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The Philosopher’s stone is the legendary end result of the alchemist’s quest: the quest for gold, for health, eternal life and wisdom. In depth psychology alchemy has been studied as a powerful metaphor for the psychospiritual growth and maturation process: the long process of becoming conscious of the unconscious and integrating it into a whole and balanced Self. This is a process of turning the lead of repressed contents of the psyche, both shadow and transcendent, into the gold of integrated awareness. The alchemical work is a process of many years (truly decades) of commitment to your own psychospiritual development, and a deep engagement with the unseen and unintegrated depths and heights of the psyche.

Often through working with trauma an individual will come to realize how their life has been controlled by it, and with support will move towards healing and new strength. When we are able to heal trauma and are empowered by that recovery process, there is a philosopher’s stone of priceless value granted to the alchemist who stays with the process. When our own personal trauma combines with collective trauma there are especially great consequences, and when we work to heal, integrate and understand these larger dimensions of trauma, there is a unique potential for healing on both a personal and collective level.

Of course, we are not just working to integrate these more challenging parts of the psyche, often just as important is integrating an awareness of our higher divine self, integrating our spiritual peak experiences, our joy, and our bliss, into a balanced approach to life.

This morning here in San Francisco, a New Age dawned, at least for me it did, and I want to invite you all to join me in marking the end of an age together. For the first time since 1962, we have six planets all in the same part of the sky that astrologers call Aquarius. It is a part of the sky famous for its chilled-out winter perspective on things, it’s air sign progressive clarity and its eccentric authenticity.

We are at the yearly Aquarius New Moon, and the end of the lunar Aquarian year. It is the peak of winter, and the time when you first dare to dream of spring. It is not just the Moon and the Sun in the sign of Aquarius, however, it is Mercury, Venus, Jupiter, and Saturn as well. All of the visible planets besides Mars are within one small slice of the sky, all within 16 degrees of each other, and it represents an extremely rare opportunity for meditation and intention setting. 

The astrology of the next three months is a sequence of incredibly rare astronomical events that have not happened in centuries. We are in the grand finale of an already over-the-top year, and the end game is in play.

This tight a conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn hasn’t happened since 1623, and even then, when they came into their exact alignment, they were too far on the other side of the Sun, from the Earth’s perspective, to be seen.

The once-in-twenty-year Jupiter-Saturn conjunction is moving towards exactitude on the winter solstice (December 21st). They are currently 1.25 degrees from exact and getting tighter every night. In this video I encourage everyone to get out and view the alignment and talk about its meaning from an astrological perspective.

What’s unique about this particular conjunction (besides the addition of Pluto making it a very rare triple conjunction, which won’t happen again this precisely for a thousand years), the declination of Jupiter and Saturn are bringing them so close together (within 0.1 degrees) that they may appear to be a single bright “star” when exact in the days around the 21st. They have not been this close since 1623, and they won’t be this close again for another 60 years, three Jupiter-Saturn cycles from now.