NEW MOON at 4 LEO, July 26, 2014, 6:42pm EDT, 3:42pm PDT, 11:42pm GMD

Image: Star Goddess sculpture on tomb in Pisa, Italy (photo by author). The Sun is our Star, shining radiant with light. In many cultures, the life-giving Sun has been seen as the Goddess, and the Moon as a God.

PERSONAL NOTE:
As an artist, I paint in oil and watercolor, largely influenced by the Impressionists (moving toward Expressionism). I also enjoy creating collages that tell stories. This version of COSMIC NEWS is rather like an impressionistic collage of streams of thought that are converging from several directions, under the guidance of the Star Goddess above.

STREAM 1 from my book, COSMIC DAILY WEATHER 2014
(also in my column for Conscious Community magazine, formerly The Monthly Aspectarian. See day-by-day interpretations at http://consciouscommunitymagazine.com).

Are you ready for a high octane lunar cycle infused with wild, fiery, unfettered creativity and intensified good will? High drama is the order of the day, with a dark edge, and, in some cases, more than a bit of egomania. It will be fairly obvious to most of us, but some will be taken in by the seductive aura. There is likely to be a big news splash from some movie premiere, television talent show or charismatic male celebrity.

Passions run high with romantic fervor and spicy erotic charge. We may be enticed or pushed out of our comfort zone, therefore emotionally reactive. Under a fun-loving Leo Moon this may be a weekend [or month] for parties or large (maybe huge) gatherings. Let’s watch that things don’t get out of hand. Also, let’s not get distracted from the main issues. Major economic concerns loom large and uncertain. A growing excitement in front of change stirs a growing unrest. Maintain integrity and rely on your inner guidance. Find the sweet spot in which you know you are taken care of and go with the flow from there.

As we head into August, many of us keep the party mood going. Others of us may need to withdraw in front of a threat to our emotional security, like a lotus that folds up in a storm and sinks down to the safety of its muddy roots. The safety of the shoreline seems far away, as we navigate these rough seas of change. Inner guidance is the lifeline that steadies us so we can reassure and comfort others. True leadership is leading with heart. Keep the faith.

A subliminal level of resistance or frustration can occur when we try to make things happen without allowing them to, a fine distinction that is one of the lessons of the times. If we not open to receiving, we can put in huge effort, but that inner resistance will block the results we look for. We may feel more vulnerable when we open to receive, based, most likely, on not getting what we need early on. When we have faith in higher powers to take care of us, we have more trust and receptivity.

Whatever our intentions for being efficient at work, we are likely to be distracted by weighty matters of the global import or thinking about serious personal issues. Don’t be hard on yourself about this. It is quite natural. Wipe that frown off your face. A contemplative mood is quite in keeping with the flow. You are cosmically in tune. Artificial workaday schedules are not. Take charge of your feelings. Pull the energy down through your feet so you can take one practical step after the other and make some progress.

STREAM 2— LEO the ARTIST
JUPITER, King of the Gods, newly arrived in LEO, is crowned on this New Moon. We can expect changes in leadership during this month-long Moon cycle. In another significant planetary shift, MARS has just entered its own sign SCORPIO, finally out of its compromised position in Libra, where it has been since last December. It makes instant declarations of its assertive power by shaking things up, challenging leadership. Jupiter in Leo is the King or Queen. We can look to the large, global stage to see power struggles and leadership repositioning play out.

However, let’s take this on a personal level, to engage in this current, ongoing third millennial, post-2012 shift in consciousness. Who is the King or Queen of your “castle”? Which “self” rules your life? Usually it’s a struggle between the fears of the ego and the love of the Self. Jupiter can also be the Priest or Priestess, vehicle of wisdom. Leo rules the heart, the temple of wisdom.

No matter what Sun sign we were born under, what Moon sign or other planetary locations, our basic human nature expresses all of the Zodiac signs. The Leo in each of us is a creator, an artist. We each seek to channel the creative life force in our lives, as Life mirrors back to us something about who we are. In throes of any creative process, we become slightly more transparent and able to intuit some new level of truth.

In Letters to a Young Poet, R.M. Rilke speaks to that artist and appreciator of beauty in each of us:

As you unfold as an artist, just keep on, quietly and earnestly, growing through all that happens to you. You cannot disrupt the process more violently than by looking outside yourself for answers that may only be found by attending to your innermost feeling.” —R.M. Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet
And this passage, written about Rome in 1903, feels especially relevant amidst all the planets in water signs now and for most of this year, as we learn more fluidly to “go with the flow.”
“There is much beauty here, for great beauty is everywhere. Living waters flow endlessly through ancient aqueducts into the great city, and dance in many piazzas over white stone basins and spread out in spacious pools, murmuring by day and lifting their murmur into the starry, wind-softened night. There are gardens here, unforgettable boulevards, and stairs—stairs designed by Michelangelo, stairs inspired by downward flowering water—step flowing into widening step like wave into wave. From such impressions you gather yourself, you win yourself back from the clamoring multiplicity, and slowly learn to know a very few things in which the eternal is reflected, which you love and in which your solitude allows you to take part.

STREAM 4—SUN & MOON
How do we know which “very few things” reflect the eternal? How often do we remember that a reflection is not the reality? LEO brings this question immediately to our experience of self-consciousness, often wrestling with the ego identity.

During this New Moon, the Sun and Moon are joined in a way that can plant a new seed of self-awareness. The Sun is the light and life force. As the Moon cycles around the Earth, it reflects the Sun. Like the Moon, the ego reflects something about the true Self, but is not the Self. The Moon carries many impressions from early life that form into attitudes, patterns of behavior, mental images about ourselves and life. Most of us identify with this formulated ego sense of self, which is a reflections of the true self.

The Pearl Beyond Price, by depth psychologist A.H. Almaas, unravels psychological ego issues in relation to Moon matters and the early relationship with mother. As I have been contemplating the astrological Moon to prepare for a webinar series later this year (through the Theosophical Society), a re-reading of this book (after 20+ years) has been very informative. I’m exploring this field of inquiry with you here, with some passages I have pulled out. See how this material reverberates with your experience of self over this Moon cycle, with the Full Moon culmination on August 10.

Ego identifications formed in childhood co-opt qualities of the essence that we truly are. Our usual sense of being an individual person is based on a unified self image defined by mind, memory, past experiences, age, sex, parents, environment, body, etc. We are considered mentally healthy and mature if we have achieved such a sense of separate individuality. However, the self-defining boundaries of the ego create a profound separateness that is rarely recognized, making true contact with each other impossible. How can we meet in the resonance of I and Thou, when we are not in contact with our true Self?

We are so used to thinking of ourselves as individuals “in our own right,” that we forget that the ego self is also just a reflection of that soul something that is deeper and truer, that something without which we feel isolated and lost. The ego props us up to deal with worldly life, but we still seek our soul, wanting the truth of our Beingness to shine through. As we dis-identify with ego reactivity based on formative relationships from early years, a sense of loss and emptiness, when tolerated with patience for long enough, can open us to depths from which naturally arises a fuller, richer embodiment of our essential Self.

SATURN’s continuing passage in SCORPIO, has raised the shadow of ego, exposing them to the light. Saturn in Scorpio relentlessly insists that we scrutinize our innards to unmask the illusory nature of unconscious self-concepts in order to shed these dried up snakeskins of ego identity. Scorpio is a deeply erotic sign, with a great desire for connection and surrender, for true contact with the Divine and with each other.

This process is what some call the task of Soul-Making. But we aren’t making our souls, they are already whole. We are simply (!) shedding masks, roles, ego projections and mental images of whom we think we are to allow space for the true Self to come through. The black hole sensation, which accompanies loss of the illusory, is not easy to bear, and most often we find superficial filler among the plentiful distractions around us.

Almaas writes, “Our unlimited hunger for love money, admiration, power, insight, even inner development and enlightenment… are continually generating fear and anxiety.” This voracious hunger stems from a feeling of lack of something essential to our souls. The ego seeks to fill this emptiness with outer assurances that ultimately do not fill the gap, but rather reinforce the ego’s insecurity, increasing the hunger. We seek the satisfying nourishment of what Rilke, above, refers to as “your innermost feeling,” in the temple of the Heart, of the Soul, of the Divine.
We all meet in that sacred space as One. We’ll be in Love and sing with the stars.

“O stars, lend us your burning passion.
O, silence, give weight to our voice.”

—John Seed quoted in Joanna Macy’s book Pass it On: Five Stories That Can Change the World. Read more at http://www.mysticmamma.com/may-we-shine/]

“A beautiful melody, plangent and strange. It filled his head with visions, and filled his heart with awe and delight. The music made him think of spaces without limits, of huge crystalline spheres which revolved with unutterable slowness through the vast halls of the air. The melody transported him, took him beyond himself.” —Neil Gaiman, Stardust

We are the stars which sing
We sing with our light
We are the birds of fire
We fly over the sky
Our light is a voice
We make a road
for the spirit to pass over
for the spirit to pass over
We are like the wind
Wrapped in luminous waves
We make a road
for the spirit to pass over
—Algonquin Star Song

Special Treat— Watch for the movie, SHE SINGS TO THE STARS, about a Native American woman living alone in desert. When her grandson and a traveling magician find themselves at her home, their realities shift as they surrender to Mabel’s timeless rhythm and the expansive desert. As each one rediscovers a capacity greater than imagined, the drought finally breaks.View the trailer at www.shesingstothestars.com.