Yes­ter­day’s post was an exam­ple of what astrologers call “Mun­dane” or “World­ly” Astrol­o­gy. That is the astrol­o­gy of cul­ture and soci­ety, of nations, cor­po­ra­tions and oth­er insti­tu­tions. I plan on mak­ing more obser­va­tions like this in the com­ing weeks as I speak to the major astro­log­i­cal themes for 2011. I will com­ment on the con­di­tions affect­ing par­tic­u­lar nations, world lead­ers, oth­er insti­tu­tions, the econ­o­my as well as oth­er top­ics. And, as events unfold, I will from time to time make com­ments that reflect this more world­ly per­spec­tive dur­ing the year ahead.

But, I will most often be mak­ing posts that focus upon per­son­al mat­ters; to help us under­stand the forces at work that guide each of us on our indi­vid­ual path of spir­i­tu­al growth. That is because I pre­fer this more inti­mate focus upon our lives; and, it is also because my per­son­al belief is that the real hope for our future is found with­in the spir­i­tu­al strug­gle for greater under­stand­ing with­in each of us.

To bal­ance the scales of inter­pre­ta­tion regard­ing yes­ter­day’s post on the Jupiter/Uranus con­junc­tion, I wish to add the fol­low­ing more indi­vid­ual or per­son-cen­tered point of view:

With Jupiter rul­ing the prin­ci­ples by which we relate to the world around us, and Uranus rul­ing the forces of indi­vid­u­a­tion, inde­pen­dence and trans­for­ma­tion, 2010 was to be a year that “shocked” us into new forms of rela­tion­ship, both to our­selves and with one another.

The oppor­tu­ni­ty of their con­junc­tion was in the cre­ation of new forms of relat­ing by “shock­ing” or break­ing up old ones. So, look back on the year, espe­cial­ly when they aligned in ear­ly June, mid-Sep­tem­ber, and right now, and see if you were sur­prised or shocked in some rela­tion­ship. Chances are you were and what you were being offered was a chance to re-set your­self and that rela­tion­ship; and, to re-set your assump­tions about how and to whom you should relate to.

We are here to grow through under­stand­ing. Some­times this pro­ceeds more gen­tly because we are in touch with the changes with­in and around us. But some­times we are sur­prised, shocked and stunned, not in order to stop us, but to make us stop, think and move into the oppor­tu­ni­ty to relate to our world with a freer, more expan­sive and inclu­sive under­stand­ing. Make it so.

Today was a very busy day. Not only are we enjoy­ing the New Moon Eclipse, but sev­er­al oth­er align­ments are also in force. The most sig­nif­i­cant, Jupiter con­junct Uranus was the sig­na­ture aspect for 2010. Now we expe­ri­ence their third and final con­tact. What have we expe­ri­enced in this align­ment; and what can we expect?

Jupiter and Uranus come togeth­er in a con­junc­tion (like a New Moon) about every 14 years. Their rela­tion­ship com­bines and releas­es the Uran­ian (unusu­al, inven­tive ener­gies) with the Jupi­ter­ian (expan­sive, boun­ti­ful ener­gies). 2010 was a year that “seed­ed” new ideas and inven­tions in the sci­ences and tech­nol­o­gy. We will see these dis­cov­er­ies and appli­ca­tions become more wide­ly expe­ri­enced and trans­form our lives over the next many years.

If we go back and look at their align­ments, we can see this rhyth­mic release of inspi­ra­tion play­ing out in our per­son­al lives, cul­ture and econ­o­my. For exam­ple, their con­junc­tion in 1983 was accom­pa­nied by: The dis­cov­ery of the virus that was the cause of so much con­cern, AIDS. The change of some­thing called Arpanet into what we now call the Inter­net. Com­pact discs are released, we’re going dig­i­tal, say good­bye to vinyl records. The FCC autho­rizes Motoro­la to begin test­ing some­thing called “cel­lu­lar ser­vice”. Humans “leave” the uni­verse; Pio­neer 10 becomes the first object to move out beyond our solar system.

In 1997 we cre­ate life for the first time; through cloning Dol­ly, a sheep is made through genet­ic engi­neer­ing. IBM’s Deep Blue defeats Gary Kas­parov; for the first time a com­put­er bests a human in a chess match. Mars Pathfind­er lands on Mars; we have a rov­ing explor­er on anoth­er planet.

In 2010, we expand­ed our def­i­n­i­tion of “life” beyond our car­bon mod­el, find­ing evi­dence of arsenic based life forms. We crossed the thresh­old from manip­u­lat­ing life to cre­at­ing it; researchers cre­ate the first total­ly arti­fi­cial and func­tion­al genome. We stare into the mys­tery of cre­ation itself, and to the abyss posed by the mir­ror-image of our uni­verse; sci­en­tists cap­ture anti-mat­ter for the first time.

But that is not all, for Jupiter and Uranus com­bined togeth­er also speak to the quick­en­ing in oth­er impor­tant aspects of our real­i­ty too, like social and cul­tur­al changes. Since Jupiter rules our prin­ci­ples of rela­tion­ship, its con­join­ing with Uranus releas­es new forms of social and cul­tur­al phe­nom­e­na and there­by cre­ates new realities.

In 1983 the US Embassy in Lebanon is bombed and what has become the so-called war with rad­i­cal Islam is said to have begun. The first woman and first African-Amer­i­can are launched into space as more bar­ri­ers to equal­i­ty fall.

In 1997 parental frus­tra­tion with the decline in read­ing by chil­dren is thwart­ed by a lit­tle boy wiz­ard name Har­ry Pot­ter. The more gen­er­al acknowl­edge­ment that the nations of the world need to coop­er­ate to address our very sur­vival is wit­nessed by a com­mit­tee at the UN in the Kyoto Pro­to­cols on Glob­al Warming.

And, what have we expe­ri­enced in 2010? For the first time in human his­to­ry, the num­ber of humans who are in a state of star­va­tion are matched by those who are over­weight or obese, (we know that we have to do some­thing about how we take care of our self and one anoth­er). A sin­gle indi­vid­ual and his web­site shake the foun­da­tions of insti­tu­tions and gov­ern­ments around the world; Wik­ileaks lifts the veil of secre­cy in mil­i­tary and diplo­mat­ic realities.

Tru­ly, we will only know in ret­ro­spect how and in what ways Jupiter and Uranus moved our sto­ry along this year…but they did, and do and will always be one of the means by which we grow beyond our mere con­di­tion­ing. We are not human beings.…we are human becom­ings, and the future is in our own hands and writ­ten in the stars.

Now it “begins”… this is the real start for 2011. A New Moon and a Solar Eclipse! Wow! And yet, at the very moment of the begin­ning, we are remind­ed that we can­not go for­ward with­out tak­ing care of what has come before…

Each New Moon presents us with the theme for the next month. So, the Capri­corn New Moon means our focus this month should be upon the word of Capricorn.…Responsibility. The word is derived from Respon­dere, “to under­take in return, to per­form one’s part in a solemn engagement…and to be respon­sivus or answering.”

The rev­e­la­tion of the true mean­ing behind a word pro­vides a greater under­stand­ing of our cul­ture and con­scious­ness. We can turn this word around and see that respon­si­bil­i­ty means lit­er­al­ly our “abil­i­ty to respond”, our “abil­i­ty to answer”. Respon­si­bil­i­ty is the call we must answer to per­form our right­ful part in the life of our soci­ety; our ful­fill­ment is sim­ply to per­form our duty.

Our duty, our respon­si­bil­i­ty is to ful­fill our­selves, to be what we were meant to be. This is the Capri­corn moment, to reach the apex of our poten­tial and so ful­fill our­selves in the man­ner that is made avail­able and deemed wor­thy by our cul­ture. But what is our duty, what is at the core of our ful­fill­ment, what is it that we are being respon­si­ble for?

We are humans and we have needs which we can and must ful­fill with and through one anoth­er. We are not alone; we are social beings and to be respon­si­ble means that we must be able to respond to the needs of those around us, those we are respon­si­ble for. That is our duty; and that is our true path to fulfillment.

We stand in a great chain of cre­ation, each gen­er­a­tion tasked with the care of those that fol­low, as those who came before cared for us. We are guid­ed by prece­dent, we hon­or our tra­di­tions and we pre­serve and pass down what has been achieved thus far. This is the mes­sage of this month, this New Moon of Capricorn.

But this New Moon is a Solar Eclipse, the Earth, Sun and Moon are aligned again and a shad­ow races across the face of the Earth this time. The Past (Moon) is blot­ting out the Future (Sun) so that we on Earth (Present) feel more strong­ly the bur­dens of our past. We have some unfin­ished busi­ness to attend to. A New Moon rep­re­sents a fresh start, a new begin­ning, but the eclipse is say­ing you need to fin­ish what you have left undone. You can­not “see” your Future (Sun), if you let the Past (Moon) get in the way.

So each of us, and all of us col­lec­tive­ly, need to look with­in and take some time to see what we have left undone, where we have not been respon­si­ble to our­selves or to another.…and fix this before we can go forward.

Some­times you have to take a step back before you can take the next step for­ward, the next step in the ful­fill­ment of your destiny.

Today our minds are focused, intense and alert. We can sense a change in the ener­gies around us. Some­thing has shift­ed and the lines of com­mu­ni­ca­tion are clear­ing now.

It is time to move for­ward with a new under­stand­ing that we devel­oped dur­ing the past three weeks. We were more intro­spec­tive and con­tem­pla­tive and that allowed us to reex­am­ine, ques­tion and improve our thinking.

At the same time, we need­ed to be more mind­ful so as to not mis­un­der­stand anoth­er or them us. That was because every­one was not as atten­tive out­ward­ly. Mis­un­der­stand­ings, delays and frus­tra­tions might have been the result. But now that phase ends as Mer­cury moves forward. 

Mer­cury ret­ro­grade cre­at­ed an oppor­tu­ni­ty to stop, go back and repair your way of think­ing. Now you can think and speak with more assur­ance that we will under­stand one another.

Okay, okay I know, it hurts…but you just need to be patient and this too shall pass. Do not force things or ignore the lim­its now, you’ll only make things worse. Impa­tience is in the air and anger is ris­ing, and if we are not care­ful there is an “acci­dent” wait­ing to happen.

If you hold the ten­sion in, you might injure your­self; and, if you just let it out on anoth­er, you will harm some­one who prob­a­bly had lit­tle to do with the sit­u­a­tion. You can­not “hold in”, you can­not “act out”…what do you do? Remem­ber, there is always a “third way”, the path of under­stand­ing, which leads you out of your pain and into a new­er, more inte­grat­ed reality.

The pain you are feel­ing is mere­ly a less than gen­tle reminder that not all things go as planned. Some­times we face delays or resis­tance in order to stop, take a look and see why our way is “blocked”. We need to exam­ine if either where we are going is where we should go, or if we are get­ting there in the right way. So, life/reality/Saturn comes along and says, “Is that what you real­ly want? Are you sure you can get there this way?”

At the end of July, we began a new cycle of Mars and Sat­urn. It was then that we start­ed to take up a path of action to bring about some new aspect in our life/reality. Now, we face a choice that has been cre­at­ed by the lim­its formed by the very nature of our Sat­urn reality.

We always act with­in the lim­its imposed by Sat­urn. Though we have poured our self into a form in order to be some­thing, at some point that vehi­cle, that form, that real­i­ty, is exact­ly what we must move beyond in order to keep mov­ing in the first place. What once ful­filled us now has become a major obsta­cle to our greater ful­fill­ment. But what is the nature of this chal­lenge now?

The prob­lem is that we are in our real­i­ty, which seems to be a giv­en, some­thing that is fixed for us. Some­how, we must move beyond the old form while we are still with­in it. In order to trans­form and tran­scend, we need to cre­ative­ly com­bine Mars and Sat­urn, we need to choose the path of integration.

Mars in Capri­corn wants to act with ref­er­ence to and rev­er­ence for author­i­ty and pow­er. If you have title, if you have the pow­er, then use it. It is your duty to act author­i­ta­tive­ly; it is your right to exer­cise pow­er and con­trol. You have the pow­er, use it.

Sat­urn in Libra is “chal­leng­ing” Mars to remem­ber that the basis for author­i­ty and the exer­cise of pow­er is legit­i­ma­cy. Libra is about jus­tice, and Sat­urn in Libra is about the rule of law. (That is why, in the chart of the USA, Sat­urn is in Libra at the very top of the chart. The prin­ci­ple embod­ied in our con­sti­tu­tion is that the USA is a nation ruled by law, that no one is above the law and all are equal (Libra) before the law.)

Sat­urn is remind­ing Mars that the pow­er exer­cised by any author­i­ty flows from the agree­ment, that is, it comes from and through the con­sent of the gov­erned. The pow­er we wield comes through us, and we must hon­or and serve the true source of that pow­er. That means with­in any orga­ni­za­tion, local or nation­al, polit­i­cal or pri­vate, we must always be sure that we are serv­ing the needs of that group and not mere­ly our own.

So, the ques­tion about pow­er and author­i­ty before each of us now is “who or what do you serve”? Ulti­mate­ly, of course, this is a spir­i­tu­al mat­ter, because any and all pow­er is ulti­mate­ly derived from the fact that we are all sparks of the divine, we are all one in Spirit.

The truer ques­tion then is do you under­stand that you are part of a glo­ri­ous com­pa­ny of fel­low beings who are all con­nect­ed to one anoth­er in the greater life of Spir­it? If so, then you will act in accor­dance with that and your pow­er will be exer­cised with wis­dom and justice.

The gifts of Spir­it are many, but one of the most prized is patience. We need to be patient as we con­sid­er what is at the source of our anger or delay now. We will find that what we face is of our own mak­ing, we made this real­i­ty, this sit­u­a­tion. So, we can change it too.

Step back from your anger and frus­tra­tion; ask for help, and Spir­it will answer. You will find that you are nev­er alone; and the answer is that your jour­ney and des­tiny has and will always be in your own hands.

The good news is that by acknowl­edg­ing and act­ing with this under­stand­ing you can change your real­i­ty for the bet­ter. You do not need to fight, or retreat, you just need to choose to understand.