This Leo New Moon is a gateway which we may choose to step through into an altogether new land. We’ve been through much in these last two months. The Cancer-Capricorn eclipses, in line with Saturn-Pluto, came with much deep inner churning and trying transformation for many of us (especially for those of us with important points in the Cardinal signs: Cancer, Capricorn, Aries, Libra). And whatever was stirred up in these past couple months, we’ll be working with for another year, as the Cancer-Capricorn eclipses play out.

Pluto is driving this deep, difficult, but necessary, transformation of our structures (Saturn/Cap). Saturn at times attempts to block or control what Pluto seeks to evolve. Saturn and Capricorn are by nature conservative. They hold to stability and tradition. On an individual level, we may resist the big changes that are trying to work their way through us. But we can harness this energy toward diligent shadow work, loving and nurturing, taking responsibility for ourselves, aligning with our personal ethics and integrity, and surrendering to great change in love and trust that it’s for our evolution.

The structures of our personal lives, our ways of thinking and being, our communities, our nations are undergoing massive transformation. Transformation isn’t merely change. It’s death and rebirth; a complete destruction and utterly new beginning. The old way is the patriarchal military industrial capitalist death machine that lumbers on toward its logical conclusion of total annihilation.

The machine is human powered. It is the oppressive labour of ordinary people who have been coerced or forced into cooperation that keeps the gears grinding. The machine eats human consciousness, breaks human bodies, and pillages the earth. And most of us, in our ordinary lives, to a greater or lesser extent, are hooked into the machine. To the extent that we participate in the economy and have jobs and speak a language, we ARE those gears. Through no fault of our own. The machine coerces us into participation.

Haven’t we seen just how deep the sickness runs? That our very language and modes of thought are linked to the madness? That we are so embedded in this way of life that even when we make changes, we so often duplicate the problem within the attempted solution?

So what do we do?

Both the Capricorn Eclipse two weeks ago, and The Leo New Moon today, are conjunct Venus. Both are pointing toward love. It’s almost funny. It’s like this astrology is saying, yes, there is all this really horrible stuff happening on your planet. And the solution is: Love. And even more so as Leo is the sign of the heart. The lion is known for its courage. Courage means being afraid, but not acting on it. Acting on love despite the presence of fear. And the Sun and the Moon are sandwiched by Venus and Mars, further emphasizing this message.

Maybe you’re not as jaded as I am, but my mind doesn’t find Love a satisfying answer. I hesitate to write about this. It seems glib. Too easy, too cliche. But that doesn’t make it untrue or unwise. In fact, isn’t wisdom usually simple? I suspect my own mind’s reaction is just more of that old way of being. It’s the pattern within us that is cynical, that sees violence and oppression as inevitable, that says, come on, it’s only reasonable, it’s only realistic.

Maybe love sounds cliche because we associate love with what the war machine culture has taught us about it: it’s goopy and sweet and romantic, and you have to look a certain way and be a certain way to be deserving of it. But to truly love is so radically different from what we know that it’s hard to even imagine.

My practice lately has consisted largely in learning to love. It isn’t easy. It begins with the self. To talk to yourself and think about yourself and treat yourself and engage with yourself in the most loving way possible is utterly transformative. Try it. And then it becomes much easier to apply that to others.

Retribution and anger and force and hatred and judgement will only create more of that.

It is 100% understandable that people who have been oppressed will be angry and will need to express that and will need to hold their oppressors to account and will need to see justice. That process is important. But I don’t believe that that alone will create the change we need. We have to go further. And the more privilege we have, the more responsibility we have to muster the courage and humility and maturity to step through the gate ino that altogether different way of being.

I feel like part of our collective resistance to change is the notion that change requires some great effort. We’ll have to work super hard and exhaust ourselves and most of us just don’t have the energy for that so we lumber on in the ways we always have. But in order to switch the tracks on the trajectory of our collective future, the change we need will not look like those other changes that operated within the logic of the past few thousand years. Even the way in which we approach the change itself will be utterly different.

What if the change could be easy? What if it could be gentle, restful, nurturing, wholesome, loving? And if those are the qualities we seek to amplify, then doesn’t the change HAVE TO BE like that? (The ends ARE the means.)

How do we resist capitalism? We do less. Spend less energy. Buy less stuff. Work less. Rest more, sleep more, make love more, laugh more, lounge more, love more. We know that our worth isn’t dependent on our productivity or the clothes we wear. We know we are all worthy of love.

How do we resist war? We learn to see ourselves and the world through the eyes of love. We learn to do away with hatred and force, in our policies, but also in our everyday ways of being. We don’t abide the notion that war is inevitable and a matter of course. We have the gall to believe that the future might be different from the past.

And we demand it. In love, and fiercely, for the love of all and the love of earth, we put our feet down and we say. No more. Remember, WE ARE THE GEARS. When enough of us stop cooperating, things will change.

For those of you who, like me, are prone to those particularly persistence operations of thought that have kept us in the violence loop for millenia, here is an argument for the possibility of peace.

Even within a materialist framework, we have to acknowledge that our expectations and thoughts will colour what unfolds. (If we expect another to be hateful toward us, we will act in ways that encourage that, making it more likely to be true.)

If most humans have a particular expectation on an individual or collective level (violence, war), it will more likely come to pass.

Peace may not be possible. But it could only be possible if we believe it to be possible.

We don’t know one way or the other whether or not it’s possible. We don’t know that peace is possible, and we don’t know that it’s impossible. So, for all we know, it’s possible.

But if it is possible, it will only be possible if enough people come to expect it, or at least to acknowledge its possibility (for all we know).

Ethically, we ought to act in a way that encourages peace.

So accepting the possibility of peace is an ethical necessity. Leaning into that possibility, imagining it, visualizing it, praying for it, will make it more likely.

Therefore, the only possibility of collectively manifesting peace is to believe in the possibility of peace.

It’s our choice whether or not to step through the gate. What’s on the other side will be entirely new. It must be. What would it be like to operate entirely from love? There is only one way to know.

Hate creates hate.

And love creates love.

May there be peace on earth and love in the hearts of all. May we come to remember the day war ended. May we learn to love and honour the earth and all creatures in all our actions and thoughts. May we learn to live in love.