‘Hidden Forces’–that’s sounds ominous, right? Like there’s something out there that may overwhelm us, push past any defenses, change our course–but what we’re really talking about are matters that exert an influence in our lives through the unconscious. We’re vulnerable in so many ways: through the deep, secret fear that we are stupid or foolish, through the power of the social sphere to make us feel inadequate or wrong for being who we are, or through the way, if we inspect the real world that surrounds us without our usual lenses, we see that we’ve fallen short in so many ways. These forces haunt us, and even when we take a step back and use our good sense, spotting these as the worst case scenario, mostly baseless fears that they are, it’s hard to convince ourselves that these are negative interpretations of reality, not reality itself. But here’s what we need to ground ourselves, this time around: we find strength in our wounds–the scar tissue of experience allows us to know exactly what to avoid to prevent injury–so we’re much safer than we might think; originality, uniqueness, and inventiveness are our greatest assets right now, along with resiliency and embrace of our own personal authority–we are arbiters of our own fates, much more than we may normally admit to ourselves–now’s the time to accept our own power and strength; Nature, in some form, is doing us a favor right now–take note; and focus on ambitions, goals, or what you desire–the ‘quiet’ available during Dark of the Moon may allow extraordinary concentration of energy and attention, which lays the groundwork for progress (Chiron semi-sq Juno and sesq Pallas, Mars conj Black Moon Lilith, Mercury sq Jupiter and parallel Uranus and Ceres, Sun sxt Zeus, sesq Saturn and contra-parallel Jupiter).