Life is fleeting and once that realization fully dawns one’s quest for meaning becomes very intense. Anything can trigger that bone deep realization: being close to death, falling in love, having a child or even wanting to realize a dream.

But it’s not just life-changing events that lead us to ask searching questions and explore our hearts; a life turned dull will do it. When I am with 20 somethings who have so many desires and limited means, I always tell them, “The money will come.” It does, too. Look at people in their 30s. Hard work, expertise and persistence pays off and they have the affluent and well organized lives they wanted. But with this comes curtailed freedom, ever growing responsibilities, stress and a dearth of time. The song that sings in younger hearts gets muted and as we age, we are perpetually running on the proverbial hamster wheel: making more materialistically and yet feeling a growing sense of dissatisfaction.

Assuredly it doesn’t happen to everyone because there are those people who seem to have a perpetual glow, an unlimited fund of energy and enthusiasm for their work and their lives whether they are 30, 40, 50 or 60. And there are others whose lives are criss-crossed by boredom and stress followed by binges or anything that perpetuates a peak experience. But the peak experiences are rare and most of life just seems mundane, dull, without luster. A meaningless exercise in fact.

So what’s going on? Losing touch with the soul purpose. When you’re in touch with your soul purpose and keep it in the forefront of your consciousness, your life becomes magical, meaningful, delightful. And you can experience it anywhere, anytime, no matter what you do or who you are.

Although there are sets of activities (or occupations) that are associated with different signs, what is even more important is our stance towards life. The signs that are predominant in your chart hold the key. You can read the below for your sun, moon and ascendant. And if you’re familiar with astrology or your chart and know the key astrological themes that operate for you, read for those.

These are small reminders or mantras that’ll reconnect you with your soul purpose. They’ll align you with the reason for your incarnated and once that alignment happens, life becomes enchanting.

Aries: I am the new, the birth. I am spring. I am vigor and courage. And everywhere I go I bring courage. I am the pioneer. I am here to overcome obstacles and this is my gift to every situation and to the people I meet.

Taurus: I am stability and safety and comfort. I am endurance and persistence. I am of the earth and I am here to participate in its bounty. I remind others by my presence of these things and I stabilize everything I touch, everyone I meet. This is my gift to the world at every moment of my life.

Gemini: I am curiosity and mental engagement. I am a love for language and words. I am the eye that notices every shine and sheen and follows it. I am the spirit seeking to learn and explore the world around it. In every moment, with every one I meet, I give the gift of my verbal dexterity and the unending charm of a mind that never loses its yearning for more and that stays forever young.

Cancer: I am the realm of feelings and moods and tears and laughter. I am the seeker and creator of warm cocoons of domesticity, of home. In every moment and in every interaction, I bring my sensitivity and infuse the world with the magical element of emotion. This is my gift and the world is enriched because of it.

Leo: I am joy and spontaneity and the sense of play tinged with drama and splashes of glamour. Wherever I go my vividness makes colors brighter for others and people feel more alive. I am the theater of life; courage and inspiration flow from my heart and this is the gift I give to the world around me and to myself.

Virgo: I sift and sort continuously. I isolate the relevant, the necessary, and then refine them. My eye, like my mind is clear. I devote myself to improving everything my hands touch, so that life becomes better, functions well, smoothly. No detail is left unattended to. I master my craft and I offer it as a service to the world.

Libra: I am tact and diplomacy, the twin pillars of peace and civilization. I need beauty and everything I do or am wears a mantle of loveliness. Colors, tones, hues, symmetry, harmony these are my areas of focus and I make the lives of everyone better when I pursue these. I give beauty and peace and harmony as gifts to everyone who’s around me.

Scorpio: I am intensity and a penetrating gaze that always seeks the truth below the surface of things. I am the unflinching gaze that can look at death, decay, deception and corruption and then shine a healing light on them by bringing them out of the darkness and into consciousness where they can be purged. Healer, detective, truth teller, there are the gifts of my soul to the world around me.

Sagittarius: I am the explorer, the wanderer. I am an unbound quest for distant horizons. I am the spirit of hope every gamble. The world is my home, I belong to no country but the country of truth. I am the clear and honest gaze that questions everything so that belief systems are in a constant state of renewal. This is my gift of the spirit for my world and its people.

Capricorn: I am the elder and I wear the mantle of my responsibility with a serious gravity. I am hard work and ambition and the builder of structure and empires. My contributions are solid and lasting and practical. I carry the weight of the world on my shoulders with an innate gravity and willingness; and I bring this to the world as my gift.

Aquarius: I can be quirky and eccentric because I am here to blast through what is no longer working. I seek to clear what has become ossified and replace it with something that will serve the future better. I am the change of Time. And this is my gift to my brothers and sisters of the planet.

Pisces: I am endless compassion. I am forgiving understanding of every shade of feeling in the human heart. Other realms reveal themselves to me and I am the mystic of mankind. I bring the light of divinity to everything I do: this is my service, this is my offering to our realm.

Fergie’s BLM aspects her Sun, Moon and Uranus. She’s one of our Lilith Goddesses…

I came here to get crazy

I was born to get wild, that’s my style

If you didn’t know that, well, baby, now you know now

-Fergie, Black Eyed Peas, The Dirty Bit

I was born free and I belong to no man. No man can own me or tame me but if you desire me, then engage me and if you have courage, follow me. I’m fun and danger and sporty mystique. I’m raunchy music and booze and smoke and late night sex.

I wield in my power openly and am spurned by humanity, I am sustained by my bond to the earth, my mother and to the sky, my father. I am the lone woman on the cliff with the wind blowing through her hair who exults in being alive. And when I come down from the top, will you have the courage to join me? Will you come with me into the night and take off everything and see how crazy we can get, how far we can push it?

I am both submission and dominance. I give and take and I do it both with an honest nakedness. Will you bare your soul and join me? Before you join your body with mine, will you be able to join your gaze with mine and hold it? If you’re weak, if you’re scared, then leave now.

I’m the woman who throws her head back and laughs; hair streaming down her back, breasts bare and I dare you to laugh with me, I dare you to not be afraid. I dare you to make love to me, sweat pouring off our bodies, breaths labored. I dare you to be my equal.

Outcast forever, I haunt places where bad boys go to meet bad girls. Places good boys dream about. And lovemaking good girls want. I am in each one of you, man and woman. I am your raw sexuality and power and your connection to the raw passion of earth itself. Deny me at the cost of your joy and sanity.

I’m an upsurging from the dark center of the Mother Goddess and I am here today to be heard, honored and acknowledged. If you ignore me, if you dishonor me, if you spurn me, then you will spiral out of control. Then every flirty tilt of the head will slay you, ever painted mouth will beckon you, bold feminine gazes will leave you weak-kneed.

Honor me, children of earth. Honor your wild passionate need to mate without any agenda except the raw intimacy of a physical bonding. Create a world where women can be raw and lovely and wild and safe. Meet them as equals and shed your layers to reveal your vulnerability. Meet the feminine wildness with masculine vulnerability and abandon, and create magic…

Astrological note: I’m talking about Black Moon Lilith. She is currently transiting in Gemini and it’s a good time to talk and write about her. For more of this Goddess, check out Mike’s work here: http://www.neptunecafe.com/lilith.html

And even deeper into the shadowy realm

And I can work with him

And weave word spells

Or douse you in soft illusions

Or conjure a pun and amuse you.

I can work with him

And do all of that

But I cannot write anything

That will delete the pain from our hearts.

There is no quick fix

No magical chant

No spell, no verse ever written

No prose to soak up our pain.

Whether Uranus has torn your heart asunder

Or Pluto put to waste your dreams

Like Chiron we must bear the pain

Of tears that seem like they’ll never cease.

Venus herself is rendered hollow-eyed

And no largesse of Jupiter will suffice

Even mighty Mars stands defeated

In the shattered ruins of human lives.

It is only Saturn’s steady grind

The powerful passage of time

Or some unknown grace

That magically descends as you sleep

Or awake from Neptune’s soft embrace

That will one day wipe the pain

From our tired human eyes.

Thinking we’d get intimacy

As easily as painting our lips

And setting forth for the bright lights?

Who did we meet but others

Wearing too much cologne

And hiding a lack of heart

Beneath suave charm?

Did we slake our hearts

With our random encounters?

With people who could write

A book on technique

But leave their hearts at home

Before stepping out for the night?

A friend told me about

“Empty sex”

It costs you nothing

But your soul.

Because here’s the thing:

Sex is not sacred,

But you are.

Saturn is going to make us work

To find someone

Who slays us

With the sound of their voice

With the wave in their hair

With the light in their eyes

Saturn is going to make us wait

Till hearts meld

Before the bodies can join the act.

Progress

And kiss your Venus

And quietly shed

Soul tears

Because it’s not me.

And I still feel the pain

Writ large in our composite

Of wanting you like that

At the deep basic level of Taurus in the fifth

With Chiron tears on the South Node.

And I see myself flunking

The North Node test

With Uranus conjunct it in the eleventh.

I stand here, with Neptune and Chiron

Fogging my Venus with rainbows of pain

With Pluto trining her

And flogging her with desire.

So I stand here, humbled

And think I’ll retreat into my twelfth

Write some bad prose-tree

And engage my third eye with mirror gazing

While the night wraps you in its arms

Of music and swinging desire

And you make the most of your transits

In the fifth. 

I watch you as you go

As you run, glide, slide

And fly away

To find purple mountains of glory.

I stand here still, quiet, alone

Aching a little

Smiling a little

I stay and I watch you leave.

I hope you find them

The horizons you seek

I’ll stay here a while longer

Trying to find my center again.

I’ll stay here rooted

Quiet, pensive, deep

Stay here

And be sad.

I’ll find joy again in my ordinary sunrises

And my assured evening sun downs

I’ll stay here

And I’ll miss you.

I’ll still be here when you return

I’ll be waiting for you to come back

And wrap me around with some of that purple glory

That I hope you found…

Projecting on movie stars. (Gulshan Devaiya, in “Hate Story”)

This what I’ve been thinking and perhaps others have written about it before or perhaps what I’m writing here is not quite correct. I certainly haven’t thought about it for very long or done much research on it. It’s about Neptunians, really. People with Pisces strong or Neptune much aspected. Especially with personal planets. And Neptune with Venus if you’re narrowing in on romantic love.

I was listening to a Howard Sasportas lecture on Venus (UAC 1992) and he was talking about the trials that people with Venus squaring Neptune go through. Can’t be very easy if you have Venus opposing or conjunct the planet of illusions and illumination either.

And this is what I think: Neptunians fall in love with archetypes. I’m not using the word “archetype” in any strict sense with reference to Jung unless I am doing so inadvertently. What I mean by it is concepts we hold like: hero, victim, genius, mover-and-shaker. Feel free to add more.

It makes sense that Neptune is associated with celluloid. Because in movies we see these archetypes clearly defined, they come alive for us. Is it any wonder we fall in love with movie stars? They’re such a perfect hook for our projections.

I suspect Neptunians project more than other people and on more people. Because Neptunians see archetypes. It’s not always easy for them to see people as flesh-and-blood mostly un-glamorous beings, no matter how rich or talented or how victimized and misunderstood.  Neptune has no boundaries and what happens when you put the planet of romance with this planet that knows no bounds? It isn’t easy to love the way Neptune wants us to, to love all there is, all there are, unconditionally. It messes with one’s mind or do I mean heart? So you see Neptunians caught up in impossible situations with impossible people and happy-and-miserable at the same time; stumbling around in a weepy daze in this very limited and limiting space-time continuum reading and writing poems, watching or creating movies, reading stories and living out their own.

The hook, watch out for the hook!

Some drink, some don’t, but they’re all on a wavelength that is not quite of this world. It’s not like James Bond who thinks the world is not enough. In their cases this world is not enough. They see the world through a Neptunian haze and what they see is not what the rest of the world sees. Borrowing and modifying what Glendower says, “I can summon archetypes from the vasty deep.” Although what happens is that they coat people they see with archetypes and then fall in love with their own vision. As they look upon the world, archetypes rise and fall before their eyes. But you cannot marry an archetype. People embody them now and again for us and the greater our distance from them, the more they become archetypical for us. And hence more alluring… Ah, Neptune traps, Neptune hooks that pierce the hearts of these dreamers. They feel the pain and know it as love.

And perhaps it is Neptune that comes to us in dreams and lovingly shows and says, “This is a world of illusions.” And perhaps that is what we need to learn when the archetypes rise before our eyes and our heart follows: that this is a world of illusions. Learn so that when the hook of compassion pierces our hearts, we feel pain but not too much; we feel sadness but only enough to draw our compassion for this sorry old planets and its trapped beings.

For more on what Neptune rules, float on to this site http://www.librarising.com/astrology/misc/neptunepower.html

Addendum: There is another side to being a Neptunian. As my friend Leisa Schaim said: “Neptunians also frequently can be the recipients of projections – positive, negative and neutral ones.”

Here’s what Catherine Ormsby shared about Neptune that I found really helpful: “Detached compassion is the way for Neptunians. Breaking away from being ‘in love’ with illusionary archetypes is a difficult feat.”

P.S. I have a Mercury-Neptune square natally and transiting Neptune has been and will be opposing my Mercury for a while. But I bet you figured some of that out…

On a (questionably) lighter note, I just saw the trailer for the new Bond movie: Skyfall. It was first released in the UK on 23 Oct 2012, the day the Sun swam into the deep still waters of Scorpio. I haven’t watched the movie yet, but the trailer dialogues are very Scorpionic:

M: Where the hell have you been?

Bond: Enjoying death.

Many astrologers have said that Saturn in Scorpio will exhume secrets.

“THINK ON YOUR SINS,” flashes ominously on M’s laptop screen as I’m sure it’ll flash on our psychological ones as well.

Line from the movie:

Man to M: Three months ago, you lost the drive containing the identity of every agent embedded in terrorist organizations across the globe. 

Then there is a scene where M is standing alone in a room full of coffins.

Line from the movie: They weren’t targeting her. They wanted her to see it.

Scorpio transits can bring to life our biggest fears as realities. Death, sex, transformations because of intense experiences. It’s heavy stuff. Another scene from the movie:

Pretty woman: How much do you know about fear?

Bond: All there is.

Pretty Woman: Not like this.

But we always need to remember that this sign ruled by Pluto is one of transformation. Rebirth. Yes, there is death. But what is death but a change in form, a change is energy? Scorpio is associated with the Phoenix, the bird that rises again from its ashes. I really like this dialogue from the movie. It echoes the psychological death and rebirth that this sign is associated with:

Bond: Everybody needs a hobby.

Bad Guy: So what’s yours?

Bond: Resurrection.

Well said, 007, Scorpio approves.

If you have planets in the first 10 degrees of the Pisces, Gemini, Virgo or Sagittarius or have your Sun early on in these signs, I dare say you have felt these transits. I was thinking earlier that Neptune makes promises it does not keep and thus causes a sense of disillusionment and loss. And what do you get when Chiron, the Wounded Healer, works on your chart? Great pain that needs healing.

I see the movement of Neptune and Chiron in the early degrees of Pisces as a great testing time for the mutable signs. A time of loss, pain, disillusionment, sacrifice and devotion; a time when many tears are shed. Your life could be going along nicely, or maybe not so nicely, and then these two come along and then you know what real grief and loss are. And that life is indeed so much bigger than you. A force you cannot control and what the Buddha says comes to mind, “Life is suffering.”

These are trying times, also because the square between Uranus and Pluto is active right now and many lives are in upheaval. We’ve are being stripped away of the illusion that we can control things. What I have found helpful right now is faith. Trust. Trust in God that no matter what is happening is happening for the best and that no matter what the outcome, we will be able to deal with it. Trust in the fact that no matter where the waves of Neptune and Chiron grief and loss wash us, we’ll survive. That there is a greater force shaping our destiny and all we need to do is surrender to that force and its will and we will be all right.

Neptune dissolves, takes away, asks for surrender and unconditional devotion. Chiron splits your heart open and there is great pain. But in that pain you can find compassion. Eyes that weep, once the weeping is done, are deeper eyes, kinder eyes. Grief and loss can make you bitter, can make your shut your heart and make you turn your face away from life. Or they can make this realm of living a more magical place where we are grateful for much even though we have lost much.

I’ll end with a Buddhist prayer a friend sent me:

May all sentient beings have happiness and its causes

May all sentient beings be free of suffering and its causes

May all sentient beings not be separated from sorrowless bliss

May all sentient beings abide in equanimity, free of bias, attachment and anger.

I thought I grieved
And it’s true I cried
But I never met grief such as this
That broke open my heart
Split me apart

Each shattered piece throbs with pain
Prayers are to no avail
I used to think like you: Life is so chaotic
Yes, my darling, but now that’s okay
Because death is so perfect and final.