Grounding dreams, celebrating community, welcoming the New Lunar Year

Gung Hee Fat Choy, Happy New Lunar New Year of the Green Goat/Sheep/Ram.

"When the world was new the Jade Emperor created a calendar. Twelve animals were chosen for each of the twelve years...Ram was chosen for his courage." - from The Rooster's Antler's a tale of the Chinese Zodiac

Our computer is once again occupied by a bug that creates chaos with software; I cannot load photos using Blogger (it works this post). But, there are ways around that and in my primitive way I pin together methods on the border and offer you a way to see how Pete and I continue to ground our dreams, celebrate community and welcome the Year of the Goat/Sheep/Ram.


If you're curious LINK HERE to see our friends and community telling stories, making rattles, and dancing the Blessing Dance to feed the hungry ghosts and make space for joy, Grace and respect for place.

Let the sun shine in ... Aquarius dawning ... revolution, evolution

The view from the Quonset window is a stand of tree skins streaked with light.  Sun.  The morning is cold and clear. I was up earlier this morning, and came into a very cool cooking hut.  JOTS was huddled by the heater and ready to escape the premises for her natural duties. My thoughts were swhirling thinking about my family back on O'ahu. We are gathering our energy to aid in the healing of one of our dearest, and it's important for one like me who absorb energy at such deep levels to attend to what is 'mine' and maintain connection without collapse. All easier said than done, but it counts to pay attention ...

I checked in with Elsa in time to attend to the stellium of planets congregating in Aquarius.  Here's what she had to say: (click on the link to read the whole post)

The Sun, Moon, Mars, Mercury, Neptune and Ceres all gather in Aquarius on February 3, 2011. This is on the heels of the new moon the day before. Talk about a revolution!

There is a nice wrinkle here in that Saturn (ruler of Aquarius) is in in the sign of it’s exaltation, Libra, which trines Aquarius.


I see this as an extraordinary opportunity. To take advantage, note the house where the stellium falls in your chart and brainstorm how you can innovate and liberate yourself or others as it relates to that house.

The stellium of planets in Aquarius will be in my 1st House.  The Aquarius party will be in Pete's 5th House.

 Dana Gerhardt at Astro.com offered this for our 1st and 5th House Brainstorming:(Click on the link for the complete articles, and more about the houses that might trigger brainstorming of your own.)

The 1st House

..."Writing about the 1st house, astrologer Dane Rudhyar stresses the need to separate yourself from its early influences, the personal, social and cultural conditioning that mothered you.4 The work of the 1st house is to keep birthing yourself, which means to keep separating, to keep honoring what’s different about you... it’s about accepting the gift of being distinct. On a deeply spiritual level we may recognize we’re all one, interconnected and interdependent. Yet it’s also true that the whole does its most productive and creative work through individuals. When you embrace your individuality, you come closer to fulfilling your destiny. You gain access to more inner resources. You become more authentically formed.

The 5th House

"Within your 5th house lives a wild spirit too. It wants to shake up your sleepy life. It wants to stimulate your ecstasy for being in the moment ...It is well known that when transits or progressions energize the 5th house, people do uncharacteristic things. They have affairs. They buy flashy new cars. They dream of running away to the circus. They behave, in short, like children... There is vital life force energy in the 5th house. When the emotional life is thus nurtured, power gathers. There is energy to create. Or procreate. There is enthusiasm for life. One is vibrant and radiant... "

ON THE HORIZON: Chinese New Year, February 3, 2011 ... welcome the Year of the Rabbit

The Lunar New Year has long been simply "Chinese New Year" to me.  Long before I knew that the moon affected the start of a new year, I remember Chinese New Year as a girl in Kuliou'ou Valley on the island of O'ahu.  I think I write about those times somewhere every year around this time. 

Who do I see and what is happening?  I am a shy and observant big-eyed girl, barely five years old and I have already begun to love letters and stories.  Mrs. Quon is my teacher.  She lives right next to the school.  Paint easels and tables with primers with big black letters and pictures of children and their dog (that would be the famous Dick, Jane and Spot).

Amazingly, the memory of climbing into the jungle-gym with long threads of white coconut candy covered with hard sugar stays with me all these nearly 60 years.  It was only one Chinese New Year in my life, that year as a kindergarten girl in the valley school.  Joy is like that though.  It lasts.

The Year of the Tiger begins, Clearings done, New beginnings, Commit to your goals

The Year of the Tiger began with rituals of clearings and wonderfully inspired clanging and banging of pan lids with silverware.  Saturday night, just before climbing onto the futon Pete and I sat quietly with small sheets of turquoise colored post-it paper.  Our tiny vardo home/oasis bedroom newly cleaned, the time just before sleep was our time to commit to our private and collective goals/dreams for the coming Year of the Tiger.  A small and precious china bowl painted with violets, a piece of my long ago and treasured history sat empty except for the Citrine crystal that has traveled with us for a decade.  Silently we wrote words and images we see happening in our new lunar year.  When the sheets of turquoise were filled, we folded them words facing in (like eggs ready for fertilization) and placed them in the violet bowl along with the crystal.  "So it is.  Mahalo Ke Akua."  Our ritual of commitment complete, we ended with that simple prayer ending.