Truth.
A word that is creating some stormy currents of late.
My truth. Your truth. The truth.
How we define the word depends on who we ask. Scientific truth looks at what is provable via facts, data, analysis, and replication. Philosophic truth plays in the dialectic reasoning of comparative ideals. Art, theology, spirituality, and psychology all have their own unique definitions and explanations of truth.
Looking at the origins of the word gives a bit more insight into its roots, “faithfulness, fidelity, loyalty, sincerity, veracity”.
Scholars and great thinkers throughout the years have tried to describe the word coming up with entire theories, including substantive, minimalist, logical, mathematical, and semantic. Whole schools of thought are dedicated to defining truth, and yet here we are, stuck in the quagmire of redundant questions with no real answers. The word itself seems to denote a sense of clarity, yet it is ever ambiguous—quite the oxymoron.
Perhaps we cannot define truth because it is sourced in something bigger and inexplicable by the triviality of diction. Perhaps truth is foggy to our human understanding because it is forever filtered through the bias of our unique perspective. Perspective isn’t necessarily wrong, of course. If we witness a car accident from differing vantage points and report our factual findings, our accounts would be different. But we would both be right.
Enter beliefs
Maybe, truth is the light and beliefs are the prisms through which the light is filtered. In this way, beliefs are personal interpretations of truth, but the lines here are foggy too. Truth looks different depending on which part (belief) through which we filter it. Habitual ego filtered truth often varies considerably compared to the right-brain soul-centered, empathic, and more intuitive variety. Logical truth might differ from emotional truth based on underlying beliefs, memories, and experiences. A belief system sourced in fear or defense creates a much different result than one filtered through love and acceptance. All might be valid in theory but unhelpful or even destructive, depending on the situation.
Maybe the best way to define truth is not what it is, but what it isn’t.
Maybe that is always the work. Not to decide the rightness or the wrongness of something but to live with such awareness that we get to know all angles of our personal prism. In this way, we consciously decipher and direct the flow of illumination, becoming ever more aware of what is animating our truth and not attaching to truth itself.
Astrology has a way of defining these bigger concepts through the symbolic language of archetypes. The planets are not doing anything to us, but merely a reflection of the cacophony of our parts. As such, in astrology, we are always working within the polarities of ideas- the signs, houses, and planets create a balanced circle of opposition. In this case, we have Gemini, the need for an open and expansive mind balanced with the Sagittarian need to define and consolidate meaning.
No doubt, truth has power and with it, responsibility.
Done well, we have a clear prism that welcomes the expansion and contraction of ideals that perpetuate significant change. Done less well, and we have dysfunctional and even dangerous dogmatic authoritarianism using its power for selfish gains.
Choice points of change are ripe with potential right now, the buried treasure we may not want to see rising to the surface. Why? We have officially entered eclipse season, and the nodes of fate are always intertwined with eclipses. Typically, eclipses arrive in pairs, but this is the first of three consecutive eclipses, emphasizing that the lessons are required and cannot be ignored.
Additionally, with the Full Moon in Sagittarius, the South Node is highlighted (SN is Sagittarius, and the NN is Gemini). For more on that, go to Through the Looking Glass. And the South Node always directs us to shadowy layers and opportunities of correction. Think of eclipses as reboots to a system. Like turning your computer off and back on again to magically reset, an eclipse does just that. In a Lunar Eclipse, the light of the Sagittarius Moon is temporarily blocked. Truth needs correction in some significant way. Perhaps, something we are missing, avoiding, denying, or projecting. Maybe an outdated filtering system needs updating. Regardless, we will be required to see something more accurately. (For more on what that is, find 15 ° Sagittarius in your chart).
Truth needs a reboot.
Collectively and personally, something is arising we NEED to see. We need to scrub the prism. Remember, this will likely be uncomfortable or not what we want to accept. We are playing with the South Node of the moon, after all- the shadow side of truth. We cannot change what we cannot acknowledge, though. Therein lays the alchemy of this time.
When we know better, we do better.
It is time to do better.
Wherever Sagittarius rests in your chart is your most direct vehicle for truth. When this part of you is realized, competence, honesty, and integrity exude. When you speak, people listen. Within that voice is authority. It is up to use that for the greater good- or not. Because truth can be illuminating, inspiring, and expansive tendrils of encouragement etched with hope. It can also be dogmatic, authoritarian, exploitative, immobile, and tyrannical etched with fear. The ego loves nothing more than to appear spiritual. Anything can become dogmatic and stereotyped. Economics, race, gender, spirituality, and politics can be forces of connection or exclusion. It all depends on the filter through which it ignites. Throughout history to the present day, we have witnessed both. Horrific acts of violence and hate have been committed (and are still) in the name of “truth”. As have amazing moments of compassionate inspiration and cooperation.
Nothing grows in a closed system. To grow we need light.
The pause of the light of the Sagittarius Moon, the reassessment of truth, is meant to offer Gemini medicine -the curiosity of expansion. The ability to see a different perspective, receive needed data, and ask more critical questions. It is time to fact check our lives, our nation, and our world.
The patterns at the beginning of the year, the great pauses, are still every activated (Saturn, Pluto, Jupiter, and Venus are all retrograde). For more, check out The Astrology of 2020. More clarity will likely arise around what that transformation is asking of you personally and collectively. Mercury also reached the shadow point of its retrograde cycle on June 2nd at 5° Cancer, stirring some emotional currents. What does all that mean?
Compassion, empathy, cooperation, and embracing the feminine genius are key to any answers arising for you. Our feelings are vital guideposts to truth.
Often we know the truth by the way it makes us FEEL.
So, expect revelations, both collective and personal. Shocks of reality that forces new data to emerge. Expect to feel deeply. Expect choice points to arise that offer you to challenge long-standing beliefs and perceptions.
Be willing to see things in a new way. Be willing to let go. Even and especially the things that have defined you. Be ready to risk. Leap into the unknown. Rise with the fire of both passion and inspiration. That is what this Full Moon Eclipse in Sagittarius reboot is all about.
Sagittarius, the archetypal scholar, philosopher, and voyager, seeks to forge a new way beyond the tyranny of the familiar. To do that, though, we must set sail on an uncharted sea. Maybe our desire for truth is merely an attempt to mitigate the uneasiness of the unknown, while the real answers we seek are found in the discomfort itself.
Perhaps, we have a hard time defining truth because to do so redacts the required balance. Truth was never meant to be a static immobile force but an ever-expanding process of discovery. Perhaps we were never meant to focus on the duality of truth, but how to develop awareness so precise, we can consciously direct the light through a lens of empathy, cooperation, connection and integrity of the greatest good.
Maybe that is the fire of revelation, after all. To awaken us from our dormancy and see another avenue, doorway, elicit a new understanding, and become a more clear filter of grace itself.
“All the “not readies,” all the “I need time,” are understandable, but only for a short while. The truth is that there is never a “completely ready,” there is never a really “right time.”
As with any descent to the unconscious, there comes a time when one simply hopes for the best, pinches one’s nose, and jumps into the abyss. If this were not so, we would not have needed to create the words heroine, hero, or courage.”
― Clarissa Pinkola Estés