The below text is an excerpt from master astrologer and author Mark Borax‘s monthly newsletter and Cosmic Weather Report, including an excerpt from his latest book by the same name.
From December 29, 2010 through Jan 19, 2011 we’ll experience a rare period where nothing is retrograde in the sky. Everything will be direct. None of the fifteen astrological bodies, including Alpha-Omega (Chiron) and the four main asteroids will be in reverse process; all will be heading forward. The last time we had a few weeks like this was January 1997, which means that during each moment of the last fourteen years something or other was inverted, turned-around, inside-out or backwards. If you’ve been fighting a certain battle with some level of existence in this period, the retrograde factor has been playing a role in your life.
The technical meaning of retrograde is that the Earth’s orbit around the Sun overtakes the orbit of some other planet. From the Earth’s point of view the other planet or planets appear to move backwards. They’re not really backing up in space, but the effect is similar to riding an express train which overtakes a local, and the local, while speeding ahead at its own rate, appears to be going backwards.
The result of so many planets being backward for so long is that some part of existence slides away from us; you can’t get your hands on some elusive function of your life. Like trying to climb a muddy hill with no purchase, you know where you’re going but you can’t seem to get there, and many of your efforts only backslide. Retrogrades aren’t all bad, though. They serve the purpose of pressuring us to clean up something on the inside before freeing us to go outward. They set up temporary roadblocks that may in the long run prove to be initiations. By stalling us from getting where we try to go, we’re forced to dig deeper into uncovering something within us that can better prepare us for the eventuality of actually getting there. But when fourteen years of retrogrades occur, things remain slippery for a long exhausting period, and it’s easy for frustration to set in.
During the three weeks beginning December 29, when everything becomes direct, a release will occur. On that day the final planet to turn direct is Mercury, which moves forward in 20 degrees Sagittarius. The Chandra symbol for that degree is “The changing of water into wine.”
When Mercury goes direct a powerful spirit blast will surge in from a high part of the sky. With nothing retrograde to get in its way, the miracle side of this high degree will be available to many of us. To frame this unusual three-week period in the fuller context of the broader cosmic weather of our time, I’ve included an excerpt from my new book, Cosmic Weather Report.
In 2012 we enter the Age of Aquarius, Age of the Water-Bearer, which will take three years for the earliest initial phase to get launched, and two thousand more to fulfill. We leave the Age of Pisces, which was two thousand years in the making, and had to run down to the dregs before the old vessel could empty out and be filled with new water.
At the end of an age it’s more important than ever to grasp its meaning. It’s crucial to extract the essence of the last two thousand years from its excesses, so we can carry that essence into the new while releasing the baggage of the old. Like creating an essential oil, civilization is being distilled, to evaporate the sludge and produce the essence.
The essence of Pisces is presence.
We’re undergoing a historical transformation where everything that’s happened since the time of Christ is releasing through the act of us becoming fully present with it. This kind of presence is agonizing and ecstatic, and needs to be if we’re ever going to get through it.
The purpose of the last two thousand years was to anchor us strongly enough into the physical to give the current awakening of our species a place to happen. The meaning of all we’ve been through since Christ is to plant us solidly in the physical, where the next stage of the species is due to occur. This requires dealing with everything formerly or presently blocking our full presence. Since crisis and drama have a way of summoning our attention, the current planetary crisis can be utilized to make us all more present-in fact, make the whole human race more present than we’ve ever been.
The greatest pressure of all gives way when you open your entire being in an ecstatic act of radical surrender. It’s not that bad things stop happening. It’s just that a fierce force of love blazes out of your soul ten times stronger than anything massing against it. And that love blast creates an opening through which others can follow.
When you ignite at the bottom of the world, you blast open a tunnel of love through the concretized karmas of our time. You plunge to the heart of existence and find it to be unbearable and exquisite and much different than you ever thought it would be during the years you were busy resisting it. You become so present that the act of your presence expels illusion all around you and draws more spirit into the mix.
Christ, foreseeing this descent at its beginning, gave us an example to carry us through the end. He showed us that when you take the most excruciating condemnation and instead of condemning back, open your entire being in an outrageous act of radical love, you inject phenomenal light into the darkness. Christ embodied a radical love presence not because he was the only one capable of it, but to give us a path to follow. He embodied a presence we’re all being asked to embody now that the age that began with him is ending.
For two thousand years we’ve been descending into increasingly dark and heavy hell realms in order to crack all resistance to love, and release a pure inner light that throws off any darkness.
Who are you really? What are you here to do?
Mark Borax
Soul Level Astrologer
As I find myself reflecting upon my own life experience during the period described here, with all the ‘retrograde influences’ and so on…this post is deeply meaningful to me, and I am eager to read ‘Cosmic Weather Report’…!! And I hope to pay attention and make good ‘use’ of this time of leaning forward.
When you speak of that radical act of love on the cross, I am remembering a long ago middle of the night spiritual experience which I wrote down as it was happening. It was the insight that the act of a single person can contribute a ‘vibration’ into the consciousness web and thus begin a new pattern…like the chaos theory phenomenon…like fractal variations, and so on. And so we learn to monitor our own moments, our own thoughts, being aware that they count within the Akashic field.
Recently, I have begun to dig into my old journals and post some entries on one of my blogs. (Isn’t the internet a marvelous force within this Akashic field?) I don’t know if it’s proper to post a link to that blog entry here, but will risk it, as I am getting a little braver about this sort of sharing. So here is the link below, and I have pasted in the text too.
Thank you very much, NAB and Mr. Borax! … a wonderful read.
–bss
FROM MY JOURNAL – SEPTEMBER 20, 1984
“In the occult tradition, the eye that ‘sees’ must be washed in the blood of the heart.” –Dane Rudhyar
It’s 3:30 a.m. Through the window in the east study I see the moon, a silver crescent held there like a cup. Oh Moon, night goddess who comes to balance and make round the glinting spears of light from rational day; we, poor creatures, crawling on the earth here, are we abandoned here until we all find the heartpoint…flashpoint!! flashpoint!!? Where the horizontal plane of rationality intersects the vertical plane of emotionality, the heart is born. The heart is born on the cross. And moment by moment I must reconcile myself to that crosspoint-flashpoint-heartpoint, the luminous center.
Has Christ really done it for us? Have we only to bring ourselves up to the ‘risen’ vibration that he has brought in for us? Stretched as he was there, he chose to monitor, moment by moment, his attitude and response toward his pain: He chose love. Father, forgive them. I will not give my soul, even in a moment of despair and pain, over to the power of darkness. Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit. I will not give my soul…the existential ordeal of choice. Flashpoint! A new threshold of luminescence glows in the web of existence called earth, vibrating outward from that birthpoint, shaking the web, even dangerously shaking the web.
I am with you all days…and wherever we are in this web, we are henceforth affected by this new vibration. I can choose this vibration out of all others and my attunement begins. Lo, I am with you all days, even unto the end of the world.
Suddenly I am remembering an exercise from our movement group. Working with a partner, one partner says ‘cookie’’ and the other is silent. ‘Cookie, cookie, cookie’…the silent partner listens carefully to the sound in order to learn to distinguish it from all the other intonations in the room. Then everyone goes into motion and the room becomes an arena of movement and varying tones of ‘cookie cookie’ as the task of each of the silent partners is to locate the tone of the original partner and find the way back to the dyad, all this with the eyes closed, attuning to the special sound, a sound which has become special, as a guide. The task is to focus only on that one sound in order to succeed in the exercise. Atonement, attunement.
The existential Jesus whispered “This is possible for me. I can choose forgiveness. This is possible for a human being. This is possible for the human race.†Flashpoint! Flashpoint! The fabric of existence is forever altered. The historical Jesus whispered ‘cookie, cookie’ and that sound vibrates forever through the web of time.
Out of the phantasmagoria of sounds, refractions, reverberations, and echoes, will come those, inevitably, who shape the sounds into words. Saint John says simply, “God is love.†T.S. Eliot says, “Love is God.â€
Carlos Castaneda has written six long tales of power and has not mentioned the sound of love. His “cookie:power†permeates our living web of morphic resonance now in 1984 as did the dark tones of William Golding in the 1960s with Lord of the Flies, that darkest of echoes from the great war where power became so completely divorced from the heart…the heartfires of the world had gone out …and then erupted in a great conflagration in the bake ovens of Dachau and Buchenwald. Yet the pervasiveness of clouds seeded by this darkness drifted through the minds of masses of students as they read Lord of the Flies, which was assigned to them by their teachers of literature, to be read and studied and commented upon while their ears were yet full of the drums of war…ears unable at that point to distinguish the gentler sound, “cookieâ€love.†Into that rumble and din, we now have Castaneda generating sounds, words, echoes into the morphic web and the drums of power drown out the sound of love. The minds of students sift for seeds of wisdom in these dark clouds of words while their ears are muffled by the modern cacophony of television and dystrophic music. Only in the gentleness of the heart can the gentler sounds be heard. Only in the heart. Body, mind, soul, spirit…where is the heart?
“Oh! Beat the world with heart of song!†Where can the sounds of the heart be heard if not through the voice of the poet, the artist, who prays, “O! Mythical father of Icarus, stand me now in good stead as I go forth to forge within the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race!†Can the modern ear be attuned to the voice of the artist?
Hoc est enum corpus meum. The artist makes the bread of life and holds it out to us in holy communion. I will pass by the dark bread and choose that which has more light. I hold out my hand for the white hyacinth. Oh, where are we going with these light bodies?
There are those today who shape sounds into gentler words: William Irwin Thompson says “Time Falling Bodies Take to Light.†Oh, where are we going in this body of light? We breathe in light; we breathe out love. I breath in light, I breathe out love, I breathe in light I breath out love breathe in light breathe out love breathe in love breathe out light breathe in light breathe out love breathe in love breathe out love breathe breathe breathe…and so the heart of the earth breathes and the heart of fire is kindled within.
–Barbara Smith Stoff
A very powerful post, Barbara! Thanks for sharing with the NAB community. We’d love to hear your thoughts on Cosmic Weather Report when you get a chance to read it!
Thanks for Sharing Knowledge is power.Astro
Gemology Mumbai India