Aries is utterly simple, the Fool of the Zodiac; the first sign in the cycle, blunt, direct, straight from the chest. Aries says, I want what I want and I want it NOW Goddammit!!

Aries doesn't care about complicated things like love, beauty, art or the mechanics of day-to-day survival. Aries is consumed by a monumental, consuming passion, the passion to exist. That's all. Not 'to exist freely', or 'well' or 'comfortably'. Simply to exist.

Aries wants what it wants, and it gets to have it. Think about it! All Aries wants is to exist. That is in the best interests of everybody. Aries is not naturally warlike, merely insistent, indomitable, unconquerable. Aries is no one's slave, and it's impossible to kill. Knock it down, it jumps back up again.

Taurus, well Taurus is a little bit more complex. Not much, but some. Taurus wants to touch, to have, to hold. Taurus wants to feel solid, to feel real--to BE real. Taurus is useful hands, strong body, sensuous experiences, physical comfort. Taurus is stolid, simple.

Taurus doesn't really know love, either; just comfort, sensation, security. Taurus doesn't worry or try hard, Taurus doesn't need. Taurus just has it. Aries wants to exist; Taurus doesn't want that, because existence is what Taurus is, period, no complications.

Meanwhile Gemini is looking around and checking it all out. Gemini has no agenda, just curiosity. Gemini seeks but has no object. Gemini is friendly enough, but Gemini doesn't know love; it's too busy looking and noticing, perceiving and cataloguing.

Gemini is pretty uncomplicated, too. Visual input, a data control center and constant attention to new things, new input, new experiences, new people to wonder about. After existence comes interest. What's it all about, this existence thing? Gemini wants to know.

Then we turn a corner, cross an angle and things get more complex. Cancer comes in with more information in the form of memory, deep and old, feelings that seem to be about something, bringing with them riptides, ebbing flows of emotion, bubbles of association, impressions, deep, ancient, implacable, and frighteningly personal.

Cancer says, these feelings are about ME, this pain is ME, I am hurting. I was hurting, I am hurting. Cancer remembers, and forgets nothing, and takes everything personally. For Cancer, everything is personal.

Cancer is a deep place but warm and somehow nourishing. Somehow we grow. Still we do not know love, but somehow we feel loved, held, safe.

We feel, we feel, we feel, then

we

feel

Good

And here comes Leo, feeling good, shining with creative light, radiant, as fearless as Cancer was fearful, as bright as Cancer was dark.

Leo, sunchild, does not know love yet, but knows attention and wants it, knows light and shines it, knows fun and has it. Somehow, from somewhere, Leo creates, makes beauty from a source beyond itself.

Creative magic, more complex now, prismatic, multilayered, bright. Having integrated the depths and memories held in Cancer, Leo has unparalleled resources. "Look at me! Notice me!" Leo is celebration with an edge of hectic intensity. "I did it! Hooray for me!"

Complexification reaches a peak in Virgo. Suddenly everything has a meaning, everything we touch is organized, everything we know has a function, and we know them all. Virgo is competence, efficiency, complexity to the nth degree.

The tiny dancing particles in Virgo are conscious, choose their part in the endless cosmic dance, until the parts fuse and become one, a seamless whole, integrated, perfect.

In Virgo, perfection is an impossible goal, but the dream drives her, a harsh taskmaster, until, magically, Virgo succeeds. In a single moment, everything makes sense, everything works together.

  Then we are born again in Libra, and life is simple again, only now we know love as something we desire more than existence, and we long for it, we aspire, we desire. We call for love with all our hearts, and if love responds, we will choose to live, but if love does not respond, then conflict arises.

This is the first conflict, for Libra is the sign of relationship and Aries is its partner, but Aries wants to exist no matter what, and does not know, nor desire, nor value love.

Aries values only self, and so Libra has a dilemma, doomed to love selflessly the selfish, doomed endlessly to give to the taker, unless magic happens and Aries gives back. Then fusion takes place, the sperm surrenders to the egg, new life is fertilized, and the next cycle begins.

Here death may begin; this is a choice point, "life, or ?"

The first time through, death is what happens, for Aries is a slow learner, and here we are, dead in Scorpio, feeling the depth of suffering, the poison fangs of fate calling us into Hell which we thought we'd escaped.

In Scorpio we burn for eternity, we flame in the blazing glory of all our previously denied power, awaiting the day in which we become all of ourselves, when all this power and pain we are victim to shall become us and heal our flesh beyond death.

But we are not yet ready to claim our power, so we feel victimized by it. Poor us! How we suffer! The pain, the agony of Scorpio, the hidden pleasure like the scorpion's sting.

We appeal to God to save us, we appeal to Sagittarius the expansive, the mind of Spirit, where we go when things get too intense and we need a break, a breather, a return to Source.

And here we relax in the warmth and joviality, see our place in the whole, and take God's word that all will be well. Sagittarius is where we divine our true place in all things, we connect the dots and forge meaning from former madness.

And in Sagittarius, we make vows and promises to God. We ask, what must we do to earn our escape from the pain we'd found in Scorpio?

We think we hear an answer from God, and so off we go to Capricorn, sign of duty and debt, and we sell ourselves into slavery in return for life limited by bounds of birth and death, and we think it is God's desire but it is only guilt we serve.

We serve the social organism and worship it as God, we carve out graven images of rule and law and call them Deity. And in Capricorn, we work hard and fulfill our assigned roles.

We do not question, for the time of questioning is past, and now is the time to pay the piper, for such was the plan we made in Sagittarius. We work for the reward we have been promised, until we are old and tired and the wealth we thought we were gaining in Capricorn is nothing but gravel in our beds.

Until we cannot take it anymore and we rebel against God who told us to enslave ourselves, and we call God dead, and the universe a democracy. We create our own Godhead in Aquarius, in which we are all equal and no one is better than any other.

In Aquarius, we laugh at the idea of God, and exalt lofty ideals of philanthropy and denial, and cast down the idols. We travel in packs, and fear the dark, and invent brighter lights and better mousetraps.

We idealize the flickering pictures in our minds, we pursue our visions, we tinker and innovate and interfere with nature until we accidentally touch something that kills us.

And here we are dead in Pisces, dreamworld, afterlife, stray fey faerieland, where nothing is real and everything is permitted, and we drown in confusion and memory, and we thrash and cry and re-experience everything, but know nothing.

In Pisces, we are all one, we share the struggles and feel all the pain that has ever been, all the joy. We hear all the stories at once, overlapping and blending into each other and miss the point of them all, but it doesn't matter because it's only a dream.

But we are missing something in Pisces--we long--we cry in the pearly void for something we almost remember, something new.

  Then after an eternity of lonely Oneness, we find ourselves born again, this time without effort, sliding into life as though down a greased pole, for the Aries spring has precessed into Pisces, and we are in a Sidereal universe now.

Here, we remember everything but don't care about any of it. We are delighted to exist, but the strugg1e is within, with the imprinting, the pain from before. We are more inward than the Aries of yore; we feel things more deeply.

Yet we have a fire too, the fire of spring which is unquenchable, and which gives us such faith. In this second, and third, and fifty-thousandth round of Aries we know love, but only as something to fear, for it once led us into death and suffering.

And so the journey continues around the circle, and we keep making mistakes and learning a little, and each time we know more, and remember more. In Aries, we know that someday we will get it right and it all will come together in a blaze of light.