Someone reached out to me a little earlier, wanting to know why things felt .. . weird. There’s a tonne of stuff going on in the Universe right now, and quite a few exact aspects in our neck of the cosmic woods. Jupiter opposed Chiron, Venus preparing to oppose Vesta, Vesta opposing the North Node, Uranus opposed Juno, Pallas Athena shifting into Capricorn (with Ceres’ recent re-entry into Aquarius) and so on …
There’s just a lot happening. As a Priestess / Spiritual Facilitator, I feel the effects of the Vesta Retrograde quite keenly. I suspect many of you who read my work would do as well.
In Pisces, the Vesta Retrograde basically asks us to Surrender, Have Faith-in-whatever-it-is-we-consider-Sacred, and to Let Go of what no longer works. We’ve been doing a lot of that with 3 years of Saturn-in-Scorpio, but this time around it’s not so much about the Hero/ine’s epic Journey into the Underworld-and-Back, it’s more like the washing away of Piscean illusion, delusion, entrapment and spiritual glamour (meant in the magickal sense).
My take on this energy is to simply let it move through you. Keep no expectations of what must or ought to be, especially in terms of your relationship with Spirituality. You’ve got the chance right now to put an end to far older karmic patterns, contracts and past-life-lessons. There’s a lot of dissolution going on, a lot of messages that come through endings and finality.
Stay open, be compassionate – especially if that means starting with you. Priestesses and Spiritual Facilitators are born of wounds – we become ready to serve once we begin to learn how to work with them, and in ways that will not harm others in search of our work.
Try not to force a logical narrative or understanding on what you’re feeling now – Pisces’ energy is anything but rational. Just let things unfold and allow the less conscious parts of your brain & psyche outlets to channel themselves into. Some of you will turn to prayer, others to solitude and nature. Some will seek to escape into obsessive-compulsive behavior, others will feel the need to fast or exercise some kind of regiment. Some will simply need sleep and sanctuary, and others will actively seek a way to make the world move a little faster. Generally speaking, if things are simply not flowing – don’t try to force them to.
Be as receptive as you can to the powerful currents of the collective sub-conscious moving through us all and let them guide you to where you need to go. Stay aligned with your sense of inner discernment and let yourself experience the powerful alchemy of Pisces, as its waters take you to new shores.
You will find great release through forgiveness and compassion. This is always the case, but more so even now. Spiritual work and rituals of release will be particularly effective now, but use them with caution and seek help from an experienced facilitator if unsure.
Vesta’s powerful lesson – to me at least – is about letting go of those wounds that started me on the spiritualist’s journey. It means changing what I thought and felt a Priestess / Spiritual Facilitator was. The wounds do not cease to exist, but an identity of service solely born of them is released. And so new chapters can begin, new journeys, new lessons, new energy can then enter the work that I seek to do.
I suspect many Priestesses and Spiritual Facilitators are feeling this in their own ways. The Vesta Retrograde ends on November 13th in Pisces and it finally re-enters Aries on December 5th, 2015. That represents the completion of Vesta’s cycle around the zodiac, beginning on February 25/26, 2012, 3 years ago!
But why, might you ask, does Vesta gain so much importance in the skies now, when there are so many other exact aspects?
Because of her proximity to the Nodal Axis. Vesta conjuncts the South Node in Pisces, opposing the North Node in Virgo.
Quite literally, new paths of Service open as we release attachments and identifications to certain types of wounds and vulnerabilities that set us upon the path we were on.
In other words, we allow Vesta to be re-born as we release her old identity and the karmic dynamics/attachments that required that identity to come into being. Some of you might find some clues as to that how/where/what/why that particular identity was born by looking back to September 25/26, 2006 – when the roles were reversed and Vesta in Virgo opposed the North Node in Pisces.
I found that my breathing difficulties and instant need to go pilgrimaging in Nepal started right after Vesta re-entered Pisces (in my 9th house of long distance travel). Many things began to be washed away, and I begin to see what this process seeks to uncover.
A New Priestess. A New Path of Service. A New … Chapter.
And by new.. I simply mean a stripping away of whatever fear, shame, pain, or attachment to certain narratives it was that made us forget what we were in the first place.
Spirit.
Bairavee Balasubramaniam
The Sky Priestess
PS – For those of you new to my work, I do not consider Priestess energy as exclusive to women. It is an energetic archetype – a particular way of connecting with some sense of the Sacred and embodying that connection with/to others. This archetype can manifest in people irrespective of their biological attributes / sex at birth. The Priest, as I understand the term, refers to a different archetype – you can think of it as the difference between the High Priestess and the Hierophant in Tarot. To phrase it a different way, I’ve met Priestesses who were men and Priests who were women; men who understood the Divine Feminine and women who perfectly embodied the Masculine; and beings who understood both, and much, much, more. And that just makes the world a whole lot more interesting.
Post & Image: ‘Priestess Bairavee in Nepal, 2015’ © Bairavee Balasubramaniam & Ashoka Mohannan (respectively).
Dr. Bairavee Balasubramaniam PhD: The Sky Priestess 