Fog-Be-Gone! Forecast for Feb. 27 – March 4

Get ready to shake off some of that stupor! The preponderance of Pisces energy in the sky has had a lot of us walking around in a brain fog or worse. A semblance of clarity rolls in this week. Spunk and gumption return, too — at least on the level of talk.

The week begins with better relationship vibes than we’ve experienced for some time. Venus and Mars are experiencing harmony and cooperation that blends desires and drive into the same flow. The feminine and the masculine are at one, for the moment. Your inner parts are getting along better, and so are you and key folks around you. (Perhaps a break will occur in the male-led war on women that’s invaded the national news?)

Hang on to that sensation of harmony. You will benefit from reminders of it by the weekend, as the water turns choppy and dissipate some of the fog, torpor or outright confusion we’ve been in.

Some of the choppiness will be coming from your own thoughts and words. They are scheduled to leave the realm of dreams, concepts and feeling everyone’s pain and erupt into impulse, combativeness and self-promotion. You can still operate with awareness of other people’s feelings; you’ll just be more assertive in communicating your own thoughts (and passing pokey drivers). Some people will miss that first part, of course, which will invite all manner of verbal escalating. ITALHang on to that sensation of harmony….

The shift occurs Friday, when Mercury, the planet of communication and short-distance travel, moves into Aries. Mercury in Aries doesn’t care about feelings or gentleness or taking everyone into consideration. Shoot first and ask questions later? More like shoot and good luck finding him; that’s how quickly he’ll move on to the next target.

Mercury makes this sign change every year, but this time will really get attention. The change in mode of expressions is such a switch from the all-connected waters of Pisces in which we’ve been soaking. On top of that, Mercury immediately clashes with the Moon in Cancer, where she is hyper-sensitive emotionally and prone to perceiving and personalizing slights. The brief but widespread outbreak of moodiness and crabbiness Friday is your signal that Mercury has made his move. The ramping up of your own impulses and feistiness will signal that as well.

The weekend has the feel of a series of depth charges going off in the ocean and shooting shafts of water, sea life and who knows what else into the air. The spray will dissipate fog and confusion. It may be unsettling, too. It will stir up discomfort around matters of the heart and bank account. It will also provide a long (emphasis on long) look at irksome people and situations, as well as limitations, naysayers and authority figures that are cramping our style.

Hang on to that sensation of harmony. It’s perfectly appropriate in this new phase — it’s absolutely called for, in fact — to express yourself assertively and dynamically ITL and act lovingly and gently. Won’t it be fun to watch the headlines?

More in my extended weekly forecast and short weekly podcast.

Tuesday evening is the first of my upcoming talks giving tools for navigating Neptune’s 14-year voyage through Pisces. Part I (Feb. 28) links your physical senses to your inner GPS so they cooperate and deliver signals you can trust. Part II teaches techniques for recognizing and clearing out all the energy you pick up that isn’t yours. $20 each. By phone (Feb. 28 and Mar. 6) and in person at The Goddess in Eden, Montclair, NJ (Mar. 15 & 29). Read more and register here…

How Ya Doing With the Brain Fog?

Haven’t the last few days been beyond spacey?

One friend told me he feels like he’s walking a couple of feet behind his brain. Another is so disoriented that she’s physically uncomfortable and going to bed early. I’ve been misjudging time and getting lost behind the wheel.

Has reality felt different to you, too — more dreamlike, spacey, even confusing? Neptune has sailed into Pisces for a 14-year voyage, and we’re all having to get our sea legs.

In two talks, I will discuss what this new influence holds in store and present two different (but equally important) types of tools for navigating it smoothly.

If you are interested in a phone presentation at a different time, please email me to discuss logistics.

Part I: Working With Your Inner GPS
Now that the fog has rolled in, your physical senses alone are no longer reliable for moving about. In this session you’ll link your senses to your internal guidance system, so that they work in cooperation and deliver signals you can trust.

By phone: 8 PM EST, Tuesday, Feb. 28. You will receive call-in instructions by email after registering. $20.

Part II: Working With Your Energy Filters
The interconnected nature of Pisces is making all of us more susceptible to energy that doesn’t belong to us. Learn to recognize how much you pick up and carry in the course of ordinary life. You’ll come away with several quick and simple techniques for clearing it out.

By phone: 8 PM EST, Tuesday, March 6. You will receive call-in instructions by email after registering. $20.

Register here.

Dreams Come True: Pisces New Moon of Feb 21

February 21, 2012
2:35 PM PDT / 5:35 PM EDT / 10:35 PM GMT
2 Pisces 42

“When you wish upon a star, makes no difference who you are…when you wish upon a star, your dreams come true.” –Jiminy Cricket, Pinocchio

Whether you normally honor (or even notice) a New Moon not or, pay attention this month. It hold the potential for outright magic. Tuesday’s Pisces New Moon doesn’t give just a star to wish upon; it gives us the Sun, the Moon, two planets and two asteroids. What’s more, its timetable for wishes coming down to earth isn’t just a moon cycle; it’s lots, lots longer.

This New Moon is a launch party for Neptune’s voyage through Pisces over the next 14 years. Not only is the guest of honor in attendance; he’s got an honor guard, too. This puts the power of the ocean behind the wishes we make now, the artistic and spiritual inspirations we receive now, the healing of divisions we experience now, the guidance and compassion and, yes, outright magic we allow to come into our lives now.

Here’s the line-up, and then here’s how to work with it: Neptune, the ruler of Pisces, is at the doorway to his sign, where he’ll basically hover for the rest of the year and beyond. The New Moon is sandwiched between him and the asteroids Pallas Athena (feminine power to lead and strategize) and Chiron (our abiding wound and the challenge to master physical existence). A little further out, but still within orb, is Mercury , the cosmic messenger, who rules both communication and traffic flow. That immerses heart and mind in one big dreamy bath of transcendence, feminine wisdom, multi-level healing and non-rational communication.

Read the full mooncast here.

Dream On: Forecast for Feb. 20-26, 2012

We’re still getting the hang of existing in and around so much … fog? Water? Waking dreams? Confusions and misunderstandings are common in any adjustment period…and that’s what’s on tap this week.

The week brings one uncomfortable aspect after another for Mercury, the planet of communication and transportation. Little will flow easily, or smoothly, or reliably. You may at times wonder if Mercury has gone retrograde. Oh, goodie, right? Naah. You can do this.

To simplify the discussion, let’s stick with the image of water. Water muffles and distorts sound. It also carries it surprisingly far distances. (Ever thought you were having a private conversation in an outdoor hot tub? Or in a lake?) Some of your words aren’t going to get across. Some of what you think you hear isn’t going to match what was actually said. The surface of some messages isn’t going to reflect the intent or motivation or, let’s just say it, truth behind them. And some messages are going to travel much further than the speaker has any idea.

So be prepared for disturbances. Sit with information before you act on it (or react to it). Ask for confirmation and clarification. Run it by your inner guidance or someone who’s uninvolved. If a message feels off, don’t make any commitments based on it; wait things out. And keep in mind that your own words (spoken, written, posted, texted) may reach unintended or unsuspected audiences.

There will be lots of splashing and thrashing in the water, too. Aggression could erupt for the weirdest reasons. (Read the previous paragraph, rinse and repeat.) Commutes and short trips are rife with confusion. You might wonder if everyone on the road has lost their mind, and maybe they have, temporarily.

Don’t despair; just take care. Hanging out in the water has its pleasant sides. There isn’t necessarily anything wrong with being slightly dazed as long as you don’t sign contracts, propose marriage or operate heavy machinery in that state.

There are moments aplenty of grace this week, too. Tuesday’s Pisces New Moon is a belated launch party for Neptune’s 14-year voyage through that sign. This one is Piscean to the max: The Sun and the Moon passed by the guest of honor, the sign’s ruler, on their way into their own meeting; Chiron and Mercury form the honor guard at the exit. The spirit of transcendence pervades heart, will and mind and delivers a boost in artistic and spiritual inspirations and inclinations — not to mention a softer, gentler approach toward ourselves and each other. Read more in my mooncast.

As the Moon grows to a crescent in the sky, coming to terms, if not to peace, with the physicality of existence builds as well. On Friday, the Sun meets with Chiron, who represents our abiding wound and challenges us to master the physicality of existence. All this we-are-one universal love Piscean energy becomes immediately and directly pertinent to our mundane lives. Here’s the joke: That wound has turned out to be your blessing, your friend and your ally. You would not be who you are without it. Treat it gently. Treat yourself gently.

Read daily forecasts in my extended weekly forecast.

There’s more, too, in my short podcast for the week.

Two Upcoming Talks — By Phone and In Person!
I’m presenting two different but equally important talks with tools for navigating Neptune’s 14-year voyage through Pisces. Part I links your physical senses to your inner GPS so they cooperate and deliver signals you can trust. Part II teaches techniques for recognizing and clearing out all the energy you pick up that isn’t yours. $20 each. By phone (Feb. 28 and Mar. 6) and in person at The Goddess in Eden, Montclair, NJ (Mar. 15 & 29). Read more…

Water, Water Everywhere: Forecast for Feb. 13-19, 2012

…and not a drop to think.

How’s the water feeling to you? We’re still acclimating to the Piscean atmosphere now, and it’s only getting more so this week. Hold tight to your grounding cord and follow your internal guidance system. If you’ve been uncommonly spacey or absent-minded, remember that these tools are at your disposal. (And if you haven’t been….are you sure?)

The planet of communication and transportation is descending from the high-rise perspective of Aquarius and setting sail in Pisces. When the Sun follows on Sunday, Pisces will be the dominant influence in the sky.

All that water can be assaultive (think: tidal wave), but it can also slip around, engulf and wear down. Signals will undergo something similar to what happens to sound when you dunk your head. The waters may distort messages, wash information for or from other people by you, and soften intellect and reason with caring, romanticism and otherworldly inspiration. The usually simple act of getting around may hit patches of confusion and misdirection, too. You could end up lost or at a destination without a clear understanding of how you get there.

It’s easier now to soak up images, concepts and emotions than grasp than cold, hard, verifiable facts. Some beings are banking on that, so monitor your boundaries *and* your filter. Notice the news stories — and how the media and public figures spin them — as Mercury moves from Neptune (Pisces’ ruler and the cosmic fog machine) to Chiron (the challenge to transcend abiding wounds and master physicality) to squaring the Moon’s nodes next weekend. The last contact will spit out developments having to do with law and politics (big surprise), religious beliefs, foreign relations, technology and the Internet and, very possibly, sports and academia.

On a personal level, this wave may crash you against thinking, beliefs and modes of technology and transportation that it would benefit you to reconsider and change, or that shove you in a direction that feels like destiny. Give yourself quiet time to process. The impact of this wave may be subtle at the moment, but its importance is long-term.

Ah, quiet time. It’s got a Required Daily Amount now. If the urge hits to nap, daydream, watch TV or stare out the window, indulge it. Hanging loose, going with the flow and leaving big chunks of time open on your calendar are the order of things for a while. Baths are calling, too.

Much of the RDA is scheduled for the predawn hours. No night this week passes without activity in the sky. Influences abound every single night to send gears and levers whirring, processing and assimilating. It might be fascinating (and would eventually be revealing) to jot down dream fragments every morning.

Mundane: Recent days have brought scads of examples of Neptune’s new phase. A few are listed in my article Neptune Dives Into Pisces and Splashes Up Some Archetypes. Whitney Houston’s death may well warrant a place on that list. Music, glamour and drugs are all part of Neptune’s realm. Pisces can demand a sacrifice, and Neptune’s trident has a way of hooking the person who will be it. Attending to the astrological overtones, Billboard is reporting that she was found in bathtub, with a legion of prescription drugs in her hotel room. I would not be surprised if the trigger for her death occurred a day or two before, in a sudden, angry outburst, when Venus was contacting Uranus in Aries.

Read my extended weekly forecast with day by day entries.

Listen to my podcast for the week, just under five minutes.

Neptune Dives Into Pisces and Splashes Up Some Archetypes

Watching the news is a great, easy and fun way to learn astrology by watching archetypes in action. A lot splashed in the surf as Neptune dove into Pisces on Feb. 3. Neptune’s the lord of the sea (and magic/illusion/alcohol/oil/film/artistry/transcendence), and his home base of Pisces contain the waters that connect all existence. Play spot-the-symbolism with these news briefs:

Ghost signs for Club Atlantis were found under the boardwalk in Coney Island.

Gaze upon the first Wee Peeple doll of the year, a dark goddess with sea shells and a watery backdrop (and read a Uranus moving into squaring Pluto tale, to boot).

CNN reported a possible leak at a California nuclear plant (this has Uranian/Plutonian overtones, too).

On the first Sunday of Neptune’s 14-year voyage, through Pisces, Antenna Television aired an episode of “Circus Boy” with an unintended but pitch-perfect summation of the potential of the next few years when Neptune is traveling with Chiron, the wounded healer, who represents the challenge to master the physicality of existence. The Pisces child actor Mickey Braddock (nee Dolenz, and later of The Monkees), gave a pep talk to an aerialist whose leg and nerve had been broken by a fall from the highwire. Being a big man means you don’t run away from problems. You recognize that people need each other. And you have to forgive. “Who do I have to forgive?” “Yourself.”

That evening, the phrase “The Sea Is Calling” appeared against a black background in a commercial for the Royal Caribbean cruise line during the Superbowl.

And, in pre-show action, while Neptune was at the end of Aquarius and approaching a trine to Saturn (rules and authority) in Libra (society and law),

The Sea Is Calling: Forecast for Feb. 6-12, 2012

Gear shift! Did you sense it? We are definitely, irrevocably in a new phase, with absolutely no going back.

A mist is lifting and revealing what’s left from all the dreams that came to ground last month. Some vaporized into little wisps that are floating aimlessly in the air. Others blossomed into solid, forms that are still filling out and in. Some of the developments I’ve seen (and experienced) unfolding are so dazzlingly heaven-sent that you could pinch yourself to make sure you’re not dreaming — if only you had time.

The two forces that brought all that into being have moved into opposite directions. Neptune has left the final degree of Aquarius, for our lifetimes, and floated into Pisces last Friday. Tuesday, Saturn is stationing to backtrack through LIbra until the middle of June. The second influence will be testing relationship dynamics (as well as the individual platforms we’ve been building since 1983) through October. We’ll get to go back over some of the dreams that have materialized and put them into more durable, supportable forms. The first influence, on the other hand, is with us for the next 14 years.

I wrote at length in last week’s forecast about the boundary-dissolving impact that Neptune’s time in Pisces is bringing. We are all creatures in vast sea of life, and how we coexist is up for a new way of being. Don’t you already feel a softening, an unmooring, a gentleness that was not previously present? If you’ve been incredibly spacey since Friday, this is why.

We may not understand what’s unfolding for some time. Neptune does have a knack for obscuring the true nature of what lies beneath surfaces. Plus he’s hovering just off the shore for the next year or two, which will ease us into this journey, much as the heat sneaks up on a lobster in the pot.

Hard as it is to grasp the mists, fogs, glamour and illusion that Neptune generates, I can say one thing with certainty: The first leg of the journey holds the potential for enormous healing — blurring walls between people(s), replacing isolationism with mutual caring, soothing long-standing wounds and, above all, awakening a compassion, forgiveness and love of the self that permeates all of our interactions.

Use that as your guideline this week. In your quiet moments (if you can find them — isn’t the pace of life a tornado of preparatory steps — and then waiting for results, while another tornado whips up?) look over the last 14 years and acknowledge to yourself how you’ve emerged. Maybe not triumphantly and victoriously using other people’s measurements, but they don’t apply. View this last phase of your life through the eyes of compassion. Now how do they look?

It’s appropriate for Neptune’s first days in Pisces that the skies this week are generating lots of activity in the dreamtime he rules. Noting your dream fragments is one way of working with this. You can also harness this connection by asking, just before you go to sleep, for a dream that answers a question or explains a situation. Be sure to specify that the dream use imagery that you can understand and also set the intention that you will remember the dream. Another approach is to ask to be led to the answer or into the most beneficial direction. I’ve been using this tact a lot lately. If you give it a whirl, you request that the information come through so loudly that you can not miss it. You will be surprised, happily. (Feel free to send testimonials!)

Two fiery, energy-amping events will inject oomph and excitement into the week’s dreaminess. Tuesday’s Leo Full Moon occurs right after Saturn stations retrograde. What we see and experience of our personal light and expressiveness is not a flash in the pan, but a spark-kindling with prolonged staying power. Read more in my moon forecast.

On Wednesday, Venus, the ruler of our hearts and all we value, moves into Aries. That’s the home of her counterpart Mars, the god of war and action, who is currently retreating through Virgo. While he’s busy reviewing and reworking actions of the past few weeks, she’s taking over leading the charge.

Aries is not the most natural and comfortable place for her, but she — and we — can have fun with the energy. She’s in huntress mode here, not waiting for anyone to do her bidding but leaping after what she wants, whenever the urge ignites. Her prey could be anything, given the flames being stoked in her. On Thursday she makes a super-conjunction (by degree and by declination) to unpredictable, destabilizing, instigating, liberating Uranus. The pre-Valentine’s boldness this unleashes will be breathtaking. “I can’t believe I just did that” will be as prevalent as “I can’t believe that just happened.” Adventure awaits!

For the day by day forecasts, read my extended weekly forecast.

Don’t forget: I also have a weekly podcast.

Moon Over Indianapolis: Madonna, The Super Bowl and the Leo Full Moon

Didja catch the Super Bowl’s half-time show? What a look-at-me spectacle, led by a Leo woman, a breathtakingly fitting lead-in to the Leo Full Moon. In the middle of the most hyper-masculine event this side of actual warfare, one woman took the stage and for one outrageous moment made the event all about herself. Madonna commanded the center of a universe populated by Roman centurions (or were they gladiators?), a marching band, cheerleaders, a choir. High, non-stop, outrageous drama full of flash, sparkle, gold, glint, not to mention her name, her initial, her image, larger than life. What a huge, huge personality it takes to hold your own amid all that; what a huge, huge ego, too. Aging? Has-been? Ha. Struck me dumb. It’s no stretch to see a presaging of Venus’ coming move into Aries and warrior goddess mode, in that one bold, high-energy woman leading all those men…and troops.

More on the Feb. 7 Full Moon here.