Here’s an experiment for you. Sometime before Mercury overtakes Mars to share the same degree of Taurus at 7:03 pm EDT (23:03 UTC) tomorrow, refer back to Eric’s Monday Astrology Diary. Read it once again. Pay attention to where you feel the energy. Just by doing that you will have grasped some of Mercury conjunct Mars in Taurus, and gotten a hold of yourself in the bargain.  

You can do it now because Mercury need not yet be conjunct Mars for correlations to be palpable. You should do it before tomorrow evening because correspondences will probably wane quickly after Mercury leaves Mars behind.

Once you have grasped how a Taurus conjunction from Mercury to Mars feels in your body, you will have gathered something of what the constituents mean. What you gather is what will last and be useful. 

It’s about attention. It’s also about energy. It’s interesting to note that your attention and your energy have something in common. Both are subject to being diverted by external forces. Both can also be handled less than consciously. 

Versatile Mercury corresponds with thinking, among other things. To direct your own attention, you have to think. Unsurprisingly, it’s when you are not thinking that your attention either wanders or is subject to being misdirected, sometimes with undesirable consequences.

Along with desire, Mars is about energy (among other things). It can be ego-oriented — which, to quote Robert Hand, functions “to give you energy and support in maintaining your own separate, individual identity.” Then again, as Mr. Hand further describes, Mars also manifests as “energy in general, which can be harnessed for any type of work.”

Often, however, the question is whether it’s you or your energy in the harness. Just as often the answer comes down to what Eric called “one of the most vexing issues of our day”: self-esteem. That is where Taurus as the location of this particular conjunction of Mercury and Mars comes in, as a place to ground that issue.

Taurus is at least as grounded as any other sign, if not more so. It is also of the body as much or more than any of the other eleven fields of expression on the zodiac. Hence, planets traversing and/or merging in Taurus are best understood (at least in part) through the body.

That’s how you have more than just a reason to re-read Eric’s Sunday treatise again either today or tomorrow. You now have a purpose. So you might think for the purpose of directing your own attention — in order to attend to the expression of your own energy, and to listen to what your body tells you.

Most of all, the experiment proposed here today will reveal what happens to your self-esteem when you know it is you in charge of where your attention and energy are being put.

Once you get that connection, especially through your body, your sense of self-esteem just might take a turn for the better. Because you will know where it is rooted. Because you will know at least something of what you need to do anytime you need to get your self-esteem back.

Offered In Service

Len is available for astrology readings. You can contact him at lenwallick [at] gmail [dot] com.

Pluto’s station retrograde tonight at 11:55 pm EDT might be your simmer. The Aries New Moon 2:57 pm EDT (18:57 UTC) Saturday could be your sizzle. It’s likely there is some of both going on for most of us right now. If that’s true for you, take a tip from the astrology. Have patience with the simmer. Practice appropriate timing with the sizzle.

Whenever Pluto changes its apparent direction, it’s about as subtle as astrology gets. This particular station retrograde has been simmering a long time.

Pluto is at 15+ Capricorn, where it has been since the beginning of March. Where it will be until the beginning of June. Basically three months of slow motion oscillation in one teensy-weensy degree of the zodiac since the previous season. Since Uranus in Aries squared Pluto for the last time. Since what may seem like ‘back when’, given the pace of events.

All the while, a lot has undoubtedly transpired for you, as it undeniably has for the world and in astrology. If you can find the simmer as it has manifested for you over the last six weeks or so, you will have located Pluto in your life. Think of it as something slowly cooking without a stir. Be patient. Take your time. It’s not done. Still, now would be a good time to be mindful so you will know Pluto’s manifestation for you when you find it.

In the meantime, on another burner of your life, things are heating up. That’s the image of the Sun nearing the end of yet another annual tour through its Aries exaltation. Especially now that the Moon is catching up once again.

The Sun basically takes a year to go through all 12 signs of the zodiac. The Moon’s apparent motion is more than 12 times faster than the Sun. Hence, about once a month, the Moon catches up with the Sun so that both spend a few hours occupying the same degree of the zodiac (and moving through the sky) together — a New Moon.

The immediately previous New Moon was also a total solar eclipse without precedent for more than three centuries. That was at 29+ Pisces on March 20. Minutes later, the Moon moved on into Aries. Hours later, the Sun followed the Moon into Aries for the vernal equinox, initiating a new season. That was hot.

This weekend, the Aries New Moon will be hot as well. Not because it will be an eclipse. We have no more eclipses until September. Not because the Sun will change signs the same day. The Sun does leave Aries to enter Taurus until 5:42 am EDT (09:42 UTC) Monday. It’s because the Sun is exalted (another word for “intense”) in Aries, and because the most intense part of any sign is in the very last few degrees.

The last few degrees of a sign are called “anaretic” by astrologers. Nearly ten years ago, Eric answered a reader question about the latter part of Aries by (in part) citing Finnish astrologers Kirsti Melto and Raimo Nikula, who observed that the anaretic degrees of any sign contain “the whole experience and extension of the sign.”

Think about that: all of your experience since shortly after the total solar eclipse of March 20; the extension of everything that has happened in Aries (and in your life) since that time. All concentrated, all accumulated, all culminating with the current lunar cycle in a New Moon at 28+ Aries this weekend. Sound like a sizzle to you?

Just as with locating where the simmer is with Pluto, you would do well to locate where the sizzle is for you now. That way you will be prepared for the weekend. It means being consciously aware of what is most intense for you right now and making those things the focus of your attention lest sizzle become burn. As anybody who has cooked at high temperature knows, that means exercising good timing.

Fortunately, the sizzle will not last long. Basically, it will last through the weekend. While it does, however, that’s where your attention should probably be. So why not put your experience of the Sun’s time in Aries to work for you? What have you learned about timing during the last month or so, as the Moon was making its rounds and the Sun was expressing itself with intensity?

More specifically, what have you learned about all the things timing means? It can mean moving quickly while there is time. Yet, it might also mean being very deliberate and taking your time. Once you have located and focused on what is sizzling in your life, remember the lessons about timing you have learned during solar Aries. Take what you have learned into this weekend. Anticipate where you might apply that learning, and act appropriately.

That way, you are less likely to begin solar Taurus on Monday feeling burned. That’s how you can move with the Sun, the Moon, and the rest of the sky into next week. Think of it as a short-term protocol to keep your patience for the long term, while Pluto slowly simmers.

Offered In Service

Len is available for astrology readings. You can contact him at lenwallick [at] gmail [dot] com.

Mercury enters Taurus today at 6:51 pm EDT (22:51 UTC), less than three hours after the Moon ingresses Pisces at 4:12 pm EDT. Those two sign changes amount to a greater shift of emphasis in the sky than would normally take place in one day. Even though it’s a celestial phenomenon, the nature of that shift will be best and most vitally understood in the body.

It has to do with how Taurus is a fixed earth sign, a milieu of solidity. It’s also about how Pisces is a mutable water sign, an environment of change and flow.

Tangible water and solid matter are both what your body is made of, and what you know best from physical contact. That’s because you find both water and solid matter collected and concentrated where your body resides, on the surface of the Earth. 

Even though the Moon is far above the surface of the Earth, nearly all of astrology’s lunar connotations are best accessed and expressed through what the body feels rather than through what the intellect abstracts. Additionally, the rapid changes in the Moon’s visage as it proceeds through its phases graphically correlate with the ebb and flow that physical feelings and water have in common. 

Hence, after two-plus days of the Moon moving through the rigid thought forms corresponding to the fixed air of Aquarius, it will not take much imagination to actually feel lunar qualities begin to express themselves more strongly later today. Indeed, you would be best off to dispense with imagination all together and simply pay attention to what your gut feelings tell you about where you are and what you are doing.

Fortunately, going with the flow of what your body tells you of the Moon in Pisces will also help you to more fully initiate and appreciate Mercury in Taurus. Even so, you will probably need to do a bit of stretching, both literally and figuratively.

That’s because Taurus is not as natural a fit for Mercury as Pisces is for the Moon. Nevertheless, if ever there were a time to make the most of Mercury in Taurus, it is now.

For you live in a time when it is vital to (as Eric put it yesterday) “claim your humanity back” from an electronic environment that has become increasingly robotic and less creative. An environment of, by and for the mind that closely correlates with Mercury as it is commonly expressed in your life. Yet, an environment that is also making your mind more like a machine and less a part of what your body feels.

Implicitly, then, you will need to avail yourself of uncommon expressions of Mercury, such as through the solid, tangible, physical, human values of Taurus

Additionally, if you are to “feel the disturbing extent to which something about you has been taken from you,” you will probably need to feel it through the body first. Then, you must allow what you gather through the body to inform the mind with physical feeling rather than with digitized information.

That will be a stretch. More specifically, you will be required to stretch. You will need to stretch your legs, your back, your neck; pay attention to what you feel, and think about what it means. You will need to place your electronic devices so that you have to stretch more to reach them — so that your body will tell you about those things you might have been doing mindlessly for so long, you don’t think about it.

Most of all, you will have to stretch your mind. It may be as simple and vital as taking the time to (heaven forbid) prepare your own food from scratch, with all the discernment, preparation, measuring, evaluation, and time away from electronic devices that requires.

Indeed, if you can do simply that — cook from scratch, for the next two-plus weeks while Mercury moves through Taurus — you may very well change your life substantially. For in addition to rediscovering some humanity over a hot stove, you might actually improve your mind’s nourishment enough that it notices the difference. If that should happen, you will be less likely to forget that your mind and body are in fact one.

Offered In Service    

Len is available for astrology readings. You can contact him at lenwallick [at] gmail [dot] com.

Venus will enter Gemini on Saturday at 11:28 am EDT (15:28 UTC) so your heart may begin to know what has eluded its understanding. That’s the implication. It has to do with both the relationship and recent history of Venus and Gemini. It’s also a matter of how this year’s ingress of Venus into Gemini is timed.

Venus and Gemini have a subtle relationship. The ascending (or “North”) heliocentric node of Venus is in Gemini. If you’ve read about the Moon’s North and South nodes, you have some familiarity with the term; I’ll explain more in a moment.

Venus is also the ruler of Gemini for the modality known as esoteric astrology. As its name implies, esoteric astrology is concerned with mysteries (such as the concept and condition of “soul”). Often such mysteries are best (or even only) grasped by feelings, intuitions and other sensitivities associated with the human heart. Interestingly, the interpretation of nodes in astrology also has an esoteric slant. 

The ascending heliocentric node of Venus is where its orbit rises above the ecliptic. The ecliptic is the plane of reference defined by the Earth’s orbit around the Sun — or, from our perspective here on Earth, the Sun’s path across the sky.

According to Philip Sedgwick, the sign placement of the ascending node of any object orbiting the Sun speaks to that object’s “mission statement.” Hence, any defining aspirations associated with Venus are informed by Gemini.

Gemini is a mutable air sign ruled by Mercury. As Amanda Painter averred in her blog earlier today, one of versatile Mercury’s primary correlations is with “your intellectual mind.” The air element, which contributes to define Gemini, likewise has a correspondence to intellect. The mutable quality, which also combines with symbolic air to further distinguish Gemini from other zodiac signs, reflects the “mercurial” (or changeable) nature of the sign.

But Venus is not Mercury. The nature of Venus is not intellectual. In the words of Robert Hand, “In its highest manifestation, Venus is love, the emotion that brings people together without force or compulsion.” In other words, Venus is of the heart, not the mind.

But the heart needs the mind (just as the mind needs the heart) to know what it cannot understand on its own. That’s what Venus finds in Gemini.

Venus and Gemini also have a powerful recent history. On June 8, 2004, and again on June 5 (or June 6, depending on your time zone) 2012, Venus was in Gemini when it transited across the face of the Sun from our perspective here on Earth. A Venus transit of the Sun is very rare. The next matched pair will not take place until Dec. 11, 2117, and Dec. 8, 2125.

The most recent pair of Venus transits took place just before Uranus in Aries and Pluto in Capricorn aligned into the first of seven exact square aspects (separations of 90 degrees) over three years. This era-defining series itself concluded only last month.

Finally, only days ago, we emerged from a two week-period between two exceptional eclipses, the combined like of which have not been seen in centuries, if ever.

Hence, the timing of Saturday’s Venusian ingress to Gemini follows on the heels of a series of seldom-seen (sometimes unprecedented) astrological landmarks. Each of those cosmic milestones have been repeatedly defined and quantified in intellectual terms like date and degree.

Yet, for many of us at least, our hearts have yet to grasp the enormity (much less the meaning) of it all. Especially with the conflation of equally momentous world events and tumultuous personal experience, the like of which no previous generations (or incarnations) have ever seen.

Hence, my suggestion of a reasonable (if slightly edgy and unconventional) way to anticipate and avail yourself of Venus moving through Gemini beginning Saturday and through until May 7. Make it a time for your heart to better know and more deeply understand what your mind has ascertained, so as to better qualify the whole of what you have become.

Offered In Service

Len is available for astrology readings. You can contact him at lenwallick [at] gmail [dot] com.

Wake up tomorrow present to possibility and remain that way for about 48 hours. Give it a try. Exclude nothing and nobody. Refrain from ruling anything out. Open windows and doors of every kind, however and whenever possible. Wednesday and Thursday will be days to not only allow in but also stir up what could be, because of what the Moon will imply.

As tonight becomes tomorrow, avail yourself of this time window of just over 48 hours by giving everything and everybody a chance. There is no certainty as to what will happen if you do, but there are already anticipations everywhere you look.

Look in your heart. Can you really say you feel the same as you did only days ago? Look at the world. Can you really say it looks the same as it did at this time last week? Is something not astir even amidst fatigue and fear?

Among all things in the sky and on the zodiac evocative of stirring, a Sagittarius Moon must certainly be counted among them. It so happens the Moon will leave Scorpio (where it is today) and enter Sagittarius for just over two days at 1:08 am EDT (05:08 UTC) tomorrow.

Hours after ingress, the Moon will briefly share the same degree of Sagittarius with the only sign-ruler that will still be retrograde by the end of Wednesday: Saturn. By itself, a conjunction of the Moon and Saturn is often less than promising. In tomorrow’s context, however, what would normally signify a downer could yield something entirely different if you will do your part by being present to some implicitly stirring possibilities.

That’s because the Moon in Sagittarius tomorrow will rejoin a flow around the fire signs for the third time in less than three weeks. Just look at what has happened in that short period.

The Moon first jumped into the flow when it entered fiery Aries almost immediately after eclipsing the Pisces Sun on March 20, and just hours before the Sun followed suit into Aries to begin a new season. Then the Moon mixed it up with fire in Leo again last week, when Eric clued you into an emerging “fire trine theater” following the solar eclipse of March 20. 

Tomorrow, the Moon follows its own lunar eclipse last weekend by joining the fiery flow once more with ingress to Sagittarius. Hence, the Moon’s conjunction with Saturn need not bring you down if you will only be present to its potential to stir you up.

For the Moon (among other things) represents what Robert Hand has called “your need to be human.” Nearly every time that need is confronted by the cold reality often signified by Saturn, you are presented with a choice.

Beginning tomorrow you will have that choice again. It’s a choice between asking ‘why?’ or ‘why not?’ Tomorrow morning, if you will only be present to the potential that ‘why not?’ offers, you will almost certainly stir possibilities out of what otherwise might be lost to the callous and/or careless complacency implied by ‘why?’.

Just asserting your need to be human tomorrow could in turn open a window of a little more than 48 hours when some very good things could come in out of what started stirring less than three weeks ago. The promise of a new season could be made more real. The distance traveled between eclipses could be measured, and what you have up to now only felt or seen hints of could become yours.

Let the next two days make a difference by making that difference yourself. What have you got to lose by simply being present to possibilities and allowing yourself to jump in like the Moon, to stir them up into reality?

Offered In Service

Len is available for astrology readings. You can contact him at lenwallick [at] gmail [dot] com.

Saturday’s Libra Full Moon and total lunar eclipse will be part of a nesting series of solar and lunar sequences and cycles, within which you might frame your own recent history so as to gain a deeper sense of your life. The shortest sequence started with a New Moon and total solar eclipse as the Sun and Moon briefly came together in the last degree of Pisces on March 20.

Only hours after the Pisces New Moon and total solar eclipse, the Sun entered Aries to precipitate a vernal equinox and initiate a new seasonal cycle.

You can almost certainly recall what you were doing less than two weeks ago. As the Moon briefly blocked daylight over the North Atlantic just as the immediately previous season was coming to a close, you know where on Earth you were.

Even so, it is nearly as likely that you now find yourself having in some sense gone further and through more than you normally would during a typical fortnight.

Now the Moon has come around to the other side of the zodiac and the sky to nearly oppose the Aries Sun from the middle of Libra. That will be the impending Libra Full Moon and total lunar eclipse, which also concludes a longer sequence going back nearly seven months.

The seven-month sequence now coming to a close started with the Pisces Full Moon on September 8 or 9 (depending on your time zone) of 2014. Since then, every successive Full Moon has taken place while the Sun and Moon were precisely opposing each other from the mid-point of their respective signs.

Saturday will mark the end of that remarkable series of Full Moons taking place precisely midway between luminary (Sun and Moon) sign changes. The occasion will probably serve to close a chapter for you as well. To participate in writing the end of that chapter, think about what you have been consistently in the midst of since the Sun was halfway through Virgo. Then, consider how to finally extract yourself from being stuck in between.

Yet, not every notable series of luminary sequences and cycles is nearing an end. Saturday’s Libra Full Moon will be but the third of four total lunar eclipses in a row.

Lunar eclipses routinely take place every six months or so. Nonetheless, only the occasional lunar eclipse is considered to be a totality, with the Earth passing precisely between the Sun and Moon.

It is even more unusual to have a series of four totalities over 24 months. The current sequence of total lunar eclipses started with the Libra Full Moon of April 15, 2014; it continued with the Aries Full Moon of Oct. 8, 2014; and will conclude with yet another Aries Full Moon later this year on Sept. 28.

Hence, you may want to reflect on how you might be three quarters of the way through something unusual yourself when Saturday’s lunar eclipse rolls around. Framing things that way could very well provide a perception of how very exceptional you are as distinguished from previous generations (and even incarnations).

Having gained such a perspective, you might even want to plan ahead for the fourth and final total lunar eclipse of the current sequence. You could conceivably frame a plan to discover and honor just what it is that makes you and your personal history so extraordinary. Who knows? It could be the start of something big. Or at least that is the implication of what may be the longest life-cycle indicated by the forthcoming Libra Full Moon and total lunar eclipse.

That’s because no lunar eclipse of any kind (much less of the total variety) has taken place within one degree of mid-Libra since April 3, 1996.

Of course, that was 19 years back. It’s not so easy to remember what you were doing or even where you were nearly two decades ago. Nonetheless, if you can simply recall something that originated for you at that time, you might be able to close the outer frame of a nesting sequence of luminary cycles that appear to be intersecting for you on Saturday.

Within that frame you might at long last see yourself being renewed, revived, returned or even redeemed from where some long-ago series of events sent your life. And wouldn’t that be appropriate while a new season is still young?

Offered In Service

Len is available for astrology readings. You can contact him at lenwallick [at] gmail [dot] com.

There is a difference between something coming at you, and something becoming apparent. It’s documented that you have a natural and healthy aversion to something coming at you as a potential threat. Anything becoming apparent, however, is appropriate to observe, engage with and learn from because it represents potential changes in your life.

During the course of your life, the distinction between what’s coming at you and what’s becoming apparent has probably become increasingly blurred. The result often is an increased perception of threat whether such a perspective is justified or not.

That’s because the environment from which your consciousness collects information has changed a lot in your lifetime. In all probability your environment is dominated by data that reaches you through electronic devices and distractions, all of which carry messages and all of which, as part of the environment, constitute a message in and of themselves.

There’s a problem with what reaches you through electronic devices as well as the message those devices in fact are. Much of that information has been manufactured with an objective of capturing and directing your attention towards a product. For example, advertisers have a concept called “disruption.”

At its best, disruption means being creative, and adapting to change by adopting new patterns. That’s a good thing. It’s empowering to change your patterns (especially unhealthy ones), and doing so fits with the transitional nature of current astrological events. Especially so if you are living with a conscious intent to actually improve your creativity.

For instance, the astrology right now supports your being creative and positive enough to change some self-disruptive perception-and-response patterns you had before the March 20 solar eclipse. Very possibly these have been conditioned by electronic media.

Heck, just thinking about what you might change about yourself will empower you! Imagine what actually trying might do! Hopefully, you can even become just a little more creative and better adapted to the changing world by the lunar eclipse of April 4. If not, at least no harm would accrue from simply trying.

So how is your little project of disrupting unhealthy patterns in your life coming along? If it’s not, it’s probably because all you know of disruption is how it is most commonly practiced on you. Unfortunately, disruption in actual practice has come to mean disturbing your consciousness with histrionic presentations designed to overstimulate and/or distract you.

Over stimulation and distraction as a constant diet, even if it’s sexy, disrupts your life. Then you respond as you would with something coming at you. That is not a good thing, except for those (such as pill makers or political strategists) who profit from your discomfort by falsely promising relief or gratification in return for a dollar, a vote, or even just a decision on your part to seek further distraction through electronic media (which starts a pattern of disruption all over again).

If there is any coherent message in the overall astrology as we approach Saturday’s total lunar eclipse in Libra, it’s to adopt a new pattern. You can start by finally refusing to project the anxiety stimulated by your electronic environment onto natural processes, including astrology.

For astrology is, above all, a natural process. It’s as simple as watching the daytime sky darken enough so that the lesser lights of stars and planets gradually become apparent for you from out of the blue. Simply because those lights undeniably are.

There is no paradox in watching the sky change. It’s not toxic. It’s not complicated. It’s reassuring. It’s empowering. The sky is where you come from, and having that simple fact become apparent to you from out of the blue as you simply watch is what astrology actually is.

It’s no different watching symbols move on the zodiac, and having their continually changing patterns make apparent for you how you could (and probably should) do something of the same.

Hence, as the Moon moves into mindful Virgo today (on its way toward opposing the Aries Sun from compassionate Libra during Saturday’s total lunar eclipse), be mindful of what you are doing with the information astrology gives you. It would be a shame to waste the natural process that your life actually is by mistaking astrology for something it is not.

Offered In Service

Len is available for astrology readings. You can contact him at lenwallick [at] gmail [dot] com.