Saturday 5/31/08--Mercury retrograde

Mercury retrograde can trip us up, but people get too spooked by the ominous warnings of the magazine astrologers.

All planets sometimes appear to backtrack in our sky, called being retrograde, due to our relative motions, the way the car next to you on the freeway seems to fade back as you speed up. At those times their energy influence on us is internalizing and deepening. There's nothing wrong with this, and it can serve us if we accept it.

Mercury is about mental processing and quickness, electric connection, and when it is retrograde the mental tide is flowing backwards, undermining momentum, giving us pause and distracting us with second thoughts. All the typical talk, "bad for communication, things break, plans fall through, don't sign contracts," is true if you don't accept and adjust to unexpected interruptions and shifting changes. Mercury retrograde can make for deep, reflective, powerfully poetic communication, magical connections and fortunate developments. It can even be a good time to sign a contract if you're willing to admit your doubts when they come up and wait until they naturally resolve before moving forward. It's people pushing past anxious feelings that causes all the famous problems. If we give in at every moment, no matter how weird, confused, scrambled or frustrated or it may leave us, the crazy mental stuff sorts itself out, sometimes with surprising rewards.

Mercury goes retrograde for a few weeks several times each year. This one, ending June 19, might be especially challenging since it's happening in Gemini, the last of the three air signs (Libra, Aquarius, Gemini), which seeks mental resolution. Several spiritual influences are in Aquarius, aligning us at the center of awareness.

It's all ok if we accept the unique mental flow of every moment, settled with nature and living with the consequences.

Tuesday 5/13/08--historic earth power

The intensified earth power of this historic year, reinforcing the concrete manifestation of primal nature, reached a turning point on May 11 and is now breaking out in tangible ways. This is fundamentally good, a tide of flowering fertility rising up through unhealthy tension that can no longer hold it back, but it can bring disturbing developments, from people feeling rattled by physical sensations and impulses (and the thoughts and emotions they bring) to terrestrial and political shocks and shifts, releasing stored energy with potentially cataclysmic consequences.

We are all better off when true nature reigns, superseding any attempt to deny and control it, but built-up forces breaking out may bring us drama and disruption. It is all part of purification, cleansing us of denial and distortion, challenging us to accept and settle with the divinity of creation as we move through transition to alignment with real and enduring nurturance, leaving behind what does not work, ready to match with what truly does. These days, in addition to reinforced earth power, there is wisdom in sensitivity and spiritual healing in awareness.

At every moment, in every circumstance, we must yield to the underlying goodness of life, letting it lead us through private trouble and global difficulty with the grace of light amidst the dark.

Peace and love, everyone, everywhere.

Taurus 2008

In this historic year of heated-up passion shifting to concrete manifestation, we have reached the moment of peak earth power reinforcement. The gravity of reality is undeniable. Primal nature is redefining us.

We began the month with an intensely feeling full moon on April 20, and will end with a second one (a blue moon) on May 19. At the Taurus new moon on Monday, May 5 (the midpoint of spring), the big planets that have all shifted into earth signs will combine with the new moon to make a solid core of reinforced physical nature, activating fertility to break through resistance with the power of a flower.

This is deeply good, but may trigger the release of built-up tension and destructive forces. Again, many traditions warn and reassure us that shock and disruption may be part of the transition to a purified relationship with life's mutually-sustaining interdependence. The unhealthy attempt to control nature will no longer be tolerated. Vitality is reclaiming us.

The grounding influence in fruitful practicality (Saturn in Virgo) completes its apparent backtracking (retrograde) and starts to move forward again on May 2. Expansive creativity (Jupiter) joins heavy power (Pluto) for months of deepening and internalizing (retrograde) in primal constructiveness (Capricorn) on the 9th. The great shift to grounded renewal and fruitful development is complete by Thanksgiving, at the end of November.

This year is about a hugely historic shift to the physical manifestation of primal nature, with the power to radically transform our world. Out ahead, an equally historic alignment of deepest feelings for healing in spirituality, with wisdom in vulnerable sensitivity, leads the way in the enlightened perspective of divine interrelationship.

Surf's up.