Thursday 30 May 2024

Astrology: Jupiter Trine Pluto June 2, 2024

From 
https://astrologyking.com/jupiter-trine-pluto/

Jupiter trine Pluto transit dramatically increases your power and influence. You can use this power to positively transform your own life, your environment, and other people’s lives. You will feel in control of situations and may find yourself in positions of power or authority in group settings.

The most significant gains during this period come from maintaining high morals and not acting selfishly. Gains will still come by putting yourself above others, but the improvements will not have the lasting transforming qualities associated with this transit.

The transitions on the way could include promotion in your career, leading to increased wealth and power. Journeys made now will also powerfully transform your outlook on life and be remembered as once-in-a-lifetime experiences. Overall, a very satisfying and evolving phase of life.

From https://cafeastrology.com/jupiters-transit-gemini-2024-2025/

Jupiter’s trine to Pluto can help us focus. It can also get us in touch with our more deeply buried ambitions.

It’s a time of heightened influence, faith, and insight. The desire for more personal significance can lead us to give of ourselves or motivate us to pursue individual or professional goals more ambitiously. This transit enhances our ability to sway or persuade.

We might seize the opportunity to better ourselves during this transit. It’s a time when long-standing problems can be resolved, and untapped resources can be harnessed. This transit is particularly favorable for business, law, and commerce, empowering us to channel our ambitions more effectively and offering us the power to organize. The desire for success is potent, and our determination is heightened, making it an ideal time for personal and professional growth.

New ventures can thrive, and so can reviving projects already in progress. This powerful aspect can lead to a stronger sense of confidence, as well as increased ambition, gumption, and resourcefulness. We may see opportunities where we previously saw obstacles, and our pursuits can have more depth and power.

From Planets in Transit, Robert Hand: 

Under this influence you will move to make positive changes in your personal and your social world. 

You have a strong desire to reform and remake at this time, you should be striving to improve condtions all around you, to renew and to serve as a vehicle for regeneration in your world. I fyou attain personal power in any way at all, use it to clear up and clean out. You may have the chance to lead or indluence others, so use that influence to help everyone concerned to grow with you. (p. 306)

Saturday 25 May 2024

Astrology: Jupiter in Gemini, May 25, 2024

Some extracts from https://cafeastrology.com/jupiteringemini.html

Whiles Jupiter was in Taurus (May 16, 2023, to May 25, 2024), Jupiter expanded our awareness of our need to establish ourselves and build upon what we own and have. Jupiter in Taurus encouraged us to embrace our needs for comfort, security, grounding, stability, collecting, and providing for ourselves.

Now in Gemini, Jupiter expands our awareness of our need to connect, learn, share, and prosper in our everyday lives. Jupiter in Gemini encourages us to embrace our need to collect, process, and share information. We seek input, mental stimulation, and movement.

Jupiter is in Gemini from:

  • May 25, 2024, to June 9, 2025.

In other words, Jupiter spends a little over a year in the sign of Gemini.

With an Air sign Jupiter, we are mentally adventurous, ready and willing to learn, and are interested in mind expansion. We are less attached to our traditional or sentimental values because we are generally impartial and open-minded. We can see many sides to an argument.

More specifically, with Jupiter in Gemini, we attract the most good fortune when we are versatile, sociable, curious, and put others at ease with friendliness and sincere curiosity. It can be advantageous to use our wit and ingeniousness during this transit.

Prosperous areas are communication and learning during this transit. Good fortune or experiences surround these things. In favor now are pursuits and fields that require dexterity, novelty, logic, gathering, collating, reporting, quick thinking, and agility. These areas can be most attractive and/or profitable. This can be a better time for investments in travel or communication. Examples of areas that might thrive include lecturing, tour guides, foreign language instruction, transportation companies, and delivery and shipping.

Mental versatility, curiosity, and friendliness contribute to success.

Winning Good Fortune

With Jupiter in Gemini, we function at our best when we feel connected and “in the know.”

Jupiter in Gemini brings opportunities related to transportation, communication systems, writing, speaking, teaching, reaching out, extending courtesies, being friendly or neighborly, our neighborhood, siblings, schools, checking in, and following our curiosity.

There can be a particular love of information tidbits, gossip, making mental connections and other forms of information sorting, developing skills, and coming up with new ideas with Jupiter in Gemini.

In contrast to the uniformity and passivity of the previous Jupiter cycle while Jupiter was in Taurus, we can now take pleasure in novelty, variety, and making contacts.

Building our communication skills or connections contributes significantly to success. Learning can be our comfort or pleasure zone.

During this cycle, we’re employing wit, versatility, cleverness, and social charm to our benefit—friendliness and sincere curiosity help to put others at ease.

With Jupiter in Gemini, we prefer learning programs that focus on ideas, fact-gathering, interaction, and discussion. Belief systems that connect people and encourage conversation, discussion, and questions are more appealing.

Tuesday 21 May 2024

Astrology: Jupiter sextile Neptune, May 23, 2024

From Café Astrology: Idealistic and humanitarian goals or impulses surface now. Making connections with others from a different background may figure. Widening our minds through unusual or different experiences can be part of the picture. Practical considerations could take a back seat now. Generosity and compassion increases, and our faith is boosted. We more easily make personal sacrifices for what we believe to be the better good.

Planetary Aspects:

 

When Jupiter and Neptune connect, we deal with matters related to our outlook, spirit, beliefs, understanding, and perceptions. This planetary combination gives a compassionate, spiritual, kind, and concerned outlook, belief system, or perspective.

 

While Jupiter and Neptune complement one another in many ways and can work well together, a key difference is that Jupiter seeks to build, develop, and expand while Neptune seeks to dissolve.

As such, when they’re working at cross purposes to one another, there can be an ongoing sense of things slipping away or repeated attempts to optimistically build something up with difficulties following through.

 

Possible Key Traits of Jupiter sextile Neptune. You will find some, many, or all of the following characteristics present in the personality, depending on how strong this aspect is in the natal chart:

  • Quick to understand the subtext of a given situation.
  • Strives toward the ideal of compassionate concern and universal love.
  • Appreciates the arts, subtleties, and appeals to sympathy.
  • Visionary and faithful.
  • Idealistic.
  • Is fundamentally optimistic.

 

Transit to Transit

 

With Jupiter forming a sextile to Neptune, this is a time when we are seeking inspiration, or when we are inspired to follow a dream or vision or to pursue a cause. We are considering our dreams, imagination, and compassion as we plan out or pursue our objectives, and we may feel supported or encouraged on a spiritual level. We are inclined to see the good in people and situations.

 

The 2020 Jupiter-Neptune sextile more specifically: Jupiter is not working at its best in Capricorn and Neptune feels at home in the sign of Pisces. This transit is particularly useful as it occurs around the time of a conjunction between Jupiter and Pluto and near to a Jupiter-Saturn alignment, although not at the same time as the latter. This sextile helps us keep a sense of proportion and to consider our morals and spiritual values as we pursue our objectives.

 

The 2024 Jupiter-Neptune sextile more specifically: Jupiter is expanding our desire for security, comfort, abundance, earthy or sensual experiences, money, and material things while in the sign of Taurus. As it harmonizes with spiritual Neptune in Pisces, we’re more likely to factor in our spiritual values and need for imagination, romance, and concern or compassion for others into our pursuit.

https://cafeastrology.com/aspects/jupiter-sextile-neptune.html

According to Robert Hand:

This is a time when you are particularly concerned with fulfilling your ideals in life, and you will formulate your eventual goals in very idealistic terms.

Helping others gives you a great sense of personal fulfillment that outweighs any personal sacrifice you may have to make.

With this tranit, your religious philosophical and spiritual concerns are often great….In fact, the nature of this transit is such that you will probably gain insight from those parts of your everyday world that you take for granted.

On another level entirely, this transit can often signify a desire to gamble. 

(Planets in Transit, 302)

Tuesday 14 May 2024

Introduction to the Voice of the Silence H. P. Blavatsky 3/4

Fragment III

The Seven Portals
This fragment portrays a chela passing through seven portals, which correspond to the six perfections (paramitas) of Mahayana Buddhism, with Viraga (equanimity) added. The Paramitas are described as golden keys that open each portal. They are structured according to the Theosophical sevenfold principles. The first four are connected to the last three by the Antahkarana. The Buddhist doctrine of the three bodies (Trikaya), termed the three vestures, is discussed.

Section 1 (Stanzas 196-214) Introduction to the Paramitas

200 – The Pâramitâ heights are crossed by a still steeper path. Thou hast to fight thy way through portals seven, seven strongholds held by cruel crafty Powers — passions incarnate.

Section 2 (Stanzas 215-229) Attuning to Alaya, the World-Soul.

221 – Of teachers there are many; the MASTER-SOUL is one (8), Alaya, the Universal Soul. Live in that MASTER as Its ray in thee. Live in thy fellows as they live in It. 
228- Hast thou attuned thy being to Humanity’s great pain, O candidate for light? 

Section 3 (Stanzas 230- 232) The Seven Gates – Key 1- Dana charity and love immortal

231- Behold, O happy Pilgrim! The portal that faceth thee is high and wide, seems easy of access. The road that leads therethrough is straight and smooth and green. ‘Tis like a sunny glade in the dark forest depths, a spot on earth mirrored from Amitâbha’s paradise. There, nightingales of hope and birds of radiant plumage sing perched in green bowers, chanting success to fearless Pilgrims. They sing of Bodhisattvas’ virtues five, the fivefold source of Bodhi power, and of the seven steps in Knowledge. 
 
(1) faith (saddhā),
(2) energy (viriya),
(3) mindfulness (sati),
(4) concentration (samādhi),
(5) wisdom (paññā).
 
Seven elements for enlightenment (Skt. saptabodhyaṅga; )

1- mindfulness (Skt. smṛti)
2- discernment of phenomena (Skt. sharmapravicaya)
3- diligence (Skt. vīrya)
4- joy (Skt. prīti)
5- pliancy (Skt. praśrabdhi)
6- samadhi (Skt. samādhi)
7- equanimity (Skt. upekṣā)
 
Section 4 (Stanzas 233- 235) The Seven Gates – 2- Sila, Harmony in word and act
235- Fear, O disciple, kills the will and stays all action. If lacking in the Śîla virtue, — the pilgrim trips, and Karmic pebbles bruise his feet along the rocky path. 

Section 5 (Stanzas 236- 241) The Seven Gates – 3- Kshanti, patience sweet, that nought can ruffle

239- The more thou dost advance, the more thy feet pitfalls will meet. The path that leadeth on, is lighted by one fire — the light of daring, burning in the heart. The more one dares, the more he shall obtain. The more he fears, the more that light shall pale — and that alone can guide. For as the lingering sunbeam, that on the top of some tall mountain shines, is followed by black night when out it fades, so is heart-light. When out it goes, a dark and threatening shade will fall from thine own heart upon the path, and root thy feet in terror to the spot.

Section 6 (Stanzas 242- 248) The Seven Gates – 4- Viraga, indifference to pleasure and to pain

242- Ere thou canst near that goal, before thine hand is lifted to upraise the fourth gate’s latch, thou must have mustered all the mental changes in thy Self and slain the army of the thought sensations that, subtle and insidious, creep unasked within the Soul’s bright shrine.

Section 7 (Stanzas 249- 260)  Crossing the moat and hedging in the Holy Isle

250- All is impermanent in man except the pure bright essence of Alaya. Man is its crystal ray; a beam of light immaculate within, a form of clay material upon the lower surface. That beam is thy life-guide and thy true Self, the Watcher and the silent Thinker, the victim of thy lower Self. Thy Soul cannot be hurt but through thy erring body; control and master both, and thou art safe when crossing to the nearing “Gate of Balance.”

Section 8 (Stanzas 260- 272)  Jnana Marga and the Unshakeable Fixity of Mind

258- Thou hast removed pollution from thine heart and bled it from impure desire. But, O thou glorious combatant, thy task is not yet done. Build high, Lanoo, the wall that shall hedge in the Holy Isle,* the dam that will protect thy mind from pride and satisfaction at thoughts of the great feat achieved.

Section 9 (Stanzas 273- 276) The Seven Gates – 5- Virya, dauntless energy 

273- The fearless warrior, his precious life-blood oozing from his wide and gaping wounds, will still attack the foe, drive him from out his stronghold, vanquish him, ere he himself expires. Act then, all ye who fail and suffer, act like him; and from the stronghold of your Soul, chase all your foes away — ambition, anger, hatred, e’en to the shadow of desire — when even you have failed. . .

Section 10 (Stanzas 277- 280) The Seven Gates – 6- Dhyana, door to ceaseless contemplation

279- Thou hast estranged thyself from objects of the senses, travelled on the “Path of seeing,” on the “Path of hearing,” and standest in the light of Knowledge. Thou hast now reached Titikshâ state (22).

(22). Titikshâ is the fifth state of Râja Yoga — one of supreme indifference; submission, if necessary, to what is called “pleasures and pains for all,” but deriving neither pleasure nor pain from such submission — in short, the becoming physically, mentally, and morally indifferent and insensible to either pleasure or pain.

Section 11 (Stanzas 281- 295) Bodhisattvic Powers and Renunciation

293- Self-doomed to live through future Kalpas,* unthanked and unperceived by man; wedged as a stone with countless other stones which form the “Guardian Wall” (28), such is thy future if the seventh gate thou passest. Built by the hands of many Masters of Compassion, raised by their tortures, by their blood cemented, it shields mankind, since man is man, protecting it from further and far greater misery and sorrow.

[*Cycles of ages.]

(28). The “Guardian Wall” or the “Wall of Protection.” It is taught that the accumulated efforts of long generations of Yogis, Saints and Adepts, especially of the Nirmânakâyas — have created, so to say, a wall of protection around mankind, which wall shields mankind invisibly from still worse evils.

Section 12 (Stanzas 296- 305) the Ârya Path, Path of the Buddhas of perfection

299- Not so when he hath crossed and won the Aryahata Path.* 

300- There Kleśa (29) is destroyed for ever, Tanhâ’s (30) roots torn out. But stay, Disciple . . . Yet, one word. Canst thou destroy divine compassion? Compassion is no attribute. It is the LAW of laws — eternal Harmony, Alaya’s SELF; a shoreless universal essence, the light of everlasting Right, and fitness of all things, the law of love eternal. 

(29). Kleśa is the love of pleasure or of worldly enjoyment, evil or good.
(30). Tanhâ, the will to live, that which causes rebirth.

Section 13 (Stanzas 306- 308) The Trikaya

306- “Yea; on the Ârya Path thou art no more Srotâpatti, thou art a Bodhisattva (33). The stream is cross’d. ‘Tis true thou hast a right to Dharmakâya vesture; but Sambhogakâya is greater than a Nirvânî, and greater still is a Nirmânakâya — the Buddha of Compassion (34). 
(34). This same popular reverence calls “Buddhas of Compassion” those Bodhisattvas who, having reached the rank of an Arhat (i.e., having completed the fourth or seventh Path), refuse to pass into the Nirvânic state or “don the Dharmakâya robe and cross to the other shore,” as it would then become beyond their power to assist men even so little as Karma permits. They prefer to remain invisibly (in Spirit, so to speak) in the world, and contribute toward man’s salvation by influencing them to follow the Good Law, i.e., lead them on the Path of Righteousness.

The three Buddhic bodies or forms are styled: —

1. Nirmânakâya.
2. Sambhogakâya.
3. Dharmakâya.

Section 14 (Stanzas 309- 316) The Seven Gates – 7- Wisdom, makes one a Bodhisattva, son of the Dhyânis

309- Thou shalt attain the seventh step and cross the gate of final knowledge but only to wed woe — if thou would’st be Tathâgata, follow upon thy predecessor’s steps, remain unselfish till the endless end.