The Great Wheel of the Zodiac begins with Aries, on the first day of spring, the vernal equinox. Aries answers the question, “What kind of energy does it take to be born in spring?” The answer is Mars energy — heat, dynamism, adolescent bravado. Green Fire!

Aries is the Ram, butting its way into whatever seems exciting. In order to be successfully intrusive, an Aries must learn the Libran skills of charm, including how to flirt and how to challenge others diplomatically.

Fundamentally, Aries is the hero or Heroine who follows the Path of Desire.

We all have Aries somewhere in our charts, and the Sun sign Aries helps to stimulate that exuberant, full-on, confident embrace of life.

And we have learned from recent entheo research that psilocybe mushrooms decrease fearful reactivity, and increase confidence and kindness — which are great leadership qualities…

We’ll begin by:

• Animating (honoring the soul) the qualities of our ideal inner heroine/hero “The hero with a thousand faces,” is a great guiding book
• Gathering our woof to begin those things we’ve been meaning to do for ages… “Let’s go, let’s go!”
• Receiving inspirational guidance from the animals with which we feel most affinity

The first of the fixed signs, Taurus’ purpose is to harness and consolidate the wild energy of Aries by providing it with a vessel in which to take form. As Venus incarnates through those born in late April to late May, she encourages cooperation in the conspiracy for ever-increasing pleasure.

In the Venusian Taurus world, there is no split between the material world and the spiritual. Rather, when we make something beautiful, we invite the invisible magic represented by Taurus’ opposite sign of Scorpio to come live there.

Taurus is the best of all the signs at acquiring and consolidating wealth by cultivating all available resources.

Taureans flourish by understanding that tending, caring, nurturing, and mating are their true tasks.

We’ll:

• Cultivate Democratic Animism (and find out what the hell that means) — Collaborative wheel and deal spirituality, as Coyote gudes us
• Make altars to magnetize the desirable
• Engage in dedicated acts of Beauty invite power into the world
• Animate our Wise Money Animal, whom we can send out to bring back opportunities for wealth, however we choose to define wealth (includes, but is not limited to — money)
• Discover animal fables throughout time

The wing-footed Trickster and messenger god Mercury incarnates through those born from late May to late June. The first of the Air signs, Gemini emerges from the heavens of Taurus with a desire to soar into the lighter, more spontaneous world of abstraction, concepts, and open-ended plans.

Geminis are in love with words, language, ideas for the sake of ideas. They are considered poets, bards, and storytellers, but not the philosophers (who are found in the opposite sign of Sagittarius).

Geminis serve the function of nerve synapses in the culture, connecting and coordinating disparate parties by facilitating information flow. The symbol for Gemini is the Twins, of two minds about everything.

Geminis are communicators; their choice is whether to apply their gift to waffling, wit, or wisdom. To talk, to say, to name is to invoke. Wherever Gemini is in our charts is where we are assigned the task of understanding the magically creative power of words.

We’ll:

• Embark on serious play with the power of language — “The world will converse with us in whatever language we cultivate”
• Participate in call and response, to discover what wants us to be its messenger
• Do practice exercises that allow us to have refined nervous systems, capable of enhanced superconductivity, without fraying our circuits

The Moon incarnates through those born from late June to late July. Cancer begins on the summer solstice, the longest day and shortest night, which is the consummation of a journey that began on the winter solstice, the longest night and short day.

The Cancerian feminine force responds to Gemini’s extended romp. The nights begin to grow longer and Cancer’s lunar tide pulls everything into the womb, to home, to family.

The Moon’s phases reveal the manifold manifestations of Cancer as the Great Mother: nurturer, protector, devourer. Indeed, every aspect of your relationship with your own mother will in some way be played out in your relationship with Cancers. Cancers are everyone’s surrogate mom, and everyone’s surrogate child.

Cancer is the Crab who lives in the sea, which is ruled by the Moon — oceanic, menstrual, emotional, the mistress of all tides. Together, the Moon and Cancer rule all growing life, natural cycles, shifting tides, introversion, and brooding — in both senses of the word. All living things incubate in their own watery sac, their personal ocean; they emerge into a larger one.

We’ll:

• Investigate our relationships with all Great Mothers in our lives
• Understand our actual Mothers, as research projects, exemplars of what does our culture encourage or discourage in women throughout time
• Explore what our culture encourages or discourages in women, and how we may break those spells and take new more expansive vows

The Sun seeks its most radiant expression in this time of year and in those born in late July through late August. Leo is the child who bursts forth from the confines of Cancerian gestation. In Leo’s passionate theater of life, pageantry and ceremony celebrate everything born of love, whether offspring of the heart, the mind, the body, or the spirit.

Leo is both “fixed” and “fiery,” adamant and impulsive, and always emphatic. Creative certainty, absolute edicts, and provocative proclamations are its basic modes of expression.

Leo’s job is to produce, direct, present, and stage life’s richness. The pitfall can lie in its singular vision of what is important now.

Like Taurus, Leo is fixed and wants to leave a structure behind, a really great show against which the creatives efforts of all others will be measured. Like the other Fire sign, Aries, Leos are leaders.

Mature Leos understand that the creative energy they emanate does not originate with them, but flows through them. The flory that enlightened Leos seek is not for the aggrandizement of the struggling child ego. Rather, it is an offering to ignite the spark of the marvelous in all of us.

We’ll:

• Create theatre or live melodrama — cultivating creative theatre and the art of ritual
• Be willing to be agents of illuminating what is hidden
• Liberate laughter-cultivating play and laughter (we are meant to be a laughing species)
• Curate a festival of humor

Here we have the mercurial mind in its analytical incarnation. Where the Gemini incarnation of Mercury was excitedly diffuse, Mercury’s expression through Virgo is polished and focused.

Traditionally, Virgo is the critic, the analyst, the healer who cures society’s ills by reintroducing the standards of quality and purity into the culture.

When the symbolism of the Virgin first arose, the attribute of virginity has less to do with chastity than with the idea of a woman in full possession of herself, an oracle, a priestess, or a muse. The sheaves of wheat are emblems of disciplined sexuality that also refer to the abundant harvest that must be sorted and refined at this time of year. The poignant wafts of autumn air remind the Virgo that all must be put in order for the approaching winter. Virgo appreciates both the beauty and the necessity of order.

Virgo’s task is to harness its attention to detail, and its consequent critical insight, to the sense of service and healing proffered by its opposite sign, Pisces. Then pragmatism can wed with mysticism.

We’ll:

• Cultivate discernment (Whoa! so important) activating our bogus detector
• Allow small things tell big stories
• Cultivate linguistic eloquence
• Find and express our inner Hermes Messenger/Magician
• Learn to use the invocative power of language — “Invoke” means literally “to call in” or “to give voice”

Emerging from Virgo’s analytical, scholastic reclusiveness, with Libra we enter the world of Venus: art, culture, and the desire to be maximally related. The first half of the Zodiac is primarily concerned with self, with constructing the individual. Libra begins the second half of the zodiac, which is concerned with the collaborative endeavor of the social world, culture, and community.

With Libra, we begin to contemplate all that has come before and to explore the realm of the other. A strong Libran drive is to find others in the past who were perhaps like oneself, to carry on their tradition, so as not to be lonely in history.

Libra is the only sign of the Zodiac whose symbol is an inanimate object, the Balance. The Scales exemplify the tendency for Libra to equivocate. Ironically, no sign can be more sure what everyone else should be doing. Libra can fixate on what others need to do at times when its own situation really demands its attention. Libras’ challenge is to follow their own advice and pay as much attention to their own development as to others’.

Libra’s task, accomplished in solitude, is to become fully effective by unleashing itself from the constraint of worrying about what other people think. Then Librans can be the social change artists who set huge, swirling social forces in motion while being charming and outrageous.

We’ll:

• Discover our affinities — which reveal to us “that for which we are an ambassadors in the court of the human world”
• Become collaborative co-operators of all things we love — “Presume love in the other,” says Kierkegaard
• Make things beautiful — “There is no solution to anything unless beauty and love are present”

In spring, the vital force of Mars emerged from the earth into the light, whereas in Scorpio season, late October to late November, Mars descends to the dark underworld with Pluto as a guide. Springtime Mars had a teenage innocence and bravado, while autumnal Mars explores the realms of darkness.

Scorpio is the sharpest, shrewdest, most investigative intelligence in the Zodiac. The three symbols associated with it, the Scorpion, the Eagle, and the Phoenix, describe three ways in which Scorpio uses this fierce insight, and delineate this sign’s evolutionary path.

In the first stage, the Scorpion stings others and then stings itself in remorse. Mars, guided by Pluto, initially does not know its own strength. At the next level the Eagle, who soars very close to the Sun, has a lay-of-the-land perspective. But the Eagle, still judgmental and predatory swoops down on its prey. In its most developed incarnation, Scorpio is represented by the Phoenix, the mythological bird of India who brought music to the world. Everything related to the Phoenix and its story is crucial to the understanding of Scorpio, for the Phoenix is Scorpio’s key totem that holds the promise of redemption.

We’ll:

• Descend into the Underworld — and re-emerge! What gets us through the Underworld
• Explore the alchemy of distilling desires back to their original pure intention
• Draw our instructional blueprints of the possible from distilled desire

Jupiter seeks incarnation through those born from late November to late December. This god of expression makes Sagittarius eager to leave Scorpio’s intense, focused introspection. Jupiterian natives leap into the grand journey, whether of the mind, the spirit, or the body, seeking to step outside parochial concerns and become citizens of the world. The nature of Sagittarius is one of broad inquiry and fascination with cultural diversity.

The Sagittarius part of us experiences life as a journey rather than a destination; it enjoys the hunt rather than the quarry, the search or the research rather than the discovery itself. The quest is the most enlivening process for Sagittarius, which is also why it is thought of as a workaholic. Sagittarius does not work within the accepted confines of other people’s timetables. The journey cannot be regimented by artificial time structures, and routine is anathema.

The Sagittarian is the explorer who not only journeys to the borders of its field and/or its culture, but also crosses them. Ideally, Sagittarius expresses a consciousness that asks questions of, and is willing to learn from, anything or anyone, as long as they are smart. Sagittarius is the life energy in all of us that is devoted to diversity.

We’ll:

• Become citizens of the world, drawing wisdom from all cultures
• Make meaning out of information
• Cultivate passionate curiosity — “The intelligence of desirous quest”
• Cultivate the manners of Bedouins
• Understand life as a journey of sequential unfurling (not really a “career”)

Capricorn “Urania’s Mirror” Sidney Hall

One of the earliest images for Capricorn is “the council of wise leaders dedicated to the next seven generations.”

We convene that council now, availing ourselves of all leadership models in Nature, whereby to redesign human structures of governance. Tracking “politics” back to its pre-bamboozled, hoodwinked state, ‘tis truly “dedication to collective wellbeing.”

Saturn incarnates through those born from late December to late January, giving them an old-fashioned love of hardship, rigor, training, and overcoming adversity. Capricorn begins on the winter solstice, the longest night and the height of dark, introspective power. Once again the energy of exploration pulls inward, as in the opposite sign of Cancer, to harness itself to the task of building a real structure.

Capricorn’s totem is the Goat. When astrological symbolism arose, there were two kinds of goats: the domesticated animal, gloomily chained to its post, and the wild creature. These refer to the two aspects of the Capricornian nature. If Capricorn feels chained, duty bound, it has an extraordinary capacity for deep gloom. In contrast, if Capricorn is free to find its own path, then it has the feisty, randy, Pan-like zest of the wild, sturdy mountain goat.

The Capricornian impulse can become weird and out of touch because Capricorn is so insular. Characteristic solitude, combined with a fierce work ethic, management capacity, and hungry ambition, can produce an extremely “successful” (in the world’s terms) character. Capricorns can get way out of touch, especially when they climb the wrong mountain but receive acclaim for it.

When Capricorn is devoted to something larger than itself, it builds a structure that serves the collective being. Martin Luther King Jr’s “I Have a Dream” speech wonderfully expresses the noblest drives of this sign; to scale the mountain, have a vision, and return to deliver the sermon that inspires us all to build a just society.

We’ll:

• Pull inward to explore ourselves through introspection
• Define and inhale our “Author”-ity — Lest it be left to others to define! (He who hesitates — gets bossed)
• Understand forgiving and honoring our fathers
• Explore and change what our culture encourages or discourages in men
• Define leadership, as derived from the many models proffered by Nature

Aquarius “Jantar Mantar” Jaipur, India

Both the god of tradition and the god of innovation rule the psyche of those born from late January to late February. The fact that two such contrasting gods seek incarnation in the same individual accounts for the complexity and wide variety of expression of those born under this sign. This gives rise to the paradoxical character of bold shyness of these very private public people.

Ruled by Uranus (called the higher octave of Mercury) Aquarius represents our desire to communicate on a massive scale through airplanes, radio, TV, film, satellites, modems, computers, public relations, and discourse of all kinds.

Its symbol is the Water Bearer, the woman pouring forth the waters of new life. Because Aquarius is an Air sign, however, the water represents wave energy. We can also think of the symbol as that of a woman with a broadcast microphone in her hand.

Aquarius’ rulership by both Saturn and Uranus reveals the truth that stability is dependent upon progressive change. Aquarius is a sign of both traditionalist and futurists, impulses often intertwined within the character of the same person. Aquarius is the culture in dialogue with itself.

We’ll:

• Co-operate with Image as an artful ally, rather than a portable prison
• Strike the circle of habit with liberating lightning and turning it into a spiral (within ourselves and culture at large)
• Cultivate our capacity to lead groups

Neptune currently transits its own home Realm of Pisces, making everything available that has ever moved humans to conscious kinship — poetry, prose, myth, fairy tales, and science.

Jupiter incarnates in those born from late February to late March with Neptune as its tour guide. Whereas Jupiter’s journey was an external quest in Sagittarius, here Jupiter dives into the oceanic realms of dreams and mystery. Pisces is the dreamer, the romantic, the cosmologist. As Virgo, its opposite, was the detail master, Pisces is the master of the overview.

The emblem for Pisces is two connected fish swimming in opposite directions. Ideally, both fish flow rhythmically to the center, touch base with each other, and flow back out on their missions again, weaving together and apart like a strand of DNA. If the fish become unconnected, the result is an unconscious Piscean manifestation of unbalanced extremes.

Pisceans easily live in past or future, but it is very difficult for them to focus on the present. Possibilities are often so much more intriguing than the present reality; this is their gift and their bane. Their challenge is to find the form with which to express themselves.

Pisces lives in the unconscious of the collective. It is in touch with what the culture has forgotten or repressed: dreams that dart, fishlike, beneath the surface. The Piscean task is to retrieve what the culture has denied, to bring it back to surface awareness.

Full-on mystery, Pisces, the last sign of the Zodiac, as though consciousness has traveled full circle and has a rich empathic possession of the whole Big Mystery, the guiding order, that we are all in one large dream of kin-ship.

Everything dissolves back into Pisces, the last sign of the Zodiac, to be reimagined before the cycle starts once more with Aries.

In this final council, we’ll:

• Honor Pisces with a daily dose of vastness… Wonder as a sacrament. (“Certainty is a booby prize”)
• Discover how imagination lays the tracks for the reality train to follow. We lay the tracks, for ourselves and the world

And ‘tis our graduation, where we fully activate our inner Zodiac and diaspora out into the world as agents of Liberating Trickster.