“We may not be the ones committing murder and atrocity, but if we sit on anger and don’t direct our innate aggression into constructive outlets, we are guilty of adding to the amount of violence and hostility accumulating in the air. … if we deny or repress something in ourselves, other people will express it for us.”
– Howard Sasportas
No matter where you are in the world, the events of this past week can still be felt like the reverberations of a bomb explosion.
The astrology of the moment couldn’t have been more on cue, as Mars stood at the very last degree of Aries, the edge between firey Aries and earthy Taurus.
The first and last degrees of a sign (0º and 29º) carry with them an urgency befitting moments of initiation and, in this case, Mars as the ultimate trigger archetype. All that’s been brewing for the last six months of Mars traveling in Aries while facing Saturn’s square-dance, Jupiter and Pluto, culminated in the events of January 6.
Lest we forget, this square dance between Mars and Saturn/Jupiter isn’t over yet.
Now that Mars is in the fixed sign of Taurus, it continues to square-off Jupiter/Saturn, also in fixed Aquarius until the end of January (culminating in the middle of the month.)
Positions are deeply entrenched, accompanied by a lot of energy behind them. Fixed signs may not ‘initiate’ things, but they sustain and help it germinate – imagine two angry bulls locking heads to their death. Taurus will pay not to get into a fight, but they’ll also pay not to get out of one.
As Mars moves through Taurus, it will meet with Cosmic Awakener Uranus on Inauguration Day (January 20).
Out of the left-field, surprises and unexpected events are part of the agenda. This is Uranus’s entrance onto the world stage of 2021, a year that has at its core the signature square dance of Saturn and Uranus (my class on this is coming in February, so stay tuned.)
We’re not out of the blitzkrieg of Mars/Uranus squaring Saturn/Jupiter. This will call on our ability to hold the tension of the opposites within.
What we witnessed happening on January 6 in Washington DC with the insurrection of a mob held hostage by the collective shadow complex of a nation was akin to witnessing our nightmarish figures walking out in broad daylight.
It was the (yet another one) explosion of the collective shadow, one of which none of us can fail to acknowledge and attempt to go back to sleep. Such an explosion of a collective shadow sends ripples out, much like an underground bomb denotation that affects all of our psyches.
Think of the collective unconscious as an aquifer and your personal consciousness (your psyche) as your own water well. Any disturbance to the collective aquifer pushes debris up our own personal water wells. To feel a myriad of emotions after such a visceral manifestation of our collective shadow is very common.
We may feel grief, anger, and exhaustion, to name a few. Plus, the Moon is in her Balsamic phase, the last of her waning phase, coming to meet Pluto and the Sun this week. Things are coming undone, needing to be purged, eliminated. At the same time, there’s also the paradoxical galvanizing drive to finish something that got started long ago – the last-ditch attempt—all or nothing.
We can see that the center is struggling to hold, so how can we best approach this collective situation?
What does Inanna & Ereshkigal have to teach us about the Astrology of Now?
In watching the news, the ancient myth of the Sumerian goddess and queen of heaven Inanna came to mind as a way for us during these times. There are many versions and interpretations of this myth.
In the Sumerian version, Queen of Heaven Inanna descends to the Underworld, either as a visit to her sister or a challenge to her power.
As she descends through the various gates, Inanna is stripped of her heavenly garbs and accessories. Finally, in her vulnerable nakedness, she faces Ereshkigal, who now proceeds to kill her and hang her corpse on a hook. Inanna is left for dead like a hunk of meat on a hook for three days.
However, before she left, Inanna had instructed her faithful servant that if she didn’t return, it was for her to find a way to rescue her. Seeing that Inanna hasn’t returned, her loyal friend and servant Ninshubur goes after a few gods asking for help until Enki, the god of wisdom, comes up with a plan.
He creates these two creatures, called the MOURNERS, and sends them to the Underworld to save Inanna. As these simple little creatures arrive there, they pay no attention to Inanna’s corpse on the hook but tend to Ereshkigal, who is at this moment giving birth. They listen to her woes, to her rage, to her sadness. They mirror back to her all her feelings without judgment.
THEY LISTEN TO HER.
After feeling witnessed, Ereshkigal releases Inanna, who is reborn as Queen of Heaven. Upon her return, she sends her consort to the Underworld to take her place for a part of the year, a story that has echoing links to the myth of Persephone and her split-time between spending time with her mother in the world of the living and time in the Underworld with her husband, Hades.
But it’s the MOURNERS that save the day, not through violence and attack, that they’re able to release Inanna, but through showing empathy to the woes of Ereshkigal. It’s no coincidence that their names are the MOURNERS.
The word mourn comes from the Old English/Norse as ‘to remember sorrowfully.’
In other words, there’s a need to grieve and acknowledge the deep sorrow of our cultural fabric. It’s not just the Covid deaths, the social injustice, the ecological crisis, to name a few – it’s a collective heritage birthed out TRAUMA ON TRAUMA because trauma begets trauma.
We may feel a sense of powerlessness, if not shock and dissociation from all that’s knocking at our gates, but it’s here that we must do our shadow work.
The personal is political.
Because Mars is still so active this month, we must remember what I talked about during my Mars Archetype class at the beginning of the Red Planet’s retrograde dance: we have to find our ARETE – meaning our EXCELLENCE and COURAGE.
Shadow work can take many forms, but we can start with Mars – our rage, as well as our courage through the practice of EXCELLENCE.
How can we work with Mars now through the ancient Greek concept of ARETE – EXCELLENCE?
- Look to the areas of our lives that need to be refined in the best possible way. Show up with courage to what is in front of us.
- Dedicate oneself utterly to the quest of being of service to the greater whole – however, that shows up in your life.
- Remember that this is a practice, much like excellence takes time and practice to be achieved. We keep doing it and trying.
- Focus on bringing quality to everything you do and experience.
- One can also apply excellence to our ordinary life through refining our manners, showing hospitality, composure when facing the unexpected, and having courtesy towards others.
Mars speaks of courage, and now that it’s in Taurus, it’s time to have the discipline and stamina to do also the inner shadow work that it’s a responsibility of all of us, especially if we want to live in a culture that is more creatively affirming than we currently have.
As Mars moves ever closer to Uranus, aspects of our dormant Mars will be awakened. Better to clear the space for it and sharpen our mind to receive it with the groundedness of a trained warrior, lest it channels destructive chaos.
Lastly, keep this in mind as we witness further violent acts as they continue to explode in our times:
“…when we experience violence, we are thrust back upon ourselves. Our emotions run amok, and our conventional thinking patterns are dismantled. … The boundary between inner and outer (life) becomes porous and permeable.
Violence can weaken our internal structures and defenses.
Everything is in turmoil. …
Complexes are reactivated, old fears, and desires awakened.
Our personality experiences a major shakeup.Violence launches us into existence … simultaneously, we are confronted with our inner self. … We see the world through different eyes.” – Allan Guggenbuhl
This is an opportunity for us to answer the call to do our own individual shadow work. If each of us can take care of water wells, it will help heal the aquifer. It’s our responsibility to hold the tension of the opposites and make space for the third to be given birth.
