Mer­cury sex­tiles Sat­urn today. Mer­cury rules our thoughts, intel­li­gence and com­mu­ni­ca­tions. Sat­urn rules our real­i­ty, respon­si­bil­i­ties, struc­tures and lim­i­ta­tions. The sex­tile between them pro­motes the work­ing out, or more sub­stan­tial man­i­fes­ta­tion, of our ideas, plans and con­cepts that we have been try­ing to bring to fruition.

What were mere­ly hunch­es, con­cepts or ideas have now tak­en on a real­ized form or con­crete real­i­ty. What­ev­er plans, ideas or inspi­ra­tions that were first devel­oped at their last con­junc­tion, (Octo­ber 8, 2010), have now reached a point of clar­i­ty and objec­tive real­i­ty. Sol­id progress can be seen now. We have not com­plet­ed the project or endeav­or, but real progress is visible.

The shap­ing of our thoughts, ideas, plans or a project at this time requires the appro­pri­ate pre­sen­ta­tion of long-dis­tance com­mu­ni­ca­tion and plan­ning, cul­tur­al aware­ness and beliefs. These sen­si­bil­i­ties are being shaped and lim­it­ed by the real­i­ty of the agree­ments, part­ner­ships or rela­tion­ships involved in the mat­ter. Our men­tal life is stead­ied now, though we are rang­ing far, we are also ground­ed by Saturn.

We must pre­pare for Mer­cury and Sat­urn’s next sig­nif­i­cant align­ment, which is the wax­ing square on Jan­u­ary 26, 2011. At that moment we will face a choice and deci­sion about which path to take in the fur­ther devel­op­ment of the idea, project or issue.

The rea­son the next moment in the cycle is so delayed is because Mer­cury will go ret­ro­grade on Decem­ber 10 until Decem­ber 30. That peri­od will pro­vide us with an oppor­tu­ni­ty to reex­am­ine many of our thoughts, plans and ideas before mov­ing for­ward in the New Year. It will, hope­ful­ly, help us to pre­pare for the choic­es we must face at the end of January.

With Sat­urn at 13º of Libra and Mars, (the faster mov­ing plan­et), at 13º of Sagit­tar­ius, we are deal­ing here with what Astrologers call a wax­ing sex­tile of Mars to Sat­urn. This is the moment in the rela­tion­ship between Mars and Sat­urn where what was released or start­ed at their con­junc­tion has reached a point in which we are shown some way in which to bal­ance and inte­grate these two energies.

The orig­i­nat­ing moment for this present cycle, their last con­junc­tion (or “New Moon”), was on July 31, 2010 at 0º of Libra. So the issue of this cycle con­cerns the inte­gra­tion of Mars ener­gies and Sat­urn ener­gies with­in the theme estab­lished by Libra, by relationships.

Mars rules desires, the ener­gies that serve the self as we seek to push out and secure our own self-inter­ests. Sat­urn rules real­i­ty, the respon­si­bil­i­ties and roles that we have com­mit­ted our­selves to in order to be part of any­thing. So, what is the answer or guid­ance offered by their aspect today?

The expe­ri­ence of Mars in Sagit­tar­ius con­cerns the les­son that our desires must be guid­ed, inspired and focused by truth. It speaks to the prin­ci­ple that our self-asser­tion must be cir­cum­scribed and giv­en mean­ing­ful pur­pose by beliefs, philoso­phies and religion.

With Mars in Sagit­tar­ius we are very enthu­si­as­tic about our truths and beliefs as we seek to extend our­selves out­ward. Yet, giv­en that Mars can excite us to over­do, we may become too self-right­eous, to dog­mat­ic about our truth. We may push too hard to be free to do what­ev­er we wish to do. We may harm oth­ers by a too nar­row asser­tion of what is truth for us. The offer­ing of this aspect between Mars and Sat­urn is being brought to bear by the mes­sage of Sat­urn in Libra.

Sat­urn in Libra reminds us that the truth of any rela­tion­ship is that we must move into it by forg­ing or cre­at­ing agree­ments, under­stand­ings, rules or laws. We all must acknowl­edge the truth that when we move into asso­ci­a­tions with one anoth­er, that is, when we enter into rela­tion­ships, we can­not just make it up as we go.

Sat­urn in Libra rep­re­sents the truth that we must make objec­tive our inten­tions with regards to one anoth­er. We must estab­lish guide­lines and rules for how we will relate to one anoth­er as a pro­tec­tion for all con­cerned. We cre­ate a social space, a real­i­ty, through which we can be ful­filled in and through our rela­tion­ship. By forg­ing these agree­ments, we can each pur­sue our self-inter­ests, while agree­ing to con­duct our­selves in a man­ner that is social­ly accept­able, sus­tain­able and mutu­al­ly beneficial.

The mes­sage and promise of the sex­tile aspect of Mars and Sat­urn is that we can all make some sig­nif­i­cant progress in our rela­tion­ship life at this time. The issue will have some­thing to do with how we inte­grate our self-inter­ests with our oblig­a­tions. This means we need to hold our­selves and oth­ers to account for how to bal­ance our desires with our duties.

We often hear the cry for “my rights”. But the asser­tion of any and all rights must and always will be tied to the ful­fill­ment of our respon­si­bil­i­ties. This is the mes­sage of Mars and Sat­urn, that you must and should pur­sue your truth, but you must always act in a way that is respon­si­ble too.

The Solar/Lunar rela­tion­ship is the arche­typ­al cycle, the mas­ter cycle, upon which all oth­er Astro­log­i­cal cycles are based. Every month we see the beau­ti­ful pageantry played out before us of the New Moon, First Quar­ter, Full Moon, Last Quar­ter and back to New Moon rhythms of the month­ly cycle.

At each moment of the cycle, at each turn­ing of the wheel, a very spe­cif­ic ques­tion and answer is offered to us by “the lights” in sky. The New Moon rep­re­sents a begin­ning, when a new impulse and ener­gy is released into our real­i­ty. The First Quar­ter rep­re­sents a turn­ing point, the turn­ing of a cor­ner or cross­roads, of the work­ing out of that orig­i­nal impulse. The Full Moon is the moment of rev­e­la­tion, the point at which the orig­i­nal impulse or idea has come to full, objec­tive man­i­fes­ta­tion for all to see. The Last Quar­ter is anoth­er turn­ing point, but this time, instead of a choice of which way to go in order to build out from and ful­fill the orig­i­nat­ing idea, now the issue is to take the real­iza­tion expe­ri­enced at the Full Moon and incor­po­rate that under­stand­ing into the unfold­ing cycle of life. Final­ly, we come to anoth­er New Moon, anoth­er release of poten­tial which will guide us dur­ing the next month­ly cycle.

We are able to take this basic cycle rela­tion­ship, and the mean­ings gen­er­at­ed by each cycle moment or phase of the Sun/Moon cycle, and apply those inter­pre­ta­tions to the oth­er plan­e­tary pair cycles. The basic tem­plate pro­vid­ed by the Sun/Moon cycle can be our guide for the under­stand­ing of each plan­e­tary combination.

At the same time, we must be aware that the inher­ent mean­ing of each com­bi­na­tion of plan­ets will deter­mine the con­tent, that is, it will denote the theme of what is devel­op­ing in the var­i­ous phas­es of any cycle. But the pur­pose and mean­ing of each phase in the cycle will fol­low this tem­plate found­ed by the exam­ple set forth by the Sun/Moon cycle.

Astrol­o­gy is, in part, a sci­ence of cycles. The pri­ma­ry cycle with­in Astrol­o­gy is the cyclic rhythm of our jour­ney from Dark­ness to Light. As we look at the var­i­ous com­bi­na­tions of the plan­ets day after day, we can always come back to this fun­da­men­tal truth that is revealed to us by the dance of the Sun and Moon.

My pre­vi­ous post exam­ined the gen­er­al prac­tice of deter­min­ing the Astro­log­i­cal con­di­tions that are cre­at­ed by plan­ets as they form angu­lar rela­tion­ships, what we call aspects, to one anoth­er. These aspects are the ones that are con­sid­ered gen­er­al, that is, they hold for every­one equal­ly since they are formed by the plan­ets mov­ing in rela­tion­ship to one anoth­er with­in the Solar Sys­tem. They are what astrologers call “Tran­sits to Tran­sits”, that is the var­i­ous bod­ies form­ing aspects to one anoth­er as they move through their orbits. By exam­in­ing these var­i­ous aspects astrologers can make fore­casts that are true for everyone.

But there is a whole oth­er class of aspect rela­tion­ships that are formed and fol­lowed in Astrol­o­gy, the aspects that are cre­at­ed by those same tran­sit­ing plan­ets to any par­tic­u­lar astro­log­i­cal chart. This is what astrologers call “Tran­sits to Natal”. These are the aspects formed between the bod­ies mov­ing through the Solar Sys­tem and cal­cu­lat­ing the angu­lar sep­a­ra­tions that are formed between those bod­ies and the natal or birth posi­tions of those bod­ies in an astro­log­i­cal chart. In this case the tran­sit­ing bod­ies are mov­ing, the birth or natal place­ments are fixed or unchanging.

In fact, it is these align­ments or aspects which are of most con­cern to astrologers and their clients. That is because it is these per­son­al aspects that are most tru­ly indica­tive of what any one per­son, or orga­ni­za­tion is expe­ri­enc­ing. Rather than being a gen­er­al “weath­er” fore­cast, these tran­sits to natal posi­tions reveal the most inti­mate details of the influ­ences affect­ing the per­son or enti­ty in question.

When plan­ets come to a sig­nif­i­cant align­ment to one anoth­er, Astrologers seek to inter­pret what that align­ment or aspect indi­cates. Aspects are the angu­lar sep­a­ra­tions of the bod­ies or plan­ets formed by tak­ing the 360° of the cir­cle and divid­ing that by a number.

For exam­ple, 360/2 = 180° (360 divid­ed by 2 equals 180), is where bod­ies are said to be oppo­site or opposed to one anoth­er. Or, 360/4 = 90° which is called a square or “right angle”. If we instead divide 360/3 we get 120°,  the trine aspect, or 360/6 we get 60° or the sextile.

Each of these angu­lar sep­a­ra­tions or aspects cre­ates a cer­tain har­mon­ic vibra­tion or ener­gy sig­na­ture between the bod­ies or plan­ets. It is said that the 90 or 180 is more chal­leng­ing or dif­fi­cult, where­as 60 or 120 is eas­i­er. But all are tru­ly part of a com­plete cycle that moves from the zero degree align­ment of bod­ies, the con­junc­tion, to the oppo­si­tion and back again. The arche­typ­al exam­ple of this occurs every month as we watch the Moon go from a New Moon, to a Wax­ing First Quar­ter, to a Full Moon, to a Wan­ing Third Quar­ter, and back to a New Moon.

Each cycle sta­tion or aspect rep­re­sents a tran­si­tion­al moment in the unfold­ment of what­ev­er was released at the begin­ning, that is at the con­junc­tion or “New Moon” moment. The oppo­site point, what would be in our exam­ple a “Full Moon”, is the point of rev­e­la­tion, the time in which we can observe most objec­tive­ly the cre­ative ten­sion that always exists between “poten­tials” and “real­i­ties”.  

By fol­low­ing each pair­ing of bod­ies, whether it is the most arche­typ­al and obvi­ous cycle of the Sun and Moon, or any oth­er pair­ing such as Mer­cury and Jupiter, or Venus and Mars, we can see the work­ing out of the var­i­ous ener­gies and lessons to be learned in our physical/psychological/spiritual spaces. By hav­ing knowl­edge and under­stand­ing of what each rela­tion­ship pair moment is ask­ing of us, we can align our­selves to that. And, by being so aligned, we will find it that much eas­i­er to real­ize and ful­fill ourselves.

The com­bi­na­tion of all these influ­ences, of all the plan­e­tary aspects one to anoth­er, cre­ates a pat­tern that we could call our Astro­log­i­cal Har­mon­ic, or our Astro­log­i­cal Weath­er pat­tern for that time. Cer­tain­ly, we have all expe­ri­enced, col­lec­tive­ly, days in which the mood seems soft and easy, when life seems to go smooth­ly. And, we have all expe­ri­enced days where con­di­tions seemed very far from that.

The advan­tage offered by Astrol­o­gy is that it allows us to under­stand what the uni­verse is ask­ing of us at any one time, to under­stand how we should approach and act in this moment, and to be at peace with that.

Astrol­o­gy reminds us that the series of events that we call “Life” is part of a greater plan, that it is con­di­tioned and shaped by the ener­gies around us. The unfold­ment of the poten­tial for each of us, indi­vid­u­al­ly and col­lec­tive­ly, is sup­port­ed and quick­ened by the stars themselves.

Each of us is devel­op­ing from our “New Moon” (at birth). We are bring­ing out from with­in our pure poten­tial, and from that begin­ning, we are cre­at­ing a life that stands as a tes­ta­ment of our poten­tial. We can all take com­fort in the knowl­edge that, along the way, we are always guid­ed and sup­port­ed by the ener­gies of the uni­verse around us.