Happy Equinox!! Sept. 22 Equal night and day!

On September 22nd at 9:45am MDT, we hang in an archetypal balance where life is just right. There is equal night and day. The temperature seems just right, not too hot, not too cold. We have overcome the challenges and insecurity of the eclipse, for the most part, and we can rest for a moment in the gratitude and beauty of life.

Birds are beginning to fly south, kids are back in school, the equinox rolls gently in with the waning last quarter of the lunar cycle. We are unwinding into a deep sweet time for reflection and meditation on how well our projects and creations are doing. With this Fall Equinox, there is a tight mercury/mars conjunction in Libra. With mercury going retrograde in two days, on Wednesday, Sept. 24.
Mercury and Mars can create hot tempers. The libran scales of justice are allies during a fiercely battling political campaign. Use your scales to feel for integrity, use your sword to cut through illusion.

There is a lot of charge right now on communications, especially in relationship. With the sun/moon waning square, in a T-square with Pluto, we are all meeting with some unsettling feelings inside. We are doing some intensive learning with each other. This is a beautiful time to stretch ourselves in our ability to deeply listen to one other and hear beyond the words and differences. There is a beautiful collective yearning in women to both discover and inspire the conscious masculine in the men before us. We must call forth the desire in men, to be their deepest self, with our love of their wisdom and integrity. As this mars meets mercury at 22 Libra on the 22nd of September, the day of equal balance, it prepares to enter the depths of Scorpio. We can be there for the men in our lives for the next month as they enter a deep process of healing. During this next month-long opportunity we can do some deep healing of the masculine presence on the earth and in our personal lives.
Equinoxes are such potent doorways for ceremony and prayer. We can celebrate ourselves as vessels of love, as we work the alchemy of preparing ourselves and our family and community for winter. Even though a waning Pluto Sun square is causing deep insecurities or fears around local and international economies, this energy of equal light and dark is enough to balance away all of our fears with our knowing that we can respond to life, one day at a time. During this equinox season, we can find ourselves having some of the most beautiful moments imaginable.

Remember to take the time to appreciate the stillness and calm of the next week. If you do not have any time for stillness, try to take an extra ten minutes here or there to breathe deeply and honor your body's desire for this deep breathing and deep resting as the moon wanes down to a low energy place by the end of the week.

Azlan is available for personal astrological consultations. Please e-mail awakeningastrology@gmail.com

Photo credits: top:"stonebird," flickr; middle: "billogs," flickr; bottom: "cello8," flickr

Mercury Retrograde Sept.24-Oct.15, 2008

Three times a year, for three weeks, the planet mercury appears, from planet earth, to go backwards in our sky. The truth is, mercury is still whizing around the sun, moving forward, but to us mercury is moving backward. These kinds of mis-understandings are more common during the three weeks that mercury is retrograde. Just like this image, each of us lives in our own "telephone head" where we hear what we think we hear and see what we think we see, but in reality, this is our own personal experience. What is communicated between two "telephone heads" can easily be misunderstood. During this three weeks, remember that each of us is in our own head, when we communicate with others. During this time, there are some important guidelines for a more graceful, and even fun time:

1. Always double check dates and times
2. Always have a back-up plan
3. Communicate with extra care
4. Have patience
5. Be flexable
6. Know that mercurial glitches will happen
7. Be able to let go of a fax machine that is not working
8. Stop, breathe, let it go
9. Review whatever needs reviewing
10. Dig into our past to find treasures
11. Notice the syncronicity of our past emerging
12. If you need to, speak to planet mercury about it.

For activists, parents and mates, people's minds are most open to change during a mercury retrograde period than at any other time. Retrograde periods are times of review and rectification with our past. This one is in Libra, the sign of the balancing fall equinox, the place where male and female, self and other, seek to find balance. This three weeks, we will review relationships. This is a perfect time to clean out the closet, releasing the old, to make way for the new. This is a great time to re-pattern, by replacing old patterns with new ways that support our conscious evolution.

During the three weeks between September 24 and October 15, it is best not to sign contracts or begin new projects. If you do either of these things, it is likely you will repeat steps and need to redo things. This is a great time to pull out old projects that needed redoing or that piece of writing that just needs one more edit; a perfect time for re- words, renovation, reconsideration, recognition, remember, re-do, re-calculate, re-negotiate, re-file, re-store, re-write, re-imagine, re-work, respect.

Between September 24 and October 15, your mind will be worked on, by the evolutionary forces of life. If you find you are having a difficult time with communications devices, even your own mind, take it to nature, breathe, and return to devices and communications issues, refreshed. Renewed perspective makes all the difference.

Photo Credits: top: "Loop_oh" on flickr
middle: "malias" on flickr
Bottom: Scenic Telephone Box - "fakelvis" on flickr