New Moon in Aries
                                                            March 31,  11:24 PM PDT/April 1, 2:24 AM EDT

This New Moon is Aries is all about beginnings.  Full of enthusiasm, Aries is an initiator energy, it marks the opening of a cycle.   It is the pursuit of the quest. Specifically,  the quest to take our rightful place within the world. 
The New Moon is Aries is a seeding moon.   Full of promise, containing life force that has not yet been fully birthed. So, to most fully harness the energy of this New Moon,  the question at hand  (notice that the word quest is the root of the word question)  is what do you want to seed in the upcoming months?  

Where you choose, consciously or unconsciously, to put your energy and attention shapes your life.  It is a powerful force that we all to readily forget or get distracted from in what can feel like the unrelenting pace of the daily details and tasks of life. 

The planet Mars rules the sign of Aries, directing us to connect to our passions, to go out and actively hunting for what we desire.  Nike’s tag line persistently is arising in my consciousness as I write this: Just do it!  It’s perfect.  Where we have Aries in our individual charts we are in essence being asked to just do it, take the quest, fight for what is ours. To take our rightful place in the world.  

Consider this New Moon a portal of new beginnings. An invitation to be born anew.  Whether it is a long cherished dream or some newly arisen inspiration, use this this energy to kick start a journey down a new path.  Baptism by fire. The fire of imagination and possibility. 

Then remember showing up consistently with your attention is a devotional act.  And if anything in your life deserves such fealty, the same allegiance that the Knights Templar exhibited in their quest for the Holy Grail, it is what you seed during this New Moon.

There is an innate wildness within all of us.  A way of moving, a pulse, that silently draws us forward. An instinctive knowing that seemingly, inexplicably draws us along our path. It knows what it knows.  Birds and butterflies migrate thousands of miles using this instinct.  The soul’s call will not be tamed and put in an appropriate box simply because our ‘logic’ demands it.  When we futilely attempt to cage ourselves it erupts in some version of s soul sickness. 

Lately I have found myself in deep contemplation about the role of Mars as to play in terms of our instinctual nature. Our wild creature.   And since this is the month officially named in his honor it seems particularly timely.  Fundamentally, Mars is about the action of desire.  He is about both how we desire and how we fulfill our desire. In other words, Mars is about going after what we want. Because, when it comes down to it, what we desire and how we go about fulfilling those desires is the ultimate trial of the evolution of consciousness.

We can’t have true inspiration without Mars. When we are truly inspired, we are set in motion.

I have an Aries ascendant which makes Mars the ruler of my chart.  Sometimes, particularly when I was younger, it truly was a case of ‘fools rush in where angels fear to tread.’  As I have evolved, matured and more and more understand what soulful embodied listening is comprised of, I have learned, for the most part, to pick my battles more carefully.  

Representing our inner warrior, Mars both by sign and house placement points us in the direction of where we are developing courage over the course of this lifetime. It illuminates what motivates us on a core level.  On a most basic level he describes how we do things.

Mars shows us what we are stimulated by. The things that turn us on. The houses it falls into  within our chart indicates the area of life where we can most get in touch with this basic energy. The sign shows us the flavors, both of our own expression and what we find exciting. When we tap into it, we tap into our own life force.

Mars is where we look for a fight. It’s how we challenge ourselves and others. It pushes our knowledge of how and why we conquer. Mars aggression is not aggression for its own sake, but is deeply rooted in the necessity to assess and test strength and power. It’s why our sexual encounters can devolve into war games. Wherever Mars is involved, we must remain conscious of our use of our own power. Mars is how we penetrate in all kinds of ways, and we have to be certain that the intrusion is welcome.

When I think about my own life, or the lives of my students or clients,  Mars  always reminds me of the search for the Holy Grail.  He asks us, What truly is worth fighting for?  What is worth expending time and energy on? What battles should we simply walk away from?  This is the heart of a true quest.  No surprise that the root of the word courage is from the latin ‘cor’ meaning heart. At its core, when we come from our heart we are being courageous. 

When Mars’s spiritual side is activated, it becomes a vehicle for higher powers, and allows us to use those higher powers in daily activities.  

The difference between a bully or thug and someone on an inspired mission is the awareness and intention being their actions.  This can’t be attributed to just one planet or point in a chart but when the desire is clear and a decision is made, Mars is the one that goes out and takes action on behalf of the rest of the chart. 

The key to harnessing the power of  Mars lies in both knowing what is truly valuable to us and then having the courage to align (make an inner alliance) with those values.  

For example, if your Mars is in the sign of Cancer it is developing the courage to let your heart speak and be vulnerable. To openly show its desires and not hide behind a shell disguised as it’s all good. Or look at how I can nourish you!  Mars in Cancer feels intensely vulnerable, it never goes directly after something.  Think about a crab, It literally walks sideways.  But the minute one of its pincers grabs onto something it will fight to the death before letting go.  Mars in Virgo’s soul needs to find some sort of work that matters, that makes a difference and to pursue that even though it might seem fool hardy to others.

A healthy, aware Mars knows where to expend its energy and passion vs picking needless outside battles simply as a way to deal with its own sense of divine discontent. 

So, as we approach the Vernal Equinox on March 21 and enter into the sign Aries and one of Mars’ official seasons, honesty ask yourself where does it feel authentically important to be fierce in your life?  To come from the heart. 

That doesn’t mean its not scary or that you won’t feel vulnerable. It just means it is a battle worth fighting. It is worthy of you. It is worthy of your energy.  And perhaps most importantly, it is worthy of your time,  which for all of us is limited.  Our personal time is finite in this lifetime.   Period.  You can always make more money, but you can never create more time. And time therefore is our most  precious commodity.

Even if you don’t personally know where Mars is within your chart,  I am willing to bet that the answers that surface are reflected and mirrored back within your natal chart.  Recently in one of my classes students were assigned a collage of their Moons.   What was truly extraordinary to all of us was that the resulting pieces not only displayed their Moons but their entire charts.  And this is an entry level class, most of them know very little about astrology at this point. 

Your Natal chart is a map.  A soul seeded map, an Alchemical Compass.  Your life is the territory.  One of the breathtakingly beautiful things to me is that they always profoundly reflect each other.  

When we bring conscious awareness to our journey life can be perceived as an experience of endless miracles. Even the challenging parts. I speak from personal experience when I say developing our Mars, our inner heart warrior, is worth the work.  

As we approach the Vernal Equinox on March 21, an annual time of new beginnings, today’s potent and enchanting New Moon in Pisces gives us a very special opportunity to gather our focus and consciously set some powerful intentions for the next six months that can be carried forward through the energy of the Equinox.  In particular, I see this month’s New Moon as an invitation to look within and open our hearts to our soul’s desires - whether they seem pragmatic or not in our day to day life. 

Romantic and magical, where Pisces lies within our individual charts we long to be connected and belong. Though we often view this through the lens of the outer world, at its core belonging is an inside job.   Its siren song metaphorically sings to us the epic tale of how we can belong to profoundly to ourselves, our wild inner nature, and thus truly experience our place in the world at the deepest  levels if we will only listen.  One of the most profound lessons of  Pisces is to surrender, to let go and trust. In other words, I reiterate, let’s use this invitation to look deeply within, dance with our truest dreams and desires before we take action in the outer world.  

One of the most magical things about this particular New Moon is that both Jupiter and Neptune will also be aligned with the Sun and Moon in Pisces.  This is key because Jupiter is symbolic of our developing consciousness exemplifying the principle of expansion.  He speeds things up and is often considered to be lucky…though I must note that he is not particularly discriminating, he just likes to amplify things.  Think of him as the gas pedal in your car. He likes to go fast.  Neptune, modern ruler of the sign Pisces,  was the God of the Ocean, symbolic of the collective unconscious and teaches us that we are all connected.  He is the principle of higher love, unconditional love, and grace; to dance with Neptune is to know that everything is connected and that anything else is mere illusion.  

Most importantly everything includes us, we are connected.  To each other, to our dreams, and how we move through the world, both implicitly and explicitly is felt by everyone.  In physics, this is the core of Chaos Theory…the infamous Butterly effect which states that when a butterfly moves it wings over Japan it is felt in the air currents in the United States.  To paraphrase Marianne Williamson in A Return to Love,  our playing small doesn’t serve the world. 

If we have Neptune heavily emphasized in our chart as we evolve we learn through our experiences that we must move beyond our desires and connect with whatever path our soul has chosen.  We sacrifice (aka make sacred) the lesser for the greater knowing that we will be rewarded with a level of understanding that our personality-driven selves could not have known about.  We begin to understand that all of our previous deprivations had to do with getting these lesser desires out of the way, so that we could be initiated into the deeper and higher levels of love and connection.  And at that level, we begin to realize something very important.  That love isn’t an emotion, or an experience, or a state of being.  Love is a power.  A connecting power.  It’s the ultimate creative force.

Think about it.  Whatever we pay attention to in our lives, whatever we care about, grows in our consciousness.  What our consciousness registers gets fed back to us in our lives.  That is the power of this New Moon.  Amplified with Jupiter’s presence. 

Nothing would be accomplished, nothing created, if it weren’t for love.  To create something, we must first envision it, and the visionary principle belongs to Neptune and its connecting power.  We must love our dreams, our inner vision,  into being. 

I am including a link here for the free downloadable Pisces New Moon Meditation from last year to help you  ground and source your deepest desires whilst capturing the energy of Jupiter’s alignment to amplify your vision.