The weekend of May 10th/11th, 2014. Two nearly identical charts, less than 24 hours apart. The main players this weekend are two planetary oppositions- Sun/Saturn and Mars/Venus, and two powerful asteroid goddesses- Sekhmet and Athena. And of course, the Moon.
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First chart, 5/10, 11:28am on the west coast, Lilith rising. Sun 20 Taurus opposite Saturn 20 Scorpio. Sun opposite Saturn is the peak of a problem solving cycle that began with Sun conjunct Saturn, and then progressed with Sun square Saturn. Let’s review both first.
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November 6th 2013, Sun conjunct Saturn at 14 Scorpio- Saturn, at 14 Scorpio, was touched three days earlier by a solar eclipse new moon, and five days before that by Mercury retrograde, and then right after crossing Saturn the Sun erupted with X3.3, the fourth largest X-flare of this solar cycle. Astrobarry, a true Sun-seeing genius, wrote an essay about that solar eclipse conjunct Saturn that you can read here .
From Astrobarry’s “Hitting The Wall”:
“Having been ‘halted’ here (or so I’ve erroneously been describing this spot in my journey) for a few weeks now, I’ve faced a struggle to not criticize myself for this lack of apparent progress. My therapist, on the other hand, still tells me he thinks I’m doing great work… that I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be… and that staying right here, in this incredibly disconcerting faceoff with my fear and my resistance and my ambivalence about going forward further and, perhaps most promising, my emotional honesty about all of this (even when it leaves me feeling bratty, indulgent, ungrateful and/or ashamed), is very much a symbol of progress. It just doesn’t look as majestic or impressive to my high-achiever mentality as the accelerated epiphanies I earlier amassed.”
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February 11th 2014, Sun at 23 Aquarius square the exact degree of Saturn stationing retrograde at 23 Scorpio, shortly after the Aquarius New Moon that ended the year of the water snake and began the year of the horse- Interesting to note Mars and Venus nearly square each other at this time, each near the beginning of their own long term cycles. The north node and Hekate were still in Scorpio, as Ceres, Vesta and Mars all crowded the final degrees of Libra ready to retrograde in sync. Meanwhile Venus, Pluto, Persephone and Psyche were all together in a cluster in Capricorn. Now this weekend, Venus is in Aries opposing Mars(retrograde), with the Sun in Taurus opposing Saturn(retrograde).
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Last November, shortly after Sun conjunct Saturn (and the Scorpio solar eclipse, which was on my natal Lilith) I became aware of some negative patterns that had followed me from my childhood to my adult life. By acknowledging these patterns for the first time, I uncovered the truth about specific things that happened in an abusive relationship, things that were so traumatic that I had buried it for over a year and a half. I spent the next several weeks catatonic as it surfaced and I began to wrestle with questions of why I allowed this type of abuse to occur. You always hear messages not to blame yourself as the victim but this time I just didn’t see how. I attempted to reach out to my closest friends but found that as much as I wanted to talk about it, I couldn’t.
Around the time of Sun square Saturn (and the Aquarius new moon, which was on my natal south node) I began to develop a very specific type of abdominal pain. I was terrified that I had a tumor in my colon and scheduled a colonoscopy. They found nothing like a tumor, but I was diagnosed with a somewhat rare condition- with no quick-fix surgery- it will require unknown weeks or months of treatment to repair- and even then, painful relapses are possible. This has been very, surprisingly very difficult to accept.
So what do I think about Sun opposite Saturn and what it means? At this point in my life I am moving into a phase of synthesis where I am coming to a place of owning these struggles, coming into a full understanding the inter-relatedness of my trauma history and my physical illness, how I approach both issues from the same broken place, and becoming aware that there is a single path I must take to overcome both problems.
And who shows us this path we must walk, keywords integration and wholeness? She Who Opens The Way: Sekhmet, sextile Sun and trine Saturn. Sa Sekhem Sahu!
Interesting observation about the orbit of asteroid Sekhmet- I definitely have some more research to do here- Her last transit through Capricorn lasted four weeks… her current transit through Kataka/Cancer is going to take six DAYS. Peek ahead to the next chart- 24 hours later, she is already far enough ahead to be squaring the lunar nodes in concert with Athena, who is sextile the north node and trine the south node. In this way, Sekhmet will open a path from our Sun/Saturn lessons to the nodes of fate, and Athena is there to guide us toward the north node, to the future…
Second chart, 5/11, 4:34am on the west coast, Uranus rising. Venus 9 Aries opposite Mars 9 Libra. Mars will be touched exactly by the Moon at 9 Libra as Venus glimmers above the horizon before dawn. Venus is on the exact degree of this year’s amazing new moon in Aries. Mars is stationing direct and will be at 9 Libra until June.
What makes this opposition so potent and alive right now is the idea of what is traditionally referred to in astrology as rulership. Mars is the ruler of Aries the Yangest of all the Yang signs, but while he is retrograde he is in his receptive (Yin) state; Venus rules Yin Taurus when she shines in the evenings, but when she rises in the morning as she does now, she rules Libra. So we have Mars in the sign ruled by Venus, and Venus is in the sign ruled by Mars. Our Yang is in a Yin way, and our Yin is in the house of Yang. My totem for Mars in Libra is the Empress of Tarot. My totem for Venus in Aries is this antlered goddess.
Artwork by Natasa Ilincic (www.unripehamadryad.deviantart.com)
(L’Imperatrice from the Camoin-Jodorowsky restored Marseille Tarot)
Beyond that I don’t have the ability to generalize, until after I share some more. I am an Aries woman with a Libra moon, in a (well…)relationship with a Libra man whose natal Sun is the exact degree of my natal moon, and that degree is 9 Libra, seriously. Our union began anew in April of 2013 when Uranus first reached 9 Aries, exact opposite my moon/his Sun (that’s called Astrology btw lol) Anyway our midpoint ascendant/descendant- based on exact, confirmed birth times- is 25 Aries/Libra, the exact axis of the April 15th blood moon lunar eclipse- the eclipse took place exactly on our relationship’s descendant. We basically “broke up” while the eclipse was happening literally right over our heads on the point that represents our shared projection of Otherness.
I think that I have had a lot of fear regarding the Sun/Saturn issues I mentioned above regarding abuse trauma and physical health- neither of which I have shared with my Libra Love in any more detail than I have shared here. I have been deeply afraid of his reaction, not able to trust that he could really be there for me. We have each been negatively conditioned in our own way to fear and mistrust the Other. We have been drawn back together again and again by the real soul level unity we experience as One, but neither of us is 100% free of our negative conditioning and continue to project our fears onto each other.
I am living this astrology, so I know my experiences are part of something that all humans are experiencing. We are undergoing a massive shift in the consciousness of our species where we are re-defining the structures of personal identity, collective identity, and relationships. The Sun-Saturn cycle loves to introduce us to problems that we have to become more whole, integrated individuals to solve and/or survive, and the opposition is a turning point. To be followed immediately by this Venus-Mars opposition will serve as a powerful meditation, to align with these energies by saying I AM ready to redistribute the disparities of Yang and Yin that prevent me from connecting fully with the new structures as a fully integrated and balanced spirit. The message for Planet Earth at this time, where we stand, exactly between Venus and Mars, and exactly between the Sun and Saturn, is a road map of where to hold firm and where to open up, how to flex without pushing or pulling away.
Planetary Clarity 
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