Ceres has already been an active archetypal energy this year. She was part of a potent T-square with the evolutionary Lunar Nodes last Virgo New Moon, making her a carrier for the new high-frequency ascension energies during a lunation period, richly resonant with Ceres and the returning feminine. This December there is a striking alignment with Ceres that I will shed some light on in this post.
Overview
I have been speaking more frequently about the inevitability of the return of the feminine, because throughout most of 2024, each forecast has featured key patterns highlighting this theme. For many of us, it is quite hard to truly grasp the feminine side of life, since it has been relentlessly maligned and devalued for thousands of years.
In astrological terms, we are transitioning into a new age of Aquarius, and I think (contrary to consensus opinion) we’ve been doing this collectively already since around 1755 with a key transition occurring in 1879 when we moved into a 300 year cycle ruled my Archangel Michael - an aspect of the Solar Logos, which has brought considerable illumination to the world (the Archangel Michael cycle comes to me via the Rosicrucian wisdom tributary and dovetails with the cycle of precession used in astrology).
Transitions between ages occur much like a cross-fade in audio or video; the prior age of Pisces has been diminishing, while decade by decade, Aquarius has been rising. At some stage in the cycle we will have left the Pisces influence behind and be fully in the Aquarian epoch. My thoughts are that we are precisely at that threshold moment (approx this coming decade), and that means we will see an even stronger infusion of Aquarian energy changing our collective experience as we see the last vestiges of the old era passing away.
The most recent image for Aquarius is Ganymede (the beloved of Zeus), a beautiful male youth bearing the cup of divine ambrosia, but before that patriarchal overlay, the cupbearer was originally Hebe the goddess of youth. Aquarius is full of surprises and new perspectives; ruled by Uranus, the archetypal essence of the sign is about the freedom and drive to simply be who we are as unique beings, and so “unity within diversity” is a core theme. Conformity is not the way of Aquarius; its about personal freedom and self-expression in service to all of humanity.
So why am I talking about Aquarius when the topic is about Ceres?
We are of course talking about The Goddess, and Hebe as the goddess of eternal youth and forgiveness, who becomes the divine consort to Hercules after he ascends, strongly indicates that the age of Aquarius will coincide with a rebalancing of the masculine/feminine relationship within the collective mind of humanity on Earth.
Quite naturally we can expect the other celestial goddesses to play their part in this rebalancing process. This year Ceres has been playing a key part.
Ceres (or Demeter) is best known as a grain goddess associated with abundance and harvest. She is also an archetype deeply connected with the cyclical nature of life (a fundamental feminine principle). Her story involves the loss of her daughter and a subsequent withdrawal from the earth that resulted in worldwide famine. Ceres is a mother archetype, and she represents the cyclical unfolding of life: gestation, birth, cultivation, maturation, harvest and death.
So let’s look at the upcoming Ceres alignment to get a sense of what might be in store for us on our own personal journeys…
The alignment: nuts and bolts
I have simplified the chart to show you the key symbols, and of course you can take the key themes and slot them into the other forecast material, in particular the imminent Sagittarius New Moon, and the upcoming December Solstice forecast.
Most significant is of course the Venus-Ceres-Pluto conjunction at 0˚ Aquarius. In a sense we are seeing symbolised in the heavens, the death and rebirth of the feminine principle; some kind of renewal is taking place. Venus, our primary and personal goddess (together with the Moon) is now fusing energy with the Abundant Mother principle, and they are significantly intensified by Pluto, who is now initiating this fusion into the evolutionary energy of the times. This is quite a loud opening statement for Pluto, who is now fully committed to Aquarius after a year or so of dancing between two signs. It is as if to say that as Pluto builds momentum in Aquarius, we are all upgrading to a new level of awareness of the Divine Feminine principle in ways both personal and collective.
This triple conjunction is strikingly in exact trine to the goddess Sedna, who has also just recently entered Gemini. Sedna has a very long orbit, and as such, a sign change (the first since her discovery) is an indicator of significant change, especially in relation to the Divine Feminine.
Not only that, these archetypes are also harmonising with the Lunar Nodes, indicating that this astrological alignment has bearing on both the past and the future; whatever is emergent now has an impact on how we each deal with the past and how inner changes affect the way we move forward in life.
For the last 2 years there has been an ongoing theme highlighting the collective need to break from patterns of the past, in order to initiate new pathways of growth and development (symbolised by the North Node in Aries).
Mars (the current ruler of the North Node and the polarity counterpart to Venus) is in opposition to the primary conjunction, and together these symbols form what is called a Grand Kite aspect. A kite aspect is a Grand Trine (at least 3 planets trine each other) activated by a planet in opposition; the easy, speedy and flowing energy of the trines, are further energised by an integration stimulus that effectively brings these energies more easily into our everyday awareness.
Self-care is a necessity and not a luxury
One of the primary themes I see with Venus and Ceres in conjunction, while in trine to Sedna, is that of self-care. Self-care is a somewhat underrated virtue, which is not surprising given the patriarchal momentum still influencing our collective experience. To engage in self-care requires of us to reconnect with our core essential needs, which in turn moves us more into vulnerability, because to recognise that we have needs, goes hand in hand with accepting the possibility that we might not be able to meet them. In a masculine dominant environment, vulnerability and self-care are qualities linked to weakness; both are considered inconvenient at best. Our cultural conditioning leans toward a toughen up and suck it up strategy because the masculine mode is quantitive and not qualitative; our current world value is toward productivity and quantity, so we create dead-lines and quotas with little regard to how constant stress and pressure affect the quality of our lives. Even modern therapy is gaining positive momentum primarily as a way to optimise how much we can achieve and accumulate, and less about how we feel.
A trine to Sedna speaks to how our personal patterns, connected with core essential needs and self-care, are affected by unresolved personal and collective trauma. Repressed trauma is intrusive on all our attempts to live an ideal and fulfilling life, and part of this Grand Kite dynamic is to activate new awareness pertaining to repressed trauma, so that we can rebirth our relationship with core essential needs and values, and an ability to parent ourselves as we move forward.
We are living in accelerated times, and the coming Pluto in Aquarius cycle for the next 20 years is going to amplify this acceleration even more. The key message for this time is simply this: self-care is a necessity during this ascension time period, and something we may have to actively work on as we move forward into the future. Without cultivating self-care on an ongoing basis, the next few years could feel exhausting and overwhelming. I see this evolutionary directive as an expression of the returning feminine; to ignore and undervalue our inner personal reality (Venus) is to comply with the patriarchal distortion; the way forward is to go within, as part of a renewed sense of balance.
Processing grief and loss as we prepare to step up in new ways
Mars and Venus are a primary archetypal pair; we can think of them as the primal yang and yin - the very first two zodiac signs are ruled by Mars and Venus respectively, and in one sense they represent energy moving out and energy moving in, and thus correspond to our outer-world and our inner-world dynamics. These 2 are in a gibbous opposition, which means a process of objective realisation is occurring within, typically through some kind of corrective inner change or adjustment. This means we must yield to a new way of being.
The fusion of Venus and Ceres in Aquarius in itself suggests an arising objective new awareness of loss and grief, especially connected to past violations or intrusions (Sedna), as part of the way we move on from the past, bring balance to our stories, and step with courage into the unknown potential within us.
All of us carry a degree of loss and grief because every decision we ever make represents a loss of possibility; if I choose a specific job, I lose the other possible jobs I might have taken. Some of us have more obvious loss and grief to attend to. Pluto will always add evolutionary intensity to everything he touches; we are deeply moved to overcome existing limits and to evolve toward something more.
My sense is that the bulk of this work will centre around processing past cycles of development and growth in relation to missed opportunities, relationships we didn’t act upon, love we failed to fully express, experiences we wished we’d had the courage to live and so on. With Mars in the opposition acting as a catalyst, we can expect a revival within ourselves to live more fully and be more fully ourselves, if only we can let go of past elements that haunt us or hold us back. Mars is stationary retrograde, which means a day later he starts to move backwards and this will further amplify the internalised “revisit, review and resolve” nature of this process.
There’s going to be a tendency to recapitulate and hopefully bring new light to old and stagnating stories that hold us back from living an authentic life.
Metamorphosis and Regeneration are active processes
Another goddess archetype - Haumea - also features in the geometry of the Ceres initiation. She is at 2˚ Scorpio square to the Ceres-Pluto conjunction and at the apex of a T-Square with Mars. Haumea herself represents the capacity to rebirth and regenerate, and her recent ingress into Scorpio amplifies this theme. Scorpio energy can express as mutation and metamorphosis, and for this reason some of us may find that more and more, the centre of gravity for personal process is to accept a call to go much deeper than before, in order to undergo profound alchemical and healing processes that enable us to release core patterns and structures in ways that liberate us into wider new vistas of being.
Haumea as the apex to a T-Square with Mars opposing the Ceres-Venus-Pluto conjunction, highlights metamorphosis as a necessary way to work with core ancestral patterns at the DNA level. As we do this, we can liberate into new elevated levels of self-realisation and sovereignty. If we respond to this energy pattern, we may be drawn to work with various plant medicines that promote healing and regeneration, such as tonics and adaptogens like Reishi Mushroom, Rhodiola, Ashwagandha, Cordyceps and Ginseng.
Or work with plant entheogens like San Pedro, Ayahuasca or Psilocybin in order to gain access to deeper layers of the psyche, to heal and become more self aware of the core patterns we are tasked to work with.
Finally…
As I mention in the upcoming Sagittarius New Moon Forecast (Dec 1st) , there are astrological themes pointing to a collective imperative to break away from existing patterns, and to move forward in new ways. This means that many of our personal processes are linked to resolving the past, and taking steady steps forward by doing things differently. On a personal level this means not doing things the way we used to; it means eating differently, taking care of our health differently, attending to our needs differently, working in a different way than before, socialising in new ways, and relating to ourselves in new ways.
This doesn’t typically happen overnight, and the nature of the cycle of the nodes means this impulse to liberate from the past has been ongoing for about a year and a half, and will soon come to conclusion by late Jan 2025 when the nodal axis moves into Pisces/Virgo, at which point the evolutionary themes will change.
The Ceres alignment may for some, represent a call to withdraw from the outer world, at least to some extent, in order to give space for grief, loss and self-care. Energy will now be needed for internal adjustments or deep transformations. For others however, who may already have been in withdrawal, this alignment may be a signal to step out of the cave and re-enter the world in a new way. This might feel a bit brutal if we have gotten used to the simplicity of withdrawal, and yet the world most definitely needs us and the call back will be hard to deny.
What is key here though is the notion of a change in our personal cycles of unfoldment; this whole Grand Kite dynamic looks like a shift in gears for most of us. Overall this is a generally harmonious yet energised activation, which for most of us should feel like a gentle arising of awareness to either go inward and deal with trauma and loss, and in general to move into active self-care if we are not doing enough, or there will be awareness arising that prepares us to engage the world in new ways as we rebirth into the new Aquarian energies.
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Aquila offers Self-realisation mentoring, Evolutionary Astrology, and Tarot sessions for those awakening to their true potential.
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