Plu­to “stands still” today as it begins its ret­ro­grade cycle from April 9th till Sep­tem­ber 16th. Rul­ing the Will, willpow­er and “con­trol issues”, Plu­to turn­ing ret­ro­grade cre­ates an oppor­tu­ni­ty every year to jour­ney with­in and reflect upon the nature of self-deter­mi­na­tion in your life.

The space that you call your “self” is your sacred space. You move out from this space and exer­cise your will in order to do any­thing in this world. But of course by so doing you come in con­tact with oth­er wills. Their space is sacred too.

When some­one push­es into your space with­out your per­mis­sion, or you do that to anoth­er, well, that is called “tres­pass­ing”. It is a vio­la­tion of your spir­i­tu­al (and often phys­i­cal) integri­ty. The key, as always, is your “self con­trol”, your self-deter­mi­na­tion. For the spir­i­tu­al war­rior, the bat­tle is with­in one­self; to achieve self-mas­tery is the only goal.

To the extent that you “Know Your­self”, you com­mand and con­trol your­self. You exer­cise your will and delin­eate clear­ly the bound­aries for your­self. You know when (and if) to let some­one cross into “your space”. Like­wise, hav­ing this knowl­edge, you would nev­er vio­late the space of anoth­er, for to vio­late their space is a sin.

You are learn­ing to exer­cise your pow­er intel­li­gent­ly, cre­ative­ly and lov­ing­ly through your expe­ri­ences on this earth­ly plane. As you advance in spir­i­tu­al under­stand­ing, you more con­scious­ly align your will (a spark of the divine will) to the One Will. That Will is the Source; it is the one, true Pow­er of the Universe.

 As it has always been said… “Let Thy Will Be Done”.

Growth is Good… and your new cycle of growth com­mences today.

The Sun rules your “self”; it is the home of all of your poten­tials, all your tomor­rows. Jupiter rules your prin­ci­ples; it is that which deter­mines how you relate to the world around you. But always remem­ber, your first and most impor­tant rela­tion­ship is with your “self”. Now with the Sun con­joined with Jupiter you can re-align your­self to your “self”.

Take time today to reex­am­ine the prin­ci­ples of your life. What is “your truth”? Under­stand where you have come from so that you may bet­ter under­stand why and where you are going. With that greater under­stand­ing you can then decide how best to move your­self towards your dream.

As a new year­ly growth cycle com­mences, last year’s con­cludes. Turn inward today to under­stand what were your inten­tions, out­comes and lessons of growth expe­ri­enced in the year just end­ed. Then turn out­ward and use this under­stand­ing as the foun­da­tion for your new cycle of growth, your new round of self-realization.

This is the most fun­da­men­tal teach­ing of the cos­mos. It is the answer to the ques­tion: “Why are you here?” The answer quite sim­ply is: “You are here to grow”.

You have been on a long, long jour­ney of self-unfold­ment. You began as a spark of the divine flame. You moved out into the cos­mos to learn, to grow, to become. At each turn­ing of the wheel of life, you must har­vest the mean­ing of what you have learned, then use that under­stand­ing and go forth again to a high­er plane of self-real­iza­tion. And so on, and so on…

Cel­e­brate today your jour­ney, your growth. Ful­fill your des­tiny, which is to be a star amongst the stars. Go Forth, Grow and become your Destiny.

This is anoth­er of the major tran­si­tions this year that I men­tioned in the overview for 2011. Here is what I wrote then:

Nep­tune Enters Pisces (Apr.4, Aug. 4, Feb. 3)
Just as with Jupiter and Uranus last year, Nep­tune dances back and forth between one sign and the next this year. It has been in Aquar­ius since 1998 and it will stay in Pisces start­ing next Feb­ru­ary 2012 until March 2025. This is a com­ing home event, since Nep­tune is said to rule Pisces. 

The last time Nep­tune was here was 1848 to 1862 and the pur­suit of dreams (and fan­tasies) grew apace. In the US, the west­ward expan­sion was accel­er­at­ed as the vision of gold sparkled in the eyes of “forty-nin­ers”. In the spir­i­tu­al world, on the heels of the “Sec­ond Great Awak­en­ing”, a grow­ing reli­gious fer­vor spurred the calls for jus­tice as abo­li­tion­ists strug­gled to make our coun­try con­front the great evil and shame of slavery. 

For the next 13 years, a path­way has been offered for a renew­al of under­stand­ing, com­pas­sion and sac­ri­fice. We are mov­ing into a peri­od of spir­i­tu­al revival and growth. Dreams, romance and the imag­i­na­tion will take flight. 

Be pre­pared to wonder…be ready to embrace… and be able to sur­ren­der, so that the gifts of Spir­it may enter our hearts and so remind us that we are one. “E Pluribus Unum” 

Green Light — Red Light… okay Uni­verse which is it? Why both, of course!

Mars Con­junct Uranus (like a New Moon) cre­ates an oppor­tu­ni­ty to align your actions (Mars) with your true indi­vid­u­al­i­ty (Uranus). Over any peri­od of time you set­tle into “pat­terns of action” that you have man­aged to estab­lish in order to accom­plish the many tasks in your life.

These pat­terns of action/reaction can be more or less func­tion­al, but they are always lim­it­ed by the under­stand­ing you had when you cre­at­ed them. The gift of this align­ment is that Uranus (The Awak­en­er) brings in a “dif­fer­ent” or alter­na­tive point of view.

Nor­mal­ly, you would view any task or prob­lem as if you were shin­ing a light upon an object. You see that side, that approach, bright­ly lit and the only answer/path/action is the one which is appar­ent to you. But with Uranus on Mars it is as if mul­ti­ple lights are shin­ing from var­i­ous points of view, you can see that there is more than one way to approach the issue; there is more than one action you can (or should) take.

With Uranus on Mars you can see that both in the way that you approach the prob­lem, and the result­ing solu­tion, that both of these can change giv­en the insight pro­vid­ed by Uranus. You have had your blind­ers tak­en off; you have lift­ed your con­scious­ness. You can choose anoth­er, more enlight­ened way of being.

Uranus bestows this bless­ing; the free­dom to choose a truer path to ful­fill­ment.… go for it.

The Sun Oppo­site Sat­urn (like a Full Moon), is a moment of revelation/reckoning. The Sun con­tains all that you can ever be, pure poten­tial as yet unre­al­ized. To be any­thing, the ener­gy, the vision, the plan must incar­nate (on this plane) into some “thing”. And yet, by so doing, it becomes lim­it­ed by your man­i­fest­ed form (Sat­urn).

Now with the Sun oppo­site to Sat­urn you see ful­ly revealed the dif­fer­ence between the orig­i­nal impulse, idea or plan and what has come of it mate­ri­al­ly. The jux­ta­po­si­tion this time is between Saturn/Libra and Sun/Aries.

The seed-idea that was released 6 months ago was for a new devel­op­ment in your rela­tion­ship to self and oth­ers. Now you are shown the out­come of that effort. The rev­e­la­tion you now have shows you how it is that your rela­tion­ship to your­self (Sun) becomes the very foun­da­tion yet, giv­en its devel­op­ment at any one time, the very lim­it for your rela­tion­ship to the world, (and for your rela­tion­ships in the world). 

In the light of this aware­ness, re-eval­u­ate your rela­tion­ship to your­self, and to oth­ers. Under­stand you are at a turn­ing point. A cycle has end­ed, so you must stop and under­stand. A cycle has end­ed, so that means a new one has begun. You are har­vest­ing the expe­ri­ence of your self­’s jour­ney to ful­fill­ment, and there is no end to this spi­ral of energy-form.

Now take your har­vest of mean­ing and use it to cre­ate an even bet­ter rela­tion­ship to your­self and to the world.…so be it.

The first New Moon of the Astro­log­i­cal cal­en­dar! 6 out of 10 plan­ets in Fire! It does­n’t get more ener­getic than that. You should be streak­ing ahead, blaz­ing new trails, leap­ing tall…but no, wait, that’s not how it feels at all…

So, why do you feel as if things are not real­ly mov­ing for­ward? Oh, you remem­ber, maybe it’s because Mer­cury is ret­ro­grade. That’s right, you can’t go for­ward with­out turn­ing back; you have to fin­ish or fix some­thing before you leap ahead. Tie up those loose ends, dig into the fruits of your life just lived, take those seeds of yes­ter­year, and plant them in the warm­ing rays of the wax­ing sun…

Okay, well that’s it, right? Actu­al­ly, that is part of it, tru­ly, but there is a mes­sage in this New Moon itself that should make you stop, con­sid­er your path ahead care­ful­ly, before you can con­tin­ue towards your des­tiny. (And that’s a good turn of phrase, “to con­sid­er your path ahead” since that very word, “con­sid­er”, lit­er­al­ly means to be amongst (con) the stars (sider). Isn’t it mar­velous how our lan­guage speaks to us with the wis­dom of the ages, the wis­dom of the stars?)

For it so hap­pens that the pat­tern of this New Moon has the Sun and Moon oppo­site to Sat­urn. This is no sim­ple begin­ning, no sim­ple release of pure ener­gy. This begin­ning reminds you that that the uni­verse is found­ed upon a fun­da­men­tal rela­tion­ship between ener­gy and form, of ide­al and real.

The Sun and Moon have come togeth­er to release a new mes­sage that cel­e­brates the Aries truth of being “I”. It is the way of Aries to be one­self with­out restraint; you must raise your ban­ner and pro­claim “I AM!”, and so begin again as pure energy.

But Sat­urn replies; it speaks from the truth of Libra. The Lord of Time, Saturn/reality, says you are nev­er alone and your life has no mean­ing with­out con­text, with­out “the oth­er”. You are filled with poten­tial, and yet what you have so far real­ized in your present self is the prod­uct of the lives of all that have come before you. You stand upon the social-spir­i­tu­al foun­da­tion of that greater life that gave birth, sup­ports and gives mean­ing to your very exis­tence. You are, in fact, part of a great com­pa­ny of souls who have helped one anoth­er since the begin­ning of time.

So as the New Moon in Aries pro­claims a new release of self, Sat­urn reminds you to tem­per this release of pure self through the con­text of your social con­scious­ness. Cel­e­brate the release of your truer self that is the Aries Way; and hon­or The Bal­ance that is Sat­urn in Libra, by mak­ing your life mean­ing­ful through right­eous relationships.