Full Moon in Cancer, Capricorn Solar Festival, Epiphany 2021 Cosmic Weather Forecast

Welcome to the Year End 2020 edition of our Cosmic Weather Forecast from your editors Curtis Lang and Jane Sherry. We hope you all had a Super Solstice and a very Merry Christmas.

Cancer and surrounding constellations, from Johannes Hevelius' 
Firmamentum Sobiescianum sive Uranographia, 1690.

On December 29th at 10:28 PM EST we celebrate the Full Moon in Cancer and the Capricorn Solar Festival. The Full Moon occurs at 08°53′ Cancer, creating a harmonious sextile aspect to retrograde Uranus, located at 6°49' Taurus.

Prepare for flashes of intuitive Uranian creativity to illuminate murky emotional and mental situations during the next two weeks! Be ready to take advantage of increased access to the personal and collective unconscious.

Ptolemy's world map, reconstituted from Ptolemy's Geography (circa 150) in the 15th century,
 indicating "Sinae" (China) at the extreme right, beyond the island of "Taprobane" (Ceylon or Sri Lanka)
 and the "Aurea Chersonesus" (Southeast Asian peninsula).

Allow relevant symbolic messages from your past to surface in dreams, meditation, prayer and contemplation. These symbolic messages will help you understand and release emotional blockages and mistaken maps of your world that may have been holding you back on your life journey or impeding your ability to fulfill your Higher Purpose.

The Sun at 08°53′ Capricorn is trine Uranus at that time, reinforcing the Full Moon theme of enlightenment through increased access to transpersonal wisdom and archetypes of healing and loving wisdom.

An incendiary, stressful square between Mars in Aries and Pluto in Capricorn was exact on December 23, making it hard to relax over the holiday season.

This conflicted aspect contributed to a major Christmas holiday Washington melodrama involving conflict over secretive deals favoring American Pluto-crats.

On December 22, as the Mars-Pluto square perfected, after months of acrimony, and with only hours to read a 5,539 page piece of legislation crafted mainly in secret by Republican and Democratic leaders, Congress passed a much maligned $908 billion Covid-19 financial relief bill providing $600 checks for individuals making less than $75,000, extended unemployment benefits and eviction protection, along with $284 billion for corporations.

"Artwork" with 20 Dollar bills Source: selbstfotografiert
This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

"Tucked away in the 5,593-page spending bill that Congress rushed through on Monday night is a provision that some tax experts call a $200 billion giveaway to the rich," reported The New York Times.

Businesses that received Payroll Protection Loans from the federal government in the multi-trillion dollar March 2020 Covid 19 financial relief bill will not only have those loans forgiven, but will also receive a tax deduction for that income.

“'High-income business owners have had tax benefits and unprecedented government grants showered down upon them," according to the article in The New York Times. "'And the scale is massive,' said Adam Looney, a fellow at the Brookings Institution and a former Treasury Department tax official in the Obama administration, who estimated that $120 billion of the $200 billion would flow to the top 1 percent of Americans."

Over the next several days, as the energy of the Mars-Jupiter square waxed and began to wane, President Trump, Bernie Sanders, Ted Cruz and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez criticized the bill from both the left and right wings of the American political spectrum. Trump refused to sign the bill until Monday December 28, when it finally became law.

The suicide bombing in downtown Nashville on Christmas Day was another potent manifestation of the explosive energy symbolized by the Mars-Pluto square.

Unfortunately, 2021 looks set to begin with Cosmic Weather patterns that indicate a high probability of increased stress, conflict and political in-fighting throughout the months of January and February. The year 2021 is dominated by the energies of one major aspect -- Uranus in Taurus square Saturn in Aquarius. This aspect will have far reaching implications for years to come.

The energies reach a peak of sorts on Inauguration Day, when Joe Biden will officially take over the duties of President of the United States.

On the feast day of the Epiphany, January 6, Mars enters Taurus, to join Uranus in the sign of the Bull, and Mars and Uranus each begin to form squares with Mercury, Jupiter and Saturn, which will all be in Aquarius during mid-January. The Mercury-Uranus square occurs on January 8th, 2021. On January 18th, 2021 Jupiter at 6° Aquarius is square Uranus at 6° Taurus. Mars is conjunct Uranus on January 20th, 2021, exaggerating the combustible energies of this string of flammable aspects. Finally, Uranus in Taurus square Saturn in Aquarius occurs February 15th.

Donald Trump and Governor Mike Pence of Indiana speaking to supporters at an immigration policy speech at the Phoenix Convention Center in Phoenix, Arizona.
Gage Skidmore from Peoria, AZ, United States of America, 
CC BY-SA 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

As Mars enters Taurus on January 6, certified votes from the Electoral College are sent to Congress for counting. Some astrologers believe that January's and February's inflammatory stellar energy signatures indicate an escalating effort by Donald Trump to nullify the 2020 election, which Trump lost to Joseph Biden.

Trump's most avid supporters expect Republican members of the House and Senate to raise objections on January 6 to the Electoral College votes in several states that Biden won based upon unsubstantiated accusations of widespread voter fraud -- accusations which have been repeatedly thrown out of court in various states since the November election.

Objections to the Electoral College results in any state would have to be ratified by majorities of the House and Senate. Trump's supporters would have to obtain Congressional majorities to nullify the votes in numerous states to overturn the election and that seems like a vanishingly remote possibility.

Objections raised in Congress would, however, support Trump's continued assertions that he won the November election in a landslide, and that he is the true President-elect of the United States. Even though Trump will lose this Congressional confrontation, if it occurs, the contentious debate could provide more grist for the Trump propaganda mill.

Trump is currently the Republican front-runner in the 2024 Presidential election, however, and has raised over $200 million for his Save America Political Action Committee since losing the election.

That money can be spent on further efforts to overturn the 2020 election, or to begin a four year campaign for President. As of this writing, President Trump is planning an event to kick off his 2024 election campaign to take place on Inauguration Day, January 20, 2021.

Could America be entering an unprecedented period when two individuals claim the Presidency? Could this be a harbinger of a cold civil war, and of intensifying internecine struggles between red and blue parties throughout the country? Could tens of millions of Americans really be convinced that the 2020 election was a fraud and that Joe Biden is an illegitimate President?

It sounds like something out of a Renaissance revenge tragedy, a plot you might see on a BBC costume drama about warring factions of predatory royal families in pre-democracy England or France.

The astrology of the moment indicates that some variant of this outlandish situation could become a reality. Let's examine some historical parallels to present star patterns to understand the probabilities a little better.

There have been two instances of a square between Uranus in Taurus and Saturn in Aquarius in the last thousand years, so this is not a frequent event.

The first instance of the square between Uranus in Taurus and Saturn in Aquarius occurred in the second half of 1432. Outer planet transits that occur infrequently influence events for years prior to their occurrence, and often for decades thereafter.

King Henry VI (1421–1471), Anonymous
collection of the National Trust

At that time Europe was torn apart by the Hundred Years War between England and France, which began in 1337 and ended in 1453.

In 1429, Charles VII of France was embroiled in a Civil War against the House of Burgundy and their English allies, who had occupied the north of France, including the city of Paris. That same year, Charles was crowned King of France in Reims, despite the fact that his father Charles VI had disinherited him in 1420 and named Henry V of England and his heirs as his successors.

On the other side of the English Channel, Henry VI of England had inherited his father's war when he ascended the English throne in 1422. In 1431, Henry challenged Charles VII and claimed the French throne, under the name Henry II, becoming the first and only person ever to claim to be king of both countries simultaneously.

Joan of Arc had come to Charles' aid earlier in 1431, and her religious nationalism had inspired the French, who defeated the English decisively in a series of battles, paving the way for Charles' coronation. Joan would be martyred by the English and their Burgundian allies the following year.

Joan of Arc enters Orléans (painting by Jean-Jacques Scherrer, 1887), 
Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

So in the run-up to this Uranus in Taurus square to Saturn in Aquarius, in the 1420s, France had two kings, and the English king claimed two thrones. In the aftermath of this epochal, contentious stellar aspect, decades of Civil War enmeshed both European powers.

History was not kind to Henry VI, who eventually lost almost all England's French holdings, while suffering a series of mental breakdowns. His weakness triggered an English Civil War, the War of the Roses, which lasted from 1455 to 1471. Henry VI lost the war and died imprisoned in the Tower of London.

Coronation of Charles VII with Joan of Arc 
New York Public Library Collection

Charles VII regained French lands that had been lost to the English, but he and his son, the Dauphin and future King Louis XI, had a contentious relationship. In his later years, Charles found himself on the defensive in a cruel diplomatic chess game with the Dauphin, as his mind and body deteriorated. Charles went mad in 1461, paranoid that everyone around him was an agent of the Dauphin. He died of starvation, unable to eat or drink as a result of physical deterioration.

We can summarize the main historical themes of the Fifteenth Century Uranus in Taurus -Square Saturn in Aquarius era in England and France as follows:

In France and England during the period from the 1420s through the end of the Fifteenth Century, the period that began with Uranus in Taurus -Square Saturn in Aquarius, a feeling of nationalism swept away Medieval concepts of social relations in both France and England.

Militarized religious zealotry combined with these new nationalistic fevers, feeding the fires of longstanding civil wars. During this transition period between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, conflicting claims to the rule of European countries were common, leading to wars of adventure that generally ended badly for all involved.

Desire by Princes to rule over entire nation states, which were beginning to form during this period, led to over reaching on the part of factions of royals in key European capitals, which fueled wars between states and bloody civil wars that lasted for the next 40 to 50 years.

Now, in 2020, some 600 years later, the world has entered a major transitional phase, as epochal as the shift from rule by Medieval European warlords to the reign of Renaissance Kings and Queens.

The power of nation states, birthed in the 1400s and early 1500s in Europe, has been eroded by global capitalism. Transnational corporations and financial institutions have circumvented or overpowered most of the restrictions that nation states have long imposed upon their activities. Only a global government would have the power to regulate these global power players.

Image courtesy Shutterstock

The global environmental crisis has also transcended the ability of individual nation states to control their own destinies. No single nation can either avoid or solve this problem, only a globally co-ordinated response is adequate to prevent disaster.

This last year, the global COVID pandemic provided another instance of a problem that no nation can solve alone, a problem that also cries out for a globally managed response.

The present global governance crisis of individual nation states is of a scale much greater than the Medieval crisis of governance that led to the formation of nations in Europe.

Attempts such as the United Nations to forge a global government appear extremely unlikely to birth an effective worldwide system of political and social management. In the absence of a new global government, it is possible that during the present period of civilizational crisis the eroding power of nation states could lead to a devolution of power, and the creation of competing regional, ideological, and religious groupings within existing nation states.

In this scenario, in the United States, the power of the federal government to impose uniform rules and regulations on all fifty states is likely to diminish further, after decades of incremental erosion. Individual states, counties, and cities imposed vastly different social, political and medical programs during the 2020 COVID crisis, and this may become a precedent for future devolution of federal governance. Such a scenario favors the possibility of two vastly different political realities co-existing on the ground in America during the next four years, and beyond.

Donald Trump's political base is composed in large part of fundamentalist Christians who abhor the secular liberal elites they see as controlling American culture and politics. If Trump refuses to concede defeat, he could galvanize his base with a nationalistic fervor featuring religious overtones, and crystallize a serious confrontation between red and blue parties in the 2020s. He even has his own Joan of Arc at his side, in the person of his daughter, Ivanka Trump, who is considering a campaign for Senate in her newly adopted state of Florida, and who could emerge as Trump's alter ego, mascot and successor during a four year Trump family campaign for the Presidency.

 Ivanka Trump official portrait taken in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building of the White House Wednesday, Feb. 12, 2020.
Andrea Hanks/Official White House Photo, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

How seriously should we take the Trumps now that Donald has lost the election? As of now, the scenario in which he continues to claim the Presidency was stolen from him while campaigning for the next four years appears to many as yet another of Donald Trump's megalomaniac schemes.

Analyzing the astrological parallels between the 2020s and the 1420s, and given that he has already raised over $200 million for his campaign, we can see that this possibility cannot be dismissed altogether.

On the other hand, we should recall the famous quote by Karl Marx, commenting on Hegel's theory of historical cycles of change. "Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice," Marx wrote. "He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce."

Feast of the Epiphany

In the 21st Century, most Christians view the Feast of the Epiphany, taking place yearly on January 6, as a mysterious legend, recounted only in the Gospel of Matthew, a perhaps metaphorical tribute to the glory of the Christ child, and a punctuation point marking the end of the Christmas season.

Esoteric Christian Initiates say that the Epiphany is a spiritual festival equal in importance to Christmas itself, a day to celebrate the unbroken tradition of Wisdom School teachings that extends from ancient Middle Eastern sources, through the Egyptian Mystery Schools, extending to the Greek Hermetic tradition and the Gnostic stream of visionary Christianity.

Adoration of the Magi by Bengt Alfredson
Commissioned by Adrian Gilbert for his book, 
Magi: The Quest for a Secret Tradition

The Grand Conjunction of Jupiter, Saturn and Mercury in Pisces that occurred 6-7 B.C.E. is thought by many astrologers to account for the miraculous appearance of the Star of Bethlehem heralding the birth of Jesus Christ. According to the Gospel of Matthew, one of the more mythological gospels, the Star of Bethlehem guided the Three Magi from Babylon to Bethlehem where they honored the newborn Avatar with gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh.

On one level, the Magi represented the three planets involved in the Grand Conjunction. The Magus who brought the gift of gold represented Jupiter, planet of wealth. The Magus who brought the gift of frankincense represented Mercury. Burning of incense was part of the traditional ritual of offering made to Mercury. The Magus who brought the gift of myrrh represented Saturn. Myrrh was considered a quintessential component of any Saturn incense.

See our articles entitled Winter Solstice Triple Jupiter-Saturn Conjunction 2020 Cosmic Weather Forecast and especially A Christmas Story and Meditation Upon the Divine Mother for more on that remarkable stellar event, and the December 2020 Grand Conjunction in Aquarius.

In the earliest centuries of Christianity, the festival of the Epiphany celebrated the Baptism of Jesus Christ by John the Baptist. The Epiphany was the primary winter festival celebrating the advent of Jesus Christ

At that time, the Catholic Church had not declared the doctrine that Jesus was Christ from birth, and acted as God incarnate throughout his life. Jesus was thought to have studied for decades to prepare for the initiation that would transform him into an Avatar of Love and Light.

Early Christians, including Gnostic Mystery School Initiates, believed that Jesus had received training from Masters of Wisdom from numerous Mystery School traditions extant at that time during his childhood and young adulthood.

The Magi metaphorically represented the Wisdom School traditions of the Zoroastrians, the Egyptians and the Vedic Masters of India, and it was thought that Jesus received training in all these traditions.

Baptism of Christ, by Andrea del Verrocchio and Leonardo da Vinci, 
completed 1475, collection of the Uffizi gallery

After decades of training, Jesus' most elevated initiation occurred on the Feast of the Epiphany, when John baptized Jesus in the river Jordan. This was the moment when the Holy Spirit descended upon the Initiate Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus began his ministry immediately following his baptism.

For early Christians, this moment was the defining moment of Jesus' spiritual evolution, his Second Birth, his spiritual birth as the Cosmic Christ, and January 6th was the High Holy Winter Festival of Christianity.

"The Festival of Jesus' birth was celebrated for the first time in Rome in the year A.D. 354," explains Esoteric Christian Initiate Rudolf Steiner, in his 1911 lecture entitled Birth of the Sun-Spirit as the Spirit of the Earth. "Before then this Festival was not celebrated between the 24th and 25th December; the day of supreme commemoration for those who understood something of the deep wisdom relating to the Mystery of Golgotha, was the 6th of January."

"The Epiphany was celebrated as a kind of Birth-Festival of the Christ during the first three centuries of our era," Steiner explains. "It was the Festival which was meant to revive in human souls the remembrance of the descent of the Christ Spirit into the body of Jesus of Nazareth at the Baptism by John in the Jordan. Until the year A.D. 353 the happening which men conceived to have taken place at the Baptism was commemorated on the 6th of January as the Festival of Christ's birth. For during the first centuries of Christendom an inkling still survived of the mystery that is of all mysteries the most difficult for mankind to grasp, namely, the descent of the Christ Being into the body of Jesus of Nazareth."

This January 6th, as Mars and Uranus unite in Taurus, we are presented with a golden opportunity to pursue our spiritual practice, a time when the stars provide strong energetic impulses that we can utilize to transcend our limited egoistic views and attain a direct experience of Unity Consciousness.

Count of St. Germain, Master of the Violet Flame and the Seventh Ray of Ceremonial Order and Magic

Uranus is one of the transpersonal planets, existing far beyond the orbit of Saturn, the last planet governing the evolution of the self-conscious personality. Operating as an instrument of the soul, Uranus evokes a direct experience of Higher Mind, Higher Self and Higher Purpose. Uranus is governed by the Seventh Ray of Ceremonial Order and Magic.

Operating as an instrument of the soul, Uranus empowers us to recognize the subtle energies of all the relationships, interactions and structures in our lives, to discern which of these are aligned with the grand unfolding plan for the optimization of Universal Consciousness, and which of these impede our spiritual evolution.

Uranus impels us to break down outmoded forms of thought and behavior, and to discard outworn social structures and relationships. Uranus gives us access to the inner vision that can creatively formulate new mental maps of the world, new relationships and new social structures aligned with the soul's loving wisdom.

Uranus and Moons, courtesy NASA

With Uranus in Taurus, the soul impels us to release attachments to our petty personal, material goals and to transmute these pursuits into activities that benefit our community in material ways.

With Mars conjunct Uranus on the Feast of the Epiphany, we are all challenged to overcome the magnetic attraction of material desires, of lust for material possessions and for possession of our loved ones, in order to satisfy our personal appetites.

We will find tremendous support for practices designed to help us transcend our base instincts, cultivate our relationship to our soul, and act with compassion in every area of our lives.

Here is a beautiful, simple ritual you can perform this Epiphany to help focus the abundant transformational energies of the day.

Set a candle in a candleholder on a large plate on your altar. Perform your normal spiritual practices for the day.

Meditation, by Alex Gray

Invoke the energy of the Violet Flame of Alchemical Transmutation and ask that you be surrounded and infused with the energy of the Violet Ray, the Seventh Ray of Ceremonial Order and Magic.

Meditate with eyes closed for a few minutes, and visualize this Violet Flame surrounding your body and extending outward in all directions.

Reflect upon relationships, social situations, professional pursuits, love relationships, personal habits, fixed mental maps of the world and family obligations that are causing you and others pain or discomfort. Envision all those involved in these issues in a circle in front of you. Envision a circle surrounding you. Envision these two circles side by side, touching one another. Direct the energy of the Violet Flame to the intersection of these two circles. Continue your meditation.

If you like you may use the following mantra to amplify the energy of the Violet Flame for transformation of these challenging issues, relationships and social situations.

Here is the mantra.

Symbol of early 17th-century mystic Jakob Böhme, 
including the names "Christus", "Iesus" (Jesus), and "Immanuel" 
surrounding an inverted heart containing a Tetractys of the Hebrew letters of the Tetragrammaton (YHVH),
 and at the bottom, the Pentagrammaton (YHSVH).

Invoke the secret name of Christ. Chant the following to yourself over and over, "Yod, Heh, Vau, Heh, Yod, Heh, Shin, Vau, Heh", pronounced "Yod, Hey, Vow, Hey, Yod, Hey, Shin, Vow, Hey".

These Hebrew letters stand for JHVH or Jehovah, and JHSVH (Jeheshua or Jesus). The four letters comprising the name of Jehovah, YHVH, stand for the four elements, fire, water, air and earth. The fifth element, which is spirit, is called Shin. When you put Shin, or spirit in the middle of the four elements, into YHVH, you get Jeheshua, or Jesus.

Jesus indeed infused spirit into the material world through his Divine presence and ability to sacrifice everything, even his own body, for love. So chant these nine letters over and over to yourself as you meditate and breathe deeply and slowly. In this way, you can attract Christ consciousness, the spirit of Jesus, into your aura, your mind, and your heart.

Continue to visualize the Violet Flame encompassing both circles as you meditate and chant the mantra.

When you are done, take a few small pieces of paper and write down several things you'd like to change, related to the people and issues you have been meditating upon.

Chant the Five Element Mantra YHVH-YHSVH as you place these pieces of paper one after another, in the candle flame. Be sure the plate beneath is large enough to hold the ashes. You may also take the plate and the candle outside and perform this part of the ritual in the open air, if you prefer.

As you burn the paper, offer up the energy of these difficult relations to the Cosmic Christ and to Archangel Michael, the Angel of Fire.

Jane and I send you Love and Light from Winston Salem at this time of the turning of the calendar's yearly wheel of life. We pray that you all receive the grace and guidance you need to successfully attain your spiritual and material goals.

Meditation Moment: It’s good to feel you are close to me by Pablo Neruda

It’s good to feel you are close to me in the night, love,