The Sun entered Aires at the Equinox but the Moon wanes new weeks later. We complete the astrological year’s final hours and return from the mystical merge. Last year’s emergency is this year’s emergence. A seed is replanted, identity is reborn – ego, appearance, defenses.
Aires is the ram, the risk-taker, and the survivor. It’s the 1st House of the Astrological Year and is ruled by Mars. Its fire sparks our ignition and asks the question, Who Am I?
Mars is the Roman God of War, Ares his Greek counterpart. In Cosmic Consciousness Astrology, which combines the inner planets with outer celestial discoveries, Mars is masculine and feminine. A divine completion and the archetype of initiation, its attributes include decisive action, willpower, and physical activity. Aggression, insecurity, and combat are its weakness.
We all have a specific sign and/or planet in our Natal Chart First House, reflecting the astral influence at the moment of our birth. Each year, however, we repeat this cycle under the Sun and New Moon in the Aires sign. Decades in, sooner if we’re lucky, we realize we’re not just fated to the original astral placement. Perhaps we have some say in it as well. We can decide each year anew who we are and here is where we do it.
The Sun and Dark Moon meet in Aires tonight at 10:30 pm ET. Less than an hour later, Venus and the asteroid Persephone square Pluto. A square is a hard aspect indicating challenge. The Goddess of Love and Values joins with the Queen of the Underworld. Together they confront the Underworld’s God.
Pluto is the de-structure/chaos in the creative cycle of order-chaos-reorder. He craves truth in the dark, where it often hides. Persephone is our guide to the underworld. Venus directs us to relationship and values, and Aires/Mars gives us the courage to face it. We will go, and we will come back, but not as the person we were. Here is the alchemy, that the darkness will refine and rebuild us, like the pearl of great price.
Many of us are longing to return to the oxymoronic “new normal.” There is no such thing. Instead, we can leave the past and seek a better future. The longer I walk the spiritual path, the more I believe that part of spirituality is realizing that we and the whole world are a manifestation of God’s love. According to Thomas Merton:
“Our vocation was to be in this cosmic creation, so to speak, as the eye in the body. But we have lost our ‘sight’ and are blundering around aimlessly in the midst of the wonderful works of God.” 1.
Aires offers us vision and sight, the eye in the body of cosmic creation. “Who am I?” is no longer a question to answer but an invocation to become.
I watched the coronation episode in the TV Series “The Crown” again last night, as I was reminded of it after Prince Phillip’s death. If you’ve watched it, you will know the scene to which I’m referring.
If only we, too, were brought forth in sacred ceremony; shielded from all but the highest eye. Our hands, heart, and head touched with holy oil. Anointed and given rite under the shelter of God. Who and how might we then be?
On this Aires New Moon, let us be the light we seek and emerge as both the I’s and the Eyes through which creation knows, loves, and celebrates itself. In the ecstatic beckoning of a timeless Sufi Mystic, may we:
“Come, come, whoever you are.
Wanderer, worshiper, lover of leaving.
It doesn’t matter.
Ours is not a caravan of despair.
Come.
Even if you’ve broken your vows a thousand times.
Come, come again, come.”
Rumi
References
1.Thomas Merton, Witness to Freedom: Letters in Times of Crisis, ed. William H. Shannon (New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1994.