I think what’s going on now is a mass state of introspection, but one that’s turning each of us inside-out; we’re seeing the raw underneath, the hurt we’re usually able to bury, the sense of outrage and defensiveness and surety that others are acting abominably while we are not (and sometimes we will be right about that), and all of it is showing. We are visible in a way we rarely are, with all our true intents showing–and to deny that, to think we can make others believe we’re something we’re not with posturing and bravado, is to reveal the depths of our own foolishness–so accept that it’s apparent, all our good, all our bad, and know that those who love you will love you anyway–and we don a suit of invincibility, in that honesty requires no defense, and gives us the perfect position from which to observe and if necessary, react.

Look around you: who’s succumbed to panic? who’s going at others aggressively (or worse, passive-aggressively)? who’s sneaking into things and expressing their power that way (if you don’t see me change this, then I’ve won)? who’s retreated? Pretty much no one, from what I can see. Everybody’s full compliment of flags are flying; it’s up to us to see them, read them, believe them.

It’s all very Higher Mind Plutonian, with the god of the Underworld exerting himself through the intellect, through technology and its influence (and its defenders), through and within the interests of groups, their leaders, their guiding ideas, through the modern, the faddish, through trends and the prevailing Zeitgeist, through the final disintegration of that social, political, and interpersonal framework that was thoroughly transformed/ destroyed with Pluto’s transit of Capricorn.

But what’s delivering it to us in this oh-so-revealing way, its sharply realized outlines unavoidable? It’s the extraordinary double retro of Mercury in Scorpio and Venus in Libra; knowledge of the hidden underbelly, the worst (or perhaps only the most deeply buried) thoughts, ideas, beliefs, spooned out one dose at a time via relationships and interaction of all kinds. Pluto’s trine to Uranus insures the shock or revelation or outrage–and there’s no way to get away from it, it’s communication via the very air, the consciousness soup of networked humanity that is Gemini–and Black Moon Lilith in Capricorn square Saturn in Aries, so that reality presents us, through our own choices and actions, with everything we thought was offering security but now we must acknowledge had been built out of denial, and so is changing, whether we want it to or not, with Merc sextile BML filling our awareness with what we’d rather not consider.

That’s the problem with being awake: you feel it, and often, it hurts. With those two direct major energies, Mars and Jupiter, conjoined the South node and trine Chiron in Aries, Self-responsibility becomes the watchword. Those who accept it flourish; and if we accept ourselves in our multi-faceted totality, then we will see opportunity to advance our cause, which is nothing more complex than a best-version expression of who we are. If it’s not clear now, it’ll become so over the coming week, as the Sun moves to square the Mars-Jupiter combo and shines its light, by way of the Scorpio concerns of life and death, the hidden, the secret, the shameful, the disgusting, the transformative, the powerful, as we are asked, in one form or another, to rise from the ashes, phoenix-like, and live.

A heartfelt thank you to everyone who reached out, and to those who sent kind thoughts and wishes. You all made me feel so cared for–and I appreciate you so much!