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!)

Whew! That was bumpy, but Her­mes mak­ing those “loop de loops” reminds us that life is not lived in a straight line…It’s a Spi­ral Dance in this Life-Con­scious­ness-Spir­it jour­ney, and you must some­times cir­cle back in order to move ahead with greater understanding.

This time you had an oppor­tu­ni­ty to re-exam­ine your image or pres­ence in the world. Now with Mer­cury mov­ing for­ward you can put out the “new you”. Your dreams, plans and ideas that have been held in abeyance for 3 weeks, it is time to move them for­ward. Your com­mu­ni­ca­tions, net­work­ing and tech­nolo­gies which seemed fraught with dif­fi­cul­ties (or worse), they should all begin to be oper­ate more normally.

Now, your only prob­lem is going to be that when­ev­er things seem to be going awry… well, you can’t blame Her­mes anymore!

Thank you Her­mes… now lead us on to the Light!

Well you should be excit­ed now. The plan­et of attrac­tion meets the plan­et of elec­tric­i­ty and sparks are bound to fly! You want to expe­ri­ence new sen­sa­tions and dis­cov­er new delights. What­ev­er is nor­mal… well, that is just not going to make it now!

Venus rules val­ue, beau­ty and love. Uranus rules indi­vid­u­al­i­ty, free­dom and inde­pen­dence. The com­bi­na­tion of these two pro­vides a won­der­ful oppor­tu­ni­ty to under­stand the core prin­ci­ple of what is meant by “true love”.

The core prin­ci­ple of true love is uncon­di­tion­al sup­port (and cel­e­bra­tion) for one anoth­er’s spir­i­tu­al jour­ney. By doing this, you cre­ate a space for one anoth­er to be more of what you are than you could ever be out­side of that rela­tion­ship. It is only in a true, lov­ing rela­tion­ship that you find the con­di­tions that encour­age you to extend your­self, to be more of your­self than any­where else.

Why? Because you under­stand, accept and believe in one anoth­er uncon­di­tion­al­ly. You love one anoth­er pre­cise­ly because you see what is spe­cial, unique and dis­tinc­tive with­in one anoth­er. That affir­ma­tion, that belief in one anoth­er, releas­es the spir­it with­in each of you to grow and express itself more fully.

In true love you cre­ate the space in which you are “free to be” rather than “free from” some­thing. The cel­e­bra­tion of your unique indi­vid­u­al­i­ty can only be ful­filled when sup­port­ed, shared and expressed with anoth­er who believes in you as you believe in them. True Love is Spir­i­tu­al Love; it is Unconditional.

Cel­e­brate the align­ment of Venus and Uranus by look­ing in the eyes of your beloved as you say the mag­i­cal words, “I see You”.

Aphrodite steps from the Pis­cean Sea and into the fiery realm of Aries. For three weeks the heart has longed to tran­scend itself, to sac­ri­fice itself, and through com­pas­sion touch the sub­lime light of the Great Souls who have shown the way homeward.

Now it is time to come back to your­self, to your love of self, to the song of “I”. Such is the song-dance of spir­it, in and out, back and forth, so that every play­er may air their melody and dance their jig in the plan­e­tary pageant.

With Venus in Aries you need to feel beau­ty intense­ly now; you are drawn to the fresh and new in beau­ty and art. Love beck­ons like “spring fever”; it is urgent, quick­en­ing and intense. Love at first sight is com­mon, yet com­mon­ly misunderstood.

Enjoy the resur­gent feel­ing of new dis­cov­er­ies in the beau­ty that sur­rounds you. Thrill to the joy of new found love between you and your beloved. But be mind­ful and not so full of haste or you will miss the true source of beau­ty that is ever­last­ing and for the love which is eter­nal. Always remem­ber, that it is from Spir­it, the con­stant source that your enthu­si­asm springs forth, and it is this same source for that eter­nal love that you see in the eyes of your beloved.

Cel­e­brate your love of self; your delight in new beau­ties and love pro­claim the joy of life renewed. Dance your dance of spir­it, sing your song of songs; and so hon­or the Divine Seed of one and all, your Spir­it-Source in the Stars.

Stead­ied now, focused now, build­ing, building…Your soul’s jour­ney turns from the ques­tion, “Who am I?” Aries time is done. You’ve made your pres­ence known. Now from Fire you move into Earth. The sec­ond Door of Life is before you. You cross the thresh­old and so seek to answer the ques­tion, “What am I?”

With the Sun in Tau­rus you seek the expe­ri­ence of what you are made of; now is the time to man­i­fest your­self in a tan­gi­ble, tac­tile, valu­able way. Dreams, ideas, plans… they are nice, but you need to make it real, you need to be pro­duc­tive, you need to under­stand Value.

The Les­son of Tau­rus is about val­ue. Where does it come from, how do you cre­ate it, hold it, pre­serve it, change it and.…let it go? This is the sec­ond step in your life jour­ney. What do you have with­in and around you to make man­i­fest your dreams, ideas and your plans?

The key to your under­stand­ing of val­ue is the under­stand­ing you pos­sess of your self-worth; that is the val­ue you have of your­self. By pos­sess­ing your­self, your moral and aes­thet­ic sen­si­bil­i­ties, your skills, tal­ents and abil­i­ties, by hav­ing this knowl­edge of your own val­ue you can then, and only then, have the right rela­tion­ship with the oth­er beings (and things) of your world.

So cel­e­brate the jour­ney of life-con­scious­ness-spir­it; move now from being to doing, from dream to man­i­fes­ta­tion. Step through the door­way; becom­ing you are the Creator.

And remem­ber, as it has always been, is now, and will always be, the Key to Life is:

Know Thy­self!