Aphrodite embraces Her­mes in a week long dance of the plan­ets. Because of the recent Mer­cury ret­ro­grade, Venus has “caught up” with Mer­cury and now pass­es by. But as Mer­cury con­tin­ues to accel­er­ate it will “catch” Venus next Mon­day and so form a sec­ond con­junc­tion with­in a week! This is a rather spe­cial “do-si-do” dance that cel­e­brates the align­ment of your Head and your Heart.…so what can you expect?

Venus\Mercury encour­ages thoughts about beau­ty, and thoughts expressed beau­ti­ful­ly. Your per­cep­tion, appre­ci­a­tion and enjoy­ment of the sub­lime beck­on you now. Take a walk in the woods or a gar­den, vis­it a muse­um, enjoy a per­for­mance; lis­ten with your heart and sing with your soul. Tru­ly this is a time to cel­e­brate the splen­dor of your uni­verse, with­in and without.

With Venus com­ing across Mer­cury, your mind is calmed by Aphrodite’s sooth­ing balm of love; con­sid­er­a­tion for oth­ers tem­pers your thoughts and the way in which you share them. The cre­ative force becomes man­i­fest through the beau­ti­ful idea, which in turn becomes the foun­da­tion for a more per­fect reality.

Sing a song, write a poem.…and tell your beloved that they are beautiful.

Turning…Slower…Deeper…Stronger. The life-con­scious­ness-spir­it ener­gies, which were released at the Aries New Moon one month ago, must become sub­stan­tial now. What start­ed as pure spir­it-fire, as “dream­ing-ways”, has now to become “being-ways” in Taurus.

Each New Moon releas­es the seed-forms for that sign. Each New Moon builds upon what came before and pre­pares the way for the next unfold­ment in your spir­i­tu­al jour­ney. Your life jour­ney is nei­ther a line nor a circle…it is a spi­ral dance of consciousness…unfolding, seek­ing and under­stand­ing, step by step, sign by sign.

Here, at your sec­ond step, the “Inspi­ra­tion-al” ener­gies of Aries, which leapt forth into myr­i­ad lines of activ­i­ty, are to be turned, shaped and guid­ed into mean­ing­ful and beau­ti­ful forms under the aegis of Venus, the plan­et of Tau­rus. Venus, the plan­et of Val­ue, Form and Beau­ty takes your ideas/ideals and fix­es them into forms of sub­stan­tial manifestation.

Here at the New Moon of Tau­rus, your ide­al must become real, tan­gi­ble and ground­ed; you seek not the ide­al of beau­ty, but beau­ty incar­nate. All of your sens­es are engaged: Taste, Smell, Touch, Hear­ing and Sight. Whether it is the smell of the ocean, the vision of a sun­rise or sun­set, the touch of your lover’s caress, these and so many more are what must be expe­ri­enced in the sen­su­al world that is Tau­rus. This is the sign that delights in Earth­i­ness; it is the time to expe­ri­ence the Boun­ti­ful Uni­verse, the Peace­ful Garden.

So, at this New Moon of Tau­rus cel­e­brate Fer­til­i­ty, Boun­ti­ful­ness, and Grace. Cel­e­brate your val­ue; it is this expe­ri­ence of your Val­ue that is your pri­ma­ry task in this cycle.

Man­i­fest your Val­ue by being the cre­ator who releas­es the Cre­ator. So be it.

Zoom!  Zoom!  Desire meets Truth and you are real­ly mov­ing for­ward now! You are filled with enthu­si­asm, ener­gy and dri­ve; your con­fi­dence cre­ates oppor­tu­ni­ties. Talk about a “Can Do” phi­los­o­phy; there is no hold­ing you back now! Go For It!

But… remem­ber before you take that giant leap to make sure you can see where you are land­ing! This is a con­junc­tion in Aries, and you would be wise to look up and out to see where you are head­ing, (or you might lit­er­al­ly bump your head). The exu­ber­ance you are expe­ri­enc­ing is real, but be care­ful that you don’t let it over­whelm you.

The answer is to let the won­der­ful ener­gy flow through you, inspire you, thrill you.…But then you need to use your aware­ness; you need to be “present”, and so con­scious­ly focus the ener­gy upon some activ­i­ty that is mean­ing­ful. The ener­gy is offered up, but you must choose how to use it!

You do not want to waste what the uni­verse is offer­ing to you now. Instead, be a “Focus­ing Lens” for right action; let your desires be guid­ed by the wis­dom of Jupiter. As you align your desires with Uni­ver­sal Truth the path to Right Action becomes clear.

Now… go for it!

This is Seri­ous! …No, seri­ous­ly, we are talk­ing about Sat­urn, the “Ring Pass Not” plan­et of Real­i­ty. You are fac­ing a Reck­on­ing and a Rev­e­la­tion about your Val­ues and Rela­tion­ships (Venus). But, of course, you are real­ly fac­ing a reckoning/revelation about your rela­tion­ship to your “self”.

With an oppo­si­tion (like a Full Moon), it seems as if “the prob­lem” is out there, which is par­tial­ly true, of course. Any of your rela­tion­ships which have been under­go­ing chal­lenges will now reach a cli­max; the rela­tion­ship will face a reck­on­ing. You’ve reached a turn­ing point, and this can, and prob­a­bly should, be painful. There is a sense of final­i­ty; “we” may not make it.

The “issue” is the bal­ance, (for both of you), between your­self and the oth­er. Venus is in Aries, asserts the prin­ci­ple of “me, myself and I”. Sat­urn is in Libra, reminds Venus that “I” with­out “Thou” is mean­ing­less. Bal­ance is achieved when you cre­ate a dynam­ic equi­lib­ri­um between rea­son­able self-asser­tion cou­pled with lov­ing con­sid­er­a­tion for the oth­er. The prob­lem here is that either the rela­tion­ship is being dam­aged by too much indi­vid­u­al­ism, or indi­vid­u­al­i­ty is being smoth­ered by a too demand­ing relationship/partner. The sit­u­a­tion has become untenable.

Either way, you need to take respon­si­bil­i­ty for your part in this, which of course is (at least) half of it! You get and cre­ate the rela­tion­ship you are wor­thy of, and that depends upon your pri­ma­ry rela­tion­ship, your rela­tion­ship to your “self”. You can­not, nor should you, seek to change the oth­er. You can re-exam­ine and you should devel­op your­self; and, you will by those actions change the nature of your rela­tion­ship to the oth­er. And yes, that means your part­ner will have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to move into this new space and change as well.

But your con­cern must be with your val­ues, your needs and the pat­terns of rela­tion­ship that you have cre­at­ed. The question/revelation is about your val­ues; the ques­tion seems exter­nal but it is tru­ly inter­nal. The issue and les­son is about your self-worth.…it is about self-acceptance…it is about your love of self…which then is reflect­ed into your rela­tion­ship and your love for the other.

You can­not turn away from this moment, this pain that seems to come from out­side. Instead move into that pain, look with­in and exam­ine your­self, your val­ues, and your love of self and by so doing you will strength­en your self-accep­tance. Then go to your part­ner or to your friend and calm­ly, lov­ing­ly and care­ful­ly explain what you have now come to under­stand about your­self. Share your new under­stand­ing of your­self and cre­ate a new space for you both to move into.

Remem­ber in any rela­tion­ship you are deal­ing with “Three”; there is “I”, there is “You”, and then there is the third there between you both, “We”. This third part must be pro­tect­ed, nur­tured and devel­op as you grow. Through greater under­stand­ing and accep­tance of each oth­er you release one anoth­er to cre­ate a new space for that “we”. Then, and only then, can you come togeth­er con­scious­ly, agree­ing to be bound to one anoth­er in mutu­al under­stand­ing, trust and love. Your rela­tion­ship can, nay must grow again; it must be the place to be more of what you each are than any­where else, for that is true love.

So, on this day of reck­on­ing, in this moment of rev­e­la­tion, turn and look with­in your­self and re-con­nect to the foun­tain-source of under­stand­ing, the source of true love, your soul.

Now turn and look upon your beloved and say those mag­i­cal words, “I love you”.

Beau­ty meets the Beast. What hap­pens when Value/Love encoun­ters Willpower/Control?… Well, let’s just say that this is not going to be pret­ty unless you under­stand the nature of the choice you face. 

The chal­lenge is about under­stand­ing and express­ing your val­ue or self-worth, and you are under pres­sure from with­in and with­out. Venus is wing­ing its way through Aries, singing the song of indi­vid­u­al­ism and the val­ue of being “I”. You feel you must assert your unique­ness and be free to be yourself.

Yet “pure” free­dom leads to a chaot­ic “state of nature”, where every­one is for them­selves with­out regard for one another.

Now that urge for per­fect free­dom is encoun­ter­ing Plu­to. Plu­to is lay­ing down the chal­lenge from Capri­corn: that your pur­suit of “I” must be lim­it­ed by the need for order and the ful­fill­ment of respon­si­bil­i­ties; it is the out­er order you sub­mit to and the inner order of your self-con­trol. In fact, your abil­i­ty to be free depends upon a gen­er­al social order, (and with­in that order by the qual­i­ty of your per­son­al rela­tion­ships), and upon your capac­i­ty for self-con­trol. It is that gen­er­al order and your rela­tion­ships formed with­in it which cir­cum­scribe your free­dom as they also pre­serve and pro­tect it.

Yet an order that just “is”, that upholds order and tra­di­tion uncrit­i­cal­ly, leads to stag­na­tion, mean­ing­less­ness and the denial of spir­i­tu­al growth.

So the urge to be free to be one­self more tru­ly is con­fronting the order which helped cre­ate the con­di­tions for free­dom. The ten­sion is between how con­di­tions for free­dom are cre­at­ed by a cer­tain struc­ture of rela­tion­ships, and the fact that this struc­ture must also lim­it your free­dom at the same time.

What is the les­son, what is the choice?

As always the les­son is about your spir­i­tu­al growth. You and your world are con­stant­ly evolv­ing: phys­i­cal­ly, emo­tion­al­ly, men­tal­ly and spir­i­tu­al­ly. The val­ues cre­at­ed and embod­ied in your rela­tion­ships cap­ture a moment in time in the growth of spir­i­tu­al self-real­iza­tion. As you con­tin­ue to unfold your poten­tials that very struc­ture which sup­port­ed you now comes to lim­it you. The les­son is to remem­ber that you are the cre­ator of the world you are in… You can and will change it. The only ques­tion is: how con­scious­ly will you bring about a new order?

The false choice here is between assert­ing free­dom and break­ing with the order that is, or using force to main­tain rela­tion­ships that are one-sided. You either break your respon­si­bil­i­ties to oth­ers or force them to ful­fill your needs. (Or they force you to serve them.) Either way denies true free­dom or mean­ing­ful order. But, remem­ber, there is always the “Third Way”, the Way of Understanding.

The core issue here is Venus/Value. It is your shared val­ues that bind you to one anoth­er in any rela­tion­ship from the per­son­al to the col­lec­tive. What you must do now is use the pow­er of Plu­to to deeply re-exam­ine what val­ues are true for you and for the oth­er. What you need to do is deter­mine your hier­ar­chy of val­ues, and come to know which are worth sac­ri­fic­ing in order to make the rela­tion­ship pos­si­ble. And as you do this you re-affirm the com­mon val­ues that you share with one anoth­er. These com­mon val­ues are what bind you to one anoth­er; these shared val­ues are the liv­ing real­i­ty which forms what is Love.

Even­tu­al­ly, as you go still deep­er, your spir­i­tu­al growth is quick­ened by your expe­ri­ence that all of cre­ation comes from one Spir­i­tu­al source, and that we are bound to one anoth­er not by com­pul­sion but by that Greater Under­stand­ing, which is so sub­lime­ly met in our Love for one another.

So, let Pluto/Hades take you into the depths of your being so that you may find the “Pearl of Great Price”, the secret trea­sure of Venus/Value at the core of your soul. For it is there that you will meet the one with­in which is the same as the One of Creation.

You will under­stand that the great illu­sion of this world is your sense of sep­a­rate­ness; and, you will under­stand the Great Truth, felt through your expe­ri­ence of love, that we are one in Spirit. 

E Pluribus Unum! (Out of many, One!)