Entering the Fertile Void

New moon at 9° of Aquarius

All art pieces in this issue are from the incredible Dan Hillier.

First - some live events in February

Saturday, February 8th - 10am - 6:30pm - Santa Ana, CA - Workshop on Intuitive Navigation and the Voice

I will be down in Southern California in February! First I’ll be giving a talk and experiential workshop called “Intuitive Navigation and the Voice” on how we can use our own voices to discern fear from intuition, and tap into the deeper wisdom we need to face this time of change and dissolution. The event is called BLOOM! Live, and it’s a day-long retreat in downtown Santa Ana at the Santorum Arts Complex for those in need of some community, support, and inspiration to reconnect with their dream for this life and the world, organized by the wonderful Shawn Marie Turi. Visit her website - letsbloomco.com - for more details and to get a ticket, and to get $50 off, use the code: mindy25

Saturday, February 15th - 10am to noon - Irvine, CA - Celebration of Life for Lynne Marie Cocklin Dresman, my mom.

This is the main reason for my trip south. If you knew my mom Lynne, and want to join us for a public service celebrating her life, please feel welcome! My sister Bethany and I will be leading this service, and I’ll be delivering my first “sermon,” a eulogy poem sermon, to honor her - we will need all the support we can get. It will be held at Irvine United Church of Christ, a church she served as an assistant pastor at back when I was a kid - 4915 Alton Pkwy, Irvine, CA 92604. Arrival time is 10am, the service itself will be an hour from 10:30-11:30, and you can linger after for coffee and donuts and hugs if you wish, or just drive off into the day, tenderized by the gift of life.

Friday, February 21st - 6:30pm - 8:30pm - Newberg, OR - Live Poetry Event

If you are in Oregon, and want to come out and hear me read poetry, this is the next opportunity! I will be reading live at Chehalem Cultural Center with fellow Write Bloody poet Miriam Kramer, in what they are billing as “slam poetry night.” Miriam is a queer Jewish poet who calls New Jersey home, and her book Built By Storms came out last year to devastate all of us. There will be other chances to see me, but this is really your chance to come get broken open by Miriam. Together we will be a lot of feelings and a lot of beauty. You can get tickets here!

And now, for the new moon reading…

Wednesday, January 29th, at 4:36am PT, the moon goes dark and renews herself at 9° of Aquarius, the cosmic water bearer. Aquarius is fixed air, the element of mind, breath, and consciousness; the element of all that is invisible or immaterial but real and actively creating the visible material world. It is traditionally ruled by Saturn, archetype of limiting containers, structure, discipline, and duty. The way Saturn often gets talked about out there, as a kind of harsh patriarchal sky daddy, is not the full true read of Saturn, but does reflect something of our historical power structures in the West and their tendency toward oppression. To really appreciate Saturn and the Saturnian aspects of Aquarius, you need to know that in the western mystery schools, and in the Kabalistic Tree of Life specifically, Saturn is associated with Binah. Binah is the gateway of Form and highest feminine principle, She who is Understanding and Compassion Herself—essentially the cosmic womb. The Goddess. Imagining Saturn as a womb gives us a very different, more organic, more loving teaching of what is meant by “limiting container” or “structure” or “duty.” It also gives us a stronger lead on what the Aquarian mind is capable of. What is conscious awareness if not the place that ideas—all potential new forms—come to be born?

In the northern hemisphere, Aquarius leads the second month of winter, and it “fixes” winter into it’s deepest or most mature expression. So it’s connected to a time in the life cycle when the outer expressions of life are diminished, when the body of the earth is static and frozen and appears “lifeless,” but the inner expressions of life are very active. So Aquarius is the seed in the dark frozen earth, and the dark earth herself. It’s the cosmic egg; the cocoon; the dreaming mind; the nothingness full of potential for somethingness. It’s also akin to the bardo state after death, the space where one form has dissolved and the next has yet to be conjured. At this level of being, something akin to pure mind or disembodied awareness, we are more easily conversant with what we call the subconscious or unconscious levels of the psyche. Conscious cognition is, after all, just the tip of the iceberg for awareness itself, which can sense and witness all that is below the surface of that cosmic ocean of being. Our ego or “I” might still exist here, as one part of many, but the “personal” reveals itself to be fleeting. The “I” easily dissolves into the “We,” which is also flirting with merging into the “All” or the “One.” It’s not clear who is even having these thoughts, as we experience ourselves for the temporary, holy vessels that we are, just permeable limited forms for something much greater and much whooshier to move through.

And so we can see why Aquarius is strongly associated with both collectivity and radical change. If Aquarius where a stage of life, it would be the stage after life or before life, where the cosmos imagines or dreams up which life to incarnate as next, out of infinite possibilities. Then Pisces would be that mysterious transition from formless goo to form, and Aries would be the arrival of that form in physical incarnation. From these archetypal roots grows Aquarius’ connections with technological innovation, fringe-y outcasts, futurism, and humanitarian social movements causing massive shifts in consciousness. Astrologers have been talking about the Age of Aquarius for decades now, as something either happening now or coming soon, and it’s no surprise that this time has seen the creation of AI, and the rapid growth of the tech industry and its billionaires, who have now succeeded in grabbing quite a bit of political power and influence. The rise of authoritarianism, however, and billionaires, and leaders motivated solely by profit and personal power, is counter to the great Aquarian themes.

What is going on, from an astrological point of view, is Pluto’s ingress into Aquarius last year. Pluto is planet of intensity, depth, soul power, death/rebirth transformation and regeneration, shadow realms and underworlds full of rot and death and hidden wealth. Its transits are said to begin with a surfacing of the rot—a highlighting of what is in need of healing and transformation. So what is rotten in the realm of the collective? What is rotten in the territory of mind and consciousness? Definitely humans, many of whom are in an ego complex or self-absorbed trance state, consuming resources at a level and pace that has unbalanced Earth’s climate and biosphere, threatening conditions for life. The freshly inaugurated U.S. government administration is an embodiment of the kind of blind greed and spiritual confusion that got us here. We will continue to experience devastating extreme weather events, habitat loss, species extinction, the loss of sources of clean water and and fortified earth, and more, as this collective existential crisis unfolds.

Many have predicted that Pluto’s transit through Aquarius will motivate collective action and bring us genius breakthroughs. I do believe that’s exactly what’s happening, and what we will witness happening for the next 18 years. And when I draw my mind’s eye out as high as Aquarius wants it to go, and I try to see the big picture, I do feel some temporary relief from the panic and dread here on the ground. It’s like, yes, right, not only are all humans connected in their struggle for liberation, but all life is connected. It used to be talked about as the Gaia hypothesis, this idea that all of Earth is one organism, and that life on Earth is a self-regulating system that maintains conditions for life. In this view, the Earth is not a defenseless being that humans are harming. The Earth is not defenseless! It has already activated its self-regulating systems to deal with our over population and the dysregulation we have wrought. Also, humans are not separate from Nature, from the Earth; we are of her and a part of her. So whatever she is doing, it’s to put us back in our right place in the family of all beings; to restore conditions for Life.

The bottom line is that we humans are not the center, or the pinnacle, of Life or this process. This is what Aquarius is really trying to teach us—it’s not just about humans coming together collectively, in humanitarian endeavor, it’s about all life forms, all sentient beings. If you want to be a beneficial organism to all life, you can start by listening to and respecting the non-human or more-than-human world. That includes those beings who have died, our ancestors. It includes the mushrooms and trees and whales and bees. It includes the Earth herself, and the Cosmos—the anima mundi and anima cosma. The ideas that are going to really change how we live, and enable us to adapt, have not been thought of yet—they are coming—and they will come through this collective intelligence. As I feel into this new moon in Aquarius, that’s what it wants to say.

The conditions surrounding this new moon are actually very hopeful—in contrast to what a rational assessment of the scene might indicate. Mercury just entered Aquarius, and made an exact conjunction with Pluto who is sitting here at the first degree. Mercury is offering its translation services and its magician services to whatever new insights have been brewing since Pluto’s cazimi on the 21st. Jupiter is also influencing this new moon, it’s over at 11° Gemini providing a very supportive, very expansive trine. And of course this new moon is just radiating Pluto’s dark healing light. Last year’s new moon in Aquarius had Pluto guarding the gateway, at 0° - but Pluto was still planning its transit back through Capricorn. Now we are in it. The new era. Please tune in to that. I know there are catastrophic changes happening, many of them cruel, many of them unfathomable, and for so many of us, this is not what we wanted, it’s not what we voted for, and we worked really hard to hold the line. Powerlessness, fear, and rage are very strong, very reasonable emotions to be having. This new moon wants us to connect with the power of being part of the collective, of being part of something much bigger and grander ad more mysterious. It wants us to manage our fear, and stay present to opportunities to respond with love. It wants us to protect ourselves from what might harm our imaginations—too much fear, too much propaganda, too many rigid stories. We are going to need free, loving, open, wild imaginations. And we are going to need our hearts.

Each of us has a part to play in this larger story. If you do not yet know what your role is, how you might be of service, that really is ok. It’s enough to want to know. Set an intention on this new moon to let go of any unnecessary fear, to practice trusting yourself, and to be open to that inspiration. This is fertile void time, and we are the seeds of the world to come. Ask to be taught to see your own light, consciously, and how you might shine it on others and for others. If you already know your gifts, and you’ve been giving them, thank you. Ask that they be moved in the coming days and months and years to where they are most needed. Ask for strong, communicative dreams. Ask for faith, because there is never enough of that. Aquarius reminds us that there is always new life coming; spring will come; Nature is regenerative; we are regenerative. We made this world and we can make another. But first, the winter; the dark; the dreaming.

Ritual & Writing Prompts

And now a little extra love for paid subscribers — a collection of links to the archive of writings on Aquarius lunations in In the River of What’s Happening Now, some recommendations for working with this new moon; and a creative writing prompt for those of us who practice writing magic.

(Disclaimer! Prompts are suggestions, not instructions. They are jumping off points. Play with what inspires you, ignore what’s doesn’t, adapt in any way you see fit.)

The Aquarius archive (in reverse chronological order)

Through the Inner Doors - full moon at 27° of Aquarius (summer 2024)

Some Fresh New Headspace - new moon at 20° of Aquarius (winter 2024)

The Road Forward Transforms - full moon at 9° of Aquarius (summer 2023)

The Conditions That Give Birth to Luck - Saturn cazimi in Aquarius (winter 2023)

Predict the Future by Creating It - new moon at 1° of Aquarius (winter 2023)