March 21-28, 2005

We've crossed into Aries, the fire sign that begins spring. This year it began, over the weekend, with the moon (heart) in Leo, mid-summer's peak passion. Mercury, quick mental processing, which led the way into Aries like a scout, now has gone retrograde there, backtracking and internalizing. The mind responds to impulse by turning inward, deepening our solitary mental experience even as we move forward with the passion of early spring. We must accept this and let it inform our spirit.

Monday night, Saturn, the thirty-year cycle centering/grounding influence, completes months of retrograde/backtracking in the emotional release of Cancer. Pulling at us from the middle of flowing feeling, Saturn has now ground to a stop at the deepest place inside us, demanding that we experience the source of true personal nurturance. From here it will start to flow forward and outward again. Tuesday, moon still in peak fire sign Leo, Venus, the light of love and beauty, right behind the sun, also crosses into Aries and early spring emergence. Internalizing mind (retrograde Mercury), soul vitality (sun), and beauty's love (Venus) have now all emerged, like dawn for the year, into the warm passion of early spring's morning light. Late Tuesday, the moon moves on into the ripening fruitfulness of Virgo, late summer in our seasonal cycle, for a few days of practical manifestation of all this new spring energy.

Before dawn on Friday, the moon (heart) crosses into Libra, the love awareness that colors early autumn, where it will be full, opposite the sun, at midday, growing in strength by Saturday. This year, big, expansive Jupiter is in Libra, reinforcing mindfulness of true harmony. With deep feeling 164-year cycle Neptune now at the midpoint of Aquarius, also, like Libra, an air sign, this full moon, the first of the new spring, is fed by creativity in love and dreams at the peak of awareness. And it is happening just as Pluto, deep, transformative power and expression, slows to an apparent stop, beginning to turn inward, in the resolving passion of Sagittarius, down at the bottom of our natural seasonal cycle. We are anchored by deep power, mentally reflective, as the passion-charged heart is full in awareness of love.