Gemini Full Moon – The Dark Feminine

We have a Full Moon on 12th December at 5.12 am GMT at 19 degrees Gemini. At this time of year, we start feeling the Christ consciousness energies, and as unconditional love infuses into our being the illusions begin to push up.

This Full Moon is right on my Venus. I also have the Saturn-Pluto conjunction exactly trining my Sun in January, so I feel equipped experientially to be talking about this upcoming Saturn-Pluto transit. I used to dread these things, but now I just get super excited as I know it’s going to take me forward in my growth.

It seems the farther down your journey you get, the more you are asked to step up and go into the unknown and embrace where you never thought you’d need to go. But what I’m discovering is that difficult encounters can actually be quite a miraculous and graceful experience with many twists and turns that continually teach and support your deepening and expansion.

Today I’ve just coming out from a minor operation and I am still feeling quite euphoric, from the GA. It just shows that we are brought everything we need. I was prepared for more pain, but actually all I feel is a deeper trust. I trust that the deeper we go, the freer we will become, and the more we step into our power, often in the most unexpected ways, if you are open it grace and miracles they will happen for you. Shamanically, we are being called to pull back our power from wherever or whomever we gave it to.

But having said that, and to backtrack a little, the rose coloured glasses are being peeled off, the illusions are breaking and the veil lifting. For many right now, this can be an incredibly painful process, at least initially. It’s a deconstruction of what you deemed real, and just in time for the holidays so we at least have time to eat, drink, and sleep our way through the struggle. But pain is on the same spectrum as power.

With Jupiter now under the yoke of Saturn (newly in Capricorn) until late 2020, there will be many times this year when Saturn will show up as the final dispositor of the Moon and other planets, revealing consequences and having us deal with them, both collectively and individually. This is going to kick us in the teeth and force those glasses off.

Early December, Jupiter has been forming a square to Chiron in Aries, which grounds hope or despair for the future, squarely into the present. With this we are seeing that we need to accept limits, without blame or judgment. It’s a deep understanding, which restores something inside of us.

With Jupiter now in Capricorn, we could say that the arrow of Sagittarius now points downwards. All the upward striving and longing, returns home, to Earth. It might be feeling like a crash and burn landing, this isn’t an isolated theme, it’s throughout 2020, (especially December 2020).

But while outer expansion might be somewhat limited, the inner expansion is alive and vital like never ever before. And it’s not an easy navigation since it’s a bit like being left in the woods without the bread crumbs. There’s no roadmap at the moment.

My wiser younger cousin Faye summed it up nicely, “life is not just the moments we live but the whole experience. Whatever it is that is happening right now will teach you new things about yourself and add to you and your life’s richness and you will bring that to the ways you connect to others. Just keep looking for the best way you can change what you can, and what you can’t, let it be or let it go.”

Others in my family are not quite so wise; her and I have always said it’s all a very mixed bag, our extended family, that they all a bunch of real odd sorts that all think themselves to be completely normal. But my extended family aside, what seems to be happening at this time is a convergence of realities. And within that space we don’t know who we are anymore, what’s beneath us, and what we can trust, or what’s ahead of us. We are not meant to know, it’s forcing us to let go of all perceived realities and truths and step fully into the now.

This is it. Every experience can be a creative place for us to explore ourselves, or. not. We don’t need to DO anything, we need to have the intention that are lives are a reflection of that. Then the miracles of unconditional love begin appearing. Like they have for me today.

Perhaps there is some training that could be useful though. Knowing how to go in and how to come out. And we need to respect the Divine timing.

I remember experiencing pain in the past, before I had garnered much awareness of myself or had any spiritual awakening. I remember getting totally stuck and lost in the pain for days. All those emotions flooding my body, taking me into stress.

Now I dive in deep, feel it, know it’s got a rhythm to it, as every experience and emotion does, and I know when and how to come out of it.

I can map out my experiences through the different dimensions, especially the range of felt experience. Felt is better, as then it supports you to access the totality of yourself. I have learnt to keep a little part of myself, like a periscope, above the sea, holding the awareness, out of the vastness, oriented, like a rudder. This becomes an ally, the awareness of what is happening means you cannot get submerged and lost.

When I was younger, I didn’t have that, I didn’t have any allies, physical or metaphorical, except perhaps my grandma but she died when I was 18. So I just got lost in it, had no idea where I was. So if you are having that experience, then it’s important to know that developing that periscope is one of the solutions. This is how you manage your experience.

Another very important aspect, is knowing that you are truly loved by the Divine, which is being loved by yourself. That is certainly not something I experienced until my late twenties.

With all these depths we are coming to, or about to go to, what I see more than anything coming up for people if how do I navigate so I know the truth, decision or what to do. People always want tools, they want to know what to do. At this time, not belittling doing, we need to move also beyond it.

Life is not about just having goals, unless your goal is to be goal-less. The song the power of love Frankie goes to Hollywood comes to mind: “The power of love, A force from above, Cleaning my soul, Flame on burn desire, Love with tongues of fire, Purge the soul, Make love your goal… When the chips are down, I’ll be around with my undying, Death defying love for you…I’m so in love with you”. Make this your relationship with the Divine inside of you, you are the Divine, it’s so in love with you. Obviously I’m still quite high from that GA…

So probing, how do you know what you know? This needs to be the question. How do we label and interpret what we know – intuition, gut, senses, signs, universal feedback – internal and external. Well, this can become quite irrelevant and almost pointless when we fall through, into the cracks of darkness. All of these, if in anyway interpreted, take us away from the present reality in the moment. Ask instead, where is it, this knowing, coming from? What’s your investment in believing one thing or other? Can you drop your investment and just sense it instead? Are you attached, clinging to a reality – remember, any clinging is just going to end up becoming illusionary. Notice your interpretations, and how they get you into trouble, they are just addictions. Let yourself crash and burn, even better, become the white fire.

Trust the process is so cliche these days, I cringe as I say it, but quite frankly it’s important to come into trust after deep pain, abandonment and betrayal. Knowing that you can never know what the outcome will be and when the pain will end, all you can do is trust you will get what you need. Trust can only ever be placed in the moment. Never place it in a future reality. Abandonment, which is a strong theme right now astrologically, expressed through different levels and dimensions of the soul, is connected to the need for being loved. We need to find that love within. And when deeply abandoned, ironically we come to find it.

Early abandonment can make us incredibly self-sufficient, it forces growth, it makes us structure our lives. It strengthens the separate part of us. And abandonment in a crash and burn sense, the deepest aspect being the abandonment from the Divine, is there to land us into a deeper trust. It becomes more possible to live in a beginner’s mind, without knowing the outcome, without goals. We trust in what is. With no investment. No planning or future thinking. It’s an opportunity to let the ego shatter, burn, and to align to the greater inner self-sufficiency and strength of the soul.

The quick answer to the question of what is my deepest truth, is whatever you think it is, will likely not be it. It is mostly the last thing you want, the most inaccessible, inconceivable thing, it’s the possibility that brings up fear as that is where you need to go. In truth, truth is just layers, one moment it’s one thing, and the next it’s another. One day one thing, the next another. Watch as it shifts, it’s momentary nature. This momentary aspect of us is offering itself to us as part of our wholeness and the wholeness is in the moment. This way, you get more of a sense of where your truth is coming from.

We just HAVE to experience ourselves right now. There’s no way around it, whether it’s happening on an individual level, or you are somehow keyed into the collective experiencing of crash and burn – through other’s crashing and burning.

Nothing to prop us up, no solid ground. It’s all going. And so when it all goes, what is left behind? I’m not sure I know the answer to that yet as there’s yet more to go in my life, but I think when this happens to you, you are forced back in on yourself and you commit to a deeper resolve, you open a creative channel, and find a strength you didn’t know you had.

The intention and beliefs you hold around all of this will somewhat create your experience, although unconditional love is far more powerful than any limiting belief system, love can shatter it all, if only for a moment, a moment is all we need.

My babysitter gave my son a Christmas present today, a book called Darkness Slipped In (Ella Burfoot). It got me thinking about this whole darkness, unknown thing that some of us are in the midst of, or about to enter into.

We have been so in denial of the dark, the feminine, and all things that are not of pure light. This preference of yang, of light, the light seekers, has a consequence as it’s the foundation of our patriarchal system, where light is at the top, as Source. But in reality, light is not at the top, it’s everywhere in everything. It’s not polarised. You can find it everywhere, just sometimes it’s just a glimmer and it’s hard to feel and see. But it never deserts us, the darkness always holds the light, like a womb, giving birth to a new creation. It’s us who desert it. Yin and yang is supposed to be about balance. That it is an equal amount of both that makes up the whole. Balance the yin in this yang culture.

In some indigenous myths, hold the belief that the central universal Sun is a dark sun. Yet we have our western concept of a light from above (as in the song above). We need to question it all, probe everything. We cannot just sit and think we know the truth. We simply do not know what is programming us, or the depth of it, just be sure it is all around you and you cannot always see it.

It is our fear of darkness or no light that leads us to forcibly embrace only the lightness of experiences. I’m not saying that that’s not good, as for sure my euphoric state is very welcomed right now. The problem is when we make a programme out of it when we actually need both, to honour, embrace and welcome both as one continuum, spectrum. The goal of being enlightened is a goal. Which leaves the womb of darkness, the nothingness, with no meaning, and rarely has a place in our lives until it forces itself on us.

On a side note this also translates to whiteness, which then has an impact on blackness – racism being the major consequence of this polarising. We embrace one and deny the other, but the world is made up of yin and yang, darkness and light. We are all this experience and we hold all parts.

It’s the same as when something appears so, so wrong at one level, but at another level, perspective or dimensional viewpoint it feels just like the perfect thing for our growth. I know it’s so hard to reconcile these two realities, that converge at the same time, so don’t try. Be in one, fully, then be in the other, fully and allow the fluidity between them, then you are welcoming the two places at once and this becomes the bridge. Don’t get stuck.

In reality, we can be wherever we choose, whatever reality we want to entertain. It’s all our creation, the tools and resources are there to take us there, I know as I have them. We don’t get taught that at school, unfortunately, perhaps one day we will. But if you don’t have the resources, then start intending to gather them. We choose the lenses we look at things through, and there is no one ultimate truth other than oneness, as it is only in the eye of the beholder. You choose the lens.

So needless to say, it’s all a bit of a head f**k at the moment. And this is why we fear the feminine, as it’s so complex. But by stepping into the complexity we make contact with the simplicity. And vice versa, they lead to each other. The simplicity is very easy to come by when you step out of the illusion, or it shatters for you.

There has been and continues to be horrendous consequences from ostracising the dark feminine, what is done to women in the name of hierarchy and polarisation. The consequences range from sexual slavery, domestic violence, unequal pay, to simply being silenced, unable to speak your feelings without a fear of consequences, of making things worse and losing more. Men also have the wounds of this since we are an amalgamation of all our lifetimes, of all genders experienced. This is not specific to gender, this is our collective wound, which we must all take responsibility for.

But all these experiences of darkness are at the heart acts of love, sent to give us freedom. Anchor that knowing in your heart, and mind.

In the astrology at this time, the dark feminine is symbolised by Pluto and it is the fear of Pluto – the repression of all that’s feminine – sexuality, intimacy, power, passion, death, rebirth, of transformation. All that we have pushed away and that we don’t understand individually and culturally. It is rising, as the complexity needs to be felt, seen and recognised for what it is, so it returns to simplicity of love, peace, forgiveness and acceptance. That the challenges are not to be ignored, but welcomed, as making us more whole.

So what do we do? Well perhaps nothing at all, but follow ourselves, especially our body. Get priorities straight and make the space to embrace the deep experiencing. At some point, all that we refuse or cannot be felt, will emerge. It needs to emerge and be felt. You can’t rush or push that process, that’s the beauty of it. I don’t think you can even prepare yourself for it. It takes you by surprise. It will make us stronger, and then we move more fully into our power and presence.

As we feel our vulnerability, our rawness, and expose it and experience more of this ocean of oneness, we feel that return to Source, that reunion within. To truly love, it requires us to be open, to be raw, we need to be in contact with our fears and needs as human beings, only then can we be met in the heart space and in an emotional space.

Saturn and Pluto together, among other planets are helping us lose the addictive desire for chasing and desiring anything that makes us cling, the stuff, which fills the big, dark void in our lives. We are dropping into our void, our pain so we can let go of all that’s meaningless and illusionary in our lives.

Saturn is yang feminine. Saturn rules the structure and order of life, the skeleton which holds life in or holds us up from the inside, but in a dynamic, active way. Saturn time is feminine – it is the cycle of the seasons. Everything comes around again for us to deal with under a Saturn transit. Saturn is also the Divine, right timing which is also feminine. We are surrendering to the Divine order and timing, instead of controlling outcomes and timing.

The things we fear to talk about the most are the things we hide away. Pluto is the most rejected of all the planets, he’s even been demoted to a non-planet, by a small group of men. It’s like the world wanted to say lets pretend that Pluto is not important. But things are changing, all that is kept in the subterranean is emerging, as it doesn’t need to be hidden anymore, as it doesn’t need to be feared, this is what we are learning.

While most have little access to the feminine, since we were raised to deny all it’s aspects, or educated out of it. Others even have a lot to lose if they embrace it – like all the privileges it gives access to. Men do not want to lose their privileges and power. This whole astrology is making what is obsolete now very visible, (and how incredibly inappropriate some of the behaviours are). What is becoming redundant now cannot handle the complexity of the modern world, and this consciousness. It’s actually also so fragile and insecure that it can’t listen to people who are different or polarised. This is where we need to develop a dialogue, within and without.

The old paradigm, focused on power through relationships, solidarity communities; the future paradigm – intimacy, sincere relating, and the individual’s presence and strength. We are here to learn that we have the individual responsibility, uniqueness, and courage to change and create whatever we choose. The future is based on self-love and exemplarism, the past is based on fear, power over, authority, command and control. I do not want to polarise them though – there’s good stuff in the past paradigm and we needed it and still need some of it. Just more balance required now.

So this new, dark embracing, yin function is the capacity to recognise and use this feminine side, this awareness of complexity, body, feeling, creativity, imagination, dreaming, connection, and sensitivity. We need to embrace it collectively, as well as individually. And I think even those in positions of power can understand how intuition and senses are necessary for us to be able to survive in highly stressed situations.

So no more denial, of our feminine side, and conversely, of our masculine. The need for boundaries, structure and clarity, us women all need a bit of that in our lives. The power within the feminine. It’s all ok for us to rave on about how men need to change, but women need to change also. The more we see the problem on the other side, the more we become the problem. Knowing boundaries is often akin to knowing our self-worth and that we deserve to be happy.

So how does the Saturn-Pluto conjunction manifest in your life? This is a time to look at the roots of your tree, what are those roots like, the deeper darker feminine is where the richness, the juice is, let the darker things comes through so it can become something useful. This is a good time and place to get in touch and explore your yin – Pluto and Saturn.

If they are transiting your 2nd house, what are your deeper feelings about self-worth and money (2nd)? In the 4th, how are you expressing your deeper yin with your family (4th)? How are you doing yin in your chart, where the conjunction is taking place? What yin is conscious for you? How is it expressed? How is it externalised? How are you at nurturing yourself? How have you externalised or projected your yin onto someone else? Who owns your yin for you, because you can’t do it yourself? And how do you even punish others for that – since we often hate that which is marginalised and not accepted by the world, or by ourselves.

Then, make a vow to step forward with your yin function in whatever area you need to, to balance yourself and not be taken by the cultural norm. Remember, with Pluto transits, BS won’t survive. You will be taken to the core of exploring it and the pathway into it is through the yin darkness. That’s the yin’s function.

So the day for all this, specifically, is Friday, when Venus conjuncts Pluto. It wants for deeper intimacy.

One more thing, at this Full Moon, and as we reach into 2020, the nodes of Pluto and Saturn are met by Pluto and Saturn also, (every planet has nodes, like the lunar nodes of the Moon, which are where the planet’s orbit intersects the ecliptic of the Earth around the Sun). These nodes symbolise a cutting through this relationship between the Earth and the Sun. This is so rare, we would need to go back before Christ to see anything like it.

The path of the nodes are a comment on the relationship between the Earth and the Sun. They symbolise an orbit pattern, as they are formed together. In other words, they are not a separation of past and future, and especially not a demonising of the past node and whatever that represents, as usually is the case. We need to cut through the illusion, and look at our collective creations, not judge or hate them.

These planetary nodes highlight the destiny line, way beyond the individual, but inclusive also. It could be argued that the nodes of the planets are even more significant than individual natal planetary placements.

South Node Capricorn is the structural nature of our society. The collective beliefs and deepest attachments are in South Node Capricorn, the nature of structural societies, hierarchy, the infrastructure of society itself. The North Node is to decentralise and form our own families and groups.

Most epoch, empire and imperial defining events in human history have begun when Pluto or Saturn’s nodal axis are activated by planets, like now. But we haven’t as yet had such close contact with Saturn-Pluto conjunction and nodes, well, not since 783 AD, which came close, but not as close as now. I’m still preparing for nothing though, when you expect something big, by and large little happens, when you expect nothing, it all happens.

And yet this is what we have in January, a conjunction of Saturn-Pluto within a degree of Saturn’s nodes and within two degrees of Pluto’s nodes. We are in the middle of the creation of a new synodic cycle, an evolutionary leap, that might mean a change to our whole perspective on the dark feminine.

We can sense this time of reckoning, and we can all feel that in the world today. With this evolutionary quantum leap it begs the question – what do we identify with? The decaying death or the small inconspicuous seeds of new life? Perhaps it’s both. Feel how this expresses within yourself, how you hold both. Both are part of our you and our world today, both are needed, both can be welcomed and both will bring us back to the same place, if we allow and open to it. Do no fear the pain, it will not kill you, you have not been abandoned, it will take with it what is now ready to go.

For Rebecca and Esme, with love.