hail to the lords of time

the spring astrological forecast

april-june 2000

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all dates are based on pacific time.

what is the difference between being stuck and being stable? they're both about being in one place for a time; the difference is how comfortable we feel being there. now we get to find out just how well we deal with security, stability, peace. we have the opportunity to become aware of and work through these issues now, because the planets are inviting us to walk into this room of our consciousness for the next few months.

in our modern world, we are so accustomed to activity. life is complicated by sensory clutter: everything from junk mail to advertisements in every visual frame (even on school campuses now!) to the constant clatter of metal on metal to the panoply of odors that assail us without respite. after years of conditioning, life seems abnormal--unsafe-- without it, like something is wrong or missing.

early on, we learn that a busy person is a productive person, and a productive person is a successful person. a successful person is rich. our culture trades in the commodities of busy-ness (interesting that this is the source of our word "business"). if you are busy, you must be doing your job, and our culture will generally reward you. if you sit and think, if you appear too passive, you are thought to be lazy. you couldn't possibly be productive if you don't look busy!

so we learn early on, in school, to look busy. store clerks must look busy, even if there are no customers and every shelf is stocked. everywhere we turn, we are taught to deny ourselves pleasure and leisure. this is one of the weaknesses of our culture, the "puritan work ethic", an ethic which has outlived its namesake. underneath it is the cultural belief that all citizens of the culture must be maximally productive at all times. in this way, the culture seeks to continue to exist. all cultures seeks their own immortality, and every culture has its strengths and weaknesses. the culture called western civilization thinks it will survive if its members are maximally productive. "time off"--whether for vacation, illness, maternity/paternity leave, sabbatical, mental health, or internalized creativity--is given begrudgingly, with plenty of not-so-hidden messages that make guilt feelings hard to avoid.

this high level of activity in essence keeps us from ourselves (our selves) and prevents us from feeling the peace that is within us anytime we want to tap it. it keeps us stuck in an immovable world that is always moving around us, threatening to leave us behind if we don't "do something".

being stuck is about being unable to effect the changes we want to while doing things we don't want to and not knowing how to stop the horrible carousel. to get to what we want, we have to be able to peel the blinders off our eyes and figure out what we really want. a person who doesn't know what they really want approaches life less purposefully and may sabotage their own efforts because they aren't sure what they want (or they are sure but it isn't what they're doing and haven't seen it yet). we can often force ourselves to "succeed" if we push our true self way deep down inside and never look inward, but it comes at a cost. it's little wonder if we don't know what we want, because it is customary in our culture for parents and culture and school to press their needs upon us, as if we should place everyone else's needs before our own. this results in the "psychology of stolen moments", where we feel that the only way we can get a shred of what we want is to steal it from those to whom we owe something.

in this culture, in absence of understanding to the contrary, we are all thieves taking from the culture. every time we take a break, rest motionless, allow our emotions to hold sway, get the flu, become depressed, engage in play--we steal from our own productivity and so steal from the culture what is rightly its due.

then getting what we want ends up as the pursuit of short-term solutions and quick fixes, or a series of stolen moments so guilt-ridden that they hardly afford us relief. we take out a cigarette instead of a deep breath; we eat a bag of chips or a pre-made salad at our desk instead of preparing and eating a balanced sit-down meal. we drink coffee to sharpen the mind, to wake us up from the day before when we overspent our energies, or we take a drug to quiet the clambering voices in our heads.

what drives our culture, and so drives us, is the utter belief in appearances. if what's on the surface, what's visible, is all there is, then life becomes a treadmill of meaningless activity; but, if there is something deeper, something latent for most of us, something more subtle, then perhaps we can uproot our existence in this jabberwocky world and find peace and meaning in what others cannot see.

the key to thriving in this world is to find peace when danger threatens, and the key to this peace is to look beneath the surface. to look beneath the surface, we have to remove ourselves from the "real world", at least in consciousness. we have to let go of its hold on us, quiet the carping cultural coterie, just long enough to feel deep within. when we begin this, it feels uncomfortable in its unfamiliarity. we feel buried hurts, complaints, and the ache of longing. we feel how little we know ourselves, how we've betrayed our self, and we see our mistakes. if we keep digging, we find the part of who we are (who we are) that lives in peace and joy, that is dying to share and express these feelings: we find the well, our source. the more we practice, the easier and more customary it becomes to drink from the well. each time we do it, we find the path inward easier to follow, and we find it easier to let go of our culture's unhealthy hold on us. each time we do it, we are living in the present instead of in fear of the future. so, no matter what danger seems to threaten us, we can be at peace because it is not here yet.

as we weather the storms of our modern world, as we discover that we can outlive y2k (so symbolic of the hold that we allow technology to have over our lives), we daily have a choice of whether to invest ourselves in this world of appearances, or to be in it but not of it. there is no time where some of the repercussions of being caught in this rat's maze will be more obvious than now; the planets are, by giving us a stuck (or stable) place to be in for a time, challenging us to look at what discomfort this brings to us.

are we in a place where it is comfortable to rest for a while (even though we aspire to higher things)? or did we get caught on the skinny branches? how much stability do we have? are we full-filled, or are we empty and depleted from our last effort? we can't always maintain perfect stability in the face of our experiences, but we can learn from those experiences about whether instability is an occasional thing, or has become a way of life for us that should serve as a wake-up call.

if you've gotten the planetary reveille, you've chosen an excellent time to open your eyes. the prevailing planetary winds hold the promise of new beginnings. this fresh start is tempered and so more powerful. specifically, what we are experiencing is the conjunction (coming together in the same place in the heavens) of jupiter and saturn. as the two slowest-moving visible planets, the ancients saw this as an awesome event, one which occurs on average every 20 years. called the great chronocrators, or time lords, they have stepped aside as the biggest planetary players to the longer-cycled invisible planets, uranus, neptune, and pluto. when they conjoin, as uranus and pluto did in the mid-sixties and uranus and neptune did in the early 90s, big events occur and changes in mass consciousness take place.

jupiter and saturn represent two great opposing forces of the universe which must be balanced for success in the physical, material world. for this reason, they rule business, real estate, finance, and economic cycles, although the other planets modify the essential picture that is formed by this cycle. in general, jupiter is associated with risk-taking--the three es: education, enterprise, and expansion. saturn symbolizes contractive or limiting forces--the three s's: safety, security, and structure. we have to learn to balance risk with safety, expansion with contraction. this means learning when we can change society and when society must change us; it means blending/balancing what you want to accomplish with how the world will accept it. growth is purely jupiterian, but it doesn't become success until it is tempered by the forces of the outer world and finds its niche. when jupiter and saturn are blended well, they bring "sustained growth" or "gradual progress".

because of the sign they are conjoining in, taurus, they bring up deeper issues that are naturally related to the physical world--materialism, focus on appearances, sensual pleasures (from food to sex), and the belief that we are isolated beings without any essential connectedness. jupiter teaches us through extremes--that is, what it's like to have too much of something we want. we learn to temper our drives and desires through the experience of excess. so jupiter is going to encourage us to experience taurus in all its manifestations, and thus we see the current "hard body" craze, the latest surge in the stock market and "get rich quick" schemes, and the patently obvious formulae for success being used in hollywood and elsewhere.

saturn, on the other hand, challenges us to look deeper, to anticipate the results of excessive behavior and curb them. this is the use of wisdom. saturn in taurus works with subtlety and complexity, as it does in all signs. it says, "go ahead down that road, and you will learn the pitfalls of your path." in taurus, saturn shows us the doorway to discipline as a means to curb our appetites. it teaches us about the value of patience. it instructs us on the importance of our values, and it shows us that the material world is a cold, empty, meaningless place in the absence of inner awareness.

jupiter and saturn may also lead to people wanting to expand authority at the center. an example is the current move to centralize some functions and powers as part of the government, such as the trend in education for states and even the federal government to control classroom curricula and lesson plans. we may find ourselves subject to these trends, because what happens in society affects all of us.

because taurus slows energy down more than any other sign, it is the stablest, but we can also feel stuck, and so our discomfort naturally leads us to seek ways to get unstuck. this search will eventually lead us to a solution; the best solution is the one which uproots the question, removing it before it even exists. if we are inwardly attuned, we uproot the question of how to get unstuck. we are only stuck in the realm of appearances, because inwardly, progress is always being made and can be felt. inward attunement also releases us from anxiety, because it leads us to live in the current moment, letting the future take care of itself. this is how we can live at peace, in spite of knowing that tomorrow may bring a new challenge.

as we complete the old jupiter-saturn cycle, we are in harmony with the times if we wait until after its start to begin anything new having to do with business and enterprise. in the meantime, work on completions--another thing our culture teaches us to overlook in that drive toward productivity.

another theme we will be attending to this quarter is breaking through to a deeper understanding of truth. far from being absolute, truth is mutable, shifting as we shift perspectives, wavering when universal laws clash in the realm of the physical. the deeper we go in attempting to gain understanding, the simpler and clearer truths become. this year in general, the doorway to the deeper levels of our own truths is wider open. there has never been a better time to know ourselves and heal our past.

so we will feel great shifts of energy in the coming season. we are certain to hold new perspectives by the end of spring and feel the promise of new beginnings.

the band plays on

although april is not a month of momentous planetary events, we will be working all month on the big theme of the past 18 months, that dealing with the resisting force. this pattern ties in with most of what happened in our lives in 1999, especially in march-june and in august. this time, however, while "problems" may arise, we should be able to deal with them more constructively than before, because they're not all demanding attention at the same time, as they were in august, nor are they so unrelenting in their unreasonableness, as they were in may-june. this pattern actually regained our focus on or about the 31^st of march by some event which made us aware of our confusion or lack of focus--perhaps that an issue that we thought was dead is in fact this something we must embrace. this is always a good thing, because we often give up on something not because it is complete, but because it cannot be worked with in the moment, so we lose touch with it, even though it will require further attention down the road.

in general, the planets are in a completing phase of their cycles with respect to each other, so that's what we should be focused on doing--completing things. we often don't like to take the time to do this, even though there is an unappreciated satisfaction in truly seeing something through to the end. since our culture does not value long-term results, it does not like to take the time to complete things. completions bring clarity and a true readiness for the challenges of the next cycle. in the complexities of our modern world, who can say that we truly put everything away when we're done with a project before we start the next one? maybe those kindergarten lessons are more important than we think!

if we can manage it, on the 1^st we should take the time to look more deeply at the thread of events linked by the dates of december 2^nd, march 2^nd, and march 15^th. this is a time when insights may lend themselves to new approaches that can mitigate undesirable influences. constructive planning and communication can be key to the actions we take at this time. on or about the third, we may become aware of how our fears influence our attitudes and approaches to our experiences. it is a good time for "reflected introspection"--a time to talk to friends, counselors, and healers--to learn what we can from this time.

on the 4^th - 6^th anxieties about the future can lead us to take action, even though this is a new moon. on the 6^th is the second of our "thematic" events. while we may need to strike while the iron is hot, just be sure that you are seeing the situation clearly. we are likely to be a little too idealistic now. chances are, our expectations are a bit off the mark--but we'll find that out after we act. a slight mistake will clear the air. the themes we experience now will also go back to last october, around the 10^th, in addition to the times mentioned above.

pay attention to your intuition on the 9^th, and you may be able to make some constructive adjustments to your plans for the future. around the 11^th, we can find harmony between the real and ideal in our relationships. there's a fine line between self-awareness and selfishness, and this is a time when we can see where we're at with this in our relationships. someone may give us feedback, or a sudden flash of clarity may lead us to understand the impact our self-centeredness is having on others.

a sense of awkwardness around the 13^th - 15^th gives way to purposeful action. the devil is in the details, and life may seem overwhelmingly complex because we have the time to stop and look at just what we're doing and what we yet need to do. this is the third of the thematic events, and it feeds into the fourth, which adds some extra punch to the full moon of the 18^th, leading us to feel more like its peak is on the 19^th. the 20^th - 24^th gives us a chance to put the pieces back together in a new way.

during this time, the sun enters taurus (the 19^th), one of the signs of the resisting force. now we will be required to make decisions about where our values lie, take actions, and make commitments. the sun will "heat up" the issues we've been dealing with for the past month. in addition, the planets that were interacting last august once again make contact with a few new twists, including the grand conjunction of jupiter and saturn mentioned above.

take a break on the 25^th, because we will want all of our personal resources available for the weeks ahead. the 26^th ties in specifically to what happened in our lives on march 31^st, requiring us to once again refocus. the rest of april gives us some breathing room before the gathering of forces that occurs several times in may.

make-a-wish time

although the planetary crush of may 2000 is not without its pitfalls, it presents unprecedented opportunities. (this is always the nature of chaotic times.) the impending beginning of a 20-year cycle is something to take advantage of. it's time to find your vision and declare your intention for how you want to fulfill it. make a wish, but do it with clarity, will, intent, and purpose. do a ritual when these energies gather--at the full moon on the 18^th and at the time of the great conjunction on the 28^th. the new moon on the 3^rd is a time to ask for guidance in finding our vision for this long cycle.

a pause to give this context: although these events are large compared to the daily experiences we have, they are not large relative to the events of history. certainly, some people will have their cataclysms, and if you are where one is occurring, it is your apocalypse. however, a gathering of planets like what we have during may (including the much-touted and feared may 5, 2000) occurs not infrequently. in fact, they usually occur several times yearly, although the planets involved vary. the ones which rise into the consciousness of the public do so because someone has picked one out of the heavens as being more significant than the others, as if it was the only one occurring for centuries. this sensationalism does not outlast astute astrological scrutiny, however.

may kicks off with an action-awareness two-step: first, we take the action, then we get the awareness. the balance shifts after the 8^th (mercury's conjunction to the sun), when the awareness begins to prompt the action. you get to decide which you prefer, without the power to change it.

we can't forget the premier event of the pagan year, beltane. although celebrated on the 1^st, the astrological event it commemorates actually falls on the 5^th! this is because of calendar adjustments that were made to make our year fit the solar cycle. unfortunately, the dates of the holidays were not also adjusted, so our traditional celebrations, from christmas to may day to hallowe'en, are a few days off the exact mark. still, it's never a bad time to focus our energies in the name of alignment with the higher powers; at beltane, we get to celebrate the european beginning of summer--when the weather is finally warm enough to relax and enjoy without those extra layers of clothes. it is the time of the ancient fertility rites, when many a child was conceived in ancient times. nowadays, we see many handfastings at this lovely ancient holy day.

the new moon comes on the 3^rd, feeding the concentration of energies in taurus. this is a time to get clear on what taurus really means to us. its personal meaning is tempered by where it is found in our own charts, since that is birthtime-dependent. generally, taurus wants us to stay in one place. we get to decide if that's stagnation or stability. if you have planets in taurus, leo, scorpio, or aquarius, this will be a very active time for you.

may 6^th brings us to focus on relationships, but it is not a good time to use the mind to do so. feel your way through; get in touch with your vision of the relationship. you will be able to be more vocal and specific after the 8^th.

if we can sort it out from the planetary clatter, a new year-long cycle of expansion, expression, and enterprise begins on the 7^th. tie-in dates to look forward to are september 2^nd, september 29^th, november 27^th, and january 25^th (01). this is also an important date for the cycle of vision, illusion, and spirituality which began on january 24^th. connect the dots to april 26^th, july 27^th, and october 15^th as well. a third yearly planetary milestone occurs on the 10^th, when the cycle of structure, conservatism, and responsibility begins. this date links up with august 23^rd, september 12^th, november 19^th, and january 24^th. it's time to plant your seeds for the first and third events; look at how your seeds are growing on the second, for now mother nature must take over.

no matter what we communicate about now, there's an unexpected surprise, an added "punch" to our interactions from the 7^th, and really incredible new levels of awareness of possible if we have the time to assimilate them over the next few days. the list of planetary events for each day from the 7^th through the 10^th is as long as your arm, and we will feel them. other days which are equally eventful this month are the 12^th, 17^th, 19^th, and 24^th-25^th.

so if may feels like a roller coaster ride, make the best of it--enjoy the thrills and have the patience to wait out the challenges, until a clear path of action presents itself. the full moon on the 18^th is the wesak full moon, a big day in the buddhist calendar. although every full moon is a time when the energies of the universe open up for us, the wesak full moon is a time when the forces we can bring through ourselves can be especially beneficial.

other major planetary events occur on the 13^th, the 20^th, and the 28^th, but they will not necessarily be felt on those days. because they involve the slow-moving planets, their influences wait to be triggered by the fast movers on the "peak" dates noted above. these events have to do with long-term cycles, the last of which is the conjunction of jupiter and saturn. on the 13^th, we experience an event which relates to a cycle begun in 1989. whatever was happening in your life, this was when the soviet union fell apart. on the 20^th, we revisit a cycle begun in 1997. this one ties in to the economic repercussions of governmental upheaval, and the economic troubles of russia and the old soviet republics come to mind. recent problems in chechniya and in un-administered "peace-keeping" arose near this time.

after the 20^th, the intensity of the month sags temporarily until the 24^th, when unpredictability reigns. this pertains to a yearly cycle begun on february 6^th (also the time of an eclipse, if you recall) and culminating on august 10^th and october 26^th. this cycle ensures that we are as attuned to our inner purpose as possible. it "introduces" us to that purpose through sudden events that disrupt the hold that the reality of appearances normally has on us. this disruption allows the true self to step into the foreground, if only for a short time, with a new awareness and appreciation for life. whether an accident or a miracle, this energy promises to bring us back to what's real.

after the 24^th, our attention shifts to another axis in our lives. as the sun slips into gemini (on the 20^th), we begin to notice that there have been some other issues that we've had on the back burners since the beginning of the month. now we get to give them the attention they deserve. these areas of focus have to do with parts of our life that have suffered because we have had deeply hidden underlying fears and misconceptions about how life works. often the way we figure this out is by having something really important--health, job, marriage, family--go through a complete transformation. this is a clue that something really big in us can be changed if we are willing, and often must be changed if we are to find the success and fulfillment in life that we desire.

don't forget the great conjunction at month-end. this will likely slip by uneventfully, since the conjunction is a usually a quiet, inward time. make the best of it by setting your intentions for the next 20 years!

the dragon emerges from the deep

our "other problem" rises to the surface in spades on or around the 1^st. fast action may be helpful as the debris falls around us. this energy will be felt throughout the month, as it seeds itself on the new moon of the 2^nd. relationships feel the full force of this shift starting on the 3^rd and extending through the month, but the energies move toward harmony by the 21^st, as we finally get to reach completion on relationship issues that have been lingering for the past year.

having a couple of weeks of simple routine is refreshing about now, and that's what is before us; the planets don't really stir things up again until the full moon on the 16^th, and then only in a pleasant way. mercury turns retrograde (backward) in its progress through the heavens on the 23^rd, giving us a chance to rework some things we've created over the past few weeks. the theme for this retrograde is the blending of head and heart (intellect and emotions), with a premium placed on emotional intelligence. there's not much to get in the way of this lesson as we finish out the month. until july 17^th, we will be working on this.

on the 30^th, jupiter enters gemini, thus shifting more emphasis to the issues we have with our use of the integrating force. our learning process with this will accelerate now, and it will gain paramount importance in the spring of 2001. we can look forward to using the coming months to prepare for the greater challenges which will arise then.

this spring has opened new doorways for us; the old cycle has finally ended, and we can get on with life. the feeling of newness we crave is with us at last, and the new millennium can finally begin!

terry lamb is a counselor, writer, and speaker specializing in astrology and subtle-body healing in a psychological frame. the mother of two wonderful boys, she has also written born to be together: love relationships, astrology, & the soul. she is dedicated to supporting others in their growth through a broad range of personal and business services as well as courses and seminars sharing her blend of astrology, psychology, and healing. this column arises out of the convergence of her training in all three fields. she can be reached for bookings and appointments (locally or long-distance) at terry@terrylamb.net.

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copyright 2001 by terry lamb