I briefly men­tioned this in my overview for 2012. Here is what I wrote then:

Sat­urn Ret­ro­grade (Feb­ru­ary 7 till June 25) 

Sat­urn ret­ro­grades every year and pro­vides you with an oppor­tu­ni­ty to re-exam­ine your social roles, hier­ar­chies and respon­si­bil­i­ties. This is its last ret­ro­grade in Libra before mov­ing into Scor­pio in Octo­ber, so this will be your chance to once again look at the nature of your rela­tion­ship agree­ments or con­tracts, whether implied or writ­ten. When Sat­urn moves on into Scor­pio you will want to have made sure that you have done your best to pre­pare for mat­ters to get even more serious.

Sat­urn rules real­i­ty; it is your cur­rent man­i­fes­ta­tion, (and hence also lim­i­ta­tion), of your pure poten­tial (the Sun). Your pure poten­tial is unlim­it­ed and ever-unfold­ing, ever-becom­ing; but in order to unfold and become real it must be con­tin­u­ous­ly embod­ied into a lim­it­ed form, so your unlim­it­ed “non-being” becomes real but lim­it­ed “beingness”…and this process is ruled and formed by Saturn.

While Sat­urn is ret­ro­grade in Libra you have an oppor­tu­ni­ty to go with­in and reex­am­ine and re-work those exist­ing struc­tures of rela­tion­ship-real­i­ty you have poured your­self into. This ret­ro­grade of Sat­urn can help you to de-con­struc­t/re-con­struct the forms of rela­tion­ship you seek ful­fill­ment through.

What this requires from you is a deep reex­am­i­na­tion of your most impor­tant relationship…your rela­tion­ship to your­self. You can and must make clear­er to your­self what val­ues give mean­ing to your life, which actu­al­ly form your life-sub­stance, for only then can you go out and cre­ate mean­ing­ful rela­tion­ships based upon what you dis­cov­er to be your com­mon, shared values.

More­over, by this reex­am­i­na­tion you can more clear­ly define the hier­ar­chy of your own val­ues so that you can make the nec­es­sary accom­mo­da­tions with one anoth­er; you can know which val­ues are sub­ject to adjust­ment and which are non-nego­tiable because they are essen­tial to mak­ing you who you are. 

It is time to turn with­in and build a bet­ter rela­tion­ship with your self…

It is time to pre­pare the way for the next step in your journey.

For just ahead is that deep­er jour­ney of Union itself as Sat­urn moves into Scor­pio in October.

It is time to prepare…and so fol­low the ancient injunc­tion, Know Thyself!

Today Mer­cury makes a supe­ri­or con­junc­tion with the Sun; this is when Mer­cury is on the far side of the Sun from here on Earth so it should be viewed as more like a “Full Moon” aspect. The pre­vi­ous infe­ri­or con­junc­tion, (which is like a “New Moon”), was back on Decem­ber 4. Now in this rev­e­la­to­ry moment you under­stand what was released two months ago. What’s the mes­sage today?

With the Sun and Mer­cury in Aquar­ius, that puts Earth (and you) in Leo so the mes­sage is about achiev­ing the bal­ance in your mind between seek­ing for approval ver­sus stay­ing true to your own beliefs. The Sun and Mer­cury in Aquar­ius favors your eccen­tric, con­trar­i­an side; it’s the way you come up with your orig­i­nal ideas and con­tri­bu­tions. But if you are too “out there” you will not get any­one to lis­ten. (You may be authen­tic but you end up being inef­fec­tu­al). Like­wise, if you too much mod­i­fy your mes­sage to meet what you think oth­ers wish to hear, you become effec­tive­ly untrue to your­self, (and you let every­one down by not con­tribut­ing your unique per­spec­tive). So what do you do?

This align­ment reminds you that it is all about inte­grat­ing your need to hon­or your­self and your audi­ence too. You need to build a bridge of under­stand­ing so that you can turn heads (or raise their eye­brows) but win applause too. You need to project your pre­cious voice of authen­tic­i­ty but do so in a man­ner that is con­struc­tive and contributive.

And this thought­ful mes­sage could not be time­li­er as today is also the Full Moon, with the Sun in Aquar­ius and the Moon blaz­ing bright­ly in Leo. The Full Moon is a time to face the con­trast between two ways of being, two paths of your truth…and it reminds you that you must find a way to work them togeth­er, so you can be whole, com­plete and at peace.

Much as in the Mer­cury “Full Moon”, the Full Moon in Leo illus­trates the chal­lenge of bal­anc­ing your need to express your excep­tion­al nature, (which seeks to go beyond the cares for what the world may think), with your need for con­fir­ma­tion, respect and approval from the world around you.

You may find your­self in an awk­ward place, seem­ing­ly faced with a choice: You can be true to your­self but may give offense, lose a friend or dam­age your relationship…Or, you can bend your char­ac­ter to suit “the sit­u­a­tion”, to gain the approval of oth­ers, but you will lose your respect for your­self. The ten­sion may build so that you take one side or the oth­er to a more extreme point, striv­ing so hard for approval that you betray your prin­ci­ples, or strain­ing so hard to be dif­fer­ent that you lose your own good name…

The answer of course is found in the com­bi­na­tion or bal­ance of the two so that you can be your­self and be appre­ci­at­ed too! How? First, fore­most and always be true to your­self, and then turn ’round and be equal­ly faith­ful to your friends too. You need to hon­or the truth you came to embody…and your friends, your com­pan­ions will hon­or you for this because they share this truth with you. It is through your rela­tion­ship with one anoth­er that you find your­self, both as an indi­vid­ual who is free to be your­self and as a mem­ber of some­thing greater too.

The Full Moon reminds you to always seek to unfold, bring forth and so hon­or your unique self because you will then enjoy the com­pan­ion­ship of those true and last­ing friends and loved ones who respect you for exact­ly that.

This is one of the major tran­si­tions that began to unfold in 2011. Nep­tune will now re-enter Pisces and stay there until 2025! This is what I wrote in my overview for 2012:

Nep­tune, which has been paus­ing at the thresh­old of her home sign dur­ing 2011, moves in to stay for over 13 years. My com­ments when it first began to make this tran­si­tion, (April 4, 2011) are well worth re-post­ing here:

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. 

In addi­tion I would add:

Nep­tune in Pisces will lead to the next step in your unfold­ing awareness…it will open a door­way to that greater recog­ni­tion, expe­ri­ence and delight in the sub­tle worlds behind the appar­ent real­i­ty of what should be known to you as this “mul­ti-verse”.

This mate­ri­al­ly appar­ent real­i­ty upon which we focus our earth­bound aware­ness will begin to give way to an ever-grow­ing com­pa­ny of seers, as their self-made bar­ri­ers of doubt dis­solve through Nep­tune in Pisces and so reveal that truer, more vivid expe­ri­ence of the worlds with­in worlds that inter­pen­e­trate and co-exist with one another.

Pre­pare to won­der and be amazed; pre­pare to imag­ine, dream and cre­ate the won­ders of a new world. This is the time, this is your time for the mag­ic of creation…this is the time for dreamers!

Let Nep­tune in Pisces help you to open your­self and become the more ful­ly self-con­scious dreamer…

You are the Shin­ing One who is dream­ing the dream that is the jour­ney of Life-Consciousness-Spirit.

Dream, Sing, Dance…Create!

Do oppo­sites attract? That’s the ques­tion you face today as Venus (Beau­ty & Love) oppos­es Mars (Desire & Dri­ve). They make this aspect, giv­en Mars’ rough­ly 2 year orbit, every 2 years or so.

Venus rules val­ue; it is what you “want”. Mars rules action; it is how you (try) to get what you want! So it will appear as if you are in some kind of con­flict between what you want and how you are going after it. Cer­tain­ly it is a moment for many rela­tion­ships to step back and make sure that what is shared and agreed to (Val­ues) is being sup­port­ed by the actions of each oth­er. Usu­al­ly one or the oth­er may feel that their val­ue is being harmed by their part­ner, or that their actions are not appre­ci­at­ed by their partner…but what is real­ly going on?

The par­tic­u­lar mes­sage of any aspect is always to be found in the signs that each plan­et is in. Venus is mov­ing through the sign of com­pas­sion and empa­thy (Pisces) while Mars is in the sign of dis­cern­ment and align­ment (Vir­go). It seems as if the uni­verse is pulling you in oppo­site direc­tions; you seem­ing­ly must choose between being car­ing or crit­i­cal, to be for­giv­ing or judgmental…

And so it may play out with each per­son tak­ing one side of this false dichoto­my, hold­ing up one end and pro­ject­ing the oth­er side onto their part­ner. The prob­lem may seem to be “out there” between you and you, (and there is some truth to that), but the real chal­lenge, the path of spir­i­tu­al growth through under­stand­ing, will always be found with­in. So you must turn the ques­tion back with­in your­self and face your chal­lenge of choice…

But of course you can­not “choose”; you have only one “choice” if you are to walk the path of truth which is to find your way to com­bine these ways into one true way, your way of being the two togeth­er. Each plan­et and each sign is meant to inform, shape and bring nuanced under­stand­ing to the other…for it is only togeth­er, in this bal­anced aware­ness, that you can walk the noble path, the one true path of the spir­i­tu­al war­rior (who’s “bat­tle” is always within).

Venus is in Pisces, where she finds her high­est expres­sion in uncon­di­tion­al com­pas­sion­ate love. But as a result, (since very few have entered this self-mas­tered, tran­scen­dent state), it makes you more like­ly to ere on the side of sur­ren­der­ing too much, sac­ri­fic­ing what should not be sac­ri­ficed, and so harm­ing your­self (and doing lit­tle good for the oth­er as well, as you become part of the prob­lem). Venus real­ly needs a lit­tle more dis­cern­ment (Mars in Vir­go) so as to be able to show enlight­ened com­pas­sion, car­ing guid­ed by wisdom.

Like­wise, Mars is in Vir­go where he finds him­self delight­ing in the per­spic­u­ous analy­sis and sub­se­quent actions that lead you from con­fu­sion to clar­i­ty, from chaos to ordered con­tent­ment. But with the oppo­si­tion there is the very real risk that your rapi­er-like mind and voice will not heal but wound, not bind togeth­er but rend apart one from anoth­er. Mars needs a lit­tle more com­pas­sion (Venus in Pisces) so that your scalpel of wit and rea­son is wield­ed with the most gen­tle of inten­tions and effect.

This is the mes­sage of their oppo­si­tion today; that you should not be pulled apart from one anoth­er nor divide your­self from your Self either. You can­not choose between feel­ing and rea­son. Instead you must find that bet­ter way of blend­ing togeth­er your heart and mind so that the great­est good is made pos­si­ble for you and the oth­er too. 

Choose the path of whole­ness, stay on the path of togetherness…

Choose your Path of Wis­dom and Love.

Mer­cury and your mind are just get­ting used to the eclec­tic, eccen­tric airy ways of Aquar­ius when Jupiter in Tau­rus comes along with a prac­ti­cal reminder…too much of any­thing is just plain too much. Bet­ter dial it back and get your head out of the clouds and your feet back on ter­ra firma.

Mer­cury in Aquar­ius is all wide-eyed with won­der about the lat­est ideas and inventions…but Jupiter in Tau­rus is root­ed in steady, true and last­ing val­ues; Jupiter is call­ing on Mer­cury to steer a more prag­mat­ic path.

Just because there is some new-fan­gled way to think about or to do some­thing does not make it supe­ri­or. As of right now, the uni­verse is say­ing you should try and find a way to bend your new-found, bril­liant insights towards use­ful and prac­ti­cal applications.

That is always the way, that nar­row path between the dark­ness and the light…you fol­low the exam­ples of the spir­i­tu­al mas­ters, to take the one true mid­dle path of inte­gra­tion, to com­bine the best of both.

So, keep your eyes lift­ed up and your head full of excit­ing dreams and ideas; while you keep your Self on the path of pur­pose­ful endeav­or and your feet firm­ly plant­ed on this good earth.