Heartbeat: Forecast for May 28-June 3, 2012

Messages and mental processes continue to take center stage this week . Cosmic messenger Mercury is hyperactive as ever, zooming through his home sign of Gemini and delivering data galore about what your heart wants and what you’re willing (or need) to do to get it.

He’s also dropping hints about May 20’s solar eclipse, the personal meaning of which is just beginning to take shape for each of us. Remain alert. Treat events and coincidences as messages. (One helpful and sometimes fun approach: What would this mean if it were written in a novel?) The universe and your higher guidance are broadcasting 24/7 these days, and their info is for the having if you will only turn your receiver on.

Some of this week’s activity is going to be a bit fractious. Fighting words will fly (or, at least, ones that spur folks to action) in the first half of the week, as Mercury and Mars enter the ring to go a round late Wednesday. The dust-up could affect any number of areas, since Mercury rules communication, transportation and vehicles for both. Technology disruptions and road rage are in this picture. Use the first as signals for needed repairs or upgrades, the second as a warning to steer clear.

Don’t fear it. This dynamism bodes well for breaking out of stuck places. Some information is going push you off the fence and send you running toward something you want. And what you want is certainly on your mind and in the air — and maybe, just maybe, within reach.

That’s because the planet that delivers messages and bouquets has his own extended date with the goddess of love on Friday. It’s a day-long extravaganza, with Mercury and Venus meeting on the ecliptic (by declination) as well as by zodiacal degree, a two-step that’s known as a super-conjunction. Hearts and minds are simpatico, aligned, on the same page, working as one — whatever concept of unswerving alliance works for you.

Their mutual admiration society creates an atmosphere of receptiveness to words from the heart, whether they’re declarations of love or a heartfelt clearing of the air. If you’ve been wanting to set things straight in a troubling situation, Friday’s ideal for finding the right words and having them go over as gently and well as possible.

The communication flow goes two ways. Notice who reaches out to you and what they say. The importance is not merely having pleasant conversations — though some will be pleasant to a wonderful extreme — but also arming you with information with very personal value. Who do you love? What do you love? Why do you love? Messages touch on all these questions. (Watch for gender issues, women’s rights and relationship/marriage items to be all over the news.) Some are going to have a retrospective feel, because of Venus being retrograde. Puzzle pieces could fall in your lap that explain why a certain situation played out as it did, and why that outcome is now a good thing for you.

Mercury and Venus’ special day is helping us amass info about the state of our relationships, bank accounts, self-worth and other valuables. That’s all funneling into the build-up to next Tuesday, when Venus meets and eclipses the Sun. Some of this information amounts to full-scale, even perspective-altering realizations and revelations, which are dropping and escalating in the build-up to next Monday’s Sagittarius Full Moon lunar eclipse. (Look for my mooncast on this site by Sunday.)

In the short run, this week is energizing, motivating and socially pleasurable. In the bigger picture, it’s also an exercise in data collection, heart and mind working together, each supporting the other.

For more big-picture information (and strategies), visit my Summer of 2012 Resource page. Bookmark this and come back to it again and again!

For another take on this week’s events, listen to my quickie podcast. If you like it, please give it five stars on iTunes!

Special reading rate for Gemini suns, moons and ascendants. Limited time only!

Talk Talk: Forecast for May 21-27, 2012

Off we go into the wild blue yonder! An incredible voyage is underway that is knocking debris and deadweight out of our minds and lives while Sunday’s solar eclipse shoots us to points unknown. This week, information abounds non-stop about all of it, the voyage, the debris, the destination and who’s on board.

The planet at center stage is Mercury, the cosmic messenger and ruler of our thoughts, minds, talk, information streams and means of getting around. Besides being in charge of the solar eclipse that will be playing out into the fall, he is active (and how!) almost every single day this week.

The chatter level will be off the charts as he teams with more-more-more-loving Jupiter Monday and Tuesday, a pairing that will up the volume (in number and noise) of messages, data and information flying through the air and our minds. It’s not just happy talk, either; lots of what you hear, say and think about has tangible, concrete and possibly financial implications.

Visitations from past loves could hit a critical point, too. They’re a by-product of retrograde Venus, who’s triangulating with Mercury and Jupiter. (She rules Taurus, the sign where their conjunction takes place Tuesday, and she’s in Mercury’s sign of Gemini, which puts her in an energetic resonance called mutual reception with him.)

The data flow only gets stronger after Mercury enters Gemini on Thursday. That’s one of his comfort zones (the other’s Virgo), and we will all feel his ease. As he abandons earth-bound mental processes for flying high and every which way, minds and tongues and information will loosen.

The noise-to-signal ratio may grow overwhelming, but jump into the fray anyway. Go after what you’ve been wanting to know. Reach out to folks. Ask questions. Converse freely. And take notes; pertinent and valuable nuggets lurk in all the tidbits you’ll be coming across. Look out for hints of what’s really going on (people will be tipping their hands, often unwittingly) and pointers to where you, they and situations are heading.

This total immersion approach will drive home the true nature of your information flow and likely prompt you to decide to cut the current on some of it — such as by dropping TV shows and Facebook so-called friends, spending less time online, unsubscribing from newsletters and not engaging with people who stir up negativity in and around you. What’s the junk food in your mental and media diet? Huge servings will tell you whether you really enjoy it, or whether you’re simply used to it.

What does all this mean for you? That’s not a hypothetical; it’s the question that the weekend will answer. Increasing clarity and self-understanding is coming as Mercury teams up with the Sun from Friday through Sunday. (As with Jupiter at the start of the week, the meetings occur first by declination and then by zodiacal degree, a one-two punch known as a super-conjunction.) Use the whirlwind of conversations and messages as information about you and the current state of your life and mind. All can open up to your delight and benefit before next week begins.

More in my extended weekly forecast and quickie weekly podcast.

I have developed so much material explaining and recommending strategies for this critical time that I have created a Summer of 2012 Resource page. Bookmark this and come back to it again and again!

Want to understand how all this is affecting you? Book a reading with me!

Garden Party: Forecast for May 14-20, 2012

Fasten your seat belts and tie down your grounding cords: One of the most intense phases of our lives is here. For many of us, it’s the most intense yet — and, brace yourselves, that’s not backing down anytime soon.

Don’t freak; keep breathing (and reading). You’ve been preparing for this. Whether you knew it or not, you’ve been staking out a place of power, support and refuge. Plant your feet firmly onto that turf you’ve been tending, cleaning up and cultivating for the past year. It’s your platform for the dynamic, exciting and, let’s be honest, challenging pressure that’s both bearing down on and rising up in us.

Signs become unmistakable this week of just how many areas of life are heating up at once. Relationships, finances and values are up for reconsideration, with Venus retrograding in the communication and gadget loving sign of Gemini (May 15-June 27). This review isn’t a good-time free-for all, with flings for old-times’ sake; it resounds with issues of permanence and commitment, because Venus does her about-face just a smidgen shy of an exact link to structure-loving Saturn.

All manner of communication and transportation issues are hitting a power-up, too, from Sunday’s Gemini solar eclipse — from the nature, quality and content of our thoughts and information flow, to the tools we use to receive and transmit and get around this planet, to our dealings with neighbors and outsiders, to the educational and belief systems we create from all that data. (Read more in my mooncast, which will be posted on my site by Saturday.)

As if those influences wouldn’t be intense enough by themselves, a cosmic doorman is pointing and pointing into an opening for making peace with long-standing issues of separation, wounds, sacrifice and self-sabotage. (This one’s with us all month, the gift of a helpful link between Pluto the transformer and Chiron, who challenges us to turn wounds into badges of our humanity and settle into the physicality of existence. ) But wait! There’s still more, lots more, the biggest source of intensity of all, and the one that will be with us for years: the epidemic of chicken-or-egg situations involving previously secure structures collapsing because of strikes by, or triggering responses from, revolutionary, individualist, impassioned-to-angry impulses. (Noticed any in, say, the national news lately?) Personally and collectively we’re feeling tension escalating and accelerating as the two cosmic change agents, Uranus (sudden and unpredictable) and Pluto (deep-rooted and unavoidable), move into position for a fight that’ll go seven rounds from next month into 2015.

So: intensity every which way you look, and the heat’s not going down. What’s the takeaway?

For starters, forget about pulling the covers over your head and hiding. That tactic won’t work. Besides, incentive abounds to dive in and actively grapple with all of this. And the payoff will propel you into living honestly and boldly.

Notice who and what pops up now, as well as who and what depart. With Venus retrograde, people and themes from the past will resurface — maybe to reconsider, maybe to resolve, maybe to remind you of how much you’ve grown or where you would benefit to revamp your thinking. Doors will slam shut, too, some breathtakingly and unexpectedly. Do not grab the ankles of anyone walking away. It’s futile. Major comings and goings are part of the eclipse process. You can’t stop anyone, and if someone did happen to turn around, you would not really want them at this point.

Notice your thinking, too. That goes for your habitual patterns (calling yourself stupid if you forget something) as well as statements of what you believe to be true. The Gemini/Sagittarius eclipse cycle is bringing mental filters up for cleaning out. You can reboot your attitude about pretty much anything if you apply yourself now. I have two resources to help you pull this off. My article “Know Your Mind: The Potential of May’s Gemini Solar Eclipse” has tips for working with the eclipses, and my 2-mp3 set on the eclipses discusses how they affect each sign (and gives strategies, too).

When the pressure really bears down on you, work with it. What are you fighting? What are you resisting? How are you making situations harder for yourself or rewounding yourself? The potential is great to dump decades of relationship, financial and self-worth baggage, clear outdated programming from your thinking and data flow and let yourself off the hook as you have never before. You’re human. That’s not only okay, it is also the truth.

Whoa, right? Wow, right? This is an enormous opportunity. Forgive yourself for what you perceive as shortcomings. Purge the resentment and the chains of living by other people’s standards. Embrace who you really are. Plat your feet firmly on that patch of ground you’ve been cultivating. Keep your knees loose and hang on tight. The adventure of a lifetime is underway.

My six-minute podcast offers another take on this week’s events. If you like it, please give it five stars on iTunes! (Don’t want to use iTunes? Visit my Podcast/Video page.)

Want to understand how all this is affecting you? Book a reading with me!

Cooking With Gas! Forecast for May 7-13, 2012

“Third gear…hang on tight….faster; it’s alright.” — Brian Wilson & Mike Love, Little Honda

We are moving now. The route may change Friday, but otherwise, this week it’s all systems go.

Can you hear the cheering? Maybe you’re cheering, too. So much has been on the brink of happening lately but just not kicking in yet. The past few weeks have had a pace that defied hurrying and required more down time than some of us consciously wanted. That pace will quickly be the stuff of distant, wistful memory.

This week brings one shift in energetic mode and a few significant aspects. (And no day-long void of course Moons!) Mercury is leaving the impulsiveness and drive of Aries for the stability, grounding and practicality of Taurus. He does this during the predawn hours Wednesday and turns mental activity from boldness to the careful and concrete.

Even though Taurus is a sign that takes its time, Mercury quickly moves toward free-flowing trines with Mars (exact on Sunday) and Pluto (exact next week). His course creates another recurrence of the grand earth trine that has been with us off and on since mid-March. Aspects of your life have been locking together into a compact but fertile garden, a sturdy foundation that supports your existence and future growth. With the planet of communication and transportation entering that picture, thoughts, conversations and messages are coming to solidify that platform further.

At a minimum, you’re wrapping your brain around the existence and nature of this foundation. News is likely to come in stabilizing and fine-tuning it, too. You may hear of or discuss tangible resources (money and more). More workable or efficient technology may be involved. So might short trips, changes in your commute or usual means of transportation, and reading up on a topic with practical or financial application. If you have been wanting certain information, or a more practical phone, computer or car, go after it now.

Adding to the lively conversation is Venus hitting the degree of her retrograde on Thursday. She’s in Mercury’s sign of Gemini, which encourages freewheeling connecting, no strings attached, the more, the merrier — and lots of company on this stretch of the journey. She likes her options open and, while she’s willing to talk, don’t expect deep and abiding commitment from her in this sign. Her retrograde (from May 15-June 27) will be full of talk going over old territory and times, not to mention exploring other options. It will draw people out of the woodwork like crazy, some of whom you will not have thought about in forever. Watch for them to start surfacing by the weekend. They could be reminders that there are other fish in the sea, or of how much you’ve changed, or that you carry around some unhelpful thoughts and attitudes about relationships.

You do have a definite invitation to get over lingering wounds, with Chiron making an opportunity aspect to Pluto. Their link encourages looking at (and getting past) those times when you took the fall for others, or soaked up their pain, or damaged yourself because of a relationship. Ongoing, abiding issues are ripe for transformation into something that waters and nurtures the garden that the grand earth trine has been creating for you.

If by some wild chance you are not able to see the garden around you, pay attention to what unfolds this weekend. Personal harvest, enjoyment and satisfaction are on the schedule from the Sun meeting’s with Jupiter on Sunday. (We get a preview on Wednesday when they make a similar contact by declination.) What’s been building and solidifying since last June now becomes real on a very personal level. There’s not merely reason for hope and optimism, but also cause for celebration. It’s time to enjoy all the sensual, physical delights of existence.

More in my extended weekly forecast and quickie podcast.

In New Jersey or New York? Join me in Montclair, NJ Thursday evening the 9th for simple but effective tools for clearing out the energy that you pick up from others in the course of life. Tonight’s session will have a focus on reclaiming your energy from relationships. Please arrive by 7:15 for a 7:30 start. $20. At The Goddess in Eden, 20 Church St., Montclair. Phone 973-919-3600 to register.

Scorpio Full Moon of May 5-6, 2012

May 5-6, 2012

8:36 PM PDT/ 11:36 PM EDT / 3:36 AM GMT

16 Scorpio 01 / 16 Taurus 01

A harvest is coming in with this weekend’s Scorpio Full Moon, and it’s a big one. Fields you’ve been cultivating are rewarding your efforts, with fruits both emotional and tangible (maybe even financial).

A Full Moon is always a moment of culmination, when the Sun and Moon stand opposite and the current Moon cycle hits its point of fullness. This month’s Full Moon has a greater than usual fullness and scope, because it occurs in the company of bigger-is-better Jupiter, which expands every thing, and every influence, he touches.

Since last June, that expansion has been going on in the sign of Taurus, which Jupiter has been slowly working over as if injecting cosmic Miracle-Gro. Signs of where and how well that has taken hold started popping up unmistakably in the middle of March. Now, in his final weeks in Taurus, not only are those indicators proliferating, but Jupiter is pumping up our rational and nonrational experiences of everything related to his work. We’re taking ownership and looking at many aspects of our life in terms of (a) what belongs to us and (b) what return we are getting on our investments of time, energy, money and emotion.

What’s coming up for review and harvest falls on the Taurus/Scorpio polarity of possession: my resources (cash, earnings, baubles, toys, talents, self-worth) vs. yours. Or ours. It’s an emotionally charged axis, encompassing poverty, satiation, sharing, trust, greed and terror. The happier potentials will abound, but the baser ones are still skulking about.

The positive playing out of this Jupiter-enhanced Full Moon involves tangible, bankable results from all the groundwork we’ve been laying and cultivating for the past year. This is one bountiful harvest. Even if it does not deposit piles of cash in your bank account, it delivers proof of how much your position has improved.

A solid sense of progress and evolution is coming from helpful aspects to the rulers of both the Sun and the Moon. The Sun is in a growth aspect to his ruler Venus, who’s a few weeks out from going retrograde and revisiting the relationship aspects of this harvest. (We’re talking about it with a new-found ease, too, since the Sun is also in a growth aspect to communicator/commuter Mercury, who’s finally cleared the shadow of his latest retrograde.) Pluto, the Moon’s ruler, is in harmonious aspects to both the Sun and the Moon, which deepens the security and safety this harvest is providing.

The easy communication with Pluto has other effects, though. Weeding, cutting back, purifying and releasing are part of this process. We could be cutting out excess or parts of the garden/work/effort that have broken down or run their course. We could eliminate involvements that have not adequately rewarded our participation or, worse, that have betrayed our trust. We could let go of some of what we have done and pass it on to others.

Some people are going to give in to baser potentials lurking in this picture — succumbing to compulsion, obsession and fear, seeing lack rather than plenty, clutching what they have close to their chest Gollum-like, demanding more from the common pot, even demanding (or simply taking) what is not theirs. If you witness any of these behaviors, know that primal instincts are propelling them, instincts that are reacting to a perceived threat to survival … and are not subject to reason.

Don’t waste your energy grappling with someone else’s demons. Address your own instead. Hear them out. Ponder whether they’re sending out reliable warning signals or false alarms. Decide accordingly, then soothe them with treats from your harvest. They’re proof of how well you function here in the physical world, and how that world is responding with results and rewards. Indulge and enjoy. You have earned them.

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© Kathy Biehl 2012. All Rights Reserved. You may forward this article as long as the copyright notice is intact. No part may be used or reprinted without my prior written permission. Karma, ya know.