Everybody’s talking about the Sun conjoining Neptune, now through the 20th–why? It happens every year, but with Neptune in its own sign, the Solar light applied to transcendent Pisces illuminates ideals, creativity, and community at their highest levels–and inevitably leaves a lot of dissatisfaction in its wake. The wash of big ideas with even bigger intentions is inspiring, yes, massively so, and it’s only human that our results will, with few exceptions, be somewhat less than those dreams we dreamed, making the reckoning between what was visualized and what was realized something we should be prepared for, accept, and still celebrate–reaching for the stars is thrilling, and if we don’t reach our final goal, we still find ourselves in the stratosphere, with a wider view and more far-reaching results than we ever would’ve created without those lofty inspirations.

This duo also trines Vesta, which may be why we’re so focused here, at the moment: Vesta is what we revere, what we find sacred, what we dedicate our life energy to–and that may put a lot of pressure on each of us, whether we’re conscious of it or not. We may feel like attaining those ideals and creative goals is more than necessary–we may in fact feel as if success is mandatory, that we will be ‘less than’ unless we get all the way to our aim. Though high standards are admirable, it’s definitely too much to hold ourselves to such stringent requirements, especially when there are likely one or more components that will be at least to some extent outside our control. We just need to focus on what we gain, what we do create, even if that creation doesn’t go as far or as wide or to completion as we’d hoped.

Chiron is quincunx the Black Moon Lilith point, amping things up even more as we carry in the back of our minds the awareness that what we ignore, deny, or are enraged by carries the potential to hurt us–and that means we know we’ve got to face what we’d rather put aside for later, or never, in an attempt to minimize our own injury. It’s smart to take it head on, as we exercise a lot more control over something we accept as reality than we do over something we’re insisting isn’t a thing. Note: if you have a placement 17-19 Scorpio, this fills in a Finger of God that suggests the fill-in energy plus the sense of woundedness combine to form a sort of dark point around something you’d rather forget–but shouldn’t. Again, addressing it is better than denying its existence, and keeps you in the driver’s seat.

And that brings us to Eris opposed Zeus, with Zeus receiving a trine and Eris receiving a sextile from aggressive Mars. Here we have the agent of discord facing off against our ambitions and desires, with Mars inserting the impetus to act on those wants, with those actions and choices easily putting a target on our backs for anyone with a beef. This is just life, really; there’s no way to control how others see and respond to us, so we must act and be with integrity, pursue our desires and aims, and let others feel and think what they may. That’s how we keep from being paralyzed by the judgments or slights handed out by those who’d rather critique us than look at their own flawed character.

Pluto noviles Saturn=we have the power to change our reality in transformative and quite brilliant ways–just know that alterations made now have a permanence about them that can never completely be undone; also know that changes imposed by externals have that same permanence, and are absolutely, 100% to our benefit, no matter how things look on the surface. Ceres also sextiles Saturn, reinforcing the idea that there’s power contained in facing reality–and both aspects to Saturn tell us that at this time, it’s much easier than usual to control those power expressions, to shape real-world results just as we’d like them to be. That puts powerful mojo behind those Sun-Neptune manifestations–and, as long as we follow a few cautions, puts us in control of our own choices and their consequences.

I’ll follow up with a few other things happening in the coming week. Have a great weekend!