The Spiritual Knot
In the system of Vedic Astrology, each sign of the zodiac is ruled by one of the four elements (the fifth element—ether—pervades every sign). Depending on where important planets are placed in your chart, you will have more or less of these elements (both physically and psychologically) in your life.
Aries: Fire/Taurus: Earth/Gemini: Air/Cancer: Water/Leo: Fire/Virgo: Earth/Libra: Air/Scorpio: Water/Sagittarius: Fire/Capricorn: Earth/Aquarius: Air/Pisces: Water
Where Fire meets Water is a juncture called “Gandanta” which translates roughly as a spiritual knot. These elements are considered inimical (fire meeting water can create an explosion, or steam that can burn) and therefore their meeting place is tenuous. Whenever a planet is situated at the last degree of a water sign or the first degree of a fire sign it is said to bring a great deal of difficulty into the individual’s life, specifically surrounding the indications of the planet that is there (Venus will bring troubled and unstable relationships, Moon can bring mental illness, Mercury can give problems with with money and communication) and the houses it rules in the chart. This placement is particularly significant for the planet ruling the rising sign and the Moon, as these strike closest to home for the native. This placement can bring a fundamental feeling of instability throughout the life.
We feel these spiritual knots collectively when the planets transit these points in the zodiac. Today, Jupiter entered the edge of Scorpio at 29 degrees, where he straddles that terra incognito between fire and water. The reason this territory is “unknown” is that the Lunar Mansions (called Nakshatras) which underlay the entire zodiac, 27 in number, bridge the gaps between signs of all the other elements. But when it comes to fire and water these Nakshatras, which have a huge impact on the mind and emotional makeup, also end, to restart in the next sign. So there is nothing to carry us across these Gandantas, particularly on the mental level. This dark place, where one is forced to dive forward into the unknown in some area of their life, is where trust, faith, and surrender take root.
We are here for 8 weeks, not quite knowing how to carry the depths, insights and transformations gathered over the last year or so of Jupiter in Scorpio into our path ahead—whether that be through teaching, a renovated spiritual practice that can hold more weight and substance, or a fight worthy of your efforts. Now is not necessarily a time to decide all that. This is the time to be confused, wonder into the possibilities, become comfortable in chaos and exercise that vastly underused muscle called THE IMAGINATION.
When the lights go out we must navigate not by the daylight senses—the vision that can tend to eclipse subtlety of perception—but by sensitivity to presences, textures, images in dreams, sensations in the body. This is the time to use your animal intelligence to push into the places we neglect when the way ahead is clear. Use active imagination to explore you unconscious, spend time with the sensations in your physical body which may have images and emotions associated with them, move toward the darkness and into the presences that reside there. If there is fear, dive into it with curiosity, exploring it like a new landscape.
These subtle senses will be necessary in some area of your life with this transit, the specific area will depend on the details of your chart. But Jupiter relates specifically to our intelligence and ability to make decisions, so consider approaching your decision-making process not from daylight consciousness (as it will be less available and you will tend to lean on the rational mind at this time, which is debilitated in Pisces) but from the intuition that is your own underworld, teeming with vitality and information if you are willing to pause long enough to meet it.
This meeting yourself where you are, on a deep physical, emotional and spiritual level is not only a tool for guidance, but is also the only way to unravel the spiritual knot we are all inside, in some area of our lives right now. It requires a constant adjustment to reality. Each time there is a relaxation into the reality of “now” (including any resistances there might be to what is happening at any given moment), a door opens up. Then you encounter another knot—another form of resistance to what’s going on. And you relax into it again. This is the untying of the spiritual knot, which can take so many forms. Any form of resistance is a tangle in the string of the knot. The untying, then, requires letting go.
When all is said and done, and Jupiter is on the other side of this hurdle, if you did not spend the entire 8 weeks resisting your life as it is, you will have gained a deep sensitivity of the senses that you can trust, a facility with the imaginative capacity, and an insight into the vast reservoir of information contained in the miraculous collection of muscles, bones and insecurities you call “me.”