I often hear from friends and clients: “I can relate to the other signs, but I don’t understand Virgo at all.”

My response: “Well, you’re really not supposed to, that’s part of Virgo’s mystique.”

The Virgin’s smile is minxian and Sphinixan — a sexy cryptogram. Rams, lions, goats, bulls — what’s to question? But virgins? How exactly do they fit within a circle comprised mostly of critters? The months ahead offer several opportunities (and tests) to solve this oddity; starting with tomorrow’s lunation — which is very Virgo. In other words very human. It’s time to begin a shift from the instinctual to the intellectual. Bestial to hominal. To pause, assimilate and follow the guidance of a higher wisdom, a more inclusive approach. Read more

Buddha sat under a tree and explained the truth of impermanence. Alchemical artists drew, etched, carved or painted vivid images to represent that truth.

Eastern philosophy evokes nature to reveal the cycles of change — living life in accordance with flow. But the alchemists of old were crazier and wilder. They knew human beings were complex creatures and depicted our psychic atmosphere in phantasmagorical allegory. Breeze-caressed willow sprigs and geese flying south for the winter didn’t match the nitty-gritty human condition.

People are complicated creatures — a mix of animal instinct and human desire. The alchemists understood this. And so the psychological world was depicted with a tumult of clashing chemistries — trials of burning, freezing, steaming, dissolving and splitting depict the psychic clash or merging of antithetical forces.

The alchemical gold, the reward at the end of the opus — the art or work — is not just a reconnection with one’s harmonized, essential nature (that goose flying to Florida), it is a certain wisdom that only a self-reflecting consciousness comes to understand and embrace. A wisdom that transcends the limitations of duality, of time and space. The result is hard-won, but clear: When we align with the law of impermanence we discover the security of our center. We abide in the present — the ‘one moment’. And that is a golden condition. The natural condition.

It’s good to bring up gold because tomorrow’s New Moon in Leo is all about the soft, precious metal. Interestingly enough, gold is very much what Pluto’s continued grind through Capricorn unearths. You dig into the earth to free the stuff. And nothing digs quite as hard as Pluto, and no sign is earthier. Read more

Today’s New Moon makes for a stellium — a sort of cosmic bloc that takes place within one small section of the sky. The locale? Pisces. The theme? Well, with Pisces you always get two completely different scenarios to choose from: Inspired dreaming, otherworldly inspiration and unshakeable faith — on one side. But that’s just one facet of the the fishes’ tale. The dark twin fish connotes Shakespearean tragedies like manipulative martyrdom, deluded flights and fuzzy self-deception.

Regardless the approach, and which of those orientations manifest within the psyche, our present dream cycle is winding to a close. Today’s New Moon highlights the buildup prior to the real new year that begins with the Spring Equinox. Any Piscean pileup will impart a sense of closure, or perhaps, as we’re experiencing life on the world stage, a feeling that the thread that suspends Damocles’ sword is beginning to fray, preparing to snap. The damage to be revealed two weeks from now during the Aries Full Moon.

This particular planetary mashup (the Sun, Moon, Mercury, Jupiter and Uranus — half of the solar system’s denizens in Pisces) heightens our susceptibility to psychological disassociation and splitting, due to the line in the sky drawn by the vector of the Moon’s nodes, and how Pluto, Saturn and Mars — sometimes a brutish planetary trio — are corralled into their own hemisphere of the zodiac.

This division of the circle can be difficult to maneuver. Treacherous actually — always the case when normal, healthy functions within the psyche are sequestered into the shadow realm. You’ll need to decipher the symbols for yourself. And you can do this by trying to picture the enclosed trio via the lens of dream. Let’s say you have three ruffians locked away in a closet. What do you discover once you’ve rallied your courage to open the door? Or you could see this in a less alarming light, and imagine, say, a solider, a lawmaker and a plutocrat being forced to collaborate on a well-lit stage. What sort of play would unfold? What would their relationship set in motion, what is the dream trying to convey by conjuring these three symbols?

Well, in the first instance — related to the thugs — it’s all about the brute force of the instincts and the particular demands the instincts make upon the environment. Mars being the sexual side of our nature, can be rapacious. Saturn being the social side of the self-preservation urge, often appears disallowing and stifling. And Pluto, well Pluto is always about the raw, primordial power of survival. The “get the fuck out of my way I’m going to eat that” sort of subsistence. Survival that must destroy in order to thrive. And this isn’t as unsavory as it sounds. If the cells in your body weren’t constantly being destroyed so new cells could run the course of their function, you’d become a toxic monster. And this is a perfect image to conjure when considering the body politic at this time. Read more

“The Ancients weighed the achievement of an individual by the sum and substance of his actions. Most of Plutarch‘s biographies–for example, of Themistocles, Alcibiades, Pompey, and Antony— are heroic assortments of virtues and vices, clear renderings of the psychological diversity and paradox which seem almost indispensable components of historic greatness.

We moderns, on the other hand, influenced by our religion, qualify all our estimation with a surgical standard of moral purity.

For the ancients, virtue was action, accomplishment, contribution; for us it is an essence so pure and fragile in nature that a beaker of goodness can be ruined by a dram of sin.

Dante makes his beloved teacher, Brunetto Latini, a sufferer in hell, because all his memorable virtues were combined with a single serious vice. Francis Bacon is almost never mentioned as a historical figure without reference to the single act of malfeasance which, deftly exploited by an enemy, ended his political career. The grievous and numerous faults of Winston Churchill are expounded upon interminably by the beneficiaries of the free institutions he fought to save.

And this stubborn altruism, often so extreme as to constitute a conspiracy against nature, extends beyond our histories into our daily lives. Shunning peccadillos, we suffer infamies. Anxious to avoid even appearing to do harm, we lose touch with the necessarily hazardous practice of goodness. We use rectitude to mask our envy of achievement.”

— Robert Grudin