There has been a chorus of anticipation building in mystical circles over the forthcoming “Harmonic Convergence”, an impressive alignment of planets that will be in the process of becoming in early to mid November and at its most potent (point of exactitude) on November 8th/9th, depending upon which side of the International Date Line you happen to be. It is the total lunar eclipse of 8th/9th November that perfects the geometry of this complex of planetary aspects – that, and the inclusion of the planetoid, Chiron. Before I go into the various interpretations of this grand alignment, let me break down its component parts and give you a chart wheel in which to view it.
(I have set this chart for New York in view of comments I will be making at the end of this article: setting the chart for 01hrs 14 on the 9th in London, places Jupiter precisely on the Ascendant.)
We start with a Grand Trine in water signs – Saturn trine Mars trine the sun – and superimpose another Grand Trine in earth – Moon trine Jupiter trine Chiron. Add to this two “T”-squares – Moon opposition sun (the lunar eclipse) squared by Neptune and the second, Mars opposition Jupiter squared by Venus – and before your eyes unfolds an 8-pointed star. In terms of sacred geometry, this alignment has great power and, like all powerful alignments, has the capacity to preside over marvellous events and terrible ones. Upon which we will speculate shortly.
Now, grand configurations come and go – you may even be among the millions of people born under one – so since the world still continues to turn on its axis and there has been no discernible evidence of the raising of consciousness – I mean have wars stopped, murders, corruption, hatred and malevolence disappeared? Do we all love one another and have miracles become commonplace? – we must rationalize that their power is overrated. Nevertheless, on this occasion, principally because of the inclusion of the total lunar eclipse, I am persuaded that something extraordinary is brewing. But, before I expand on my theories let me include some other views on the November “Harmonic Convergence”.
The Harmonic Convergence
November 8 2003, New York, NY, USA
20:14
click to enlarge
” I have been a practicing astrologer and spiritual seeker for more than thirty years. As the discoverer of the chart [this, by the way is John Mirehiel speaking, who somewhat presumptuously claims to be the person who first “discovered” this grand alignment] I have identified many individual astrological details that are in play at the moment of the Concordance Eclipse. My experience tells me that these factors, when taken altogether, confirm a promise of hope, joy, unity and transformation… Although this astrological chart is set for our future, the ultimate perfection of that ascended world exists right now… Time is the great illusion… in fact all time “happens” in the simultaneous NOW. If that is so, then this “future” moment of ultimate balance, power, and peace is available to us in the present… Quantum physics speak [sic] of “nonlocal” reality as comprising the basic structural “field” that supports and sustains life. In this reality, time and space do not exist. This is the place from which we are able to see the Universal Perfection in All That Is; and it is from this vantage point that we can step through the Concordance paradox and into a divine state of existence right now… This is the symbolism inherent in the interlocking triangles of the [November 8th/9th alignment]. It is therefore a great paradox of the Concordence Moment that if you wait until November 8 2003 to experience it, you might well miss it completely!”
John Mirehiel
Separating the meaning from the hyperbole I think what John Mirehiel is getting at is that if we are open enough to receive the ‘energy’ of the grand alignment then we can harness its joy, peace, unity and balance and in the process become transfigured. On the other hand, he does seem to imply that if we wait until the 8th November we will have missed the opportunity and certainly the point.
Patricia Diane Cota-Robles clarifies:
The spiritual hierarchy [I believe she is referring to her Guides here] has revealed that 2003 is the year that is destined for the global shift in consciousness we have been anticipating for the past 50 years. There is going to be a Galactic alignment that will open a multidimensional portal of Divine Consciousness into the Heart and Mind of the omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent Cosmic I AM ALL THAT IS. During that rare moment the Cosmic I AM will flood the Earth with unprecedented frequencies of Divine Consciousness and lift every man, woman and child a quantum leap into the remembrance of the Oneness in ALL life.”
Yes… I see.
As I mentioned earlier, there have been many grand alignments over the decades, and most have been heralded as emblems of global enlightenment. Many astrologers and mystically minded folk considered Feb 4th/5th 1962 to be the official dawn of The Age of Aquarius.
No less than seven planets and a total solar eclipse in the sign of Aquarius, opposed by Uranus in Leo lent plenty of astrological weight to the theory and, indeed, the two decades that followed were suffused with the heady scent of the brotherhood of man, flower power, love and peace – quintessentially Aquarian themes. Yet forty years down the line that Golden Age of enlightenment remains tantalizingly out of reach. In 1982 the approach of another alignment sent some stargazers heading for the safety of the hills in readiness for a shift in the earth’s axis and in consciousness. And August 1987 gave us the forerunner of 2003’s “Harmonic Convergence”.
The significance of this alignment lay not in any complex geometric shapes but in the fact that the seven planets loosely forming a Grand Trine were all in fire signs. As Marcia Starck put it:
“The Harmonic Convergence of August 15/16 1987 was an example of how planetary alignments synchronized with much ancient esoteric wisdom, the Mayan Calendar and the Hopi prophecies in particular. At this time there were seven planets in fire signs, symbolizing the purifying as well as the destructive aspects of the times we are entering.”
Earth Mother Astrology: Llewellyn Publications
Certainly, the belief that this Grand Trine augured a gigantic leap in consciousness compelled thousands of people to head for remote and beautiful parts of the globe to capture the essence of the planetary fire and so upgrade their consciousness. The 1987 alignment passed me by but in 1989 my attention was definitely caught by what was called The November Time Warp. Not perhaps the most poetic of titles but what came in the wake of it was a set of truly uplifting and epoch-making events: the fall of the Berlin Wall and the overthrow (by the people) of the bloody and repressive Ceaucescu regime in Roumania. According to Amatron, a channelled entity:
The Dawn of the Age of Aquarius
February 5 1962, Los Angeles, CA, USA
08:15
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Harmonic Convergence (1987)
August 15 1987, London, England
06:00
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“During the November time warp there will be a dimensional collapsing of time… It is an evolutionary process, an expansion of energy. Because you have invoked higher consciousness you have magnetized to you a gravitational field that is now pulling you to a new dimension… Your whole galaxy is expanding in consciousness. It is speeding up in frequency…”
Divine Encounters: Penny Thornton: Aquarian Press/Harpers San Francisco
And so on: more hyperbole and grandiloquence. With all these shifts in consciousness humanity should be able to do a better job of running the planet, surely!
What was perhaps more significant than a galactic time warp was that at that very time (17th – 19th November 1989) the prevailing Saturn-Neptune conjunction was animated by Venus and Jupiter while Pluto ‘rested’ at the mid-point of Mars and the sun in Scorpio. The Saturn-Neptune conjunction in Capricorn epitomized the erosion of long-standing structures and with the intervention of Venus and Jupiter – a truly heart-opening combination – those structures weren’t so much eroded as bulldozed.
So, here we are at another juncture when an impressive alignment provokes notions of the great shift of consciousness. And, of course, we are drawing ever nearer to December 21st 2012, when the ancient Mayan Calendar predicts the end of this ‘final’ world cycle. Or does it? According to Jose Argelles and his wife, Lloydine, by altering the Gregorian calendar to conform to a thirteen moon cycle (thereby generating a thirteen month year) it will “complete the necessary realignment of humanity to the cycles naturally experienced by Earth” and prevent us from crashing “into the wall of the 2012 necrosphere”!
I apologize for not being able to shed any light on the ‘wall of the 2012 necrosphere’ but Peter Bulliard* goes on to say in reference to the Argelles’ work, that according to the Mayan Calendar we have exactly one galactic spin cycle left [now, is that a Freudian slip?] to complete the realignment of humanity to the cycles naturally experienced by Mother Earth. Bulliard also provides further food for apocalyptic thought by adding comments from other psychics and researchers:
Psychic, Silvia Browne believes the Mayan 2012 date is wrong anyway because her guides have told her that 2003 is the correct corresponding Gregorian year. According to shaman-psychologist, Dr. Alberto Villoldo, Peruvian shamans of the Q’ero lineage have talked about a significant event in the late autumn of 2003 that will mark the end of a great cycle of time (“Pachakuti”). In this late autumn period “a tear in the fabric of time will appear and those who have prepared for it will be able to walk through it and into their luminous bodies.” “Time researcher”, Preston Nicholls, has earmarked 2003 as the year at the other end of the “time wormhole” that was opened by the Philadelphia Experiment in 1943. And healer and teacher, Starr Fuentes, was told of the significance of the November 8th alignment by her own teacher in 1964. [She and John Mirehiel must talk.]
* Sadly, in my research for this piece I could not track down Peter Bulliard, nor in which publication his article originally appeared.
So here we are (at the time of writing) some twenty-two days before the total lunar eclipse of 8th/9th November and the perfection of this current grand alignment. What can we expect in terms of real life events?
As I mentioned earlier, were it not for the participation of the total eclipse I would not be paying much heed to this planetary configuration and to some extent it is compromised by the inclusion of Chiron, which is not a planet but a planetoid or an asteroid, depending on your persuasion. Reassuringly, I am not the only voice to pour cold water on the idea that this alignment has the capacity to raise consciousness. John Townley, in his article, The Other Side Of The Coin, included on John Mirehiel’s website astrosite.com cautions:
“Astrological history is littered with the corpses of marvellous sky shows of great portent [yet] most often the least heralded and unlikely ones bring on cultural and socio/political watersheds, while the ones we astrologers pick as being earthshaking pass by relatively unnoticed…
Whatever the consciousness-expanding properties of this so-called Harmonic Convergence it will be in place at a time already throbbing with global disharmony, and to my mind the factors that point to November 2003 as a critical period for the world lie not in this pattern on this day alone but in the series of planetary transits that follow in its wake.
There is not just one total eclipse in November but two, the second – solar and considered even more powerful – occurs on the 23rd/24th. Before this date Uranus will have squared Venus (2nd), Mercury (11th) and the sun (21st) – incidentally Uranus is making its final squares to these bodies before it leaves Aquarius so it may well be at its most destabilizing. Just prior to the solar eclipse Venus will square Jupiter (15th), conjunct Pluto (18th) and Mars will oppose Jupiter (20th). And two days after the solar eclipse Mercury will conjunct Pluto (25th) while Mars squares it (26th). This is enough of a planetary cocktail to set the world on fire, whether in the most joyful sense or the most devastating. However, it must be said that there have been occasions earlier this year when the transits had a similarly incendiary aura to them – late February, mid-March, mid-late June, late August and early-to-mid September – and although these periods coincided with inflammatory world events (not least the beginning of the controversial War on Iraq) a major global disaster did not occur, nor was there a large scale terrorist attack on Western soil. And it is this latter prospect that raises its ugly head under November’s star-crossed canopy.
If we return to the lunar eclipse of the 8th/9th, at that moment in time, from the standpoint of New York, Saturn is rising, and since Saturn’s degree is the natal sun of the US and George W. Bush’s natal sun, the portents are not happy ones. Of course, Saturn will rise over the horizon every single day at some point so this in itself is not significant; what makes it significant is that at the precise moment of the lunar eclipse, Saturn rises. Furthermore, Saturn’s position at 13 Cancer will be squaring the US’s natal Saturn (14 Libra) and squaring the President’s moon-Jupiter conjunction (15-17 Libra). Not to be forgotten either is the all-important detail that on that never to be forgotten moment in 2001, 9-11** at 8.46 am in New York, 14 Libra (the US natal Saturn) was rising, with Mercury also at 14 Libra.
At the very least, this heavy Saturnian theme suggests that the US and President Bush are entering a period of greater alienation from the rest of the world – responsibilities weigh heavily on their shoulders, their enemies are solidly railed against them and earlier actions will have to be paid for – but at worst this Saturn symbolism, and the rest, could herald a terrorist attack on a scale of 9-11*, and the loss of one or more leading world figures. That the President is currently touring the Far East places him in the jaws of the tiger for a brief period and while no physical harm may come to him there, his presence will no doubt inflame anti-American feelings among the more militant Muslims, and may well provide the psychological spark for an attack that has been in the pipe-line for some while.
Another minor point to consider in light of all the ‘hard’ planetary aspects of November is that Uranus is conjuncting the US natal moon, and since the moon represents the American people, they are either in revolutionary mood or about to have their lives and their routines severely disrupted. Indeed, you only have to go back some eight weeks to the black-out that affected 50 million people in the North-East of the United States, to see just how inconvenient Uranus can be. Furthermore, in the chart for the solar eclipse from the standpoint of New York, the Mid-heaven degree is the US moon and, of course, Uranus is precisely at that point. Plus, for good measure a triple conjunction (Mercury, Pluto and Venus) straddles the Descendant. What a spectre of disarray ***.
Pope John Paul II is another world figure whose chart connects with November’s lunar eclipse. This much beloved Pontiff was born on a solar eclipse and he celebrated his birthday this year in May two days after a total lunar eclipse. The symbolism of a life coming full circle is redolent in this year’s eclipse pattern for the Pope and in keeping with his epithet, The Labour of the Sun, it seems his labour is indeed at an end. Certainly, the passing of a great religious figure from the physical world to the spiritual realm would reflect any consciousness-raising properties of the “Harmonic Convergence”.
I happen to believe that achieving higher-consciousness is not a matter of standing under a celestial configuration in the hopes that you will be bathed in and transfigured by its ‘energies’. If it were only that easy. Higher consciousness is evoked in life and death defining moments – when you decide to storm a cockpit and overpower some terrorists bent on flying a 727 into The White House, for instance. Acts of heroism, feats of bravery, scientific discoveries, great works of art and literature are all achieved in a state of higher consciousness, and usually after many years of sustained effort. An ‘Aha!’ moment is invariably the culmination of years
Solar Eclipse
November 23 2003, New York, NY, USA
17:50
click to enlarge
of dedication, effort and focus. It must also be remembered that configurations, eclipses and even harmonic concordances are nonpartisan – they are divinely aimed at all mankind, regardless of race, culture or creed. And operating on the principle that 2003’s “Harmonic Convergence” is a moment of sublime unity with God, just whose God are we talking about? Given the essential harmony of the configurations on 9-11, some might construe that on that occasion those who perpetrated the act of terrorism were the ones who were divinely blessed and inspired.
So, as we stand on the threshold of a mettle-testing few weeks, all these considerations provide contrasting food for thought. And regardless of my somewhat cynical stance to the divine properties of the “Harmonic Convergence” I would welcome any demonstrations of higher consciousness at work. It would be wonderful for Prime Minister Sharon to invite Yasser Arafat for tea to discuss the dismantling of the settlements on the West Bank and the future of the State of Palestine. And it would be truly marvellous if KIM Chong-il of North Korea suddenly abandoned his nuclear arms programme and allowed his people to know what life was like outside the prison of their own country… But past experience has surely taught us that divine moments in time do not manifest as a magic raft upon which to transport us all to peace and enlightenment. In many ways we are no further forward in terms of man’s humanity to man than we were in the Dark Ages.
If I have a positive thought upon which to end it would be my suggestion that we should all hope for the very best while preparing for the absolute worst!
Bon Voyage!
“** The terrorist attack on the World Trade Centre in 2001
*** The Mid-heaven of the tragic ferry incident on Staten Island, NY (15th Oct 2003: 15hrs 20) was the exact degree of this solar eclipse.