Aloha everybody,

I’m writing to you from the beaches of Kaua’i, possibly the most beautiful of the Hawaiian islands.  Now that I’m here I realize my plan of continuing to post to my blog was the product of an insane, city-dwelling mind and that there’s no way it’s going to happen.  I’ve gone troppo.  I’ll be here for another week and will be making no blogposts, no newsletter, no Twitterfeed until the stars guide me home.

mahalo,

Jamie

This demanding solar eclipse brings out the tough, career side of us.  Venus acts as its Shadow Agent, bringing in themes of relationship integrity and contractual obligation.  During this eclipse, life goes best if you follow through on what you say you’ll do.

Details About This Eclipse

Date: January 14, 2010
Time of eclipse: 11:11 PM PST
Type: annular (weak in intensity)
Visible in: People in Africa, India, Sri Lanka and southeast Asia will see this partial eclipse. At: 25 degrees Capricorn
Shadow Agent: Venus in Capricorn

Does It Affect You Personally?

If your birthday is on any of the following dates, you most likely experienced this eclipse:
January 10-20
April 10-20
July 13-23
October 13-23

Remember, not every eclipse touches everyone, but when it does, it’s usually noticeable.  A solar eclipse is likely to be marked by an external, real-world event (unlike a lunar eclipse, which is mostly experienced internally).  The following script is just one possible way it could go.

You hear a knock at the door.  You answer it.  Venus is there:  she’s an attractive, trim and serious-looking woman in a business suit.
Venus:  Hi, I’m your business coach.
You:  I don’t remember hiring one of those.
Venus:  I come with the package.
You:  What package?
Venus:  The package called “Your Life.”  Freebie.
She sashays past you and into your living room.
Venus:  Where’s your desk?
You:  At work of course.
Venus waves her hand and suddenly you are at your workplace.  She shimmers into existence and tugs her suit jacket down, just like Captain Picard.  She looks so official you decide to pay attention.
Venus:  Ok, time for a drill.  Hup-two-three-four!
You:  What am I supposed to be doing?
Venus:  Working on your relationships.  Your business ones, to be precise.
You:  Why would I want to do that?
Venus:  Because without relationship, you cannot advance in your career.  Tell me about your promises and agreements. How good are you at keeping them?
You:  Oh, pretty good, I guess.
Venus:  Pretty good?  You think that’s enough?
You:  Well, I never really thought about it.  
Venus:  And that would be the problem, wouldn’t it?
She produces a very long document, which drags on the floor as she reads it.
Venus:  I have here a list of all the promises you’ve ever made.  Do you know how many you’ve broken?
You:  Um. . .
Venus:  How do you expect people to take you seriously if you can’t take yourself seriously?  Become a person of substance!
She smacks you on the back.  You stagger a little.
Venus:  Integrity, my dear!  Your career depends on it.  You want people to take you at your word, right?  You want them to take you seriously, right?  You are an adult, aren’t you?
Each question brings her closer to you until she is literally breathing down your neck.  She removes a monocle from her pocket and scrutinizes you closely.  This is an uncomfortable process.
Venus:  Mind your P’s and Q’s!  I’m watching you.
And with that she stalks out.

“Wake up!” says Saturn.  “I gave you a chance to see your responsibility recently.  Now I’m telling you again:  this is a time of testing.”

Today is a Pivotal Day
When a planet turns retrograde it makes a pivot in the sky and also creates a metaphorically “pivotal” experience for human beings.

Today, that planet is Saturn.  It’s as if Saturn is telling us, “You can’t go on avoiding responsibility forever.  Today I’m delivering a wake-up call.”  If Saturn is touching a planet in your chart this year, this message is for you and it will have very specific meaning, depending on what planet that is.  That planet, and the part of you it represents, is being asked to take responsibility.  Today is the peak of possibility of Saturn’s wake-up call, but it could happen anytime within 5 days surrounding today.

Initiation Leading to an Inner Journey
Sometime between now and the beginning of last October Saturn showed us an area of life in which we need to take more responsibility.  What he delivered was an initiation and it was our first chance to catch a clue about the changes coming.  That clue may have been obvious or it may have been subtle, but we’ve been shown a place in our life that would benefit from sustained hard work and a more serious attitude.

Did we notice?  It’s human to go into denial after a clue is delivered.  During the autumn we may have said to ourselves, “Maybe I don’t have to do anything about this.  Maybe it was just a one-time thing.  Maybe I can just move on.  Maybe I can get away without paying attention to this.”

Or maybe not.  Today Saturn turns up the volume and gives us a reminder.  “That responsibility you need to take?” he says, “You’d better figure it out and start doing it.”  This is a wake-up call.  Today, Saturn’s retrograde journey begins and with it begins our journey inward to discover what responsibility we need to take and how it will benefit us to do so.  Saturn’s retrograde journey lasts until the day it turns direct, which is May 30, 2010.

Where must we take responsibility?
The sign Saturn begins its backwards journey in matters, as well as the sign it moves backward into.  Saturn has been in Virgo for the last 2¼  years.  In 2010 it moves forward into Libra.  Its retrograde journey takes it back into Virgo for a few brief months before making the commitment to forward motion into Libra.

Virgo represents the phase of life in which we become a full adult.  In Virgo we assume adult status, enter the workforce and groom ourselves for life as a grown-up.  Libra, falling next in zodiacal order, represents relationship.  In Libra occurs the encounter with the Other, the Beloved.  In Libra we meet our match.

But before we move on to the domain of relationships, Saturn is telling us we need to get our house in order as individuals.  He tells us this by moving back into Virgo for a brief time before then moving forward into Libra.  This will be a period of grooming, cleaning, perfecting.  If you have organized things and structured your health or personal habits over the last 2 years, this is your last chance to complete that process before Saturn shifts out of Virgo’s perfection realm into Libra’s relating realm.  Virgo is a period of preparation to meet the Beloved, a period of finding oneself before entering into relationship with another in Libra.  It is that last moment you spend in front of the mirror before leaving the house.  “Is everything in order?” Saturn wants to know.  The next few months are your last chance (for many years to come) to make it so.

Is this story your story?
If this resonates for you, it may be that you are personally touched by this transit.  Saturn may be triggering a planet in your own chart, thus bringing these themes up for you.  This year Saturn is covering the space between 27 degrees Virgo and 4 degrees Libra.  If there is anything in your chart in 27, 28 or 29 degrees of Virgo, Gemini, Sagittarius or Pisces, you will feel this.  Also if you have anything in 0, 1, 2, 3, or 4 degrees of Libra, Capricorn, Aries or Cancer, you will feel this.  And knowing it can explain feelings you may be having of guilt, seriousness, obligation, duty or feeling trapped or limited.  Saturn may be trying to tell you something important, and if you listen, your discomfort will ease and a clear path to action can open up before you.

What area of your life is being affected?
Good question.  It will have to do with the planet in your chart that’s being triggered by Saturn.  If it’s Mercury, Saturn is asking you to sharpen, hone and focus your mind, so this could be the right time for studying hard.  If it’s Venus or Juno, Saturn is testing your relationships for strength and resilience.  If it’s Jupiter, your hope and faith are being tested.  But whatever it is, that feeling of heaviness, oppression, limitation and the pressure to take committed action are present.  That’s Saturn.  He’s nobody’s favorite planet, but because he lives in each of us, the job gets done.

Want to know more about how this Saturn transit affects your life?
Contact Jamie at pandora@pandoraastrology.com
to schedule a reading.

Last year you may remember a series of posts I wrote about the myth of Inanna, called Descent Into Love’s Darkness.  That was about the Venus retrograde period happening at the time, using the story of Inanna and her descent into the underworld as a metaphor for the conscious vulnerability that real love requires of us.

Venus has a full yearly cycle, which begins and ends when it conjuncts the Sun.  Today is the alpha and omega of that cycle.  Today, last year’s relationship journey ends and this year’s begins.  Venus will proceed direct (i.e. forward) until October 8, when it will move retrograde (i.e. backwards) again for six weeks, sending us all on another deep journey into the heart of relationship.  At that time I’ll write a post on another myth about love’s darkness, that of Eros and Psyche.  This is one of my all-time favorite myths.  I’m looking forward to it already and hope you are too.

In the meanwhile, one relationship journey has ended; another begins.  This does not mean relationships have to end.  Quite the contrary—now is a time of fresh starts and there is a sense of newness, a scent of spring about it.  The testing time is long past.  Love has been reborn.  Now is a great time to fall in love with those you care about, all over again.

This morning, at the dawn of the new year I woke up burning with the desire to recommit to this blog and the deep conversation that it is with you, my fellow human being.  I am actually composing directly into WordPress (rather than writing elsewhere and posting after my thoughts are perfectly composed).  I am habitually meticulous, so this is unusual for me.

I want you to know that I LOVE the many opportunities I have had to touch people’s lives through astrology in 2009.  I have had more sessions than ever before, with more interesting, growing, exciting people than ever before.  I have had a lot of requests to join my newsletter list and am very excited at how this ongoing conversation about how we humans can take charge of and change our lives using astrology as a power tool is expanding.

To mark my excitement, I am recommitting to this blog.  In 2010 I will continue writing timely, relevant posts designed to help you apply astrology’s wisdom to your real, actual life.  I write to you, my intelligent, motivated audience.  To remind us both who you are and what our relationship is, I am reposting one of my very first posts, called “I And Thou” in which I wrote our relationship into being.  I hope you are as inspired by it as I am by you.

Here is what I said to you on April 3, 2007.  After blogging for 2 and 3/4 years, it is even more true today.

*     *     *     *     *

“If you hallow this life, you meet the living God.” -Martin Buber, I and Thou

The Necessity of Imagining an Audience
Every writer needs an audience. That audience is of necessity a fabrication, at least at first. It is invented out of pure imagination. In “inventing” you, I am adding you to my waking dream.

I am setting a high bar for myself. I know you are intelligent, discriminating and thoughtful. I know you are practical and desire more active participation in your own life. I need a reader just like you. I become a better person just thinking about you and the vast worlds we have to talk about together.

Here and now I get the opportunity to determine what you are like, but I also know that if I am to hold your attention I must remember that you have a reality beyond my imagining. So I choose to see you as a real person of stature and solidity, a person who is my equal (a Thou to my I) and a person who is capable of surprising me in a way a fiction can never be capable of. I have put out the shoes. If they fit, step into them.

You are adding me as a character in your dream by reading this and volunteering yourself for the relationship with your attention. You will self-select in or out of being here according to your needs. I trust you to do that.

Now that you’re here, please—pull up a chair. Join me here, at the fire.

Fireside Chat: Can I Be Frank With You?
I speak to you as to someone who understands, someone who “gets it.” We share certain values. You are spiritual but grounded. You have one foot in this world, one in a very different world. You are a spirit and a body and very interested in both. You are smart, subtle, psychological, metaphysical, but also motivated and driven. You are going somewhere in life (as I am) and don’t have patience or time for beating around the bush. You appreciate practical approaches to metaphysical matters. You’ll reach for whatever will help you move forward but if I am too woo-woo or new-agey you will get bored. I know that you are choosy and that I need to stay interesting or I will lose you. I respect that. It is a sense of discrimination I share.

Here, in this conversation, which is just between you and me, the medium is the message. Sometimes I will speak sharply; sometimes with infinite gentleness. It is my job to remind both of us again and again that life is marching on and each moment is too important to waste.

I keep to the realm of the universal, the classic. I talk about small, subtle experiences and large, general ideas. Things that pertain to you when you see how they apply to your life. All of it is useful. You find more here than you can use at one time, so you come back later to absorb the parts you couldn’t take in before. You are learning astrology despite yourself. Perhaps you came because you know some astrology and you want to learn more and you stayed because I’ve shown you new ways of thinking about it. You will never be the same.

I have very little use for knee-jerk negativity and “helpful criticism.” For this reason, I am letting you know now that I won’t have interest in comments that are critical but suggest no helpful change. But I am deeply interested in comments that add value to this conversation. In my view, you are an excellent person with much to say and useful experience to draw on. If you dilute that respect by speaking drivel it will be a loss for both of us. Mother used to say, “If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all.” I would say, “if you can’t say anything useful, wait to speak until you can.” Please don’t waste my time. I promise not to waste yours.

Hello, Thou. Who Are You?
You are adventuresome, growing, not judgmental, leveling, able to hold what I say gently in your mind. Your mind is open and curious. You are willing to consider any idea that might help you in your life.

You are an experimental person. This is because you’ve come to realize that there are no test runs in life, so your life is one big laboratory and you like to try things in it. You’ve had enough life-experience to trust your own assessment of the workability of ideas. You’re willing to grow-as-you-go.

You are a self-aware person. You notice your impact on others and your impact on life. This too enables you to experiment. When your experiments drive others away from you, you notice and perhaps change course. But you’re brave enough not to change course even if others are uncomfortable, in the times when you are sure you’re on the right track.

You have an idea where you are going, maybe sometimes only a general idea, but most importantly, you’ve got some kind of intuitive mechanism that lets you know when you are on-track, and when you are off. You pay attention to that. This gives you freedom to explore because you know that when you get off-track, you will eventually restore your course.

You are in the prime of your life but perhaps you don’t know it, because sometimes you’d rather be somewhere else. You have much more power than you’re using. You are at a nexus, a crossroads, a fork in the path. What you choose now will affect the whole future. New paths will open up, existing ones will close. There is no time but now for you to create the life you really want to live, to carve it out of the block before you. You are looking for what will help uncover the meaning of your life. What I’m writing will help you. At times it is exactly what you need. You are happy to have found me. I am grateful to have found you. We now have each other.

You look at your life differently because of what I have said. You are someone willing to do that. You are willing to change your whole life now, today, because of something that happened this moment. You are open to wild insight and willing to suspend disbelief long enough to entertain crazy ideas. You are willing to rearrange your brain. You are not stuck in ideas. You are also not stuck in a rigid “flexibility,” an ungrounded state that cannot find anchor or center and cleaves to nothing. You know your center when you’ve found it. For this reason, I can speak strongly to you. Thank you for that.

Thank you for listening; I see you are on the edge of your seat. That’s good because it’s your life we’re talking about here. Even when you are skeptical or the subject doesn’t grip you, you read to the end anyway, because you’ve learned to trust me. You know it will be just for you again very soon and you are watching eagerly for that moment.

What I Plan To Do With Your Attention
The conversation has already been going on. Somehow we entered in the middle of it. Our relationship? We are human beings. Sometimes we are up off the planet observing phenomena in ourselves, each other, other humans, the world; sometimes we are down in the thick of it, immersed in our lives, our points of view, our perspectives. Sometimes taking strong positions, sometimes not so much. We immerse ourselves, then pan out and look at the big picture. We are always deriving value from the comparison between the subjective and the objective.

I tell the truth and tell it often: on myself, on you, on others, on life. You respect me enough to hear it and to select what you need to hear from among the things I say. Sensibly, you discard the rest. You give me the infinite gift of changing your life because of what I’ve said here. I galvanize you; you allow yourself to be galvanized.

I respect you, I know your strength and I’m standing for it. I won’t tolerate you being a wimp. In speaking to you this way I am saying “I know you are already conscious, although sometimes you look asleep. Look at your life and take charge of it. It’s yours—no one else’s.”

Now I see others have joined us here at the fire. That’s ok—they can listen. This is still just between you and me, but if others benefit from it, that is very, very good.

Look at the fire. That fire is the urgency we feel: life is being lived now, here, whether we are paying attention or not! The dancing flame is never the same twice: in every moment comes another chance to change it all. In every moment comes another chance to leap in and shape this life according to our joy. To do that we need to give up resentment and discontent, accept how things are and then find the hope to move.

If you are still reading, then you belong here. You and I are connected, as we always were, as we always will be. This ever-existent connection has lain dormant in the back of our consciousness, waiting to be born in this moment, when you showed up and read to the end of the entry. And this, dear reader, is the beginning of our relationship.

This December 31st we have an extremely special kind of full moon.  Not only is it a lunar eclipse, but it’s also a blue moon!  A blue moon is a second full moon inside a calendar month.  It only happens in months that are long and that begin with a full moon, allowing room for another full moon 29 days later to still be in the same month, thus the phrase “once in a blue moon.”  Full moons are times of heightened emotion to begin with, but when you add the increased intensity of the eclipse, the rarity of the blue moon and the fact that it’s New Year’s Eve for cultures using the Gregorian calendar, the day of December 31st is outrageously special.

This lunar eclipse brings strong emotions and nostalgia to pressure as the sensitive Moon in Cancer is pitted against the tough-minded Sun in Capricorn.  Saturn and Pluto act as Shadow Agents, bringing in themes of integrity and intensity.

Details About This Eclipse

Date:  December 31, 2009
Time of eclipse: 11:13 AM PST
Type: partial (weak in intensity)
Visible in: People in Asia, Australasia, Europe and Africa will see this small sliver of an eclipse.
At: 10 degrees Cancer
Shadow Agents: Pluto in Capricorn, Saturn in Libra

Does It Affect You Personally?

If your birthday is on any of the following dates, you most likely experienced this eclipse:
December 26-January 5
March 25-April 5
June 27-July 7
September 28-October 8

Remember, not every eclipse touches everyone, but when it does, it’s usually noticeable.  A lunar eclipse is likely to bring up strong emotions.  The following script is just one possible way it could go.

You hear a knock at the door.  You answer it.  Saturn is there:  he’s a serious-looking older man in a dark business suit, wearing a power tie.  Next to him is Pluto, the Alchemist, in a long black robe spattered with various chemicals.  Pluto is carrying a large pot.  Something seems odd about that pot, but before you can argue, both of them sweep past you and head for . . . your kitchen??
You:  wha?
Saturn:  Sit down.  Shut up.  Do as you’re told.
You:  But this is MY house!
Pluto:  You’re not in charge here.
Saturn pushes you into a chair and actually ties you to it while Pluto gets busy at the stove.  Once Saturn has finished restraining you, you can begin to see what Pluto is doing.  He’s put the giant, black, cast-iron pot onto the stove, added a lot of some strange-smelling liquid and is turning the heat up.  Way up.  You notice it’s not so much a pot as it is a cauldron.
You:  You’re not going to hurt me, are you guys?  What did I do wrong?
Saturn:  Nothing.  This is just how we roll.
The pot is now boiling.  Pluto begins to walk around the house and grab particular items to put into the pot.
You:  Hey, that’s my favorite shirt!  I aced a job interview in that shirt!
Pluto:  Does it have sentimental value?  In it goes!
You:  Oh no, not that photograph—that’s the only memory I have of her!  Damnit, will you fiends stop?
Saturn:  Who are you really?  Have you thought about it?  Where’s your integrity?
You:  I don’t know what you mean.  You guys are just torturing me.  What gives you the right?
Saturn:  You are the amalgam of all things that have ever happened to you PLUS the essential ingredient.  The thing that makes you different from every other human being alive.
You:  What’s that?
Saturn:  What you did with what happened to you.  That one single driver inside you that decided what to do with all the things that happened.  Did you achieve or fail?  Did you love or hate?  Were you a whiner or were you heroic?  That moment of decision—how you act under pressure—is the crucial ingredient.
Saturn reaches into your chest and grabs your heart, pulling it out.  You have no idea why you’re still alive as he tosses it into the pot.  Pluto claps on the lid and seals it tightly.  Belatedly you realize it’s not an ordinary pot—it’s a pressure cooker.  As Pluto turns up the heat under the pot, the pressure increases until you think your heart will explode.  All the feelings, sensations and experiences you’ve ever had are suddenly compressed together with enormous force.  You realize there are few moments in which you made the heroic choice under pressure.  You want to die but find yourself alive anyway, and open your eyes.
Saturn:  You must change your life.
Pluto:  Got it?
You:  unh.
They pack up the pot and go.

Today is a milestone in this year’s phenomenal triple conjunction of Jupiter, Chiron and Neptune in Aquarius.  Today Jupiter and Neptune form a perfect conjunction for the third and final time.  This month is our last chance to take advantage of the magic these two make together and they really want us to know that.  Here’s a snippet of their conversation:

Jupiter and Neptune are perched atop their favorite cloud, watching the world go by.
Jupiter:  Hey, Neptune, have you noticed that it’s a really jaded world out there?
Neptune:  I had in fact, noticed that.  Nobody seems to believe in anything anymore.
Jupiter:  Why do you think that is?
Neptune:  Actually, I think it’s your fault.  Advertising, your monster-child, has jaded them and they are so glutted with unfulfillable promises that they can no longer hear the siren song of true magic calling them.  MY siren song.
Jupiter:  Oh, I really don’t think I’m the only one to blame here.
Neptune:  No?
Jupiter:  Definitely not.  You, after all, are always trying to get people to believe in ridiculous, ungrounded, unprovable metaphysical principles.  People are tired of being psychologically overextended.  They want reality.
Neptune:  BUT they want reality to go their way.
Jupiter:  True.
Neptune:  Yet they’ve forgotten that being able to imagine the impossible, which is my gift—   (Neptune takes a little bow)
Jupiter: —and having enough hope to carry through the effort necessary to prevail despite the impossibility of the task, which is my specialty—  (Jupiter bows back with pretend gravity)
Both in unison: —is exactly how reality can be bent to human will!
They do a little dance, then collapse in laughter.
Jupiter:  Do you think anyone took notice?
Neptune:  Probably not.
Jupiter:  Maybe we’d better try another method.
Neptune:  Ok, what do you have in mind?
Jupiter:  I’m thinking of a Peter Pan moment.
Neptune:  I know exactly the one.  I’m with you.
Together they lean over the cloud and address themselves to all of humanity, in booming-god tones loud enough to be mistaken for a thunderclap.
Both in unison:  DO YOU BELIEVE IN FAIRIES, PEOPLE?  DO YOU?  If so, you’d BETTER START CLAPPING!  Because right now, this very moment, is the one in which you can choose to make a miracle.  IF, that is, you want one.  So there.
The two of them roll back onto the cloud and listen intently for a moment.  Then, just when they were about to give up, they hear it:  the clapping, coming from all over Earth, of people who believe in fairies and some other people who maybe don’t exactly believe in fairies but think it would be a better world if we had a few.  Neptune and Jupiter are filled with delight and dissolve into a fit of giggles.  With each giggle a fairy is born and flies off to do good in the world, for all the people who clapped, and even for a few who didn’t.

For more on this, see:
May’s Triple Conjunction of Neptune, Chiron & Jupiter
Jupiter Conjuncts Neptune: Let Your Dreams Run Wild

Sunday, December 20, 2009 through Wednesday, March 10, 2010

What is Mars Retrograde?
“Mars retrograde” means Mars is in the part of its cycle where it is traveling backwards from our point of view here on Earth.  When Mars goes retrograde, we are cast upon a symbolic Hero’s Journey.

A retrograde period of any planet is a retrospective of that planet’s themes.  It is a time of moving backward, perhaps of going back to pick up pieces lost in the past.  It can be a retrieval, a turning inward, a letting-go.  A Hero’s Journey is a life-passage in which we retrieve our own heroism.  True heroism involves courage, strength, assertiveness, but also gentleness and appropriate restraint—and during this journey we are tested, in a number of ways, for those things.  While Mars is retrograde, we’ll face many opportunities to be a hero in a deeper, truer sense than we ever have before.

How Are Heroes Made?
As human beings, we feel the tug of the heroic journey because each of us (regardless of our physical gender or age) has a hero inside us and that part of us wants to become immortal.  This side of us, symbolized by Mars in our astrology chart, is drawn toward conflict and righteous struggle as we seek to retrieve the lost pieces of our heroism.  We want to be assertive but we don’t really want to hurt others.  We love a glorious battle, but what’s behind that is the simple desire to assert ourselves against a worthy obstacle, sharpen and hone our battle skills and emerge victorious.  To be a hero is to have at our command all the strength, courage and fortitude that we need to contend with any situation in life and come out a winner.

How Long Will It Last?
Mars will be retrograde from Sunday December 20, 2009 through Wednesday, March 10, 2010.  That’s a long time—almost 12 weeks.  Plenty of time to have a few interesting adventures that will test our mettle.  During this 12 week period I’ll be telling stories from the adventures of Greek and Roman heroes who exemplify certain heroic virtues.

Six Tales of Heroic Virtue

Strength—Hercules
Strength is naturally the first of the heroic virtues and Hercules exemplifies it.  His stories overflow with his vitality, hotheadedness and even his sexual prowess.
Courage—Achilles
The virtue of courage is shown by the story of Achilles and his famous weakness (his heel).  Paradoxically, his is a story of faith in one’s own invulnerability.
Resourcefulness—Odysseus
The virtue of resourcefulness is best shown in the craftiness and guile of the clever Odysseus, for whom the Odyssey (his journey) was named.
Alliance—Castor & Pollux
The famous mythical Twins (who make up the constellation Gemini) are a perfect example of the importance of brother- and sister-hood, the ability to form ties with trustworthy battle allies.
Invention—Alexander the Great
Alexander’s story is a historical as well as a mythical one.  His slicing of the Gordian Knot reveals the power of creating your own original solution.
Devotion—Orpheus
What good is a hero without something worth fighting for?  Orpheus was willing to go to the land of the dead and charm the Lord and Lady of that land to reclaim his beloved wife.

I’m going to have a LOT of fun writing these for your benefit and I hope you enjoy the process fully as much as I do.

Mars, the Inner Hero
Every one of us has a hero within us, and that would be Mars.  Mars is the heroic, strong, courageous, overpowering force that beats fiercely in the heart of every human alive.  When we need defending, Mars steps forward.  When we get into a fight, Mars got us there.  Making friends with Mars, and being aware of the gifts and challenges shown by his position in our chart, is the best way to become a hero.  (Contact me if you want a reading about that.)

What Will You Do With This Opportunity?
Heroes are made, not born.  This is not an easy process.  To become a hero is to exert oneself and likely fail many times before the ultimate win.  This involves not giving up along the way.  You must be able to hope and to imagine how to conquer even seemingly-impossible obstacles.  The tales I’ll be telling over the upcoming weeks involve more than strength—they involve courage, imagination, intelligence and even love and devotion.  A true hero fights for what is right when that is needed and puts down his sword in peacetime.  A hero in modern-day is not only a warrior, but blends all these human qualities into one seamless whole.  To be a hero is not exclusively open to men, but to women also, and children too.

Naturally, this means you.  What will you do with the opportunities this astrological event offers?  Will you see them as opportunities?  Will you take up your sword and follow the flag of your inspiration?  Mars demands not just comprehension, but action.  Mars doesn’t care what you think or feel; he cares what you do.  And when he’s awake in you, you are unstoppable.

Mars is retrograde now.  He’s raised the horn to his lips.  He’s uttered a battle cry.  Will you leap into the fray?

In honor of Sagittarians everywhere, this post is about Jupiter, Sag’s ruling planet, the bringer of joy.

Jupiter is located in a sign in your chart that brings you joy.  Wherever Jupiter resides will tell a story of an area of life or a way of being which brings you sheer delight and happiness.  To do your Jupiter thing is the very pursuit of happiness for you.  The feeling you get when you do that is a sense of expansion, pleasure and lightness.  Jupiter is just plain fun.

Jupiter is also the part of us that reaches beyond ourselves and makes us grow bigger.  This part helps us develop a philosophy of life that answer’s life’s big questions and makes sense of our place in the universe.  When you are in touch with your Jupiter side, life has meaning and you have a reason to live.  You have a happiness to pursue and when you do so, you exude such positive, hopeful qualities that life rolls out the red carpet, tossing you opportunities and making you lucky.  When you are friends with your inner Jupiter, life is an adventure.

How do you find out where your Jupiter is?
If you don’t have your chart, or don’t know how to read your chart, you might want to order your own personal Astrology Chart Decoder.  This is a special tool I’ve invented that puts your chart’s details in English, instead of astrology symbols.  Your Decoder tells you where every planet in your chart is located:  the sign it’s in, the house it’s in and the exact degree it occupies.  When you’ve got your Decoder in front of you, check to see what your Jupiter sign is.

Where’s Your Joy?
When you have Jupiter in Aries, you derive joy from leaping into action.  It’s a little hard to sit still because you’d rather be in motion, making progress or getting somewhere.
Spontaneity delights you and you are never so happy as when your own action is the right one and brings delight to others.  You bounce back fast & learn well from mistakes.  Your philosophy is based on transparency and you get a lot of joy from being your truest self without apology.  To you, mutual honesty and directness are the key to any relationship.

Jupiter in Taurus people love the physical world.  If you have this Jupiter sign, you relish feeding all your senses with delicious sights, sounds, tastes, scents and textures.  Can this lead to gluttony?  You bet.  It can also lead to acquisitiveness.  But such people do generally end up with the nest egg they seek and lots of nice things to decorate it with.  And your love of food leads to natural cooking talent.  Your philosophy of life includes the importance of continuity and the idea that things should go on much the same unless there’s a really good reason to change them.

Jupiter in Gemini?  Ok, you can be a real talker, even a serious chatterbox.  You love being clever, expressing your wit and getting into wide-ranging conversations on a huge variety of topics.  You are a “renaissance person,” pulled in a number of directions, all of which give you equal joy.  In fact, you’re so multi-talented that you don’t know what to develop.  Being involved with several ideas at once brings you delight and your life-philosophy involves the importance of using one’s intelligence and seeing life logically.

People with Jupiter in Cancer are a fountain of love and nurturance for those lucky enough to be around them.  When you have this, you tend to feel emotionally secure and to feel like your emotions are ok without needing validation from others.  You spread your support around liberally and are not easily emotionally depleted.  You are sensitive to the needs of others, but not clingy or cloying.  Yours is an open kitchen and a well-trod welcome mat.  Your philosophy of life involves the importance of family and of treating people like family.

Jupiter in Leo is very expansive and exudes noblesse oblige.  This makes you a really royal person.  Creativity gives you joy and you like to express yourself, but beware of excess self-involvement.  You can bear a lot of attention.  You are a natural leader and role model.  You are sometimes unaware of how your large expression can overwhelm others and stifle their expression.  When you make room for the creativity of others while not diminishing yourself, you are the best role model of all.  Your philosophy is about being an individual and the importance of individual will and expression.

Jupiter in Virgo is similar to Gemini.  When you have this, you can get lost in, and overwhelmed by, the details.  You find yourself trying to pan out and focus in at the same time, which can be frustrating, but on the other hand, having an abundance of Virgoan organizational energy is not a bad thing at all and you like nothing so much as a clean, fresh surface ready for use.  Your health tends to go well because you enjoy putting healthy habits in place.  Your philosophy can put a positive spin on the work ethic, partly because being efficient and industrious just feels good to you.

Jupiter in Libra people truly enjoy relating to others, which may account for your varied and interesting social life.  Your philosophy includes the tenet that life should be fair and this trips you up occasionally, when it doesn’t bear out.  You think everyone’s beliefs deserve room, except where they exclude the beliefs of others.  You can be a social magnet and a matchmaker, introducing the right people to each other and smoothing over social mishaps among your many and varied friends.  Your tolerance for people’s differences leads to a host of good connections that can pay off over time.

When you have Jupiter in Scorpio, you have a dark side that you enjoy.  Sometimes this takes the form of gallows humor and sometimes it’s about a love of the gritty, grimy side of life (a fascination with detective novels, for example).  Your philosophy includes the idea there’s no moment so dark it will not pass and that there is a light at the end of every tunnel.  Because of that, you make a good helper and guide for people who are truly at the end of their rope, because you have a high tolerance for other people’s shadows.  In fact, your sheer delight at seeing someone else being real while in pain is infectious.

When you have Jupiter in Sagittarius you like to stay mobile.  You are a pretty purely Jupiterian person, so you have a strong sense of humor, a large and benevolent presence and you are fascinated with travel and foreign cultures.  You are delighted by that which is different from you simply because it is different—that makes it interesting.  You are sometimes very restless and need to avoid getting tied down.  You have a deep well of optimism and can bounce back from just about anything.  Your life-philosophy leaves room for endless growth and expansion.

Jupiter in Capricorn people are prone to overworking because they love the sensation of discipline and focused effort.  When you have this, you are delighted by discovering what to devote yourself to and you get a lot of energy and joy from working extremely hard at it once you’ve found it.  Achievable goals inspire you and pie-in-the-sky goals annoy you.  While you are not naturally optimistic, once your skepticism is satisfied, you can show tremendous persistence.  Your philosophy is based on the idea that hard work leads inevitably to success—and for you, it does.

When you have Jupiter in Aquarius, progress is enlivening and central to your world-view—thwarting it runs counter to your philosophy.  You have a rebellious streak and quickly spot the places where old ways have stopped working.  You are happiest when there’s a little chaos going on due to a really big change in the works.  You have an abundance of ideas and enjoy taking an intellectual, experimental approach.  For you an adventure is better had in the world of ideas than in the physical world and you secretly like shaking up the old, established ways.

As a Jupiter in Pisces person, you have a deep well of faith to draw on.  You are a profoundly gentle and tolerant person, with warm affection for all living things.  You can be wise and generous with your attention and help make room for smaller beings around you to grow.  If you are religious, you’ve chosen the finest parts of your religion and tolerate or ignore the rest.  This frees you to participate in a communion with spirit that feeds your soul and gives you joy and vitality.  Your philosophy is simple: every living thing is deserving and there is room for all of us to be happy.

Today Jupiter and Chiron are in conjunction for the third and final time in 2009.

Jupiter and Chiron have met on a giant cloud over Mount Olympus, home of the gods.  They are watching events on Earth.
Chiron: (pointing) Hey, Jupiter, you see that little human over there?
Jupiter: You mean the one with all the intolerance?
Chiron: Yeah, that one over there, surrounded by people different from himself.
Jupiter: Not too happy, is he?
Chiron: No.  Shall we?
Jupiter: Of course!
They link arms, then disappear in a puff of smoke, reappearing near the human in question.
Everyman: Wha–?  Who the hell are you?
Jupiter: Different from you, apparently.
Chiron: Yep, it seems that everyone is different from you.  Don’t you ever get lonely?
Everyman: I don’t know what you mean, but I do know you aren’t from around here.  So here’s the point-end of my gun.  Go back where you came from, before I shoot!
Jupiter sticks out one finger, plugs up the end of the gun.  Everyman shoots and the bullet is stopped by Jupiter’s finger.  Everyman looks at his gun, dumbfounded.
Jupiter: You see, there’s really no need for this.
Everyman: Now you’re making me mad!
He gets out a bigger gun, but before he can use it, Chiron suddenly grows very large and picks him up by the collar, shaking him until he drops all weapons.  Several fall from his clothing and clatter to the ground.
Chiron: Silly human!  When will you learn?
Jupiter: Intolerance will get you nowhere.
Everyman: (choking a little) You don’t understand!  They are going to kill us!  They won’t let us just be—so we have to get them first.  It’s the way of the world.  If we don’t protect our way of life we’ll lose it.
Jupiter: But if you keep fighting, you’ll lose your life anyway.  And who will be left around to continue the culture you’ve built?  Why are you fighting anyway?  Who is the real enemy here?
Everyman is still dangling from Chiron’s grip.  Chiron drops him suddenly.
Chiron: (shaking his head) I can’t make you tolerant.  But I can show you what’s possible.
He picks up a rock and breathes on it.  The rocks clarifies, becomes like a pool.  In the rock, pictures begin to appear.  Everyman becomes fascinated and steps closer.
Jupiter: What do you see?
Everyman: I see my people, fighting our neighbors, as we’ve always done.  So many dead, so much territory changing hands over so many years.
Chiron: Do you want your children to die for this?
Everyman: I, um, I don’t know.  I want our way of life to continue.  I’m not giving up our ways!
Jupiter: What if you didn’t have to?
Everyman: I don’t want my daughter to marry one of them!
Chiron: I understand, but what if your battle is over?  What if no one is right and no one is wrong?
Jupiter: What if you could spend your days in building up your culture instead of tearing down theirs?
Chiron: And what if their culture contains some hidden key, some mystery that can unlock something in yours—wouldn’t you want access to that?
Everyman: (grudgingly) Maybe.
Jupiter: You’re a hard case.
Everyman: Yeah.  I’m not budging.
Jupiter: (to Chiron) He doesn’t seem to have any clue that he’s not unique in his intolerance.  It’s as if he really believes his culture is superior.  This is useless.
Chiron: (to Jupiter) I think it’s time to visit the one we really came here to see.
They turn their back on Everyman and walk into a nearby house.  There, seated on the floor, is an 8-year-old of indeterminate race, who looks up in surprise.
Jupiter: Hi there!
Child: Whoa!  You have got to be deities!
Chiron: You guessed it.  Can’t fool you for a minute, can we?
Child: Nope.
Jupiter: Bit of a mess out there, isn’t it?  He points outside with his thumb.
Child: No kidding!  Everybody’s killing each other all the time.  They killed my dad because he’s not like them.  They shun my mom too.  Did you come to fix it?
Chiron: No, we came to do something better.  We came to help you fix it.
Child: No way!  That’s not better—that’s worse.
Jupiter: Yeah, it wasn’t my idea, it was Chiron’s.  Blame him.
Chiron: You were born to be a bridge between the two cultures you came from.
Child: Don’t be an idiot.  How am I supposed to do that?
Jupiter: Because you want to be whole.  Because you have two sides and yet you are one person.  Until you completely own and accept both sides of you, this war will continue.  Make friends with both sides and you make yourself whole.
Child: That sounds hard.  I don’t know where to start.
Chiron: Start wherever you are.  Find the places that are broken in you and make them whole.  Gather people who are different together and get them talking about what makes them the same.  Help them learn from each other.  This will make you whole and it will save the world you live in.
Jupiter and Chiron begin to go up in a puff of swirling smoke.
Child: Don’t go!  I can’t do this alone.
Chiron: You won’t really be alone.  We’ll be behind you the whole way.
Jupiter: You can do it.  It is your gift to the world.  And you have your whole life to do it in.

For more insight into this year’s Jupiter/Chiron conjunction, see these pages:
May’s Triple Conjunction of Neptune, Chiron and Jupiter
Jupiter & Chiron Ask “Am I Too Big Or Not Big Enough?”