10:28 am  AHST 04/30/2022
  1:28  pm    PDT  04/30/2022

  4:28 pm    EDT  04/30/2022
  8:28 pm    UTC  04/30/2022

We’re into eclipse season. Every six months we go through a time of cleansing and rejuvenation, looking at what needs to be cleaned out and what needs to be brought forward. Usually a solar eclipse is fairly close to the Nodes by degree, this one is far enough away that its shadow glances over only a small area near Antarctica and South America. However, its energy is still the same in terms of its relevance, being an indicator of a chart whose emphasis is upon shadow material.

Shadow material in the Jungian sense refers to the contents of our psyche that are relegated to the unconscious, that are hidden from our awareness, and that often appear as projections upon others and dramatized in the world around us. Shadow is those parts of ourselves that we disavow, and those parts can not only be negative, but in some cases the most positive or angelic parts of ourselves. It’s whatever aspects we deny.

This chart has very few challenging aspects in it, and consists overwhelmingly of angles of sextiles, or harmonious 60˚ aspects. These are aspects that need a bit of a push, or extra attention before they can be taken advantage of, but are still reflecting a sense of possibility. Given that this is an eclipse chart and given the state of the world at this time, I would say that what we are dealing with here are shadow contents that are made up of our loving and caring nature as a mass consciousness, a sense of ease and flow.

Most notable in this chart is the conjunction of Jupiter and Venus, which becomes exact only 45 minutes after the eclipse. And they are conjoined with Neptune, which is only a few degrees away. All are in the sign of dreamy, imaginative Pisces. No one alive will see this conjunction again. A few days ago, the Moon joined them as well. If any planetary configuration is a sign of spiritual awakening, this one is it.

However, we live in a Godless time, a time with a great deal of misery and violence, of genocide not only of humans but of the Earth herself. Humanity has yet to awaken to the priorities and practices that are the basis of all spiritual beliefs. The “money changers” are our current rulers, the ones we somehow give our power away to. Nevertheless, the planets tell us that we are in for very big changes, and they are just around the corner. Planetarily this, of course, means over the next few years.

But Uranus, the game-changer, is conjoined with the Sun and Moon at the eclipse, and this is an omen of sudden changes, upsets, things being stood on their head and turned around. With Pluto in a trine to Mercury which has just entered its “home” sign of Gemini, this indicates transformative changes in the ways we communicate, in media worldwide, and even in our receptivity to messages from beyond our conscious minds. Saturn squaring Mercury, the only 90˚ challenge in this chart, is asking us to discipline our thinking minds, to curtail our worry energy, worry being “prayer for what we don’t want,” as is often quoted to me.

Humanity is on the verge of needing to make some important changes, and setting some essential boundaries, lest we lose the democracies that we still have vestiges of. This also applies to the way we live in our personal lives, we need to practice an inner democracy so that we don’t become subject to narrow-minded thinking and judgements that only serve to separate ourselves more and more from others around us. 

This splitting in our collective, this “house divided” that we are all living in is part of an important process of delineating how we are to deal with our shadow, both personally and globally. But what is clear to me from this chart is that our collective shadow now is actually our capability of doing good, of living with a sense of community on a global level. The old way of religions and governments historically haven’t been used to empower us as much as to control us. They are reflections of our old belief that we need to follow authority, that someone else knows what is best for us, which is what weakens our self-awareness. We have become acquisitive, ambitious, power-seeking, rather than focussed upon developing the capacity of the heart to embrace and nourish each other, and the Earth beneath our feet.

This is the essence of the rare Pisces stellium (group of planets) that is upon us now. Venus, which rules the Sun and Moon in Taurus, is said to be “exalted” in the sign of Pisces, and her exaltation is dramatically heightened by her proximity to Jupiter, the planet of expansion. This is an important representation of the power of the heart, of the need and the imperative to learn how to love, in all its many varied forms, both sweet and strong, even at the level of government and politics. We are far from that now, but in true Piscean and Neptunian fashion, we must continue to “have a dream” in order for that reality to come into our experience. As impossible as it may sound, we must look to and embrace the shadow of a world in violence, which is a world in which reconciliation and sharing is possible, and essential for human life to continue. We need to look at where we have disavowed the possibility of peaceful coexistence. This is our task, our practice, our prayer.