posted June 17, 2007 03:41 PM         

The following will be taken from the Eric Francis Planet Waves website. He and his team put together an exhaustive study of the year 2007 for all sun signs.

Eris in the 1st solar house. Spiral Door aspect, Quaoar and Ixion in the 9th solar house. Pluto working toward the 10th solar house. Saturn in the 5th solar house. Chiron-Nessus conjunct in the 11th solar house. Later in the year, Mars will be retrograde in the 4th solar house and Venus will be retrograde in the 6th and 5th solar houses.

Aries is the relationship house for Libra, the career house for Cancer, and the house of home and security for Capricorn. This interpretation works for Aries rising as well.

HOW WE MORPH from one stage of life, or one version of our existence, into another, is mysterious -- and easy to miss when it's happening. Many people talk about reincarnation, but I have noticed that whether we intend it or not, one incarnation is an experience of multiple lifetimes, and I think that on one level the whole theme of supposedly multiple incarnations is a metaphor for change in current lifetimes.

It may actually be that we're a different person every day despite the intention, quite often, to remain the same. Self-continuity is a kind of illusion, in part based on belief, in part on memory, and partly on the fact that we wake up in the same body with the same name. Yet we are continuously different, constantly in motion, and often in some degree of crisis to handle the changes. We also wake up in a different world. But something about the human mind so often tries to plaster that over.

I've also noticed that often we seem to have concurrent incarnations -- facets of who we are that are so vastly different from one another, incongruent, contradictory and seemingly impossible to reconcile, that we are in essence many different people contained within one. That in itself is not so strange, but one odd effect of this is when you appear in one of those forms, but cannot imagine being any other one from the viewpoint of any other. There are things we will do in our fantasies, in certain states of mind, under specific circumstances or with certain people, that we would not vaguely imagine doing at other moments, and would not want known outside those environments. When we're in fully revved mode, it's nearly impossible to feel the self that resists or denies.

The real issue of continuity, if you ask me, is that of opening our various compartments and integrating the many people we contain within us at once, rather than in sequence. This is called integration. That would go a long way toward addressing the alienation we feel in the world, because alienation is in truth alienation from oneself. The more we compartmentalize ourselves, the more we feel like aliens in a hostile world. And, ironically, usually the idea of compartmentalizing is to adapt to different situations without actually having to change.

I bring up the subject thanks to Eris, based on some research I have done on this planet that was discovered in 2005, and which has rearranged how we think about the solar system. After many thousands of discoveries, something was found that was larger than Pluto. Though the logic seems somewhat male in nature, something bigger finally got everyone's attention. It was named Xena unofficially in 05 and, after last summer's meeting of astronomers in Prague (the International Astronomical Union or IAU), it was named Eris, after the Greek goddess of discord. At the end of it all, Eris, and the earlier discoveries, Pluto and Ceres, were included in a new class of planets, and a phase of scientific, indeed, of cosmic history, began.

As those who work with astrology, we know the cosmic model mirrors the psyche and vice versa. Eris was discovered in your sign, and this can give you a new way to think about yourself. Imagine that there is a vortex in your mind, through which any self is possible to reach at once, or through which any may reach out toward you. Time, space, inner compartments, how you felt yesterday, who you were in a past life -- they're all mobile; all available, all equally meaningful and/or irrelevant.

You can go into yourself, and somehow come out anywhere, any time.

As long as you stay away from the opening, you can safely feel that you are the same person as you were yesterday. As you shift your awareness toward your center and allow yourself to be drawn toward that place that feels like an intense, perhaps difficult, perhaps frightening point of inner focus, you have your freedom. It's a place where any potential is available now, from which you can in a sense reach through all your selves to find the one entity they have in common. This is the being at the core of who you are who is the one doing the supposed reincarnating, changing, compartmentalizing, or whatever the case is.

Here is another image. Imagine your consciousness is a ball swirling down a gradually inclined cone-shaped vortex, around and around, slowly accelerating its momentum as it reaches toward the center. As the position of the ball changes, you experience yourself differently. It's all a matter of perspective, and that perspective is changing at an increasing pace. Because the process of acceleration has been gradual, and because it always looks like a long way through the chute, you may have missed the fact that it's even happening, or you did for a while. The changes within you now are too amazing to overlook, and they are starting to have some distinct effects in the physical world.

For one thing, a sense of mission is starting to coalesce in your life like never before. For another, you are starting to let go of your exterior identities and are relating to the world from an evermore centered place.

At this point you may not have the feeling that you're making actual decisions that are taking you through this experience, only taking a ride pulled by some strange form of gravity that is compelling you to transform in a particular direction -- though I trust that at a certain point not too far from now, you will recognize that you are, in fact, the one whose awareness and intelligence are guiding the process. The gravity you feel, the compelling force drawing you in spirals through the Spiral Door, is your own soul's inclination not only to grow and become, but to fully express yourself in the physical world and in ordinary consciousness.

Something at the core of your transition involves your original instructions. Usually on this planet, particularly in the Western world, the expression of mission supposedly takes the form of a career, but we both know that in real life, one's job and one's actual calling often have too little in common. It is the precious few who find their calling, but it's not difficult to find out why. Too many adults were trying to influence us when we were young, and we were told too many lies about how or whether we would or would not make money if we went a certain way. Jealousy often plays a factor; parents who are jealous of their children need to find a therapist, but unfortunately, they don't and we are the ones who need the help.

Curiosity, the most powerful force of the psyche, is usually extinguished young. That can block any natural process of discovery that would have otherwise ensued, and it eviscerates us of a potent primal force that could easily guide us forward. Then, once attachments are formed (i.e., you start doing something you don't like but at least you can eat), and patterns established, they often prove to be difficult to escape. But it happens, and it will happen for you, no matter how daunting the prospect may seem today. The result will indeed be small in contrast to the inner force that is compelling it. Eris is a reminder to allow your curiosity to burn like a hot torch, and to let the heat and light of that torch guide you.

You are being summoned to a new role in the world, not by outer circumstances just yet, but by a process of change so deep and so interior that there will arrive the day when you either cannot go on as you are now, or you will move effortlessly, fully, with both feet, plus heart, mind and soul, into whatever is next. You will know that point when you get there, and I can assure you that the decision will seem smaller in reality than it does when you project into the future from where you stand today. For now, your sense of mission may bear little resemblance to what you wake up and do every day.

That's supposed to matter, and the refreshing news is how little it does. On this point, looking at some images from the astrology will be helpful. Pluto has been transiting your 9th solar house, Sagittarius, for many years. The transition from Scorpio, your 8th solar house, occurred between 1994 and 1995, and in the years since, your sense of your own presence in the world has gradually faded into view. Gone were the confrontations, obsessions and power struggles that characterized the phase before 94/95, which indeed may have one day vanished inexplicably. Then came a long quest, what most astrologers would describe as a spiritual quest, or the slow attunement to your soul's existence.

The problem with becoming aware of soul is that we also become aware of something called shadow. Pluto will call attention to the shadow, and then once we see that, we get the light at the core. This can work quickly or not, consciously or not: today, we have options.

At first as Pluto worked its way across Sagittarius, this was going on in the background, but at a certain point, I am going to estimate around 2001, it became clear that you were definitely in touch with yourself on another level entirely, and that you existed in striking contrast to the world around you, in particular, to your parents, your family and your employer. You may have noticed you had nothing in common with your culture except that you like French fries. At that stage, the Saturn-Pluto opposition, you may have discovered that your faith could shape your life.

Today, Pluto is reaching the peak of its 13-year journey across Sagittarius, climaxing with its current trek across the Galactic Core. This rare and dramatic astrology, the likes of which has not been seen by humanity in centuries, changed humanity irrevocably when it occurred the last time. Education, science, revolution, the notion of human equality, basic freedoms, the defanging of the Holy Roman church: all were in their formative moments when Pluto was last on the Galactic Core. Today this event is taking place in one of the most sensitive angles of your solar chart: where the 9th solar house (ideas, soul, your concept of yourself at your most evolved, education, your sense of the wide world) meets the 10th (your outer mission, role, reputation, influence and sense of your effectiveness in the world).

One of my old astrology teachers, Barbara Hand Clow, commented once in a workshop that a big problem with the world as we know it is that people try to jump to the 10th house without doing the work of the 9th house. I am not talking about the ones who drop out of high school and become remarkable successes, mainly because they understand themselves and have a sense of how the world works. They probably have the 9th house down to an art. I mean the ones who skip over their inner growth and promptly set about conquering the planet; the ones who skip over ethics and take power. The ones who use morality as a weapon against the weak. Currently they are the ones in charge, and it's going to take a busload of faith, moxie and intelligence to make the world any different.

By early 2008, when Pluto ingresses your 10th house for the first time, your sense of movement, progress and initiative will be impossible to miss. Before then, what you are experiencing is the impulse to reach out toward a deeper reality, in a sense, your own source. If Pluto represents the soul and the Galactic Core represents something that resides 'at the core' of all existence, the result is that you are personally having this encounter on a level so deep it would normally defy all awareness: but your whole life has been building toward this for a long time.

Therefore, I would not suggest pushing your professional ambitions or desires, but rather, let them follow the rare process that you're going through now, and allow the mission aspect of your life to develop as a consequence of your growth and awareness.

Retrogrades of both Venus and Mars indicate that you and partners, or potential partners, are objects in motion, and that on the physical plane you will be going through many reshufflings of your affairs. In times of deep inner change and challenge, this is often a natural result; outer stability tends to follow inner stability (though not always). In any event, the worldly level of things suggested by Venus and Mars coincides with the awesome movements you're experiencing internally.

In practical terms, be open to change in your relationships, and also how you express yourself in them. The personal qualities you take for granted, whether you feel you can assert yourself, whether you expect your needs to be met, who 'makes' you feel secure, and all the rules that surround sexual desire -- all are up for rearrangement. Take none of it for granted, and be aware that behavior patterns that once seemed deep and intractable may suddenly seem superficial and completely open to change.

At the end of all of this, you will be ready for an entirely different kind of partner, and the seasons ahead are a time of transition from one reality to the other. In that time, it may not be good to try to settle into situations with any expectation of their being permanent. They may be, but if so, it won't be the result of your plans.

Mars retrograde later in the year suggests that you need to work consciously at being the source of your own security. If you are involved in a live-in relationship, or indeed any emotionally close relationship, prepare to each take responsibility for your own fears. That will not only take away the power they hold over you, it will also give you awareness that you can summon your strength by recognizing yourself as the author of your own feelings, and as the person who must be the mediator with your own past.

If living a life dedicated to truth and growth brings tests, this is one of them. It is true that themes like confronting the injuries and fears that we carry from the past, feeling safe and secure, and taking responsibility for our feelings are often the most meaningful. If you're willing to do that, you will likely notice that you have strikingly useful resources that help you in the process. You will discover you have talents and gifts you had never dreamed of, and that as you apply your willingness rather than your will, the cosmic forces conspire to help you on your way.

Usually in life, we look back and see how far we've come and gain perspective that way. We may look ahead and see how far we have to go, but often that comes with a sense of apprehension. I suggest you look forward to these four seasons with a sense of adventure, ready to let go of all that is not true and embrace all that truly is.

posted June 17, 2007 03:55 PM         

Taurus

Eris in the 12th solar house. Spiral Door aspect, Quaoar and Ixion in the 8th solar house. Pluto working toward the 9th solar house. Saturn in the 4th solar house heading for the 5th. Chiron-Nessus conjunct in the 10th solar house. Mars retrograde in the 3rd solar house. Venus retrograde in the 4th and 5th solar houses.

Taurus is the relationship house for Scorpio, the career house for Leo, and the home and security house for Aquarius. This interpretation works for Taurus rising as well.

EXPLORING just what it is about Taurus, you know, just what that odd special something is, one is always taken deeper in, and not where one expects to go. The metaphor I like to give comes from the book Esoteric Astrology by Alice Bailey, who describes Taurus, on the inside, as the blacksmith shop of the soul: a smoky place with a hot fire and molten metal, and the god Vulcan down there hammering away at his anvil. Vulcan, in other words, not Venus, is the god associated with Taurus, at least as Bailey explains things. Vulcan is not actually a planet (some astrologers use a hypothetical planet known by that name), but the metaphor is meaningful.

What I find interesting is how many Taurus people relate to this description with a little smile and a nod, and how it seems to fit them so well, once you look beneath the grooming and the impeccable personal presentation. You can sometimes see the little puffs of smoke coming out of their eyes and hear the hammer strike between the notes of the musical intonations of a Taurus voice. The seemingly endless, intense tests and tribulations of recent years go along with this: your life has not resembled the familiar images of Aphrodite we see laying on her divan or being worshipped on a pedestal. They resemble something else. Indeed, at times you may feel as snubbed by her as Vulcan was in the myth.

Notably, Vulcan was the god rejected by Venus in favor of Mars, and therefore (looked at another way) represents something of the displaced or castaway aspect of the Taurus psyche; the part that exists beneath the level of appearances, perhaps forgotten, perhaps surfacing as shadow material, and perhaps as a quality of you deep beneath any appearances but urgently needing expression. We could ask which aspect of yourself you relate to when you relate to others; and which they perceive, regardless of which you choose to express.

If in the past decade you have learned how not to have every encounter with another person become a power struggle, you are doing great. Your life is almost always intense, and based on what I know about Pluto transits, if you haven't learned how to guide that obsessive, impassioned intensity by now, you're probably reading this horoscope from another dimension, with St. Peter looking over your shoulder. I am going to hazard an educated guess that you have lately decided that resistance is not always a virtue; I trust you've observed that change usually brings improvement to your life. But this has, as I am suggesting, been challenging.

Equally difficult has been having your idealism slowly stripped away, particularly about relationships, though it would be interesting to consider what has replaced it. Is it pragmatic values, or cynicism? Is it a sense of loss, or of opportunity? An appreciation of your own virtue, or the sense that nobody can really be trusted, once you get too close to them? Well, actually, that remains to be seen. Though Pluto has been creeping across the degrees of your 8th solar house -- the planet of transformation, making an eternally slow transit through the house of transformation -- the Spiral Door is in the process of opening to a new reality at the end of this stage of the journey. You will in this year find out what you have been striving, struggling and waiting for through the long years of Pluto in Sagittarius.

The peak of intensity involves a relatively recent discovery, one unknown to the Greeks and Babylonians from whom we inherit our astrology. In your solar chart (or the natal chart for those with Taurus rising), the 8th house -- the dark, mysterious zone of deep encounters that rewrite the lines of our souls, and which reveals our true feelings about sex and death -- concludes with the Galactic Core. Sagittarius comprises your 8th solar house; the Galactic Core is in the last degrees of Sagittarius, so planets transiting this house get there at the end of the transit. They must cross the core before they can get to the next house, the 9th, the house of spirituality, the higher self, and participation in the world.

A planet moving from one house to another, or one sign to another, is not like the speedometer needle going from 30 to 40. Rather, there is an initiation process involved; a cycle ends and a new one begins, and between them is a transitional phase that, because Pluto affects everyone, everyone is going through, and you are encountering in a particularly poignant way.

This is because the core is a point that we could call our cosmic origins, our deepest inner truth, and the invisible beacon that points us home, indeed, that pulls us toward home with its gravity, light and love. It is way off the wavelength of most of the world, though the longing for it is exploited by many, including politics and religion. Astrology is full of little metaphors that help explain the world, and this is a fine one.

The 8th house represents what you might call the most powerful tropisms operating in the psyche -- the things toward which we are irrevocably drawn, and cannot resist. The core of our galaxy is perhaps the most vivid image of God that exists in astronomy, and the one thing we all have in common; our common source; our shared reality. And toward this, you are pulled all the time. Pluto is now focusing your mind, your growth and your soul's passage precisely in the direction of home. It's as if you're being called to surrender to your cosmic origins, but with the knowledge that something about your worldly life will experience profound transformation as a result. In other words, you are not dying -- you are being born.

As the years have evolved, I would imagine you've considered many ways to name the experiences, which have come one after the next in an endless succession. With Sagittarius, we have something associated by most people with spirituality and the quest for truth, though in your 8th house, we have an environment of sex and surrender, of death, and the actual experience of recreating oneself into a new being. True, this is spiritual, but in ways that are not usually associated with yoga weekends or vegetarian cookouts. The idea that what people typically call sex can have any vague connection to what other people usually call spirituality is still something of a joke, and the results are not usually so funny: in particular, unhappiness and fragmentation; shallow encounters; treating sex like a commodity and religion like it's a product of something other than human experience and passion.

The pain and struggle that comes from this split is worth pausing over. Many people talk about the association of love and sex. Others talk about how God is love. How, then, does it become blasphemy to associate God with sex? We had better ask, because in worldly terms it is the essence of blasphemy -- and for honest seekers, one of the most meaningful dimensions where healing occurs, and where we begin to allow life force, blood and feelings to flow back into our psyches numbed out by isolation, war and violence.

In these years of your life, indeed, a significant portion of your life, Pluto has come along like a blowtorch and fused these two seeming opposites, eroticism and divinity, into one thing, an entirely new thing, a unique new element in your soul. New, except for one thing, and I have written this before.

Religion accuses mankind of usurping God's power. Religion has also turned sex, the experience which creates life, into a sin, and projected the power of creation onto a phantasm of God that it uses to terrify us. It is religion which has usurped the power and creativity of humanity -- and it is you who are involved in a profound process of getting it back.

The beauty of this is you know instinctually how good life can be when you live the whole natural truth of who you are: God, love, passion, sex, creation, service. The difficult thing is how often how few others can relate, and how many are satisfied by what amount to superficial exchanges and partial honesty, men and women alike. You have been through so much that superficiality at this point probably either makes you nauseous or works as a momentary relief from all the glum negativity we are getting bombarded with every day. Indeed, the fact that the media has become a death fest in a time when you are so sensitive must be weighing on you profoundly.

Yet you must stand up to the world. You know you must be strong in the face of it all. Eighth house Pluto is a story about learning to be the equal to others; generally, this means learning how to stand up for yourself and not get taken along the road of other people's power trips, and there are plenty. But I would propose a question here, which is that if you cannot share pleasure on equal terms with others, can you really be equal?

The image of the Spiral Door opening at the last edges of your 8th house is an image of taking what we might call your personal power and allowing that to go a step further, into a kind of cosmic union with yourself that opens up some significant opportunities to make the kind of contact that you have needed and wanted for a long time. It still may be that you are the one leading the way, and in such times you must do your best to be patient, but more than patient, trusting, aware and a bit clever about getting your needs met. If you can keep doing what you must do, seeking what you want and guiding yourself toward a more positive outlook, you will be met by authentic results -- even if you cannot say what they will be.

Now, in practical terms, what is this about? Let's talk about your professional life for a moment -- which, by the way, was not designed as a substitute for anything in your life, but rather as one of the main events of your journey on Earth. You have Aquarius in this house, the 10th. That alone, apart from any transits that may come through, is a placement that says you are here to make an ORIGINAL CONTRIBUTION (this is the only time I am using "all caps" in the entire horoscope section -- 40,000 words, and just two of them are in all caps -- the words "original" and "contribution," and they are in direct reference to you and why you are on the planet).

For a long time, you had Neptune alone transiting this house, perhaps for seven years. Neptune was giving you a lot of ideas and ideals about what you might do and wanted to do and wished you could do. But mostly it was insubstantial; dreams and daydreams, but actually, a process was underway of the old patterns keeping a grip on your life slowly being dissolved. Then all of a sudden, two Centaur planets showed up; not one but two: Chiron and Nessus. This was in early 2005, about two years ago, and that year was the time when, seemingly very quickly, your mind started to focus; your mission started to become clear.

Notably, this probably showed up with a series of crises over your direction and potentially actual workplace crises. These were related to helping you make sure you are actually doing the right thing; helping you break out of those very firm fixed patterns and find your new path. Yes, it was annoying; just when you were getting used to living with 8th house Pluto seemingly forever, just when you had a grip on that, at long last, suddenly the whole issue of purposes started to vibrate through your life, not letting you give up the idea of what you really needed to be doing for a moment.

You are likely to have noticed two things: ideals need to be acted on, and it's not easy; and two, there is a dark side to what we are called upon to do, and that often involves acknowledging the world's pain. In other words, we would not need healing if not for sickness; we would not need teachers if not for ignorance; we would not need inventors except for need itself. And indeed, you are being called upon to be all of those things -- but with one focus; one mission. In reality, that is, in the physical world of people, organizations and society.

The issue with Centaur transits is that they can, at times, have this way of making you feel pretty unstable. Centaurs all have an edgy feeling, a little dangerous, verging on impossible; they push us to our limits and make us redefine the idea of a limit. Centaurs do extremely weird things with the whole notion of "possible," because the things that actually happen under Centaur transits are things we previously thought were impossible. Then one day they are necessary; and then the next day you're actually doing them.

We must add one last characteristic to these events, which can be easily deduced from all of the above: they involve gaining experience, and learning through experience. If you don't rise to the occasion, it's really easy to get shredded; if you pluck up some confidence, you can find yourself living on a whole new level, and working with talents you had only previously dreamed of.

Along this vein, Saturn transiting your 4th house has been pushing you to make some changes to what you consider your foundation. Nobody should stay in one place too long, as in one house or one community or one neighborhood; one of whatever you want, but change at the root level is essential to keep a human being healthy. The resounding message, indeed, the compulsion, of Saturn in Leo has been to clean your life from the roots; to repair your foundations. In order to do that, you've needed to assess where you are, and why you are there. There must, with Saturn in the 4th house, be a connection between location and purpose. The two can often exist independently, but not now, not for you. You draw too much strength from your home and your physical location to have that be out of whack or off kilter. So, without interpreting anything special here, I would just suggest you consider what messages you have been getting from the world and from your life, and take this opportunity to do something about them, if you feel that's the right thing to do.

Venus and Mars are both making retrogrades this year. Both are interesting and will be yet another stage of helping you reorient and rearrange your personal relationships; yes, yet again, in a new way. While these retrogrades happen later in the year, we can work with them now, and their effects are starting to manifest. I'll keep these discussions brief and to the point; they are simpler than the earlier subject of this essay.

For a long time, your relationships have had the feeling of power being brokered, distributed or somehow becoming an issue. Pluto in the 8th can be reduced down to a series of power equations, and while in some ways exciting, they are not exactly what you would call recreational. Venus retrograde is calling on you to get back to some of that fun aspect of relationships. True, you may have a huge case of post-traumatic-romantic-shock syndrome. You may be keenly aware that any situation can suddenly manifest more karma than you can haul in the Space Shuttle. You may be the type that adds up your dinner check on a solar powered calculator, and have (at times, hopefully other times) plotted and schemed your romances in this way. But how about, you know, some fun? How about picking people who are actually fun? I am aware you need smart people and smart fun; don't compromise. Dumb fun is stupid. Intelligent fun. Brainy fun. Whatever. Fun, your style.

As for Mars, this happens later in the year, but you can prepare now, and by prepare, I mean practice being clear. Clear, first, with yourself. You may have noticed once or twice here and there that you try to think with your emotions. This is a little like driving a Ferrari into a lake. Cars are fun and lakes are fun, but -- you need a boat for the lake and a car for the highway. When Mars enters Cancer on Sept. 29, if you find yourself feeling like you can't keep your focus, like you make no sense, or moreover if people are saying you're being aggressive, or reacting like you're being aggressive, remember: drive on the highway, and take your boat on the water. Feel with your emotions and think with your mind. People will like you more, you will like yourself more, and your days will go easier.

Indeed, if you think with your mind and feel with your feelings, there will be more to talk about, less to argue about, and all those cool things you like to think about, you'll be able to share with others. How is that for a plan? You can even start right now.

posted June 17, 2007 04:07 PM         

"and that it would seem, is the moral of the story: relating from the soul level"

WHEN I first began writing horoscopes in 1995, Pluto had just begun its transit of Sagittarius. I remember writing every Gemini horoscope with caution, taking care to handle the energy of this planet seeking the most beneficial possible interpretation and reaching beneath the surface for what the psychological message might be. The intensity of a Pluto, the deepest known energy at the time, transiting your relationship house (your opposite sign), called for attention and awareness, and I am going to presume that's what you've learned in the 12 years since then.

In sum, the picture looks like this: you've encountered, again and again, how powerful people can be. You have probably learned they do not always have the best intentions, though another factor says this in particular was a theme of the first few years. I am fairly certain that the beginning of this transit was the most difficult, through 1999, when Nessus, a Centaur planet, was accompanying Pluto in Sagittarius. In a sense, Nessus accelerated the transit, pushing a lot of the darker material normally associated with Pluto out into the open.

The rocket fuel effect of Centaur transits has been noted by other astrologers, who notice the increase in intensity. Nessus in particular has a way of revealing the interpersonal dynamics that comprise betrayal and cruelty. In other words, these things are not lacking for a cause. When they are present, we play some part, be it through expecting these qualities to be there, not recognizing them when they are there, or having a blind spot about the same qualities in ourselves.

The 7th house is sometimes described as the "zone of projection" in the chart, a place where our inner qualities are played out in the world of our relationships. What is crucial is that we take the opportunity to keep choosing. At first, we may choose to get drawn into the game; then we may choose to see the game; and finally, to make adjustments and consciously sidestep it, and choose another way. Pluto is basically a process of making what was hidden available to work with, and one of the advantages to working with astrology is that process, in itself, can be seen for what it is.

By late 1999, Nessus had left Sagittarius and another influence had come in -- Chiron. The conjunction of Chiron and Pluto in the fall of 1999 (coinciding with the World Trade Organization protests in Seattle, the opening of the anti-globalization movement) marked a turning point, or at least a checkpoint in your progress, the first of three extremely significant ones. Rather than interpret this, I am going to suggest that you make some notes about what was going on in your life, what you thought it meant at the time, and what you think it means now. It was certainly an unusual time in history and an unusual time in your personal history.

By mid-2001, Saturn had entered your sign, which was the first placement of a slow-moving planet in Gemini in quite a few years. This had the effect of putting the focus back on you, no matter what was occurring in your relationships. Saturn will always focus its energy on the house it's transiting, even despite other seemingly stronger factors. In the summer of 2001, Saturn and Pluto met in a rare opposition aspect, and as far as the outer world is concerned, we all know the results. Once again, I suggest you consider what this meant to you at the time, and what it means to you today.

Through the rest of 2001, Chiron was close to the Galactic Core, where Pluto is today, and I would suggest that there is information from late 2001 about what you are experiencing today -- something that I would suggest is valuable for all the signs. This was a kind of warm-up to the Spiral Door experience that we are living through today.

To sum up, I would propose that the transit of Pluto through Sagittarius has provided one continuous opportunity to meet the world on its terms, and for you to insist that it meet you on your own. This has been a long journey, like scaling a mountain, but more like learning to handle yourself under any circumstances. The world is full of power games; you have learned the rules of these games, learned to play them to your advantage, and most important, learned to get out of the way when you need to.

Pluto on the Galactic Core is now a chance to leave all this behind. Pluto has a way of reorienting us, setting up expectations about how life is, and causing us to completely reorient ourselves around those feelings and in that environment. The Spiral Door phase is about loosening up that orientation, consolidating your knowledge and getting ready to move onto something new. With important Pluto transits, this can be a challenge because they can take so long to get used to. Then, once we have gotten into the process, the years have slipped by and it's time for something new.

But in summary, I want to say this. A Pluto transit is one thing; a Pluto transit with the support of two Centaur transits is another. In other words, had you experienced this transit in a time before the Centaur planets were known, it would have been a different thing entirely, less aware, with you having less power. The fact that you have integrated that material as well puts you on another level than you might ordinarily be. In essence, Chiron and his cousins increase the volatility of our growth. They work like psychic grease cutter, creating a more soluble state of mind, allowing for rapid changes in perspective and moreover, raising awareness of what might not otherwise be there. And that awareness you take with you as Pluto begins its process of changing signs, marking a gradual close to what has obviously been a significant period of your life.

The Spiral Door phase, Pluto crossing the Galactic Core, is about taking all that you have learned and reorienting in your relationships in the most aware and constructive way -- based on what you have learned. I daresay, much of that learning has involved what you do not want, but if you sift through the experiences, you'll see that there is quite a lot that you now know you want. This is the time to remember. It may also be a time of forming or developing existing partnerships that you will carry into the future. These are the relationships that can stand awareness, that are agents of change, and where your agenda is aligned enough with that of your fellow travelers that you can both relate from the soul level. And that, it would seem, is the moral of the story: relating from the soul level, indeed, making that your priority.

If you feel comfortable with the term, all the activity in your 7th house has spiritualized your relationships, and if nothing else, taught you to experience them, and yourself, and the people in your life, on an ever deeper and more essential level. This, in turn, has done something profound for you: it has helped you deal with being a Gemini more gracefully, and resolved something that I would imagine is both challenging and at times annoying for those born under your sign, which basically involves dualism.

Pairs of opposite signs bear a close relationship, and the two need one another dearly. The properties of one are often the necessary ingredients for the other. Indeed, opposite signs have a way of masquerading as one another, and there is often a deep mission in the lifetime of integrating the material of the opposite sign. In the book "Esoteric Astrology", Alice A. Bailey describes Gemini as "the light of interplay," adding that it reveals "that which opposes, or the basic duality of manifestation, the relationship between spirit and form. It is the conscious light of that relationship" [on p. 329 of the softcover edition].

Read that a few times (with esoteric writing, you have to), and then please allow me to paraphrase. Gemini's main job is to reveal consciously the relationship between spirit and form.

We live in a world that is hung up on forms. We have different names for them: status, appearance, perception, roles and so on. Within the forms is the content, the essence of life, but we tend not to notice. Indeed, the world is all about not noticing, and what we call the spiritual path is all about going beneath the surface (of oneself and of others) and experiencing what is below. So, here, we have another image of what it has meant to experience Pluto in Sagittarius, or to say that you have grown into a space where you've learned to relate on the soul level. This is the level below the form; what many spiritual paths call reality. You have also learned to experience yourself on this level.

While you have been going through this process, the world has been going through something similar, though at the moment it's not apparent. Indeed, something quite the opposite is apparent, as shadow material is getting projected all over the place, accusations are flying and divisions within divisions of dogmatic ideologies are appearing. Individually, though, I trust that many of us have integrated the "beam of directed, focused light" of Sagittarius, wherein "the point of light becomes the beam, revealing a greater light ahead and illuminating the way to the center of the light" [p. 330].

When this takes effect on a collective level, we shall see. Clearly, it will be based on dire necessity for survival, the only thing non-artists seem to respond to. One sense I have about 2012 is that along the way to this transition, we are experiencing a series of events that are gradually awakening the human family to the fact that we live on one planet, and are part of one living entity. Consider how hard it is for individuals to change, to make up their mind about something simple. Then magnify that by about 6.5 billion, then add governments and corporations manipulating everyone into doing various harmful things, or delaying progress.

This makes a strong case for the strongest progress, in the long run, coming from individuals and individual growth, as this seems to be the most difficult to block and the easiest to effect.

And now, for more practical matters. One extremely practical subject that comes into focus is money. While the astrology affecting this occurs later in the year, you can go a long way toward making life easier for yourself by doing what I will call taking a less emotional approach to the subject.

It is one thing to be intuitive, but that is different than emotional, and indeed, you can be quite intuitive when it comes to finances. This is not always true, however, and the ebbs and floods of your financial life need some stabilizing. The financial story of this year involves your coming to understand all of your beliefs about money that don't work. Many of them are based on insecurities. Many of those come from your mother. To successfully handle money, we need to act like an adult, not like a child under parental authority, or a parent controlling a child.

Another layer of this story is that you are likely to perceive your value in what you have to give, and this may preclude or at least create an obstacle to the possibility of receiving. I would, again, urge you to look at your parents and see who among them had this kind of attitude, because it likely comes from one of them, and was reinforced in you by their conduct and teaching.

Cancer on this house involves cycles, both financial and of self-esteem, and the two are related. Indeed, not enough has been said about this relationship, to which astrology points vividly. Wherever Cancer is in one's chart, there will be dependable cyclical movement. But the question is, what is driving those cycles forward? And what states of mind do they represent?

The sign Cancer can most frequently take two states: mother, and child. Each will have different expectations about the worth of things, how money is supposed to flow and what the rules of the game are. However, until you see and experience these different states consciously, and get acquainted with the various rules they imply, it is unlikely to be something you can work with consciously. Each will have a different idea of what money is, where it comes from, and what you do with it. Sometimes self-esteem will be connected to financial success; other times, low self-esteem will create failure.

When Mars makes its retrograde in this house, a lot of past stuff is going to come up, and you may want to get ahead of the curve. Retrogrades and other major events are available to work with long before they occur. So it's not really practicing but accessing an energy that is available. When the personal material becomes more apparent at the time of the retrograde, you will know what is happening and be able to identify solutions, more or less on the spot. The big questions are likely to involve certain past values about effort and labor.

One of these involves the question of sacrifice, which seems to have been pre-programmed into you from a young age, and connected directly to the value of your efforts. I have had a discussion a number of times with young people considering going into the esoteric arts as a profession, who often say some form of, "Yes, but is it right to charge money to help someone?" to which I reply, "Would you rather charge money to hurt them?"

Perhaps this is the working of my twisted mind, but I love the expression on people's faces as they work this concept out. The logic, though, is impeccable. At some point, you're going to need to feel great about being paid to help people, and getting paid well. This is your natural mode of expression -- you were indeed born to help. The trick will be making this work for you rather than against you: in essence, never being the victim of your own willingness to help others. And, to do this, you will need to be alert to the games that can and often do come with the act of helping or being helped.

I have a feeling that most of this is emotionally rooted, and thus tends to not express itself in words. And this is, in part, why you insist on such clear and at times oppressive agreements with people, contracts that have an odd tendency to trap you in places and situations you don't want to be, but which offer you a kind of pseudo stability. As you understand what is holding you down, and put it into terms you can understand, and address consciously, I think you will be able to relax a bit. This will help you slip into the natural flow of abundance that can really be yours -- in all respects, and in all kinds of relationships. This will feel like a miracle, and it will be one: the miracle of awareness. And that, fortunately, is available all the time.

posted June 17, 2007 04:19 PM         

"you exist in this life with a divine purpose, and this purpose involves action with it's basis on faith"

Eris in the 10th solar house. Spiral Door aspect, Quaoar and Ixion in the 6th solar house. Pluto working toward the solar 7th house or descendent. Saturn in the 2nd solar house heading for the 3rd. Chiron-Nessus conjunct in the 8th solar house. Mars retrograde in the 1st solar house. Venus retrograde in the 2nd and 3rd solar houses.

Cancer is the relationship house for Capricorn, the career house for Libra, and the home and security house for Aries. This interpretation works for Cancer rising as well.

CANCER is an astrological sign that insinuates emotional dependencies, nurturing and good food on the stove. But for half a decade or so, you've been under the strong influence of Saturn, first moving through Gemini into your sign, then working its way through Cancer and over your Sun, and then into your 2nd solar house, where it is as the year begins, and will be through late summer.

Crabs come in a variety of species; some are tough and spiny, and come on claws first. Many, though, tend to be receptive and lack the boundaries that you would normally associate with an invertebrate. Note that a crab is one of two animals in the zodiac that lacks a backbone, the other being a scorpion. The skeleton is on the outside, protecting an extremely soft interior.

Invertebrates go through a growth process called molting. They shed one shell and grow a new, larger one. Some such as hermit crabs occupy a shell that was once owned by another creature. Each time Saturn has changed signs has represented a molting process for you, at the beginning of which was an extreme of vulnerability, which was followed by growing into your new size and strength.

Saturn and Cancer are not so incompatible as modern astrology often tries to convince us. Both archetypes have strong associations with mother. Both have direct references to structure, in the case of Saturn, the spine and the bones, and Cancer, the exoskeleton. They are compatible in that Cancer thrives under the energy of Saturn, because the emotions need structure, and the needing safety aspect of Cancer benefits from the tangible reality that Saturn offers. Saturn and the Moon are often archetypes for the parents, and in the current world, the roles of parents are entirely interchangeable. To put it simply, I think Saturn is the best friend of all those with strong Cancer signatures in their charts.

If Saturn's action in your life has taught you anything in these years, it's been how to be more independent, which has, with any grace at all, assisted you not in distancing yourself from others, but rather in forming more mature dependencies and deeper bonds. Healthy relationships have boundaries, and feelings have limits. To a point, structure liberates energy. As it works out, Saturn is an excellent force for change, movement, growth and clarification of one's ideas, contrary to nearly every description in a commercial astrology book (which is why I am nearly out of answers when asked to recommend such a book). To put it mildly, Saturn has kept you busy the past five years, and though you have not necessarily had an easy trip through life, or had everything you wanted, I am obliged to quote the late Patric Walker: Saturn always gives more than it takes away.

But it is, in truth, humans who are in the position of giving to one another, and receiving from one another, and we do this in our relationships. One look at the world or at nature reveals the existence of an interdependent web of life. Whether we are talking about trucks hauling beer from the brewery to the supermarket, or the wind carrying pollen from one flower to another, life is a collaborative process. Those who feel they are autonomous are lying to themselves, and everyone else, or are simply not aware. We have a metaphor for the awareness of one world, which occurred to me today watching a special on BBC about the Amazon Rain Forest. In short, I was considering how people 50 years ago might have responded to the proposition that the rain forest vacuums in carbon were created on California's highways, and that it's directly affected by the climate of the entire planet. Most people would have laughed -- not so today. Today, we get it, and it's almost too late. In a similar way, I feel we need to understand the ecology of our relationships and our communities, and act accordingly. I'll come back to this in a moment, in my discussion of Chiron and Nessus in Aquarius.

Let's briefly review the Saturn story. Saturn's role through Gemini, Leo and Cancer (your 12th, 1st and 2nd houses, respectively) has been a gradual toughening up process that is probably a good thing for you. Saturn in Gemini (approximately spring 2001-spring 2003), your solar 12th house, was a kind of closet-cleaning exercise, where you may have been compelled to pull back from people, or when you endured a phase of relative isolation. This is a "deal with your stuff" transit. It was a time of sobriety, dealing with your fears, and also of creating tangible dreams. Dreams are great, but they are a big tease unless you can actually build them, and build on them. Saturn in Gemini also taught you to be of one mind about what you want and need the most. To whatever extent dualism prevented you from making commitments, you took some big steps in this phase.

Then came Saturn in your own sign (approximately summer 2003-summer 2005). Saturn in our sign has an odd way of limiting us to one agenda, to which everything else is subordinated, at least for a while. It may be the kind of thing where you say to yourself, "I don't really want to do this, but I know I need to," at the end of which, you realized you gained, grew and matured considerably, and what you were doing was right on time. Saturn in one's own sign (which happens once every three decades) always compels us to come to terms with ourselves in a tangible way. It's a time of burning off the baby fat, clearing space, making some kind of major move, and (as I will develop in the Leo essay), a time of taking over the role of one's parents and one's self-authority. The moral of the story is, the more we are in charge of ourselves, the less others are able to run our lives.

Currently, Saturn is in Leo, your 2nd solar house (which began in the summer of 2005 and will go through late summer 2007). This is the money house, as well as covering subjects like one's personal values and resources. Most trashy astrology books tell you money will be tight at this time; but the real meaning of this transit is about getting yourself structured financially. Leo burns with a hot fire, and it benefits from a fireplace or a nice wood stove. Every wood stove needs a woodpile, and the proper tools to handle burning logs, and so on. Basically, the astrology is a good map of what opportunities are available. The archetypes tell us what time it is, in the big sense, and reveal what energies are most readily available. So based on this, it's a good time to take care of creating some kind of economic structure for yourself, whether that means getting a savings account or a retirement plan; engaging an accountant, or filing taxes for the first time. It means taking your financial life more seriously, one degree at a time, whatever that means to you: but Saturn is saying that ultimately, the results must involve structure.

With Leo in this solar house as a constant factor, you identify with your values more passionately than most people. Indeed, this is something you share with the other water signs, Scorpio and Pisces. What is important to you is really important for you, and it's nothing you take for granted. Water signs get accused of all sorts of interesting things, but we cannot really be accused of not caring. Saturn's presence is strongly urging you (to put it politely) to materialize what is important to you -- and I trust you've made some actual progress on this particular front. Saturn's form of action typically comes in the form of commitments that we act on gradually, and steadily, and which have lasting benefits.

When Saturn changes signs to Virgo, your solar 3rd house, you will have many opportunities to put this structure to work. I can think of few transits that will focus your sense of mission like Saturn in the 3rd house associated with Virgo. Unless you have some serious money issues, you will want to get paid for that focused, excellent work that you do, and one of the best ways to get paid is to create the space and structure for it. The point being, you need to do what is important to you, and you need that to be what sustains you. And, luckily, now is the time.

Now, let's go to the opposite house -- the 8th, which for you is Aquarius. The 8th is an extremely interesting house, and you have some planets there that are creating an exciting time of learning for you, in what may seem like another dimension entirely than I've been describing with Saturn.

Indeed, this is a true frontier of your life, a comment I can make in part because Aquarius is involved (ever interesting), and in part because two of the more recently discovered planets are involved, Centaur planets Chiron and Nessus. Without going into a huge dissertation on the 8th house, it's the house of shared resources, mutual commitments and sex. It is the house of "other people's money" and the meeting place where we share both resources and ideas about resources.

Aquarius occupying your 8th solar house is quite revealing of your nature -- or at least a few possibilities about it. There is the idea, in the fantasy version of your life presented by astrology, that when you consider shared resources, you think of them as group resources. The same holds true for ideas, for knowledge, for community, and if you're not too hung up, for sex and money. The dualism of Aquarius (two wavy lines) is that it can be fascist and it can be revolutionary. It can worship authority and, on another day, strive to overthrow it. Taken as a sexual metaphor in the 8th house, there can be strains of petty tyrant, or of true egalitarian. You will need to fill in that side of the story; I can tell you that you have a choice in the matter; I can tell you that you may be considerably more hung up than you think, that you may be considerably more radical than you think, and that you may be substantially more revolutionary than you think. Both of these probably make you nervous.

The fact that you're having Centaur transits here is pushing all of this potential into focus, raising questions and keeping things moving in your relationships. To the extent that you are addressing old questions and dispensing with them, you are succeeding. If the same stuff keeps coming up, slow down and work with it more closely.

While you may not be totally thrilled about what is happening, or how it's happening, actually, plenty about your current state of interrelations with others is working for you, and helping you expand your base of support. Anything you don't particularly like, you can at least put into the "knowledge is power" file, but indeed, addressing things on the spot, internally first, then externally, will be very productive now, and have more or less immediate effects. You can indeed change your relationship patterns at this time, and you can do so effectively and with minimal grief -- as long a you stay out of denial. Chiron is bringing a magnifying glass to the place where your world intersects with the reality of others, and theirs with yours, all in the most practical ways, to wit, money, sex, power, resources, commitments and ideas. This transit is both revealing the dynamics that have long existed in that house, and creating a fertile environment where you can rewrite, reprogram or recreate them.

Chiron's basic mode of operation is, if you can be aware of it, you can work with it. However, this transit has a dangerous feeling, as if you are working the edge and in some way defying death. Indeed, death may be a concern of yours, if only as the awareness of your own mortality, and mortality as an issue we all share. You may live constantly with the sense that the only time is now; that you must use every minute with awareness; that any day could indeed be your last day.

While you're there, you might want to look at how death is a commodity in your relationships. Death is almost like a silent third partner in many relationships, as many people tend ["unconsciously"] to make bargains that involve death, and yet keep the idea of death and its meaning far from the picture. With an 8th house Chiron transit, this is not exactly on your list of options. What is nice, though, is that you get to come to any revelation, any personal recognition or point of growth, with the comfort of knowing you are not alone.

One quality of the 8th house is that it tends to be the place where you can get a lot of information about how power is transacted in our lives. Nor should this be surprising, given that the subject matter of this house all involves the money-sex-death matrix of themes. Typically, more than being the place that most people gain any sense of their power, or actual power, the 8th tends to be the place where they lose their power, or give it up, specifically, in relationships and agreements. Signing contracts that are unfair to us is a typical kind of event. Then we have to live with these agreements, or risk getting sued. But how often do we sign contracts not knowing what they contain? How often do we make agreements with others, not knowing what we're committing to; how often do we assume a commitment on the part of another that is not clearly spoken? These are not rhetorical questions. I suggest you look at the facts.

Aquarius on the 8th raises another question that may be coming to light with a Chiron focus on this house. That is, to what extent did group pressure force you to have the values that you do? To what extent, consciously or "unconsciously," do you hold the values of the people who surrounded you when you were little? To what extent to you succumb to the values of others in your relationships, particularly if they involve sex or money? Chiron may be making these factors uncomfortably clear. Yet rather than live in discomfort, I suggest you do your part to raise awareness, and to put your knowledge into action.

Aquarius needs a theory, and it needs facts to support or deny it. Chiron, too, calls for accounting and accountability; for the awareness of details and what they add up to. As a Cancerian, you may be inclined to think emotionally, without words, on "intuition" or hunches or to "go with your gut." Chiron is suggesting that you use your excellent mind and actually get a sense of where you stand in the world. To briefly address the presence of Nessus, this adds the focus on accountability, compelling you to know who is responsible for what, and particularly, to take responsibility for what you know you can change, or what (or who) you know you cannot change. The conjunction is saying: come out of denial, or rather, wake up to your denial and then address honestly what you need to address.

When the Spiral Door opens in your life, it will open in a distinct angle of your chart where work relationships are experienced as of some of the most intimate of our lives. The world puts great emphasis on marriage, romance and love relationships, and practically ignores the miracles and beauty of work partnerships. Indeed, they are at once some of the most meaningful and under-rated of our human contacts.

Personally for you, they are where you share, cultivate and grow two things vital to a whole life -- service, and faith. If these past 10 years of your life have taught you anything, it is that you must actively live what you hold true. Belief is not enough, and by itself, it is nothing. Many people "believe in God." Your calling is to serve -- perhaps God in some form, or some cosmic presence that you relate to much like alive people connect to nature. But in truth, this is a practical matter, and it involves serving humanity. The Spiral Door represents the full recognition, indeed, the realization, that you exist in this life with a divine purpose and that this purpose involves action with its basis in faith.

Yet this state of existence necessitates that you engage with people who have a similar agenda, which includes being willing to ask the important questions; the real ones; and to do the real thinking.

posted June 17, 2007 04:25 PM         

"you bring passion into whatever you do, and there is little point in living any other way"

Eris in the 9th solar house. Spiral Door aspect, Quaoar and Ixion in the 5th solar house. Pluto working toward the solar 6th house. Saturn in the 1st solar house heading for the 2nd. Chiron-Nessus conjunct in the 7th solar house. Mars retrograde in the 12th solar house. Venus retrograde in the 1st and 2nd solar houses.

Leo is the relationship house for Aquarius, the career house for Scorpio, and the home and security house for Taurus. This interpretation works for Leo rising as well.

AT THE CORE of the Western zodiac is a lion, who we call Leo. As we go orbiting through the foggy ruins of time depicted in the cosmic scheme, we step outside our front door (Cancer, the home), take three steps, and come across a Sphinx.

Who it is, how old, why it's there -- it's all anybody's guess, yet still it seems to make sense. Perhaps it's the eternal question: "Hi! Whose kitty are you?" Well, sir, I am my own kitty. Note that there is no dog in the Western horoscope, though I may have to invent one. Dogs are cool, you can go running and hunting with them, some catch Frisbees, they lead the blind and after all these years, they still keep you safe at night. Cats provide companionship, the feeling of a soul, and a being to behold in all its mystery -- which helps humans do something important: feel deep. And after all these years, they are still the best way to catch a rat.

Leo is not an ordinary sign, and because of its central place in the astrological system, it plays a vital role in everyone's life. Where we have Leo is a power source in our charts. Where we have Leo people in our lives is an anchor point. Astronomically, we reckon our lives by the apparent motion of the Sun around the ecliptic, a model for one of the epic dramas of humanity told in many myths. It's the only one of the 12 signs ruled by a star, not an orbiting body of some kind. Though not a particularly remarkable star, and a small one, as they come -- but it's our star, at the center of our consciousness, providing much of the energy we live on and the matter of which we are created. It takes us along as we orbit the galaxy once every quarter billion years or so. Leo is associated with leadership, with kings and presidents, with the heart, and the metal gold. It is something of the reference standard for astrology.

At the moment, Saturn is in the sign Leo, a transit which is affecting everyone, particularly you who has Leo Sun or Leo rising. This transit is said to be fundamentally at odds with the energy of this sign. I don't see it that way. While Leo is often assigned properties of high creativity, more often what you will find Leos doing is taking care of the necessities of life, rising and setting each day like the Sun, making sure the crops grow and the seasons change. Leo may shine like the Sun some of the time, but you also shine behind the clouds, rain or shine. In homeopathy, the remedy aurum metallicum (made of gold) addresses the situation of people who work tirelessly, and get tired. Think of aurum as addressing what you might call service fatigue.

Saturn, the planet sometimes associated with the opposite metal, lead (and your opposite sign, Aquarius), is compelling Leo to come to terms with its fundamentally creative nature, rather than just being it in potential. Saturn is always about recognizing necessity, and the teaching mission of Saturn in this placement is working toward sustainability and economy. Saturn has a dependable way of liberating us from excess, including from the sense of excess talent that is not being utilized; hence, it will be put to use. But Saturn in Leo is very good at focusing the inventive property normally associated with Aquarius, and helping humanity create ideas, things and conditions that focus energy for the long run. Saturn can point out exactly what you need to do to work more effectively, and I would reckon this is a big piece of the Saturn in Leo puzzle.

Part of this is based on coming to terms with just how much responsibility you have, then becoming realistic about it -- and therefore, practical. This transit is about making adjustments and balancing out the accounts of talent and responsibility.

With Taurus positioned on top of your solar chart, your work must be something that's important to you, and with Aries in your 11th solar house (throughout our lifetimes, graced by Eris) you thrive on distinction. For Leo, your contribution to the world must be a direct expression of your values and your individuality, more so as time goes on. It is less important that you "be creative," and more important that you do what is right for you, and what you perceive as right for the world. Saturn in your sign is pushing the creativity factor as a matter of long-term necessity, focused now. The game at this point in your life is about being creative enough to organize your energy so you have enough left for what you want, without sacrificing what may be a far mightier priority -- being part of the world, and in some crucial way, being at the center of your world.

The gift and the lesson that Leo brings for all of us is being at the center, unapologetically. The lesson and the gift that the rest of us bring to Leo is the part about there being nine members on a baseball team and many instruments in the orchestra. Living the center implies being the center of something; that something implies others, a mission, an active purpose. It's a good exchange.

However, at the moment, the focus on Saturn in Leo is specifically about one-on-one relationships, since Saturn is the ruler of your relationship house. This is a conditioning factor that is helping you take on board the viewpoint of the people closest to you at the same time it plunges them into your point of view. It's as if, whenever necessary, you and anyone close to you can switch places and align your points of view. And because Saturn is the planet telling this story for you personally, there is a structure involved; everything is happening (or must happen) within reason, in line with a reasoning process, though the challenges of life may push you right to the edge.

The relationship angle of your solar chart (the 7th house or Aquarius) is described by three factors now, which are making good old Saturn something of a comfort zone, and one that you are gradually being nudged and budged out of.

The first and most prominent factor is Neptune in Aquarius. I say most prominent because Saturn and Neptune are in opposition, and will make two of them in 2007, completing this fairly rare and somewhat dangerous alignment. Neptune was in your relationship house years before Saturn arrived in your sign, which has signified a long reevaluation of your ideas about love and partnership. One aspect of that was allowing yourself to be idealistic; another was taking some of the 'self' aspect of Leo and, perhaps uncomfortably, making it 'selfless'. As many have noticed, to really be someone special, you have to be a bit of a nobody as well.

As Saturn has gradually moved into opposition with Neptune, a sobering quality has entered your life; ideals are important, and so, too, is clarity with people. You have likely taken on the role of Mr. or Ms. Boundaries, even helping people understand what's important to them from the space of knowing what is best. This has, at times, felt like herding cats, but the thing about cats is, they have to eat, so mealtime is a good place to have discussions that don't happen at other times.

The effect on you has been one of gradually teaching you to relax and to notice how people and things so different than you can have potent effects on you -- ones you may not have noticed, or which are slowly dawning. Indeed, you're living through a long phase of people working their way into your life, into the cells of your mind and patterns of your existence. You have always been attracted to intelligent people; unlike many of our worldly comrades who either dumb themselves down or get shaky knees when they encounter someone with educated opinions, hyper intelligence is one of your fetishes.

Now let's add Chiron in Aquarius to the mix, a new kind of planet that mainly has the property of focusing whatever it touches or even comes near. Chiron is now in the process of opposing your Sun, though the later in Leo you are born, the later this exact transit will occur. The mystery of "what Chiron means" can be solved in this one idea: Chiron brings out the meaning of whatever it is contacting. Hence, it is associated with healing, with awakening, with crisis and with awareness; and as a result, with change and consequently, progress. Chiron so personally situated is a lot of focusing power. (This answers Rob Hand, the Papa Smurf of astrology, who once said to me that he had worked with Chiron for a while, but could not figure out what it 'meant'. But he noticed how the intensity level of everything went up when it was in the neighborhood, which usually accompanied other important transits.)

So, let's assemble some of the pieces. Neptune in your relationship house starting in the late 1990s began an irrevocable process of change that helped you deepen your relationships and drop many of your prejudices, and was also associated with a new kind of idealism and perhaps faith in humanity. There may have also been a shift in your relationship to drugs and alcohol: maybe you started hanging out with people who did more of them; maybe you became aware of that, made some decisions reflective of your values, and did less. Along the way, a process of your old relationship ideologies and structures melting away began, and is still underway.

Then in 2005, Chiron crossed your solar 7th house, joining Neptune in your relationship house, throwing a spotlight on whatever you were willing to look at and some things you were not so willing to look at. It remains there today.

Then a few months later, Saturn showed up in your sign, which suddenly gave you the strength to deal with whatever you needed to deal with: the patience, the boundaries, the sense of fortitude and also the willingness to make the personal changes you've needed to make. Saturn is about taking personal responsibility, particularly in your own sign. And you have done plenty of this, taking over the 'parent' part of your psyche and making sure that you are the one who takes this role in your life, effectively ousting others from this position -- be they actual parents, or people taking a parental role. And, this process continues as well. The ongoing meeting between Saturn and Neptune is a long reckoning of ideas and reality; of fantasy and necessity; of idealism and practical realities, that in the end will have moved a mountain.

Later this year, Saturn changes signs to Virgo, which will help you complete the processes I'm discussing here, and also provide some very helpful changes on the financial front; I'll leave those details for another time.

One last factor exists, that I haven't mentioned. That is that Chiron is currently traveling with a fellow Centaur, called Nessus. Nessus is like Chiron, but with a specialty: it addresses the responsibility for abuse, calling attention to the dark side of our programming and helping us resolve what we have had inflicted on us as children. Nessus is about taking responsibility, but it's really about knowing where that responsibility actually rests. It is not automatically with you, but you must take responsibility for the ultimate awareness. Indeed, it can be complex, but Nessus helps us get to the bottom of things, so we can get on with life.

Moreover, Nessus reveals the underlying psychological dynamics of relationships, so that we can actually see them, give them names, and if we need to, be free of them.

Centaurs discovered subsequent to Chiron all work a little like Chiron, but each with particular specialties; they all put the magnifying glass to things, with a particular filter. What Nessus (the third Centaur) helps reveal are the invisible psychological damages that might otherwise go unnoticed, because they were not accompanied by anything more overt (such as beatings), or because responsibility was somehow diverted (perhaps you were blamed for what you had no control over, so you miss the fact that it was your parents' role to take care of you, not the other way around). Nessus also addresses what is potentially inappropriate, and helps us decide whether it was (or is) in fact, inappropriate. This is often a truly helpful sorting-out process that can help us clarify our values, and then act on them. Important Nessus questions are, "Who owes what to whom, and why?" or, "What happened, and what does it mean?" or to give another example, "Was permission given?"

What is interesting is the extent to which your astrology is calling you into group relationships, of many kinds, or revealing group dynamics.

They may range from drinking buddies to therapy groups to political activity to family situations, but the idea of relating to several other people is now focused. So, too is your attractiveness. There may be a heck of a lot of people who feel that you are the right person for them, whatever your situation may be. Partly this is occurring because you are actually someone who understands others, partly bestowed by Chiron in your 7th house.

Notably, this increase in energy is occurring in an era when monogamy is a word that for most people is lacking a coherent definition. Past the veil of the primacy one-on-one relationships is the reality that we all love many people; yet how we respond, such as what we say or do, is a matter of context and integrity.

Beyond the fact that we almost always relate in the context of a group dynamic is the underlying truth that every relationship is indeed one-on-one. Beneath the presumptions and the social dramas, the expectations and the unquestioned values, we have these layers of dynamics: the idealized or unquestioned level; the level where we can look at what we choose to see; and the level where all the nuts and bolts of the damage that was done to us are shown to us, and which we have the ability to change, mostly because we have agreed and have chosen to be conscious.

So to say that conscious relationship is the main theme of your life now is an understatement, but to say that it's a rich time for you to be exploring this is also an understatement. Indeed, the potential is awesome at the moment for you to be one of the clearest people within your relationships, and on the whole subject, to become a kind of lightbulb among your friends -- if you haven't already noticed this, and if not, well, that's what's happening.

As for The Spiral Door aspect. Pluto's movement through your 5th solar house, Sagittarius, has encouraged you to create a brilliant fusion of art, sex and your spiritual experiences. This has felt risky, but it's really been a matter of learning that all the things you love the most are one thing; and that you can bring passion into whatever you do, and there is little point in living any other way.

Note that Leo is the 5th sign and Pluto has been transiting your 5th house -- compelling you to come to terms with your deepest level of creative energy, the very life force that Leo itself represents.

What Pluto's conjunction to the Galactic Core does is melt away any possible remaining barriers between work and play; between love and supposed responsibility outside of love -- because nothing exists outside of love. This year is likely to be the phase of the greatest experiment, and the boldest adventure of all. You are likely to see the point you were driving at all these years, and find the quality within yourself that you were looking for. You may not get to 'have' it -- indeed, it is too big to have -- but you will indeed get to be it (yourself), feel it (yourself) and experience it (yourself) in a big way.

We began this discussion with the Great Sphinx, of which I will include a photo by my friend Charlie Lemay below so you can see a reflection of yourself. I would like to end with a discussion of the cat, the pussy, the lion and the sphinx.

Leo, as the sign of the Sun and the sign ruled by the Sun, is the sign of what is called vital force: the life force, prana, chi, orgone, kundalini -- the energy of life. It is symbolized by a cat. The cat appears in the tarot card Strength or La Force, the Leo card, which depicts a woman spreading the jowls of a lion, symbolically spreading her vulva. The ancient esoteric masters drew a connection between the female genitals (the gateway to life), a cat and the vital force. Thus the reference to vulva as "pussy," whether visually or in language, is extremely old. But not as old as the oldest thing on Earth, which is a representation of a lion morphing into a human being or vice versa, called the Great Sphinx.

There is some dispute as to the age of the Sphinx, and it would be difficult to date precisely because it doesn't have a serial number. I have seen it, and it makes the Great Pyramid look like a new bank that just went up last week (which it is not). Official estimates have the Sphinx being built around 2520 BCE, but this is ridiculous. It was already being repaired during the Middle Kingdom, which began around 2030 BCE, so this would seem to be a slight underestimate in age. Most amusing of all is the water damage on a stone thing standing in the middle of an old desert, damage which nobody can account for, except for the possibility that there was once an entirely different climate where the Sphinx stands. And, indeed, the climate changes, and the Sphinx endures. Humanity endures, the vital force endures and Leo, the Lion, has seen it all.

Saturn (the structure and lord of time) in your sign is making you aware of this fact: of the experience, strength and wisdom you possess -- and counseling you to take your time, because as long as you take care of your heart, you do have time. The opposition of Saturn to Neptune is a cool image of that structure experiencing an ebb and flow and changes of climate, emerging perhaps in some ways different, but still very much recognizably yourself -- though everyone stands around and wonders.

posted June 17, 2007 04:32 PM         

"that moment of discovery where a belief evaporates like a drop of water, is rich"

SAFETY is the issue on Planet Earth, and what a game we make of it. Perhaps this is born of some need to flirt with death as a way of affirming life, or to have a little of the power over others that we think they hold over us, but we make things a lot more complicated than they are. And, indeed, we live in a time when we are under constant psychic attack; when our rights and liberties are under attack; when any person who can read knows their food is not food anymore. And, as a Virgo, you know it's your role to make the world a better place, a safer place, to offer if not solace, then solutions. The question is your point of beginning; the feeling from which you proceed.

For you, safety has been the theme of many years of your life, though you may have given it a variety of different names, and gone through a diversity of phases along the way to where you are today. Indeed, you may look back and wonder what, at certain times, you were thinking. As uncomfortable as it may be to question your logic, I suggest you do so. The reward will be the clarity of conscience that can only come from an honest reckoning with yourself, and the time is at hand. I suggest you celebrate this.

Pluto has been burning its way through your 4th solar house since the mid-1990s, representing a distinct phase of your life. The 4th solar house is about emotional grounding, security, family and the childhood environment that becomes the adult's emotional environment. For you, the sign involved is Sagittarius. The planet involved has been Pluto, the lord of transformation and the soul's journey. Yet an unprecedented series of discoveries in Sagittarius during the past decade has expanded the plot and the theme, gradually giving you new ways to consider your situation, in particular, the family life from which you originate, the family life you exist in now, and your relationship to the family of humanity.

Sagittarius in the 4th house is not about having a warm, cuddly feeling inside -- that you must work for, and grow into. Sagittarius, rather, is a bit distant, it perceives on a wide scale, and it reaches deep into awareness. If taken superficially, Sagittarius is perhaps the very worst archetype of the lot, creating a devil-be-damned attitude that, if run through one's emotional system, can create cruelty. If taken on the deeper level, or higher level (as you prefer), the result is an individual who is able to perceive his or her place in the world and not see himself or herself as separate from, or above, the condition of the planet.

Pluto transiting this house has certainly given you a lot to think about, and has compelled you into direct experiences with life where you transgress the boundary between what is personal and what is political. You live something of an inside-out, upside-down experience; the more selfish you may try to be, the more you are guided back toward your destiny of participation. The more you try to participate in the world, the more the cosmic forces seem to align and say: this is about you.

Living this paradox has kept you on the edge, very much apropos of your sign and its modern ruling planet, Chiron -- a planet also associated with the sign we are focusing on, Sagittarius. Chiron is the archetype of the shaman, who must live on the edge of society, who defines and negotiates his needs differently; and who has a different purpose. You will find that you belong on this planet as long as you honor that purpose. Alienation is one thing, but if that takes you beyond the sense of an existence that has meaning, you need to make adjustments, mainly to your philosophy of life: not somebody else's philosophy, but as you have by now discovered, your own.

A 4th house Pluto transit, if lived unconsciously, can create a constant search for security that takes you many places, through many ideas, and many concepts of self and God. The thing is, as someone once wrote, seek and you shall find.

It would not be an exaggeration to say that isolation has at times been a difficult but productive teacher, pointing the way into yourself and helping you reach the core of your being. You have not quite arrived yet; the Spiral Door is located at the gateway between the 4th and 5th houses, where the sense of safety and grounding becomes the gift of expression, be it through some creative experience, the ability to live spontaneously, raising a family, or creating a business that helps support you and your community. If you have gained knowledge in these years, to borrow another expression, this time from the yoga path, "Action is the fruit of knowledge."

In other words, the reward of being clear with yourself, and emotionally grounded, is the ability to participate in the world in a constructive way. And it would seem that every cell in your astrology and very likely your body wants you to take on some element of world karma and take on your role fully as a world server. There are an infinite number of possibilities, and the planet at our particular moment has karma to burn. In fact, that's about all we have to burn right now.

Let's come back to the idea of safety, because this remains a big part of the story of your life. For most people, safety is about believing they are safe. Beliefs, however, are often little more than the mind tricking itself. They are a form of self-manipulation. For example, you may believe that your front door is locked, but that does not make it locked. If you believe it, you feel safe. However, when you later discover that your door was not locked, or that the back window was wide open, you may for a moment have the vague idea that either you were not safe, or that something else (perhaps just luck) was keeping you safe. But that moment of discovery, where a belief evaporates like a drop of water, is rich.

Conversely, you may have locked your door, but you're afraid it's not locked. Your belief tells you you're not safe. You go back, and the door is in fact locked. You may adjust your belief based on the arrival of that fact, and declare yourself safe (which is another belief); you may go back and check again. We could say from this that there are at least two kinds of beliefs: those that are based on known facts, and those that have no basis. A third kind of belief is the kind based on faith. One by one, as your facts have proven to be without basis, or have not added up to the truth, you have been guided more and more clearly to trust something else, which is faith.

But faith in what? This has been an adventure, and continues to be one. Because no matter what external "thing" we may have faith in, be it the security of our job, a concept of God, a medical test, a place, the government, or some verified truth, all faith is solid to the extent that one trusts oneself. The game can be projected outward to an infinite degree. You can collect facts all you want and they still won't add up to the truth. Something, some other factor, is guiding the process, and that something is inside you.

There have been some interesting turning points here. One phase of your life to become intimately familiar with is late 1993 through late 1995. This was the era right before Pluto changed signs to Sagittarius, when Chiron came blazing through your sign. Working with Chiron, I suggest that people do what I call "time frame" exercises, going back and looking at certain periods of time and establishing the basic facts of what occurred, and the nature of the turning point. These always make interesting investigations, and the Chiron perihelion, when it was closest to the Earth, moving the fastest through the signs, and making many aspects to everyone's chart, is an interesting one. For you, it was a personal transit because of the involvement of your Sun and one of your ruling planets.

This time frame is likely to have brought out something of your true nature, or precipitated a course of events that had the effect of putting you in contact with yourself, over time. If you are Virgo rising, then Chiron crosses your ascendant at this time, and the effect was potentially stronger than if it transited your Sun, though there are meaningful differences. For example, the Sun is about your role in the world, your sense of glory, and it has a lot to do with how you relate to your father and what he felt your destiny was. The ascendant is more closely related to your sense of existence, and is more subtle. Chiron in the ascendant can create an existential crisis that gets us to finally focus on who we really are as opposed to who everyone else said we are. (If you're not Virgo rising, you may want to find out what your ascendant is and see when Chiron was there, or will be there.)

Now, I bring this all up because whatever happened, developed, between 1993 and 1995 was definitely a turning point. Something seems to have wiped clean your sense of who you were; you became transparent to yourself, saw your own games, or had a crisis that changed your life, and that is when the real search began. Bearing in mind that on the most superficial level, this was a search for safety, what proceeded was likely some form of a grand experiment in what makes you feel safe, how long it lasted, whether it was sincere, whether it was at the expense of others, and whether it cast you in the role of victim or leader. To put it mildly, if Virgo is the sign of nurses, then it's not of any ordinary ones; assuming you got yourself into a position where you could be consistently useful, you would be a Clara Barton (Capricorn Sun and Moon) or Florence Nightingale (Taurus Sun and Moon).

Both were pioneers, inventors and bold leaders, whose contributions we still benefit from today. While we're on the subject, there are stories from both of their lives that are apropos of your moment. They both fall within the general category of grounding, and in particular, grounding one's search for meaning -- which is one way to sum up Pluto in Sagittarius in a sentence. Barton, the founder of the American Red Cross, had enough Capricorn in her chart to walk through a brick wall without needing to dust herself off. (She gets added to my formidable Capricorn Moon chart collection.) Barton was a self-described Universalist, and today, Unitarian Universalists are among the few Christian groups that have the guts to refuse military service on religious grounds. Barton's basic beliefs included, according to the Wiki:

1. The inherent worth and dignity of every person;
2. Justice, equity and compassion in human relations;
3. Acceptance of one another and encouragement of spiritual growth in our congregations;
4. A free and responsible search for truth and meaning;
5. The right of conscience and the use of democratic process within our congregations and society at large;
6. The goal of world community with peace, liberty and justice for all;
7. Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.

Note the lack of dogma and the emphasis on action. Note the corresponding emphasis on dogma and the utter lack of action connected with most religious ideologies.

Florence Nightingale, a nurse who took on the project of tending the Civil War wounded, is another name and story to get familiar with. Thus sayeth the Wiki:

"Inspired by what she took as a divine calling, experienced first in 1837 at Embley Park and later throughout her life, Nightingale committed herself to nursing. This demonstrated a passion on her part, and also a rebellion against the expected role for a woman of her status, which was to become an obedient wife. In those days, nursing was a career with a poor reputation, filled mostly by poorer women, "hangers-on" who followed the armies. In fact, nurses were equally likely to function as cooks. Nightingale announced her decision to enter nursing in 1845, evoking intense anger and distress from her family, particularly her mother."

Aah yes. For everyone who writes to me and says I'm "too tough on parents," because I constantly suggest we need to basically divorce our parents and deal with the head trips they laid on us, note the number of actual achievers and contributors, from Ammachi to George Lucas, whose parents wanted them to do something else, and who stood up to them, broke free and did what they had to do. Indeed, this is quite the theme of Pluto through one's 4th house, liberating oneself of one's parents' influences and the influences of the generations.

The necessity is for what Alejandro Jodorowsky calls "cleaning your tree," that is, addressing the influences of your generational lineage, the past deeds of your ancestors, their refusal to deal with their psychological baggage -- and what they dumped on you. This should be the subject of a book, not a horoscope, and fortunately plenty have been written. I suggest you start with A General Theory of Love. I don't recommend books lightly, and I don't recommend this one casually, either.

So, safety. There is more to say on this subject than I have room for here, but I will conclude with this. For you, real safety in the world has a lot to do with how you relate to others, particularly in the form of groups that are committed to service. The part of safety that has nothing to do with beliefs involves community. Part of why we feel so unsafe, threatened and voided out is because our sense of community is quickly being fried. Your sense of community, however, is being turned up, and I would start this brief discussion with the suggestion that you check in with the reality in your life of how you relate to groups of people. It's a focus point, because Chiron, one of your main planets, is taking a long trip in Aquarius.

Aquarius is your 6th house -- the Virgo house for Virgo. In other words, the way you express your Virgoness to the world is not by being alone, but by experiencing, teaching and learning cooperation. That cooperation needs to be focused and directed; dedicated to some idealistic goal with practical application. Optimally, it would be something that has never quite been done before, or is being done in an original way.

But note, as many have noted before: the dynamics of how you relate to a group involve rather directly the dynamics of your family of origin. Group involvement is also a place to outgrow the dynamics of your family of origin. The point, however, is not therapy. Therapy should be had in the therapy room, and to some extent, all of us in the Western world need it. The people you are meeting are people on a mission, and you are being invited to share in that mission, and even to create it as you go along. True, there is more to life than this -- but here, we have a very good start.

posted June 17, 2007 04:39 PM         

"that might lead you to want greater impact, or to search for how you find your place in the world"

YOUR SIGN has such a strong empathy with other people that it's difficult for you to see the impact you have on them. In other words, your effect on people is so pervasive that it's often invisible both to you and to them, blending into the environment in which you live. Cause and effect are never separate, but to observe the process working it's necessary to look from a different point of view than that to which you are normally accustomed.

Fortunately, a diversity of different aspects are giving you just the opportunity to do that, and a personal development project that has been underway for some years appears to be coming to fruition. That project involves an initiative in community and relationships that is designed, for lack of better words, to make the world a smaller place, a more accessible place, and to ensure that you and the people around you have enough space to be yourselves.

My impression from your astrology is that both sides of the equation have equal emphasis -- your niche, and everyone else's. I suggest, though, that you assess where your personal emphasis has been: have you been working to find a place for yourself, or primarily for others? Or has your place been working in support of others?

Saturn transiting Leo the past two years is a commentary on your role in the world, in particular an active enterprise about finding the right role, the one that specifically matches your talents. Many would say this kind of perfect match is a lot to ask in the world, where evermore people need to work at both McDonald's and KFC to make ends meet. This is not your particular assignment, though, unless you're working your way up from the French fry station to Industrial Hygiene Manager for the global franchise -- you know, whatever job you were born to do, but you have to start by making some darned good fries.

I would propose here that like in many forms of life endeavor, the journey is as important as the destination. The process of searching and discovery, if sincere and oftentimes even if not, frequently leads to actually finding something. The way this has been developing, there is something important about your growing out of "little old me" and into someone who is able to assert your ego, your identity, your sense of self, your mission, your sense of responsibility for the world (as you prefer to call them, probably some combination). If you're taking this transit negatively (Saturn in Leo in the 11th solar house), the result may be confrontational, a power trip or some boring form of seeking authority or reputation for its own sake. If you're relating creatively to the transit, the result will likely be some combination of social satisfaction, a growing sense of mission, and a bit of well-earned money. Even if you're not quite there yet, you have time. Jupiter recently joining Saturn in a fire sign will lend some support, as will consciously working with Eris in your opposite sign Aries -- something I'll get to in a moment.

We do need to bear one thing in mind when considering Saturn: it's in a long opposition to Neptune. Saturn is to Neptune what a lighthouse is to the ocean; but when you play these archetypes out in the human mind, you can get doubt, confusion, skepticism, and cynicism. So this has been a challenging transit, perhaps riddled with doubts and questions about whether you would actually succeed. If you haven't figured it out yet, along the way to succeeding, the most important resource you have is your creativity, but also your ability to bend social rules in order to get around the rule about not getting what you need. The point being that you are in an active dynamic with the world, one which is changing you and changing it. In this respect, if one is alive, it is impossible not to change the world.

Before we get into the real theme of this horoscope, which is community and your role in it, let's talk a little about your unusual gift for empathy. This discussion is partly based on Eris in Aries, your opposite sign and the sign addressing your relationships and partnerships. For the full discussion of Eris, please see my article in the 2007 Planet Waves Almanac.

Not everyone is so stable, and most people are searching for themselves and don't know it. We don't have the language or acceptable social mode in current society for "finding yourself." For most people this has been reduced to finding the right ring tone for the right cellphone.

Being a Libra grants you certain qualities, particularly a measure of emotional intelligence, if you choose to access it. This, combined with the ordinary kind of intelligence, can get you pretty far in life.

Yet things can get a little screwy when, because of your gift for empathy, you start to identify with the identity crises of others in a way you don't recognize is happening. And it can get super duper screwy when, responding to your influence, which you don't necessarily notice, their identity crisis is sparked.

If other factors in your natal chart (which we're not working with here) are working for you, you have a natural affinity for relationship that many others lack. Just like some people are really good at playing piano and others seem to know about plants from when they are little, Libra is able to access the usual maddening dualism of human consciousness and convert it into something useful: a multiple-viewpoint perspective. Bear in mind that most people you encounter are able to think about the situation of another person, but only when it's seen as not quite relating to them, i.e., at a distance -- or when the subject of "someone else" is all about them. Most people can go back and forth between the perspectives self-other; you can see both at once, as if they are the same thing (they are not, always). So, while you're seeing both at once, you would do well to notice your impact, and the environment into which you're broadcasting.

Most people see themselves as passive elements in their environments; they don't consciously create their own experiences, and they don't create the experiences of others. These things 'just happen'. Well, anyone who thinks about it for 12 seconds realizes they don't just happen, we make them happen. Most folks don't realize that their insecurities, blasé expressions, denial trips, playing dumb, and other social games actually create the world in which we live. Those who dedicate themselves to creative living in some way are the ones who have woken up to their power to co-create the world in the constructive sense of the idea. You have a gift that allows you to see through the whole process, and fortunately so. You can use this gift to create a better life for yourself and for everyone around you.

I would propose that the discovery of Eris in your opposite sign, your relationship sign, is a factor that can prompt you to reconsider the environment of your life, your relationships, your business partnerships and any relationship that verges on enmity, or plunges all the way in.

How to sum this up? I think my next article on Eris will be called, "Something Missing." A lot of people are walking around with Something Missing. Then they find you and they think that you are it. This is good; you get to relate, you have a captive audience, you have an abundant supply of relating subjects. It is also bad; you often get to relate in a way that is not fully satisfying because you have so many relationships with Something Missing. At least you find people interesting. That is a help. But Something Missing is only so interesting.

Here is one thing I can tell you, and it relates to Eris, because Eris speaks of the chaos and discord of the world, and its roots in the personality that are the source of that chaos. Relationships in American and English society used to be very structured. (In Europe too, but things are currently a bit more structured and traditional here than in the US or the UK.) There were strict rules of courtship and establishing relationships, and most people tried to follow them. Over the past century, anarchy has set in. On the one foot, anarchy is great because it presents opportunities to do things differently, and to invent your way as you go along. On the other foot, this is very difficult because there is a creativity gap in the average human brain, and when most people are not told exactly what to do, sadly, they do not know what to do, and don't typically feel creative enough to make it up as they go along. Hence, we humans often fill our hours with brooding thoughts of jealousy and resentment, or figuring out how to win, or how to avoid what scares us, when we could be playing, frolicking, making food, making art, ******* and experimenting with life.

To me, the discovery of Eris has a resounding message for Libra, which is get curious, turn on your headlights, use your radar, and pay attention like you've never paid attention before. Look for people who are consciously becoming self-aware.

While you're at it, learn to spot vain people. It's easy. Here is the formula: They are not really interested in you, or in anyone, or in anything. Everything and everyone is just passing through. Watch how people relate to their environment. Anyone who does not notice their environment is either vain, depressed or deeply insecure, and the three are sometimes closely related. Anyone who cannot talk about an idea is a candidate. But you really need to spot these people fast, and respond appropriately.

Anyone who pretends not to notice you is a prime candidate for being vain, depressed or insecure. How do you know they are pretending? Simple, you are standing right there, and they are pretending not to notice. Because if they were not pretending, they would notice. So -- notice who notices; notice who does not; see if you can spot the live ones. Remember you are a live one. Learn to spot games. It's a skill you will need.

We get a few interruptions in the normal flow of emotional events later in the year with retrogrades of Venus and Mars, which should make things interesting. They are separated by some months, fortunately. Two at once is a bit much to deal with, but both of these transits tend to vibe in early and also linger in their effects -- and make it difficult to guide the flow of events.

What is interesting about Venus retrograde later in the year is that it's going to blur a lot of old boundaries and push you a little further into the world where nothing is really decided in advance and, where the past does not matter so much. The retrograde occurs on your 11th/12th house cusp, taking place in Leo and Virgo; these houses, respectively, pertain to groups (in the case of the 11th) and isolation and/or merging with 'the cosmic all' (in the case of the 12th). What you get with this retrograde, potentially, is the following:

1. A chance to test how the boundaries of friendship, love, romance and sex work for you, and what it means to exist apart from these things. Any phase where you feel isolated is a good opportunity to step back from the world and assess your life. Indeed (on another topic), when Saturn goes into Virgo over the summer, you may get a good bit more time to yourself.

2. A chance to test boundaries in general, as you find out the limits on who you can be to others, and the needs you have as an individual.

3. A review period of some kind, including a review of several important past relationships that may mysteriously come back into your life in an odd or seemingly haphazard way, most likely in the form of friendships, or as follow-up romances to a past experience.

As for the Spiral Door aspect. Pluto is aligning with the Galactic Core late in your 3rd solar house, on the cusp of the 4th. Both houses are involved, and I'll take them one at a time. They are related, because they are neighbors. The 3rd house is the local environment. Traditionally, it's the house of brethren, and brethren used to be neighbors. These days it's the house of the neighborhood, one's mental environment, and one's local dialect. Writing and speaking are themes of this house. For children, it's the house of what you bump into when you're crawling around on the floor, and any understanding of the 3rd house would come with understanding what that early environment was about.

With Sagittarius involved in this angle of your solar chart, we get an interesting picture: it's big, it's exotic, it's full of ideas, it's extremely interesting, and it's not necessarily so responsive to you. That might lead you to want greater impact, or to search for how you find your place in the world, though imagine a little child confronted that big, big world of Sagittarius.

The effect this has had on you is likely to be some significant form of adopting a life philosophy of "think globally, act locally." You may or may not travel, but you can certainly find the world in your neighborhood, town or city. You can say some interesting things and reach some interesting people; the foreigners come to you, and the exotic types, the Armenian chefs, the Iranian belly dancers, the space aliens, and the rare books and probably a few rare authors to boot. You may wish you could be a writer, but feel you could never be up to the task (this is a Mercury/Sagittarius overlay). Now is the time to get over it, that is, the time for a breakthrough, be it as a writer, thinker, or in discovering and experiencing the impact of your ideas in some new way. When you combine Mercury with a sign where it's not typically well supported (Pisces or Sagittarius, in particular), you can get a Chirotic effect: based on an irritant, the power level goes up, not down.

The essence of the Spiral Door is the flourishing of your community, and your place in it, and as Pluto draws toward Capricorn, this is your safety, the place in the world that is your own, where you have deep roots. There is an echo of Saturn in Leo here, but this is easier; this is a way of reaping the rewards of having lived through most of Saturn in Leo, having endured the doubts and self-doubts associated with the Saturn-Neptune opposition (and perhaps continuing to do so), the sense that you don't necessarily belong -- but that in some way knowing you must belong. That, it would seem, is pretty much an inevitable development, and as the world situation heats up, along with a backlash to the war in the form of social and community activism, and the many creative opportunities this offers people to be part of the world, the more you will find open doors and adventures.

posted June 17, 2007 04:45 PM         

"at the center of an individual is a sense of one's origins, and the desire to live for your origins"

Eris in the 6th solar house. Spiral Door aspect, Quaoar and Ixion in the 2nd solar house. Pluto working toward the 3rd solar house. Saturn in the 10th solar house, about to enter the 11th. Chiron-Nessus conjunct in the 4th solar house. Mars retrograde in the 9th solar house. Venus retrograde in the 10th and 11th solar houses.

Scorpio is the relationship house for Taurus; the career house for Aquarius; and the house of home and security for Leo. This interpretation works for Scorpio rising as well.

VESTA, the eternal fire, is in your birth sign as the year begins. The fourth and brightest asteroid, discovered in 1807, she is perhaps the most difficult for astrology to grasp. Delineations of Vesta vary widely, including over-dedication to work, involvement with projects rather than people, the use of space, all matters relating to the home, sublimation of sexual energy into other things, the shame of sexual abuse, sexual chastity, and a few others. To some real extent, they are all applicable -- but not one at the expense of another. Vesta, much more than the other asteroids, presents us with the goddess of a thousand faces, though this may relate to cultural taboos about what we can and cannot speak of openly, more than to any other factor.

Her themes, as far as I understand them, are strikingly similar to those of Scorpio. Though Vesta is only a brief visitor to Scorpio, her presence in your birth sign is likely to be arriving with experiences that will set the tone for these seasons, and which you would do well to remember.

Let's focus on the image: a flame. The symbol is a chevron with the fire depicted. The Vestal Virgins, servants of the goddess Vesta who were legendary for their unfailing chastity, had the role of tending this fire night and day, never allowing it to go out. Their role was to place service to the greater good above their own personal desire and needs. From this, we can see where some of the ideas above originate. What we cannot forget is that the symbol is very simply one of a flame that must be tended constantly, and as a direct extension, the "selfless" dedication necessary to do that.

Granted, I have never read anything resembling this in any explanation of Scorpio, quite to the contrary: but astrology is about experience and not just about what you read. It also depends on what you read, and what you do with it. Let's look at the mythology for a moment. Vesta, the goddess, is a personification of fire, one of the primal forces of the cosmos and the very thing central to human survival. On the short list of things that human beings do that no other species does is make and tend fire. "[Vesta] continued to the end, as she had from the beginning, [representing] the household altar, the sanctuary of peace and equity, and the source of all happiness and wealth." The aspects of life that she oversaw were not just the hearths of households and cities. Rather, it was supposed in ancient times "that in the center of the Earth there was a hearth which answered to the hearth placed in the center of the universe."*

When we bring the Vestal Virgins into the picture, we have the image of humanity working together to tend this fire: fire that is at once interior to a human being; that burns in their home; that burns in the central altar of a city; which burns in a hearth at the center of the Earth; and which is one with the fire at the center of the Universe. Perhaps this means the Galactic Core, perhaps some other presumed center of consciousness, such as Shamballa. The relationship between the humans and the fire implies devotion, attention, and direct participation in the life of God. In other words, the divine fire burns to the extent that we tend to it.

I had my first direct experience of Vesta one year when I moved into a house that only had wood heating one cold, damp autumn. The place came with a woodpile, but all the wood was wet. As it grew colder, the fire became a necessity, particularly at night. I had never experienced living with wood heat before, and the wet woodpile presented a special challenge.

I had to develop a routine to get the stove going, then systematically bring in wood and dry it out a little next to the hot stove. Burning wet wood is not efficient, and the fire required tending at least every two or three hours around the clock. Because of how difficult it was to get started again with wet logs, I had an incentive to keep it going.

This went on for some weeks, at least. Tending the fire became an overriding priority during that time; it was a ritual that transcended all the other activities of my life, and kept me bound to my home except for short trips out. In a sense, I was married to this fire, and had to take care of it night and day.

This experience gave me my first real clue as to what Vesta was about -- the feeling, not just the idea. It was not so much tending the physical flame, though the metaphor was difficult to miss; it was, rather, the sense of total dedication that came with the activity, including maintaining continuity of that fire, from night to day, from one day to the next. In truth it was about developing a conscious relationship to the fire -- and the stove, the wood and the space in which I was living.

Few of us tend a fireplace or actual sacred hearth these days, and astrology is for the most part an interior study of our psychological and energetic properties. As a symbol of the psyche, the flame is usually considered an archetype of the core fire, which is creative and sexual -- they are the same thing. It could be interpreted as faith or devotion, love or awareness; they are all properties of the same thing. This is the heat that keeps us warm from within, and in the human realm with its many distractions and its many competing gods, it needs to be tended constantly. Sadly, as humans press forward into the activity of life, their core creative/sexual nature is one of the first things we tend to ignore.

Now, Scorpio is the sign that tends to bear the burden of sexuality in the Western world. Scorpios are presumed to be sexual, and all astrological definitions of your sign say so. I'm sure you're familiar with these ideas, nearly all of which miss the point. The problem with sexuality in the West and in many other cultures is that it's considered inherently inappropriate, an aspect of human nature that (despite being what creates us) we need to ignore, bypass, deny, discard, eliminate or find a substitute for. The notion "sin" implies sex, sin implies hell, and so on and on till you get there. But take my word for it: this is not coming from Goddess -- or Earth-based religion. Only death-cults or purity cults could come up with this kind of reasoning.

More to the point, as a Scorpio it's obvious to you what a crock of ******** this is, because the moment you feel your existence for about 20 seconds, the truth of your core sexuality becomes obvious. While you are basically barred by your inherent nature from going on a denial trip (unless you are genuinely willing to flirt with evil, or are in some extreme form of conflict), how you actually use your sexual energy is very much a question, and one that needs to be addressed. So, too, is how you deal with a world (including the influences of your parents, your partners and your friends) that are not necessarily as aware as you are. Indeed, you must contend with a world that is constantly projecting its shadow onto your soul.

Finally, there is the issue of how to handle your own shadow material -- and I suggest that the thing to do is tend your fire around the clock. If need be, marshal all the force of your will and claim back enough of your life that you have an inner altar and sufficient time and space to take care of it in a tangible, real, actual way. I am not talking about an idea here. I am not presenting a theory or a concept. I am suggesting that the actions you take be actual, real and tangible. This may, in the most immediate sense, involve making friends with your sexuality in a new way. You must not take for granted that the blanket of ignorance that is smothering humanity, and the raging creative fire that is engulfing humanity in warfare and driving us on a path of global self-destruction, has somehow avoided you. Perhaps it may have; please don't assume.

Please assess your life honestly, including what you do with your time, your strength and your authority. Seek the assistance you need; put the support in place that you need; take responsibility for your own journey on this planet, and surround yourself with people for whom this is a conscious process -- and note, they may be difficult to find; and that is very likely to be part of your vestal journey this year.

Let's consider the story of Pluto, which is your ruling planet and which has been one of the dominant energies in the world story the past decade. Pluto has been in Sagittarius, your 2nd solar house. The 2nd house denotes the value system of an individual. It describes a person every bit as much as their primary sign, but is often experienced as being more internally oriented, perhaps something felt and lived for but not spoken. Sagittarius is the cosmic fire. Indeed, the two central points of the cosmos of which astronomy is now aware -- the Galactic Core and the Great Attractor -- are located in your 2nd solar house. Here is where we get a positively enormous clue as to what is going on at the center of your reality; what you actually feel and experience as driving your motives, and the concept is pure Vesta in nature: that at the center of an individual is a sense of one's origins and the desire to live for your origins.

The exterior may be passion, drive, eroticism and the need to shape your own life; the exterior is the cosmic fire. Whatever you do, you can do in the expression of the cosmic fire. Which brings us to the unspoken theme of Vesta -- that being what is called sacred prostitution. This is actually a simple concept, though known to few, and rather few prostitutes: whatever we do, we do in service of creation. This is the metaphor of tending the fire; this is the metaphor of shaping one's life around what must be done, in accord with your values. Pluto burning through this house for more than a decade has compelled you to do some important, difficult things, indeed, many of which have been incomprehensible to the people around you and which have seemingly been damaging to you. But you have, by your faith and your awareness, prevailed over the stuck values of the world that would have had you serve many other masters, none of them true. I trust that at long last you are discovering that if you can trust nobody else's agenda, you can trust your own.

This trust has come at a cost, which you have paid. The debt is settled. It is time to move on.

If there is a crisis associated with your astrology in these years, it's something that (once again) is decidedly left out of the official Scorpio guidebook, which is the extent to which your foundations stand on the bedrock of community. This is a logical extension of the idea that you are inherently part of the cosmos. It is an extension of the idea that you know you must, in this lifetime, be a leader, if only a leader in conscience and consciousness. Your devotion to community (in whatever form that takes) is a direct outgrowth of the fact that you intuitively understand that society is a family, and that you are not only part of that family, but one who has been bestowed the responsibility of tending for and caring for that family.

In the typically coarse or cynical terms of the human race, this is often viewed as a joke, or a ridiculously idealistic sentiment. That does not deter you, indeed, it must not. What has begun to occur in these years of your history is precisely that you have begun to take yourself seriously on this subject. You have entered a space of willingness to embrace the crisis of brotherhood that humanity is suffering from today. You have, I trust, made friends with the fact that there is no security in the religion of individuality. Rather, individualism is worth something only to the extent that it allows us to relate to others consciously, to serve others, and to participate in our collective experience of life.

By the way, what I'm talking about here is the fact that Aquarius (the sign of groups and communities) is situated in your 4th solar house (the house of home and security). A simplistic reading of this would say you might prefer to live in a group situation of some kind, but this may be something of a silent dream that is kept at bay by the practical reality that groups tend not to work so well. On a deeper level, the house you live in is bigger than the four walls you inhabit, and Aquarius is the sign of the future. It is reasonable to live today nurturing something that may, possibly, be true in the future -- but with Chiron and Nessus now focusing your energy on this house, there is something imminent, urgent and meaningful now on which you are being focused.

Saturn is the traditional ruler of this sign, and Saturn is working its way across your 10th solar house, Leo. This is a phase of your life where you are answering your calling to leadership, which also includes leadership of your own life. That, by extension, means your community, company and any professional activities with which you may be engaged. Just keep the perspective that while you and the world may consider these things "professional" two other things are true. First and foremost, the theme is community, which reaches as far and wide as you like, or as close to home as you like. The only thing you really need to remember about Saturn is, well, two things. One is noblesse oblige. The second is that all roles are transient; so it would serve you well to express your authority with the utmost respect for others, respect which begins with self-respect.

Next, consider this. The second ruler of Aquarius, Uranus (the modern ruler), is making an impressive transit through your 5th solar house, fellow water sign Pisces. I have not said enough about this transit in this series, perhaps because it's difficult to understand, and also because Pisces often seems to fade into the background. Let's go from the general to the specific. Pisces, even more than Sagittarius, is the sign of the Cosmic All. Sagg can at least express itself in some human terms; Pisces can conceive of a picture so all-embracing that even humanity is a small part of it. Pisces is Alpha and Omega: the undefined cosmic waters from which all life emerges; and the end of the story, the destination of all things, and the end phase of history and individual history where all colors bleed into one. Simply, Pisces is the sign of unlimited potential (not always so easy for those with strong placements in this sign, because rarely does reality live up to that potential).

Uranus is the energy of invention, revolution and awareness. It is like lightning striking that cosmic ocean again and again until it glows, emanating an entirely new light. If there was ever a placement suggesting that something new is about to happen, it is Uranus in Pisces. Notably, this is not always a good thing; new does not automatically imply beneficial, though when we take responsibility for our creative power, when we tend the flame, when we focus our energy on what must be, well, that's a different story. And honestly, no matter what way society is going, you remain the one who tends the flame, who ensures continuity, who makes peace with the process of change and holds true to the core energy of the human experience.

We find this placement occurring in your 5th solar house -- the house of risks, creativity, the inner child, for you, the cosmic child.

Now, this makes an interesting contrast to Saturn in Leo (the fifth sign, a cousin of the 5th house), and it suggests more than anything a balancing of your psyche: being aware of the profound inner child that is pushing into your awareness and the desire to take any risk that you need to take in order to live your truth; as contrasted with Saturn in your 10th solar house suggesting that you must make responsible and honest choices on the way there.

Yes, it's a tense setup; a blatant contradiction; a cosmic paradox. Yes, there is no easy answer, and from a variety of perspectives, it seems absolutely impossible to resolve. And it's from these spring-loaded setups that the big advances come, both for individuals and for all of us. You can be grateful that you have the creativity, the passion and the intelligence to make it through each day in this tragic moment of history, yet one which will ultimately unleash the potential of humanity.

Pluto, your modern ruling planet, is crossing the Galactic Core this year, and if you want an image for all that wood stove, Vesta, sacred flame imagery, there is one. When in doubt, tune into the largest scale you can. When in doubt, feel the whole strange turmoil boiling inside yourself. Trust that making space for yourself to love safely, to create shamelessly and to live like your life matters will heal the universe, not symbolically, but in the actual truth. Trust your judgment. Trust your leadership, even if you do so on the basis that you keep finding people who don't have any clue at all -- and you, at least, have half of one -- probably a good bit more.

One thing you know is that you're alive. You actually know this; check it out. By some odd coincidence you are alive right now, and that, lucky for you, is the only time that matters because it's the only time there is.

posted June 17, 2007 04:47 PM         

"simply put, the future has arrived, and it is time for you to be who you are"

Pholus in your birth sign, the 1st solar house. Eris in the 5th solar house. Spiral Door aspect, Quaoar and Ixion in the 1st solar house. Pluto working toward the 2nd solar house. Saturn in the 9th solar house. Chiron-Nessus conjunct in the 3rd solar house. Mars retrograde in the 8th solar house. Venus retrograde in the 9th and 10th solar houses.

Sagittarius is the relationship house for Gemini; the career house for Pisces; and the house of home and security for Virgo. This interpretation works for Sagittarius rising as well.

YOUR LIFE: what have you been building toward all these years? What has been the core ideal, the main idea, or the common thread? There has been one, and it has taken many different names. But that thing that keeps getting renamed, redefined and thought through a new way, is really one thing. But to say that it's about doing something would be a mistake; in truth it is about being someone, and being that person now. Simply put, the future has arrived, and it is time for you to be who you are.

Indeed, your life has everything to do with this moment in history, and the process by which humanity is getting there. You play a role, and potentially a pivotal one. The process of human evolution, or any kind of evolution, is a mystery, and at the moment that mystery is buried in what seems to be a planet that is devolving and collapsing on itself. I trust you know that there is another factor; that something else is occurring, beneath the appearances and in many ways spurred forward by those appearances. A Course in Miracles points out that anything and everything in this world must be used for healing, and one of the affirmative functions of evil is to provide contrast and thus the basis for choice. Well, we're getting plenty of this at the moment.

But where do you fit in? You could imagine your life of that as a visitor, a traveler, here for a specific purpose. In a sense, we are all visitors to World Earth, but the trajectory of your life often casts you in the role of one who is looking in from the outside, who sees things that others cannot see, and who brings information, as if from the outside. I would not be surprised if it's never seemed more important that you accomplish what you came here to do, or at the least to align yourself with that mission and carry it forward directly. Among the mysteries of evolution are the roles that advanced souls may play, and you are likely to consider yourself one. If so, then step into your part in the planetary drama and assist in the world's dangerous moment of healing and transition.

Sagittarius has been home to many of the strangest and most important astronomical discoveries in recent decades. I think several of them help explain why the ancients had the ideas about your sign that they did -- that it represented the most exotic and divine things in creation, as well as enlightenment, world culture and education, in particular. It would seem that several of these discoveries comment beautifully on your experience of life in these long, fleeting years of Pluto in Sagittarius (by the longest measure, this extends from 1994-2009).

About Pluto we could say a great deal, and much has been said -- but what Pluto may conceal is its own progress. We cannot see the distance we have covered with Pluto, and you may not be able to see yours. Yet it would be wise to remember the helmet of invisibility that the mythological Pluto wears. This relates to the action of Pluto (the planet), sometimes described as an unconscious, if deeply compelling, process. In many ways, the coming four seasons, perhaps a bit more, represent a summary of the vast but invisible experience that you have accumulated. These seasons represent a time of consolidation and gaining perspective, but not stepping back. Indeed, you've never been called upon to participate more actively in your own life, and to put your knowledge to work for the sake of progress and happiness.

The many smaller and larger changes and developments that you've experienced are likely to coalesce into one sweeping transition that, once you notice the momentum, represents an inevitable and astonishing stage of your growth in this lifetime. This will take you and many people with it, and one result will be that many of the problems you envisioned that were blocking your progress will cease to be factors. The inescapable calling of home, whatever home may be, is at times all that your ears can hear, and yet from moment to moment the cosmic instructions are telling you to place your roots in the here and now; in the community in which you live; and the planet where your body is located.

Let's briefly look at some of the elements that have been discovered in your birth sign and what they may say about you, starting with a planet called Quaoar. This was minor planet number 50,000, discovered in 2002 by Chad Trujillo and Michael Brown, two of the discoverers of Eris. I believe it's every bit as significant a discovery as Eris, only it relates to family and society more than it relates to the experience of an individual.

Located beyond Pluto and named for a creation deity of Native Americans called the Tongva people, this planet tells a complex story of how the gods, and consequently, people, came to be. Here is the myth as told by Marc Acuna, a Tongva scholar and tribal elder:
'Quaoar,' the great force of creation, sings and dances the high ones (Deities) into existence. While Quaoar has no form or gender he is usually referred to with the male pronoun.

He dances and sings first 'Weywot' who becomes Sky Father; they sing and dance 'Chehooit' Earth Mother into existence. The trio sing 'Tamit' Grandfather Sun to life.

As each divine one joins the singing and dancing, the song becomes more complex and the dance more complicated. In turn 'Moar', Grandmother Moon (a very complex deity), 'Pamit' the Goddess of the sea, 'Manit', the Lord of dreams and visions, 'Manisar' the bringer of food and harvests, 'Tukupar Itar' Sky Coyote (who is also our major hero), 'Tolmalok', the Goddess of Shishongna (the underworld) join in the singing, dancing and creating.
In psychological terms, I get two messages. One, Quaoar is the way in which we internalize the world, including our family. A number of excellent models of the human mind have emerged in recent memories which help us understand our lives as an internalization of our early family history. Though this may seem depressing to some who did not have such great backgrounds, the gift is that we have a model to work with.

Quaoar also relates to the story we make up about our own creation, on the cosmic scale -- which has personal emphasis for you, and which we could look for as a theme of Sagittarius in general. One's creation myth, of the world, of oneself, of one's society, tells us a lot about who we think we are.

Finally, Quaoar relates to the family of society and how we relate to it; whether it functions or not; and what we try to do about it. Quaoar points out the damage that has been done, and what remains of some original information or instruction set that allows us to reach out from our core existence as original humanity.

At the moment, Quaoar is conjunct the largest known point in all of astronomy, another discovery in your sign: the Great Attractor. This is in the approximate direction of the Galactic Core, but it's located on the other side of our galaxy and millions of light years beyond. The Great Attractor increases the size and scale of anything that contacts it, but moreover, makes the alternatives and contrasts obvious. It is almost like something more Gemini than Gemini, located in the opposite sign.

The personal implications are profound, as this time in your life is one where you are radically shaping your relationship to everything that is around you. You seem to be going as deep as you need to go, and leaving nothing out of the question.

Jupiter, your ruling planet, now in your sign, is emphasizing all of this. At times this feels like you're being shown a super-magnified movie of your life, and at others, like you are covered by an umbrella of protection that you can use for any creative purpose you like. Jupiter will, this year, cover all the territory that Pluto has covered in the past 14 years, as well as make conjunctions to all the new discoveries in Sagittarius. This includes the current Quaoar/Great Attractor conjunction, and later in the year, the Pluto/Galactic Core conjunction. As if these alignments were not enough, Jupiter is showing up to increase their scale to such a degree that they are impossible to miss, no matter how dense one may be. On a low-density level, though, it may not be so pleasant, though I trust that many years of practice have taught you to ride the tiger of creation.

Whether you are a Sagittarius, Sagg rising, or affected by Sagittarius through some other angle of your life, you are clearly on the brink of some enormous breakthrough. Yet what you need to remember is that it's a holistic breakthrough, not affecting any one part of you, but rather your entire existence. It's a breakthrough of being, rather than of doing. It's a shift in your relationship to all of existence and all people, not to any one person in particular. But I may as well issue a few of the warnings that don't usually come on the label of the bottle of enlightenment.

As you know, you're doing well in a time when the world is not -- indeed, when the world doesn't realize its own peril. This may be something of a grief for you, if you have a shred of sensitivity. On the other hand, this presents many opportunities for you to do your part. You have a lot; this world needs a lot; it's a good time, in that respect. Still, you may need to stand apart from any idea that you are profiting on the world's loss. Rather, you are benefiting from the benefit that you bring to others.

The world, though, is not always so kind to those who carry the light. In some way, without shrinking who you are or compromising what you need to do, you need to exercise discretion, and be clever about how you go about your life and your mission. I would suggest being visible only to the extent that is necessary. If it's necessary to be a little visible; then just be a little visible. If you get that it's necessary to project yourself with great emphasis, then work with that method. It is essential, however, that you work with your environment and make sure that to the extent you experience power, you match it with awareness and a sense of appropriateness.

People have strong reactions to actual strength. There are many around you who are currently provoked and who are going through some parallel process to your own, though not necessarily as gracefully. One thing you may notice is a process of noticing who people really are; their true colors or internal motivations will become visible and at times undeniable. People will tell you what you need to know about them -- and then it is your responsibility to act on that information. You do not owe anyone your allegiance, only an appropriate place in your life.

Those whose growth process is in harmony with yours, you will find natural ways to relate to, and harmonious circumstances that you may share. Those who reveal a different agenda, you need to keep exactly where they belong. I would not suggest ignoring them or their message; symbolically they may play a truly important role, revealing your own tendencies, including those of supporting those who do not support you. You need to be particularly alert for two issues: those who live like they are never going to heal; and those who are abusive. Be mindful of who creates harmony and helps you align the creative energy around you; and those who scramble energy or insist on creating disharmony.

Pay attention to your immediately local environment. Keep track of who is around you. Observe their choices, their activities and their state of mental and physical health -- without judgment, and without a need to intervene in some way, except when you truly feel it's appropriate, which should be rare.

To a great extent, your success this year depends on maintaining authentic harmony, particularly of purpose, among those in your social circle. The people who surround you need to be dedicated to clarity and to getting along with others. This will reflect their inner state more than anything else. Make sure you continuously reckon the state of your social life with what you know about your early childhood environment, and do your best to make an internal adjustment every time you make an external one.

In part due to intense Centaur activity in your 3rd solar house, Aquarius, explained in detail elsewhere in this series, you need to make sure you're doing everything you can to take care of your mind. Actually, physical activity and comfort would be a great idea, but you must be aware of when you're getting stressed and when you need a change of scenery. You must take the energy to make the choices that will shape your environment in a way that supports you. This includes seeking out the right healers, practitioners and consultants to work with. If you find it difficult to do this, notice your resistance, and do what you can to work through it gently, focusing mainly on mental patterns and the corresponding social patterns.

Quaoar is, and has been, teaching you not to take your own existence for granted, or perhaps has been calling your attention to all the ways that you have done so in the past. These elements of your story, with which you cannot be too familiar, have served you to a point -- and that point has arrived. To take over the process yourself, to enter directly into a relationship not with what has been created but with the Prime Creator, you have little choice but to become conscious of how exactly they have shaped you, in some sense fragmented you, and set the different aspects of yourself at odds with one another.

What may be daunting are many situations in your life and indeed how you see yourself that appear to present you with an all-or-nothing choice. That choice may put you in the position of feeling that you will somehow become unpopular with half the population of your life; or that you will betray half of your own intentions in the process. Yet no matter how this may express itself externally, the solution resides in an internal reckoning of your most vital truths.

These have appeared in the form of a series of insights that have, shall we say, been creeping up on you over the years: things you know are true despite anything you may think, believe or are currently committed to. Insight, though, is like light projected on a screen, vivid while it's there, clear to see, available to look at and consider -- until it's not there. You are the source of that light; though the insight may appear to be coming to you, it's really coming from you. That insight may be a vision of things to come, it may be an alternative point of view of yourself, but ultimately it is you.

As Pluto continues its journey across the Galactic Core, drawing you to the deepest core of yourself, you and this seemingly external vision will gradually merge into the one entity you are and were all along. Rather than being a source of controversy as you may fear you are, the unity that is created as you reconcile with yourself will, perhaps a bit strangely, manifest as leadership and harmony in the world around you, and by that, I mean in the people around you and the mission that we share.

Sagittarius, like Pisces, often practices a kind of denial as a psychic coping mechanism, though it's a different kind of denial. Pisces can deny what is good and true; Sagittarius tends to deny what is dark and difficult. You have many reasons for optimism now, and just as many reasons for caution. If there is a way you can walk between the two without being defensive and without raising your expectations of life higher than they need to be, you will continuously gradually unlock the potential of this moment in your life, and at other times, unleash it wildly.

The key to getting the maximum energy from the chemical reaction is having enough of the right ingredients, and combining them consciously. Balance is key; the right mental attitude is key; trusting the process of your own life is the most important of all. We could say that you have little other choice but to trust, but actually, on this plane of reality -- you have several other choices. Trust, at least for you, will be the most obvious of them, and may indeed be the purpose of the whole journey you are on. Perhaps test that theory and see where it leads -- in truth, you cannot go wrong.

posted June 17, 2007 04:56 PM         

"it will be vastly better to not only leave all that old stuff behind, surrender it to the cosmic ocean"

MANY are considering scenarios around Pluto going into Capricorn, which technically begins in one year. I know the feeling, since I've been thinking about it since 1997. Personally, at the moment, I am boycotting reading anything on this topic by other writers, for what I will call religious reasons -- namely, that Pluto has not finished its extremely rare crossing of the Galactic Core, something we need to focus on and as best we can, understand while it's happening.

Rather than predict, we must mind our business and take the process of personal history, and world history, into our hands.

Pluto's crossing of the Galactic Core is not merely a "transit," but rather a transformation of how we experience, think of and feel Pluto -- which is another way of saying how we consider our own lives on the bottom-line level: call it what you will, life or death, the story of our soul's journey, or reckoning with the unstoppable force of evolution. It is a threshold event, not a passing phase. Any transit that happens just once in a lifetime is a threshold. Some that happen more than once (Saturn return, for example) are also thresholds. But every Pluto transit counts; we are never the same after a Pluto transit, and while we may complain while it is happening, we will surely miss it when it's over.

We need to consider that you've had Pluto transiting your 12th house for many years, and that has set a certain tone in your life, as well as an agenda, but the two may have existed in the deep background, as is the tendency of both Pluto and the 12th house. As Pluto pushes the endnotes of the 12th, the theme is indeed completion, but in order to grasp that, we need to understand what you've begun.

The 12th house is probably the most difficult of the lot. It is at once last (the 12th of 12) and first (the astrological day begins at dawn, when the Sun crosses the horizon, into the 12th). The houses each represent environments in the worldly sense of that word.
I sometimes call them stages of life, a double take on both theatrical stages, and stages of growth. If you're studying astrology, a good exercise is to randomly stop and ask yourself, "What house am I in?" Where are you physically in that moment, and on what stage of life are you acting out the primary drama of your life?

Like many things with a Neptune flavor, the 12th is difficult to see, feel, understand, explain or make a coherent image for. You cannot point to "it" because there is no it to point to. What it resembles most clearly are dreams, which are often chaotic under the best circumstances, and which have all their own rules. It also represents things so large, nobody really understands them. For most people, the 12th is like standing in the lobby of City Hall in Lower Manhattan, and trying to divine how New York City works. So in one respect it's the symbol of all that makes no sense, all that is too vast to comprehend, and the unknown that instills a bit of fear in a healthy person, but is also inspiring.

Then, turning this concept 14 degrees to the left, pointing it toward the southeast a little, and scratching your nose, it's the house of bliss and surrender. One of the most accessible places we contact the 12th is orgasm -- the real thing, the blotto kind, wherein everything ceases to exist, and you cease to exist in any recognizable form, and that's all just fine: the moment of totality, one of its most notable characteristics being that you cannot understand it. Something just happened, you were there, but you don't quite know what it was. You went somewhere, but you don't know where you went.

It is difficult to imagine two more contrasting images than Capricorn and the 12th house. Cap is the sign of everything you can ultimately make sense of, know the history of, and draw a diagram to explain.

We tend to hold a lot in the 12th house, in particular, the most of contents of the unconscious. (When dreams, a 12th house subject, bubble to the surface, we experience the unconscious semi-consciously, and sometimes we even remember). Anything we do not understand about ourselves, anything that scares us about ourselves, anything we hide from ourselves: these could be considered 12th house matters. You have Sagittarius in this house (in your solar chart), which suggests something about how you express your spiritual quest. Worldly though you may be, you definitely have one; you may just call it something else, or experience it as something so vast and all-encompassing that it's not its own thing, it's part of everything.

Pluto, for its part, is a focus point of growth. Where Pluto is transiting, we experience intense growth. It is growth as a matter of necessity; do or die type growth; the thing we cannot miss, and if we do, it comes back and finds us. In astrology at least as we understand it so far, Pluto is the court of last resort in the soul's journey, but it's also the prime mover, working just as easily as the first thing we can turn our attention to. First, last: Pluto works fine either way.

A 12th house Pluto transit is about making deep roots into your own relationship to the cosmos. I have a Capricorn friend I've known a long time. When I first knew him, he was always playing himself off as an atheist. During the course of Pluto in Sagittarius, I've noticed something interesting developing. Every time I would see him, he was making a new discovery that so far as I can tell required an extraordinarily open mind. For a while he was investigating certain specific UFO phenomena and what they meant to people; at another time, reincarnation. The material he would explore had to make sense, it needed to be carefully done, but there was never a question of something being too out-there or unbelievable. I am aware that the loss of a very close friend went a long way to shift his focus to what he knew was more important. But if I asked him today, I am sure he would say he has no use for God or a god concept, instead, drawing nourishment from a nameless universal source or the simple awareness that there is more to life than what we perceive.

Pluto in the 12th is also about facing one's worst fears, be they of isolation, death, surrender, or the idea that we're really all just prisoners of the world, trapped in vulnerable bodies subject to many cruel fates. While people tend to heap religion onto their backs and drag it around like the burden it usually is, your method of addressing all these things has transcended words and concepts and has happened in actual fact, following no special rules, and without the guidance of a holy man.

So now imagine Pluto going through your 12th house for the past 12 or so years, churning up and distilling down all this subject matter. We rarely go into the 12th, but Pluto, the most compelling force, has drawn you there like a homing beacon. Imagine that it's taken on all those fears, all your old beliefs, and all your unanswered questions. Now imagine that in the process of crossing the Galactic Core, it is going to have all that old material, old karma, if you will, vaporized. Imagine the concentration of billions of stars, clustered around a supermassive black hole, turning Pluto white hot and cleansing it of everything that is not true, that may have seemed true, that was too horrid to be true -- all of it -- and the Galactic Core vaporizing it like it was nothing.

This is a necessary step before Pluto enters Capricorn, and it works personally as well as it does culturally. Sagittarius represents what I will call "spiritual lessons," for unfortunate lack of a clearer term. For you when Pluto crosses your solar ascendant (the Capricorn cusp), it will be vastly better to not only leave all that old stuff behind, to surrender it to the cosmic ocean.

Sounds good, though you may be wondering what exactly you have to do about any of this. One thing that would help is if you expect yourself to suddenly become the person you have gradually been becoming all these years. Many events of your life have hinted to something, pointed in the general direction of something, or given you a clue as to what is possible. As Pluto works its way over the core and into the last degrees of Sagittarius, secretly dumping all that old material, there is likely to be a condensation process in your waking life, as if a strange liquid that was vaporized in the air is gathering on you and in you. What was a scent is suddenly becoming something you can taste and feel, and then see.

You may notice that what once held you back, principally your fears, is no longer a factor. Beliefs that no longer served you and in truth never did serve you so well, may cease to exist, and yet it's now up to you to recognize what has replaced them -- and what the natural consequence of that is. The entire basis for all your decisions will, as if you woke up a different person one morning, be something entirely other than what it was.

Now, while all this has been transpiring in a hidden dimension of your life, it would appear that you've been involved in a long process of negotiating your strength, power and position in the world. Indeed, the movement of your ruling planet Saturn through your 8th solar house (Leo) the past couple of years is something akin to a model of Pluto in the 12th, only in the most worldly terms, and projected into your relationships. A few metaphors or images that come to mind are being able to absolutely stand in the eyes, ears and feelings of someone you are intimately involved with; being compelled to determine what is absolutely fair, and stick to it even if others may not agree; or feeling your presence in the lives of other people as a vibrant, meaningful dynamic (in short, anything but what astrology textbooks say about Capricorns). Allowing yourself to be different, that is, to step distinctly out of the past and the agreements of the past, and to be yourself.

Let's switch houses, to the 2nd. In your chart, this is Aquarius, which is astrology's funny little way of saying what a radical you are, if indeed an impeccably dressed one. For a good portion of the time that Pluto was in your 12th, Neptune was (and still is) in your 2nd house. This is the symbol of self-doubt. It's like the numinous, self-questioning nature of the 12th house visiting what should in reality be the place you feel the most confident, and where you draw most of your resources. I am sure there have been many days in recent years you felt you had nothing at all, and others you felt you were blessed with everything.

Recently, Chiron and Nessus entered this house, more or less together. These planets push things to the surface very fast. Unlike Pluto, which will work at an issue for years, Chiron will push to the surface what has been there for years. The 2nd house has two main functions: it tells us what we have, and shows us what we lack, so that we may find it. What is perhaps most beautiful about Aquarius is its ability to invent what it needs: a gadget, a theory, a solution to a problem, or the right people. Aquarius on the 2nd house is about having radical values, though they may somehow never appear that way.

And what the presence of Chiron and Nessus in this house tell me is that you are becoming comfortable with just how original your viewpoint is, just how different you are, and indeed, fully aware of the fact that there is actually nobody like you. I will concede there are some for whom this may be a real crisis point. Some people have an utter panic attack when they notice they are not like everyone else, as if this somehow disentitles them to be alive or accepted by others. Don't mess with this kind of trashy belief. You have been through too much, you have earned your freedom every day, and you have answered too many of your own questions to be caught in what are in truth doubts that have no basis in reality.

One last comment, on Mars retrograde later in the year, in your 7th house -- your most intimate relationships. Starting now, you and a close partner need to be more honest about your needs. I would suggest that all this reaching for the roots in your spiritual life, and the life of your values, has a necessary expression in your relationships; they represent causes that have effects and consequences. And though someone close to you may have very different astrology than you do, they have enough in common with you to share many of the same points of growth.

Later in the year, you're likely to experience a situation in a relationship that leads you to question that relationship or the motives of the person or people with whom you are involved. There is no predestined answer to that question, and at the worst it represents seeing someone for who they are and asking yourself whether you feel like living with that. What is vital is that you keep your perspective; that you remember nobody holds anything over you, and that your emotional independence is right within reach. At best, the scenario will help you notice and identify with your emotional independence, and remind you that your safety in this world comes from you, and your relationship to something much larger than yourself. It is then expressed in relationships; you could say that when you feel safe, your safety finds a home among the people that you love.

Yes, you have done other things at other times -- but haven't we all?

posted June 17, 2007 05:02 PM         

"wake up each day and remind yourself you're never going to pass this way again"

Eris in the 3rd solar house. Spiral Door aspect, Quaoar and Ixion in the 11th solar house. Pluto working toward the 12th solar house. Saturn in the 7th solar house. Chiron-Nessus conjunct in the 1st solar house. Mars retrograde in the 6th solar house. Venus retrograde in the 7th and 8th solar houses.

Aquarius is the relationship house for Leo; the career house for Taurus; and the house of home and security for Scorpio. This article covers Aquarius Chiron returns at the end.

CHIRON, Nessus and Neptune are acting like permanent residents of your astrology, distant planets that are together compelling you to think of yourself more deeply, and differently, than you ever have before. This is saying a lot, as you are one for whom personal inquiry is as natural as breathing, perhaps more so. One of the gifts of your sign is a natural skepticism which lets you take nothing for granted. But now this is being pushed past all limits.

Like Aries, Aquarius provides a nexus point for where a conscious individual and his or her community (or society) meet. But the relationship, Aquarius-styled, is more complex and involves what feels like an eternal process of logically integrating each individual thought or idea with its implications and wider ramifications. In other words, it's never just about you; and no idea stands alone. There is also the necessity, always, to deal with group reality presented by Aquarius, a factor which is being called into focus by so many planets in your sign.

Aries often takes many leaps as an individual and is capable of considering itself much more freely from constraints imposed by collective reality, though the awareness of Eris in that sign is changing this as we speak. Fire signs, with whom you have many significant relationships, play a somewhat faster and looser game in life than you do. Air signs, particularly yours, need a theory to back things up, evidence that the theory holds some water, and a collective agreement among others as to the truth of what you perceive.

Speaking of water, Neptune transiting your sign since the late 1990s has taken your logic for a swim, given it a bath, vaporized and condensed it a few times, and run it through the spray mist of a fire hydrant on a few hot days of summer. In short, your logic is not what it used to be; its papers are crinkled and its colors are running together. As a result, your prejudices are losing their grip, a fact of which I am sure you are grateful. But your intuition is much more vivid than it used to be, and if Aquarius is the sign of the water bearer, your pitcher is by this time pretty well full and you have plenty to share.

Different things matter to you today, things you never would have dreamed would change so profoundly. I would imagine some of your fighting spirit has mellowed, but you're not exactly a wimp; rather, you know there are different ways to penetrate the world than intellectually, and one by one you are learning them. Yet how long did it take to realize that a question was the thing driving you forward? It will continue to do so, though the form of the question is rapidly changing.

Chiron and Nessus in your sign, forming a long conjunction that actually started in Capricorn, tell much of your story astrologically, though apropos of who you are, this is a story that is rippling through the culture and of which you are somehow part. When planets move into our birth sign, we tend to identify with them, or perhaps it's more accurate to say that life is better when we do. Let's take these planets one at a time, and for background, they are Centaurs, discovered in 1977 and 1993 respectively. Centaurs are small planets that tend to have orbits that cross those of other planets, often Saturn. This orbit-crossing quality speaks to their ability to reach from normal consciousness into another level. Sometimes that level is crisis, or sometimes through intense learning, a portal opens up to another state of mind or energetic dimension. Often, this odd thing called power tends to condense or crystallize around Centaurs, though it usually comes after a crisis and confrontation with the shadow aspect self, that is, by confronting what we normally deny.

Chiron, in particular when crossing one's birth sign, crossing any angle of the horoscope, or when placed prominently like in the ascendant, can prompt a crisis over existence. I mean this literally; some people have massive health crises, while others just dive into their unexplored ability to question life, its meaning, and the meaning of their own existence. If Neptune in your sign left you for many years with the feeling that you may not quite exist, Chiron has pushed the issue to the forefront, insisting that you consciously feel how intense it is to exist, to fear that you might not really exist, to know you will not exist someday, and to face many different opinions from others about the fact that you are very much a factor in their existence.

Whether someone bestows upon you an honorary Ph.D. from Princeton University, or throws a tantrum and promptly runs out the door when you walk into the room, any response to your presence is indeed affirmation of your strength and awareness, though you may not see it that way. But I do recommend it. Chiron in your sign is an ongoing lesson not to take things personally -- maybe the most useful tool we have for living amongst others in society. Yet it's also a reminder that your personal experience of life is a testament to who you are; your perceptions are unique to you alone. And no matter what sub-species of Aquarius you are, whether you have an Aquarius Sun, Moon, ascendant, or another planet placed there that you identify with, this Aquarius factor provides a critical point of contact, a tangible nexus, with society.

With Chiron, the relationship is now highly energized. You are being drawn out of yourself, and compelled to integrate your reality with the world. I would say it's tense, but it's only as tense as your mind is not relaxed. Who you are is who you are in the moment -- the moment, that is, when you remember. The tension of Chiron in your sign is a little like having a transport beam following you around. Because you're human, you tend to forget it's there, being easily distracted by chocolate cake or checking the bus schedule. Then you remember, and suddenly you're a different person, because you're right there in the moment of your life, fully present. Then you drift off, but it seems to be doing the drifting. Again and again this happens, until eventually you remember you're able to step into a place of actual awareness wherein you can actually define yourself, program your existence in the form of clear choices, and direct the overwhelming energy that Chiron brings into any situation.

One thing you have helping you from overheating is Saturn in your 7th solar house, Leo. This is a big guardrail, with two main functions. One is that it keeps you looking at your reflection. Your ruling planet in your opposite house is a bit of the "mirror effect." However (as one who makes art principally with mirrors), I have a different view on this metaphor. Mirrors always present a mirror image; we see everything reversed laterally. In this respect, the image is never accurate. When people show up in the world and "show us our reflection," they are often showing us something different than ourselves. Yes, we may identify with it in some way, or despise it in some way -- but it is indeed different, and we can use the opportunity to choose.

Second, Saturn is helping you decide which relationships you want and which you do not. Everyone plays by different rules, and one of the ways you will decide who you want in your life is by the rules by which they play. Are their rules fair? Do you always come out the loser? Do their rules give you a chance to play and have fun? Do this person's rules add up to the fact that they are an ******* ? Make up your mind. It's easy. Play with the people with whom you want to play. If somebody doesn't want to play with you, move on -- it may be personal, but don't take it personally.

Through this dance, the question of meaning is lingering in the atmosphere. What is the meaning of having this much awareness? What can I do with it? Why does it hurt so much sometimes? Why can't I go back to sleep?

Nessus, also transiting your birth sign, helps tell this story. However, as I am writing, I am remembering something that happened many years ago involving this strange and relatively new planet, which is that when Pluto transited from Scorpio to Sagittarius for the last time in the fall of 1995, beginning our current era in history, it was accompanied by Nessus.

The theme of Nessus, which we are now facing in spades as the Pluto in Sagittarius era builds to its climax, is that causes have effects, and effects have causes. Nessus is the point of consciousness where the two meet. Nessus is the point of awareness where the law of cause and effect cannot be denied: some call it karma. Chiron is the awareness that we must do the right thing at all times; some call that dharma. Now the two are close together, implying that they are factors that bear a close relationship: past and present; or choices made today based on lessons learned in the past.

What Nessus makes us aware of is what was done to us, and how it is that we came to be less than whole. What Chiron makes us aware of is what we must do, in order to be whole. Nessus is suggesting strongly that the mental patterns which shape your life were, in turn, shaped by certain acts of cruelty or negligence that were inflicted upon you, and that these things have taken up residence in your thought patterns. Nessus is reminding you that the buck must stop with you; that, at the least, it is your responsibility to take care of your needs and not pass on the damage that was done to you.

Chiron states the case more affirmatively: it is your job to heal, and to teach others how to heal. A Course in Miracles reminds us that "everyone teaches, and teaches all the time." Such words, attributed to Jesus, could have as easily been spoken by Chiron, whose life was indeed a lesson in teaching all the time. It is by the act of teaching that we ensure further learning, consolidate what we have learned in the past, create new knowledge, and at least attempt to extend the thread of consciousness to a new generation.

The Spiral Door opens in the charts of Aquarians on the cusp of the 11th and 12th houses. Consider that Aquarius is the 11th sign, and the 11th stage of this sign is Sagittarius. In other words, the way you express your Aquarius-ness is through Sagittarius; when you overlap the archetypes we have the feeling of your heart and soul, your ideas and your feelings, reaching into the wide, wide world, further than you ever imagined; yet we also have the feeling that you seek your true self along a journey that necessarily has you deeply invested as a member of society. For you, being an individual and being part of a group are the same idea -- this does not present a paradox. This is because a group is made of individuals.

And as Pluto has transited this house for more than a decade, you have had some intense, challenging or strange experiences along the way, including a radical change of direction in 2001 that in a shocking, stunning or alarming way, made you conscious of the direction in which you needed to take your life. I trust that you did. Other factors were at the time pushing you to become fully responsible for your creative gifts, your ideas, and your need to express them. That phase of your life still has a bearing on your decisions now.

The events of the coming four seasons illustrate a scenario of you breaking into the clear. It would appear you have grown tired of any vestige of the old ego shells you dragged around for so long and have become determined to exist in the world as what you know of as your soul: your infinite self, your most authentic self, and the self that has the gift of being able to not only create things and ideas, but also to create patterns in the community or society around you. This is leadership by pattern making; an unusual kind of leadership indeed, and I trust that not everyone reading this will be up for it or believe that it's possible, but the truth is, it happens anyway; we always partake in society in a way that creates society as we all go along.

It's just that your power is being turned up, your awareness turned on, and your empathic understanding of the experience taken deeper. Everyone teaches and teaches all the time; this is about the example you set being more effective than anything you could ever say, but the words you say counting for quite a bit.

I will touch on this briefly. The 3rd solar house of Aquarius is Aries, which means Eris in Aries. The 3rd is an intensely mental house, it has a powerful here-and-now property, and in it the primary means of expression is words. The presence of Eris suggests that you will address your insecurities most profoundly by relating to them in words. The beauty of written words involves the way they can be consciously shaped, sculpted, edited and refined; and a property that may seem opposite -- the fact that they can preserve the image of a contemporaneous state of mind and allow us to reflect on where we were in the past, days, weeks or months later. Words allow us to see what we believed in the past, and they also allow us to shape what we believe in the present.

Either or both can become excellent tools for identifying our shadow material: our fears, hidden beliefs, and the thought forms that are inherently self-limiting. As your role in society changes as you step through the Spiral Door, indeed, as you are transported through it, written words will be one of your most useful tools for grounding and for figuring out where you are at.

The discipline necessary for you to do this will only help your growth and help you raise awareness of the changes you need to make, and the many options you now have.

Aquarius Chiron Returns

Many readers of this essay, I reckon, have Chiron in Aquarius and will be experiencing their Chiron return, and I will touch upon that for a moment. Anyone between 49 and 52, broadly speaking, is in the process of their Chiron return. Chiron in Aquarius pushes the Uranian side of Aquarius to maximum voltage, and you are likely to feel highly energized, hyper-aware and at the same time, uncertain what to do to have maximum impact on the world. You may alternate between extremes of alienation and social acceptance, yet never fully identifying with either one.

The healthiest impact of your Chiron return will be to ground you in yourself. Chiron always does this one way or another, but I would suggest that Saturn in Aquarius is a good model for what you are reaching for now. The quality of this placement is a steadiness of energy and a quality of being impervious to the weather. There is something older than you that can teach you how to be you in a way that is at once absolutely unique and at the same time fits beautifully with the moment in which you are alive. Saturn in Aquarius is the fairness of a judge who has seen it all and who has learned compassion, who sees the need to assess cases individually, and who is aware that personal bias enters into every decision. Being aware of that bias, it is easier to reduce its negative impact and to emphasize the fairness aspect. In this situation, fair is not what everyone else says it is; fair is having the courage to accept that it's what you say it is, and being wiling to be wrong.

The mid-1950s, when you were born, were an extremely disturbing time in world history, a time verging on as dark as the current times in which we are living. The world was systematically being wired with nuclear bombs, and our nervous systems wired with paranoia. The mid-1950s are a particularly interesting era in the history of the chemical industry ("better living through chemistry"), which reveal that better came with an extreme cost, such as sick workers, poisoned food and a breakdown of integrity on a scale that few can imagine.

At the same time, a small group of people were breaking free from the prejudices of their society, the pressure to conform, and moreover from the illusion that there is just one correct way to live, depicted on Father Knows Best. This movement, who gave us the poets Allan Ginsberg, Gary Sneider, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Diane Di Prima and many others, was based on the idea that you had to speak your mind and your guts at the same time, and that each individual who was aware enough had a responsibility to wake up and stay awake.

As Chiron returns to the position of your birth, you get a choice for which side of the Aquarius coin you want to live on; which way of thought, action and in truth idealism you want to embrace. In a true sense, you get to relive many of your early examples, only this time, seeing what it's like to be alive in a time when there was never more freedom available, and never more false reasons in your face not to be free. You get to see what it feels like to make the choices of your parents and grandparents. You get to experiment, if you choose, with coming out of your comfort zone and daring to be an individual. In times like the ones we are in, it is easy to cower, and it will get easier.

But I suggest you wake up each day and remind yourself you're never going to pass this way again -- and that it's amazing you're even here.

posted June 17, 2007 05:07 PM         

"face your fears with clarity and live your truth boldly"

Pisces is the relationship house for Virgo; the career house for Gemini; and the house of home and security for Sagittarius. This interpretation works for Pisces rising as well.

SENSE OF MISSION is the theme, the message, the meaning, the time of year and the time of humanity. It is, rather, if you have the inclination or willingness to feel -- something not true in all parts of the world, or for all people, but the Spiral Door is wide open for you, and is continuing to open. This is the result of years of preparation, dedication and, in a sense, making large investments in an annuity that is reaching maturity.

Among those who follow astrology, the question of what to do with one's life seems as popular as Bic lighters at a rock concert. I would propose that it's a more pressing question than relationships, which I personally think is a fine thing because in my view the relationship questions are asked in ways that don't have real answers. But there's always something that needs to be done on our planet, and when we're surrounded by those with whom we share intention and work, we can easily share love.

The turmoil of our era in history, combined with actual advances in spiritual awareness, are contributing to the issue of what to do finally coming to the surface. So, too, is a breakdown of old belief systems, which are crumbling under the weight of their own nothingness. Could it be that the supposedly most ethereal of the signs, the one normally associated with swimming backwards into a little nook between two rocks, going in circles, or sitting on the couch with a beer and purple bong plucking idly on the guitar, is currently the one getting the clearest signal from the galaxy about what now must be done, and how to do it?

One reason this is plausible is because Pisces is the sign that is composed of cosmic chaos; and from chaos imagination may spring. It is the last sign, the sign of endings and transitions, and this energy matches perfectly the difficult and astonishing transition the world is now engaged in at full throttle though not necessarily looking at the highway. Our times call for nothing if not paying attention, first, and an all-embracing imagination, second. Rarely is that your problem; rather, your problem more typically involves keeping a positive attitude and allowing yourself to believe your contribution is part of a necessary exchange of energy. It involves feeling you are some actual value to the world, and feeling that this value in some way nourishes you.

The long journey of Pluto across Sagittarius, which began in the mid-1990s, has occurred in your 10th solar house: your calling , your profession, the reputation you earn, and in the most tangible terms, your life mission. The passage of Pluto is never a cakewalk, but it is always meaningful, ever compelling, and guides us to keep our eyes on the bottom line or single most important priority. Pluto is a prime or fundamental energy. If at this point you don't have a sense of what you are here to do, I would propose that you are either not listening, you are attached to the past, or caught in a pattern that involves devaluing the role you are being called upon to play. If you don't sense your mission, you need to ask if you don't prefer dramas. At this point in your life, you will get the one you prefer.

Pisces, though it is a sensitive, receptive and often negatively polarized water sign, is blessed with strong fiery placements in its solar chart, and these are now all getting major transits. That is to say, the three houses that address key issues: your personal resources and self-esteem (the 2nd); focus, service and wellbeing (the 6th); and your mission and sense of achievement (the 10th) coincide with the fire signs Aries, Leo and Sagittarius, respectively. These signs all bestow passion, imagination and determination. They help create something where once there was nothing, a Pisces specialty. They are indeed the most optimistic signs of the zodiac. I would like to focus on the archetypes of these three signs, and the planets now transiting them. While most people draw their primary identity from their Sun and Moon signs, when planets transit other areas of the chart, or when major discoveries occur there, it's possible to access them directly and put them to work.

Let's go in order. Aries is the archetype of self, self-awareness and because of the Aries Point, it's the sign where we personally intersect with the much larger society. The message of the Aries Point is that the 'self' and 'society' are integral to one another. This is obvious, but our human sense of separation affects not only our relationship to Prime Creator, and to one another, it affects our relationship to the community and culture of which we are part. And we often experience a sense of separation from ourselves, which basically puts the world and everyone in it out of reach.

If we understand Aries in the context of Eris, which in 2005 was discovered there and has been there throughout our lifetimes, we might get a better sense of why it's so challenging and so necessary for you as a Pisces to make a constant yoga of being friends with yourself. It would probably be an excellent idea to review the events of 2005 for a turning point on these themes. It is likely that something crystallized or became apparent; something that did not have a name got one; some process that lacked a shape or tangible sense of reality came into focus, and that thing in essence was your conscious relationship to yourself.

Aries is in your 2nd solar house, so it represents your personal resources, from cash to your talents, from what you use to make your living to all that you consider your personal property. Because Aries is here, you are your most important asset. You might say this is true for everyone, but I don't think it is; there are many ways to tap into energy, and for you, it's directly through your self-awareness and the ongoing process of weaving your relationship into everything larger than you. But for reasons relating to Pisces, not to Aries, this can be unusually challenging for you. So, Pisces bestows a kind of selflessness; Aries compensates for it mightily, unless there is some unaddressed damage or beliefs so dysfunctional you cannot get through the day.

Eris, one of whose themes is alienation, appearing in Aries helps us understand why it is that Pisces people tend to have such a hard time making friends with themselves, as well as why we must deal with so much shadow material when it comes to self-worth. Shadow material can be doubt, fear, presuming others are better than we are, or that they are unwilling to assist or don't care about us. It may be the presumption that they are out to get us. Shadow is, in the simplest form, anyplace that the light does not reach because it is blocked, and what it tends to get blocked by is oneself. But how this happens is worth questioning.

This is particularly true as your calling in the world is increasing in intensity, because that is a form of light. The more energy, the more damage a relatively small liability can do. The more power you are working with, the more dangerous a relatively small character flaw can be, and the more important it is that you understand and address it.

One common form of shadow is self-sabotage. I feel the reason this is so difficult to address is because of hidden loyalties to the people who indeed taught us to sabotage ourselves. The moment we get into alignment with ourselves (or even move in that direction), we betray them, and we may fear being alienated by them and left further out in the cold. Yet if we recognize that in many ways, 'self' is a learned concept, we may investigate from whom we learned it, and indeed question whether we want to be loyal to whoever that was. Eris is now pushing the issue, insisting that you remember that you make every decision on the basis of who you think you are. Every decision is an affirmation of who you think you are. As you decide, you vote for or against yourself, sometimes thousands of times a day. The more you are able to see that all your decisions are essentially modeled after how you feel about yourself, you'll be able to take the process of how you feel into your own hands. But it's not enough to sense your own inadequacy; I suggest knowing how you got that way, because at the moment, it's the only thing that can stop you.

We have many advantages in this game of psychic chess today; for one, we have a ready concept and words for 'shadow material'. We live in a time when one is free to believe what one wants, and in our society, pretty much to do what one wants. Feminism died an early death, but if women are willing to center themselves, and stop being at war with themselves, they can indeed compete in the way that men must do. And if so, they can have most of the opportunities that men have, if they want them. If economics are somehow stacking the deck against people, I don't think there has been a moment in the history of the modern world when we had more possibilities to bring ourselves forth, if we are willing to do the work. Which leads to what Leo says about your chart.

Leo is your 6th solar house, and this presents an extremely interesting and characteristically Pisces kind of paradox. Leo is the sign of self-expression, glory and leadership. Leo bestows creativity in the biggest sense, that of creating the world and holding it in alignment. But the 6th house is the house of servants, service and participation in the most basic ways. The disadvantage is the sense that all your glory gets lost in the sauce of washing pots, cleaning toilets, doing the filing and tending to the sick -- traditional activities of the 6th. The advantage is that you have the capacity, an incredible capacity, to do what must be done. You can do so with astonishing energy, stability and relentlessness.

The 6th house is actually an excellent place to stash Leo, because it puts that energy to good use, and if one is going to feel glorious, applying energy to the basics of life is a good way to do it. The 6th also bestows healing power and vitality, for good or ill: Leo there is a strong sign from which to be drawing these kinds of strength. Nobody can say you don't earn what you have. But you can claim that, though the shadow form of that is the feeling of not having what you deserve. Once again, you get to decide, though if you want to be free, decide you must.

Saturn in Leo has been the cause for a lot of dealing with necessities the past couple of years, but I think if you look, you will see that you have made some astonishing progress and, indeed, made a contribution. Saturn is opposing Neptune, however, and there will be moments when you may feel total doubt, or like all you have created represents a kind of obstacle. Yet I think there is a healthy way to channel your skepticism, particularly if you admit that it's there. Indeed, the ability to question yourself is a great asset, it keeps you honest, and it keeps you clear, as long as you ask the questions in a way that has answers; honest questions usually have answers, and the dishonest ones tend not to. If Saturn opposite Neptune is about having no illusions, then let go of them gladly so that you may live the life you want to live, rather than the lie you perhaps think you must live.

Which leads to the Spiral Door opening in your 10th solar house (Sagittarius), right on the cusp of your 11th house (Capricorn). Sagittarius, the last fire sign, is the most visionary. Sagg takes the passion and creativity of fire and assimilates it into a form that can easily blend with this world: as ideas, as entertainment, as knowledge, as a quest. True sense of mission, as those who lack it can tell you, is about having a connection to something beyond oneself and beyond one's immediate needs, and here we have the essence of Sagittarius. It is about assimilating reality one atom at a time, but at the moment, very quickly.

Sagittarius represents visions that others can relate to, inspiration that can help guide people toward their own inner fire, and a compelling quality that generally gets results. As you build your skill at doing these things for yourself, you will do them for others. But Pluto suggests strongly that you address the issue of shadow material around your sense of power. Does having power scare you? Now is the time to let go of it. Does influencing others scare you? Now is the time to be honest about your influences. Do you in any way lack trust in what you do with the strength and influence you have? Be honest, start modestly, and learn to trust yourself, because that trust is your foundation.

All the fire signs are idealistic, but none has the vivid, accessible, practical passion of Sagittarius. And here, you have been on a long, intense and at times very difficult mission, because Pluto has pushed you to go to the depths at any time you aspire to anything greater than what you are. But it is this combination of reaching the depths and reaching upward that unlocks potential and creates lasting progress. Though it is odd to say, you count on fear to ground you and keep you humble, but it's now fear that has served its use, and it's time to use other techniques.

In essence, the journey of Pluto in Sagittarius has come with one message, which is that to really feel and express a mission, it must be one that you truly deem meaningful, and that connects with the world in a tangible way. Moreover, it is your dharma to express a positive message, affirming of life. This comes to a shuddering climax as Pluto crosses the Galactic Core in your 10th house, but in case you're worried about a letdown, don't -- if any sign is capable of a rolling multiple orgasm that lasts through the night and well into the morning, it is Pisces. Indeed, this is a threshold to a role in life for which you have been preparing since Pluto crossed your solar midheaven in 1994 and 1995, and which will continue well into the Uranus in Aries era (which has yet to begin).

The Spiral Door aspect is refining Pluto to its clearest essence -- your soul's mission in this lifetime and perhaps through a series of lifetimes. There are few better places to express this than Sagittarius. At the same time, Uranus, now on its long-term journey through your birth sign, is giving you plenty of energy to identify yourself as an inventor, creator and innovator; as one who solves problems and who invents the world as you go. Pisces born in the second decanate (approximately the first week of March) are now getting this transit at full energy, though any Pisces who chooses to identify with the Promethean, forward-looking, creative breakthrough energy of Uranus will surely have access to it.

Which leads to your relationships. You may have noticed a few things lately: one being that you are considerably more radical than most of the people around you. Second, though this may have been repelling in the past, you are now gathering a group around you, made of genuine individuals who share certain key values. This magnetism is the energy of Uranus. The more you value yourself, the more you will feel part of your community. Conversely, if you are feeling alienated, go back to Eris in Aries and have a talk with her: look at the shadow, get to the bottom of your guilt complex, turn toward the light and become aware of what blocks your own awareness of love's presence. This will not be difficult, but you will need to go through the steps consciously.

When Saturn reaches Virgo later in the year, we come to something of a main event in your relationship life, indeed, an encounter or deepening of involvement with someone who is not out of their depth when they encounter you. At the same time, a process of making sure the relationships you have are really the ones you want has already begun. As both Saturn and Virgo would suggest, time is of the essence -- a lot of time. If you choose at the beginning to take your time and allow commitment to grow, and indeed to allow the places in your life where commitment does not really exist to be shown to you, Saturn will bestow the gift of clarity, stability and solid exchange in your most personal relationships, which in these chaotic times is the best gift you could want.

Saturn creates, supports and helps us modify form, and Saturn is playing a major role in your life now, indeed, pushing you to keep yourself organized and take care of your health. That is good form. Yet form, to be meaningful, must have content, energy, and substance to drive it, and for you, that means purpose, innovation and passion. The one thing you cannot substitute for is passion. Anything else, any other factor, you can replace.

It does not matter what you have passion for: life itself, some way of expressing yourself, some subject, a person, your family, God, your own existence, training guide dogs or all of the above.

So many people lack passion, there is a kind of cover-up of this truth, and a denial that passion is really real -- especially with women, who are still to this day presumed to be handmaidens and thus in the eyes of society, passion in their hands is seen as a dangerous thing. But men face an equally difficult crisis, because authentic masculine passion is gradually being replaced by sexual and intellectual sheepishness pumped up by Viagra.

Uranus making its long transit through your birth sign, which reaches a peak this year and in these very days as it squares Jupiter and begins to contact the Great Attractor, is putting you in an unusual position of not only setting an example, but also of allowing your own energy to push those who are more reluctant than you, who are more reticent, more hung up on form.

Once you have your passion, of which there is no shortage right now, the new form follows, sometimes easily, sometimes less so -- but it follows, and this must guide your priorities, your choices, and your sense of what is necessary. That will have repercussions, not everyone around you (as you are no doubt seeing) will be up to the challenge, and indeed (as you are no doubt seeing) some people most assuredly will be up to the challenge. But to say that the Sun, the Moon and the planets are pushing you higher, pulling you higher, and guiding your intentions is only to glimpse reality. You have what you need, and you are who you need to be.

And at this time, your mission, which originates inside you, is now wide open before you -- if indeed you will open your eyes, look and -- trust what you see.

posted June 17, 2007 06:28 PM         

How's your Taurus section resonating, at almost halfway thru the year??

I like reading about the Galactic Center..... (see http://www.linda-goodman.com/ubb/Forum1/HTML/008745.html ) but I know very little about the Spiral Door, Quaoar and Ixion, will have to add to my study list

posted June 17, 2007 08:33 PM         

Pisces the sign of all signs was represented by a shot Barred Spiral Milky Way Beautiful.