I thought it might be helpful to those who may want this, or may not have the time to listen to the radio podcast of my show on Saturday August 19th. Here is a transcript of the show:
The Meaning of America and the Great Eclipse of August 21, 2017
Intro
Today we are going to consider the Eclipse that is happening on Monday August 21st, and what Spiritual/Astrological messages, meanings and insights this event offers for you, this country and the larger world.
Each of us on a journey of discovery and awakening, and many more souls have moved closer to the Greater Awareness that awaits one and all. From the beginning of time, the Spirit within the human heart has stirred all of us to wake up and to realize that we are the ones making things happen. That it is why education and critical thinking, philosophy and science, and metaphysics and spirituality have been essential to this journey of Spirit. At times, these Ways of Knowing have flowered, and guided civilizations and peoples for many years. We can look to and be inspired by the great teachers and teachings in the past, formed into the greater and lesser mystery schools of Egypt and Greece and Rome, and the Gnostic teachings in the early Christian era where they were embraced and then suppressed. Those esoteric teachings continued in the work of the Alchemists, Rosicrucians and Masons. This Ancient Wisdom, what is known as the Perennial Teachings, continue to be passed down unbroken from beyond the mists of time, through Antiquity until our (so-called) modern period.
These Universal Teachings have inspired and guided and reminded humans what we are really here for. We are not here to amass wealth, or power, or fame, and though we are certainly in a mortal world and we need a home, clothing food and many other things to exist here, those things are not our aim, or goal or purpose here. At the end of the day, all we take with us, from life to life, are the lessons we have learned in how to be a better human. Our treasure is measured by how we treat our planet and other life-forms, and most especially by the love we have shown to one another. This is the whole point of life. We are here on this lovely Earth, surrounded by beauty, to become fully self-aware, loving and centered co-creators of creation.
This Ancient Wisdom is there to remind us and help us, that we, and all of life, are on this journey of self-awakening. And, since we are all here now, we quite naturally think and feel that “this” is the critical moment, (and it is of course for us). And certainly, from looking around us there are many signs that speak to this feeling that we in are in a time of great import. But you can be sure, that throughout human history, peoples in their time felt as we do now, and rightly too. At any moment, a soul can “wake up”, and a “Star” is born in the heavens so to speak.
So, there is no time to waste, but we also have plenty of time too, because we have all being doing this for a very long time indeed.
But certainly, we would agree that Spiritually, Environmentally, Economically, as we witness these phenomena and forces coming together (or crashing together), we would agree and say “Wow, this seems like a pretty big time indeed”, and we feel a greater urgency to get it right, and to steer our lives upon a more productive, loving and integrated way forward.
What is an Eclipse?
Two times a year, roughly six months apart, we have a beautiful alignment of the Sun, Moon and Earth forming the Lunar and Solar Eclipses, which quite wonderfully show how we are part of an interrelated “Dance of the Planets”, which we know as our Solar System. At times, their orbits and planes of motion intersect one another, so that the Sun, planets and Moons pass before one another. Here on Earth these Solar/Lunar/Earth alignments, what is so extraordinary and mysterious to many, is that often during a Solar Eclipse, with the passage of the Moon across the face of the Sun, that it will do it so perfectly that it covers the Sun so that only the plasma of the Sun’s corona is visible to us. If the Moon were slightly larger or smaller, or a little further away or closer, we would not have this dramatic show! How did this happen, why is this so?
We understand from the Ancient Wisdom that everything is “conscious”, that Spirit which is Life is ever-present through all the hierarchies of creation, that everything from the most semi-conscious forms of materiality to the most consciously evolved beings on our planet to the most sublime forms beyond our human kingdom, that everything is alive and conscious and contains some form of intelligence. So, from these ancient teachings and from our intuitional knowing, we believe because we know in our minds and in our hearts, that there is a Divine Plan and a Divine Intelligence guiding everything and everyone.
We understand because we know that this Universe is a vast hierarchy that is formed, sustained and held together by the One Spirit, the One Life. That in this vast range of Life-forms and Intelligences, it is said that the human kingdom is right there “in the middle” of this hierarchy, and is understood to be a most special one. We are told, that the Angels long to be us, and Life-forms below us long to human, because we reach in the human kingdom this wonderful experience of self-awareness, of self-understanding and therefore we encounter the great gift and awesome responsibility of “Choice”. We learn, through trial and error, step by step, the consequences of our actions, and we learn, hopefully over time, to choose what is loving, and good for us and for one and all.
But it takes time, it takes an awfully long time for humans to do that. There are souls that have reached the end of the Journey, like the Buddha, like Krishna like Jesus, who achieved full awareness, what is known as Cosmic Consciousness. And, there are souls who are just barely waking up now, and everything in between. But all of us are on that path, and we are all connected, we have and find our commonality and common connection in the One Spirit that we exist and abide in, that surrounds us, is us, and pervades the whole Universe. We are that!
The Truth of the Universe is everything is One; and the Great Illusion is that everything is separate.
These profound realizations are also so simple. They can be seen and experienced in their complexity too. That out of Nothing or Non-Being came the One, and proceeding from the One came duality, and then triplicities and so on. From there a whole range of of life-forms, of beings and bodies came to form all the various divisions, energy-forms, and the dimensions of the Hierarchy that is Creation, and this is infinitely complex and very challenging to truly comprehend.
But I think we should also keep it simple, and it is important that people look at all the universal teachings, from various civilizations and cultures, whether in the Vedas, or in Buddhism or Christianity, to look at all these teachings in their esoteric or Heart teaching-form, in their essential or root truths, and you will find that they all say the same thing! Because they are all observing the same thing, you and I, humanity, and then the world around us, we come to see that everything is part of this great, beautiful Journey of Life and Consciousness and that we all abide in the One Spirit.
What messages and guidance might we obtain from this Eclipse sweeping across America on Monday? Every phenomenal experience is an opportunity for us to respond to with our present level of understanding. We encounter the world and these energies and we respond to it in that moment. When larger phenomena like this happen, when in the middle of the day the sun “disappears”, people notice this! In past times they reacted often with great fear and apprehension, and they would ascribe to these phenomena a negative character, and bad things would probably happen as a consequence.
But the Universe isn’t full of “negative” energies…it is just Energy. If we understand what it is about, what it is for, we are meant to use that experience and that energy in a most positive and beautiful and building way.
But for those who remain more unaware or more “fear-based” or deny our connections to one another they may spin off of that very same energy and see it as a dark, foreboding and negative thing. And it becomes negative for them. Again, we make our reality by how we understand ourselves and the universe around us.
There is certainly great anxiety and fear in the world and the USA at this time. As I have been noting in many forums, we are moving through an end of an age here from 2008 through 2024. There has been great breakdowns of the institutional structures of culture and civilization, from the highest on down to the local levels of society. And when people become confused and uncertain, they become anxious and they become fearful. They need to find something to hold to, to believe in to get them through this time of disruption. Some will return to their roots, to traditions and culture that are affirming and binding and healthy and loving.
And some may turn to an ideology or belief system that is about otherness, seeing themselves as we are this and they are that, and so they make the other as the object and source of their anxiety and fear and suffering. Their solution may come down to the putting others down so as to lift themselves up, making scapegoats of those not like them.
Now this happens repeatedly throughout history, of course. But we are seeing and experiencing it more immediately and visibly now given our means of media and world-wide communications, and so we are sharing these experiences together in real time. People are being highly stimulated by local and world events like never before. And, again, it is our chance, challenge and opportunity for each of us to choose how I see this, and how I should respond to this.
So eclipses are these moments when the energies coming from the Sun, the source of Light and Love for our system, these energies are altered or modulated by this aligning of Sun, Moon and Earth. In the Solar Eclipse that energy is falling on the Moon, then in a way “burning through the Moon” and coming to the Earth via that modulation. The Moon’s shadow falls upon the Earth and darkness descends during the day. By doing this it stirs up the energies that are connected with that sign which just happens to be Leo for this Eclipse.
The Meaning of America
But we need to consider what this might mean for us here in America. What is striking about this eclipse is that it is falling at the very end of Leo, sweeping across the USA from the Northwest to the Southeast, right across the whole of the country. But in the Chart of the USA the Eclipse lands exactly opposite to the Moon in Aquarius. What might this mean?
In a nation’s chart, the Moon rules the people of that land, the feelings of the people and of a nation. So the Moon really holds the notion of what we understand or believe ourselves to be as Americans, of what mean by being an American.
That is why I believe that for us this eclipse is reminding us about “The Meaning of America”. But to do that we need to understand “where” did America come from. Everything comes from something, and if you wish to know where you are going and why, you need to understand where you came from.
What many people know, but many more people do not know, is that our revolutionary war in the 1700’s was preceded in England by the Great Civil War they had from the 1640’s to the 1680’s. It was their “revolution”, and it was bloody, and disruptive and traumatic. Royalist and Parliamentary forces battled one another. The King was captured, he was imprisoned, and they eventually chopped off his head! Parliament ruled instead of the King, but it devolved and descended into a rule by dictatorship by a man named Oliver Cromwell. Eventually, the monarchy was restored but with much stronger controls and oversight by parliament.
From that great turmoil, from that world turned literally for them upside down, all the founding fathers of America come out of that experience, and all the spiritual and intellectual struggles over what that meant, over what is government, and how should it be formed, because they literally lived in a time of anarchy and then the restoring of government, they thought through these questions. This was during the period known as “The Enlightenment”, from the late 1600’s into the early 1800’s. There were many great thinkers and philosophers of that time, who looked back to the great teachings of the ages, back to Greece and Rome, as well as to the mystical and esoteric teachings for guidance like in the order of the Masons.
The Declaration of Independence
The principle author of our Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson, looked to the writings of the political philosopher John Locke (1632-1704) for guidance and inspiration. When we look to the words, phrases and concepts he chose as he wrote our declaration, we need to know that he chose his words very carefully. If we want to know how we began, and to know who we really are, we need to understand what these familiar but misunderstood words really mean if we are to understand the “Meaning of America.”
The Declaration is our Founding Document, and when we declared our separation from the monarchy, from “our” king, from that political entity, and we decided that we would “govern ourselves”, to form a government of “self-government”. Well, that was truly “revolutionary”. Up until this time in history, the hierarchies of political orders were based on Tribalism, Ancestry, Ethnicity or of a Place, and the rulership was determined mostly by Heredity, a line of succession and by conquest. But here, we would come together declaring ourselves to be beholden to no prince or king or emperor, that we would form a sacred compact with another and we agreed to pledge ourselves to all be subject to this contract, bound to one another by our self-determined laws. In America, the Law would be King.
So, the most critical and well-known phrase in our Declaration reads like this:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
When we hear those words, we might simply think that “Life” means life, to have a living, and we might think that “Liberty” means having freedom and owning property, and “Happiness”, means just being happy. But this is not what those words meant and are meant to mean. When we look at Life, or Liberty and especially that phrase the “pursuit of Happiness”, what do they really mean?
Life in this context does not mean to be alive. Since all of Creation is Mind, and everything has some measure of intelligence associated with it, for Jefferson knowing this, Life meant that we need to have the right to think freely, to develop our consciousness and awareness to grow spiritually. And Liberty is about the Will, about our exercise of our Free Wills. And yet, by that we must equally acknowledge and respect the Wills of others, because each of us is a spark of the divine, each of us exists in our sacred space, and we can only exercise our will to the extent we do not deny the sacred space of another.
The True Meaning of “Happiness”
But the most curious phrase, the one people should consider carefully as to what does it mean, is this “Pursuit of Happiness”. Well the true meaning or derivation of happiness comes from the Ancient Teachings or Wisdom, affirmed and restated in Greek Philosophy by Aristotle, and Locke and Jefferson refer back to this ancient understanding or meaning or definition of happiness. The word in Greek that defines this notion of happiness is Eudaimonia.
That word translates literally as “Union with Good Spirit”, or what we might call “Human Flourishing”, or most truly we would say “Human Self-Fulfillment”. What Jefferson was saying is not that people should be allowed to be happy, to just be happy or cheerful or something like this. He was saying this a spiritual matter, and what he was writing about and what we are doing here comes from the story of Humanity, growing and developing and becoming ever more self-aware and self-determined. What we are trying to do here, what the true purpose and goal of human life is to achieve the Union with one’s Higher Self, to experience the truth within by joining with what I call the “Beloved”, or the Divine Spark within us.
Happiness and Self-Fulfillment
What this means for America, is that the foundational value of our Nation is that we are trying to allow and empower each person to be able to pursue their Full Human Potential. In other words, this core principle of our founding document, and we broke from the King because he was denying our right to govern ourselves, we could not fulfill ourselves while being under the rule of a monarchy, and so we justified our breaking free so that we could pursue our right to Self-Fulfillment. We established this as our understanding of the purpose of our Venture, that the true purpose of relationship is that it must serve human Self-Fulfillment.
We have formed our sacred compact with one another, based upon this pledge, that we will fulfill our potentials for and with and through one another, as we steadily move towards and align ourselves with our true and Divine Nature.
This is what Jefferson meant by the Pursuit of Happiness, Jefferson meant Self-Fulfillment through Spiritual Awakening. Which means every choice we make as individuals or as a society, must be grounded in this simple question: Will this Action or Activity bring us closer to universal human self-fulfillment or move us further away from it. We make good and bad decisions every day, all of us do. But to support our own or others greater self-fulfillment is the true goal and way to Happiness.
This must be our Guiding Principle, this true definition of Happiness must be our beacon, if we are to be truly happy and create a society that celebrates and supports the Spiritual Fulfillment for one and for all.
What does this eclipse mean for the USA?
In terms of what is happening right now, and looking at the chart of the USA which was created when our Declaration was made public, to see what this eclipse might mean for us, we find that this eclipse is falling at the very end of Leo and opposite to the Moon in our national chart. The Moon represents the people of a country. Because the USA Moon is in Aquarius, we have posited that what is most essential and necessary for us is the need to create and preserve a “space of freedom” for one and all. This makes perfect sense given the meaning Happiness, that our Freedom is required so that we as self-aware beings may be fulfilled to pursue what we have idealized, which is our true happiness or the good that comes through our Self-Fulfillment. We are trying to create ever better spaces of freedom so that we may become who we truly are with and through one another. We are here to lift one another to greater and greater Self-Fulfillment.
With the Eclipse casting/burning this Shadow of the Moon and Leo onto the Earth, it brings to bear even more strongly the Lesson of Leo, and the Karma of Leo. Either you are growing and developing in the positive forms of Leo energy-forms, or the shadow side takes over.
The Lesson of Leo
The lesson of Leo as I understand it, is learning about the truth that at the core of us is the spark of the Divine. What is found here, in the Heart of Leo, is the unconditional love of the Higher Self for the self, residing in all of us. When you come into contact with that, you are filled with true love for yourself, and equally for one another, because you now know and understand that this same Divinity is in every other too.
You appreciate yourself as “special”, but appreciate everyone else in their specialness too. This unique sense of self comes from your Quintessence, your special spark of the Divine at the heart of every being. What makes everyone alike yet also different, is that we are all one with this Divine Center, yet we are unique instances of this Divine Love.
We all want Respect, we all want to be and to see ourselves Truly, and to realize this we have to be true for one another. Everyone wants to be seen and loved for who they truly are. Hence, we are here to “Shine” for one another, to love and respect one another. And by doing this, we lead by example, we encourage and inspire others to bring forth their better, finer natures. This is what it means to be a “Leader”, this is what it means to Love, and this is what leads to true Self-Fulfillment. And we need one another for this. And this is the Heart and Soul of Leo.
But the Shadow Side, and often the shadow side can be kicked up or elicited in those who are not ready to take the next step, who have been living in fear, have not understood the true source and nature of love in their life, at all or in this life. What happens to them is that have a fear (and apparent reality) of being unloved, and being disrespected and not being appreciated. So that if they fail to truly see themselves and love themselves, when they look for “that look” in the other’s eyes, that sign of love that they are looking to see coming back to them, they cannot and will not see it, because they cannot see it in themselves.
That person then becomes instead Envious, Jealous, and they puff themselves up and become Braggarts and Bullies. They may try to force respect and belittle others to feel some sort kind of twisted self-love and self-importance. They demand it, and they demand loyalty, and deference, but they show no respect and they have no humility. They really do not feel; they only emote. They try to take or buy or steal what they want, and they call that “Love”, but it is not love. It is fear coming out of self-loathing, and it ends up destroying that person as it harms many around them too.
So, this Eclipse will elicit these very different effects depending upon each person’s development. It will stir great and greater love in many people; but for those who are more broken it may set them off in a more negative way, of feeling lesser and trying to compensate by putting others down.
The Great Fixed Star Regulus
What we find also is that this Eclipse is aligned with one of the Great Fixed Stars in Astrology, the Star Regulus which is located at the end of Leo. This is star is known as the “Watcher of the North”, and is one of the four stars found at the so-called Four-corners of our portion of Space. These Fixed Stars aligned with important elements in someone’s chart are said to indicate or confer some great blessing or power, but if the lesson of that star is not understood, the individual will fall from grace.
Regulus is said to be the Heart of the Lion, and its meaning and message is linked to story of a mythical King of Persia, Feridum. He was a prosperous king but lost his kingdom when he engaged in revenge. All these Royal Stars promise great potential and success as long as some particular human nemesis is avoided. With Regulus, the issue is that of “revenge”. If this Star is strong in any chart this temptation will be that individual’s test.
So, we might ask ourselves does this Eclipse and Regulus line up in any particular chart? It most certainly energizes the US Chart, but it is opposite to the Moon and therefore more directed toward that. I would say for us in the USA, we will be experiencing this greater lesson of Leo reminding us that as we focus and center our Social Consciousness and Conscience (from our Moon in Aquarius), that we need to reconsider more truly our compact with one another in our collective pursuit of Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. We need to help one another to experience a fuller measure of Self-Expression, Creativity and Love and Respect (from Leo) as the way in which we may more truly fulfill our motto, “Out of many, One.” The question will be how do we create, but to remember to do so in socially meaningful and significant ways, and so help one another to achieve more self-fulfillment individually and collectively too.
But what about a particular person’s chart? Whenever we are looking at a nation’s chart we will often look at the leader’s chart to gain insight into what is happening too.
Donald Trump
I have been writing in the blog, and speaking in the radio show about Donald Trump’s chart, and I have said that this month of August was going to be one of the most critical for him this year. Not only has he just had another passage of Pluto over his Jupiter (his test of Will with Truth and Law), but he is also experiencing Saturn going over his Moon twice in this month, (indicating that he is at a very low point both emotionally and physically). And one of those Saturn passes over his Moon is exact tomorrow, August 20th.
But this very eclipse is lining up with his chart too! Trump is born with Leo Rising, and his Mars is in Leo just inside his 12th house. The Eclipse lands on his Mars and Ascendant. The Ascendant rules your presence in the world, it is how you meet the world. And the question would be for anyone, are you being authentic or not. And Mars rules desires and actions; it is there to serve your “self” as you assert yourself. But with Mars in his 12th house Trump prefers to act in the background, in the shadows, hiding what he is really doing, and concealing his real intentions. When undeveloped, a person with Mars in Leo in the 12th house is full of fear, but will mask that with bullying and bravado. If he is not careful, his own actions will lead to his own self-undoing, and ultimately lead to his fall from grace or power and even potentially face some form of imprisonment.
As astrologers, we would argue that this Eclipse will elicit this challenge to him and he will have to stand in the Shadow and Light of Leo and answer as to whether he is abiding in the Truth of Leo or not. Moreover, considering that his Ascendant and Mars are aligned with Regulus, promising great fame and power, the question will be put to him as to whether he has avoided the peril of revenge.
Given Trump’s history of how he has conducted himself in the business world, and now as a “public servant”, Karma would seem to be leading him to a reckoning that he has forged for himself.
Unlike others who have been elevated to this office before, it appears that Trump has not been humbled by the majesty and responsibility of the presidency. He does not understand the Leo lesson of Love; nor has he understood the lesson of history, that the gift of success will be snatched away if one succumbs to the temptation of revenge.
