Astrology - Grand Water Trine, two different views

Sun: 29'Cancer
Moon: 18'Capricorn
1 Day to Full Moon

So.  A friend of mine emailed a group we are both part of on Wednesday (good day for mass emailings, being that that's Mercury's day) regarding a major astrological configuration coming exact this past Thursday.  Specifically, Mars + Jupiter in Cancer, Saturn in Scorpio and Neptune in Pisces, all coming to trine one another for the Grand Water Trine pattern.

Now, the Grand Trine happens fairly often - I have one in my own natal chart, across the Air signs.  But usually when it happens it involves the fast-moving Moon and only lasts for a few hours, or it'll split elements (one planet sitting in a different element than the other two when it occurs close to a cusp).  It's a lot rarer to get the much-slower social and generational planets involved across the same element: Jupiter, as the fastest of those three, still takes about a year to transit the 30 degrees of just one sign, and they stay together for a bit when it happens both prior to and after the most exact point.

I find it interesting to hear how the same aspect patterns can spark totally different takes on it.

GreenCorvid.com

Sun: 13'Cancer
Moon: 09' Gemini
Dark of the Moon

A shameless self-plug here, but I have spoken often about Monsanto and the other biotech giants, and their roles in promoting unsafe GMO products and deadly pesticides that are endangering entire ecosystems.  These are things that can and should interest Pagans, Wiccans, and anyone who claims to follow a nature-based religion.  I speak out often.  I Marched Against Monsanto.

Now I am putting my money, my reputation, and my honor where my mouth is in permanent business opposition to the companies that are killing the Earth and the creatures who live upon Her.  I am pleased to announce that my new online storefront has opened for business at www.GreenCorvid.com.

www.GreenCorvid.com will eventually carry the full line of Herbal Choice Mari health and personal care products: the entire line is certified cruelty-free and USDA Organic.  HCM is in the process of re-designing their labels to reflect the USDA Organic and Leaping Bunny logos, so I cannot openly list it on the website until Nature's Brands (Herbal Choice Mari's parent company) gives me the go-ahead, but the certification has been approved.

I am very glad to see it happening, myself: the USDA certification is an automatic guarantee that no part of the product was produced with sewage, radiation, pesticides or genetically-modified ingredients.  It means that there are no synthetic ingredients of any kind, including chemical preservatives (they keep themselves fresh based on their own natural properties).  Pthalates?  Hell no.  Parabens?  Absolutely not.  It is the highest standard of organic purity in the country, and the Green Corvid is proud to carry products that carry that seal.

Also, the development of these products was done and continues without involving innocent animals, either directly through testing or indirectly through parts and by-products.  Therefore, an Herbal Choice Mari moisturizer is based in purified water (meaning that it meets the Universal Standard of Purity), certified organic olive oil, certified organic jojoba oil and wildcrafted candelilla wax, all derived from plants, instead of lanolin (which comes from sheep's wool).  They are vegan-friendly and certified Cruelty-Free by the Coalition for Consumer Information on Cosmetics (CCIC). 

(As an affiliate, the rules of the CCIC prohibit me from displaying their Leaping Bunny seal of cruelty-free certification even though the company I am marketing for has already earned it for their product, but the company's direct website does display it proudly and the link above verifies that they do have the right to do so).

Not all ingredients can be certified as purely organic, because they are wildcrafted.  The only safe way to wildcraft involves a deep and unshakeable commitment to environmental stewardship, which is a business ethic in short supply these days and which I am very happy to support with my business, both as a customer and a marketer.

Finally, the full line of Herbal Choice Mari is created with the idea of not using any of the ingredients that are common allergens.  There are no nuts or nut products (no almond oil, for those allergic to tree nuts) in the Herbal Choice Mari line.  There are no glutens to worry about, no dairy byproducts, no soy (95% of global soy production is GMO, which would invalidate the USDA Organic certification).

I believe I have found a quality product line: I am removing the product testimonials that the parent company's website lists because I believe the ingredients' lists on every product speaks for itself.  I also support and hold the same commitment to non-GMO, organic, wildcrafting, and animal-free ethics shown by Herbal Choice Mari.  I truly believe that this is a line of products worth using, worth promoting and worth the price, and I am willing to work to ensure that the ethics driving Herbal Choice Mari and similar companies become more visible and more popular throughout the cosmetics industry: if it happens to be a way through which I can help provide for my family, even better.  This is something I can be passionate about.

To put it another way: 8 months pregnant with a baby girl, I am switching my house over to Herbal Choice Mari health and personal care products, because they are safer for my family than anything else I have found on the market and I wish I had done it sooner.  I am willing to use their organic products on my baby's delicate skin, because she won't pick up the toxic ingredients from them that she would otherwise from commercially-produced "baby products" like Johnson&Johnson.)

My Pagan side has brought me a good deal of knowledge of what different herbs and essential oils may be used for, both magickally and medicinally.  I find their product line offerings to be absolutely sound in this regard.

If you don't think organic is worth the cost, you might like to know what's in the products you're using now.  Check out the Environmental Working Group and their (very extensive) cosmetics database at www.ewg.org/skindeep.  Even some of the department-store "natural" and "organic" brands might surprise you.  (What are dimethicone, polyquaternium-7 and the ubiquitous, nebulous and ultimately undefined "fragrance" doing in JASON Brand Natural Cosmetics?  They're owned by the Hain Celestial Group - the same people who brought you Celestial Seasonings tea - which is known to carry dangerously high levels of pesticide contamination.  Same with Tom's of Maine, owned by Colgate-Palmolive.  How about Nature's Gate Organics?  Surprise, surprise... if there's anything in that ingredients list that a five-year-old can't pronouce, it's not natural, let alone organic: each of the companies I just linked make products that are commonly found at the grocery store in the "organic" section - and every one of them has an EWG score over 7, which is high-risk.  Compare to Herbal Choice Mari, where nothing - not the brand, not a single ingredient, ranks higher than a 2: safe.) 

Now, come find me at www.greencorvid.com and start kicking the toxins out of your body and out of your life.

Update: The bees keep dying from a neonicotinoid pesticide

Sun: 04'Cancer
Moon: 04'Aquarius
Waning Gibbous

Update on the Oregon bee kill-off, which I initially covered in my National Pollinator Week post earlier this month: lab tests confirm that the bees were in fact killed by the Safari pesticide used for aphid control on the linden trees around a Wilsonville, Oregon Target location.  Safari is a neonicotinoid pesticide known to be highly toxic to bees, and of a type banned by the European Union.  The bees have been dying since the spray on 15Jun, and estimates have doubled from the initial 25,000 bees dead to over 50,000. 

For more information....

Please note that it was unnecessary to spray the trees in the first place: Target had received no customer complaints about the aphids or the honeydew they produce, and it would not have taken a neurotoxic pesticide to kill them had they reached numbers which would have hazarded the trees.  Soapy water would have done just as well.

I think that pretty well lays to rest any controversy, anywhere in the world, that pesticide use is a large part of major bee die-offs.  I will be interested to see how the chemical giants (Monsanto, Bayer, Dow, DuPont, Syngenta) react to a solid confirmation that their products may indeed have a significant role in the worldwide Colony Collapse Disorder ("Bee-pocalypse"). 

I would also be interested in seeing how the Pagan community at large worldwide reacts to this news: most of us, it might be fair to say, consider ourselves to be stewards of the Nature we reverence.  This would be a good time to start walking the talk, if we haven't already at the individual level.

For my part, I am learning the basics of container gardening, specifically choosing strongly aromatic herbs that will attract bees and growing them organically, from organic seed - I will not feed the beast.  So far I have three lavenders, a basil, a mint, and a lemon tree sapling successfully started, with more lavender, basil, tomatoes, pomegranates and a mango to start when I have the time.

National Pollinator Week kicks off - with a huge bee kill

Sun: 29' Gemini
Moon: 28'Scorpio
Waxing Gibbous - 3 days before Full

My sister Alohi, who runs the blog Tales of Alohi, tipped me off to this story on OregonLive earlier this morning:

25,000 bumblebees killed, dropping from trees in Wilsonville; pesticide suspected

 25,000 bees.  55 trees, known to have been sprayed with neonicotinoid pesticides just days before as National Pollinator Week began.

The European Union has issued a continent-wide ban on the use of these "neonic" pesticides.  Why?  Because they have found sufficient evidence for concern that the extreme toxicity of these insecticides (to bees as well as to the insects they're intended to kill) is contributing significantly to Colony Collapse Disorder - observed worldwide among farmers and beekeepers for years now.  The evidence is strong enough that Vladimir Putin almost refused to meet with Secretary of State John Kerry because his outrage and fury over America's support for the companies that make them - including Monsanto, Bayer, and Syngenta.

If you like to eat, you may want to keep reading this one...

The Global March Against Monsanto

Today was the global March Against Monsanto.  While I don't expect that a march with the astrological configuration it had will have much effect anywhere in the world, and less here where it was begun and completed on a Saturday, entirely within the local planetary hour of Venus, it may yield some networking for those with the power to make the changes necessary.  (I addressed the astrological chart for the March in a previous post.)  But my husband and I marched anyway to offer our support for policies and legislation that will break Monsanto's hold on our local Hawaiian agriculture and help break its stranglehold on the nation's food supply, the first time either of us has really gotten into political activism.

25May2013 Lunar Eclipse and the March Against Monsanto

There will be a penumbral Lunar Eclipse on that day at 04'08"Sagittarius. According to CafeAstrology, the Sabian symbol for that degree is:

"An old owl sits alone on the branch of a large tree."

I don't use the Sabians often, but I find they frequently have chilling accuracy with regards to eclipses, and the effects of an eclipse will reverberate for six months after a lunar or a year after a solar (until the Sun returns to the eclipsed degree and begins a new cycle).

On that day, a worldwide protest is scheduled to protest the use and development of genetically-modified organisms (GMOs), which are at this point a large portion of our food supply and are showing devastating links to major health issues, the evolution of "superweeds" and the overuse of pesticides, which is contributing to the sharp crash in the global domesticated bee population (or, as some call it, the Bee-pocalypse) that threatens the global food supply.

Given the conjunction of these two events, and also in respect to the multiplicity of events and times on that day, I will explore the astrology of the march, without tying my interpretation down to any particular location.  (The chart is drawn for Greenwich, ENG for convenience and uses the time as given by NASA.  Though the Sun and Moon are about a degree off exact in the chart as shown, the difference is negligible and will not affect chart interpretation.)
I will join this March Against Monsanto and support it locally, but I hold out little hope of it actually creating the change that needs to be made. Astrologically, it's just not there.  The symbol does not support it - wisdom (owl) goes unheard (alone) by the world (tree), nor does the chart carry the powerful indicators of a sea change.  See below the jump: