Venus leaves behind those dreamy seas of Pisces; she splash­es ashore and dances into the bright­ly lit realms of Aries. Self­less­ness and sac­ri­fice have had their day but they must defer now to your need to find, acknowl­edge and reaf­firm the love of one’s self again.

You need always be car­ing, to show com­pas­sion and empa­thy; but they must give way for a time, these too must yield and sur­ren­der. Now you need to come back to your begin­ning, to your first melody and love…back to your own sweet song. For with­out this self-acknowl­edge­ment, with­out this first love of self, there can be no oth­er love in your life…

Then spring­ing from this reaf­fir­ma­tion, from this return to source at the cen­ter, you turn towards those you love and take your delights in new dis­cov­er­ies, sen­si­bil­i­ties and enjoy­ments with one another.

Aries is about begin­nings, those resur­gent and eager ener­gies you asso­ciate with spring. Your heart quick­ens now with new-found appreciation…colors look brighter, sounds ring out clearer…it is the dawn­ing of a new aes­thet­ic day in the beau­ty that is with­in and around you.

Aries love is not patient, nor is it found wait­ing; but that means you need to take a deep breath and enjoy your enthu­si­asms but avoid the reck­less impa­tient ways that can lead to bit­ter-sweet fruits. Be not so full of haste that you miss the mark; see the source of love that is ever­last­ing, the love that will not fail…

Always remem­ber that the foun­tain-source of all such feel­ings is found in the heart of each and every spark of the Divine…

That it is the Light Eter­nal which shines back to you in your lover’s eyes.

I briefly men­tioned this in my overview for 2012. Here is what I wrote then:

Sat­urn Ret­ro­grade (Feb­ru­ary 7 till June 25) 

Sat­urn ret­ro­grades every year and pro­vides you with an oppor­tu­ni­ty to re-exam­ine your social roles, hier­ar­chies and respon­si­bil­i­ties. This is its last ret­ro­grade in Libra before mov­ing into Scor­pio in Octo­ber, so this will be your chance to once again look at the nature of your rela­tion­ship agree­ments or con­tracts, whether implied or writ­ten. When Sat­urn moves on into Scor­pio you will want to have made sure that you have done your best to pre­pare for mat­ters to get even more serious.

Sat­urn rules real­i­ty; it is your cur­rent man­i­fes­ta­tion, (and hence also lim­i­ta­tion), of your pure poten­tial (the Sun). Your pure poten­tial is unlim­it­ed and ever-unfold­ing, ever-becom­ing; but in order to unfold and become real it must be con­tin­u­ous­ly embod­ied into a lim­it­ed form, so your unlim­it­ed “non-being” becomes real but lim­it­ed “beingness”…and this process is ruled and formed by Saturn.

While Sat­urn is ret­ro­grade in Libra you have an oppor­tu­ni­ty to go with­in and reex­am­ine and re-work those exist­ing struc­tures of rela­tion­ship-real­i­ty you have poured your­self into. This ret­ro­grade of Sat­urn can help you to de-con­struc­t/re-con­struct the forms of rela­tion­ship you seek ful­fill­ment through.

What this requires from you is a deep reex­am­i­na­tion of your most impor­tant relationship…your rela­tion­ship to your­self. You can and must make clear­er to your­self what val­ues give mean­ing to your life, which actu­al­ly form your life-sub­stance, for only then can you go out and cre­ate mean­ing­ful rela­tion­ships based upon what you dis­cov­er to be your com­mon, shared values.

More­over, by this reex­am­i­na­tion you can more clear­ly define the hier­ar­chy of your own val­ues so that you can make the nec­es­sary accom­mo­da­tions with one anoth­er; you can know which val­ues are sub­ject to adjust­ment and which are non-nego­tiable because they are essen­tial to mak­ing you who you are. 

It is time to turn with­in and build a bet­ter rela­tion­ship with your self…

It is time to pre­pare the way for the next step in your journey.

For just ahead is that deep­er jour­ney of Union itself as Sat­urn moves into Scor­pio in October.

It is time to prepare…and so fol­low the ancient injunc­tion, Know Thyself!

Today Mer­cury makes a supe­ri­or con­junc­tion with the Sun; this is when Mer­cury is on the far side of the Sun from here on Earth so it should be viewed as more like a “Full Moon” aspect. The pre­vi­ous infe­ri­or con­junc­tion, (which is like a “New Moon”), was back on Decem­ber 4. Now in this rev­e­la­to­ry moment you under­stand what was released two months ago. What’s the mes­sage today?

With the Sun and Mer­cury in Aquar­ius, that puts Earth (and you) in Leo so the mes­sage is about achiev­ing the bal­ance in your mind between seek­ing for approval ver­sus stay­ing true to your own beliefs. The Sun and Mer­cury in Aquar­ius favors your eccen­tric, con­trar­i­an side; it’s the way you come up with your orig­i­nal ideas and con­tri­bu­tions. But if you are too “out there” you will not get any­one to lis­ten. (You may be authen­tic but you end up being inef­fec­tu­al). Like­wise, if you too much mod­i­fy your mes­sage to meet what you think oth­ers wish to hear, you become effec­tive­ly untrue to your­self, (and you let every­one down by not con­tribut­ing your unique per­spec­tive). So what do you do?

This align­ment reminds you that it is all about inte­grat­ing your need to hon­or your­self and your audi­ence too. You need to build a bridge of under­stand­ing so that you can turn heads (or raise their eye­brows) but win applause too. You need to project your pre­cious voice of authen­tic­i­ty but do so in a man­ner that is con­struc­tive and contributive.

And this thought­ful mes­sage could not be time­li­er as today is also the Full Moon, with the Sun in Aquar­ius and the Moon blaz­ing bright­ly in Leo. The Full Moon is a time to face the con­trast between two ways of being, two paths of your truth…and it reminds you that you must find a way to work them togeth­er, so you can be whole, com­plete and at peace.

Much as in the Mer­cury “Full Moon”, the Full Moon in Leo illus­trates the chal­lenge of bal­anc­ing your need to express your excep­tion­al nature, (which seeks to go beyond the cares for what the world may think), with your need for con­fir­ma­tion, respect and approval from the world around you.

You may find your­self in an awk­ward place, seem­ing­ly faced with a choice: You can be true to your­self but may give offense, lose a friend or dam­age your relationship…Or, you can bend your char­ac­ter to suit “the sit­u­a­tion”, to gain the approval of oth­ers, but you will lose your respect for your­self. The ten­sion may build so that you take one side or the oth­er to a more extreme point, striv­ing so hard for approval that you betray your prin­ci­ples, or strain­ing so hard to be dif­fer­ent that you lose your own good name…

The answer of course is found in the com­bi­na­tion or bal­ance of the two so that you can be your­self and be appre­ci­at­ed too! How? First, fore­most and always be true to your­self, and then turn ’round and be equal­ly faith­ful to your friends too. You need to hon­or the truth you came to embody…and your friends, your com­pan­ions will hon­or you for this because they share this truth with you. It is through your rela­tion­ship with one anoth­er that you find your­self, both as an indi­vid­ual who is free to be your­self and as a mem­ber of some­thing greater too.

The Full Moon reminds you to always seek to unfold, bring forth and so hon­or your unique self because you will then enjoy the com­pan­ion­ship of those true and last­ing friends and loved ones who respect you for exact­ly that.

This is one of the major tran­si­tions that began to unfold in 2011. Nep­tune will now re-enter Pisces and stay there until 2025! This is what I wrote in my overview for 2012:

Nep­tune, which has been paus­ing at the thresh­old of her home sign dur­ing 2011, moves in to stay for over 13 years. My com­ments when it first began to make this tran­si­tion, (April 4, 2011) are well worth re-post­ing here:

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. 

In addi­tion I would add:

Nep­tune in Pisces will lead to the next step in your unfold­ing awareness…it will open a door­way to that greater recog­ni­tion, expe­ri­ence and delight in the sub­tle worlds behind the appar­ent real­i­ty of what should be known to you as this “mul­ti-verse”.

This mate­ri­al­ly appar­ent real­i­ty upon which we focus our earth­bound aware­ness will begin to give way to an ever-grow­ing com­pa­ny of seers, as their self-made bar­ri­ers of doubt dis­solve through Nep­tune in Pisces and so reveal that truer, more vivid expe­ri­ence of the worlds with­in worlds that inter­pen­e­trate and co-exist with one another.

Pre­pare to won­der and be amazed; pre­pare to imag­ine, dream and cre­ate the won­ders of a new world. This is the time, this is your time for the mag­ic of creation…this is the time for dreamers!

Let Nep­tune in Pisces help you to open your­self and become the more ful­ly self-con­scious dreamer…

You are the Shin­ing One who is dream­ing the dream that is the jour­ney of Life-Consciousness-Spirit.

Dream, Sing, Dance…Create!