between the Great Bear and the Little Bear (the big and little dippers) in the northern sky. Theban is not a bright star; its location as the place in the sky aligned with the North Celestial Pole is its significance. The heart of the Dragon is the star location that directed us northwards for at least a thousand years.

At our current point in time, the North Star, the star around which all the other stars seem to rotate, is Polaris in Ursa Minor (the Little Bear). According to Don’s research, Polaris is still moving towards exact alignment with the North Celestial Pole; that will occur in 2100 AD. We talked about the North Celestial Pole being connected to the crown chakra in the human being. Don feels that, as a species, we are moving towards that perfect alignment with Source, a heavenly marker that he connects with the long cherished notion of the Aquarian Age.

As I say prayers for the dear departing souls whom I know, I am also trying to understand what is happening in the Ukraine and Venezuela, and remembering the poor souls on the plane from Malaysia that disappeared; the bitterly impoverished victims of drought in southern Pakistan; the thousands of refugees in Syria; the victims of violence in the Central African Republic and the South Sudan; the many thousands in Haiti and the Philippines still suffering from the effects of the 2010 earth quake and 2013 typhoon. A friend appearing at the door with a flower in hand can be the most welcomed sight in the world.

Reference:

(1) Don Cerow’s West coast tour continues through April. Check his schedule here.