There’s Got To Be a Morning After: Forecast For June 25 – July 1

Big events often give way to a stretch of time to assimilate and acclimate, and that’s what’s happening now. Monumental influences have rocked us for the past month, especially in the last week. Instead of new ones entering the mix (as if anyone could deal with that!*), we get to see more and more of what’s already with us.

Latrelle speaks for so many of us, at 1:10.

Don’t kid yourself: The intensity is not going away. We’re not so much getting a break from it as getting acclimated to it. Stuck places of all kinds (beliefs, situations, relationships) have hit an evolve-or-die point. Nothing’s changing quickly. Even if immediate circumstances lurch into a new form, the ground beneath them is going to continue to shift over the long haul. We have entered an evolutionary process that will play out over years. Sunday’s Uranus/Pluto square was only the first round, pushing the process to the point of no return (If you haven’t read my short article on what that means, take the time now.)

It’s way too early to tell what this first round is really dredging up, much less what we are going to do with or about it. This week has an air of immobility, with much hanging in the air and little opportunity for resolution — an ideal formula for assimilating and acclimating.

More old stuff will be surfacing as Jupiter crosses the South Node of the past and whips up a flurry-to-tornado of archaic though patterns, memories folks and communications. The amusement value could be high; this is the type of influence that could deliver a letter or package that’s been presumed lost. The personal growth value could be high as well. Pay attention to old thinking that flies out of you. You could find yourself making statements that come from a you of long ago, and that you thought had left years ago, too.

Big shifts in those departments build as Friday approaches, when the Sun makes harsh aspects to both of the change agents and compels each of us to get with their program. (Soundtrack: Break on Through to the Other Side by The Doors.) No matter how wild and wooly the outside is becoming, the most important place of evolution is — all together now — inside you.

Besides the Uranus/Pluto square resonating, two planets are stationing direct without moving ahead. One is the ruler of time, Saturn, who is in charge of Pluto, and who ends his five-month review of relationships, agreements, reciprocity and social contracts on Monday. The other is the ruler of relationships, money and worldly values, Venus, who is in charge of Saturn, and who ends her five-week retrograde on Wednesday. Slowly — slowly — all manner of relationship, money and social matters are ripening into new and improved forms, made possible by what we’ve been encountering, rethinking and renegotiating during these retrogrades. The new forms aren’t springing up overnight, though. We can sense them, we can see them, but we have to allow them to show up on a schedule outside our control.

As Venus turns direct and eventually moves forward, stalled situations will start gearing up; ones that vaporized will come back into the picture. A big plus all around, the cosmic warning light will go dark where potential love interests and business deals are concerned. You can resume evaluating offers on the basis of your own instincts or intuition (or, let’s be honest, animal appeal) without an invisible finger wagging at you.

Even before Venus and Saturn move, concepts and talk are going to grow lively and impassioned without resulting in appreciable follow-through — until the weekend, when they fuel the personal, internal conflagration each of us is experiencing in the Uranus/Pluto aftermath. The culprit/facilitator is Mercury, the planet of communication, who abandons the emotional waters of Cancer on Monday for the playful, drama-loving fires of Leo. His shift is putting more pep in our minds, conversations and jaunts around town.

Over the weekend he closes in on Uranus’ force field, and the approach could be like a match moving toward a candle flame and igniting inches before they touch. What’s igniting is your own impulse to break out of confinement. Let your hair down. Let your inner child out. Be outrageous.

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! (Please? I know it’s a pain for some of you to use, but that brief action would be a greatly appreciated gesture of appreciation.)

Gemini New Moon of June 19, 2012

8:02 AM PDT / 11:02 AM EDT / 3:02 PM GMT
28 Gemini 43

The old ad slogan “Double your pleasure; double your fun” would be a fitting tagline for Gemini, the sign of the twins. It’s certainly true for all of us during this Gemini-focused time. The sign is sharing its two-fer bent by hosting two consecutive New Moons this year, and the second one comes this week.

Tuesday’s Gemini New Moon delivers a double shot of the revitalizing mental energy of the current eclipse cycle. Last month’s New Moon was on May 20, at the first degree of Gemini; this week’s takes place at the last and also activates the degree of the lunar eclipse that launched this cycle, the Sagittarius Full Moon of December 2010. The issues that crested then are coming full circle and shooting off into a new cycle.

This convergence — two New Moons in the same energy, the return to the summing-up point that started it all — means that the skies are hammering the message but good: It is time to cut loose from old ways of thinking, old information sources, old technology and vehicles, old dynamics with siblings and neighbors. The cutting loose is already happening, actually, without us having to wield the knife consciously (although you could certainly harness this vibe and do that).

The configuration of this New Moon signals — yea verily, screams — skyrocketing into the new. The activity surrounding it is all major. The first cog is the summer solstice, only barely a day away, on Wednesday. The solstice is always a major turning point that affects and resets everyone, individually and collectively. By ushering in the solstice, this New Moon colors the next three months

Add to that Saturn slowing to a halt, to station direct next Monday and end his five-month retrograde through the sign of relationships, reciprocity and social order. As he stops, he’s in an easy flow to the Moon, which is going to prolong our experience of everything that happens now. This link is creating a slo-o-o-o-o-o-o-mo effect that suspends us in time. Words will hang in the air (no take backs!); developments will begin to take shape frame by frame by frame and then inch toward us. It could be agonizing; it could give plenty of lead time for preparing what’s on the way.

The Moon is also squaring Mars, the ruler of our drive, in the sign of Virgo, where the intellect and earthly details meet. The impact makes us feel that we must act — but we can not just yet. We must analyze, rethink, inspect and perfect. That’s wonderfully fitting, given that both this Moon and Mars are ruled by Mercury, lord of everything that flits through the air (and our minds). Action must happen on the mental level before it plays out in the physical.

And, lest we forget (as if!), this New Moon occurs in the lead-in to Sunday’s Uranus/Pluto square, the first of seven clashes that is sending shock waves through our beings, our institutions and the very ground beneath our feet. If we haven’t been keeping pace and upgrading appropriately, what we rely on is hitting the end of the line and falling apart. (Any other techno-Luddites out there finding that they can’t put off installing a new operating system any longer? Or feeling increasing pressure to ditch a plain ol’ cell phone for a smartphone or iPad?)

We are being shot out of old school ways. For now, though, the journey is like the moments preceding an accident, when every second feels like an eternity and developments occur increment by increment. Once timekeeper Saturn starts moving next month, the very slowness that is so agonizing now will feel like a luxury. Savor it. Take advantage of it.

Once again, here’s my list of where we have the opportunity to start anew. Bookmark and return!

✭ We can wipe the technology slate clean. How much time do you really want to spend online, on Facebook and Twitter and the zillion of other social media sites, texting and watching TV anyway? How do the topics in your Facebook feed affect your mood?

✭ We can clean our mental filters. (This is a extension of the above paragraph.) What do you normally think about? Who do you regularly talk to? What is the quality of your conversation? What are the topics? Do you read anymore? Contemplate? Think? Are your thoughts really yours, or are they the programming/parroting/byproduct of what you see on TV, hear on talk radio or read online? What catchphrases do you normally use? Is any of this congruent with what you want to be going through your mind?

✭ We can consciously launch new phases with siblings and neighbors. Do you and your sibs still relate with the old dynamics, or do you relate as adults or allies? (Think about it: Who else understands you so thoroughly? Who so thoroughly shares your frame of reference?) Are you in sync with the people in your neighborhood? Do you want to be?

✭ We can become conscious of the nature and quality of our information sources (see first paragraph) and make new choices.

✭ We can become aware of our communication style — whether we actively listen, or simply wait for a break in the conversation until it’s time for us to talk again; whether we present our opinion as Truth or are actually open to other points of view — and how the people around us communicate.

✭ We can become aware of the effect words have — ours on others, others’ on us — and make different choices.

✭ We can consciously review, rip up and rewrite our relationship expectations and rule books.

If you would like a greater understanding of what the Gemini/Sagittarius eclipses are doing, including the effect on each sign, purchase my 2-mp3 talk “It’s All In Your Mind: The Potential of the Gemini/Sagittarius Eclipses of 2010-2013.”

© 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.

I Feel The Earth Move: Forecast for June 18-24, 2012

Summer’s here! Life is supposed to magically flip back into lazy hazy days now, right? Not this year. Intense is the new normal, and this week drives that home.

The action is nonstop, with four big events, movement toward a fifth and very little down time. That last is a necessity, though, and it’s largely up to you to carve it out for yourself. Periodically take a break, clear your mind, regroup and refocus. That’s the strategy to navigate not only this extraordinary week, but also the foreseeable future.

Summer officially begins on Wednesday, with the solstice (at 7:09 PM EDT). The Sun’s annual move into Cancer is a major turning of the year and sets the tone for the next three months. All the current astrological influences color what we’ll be experiencing throughout the entire summer. Read the rest of this forecast with that in mind. It applies until the middle of September.

Tuesday’s New Moon in Gemini renews the reminder to reconsider your what flows in and out of your head and the vehicles your mind and body use to get around. All are ripe for a new phase. That’s the impetus of the Gemini end of the current eclipse cycle, and it’s getting whipped up by bigger-is-better Jupiter settling into that sign for a year’s stay. We’ll be hearing more and more from old thoughts, old paradigms, old teachings, etc. over the next few weeks, as Jupiter moves toward a meeting with the South Node of the past (which will be exact next month).

Wait a second — did I just say New Moon in Gemini? Didn’t we have one last month? Yes, indeedy; good call, all you attentive readers. May’s New Moon solar eclipse was at the very first degree of Gemini; this month’s is at the next to last. Two consecutive New Moons in the same sign is like the cosmos saying, “And we really mean it!” Read more in my mooncast, which will be on the site sometime Monday.

Issues of reciprocity, fairness, negotiation, obligations and restructuring in relationships and agreements are under the magnifying glass all week. We can’t look away. Questions tug at us relentlessly. What’s working? What isn’t? What’s crushing your back? What has run its course? Even if we figure out what we want to do — even if we actually start discussing what we want to do — actual movement is a ways off. Saturn, the slowest influence in the sky, is coming to a stop in the sign of relationships, Libra. On Friday, he enters the exact degree and minute where he will turn direct next Tuesday. It’s just not time yet. We have to lie in the beds we made just a bit longer.

Besides, more fundamental issues are screaming for attention. On Sunday, Uranus and Pluto finally complete the square they’ve been moving toward. This tense, action-demanding aspect is beneath the general discomfort that’s been so endemic. These two planets (and a big puh-leeeez to not treating Pluto as a planet for astrological purposes) are agents of change, which disrupt and transform, respectively, everything they touch, and their brewing battle has been rocking and stressing out the very foundations of our lives and institutions. Now the pressure is reaching the point that something must give way. Stress lines are fracturing, situations breaking apart, attachments shattering.

This is no one-off, but the first in a series of seven exact squares between now and 2015. The first round may be more muffled or internal or — dare I say it? — gentler than the ones to follow, because of when it occurs: while most of us in the Western Hemisphere are sleeping (5:12 AM EDT), during a void of course Moon. Developments that occur when the Moon is void (done making major aspects before entering the next sign) have a way of unraveling later. This is fitting for the first in a long sequence of change aspects. Whatever goes down now is not the end of the story, but the beginning of a process that will morph and morph and morph…and deposit each of us into a completely new way of living.

This ongoing aspect is so important that I have written a separate overview, so that my explanation has staying power beyond a weekly forecast. You can read it here.

The only scheduled breathing room in all this activity is Thursday, when the Moon is void of course from mid-day on. Otherwise, it’s up to you to stake out down time. Take a break, clear your mind, regroup, refocus and remember what’s important. You’ll be all the more effective when you jump back into the fray.

Read my extended weekly forecast here.

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! (Please? I know it’s a pain for some of you to use, but that brief action would be a greatly appreciated gesture of appreciation.)

© 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.

Blow, Ye Winds: Forecast for June 11-17, 2012

This week the winds of change grow bigger and, in some ways, better. (“What??? More???” I hear some of you gasping. Yes. More. Keep breathing.) They’re expanding on what we’ve already been experiencing. The philosophical rebooting we’re undergoing is getting a huge assist as larger-than-life Jupiter moves into the air sign of Gemini for a one-year stay.

Jupiter is the devil-may-care big guy who ups the ante of any action he’s in. For the past year he’s been playing gardener in the Taurus area of our charts, where he’s poked around, applied Miracle-Gro and set a nice rolling harvest in motion. He’s shifting now to whipping up all things Gemini: the flow of communication, data and information; the speed of our minds and the input coming at us; a proliferation of innovative gadgets and technology; multi-tasking; short attention spans;’ the urge to talk, share, learn, read, dart from subject to subject and place to place…

Makes your head spin just reading about it, doesn’t it? The first days could be like a gust of wind blowing papers off your desk — only instead of turning into clutter, they fall into patterns that turn out to be neat and beneficial. The instant Jupiter takes off in Gemini (which is Monday), he activates the degree of May 20th’s New Moon solar eclipse. Whatever you’ve sensed the possibilities of that eclipse to be, they are swelling into grander contours now.

Haven’t though in terms of the eclipse? What new directions or horizons have you been sensing opening up? (Perhaps inside you, if nothing external comes to mind?) Those are expanding and expanding now.

Think big, then think even bigger. Information will be flying; trust that helpful data is coming your way. Themes and issues are coming back around from mid-2000 to mid-2001, when Jupiter was last in this sign. Think about what expanded then (good and bad) and what big themes shaped your life, and you have a preview of what’s blowing in over the next year.

Much of the communication and data flow will have an emotional content — or impact. Gemini’s ruler Mercury is in the sign of Cancer, where he touched down last week. He has a way there of tugging at heartstrings, of bringing tears to eyes in response to a video, a song on the car radio, or even a commercial. (Who remembers Kodak’s campaign using Malvina Reynolds’ song “Turn Around?”) So the processing won’t be purely intellectual. You may be surprised what touches you — and what people choose to take personally.

Grounding continues to important. You don’t want to get lifted off into the sky yourself. (Or maybe you do; who am I to presuppose?) In this atmosphere, focusing and staying on track will require concerted effort, and planting your feet on solid ground. Jupiter is moving into a hard aspect with Neptune that will increase and thicken the fog, confusion and illusion coming off the god of transcendence. Ask for guidance and miracles, and they will surely rain down upon you. Spin doctors will be in overdrive as we glide into next week, though, so … just keep putting your feet back on the ground.

Fortunately, this week affords time for breathing, assimilation and reflection. Long void of course moons are back in the picture for the time being. (Want a refresher on the meaning of a void of course moon? Click here.) The void times are all day Monday, Thursday morning and all day Saturday. These are stretches for kicking back and letting life play out, for being more inner-directed than outcome-oriented, for sitting still and quietly long enough for the ruckus in your head to settle down. There’s certainly plenty of fodder to contemplate from the last few weeks. There’s no need to actively sort and analyze. Simply be and insights can come to you.

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! (Please? I know it’s a pain for some of you to use, but that brief action would be a greatly appreciated gesture of appreciation.)

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

Forecast for June 4 – 10, 2012

Tumblers are clicking into place. Doorways are slamming; new ones are beckoning and opening wide. The celestial clockwork is signaling an evolutionary leap to end all leaps, in this uncommonly action-packed week.

Vague tugs you haven’t been able to put a finger on, thinking that’s been fuzzy, complications you haven’t quite been able to sort out — these sorts of persistent pests are coming into sharp focus with Monday’s Sagittarius Full Moon. The sharpening may take a few months, but it’s already underway. This one’s a Full Moon to the max, which is to say a lunar eclipse, culminating dramas and revealing juicy tidbits that explain ever so much.

They’re prompting course adjustments in thinking, in prejudices, in beliefs about reality, all part of the ongoing rebooting brought to you by the Gemini/Sagittarius eclipses that are with us from December 2010 to May 2013. (To understand how they are affecting you, why not listen to my eclipse talk?)

While much is coming clear, there’s still a haze in the air. Coinciding with the eclipse, cosmic illusionist-cum-fog-machine-operator Neptune is retrograding (till November). Keep your hooey detector on alert, and take your time implementing the imperative of this Full Moon. That may take resolve, because the Moon is making a hard aspect to go-getter Mars, which means that every revelation, realization and decision leads to: Action. Prepare to draw lines, jump off fences and generally get moving — but wait for the important leaps until the fog starts lifting. For an extensive discussion, read my mooncast, which is worth printing out and keeping at hand for easy reference.

Tuesday, Venus not only meets up with the Sun, but also steps between him and us. Astronomers call this rare event the transit of Venus. It’s only the second time we’ve experienced it in our lifetime (the last was 2004), and it won’t happen again for another 100 years or so. The feminine is stepping out, claiming the spotlight, blotting (briefly) out the masculine.

It’ll be fun to watch how this plays out in the news (don’t hesitate to email me with items you find). On a personal level? With this occurring in the thick of Venus’ retrograde, and the mind-clearing lunar eclipse to boot, important people and arrangements are emerging that speak to your heart (in its current language, not following the old rules) and line up with the latest revisions of your values and beliefs. (My Spidey sense tells me an epidemic of Major Relationships is on the way, too.)

Meanwhile, shockwaves are growing more noticeable, insistent and challenging. Parts of your infrastructure have already been showing strain, and now they start to split apart. You have to strike out on your own as the tried and true crumbles around you. The pressure is only going to build as the month goes on. The two cosmic change agents, Uranus (unpredictable) and Pluto (unavoidable) launch open hostilities by degree on Wednesday, a clash that will intensify and become exact on June 24. This has a strong David vs. Goliath vibe, except that with Pluto retrograde, it may play out more like “The Empire Strikes Back.” (Political news junkies, take note.)

The pressure will be unrelenting. For years, I have to warn. Uranus and Pluto will be traveling loosely in this aspect for the foreseeable future and locking it into place exactly secen times through 2015. (The next round’s in September.) Just as their conflict weaves itself into the fabric of current life, Mercury, communication and transportation specialist, dives into the hyper-sensitive waters of Cancer. First responses will be crabby, personalizing, weepy, sentimental and touchy-feely. People will be emoting all over the place, even those of you who have been enjoying the winged messenger’s time in the intellectual airs of Gemini. It won’t all be tears and clinging and self-pitying, of course; on the heels of the Venus eclipse, some truly heart-felt expressions of love will be flowing, too.

And some of those tears will be of joy and gratitude. For real. Jupiter, the bringer of bounty, is in his final week in the earthly realm of Taurus, where he has been hanging out for the past year. With the help of Pluto’s pruning shears, and the grand trine the pair formed with action hero Mars in March, Jupiter has brought concrete, tangible, bankable, perhaps edible growth in metaphoric gardens, which are flourishing wildly now. The last big rush is happening this week. It’s certainly appropriate to harvest a bit and enjoy it, perhaps with an aromatic beverage and fresh, luscious foods — and the company of whoever Venus has sent to your garden gate?

Amid that growth, each of us has a safe spot, a stable patch of life where we can stand, ground and continue to thrive no matter what the Uranus/Pluto square rends asunder. (If you would like to understand what Jupiter’s time in Taurus has meant for you, you can get my Jupiter in Taurus guides at a rock-bottom discount.)(You’re welcome!) Find that spot and claim it. Respect the intensity of relentlessness of the stress we’re under. Be very kind to yourself, and above all to your body. It’s your vehicle, baby.

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! (Please? I know it’s a pain for some of you to use, but that brief action would be a greatly appreciated gesture of appreciation.)

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

Unchain Your Heart: The Power of Venus Retrograde

Relationships are a focus this June, and not just because this is traditionally a time for weddings. Several astrological influences are bringing relationships up for rethinking, resetting and rebooting — and the greatest of these is the goddess of love.

Read how this benefits you in my article for OM Times.

Reboot: Sagittarius Lunar Eclipse

June 4, 2012
14 Sagittarius 14 / 14 Gemini 14
4:13 AM PDT / 7:13 AM EDT / 11:13 AM GMT

Beliefs and philosophies are up for their annual review with this month’s Sagittarius Full Moon. Review may be an understatement, given the level of waking up and coffee smelling that are already underway. Have you jumped off a fence or three in the last week? Has a situation – or, more importantly, your attitude about it — come into sharper focus than ever before? Know it or not, you’re running on Moon time.

This Full Moon is a lunar eclipse, which ups the ante, super-sizes emotions and drops all kinds of clues, shoes and puzzle pieces. (View the eclipse path here: http://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/OH/OH2012.html.) We last experienced an eclipse at this location in June 1993, so themes from them are spiraling back around — with a different flair.

Lots of the current fallout involve relationships, money and questions of value(s), especially ones with ties to the past, which have been popping in for a chat since Venus went retrograde at the middle of May. She’s a featured artist in this eclipse, since she is not merely cozying up to the Sun, but a day out from eclipsing him herself. (More about that at the end of this mooncast.) Her presence makes our hearts and desires even more engaged than they usually are in the escalating emotions that come with a lunar eclipse.

Whatever we’re thinking about now, we’re also feeling it. Intensely. Maybe even a little insanely, because dreamweaver Neptune is stationing to retrograde. We’re talking, too, and how. The Moon may be ruled by bigger-is-better Jupiter, but the ringmaster of this event is Mercury, the god of gab, gadgets and getting around.

Here’s why: Jupiter (the Moon’s ruler, remember?) is in Taurus, which is ruled by Venus, who is in Gemini, which is ruled by Mercury. The Sun is in Gemini, which is ruled by Mercury. The only other body in the sky making close contact to the Sun or the Moon, Mars, is in Virgo, which is ruled by Mercury. Everything leads back to the fleet-footed, quick-witted, multi-tasking, techno-friendly messenger – and trickster – of the gods.

Each of those adjectives applies in some way to the revelations, realizations, emotional dramas, door-closings and rethinking cresting under this Full Moon. We’re thinking, processing, texting and talking, running around, juggling activities, batting bits of info around and catching some of the volleys coming our way while dodging others. The level of chatter is becoming deafening. Information isn’t merely flowing; it’s bombarding us.

Have you hit overload yet? Devices and cars have, taking the hit for a number of people I know. Faulty technology is breaking down and requiring overhaul or replacement. (No duct tape fixes these days.) Faulty, outdated thinking and beliefs are hitting the end of a line, too — becoming unsupportable, unsustainable and, in some cases, inspiring us to shut them down. We’re seeing proof after proof of how life plays out according to what we think, say and believe — and how some of that is creating situations we no longer want.

What I wrote for last year’s Sagittarius lunar eclipse holds true now as well:

This Full Moon is escalating the role that our beliefs play in our experience of reality, and the role that external sources (the media, the educational system, the legal system) play in creating and directing those beliefs. The Moon’s ruler is Jupiter, the guy who ups any action he contacts. He’s pumping up the Full Moon’s developments so they stretch their limits (and our credulity), making situations so extreme they look like something out of a cartoon. There is no incentive to hold back, to moderate thoughts and words, to realize, in the moment of disclosure, the extent of what you’re saying.

Sound scary? Here’s the benefit. This is an extraordinarily revealing time. Backstories are coming out. So are people’s frames of reference, prejudices, and other aspects of upbringing and experience that color their view of reality. Resist the natural human impulse to assume that your position is Truth and the only correct one (whether it’s about your memory of an event or view on legislation), and “Aha!” moments will abound. You can learn a lot – about yourself as well as about the people in your life and on this planet.

And about the past, too. There is enormous potential now to move beyond a lot of the revelations – to bring them out of the shadows, to think about them consciously and to reclassify the role, if any, we allow them to play. We are being shown the logical consequences of the beliefs we hold (about life, about ourselves, about people, about everything).

Belief systems are the filters through which every event in our lives pass. They limit and color and determine and direct what we experience. Our filters are up for a good, thorough cleaning now.

This year, we have quite the motivation to Do Something About All This. Lunar eclipses usher people and situations out of our lives, and this one prods us to act rather than react. The Sun and Moon are pressuring Mars, the planet of push, in a dynamic configuration known as a T-square. We can’t crawl back into bed and go back to sleep to wait this energy out; Mars is in the fix-sign of Virgo and he is spurring us to get to work.

Action’s coming on the level of both the forest and the trees. The little details that Virgo prizes are coming into stark contrast. Dust and cobwebs, real and metaphoric, are suddenly visible everywhere and screaming to be eradicated..

Larger scale clean-up is also hitting the top of to-do lists. Health, cleanliness, efficiency and clearer boundaries are enjoying an epidemic of popularity, across all manner of topics. What we think about what we eat is a growing issue; just watch how many people around you are not just talking about food choices and sources, but changing their eating habits.

What comes through our information channels is undergoing a similar rethinking. How have you been redrawing lines of communication? That’s part of the mandate now. Sick of so much email? Redo your filters channel messages into categories (your inbox will look so much more manageable) and unsubscribe from all those lists and newsletters that you routinely delete without reading. Sick of name-calling, prejudice or divisiveness in your Facebook feed? Hide the posts; block repeat offenders from your feed; unfriend folks. Sick of unwinnable arguments? Stop engaging in them. Sick of the (il)logical extension of those stupid old lingering childhood beliefs? Throw. Them. Out.

You are already doing this. Rethink the last week or two. See? That’s it. You are. We’re all responding to the imperative to clean out debris. We are overwriting our programming, erasing bad sectors, defragging hard drives, upgrading operating systems and clearing our minds, memories, stories, information channels and life philosophies of sludge and more that gets in the way of our health and flourishing.

With Neptune pulling up anchor for his annual retrograde, opportunities abound to see how we have fooled ourselves or fallen for hooey, and to set up safeguards against illusion and propaganda getting in the door. Then again, we could be inviting them in. The US House has just passed an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act that lifts the longstanding ban on government misinformation campaigns. If this concerns you, you might want to let your Senators know.

The masculine and the feminine are both in the cresting and clearing process of this Full Moon. The ultimate cosmic woman, Venus, is standing with the Sun, which is the masculine representation of the self. She’s eclipsing him the day after the lunar eclipse, a rare event that hasn’t occurred for some eight years and will not again in our lifetimes. (Watch it online via the Slooh Space Camera.) Symbolically, it boils down to this: Venus is not merely meeting with the Sun, but also moving between him and the earth. She’s upstaging the Sun. The feminine is coming to the fore and eclipsing the masculine.

Our hearts are steering what we do with the Full Moon lunar eclipse.

No coincidence, the love goddess’ consort Mars is the one taking the orders from this Full Moon. It will play out for longer than the summer, and inaugurates one of the most volatile and life-changing passages we have ever experienced.

And how do we enter this passage? Knowing your heart and mind, getting clear on what you have — and want — to do, and following through. The getting clear part may not lock in until Neptune’s clouds dispel, but it’s in the works. And no backsliding. As if that were possible.

© 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.