Neptune Stations in Pisces and We Head to the Gemini New Moon Entryway Into the Cardinal Grand Cross/Triple Eclipse Summer of 2011

Flooding in southeastern Saskatchewan

As I've written about, the current cardinal t-square formed by Uranus in Aries opposite Saturn in Libra square Pluto in Capricorn becomes a quite unsettled (and unsettling) Cardinal Grand Cross mid-June through the end of August. We're under very similar astro conditions as we were last summer, only tighter and more condensed. The parallels are striking - and orchestrated.

- Last summer, the Canadian prairies, where I'm located, were flooded. This caused massive crop failures - if farmers were even able to get a crop in after an unusually cold and wet spring. Honeybees starved to death due to the lack of flowering crops - not a good omen.

This spring, we have more of the same: unusually cold temperatures and heavy precipitation. Farmers can't get on the land due to flooding. People along the rivers have been evacuated from their homes, and they're calling it a once in 300 years flood.

- Last spring and summer, the prairies had wild weather all summer long, including baseball-sized hail, destructive winds and tornadoes.

This spring, various U.S. states are experiencing deadly tornadoes and baseball-sized hail. A HAARP-induced tornado Sunday night in Joplin, Missouri killed at least 116 people and destroyed large swathes of the 50,000-person city.

More artificially-created, unnatural disasters are to be expected. Don't blame Mother Nature or even global warming on these ones. Their hands are being forced.

- Last spring, the major, gut-wrenching disaster was the oil/Corexit/synthetic micro-organism horror show in the Gulf of Mexico.

This spring, it's Fukushima. (Both events are under media blackout.) The most recent readings released to the public show radiation releases from Reactor 1 shot up from 45 sieverts per hour to over 200 sieverts per hour on May 22/23. For perspective as far as how much radiation this is: an exposure of six sieverts per hour results in almost immediate human death. With a timeline of nine months until containment (as if anyone could really pinpoint it), the entire northern hemisphere is at risk for contamination by radioactive fallout - all while the government and media tells us next to nothing. Almost 5,000 Japanese nuclear power plant workers have been found to be suffering from internal radiation exposure after inhaling radioactive materials near the disaster site.

- In April of last year, a volcanic eruption in Iceland spread ash across northern Europe, stranding 10 million air travellers.

This May 22, just after Family Radio's "Rapture Weekend," another volcano blew in Iceland, kicking up similar clouds of ash and causing more air traffic problems.

- Last summer, the G8 and G20 meetings took place June 26-27 under a cardinal t-square/energetic Grand Cross as well as a wickedly potent Capricorn Full Moon lunar eclipse exactly conjunct Pluto at 4 degrees. The meetings took place with Uranus on the zero degree of Aries, moving into its long-term square position to Pluto in Capricorn, and planning for the Uranus-Pluto square series was laid out.

This summer, NATO is involved in a brand new war against Libya, headed by Canadian General Charles Bouchard. The initial attack was scheduled to begin on the vernal equinox 2011 as Uranus re-entered the zero degree of Aries. (The invasion of Iraq was scheduled to begin on the vernal equinox 2003 as Uranus ingressed Pisces.) NATO warplanes have been bombing Libya since then with the heaviest shelling to date happening this morning. Three people are dead and at least 150 injured, many gravely.

Osama bin Laden's death was announced May 1 just before Obama's appearance on The Oprah Winfrey show, giving his approval ratings a boost as he leads the United States into another attack on a sovereign nation. Other reports claim bin Laden has been dead for years. Now, aggressive language is being ramped up against Pakistan for supposedly harbouring bin Laden, justifying an attack against that country.

It's all a farce.

As we head into another potent eclipse season within Cardinal Grand Cross, the socio-political scene across the globe is incendiary, and the orchestrated war machinations take direction from the energy and decisions made at those G8/G20 meetings under the Plutonic lunar eclipse.

Obama has recently made purposefully confusing statements about Israel and Palestine, with CBC reporter Neil McDonald writing: "A diplomatic fog surrounds U.S. President Barack Obama's explosive remarks last week about the borders of a future Palestinian state...The diplomatic fog, as is often the case, is deliberate."

You nailed it, Neil.

Neptune is currently stationing retrograde at 0 degrees Pisces (going retro June 3), and communication tensions related to this strong Neptunian overlay infuse the Gemini New Moon eclipse June 1. Everything has that tinge of foggy surreality - especially when related to the media (Gemini) - and this energy is being purposefully utilized to veil, divert, confuse, and sway mass opinion.

We're in a confusing and arduous place with this Neptune station, moving through life in a world where dream (nightmare?) and waking life are difficult to differentiate.

The Sun in Gemini is currently moving out of a square to stationing Neptune in Pisces. As the Neptune-influenced Sun moves through the eclipse and to a June 13 conjunction with the South Node in Gemini (followed by Mercury, Venus and Mars), media-related diversions abound. The line between truth and manipulated information is as blurry as a surrealist watercolour, and we're only getting the latter from most sources.

And still the Sagittarius North Node demands that we stick to the truth - staying firmly within the bounds of what we know and feel to be true, what we have faith in. This is the shield that keeps us sheltered as we move through the kicked-up Geminian detritus of half-truths, partial-truths, artifice, lies and utter bullshit. This is how we stay straight and true as an arrow, moving through the bluster of words and frequencies attempting to toss is this way and that.

- Gemini New Moon: June 1, 2011 at 4:03 p.m. Central, partial solar eclipse at 11 degrees
- Sagittarius Full Moon: June 15, 2011 at 3:14 p.m., total lunar eclipse at 24 degrees
- Cancer New Moon: July 1, 2011 at 3:54 a.m., partial solar eclipse at 9 degrees

- Cardinal Grand Cross (Uranus in Aries opposite Saturn in Libra, Pluto in Capricorn opposite Mercury, Sun, Venus, Mars in Cancer) in effect June 16 to August 29, 2011

Points of intensification:

- June 18 - 22 as Mercury in Cancer triggers the Cardinal Grand Cross
- June 25 - July 2 as Sun in Cancer triggers the Cardinal Grand Cross
- July 1 - Cancer New Moon partial solar eclipse at 9 degrees Cancer within Cardinal Grand Cross formation
- July 6 - 13 as Venus in Cancer triggers the Cardinal Grand Cross
- August 8 - 25 as Mars in Cancer triggers the Cardinal Grand Cross

Now, I'm pretty sure those who read this blog are able to handle and absorb the facts of our planetary situation, but for those who find information laid out like this overwhelming, I will remind you of the love, spiritual guidance and people fighting the good fight that you are always connected to, never separated from. We're experiencing this mystery together, and the love and spiritual power we belong to is so much stronger than the forces attempting to break it.

No matter what happens, you are loved, you are beautiful and you are whole. Every nasty trick and shitty turn of events is just one more layer to experience (with black humour, if possible), move through and shed. They never touch the core of you. They don't even come close.

The loving spirits we're connected to know what we're going through. The information we're collecting, the perspective we're gathering, and the work we're doing are invaluable. None of it goes to waste. All of it matters. We're here now for a reason, and for those of us who have the skills, getting to the root, to the full ground-level reality of what's going on here is where we're most effective. This is how we add to the cumulative knowledge of what's going on and what can be done about it. This is how we hit the energetic marks where things can change.

Not many can go there, right to the central points, so there is honour in doing so. It hurts. It's hard. It's scary. It's lonely. And you're honoured for doing so. Feel the lineage behind you. Feel the grit it's gone through. And honour yourself for being another sexy, hardcore motherfucker in a line of sexy, hardcore motherfuckers who had the courage to go there. Thank-you for having the courage to stay with it. It's not easy.

I don't live in terms of things being "light" or "dark," "positive" or "negative." I personally believe that the light-dark paradigm is an artificial one, perpetuated through New Age to keep people from their true effectiveness. To me, that way of looking at things is overly simplistic. It keeps people using training wheels. I just don't see things in those terms, flipping back and forth like a switch. I don't feel the subjects I write about are "dark" and that I then need to run out and take a bunch of hits of Neptunian ether "light" to counteract the effects.

My soul craves give-it-to-me-straight reality. That's what I find beautiful and inspiring. I know it and feel it, anyway. I'm not able to deny it. So to know the way things are on a deep level gives me strength. It validates that I am not crazy and that my experience of this planet is on the money.

I'm not attracted to gloss, watered-down social artifice, or artificial light. I like reading about reality, and that's what I like writing about, so that's my contribution. It's the type of information I find important and pertinent to the situation of being human on this planet at this time. So, to use a hockey metaphor, I have to keep driving to the net, and I can't and won't apologize for the information I include on this blog.

From now on, I write what I write, and the chips can fall where they may.

You Know What Term I'm a Little Sick Of? Cardinal T-Square.

Baseball-sized hail wreaked havoc in southeastern Saskatchewan this past Saturday, July 31. Since just before the Full Moon Capricorn eclipse on June 26, Saskatchewan has experienced the wildest weather in memory, being pounded by storm after storm of hail, mass quantities of rain causing flooding, and tornadoes. One hundred fourteen communities have declared themselves disaster areas this summer due to flooding, and there has been massive crop failure due to both a cold, wet spring and now flooding. I'm not a person who believes most weather patterns are natural at this point (an earthquake AND a tornado just before the G8/G20 Summits?), but this is quite symbolic of the astro energies we're dealing with currently.

We're getting hammered. Tempered on all fronts by the weight and pressure of the cardinal t-square configuration.

Action planet Mars in Libra completes its grind through this uber tight t-square late tonight with an opposition to Jupiter in Aries and a square to Pluto in Capricorn. Heavy is understatement.

Mars is still within range of its conjunction to Saturn, and our actions carry an extreme amount of weight. We're in a time frame when the decisions we make and actions we take (or don't make and take) have such broad, long-term effect that if we were fully aware of the possibilities, we would probably freeze and curl into a little ball. All four seasons are changing in our lives simultaneously.

Luckily, we're humans, and we're never 100% aware of the stakes. Also luckily, the amount of pressure involved here makes it nearly impossible NOT to take some sort of action. To curl up into a little ball would probably mean being crushed under the weight of it all. At this point, it's difficult if we do and difficult if we don't, but the cardinal impetus squeezing the crap out of us says we have to go. Things have crumbled all around us, and taking the next step and then the next, even when we're dragging ourselves through it, is the only way to forge our way out of the wreckage.

"Tipping the scales moments" is putting it mildly. These are the types of energies where the fate of humanity on this planet lies in our skill (or lack thereof) in dealing responsibly. The weight of a billion interactions that have preceded us hangs in the air, and this is where things are decided.

Feeling pressured is understandable. The responsibility is pressing. The stakes are high. The complexity is incomprehensible. But again, we can't think about that. We just have to carefully determine what is right, what our souls tell us is right, and do it.

It's going to be tight. There's only so much we can do at this point with insanity being unleashed all around us. There is only the thinnest of threads to follow through it. But we're doing it. We knew we could, and we're doing it. We had the best chance of getting it right. The right mix of finely-honed skills, fire, determination and experience for these times. So we were called in, elected as the ones best able to take a shot. To take the shot for all those who came before, who wait in the etheric wings with bated breath. As we crawl on bleeding elbows through barbed wire and thistles to get to the release point.

As of midnight tonight, some of the pressure breaks as Mars slowly starts to pull out of the t-square formation. It will be fully out of orb by the time of the third and final square of Saturn in Libra and Pluto in Capricorn August 21.

Don't be too relieved just yet, though. Venus enters Libra Friday, August 6 (9:47 p.m. Mountain) in tight conjunction with Eros, and those two run the cardinal t-square gauntlet, too, August 7-9. This won't be a relaxing weekend, so the Monday to Friday-ers hoping to escape the pressure with a weekend trip out of town will be out of luck.

Just to add to the fun, as of 3:50 p.m. Friday, the Moon will be in Cancer, becoming the fourth cardinal leg. For just over six hours, we have a full, exact Cardinal Grand Cross in our sky. (Pulling out of range by the early morning of Saturday, August 7.)

Venus and Eros finish their last aspects and start to pull out of the t-square late August 9, the same day of the Leo New Moon. This is the release point of the previous Cancer New Moon solar eclipse July 11, so this New Moon is going to be a relief in more ways than one.

As of August 10, we have released the most potent aspects of the recent eclipse season and personal planets Mars and Venus will have made it through the cardinal t-square gauntlet - the only personal planets (other than the Moon) that will take part in this cardinal t-square.

As of August 21, Saturn will have completed it's final square to Pluto in Capricorn from Libra, and we are past the most potent and constricting point of the cardinal t-square.

With Saturn involved, taking this stuff in chunks of time can really be helpful. Saturn transits often feel as if they will go on forever. So even though things may feel insane right now, a major layer lightens after the August 9 Leo New Moon. And by September, things really start to ease.

Sure, we'll be into the retrograde shadow degrees of a massively potent Venus retrograde in Scorpio by then, but honestly, at this point even a Venus retro in Scorpio will feel like something we're better able to handle.

Jupiter in Aries Puts the Brakes On and Slides Backward Into a Square With Pluto

The quick burst of fiery forward expansion and movement we experienced as Jupiter and Uranus transited Aries over the past couple months has just come to a creaking halt. Jupiter went retrograde in Aries yesterday morning, joining Uranus, and our earliest of Arien progress is now being fused into place (or discarded if it is not to Pluto's liking) by a square to Pluto in Capricorn tonight at 10:20 p.m. Mountain.

We've reached an initial landing point, anchored a crucial starting place for next spring. The Sun in Aries 2011 is our grandscale birth point - at that time, we've reached daybreak, although we do not yet know what the light of day will reveal.

We're just finishing the planting of the initial seed points for the next five years with a six-week cardinal t-square on the early degrees along with the fifth and final Saturn-Uranus opposition July 26. We can all breathe a sigh of relief that that opposition cycle is completing, but we have to make it a quick one - we're being propelled into new territory on multiple fronts. Things are not as they were, and we're getting an instinctual feel for what that means moving forward.

At the same time, we are gradually moving back over this earliest of new territory and into the swampy, highly karmic morass of tail-end Pisces at the tail-end astrological Piscean era. Believe me. Very few of us are looking forward to this. But re-enter it we must. Because we never really left. There is mucho unfinished business – mostly collective, but also personal – including that little situation going on in the Gulf of Mexico. You might have heard something about it?

The reality of this situation has yet to sink in for many (a big part of which being the manipulation of related information through the media), but Jupiter and Uranus transiting back into the last degrees of Pisces – the last degrees of the astrological zodiac – will be a heavy reminder. Uranus Rx re-enters Pisces August 13 and Jupiter Rx September 8.

We're all antsy for movement, but for those who have not yet been released from the inertia and heaviness of two-and-a-half years of Saturn in Virgo opposite Uranus in Pisces, the traversing of Jupiter and Uranus of late Pisces will be a last drawing on of spiritual guidance. Hitting the final marks that click disparate parts into place and light us up with the full Piscean understanding of the situation of life on this planet. In particular, the connection of states of being and shared suffering around the world.

Once infused with this grand finale Piscean awareness, we are given some time to come to a state of acceptance before being spurred fully into new actions and directions indicated by Jupiter (January 2011) and then Uranus (March 2011) re-entering Aries.

As Jupiter and Uranus move back into late Pisces, keeping an eye firmly on our spiritual reasons for being here during these times, as well as on the impermanence of our trips, can help us find the courage to stay effective in the current moment while elevating us out of the oily, toxic mess threatening to pull us under.

We're in a period of potent and dynamic change and upheaval – indicated astrologically by the cycle of squares between Uranus in Aries and Pluto in Capricorn (coming to exactness between June 2012 and March 2015). Think late-1920s/1930s vibe – the last time Uranus was in Aries, at that time squaring Pluto in Cancer.

Those who have not adjusted accordingly their actions, goals and personal directions in light of the stark and disturbing information Pluto has been throwing up into collective awareness from Capricorn for the past couple years will have a rough time of these squares. For people still in denial of the collective situation with which we find ourselves confronted on this planet, still attached to a 'business as usual' way of life, these squares will provide wake-up calls, at times unpleasant.

For those who have keyed in to the energy of what is being unearthed by Pluto's transit of Capricorn and have done their best to adjust accordingly, things should have a smoother tenor. As smooth as possible, anyway, which is still not all that smooth, in my estimation.

There is a real soul reckoning afoot. Those complicit within corrupt and murderous structures, those cutting corners, those looking the other way or skimming by while reaping the rewards for doing so are going to be faced with some major decisions about what is truly important to them during their trip to this little planet.

Saturn has just entered Libra (July 21) until October 2012, and our challenges now turn to relationship, social justice and the balanced, working partnership of feminine and masculine. The vehicle for the achievement of our highest potential shifts from self-improvement and mastery (Virgo) to working for balance, harmony and justice through relationship with others (Libra).

With a third and final square to Pluto in Capricorn August 21, the awareness of abusive patriarchal power structures is pushed to the surface, and we have the ability to become conscious of the influence of them in our lives while working to build something more dignified and fair (Libra). This is not going to happen overnight, of course. These are deeply embedded power dynamics that will require a great deal of effort and conscious awareness to shift. But the next two years of Saturn in Libra, followed by a period of mutual reception between Saturn in Scorpio and Pluto in Capricorn until September 2015, will give us a good start.

Saturn is the planet of, among other things, karmic challenges. Pluto is the sign of collective power dynamics and the necessary transformation of those dynamics. The influence of both these bodies indicates that it is some serious and long-standing karmic territory we are now traversing. Only a full commitment to getting down to brass tacks together, in a loving, mutually-supportive way, is going to go deep enough to truly be effective.

The relationships we enter into now cannot be entered into lightly. We need people in our lives who can be counted on when the chips are down, in light of the times in which we are living. There will be many decisions about what relationships to enter into, what ones to keep and how to restructure them and what ones are no longer viable moving forward.

The skills of the Pluto in Libra generation come strongly into play, also, as Saturn begins its transit of Libra and conjuncts the natal Plutos. Their relationship alchemy and understanding of core relationship realities will be necessary, especially within morphing work structures, and this generation comes into positions of leadership beginning now.

Getting down to brass tacks as far as true compatibility – meeting mutual, soul-deep needs – becomes even more important this fall with the Venus retrograde in Scorpio.

Saturn, Mars and Venus in Libra and the Second Cardinal T-Square of the Summer

July 21 finds us with Saturn re-entering Libra - this time for the remainder of its transit until early October 2012.

July 26, it opposes Uranus in the fifth and final Saturn-Uranus opposition, this time at zero Libra/Aries, completing a 2.5 year cycle of oppositions that has rattled and shaken our structural realities to the point that they are now barely recognizable. A smooth and gradual transition it was not.

Between July 26 and August 20, Saturn will be moving to its third and final square to Pluto in Capricorn, also completing that cycle which began in November 2009.

So we have all these cycles completing at the same time as we're experiencing a second very powerful cardinal t-square - this one much longer-lasting - coming at us from Libra now instead of Cancer. Cycles are completing while we simultaneously have potent frictional impetus to actions initiated, new directions taken, new allegiances formed and underway - all in light of the stresses and difficulties of these transitional and transformational (for good or ill) times on Planet Earth.

The summer of 2010 is a big summer in the scope of things, to say the least.

Saturn in late Virgo has always been within range of these squares, but I was unable to call the configuration in late June a "Cardinal Grand Cross" because Saturn was not in a cardinal sign. It was an energetic Grand Cross - within degree but not by sign.

The cardinal t-square we experienced around June 26 (coinciding with the Full Moon Capricorn eclipse) involved the Sun and Mercury in Cancer opposing Pluto and the Moon in Capricorn squaring Jupiter-Uranus in Aries. Saturn in Virgo created the fourth leg - again, an energetic Grand Cross but not a full Cardinal Grand Cross. Virgoan details.

The Sun and Mercury are fast-moving planets, so the time frame of this initial cardinal t-square was very quick. An insanely intense energetic configuration in a tiny window of time - like a warp speed imprinting of energetic potential, with ripple effects for the next five years of cardinal squares but also for the next 2,000+ of the astrological Aquarian era. So you see why our full awareness and informed actions/decisions were and continue to be so important.

When Saturn re-enters Libra in a couple weeks, the Sun and Mercury will be out of range of their square from Cancer, but it will shift into full cardinal t-square alignment opposing Uranus and Jupiter in Aries and squaring Pluto in Capricorn.

Jupiter in Aries is stationing in exact square to Pluto Rx in Capricorn, increasing the potency of this energy and configuration.

I know it sounds like a broken record about how powerful these configurations are, but they really are. Layer after layer, aspect after aspect. We're ticking the seconds off of an entire 2,000+ astrological era (Pisces) and transitioning into a new 2,000+ cycle (Aquarius). Intuitively, I like Carl Johan Calleman's date for the actual ending of the Mayan calendar - October 28, 2011. This seems to fit the intensity and the acceleration we're experiencing, indicated astrologically.

To be honest, I'm not sure if human beings will be around for the full Aquarian cycle considering the state of things currently and the direction things seems to be taking straight out of the gate (at least, the human beings who share aspects of my personal spiritual lineage and energetic reason for being on this planet). But we're here now, so present we shall stay, fighting for our right to exist on this planet despite those doing everything in their power to make things inhabitable for us here.

So they think they can do this planet without us, eh? Hmm...

We're personally invested in what goes on here. God is invested in us. What we do with our time here matters - especially, at this point, in what we do with others, the quality of our relationships. And Mars and Venus, soon to be entering Libra, are coming to the table within this cardinal t-square to bring that point to full awareness.

Mars enters Libra July 29, opposes Uranus in Aries July 30, conjuncts Saturn July 31, and opposes stationing Jupiter and squares Pluto Rx in Capricorn August 3. Whew! Seriously.

As if that action weren't enough, Venus enters Libra August 6 and does the same dance Mars did in the cardinal t-square configuration. It opposes Uranus in Aries August 7, conjuncts Saturn in Libra August 8 and opposes Jupiter in Aries and squares Pluto Rx in Capricorn August 9. Whew squared!

This brings us personally into the proceedings. We're not just along for the ride with the transpersonal and intermediary planets (Jupiter and Saturn) acting upon our lives. The personal planets are involved; we're invested. We want and need things to go a certain way here, in more ways than one.

With all the Libra influence, this especially involves our relationships. Considering the context of the times, we no longer have a lot of time (Saturn) to waste in relationships that do not truly honour us or meet our needs. There isn't much room for do-overs now. We're craving quality human beings and quality relationships that we can build upon, invest ourselves in, develop our full potentials within.

What this planet needs are people willing to commit to the sometimes difficult process of harmony-creation and love-building between two people that will start to bring things back to an energetic state of balance. Reaching for the fullest, truest potential of ourselves and each other within relationship, despite the difficulty of the circumstances. Our highest selves, interacting. Every break from that is a break in the chain that the planet (and we) cannot afford at this time.

It's time for a new level of maturity, respect and responsibility toward others.

Our relations, especially romantic love relations, have gone pretty far afield in many cases from the mutually supportive, soul-and-spirit-honouring interchanges they're meant to be. Many people have bought into the idea constantly advertised to us that sex and love are cheap, easy and expendable. Easy come, easy go. Run into a problem? Just toss it into the heap and onto the next. Fast food love.

Now with Saturn entering Libra, things shift. That type of interaction is no longer going to sustain - just as a diet of Big Macs or Whoppers will not sustain. Fast food love and sex will be seen as the toxic energy exchange they are, and we'll crave (and demand) something deeper, better, more befitting who we really are as human beings. Something we can count on. People we can count on.

Maturity, fidelity and seriousness - being serious about each other - are about to get very sexy.

All this summer Libra action is a precursor to the Venus in Scorpio retrograde this fall (October 8 - November 18) when relationships will either end or fuse. Be shed or merge. And we'll be left, post-retro, in a much more real, authentic and raw place from which to relate - soul-to-soul, heart-to-heart, no BS - just how Scorpio (mature Scorpio) likes it.

Pluto and Ceres will finally meet in conjunction during the Venus retrograde in Scorpio, adding to the mythological/archetypal layers and underlying intensity of this time period. We need to clear unfinished business. It's now or never. This is my hope - renewal and restoration in love matters for all of us this fall. The cycle completing and falling away.

We're building on the work of the Pluto in Libra generation here - their stripping down of relationship constructs past their prime, abusive control and power dynamics, and relationship set-ups that deprive us of love, intimacy and closeness while keeping us from reaching our full potentials, together, within them. Stripping the Neptunian illusions and delusions around love and love relationships that set us up so painfully for disappointment and disillusionment.

The relationship constructs going forward will be much more alchemically fluid, dynamic, catalytic - creating an energy that is above and beyond the energy of the two individuals within them. We're not going backward here to relationship dynamics that stifled our love and development in the past - we're drawing the solid, valuable aspects of relationship through time and space into our current relationships. We're moving forward, but we're not leaving any crucial basic foundational tenets behind. This is the conserving influence of Saturn in Libra.

There is a lot going on as we head more fully into a summer, fall and winter that bring our relationships right to the forefront.

Saturn in Libra July 21 will be just the beginning.

Cardinal T-Square Eclipse: Dicey at Best

Well.

Yesterday, I had a really nice time talking with Robert Phoenix on his Free Association Radio show. Check it out in his archives if you missed it yesterday. We talked a lot about what is going down in Toronto this weekend - the G20 Summit involving $1.2 billion spent on security complete with sound/energy weaponry to be used against citizens.

I live in a country of about 30 million people. A $1.2 billion show of force around a 72-hour meeting of the "Global Governors" paid for by tax dollars? Pretty insane. Extremely insane.

While Robert and I were on the air yesterday, there was a 5.0 magnitude earthquake that shook Ontario and Quebec, including Toronto.

(Canadian humour aside: the best post-earthquake quote I heard was: "In Toronto, the aftershock was that Toronto wasn't the epicentre.")

Then later last night, a tornado hit Midland, Ontario destroying more than 70 homes, several businesses and throwing them into an emergency state.

There were some injuries, but thankfully no one was killed in either the earthquake or the tornado.

Midland is about 80 kilometres southwest of Huntsville, Ontario - Ontario cottage country where the major player Global Governors will be meeting this weekend for the G8.

I have a hard time believing the timing and location of these events could be purely coincidental.

During this past week, heavy rainfall caused major flooding in widespread areas of Saskatchewan and Alberta. Basements are flooded, crops are drowned and a major highway has been washed out. In the area where I'm from in Saskatchewan, they got between four and seven inches of rain in one day. Even the old timers can't remember that happening before.

This is following an abnormally wet spring where farmers couldn't even get their crops in in many cases. Now, many of the the crops that were seeded have been drowned or hailed out after this storm.

This is the breadbasket of Canada - and elsewhere. Over five million hectares could not be seeded, and this does not count the number of hectares that are now drowned or hailed out. Rural areas have declared themselves agricultural disaster zones. This means farmers and their families are now facing the loss of an entire year's income. In an industry of insanely high input costs, if they can't somehow stay afloat, it will more than likely mean the loss of their farms and their ways of life - not to mention the loss of farmers, which we can't afford to lose.

The primary industries, people. They're our backbone. I know people have become completely disconnected from where food comes from. (The supermarket?) But it's the toil of these farm families that keeps food on our plates.

Like fishing, another primary industry that has just been horrifically attacked, these are vocations that are often handed down from generation to generation. The wisdom comes through the lineage. Sons and daughters learn from their parents and grandparents who learned from their parents and grandparents before them. This knowledge is gleaned and refined over generations, always changing and adapting to the prevailing conditions. Far from the stereotype of the dumb farmer, anyone who is successful in this way of life these days is highly skilled, intelligent, adaptive and resilient.

I cannot overstate the importance of continuing the family farming heritage - for all of us.

Farmers have been played big time over the years, worn down by the constant ups and downs of the market. High input costs. Low commodity prices. The effects of the manipulations on weather. Ineffective government program after ineffective government program, designed to get them caught up in bureaucratic red tape, often putting more of their own money into complying with the terms than they ever see in return.

Basic, staple goods should not be being toyed with in the highly manipulated rollercoaster stock market. Number-shifting suits in office buildings should not be lining their pockets by intentionally screwing with the lives and work of farm families. If family farmers are crushed, that leaves our food supply wide open for agri-business corporations with their genetically modified, highly chemicalized "food" production. All part of that plan.

So it's important.

The Sun in Cancer opposes Pluto in Capricorn tomorrow (12:55 p.m. Mountain), locking us into full-on cardinal t-square/eclipse energy. Mercury enters Cancer early tomorrow morning (4:32 a.m.), bringing our minds and what we're talking about fully into it, as well.

The Moon enters Capricorn tomorrow evening (8:21 p.m.), and the Full Moon eclipse is in full swing tomorrow night. The Moon will be exactly full at 5:32 a.m. Saturday morning, just a little over an hour after it conjuncts Pluto Rx at 4 degrees Capricorn.

The police and military take their positions.

The G8 leaders start to nestle into Ontario cottage country. And the G20 players hide away behind those fences in Toronto, driven in in a fleet of black luxury vehicles complete with high security police escorts. The cavalcade.

And we're the alternative cavalcade - working in the spaces between those squares. Rocking, shifting, doing anything to stop the lightning-fast fusing. Wiggling, wiggling and working within the confined Virgo spaces we have to work with. Reaching together for the alternative to the plan that has been laid out for us by the Global Governors.

I've written an extensive post on the astrology of this weekend:

Summer 2010 Eclipse Season: G8, G20 and Martial Law A-Plenty

I've also written quite a lot about the LRADs, including a post on how to stay safe in Toronto this weekend:

Staying Safe in Toronto During the G20 Summit

Stay safe, all in Toronto. Stay safe this weekend wherever you are.

All Willow's Web Astrology articles on the G20

Cardinal T-Square Summer 2010: Things Are On the Move

The Sun, newly in Cancer, brings us fully into the cardinal t-square involving the Sun in Cancer opposite Pluto in Capricorn, both squaring Jupiter and Uranus, conjunct in early Aries.

We head now to the Full Moon Capricorn eclipse exactly conjunct Pluto Rx at 4 Cap on June 26.

Things are moving - both in devastating ways and in wholeheartedly exciting, "deliver us" kinds of ways.

Deliver us - from evil, from corruption and greed, from illegitimacy and control, from dirty tricks and falsity, from the forces and people who are attempting to steal our health, our well-being and all that we hold dear on this planet.

Deliver us - beyond reinforced structural toxicity. Beyond follow-the-leader pyramid-scheme hierarchies and illusory experiences based in mass, collectively-reinforced psychosis.

Deliver us - into a world where the power of our love and our raw individuality, connected to God, our source, the loving creation force, is the vital, motivating force. The only real force. Where we know God's will, and it's our will, and we do right by it. We commit. Where we are no longer artificially separated into "the lucky ones" and "the sacrificed." Where we are free to apply our genius to solve the grand-scale problems we face here, rather than being milked and used to further damage and dismantle life on this planet.

There's a force rising here.

As those who would destroy us along with this beautiful planet and all its creatures stir and harness their dirty, corrupted energies, the loving and the righteous is there in lock-step.

And that's us. Don't you forget it.

We have the power to edge this here, but it's going to take all the courage we have, both individually and together. We have to give it all we've got - all we've got left. And we have to go all in, as terrifying as that can be. Give all the love in our breaking hearts to the vital current moment.

And my heart's breaking. I can't deny it. The loss of personal health is devastating. The loss of health of family and friends is devastating. The deaths and the senseless destruction. Knowing what's coming, what people are going to be facing, is devastating, too.

The Plutonic razing of all illusion and delusion. Laying bare stark reality and then saying, OK. There you go. That's where you are. Now find the love and follow it. Bring it through you, despite your fear, despite the pain. And know that you're OK on the other side of this, no matter what happens. Even when things aren't OK. Even when they haven't seen the light of OK in months or years.

What's going on in the Gulf is far worse than people are being told. They've breached deep within our Earth, puncturing 30,000 feet beneath the ocean floor. They have created fissures - not a single leak. Many leaks in a destabilized ocean floor that they are now further destabilizing by drilling "relief wells." The pressure coming up from that puncture is so great that human beings do not currently have the technology to stop it - even if the forces in control wanted to stop it. They don't.

The workers on the Transocean knew a disaster was about to happen. They warned about it. The toolpush, Jason Anderson, argued with his "higher ups" the morning of the explosion about the recklessness going on. He's the man who was so worried about BP's lack of safety standards and corner cutting that he got his affairs in order and wrote his will the last time he was home with his family. He was one of the 11 killed in the explosion.

Over one million gallons of Corexit chemical dispersant have been dumped in the Gulf water, against the orders of the United States Environmental Protection Agency. This is now in our water, evaporating into our air.

The name Corexit is no coincidence. Corexit is a neurotoxin being applied to the gaping wound within the Earth. Attacking the core energy. The central nervous system.

There has been a systemic attack going on here for decades now, and it has trickled down, morphed, spread. Anyone can see clearly now that there is no real separation into "the lucky ones" and "the sacrificed." There is no situation where certain races or money-holders or spiritual lineages get off scot-free from the systemic poisoning of our systems - not if you're a biological human being.

And really, we know that. That's core spiritual knowledge that runs through all human beings - all who have not been artifically separated from the working connection to their souls and inherent spirituality. We know our connection. Our interdependence.

This is not grandscale karmic comeuppance here "teaching us a lesson," as people are being fed in New Age circles. We have not "allowed" this to happen - playing on guilty consciences. Those aspects are tiny parts of the true situation that are being latched onto and manipulated, as New Age does.

We've been attacked. And when you attack the central nervous system, the systems start to fight themselves, attack themselves. Scorpio tricked into turning its poisonous tail on itself.

The Long Range Acoustic Devices (LRADs) that will be used against protesters at the G20 Summit this weekend in Toronto, Ontario are sound/energy weapons that also disrupt and damage the central nervous system. Coincidence? Not one little bit.

In Chiron in Piscean fashion, at the very end of the astrological Piscean era, we are having our inter-related energetic nature used against us by forces that seem to believe (whether true) that they will remain beyond it, unaffected.

The Sun in Cancer (home) is squaring Jupiter conjunct Uranus in Aries (soldiers), and we're heading to Canada Day July 1 and the Fourth of July in the United States. Independence Day. Ahem. Sandwiched between the Full Moon lunar eclipse in Capricorn (June 26) and the New Moon solar eclipse in Cancer (July 11).

Home. Warmth. Family. Children. Protection. A safe little nest. All we hold dear.

Squaring war, fighting, soldiers, bare survival, gutteral instincts, Fourth Reich, hell on Earth.

For decades (centuries) now, soldiers have been being used as guinea pigs, subjected to the most heinous of energy and chemical weapons, radiation and experimental vaccinations.

They have been exposed to radioactive dust from depleted uranium munitions designed to penetrate tanks in Iraq and Afghanistan. (Not to mention the radioactive hell left behind for the citizens.)

Soldiers sent to the Middle East during the second Gulf War were dosed with a number of vaccines, one of which is an anthrax vaccination. They were also dosed with the fluoroquinolone antibiotic Cipro - made by Nazi pharmaceuticals corporation Bayer - which was initially developed to ward off anthrax.

So these men, the fittest and strongest, have been assaulted in a multi-layered attack. And I know from my experience with Cipro that they are in a living hell right now.

Over one million soldiers are suffering, many horribly, from Gulf War illness and cannot get assistance from their government. At the same time, many doctors along with the U.S. government are working hard to reinforce the idea that Gulf War illness does not exist. Much the same as how mainstream doctors refuse to admit horrific adverse reactions to fluoroquinolones are possible and keep prescribing them irresponsibly, as a first-line antibiotic.

Forty-two percent of veterans of the second Gulf War are sick. That's over 400,000 men from the second war alone. Fifty-eight percent of those are young men between the ages of 18 and 29. Chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, neurological problems, Guillain-Barre syndrome, Lou Gehrig's (ALS), multiple sclerosis, scleroderma, lupus.

I can't express the helplessness of having your nervous system attacked and poisoned. The crushing nature of it. The vulnerability.

When does this become not OK? Where is the real catalyzing point? Dear God, we've been working for it...

Vietnam couldn't do it - not in a sustained way. Drugs and hedonistic sex and the introduction of cool, new consumer toys became the escape hatch then, just as ascension and 5th dimension and New Earth and UFOs taking us away from it all are now.

Agent Orange poisoning, napalm, babies born deformed. Now the babies of the Gulf soldiers are being born with related birth defects. The Cancerian home has been penetrated. Who protects the soldiers when they can no longer protect themselves from their own government?

And I see the reports of what has been unleashed in the Gulf - the neurotoxin Corexit, benzene, hydrogen sulfide, methane, possibly even radioactive elements coming from near the core of the Earth. I see reports of people getting sick already. Dead sea animals floating on the surface. Our sweet, sweet sea creatures.

And I wonder if we are going to be able to come together here. That's what's necessary. But the pull of "the lucky" versus "the sacrificed" is so strong here. No one wants to be sacrificed. We all want to be winners.

And that will be manipulated.

Will all that is so hard to face and accept, the people living it, be rejected, marginalized, separated off, as has been done? Or do we get it together now? Does the love fill the cracks and bring us back together as a whole? Do we go beyond our manufactured, segmented, single-serving lives?

I could cry and scream and rage for a thousand years, and it would not express it. There is no energy left for that. Uranus and Jupiter are in Aries, urging us forward. Gotta move. Gotta go. Gotta survive. Just get through it.

After a summer of cracking into the Aries themes, we're back in tail-end Pisces territory with retrogrades. Uranus goes retrograde very soon - July 5 - and Jupiter July 23.

We're riding some unbelievably emotional dips and peaks here. But they're smoothing out, even in the midst of the hell-scenarios. There's a calm centre we can hold, even a buoyance I've experienced lately, that we can share with each other even while we're horrified by what's going on around us. Surfing.

We've been prepared emotionally here by the series of eclipses on the Cancer-Capricorn polarity. Last summer was the raw, initial tear. The rip out of any kind of linear regularity or feeling of place. We were giving up our Cancerian versions of home in light of the propulsion into Aquarian times.

December/January's eclipses coincided with the Haiti earthquake with between 200,000 and 500,000 people dying. More shock and awe. Stirring the tortured soul energy of the Arawak-Taino people, slaughtered en masse by Cristobal Colon (Christopher Columbus) in his search for the New World.

And now we are within range of the third set of eclipses on the Cancer-Capricorn polarity. We're hardened a bit now. Weary. And when you're so very weary, all you can do is let your soul take the lead. That's what we do now. We make every day count. We say the things we want to say to the people who mean something to us. We make things right and keep things right in our lives, with each other and with God.

Third set of Cancer-Capricorn eclipses. Fifth and final Saturn-Uranus opposition July 26. Third and final Saturn in Libra square to Pluto in Capricorn August 20.

Big cycles completing. Something bigger than we can imagine emerging. Keep going.

Saturn Goes Direct in Virgo and We're on the Home Stretch, Beautiful Babies

Saturn is about to turn direct (12:08 p.m. Mountain), marking its last sweep through Virgo for almost 30 years. We've completed four of five Saturn oppositions to Uranus with one remaining in the zero degrees of cardinal Aries and Libra July 26.

For more on this, here's a previous post I wrote when Saturn first retrograded back into Virgo.

Saturn turning direct in Virgo is currently showing us a pattern, as well. Those nutty, nutty Bilderbergers are about to meet again in Spain (June 3-6), and you'll recall that they met last year just as Saturn was turning direct in Virgo, as well. Last year's meeting took place May 14-16 in Athens, Greece. Hmm, Greece you say...

This year's meeting takes place in Spain, which is apparently the next country that will need the "services" of this group and their International Monetary Fund.

Saturn going direct is a potent time period for agenda-setting, and one of the agendas being set by those crazy, fun-loving B-bergers will be the docket for next month's G8 and G20 meetings, going on simultaneously in Ontario, Canada on June 26 and 27.

The G20 meeting, involving the world's 20 wealthiest countries now self-appointed as worldwide overlords of economic policy, is the smokescreen. This meeting is being held in Canada's largest city - Toronto, Ontario - inviting massive crowds of demonstrators. The police presence is going to be huge and disgusting - theatrical, really. But also fucking frightening. Our NWO lapboy Stephen Harper is taking his orders.

Over one billion Canadian taxpayer dollars are being used to set up martial law in southern Ontario next month. Thousands and thousands of police officers and soldiers will be enforcing the secrecy of the "Global Governors," who are meeting behind fences, outside public knowledge or consent. The exact number of police/military is not known, but over 5,500 hotel rooms have been booked to house them.

Peacefully demonstrating citizens have gotten used to being gassed, pepper sprayed and hit with rubber bullets. This doesn't even shock anyone anymore. But now, Canada follows the United States' lead with the introduction of energy/sound weapons.

The Toronto City Police has purchased four Long Range Acoustic Devices (LRADs) to unleash on the protesters. Yep. We're not just renting these bad boys for the occasion. We're not just borrowing from our neighbours to the south like we would a cup of sugar or a snowblower. The Toronto police have locked them in. They will now be a regular part of policing in Canada. They've slid them into the public consciousness slick as shit.

T.O. police spokesperson Wendy Drummond: “They were purchased as part of the G20 budget process,” Drummond said. “It’s definitely going to be beneficial for us, not only in the G20 but in any future large gatherings.”

Yes, lots of fun for parties and gatherings of all kinds!

They're softening things by calling these LRADs "communication tools." Communication tools that can cause permanent hearing loss and inner ear damage, blood clots, aneurisms and can stop a pacemaker? The sound emitted is also being compared to the sound of a jet - sorry, but a jet was not purposefully designed to emit a frequency destructive to human beings.

From Lyn Davignon of the National Non Profit Party:

"This type of weapon disrupts the central nervous system, causes aneurisms, stroke, heart attack, blood clots, damages the eye retina causing blindness, causes permanent hearing loss, can cause permanent damage to your equilibrium (balance), and can kill anyone with a pacemaker.

In addition, it can cause structural damage to buildings...Sonic weapons have been used in Iraq by the US military. First tested at the University of Lyon, France in the 1960s, a six second blast of a 50 watt sonic weapon nearly killed the researchers...It caused structural damage to the building and was deemed to dangerous to continue testing."

The fun never stops.

The real power players, though - the leaders of the G8 countries - will be much more tucked away in cottage-country Huntsville, Ontario, away from the crowds of demonstrators. This is where the orders are really locked into place and the Pluto in Capricorn agendas fused.

The G8/G20 meetings have been set to coincide with the uber potent Full Moon Capricorn eclipse exactly conjunct Pluto in Capricorn on June 26. This eclipse takes place within the cardinal t-square formation, and the potential for this energy to be used in completely nasty, lock-down totalitarian ways by these so-called leaders is high.

There's not much I can do to sugar-coat this - nor is that my role. There's no need to curl up in the fetal position and cry ourselves to sleep over it, but I mean, the astrology is the astrology. You can check it out for yourselves: Summer 2010 Eclipse Season: G8, G20, and Martial Law A-Plenty.

I noticed someone posted an excerpt from my post on an Astrodienst message board. The person then said she hoped someone else could provide a more "positive" take on things.

Hmm...

A positive take on fascism. A positive take on the destructive worldwide agenda of the Global Governors. A positive take on martial law in Ontario, Canada, gassing and sound wave attacking demonstrators. A positive take on agent provacateurs being implanted to incite violence and justify police crack-down.

The only thing I can come up with here is that things could possibly be getting so Pluto in Cappie extreme, so increasingly brutal and harsh, that people will no longer be able to bury their heads in the sand. They'll have to start to look at what is going on in the world around them.

At the same time, I know how strong the powers of denial, willful ignorance and complacency are in the human population - especially among the NA positivity-pushers. I know how easily people swallow the mainstream media line that it's just the police and military doing their jobs, keeping those evil anarchists in line. Keeping the people "safe."

The only real empowerment here, with Pluto so strongly involved, is to face it. To dig a little deeper than the mainstream line and look at what's really going on. When you do that, the power it has over you is instantly mitigated, instantly released.

Maintaining our emotional comfort and health is crucial here, also - but it's equally important to bring this stuff to light in the public consciousness. Here's the required balance:

At the time that Saturn goes direct in Virgo, the Moon in Capricorn is exactly conjunct the North Node at 12 Capricorn. Venus in Cancer is exactly conjunct the South Node.

There is a highly intricate interplay of energies here along this nodal axis, requiring all our mastery.

Overall, we need to keep plowing forward, keep making concrete progress, keep putting one foot in front of the other, out of the Pluto in Capricorn rubble. This is the North Node path - the path out.

At the same time, we need our resting places, our feel-good spaces. We need the connection to hearth and home, to family and friends and other people who get it. We need to take rejuvenating time out for ourselves, when we can protectively sequester ourselves in our little cocoons. These are our touch-points, and they assist us greatly with that Capricorn North Node path. We just can't stay hunkered down there.

Go too far out on a North Node in Capricorn limb, and we emotionally crash and burn. Go too far into the past and into old emotional habits and comforts and patterns, and you'll get sucked in, drained and will lose your momentum.

The nodal axis always relates to soul-level guidance, but with the Moon exactly conjunct the North Node, the importance of our emotional cues are intensified.

We need to maintain emotional continuity here, moving forward out of the wreckage. We need to keep our emotional anchors strongly connected to that which sustains us now. These are tough times to move through emotionally, and we need the right balance. This will become even more important the further into the summer we get, when Saturn re-enters Libra for over two years.

There's a quote I remember from a sociologist. The guy says something about us having the responsibility to take on as much conscious awareness as we can stand. That sounds a little harsh, but I think it's valid - especially in these times.

So the balance here is to be aware of what we know we need to be aware of, to do what we can with that awareness, but to never go past our saturation point, especially emotionally.

When you're full to the brim with the Plutonic dirty dealings, please go look at some cute kitty videos on YouTube or stare into a flower in the park.

Harper to World: We'll Take Your Nukes...and Give Them to the Only Country Ever to Attack with a Nuke

Speaking of those nefarious Saturn in Libra square Pluto in Capricorn allegiances... 

As Pluto heads more deeply into its retrograde period in early Capricorn, the "global governance" pushers (*cough* new world order *cough*) are meeting in Washington, D.C. in what is being called a Nuclear Security Summit. 

Obama is playing the nuclear annihilation fear card here in hopes that all the world's nations will gladly hand over their nukes and enriched uranium to Big Daddy U.S.A., who surely has only the most altruistic of motives for taking on the world's nuclear stockpile. 

And Canadians have yet another reason to be bursting with pride over our federal government, as our Prime Minister, Obama lapdog and NWO shill Stephen Harper, plays negotiating middle man. 

"Harper is expected to promote a Canadian initiative Tuesday to help other countries secure their nuclear material. On Monday, Canada said it would return its stockpile of enriched uranium to the United States, while Ukraine announced it will give up its stockpile of weapons-grade uranium by 2012 — and most of it this year. Later Tuesday, Harper is expected to promote the global partnership on nuclear materials and call for its renewal. The G8 signed on to the program at its 2002 summit in Kananaskis, Alta. Since then, the group has spent more than $600 million helping other countries decommission and secure their nuclear material." 

Let's recall that Obama dropped the information about Iranian nuclear facilities into the world media at the last G20 Summit in Pittsburgh in September 2009, setting a confrontational atmosphere. Here, he ramps things up a little, taking the next strategic step of "asking nicely" for all the world's nuclear weapons. 

Hmm...I wonder how the countries who don't want to be "globally governed" by this group of stooges are going to respond? 

This is in preparation for the next G20 Summit, going on at the very same time as the next G8 Summit, in Ontario, Canada during that uber potent Capricorn eclipse exactly conjunct Pluto Rx/Cardinal T-Square on June 26. 

We can expect the next installment of this "disarming everyone but the United States" drama to unfold there. 

Wow, I can't wait! Don't know about you guys. Sigh.

Venus Shows Us How Far We've Come Since Last Spring

Venus conjuncts Uranus at 25 degrees Pisces tonight and it then traverses the last degrees of Pisces, which, of course, are the last degrees of the zodiac, in general.

The interesting thing about Venus' path right now (other than the sudden and shocking relationship shake-ups associated with the Uranus conjunction) is that it is heading into the degrees of last year's Venus Retrograde.

I wrote a lot of posts on that retrograde (click the "venus retrograde in aries" label to read them). It was a very feisty, often incendiary, time, especially regarding our relations with others, with three squares to stationing Pluto in Capricorn. (March 5 - April 16, 2009)

Some of the main themes then were: getting in touch with our anger as a guiding force and impetus to action, false karasses that force us to compromise ourselves, exerting our wills in relationship, the importance of individuality and being true to ourselves within the group, passive-aggressiveness and other underhanded ways of interacting, speaking up and standing up for ourselves in relation to others, creating a healthier balance of masculine and feminine, especially related to the feminine exerting itself.

From a previous post:

"We shone our identities into full-on radiance at that point and burned away what was false. The process wasn't always Venusian pretty, either.

The new ground we've entered into personally since then, initiated by those Aries-Capricorn squares, has set the stage for the upcoming longer-term transpersonal cardinal squares between Uranus in Aries and Pluto in Capricorn. Exertion of will, identity, and new leadership on a global scale as our power structures continue to morph and merge - with the possibility of both open aggression and hidden destructive force.

Getting on top of these energies and themes personally is necessary in light of these huge, transpersonal forces that will be squaring off over the next six years.

If this [Venus transit of Aries] finds us with more work to do to get over the hump related to being exactly who we are in relation to others and in relation to structural institutional set-ups, it could bring some fiery, emotional moments forcing us to stand up for ourselves once and for all.

We must be willing to fight for the survival of ourselves and our true identities when necessary, in the face of people, situations and forces that would threaten that."

A lot of relationships that could not handle who we really were came to an end last spring. We went down to the quick - the soul quick. We simply don't have the time or energy for friend-collecting or for relationships with a degree of falsity that don't truly meet our needs right down to the soul level. Social artifice was stripped down in a major way and relationship rules re-written.

The current Venus transit of Aries should bring new energy and movement in our relationships, along with new relationships altogether, more fitting to our real identities. No painful bending or compromising of ourselves. New partnerships formed now will have a strategic element related to achieving goals we could not achieve alone.

Any ways in which we have kept out true selves/identities and our true desires and motivations hidden or subjugated in relationship (personal or business) since the last Venus Retro will most certainly come out now with hard aspects to Saturn and Pluto. We simply cannot subjugate ourselves to another or to a group or business at this point because with Saturn and Pluto involved, doing so risks losing ourselves altogether in the massive structural shifts we're a part of at this time in human history.

Though this is not comfortable territory for the planet associated with love, beauty and relationship, Venus takes a deep breath at 29 Pisces and courageously leads the way into Aries March 7, immediately creating the cardinal T-square that will be much longer-term when Uranus (May 27) and Jupiter (June 6) ingress Aries.

Venus in Aries will immediately oppose Saturn in Libra (March 9) and square Pluto in Capricorn (March 11). There is a huge amount of tension here, a masterful balance required between ourselves and others. Power struggles, emotional meltdowns and a rebalancing of power within relationships (personal and business) are to be expected. With Venus in Aries, we need to put ourselves first while balancing the needs of others. Not an easy task with Saturn and Pluto involved, and strong self-preservation will be necessary.

Mars in Leo is currently stationing at 0 degrees of the sign and will go direct March 10. Venus will trine almost-standing-still Mars on the 7th as soon as it enters Aries, adding tension and irritability to the pressure-cooker cardinal t-square. (Because we didn't have enough already!) Tempers are smouldering. The Sabian Symbol for this degree of Leo is "A Man is Under Emotional Stress and Blood Rushes to His Head." Pretty much says it all.

Venus retrograded to and then stationed on the anaretic degree of Pisces (the final degree of the zodiac) in April of 2009, adding a cyclical/spiritual clearing house flavour to the proceedings. Clearing out ghosts of relationships past - many not even from our personal lifetimes. Energetic/archetypal stuff.

I'm sensing some similar relationship spring cleaning in the air right now (Venus conjunct Uranus in Pisces) - even before the Vernal Equinox! Clearing dynamics and relationships that are connected to older versions of ourselves - or to people who are interacting with versions of us that exist only in their minds. Oh, Pisces. Oh, Neptune.

In my case, it's a final realization that I have assigned the term friend to people who are actually just acquaintances out of old soul loneliness and isolation. I'm now facing the fact that it is better to rectify this, regardless of a lack of new connections, rather than set myself up for further alienation and feeling like the odd one out all the time. It's definite Piscean territory to accept scraps, and this is a habit I've been conditioned into since childhood through bullying and ostracism. I've been clearing this layer-by-layer for years, so I'm hoping this is the final purge.

Venus passes through the potent 29th degree of Pisces March 6/7, so note anything coming up on the days before Venus enters Aries. There could be clues related not only to personal relationships but to the relationship we have with spirit and how that develops from here.

This transit of Venus in Aries will allow us to see the results of the effort we put forth last year with the retrograde and re-orientation in our relationships. Anything swept under the rug then will be forced to the surface now. Pluto's involved here, remember. ;-)

If we worked on building our Venus in Aries muscles then, while facing what Pluto kicked up, things will be much smoother now. We'll know what actions to take, and we should be able to stay out of the detritus kicked up by those who shirked their Plutonic duties last time around. (Fingers crossed, anyway.)

Staying out of it as a matter of self-preservation. That will be a big theme of this month with Pluto trying to draw us into the fray and Saturn in Libra activating our sense of injustice.

It will probably be impossible not to be touched by some of the angst - even if only on an energetic level. We have a strong stake in how things go down, after all. But these energies should be less difficult to deal with now that we've already had a big old dose last year. Remembering the Venus in Aries retrograde themes and the lessons we learned then will come in handy now.