Mercury will be initiating a week, a month, and probably you with expansive style come Sunday. Indications are you should not take a passive role and simply wait for something to happen. Even though several expressions of the same theme will be intersecting in one day’s worth of astrology, you will probably have to make at least a some effort to catch the swelling wave.

The requisite nature of your participation will implicitly have to do with exposing yourself to some sort of mind-expanding initiation. That will mean going to someplace new, or doing something for the first time.

Be selective. Wherever you go or whatever you do should have a quality or reputation that makes your pulse race a bit in anticipation of what it will be like.

In addition, Sunday’s astrology implies that your chosen activity or destination should stimulate your mind at least as much as your body. Finally, insist on some sort of inherently spiritual (but preferably not ideological or hierarchical) quality for your astrologically harmonious participation.

So what is happening in the sky and on the zodiac to open a door and possibly blow your mind on the first day of both next week and next month? A handful of things, actually. But there is no doubt that Mercury will be the crux of what manifests for you. So let’s look at the little big planet first.

Mercury is versatile. Yes, it has to do with mind and mentally-related subjects. As Eric has repeatedly pointed out, however, there is now an unavoidably electronic component to Mercury’s impressive reach, manifesting in every form of media and whatever else moves quickly.

Then, of course, there is Mercury’s well-earned reputation as a trickster, paradoxically paired with its proficiency as a medic. The list of other mercurial qualities goes on and on. It’s quite the multitasking planet.

Mercury is in Aquarius and has been since Jan. 5. How could the planet with fastest apparent motion be confined to one sign for nearly two months? Well, there was this little matter of a retrograde during which Mercury slowly (for the most part) pinged back and forth in basically the first half of this fixed air sign. You probably got pinged a bit as well.

Mercury entered the arc (or first shadow/echo phase) of its retrograde motion on the same day it entered Aquarius. It turned on a dime and shifted into reverse Jan. 21, then resumed direct motion Feb. 11. Finally, on March 3, Mercury will move out of the narrow slice of the zodiac to which it has been confined most of this year, and concludes its second echo/shadow phase by accelerating into new places and interactions.

But not before an implicitly grand finale.

The big finish will come on March 1. In the course of one day, Mercury will achieve an exact sextile aspect with Uranus (in Aries) for the third time this year, followed by an opposition to retrograde Jupiter in Leo for the very first time this year.

Jupiter and Uranus are not chopped liver. What they have in common is that both express some sort of expansion, albeit differently. Jupiter’s expansiveness is usually on the magnanimous side, although retrograde motion can bestow a quality of megalomania to Jupiter’s old and usually stable reputation.

The reputation of Uranus does not imply stability. As a matter of fact, none other than the concisely erudite Robert Hand flat-out referred to Uranus as “a crazy planet” when interviewed for the October/November 2014 edition of The Mountain Astrologer magazine.

Hence, what expansive quality Uranus can be said to have tends to be somewhat explosive. That’s a good quality if you can harness it. Fortunately, Mercury in sextile aspect (closing to within 60 degrees of separation) with Uranus on Sunday indicates a chance you might be able to capture lightning in a bottle, or more precisely with your mind.

The evocation of lightning is not an idle one. Mythical Jupiter was known for his thunderbolts, with which he sustained his power over heaven and Earth. Mercury’s archetype, as already mentioned, has grown to include all things electronic. Finally, Uranus (as what some astrologers call the “higher octave” of Mercury) has an implicitly galvanizing cachet all its own.

We already have some experience with Mercury in what is normally known as a supportive sextile aspect with Uranus. That’s because Mercury’s retrograde sweep has already brought us the same aspect twice this year — on both Jan. 14 and Jan. 28th. It would be worth your while to check back on your calendar, diary or memory for what happened on those two Wednesdays, to give you a leg up on what promises to be a third time that just might redefine the word ‘charm’.

We have no such previous experience this year with Mercury in Aquarius precisely opposing Jupiter in Leo, but maybe a hint. When Mercury apparently initiated reverse motion on Feb. 11, it was two degrees away from a precise opposition with Jupiter. The sky has waited until this coming Sunday, however, to show us the real thing. Hence the idea that Mercury will be hooking you up to an initiation of sorts, one that might well blow your mind.

Like Mercury’s reputation, there’s an even longer list of indications in the astrology to reinforce the theme of a mind-expanding initiation on Sunday. We could go on and on here, but by now you have the idea.

To access the real thing yourself, you will need to do your part. After all, to surf you must first go to the beach. So, as Mercury would have you do, start thinking now.

Would your first experience watching an opera fill the bill? On any given Sunday, you might well find a bargain matinee. Alternatively, you might take a walk on the wild side (as Uranus would encourage) and check out a kinky cabaret. Perhaps (as Jupiter may have you do) you might even show up to support an unconventional (but now legal) marriage ceremony.

So here’s wishing you Jupiter’s good fortune, Mercury’s stimulation and the combustive upside of Uranus. May you come back to Planet Waves next week a bigger, better person for having caught every bit of a perfect wave for the first time in your life.

Offered In Service

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

By Amanda Painter

On the mental level, this is a ‘big picture’ kind of weekend, one where you could get some really productive planning or creative visioning going. This is thanks to Mercury in Aquarius opposing Jupiter in Leo. At the same time, your emotional landscape will likely be varied (and palpable) thanks to the Cancer Moon making a variety of aspects.

The bright lights of the (not so big) city; photo by Amanda Painter.

The Mercury-Jupiter opposition is exact Sunday at 4:15 pm EST (21:15 UTC), but is in effect now.

Although oppositions sometimes get a bad rap as being ‘confrontational’ or energetically intense (think Full Moon), a Mercury-Jupiter opposition can come with a good dose of optimism. If you have any contractual negotiations needing your attention, creative projects ripe for collaboration, or similar sorts of discussions on the table, the astrology is favorable.

Oppositions often signify some form of push-or-pull type of tension we have to navigate with someone who’s coming from a contrary side of an issue. Yet oppositions also signify a meeting place where contact is made. Think in terms of partner dancing for an image: facing each other and then finding a way to move together through space.

Now, as with partner dancing, the devil is in the details. You can’t bump into someone on the floor, do your thing while holding their hands, and expect them to automatically mirror your moves without certain specific types of communication and agreement: Who’s leading, who’s following, and do those roles switch? Are we dancing tango, salsa, waltz or contact improv? Do we know the same basic steps?

Continue reading →

Note: this essay can be read in full on the Cosmophilia website. In it, Alison Beth Levy chronicles her search for her birth parents and a sense of identity, with astrology and other healing modalities as her guides. — Amanda P.

by Alison Beth Levy

Ten years ago, at age 26, I initiated a search for my birth parents — a process many adoptees undertake to clarify their identity. Maybe it was a diffusing Neptune transit that set a timer off for me to reclaim myself, or perhaps I was induced by earth-shaking Pluto to make deeper inner discoveries, but it was definitely Uranus that pulled the rug out from under me in a bone-rattling awakening.

Photo by Eric Francis

During this time, I began to understand the mind-body-spirit connection, rekindle my previous teenage love of astrology, and discover much about the effects of my early life on my challenging emotions — and take responsibility for them. Ten years later, I can look back with gratitude on many adventures I had in my pursuit of finding my place in this world as an adoptee.

The first thing I discovered, via my Michigan adoption agency’s records, was that no one was expecting my birth — not even my mother. At the time of her pregnancy, my birth mother, a 26-year-old professional musician and Orthodox Jew, was being medicated for schizophrenia.

I was born one night at home, brought to the hospital and then to the Jewish adoption agency. Due to my mother’s state, her mother made the decision for my adoption.

Because my birth mother had signed my adoption papers I was able to get her name and family info after I applied for and received the written report from the agency. Many adoptees can’t lawfully receive actual contact information, and it causes them much grief not to have a way to find their blood family. Fortunately, there is a social rights movement in the United States to overturn the withholding of “identifying information.”

Upon requesting my birth mother’s contact info, I was told that she had already passed. Thankfully, however, I was put in touch with one of her brothers. Speaking to my uncle for the first time and learning about my birth mother was one of the happiest moments of my life.

Most people take knowledge of their blood relatives for granted. For this reason, it is hard to understand an adoptee’s struggle with disconnection and separation. Many adoptees report painful emotions resulting from not knowing where they come from. They might feel that they lack a sense of self, or that they are not accepted by or fit in with their adopted family. There is an unconscious wound of separation from the birth parents. Actor, playwright and poet Rock Wilk reveals how adoptees navigate the question of blood-relations in his solo theatrical play, Broke Wide Open.

Continue reading here.

And before my life is done, got to find me a place in the Sun
— Stevie Wonder

There is an interesting pattern in the sky this week. The pattern favors finding your place in a larger scheme of things than just your personal life. It has to do with how the sign rulers have temporarily sorted themselves out. As always, the final and crucial ingredient in making this astrology work for you is your awareness, holistic perception and conscious response.

With an exception for the Moon’s unique scope, sign rulers associated with your personal life (the Sun, Mercury, Venus and Mars) are clustered into a relatively narrow arc of the zodiac — all within 60 degrees of each other.

As result (and once again, with the fast-moving Moon as an occasional brief exception) the so-called “personal planets” are not perfecting any major aspects to each other in the near future.

That’s because Venus is now separating from its weekend conjunction with Mars, which occured as both entered Aries. Also because the next major aspect after a conjunction is a sextile, which requires a separation of 60 degrees. That’s something Venus will not quite achieve from either the Pisces Sun or Mercury (which is accelerating faster in Aquarius than Venus is in Aries) anytime soon.

Instead, the four sign-ruling planets closest to the Sun are exclusively aspecting their peers in the outer part of the solar system for the time being. Proportionally speaking, it’s a big jump from the orbital period of Mars (about 2 years) to the approximately 12 years it takes for Jupiter to circle the Sun and the zodiac. The same is true for Saturn’s circuit of nearly 30 years.

For that reason, Jupiter and Saturn are usually interpreted as corresponding to entire segments of your life rather than the frequently repeating life cycles that correlate to personal planets. That’s how Jupiter and Saturn have come to be thought of as trans-personal planets, completing their respective orbital periods to distinguish passages associated with generations.

Beginning with Uranus (which takes approximately 84 years to move through all 12 signs), and continuing on out to include the even longer periodicity of Neptune and Pluto, the modern sign-rulers tend to mesh with historical cycles and social entities that transpire over multiple generations.

Hence, the fact that personal planets are now focusing their most meaningful angular attentions on the outer solar system has a symbolic message for you: now is a good time to place yourself in a larger, longer context.

You might say the process started yesterday with the Pisces Sun achieving a separation of 90 degrees (a square aspect) from Saturn in Sagittarius. Therefore, in order to place yourself in context with the sky, try to recall whether you experienced anything other than the usual weekly return of anxieties normally associated with Mondays.

Specifically, if you consciously encountered or contemplated any long-term milestone with a sense of trepidation in the last day or so, don’t be troubled. Instead, take consolation from the fact that yesterday’s inner tension is the handle by which you may open the door to this week’s astrology.

The handle yesterday’s discomfort provided will allow you to reach within yourself. With but a little contemplation you might attain an instinctive sense of reconciliation with your place in a larger, longer scheme now — as today’s fire trine from Venus to Saturn would support your doing.

If you can but stretch to get a hold within yourself today, it will help tomorrow. For even though Mars is falling behind Venus as they both move through Aries, it is still close enough to perfect a fire trine of its own by reaching precisely 120 degrees of separation from Saturn in Sagittarius tomorrow.

Yes, trines are supposed to be easy. Without awareness, however, any aspect between Mars and Saturn might feel unduly intense. Now that you know what’s coming (and assuming your experience yesterday opened a door to understanding), you can conceivably place yourself to apply any intensity as opposed to weathering it.

Plus (and this is where seeing astrology holistically comes in really handy) when the Sun’s conjunction with Neptune peaks tomorrow, you will be able to take inspiration rather than being confused. It will be a matter of simply getting things in the right order. First, listen to your imagination. Then, act to build just a little reality on what you imagined. Just a little will do.

You need not build Rome this week. Instead, simply find your place in Rome (or its equivalent for you) as your first order of business. Then, do a little something to assert your place. Do a little for now. It will be enough.

Doing enough for now will establish a foundation to build on. Subsequent construction will be supported later by the waxing Moon. So too Mercury, which is on approach to expand your mind with a sextile to Uranus in Aries and an opposition to Jupiter in Leo.

But that’s another story (ideally your story), to be meaningfully continued.

Offered In Service

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

In this latest piece available in full on the Cosmophilia website, Dallas Jennifer Cobb shares her story of overthrowing the narrative instilled in her by her mother — ultimately healing herself through the process of mothering. — Amanda P.

by Dallas Jennifer Cobb

“Don’t ever have children, they ruin your life!” These are the words my mother said to me repeatedly. That one sentence reverberated within me for decades instilling fear, betrayal and a sense of abandonment. My mother didn’t want me.

Photo by Eric Francis

The personal is political and very powerful. It is the most personal experiences that deeply wound us, but within them we might also find transformation and healing.

We are our own best allies in healing, whether we seek it consciously through therapy, self-help and reflection, or it comes organically through lived experience or instinct.

Like all animals, our biological instinct is to survive — to heal and return to homeostasis. I know that it is possible to heal and fully possess my own life, that there is something organically moving me toward wholeness. At the cost of sounding like an oversimplified stereotype, let me say: my mother deeply wounded me, but mothering has healed me.

After 16 years of daily drug use I got clean in 1990. I went to treatment, joined 12-step groups and began keeping a journal. I realized I had big gaps in my memory. Those gaps scared me.

Fast-forward to 2001 when my daughter was born. With little time to focus on my own recovery, I was totally wired to the care of my baby. I felt frantic a lot, terrified I didn’t have the skills to parent her appropriately. Sometimes my anxiety paralyzed me.

I thought that attaining the mainstays of good parenting (safety, security, nurture, affirmation and fostering self-esteem) was insurmountable — that I knew nothing about any of these. So I sought out resources.

Continue reading here.

By Amanda Moreno

Something died in me this week. The death knells were rolling and wrenching and plunged me into all of my fears at once. I was being tossed about inside of them, moving between my bed and the bathroom floor, totally unable to get out of their grip. Purging, releasing, wailing.

Photo by graywacke/A Landing a Day

Was there a catalyst? Of course there was. Was it equal to the response I had? That seems like a pointless question. Regardless, it’s done and integration has begun.

I’ve been fluxing through feelings of being totally disempowered, and like everything is futile. Like the same old patterns have arisen, all the things I thought I was clearing, like I’ll never make any progress and have deluded myself once again. Luckily that phase has passed and I’ve entered a feeling more like emptiness.

The emptiness is acute this time, but it has shifted from feeling like a void to feeling spacious. As my attachment to knowing flows out, the universe flows in. I’m aware I get to create whatever stories I want, and the fear of choosing the wrong ones is feeling more distant, although as I write this it is 3:00 in the morning and the world feels still and at peace, which helps.

My attempts at willing myself into cycles of grace and ease rather than cycles of crisis have been…well, they haven’t really been working. As has been pointed out by several well-meaning souls, I tend to put myself in situations where all of my triggers get pushed, often all at once. Am I pushing myself through triggers at a rapid pace in order to get that shit up and out of the unconscious to be dealt with and healed? Or am I just re-fragmenting myself in heaping doses?

The answers to those questions don’t seem to be relevant to me at this moment in time. I can’t keep trying to make sense of it all. The fact is that I don’t know — and I could probably spin whatever story I want around it.

I’ve been pondering the notions of ‘safety’ and ‘what is safe,’ and at this point every attempt to understand, to qualify, to classify just seems exhausting and unworthy of my time. I just want to let it go.

Very Piscean, no? As that New Moon on the Aquarius-Pisces cusp rocked my South Node, my progressed Moon moved into Pisces and my Venus return [in Pisces] occurred. Although I often refer to Pisces as the ocean of divine love, there is another interpretation that occurs almost as often — not to say they aren’t related. It is one of Pisces as the unqualified realms, where everything just exists. Where the shark stalks and kills its prey because that is what it does, not because it has malicious intent. Where death happens because it is part of the natural cycle, not because someone has to learn a lesson of grief or about graceful transition. It’s about letting go of the concepts and just accepting.

There has been so much floating through my reality this week whispering something about the importance of stepping out in front of our creations at this time. About how thoughts are manifesting quite quickly, and that we need to be honing our skills when it comes to reality-creation. Earlier in the week, I was receiving these whispers as added pressure. I have felt so far from being able to see ‘the truth’ and so unable to get myself out of my fear that I didn’t want to think about my power to create reality, because I sure didn’t want the reality I was thinking of.

And now…again, the feeling of letting go. Of being reborn and having no idea what the future holds, and being OK with it. At least in the moment, and really what else is there but this moment?

I’m sure I’ll get back to the more euphoric tones of my Piscean self at some point, although I really hope to stay clear of the delusional parts of it (please?). But for now, there is something about the feeling of letting things be unqualified, just letting them exist as they are without analysis or understanding or mental-masochism, that is helping me to remember my center, to actually hear through to the core of who I am. Perhaps by remembering my center I’ll be able to begin the work of stepping out in front of my creations? It’s too middle-of-the-night for a pondering of that question, so I think I’ll let things rest for now.

Here’s wishing you a happy Pisces Dream Season. May they be full of whatever you need to bring you to the peace at the center.