January 20
Sun enters Aquarius
Venus sextiles Pluto
It’s the middle sign of the season; the fixed sign. Here in the northern hemisphere the days hold the promise of more light. Even if the weather is weird the heavens behave according to plan. There is discernible reason to have hope. And while we are busy hoping we could also be organizing and gathering to create the better world we believe is so necessary. It’s something we can only make together. If you feel blocked by too much mental energy let the power of beauty move you.
January 21st
Sun sextiles Uranus
Look for every opportunity to liberate yourself, your friends, your people. May all beings be liberated; starting with me! And you! And extending to the ones I love, the ones I fear. It’s a wonderful day for Metta (whether you want to be born back into this world or not!)
January 22
Sun square Jupiter
An excess of attachment troubles us all. While we are quite aware of our attachment to our stuff we often don’t realize that we can also be attached to our ideas and/or our ideals. We don’t think we have to change our minds although we are often more than ready to change our clothes, our couches, our diets. Today the simple existence of the material world is offering resistance to the fixed mind.
January 23rd
Mars Stationery retrograde
Mercury trines Mars
New Moon 2:41 AM 2* Aquarius
The hero in each of us is ready to take on the Great Challenge of how to live in the world on a day-to-day basis knowing that it is finite and sacred all at the same time. We make important decisions over the next 6 weeks about how we live from moment to moment. Don’t take lightly the words that fall from your mouth or the food that enters it. What you do is the stitch in time that creates the tapestry of reality. This is understood and not so hard to communicate if you know that although you do not rule the world, your actions are significant . In fact you create the world – one thought/action after another.
Let your intention be for the good of all.
January 27th
Mercury square Saturn
Mercury enters Aquarius
There is a tough nut waiting to be cracked. Stick with it. The closer you get to cracking it, the harder it looks but that is true of all great problems. When the breakthrough comes it is due to the fact that structure gives way to intention. Matter is meaningless without the mind to understand it. Or is it?
January 28th
Mercury sextiles Uranus
Mercury square Jupiter
The mind is like a jumping bean. Ideas are plentiful and the need to possess them is a nagging feeling in the back of the mind. Who owns ideas anyway? Maybe the question is, who controls them. Don’t get carried away with judgement. It will contract your thoughts. Be discriminating if the situation warrants it but stay open to the infinite possibilities that exist before we collapse them into goals.
February 1st
Venus opposite Mars
It’s about desire. I want to have this because it pleases my senses. But the way I go about getting it is all wrong. The means is offensive but the end is desired. Certainly we know about this on a personal level. And we struggle endlessly with how to resolve the issue of our desires and the destruction they can cause. This is even more intense when you step back and see it from a planetary perspective. Our means are mean-spirited. Our desires are out of control. And then there is the 1%. Hopefully we will survive progress.
February 3rd
Neptune enters Pisces (and will remain there until 2025)
This is big news astrologically. You can read all about it all over the web. When a slow moving, outer planet changes sign astrologers expect that there will be shifts down here on earth. Never forget that the entire astrological panoply is only from the perspective of earth. No where else in this multiverse is Neptune changing to Pisces today (unless there are twin universes…). So it’s about us. It’s Ourstory. History in the making. Neptune and Pisces are all about the water and things that live in water. On one level we can expect a lot more crises about the waters. No surprise. It’s melting, it’s pouring down in torrents, it’s flooding, it’s evaporating. Neptune has another side as well. It’s about glamour and all sorts of large screen projections. It’s about pandemics of the body and the mind. It’s about delusions and addictions as well as spiritual transcendence. It is no surprise to anyone that alcoholics seek the spirit in the bottle. And of course it doesn’t live there. Neptune in Pisces will open us up to greater compassion and spirituality through art and all sorts of psychic connections. Neptune may heighten the feelings of our lonely planet spinning through a vast expanse of space seemily empty of sentient beings. But Neptune will also offer the connection to Creation itself.
Every one of us is shadowed by an illusory person: a false self.
This is the man that I want myself to be but who cannot exist,
because God does not know anything about him.
And to be unknown of God is altogether too much privacy.
Thomas Merton. New Seeds of Contemplation: p. 34
or you might rephrase it to say:
Every one of us is shadowed by an illusory person: a false self.
This is the person that I want myself to be but who cannot exist,
because the Great Spirit of Creation does not know anything about me.
And to be unknown of Creation is altogether too much privacy.
February 7th
Saturn stationery retrograde
Sun conjunct Mercury
Full Moon in 18* Leo at 4:54PM EST
Full Moons offer challenges to see and celebrate the world as it is. The Sun and Mercury in Aquarius hold out for ideals, the Moon in Leo wants to create; to play; to warm the winter with heart-felt love. Aquarius can be too theoretical, Leo can be too self-centred. Today they let it rip. Celebrate love with as many friends as you can find. It’s time for some full catastrophe living.
For those who are feeling hemmed in and burdened today is an exceptional day to face up to reality which is most definitely not the same as letting it bury you.
February 8th
Venus enters Aries
Love is bold and wants to individuate. See Her up in the western sky after sunset. She evokes a feeling in the heart because she is Beauty itself. How to reconcile the longing for love with the need for separation?
February 9th
Venus conjuncts Uranus
The wind in your hair, the highway calls; free at last. But what is freedom? What value does it have for you and where do you expect it to lead? Maybe like bellybuttons, there are two kinds of freedom; the inner kind and the outer. Or maybe there are as many kinds of freedom as there are people to conceive of it. In any case it’s a big theme for 2012. So watch how you get caught up in the spirit of freedom.
February 13
Mercury trines Saturn
Mercury enters Pisces
When a planet changes sign it essentially takes off one perspective or attitude and takes on another one. Mercury’s last wish in Aquarius is to UNDERSTAND. And its first impulse in Pisces is to use that understanding to do something that would/could change the world. No time like this time!
February 14th
Mercury conjunct Neptune
A perfect day (night) for love; for poetry; for dreams too large to come true for one individual. Consider that love at all levels teaches us to include a greater and greater number of others. The problem is not that we love ourselves too much but that we love ourselves exclusively. To love only the self is the loneliest of conditions. To love the self in the other is a start. To love the other is a true accomplishment.
For the error bred in the bone
Of each woman and each man
Craves what it cannot have,
Not universal love
But to be loved alone.
W. H. Auden
February 15th
Venus squares Pluto
Pleasure taken in freedom must pay the piper. Be frustrated; acknowledge regrets. The power of love and desire wants more. What can come of this wanting more? How much more can we possibly have?
February 16th
Mercury sextiles Jupiter
It is not necessary to martyr what you love most to have what you want but rather to allow the simple awareness of how what you love most comes through you, not from you. In this way we are free to experience love fully with devotion rather than martyrdom.
February 18th
Sun trines Saturn
Mercury sextiles Pluto
Magic is afoot. Real magic. The kind that finishes the project; or figures out the right way to do something. Look for every opportunity to dig deep into understanding everyday mysteries. There is beauty for one thing. There is communication for another. And then there are the mysteries of how things are made and who are the Makers. There are some days, some moments, when we stand in both worlds at once. Magic is and isn’t. Today calls us to be both rooted and aware of the wonders of life.
We come from nothing…
Julie Simmons' Astrological Insights 