This letter is coming out Aries-style a bit early this month. A lot of the tension of this sign is eased by the cell salt Kali Phos. - the two ends of this feeling are being tired but so wired one can’t relax, or being collapsed and unable to move in response to mental urging. It’s the discomfort that results from driving at life on nervous energy, needing rest but never stopping long enough to unwind. Kali Phos helps the nerves and Mag. Phos. helps to relax the cramping muscles. If this is the cell salt you need, taking it can lift your whole mood from a kind of worried desperation to buoyant acceptance of the next challenge.

ARIES!

Over the last few weeks and into this coming month, we are all feeling something of the Aries style. In general, Aries feels somewhat driven, and alone. What a person does about that feeling depends on the rest of their character. Situations where Aries is alone feel familiar even if uncomfortable. Being alone on stage, for instance, requires an audience’s total attention, and may result in what is called ‘prima donna’ behaviour. Running a race feels more familiar and ‘right’ for Aries if they see no one else on the track, and that means being in front (they don’t usually look behind, only ahead). Winning is given positive re-enforcement, which encourages competitiveness.

There’s a lot of energy and drive to act, so Aries often ‘gets there’ first in any situation, and when Aries arrives it feels the familiar aloneness and space. But then they have to wait for the next thing to happen, and inactivity is uncomfortable for Aries. When energetic impulses are frustrated, anyone can find themselves expressing impatience, and it often looks like intolerance.

Aries also has an expectation that they must do it all themselves, so they don’t think to ask for help, and this can look like arrogance. Other signs find Aries challenging because they take their own time, while Aries is immediate, not usually bothered by an agenda, often ahead even of their own best interests!

What circumstances make YOU impatient?

We all have Aries somewhere in our birth chart. Even though there may be no planet there to energise these characteristics, the House Aries occupies in your chart shows the area of life where you may feel driven, alone, impatient. Always at this time of the year, and especially at the moment with this New Moon chart, there is an emphasis on these ways of being human, and that area of your life is being tested (Sun/Moon are together with Mars and Venus).

and then apologise!

All of this would normally be fine, but over these years Pluto is occupying Capricorn, and Aries energy is often being held up by circumstances (Uranus in Aries square Pluto). The Aries in us all wants to get on, and gets impatient at delays it doesn’t understand, and can’t affect. Your experience may be of events tripping you up, of circumstances being hugely frustrating, and you may discover in yourself an on-going level of irritation which explodes in anger from time to time. When that anger is expressed, Aries can be very hurtful. As long as the force of your anger is matched by the warmth of your loving apology, all will be well.

Finding your true self . . .

We are each capable of feeling any human emotion and, during the last couple of months may have slid along a rollercoaster of emotions (Pisces-style). This New Moon chart showed a determination to re-claim our own personal view and natural response pattern (Aries). This is an opportunity to discover and claim your up-to-date truth rather than simply returning to the instinctive unconscious bits of pattern. To find that present day self, we need to be honest, to be up front. That doesn’t mean being in people’s face, but rather remaining quietly real, authentic, responsive to what is present. From this place in yourself, everything is clearer, more alive and colourful. You see other people’s truth in their eyes, and they can see you (Venus and Mars also in Aries with Sun/Moon). There may also be passion in this Mars/Venus combination, but beware - Aries energy is like a meteor, not a comet, and tends to burn out as it approaches reality! This pattern, at its best, is the expression of love for, and from, ourselves towards everything we do and everyone we meet, and this month is a good time to practise.

. . . not in emotional-mental machinations . . .

This process of discovering who you are and getting on with what you really want or need to do, will be carried on, almost regardless of world events (Aries bunch, and Mercury, not connecting with the outer planets). The bigger issues are generally the backdrop to our lives - this month it may be time to look again at how our attitudes to social, or world, concerns affect our personal life experience.

Being fearful of the on-going recession, or angry at apparent stupidity in world leaders, makes our own lives more painful than they need to be, leaving us with personal fear or anger that will attach to any circumstance in our own life - not pleasant for us or those we interact with. Within ourselves, we often become embroiled in painful imaginings where past horrors threaten and we become anxious about our future. This way of being inside oneself is disconnected from the present: as we go down the vortex of mentally triggered emotions, we tend to get cut off from NOW.

. . . connecting through our physical senses - to relate.

A very helpful practice is relating to the place you find yourself, re-connecting with what is real around you (Libra is opposite Aries): the feel of the cloth of your clothes, the texture of the chair cover, the sound of a clock ticking or the traffic outside. Try to be aware of the feel of the room you are in, as distinct from your personal feeling. Any of this is the first step towards finding that you are here, in a place that you can relate to with openness, rather than just seeing it there. Relate to another person, an animal, a plant, or relate just to the reality of your body itself. Aries rules the head, and Libra, as the sign of relating to another, is its necessary balance. Connecting from our inner space to anything that surrounds us can be the rope that pulls us up out of that pit of negativity, or back from wild imaginings.