Lillith in Scorpio- Dark Desires

in your eyes, morbo by Colectivo movimente CCL

Effective Dates: 5/22-12/2/16

Helios Says:

“When we least expect it, life sets us a challenge to test our courage and willingness to change; at such a moment, there is no point in pretending that nothing has happened or in saying that we are not yet ready. The challenge will not wait. Life does not look back. A week is more than enough time for us to decide whether or not to accept our destiny.” -Paulo Coehlo

So much for feeling stuck, right? It seems like events started moving again, going from 0 to 60 overnight (Which in terms of car speed, is actually insanely slow, but in cosmic terms not so much), and it couldn't have come quick enough! The events of the last two months have been grueling, to say the least- being slowly ground down, like each planet was raking a sheet of sandpaper across your soul an inch at a time, trying to buff out your edges and exposing the flaws.

Well I have some good news and I have some good news; The good news is, the greater part of this process is over, and we are on the other side of the storm (specifically the feelings of being stuck and impotent) - The bad news is that now the real work begins, and you are going to have to put your money where your mouth is. You see, now we have Lilith to contend with, and she is not the one to let you sit back and let life be something that just happens to you, especially not since she is in Scorpio! Your grace period is over and you forgot to cancel your subscription.

This will be an uncomfortable time, especially at the onset with it being Gemini season- You have a conflict between what you THINK you should do and what you actually WANT to do. Lilith will be running around in your subconscious as you try and keep pace in your mundane life, and will buck every attempt you try and make to get her under control- and that is a good thing.

This energy of this year is straight out of Fight Club- No, no, not the obvious "You don't talk about Fight Club" reference, I'm actually onto something here. In Fight Club, the narrator knows he is dying a little more every day, and he is losing himself in the inauthentic nature of his life. In fact, the creator, Chuck Palahniuk wrote the story after he had a fight on a camping trip, and came back to work bloody and bruised- None of his coworkers brought up the injuries to him and their reluctance to get involved in any kind of "messy" personal details or trying to forge any kind of authentic human connection was the inspiration for the book. These last few months have been the equivalent to that camping trip, and now we are coming back to work, battered and bruised. You will be given the same treatment as Palahniuk was given- and it will open your eyes. No one else will care about what is happening to you, they are too wrapped up in their own bullshit. Your isolation will be a boon, even if it doesn't feel like one. You will be made aware of what needs to change, and will not be able to ignore it. You will know what you have to do.

Work with Lilith and she will save your soul. Fight her and she will leave you to rot. She doesn't have time to waste on the unworthy. Show her what you can do!

Artemis says:

“We are all born sexual creatures, thank God, but it's a pity so many people despise and crush this natural gift.”  -- Marilyn Monroe
Cards:  The Devil, 8 of Swords, The Queen of Swords

You will hear me barking about mirrors all of the time.  It is one of my favorite topics.  We are all little mirrors running around, projecting our issues into the outside world and receiving projections from others.  Sometimes we forget where our reflection begins and where the reflections of others end.  Unlike a mirror you may use to look at your beautiful face, humans are living, lucid mirrors.  We are ever morphing like liquid, filling cracks, reflecting some more, creating labyrinths of the mind - projecting outward and beckoning our deepest, most repressed desires to manifest as people and events in our lives.  We take things in - traumatic events or hurtful words people say - and leave a void in the world.  This is where Black Moon Lilith comes in with her influence.

Who is the mirror of the moon?  Why, that is the Black Moon Lilith.  So what the fuck is that?  Mirror mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all?  Why, Lilith gives no fucks about silly questions like that.  She is the "evil" queen, aka the wild, self owned woman who kicked Adam in the teeth and bore a bunch of demon babies in some myths.  She is not passive femininity like Eve, who is born of his rib and bound to her identity as a subplot of man.  No, she is as much of a full being as Adam.  She is associated with the dark sexual energy inside all of us that we unfortunately stifle due to the commands from "civilized" society.  And then we label those urges a "monster" or "demon."  How backwards is that?  "Exercise the beast, don't exorcise the beast," goes a famous Satanic saying.  You can't ever rid yourself of your primal side, so you better learn how to harness it and ride that dragon.  

Nature has no idea what the fuck we are talking about when we say shit like "good" and "evil."  It doesn't know "good" and "evil."  Nature only recognizes when things are out of wack and a horrible imbalance has crept into the fold.  With our actions, we create a pocket or a void in our life.  Back to Black Moon Lilith.  During this ingress of the Queen of mental darkness, Black Moon Lilith will show us just how tight our blindfolds are.  Shackles of various kinds lead to mental blocks that keep us from fully expressing our nature.  As the mirror of the moon, Lilith will show us what personality traits we have developed to repress our desires.  Scorpio is very heavy handed when it comes to transmutation.  Why are you so terrified to change?  You know that your job, spouse, whatever, sucks.  So why don't you leave?  Why don't you severe?  Because you are afraid of your own power.  Lilith left her position of glory because she did not love Adam and did not want to be his servant, as the Abrahamic god YHWH commanded.  That was some big fucking decision...  That means she wont take any of your shit excuses anymore.

It's time to change.  You feel it in the air, don't you?  All of the events the past couple of moons have been gearing us up for our ability to cut through this thick jungle of our mind.  We have witnessed deep misery.  We have witnessed the power of the cosmos and how we are mere peons when it comes to the force of nature.  The "dream" that society gives us is as fragile as glass when it comes to the forces inside of us.  Don't fight her.  Learn from her.  Lilith will crack you open and devour your insides.  She is ruthless.  Change is inevitable, and that realization alone is enlightening.  

Remember what I told you when Vesta entered Gemini?  Watch your mind.  You lie to yourself as much as you lie to others.  Those urges you feel in your gut, what do they say to you?  If you do not manifest what you truly desire, the demons in your external world will just get scarier and scarier.  And then they will seep back into your brain as anxieties and more trauma and back out like a horrifying wheel of death and destruction.  Break that fucking wheel!  This Lilith energy is very Kali, the dark dancing Hindu goddess of time, creation, preservation and destruction.  She is associated with Shakti energy, or feminine sexual energy that leads to Kundalini Awakening.  Creation and destruction are mirrors, and this is an ancient creative/destructive force we are dealing with.  The deep, repressed desires inside of you are your way to the light.  They only seem ugly because we are reflecting back the tremendous fear that society has for the wild.  The power inside all of us is tremendous and boundless.  Why wouldn't that terrify a handler?  

Lilith knows she was born a Queen, not a slave.  Let this lesson pass on.  Don't live your life in quiet servitude to those around you.  Transform, become one with your desires, let the fucking beast out of the cage.  Don't let them use your own mind against you.  Don't let them tell you what you want.  You know what you want.

Full Moon in Cancer- Unchained

Tortured victim screams in pain by Emerson Quinn, CCL

Peace is a lie.

Not the most optimistic way to start this festive Full Moon, but allow me the chance to explain why this is a good thing, and how the philosophy that Darth Vader and the Sith followed is your map for success this lunation. That’s right, this is a Star Wars thing. Deal with it.

Anyways, “Peace is a Lie, there is only Passion”. This is the start of the Sith code, the antithesis of the Jedi code, which starts out: There is no emotion, there is Peace. That may be a great ideal to strive for, complete control over one’s emotions, but it is one that is difficult to say the least. Even more dangerously, this way argues for stasis, the status quo. When you are in that mentality, you are against the forces of the universe- You resist change, growth, and the natural order and flow of life. You cut yourself off and remain apart. You lose ground to Time and Change every day, and that is a fight that you cannot win. When you reject Peace, your enemies become complacency, stagnation and outdated mentalities. You live a more energized life, far more in tune and aware of your surroundings and the natural energies of the cosmos, like this current Astro. On the surface, it feels dull and peaceful, boring even, but undeneath, things are brewing, threatening to bubble over…

The Sun and Moon- As we gather together to celebrate a myriad of holidays, all of which are offensive to someone out there, you must not lose sight of yourself and your needs. Your situation no longer feels like it is sustainable, because it isn’t. It is unraveling around you, in ways visible and invisible. Part of you knows this, but you are more than willing to write it off as holiday blues or some such nonsense. NO! That is your Passion, crying out to be heard and acted upon. The next part of the code, “Through Passion I gain Strength”, echoes this- When we ignore our passions, we sap away our vitality, which weakens us daily. The cumulative effect of this is crippling. We subjugate our passions, denying our deepest wants and desires to continue our banal, mediocre lives. Why? Why do we accept this as our reality when we could become so much greater, so much more than what we are? When did you give up on your dreams? And what would it take for you to believe in your ability to bring them into form again?

Mercury, Venus, Mars and Jupiter- “Through Strength I gain Power”- At first glance the third line of the code seems to be at odds with the grouping of stars in this segment, but give it some thought. Yes, the line is simplistic at first, but is it really? Through your strength, and its continued use, you gain more power to affect change in your life and the world around you. Strength is your path to change, and you must constantly seek to improve yourself and grow your strength. This is fortuitous, as this stellium is all about power, whether it be Mercury’s mental prowess, the tsunami of broken hearts Venus leaves in her wake, Mars’ militaristic might, or Jupiter’s  place at the head of the pyramid, looking down onto the rest. Right now you must find and honor what makes you stronger as a person, and you need to work and hone that until it is your weapon to affect change in this world. It is also time to look toward the future- you have to make changes in your life, drastic ones. If you stay on your course you will die, a little more each day until there isn’t anything worth living for. Everything here already sucks so much, why in the seven hells would you want to drain your life of any joy and vitality as well? Let your passion lead you to new paths, which will remove less than ideal factors from you and your life, which will only make you stronger. The clarity from this will make the way forward much easier to see. Caution is advised however: now is not the time to be implementing these changes, it is a time of reflections and plotting. Action comes later.

Saturn and Neptune- These two have been dominating the recent Astro, and don’t expect that to change anytime soon. No, we won’t wake up from their hangover until we hit the summer and get tossed straight into the insanity that I have been talking about all year. But another time for that. Your next precept is “Through Power I gain Victory”- Again, another seemingly simplistic idea that belies its true nature. Over time, as you honor who you are as an individual, having found what separates you from others and allows you to excel and honing it, helping you to find your place in the world, you achieve your goals and win, shutting up those hateful voices trying to tear you down, both within and without. More important in this precept, and with the code as a whole, is the embracing of strife as a factor for growth and change. Think of it like a pearl. A bit of dirt gets under the shell of an oyster, and irritates it. The oyster tries to insulate itself from this, as it hurts like hell! The oyster is hurting where it is most vulnerable, and it tries to cover the pearl in its stomach juices, which harden and over time, become a pearl, smooth and perfect. To get there however, you need that speck of dirt which gets past your armor, and you need to suffer for a while. Hell, I don’t need to tell you anything about suffering- We have all been there. Some of us still are there, and can’t see a way out. What this precept and the Astro behind it are telling you is that the end goal is to improve your worth. Now, I preface this by saying I am wholeheartedly against the idea of suffer now to be rewarded later- that isn’t what this means. This is Saturn and Neptune telling you that one day, this will make sense and you will see why things had to be the way they were. To your part, Victory at all costs is only to be used as a last resort- there is far more value in a worthy victory, in which you prove what exactly you are made of. The conditions are set, and your path leads you forward…

Uranus, Chiron and Pluto- And straight into the biggest challenge, and the end of the code- “Through Victory my chains are broken”. I get chills every time I read that line, it is so crucial. Through this lens, it is revealed that victory and success are not the end goal- it is our freedom, our ability to live on our own terms, without being subjected to the whims and wishes of others- Working toward your own dreams, your own goals and plans, instead of building their monuments. In the end, this is the only thing worth doing, because it is whatever YOU want it to be. Doing this allows you to reach your fullest potential, unfettered by anything that would hold you back. This is the Cardinal Crisis in a nutshell. The worst may be over, but all of the pieces are still there, and you can still use them to affect change, but without the sword of Damocles (or lightsaber in this case, I suppose) hanging over your head! There is still time on this clock! You are not locked into anything yet! You can still say fuck it, drop everything, and run as fast and far as you can to build a brand new life. Sure, there are consequences, but there are also consequences to NOT living life on your terms. Which will you be more regretful of on your deathbed?  When your life flashes before your eye as your breathe your final breaths, will it be worth watching? Only you can make this call.

The Future is waiting for you. Are you ready to meet it?

Lunar Eclipse in Aries- Fight or Flight

Fear by Nathan O'nions, CCL

I open with a confession- I am terrified.

 This is a Lunar Eclipse, at the Moon’s closest approach to the Earth. On this day, above all else, I promise that you will feel. And that, above all else, scares me to death.

I am not a brave or strong man. I am a man who, long ago, figured out how to shut off his own emotional response to just about any situation. It enables me to survive, on nothing but pure bloody-mindedness and refusal to quit, long after I should have fallen. That will not work today. Today, I must face the rotting, necrotic corpse of what I once was. Today I must face the creature that I helped to survive. It is not me, not anymore. What I once was is dead, and I must move on with what is by facing the shattering of the fantasy. The day I am forced to feel again, I fear that the cumulative emotion will tear me to shreds, like the proverbial dam breaking and unleashing a torrent.

You will all face this in one way or another. This one will slip through the cracks in your armor, not matter how tightly you have wrapped it around yourself. You cannot run, you cannot negotiate or talk your way out of it, and you sure as hell cannot fight it. What you CAN do is dive in, and let it envelop and permeate everything that you are. You can give in to it. Stop resisting it and let it do its work. You must jump into the black abyss that holds everything that you fear and everything you want. You may die, alone and scared as you run out of oxygen. You may face terrible creatures, the stuff of nightmares that mankind has never seen; black and terrible things, hell-bent on making you their lunch. Or, you may swim like your life depends on it, giving it everything you have and just a little bit more, and you may emerge into a chamber filled with light, and sweet, sweet oxygen. You may find a reason to live when you hit the bottom and things look their bleakest.

The Sun, Moon, Mercury, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune and Pluto- Yes, you’re reading that right. It’s insane. This is highly concentrated energy, and it can easily crush you if you let it. It’s mammoth, gargantuan, and overwhelming. But know this- This is the paradigm. It’s set now. In the cardinal crisis, things could and did shift monumentally in the blink of a moment. For better or for worse, this is what you have to work with. This is forward motion; unfortunately it’s all uphill. Good for the calves though- Leg day and all. This is all set against the backdrop of the Nodes, as all eclipses are… *editors note- from here its just me rambling. I tried to edit it but it didnt make any sense. Skip to Venus if you want pure astro* Huh. I just realized, mid-sentence why eclipses are so feared- The nodes are massive channels of pure, formless potential energy. Their symbol in the charts looks like gateways. When the sun/moon combines with them, the gate is opened and the energy is released, for better or for worse. Think of it like Ghostbusters (the original, when they open the fridge to the other dimension). It’s up to us to shape what comes through the gate, just like Gozer could not choose its own form- It needed a human for that. Which brings us to Saturn (not that I can even follow my own train of thought on this, but trust me it’s there) Saturn is the one holding this shit together, as he almost always does. He will help bring form to whatever you put your energy into (Mars), bringing it out of the potential and into the real (Mercury-Neptune). Even though it doesn’t seem like it, YOU are the one in command of this energy (Jupiter). Wield it or be destroyed by it (Pluto).

If you will indulge me another reference, I will explain in terms of a really good story. In one of my favorite super nerdy book series, Shannara (There are about 30 or so books so far, and it’s going to be a series on MTV!)  There exist objects called Elfstones (coincidentally, the name of the book they are starting the MTV series with!) which all have different properties. Blue for Seeking, Red for Destruction, White for Protection, and so on, but each one comes with a cost, as magic is never free. There are three of each set, one stone for Head, Heart, and Body. All three need to be present and in tune to work. This is true for all but one stone, the Black Elfstone. It is self-contained and surpasses anything that any of the others can do. Upon its first use, it destroys all in its path at the cost of its user’s life, sacrificing himself for his friends and his mission. Another time it was used as a means of deterrent and ended up turning both users into monsters, warped beyond all former semblance of what they used to be. On its final use, it is used to take on magic that was deadly to any other person- The user was able to take the magic into himself, and upon doing so found both power, wisdom, and a new mission, not to mention a personal catharsis and coming to terms with the use of his own magic that he continually rejected. He suffered a death of sorts, and came out the other side, healed in ways that he was unaware could be healed. He embraced the challenge before him, and refused to allow his own limits, rage and fears stop him from doing what must be done, even if it meant becoming the very thing he hated. Once the crisis was over, he was able to move on and accept what was, by facing it head on. He never looked back, and was better for it.

Venus, Chiron and Uranus- See, this is the shit that scares me. The rest of you are still freaking about the other nonsense that I barely explained. This is dam-breaking Astro if I’ve ever seen it. The catastrophe that you have been trying to hold at bay, the worst case scenario that has kept you up at night, maybe for years, will come to pass. It will be sudden, and all your plans won’t amount to shit. It will be bad. You will need to face it and will not be able to run from it. But no matter how the chips fall, they will fall. This is a good thing, because it is taking so much energy to fear this thing happening, that even if the worst happens, then it will be a relief to no longer have it hanging over your head. It is a brave new world out there, and you can’t take this old fear with you. Your deepest weaknesses and insecurities will be exposed, and you will be vulnerable. You may find yourself all alone. But it’s not the end. In fact, your load just got much lighter, and you can move on to the next stage in your story.