The Great Conjunction
December 20, 2020
(Patricia Pearce)
It is the conjunction within that opens the way for a new world.
When I was a child, one summer evening I was out in our front yard with my mother watching a sky ablaze with spectacular pinks and oranges. It was one of those sunsets where you feel like you are witnessing the otherworldly.
My mother was a woman of deep faith, although she rarely spoke about it. But that evening, gazing at the sunset, she confided in me, “This is how I imagine the Second Coming will be. Jesus will descend on clouds like these.”
As far fetched as it may sound, her understanding of the Second Coming was quite conventional. In the Second Coming, Jesus—who was understood to be the one and only embodiment of Christ—would descend to earth again and establish a long-awaited reign of peace.
The Second Coming has been anticipated for centuries, since the time of the first followers of Jesus who expected his return to occur at any moment, and certainly during their lifetimes. That no such dramatic re-appearance happened caused some consternation among the emerging community. There was no intervention from the heavens. No overthrow of the worldly powers-that-be—and all these centuries later we are still waiting.
I’ve been pondering all of this as we approach this Great Conjunction of the planets—“The Christmas Star”—which is inviting speculation as to whether this is the moment when finally the way will open for the Second Coming to commence.
I’m not an astrologer, but this past Friday I was on a call with a group of people who have been taking one of my online courses, and one of the participants is. She was explaining to us the significance of the two planets, Saturn and Jupiter, that are coming into conjunction.
Jupiter, she explained, is a gaseous planet and brings the energy of expansion, while Saturn rules over structures. Furthermore, she said that this conjunction is occurring at a time in which the position of Pluto is pointing to the arising of the feminine principle.
I found it to be an intriguing combination, and even more so because it is occurring on the Winter Solstice, in the season of Christmas, at the height of a pandemic.
So although I’m not an astrologer, I am someone who tends to think symbolically, who understands this reality to be a form of dream, and who often looks at the world through the lens of dreamwork and symbol—and here’s where I go with this unique combination.
Structure Aligns with Expansiveness
We are in a time in which the structures that arose in a previous age are crumbling, which is necessary because they are inadequate to accommodate the emergence of what now wants to arise on the planet.
That structure and expansiveness (Saturn and Jupiter) are coming into conjunction suggests that we are moving into a time in which new structures can come forth that will be able to accommodate and support our expansion—a time when our creative and imaginative capacities will be freed from former fixed patterns and we will be able to envision and bring forth new forms and ways of being on the planet.
Structures emerge over time in response to energies, beliefs, and paradigms. They don’t drop out of the sky, but grow from the soil of our awareness. This means that this expansiveness of structure will begin within us, with the inner structures that make up our understanding of our self, and from there they will be reflected in the structures that we create together.
The Winter Solstice
This conjunction of planets is happening on the Winter Solstice, the moment when darkness begins to recede and light begins to grow. As I wrote in my last blog post, Ode to Darkness, I see the darkness as representative of the Unknown, of Mystery, of that which is present but exists beyond our conscious awareness.
This conjunction of expansiveness and structure, then, is taking place at the moment when something is moving from the realm of the Unknown into the light of the Known, into conscious awareness. And what might that be?
The Christmas Pandemic
The season of Christmas is the celebration of the incarnation of Christ. This Christmas, though, is unlike any we have experienced as it is happening at the height of a pandemic, a word that literally means all people.
Traditionally, Christ, or Christ-Consciousness has been projected onto a solitary individual—Jesus—when actually it is our true nature. For most of us throughout history, that Christ-nature has remained hidden as an Unknown within us. This is what is beginning to change; this is what is moving from the realm of the Unknown into the Known: the realization of our Christ-Essence.
This awakening to our true Christ-nature is the Second Coming. In other words, we are the Christ we’ve been waiting for.
So does this conjunction of planets and confluence of energies mean the heavens will do it all for us? Are we, as our ancestors believed, merely the passive recipients of a new world that has been foreordained?
If that were the case, we wouldn’t be the co-creators we are meant to be. Not only that, but as humans we have free will. This means we have an important co-creative role to play and we decide whether we will play it. So while these energies are present and can serve and support us, we are the ones who choose whether or not we will align with them to participate in this global emergence.
The Feminine Principle
And how do we align with them? How do we participate? We do so through the principles and patterns of the Feminine.
In the past we have believed that change comes about through effort, striving, fighting, resisting. But this awakening to Christ-Consciousness comes about through the ways of the Feminine—through receptivity, accepting, allowing, and relationship.
We participate in this awakening by receiving the energies that are available to us, by accepting that Christ-Consciousness is our true nature, by allowing that consciousness to come into form in and through us—and by recognizing that we exist in and as relationship, which is the definition of Christ-Consciousness.
In other words, our Christ-nature isn’t something we must strive to attain, but a given that we come to accept.
The Inner Conjunction
While previous generations believed the Second Coming would happen outside of us, to us, and for us, it is actually something that happens within us, through us, and as us.
So as breathtakingly beautiful as the conjunction of planets are on the evening horizon, it is the conjunction inside of us that opens the way for a new world. It is through our willingness to align ourselves with the opportunities of this moment and to participate in the transformation they are offering that we make this conjunction truly Great.