Venus enters Pisces and for the next 3 weeks you will enjoy the mag­i­cal, inspi­ra­tional and spir­i­tu­al aspects of beau­ty and love. 

Venus is said to be exalt­ed in Pisces because here she finds her high­est under­stand­ing of the nature of val­ue and the expe­ri­ence of love; this under­stand­ing is found­ed upon the spir­i­tu­al truth that you are the dream­er who is dream­ing this real­i­ty. You need only abide in that spir­i­tu­al aware­ness, to be “Faith-Full”, in order to unfold your poten­tial and so change your­self and your world too.

Venus rules val­ue, beau­ty and love. Here in the final sign of the zodi­ac she dances with delight to the song of cre­ation, the song of spir­it ever-becom­ing. You appre­ci­ate your­self more tru­ly for what you are; that you are not some “thing”…you are a spe­cial spark of the Divine and your ever-unfold­ing poten­tial “to be” has no lim­its. You need only look with­in and dis­cov­er a won­drous world of the won­der­ful; it is you and the yet to be real­ized cre­ative essence wait­ing to be released through you.

Your val­ue is immea­sur­able because it is ever-unfolding…you are the creator.

Your true form is lumi­nous, sparkling and radiant…you are sur­round­ed in beauty.

Your Love is eter­nal as is the spir­it with­in you…you are one of the ones of the One.

Dance the dance of Venus in Pisces…

You are the dream­er danc­ing your dance of Creation.

Dream…Dance…Create…

This is a very busy and beau­ti­ful day in the heavens!

Tomor­row Venus will depart from Aquar­ius and enter Pisces, but on this last day in Aquar­ius she will make beau­ti­ful con­tacts with both Sat­urn and Nep­tune. Mer­cury mean­while aligns with Plu­to to pro­vide you with very insight­ful per­cep­tions and challenges.

Venus rounds out her jour­ney in Aquar­ius with two won­der­ful influ­ences. First she is graced with the grav­i­tas of jus­tice by Sat­urn in Libra, (Libra is Venus’ sign so this is quite for­tu­itous, and mean­while Venus is in the sign that Sat­urn was held to rule in clas­si­cal astrol­o­gy! This “trad­ing of places” is called by Astrologers a con­di­tion of “Mutu­al Recep­tion” which is very, very good indeed). Here Venus and Sat­urn mutu­al­ly ben­e­fit one anoth­er, each affirm­ing and rein­forc­ing one anoth­er in your ever-unfold­ing under­stand­ing about the nature of rela­tion­ship in your life.

Sat­urn in Libra stands for the prin­ci­ple that right and healthy rela­tion­ships are found­ed upon objec­tive and con­scious­ly agreed to prin­ci­ples of fair­ness, equal­i­ty and mutu­al regard for one anoth­er. Venus in Aquar­ius con­curs in that those rela­tion­ships must equal­ly be based upon a fun­da­men­tal shar­ing of per­son­al, social and spir­i­tu­al val­ues with one another…in oth­er words the sound­est, truest and most ful­fill­ing of rela­tion­ships are also ones of abid­ing friendship.

Today you should have some deep­er expe­ri­ence of these two truths, some con­se­quen­tial con­fir­ma­tion of a rela­tion­ship or rela­tion­ships that are found­ed upon the prin­ci­pled pil­lars of Jus­tice and Friendship.

Mean­while the plan­et that rules your mind and ordi­nary pow­ers of per­cep­tion, Mer­cury, is lin­ing up with the ruler of the will, Plu­to. This is a day for “x‑ray” vision; you will have more pen­e­trat­ing insights and deep­er thoughts. It is a day that you may real­ize that you had been look­ing through a dimmed or dark­ened lens, but now see “clear and true”; a whol­ly deep­er lev­el of per­cep­tion is before you and so you are thrilled by the rev­e­la­to­ry vision of a new world.

But what hap­pens now is crit­i­cal, for with Plu­to rul­ing your willpow­er you may feel it to be most urgent and impor­tant to impart, nay to force this truth upon another…and that, you should know, is a far greater wrong than poor or incor­rect thoughts. You can­not force anoth­er to see “the Truth”, because that very impo­si­tion of your will and thought upon anoth­er is the most griev­ous vio­la­tion of spir­i­tu­al integri­ty. You must resist doing this and instead seek to lead by example…encourage the oth­er to con­sid­er your per­spec­tive or posi­tion, and so through com­par­i­son and con­trast to re-con­sid­er their own…but you must not, you can­not, force them to truth!

Con­trari­wise, if some­one is so cer­tain of them­selves that they are attempt­ing to force their ideas upon you, then you must do every­thing you can to dis­suade them from this fol­ly and point out how very wrong this is.

Instead, use this excep­tion­al gift bestowed by Plu­to to plumb the depths of your own per­cep­tions, assump­tions and thoughts. Turn this fusion of Mind and Will back upon your­self; you should seek to root out your own incon­gruities and false men­tal path­ways and there­by arrive at a clear­er and more hum­bled appre­ci­a­tion of reality.

Final­ly, Venus is won­der­ful­ly graced by her pas­sage over Nep­tune today. The plan­et of per­son­al love and beau­ty aligns with her spir­i­tu­al dou­ble, for it is said that Nep­tune is the high­er form or expres­sion of Venus and rules inspi­ra­tion, imag­i­na­tion and uni­ver­sal love.

Venus rules val­ue, beau­ty and your expe­ri­ence of per­son­al love for one anoth­er. All of these rest upon one fun­da­men­tal foun­da­tion for you, the val­ue you have for your­self or self-worth. To the extent that you under­stand your own, ever-unfold­ing real­iza­tion of val­ue with­in your­self, then to that same extent will you be able to have right rela­tion­ships to the things in your world and more espe­cial­ly to oth­er beings in your world.

Today you are blessed with Nep­tune’s mes­sage that at the core of each and every one, (the ever-renew­ing foun­tain-source of your true and abid­ing love for one anoth­er), is estab­lished and main­tained by that spark of the Divine, your divine essence or mon­ad, which is the illu­mined core of you and every oth­er too. Nep­tune rules this Uni­ver­sal basis of Love; for true love is found­ed upon this com­pas­sion­ate con­nec­tion forged by each and every one being “ones of the One”. You can love and be loved because in truth who­ev­er stands before you is one with the Divine too.

The great illu­sion is sep­a­ra­tion, the high­est truth is that all are one in Spirit.

Today is a day for inspiration…

Today is a day for imag­i­na­tion and dreams…but most truly…

Today is a day for Love.

This is a good day!

The Sun (your pure poten­tial to become) favor­ably aligns with Mars (your aims, actions and aspi­ra­tions) so that today is a day you can “Be your Becoming”!

Ener­gies are flow­ing, the stars are aligned and you will find that min­i­mal effort earns max­i­mum results…

The Sun in Capri­corn is strid­ing through the realms of tra­di­tion, accom­plish­ment and ful­fill­ment. Mars in Vir­go pro­vides that focused sparkle by order­ing your pur­pose along lines of mean­ing­ful, inte­grat­ed struc­tures. You live to serve and through ser­vice find your ful­fill­ment. No effort is wast­ed, no detail overlooked…but most of all you can count on the sin­gu­lar gift that all the oth­ers rest upon, self-mastery.

You (along with each and every spark of the Divine) are always seek­ing to real­ize your pur­pose; you find ful­fill­ment in the under­stand­ing of, and then through express­ing your unique poten­tial. While the Sun is in Capri­corn you con­nect to this sense of pur­pose­ful striv­ing to reach high­er, to be your best, to be the mas­ter-crafts­man of your own life.

Now Mars in Vir­go pro­vides one of the key ingre­di­ents, which is your capac­i­ty to ana­lyze and so improve on your aims and actions; you can more clear­ly dis­cern what to strive for and then apply your­self to those bet­ter ways of mov­ing towards it.

Today is a very good day to be and to become…

Today is a day for fulfillment!

The annu­al release of Capri­corn spir­it which began to unfold at the New Moon two weeks ago comes to the moment of rev­e­la­tion, your epiphanal cli­max. The posi­tion­ing of two bod­ies in oppo­site signs, here the Sun in Capri­corn and the Moon in Can­cer, pro­vides a beau­ti­ful illus­tra­tion of the inter­de­pen­dent, dynam­ic rela­tion­ship between two forms of your being, two approach­es to your life and two ways of truth.

This is Capri­corn’s time, and so the empha­sis has been upon your struc­tures, for­mal­i­ties and duty. In the spir­it of Capri­corn you do what is right because it is prop­er, tra­di­tion­al and upholds the sta­tus quo…for what has been achieved by you is impor­tant and needs to be safe­guard­ed, hon­ored and passed along…Capricorn is about the hier­ar­chies of your life, who you are respon­si­ble for and who or what you are respon­si­ble to. 

But today the Moon is in her own sign of Can­cer, and she is singing a dif­fer­ent song. Where­as Capri­corn does what is “right”, Can­cer does what “feels right”; with Can­cer you fol­low your feel­ings, respond­ing to the needs of the moment for your­self and those you care for.

Capri­corn is duty-bound, Can­cer is spon­ta­neous; Capri­corn is dri­ven and ambi­tious, Can­cer is pro­tec­tive and care­ful. Capri­corn is prag­mat­ic and reli­able, Can­cer is sen­si­ble and respon­sive. So what does the oppo­si­tion tell you about this moment?

The Full Moon is always a time when you feel pulled in two direc­tions, and you feel that you must “choose”. Of course, the real chal­lenge is to remem­ber that you can­not choose between them, you must always take the path of integration…which is the way of spir­i­tu­al truth.

The Full Moon illu­mi­nates some­thing that you need to acknowl­edge, and equal­ly illus­trates what you should do. Per­haps you are fac­ing a choice between the demands of your job ver­sus the needs of your fam­i­ly. Maybe you have sac­ri­ficed too much to secure some­thing for your fam­i­ly, sac­ri­ficed so much that you are los­ing the very fam­i­ly that you were try­ing to sup­port. Or it could be that you have been too involved with a per­son­al mat­ter, you have tried to meet the needs of those who are clos­est to you, but this has caused you to stum­ble in your duties to the larg­er world.

This is a time to face these dilem­mas square­ly. Remem­ber, you can­not choose here. You must find the inte­gra­tive bal­ance because each of these forms of life, each of these ways of truth, are essen­tial parts of your being that depend upon one anoth­er for ful­fill­ment. Each with­out the oth­er can­not be and only through one anoth­er can you find both secu­ri­ty and ful­fill­ment. Seek to bal­ance out these worlds by under­stand­ing whether you need to bring more feel­ing back into your life or cre­ate stronger struc­tures to have those feel­ings in.

Here in the cold win­ter light of the full Moon, stand and be still, between the dark­ness and the light…

Seek and you will find the illu­mined path of liv­ing whole; to walk in bal­anced understanding…

Be the cen­ter of your cir­cle of life, whole and inte­grat­ed, with­in and without…

Feel­ings and Fulfillment…

Com­plete.

MAJOR ALIGNMENTS and PHENOMENA

I will make note of and com­ment upon the remain­ing major astro­log­i­cal move­ments and align­ments for this year, sav­ing more exten­sive analy­sis for when they actu­al­ly take place. I will then take a more exten­sive look into the align­ments that are occur­ring in the charts of the Unit­ed States and for Pres­i­dent Oba­ma, and per­haps one or two oth­er charts, again sav­ing more exten­sive com­men­tary for lat­er this year.

Mars Ret­ro­grade (Jan­u­ary 23 till April 13–14)

Where­as Mer­cury moves ret­ro­grade 3 times a year for about 23 days each time, and Venus ret­ro­grades about every 1.5 years for about 40 days, Mars will move ret­ro­grade about every 2 years and 2 months for about 80 days or so…it is the plan­et that goes ret­ro­grade the least so you should take advan­tage of this opportunity.…what opportunity?

Mars rules your actions and desires, it serves your “self” (the Sun) by pro­vid­ing the dri­ve to secure your needs and wants. But when it turns ret­ro­grade it sig­nals a time for you to turn inward, and offers you the oppor­tu­ni­ty (neces­si­ty) to re-exam­ine what is “desire” (or what are your desires), and, just as impor­tant­ly, re-con­sid­er how you should obtain them. This time Mars is ret­ro­grad­ing through Vir­go, so the review of your desires and aims will be upon your need for greater clar­i­ty, order and peace of mind…

Nep­tune Enters Pisces (Feb­ru­ary 3, 2012 till 2025–26)

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. 

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” 

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.

Mer­cury Ret­ro­grade (March 11–12 to April 4)

Mer­cury ret­ro­grades through the sign of Aries and back into Pisces. You need to go with­in and recon­sid­er your atti­tudes and be mind­ful to think before speak­ing! Lat­er, when Her­mes moves back into Pisces, you will need to con­front your fears and restore your faith by re-con­nect­ing to the pow­er of your imagination.

Venus Ret­ro­grade (May 15 to June 27)

Venus ret­ro­grades in the sign of Gem­i­ni. Take this oppor­tu­ni­ty to go with­in and con­sid­er the nuanced com­plex­i­ty in your hier­ar­chy of val­ues. Venus in Gem­i­ni illus­trates the mul­ti­fac­eted nature of your aes­thet­ic and social val­ues, but some­times those flash­ing facets can become a lit­tle dis­con­cert­ing and/or con­fus­ing. The ret­ro­grade will offer a peri­od of re-exam­i­na­tion so that you can more clear­ly assess those dif­fer­ing and diverse approach­es and so help you to sort the wheat from your chaff.

Solar Eclipse in Gem­i­ni (May 20)

The New Moon Solar Eclipse is in Gem­i­ni which means that before you can move ahead with this next release or gift of ener­gy you will first have to turn around so as to cor­rect some­thing in your think­ing. Gem­i­ni rules the low­er mind’s most impor­tant gift, the agile-adapt­able-ques­tion­ing voice bet­ter known as your intel­li­gence. The Moon’s shad­ow reminds you that some old assump­tions may be block­ing you so that your cat­e­gories, labels and what­not are cast­ing a shad­ow upon what you per­ceive. It is time to think “out­side of the box”!

Lunar Eclipse in Sagit­tar­ius (June 4)

The Full Moon Eclipse falls in Sagit­tar­ius and is the “answer” to the Solar Eclipse on May 20. Where­as the Solar Eclipse reminds you that your past may obscure or hin­der the unfold­ment of a new release of ener­gy, the Lunar Eclipse sym­bol­izes the impor­tance of how your cur­rent belief sys­tem, your “truth”, may be blind­ing you to a greater Truth. This Eclipse is also World Invo­ca­tion Day so many, many peo­ple will be call­ing upon uni­ver­sal ener­gies for guid­ance and sup­port. Join in this spir­it of com­bined aware­ness so as to rise to a high­er under­stand­ing in your life.

Jupiter Enters Gem­i­ni (June 11) 

The biggest plan­et “hops over the prover­bial can­dle­stick” (again and again), as it moves through the sign of nim­ble­ness, intel­li­gence and com­mu­ni­ca­tion. The over­all ener­gy lev­el (thoughts, com­mu­ni­ca­tions and actions) will expand great­ly, but you will need to work on try­ing to main­tain direc­tion­al­i­ty and focus. Advances will be made in all forms of net­work­ing, and indi­vid­u­als and groups will have access to more and more infor­ma­tion. The ques­tion will be: “Do we real­ly have more under­stand­ing or are we mere­ly becom­ing more distracted”?

Jupiter Square Nep­tune (June 24–25)

Jupiter in Gem­i­ni meets up with Nep­tune in Pisces; you need to see how to bet­ter bend your grand ideas to the whis­pers of your imag­i­na­tion, dreams and spir­i­tu­al nature. Growth is good, but you need to expand rea­son­ably (and hon­est­ly). Be care­ful of deals or promis­es that sound too good to be true…they usu­al­ly are!

Mer­cury Ret­ro­grade (July 14 to August 7–8)

Mer­cury ret­ro­grades through the sign of Leo. Before you can make a splash with your next “big idea”, you need to go back and review your approach. You need respect, but you have to earn it by lead­ing by exam­ple and help­ing oth­ers to believe in them­selves too.

Sat­urn Enters Scor­pio (Octo­ber 5)

The lessons learned about rela­tion­ship needs, prin­ci­ples and agree­ments (Sat­urn in Libra) moves onto the heart of the mat­ter, lit­er­al­ly. The test now is to go beyond your for­mal agree­ments and forge deep­er and ulti­mate­ly trans­for­ma­tion­al unions. The way for­ward is through joint ven­tures, but that means real sac­ri­fices of the less­er so as to hon­or the greater good for one and all.

Mer­cury Ret­ro­grade (Novem­ber 6 to Novem­ber 26)

Uh oh…remember the Pres­i­den­tial Elec­tion in 2000, (Flori­da and those hang­ing chads, a Supreme deci­sion)? Well, here we are again with Mer­cury shift­ing directions…and this time Her­mes is going ret­ro­grade right on Elec­tion Day!

Mer­cury will start mov­ing back­wards in Sagit­tar­ius and on into Scor­pio. The re-exam­i­na­tion of your beliefs will ulti­mate­ly lead to fac­ing what unites and divides you from one another.

Solar Eclipse in Scor­pio (Novem­ber 13)

Right in the mid­dle of Mer­cury’s ret­ro­grade we expe­ri­ence the sec­ond New Moon Eclipse of the year. The theme for the Solar/Lunar eclipses is shift­ing now, away from the realm of thoughts and ideas (Gemini/Sagittarius) and onto the thorny ques­tions of Val­ue (Taurus/Scorpio). The release of some new under­stand­ing about the nature of your unions is being obscured by shad­ows from the past…time to con­front those fears of rejec­tion and loss and take the high­er path of show­ing your strength by cre­at­ing a bet­ter space for mutu­al sacrifice.

Lunar Eclipse in Gem­i­ni (Novem­ber 28)

The Full Moon Lunar Eclipse in Gem­i­ni inter­rupts the rev­e­la­tion you were hop­ing for. You were seek­ing to bend and stretch your intel­li­gence so as to hold two (or more) approach­es to the issue you con­front. Again, it is your men­tal “blind spot”, your unques­tioned pat­terns and assump­tions that need to be seen as stand­ing in your way. Real intel­li­gence is not exer­cised in hav­ing the “cor­rect” answer by accept­ing the con­ven­tion­al par­a­digm; it is much more impor­tant to be able to shift your assump­tions so that you can ques­tion the ques­tion itself!

Next, I will take a look at the major tran­sits for the year in the charts for the USA and Pres­i­dent Barack Obama.