Turn, turn, turn… Mer­cury comes back to Jupiter for the sec­ond of 3 encoun­ters. This cycle start­ed on March 15 when Mer­cury first passed over Jupiter. Now it pass­es over while mov­ing in ret­ro­grade. The final pass will be May 11. The com­plete cycle offers anoth­er oppor­tu­ni­ty to re-align your low­er mind with your high­er mind, your intel­li­gence and your intuition.

Think of this dance as if watch­ing a three act play. The first act in March announced the major theme of Intel­li­gence-Wis­dom, of “facts” vs.“truth” that would play out over the next 2 months. The issues and ques­tions were revealed so as to be considered.

Now, in Act II the dra­ma is clear; the dichoto­my and polar­iza­tion are laid before you now. The low­er mind cleaves to the “facts” which are true giv­en the prism through which the issue is viewed. The argu­ment is unas­sail­able; the rea­son­ing is sound…ipso facto.

But the Intu­itive Mind replies, “Facts are not things in them­selves, they are cre­at­ed by your point of view”. To tru­ly under­stand you must go to the roots of your under­stand­ing and exam­ine your assump­tions, your prin­ci­ples. Your aware­ness is a jour­ney of pierc­ing through many veils, many lev­els of under­stand­ing. At each lev­el, you believe you see it all now, but there are many, many veils to pass through to get to the One, to the heart of truth. 

Your low­er mind retorts, “facts are true”. The Intu­itive Mind replies that the word “fact” comes from the Latin “Facere” to make and “Fac­tum” as in a thing done. It is where the words arti­fice (and arti­fi­cial), fac­to­ry and man­u­fac­ture come from. The Intu­ition knows that facts are made. How­ev­er, what is true is that facts are like a series of steps you must lit­er­al­ly make in order to move from knowl­edge to wisdom.

The Lower/Rational mind resists; “this is truth, it is the world as it is”. The Intu­itive Mind replies, “It is the world as it appears to you, it is ‘true’ for you” for now.” But you will grow; you will under­stand and so real­ize that the mea­sure of wis­dom is found in the devel­op­ment and depth of your humility.

As you come to seek the guid­ance of those who have walked the Path of Truth, you imag­ine the Wis­dom Teach­ers as per­fect­ed beings endowed with the full­ness of Truth. They watch over you, look upon you, and smile gen­tly and say, “No, we have not nor will we find an end to this search for Truth till the end of days, and even then, who can say”.

Look with­in your­self to The Teacher, to the Watch­er, who reminds you that there is but one injunc­tion that all must fol­low, “Walk on”.

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.