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For those of us living in the U.S., tonight brings a cosmic event that is part of a major energetic signatures of these extraordinary times.  For the third time since June 2012, Uranus, the Cosmic Awakener, forms an exact square in the heavens with Pluto, the Cosmic Transformer.  Any square between celestial bodies is full of conflict and creative dynamism. This one, between two of the mightiest forces in our solar system, is world-changing in scope and relentless in power.  By March 2015, it will have occurred seven times.

Uranus and Pluto make contact  every 40 to 50 years or so. Those moments are so powerful that a comprehensive history of civilization can be written using their dates as an outline.  Normally, those contacts include three or perhaps four moments of exact connection. These represent massive energies, and bring about events like the U.S. Civil War, the Great Depression, or the two World Wars.

The Seven Squares of Uranus & Pluto: A World-Discovering Order of Magnitude

The seven squares we’re now in the midst of belong to a different order of magnitude. It’s been over 500 years since the world experienced seven Uranus-Pluto squares. The final years of the 15th century were a turning point for humanity, as a new world was discovered that changed the course of history altogether.  Portugese explorers landed in North and South America and on the coast of India.  And in Europe, monks began to defy authority and to claim that contact with the divine could be made without the intervention of hierarchical bureaucracy.

Seven is a mystic number.  It carries the vibration of the seeker, the dreamer.  Far more spiritual more than religious, seven searches to understand the mystery.  Similarly, 33—the number of months between June 2012 and March 2015, when the seven squares occur—is considered by the ancient art of numerology to be a “master number.” These double digit numbers are said to carry a vibration of unusually high frequency and with it, special powers and gifts.

The Uranus-Pluto Square at 11 Degrees:  An Exploration of the Cosmic Order Within You

“A triangularly shaped flight of wild geese,” the Sabian symbol for 11 degrees of Aries, reminds us of the cosmic order all living things carry within them.

The degrees in which this square takes place resonate deeply with the spiritual power of both numbers.  From 11 degrees of Aries, Uranus challenges Pluto at 11 degrees of Capricorn (11, of course, is another of the master numbers in numerology, carrying the energy of spiritual illumination.)   The symbol for 11 degrees of Aries is “a triangularly shaped flight of wild geese.” It evokes the attunement to the cosmic order that every living thing carries within it. It reminds us that each one of us is part of the cosmic matrix.

In Capricorn, this degree is symbolized by “an illustrated lecture on natural history, revealing little-known aspects of life.”  No one can deny that our age is brimming with discoveries of unfamiliar realms of life—from the solar storms we have only recently been able to observe in detail, to the enormous plasma cloud that is expected to reach the center of our galaxy next month.

Today’s square, however, brings us to a critical point in our personal and planetary journeys of discovery and creation. As this month’s eclipses and solar storms signal, we’re at another threshold. The great force of Uranus and Pluto is once more breaking new energetic ground, releasing energies of deep illumination, powerful transformation, great surprise, and  profound mystery.  In the coming month, an enormous plasma cloud will reach the great matrix of creation and destruction known as Sagittarius A–the super-massive black hole at the center of our Milky Way whose mass is 500 times greater than our Sun’s. Some predict that the force of this encounter will radiate all the way to our obscure corner of the galaxy, triggering far-reaching changes in human consciousness.  

The Sun and Venus: Reactivating the Trigger Points of Irrevocable Change

Today the Sun enters Gemini, activating the energy of the powerful ring of fire eclipse that occurred on May 20, 2012.

As the titanic forces of deep and irrevocable change collide within us and around us, the Sun moves into the first degree of Gemini — 0 Gemini.  Far beyond our solar system, it’s the same degree of the sky occupied by Alcyone, the central star of the Pleiades.  This is where the powerful ring of fire solar eclipse took place on May 20, 2012, signaling that the world we’ve known is about to begin disappearing before our eyes.

The threshold we began to cross at the moment of that eclipse, exactly one year ago today, is already receding rapidly behind us.  So is the passage of Venus across the Sun two weeks later.  On Wednesday and Thursday of this week, she’ll move once more through that degree of Gemini, re-activating the mystery of that encounter between the Cosmic Feminine and the life-giving Star of our solar system. 

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By June 24,  2012, when the first Uranus-Pluto square took place, we had crossed the energetic threshold. This week, we step across another one.  Look back, and see how far we’ve come.  The world we’re headed towards is only beginning to be discovered.  Already, though, we know a few things about it.  It’s a world that’s inseparably joined to its cosmic matrix.  And where it’s most alive at this very moment is in the songs of your own heart and the vibrant depths of your own soul.  To paraphrase the poet e. e. cummings, “we carry its heart within us.  we carry it in our hearts.”

The rippling energy of last week’s lunar eclipse continues to unfold within us in way that’s very real and extremely intense way, creating what many are experiencing as a vortex of transformation.  Each day this week has brought a confrontation with the Manifestor and the shedding of  another layer of patterns that no longer serve us.  Each step is preparing us for what is to come–two more eclipses and the third square of Uranus and Pluto, all within the next three weeks.

This all began with the two most powerful carriers of feminine energy in the sky–Venus and the Moon.  Two days after Luna’s eclipse, at her moment of perfect fullness in Scorpio, Venus moved into the same degree as the Moon’s South Node.—and when she did, we were all put on notice. The old ways will no longer work.

The South Node is single most karmic point in the sky, carrying the energy of all we have been in the past.  Venus’ presence on the South Node activated our awareness.. We can no longer avoid recognition of old ways that are no longer viable. To realize the extraodinary potential of our times, we’re going to have to break with the energy patterns of our past. Somewhere in your inner sky, that break is beginning at a deeper level this month.

All the personal planets will confront Saturn from across the sky as they pass through Taurus.

Thanks to Saturn the Manifestor, that’s been the news of the week: a very real, extremely intense, and exceedingly uncomfortable process, not unlike going through an energetic funnel.  From his slow, vision questing crawl through the early degrees of Scorpio, Saturn has confronted the Sun, Mars, and the Moon from across the sky.   These meetings have had all the seriousness of the examination given to candidates for initiation—and in fact, that is exactly what they have been. What Saturn is probing us to determine is this:  are you ready to release what is blocking your path to the next level of your life?

The Manifestor is vision-questing through early Scorpio like a pilgrim, making prostrations every step of the way.  In five months, he’ll only move just under seven degrees.  At this slow, deliberate speed, the Manifestor is searching for something we need in order to make Scorpio’s transformational power real and tangible in our lives and our world.  Wherever the degrees from 4 to 11 Scorpio are to be found in your birth chart is where he’s looking for the hidden treasure in your inner sky.

With each of the personal planets–the Sun, the Moon, Mercury, Venus, and Mars–opposing Saturn by May 5, and a pair of eclipses in Scorpio and Taurus, the heat has been turned up full force.  Taurus is where energy is more deeply rooted than anywhere else in your inner cosmos. Change is not something that happens easily or casually for this fixed earth sign.

As the Sun then Mars, then Luna all moved into the degree of Taurus exactly across the sky from Saturn, each was examined with the same deep, thorough, almost ruthless attention that the Manifestor has been giving to each degree of Scorpio that he retrogrades through.  Our heart, our actions and our emotions—all have been tested, and pushed to a limit in the process.

On Sunday, the last of these meetings will occur when Mercury takes up his position.  Our perceptions and the way we express them will be the subject of the Manifestor’s scrutiny at this last .  Then we will enter the Dark Moon phase before the eclipse.  After the last 10 days, we will know on a much deeper level what to shed and release to make space for the seed energy that is already forming within us.

We’re already in the energy field of next week’s powerful solar eclipse in Taurus.

Meanwhile, last night we entered the midpoint between the first, powerful eclipses of the Year of the Water Dragon. Astrologically, midpoints allow us to work a little cosmic alchemy in our lives.   When they’re triggered, two distinct energies can be tapped simultaneously—in this case, a transformative lunar eclipse in Scorpio and a solar eclipse in Taurus full of breakthrough potential. When Mercury confronts Saturn on Sunday, the combined energy of completion and release on the one hand, and of the breakthrough energies of abundance and fertility on the other, will have been activated for almost three days.

Already we’re in a new eclipse field.   On May 9 in the U.S. (May 10 in Europe and points east), the seed energy of a very tangible and fertile new beginning will be created from the energy of the Sun and the Moon as they meet in the same degree of Taurus at the solar eclipse.

It will be another extremely powerful cosmic event.  Both the May 9 Taruus eclipse, and the solar eclipse in Scorpio to come in November 2013 , are part of a series whose past eclipses include 1905, the “miracle year” in which a Swiss patent office clerk named Albert Einstein published four papers that changed our ideas of time, space, energy, and matter, and 1977.  The same Saros series includes the year of the discovery of Chiron, the Cosmic Shaman who orbited into our solar system to guide us through the great shift in human consciousness that is underway.  WIth the spring eclipse season of 2013, that shift is fast approaching a tipping point–in the cosmos around us and in the cosmos within us.

With today’s Scorpio Lunar Eclipse, a surge of evolutionary energy that began 1,280 years ago comes bursting into your life.

With today’s Full Moon Lunar Eclipse, a surge of energy comes bursting into your life.  As the grounded, conservative Taurus Sun confronts the shamanic power of the Scorpio Moon,  something that’s been gestating beneath the surface comes into being, with the drama and surprise that birth always brings.

In the Buddhist world, the Scorpio Full Moon is known as Wesak.  Also known as the Buddha Moon, it honors the Buddha’s birth, his deeply transformative process of shedding illusions that we call “enlightenment,” and the death of his physical body.

This lunar eclipse takes the always intense energies of the Scorpio Full Moon and magnifies them. Themes of security and fear, defendedness and hostility are magnified by Saturn’s presence close to the Moon and Mars’ conjunction to the Sun.  So is the potentials for breakthrough, at a deep and lasting level.  It’s up to us.

If we want to point our arrows anywhere but towards our desire to shed the dead skin of our lives, we’ve got plenty of choices.  With not only the Sun and the Moon, but also Saturn and Mars, confronting each other, we can be harshly critical of ourselves or others.  We can be afraid of the world, of other people, or of the longing of our own souls.

Neptune at the Eclipse: New Birth through The Heart

Or we can tune into Neptune, the Cosmic Dreamer, and trust the process of Life that is unfolding within us.  Neptune’s strongly supporting the Moon’s deep, transformative energy with a trine, and he’s creating opportunity with the Sun’s energized and grounded sense of purpose, with a sextile.  Opening our hearts–to ourselves, to our world, and to the Cosmos–we can receive the inspiration, the vision, and the Love that we need.  It can show up as breakthrough, as divine intervention, as a blessing from the Universe.

The Scorpio Eclipse: A  Mystical Connection with Your Ancient Ancestors

This eclipse is full of power on its own.  It’s also a gateway to a season of deep and potent change–the vortex of a momentous shift occurring beneath the surface of all that lives on planet Earth.

Normally, we very rarely, experience on a visceral level the vast sweep of evolutionary change that is unfolding through our individual lives.  We don’t often get the chance to experience a sense of connection that’s both personal and mystical with our ancestors from a thousand or more years ago. Today, we can. For that, as for so much else, we can thank the Cosmic Dreamer.

Every eclipse belongs to a series of many others, which unfolds over centuries. These series, known as Saros cycles, were discovered by the astrologers of a part of what is now Iraq, known in the ancient world as Chaldea. Through their detailed observation and highly developed mathematical skills, the Chaldean astrologers mapped and dated series of eclipses stretching across a thousand years and more.  They discovered that periods of 18 years and 11 days separate each eclipse in a single series.  They called these periods “saros.”

The April 25, 2013 Lunar Eclipse in Scorpio, for example, is part of a series that began 1,280 years ago.  The new energy that is rising up into your life through today’s eclipse is directly connected to the energy that came into the world on May 20, 859.–and to the last eclipses in this series, which occurred on  April 4 , 1977 and April 15, 1995.

Stop for a moment and think about that.  What’s unfolding today is linked to the events in April of 1977 and 1995.  And those times were, like this one, connected to the year 859.

The wave of Viking exploration was rolling over western Europe when the energy of today’s eclipse began to unfold through time.

That was a year when the great wave of Viking exploration was rolling over Europe. Norwegian Vikings had already sacked Paris and in England, they had taken York. Ireland and Scotland were already plundered.  By the end of the 9^th century, the Vikings would have established kingdoms in England, Iceland, and the Duchy of Normandy in France.

Elsewhere in Europe, the Holy Roman Empire was already beginning to fragment, and Christian rulers had already begun to conquer the pagan Danes, Poles, Czechs, and Magyars.

Buddhism was established across Southeast Asia, and the messages Muhammad had received form God in his cave south of Mecca were already 250 years old.  The Diamond Sutra, the world’s oldest printed book, had been published the year before this Saros series 112 began.

The world of 859 was only beginning to discover itself–just as in a very profound way, the world of 2013 is only beginning to discover all that it is part of, from the deep interior to the vast regions of the Cosmos.  Similarly, in 859, the travels of Marco Polo through central Asia were four centuries in the future.  The voyages to the Americas and India were over six centuries away.

The chart cast for the first eclipse in a series reveals the evolutionary purpose of the entire series. It shows us the quality of energy that links us to that long-ago time, an energy that still lives within us.  Australian astrologer Bernadette Brady, an international authority on the Saros series,  writes:

“This series is about the release of tension. A situation which has been lingering will suddenly clear. In the clearing of the problem there is also a sense of grief or loss which is not so much personal as belonging to a group or collective.”

For more clues about the purposes of today’s eclipse in our own lives, we can also look at the last times that eclipses occurred in 5 degrees of Scorpio, the point in the sky where  today’s eclipse takes place:  April 1986 and  2005.

Life’s Evolutionary Journey: Unfolding through You

What happened in your life in these earlier springs of 1977 and 2005, 1986  and 2005?  Think about how those times are energetically connected with the issues you’re confronting now.  You’re going deeper now, and expanding further into the Universe.  You’re following a trail of energy that began long, long ago–in the days of the Vikings and the time of the Diamond Sutra. Travel safely and boldly, with an open heart and a courageous spirit.  You have the energy of over a thousand years behind you.

Four days ago, the explosions shaking our world came closer to home for those of us in the U.S.  It was exactly one week into a 21-day road trip through late Aries and early Taurus that Mars and the Sun are making.  These two are the fieriest planets in our solar system, and when they team up, what gets unleashed is firepower.

Venus and Neptune: Open the Heart, Heal the Wounds

Now, just past the mid-way point in this journey, the Cosmic Warrior and our Star are in the last degree of Aries.  Taurus, the ancient sign of the fertile, abundant earth, is just one degree away.  Venus is waiting there. In today’s early hours, as a massive manhunt swept through the locked-down city of Boston, the Cosmic Feminine created opportunity with Neptune the Mystic.  As Venus sextiled Neptune–himself aligned with the enchanted mystical energy of the great star Fomalhaut–she invited hearts and minds across the planet to open to the healing power of Love.

As a manhunt sweeps through a locked-down Boston at the end of a week of exploding fire, Venus and Neptune open our hearts to the healing energy of the Cosmic Heart. Green, the color of the fields of the Earth and her sign of Taurus, is also the color the heart chakra.

As a crowded Aries sky turned into a firestorm on the day of the Boston Marathon, two things happened.  One was that Mercury, the Cosmic Messenger, joined the Sun, Mars, Uranus, and Eris in Aries.  The other was that Venus and her energy of relatedness  left the fieriest sign in the sky and moved into Taurus.

In the U.S., two young men carrying duffel bags filled with bombs turned the Boston Marathon into a nightmare.  In multiple cities across Iraq, bombs killed hundreds and injured more.  A fertilizer plant exploded in Texas.  And as the Sun entered the last degree of Aries, evidence of Syria’s use of chemical weapons was presented to the U.N.

Mercury Conjunct Uranus:  A Breakthrough in Consciousness?

As Mars and the Sun move through the final minutes of the last degree of Aries, Mercury the Messenger moves into the same degree of Aries as Uranus, the Cosmic Awakener. Together, they signal the possibility of the  breakthrough in consciousness we desperately need.

In the last two months, we’ve been through an extraordinary energetic immersion.  From late February to mid-March, the most potent Pisces sky we’ve seen in centuries dislodged firmly rooted perceptions and certainties and brought long-forgotten memories floating to the surface.  Across this water-soaked world the firestorm of recent weeks has raged.

Now, all we’ve felt and seen is getting grounded.  The Sun, Mars, and Venus are now in Taurus, the sign of the fertile, abundant earth.  Venus sextiles Neptune, allowing us to gather information through a process much like psychic osmosis.  And Mercury the Messenger moves into the same degree as Uranus, the Cosmic Awakener. This meeting could have various outcomes.  We could have a disruptive, unsettling conversation. We could have an accident. And we could have a breakthrough in consciousness.

A Taurus Reunion

In Taurus, such a breakthrough would almost certainly include a heightened awareness of the Earth as the matrix of life.  This is the destination of the Sun and Mars.  The cosmic road trip that began in fiery Aries will end in earthy Taurus.  Anthropologist Alberto Villoldo writes of the link between our connection with the Earth and the out-of-control Mars energy that has scourged our planet not just for a few weeks, but for the last few millenia:    

“When the first chakra is disconnected from the feminine Earth, we can feel orphaned and motherless. The masculine principle predominates, and we look for security from material things. Individuality prevails over relationship, and selfish drives triumph over family, social and global responsibility. The more separated we become from the Earth, the more hostile we become to the feminine. We disown our passion, our creativity, and our sexuality. Eventually the Earth itself becomes a baneful place. I remember being told by a medicine woman in the Amazon, “Do you know why they are really cutting down the rain forest? Because it is wet and dark and tangled and feminine.”

Into the Eclipse Season

This possibility for breakthrough, as the Sun and Mars join Venus in the sign of the Earth, comes not a moment too soon.  We’re just days away from a lunar eclipse in Scorpio next Wednesday.  The first eclipse of 2013, on April 25, opens a power-packed eclipse season.  Instead of two eclipses, we’ll have three between April 25 and May 25–with the third of Uranus’ and Pluto’s world-changing squares coming on May 21.

Lunar eclipses bring things to conclusion and completion.  They bring the endings that need to occur before the new can begin.  In the month ahead, we’ll see many things come to an end—the things that need to conclude so that the new beginning can come, for each of us and for all of us.

The Flow of Grace Is Calling YOu

Because what’s just ahead is grace, a rushing river of abundance and blessing.  July brings a rare and auspicious grand trine in the water signs.  Jupiter will be in Cancer, the sign of his exaltaton. Neptune is in his own sign, for the first time in 165 years. Joining them in an unimpeded flow of energy will be Saturn, whose function is to draw energy from the forlmless into form.  Eleven days after this Grand Water Trine between the Blessing Giver, the Dreamer, and the Lord of Form perfects, a Star of David will form around it, with Venus, the Moon, and Pluto filling in the Earth signs.

This is a profound opportunity for creating the harmony, healing, and prosperity that we dream of.  We haven’t been taught that the Love that holds the Universe together can heal all that is broken and crazed in our world. We haven’t been taught that we have the ability to connect with the Universe and join in creating the good future for all that lives. We haven’t been taught that we are part of the Universe, that we carry the Universe within us.  What we haven’t been taught by our culture, though, is now being shown to us. Our part is to open our eyes, open our minds, and open our hearts.

Venus has been busy during her journey through Aries. In just two weeks, she’s merged her energies with the Sun, Uranus, and Mars, clashed with Pluto, collaborated with Jupiter, and confronted the Moon. When she leaves, we won’t be the same.

The Cosmic Feminine has a message for you this week.  As it always is with her, there’s nothing abstract about it.  It’s personal.  And it’s important.  That’s why she’s brought the message four times in less than two weeks:  Come alive. Come fully, vibrantly alive.  Don’t wait til tomorrow.  Do it now.  In this moment, take the energy that makes you come alive and begin something with it.  It will change your life.

Venus has been on fire for two weeks, ever since she crossed the Aries Point. It’s from that zone of hot, creative intensity, that she’s talking to you.  If you aren’t listening yet, this would be a good time to start.

Because on Wednesday (5:35 a.m.  Eastern Daylight Savings Time in the U.S.), the Aries New Moon will take a torch to the fire that’s been building for two weeks.  This is when the fire burns into your heart and soul.  This is when you can begin something that can change your life.

This is the seed energy that began to form at the Vernal Equinox, when the Sun crossed the Aries point.  The very next day, the heat intensified, when Venus crossed the Aries Point.  A few days later, she merged her vibrations with those of the Sun and Uranus, the Cosmic Awakener himself.

These three—our Star, the ruler of cosmic chaos and the daughter of chaos—then turned their light on Luna, full across the sky in Venus’ sign of Libra.  As they flooded the Moon with their liberating passion, we felt it–not only in the sky above us, but also deep within us.
Saturday night, Venus and Mars merged their vibrations in the same degree of Aries.  These two met regularly, in a cycle that’s linked to the rhythms of life itself.  But they haven’t met in Aries–the energy that begins the world anew–since 1985.

Ever since we’ve all been drenched in the afterglow.

Wednesday’s New Moon in Aries will seed the energy that’s been building for two weeks in your heart and soul.

And it’s not over. Wednesday, when the Aries New Moon occurs just one degree away from the place where Venus and Mars merged their energies into one hot, fiery, blaze of life force.

That’s where all the power you need lies and it’s Venus who’s been pulling out the stops for two weeks, so that you’ll  claim it, feel it, and be it.  She’ll be off to the side, three degrees away, when the Sun and the Moon merge their energies on Wednesday. Her part in stoking the fire is done–for now.   What she’s been seeding, however, is just getting started, within you and around you.

Tomorrow, we’ll see exactly why it matters so much, to you and to the world.  There’s a long history to this energy, and a very big and bright future.  For that, stay tuned.