New Moon and Solar Eclipse in Leo – Awakening the Spirit Within

August 21st, 2017

Contributing writers for Wake Up World

July’s astrological transits energetically summarised and reflected to us the intensive inner work we have undergone since February’s total Lunar Eclipse in Leo. In culmination, this intense period of unlearning has taught us that we are not here to search and struggle and become, but simply to be, living in the natural flow. However the process of receiving and integrating this lesson has not been easy, and we have recently been given the energetic pushes (and in many cases, triggers) we need to finally begin letting go of our fears and inhibitions, to elicit genuine change, and learn through experience what it truly means to live authentically and fearlessly from the heart.

Now, with today’s New Moon and total Solar Eclipse in Leo, we are offered a powerful push in that direction as the energy of the cosmos helps bring into sharp focus the emotional blocks and underlying fears that stand between us and living our visions, passions and purpose. In essence, we are being invited to go beyond the limitations of the mind, liberate our hearts and discover a place within ourselves of emotional clarity and transparency — a place from which we can truly begin living.

Let’s take a look at the evolutionary intention of this lunar cycle.

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Venus in Cancer square Jupiter in Libra, oppose Pluto in Capricorn, and trine Neptune in Pisces

Emotional Transparency

All of our conditioning and imprinting from early life effect and influence our mental and emotional choices later on in life, often unconsciously, narrowing not only our concept of what’s right for us but also of what’s possible. So, in order for our unique gifts to become fully discovered and experienced, we have to walk through certain layers of our own darkness and fear that are embedded within us by our conditioning.

Beginning just over a week ago, the opposition of Venus in Cancer and Pluto in Capricorn has recently brought these emotional blocks and underlying fears into clear focus, taking us into those deep murky and often forgotten places within our psyche. However, while this may be a confronting and uncomfortable process, the energies of Venus square to Jupiter in Libra and Venus trine Neptune in Pisces invite us to surrender and accept past events and dynamics as they were, and release their energy (and their effect) from our lives, making way for our newly emerging life direction.

During this transit it helps to remember, fear is rooted in past experiences through which we felt we were not accepted or loved. When fear strikes, we externalize, we live in the shadow of potential futures, we lose our sense of joy and presence in the now moment, and thus, we forget to embrace ourselves. But, if we can allow for emotional transparency and vulnerability to be part of our process and choose to be real with our own inner journey, we may learn to know the freedom that comes from within us as we move closer to knowing our deepest truth.

In essence, to embrace the unknown is to embrace insecurity. Finding the freedom that comes with embracing the unknown underpins our experience of this eclipse cycle. We are being challenged to fill that space of insecurity with a sense of inner security that may only come from living in the flow, in total alignment with our own truest self.

Greatly influencing this eclipse period is the Cardinal energies of Aries, Cancer, Libra and Capricorn. These energy archetypes reflect the motion of change, and through the transits and aspects being formed between Uranus in Aries, Venus in Cancer, Jupiter in Libra and Pluto in Capricorn, what we are experiencing is change in motion. The process is initiated by Uranus, whose energy seeks to liberate us from any sense of limitations we have lived by in the past, and this in turn activates Venus to bring our essential individual needs into focus. Through this, Jupiter awakens old relationships patterns and the core beliefs we once attached to them, and as those patterns die off, a new direction emerges with Pluto either helping us feel disempowered or ultimately, empowered.

This cycle of change and therefore uncertainty can be a very fearful space to the human mind. Our ability to find a sense of security in what is to come lies in our ability to be present with each day and each moment, and observing what comes to us without judgment.

The LEO/AQUARIUS Nodal Axis

The energy axis of the Aquarius and Leo polarity shows us in life how each expression has a unique creative process. What makes us unique is our colour, tones and preferences; we each reflect a different fraction of light. What it means to find our purpose is to know ourselves inwardly; to watch the patterns that excite us while we seek meaning in those patterns and, if we are able to, to bring awareness to others as a form of service. We all travel different roads in search of that deeper connection, and each of us has this coded inside waiting to be awakened. For some it is easier than others.

The LEO/AQUARIUS energy brings us closer to knowing this by calling us to fully occupy our energetic space and be vocal about our visions, passions and perspectives. What stops us from seeing our true self is layers of emotional, psychological and spiritual traumas, and these emotional blocks and detachment patterns are most amplified through challenging and chaotic times such as these. We form protection layers around our hearts when we experience shock or an unexpected difficult circumstances. This ultimately leads us to shut down, dim or desensitize ourselves from our own light, in fear of re-facing these emotional and psychological complexes. The remaining 13 month-long transit of the Moon’s nodes through the LEO/AQUARIUS axis will bring freedom to these complexes and help us find more heartfelt openness.

Saturn in Sagittarius trine Uranus in Aries trine Sun, Moon, Mars and the North Node in Leo

Awakening the Spirit Within

So, how will this set of alignments help us to heal these barriers of protection we have formed to protect ourselves from these past experiences? What can awaken us to see our true potential? What is our creative process?

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Throughout the Suns’s transit in Leo, we had two New Moons and a Lunar Eclipse in Aquarius. During this time the Sun and Mars moved from tension aspects to a free-flowing trine with Uranus. Energetically, the progression of these aspects have brought us closer to what it really means to be authentic with our selves. The New Moon on July 23rd brought a series of experiences that helped us see what was not bringing us joy or flow. Halfway through the New Moon cycle we reached the lunar eclispe in Aquarius which brought up profound layers of ancestral karmic fear, and as a result we grew aware of these unconscious traumas that hold our hearts contracted and ultimately prevent us from the feeling of life moving through us.

With today’s second New Moon Solar Eclipse in Leo, we are gifted the opportunity to truly integrate these three phases of awareness. Saturn will be turning direct on August 25, just three days after the Solar Eclipse, which will help us begin integrating these insights into our emotional lives. Mercury is currently in Virgo and will be in a retrograde motion, and will remain retrograde until September 5 after stationing direct on the exact degree of the Solar Eclipse — so this alignment holds a very important message for us.

Currently the phase of Mercury is pointing us inwardly, to examine the inner nature of the past traumas and emotional blocks that encase our hearts and souls. During this time we will receive messages through direct experiences that will help us rethink these situations and ultimately, begin to transform our inner cosmic terrain. While Mercury reflects the lower octave and short-term memory, the higher octave and long-term memory of our mental sphere is reflected by Uranus — and both of these planets are retrograde during this Solar Eclipse. In culmination, the experience of rethinking and mental insight on the Mercury level will directly effect and inform the deeper more sub-conscious Uranian levels of our awareness.

The New Moon’s Message – Liberate Your Heart

Our defenses are rooted in the gathered experiences of our minds. We have been wounded, so we learned to protect ourselves. We have lost, so we learned to hold on. We have been defeated, so we learned to push away. These protections become core beliefs which serve as a layer of protection around our hearts. We become encased in these beliefs and then live to experience them repeatedly through our own protected yet inaccessible position. In essence, the shelter we build to keep us from pain becomes that which isolates us from love, and from life.

It is natural to learn from our experiences and try to approach situations in new ways, but the undesirable aspects of life cannot always be avoided or safeguarded against. Pain is unavoidable, it is part of the human experience, but the level of suffering we experience in relation to our pain is deeply connected to the mind-set we choose to apply. That is where our inner security is to be found; by seeking to embrace a mind-set which liberates our hearts from the restraints that encase it, and this is achieved through understanding, acceptance, forgiveness and healing — through choosing life, and showing up to fearlessly experience this journey, with all its challenges and limitations.

We all share fundamental core needs for security, love and connectivity. These needs are universal. We all come in to this world expecting to have these needs met and we all experience moments when the outer reality has not been able to meet these essentials. This causes a survival instinct to take root in our approach to the world, a flight/fight response, which further disconnects us from that which we seek. And so the spiral of isolation continues…

However, the heart can no longer be contained in this isolation. It is pulsating for life and wanting to feel alive! But in choosing life we are also choosing to embrace our vulnerability, to embrace our pain, our fear and wounding, our sense of uncertainty, and to keep on loving and living from the heart space. Each experience breaks us open to what it is to be human and experience this reality in the flesh, which, after all is what we came here for — to become more aware of the eternal love which is ever present within us, and allow that light to shine through us in everything we touch, embodying and radiating our fearless higher self in every moment and every move.

Do you choose life?

Blessings,
Simon & Jennifer

About the authors:

Simon Vorster is an evolutionary astrologer and teacher who has been practising astrology for over 12 years. Together with his partner and co-founder of Raising Vibrations, Jennifer Langstone, their work is rooted in helping souls de-condition the self and empower the soul into making new conscious choices. Through the website, Raising Vibrations Astrology, and the consulting services they offer, Simon and Jennifer share their thoughts and insights and, using the powerful tool of evolutionary astrology, help and guide others to find their own spiritual paths, live authentically in the moment and understand ways they are able to positively effect their own spiritual evolution.

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