Imbolc 2016: swans, cicadas, clouds and cards.

This time of the year is always significantly important to me. 

Imbolc has always represented that moment in time when something old crumbles, disintegrates and the vision of something new slowly emerges.

I am either sick at this time of the year or feeling completely exhausted, as if all that needs to be purged decides to do it now. It is also a time when I usually feel “a call” echoing insistingly. All I would like to do and need to do is go on a retreat into myself.

And it does make sense astrologically speaking. The Sun at this time of the year is transiting my 12th house. 

For me the 12th house represents the alchemical pot of the zodiac wheel where all melts and simmers in the cauldron of those subtle energies that are intimately and profoundly connected with all that is.

There is chaos, the complete destruction of all forms. All bearings dissolve in a whole big cloud.

Imbolc is traditionally celebrated on the 2nd February but astrologically speaking, the 15th degree of Aquarius, usually happens a couple of days afterwards.

Imbolc is also the time when the esoteric apprentice vows to study the path for “a year and a day”.

On the 2nd February I could not celebrate, I had my new area manager with me. Contrasts definitely work to refine the search for resonance. All I could do is “listen” to where the call was coming from and where my “alliances” are. 

I am always so pleasantly amazed and warmly reassured how astrological timings come to be even when I am not really taking notice or simply life takes hold of me and I can’t do otherwise.

Thankfully there is something in me that knows that,“that something”, should happen at that precise moment.

A few days ago, I was approached by person that works in the healing arts. We spent three hours talking about a project he had in mind and he was inviting me on board. On that day Jupiter  was conjunct the North Node of the Moon in Virgo. Later as  I walked near sea thinking about this offer, a swan appears out of nowhere. 

Jupiter likes showing himself…

On the eve of Imbolc I phoned that person to say "yes I like the idea, let’s see how we can work it out".

I was saying yes to a new path. 

Just as I close the phone call, a cicada starts chirping. Yes a cicada, on the sand, near the sea, in winter, in pitch cold dark. 

I could hear the voice of my mentor saying “you will be journeying soon…” 

Imbolc is also a good time for divination…

And so it happened that exactly as the Sun passed over the 15th degree 15 seconds of Aquarius, the Universe conspired for an improvised tarot reading from my spiritual brother…. And lo and behold the Wheel of Fortune card comes out, with the Aquarius symbol on it. The Wheel of Fortune is astrologically linked to Jupiter.

Some years “the call” is stronger than other years. Sometimes, like this year, “the call” is definitely “a call for the arms”, a complete makeover of my life. They are those years that one later remembers "as when everything changed".

They are those years when all perfectly aligns to say yes to a wonderful new journey of self-discovery even if the details are still shrouded in the mists of the bubbling cauldron.

Now it is time I sit and rest near the cauldron and start taking notes before I jump off the cliff.

As above so below, as within so without…

Blessed Imbolc to you and yours.

My Self-undoing... 17 years later

Today it is an important day in my family of origin. So wherever I am my mother phones me.
Today she reminded me that 17 years ago on the 13th January 1998 she had phoned but did not find me at home. I just was being admitted in hospital to come out only 30 days afterwards, on the 14th February 1998.
Not because I was healed but because I was loosing so much weight that the doctors thought I would not make it through.
So after 17 years I had the courage to look back at the clinical data of the event that has and still is changing my life. And I found the time when I was admitted to hospital and surgery.
Now as you may know I am studying astrology so I was curious to cast a chart. The surgery started at 20:10 Rome Italy.
That makes it Capricorn Sun, Virgo Rising and Leo Moon.
The bi-wheel shows 5 planets in my 12th house (the house of hospitals, prisons and self-undoing or the house where you just simply loose your identity to the world), Saturn in my 2nd house (my body) and the Moon in my 6th house (the house of health and mind-body connections). Saturn was transiting on my Chiron in my 2nd house. The Lord of Time meeting Wounded-ness on my body.
The Capricorn Sun was on my North Node that had just been touched by transiting Venus that was making an opposition to my natal Venus conjunct South Node. In short my values where being called on duty...were am I really living my life?
I wasn't aware at that time that I was putting everything in my unconscious. I did not want to see and feel. It was only a year and a half that I had left my natal land. My life had changed drastically, more than I had expected and accepted.
Reliving that period, the moment I decided that I could not take it anymore and needed medical help. The moment I went in hospital, the what seemed the long waiting alone in a corridor shivering in pain and with cold. The waking up with more scars than I was expecting. The long complicated recovery which seemed never to arrive with brutal therapeutic methods. A diagnosis that left me helpless. The watching people dying alone and without family. The loosing the want to eat and live....
17 years afterwards I am still licking the wounds. I am still slowly healing.
Yes that surgery was really my self-undoing giving me more scars physically, emotionally and spiritually than I am comfortable with even to this very day.