This article was originally published on Reverie Astrology with a different introduction, July 26th on a Sagittarius Moon.
The Sun and New Moon in Leo are conjunct Venus in her seemingly backwards movement, all at a trine to Uranus in Aries… and hasn’t fire been an enduring menu feature in recent weeks! The expansive quality of this element — speaking one’s truth with pride, self-honoring integrity and virtue (one would hope) — is met by a dash of prudence from Mercury and Jupiter, their sharp expansion having recently entered Virgo’s more contractive flavor of self-respecting purity.
The natal chart and life’s work of Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Gustav Jung are rife with fiery symbolism — energy associated with philosophies of unification, transcendence, making known what was unknown and ‘bringing into consciousness.’ One of his many enduring psychological insights: “The more aware one is of an archetype, the more equipped one is to transcend its negative effects.” By getting into the flavors of vision that Jung brought to the world psyche’s table, I will share some perspective on the fire and water of solar and lunar philosophies — of particular relevance given the planets’ current Leo placements and recent Cancer activity.
Archetypes are like active images, instincts working through us, dancing onstage in the theaters of our mind and soul. When we identify the characters most dominant in us, we can more effectively embody their ‘good’ and discard their ‘bad’ — a very solar truth. Forewarned is forearmed. Knowing is half the battle, perhaps… though as Dane Rudhyar observed, “awareness does not imply willful action.” Awareness is like inward fire, action outward fire.
These narratives are very much like the Sun, which rises each day as Earth turns. Sunlight reveals the extent of earthly division, yet it also brings life together in the playful rays of its nourishing luminosity. Seeking to unite that which is revealed by this glow, solar philosophies tend to see all the differences and nuances on Earth as partaking of oneness. The monotheism shared by many of the world’s major religions is a common expression of the solar approach; the ‘love and light’ narratives of hippiedom and consciousness movements are often largely analogous.
The astrologer Adam Elenbaas skillfully contrasts the nature of Jung’s thinking with that of the psychologist James Hillman, in many ways parallel to the variance between solar and lunar philosophy. Hillman’s school of thought, archetypal psychology, is obviously inspired by the jungian term ‘archetype’ and described by Hillman as a 3rd generation derivative of Jung’s analytical psychology — yet it is much less goal-oriented in its therapeutic approach.
Jung’s expression weighs heavily in the direction of integrating the unknown, and by extension healing personal wounds through identifying them. Hillman’s approach involves a lunar deepening towards our wounds, an acceptance that they not only exist but in many ways aren’t going anywhere, as much as we might try to purge ourselves of them. ‘The gift is near to the wound,’ as they say.
To carry this and communicate lunar truths, I will share words of mine from a Facebook thread in early June. The aggressive debate I chimed in on revolved around the perceived inability of ‘love and light’ crowds to actively confront darkness and division. In this case, such darkness was the behavior of some involved in planning largely white (happenstance), ‘peace-loving’ events, and their perceived failure to actively reach out to oppressed and marginalized cultures, groups and demographics. These dynamics often tie into the reality that by being in positions of white privilege, people participate in racism even if they are not explicitly racist, and need to actively unschool themselves in these culturally implicit behaviors.
The Sun says: Spirit! Oneness! We’re all heroes, project positively and everything will be okay! Manifest shit! Your environment is a product of you! The Sun rises, revealing a lot of outward stuff. But what about all the multiplicity and nuance that gives singularity or oneness any shred of particular meaning…
The Moon says: Soul! Manyness! We might be heroes, but the spirit has a special relationship with darkness and particularity of incarnation, the going down and inward through which it becomes soul… the anchor of our beautiful differences — individually, culturally and so on. Lunar consciousness sees that just as our environments are products of us, we are made up of how we receive others — music is not just the manifest notes but the silence and spaces between them.
When the Moon rises, we see a different side of life on Earth… moreover, we see the endless backdrop of stars, many suns, many centers, countless for each per-sun of the Earth. We go inward and celebrate the many ways.
To stare into the Sun, into spiels about ‘love and light’ and oneness and manifestation, is to risk collapsing all differences into one giant boring ass narrative that ignores all of our beautiful shades — as well all the wounds that need some serious work.
Solar philosophies, for all their evolutionary gusto, risk serious spiritual laziness in their own way, not to mention echoing all the obnoxious aspects of patriarchy and monotheism that hippies somehow think their new age narratives aren’t parroting half the time.
On the other hand, if you happen to think that the ‘love and light’ crowd’s shadows are going anywhere, you are embracing another ‘light’ based solar philosophy, and that’s the ‘going outward’, objective, goal-oriented notion that the human shadow ‘needs’ to be subordinated to the Sun’s all-consolidating, all-unifying spiel.
See the problem? The solar ‘love and light’ vibes aren’t wrong, they’re just really reductive and boring. The world is starved for maaany aspects of ‘light’ solar philosophy — the aggressive individuation through which people rise above stale Babylon and try to change the oppressive status quo. The world could use a heavy dose of ‘oneness’, but not at the expense of honoring particular divinities. Lunar consciousness is much the receptivity and transformation that is then thrust outward with some help from the Sun’s impetus.
My point is mostly that no one is in just the solar camp or the lunar camp. The whole dualism is overly simple in the first place… there’s so much in between and beyond. Some people seem a bit presumptuous in what they think members of their communities are willing to do or examine in themselves.
As much as the Sun is about the hero’s myth of saving the day, the Moon is about the reality that we might all just be DJing the dance party on the Titanic. That’s not an excuse for cynical resignation, but it does certainly remind people that the poetry of life is not all about ‘light’, it’s about love — and I often feel that love has a lot more to do with darkness, brokenness, and gravity towards these nuances. Not so much some hyper-general new age-ism. The ship is sinking, let that not be ignored, and let’s also save it. My dark ass lunar vibes and the ‘light crowd’ part of me can both have it right.
Same for anyone else.
