Go Speed Racer! New Moon + 5 planets in Aries + Mercury Retrograde

It's not what you do, it's how you live...

I start this column by honoring the passing through the bardos to dimensions beyond of two pioneering spiritual teachers and calendric wizards Jose Arguelles of the Dreamspell and Ra, creator of HuMan Design.  Thank you to their souls for their wisdom and may their passage be safe and blissful.
 

From March 30 to April 23,  tongue-twisting trixter Mercury goes retro once again, while four other planets prance and play and go crazy in Aries.  The New Moon in Aries occurs on Sunday April 3rd, asking you to intend boldness and courage in your new ventures.  Mercury retrograde in Aries should make us really consider our desires and goals.

Although tempted to commit to projects or risky ventures, we should be very careful with so many planets in Aries, and with Mercury retrograde, it's the least ideal time to make commitments or contractual agreements, but the best time to reflect and plan ahead.  Evaluate and strategize, like any intelligent general would.
  

Aries is very aware of the impermanence of life and lives by the motto of "seize the day."  And it lives this through bold, pioneering manuevers, willing to take risks and lead the way.   This is one of the major Aries predicaments -- its "mission," its self-directed impulses allow little space for depth or strategy.  The "dive-in" mentality, although exciting, can put one into some precarious positions, but fortunately, Saturn may get us to think twice about diving head first.
 

Over the next month, Saturn will be opposing most of these Aries planets.  Any of those pesky practicalities -- money, work, even family and relational obligations -- may frustrate our desires to burst into the next level of our personal self mastery.  We are asked, especially with a Venus-Chiron conjunction the week of March 28th to communicate compassionately the healing needs of the self while honoring the others we relate to.  Saturn in Libra is helping us focus while providing us important relationships which act as guides to instruct us just where and how to direct all of our creative fires.
 

For Aries, the world is your adventure.  If you're planning on doing some summer travel, the Aries month is a great time to study your relocation maps.  This can help get your antennae up for the power places and evolutionary vortices on the planet for you, as well as the best time to visit and activate yourself in those places. 

Uranus in Aries (2011-2018): The Cult of the New and Now

For the first time in 84 years, Uranus has moved into Aries (amidst the mideast turmoil and the Japanese tsunami), promising a potent decade ahead of us.  Aries is the first, and fastest sign in the zodiac.  Uranus is the lightning strike.  Combine the two and you get one of those Bugs Bunny cartoon moments, when the Coyote is chasing the Roadrunner, and Coyote runs right off the edge of the cliff and falls SPLAT!! on the ground.  Or Coyote ignites a special atomic bomb trap for the Roadrunner, but through his impatience, steps right onto the dynamite and then it's KABLOOEY!!   
 

In the wheel of the zodiac, the first house and the rising sign is associated with Aries.  This is the most instinctual place in our birth chart.  We have a certain amount of foresight in this location and with Aries.  Like the Coyote, we can smell the next steps of the Roadrunner.  But with Aries, our primal hunting ethic often catapaults us too quickly into chaos and crisis.  If Uranus, the Great Awakener and Liberator, reflects that Promethean urge to steal fire from the gods, we must consider the kind of cunning and skill it takes to steal, and not just any object, but the potent flames of fire--all of its spirit, wisdom, and intensity.  And how do you steal fire from of all beings, the gods?!  You must act with stealth and with power.  As Nietzsche stated,  "We are all of us growing volcanoes that approach the hour of our eruption, but how near or distant that is, nobody knows."
 

This is that hunter-hunted anxiety that raises our hair and tenses our muscles with Uranus in Aries.  It's like we're in Stephen King's Running Man, a game we cannot escape; our only have to learn how to play it better.   Don't some of us feel this now with staying current with our technologies, gizmos,  information, and friends' statuses?  Always about to explode, electro-reactive, combustible, as we try to surf the cult of the New and the Now?


As an author, I've had to learn about the rules of the online game called Blogging.  Google's little spiders will only crawl in your direction if you consistently blog, which means adding new content constantly.  This new content and "popularity" of websites is the means by which an online author will receive traffic through Search Engine Optimization (SEO).  On a certain level, in order to be found, to even be "present" as an "I" in the online world, I must 'compete,' offering up my content as something universally important and consistently fresh.  If I do not follow these rules, my voice will not echo very far through the infosphere.

Culturally, we become obsessed then with speed and competition as Uranus moves through Aries.  There is something of a "necessary evil" here, with its own rules for evolution. Conveniences are sexy, slick, and seductive, but at what cost? The "always on" mentality can create an exacerbated level of stress and anxiety.  While on the high side, the combination of speed and competition compel the innovative spirit in each of us.  Again, following the dictums of our favorite Uranus in Aries persona, Nietzsche: "Genius has its source in instinct."  This is gut-level decision-making.  This is Maverick in Top Gun reacting to his instructors, that as a fighter pilot, "I don't have time to think up there.  If you think, you're dead."
 

Sports such as downhill skiing, horseracing, and stock-car racing all began during Uranus in Aries cycles, reinforcing the motivating factor of speed and competition during this cycle.  The speed of light was even discovered during Uranus in Aries.

In all of your Aries doing, may you remember to take a deep breath and also, "Get Busy, just Being."

Image by buglugs, courtesy of Creative Commons license.