Grand Water Trine

7.14.13


Welcome to another stream of writing, in which I wade suggestively through the exaggerated water-themes prominent in the present astrology.

Water—the unofficially official element of the year! Does that come with a fancy award? A zippy jet-ski, perhaps? Or some sort of flotation device, for those scarier ripple-moments?

Anchored by Saturn in Scorpio and Neptune in Pisces, new-arrival-to-the-aquazone Jupiter in Cancer is moving in to form an exact grand water trine, aspect of magnified flow. And hey, look over there, here comes Mars too: Having also arrived in Cancer just yesterday (Sat Jul 13), he conjoins with Jupiter to add punch to this magic astro-triangle. The whole beautiful embrace, in effect now, reaches its peak from Wed Jul 17 through Mon Jul 22.

We keep reencountering this mode of non-rational messaging as 2013 progresses. Within these past several weeks, we've already crossed paths with other grand water trines, first from Mercury and Venus to Saturn and Neptune, then from the Sun (on the exact day of the US Supreme Court's rulings on marriage equality). I, for one, have already been overtaken with non-specific tears, to weep in release of emotions both personal and beyond. Immersed in this water, we are continually being met by 'callings'—and hopefully dispensing with our need-to-intelligibly-understand enough to acknowledge them as such. When humble enough to bow in awe, we thank our feelings: 'Even in your darkest garb, you are our friend.'

And from ASTROBARRY'S 2013, on this Jupiter-Saturn-Neptune grand trine: 'These water planets are calling on us to better integrate feelings, hunches, intuitions, and sensitivities into all our decision-making. Why else would it become increasingly impossible to preserve those compartmentalizing divisions, between the nuts-and-bolts of everyday mundane existence and their impact on our emotional experience of life, which we've typically used to anesthetize ourselves from sorrow or suffering? Maybe because we shouldn't be compartmentalizing or anesthetizing. Maybe because we need a whole lot more heartfelt emotional regard in how we manage every day, to counteract the cold and soulless aspects of modern life we've let encroach upon us over the years. What better time to invite it in than during the midst of a [Uranus-Pluto] revolution, when a great number of us are aching for grace?'

I, of course, can say more… though with sensible expectation that all these words will do is merely evoke rather than diagrammatically pin down. Such is the way with water, that invisible gel which seeps in whether wanted or not, yet evades all but the most tyrannical efforts to grasp or trap it. That also is its subtle soul-giving beauty, its everywhere-at-all-once-ness, how we all get wet when it rains, then together, post-drenching, breathe the fresher air, how the fog blocks our longer-range sight, imposing softer-focus, redirecting us to gaze at what's right here in front of us, meanwhile a love-note in a bottle on the waves washes up, uncorking itself to spill its sticky juices on the distant shore, all sides taste it.

The blessings and gifts are apparent, no? What we 'do' with this water trine is bother to care. Whatever further actions such care may inspire, that is how we follow up. Everything starts with the instinct to care, for others and ourselves. Exalted Jupiter makes this easier. Mars, less in his element in Cancer (the sign of his fall), can so eagerly desire to put forth his care, he sometimes even forces it on an unwilling target or seeks to 'caringly' avoid upsetting a loved one by withholding the truth of a divergence. But no mistake, he really fucking cares. Saturn in Scorpio reminds us that real care may indeed necessitate a confrontation with such potentially upsetting (or, at the very least, complicating) truths. On his clock, genuine intimacy trumps comfort on the scale of care-demonstrations. Neptune in Pisces wraps the whole thing in a spiritually compassionate gauze: We have come together to love each other. This love is our most precious commodity; we must therefore spend it wisely, restraining ourselves from squandering it on people or situations that deplete our stores rather than replenish them in reciprocity.

Water knows when the surface-happenings belie a different reality lurking underneath… when the undercurrents don't line up with the words being spoken. It all sounds perfect, but something's just not adding up. Something's not right. Water loathes the limits of the superficial. It'll leak ever deeper into crevices 'til it hits upon the buried treasure. Only question is, who knew it was buried there? These golden nuggets often end up underground due to someone's unconscious distancing process. And what are we fishing for, exactly? Are we just scratching too ferociously away, kicking up a whole bunch of dust, creating the very situation we suspect of existing by insisting it exists?

Enter the confusion between perception and creation…

… an eddying of information, everything related to everything else, which indubitably it is, but not always in productively meaningful ways… and every so often, an error in watery-thinking arises: pre-verbal awareness of an unambiguous reality, followed by self-aggrandizing acts of interpretation which presumptuously place the interpreter in the center-role as privileged possessor of The Truth, master-author of The Story, and/or prime victim of The Conspiracy… and at its worst, a slippery interpretive slope descends straight into psychosis, the water so overpowering, it drowns a person's mental coherence… ground flipped, feet over head, upside down by the tidal surge, nothing to hold onto… and sense, having devolved to undifferentiated everythingness, leaves the destabilized subject unable to find a reliable reference-point to shared reality.

This grandly synergistic water-trining can be, yes, absolutely devastating, too... even as we paint it as a 'gift' or 'blessing'. A sincere gift can paralyze the receiver. A true blessing does sometimes arrive in the garb of jarring trauma. These things are in the eye of the beholder.

Watch out for those who tend toward the unhinged: This waterwall may be enough to sever the tether altogether.

The wise ones on the outside may witness lovingly, lending our practical support when it might be fruitfully used… but please don't sacrificially throw one's self into the whirling eye. Would we foolishly dive into currents stronger than we can safely row through, valiant though our caretaking motives may be, and drown alongside the doomed? One more casualty floating alongside the other, swallowed up by the force-greater-than-we, does nothing to help.

Tsunamis, the ultimate excess of water, can sweep away hundreds of thousands of souls in a heartbeat. The inconceivable magnitude humbles. We might say this too, the most unimaginable, adheres to some water-logic unbeknownst to us. The 'everything happens for a reason' claim flirts with heartlessly failing to provide solace… especially while still in a moment of loss, when there's not yet any need to be 'reasonable' in perspective. But the living are left to contemplate—and, hopefully, to appreciate—some previously undervalued virtue foregrounded by the roused emotion, no matter how sickeningly salty or sour its first taste. We remember how much we have cared, and/or continue to. Flooded by circumstance, our attention is redirected to what feels most important.

The very harshest expressions of excess water contain in their potential the very same blessed gifts as the luckiest grand-water-trine occurrences… the distinctions between good and bad in life and death collapsing in on themselves… the tears renewing us… and the water breaks… and the cycle streams on…