Aries Birthday Reports 2005

Illustration: Push Push by Adele Satori 

WHEN THE TIME ARRIVES to offer your whole being to the world, to give your gift to the community and to take up your place of leadership -- and that time is soon to arrive -- you need a solid foundation. You've spent recent years building that structure, deep within yourself, so deep that it's probably invisible. But you can depend on it; you have been in a stage of intense preparations, and you have as much worldly knowledge as you need.

The work you've done rising above your insecurities, clearing out the influences of parents and other family members, and quite possibly settling into the new place you live, all count. And they count for a lot, because the past was weighing you down like a millstone. And now, for the most part, you are free. You live in the present, where your imagination has the power to live, breathe and create.

It's true, the inner work may not be completed, but your acknowledgement of this is a sign of both maturity and strength. Aries is world-famous for its utter lack of patience, but you've been put through quite a bit in recent years that has compelled you to slow down and take notice of how you feel, what you need and who you are. You've had to sort out many voices in your mind -- most of which were not your own -- and find the true inner voice of the child you are.

At the end of this process, I think you'll agree that any inner voice that feels or sounds authoritarian, parental, or even remotely bossy is not you and thus has no place in your life. If so, congratulations: you have waged the one and only revolution there is.

There comes a time, not so far in the future, when you see that you are being asked to offer something to the world; then, you're likely to spend your time investigating whether or not you have that particular quality to offer. You may wonder whether anyone needs you, or worse, whether they want what you have to give. Please don't trouble yourself with these questions. Just do what you need to do. The world really is calling you. This is the most basic, clear and potent theme of Chiron transiting your 11th house -- Aquarius.

In the role you now get to play -- and since the world is a stage, it's very much a role -- you have the challenge and privilege of relating to the people around you as peers. This is the most compelling form of leadership because all the old methods of cheating, such as intimidation, financial motivation and competition, are out with the recycling. Yet despite this, people will be looking to you for the wisdom and clarity you have to offer. And whatever your specific craft, art, or field of expertise, you will become the person who weaves together the community around you in some new and exciting way. Whether you make candles or program in Unix, your true job is that of a weaver.

I say this knowing you're not likely to feel particularly comfortable with your role, at least not at first. This will prove to be positive; it will keep you awake all the time. On a deeply intuitive level, you know exactly what your place is and what's being asked of you; you have more practice than you think, and you have developed an excellent intuitive -- almost psychic -- sense of group dynamics. But now, as a focal point, as someone whose intelligence is going to be called upon regularly, that little edge of discomfort is essential, humbling and simply human. It won't last, but I suggest you learn from it, and relish every moment of insecurity for its excellence and for the added clarity it offers you.

Get in the habit of seeking input on every decision. When asked, people come up with intelligent things quite often, and almost everyone appreciates having their input taken into account.

From what I can see, you're going to be helping quite a few people deal with this issue of parents and authority. Though it deserves a weekly column of its own, I will say, simply, that our inability to deal honestly with authority, and to take authority over our own lives, is what is choking us as individuals and as a society. It's the basis for so many people projecting all their power onto a vengeful 'god', and it explains in a few words why we consent to government leaders who need psychiatric in-patient care more than they need the ability to incur limitless war debt.

At the core of your process is what I will call creative self-mastery. You've come to a point in your life where you can hold your center and do your best work, no matter how you feel. The calling that's likely to take your life like a seizure is the need to actually do and offer that work where it's the most needed, which will reshape your relationships entirely. They will be based not on you needing to have your insecurities shored up, or to play therapist to others, but rather on what you have to offer and what you have to exchange with people on level ground.

As you do this, the real gain of these four seasons involves sorting out what is important to you and what is not. The astrological key is Mars retrograde in Taurus, which happens later in the year, but which will be offering its messages constantly, particularly as the Sun crosses Taurus this spring.

The core of who you are is a creative fire. You are an Aries, the first and arguably most powerful sign of the zodiac. Aries is the engine that initiates the activity of all the other signs. Aries is passion; it is the drive to be and become; to express yourself in all that you do; and to find that point of perfect faith within yourself.

Try not to spend too much time convincing yourself of anything. Between certainty and doubt is a space of acknowledging what is so. In any given moment, with a moment's thought, this is never particularly difficult to see. And at any moment, you have the prerogative to look around you and ask: what am I called upon to do right now? The answer will be obvious.

Happy Birthday, Aries!

It may seem ambiguous and exaggerated to promise you the strangest and most interesting year of your life. But astrologically it is an accurate statement, and it is sound astrological advice. There is so much happening as the Sun makes its transit through your sign this year that there’s really no accounting for it. Mercury is retrograde, or very close to it, clear through from the Aries equinox through the Sun’s ingress to Taurus a month later.

There is an eclipse in your birth sign, which will probably affect Aries born April 5-15 more than others, but in reality everyone with the Sun, Moon or ascendant in this sign is affected and will notice the dramatic and momentous effects of such a threshold.

Reverberations were bouncing through time like sonar beginning last March and April. There were reminders that something was imminent; there were most likely clues that you needed to get yourself ready, for someone, something, or some kind of intensified growth process. Now you’ve reached the peak of that moment. It is a good thing you’re an Aries and thrive on adventure and unpredictability, because that’s what you’re going to have in your life for a while. Many people would be cringing at the idea of so much progress all at once; for most, the idea of security is one and the same with stability.

I suggest you separate those two ideas to the greatest extent possible, particularly since real stability for you has more to do with going with the unusual changes and developments that seem to take over your life, than it does with holding onto what is sure and familiar. I have every confidence that you will be taken care of. I feel solid in saying that there are significant gifts coming your way if you can stay in the present moment and make your choices as you see them arise.

When the Sun makes its ingress into Aries in a few days, officially beginning your birthday season, it will be in an exact conjunction to the asteroid Amor. I happen to know that Cassanova, one of the most talented men (and lovers) of the modern age, as well as Alfred Kinsey, one of the most bold and curious, were born with the Sun conjunct Amor. So this bodes well for you, if you are looking for a life that is not what you would call ascetic.

Though you were never one to march along with the regiment, you are unlikely to have much in common with the people who surround you, though a few will get the message and wake up to the changes that are imminent in their lives as well; there are some clues that significant partners are feeling these developments clearly, and that they have identified you as a point of origin, a reference and as a guide through this process.

There are many factors that suggest you’re in a real position to stand out from your friends and colleagues, and you will need to muster all your Aries power of will to remain clear, firm and secure. If or when you are confronted with anyone who might not seem to approve of you, your choices or your changes, remember that fear of feeling is the fear of life. Morals are nothing more than control devices put on those people who are not bold enough to declare for themselves what is right and what is wrong. You have no choice but to make this decision for yourself, and in one respect that is the spiritual lesson of the seasons that are ahead.

You may wonder, in the midst of this all, what is guiding you. The key factor is curiosity: the yearning and the quest for experience. Whether you're driven by your hormones, your heart, or your soul, answer the calling to find out what this life holds for you, and what you have to offer it, and you will discover a lot more than you were expecting.

for March 25, 2005

Happy Birthday, Aries!

I have suggested that you are heading into a rare, strange four seasons, something that exceeds your experiences and expectations. How is the trip so far? Pretty interesting, right? This is, however, a good time to raise a particular spiritual matter, which we could call the matter of the soul. The soul is an inward manifestation, compared to everything we see and experience in the world — except that once that energy is contacted, it begins to express itself very nicely.
 
When people 'search for themselves', this soul-essence, and its purpose, are what they are looking for. When the soul is made contact with, our sense of identity changes. The approximate corollary for soul is ego. Hugh Prather once remarked that, "It takes ego to see ego." So if I may: ego is the level of awareness or existence that is essentially automatic, fearful, possessive and consumed with its own identity.
 
Soul is transparent; you can see right through it. Listening to its voice results in living a spontaneous way. If there is a plan, it's revealed as the steps become necessary or appropriate. Soul will always guide your life toward healing and completion, and, given time, toward the deeper pleasures you need. The most interesting quality of soul is how it feels 'so much like you' when you kind of stumble into the feeling. We may well ask just what everything that 'did not feel like you' was, but it doesn't take long to figure that out.
 
There are a number of vibrant factors in your astrology this year which suggest your true journey is an inner one — not, as you so often experience it, a quest in the world or the world of people. It's clear enough that everything you decide and feel will have some effect on your outer life, and that your interactions with others are going well. But beneath those layers, you are reaching into yourself in a way that's highly unusual for both you and anyone you've ever known. So unusual, in fact, that few would be willing to admit that your process is real, or that the changes you feel happening are meaningful in the 'real world'. So I suggest that for now, you keep this between you and yourself, and share your experiences only with people you feel on a deep intuitive level will understand.
 
In truth the process you're going through is more mysterious than anyone can say, and the outcome is far from predictable but by no means uncertain. You are headed for a destination: a state of existence, personal development and self-understanding that you will, I assure you, love, and wonder how you ever lived without it. No use wondering; just live and accept the gift.

for April 1, 2005

Happy Birthday, Aries!

Normally, an identity crisis would be an unwelcome development, but I suggest that if you're having one, you go for it whole-heartedly. Generally what we call an identity crisis is about a loss of moorings and a sense of forgetting. My sense is that you are having an identity crisis that is about remembering. It is amazing how much we forget, and then proceed like we never knew. So many revelations about who we are, what we want, what we need and how we really feel about certain people disappear into the mists.

As we do this forgetting, we tend to enter into relationships that in an odd sense calls upon us to owe the people in our lives remaining static and even stuck. Change, moving toward the core, being who we are in more daring ways, and bringing our true inner person out into the open, are qualities that people around us often find threatening. They threaten this thing that some call 'security' and present a situation where, when one person's orientations are changing, they have a compelling quality. But this can feel dangerous to those whose primary goal in life is to stay put. I'll return to this point in a moment.

For you this is a time of remembering. It's a time to return to what I will call an encounter with your original instructions — a concept that every human would be wise to remember, but which for you is now a more or less inevitable meeting. This must happen, I believe, irrespective of your relationships. I'm not suggesting you leave people behind. I am suggesting that you do nothing specifically to protect them from your growth process and that, more to the point, you dare to grow despite how they may be influencing you.

It seems more than likely that if you do this, you will quickly sort out who is coming with you for the journey you're embarking on — a journey to the center of yourself. It is true that we must take certain portions of this trip alone, even the most important parts. But people around us can be more or less supportive, and you need to know who is who from the outset. Relationships are closely involved with the process of growth or stasis. Emotions have a quality of reiterating from person to person, and people can trigger fear in one another as much as they can inspire a sense of daring. Therefore I suggest that you stick with people who support you unconditionally, without needing to know or assess the details, and leave everyone else out of the picture, at least for now.

Every moment in life is meaningful, and there can always be a case made for this particular moment being the most important or significant ever. However, you have certain extremely rare resources available now and you have access to information that has the ability to remind you who you are on the deepest levels — and then to take action using that information. To do this, you need to let go of certain 'ego concepts' and superficial ideas about your identity on which much of the world of personality is based. Often we think of these as somehow threatening but you, I trust, know that your time has come; the time to be real and to live like your life matters, with the perfect faith that it does.

But this is not an act or an affect. There is simply information coming to you from deep inside yourself that will inspire awareness, action, and the courage to make the right decisions in your relationships — the right decisions for you.

In truth, the biggest potential limit is your willingness to be someone who can receive all that you're becoming. You have spent a lot of time and energy clearing out the cobwebs of the past, and overthrowing all the influences of days and times long gone by. It's time to receive the benefits and, when the time comes, to share them with those who may have doubted you or been intimidated.

For now, focus on yourself and what you're learning and a world will open up inside —a world you always knew was there, and always knew you would find.

for April 8, 2005

Happy Birthday, Aries!

A solar eclipse on or within a few days of your birthday — for you, one of those is true — is a personal invitation to take your life to the next level, the next phase, or the next place. The closer to the day of your birth the eclipse occurs, the more direct, intimate and clear the change will be, and yet the less it may seem like you're in control. The key to progress where great astrology is concerned is to remember the ways you are still in a position to make decisions.

There are many, and where you seem to lack choices in one area of your life, or in one direction, you will make up for in others. Where you face a limit in one manner of living, you will be looking right at an opening in another. There are always several solutions to one puzzle; several ways around any obstacle; many ways to accomplish the same goal. You are, in this moment, gifted with awesome resources. The greatest of these is the willingness to change, and the second greatest is the willingness to persevere.

For many long years, it may seem as if your faith has been tested. You may have been forced to look directly, again and again, at what could never be, only to decide that it really was possible all along. What I hope and trust is abundantly clear for you is just how resourceful you are. The greatest resource is confidence in yourself, and from the look of your solar return chart, everything points in that direction — even those qualities of your life which, in the past, somehow would have undermined you.

You have always been a dauntless person, but may not until recently have seen the extent to which small insecurities added up to a large liability. But recent years of your life, particularly going back to the extremely challenging summer of 2003, have given you many occasions to look at yourself, your values, your needs and why it is that you would ever be afraid. You are now free to conclude that there is, in truth, no reason, and it's your choice, your option, to live that way.

In your relationships, a process has begun recently, which has allowed you to become that which you desire. I think that often people resist taking part in this genuine process of growth because if they became what they wanted from others, the question remains: what would they get from relationships? But you can be sure that having satisfied a certain sense of 'something missing' and let go of a needy quality that had in the past presented many challenges for you, there is much that you have to share with others, and receive from them.

The life we live is based on exchange. In the biological realm, a lot of oxygen molecules get passed around. On the way to making our lives better in the human realm, we must give up what we don't want in exchange for what we do. Often it's not so clear cut what is a positive, and what is a negative, but at the moment, there remains certain things that subtract from your world and there are things that add to it. With a little discernment and honesty, you should have no difficulty telling which is which.

The more of what you don't want that you give up, the more of what you do want that you will have room for, and be willing to receive. This is a more daring step than many would acknowledge, but emboldened by a rare eclipse of the Sun in your own sign, which reaches so close to who you are, lets yourself be reminded that you are indeed alive, that you feel your life, and that you are indeed free to make your choices.