Venus style meets proven sub­stance in a grace­ful pas de deux; beau­ty, love and val­ue are ground­ed by and made more pro­found through the gift of Sat­urn’s expe­ri­ence. Pass­ing fan­cies will just not make it today; you need to expe­ri­ence last­ing val­ues, clas­si­cal beau­ty and endur­ing love.

With Venus mov­ing through Leo, and Sat­urn through Libra, their felic­i­tous align­ment affirms the truth that all great val­ue is found­ed upon expe­ri­ences that are shared; that the truth in beau­ty you find before you reflects your inner grace; and that ever­last­ing love is the won­drous real­i­ty which affirms your jour­ney in Life-Consciousness-Spirit. 

Take some time today to build upon the last­ing val­ues between your­self and anoth­er; enjoy the beau­ty around and with­in one anoth­er; and acknowl­edge, embrace and be assured by the force which binds you togeth­er with a great host of shin­ing ones, seek­ing to find your way to the One…again.

When is too much, Too Much?…Today!

Venus and Jupiter are called the “less­er” and “greater” benefics in Astrol­o­gy; today they meet up in a square and that typ­i­cal­ly means you will over­do, overindulge and gen­er­al­ly ere on the side of excess. But real­ly, what does this align­ment mean spiritually?

If Venus rules your wants, and Jupiter defines your social prin­ci­ples, then today you are torn between your per­son­al val­ues and your social sen­si­bil­i­ties, between your needs and your social con­science (or spir­i­tu­al devel­op­ment). You may feel that you have to choose between per­son­al enjoy­ment and social accept­abil­i­ty, between love and honor.

What you may want for your­self may not be good for your rela­tion­ship or vice ver­sa. Maybe you find your­self in a sit­u­a­tion where you are in love with some­one, but the rela­tion­ship is some­how just not work­ing. Or, you are in a good rela­tion­ship, but you do not feel (any­more) the love that you want. Of course you should not choose between one and the other…as always, you need to find the high­er way, the spir­i­tu­al path of inte­gra­tion. What is the nature of the challenge/choice and how do you do that?

Venus is in Leo, so it is speak­ing from those ide­al­is­tic realms of roman­tic love, of respect, appre­ci­a­tion and approval. Venus is enthralled by and act­ing out emo­tion­al­ly in the dreams of great romance, of Princes and Princess­es and sto­ry book end­ings. Jupiter weighs in (lit­er­al­ly, since it is after all the largest plan­et), from the prac­ti­cal realms of Tau­rus. What is the point of “great romance” if your cup­board is bare? How roman­tic is it when those dra­mat­ic ges­tures lead to dra­mas of despair instead of con­stan­cy, trust and commitment?

What you need (and what you want), as the famous slo­gan for wom­en’s rights had it, you must have “Bread and Ros­es”, secu­ri­ty and romance, com­mit­ment and excite­ment. As always, you must find the mid­dle way, the noble path where your per­son­al val­ues and social needs are inte­grat­ed and not torn apart from one another.…You must cre­ate a whole life, where each informs and shapes the other.

Rather than choose between love and hon­or you must work them back togeth­er if you can. One with­out the oth­er is not sus­tain­able (or healthy), for you or the other.

As always, the chal­lenge is not to choose but to take up the task of mak­ing whole what has come apart…

Love and Hon­or one another!

This is the sec­ond of three sex­tile align­ments of Mer­cury and Mars. With Mer­cury ret­ro­grade and so turned inward in Vir­go, and Mars new­ly feel­ing its way in Can­cer, the mes­sage from the stars has shift­ed from July 11 when Mer­cury was in Leo and Mars in Gemini.

Now the quick­en­ing touch of Mars inspires Mer­cury to lead you inward and deep­er; reflec­tion, intro­spec­tion and self-crit­i­cism are all enhanced. Your insight is sub­tilized by the watery depths of Mars in Can­cer as it com­bines with the ana­lyt­i­cal lucid­i­ty of Mer­cury in Vir­go. Thoughts and Feel­ings work togeth­er here to guide you into a greater depth of self-awareness.

Where in July your mind was aflame with the desire to explore and share your excit­ing dis­cov­er­ies and real­iza­tions, this time is more pri­vate, more per­son­al as you explore the inner depths of your assump­tions, per­spec­tives and points of view.

This is a gift, a gift of clarity…think well.

Nep­tune pays a return vis­it to Aquar­ius today till Feb­ru­ary 3, 2012. The dream of sal­va­tion through inven­tions and tech­nol­o­gy is kin­dled anew. The world hungers for and seeks some quick fix or easy escape from the phys­i­cal, social and spir­i­tu­al debts it has incurred.

When Nep­tune returns to Pisces in 2012 there will be a gath­er­ing real­iza­tion and acknowl­edge­ment of the need for pro­found spir­i­tu­al trans­for­ma­tions and sac­ri­fice. There will be no quick fixes…

You are already in the shad­ow time of the old order; the twi­light, the dawn of a new age is gath­er­ing and you must turn and let go of that which can­not pass as you move into the light…

A new world is arising…believe and behold.

Mars leaves Gem­i­ni and glides into Can­cer for the next 45 days…Your Desires, Aims and Aspi­ra­tions become focused upon home, fam­i­ly and secu­ri­ty. Gem­i­ni brought curios­i­ty, diver­si­ty and debates…but now you want to pro­tect and pre­serve who and what is close to your heart.

You will act with more care­ful­ness (or cau­tion) now; it is time to lead with your feel­ings. You will act (and react) with height­ened sen­si­tiv­i­ty. Out­ward dis­plays and actions are super­seded now by inner jour­neys and dis­cov­er­ies. Whichev­er way you trav­el, before you sal­ly forth you will have to feel just right with it.

Stand­ing at the gate­way of the last Water Sign (and about to make a return vis­it back into Aquar­ius tomor­row), Nep­tune in Pisces wel­comes Mars to Can­cer by gen­tly caress­ing the Lord of Desire with gifts of Imag­i­na­tion, Intu­ition and Dreams. The Trine of Mars and Nep­tune is mag­i­cal, won­drous and inspi­ra­tional. This is a day for dream­ers who live to live their dreams!

Some­times it feels as if your dreams and your abil­i­ties will just not, or can­not, match up…But today, today if you believe in your dreams, if you fol­low your heart, you will expe­ri­ence the joy and truth of “Dream-mak­ers”.

That is when Imag­i­na­tion and Belief, when Inspi­ra­tion and Action, dance as one…That is where you find the Shin­ing Ones, the dream­ing-mak­ing Devas, who dance the Dance of Cre­ation that is Life-Consciousness-Spirit.

Today, you will dance the dance of the Cre­ator. You will be inspired and inspi­ra­tional. You will dream and you will do…for that is your path, always and forever.

Dream on you shin­ing ones!

Okay, so who let the Grem­lins out…again?

Yes, that’s right it’s your favorite scape­goat for every­thing not going accord­ing to “plan”, (tech­nol­o­gy fails, com­mu­ni­ca­tions become gar­bled and mis­un­der­stand­ings mount), Mer­cury ret­ro­grades for over 3 weeks till August 26. This time it’s a lit­tle more com­pli­cat­ed as I not­ed ear­li­er, since it will start in Vir­go and then go back into Leo. There are oth­er chal­leng­ing align­ments along the way too, so this will be an August to remember…

It does seem evi­dent that things seem to go awry when Mer­cury turns around. But that real­ly is not the “fault” of Her­mes; you just need to align your­self with the ener­gies around you, which have shift­ed indeed. The ordi­nary flow of your men­tal­i­ty will now be direct­ed inward, becom­ing more reflec­tive, focused and intro­spec­tive. This is good news; you need these oppor­tu­ni­ties to cor­rect false assump­tions, flawed per­cep­tions and misunderstandings!

But if you pro­ceed as if every­thing is “nor­mal”, if you do not stay alert to the changed men­tal ener­gies, then you will stum­ble and fall into error in both your per­cep­tions and com­pre­hen­sions of your world. And, since most oth­er mor­tals are sim­i­lar­ly “afflict­ed” by this lack of aware­ness with regard to the shift­ing ener­gies, the mis­cues, errors and con­fu­sion mul­ti­ply expo­nen­tial­ly. No won­der every­one seems to see these peri­ods as “chal­leng­ing”.

Mer­cury gets the “blame”, but as the bard wrote in Julius Cae­sar:

“Men at some time are mas­ters of their fates: The fault, dear Bru­tus, is not in our stars, But in our­selves, that we are underlings.” 

What Shake­speare affirmed is that your exer­cise of your most pre­cious gift, your Free Will, is not lim­it­ed exter­nal­ly by the ener­gies around you, so much as it is by your lack of self-under­stand­ing (and so self-con­trol). The key to your spir­i­tu­al progress is self-aware­ness; it is that unfold­ment of your aware­ness which leads to self-knowl­edge and the resul­tant expan­sion of your Spir­i­tu­al Will. And this is why you should cel­e­brate Mer­cury’s gift now. Why?

Why, because this is pre­cise­ly what is offered up to you now, an oppor­tu­ni­ty for greater Illu­mi­na­tion is here, right now. Her­mes is the guide who will lead you inward. He is the mes­sen­ger of the gods who will take your hand as you seek to re-vis­it, review and revise what you have come to expe­ri­ence as your reality.

But you have to par­tic­i­pate; you have to be alert, adapt­able and will­ing to use your pow­ers of dis­cern­ment, dis­crim­i­na­tion and self-crit­i­cism. It is always up to you how you will “dance your dance” with the ener­gies of the universe.

So you can com­plain about all the pet­ty annoy­ances of the next 3 weeks…Or, you can under­stand that the uni­verse is offer­ing you a gift, a most pre­cious gift of greater self-awareness.

What can you do? From now till August 8, Mer­cury will ret­ro­grade in Vir­go so the empha­sis is upon a re-work­ing of your pow­ers of crit­i­cal think­ing which should be applied reflec­tive­ly now…That means, yes, it is a time to be self-crit­i­cal and weed out false assump­tions and pet­ty attach­ments. Be care­ful about becom­ing over­ly annoyed by some­thing or some­one; instead turn that back on your­self and see why it upset you so much…then let it go. Use a lit­tle Pis­cean imag­i­na­tion and keep step­ping back so you can see the big­ger pic­ture; remem­ber to counter any attach­ment to minu­tia by assum­ing a more encom­pass­ing view­point, one that steps back so as to con­sid­er the for­est and so pre­vent you from becom­ing lost among the count­less trees.

Then from August 8 to 26, as Mer­cury ret­ro­grades in Leo, use this reflec­tive focus to reex­am­ine your ide­al­ism, ego and pride as regards your thought process­es. Be care­ful here about being over­ly upset by some­one who is ego­is­tic, demand­ing of atten­tion or bossy. Again, you must look with­in and see why this is so upset­ting to you; what are you too attached to or fear­ful of…then release it. Use the pow­er of Aquar­i­an detach­ment to bal­ance out the pas­sions of Leo. Remem­ber always, that the noble path is the Mid­dle Way; that extremes of emo­tion lead to regression…your way must be calm, cen­tered and self-crit­i­cal. If you real­ly want respect, live that truthway…stay on the path.

Okay sparks of the Divine, are you ready for some new music, are you ready to show some new steps? Her­mes is pip­ing, lead­ing you through the veil of appear­ances to a greater understanding.

Ready, Turn, Dance!