(Excerpted from tonight’s New Moon Gathering Ritual):

There’s a lot going on right now.

We have some play between Saturn and Jupiter that causes us to look to the lessons of the past.

We have a Mercury Retrograde in Aries, which can be trying. Aries asks us to dash forward and try new things with the exuberance of a child, but Mercury Retrograde is the Universe’s way of saying “Stop. Breathe. How did you get here? What loose ends need to be tied up?” And only once all of that is complete are we allowed to plan for the future, still without acting.

Mars and Uranus are dancing as well, creating a strong push to no longer put up with things that aren’t working.

Plus we have the reason for this gathering, the New Moon in Aries. It’s energetic, which doesn’t really mesh with the Mercury Retrograde, and we may find fresh ideas being sparked from brainstorming about the past.

This is a time of rapid growth into new territory, that begs for carefully thinking things through, especially when that is the last thing we want to do. Allow for spontaneity while consciously approaching our actions.

We are due for another big shift this month, according to spirit. Globally, look for more incidents that shake up the paradigm. On a personal level, we may find rapid changes going on around us that effect us personally. Remember that Mercury retrograde comes with a strong energy for manifestation, and focus your thoughts on the positives, the solutions, and the silver linings rather than getting caught up in what’s not working, so you may find yourself attracting more glitches.

We actually have six planets aligned in Aries today…

Let me tell you a story about Aries, borrowed from Dana Gerhardt:

Aries never looks before he leaps. His mother never cautioned, “If you run with a stick you’ll poke an eye out!” At six, he challenged bullies twice his size. At sixteen he built his castle; he made the ceilings tall as sequoia trees. He strung an acrobat’s tightrope from room to room—sixty feet up, no net below. Now that he’s much older, he flies a hang-glider from the bedroom to the library, where there are books everywhere. Biographies and autobiographies—all about him: how he crossed the Alps with Hannibal, wrestled grizzlies, escaped from pirates; he’s even been to the Moon.

Aries is popular with the ladies—the celestial ladies. They guide his feet up snow-drenched mountains, fling trees to block his enemies; they send magic rope, golden eagles and unbeatable swords his way, just in the nick of time. Ask them why they take such good care of him and you don’t get the usual answers. He’s handsome, of course, dripping with youthful enthusiasm. He’s got strength to die for. Sexy too. But it’s his heart they swear they love. So pure. Whatever he does, he believes in.

“I wasn’t always this way,” he confesses. “I was reckless, an egomaniac. Until I burnt my house down while playing with fire. I spent the whole night studying the flames. By morning, I had learned its language. Fire leaps up with love, you know; it has more secrets than a forest of trees. If you can draw it into your heart and contain it, you’ll achieve impossible things.”

Aries urges us to maintain the optimism of a small child, to do what makes us happy, as long as we do our best to not make others unhappy in the process.  Gretchen Rubin, in The Happiness Project, writes “One of the best ways to make yourself happy is to make other people happy; one of the best ways to make other people happy is to be happy yourself.”