Okay…well this is bet­ter now. The two “benefics”, Venus and Jupiter, align today to offer you phys­i­cal, social and spir­i­tu­al joys. Venus is what you val­ue or want; Jupiter is how you relate to your world. Their com­bi­na­tion lit­er­al­ly means that today you will relate to what you want with sub­lime satisfaction!

Venus, danc­ing through the nur­tur­ing feel­ing-roots of Can­cer is gen­tly touched now by Jupiter whose Tau­rus song imparts the appre­ci­a­tion of earth­ly delights. Enjoy the sun ris­ing, take a walk in the woods, mar­vel at the great beau­ty that sur­rounds you. Or, go to a muse­um and won­der at beau­ty-past, or attend a per­for­mance and share in beau­ty-present. Then turn to those you love and cel­e­brate the glo­ri­ous beau­ty that is life before you.

Live the teaching:

“Beau­ty before me, beau­ty behind, beau­ty below, beau­ty above, and beau­ty within…surrounded by beau­ty, it is done in beauty.” 

So be it.

Today is also a day for the stead­ied and dis­ci­plined mind to shine. Mer­cury is stretch­ing itself now to per-form through Leo. Sat­urn in Libra pro­vides that steady form, that cen­tered space, to extend your­self from.

The puz­zles and prob­lems that stymied you are pierced by your lucid mind as it reach­es across the cross­ing point to the light of under­stand­ing. You com­bine in equal mea­sure the self-con­fi­dence of Leo with the con­sid­er­a­tion of Libra.

Today you will understand…and you will be understood.

Last­ly, one of the great ones, Uranus, turns ret­ro­grade today till Decem­ber 10. The ret­ro­grade of the out­er plan­ets is a func­tion of Earth “catch­ing up” and pass­ing the out­er plan­ets (sort of like being on the inside track in a race); we come to our clos­est approach to them at these times. Many would argue that means their influ­ence is stronger as a result.

The expe­ri­ence for you of this ret­ro­grade, as in any ret­ro­grade, is that it turns the ener­gies of Uranus inward, it becomes inter­nal­ized. The gifts of Uranus will help you grow from with­in out­wards as you dis­cov­er some as yet unre­al­ized part of yourself.

Uranus is the awak­en­er and frees you from less­er forms so you may con­tin­ue your jour­ney of becom­ing the becom­ing. Wel­come the magi­cian who quick­ens your soul, the wiz­ard of won­der as he dances the dance of creation.

Free your­self, be yourself!

Not only may you “not always get what you want”, you may have to strug­gle to hold onto what you have today!

Venus rules val­ue, beau­ty and love. Plu­to, rul­ing willpow­er, stands oppo­site now and lays down a chal­lenge to what you hold dear. Will you be forced to sur­ren­der your val­ues to anoth­er, or will you turn the tables and force yours upon them? That seems to be the choice/challenge here; it’s win or lose, give in or fight back…or…

Or will you take the noble path as befits your ori­gins? Know that you are a shin­ing one, who trav­els with a mighty, shin­ing host of seek­ers. Will you under­stand and move even clos­er to the sacred spaces of your soul, to your cen­ter and truth? For if you do you will know that this is always the real chal­lenge, the chal­lenge is a test of your integri­ty, of your under­stand­ing of who and what you are, of why you here, of where you came from, and how you are to move towards your destiny.

You will know that in your heart of hearts you are des­tined to secure, pre­serve and express as your truth the val­ues you have come to under­stand into the worlds around you. But you also will know that this is true for every being who jour­neys with you. You must live out your truth, but always with­in and cir­cum­scribed by the Greater Truth…that every soul’s space is Sacred Space. You may not force your ways upon anoth­er, nor may they…that is Tres­pass­ing. It vio­lates the Spir­i­tu­al Integri­ty that is the core of every spark of the Divine; it dimin­ish­es you and them and only delays the greater good that you seek.

So, if anoth­er is seek­ing to force some­thing upon you, you must resist and pro­tect your sacred space. Try and help them to see the error of their ways; that they will only delay not advance their cause by such con­duct. If they will not, then move away; let them exhaust them­selves in the empti­ness that they have made between the sacred spaces.

Like­wise, if you seek too enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly to pro­mote your truth to anoth­er know that you will only fail. Truth can­not be real­ized in the vio­la­tion of anoth­er’s sacred space. The only con­trol you must exer­cise is…self-control, all else is illusion.

The les­son of Plu­to is of bound­aries, of the sacred spaces and the knowl­edge that your pow­er, your will is for you…as you become the becoming.

Shine On!

This is the major align­ment in the US chart for 2011, and this is the sec­ond of three pass­es. Giv­en what is hap­pen­ing in our coun­try (and in the world), with the strug­gles over how we should relate to and care for one anoth­er, the fight for equal rights, social jus­tice and under­stand­ing, it cer­tain­ly seems to reflect our expe­ri­ences now. Here is what I wrote back in Jan­u­ary 2011:

Plu­to Oppos­ing Jupiter (Jan. 17, Jul. 8, Nov. 20)
In 2011 we face anoth­er, per­haps our great­est, chal­lenge and oppor­tu­ni­ty, the Oppo­si­tion of Plu­to to our Jupiter. Jupiter rules the prin­ci­ples, beliefs and laws of a nation. Venus is the val­ue “behind” the law, but Jupiter is the law itself as well as oth­er embod­i­ments of what we have dis­cov­ered to be “True”, as in Sci­ence, Phi­los­o­phy and Reli­gion. Jupiter also rules how we relate to one anoth­er and to the rest of the world. Essen­tial­ly, Jupiter does this because it rules the beliefs we hold that deter­mine our atti­tudes and actions towards one anoth­er and the world.

Plu­to rules the pow­er of trans­for­ma­tion, of death and rebirth and the great strug­gle of pow­ers with one anoth­er as they exer­cise their will. The oppo­si­tion of Plu­to to Jupiter sig­ni­fies a great moment in our his­to­ry when we must make absolute­ly clear, (the oppo­si­tion should be the moment of rev­e­la­tion), what are the prin­ci­ples we under­stand, stand upon and project out among our­selves and into the world as a nation. To help us see how this might play out in 2011, let us look at Plu­to’s pre­vi­ous tran­sits of our Jupiter.

Plu­to’s pre­vi­ous align­ments to Jupiter

1827–29
The pre­vi­ous align­ments of Plu­to with Jupiter may pro­vide us with some insight as to what is being demand­ed of us now. The first tran­sit of Plu­to to Jupiter was a square that last­ed from 1827 to 1829. Dur­ing this peri­od a fun­da­men­tal shift in the char­ac­ter of the Nation was expe­ri­enced as exem­pli­fied by the begin­ning of the era of Andrew Jack­son, which her­ald­ed the end of the so-called “era of good feel­ings” and the re-emer­gence of par­ti­san pol­i­tics. This was in part the con­se­quence of the empow­er­ment of the gen­er­al white/male pop­u­la­tion who now were giv­en the right to vote direct­ly for the elec­tors for pres­i­dent. As a result, Jack­son­ian pop­ulism stoked the fires of the bat­tle lines that had been form­ing between the wealthy finan­cial, mer­chant and man­u­fac­tur­ing inter­ests as against the vast agrar­i­an and labor­ing groups. An exam­ple of this, and one of Jack­son’s sig­na­ture accom­plish­ments, was to do away with the US cen­tral bank at that time, (sound famil­iar Mr. Bernanke?), as he stood for the “com­mon man” against the wealthy spe­cial interests.

1918–20
The next tran­sit of Plu­to to Jupiter was a con­junc­tion from 1918 to 1920. Pres­i­dent Woodrow Wilson’s vision of what the world should be after the deba­cle of World War I fell on deaf ears, both at home in Con­gress, and with the world lead­ers who met at Ver­sailles, France. Amer­i­can ide­al­ism, as embod­ied in Wilson’s view of a new world order, the putting forth of our “truth” (Jupiter), was reject­ed by the old guard in Europe and at home. Amer­i­ca retreat­ed into itself and did not par­tic­i­pate in the League of Nations, and, as a result, sowed, some would argue, the seeds for the next great World War.

Inter­nal­ly, the pro­gres­sive move­men­t’s attempt to “reform” Amer­i­ca led to the enact­ment of moral­i­ty by fiat as embod­ied in the 18th Amend­ment, (Prohibition).This led to the most fla­grant dis­re­gard of “law” since most Amer­i­cans ulti­mate­ly did not agree with that expres­sion of social virtue (val­ue). Yet, at the same time, the forces of progress final­ly achieved the enfran­chise­ment of the “oth­er” half of the US pop­u­la­tion with the pas­sage of the 19th Amend­ment, (Wom­en’s right to vote).

1973–74
The last tran­sit of Plu­to to Jupiter was a square from 1973–1974. As before, Plu­to’s trans­for­ma­tion­al ener­gies as well as its sig­na­ture effect to bring about a great strug­gle of wills played out in var­i­ous spheres of Amer­i­can life and with the World. Polit­i­cal­ly this was exem­pli­fied by Water­gate and the fall from pow­er of a pres­i­dent for the first time in our his­to­ry. All three branch­es of gov­ern­ment strug­gled with what had been unleashed by a “sim­ple” break-in at the head­quar­ters of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Social­ly, one of the most divi­sive issues to this day was enact­ed into law in a Supreme Court deci­sion that pro­tects, as a pri­vate deci­sion, a wom­an’s right to decide the ques­tion of abortion.

In inter­na­tion­al mat­ters, seem­ing­ly, one could argue, as a some kind of karmic coun­ter­point to the attempt by the US to pro­mote and push its vision at Ver­sailles in 1918–20, the strug­gle in the Mid-East and the Arab-Israeli con­flicts led to the Arab Oil embar­go, as OPEC attempt­ed to force Amer­i­ca and oth­er West­ern pow­ers to yield to their point of view by chok­ing off the life-blood of what dri­ves the mod­ern world economy.

PRESENT
2011 Plu­to Oppo­si­tion to Jupiter
So what is to be our oppor­tu­ni­ty and chal­lenge this year? What are we faced with as a nation inter­nal­ly, and what is the nature of our coop­er­a­tion or strug­gle with oth­er will­ful mem­bers of the world of nations? It seems that at each align­ment of Plu­to with our Jupiter, we as a nation are chal­lenged to relate to one anoth­er with or through a new under­stand­ing. Like­wise, at each align­ment there seems to be a sim­i­lar demand to shift the man­ner in which we relate to the world around us.

Inter­nal­ly
With­in our bor­ders, the fun­da­men­tal ques­tion of the bal­ance of pow­ers between the Fed­er­al gov­ern­ment and the States, a ques­tion that has been put before us again and again, is cer­tain­ly a key aspect of the strug­gle over our prin­ci­ples now. As Venus rules our val­ues, Jupiter rules those val­ues in oper­a­tion, seen in our prin­ci­ples of con­duct between one anoth­er which we have cer­ti­fied, agreed to and cod­i­fied into the Law of the land.

Where­as the Plu­to oppo­si­tion to Venus raised this ques­tion in a per­son­al man­ner in 2009-10, (the strug­gle over val­ues was per­son­al­ized in the crescen­do of rhetoric that bor­dered on scream­ing “Fire” in a crowd­ed the­atre at times), Plu­to oppos­ing Jupiter will now move these same ques­tions to the stage of an argu­ment over prin­ci­ples, over “the truth”, which will lead to a strug­gle over our rules of con­duct, over the law itself. Cer­tain­ly, one exam­ple of this strug­gle is the attempt to pro­vide some form of uni­ver­sal med­ical cov­er­age for all Amer­i­cans, with the imme­di­ate reac­tion among a num­ber of states to chal­lenge and seek to void that Fed­er­al statute. This con­flict will ulti­mate­ly lead to a Supreme Court deci­sion that will cer­tain­ly please only part of the population.

Echo­ing the Jack­son­ian era, the calls to “reign in” or “do away” with the Fed­er­al Reserve Bank could shake the finan­cial mar­kets as new uncer­tain­ties are added to the eco­nom­ic order still recov­er­ing from the shock of 2008-09. Yet the Fed­er­al Reserve chart seems to indi­cate that it may have weath­ered that storm for now. This sto­ry seems more of con­ve­nient dis­trac­tion to turn atten­tion away from a big­ger story.

Veiled behind the front of pop­ulist fer­vor, pow­er­ful cor­po­ra­tions led by finan­cial cap­i­tal seek to turn back any attempt to impose any sen­si­ble reg­u­la­tion on “the mar­ket”, whose fevered bub­ble burst­ing we have yet to recov­er from. The calls to bring to “Jus­tice” (Jupiter) those who led us over the precipice have been met by the manip­u­la­tion by the pow­er­ful (Plu­to) as we are all made to feel guilty (Plu­to) since, “well, did­n’t we all behave badly?”

Will the oppo­si­tion of Plu­to to Jupiter smash through the “smoke and mir­rors” and reveal the depths of deceit by those who have been entrust­ed to pre­serve and pro­tect our val­ues; or will Plu­to’s pow­er to veil the truth by those who can and will manip­u­late the sys­tem lead us from this last cri­sis into the next “big one” in the not too dis­tant future? This is one of the ques­tions that must be addressed as the Unit­ed States strug­gles to bal­ance Jupiter (Truth) and Plu­to (Pow­er). Truth is Pow­er, but Pow­er can cor­rupt the truth. Which will it be?

Exter­nal­ly
Chal­lenges from abroad may bring some of our inter­nal strug­gles into focus. Cer­tain­ly, the pow­er of the indi­vid­ual to chal­lenge the larg­er order, (by dig­ging into the secret depths (Plu­to) of any sys­tem), by expos­ing “the Truth” (Jupiter), has played out this last year (and into this one) with the phe­nom­e­non known as Wik­ileaks. Although many of us have been made aware of the rev­e­la­tions about Iraq and Afghanistan poli­cies that were con­tained in diplo­mat­ic and mil­i­tary doc­u­ments, there are oth­er rev­e­la­tions that have been promised that expose malfea­sance or cor­rup­tion in the eco­nom­ic cen­ters of pow­er. Per­haps this will not indi­rect­ly expose some play­ers clos­er to home.

Where­as in 1918–20 the the­atre for will­ful strug­gle played out between a ris­ing Amer­i­ca and the old world of Euro­pean pow­ers, and the 1973–74 bat­tle of wills fea­tured an Amer­i­ca as a super­pow­er fac­ing its very real vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty over the con­trol of oil, it would appear that the “test of wills and prin­ci­ples” in this peri­od may fea­ture an Amer­i­ca that has stum­bled won­der­ing how it might hold its own against a new pow­er assert­ing itself in the East. We have become a debtor nation whose “con­sumer” soci­ety depends upon the will­ing­ness of our provider of goods to keep extend­ing us cred­it. We wish to pro­mote our Truth (Jupiter), but there seems lit­tle Pow­er (Plu­to) behind it. To many it seems our time for “great­ness” is past, and that we are in decline and that we do not under­stand how or why this has happened.

Our True Source of Strength and Val­ue
To begin to under­stand, we must come back to the Natal or birth chart and remem­ber that Amer­i­ca’s great­est strength, (with the two “benefics” of Astrol­o­gy, Venus and Jupiter, Val­ues and Prin­ci­ples, in the 7th house of rela­tion­ship), is to be found in our great gen­eros­i­ty of spir­it towards one anoth­er and the rest of the world. Our strength, our real wealth, lies in our con­tin­u­ing con­tri­bu­tion to the evo­lu­tion of a greater spir­i­tu­al under­stand­ing of the mys­tery and pow­er of freely formed rela­tion­ships with one another.

The dynam­ic, quick­en­ing nature of these vol­un­tary rela­tion­ships, the very spe­cial “free” asso­ci­a­tions that were observed by de Toc­queville in the 1830’s in his “Democ­ra­cy in Amer­i­ca”, have been a chal­lenge for us through­out our his­to­ry. We seek to find a way to bal­ance the efforts to ful­fill our selves as unique indi­vid­u­als, (to be “free”), while, at the same time, we must hon­or, sup­port and sac­ri­fice for one anoth­er in those very asso­ci­a­tions we have with each oth­er. To some who may believe in a form of “absolute lib­er­tar­i­an­ism”, we must under­stand that you can­not be alone to do what­ev­er you want and be free. Free­dom is a social real­i­ty that is cre­at­ed through mutu­al under­stand­ing, tol­er­ance and for­give­ness; it is found­ed upon the knowl­edge that our true poten­tials are dis­cov­ered, expressed and extend­ed through our mutu­al sup­port of one another.

Where two or more are gath­ered togeth­er, acknowl­edg­ing their unique­ness, yet seek­ing through their asso­ci­a­tion to devel­op one anoth­er in and through that relationship…there is Free­dom. Not free­dom “from” some­thing, but Free­dom “to” become what we will be. We are not human beings; we are tru­ly human becom­ings. We can become what we will become because we agree to turn to one anoth­er and cre­ate the future…together.

Our Chal­lenge Now
Plu­to oppos­ing Jupiter asks noth­ing less of us than to under­stand, tru­ly under­stand and artic­u­late, our shared root prin­ci­ples that we must now affirm and ask each of us to hon­or and ful­fill. Plu­to will force this as we expe­ri­ence the exer­cise (or mis-exer­cise) of pow­er either with­in our coun­try, or between us and anoth­er nation. This dra­ma will play out as a con­fronta­tion of Will or Pow­er (Plu­to) with Truth or Prin­ci­ples (Jupiter). It will appear “out there”, but the true strug­gle and hope for us all rests upon each and every one of us to do the work with­in ourselves.

What each of us must do is look with­in and find what values/principles bind us one to anoth­er; and seek, affirm and secure our foun­da­tions in one anoth­er. Do not be dis­tract­ed by the nois­es out­side; instead, lis­ten to your inner voice, which will always guide you to the real­iza­tion that you are nev­er alone, and there is hope for a bet­ter world. That bet­ter world is found­ed upon our com­ing togeth­er and under­stand­ing that it is this illu­sion that we are sep­a­rate from one anoth­er, whether with­in our nation or between our nation and the world, that has always been our self-limitation.

The greater Truth is that we are all one in Spir­it; we are sparks of the divine seek­ing to under­stand our­selves and our com­pan­ions in this great journey. 

As our found­ing fathers so elo­quent­ly inscribed upon the Seal of the Unit­ed States, “E pluribus unum”… “Out of many One”.

Your val­ues, tastes and sen­si­bil­i­ties are push­ing (or being pushed) beyond the beyond today. Venus is what you val­ue, what you want for your­self and what you wish to share with anoth­er. Uranus is the awak­en­er, the unex­pect­ed vis­i­tor, the path not (yet) tak­en. Cou­pled with Uranus, Venus is usu­al­ly delight­ed by the thrills of dis­cov­ery and surprise.

But this is a square (a chal­lenge) and you may find today that your dis­cov­ery is unset­tling, the sur­prise is upset­ting. There is like­ly to be a shock about a rela­tion­ship and it may seem to come out of nowhere. What is the chal­lenge that you are con­fronting? It seems that either you have “had it” with anoth­er, or they with you. You feel that you can­not be your­self with them, or they feel they must break free of you. Why, what is real­ly going on?

The chal­lenge (which, of course, is an oppor­tu­ni­ty) is to under­stand, rec­on­cile and so inte­grate the two truths that Venus and Uranus are now divid­ed over. Venus rul­ing val­ue, attrac­tion and love seeks to bind self and oth­er togeth­er through what is shared. But Uranus is assert­ing the prin­ci­ple of inde­pen­dence, orig­i­nal­i­ty and free­dom. The sit­u­a­tion is that either for your­self or the oth­er, that there is the feel­ing that either too much has been sac­ri­ficed or not enough offered for the rela­tion­ship to work.

The con­flict seems to be whether to be in a rela­tion­ship or whether it is bet­ter to be free (to be one­self). It may seem to come to that: Rela­tion­ship or Free­dom. But real­ly that is a “false choice”; there is no Free­dom out­side of rela­tion­ship, there is only being alone. And there is no healthy rela­tion­ship with­out Free­dom; because true free­dom is not “free­dom from” it is the “free­dom to be”. The chal­lenge you (and they) face is how to cre­ate a bet­ter expe­ri­ence of self and relationship…and that requires, as always, greater self-knowledge.

Do not see or frame the chal­lenge as a choice between rela­tion­ship or free­dom. The chal­lenge is take the path of syn­the­sis, that both Venus and Uranus must be hon­ored. You must be true to your val­ues (Venus) and so love your­self; and those who love you will wish for that too for they will share them with you. You must express your indi­vid­u­al­i­ty (Uranus) and so ful­fill your des­tiny; and those who love you will want that too for they too wish to ful­fill themselves.

A healthy rela­tion­ship will grow with this align­ment; you will each dis­cov­er some­thing more about your­self in and through the con­flict with one anoth­er. But if there is not enough com­mon val­ue, or enough appre­ci­a­tion and space for indi­vid­ual expres­sion, well then there will be a more sig­nif­i­cant change in the nature of the rela­tion­ship so that each of you may con­tin­ue your journey.

Cel­e­brate the sur­prise of today…it is the spark that lights your path of self-dis­cov­ery as you become the becoming…together.

The Jupiter/Pluto align­ment is one that I exam­ined for the Overview for 2011. Here is what I wrote then:

Jupiter Trine Plu­to (Jul. 7, Oct. 28, Mar. 13, 2012)
The cycle of Jupiter and Plu­to moves into this more pos­i­tive phase for the next 9 months. Hav­ing faced the chal­lenge in late Feb­ru­ary, we will find our­selves able to expand more effort­less­ly now in our mate­r­i­al life and spir­i­tu­al under­stand­ing. Because Jupiter has moved into Tau­rus (Earth) and Plu­to is in Capri­corn (Earth), this cre­ates very pos­i­tive con­di­tions for real eco­nom­ic growth. Though there are always expand­ing and con­tract­ing forces at play in any year, this is cer­tain­ly a strong fac­tor sup­port­ing those areas that are capa­ble of growth, espe­cial­ly those which have read the signs of change and adapted.

Spir­i­tu­al­ly, to the extent the right choic­es were made in Feb­ru­ary, the oppor­tu­ni­ty now is to bring about a real evo­lu­tion in our moral affir­ma­tion of one anoth­er. We are will­ing to seek accom­mo­da­tion with each oth­er as an expres­sion of our under­stand­ing for one another.

I would add that this align­ment brings a per­son­al oppor­tu­ni­ty to delve deeply into the col­lec­tive arche­types that shape, inform and inspire your rela­tion­ship to your life. Jupiter rules your prin­ci­ples, truths and beliefs which are being shaped by Tau­rus now. Plu­to rules the uncon­scious pat­terns, embed­ded in what Carl Jung termed the “col­lec­tive uncon­scious”, which are being expressed through Capri­corn now.

This felic­i­tous join­ing of Jupiter with Plu­to will open a por­tal to the deep­er con­structs that under­lie your identity/relationship prin­ci­ples. You will find your­self, your mean­ings and your truth in the myths that sur­round you. The ancient arche­types like “The God­dess”, “The Heal­er”, “The Hero”, “The Grail King”, “The Wound­ed Heal­er”, and so many oth­ers, strike chords with­in your soul as you con­nect to the myths of your jour­ney, to the seed songs of the sil­ver chain, the shin­ing path of life after life that came before and stretch­es out beyond the beyond.

These shad­ow-songs of your past sculpt, shape and inform you now; their mean­ings bind you to the one sto­ry, the great jour­ney you are upon. Their mes­sages guide you as you seek to face the future with under­stand­ing. You are the seek­er; you are the story.

Now you fash­ion one more pearl on that great sil­ver chain of Life-Con­scious­ness-Spir­it. Once more, it is time to con­nect the past and future as you face that pre­cious present, the razor’s edge, upon which you dance the dance of the creator.