2017 Astrology for Earth Renewal Forecast

adapted from special report prepared for Qoya Woodstock Retreat

Earth Guardians, Water Protectors, Love Workers, Priestesses and Humans Who Care,

Yes, it is true that 2016 has been a year that has shaken the ground beneath our feet. Our illusions have been shattered. We have been humbled, ignited, broken open, and revealed. We might be catching our breath, or we may be inspired to rise up and contribute our vision to the world. Many of us feel concern about the future that lies before us in the U.S. and across the globe. And we see that concern and fear echoed all around us.

Yet many of us are also seeing a new light, a new presence in the eyes of loved ones and strangers. Many of us are feeling a wild hopefulness, a new sense of aliveness within. We might sense that we live in a time of miracles and prophecies unfolding. We know to look deeper than the headlines around us. We know a bigger story is unfolding, and we can choose, with our point of focus, to co-create with Great Mystery our Collective Story as one of love, beauty, and joyful collaboration with Tribe.

We sense the potential for 2017 and the coming years to present us with greater challenges and shadow than we have ever faced before. We also, in our Divine Hearts, sense and know that the Shadow we see and feel rising to the surface is met by equal power of Great Light, joyousness, creativity, and the impossible becoming possible.

And ultimately, the Divine Feminine, Shakti, She who understands the mutual necessity of both Light and Shadow, tells us we must learn to bless the Shadow, within and without, because it calls us to our knees and it drops us into our deeper humanity, and it initiates us into our wholeness and Soul Presence. It is Love as the Dark Goddess loves—fiercely—stripping away all that stands in the way of our truth, authenticity, and embodied essence.

In 2017 we courageous pioneers of the New Earth, we who are so blessed to be alive at the Turning of the Ages, are encompassed also in Love and Light from Allies arriving from all dimensions of space and time to hold the Earth in this passage of tremendous change and awakening. We live in a time of great danger, and a time of great blessings, all at once. We were made for these times. 2017 is OUR year. We Are Called to Show Up and Shine.

Each of us has been gathering our tools and honing them. We are ready to give our gifts, and our world is ready to receive them. Consider over the course of your life all of the embodied wisdom you have gained consciously through workshops, intensive study, dedicated practice, and life experience.

We have been given so much—the ancient and future worlds are at our fingertips, the wisdom of yoga, of dance, of shamanic healing, the restoration of a dreaming culture, a multitude of spiritual traditions flowering in a million ways from the root of many cultures and bursting forth into new forms appropriate for our Age.

And this knowledge, these tools we are consciously aware of, don’t even begin to touch what we know and understand at the level of our multidimensional, ageless souls. We have lived so many lifetimes on this precious Earth, yet we are also birthed from the stars, from distant galaxies, civilizations, and dimensions of space and time beyond our wildest imaginings.

We hold ancient and future wisdom inside of us, and we also receive it, constantly, from the Stars, from the plants, from the elementals, from the dream worlds, from our meditations, from our higher guides, from our ancestors, from our Higher Selves, or our Oversoul which has access to it all.
We have within us and all about us, all we need to thrive and to contribute to the world, powerfully and perfectly, in the way that only we can.

2017 Astrological Overview

Venus in 2017: Radiant Self Love & the Fierce Feminine Arises

Venus in Leo Cycle Completion: Start With Self Love & Shine

By the end of March, Venus will be completing a 19 month Leo Cycle that began in August of 2015. To work most powerfully with the Divine Feminine at this time means that from now through late March, our first priority is to practice radiant, radical self-love.

It is time for us to treat ourselves as the “Qoya” that we truly are.

This means different things for each of us. For some, if we have been pushing too hard, it means softening, and practicing exquisite self-care, so that we can begin again to hear the voice of our feminine soul, and the true desire and purpose that arises from Her. When we have deeply filled our well, we move to the next stage of Sharing our Creative Vision and Bringing Our Light into the World.

For others of us who are coming from a place of grounding and balance (and there is no need for judgement—we are in perfect timing!), this is a time where our creative visions are coming through fast and furious and so it is time to step up as Vision Carrier, enroll others in our vision, and initiate the creative projects we so long to bring into the world. It is time, in other words, for us to Shine.

And by the way, not long after Venus completes her Leo Cycle, which means that the Leo Goddess is fully activated and alive within the collective, the North Node, which represents “True North” for humanity, moves into Leo, so we are guided to continue these practices of returning to Self Love, Sovereignty, and Focus on Creation of our Higher Visions throughout the remainder of the year as a focus point.

Venus in Aries Cycle Initiation: Find Your Fierce Feminine and Protect What You Love

April 1, Venus rises as Morning Star in Aries initiating a new 19-month cycle in Aries. To the ancient Sumerians, who perceived of Venus as the Great Goddess Inanna and her 19 month dance with the Sun and Moon as the “Descent and Rebirth” of the Goddess, this Venus Morning Star rise closest to the Spring Equinox, which occurred every 8 years, was cause for great collective ceremonies and celebration, and enactment of the Inanna Descent and Rebirth Story.

From April 1 through the remainder of the year, the Divine Feminine guides us to claim our fierce inner Warrior Goddess, sourced in Self Love and Earth Care. We are Female Warriors of Love, Light, and Empowered Purpose. Again, as with Leo, the focus is first on a grounding of Self, or I Am awareness.

We are to release our old habits of scattering our energies too much outside of ourselves and attempting to rescue everyone else, but to begin by getting very clear and focused in our own Divine Cause and Mission. The Aries Feminine is fierce, but she, like Leo is also fun! She knows how to have a good time, to bring a sense of innocence, and joy into the world. She embodies inspired action.

We are also, from April to the end of 2017, meeting, healing and releasing our old patriarchal armoring around what it means to be strong, what it means to show up, what it means to be fierce and to protect what we love within our own being and in the world around us. We are, in other words, healing the wounds of separation, and isolation.
We will be in training, relinquishing old weapons and beliefs that hamper our ability to inhabit our full Goddess Nature in alignment with our beautiful, humble human hearts, and in alignment with Tribe—both human and more than human.

We may find that we learn a lot from the Water Protectors at Standing Rock who embody the deepest strength and courage by meeting brute force with love, and prayerful resistance, to protect the Waters of Life that sustain us all.

If I were to sum up What Venus, the Feminine Divine, Urges Us to Do in 2017 it is This:
Love Yourself Exquisitely * Be You—It is Enough * Shine Your Light * Initiate Your Wildest Creative Visions * Step Into Your Fierce Feminine and Protect What You Love

Jupiter in Libra Ignites T-Square with Uranus and Pluto: Breakdown Breakthrough Accelerated

From 2011 to 2015 we experienced 7 drum beats of exact squares between Uranus and Pluto. These activations began a powerful shaking and falling apart of our old cultural and societal structures all across the globe. We saw this with the Occupy Movements, with Arab Spring and its aftermath.

The last time Uranus and Pluto came together exact was in the early to mid 1960’s. If we look back, we see that the greatest intensity of widespread culture change, upheaval, and awakening occurred in the aftermath of those activations, from 1965 to 1970.

Again, we see this pattern, where the great rumbling we began to feel between 2010 and 2015 are intensifying and they will continue to do so through about 2020.

In 2017, Jupiter is the catalyst triggering the Uranus Pluto square, amplifying it throughout the year, accelerating the level of change we see and feel around us. It is essential to remember that Uranus and Pluto’s function is to wake us up by forcing us to face the “Shadow” and integrate it fully personally and collectively, so as to gain full empowerment, and aliveness and to become fully initiated.

Jupiter in Libra and Saturn Square Chiron: Moving from the Story of Separation to the Story of Inter-being

Whatever sign Jupiter is in is the “highest path” or the most supported approach for the collective in any given period, in order to meet challenges that arise. From September 9, 2016 to October 12, 2017, Jupiter is in the sign of Libra.

We increase the quality, joyfulness, and impact of our lives exponentially this year, to the degree that we are willing to face our patterns of isolation and separation, and choose instead to connect in authentic, heart centered ways with others. We are invited to become more vulnerable and real, to remember what it means to be a true human being and cherish that.

We are encouraged to gather circles large and small, and to get out into the world and interface with others in ways that feel good and enlivening to us. We are encouraged to share who we truly are, and what we care about with others.

Charles Eisenstein, author of The Gifting Economy and The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible proposes that we are moving from an Old Story of Separation, promoted both by modern science and monotheistic religions, where human beings are separate from one another and from the Earth, which is perceived of as nonliving.

He says we are currently in the Gap, beginning to both remember and create a New Story of Inter Being. In this ancient yet new story we begin to see how the entire creation is alive and conscious. We begin to remember the language of the natural world around us, and we also begin to see how every time we choose to perceive and act from the awareness of our inter-beingness with that bird, that homeless person, that Syrian refugee, that suicide bomber, we are reweaving the fabric of the world. We are contributing to the creation of the Ancient Yet New Story of Connection.

We know now that a great deal of anguish in our world, and in ourselves, which leads to self-destructive patterns of addiction, stem from the widespread sense people have of being alone, and disconnected from meaningful connections and relationships with people, and from the Earth. We know that when people feel connected to others in healthy ways, and when they perceive the Universe as friendly, the need for addictive substances decreases dramatically.

In 2017 we are each invited to connect first with our own hearts, our own inner voice, our own soul , our own bodies, and from that place of deep integrity to reach out to others and to our Earth community to generate all around us a caring culture of connection, listening, and deep presence. This is what will get us through the hard times, more surely than any other technique.

From this place, we are called upon to activate the next octave of Libra, which is to stand up for equality, for justice, peace, dignity, and basic human rights for those who are most vulnerable among us. We also honor and protect the right of all creatures, all lands, our rivers, mountains, oceans—for all life on Earth to survive and thrive.

Saturn Square Chiron: Healing the Separation

The relationship between Saturn and Chiron is that Chiron is the Sacred Fracture Point or Core Wound we experience as humans. This wound is the pain we feel as we, limitless Spirit, Living in Unity with All That Is, bump up against the human experience of living in a body that experiences pain, loses those we love through death or separation, sees a beloved landscape destroyed. This is Saturn.

It is for us to learn to dance in this space of polarity and duality but is actually a part of our beautiful human nature to feel things, to become attached, to love, to experience grief when we lose someone or move beyond a former state of awareness r development. We want to learn to value our human capacity to care equally with our more detached Cosmic awareness.

We see in our own lives how some of our most profound experiences of growth and awakening occur as the result of loss, or pain, or suffering. This is not to glorify suffering, because in reality we grow tremendously also through experiences of joy, of delight, and pleasure!

Yet in the realm of Saturn and Chiron it is good to train our perception so that when we see pain and suffering or sudden violence in the world around us, we pay attention to the ways this is fostering greater compassion, kindness, openheartedness, and connection within the Collective and ourselves. We can feed that with our attention even as we create space to acknowledge the fear or overwhelm, so that it can more easily pass.

August 21 Leo Total Solar Eclipse with Regulus

One of the major events of 2017 is the Total Solar Eclipse in Leo on August 21. This eclipse is so extraordinary because it will be the first Total Solar Eclipse visible from all 48 states of the U.S. since 1945. Also because it is conjunct Regulus, the Star known in some mystery traditions as “The Sun Behind the Sun,” with a connection to Archangel Rafael, the angel of healing, and Mother Mary.

This Total Solar Eclipse will be experienced with greatest power in the U.S.A. and as a “Mega New Moon” it can be seen as a Reset Point for the U.S.A, reminding us of our original blueprint and destiny—yet to be fulfilled—as a Nation of Great Heart. We might also see it as a Reset for the original blueprint for humanity.

It is our destiny to model generosity and abundance, healing and feminine nurturing for those from all corners of the globe, including first and foremost the original inhabitants—who were meant to lead in creating a culture of Earth Care. It is our destiny to become a nation where all are supported in cultivating their inner greatness, their sovereignty, and divine mastery, in alignment with Mother Earth.

The eclipse is with the North Node, which means that it is about moving into the future and reaching for our destiny point, rather than surfacing wounds from the past. In 2017 we begin to see where true power and leadership emerges. Not from the halls of political power but from We the awakened, Earth-sourced, heart centered, collaboration-minded People, Ourselves.

Not coming together under one leader, but self-organizing, with shared and rotating leadership and all of us remembering how easy and natural it is to take turn sharing our brilliance and taking the lead, and falling back and allowing others, and learning to also work in parallel.

So we are invited to begin now the personal and collective process of envisioning the U.S.A. and our world as we wish it to be. This practice will inevitably cause us to bump up against the many areas where our vision and the reality “on the ground” do not match. Already so much of the Shadow has been revealed to us in, so this will begin to seem natural, to see more of it. We are learning to integrate it.

It is good to learn to see clearly what is not working around us. Yet it is essential that we focus more and more of our energy seeking out the hidden pockets emerging in every corner of the globe (and in our immediate environment!) where this New Earth is indeed coming into full view in all its messy, imperfect, glorious beauty.

It is for us to beginning seeing more clearly the change already underway within and without. It is for us to feed and nourish these flourishing new shoots of the New World Tree, the New Earth Community.

And of course, it begins as we align ourselves with the change we wish to see in the world around us. We begin to ask more and more, how can I support the new renewable energy economy? How can I use my time, my money, my resources to grow the culture of connection I want to experience? How can I truly practice the kind of self-nurturing I want every child to experience in my world?

This is Our Moment. We Are Ready. Let Us See What Beauty and Magic We Can Create Together! Let us Leap into the Void, Laughing, and Holding Hands.