We’ve moved, a ferry ride away from our old house, but what feels like a world away from Seattle. The new place is in a forested neighborhood near the water. Eventually I’ll show you some pictures of my favorite things here, particularly of two giant cedars, a pair of does that graze behind the house, and of a group of trees, dead but still standing, like an elongated, bleached bone crown on the hillside. It’s peaceful here, a perfect place to recover from the cold–or maybe light flu?–that’s lingered for the past 3 weeks, both delaying my return and continuing to leave me more fatigued than I expect to be.

So, I missed our daily chats, but really–I leave you all for five figurative minutes, and somebody gets a pandemic started! Humans are constantly generating, constantly creating, and so is every other living thing. This can’t entirely be a surprise, especially since we’re in prime flu season in the Northern Hemisphere; but that doesn’t make our new reality of isolation, and considerable uncertainty and fear, any easier.

Rather than re-tread ground that many others have examined astrologically, ad infinitum, I’ll just say that the current Capricorn stellium of Pallas, Jupiter, Mars, and Pluto, all sited within less than a 3 degree span of one another, do speak of breakdown, of cells and the social construct, with normalcy the victim of virulence, of drastic, extreme choices, of belief as it clashes with ‘the facts’, and in some, a determined effort to defend the status quo, even as wisdom tells us change must happen, for the good of the public, as well as the survival of the individual.

This grouping is headed toward, at different rates, trine to Sedna in Taurus, toward a meeting of change and destruction and the need to make choices, over and over, that dovetails with what we ‘know but don’t know’, with what we instinctively react to, and with what we have judiciously remained unaware of via our ‘blind spot’–that last encompassing the Taurean realities of Nature itself and the way certain among us have bet that we wouldn’t meet a crisis, so we didn’t need to be informed, didn’t need to care–and the wheel turns, and we see what a bad bet it was.

But what I want to draw your attention to is a Cardinal Grand Square, involving the Sun/ Earth axis, along with current players Chiron-Black Moon Lilith in Aries and the Nodal axis. As the Sun-Earth move toward closer engagement by degree we see the tension of the Cardinal imperative to do something pushing against the individual injury/ weakness and the way we may be tempted to ignore or deny the role of the individual, or the importance of the choices the individual makes and the actions one takes, in what is happening–and all of this charts the course forward, as the future rolls out from what’s been done and dealt with (or not) in the past.

I don’t mean to heap responsibility on the individual; I’m only trying to say that the astrology speaks to me of the vital role each of us can play, simply by doing what needs doing, as long as our choices are informed by both the facts and our awareness of the needs of the Collective. Our individual efforts may be small, but they are all building blocks in the well-being of the planet and humanity–don’t ever think they are inconsequential, that they don’t matter–and really, it’s likely to be that in taking responsibility on a personal level, we gain in ways we haven’t yet thought of.

I want to know what you all need from me at this time. I can’t promise I’ll be posting every day, as I’m still not up to par, but I’ll do my best. Put suggestions in the comments, and I won’t make them public–you’ll just be talking to me about what might help you on this page. And many thanks to all those who commented, or wrote directly to me while I was away–it’s appreciated, though you should know that I don’t generally see these things until I return. When I get off line, I really get off line!