Warn­ing! Warn­ing! … This is not an easy one to handle!

Mars rules Desire/Action; Plu­to rules Will/Control. When plan­ets are in a square to one anoth­er the ener­gies are not com­bin­ing effort­less­ly; there is stress, strain and some­thing’s going to hap­pen. And when it hap­pens with these two, well let’s just say we humans are still work­ing on get­ting these ener­gies right. It is not that there is “bad” ener­gy (or bad plan­ets); it is just that it takes time to acquire that “greater under­stand­ing” to work with the cre­ative pow­ers of Desire and Will.

When­ev­er there is a square you are faced with a choice. Some­times you don’t under­stand or want to face the chal­lenge. Or, if it con­cerns anoth­er, maybe they can­not, or will not, work with you. The sit­u­a­tion may not lead to a greater under­stand­ing, but instead stum­bles into pain, suf­fer­ing and loss.

What is the choice/challenge here? Mars is in Aries, its “own” sign. Mars is dri­ving for­ward with an ide­al­is­tic, insis­tent ener­gy of being pure­ly one­self; it is that pure Life-Force-Song that bursts forth to exclaim “I am” as you dance the dance of life incarnate.

Plu­to is in Capri­corn, the sign of order, tra­di­tion and real­i­ty. It is the force of will and con­trol now focused through the neces­si­ty of Author­i­ty and Tra­di­tion. Plu­to is here the Avatar of the man­i­fest­ed real­i­ty; the will that holds togeth­er the Life-Force-Song that has found self-real­iza­tion in matter.

The chal­lenge is to be true to your­self, to your ideals and dreams, but how to do this with­in the con­text of a real­i­ty that seems to be thwart­ing your progress? Do you just dri­ve ahead any­way and maybe crash and burn? Or should you just give way to the sta­tus quo, for­go your quest, and be untrue to your­self? What to do? If you push ahead you risk caus­ing injury to your­self or oth­ers. If you hold back, you fail to ful­fill your pur­pose which is to grow. It seems either way you will lose. But there is always a “third way”, it is the Way of Under­stand­ing.

You must pay homage to both ener­gies, for they are both true. You must not, you can­not, choose between them. Instead, you must find the Noble Path, the one true road; that is the “mid­dle way” of inte­gra­tion. You can and must inte­grate both ener­gies because each in fact depends upon the oth­er for its very exis­tence. The very reality/structure that Plu­to is uphold­ing was cre­at­ed by the insis­tent, ide­al­is­tic ener­gies of Mars long ago. And, the Root-Source for those dreams of Mars springs from the Seed-Forms embod­ied in that which was passed down by your ances­tors. They and now you made this “real­i­ty”. You must accept the respon­si­bil­i­ty to hon­or their sac­ri­fice and now add to the song of  Life-Spirit.

Take the Mid­dle Path. Move with your Aries ener­gies through the forms of real­i­ty and bring into them a new and greater under­stand­ing. Do this cre­ative­ly, with love and com­pas­sion and know that this has always been the way. You are Spir­it. You are Mat­ter. The illu­sion is your expe­ri­ence of sep­a­ra­tion. The Truth is the Move­ment, the Dance of Life, of Spirit/Matter. Dance the dance of Cre­ation which knows that Free­dom is to be found in the Now.

To walk the Noble Path, to take the path of under­stand­ing, the first step is accep­tance. What is before you, what seems to be in your way, is of your cre­ation. You made it, you can (and will) change it. The only ques­tion is, will you change it con­scious­ly, and so tru­ly embrace the Song of Spir­it which sings “I am THAT, I AM.”

Wait for it… yes, your answer is here. You’ve been try­ing to under­stand some­thing impor­tant since Mer­cury turned ret­ro­grade on March 30th. Now there is an offer­ing from the stars.

Actu­al­ly, you could say that ever since Mer­cury aligned with the Sun on Feb­ru­ary 25 (like a Full Moon), you’ve been mov­ing towards this new begin­ning. This is the mid­point of the Mer­cury ret­ro­grade cycle. This align­ment with the Sun is like a New Moon, so there is a new release of ener­gy and understanding.

Since this align­ment is in Aries, it is an answer to the ques­tion about your “pres­ence” in the world. You’ve been reflect­ing, review­ing and reex­am­in­ing how you appear to oth­ers. The way in which you hold your­self and project your­self into the world has been the main top­ic or point behind many oppor­tu­ni­ties and chal­lenges that you face now.

Maybe it is just the real­iza­tion that your hair/makeup/clothing style needs a makeover. Or, more impor­tant­ly, maybe it is an adjust­ment in your atti­tude. This is the moment to get your answer. If it seems as if your old look or old ways don’t seem to be get­ting you to where you want to go, well, it’s time to re-boot your presence.

Lis­ten for the mes­sage from Her­mes. Turn and look into your mir­ror of life. Then, take a step beyond appear­ances and cre­ate a per­sona that reflects the real you. Work on it till April 23, when Mer­cury turns direct. Then move outward/forward through your re-imag­ined presence.

What you see is what they get. Make it right.

Plu­to “stands still” today as it begins its ret­ro­grade cycle from April 9th till Sep­tem­ber 16th. Rul­ing the Will, willpow­er and “con­trol issues”, Plu­to turn­ing ret­ro­grade cre­ates an oppor­tu­ni­ty every year to jour­ney with­in and reflect upon the nature of self-deter­mi­na­tion in your life.

The space that you call your “self” is your sacred space. You move out from this space and exer­cise your will in order to do any­thing in this world. But of course by so doing you come in con­tact with oth­er wills. Their space is sacred too.

When some­one push­es into your space with­out your per­mis­sion, or you do that to anoth­er, well, that is called “tres­pass­ing”. It is a vio­la­tion of your spir­i­tu­al (and often phys­i­cal) integri­ty. The key, as always, is your “self con­trol”, your self-deter­mi­na­tion. For the spir­i­tu­al war­rior, the bat­tle is with­in one­self; to achieve self-mas­tery is the only goal.

To the extent that you “Know Your­self”, you com­mand and con­trol your­self. You exer­cise your will and delin­eate clear­ly the bound­aries for your­self. You know when (and if) to let some­one cross into “your space”. Like­wise, hav­ing this knowl­edge, you would nev­er vio­late the space of anoth­er, for to vio­late their space is a sin.

You are learn­ing to exer­cise your pow­er intel­li­gent­ly, cre­ative­ly and lov­ing­ly through your expe­ri­ences on this earth­ly plane. As you advance in spir­i­tu­al under­stand­ing, you more con­scious­ly align your will (a spark of the divine will) to the One Will. That Will is the Source; it is the one, true Pow­er of the Universe.

 As it has always been said… “Let Thy Will Be Done”.

Growth is Good… and your new cycle of growth com­mences today.

The Sun rules your “self”; it is the home of all of your poten­tials, all your tomor­rows. Jupiter rules your prin­ci­ples; it is that which deter­mines how you relate to the world around you. But always remem­ber, your first and most impor­tant rela­tion­ship is with your “self”. Now with the Sun con­joined with Jupiter you can re-align your­self to your “self”.

Take time today to reex­am­ine the prin­ci­ples of your life. What is “your truth”? Under­stand where you have come from so that you may bet­ter under­stand why and where you are going. With that greater under­stand­ing you can then decide how best to move your­self towards your dream.

As a new year­ly growth cycle com­mences, last year’s con­cludes. Turn inward today to under­stand what were your inten­tions, out­comes and lessons of growth expe­ri­enced in the year just end­ed. Then turn out­ward and use this under­stand­ing as the foun­da­tion for your new cycle of growth, your new round of self-realization.

This is the most fun­da­men­tal teach­ing of the cos­mos. It is the answer to the ques­tion: “Why are you here?” The answer quite sim­ply is: “You are here to grow”.

You have been on a long, long jour­ney of self-unfold­ment. You began as a spark of the divine flame. You moved out into the cos­mos to learn, to grow, to become. At each turn­ing of the wheel of life, you must har­vest the mean­ing of what you have learned, then use that under­stand­ing and go forth again to a high­er plane of self-real­iza­tion. And so on, and so on…

Cel­e­brate today your jour­ney, your growth. Ful­fill your des­tiny, which is to be a star amongst the stars. Go Forth, Grow and become your Destiny.

This is anoth­er of the major tran­si­tions this year that I men­tioned in the overview for 2011. Here is what I wrote then:

Nep­tune Enters Pisces (Apr.4, Aug. 4, Feb. 3)
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”