Spirit at the Crossings III

Autumn 2014: The Heart of Beauty

Joyce Mason

.The Autumn Season

What role does beauty play in your life?  Autumn floods us with loveliness so spectacular; I can barely breathe from sensory overload.

At this seasonal crossing, if you live where the leaves laugh and sigh in Technicolor and Panavision, you’ve got the ultimate ambiance for a love affair with nature and life itself. This particular Autumn Equinox finds the Moon conjunct Venus—Venus being the planet of both beauty and relationship. Every autumn starts with the Cardinal Crossing into Libra, a sign Venus rules. It’s no wonder that autumn in so many places is gorgeous out loud, and we’re ready to reap the relationship seeds we’ve sown in spring during this harvest time of year.  Harvesting our growth from the first half of the year begs a review of where we’re at with all our loves: human, animal, home/hearth, community, and geographical units from Earth to Sky.

We’ll have a chance to analyze our feelings about all things Venusian as the Moon/Venus pairing is in the sign of Virgo. Virgo analyzes and distills. Look forward to finding the nugget of where beauty fits into your life in very practical ways.

The Spirit of this Crossing is plenty and the fullness of life.

This Autumn Sky 

Autumn arrives on Sept. 22 at 7:29 PM on the US West Coast. Check here for your magic moment, if you live in a different time zone. Here are some autumn Astro-highlights.

Moon conjunct Venus in Virgo.

I hit the high side of this placement in the opening, but I want to also want to mention the red flags for taking this placement “South.” Virgo can get nitpicky, critical and obsessive-compulsive. The most positive qualities of Virgo are analysis and finding the nugget of truth—what’s healthy and healing (or in need of healing), this case, in your relationships. Venus also is associated ambience, beauty and money. When you think on these things, give it the best of Virgo short of going all Felix Unger, Monk or Miss Manners.

Retro Alert!

Mercury goes Retrograde from Oct. 4- 25 between 2 Scorpio and 16 Libra. I have written many articles about harnessing the best of this cycle, as well as what wisdom suggests you avoid. Postpone signing contracts or starting anything new of importance (a business, marriage or major project). You will thrive doing anything that starts with “re,” such as review, rewrite, reconsider and my favorite—recreate as in recreation/ fun. It’s not a time to move forward but rather to look in the rearview mirror. For more ideas, read First Aid for Mercury Retrograde, which has links to the entire lot of my maximize Mercury Retro-spectives.

Solar and Lunar Eclipses.

Two Eclipses also punctuate October. On October 8, there is a Total Lunar Eclipse, the Full Moon in Aries opposite Libra Sun on the I/Us relationship continuum. This just adds to autumn’s usual relationship focus, as the Sun moves into Libra, and this particular autumn’s growing signals that emotions and relationships are front-and-center. The Moon is conjunct Uranus at the time. Unusual and unique friends and causes may appear out of nowhere to stimulate your emotional life. Expect the unexpected—and surprises. Lunar eclipses have to do with beginnings, endings and major changes. Some astrologers feel they always have to do with relationships. This one joins Moon/Uranus to the ongoing square of Uranus/Pluto, active since 2012. Never a dull moment, and no rest from the pressure to grow dramatically and deal with human (including international) relations.

The Solar Eclipse on October 23 is at the very beginning of Scorpio, near where Mercury just went retrograde. This re-emphasizes the call to look back and learn while implementing every eclipse’s call to new beginnings. What in your past needs to be brought forward for a new start, once Mercury goes direct? Wisdom is bringing the best of the past forward into the future while opening to new possibilities.

Look at how 16° Aries (point of the Lunar Eclipse) and 00° Scorpio (Solar Eclipse) fall in your chart. Watch how these lunar events influence you over the months to come.

Mars in Capricorn.

Mars switches signs from Sagittarius to Capricorn on Oct. 26, where it remains until Dec. 4. This is a time when hard work and laying the foundations for any important long-term project pay off. Consider your relationship with ambition, business, government and “the establishment.” It’s a friendly time to thrive in any of these arenas.

Jupiter trine Uranus.

There’s a very close, friendly aspect between these planets at Autumn Equinox. This strikes me as “change with opportunity.” Uranus often upsets the applecart of our tidy lives, and we can resent the disorientation and clean-up. However, with Jupiter as part of the equation, blessings and expansion are part of the results this fall.

Cusp of Saturn in Sagittarius. While Saturn doesn’t move into Sag until Dec. 23 (I’ll cover it in the next Spirit at the Crossings), so many people have found Saturn in Scorpio heavy; I thought you’d want to know that a lighter-style Saturn placement is in sight.  Hang in there and consider it an early holiday gift!

Autumn Rituals 

Themes. There are two prevailing themes this time of year. First, there’s abundance and its soulmate, gratitude—celebrated on the holiday, Thanksgiving. Second, we explore our relationship with death (and those spirits at the Crossing) on Halloween, the Day of the Dead and All Soul’s Day.

Prayers and Thanks. Gratitude is so interlaced with the ability to feel joy and fulfillment, much less draw more blessings; it’s always front-and-center in my autumn ritual recommendations. I recently heard about this practice from a friend:

“With your partner, pray at the end of every day and review and share your
“gratitude list” for the day. This can also be done solo. This practice increases
relationship bonding and your bonding with the Creator/All That Is.”

Little things mean a lot when it comes to gratitude practices. For instance, yesterday I was grateful for finally getting ‘round to listening to an audiobook with my husband that we’ve wanted to “read” together for months. I’m grateful the cat didn’t meow in my face, as usual, and wake me up earlier than I wanted to get up. (You get the idea.) There were also bigger blessings, duly noted.

I like to journal my gratitude. I’ve created a journal form on my computer that has a column, What I’m Grateful For Today. If, like me and you’d prefer your prayers a little more universal than whatever old time religion you might have grown up in, I did a Prayer Month on my Radical Virgo blog last November that has some truly wonderful prayers taken from multiple traditions. I especially resonate to those that are Native American.  Amen to Prayer Month contains the most popular prayers at the bottom of the post or go to the Search box on The Radical Virgo. Pop in “prayer” to find the others—or lower on the sidebar, click on 2013, then November, and see the whole lot.

Autumn Harvest Meditation. 

Another way to celebrate the season is to find a quiet corner, play some lovely mood music (Autumn by George Winston and Thanksgiving by Windham Hill are among my faves). Contemplate the following:

• In Spring, you planted what you wanted to grow this year.  In Summer, your seeds sprouted.  Now you are harvesting the crops of your own creations.  What do they look like?  

• What symbolizes your harvest?  An object?  An idea?  Place it on the altar of your mind.

• Now take your harvest symbol and move it into your everyday world, onto the banquet table of daily living.  How will you work with it there?

• This harvest, this symbol, these gifts—what abundance will you reap from them?

• Who will you thank?

“Spirits” at the Crossing.

 At Halloween, we thumb our noses at Death and enjoy a few days when the veil thins between Here and There, Heaven and Earth. We feel it coming: the next season after the full ripeness of autumn is the “dying” of winter. While this is an illusion (nature is just dormant), even when it comes to human death (we reincarnate), these are times to contemplate our relationship between body and soul. Where do we stand in our preparations for the Ultimate Adventure?

How do our ancestors continue to play a role in our lives—or as we’d say in the Catholic tradition of my youth, the souls of the faithful departed? This is a wonderful time to honor relatives who have passed by placing their pictures on your altar, “conversing” with them in your meditations, visiting the cemetery with some flowers and prayers—or doing your genealogy. When Sun is in Scorpio, deep research into those who have passed or communion with them is perfect timing.

I wish you an abundant and blessed Autumn—the cornucopia of feeling your continuity with your ancestors and all the Ancestors.

Till Winter Solstice …

© 2014 by Joyce Mason