Winter Retrogrades
Melt into April’s
Cardinal Grand Cross
© 2014 by Joyce Mason
All Rights Reserved
In Stillness:
Our Retrograde Winter 2014, I focused on the sky’s call for turning inward.
Big rewards will come to those willing to take cosmic direction about
self-reflection. This winter is about reassessing values, goals, and desires while
the personal planets do their retrograde stints.
Much action focuses on the I/Thou continuum with Venus
Retrograde and Mars Retrograde in Libra. How are your relationships going with
others? Then there’s the ultimate question when we’re talking about Libra,
how’s your relationship with yourself? One of the major Libran issues is to
lose yourself in others. Do you identify? Or are others losing themselves in
you?
One of my favorite New Age albums is
Winter into Spring by George Winston
. This year, it’s good to look ahead toward the next season, even
in the middle of winter. Begin to imagine snow melting and a gradual shift from
one emphasis and energetic to another, one that’s completely different. We’re
heading toward a Cardinal Grand Cross. Winter 2014 asks us to pause and
reconsider what’s important to us—what’s working and what’s not in our personal
lives. Spring 2014 emboldens us to take action in an even bigger way than the usual
Aries charge into the natural New Year, as the sap rises in the trees rises and
human energy starts picking up with it.
The Cardinal
Grand Cross at
the US April 2014 Lunar Return
*(See note)
23-Apr-2014, 10:09:07 pm EDT, Washington, DC +4:00
38N53’42” 077W02’12”
Geocentric -
Tropical - Porphyry -
True Node
The Cardinal signs
of Aries, Cancer, Libra and Capricorn are the turning points that mark each new
season; therefore, they represent points of visible, discernible change. We
associate them with changes in weather. They are the markers for shifting
astrological weather, too. A Grand Cross consists of four squares joined at the
crossed oppositions where the bottoms of the triangles overlap. Planets in square
create a tension of initial incompatibility that nags to be worked out in some
way to bring a workable energetic mix to the person or situation it represents.
Better said, squares evoke creative
tension. It takes creativity—the God stuff, if you will—to find your way
out of the standoff. When the squares make a Grand Cross, you have to find your
way out of an enclosed box. Whew!
Let’s look at what each of the Cardinal signs calls us to do
in order to see how we can think “out of the box” to find our way beyond the
tensions and into the most creative manifestation of this opportunity to
evolve.
Aries asks us to
create. It’s our purest power of new ideas and actions. Cancer nurtures our creations. Libra
helps us involve others in whatever we design from art to work projects to human
relationships. Here’s where we learn that partnerships and sharing our
creations in an equitable way fosters peace on earth and beauty all around.
Finally, Capricorn helps us put our
creations into solid form, even to the point of leaving them as a legacy. These
are four noticeable stages of manifestation.
Before you apply this personally, time to consider the tight
way the Grand Cross clusters on the 13
th degree of the Cardinal
Signs. In considering this Cardinal Grand Cross, let’s look at the
Sabian symbols
on its four points. Sabians are read “one up” unless they’re 0 on the dot,
i.e., 02 Cancer 00 is 2 Cancer, but 02 Cancer 01 is 3 Cancer. Given that, we’d
look to the 14
th Sabian degree, where the planets Mars, Jupiter,
Pluto and Uranus land on each of the points forming the Grand Cross in Cardinal
signs. The Sabian Symbols may provide some deeper insights.
These are the Sabians and planets involved:
Aries 14 (Uranus):
A Snake Coiling Next to a Man and Woman in an Embrace.
Cancer 14 (Jupiter):
An Old Man Faces a Dark Space to the Northeast
Libra 14 (Mars):
A Rich Landowner Takes an Afternoon Siesta
Capricorn 14 (Pluto):
A Mayan Bas Relief.
There’s a certain mystique involved in each of these
symbols.
- Aries 14 conjures an image of the Garden of Eden and the snake,
tempting the Original Couple into “something more.” It reminds me of an episode
of Twilight Zone, where
things go on almost to the end of the hour, perfect and light. The story is about
an idyllic little town that’s like living in Happy Days with frosting. Only
at the end, you find out this place is actually Hell. Divine discontent and
human boredom are probably the age-old reasons for evolution itself, both
individually and as a species.
- Cancer 14 is a man looking into the distance and the dark.
It’s the void from which all things are created and born in the symbolism of
the biblical Creation story. It may be a portrait of someone yearning to
manifest more—or at least opening to more creative possibilities.
- Libra 14 is a man who has worked hard to create his
surroundings and is ready for rest, to return to the dream state where we
co-create with our subconscious. Many of our creative ideas and solutions come
from such downtime when our minds are on autopilot and our psychological needs
become characters in complex dream dramas to bring us information about what we
need to do or resolve in our lives.
- Capricorn 14 involves a cultural artifact, perhaps digging
it up. It has something to do with what we leave behind and what that symbolic
object means.
From my free associations with the Garden of Eden, the
Creation story, dream time and cultural symbolism, these four symbols complement
the process of birth, nurturing, sharing and putting into solid form what we
create in the world that we see in the signs of Aries, Cancer, Libra and
Capricorn. They just further touch on the longing and natural need for
stimulation, creation and legacy that goes with the turf of co-invention with
All That Is.
You can delve deeper into the planets on each point and
their astrological meanings—how the expansion and worldview of Jupiter plays
in, the sudden insights or changes of Uranus, the passion and conflict of Mars,
and the call to let go and transform completely from Pluto. You can see where
these points fall in your own chart for another layer of insights.
I've heard that a Cardinal Grand Cross can make accomplishing goals challenging because we want to accomplish everything at once. This lack of focus often leads to achieving little for the "shotgun" approach. That's why we're so lucky to have a retrograde winter for sorting out where our spring energies need to be channeled.
Once focused from too many scatter shot goals, I envision the tensions of trying to do it all, represented in this Cardinal Grand Cross, as building to a creative explosion of new birth. It's much like the Big Bang "in the Beginning." Here’s
an invitation to make things simple. If you have planets in or near 10-16 degrees
of Cardinal signs, what you create, how you support your own creative
process—and how you share and make it permanent is up for an extreme makeover.
Don’t have planets close by? It doesn’t mean you don’t need
this reassessment and creative resurrection. You just may not feel it quite as
intensely or the tension quite as acutely. The call for creative overhaul is in
the sky and in the air.
What do I want to create in
the world and what do I want to leave behind?
These are the beginning and ending points of one big
question. As you do your winter retrograde contemplations, knowing that you are
building up to answer perhaps the largest question in life, it may help you get
more out of this winter’s review process.
Don’t forget to laugh and involve your inner child. Creation
is like a big
Etch-a-Sketch.
Twist the dials, erase and start over. Play with it till you’re ready to do it
in ink.
This spring, you’ll have that opportunity.
~~~
Photo Credit: Earth Creation © macropixel - Fotolia.com
* Note: The Grand
Cross will be in close orb over several days, often cited to peak on April 22.
Since most Radical Virgo readers are American, casting the chart at the US
Lunar Return the following day seemed the most significant date and chart to
choose, providing a sociopolitical context to whatever we’re experiencing
personally.
Want more on the Cardinal Grand Cross and mundane/world
events? Here are some articles you might find interesting as a start to explore:
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