Mary Jo Wevers

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Creating Inner Peace and Harmony

While we tend to focus on the outer world when talking about peace and harmony, justice and fairness, these qualities cannot exist outside of ourselves if we do not embody them internally as individuals. When we create the necessary balance and integration among the sometimes conflicting parts of ourselves, our deepest wants, needs and desires, we exemplify the best expressions of Libra. 

In astrology we view the planets as representations of archetypal forces within the human psyche. Our personality has many facets, each with their own drives, principles and urges. The planets in your birth chart describe the different facets of your multi-dimensional personality. Like characters on a stage, they each have a specific role to play in the development and expression of your character. One archetypal part of your psyche may get along fine with some of the other archetypal forces, but have difficulties with others. Astrologers examine planetary aspects in the horoscope to get insight into this. 

Learning how to implement, balance and integrate the different archetypal forces within us into a healthy, balanced and cohesive whole can be challenging. We must find ways for each of the different parts of our personality to express themselves and function in a productive manner. If we utilize only some parts of our planetary personality constellation and repress others, we feel out of sorts, incomplete, unfulfilled. Repressed or unexpressed facets may erupt at inappropriate times or in extreme forms, or may be projected onto others instead of owning them ourselves. The inner conflict between our “characters on the stage” is then played out in our outer relationships and experiences. 

Alternatively, we may strongly identify with specific parts of our personality, mistakenly thinking this is the only way we are supposed to be. This can lock us into limited ways of thinking and behaving, and keep us from fully utilizing our potential. When we successfully engage and express all parts of our personality in balanced ways we experience satisfaction and a state of peace, wholeness, and completeness.

Each of our personality facets, the “characters on a stage,” must play out their roles. We can allow them to work collaboratively by finding common ground where they can cooperate. If they cannot share the spotlight, perhaps they can take turns being center stage, or in different parts of our life. Ideally we want them to come together in a respectful “meeting of the minds” where we can listen to each of their viewpoints and honor the contribution they can each make to our current situation or endeavor. Learning to value and trust the unique gifts and skills they provide is a first step in integrating and balancing the different facets of our complex psyche.

“Happiness is not a matter of intensity but of balance, order, rhythm and harmony.”  – Thomas Merton

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The Sun

The Sun is the ruling “planet” of the sign of Leo. The Sun represents the unique frequency or vibration of the Divine Spark of Life within us. Our Sun sign defines how we radiate the energy of Divine Spirit through our individuated self out into the world.

The sun is the center of our solar system. It provides the gravitational pull and cohesive force that keeps all the other planets in orbit around it. The innermost planets absorb and reflect the light and energy of the sun.

In astrology the Sun represents the ego, which provides the cohesive force in our psyche. The other planets represent various archetypal urges and drives to meet specific needs. The Sun is our conscious center, our ego, our individuality. It holds together all the other pieces of our multifaceted self.

The glyph for the Sun is the circle of spirit surrounding a dot representing a seed of potential. The Sun is a conscious focus in the astrological chart, and therefore can be more easily recognized and understood by us. Perhaps this is one reason why sun sign astrology is so popular. 

Our Sun sign provides the fuel for our inner battery. When we need more energy and enthusiasm in life, doing our Sun sign revitalizes us and helps us feel more powerful. Through engaging with our Sun sign activities we feed the solar function in our psyche, therefore enabling us to experience higher levels of engagement with life. We feel more alive and vital. We have more fun!

The Sun represents our power urge, or will. It is associated with the 3rd chakra, or power center. It bestows dignity and authority upon us. It gives us honor and pride. The Sun indicates how we manifest our personal power. It describes our qualities of leadership and success, where we “shine” and are seen as an authority or leader.

The Sun reveals our instinctive warm and enthusiasm in life, the focus of our creativity. It shows where and how our innate talents can be self-expressed. It indicates our need to be recognized as special and unique for our gifts.

The Sun represents our heart center. It is our generosity of spirit, the love and affection we give in the world. It is our magnanimity, the giving towards those less powerful than us.

Archetypes for the Sun include the King or Queen, royalty, those who are living representations of God on earth. For centuries the Sun has represented the masculine principle: the father, the husband, and men in general. Traditionally, it symbolized the energy a woman’s husband would have, implying the woman would “shine” through her husband’s vitality, and not through her own Sun energy. As we release antiquated patriarchal belief systems, we gain a greater appreciation for the diversity of expression of the Sun sign in the individual horoscope.

The Sun in fire signs (Aries, Leo, Sagittarius) is motivated by inspirations and aspirations. Its ego is about will and action. It recharges its energy through vigorous, physically demanding activity and by pursuing new visions for the future. Its urge is to create anew and expand its horizons. It needs to be recognized for its courage and will to become more.

The Sun in earth signs (Taurus, Virgo, Capricorn) is motivated by material needs. Its ego is practical and goal directed. It recharges its energy through working with the physical world and through the filter of sensation. Its urge is be successful in a materially. It needs to be recognized for its wisdom, common sense and drive to accomplishment.

The Sun in air signs (Gemini, Libra, Aquarius) is motivated by intellectual concepts and social ideals. Its ego is of the mind and its ability to communicate and share ideas. It recharges its energy through social involvement and intellectual stimulations. Its urge is to gather and disseminate information. It needs to be recognized for its cognitive strength and ability to articulate its ideas.

The Sun in water signs (Cancer, Scorpio, Pisces) is motivated by deep emotional yearnings and desires. Its ego is feeling oriented and sensitive. It recharges its energy through emotional experience and involvement with others. Its urge is to explore feelings and to express them. It needs to be recognized for its emotional intelligence and its depth of feeling.

The House occupied by the Sun in your horoscope indicates the area of life where you are naturally talented and creative, where you have the most instinctive warmth and enthusiasm, and where there will be a strong urge toward self-expression and creativity. This area of life and its related issues indicate where you can be the most powerful through self-mastery. The House shows where you need to express yourself spontaneously in order to attain and maintain personal vitality. This is essential to your sense of well-being.

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Emotional Intelligence

Emotional intelligence can be defined as having understanding and insight into our feeling experiences. The sign of Cancer is devoted to creating a safe haven to experience emotions in their purest and most direct form. It understands emotions are an integral part of the human experience that provide richness, depth and color in our lives. Cancer intelligently nurtures their healthy expression, application and management, and encourages us to appreciate and master our inner emotional realm.

In her excellent book The Language of Emotions, Karla McLaren explains that emotions contain valuable information and guidance for us. They are our first, pre-verbal information channel to the world, connected to our inner truth and intuition. They continue to inform us, if we honor and pay attention to their messages, after our rational mind develops around age three. 

Cultural conditioning, however, encourages us to value the ration mind and disregard emotions as troublesome, or as annoying inconveniences, especially emotions that we label as “bad.” Yet as Daniel Goleman explains in his groundbreaking book Emotional Intelligence, the rational mind cannot control our emotions. Rather, our primal emotional nature can harness the rational mind to justify its association of emotions from the past with present experiences, distorting our perceptions and ability to respond appropriately in the moment.

Emotions, like the element of water, are fluid. They are ephemeral, usually lasting less than a minute, and are continually changing. They arise from our inner depths, shift, ebb and flow into one another. Emotional agility requires welcoming the changing nature and flow of feelings, and allowing ourself to fully feel an emotion in the moment. When we pay attention to our emotions without judging them, we become the neutral observer. Then we can acknowledge the personal information an emotion is conveying to us, and employ the rational mind to guide our response.

Karla McLaren’s book describes messages specific emotions provide us. For example anger informs us a personal boundary has been breached. Fear is our intuition telling us  something is dangerous. Sadness signals something must be released so we can move forward. And shame alerts us that we are out of integrity with our values. Disregarding this information, or allowing the rational mind to explain it away, separates us from important inner truths. 

In his book Daniel Goleman outlines four domains that constitute emotional intelligence. Self-awareness is the ability to observe our internal state and recognize our emotions. Self-management is handling an emotion appropriately by self-regulating our response. It requires adaptability and striving for emotional balance. Social awareness is the ability to recognize emotions in others, having empathetic understanding. And relationship management is the ability to work with the emotions of others in productive ways, of having social competency in the world.

The archetypal energy of Cancer rules our emotional foundations in life. Its wellspring nourishes our security, well-being and creativity in our “inner home.” It guides us with care, concern and compassion to embrace our emotional nature and learn to use it skillfully in the outer world. 

“The more clearly you understand yourself and your emotions, the more you become a lover of what is.” – Baruch Spinoza

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Re-forming our Vision of Venus

The planet Venus is named after the Roman goddess of beauty and love. To the Greeks she was known as Aphrodite. She is perhaps the most ancient and primal of all the goddesses around the world, and has had many names from many cultures over human history. She is often referred to as the Goddess of Love, and the Goddess of Generation due to her creative powers of attraction, abundance and prosperity. She is associated with the lush fertile greenness on our planet, and the life giving force it provides to animals and humankind.

As an archetypal figure Venus embodies the power of spirit to attract and animate matter. Venus expresses love in the world by drawing to her the prima materia to bring Spirit into physical form. She provides warmth and substance. She holds, cares for and preserves the seed: the embryo form of beauty gestating in our earthly world. Venus represents our ability, as spiritual beings having a human experience, to manifest the beauty of spirit through our corporeal selves and by working with material resources in the world to create tangible objects of practical beauty.

All human creative endeavors, including mythology, are influenced by the cultural paradigms, beliefs and assumptions of their time and place. The Greek and Roman myths we know are a product of the patriarchal worldview of the past three thousand or more years. The archetypal figures in Greek and Roman mythology and their stories are all interpreted and told through a misogynist lens. Masculine endeavors and traits are over-valued in the patriarchal system, while the feminine are under-valued, even denigrated.

Reforming Uranus conjoining the Taurus Sun this month directs us to break through the old patriarchal view of Venus and revise our attitudes, stories and interpretations of this important feminine archetype. It is high time to up-date and modernize our vision of the Divine Feminine principle. Getting back to basics, looking at Venus and her sign of Taurus from an energetic level may help us see her in a truer light. As a receptive fixed earth sign, Taurus is patient and loyal, warm and generous, earth centered, and practically creative. Connecting with the earth through all our bodily senses can help bring us into direct contact with Taurus’ planetary ruler Venus, and develop a greater appreciation and understanding of her archetypal principle.

“The body is condensed Soul.” – LiYana Silver

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Finding Spiritual Meaning in Everyday Life

The archetypal principle of Neptune, modern planetary ruler of Pisces, is to transform our consciousness by expanding our spiritual understanding of individual and collective experiences. Neptune and Pisces guide us to transcend the superficial appearances of everyday events by turning our awareness from preoccupation with the outer world, and examine them from an inner, deeper place. Working with the principle of Neptune is a process that helps us soften the boundaries of our ego-identified self in order to find greater spiritual meaning in life.

The ego tries to protect us in the physical, material world by interpreting and judging experiences from the point of view of the individual self. The mind chatter generated by the ego tends to be fear-based and self-centered. It can lead to suffering, selfishness, jealousy, and all forms of disillusionment. When we quiet the mind we allow ourselves to tap into deeper, more intuitive levels of our being. By listening to our inner knowing we can find a broader and more universal perspective on matters. Neptune and Pisces help us transcend our personal earthly experiences, find commonality in our human condition, and guide us to find the spiritual significance in them.

When we find ourselves emotionally charged by something that is happening we can use our ego-mind to explore inwardly rather than re-act outwardly. Ask yourself these questions in this three step introspective process.

  1. What happened? What was the experience? Simply state the incident or event.
  2. How did I feel? What emotions arose naturally and spontaneously? Instead of judging your emotions, just recognize and name them.
  3. From a place deep within, ask why your soul or higher self might wish you to have this experience. Why might you have attracted or created it? What is the opportunity for healing, for growth, or simply for greater awareness? Finally, gently ask yourself what judgments you made about the experience, or about others or yourself, that interfere with understanding the spiritual gift of it.

Neptune and Pisces ease our suffering and misery in life by dissolving and washing away the boundaries and limitations of the ego and its self-importance. We surrender the need to be a victim, a martyr, or a rescuer in the world. We release co-dependent dynamics playing out in life. We find unity with all of humanity through sensitivity, sympathy, empathy, compassion, and forgiveness. We can experience Oneness consciousness and universal Love. Even when our ego-mind cannot fully comprehend the meaning of our life experiences, we can have faith they contribute to our greater good and spiritual evolution.

“All human beings are interconnected, one with all other elements in creation.” – Henry Reed