The Sun enter­ing Pisces begins the month that ends the Astro­log­i­cal year. It is a time of sum­ming up, review and renew­al. The year ends as it began in the realm of the spir­it from which all gifts come. We have come full cir­cle and must pre­pare to begin again. We har­vest the mean­ings of our year just lived and plant them in the soil of the year that is to come. We turn with hope to the future and draw upon our great­est gift, the gift of Pisces, which is the supreme gift of what it means to be human… Imag­i­na­tion.

You meet the world every­day as it is; pre­sent­ed to you as “fact” that you seem­ing­ly must accept. Yet the world you meet every day is the prod­uct of what you and every­one else intu­it­ed, felt and act­ed upon yes­ter­day and a thou­sand yes­ter­days before. The great good news we can take from this is that it is we who made this world, so we can re-make it too.

The spir­i­tu­al source of that abil­i­ty is our supreme gift, the gift of the imag­i­na­tion. We encounter the world today as it is, we dream of a dif­fer­ent world; and by using our imag­i­na­tion, (com­bined with love and will), we bring into being a new world.

But of course, we do this rather imper­fect­ly because we are lim­it­ed. We are lim­it­ed by our lack of under­stand­ing which cre­ates the prin­ci­ple lim­it to our cre­ative pow­er, fear. This is the chal­lenge of Pisces: are you fear­ful or faith­ful? Do you believe that life is more fat­ed and that you just have to accept what comes your way? Or, are you more faith­ful and believe in your pow­er to make a difference?

We can over­come our past and cre­ate a bet­ter future when we con­front our fear by shin­ing the light of under­stand­ing to dis­pel the dark­ness that is fear. We know we can be bet­ter, we know we can grow because it is in our nature to believe. We have faith, imag­i­na­tion and the knowl­edge that it is we who make the world we live in.

We all find our­selves some­where on the con­tin­u­um of life between fatal­ism and free will. The prin­ci­ple deter­mi­na­tion of where you come down between fate and free will is your state of under­stand­ing. The less you know of your­self and the world around you, to that same extent will your life be “fat­ed”. And, the greater your knowl­edge of your­self and the world around you, the greater will be your free will or self-determination.

The entire jour­ney around the zodi­ac depicts (for us) the process of human unfold­ment. We begin at the Alpha moment of Aries, the spring­ing forth with the joy of new begin­nings. We come now to our Omega, the time of Pisces, in which we gath­er in, har­vest the mean­ings and dis­till the essence of our expe­ri­ences so as to cre­ate the seed of the new life we will plant again in Aries.… and so on.

We grow in under­stand­ing, day by day, year to year. But what sus­tains us on our jour­ney is the spir­i­tu­al gift of dream­ing and imag­in­ing a bet­ter world that we know is possible.…and so it is. 

The Aquar­ius Full Moon jux­ta­pos­es the ener­gies of Aquar­ius from the Sun that are reflect­ed in Leo by the Moon. The align­ment pos­es this issue: how do you rec­on­cile your need to be inde­pen­dent and free, with your need to be respect­ed and appre­ci­at­ed? If you over-empha­size how free or dif­fer­ent you are, then your life becomes mean­ing­ful only to you; but if you too much fol­low the dic­tates of what brings approval from oth­ers, then you end up being untrue to yourself.

When faced with an oppo­si­tion and a choice, your chal­lenge is real­ly NOT to choose but to take the path of syn­the­sis. The answer here is to hon­or and express your true, unique self while you enjoy the com­pan­ion­ship of those who respect you for that. The noble, spir­i­tu­al path is always the “mid­dle road” of integration.

The Venus/Saturn align­ment lays down a chal­lenge and choice about your self-worth, val­ues, and love. Venus Square Sat­urn reminds you that it is time again to re-exam­ine your self-worth in order to under­stand a choice you must make about values.

In order to have a prop­er rela­tion­ship with any­thing or any­one, you must have a way to con­sid­er what that rela­tion­ship is worth to you. By re-assess­ing your val­ues, by dis­cern­ing what is of mean­ing­ful val­ue with­in your­self, or what you find wor­thy, by doing that you are able to cor­rect­ly assess what val­ue there is for you in that relationship.

So, although it might appear as if you are fac­ing a choice and chal­lenge in your finan­cial life, or in your rela­tion­ship life, the real chal­lenge is to be found with­in: do you under­stand your worth, do you val­ue your­self tru­ly? Do you love your­self unconditionally?

To the extent that you do, to that same extent you have the means to form mean­ing­ful rela­tion­ships with the life around you. The chal­lenge now is to re-exam­ine your self-worth, val­ues and love of self by fac­ing square­ly with­in your­self what is right and true and should be re-affirmed, and what might need to be ques­tioned or eliminated.

The con­tent of the chal­lenge this time is between Venus in Capri­corn fac­ing the chal­lenge posed by Sat­urn in Libra. Venus is speak­ing from the voice of tra­di­tion, of time test­ed val­ues and the prac­ti­cal­i­ty of main­tain­ing the sta­tus quo. But Sat­urn in Libra is remind­ing Venus that just because some­thing has last­ed, or has “sta­tus”, or “works”, does not make it true, wor­thy or lov­ing. Sat­urn in Libra asserts the prin­ci­ple that a tru­ly lov­ing rela­tion­ship is based upon a mutu­al under­stand­ing, a dynam­ic equi­lib­ri­um and bal­anc­ing of shared val­ues, and a fun­da­men­tal sense of fair­ness that is found­ed upon an open, con­scious agreement.

Look with­in so as to chal­lenge and ques­tion your assump­tions of what makes you wor­thy, and by doing that you can elim­i­nate those “false” val­ues which lead to less self-love. Look out­ward and exam­ine your rela­tion­ships, in the light of this re-affirmed love of self, and make cer­tain that you do your part to make those rela­tion­ships wor­thy and lov­ing too. 

The Sun rep­re­sents the total poten­tial of your being in this life, your life poten­tial. Nep­tune rules dreams, visions and imag­i­na­tion; it is your capac­i­ty for illu­mi­na­tion. The align­ment of the Sun and Nep­tune reminds you that it is always pos­si­ble to imag­ine what you wish to be, to dream or re-dream your life… and then make it so.

Nep­tune rules your per­cep­tion of your­self and the world around you. You have a vision of what you are and what you face. But it is lim­it­ed by your assump­tions and con­scious­ness of what is real for you. Your real­i­ty, your uni­verse, is always cir­cum­scribed by what you per­ceive. You may share many of these per­cep­tions with oth­ers and your real­i­ty over­laps with theirs.

The align­ment of the Sun (Self) with Nep­tune (Illu­mi­na­tion) allows you to per­ceive the truth that there are mul­ti­ple real­i­ties in and around you. You actu­al­ly live in one uni­verse with­in a “mul­ti­verse”. You have the oppor­tu­ni­ty now to let go of a less­er, more lim­it­ed sense of your­self, at least for a moment or two, and dis­cov­er a more com­plete you with­in a more inte­grat­ed real­i­ty. Now you have an oppor­tu­ni­ty to dis­solve, let go, dream great dreams, and move into a new space of self-realization.

This should be famil­iar to you; you do this all the time… when you are sleep­ing. Now, bring that won­drous expe­ri­ence into this wak­ing world so that your dreams can become sub­stan­ti­at­ed. It is con­fus­ing at first, but that is the path to a more com­plete understanding

Remem­ber, the path of spir­i­tu­al illu­mi­na­tion leads from Cer­tain­ty to the dawn­ing of Doubt to a time of Con­fu­sion so that you may final­ly come to Dis­il­lu­sion­ment. It is then, when you have dropped your for­mer assump­tions and cer­tain­ty, that Spir­it will enter in and bring to you Illumination.

If you are cer­tain then you are not pay­ing atten­tion; if you are ques­tion­ing then you are prepar­ing the way; and when you are Faith-Full then you are ful­ly present and know that you can cre­ate what­ev­er you imagine.…and so you shall.

Dream on!

Your mind is steady; your thoughts are ground­ed. Solu­tions to prob­lems that have elud­ed you are avail­able now. You will make a good impres­sion with those that count. Fresh insight com­bined with an author­i­ta­tive foun­da­tion leads to success.

With Mer­cury in Aquar­ius your mind is recep­tive to social ideals, visions of the future and inge­nu­ity; while Sat­urn in Libra pro­vides poise, sta­mi­na and social sen­si­bil­i­ty. Their com­bi­na­tion means you can­not but impress oth­ers… and yourself.

When the stars align, your ideals become the real­i­ty you have always dreamed for. Dream, think…create.     

Div­ing deeply into val­ues is called for today. Supe­ri­or insight about the true nature of love is avail­able to you when you move beyond appear­ances and dis­cov­er what is most heart­felt in rela­tion­ship. With Venus rul­ing val­ues, and Plu­to rul­ing the will-pow­er, this align­ment is all about love and control.

When you val­ue your­self, when you tru­ly love your­self, then and only then do you have the capac­i­ty for self-con­trol. And it is that cen­ter­ing of will that makes it pos­si­ble for you to give your­self will­ing­ly to anoth­er. You can take that step into the space of vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty, the space that is the meet­ing ground of two hearts, because you have found the love with­in and the will to make a choice.

But the greater mys­tery here is that is only through rela­tion­ship, only when you come togeth­er with anoth­er, can you pen­e­trate beyond the illu­sion­ary self and dis­cov­er your truer self. Because in order to come togeth­er, when we meet one anoth­er in that cru­cible that is rela­tion­ship, we each must sac­ri­fice and sur­ren­der the less­er val­ues between us. We affirm to one anoth­er what we tru­ly share; we re-dis­cov­er and strength­en our greater val­ues which form the true song and sub­stance of our love.

The mys­tery of Venus and Plu­to is that by join­ing with anoth­er more deeply, you end up com­ing clos­er to your own true self. You sur­ren­der your less­er self so that you may meet your high­er self, who is revealed to you by the smile in your lover’s eyes.

So, today, go deep and give your­self to love and find your­self and your love in one another.