Facing our shadow or projecting it
Three factors this week point to a great shift of energy.
The new Moon in Scorpio on Saturday is concerned with uncovering what lies behind the veil of consciousness, digging deep into the unconscious to achieve the renewal. The doorway to the underworld is thin at this time as we enter into the darkest part of the year.
It’s good to remember what the alchemist said about the Dark being the Mother of the Light. It is in these times of darkness that we find in ourselves the light of spirit that guides us towards fulfilling our work in the world.
A day before the New Moon Mars turns direct after spending the last month and a half moving retrograde. Mars has been at its brightest ever since coming into the early evening sky. You can see the Red Planet every night at Sunset as one of the first stars in the sky.
Mars turning direct will be felt as a powerful urge to express and live what we have been gestating. Mars is the ruler of Scorpio and has such has a very intimate relationship with this New Moon. Mars is how we express our gifts in the world and how we manifest our true uniqueness. While retrograde we felt it very difficult to express ourselves in these tense times and as it begins its direct movement we will find it that much more important to find a way to assert our gifts and needs to contribute.
The third factor that makes this week that much more potent is the Jupiter Pluto conjunction which engages with the new Moon in a sextile and forms a flowing triangle with Neptune making it very difficult to find our self in the collective tension. This is the third Jupiter Pluto conjunction this year and each and everyone of them coincided with the increase intensity of the crisis we have been navigating. Its almost clock work to see the tension rising as this powerful conjunction relates its energy into the collective. The first one came at the end of March beginning of April, the second at the end of June beginning of July and the third is active all week.
As we look back in history at this conjunction we find similar times of tension; from the Spanish Flue epidemic of 1918; to the great depression of the early thirties; to the heighten tensions of World War two; to the hearth of the sixties, to the cold war of the early eighties, to the latest crash of 2008. All these times have in common an increase empowerment of government control in the light of a perceived or actual enemy. These patterns are cyclical and continue to visit us from time to time.
Jupiter is emancipation and Pluto is the Lord of Death and Rebirth, the Lord of Hell. These three conjunction were preceded by the Saturn Pluto conjunction of early January and will be followed by the Jupiter Saturn conjunction at the end of the year.
These are very very important times in our evolution and we are all asked to show up on a level we have all been preparing for, for a very long time.
So at this new Moon we are faced with this confrontation of the shadow of our times. We can choose to see this shadow in ourselves and to give it a voice through creative endeavours and through spiritual practices, or we can project it out on the outer world and blame our discomfort on a virus; or on the government; or onto political leader; or we can project it on our neighbours; on a race; or on our children; or on our spouse causing the tension to grow and grow. But if we have the courage to withdraw the projection and look inwards to see our own shadow and if we put the effort to integrate our shadow then we can become the change or the solution to the problems that ails our collective.
These are difficult realizations to mature with and this year has given us a big opportunity to face this reality. What we do with these realizations will be tested as the Jupiter Saturn conjunction approaches and has 2021 begins. More on that in my next post. This new Moon, Mars turning direct and the Jupiter Pluto conjunction give us an opportunity to gig deep into our inner world and to look at what is seeking to die within us so that we can be reborn to a higher octave of expression. We must resist the temptation to blame the current crisis on external factors and realize that this is all the work of nature and as such it is a perfect expression of the will of nature. If we refuse this call and empower external sources and give our power away then we just delay the inevitable need to be full individuals in the light of the tremendous darkness of your times.
I leave you with a quote from Jung’s essay “The Undiscovered Self” which expresses these ideas with clarity. This essay was written in 1957 just after another Jupiter Pluto conjunction and can be purchased as a small book which I highly recommend to help you understand the current crisis.
“A mood of universal destruction and renewal... has set its mark on our age. This mood makes itself felt everywhere, politically, socially, and philosophically. We are living in what the greeks called the kairos - the right moment - for a “metamorphosis of the gods,” of the fundamental principles and symbols. This peculiarity of our time, which is certainly not of our conscious choosing, is the expression of the unconscious human within us who is changing. Coming generations will have to take account of this momentous transformation if humanity is not to destroy itself through the might of its own technology and science.... So much is at stake and so much depend on the psychological constitution of the modern human.”
In service,
Peace and love,
Martin Comtois
