Are you tired, uncer­tain or just plain confused…well then you are doing just fine! After all, did­n’t you know, that is just what you are sup­posed to feel like when Mars and Nep­tune oppose one another…On the oth­er hand, if you are ener­gized and cer­tain today…then you prob­a­bly need to wake up and real­ize that you’ve been day-dream­ing again!

Mars rules your desires, dri­ves and actions; its prin­ci­pal pur­pose is to serve your “self” (Sun) by pro­vid­ing the “zip” to go after what you want. Mars is the plan­et of “you”, the plan­et of Self-Asser­tion. Nep­tune brings you into self­less­ness; it rules your capac­i­ty for com­pas­sion, empa­thy and uni­ver­sal love…and it is the source for your dreams, those very objects of your Mars desires. Nep­tune is the plan­et of “beyond you”, the plan­et of Imagination.

So, sim­ply put, this oppo­si­tion illus­trates the chal­lenge of  how you rec­on­cile, bal­ance and inte­grate self-asser­tion and selflessness…and it also illu­mi­nates the rela­tion­ship between your desires and dreams.

Today your Star­ry com­pan­ions are pos­ing a daunt­ing dilem­ma: How do you (or can you) assert your­self and be kind too? In the begin­ning of your jour­ney, when faced with the chal­lenge to get what you want, to get “your way”, you either “threw down or turned your cheek”, you either forced your way or yielded.

But as you grow, as you become spir­i­tu­al­ly stronger, you real­ize that your strength is for you, yes it is, but more it is for you to use in ser­vice to some­thing greater than yourself…that one of your most impor­tant advances is to learn how to become self-assertive in non self-cen­tered ways!

You need to make your unique con­tri­bu­tion to your world, and so you need to become stronger. Yet much if not most of your strength is found­ed, formed and giv­en sub­stance by your expe­ri­ences with your fel­low com­pan­ions. Your strength, your pow­er and pur­pose is not by or for your­self alone…it is for some­thing much more sublime.

Today’s align­ment reminds you that your jour­ney is paradoxical…the stronger you tru­ly become…the more hum­ble, accept­ing and self-less you must even­tu­al­ly become too!

Equal­ly today’s mes­sage is about your desires and dreams, it is about the rela­tion­ship between your actions and where you think (or hope) they are tak­ing you. You always encounter your world as it is…Today is seem­ing­ly “giv­en” to you (by “the past”, by the thoughts, feel­ings and actions of you and many oth­ers). But then, by your great­est pow­er, “Imag­i­na­tion”, you dream of a dif­fer­ent world, a bet­ter, gen­tler and more beau­ti­ful place (one that you may remem­ber, one that you came upon in your dreams).

Then you act (Mars) to real­ize this dream (Nep­tune). Per­haps some of it will come into being, if you dreamt well and act­ed tru­ly. But you and those around you are not yet the cre­ators you will be, so often much will not turn out well, and much not intend­ed may come into being too. And so, you must try, try again. 

This is also what you feel today, you remem­ber the Dream (Nep­tune), and you see how you have Act­ed (Mars), whether well or not so well to bring that dream into being…and you know and under­stand that you must dream and do again. You have reached a turn­ing point in dreaming-reality-dreaming…a cycle is over, a new one begins.

Dream well today!

Then act with conviction…

Be moved by compassion…

But above all else, be a creator…and be humble…

A Dou­ble-Day again, and it is Fire to Fire! New­ly arrived in Sagit­tar­ius both Venus and Mer­cury form a beau­ti­ful trine aspect to Uranus stand­ing at the thresh­old of Aries…This is indeed a Fiery Day!

Venus has just begun her explo­rations in Sagit­tar­ius, seek­ing out the delights, dis­cov­er­ies and rev­e­la­tions that come from beyond your beyond, lead­ing you out to your far hori­zons of val­ue, beau­ty and love. Uranus, “The Awak­en­er” lends a hand, to quick­en your appre­ci­a­tion of the unfa­mil­iar now, for it is always his role to lead you into your greater spaces of self-realization.

Uranus does this by chal­leng­ing, break­ing through and ulti­mate­ly over­throw­ing the Real­i­ty-Struc­tures that have you have cre­at­ed. You made your Venus-Space of val­ue and beau­ty, of likes and loves…and you did so by dis­cov­er­ing what you were drawn to and what you attract­ed in turn, and of a neces­si­ty these were all unfa­mil­iar, at first…But they became the re-assur­ing, the need­ed and nec­es­sary val­ues of your life. You cre­at­ed a sys­tem of val­ue and mean­ing, a hier­ar­chy of beau­ty and love and it was good…

But if you were to remain there, with the famil­iar, with the everyday…well, how would you grow, how could you learn…how could you become? So, there comes a yearn­ing with­in, and an oppor­tu­ni­ty with­out, and you move into the unex­pect­ed again.

This is the spir­it of Uranus mov­ing with­in and around you, remind­ing you that your jour­ney is a con­stant unfold­ment of poten­tials, a spi­ral dance of life and dis­cov­ery, of beau­ty and love…and around every bend, as you turn the next cor­ner, you come clos­er to the cross­ing, clos­er to the light.

Mer­cury is graced by Uranus today too…and these two, well, they real­ly, real­ly get along with one anoth­er! Uranus is said to be the high­er vibra­tion of Mercury…Mercury is your low­er mind and Uranus is your high­er mind or what is called the “Mind of God”, (just as Nep­tune is the “Love of God” and Plu­to the “Will of God”).

Mer­cury rules your per­cep­tions, your abil­i­ty to gath­er “inputs”, process them into some order and cre­ate a body of expe­ri­ence and knowl­edge. Like­wise, he rules your abil­i­ty to share this infor­ma­tion by means of many modes of com­mu­ni­ca­tion. Her­mes is the mes­sen­ger and rules your net­works with­in and your net­works around you.

Now mov­ing through Sagit­tar­ius he is stretch­ing, seek­ing to under­stand and share that much more. But how, how do you get beyond your self-made blind­ers, those shad­owed views of your pre­cepts, assump­tions, beliefs and truths? Those struc­tures were built up so that you could com­pre­hend and com­mu­ni­cate in your present real­i­ty, but they also form your self-lim­i­ta­tions as well.  For you stand in your own shad­ow, so that what you see…is what you expect or wish to see, and what­ev­er does not fit or chal­lenge that must needs be dis­missed to pro­tect “your truth”.

Here is where Uranus comes to the res­cue, shin­ing a bright light from a dif­fer­ent point, anoth­er angle of space; he shines an intu­itive beam of bril­liance that reveals some­thing missed, anoth­er piece of the puz­zle and you go “ah hah”.…now I see beyond, and the “That” is not so dimmed now.

For, in Truth, every part of your world is like a many-faceted jew­el, and you have only been see­ing, believ­ing and liv­ing in one facet, per­haps two…but your jour­ney, your goal is to under­stand and encom­pass it all!

Today Uranus takes you beyond your mono­chrome mind and shows you a glimpse of the rain­bow world you real­ly move through…

You are shin­ing now, you are brilliant…and you are beautiful!

You are in for a dou­ble dose of shift­ing ener­gies today as Venus and Mer­cury are mak­ing their moves into Sagittarius…no doubt about it, you are going to feel different!

Venus dances into Sagit­tar­ius for about the next 3 weeks and your appre­ci­a­tion turns away from those deep­er, hid­den secrets that you shared with one another…you turn, togeth­er, to face out­ward because you seek for a dis­tant horizon.

In Scor­pio what mat­tered most was for you to move clos­er togeth­er, to go inward and cre­ate a more intense, pas­sion­ate con­nec­tion. But now you are in “Fire” and you need to go beyond the beyond, to cross bor­ders, to take your delight as you explore new worlds togeth­er. The thrill of dis­cov­ery, of reach­ing the far­ther shore is what you need to share now.

Dis­tant lands beck­on, oth­er times, oth­er places and oth­er peo­ple refresh and renew your soul. The free­dom to dis­cov­er one anoth­er in new spaces is what Sagit­tar­ius seeks, the free­dom to grow beyond one­self and dis­cov­er some­thing greater with and through one another…this is the promise and hope of true part­ner­ship now as you trav­el with your com­pan­ion on a great adventure…together!

Mer­cury too makes his move into the Archer’s realm, but his stay will be much longer (he is going ret­ro­grade soon) and so will not move onto Capri­corn till the sec­ond week of Jan­u­ary. That’s a long, long time to be expand­ing your men­tal horizons…but what an opportunity!

In Scor­pio you peeled back many lay­ers to reach the deep­er core of the mys­tery. But now you are in the Ide­al­is­tic Halls of Fire, in the realms of Truth and Phi­los­o­phy, of Sci­ence and Reli­gion. Now your mind needs to con­sid­er how what you have found fits with­in a larg­er context…you seek to con­nect your expe­ri­ence to a frame­work of mean­ing and understanding.

You need to dip into the Well of Wis­dom to explain your sto­ry to yourself…and you need to add your sto­ry, your dis­cov­er­ies, to that very same Wis­dom-Well too. For this is how we jour­ney and help one anoth­er. We share our insights, com­pare and con­trast the expe­ri­ences and build up a Library of Truth about our­selves and our world.

Now with Mer­cury in Sagit­tar­ius you need to lis­ten, think and speak with a right­eous devo­tion to the cause of a Greater Under­stand­ing. You need to hear the Truth, you need to speak the Truth…but most of all you need to live your Truth.

For you are one of the ones of the One…and your sto­ry is True.

Don’t hold back…live your Truth!

Now it is Her­mes turn to dance in those mir­rored Halls of Wonder…Neptune’s Mag­i­cal Mys­tery tour is com­ing to your mind…There is going to be some mis­per­cep­tion, and some mis­un­der­stand­ing here…but that is only the sideshow, because this is real­ly for you, it is a gift, an oppor­tu­ni­ty to grow beyond the bound­aries that kept you from the greater truth that is always around that next spi­ral turn…

Mer­cury is wind­ing down his div­ing-deep­er, his jour­ney through Scor­pio is almost done, and he’s clos­ing in but not quite catch­ing Venus before he piv­ots ’round in Novem­ber. Your mind has been prob­ing fur­ther, to peel back lay­ers of assump­tion, fol­low­ing a hunch, a feel­ing to go beyond the ordi­nary, beyond those mere­ly sur­face appear­ances and so reach that under­world, that hid­den realm which reveals the deep­er real­i­ty behind the screen of your day to day. You may have found some­thing greater, had your “Eure­ka!” moment…

But Nep­tune adds her Mys­ti­cal Touch now…And you will find that there is a need to pause and recon­sid­er what you have dis­cov­ered, and you may feel, yes there is some­thing going on here, an altered state, a shift­ing of the light…you have a touch of doubt, a greater uncertainty…oh yes, there is even con­fu­sion in the air.

And, of course, that is exact­ly what you need, to ques­tion, to wonder…to throw a dif­fer­ent light upon the dis­cov­er­ies before you…for this is the way it has always been done, “The Work” that is the mak­ing of your Greater Aware­ness. You move from lev­el to lev­el, to an ever clos­er com­pre­hen­sion of what “That” is…and you do it by means of this mys­tic spi­ral dance of Con­scious­ness, that part of you who is for­ev­er seek­ing to encom­pass the real­i­ty with­in and without.

“Cer­tain­ty” sure has a nice ring to it, yes it sounds nice, it is reas­sur­ing and a seem­ing com­fort­able place to be…but it is great­ly over-rat­ed and real­ly unable to hold. Because you are spir­it on a quest; your jour­ney is a con­tin­u­ous, unfold­ing and nev­er-end­ing expan­sion of con­scious­ness and there is noth­ing for it but to keep mov­ing on, into the greater mystery.

You cycle into a new state of aware­ness, a new under­stand­ing, and you set your­self down into your new certainty…and it holds for a time. But a dif­fer­ent light is cast, Nep­tune helps by shift­ing the shad­ow-plays, and doubt is born. You move from cer­tain­ty to questioning…and so you look again, you make adjustments…and all seems well again for a time.

But even­tu­al­ly, and this is good, the adjust­ments are not enough the shift­ing shad­ows are too great, and ques­tion­ing leads to greater doubts, which leads to deep­er confusion…and, final­ly, the release from the old is found in your Dis­il­lu­sion­ment. That is pre­cise­ly what is need­ed of you, to become freer, to be dis-illu­sioned and so “lose” your illusions!

This is the nec­es­sary path you must walk, into this dark­ness (for a time)…for it is this mys­tery, it is this pas­sage that must be made to release the seeds of your new under­stand­ing, a re-align­ment of your mind…To the “Ah Hah!” of your next Illumination…

Now you take that next spi­ral turn in your jour­ney from an unself-con­scious spark of the divine…

You move that much clos­er to becoming…the becoming.

As the veil becomes ever thin­ner, between this near­er realm and those beyond, you are giv­en anoth­er oppor­tu­ni­ty to dis­solve away the less­er and dis­cov­er some­thing greater, to ques­tion what is of val­ue with­in you and what is of val­ue between us.

Venus is fin­ish­ing up her sojourn in Scor­pio, where your expe­ri­ence of depths and pas­sions, your unions and trans­for­ma­tions, have moved you fur­ther into the mys­tery that is found between “I” and “Thou”.

To reach that cross­ing point, to tru­ly form that spe­cial “we” has required much of one anoth­er; you have sac­ri­ficed for each oth­er, giv­ing up the less­er val­ues to cre­ate the greater shared. But a dan­ger is always there, that you might go too far, sur­ren­der what makes you “you”, and so achieve the “we” only to lose yourself.

Nep­tune in Aquar­ius pro­vides a way to under­stand, to form the nec­es­sary coun­ter­point; she offers a gen­tle reminder that the whole point of mov­ing into a greater, more con­scious rela­tion­ship beyond your­self was real­ly so that you would come that much clos­er to yourself!

Nep­tune in Aquar­ius sings the song of Indi­vid­u­al­i­ty that is born from, finds its life in and remains faith­ful through friend­ship; that the way to your­self is met in fel­low­ship, it is found­ed and formed by your com­pan­ions who jour­ney with you, out­ward and inward on this riv­er of Life-Consciousness-Spirit.

Nep­tune reminds you now that the sac­ri­fice required of you was to give up the less­er and not “true to you” val­ues that you might have been attached to…those periph­er­al val­ues were instead lead­ing you away from your authen­tic path of self-real­iza­tion. By mov­ing into Union, by that fric­tion­al engage­ment with the oth­er, you each forced the oth­er to con­front the ques­tion “what is more me and what is less me?”…and choose.

If you were attempt­ing this with some­one whose essen­tial val­ues were not aligned with your own, there is no way it would not end in self-denial and loss. The greater effort you made, the more you sac­ri­ficed, the more you would dimin­ish your­self, lose your­self and the oth­er too.

Instead, there must exist a core of shared val­ues that you come togeth­er upon, some already present val­ues (and many wait­ing to be re-dis­cov­ered), which form that shin­ing sil­ver chord of com­pan­ion­ship (forged long ago) that is re-awak­ened and ener­gized by your return to one anoth­er. For this is not the first time, nor the last, and the love that is there is waiting…

Then, with this endur­ing love, you can each turn from the periph­er­al, sac­ri­fice those less­er attach­ments, while you hon­or the greater with­in and between you. The mys­tery is revealed as you each become more your­self in and through one anoth­er than you ever could by your­selves alone…

Today, cel­e­brate the mys­tery of your jour­ney to your­self that is found through the hearts of one another…

Let go of your less­er sense of your­self and dis­cov­er the greater wait­ing to be real­ized in the beau­ty, majesty and mys­tery of your tran­scen­dent life of being one of the ones of the One.

Love your­self, love one another…and repeat.