We are preparing this week in Pisces (last sign of the zodiac containing all the eleven previous signs) for the first Mercury retrograde of 2019 with Mardi Gras (festival), Ash Wednesday (ashes on the forehead) and Lent—40 days and nights of purification before Spring begins. It’s a busy week.
Friday, Venus enters Aquarius impressing us with the knowledge, science, art, astrology, and technology needed to create the new Aquarian Era, which includes the Aquarian laws and principles. Saturday, the moon joins Venus in this endeavor.
Tuesday is the beads and bacchanal festival of Mardi Gras. Wednesday is Ash Wednesday, when Lent (time of purification) begins. Pisces is a perfect time for this. After Pisces, we begin a new year in Aries.
On Ash Wednesday in the Catholic Church, there is a special ritual of remembering. The priest places ashes (made from palms given out last Palm Sunday, gathered each year and burned) in the sign of the cross on the forehead of parishioners while saying the words, “From dust thou art (we were made of this), and unto dust thou shalt return.”
Our actions during Lent imitate retrograde Mars and Mercury (29 degrees Pisces). We advance interiorly in quiet reflection, contemplation, study, and wisdom, which purify and enable us to participate more fully in the upcoming solar festivals, setting the template for the rest of our year, and leading to the Festival of the New Group of World Servers at winter solstice.
ARIES: A quiet, peaceful change comes into your life. You become sensitive, compassionate and sympathetic toward everyone, especially those in need. You’re drawn to things mystical, religious, spiritual, meditative, functioning behind the scenes, and the “why” isn’t apparent. You seek forgiveness while offering it. You allow no persecutions of any kingdom. Here your Aries comes forth.
TAURUS: All that you do, consider and ponder upon has to do with groups, friendships, organizations, and the forming of community that restores and reforms society. You know what’s coming. You are concerned with hosting new ideas, creating collective objectives, helping others realize hopes, wishes and dreams that sustain life on earth. There is a mantra that is useful to say: “Let reality govern my every thought, and truth be the master of my life.”
GEMINI: You can use the mantra for Taurus, too, Gem. It’s very useful for the dissolution of illusions and glamours (distortions, miasmas, illusions)—not only the glamours of self, but when encountering the glamours of others. Eliminating glamours helps us focus on accomplishing goals and achieving a successful public life. You have authoritative tasks to perform, and an influential position to fulfill for the saving of humanity. You might begin to prepare now.
CANCER: The light of Pisces sun is providing you with aspirations and high ideals to learn something that develops a new level of consciousness leading to wisdom. Remember to never assume a position of knowing until it is experienced or its validity proven. You will expand your mind through travel, study, a philosophy, or encountering soil and the earth (gardening). Then you are to teach others. Be adventurous and experiential.
LEO: You search for your values. They have changed over the years. You explore the values of others, listening to their talk of sex, intimacy, money, death, regeneration. You discover your ability to diagnose illness in friends, extending this ability to pets. You like to be the detective, and for a while read mysteries that provide courage through conflict. Be not jealous or combative. You will lose. Life in the shadows for a while is best.
VIRGO: You find yourself through relationship interactions—whether intimate, close friends, or who and what you identify with in the moment. You want to cooperate, seeking harmony within all situations so a sense of life in balance emerges. From personal to the political, from social justice to world peace, you travel the range of relationships within the world of humanity’s endeavors. Do you remember the esoteric formula for peace?
LIBRA: You become practical in all ways, tending to daily necessities for self and others. You become the social worker for the world, using your gifts and capacities to create roles for others so they too can be of assistance and be of service. You make improvements wherever you go, tending to details, being scientific and concrete in your healing information. You drop all levels of criticism. You understand forgiveness.
SCORPIO: When observing you for a time, we sense a new level of dignity emanating from you. We also sense a new level of creative self-expression, which in time can lead the world in a new artform that restores the art of living to the world. Sometimes, you focus on happiness, things that entertain and are playful with games, children and/or sports. You speculate on ways resources can be rightly used to create a new world, the new era. You meditate upon this daily.
SAGITTARIUS: Family continues to be your concern—creating, tending to, or writing about one. Your history is like a tree growing within you—its roots go deep, the trunk is your life force, and the leaves how you interact with the world. Realize how important parents were, whether they were good enough or not. All parents are “good enough” in terms of what we must learn (and realizing we choose them). A radical thought. Moodiness may assail you. Take shelter.
CAPRICORN: You’re interested new ways of communicating, expressing yourself and talking with family, friends, neighbors, and siblings. Most important will be things literary and artistic, either in books, attending museums, music fests, or simply reconsidering how to once again bring forth the arts. You love change now and are very adaptable. Realize that others around may not be. Restlessness can upset our organized and artistic apple cart. Draw your greenhouse.
AQUARIUS: During this month, you will be asked to consider what you value. How well you value your abilities, talents, resources, work, friends, and possessions. You will realize you have vast resources, some of which you will want to give away. You will seek ways of making money and will find a state of reserved strength that sustains conservative-yet-liberal values. You will seek comfort and a new love to keep you warm.
PISCES: There’s a sense of well-being, exaltation and a radiant willingness in all that you do. You will initiate new ideas others will accept, reject and react to. This is good. Controversy is good, calling forth the harmony at the core of chaos and conflict. The heavenly lights in Pisces are creating a state of dignity, magnetism and confidence within. Handling all this with care is the sign of a Disciple. Tend with care to diet, sleep, rest, vitality, exercise, and health. Think green (plants, clothes, drinks, shoes, barley grass, etc.).
