What we’re empowered to do, what we choose to do, is the focus today. Sometimes one and the same, sometimes wide apart, when our options are limited, or our Will is unsure, or when we just can’t muster the energy to make a choice–that latter being dangerous, giving ourselves up to the currents, not out of faith, but in abdication, in decreed helplessness–and the Universe has no respect for that. For the present we need to claim whatever power, in whatever form we own it, and we need to choose, need to act–because what results is greater than the sum of the parts, bringing fulfillment of an ambition or desire–and this is so even if that’s not what we’re aiming for! We have a healthy outlook, in terms of the future, so trust yourself, and don’t let others’ communications cause damage to you–and take care with your own words, as they are mightier, with a bigger impact, than you think.

(Juno sxt Mars, forming the base of a Finger of God with apex Zeus, Hygeia trine NN, Mercury semi-sq Pluto)

Today’s word image is the Bird-of-Paradise–the flower, not the actual bird. As a kid I was confused about this plant–I thought it was somewhere between a plant and an animal (I thought the same of sunflowers–have I told you this story before?) These things seemed mysterious, kind of magical–and sentient, to my child-mind, so that when I was piled into a car with lots of others on the way to the cemetery, I silently prayed that I would not have to sit near the bird-of-paradise someone was bringing to put on a grave–and then I was told to hold it in my lap. I remember sitting very still with the tall, pointy flower balanced on my knees, really nervous that it might decide to take my eye out with its beak-like petals. I remember studying it, looking for an eye or some movement that might clue me in to what it was thinking, what it might do. It was a miserable ride for me; I arrived at the cemetery in a sweat! So what does this shaggy-dog story have to convey as an image? Probably that there is something in our lives right now that we fundamentally misunderstand–to the point that we’re frightened or worried, when we really don’t need to be.