All that lurks below

At long last….

As the lunar month begins, the nodes are firmly established in their homes for the next 1.5 years after a period of turbulence. Rahu is out of the tenuousness and tension of the gandanta or spiritual knot between Aries and Pisces, and we can start to get clear about what is likely to be evoked by this shift.

As mentioned previously, the nodes represent extremes—the push and pull of karma that specifically impacts our psychological experience (being that the nodes are lunar nodes, meaning they have a special relationship with the moon which also shows us the mind and emotions).

Rahu: the planet of disturbance, obsession, creativity, shape-shifting, shadows and manipulation is now in Pisces: the sign of the unconscious. Straight away we can see this lends itself to some collective disturbance of all that is below the level of conscious awareness.

Pisces is many things, beyond the unconscious. But all of its significations will stem from this central theme: it is the place where the individual dissolves into something much larger. It’s indications of sleep, retreat, alone time, dreams and meditation are some different examples of how this happens.

Pisces and it’s correlate the 12th house generally shows us things we can easily ignore or which we don’t necessarily notice. It can actually be thought of as all that preceded us (including inherited family karma), since in the sky the 12th house is what rose just before you did in the sky, with your moment of birth fixing the 1st house or ascendant on the eastern horizon, with the 2nd house rising shortly after your birth.

And if we consider Jung’s interpretation of the unconscious as containing the intelligence of the whole of human existence and instinct, and the correlate with the ‘reptilian brain’ that neuroscientists have spoken about as the container of instinct which we inherit as our central cognitive layer, then we can see that all of this tracks with the astrological indications of the Pisces association with karmic or genetic inheritance. This also explains why it is a place of incredible potential, but one that we don’t easily see or don’t know to look for.

Pisces is that which is behind us which we tend to not see, and which if we consciously approach can lend itself to liberation, which is fundamentally a surrender of the individual will to something much larger. This leads us to aspect of Pisces which is intensely spiritual. The sign is sometimes called the ‘moksha sthana’ or place of spiritual liberation. When the release is deep enough, it lends itself to an unwinding so profound that the individual may identify more with the container than the contained. This is the capacity of Pisces, and something which I’ll get deeper into as we move along into the transit.

Themes of endings and letting go and resolution through dissolution pervade. But all of this will have to be filtered through the influence of Rahu, who is a planet that will tend to create disturbance wherever he goes.

The nature of Rahu will surely rile up the collective unconscious during this 1.5 year long transit. And sometimes it is necessary to ‘stir the pot,’ so to speak, to dredge up what has been ignored or forgotten in the tucked away corners of life and consciousness. And this is consistent with other indications of this placement, since overall Rahu as the lord of obstacles placed in the 12th house of the Kalapurusha (Body of Time deified, with Aries as the head and Pisces as the feet) is considered to be positive for removal of obstacles—especially Rahu types of obstacles like illusion and subterfuge.

We might predict, in this case, an emergence of the collective and personal ghosts which may create a period of disturbance. But the metabolization and integration of these strange and unexpected aspects of forgotten, buried or misinterpreted experience should also remove a good deal of confusion from our lives or at least contribute to some kind of much needed reckoning. They would have been contributing, most likely, to some unexplainable tension or trouble in your life somewhere, while they remained submerged below the horizon of awareness. And collectively they can be thought of as the cultural or societal blind spot(s) that have no doubt gotten us into trouble.

The last time this transit took place was 18 years ago: March 2005-October 2006. This was right around the time that the housing bubble in the U.S. began to burst (October 2005), precipitating the ‘Great Recession’ which began just as Rahu moved into backward into Aquarius after October 2006. Aquarius is a sign associated with income and gains, so the collective bank account was experiencing a major disturbance during this time. This is an example of something which was fomenting below the surface coming to light in such a way that the whole world was influenced by the reckoning that took place afterward.

We could see a similar sort of cycle as it relates to global finances, with mistakes made over the course of the last 18 years coming to light during this next 1.5 years, and the real financial impact being felt when Rahu moves again into Aquarius— which is when we can expect a host of ‘reforms’ directly resulting from the irresponsibility that showed itself with Rahu in Pisces running amok.

An historical overview of planetary cycles can be extremely telling!

Hurricane Katrina became the costliest hurricane in U.S. History during this time. Pisces is associated with oceans and large bodies of water, and Rahu is essentially wind, so might expect more of the same during this transit for places that are already vulnerable. The ocean is getting whipped up metaphorically (in the form of the unconscious) but this can also play out physically (as in the case of a hurricane).

In Summation: this transit of Rahu will likely bring to light some deep elements of the personal and collective unconscious. Blindnesses can become apparent and the ground of reality can be perceived in a new way. This may be so subtle for some people that it is imperceptible. For others it will be impossible to ignore.

Ketu in the opposite sign of Virgo, meanwhile, is going to be having a very different experience, which we will get into next month!