Mercury Retrogrades In and Out of, All year Long

The pace of life being what it has been for the past while now, I only just yesterday came across some staggering information regarding the triple retrograde phase of planet Mercury this year.  Mercury will be going in and out of retrograde for the majority of the year and this will be extremely consequential.  Other planets are retrograding as well including Venus in Gemini later, in the late spring and then there's the long standing Mars in Virgo transit underway.  Oy vey.  God help us all!  More on this later, just a head's up.  A lot is happening at the cosmic, extra terrestrial level and we will need to be level headed going forward, forget we not that this is the big one:  2012.  More on this soon.

Farewell, Whitney Houston and Thank You

Listening to a Whitney Houston recording just now, I'm prompted to post this blog. 

With our transcendental, huge, ice/gas ball planet, Neptune on the very cusp of it's own sign after traveling throughout eleven stellar constellations of the zodiac - Neptune has finally arrived at the threshold, the earliest degree of it's planetary place of greatest power.  The constellation of Pisces, sign of the underdog and the sign of sorrows.  It is significantly in relation to Whitney Houston (and to us all really) that "the house of Pisces" is the sign of our own undoing. 

Pisces, the astrological sign often related to the water element, to vibrations of all sorts, music, fine arts, dancing and yes, drug addiction and other visionary states of  mind, the mystic and so on. 

 It is no mere coincidence that the world lost Whitney Houston during this time period.  The singer has been known to have had problems with recreational drug abuse and other issues that apparently reached a culmination and may very well have contributed to her loss of life. 

With Neptune arriving in the earliest degree, again, we can see a global sorrow for the loss of this huge, international talent.  When I heard that the state she was born, New Jersey, will lower the flag to half staff, I had to reserve my judgement as best as I could.  I am not sure that sets the right example for her many young followers to connect with but, it is for her contribution and not her weakness the flag will be lowered. 

The circumstances in which Whitney Houston lost her life are known to a certain degree and significantly again, water was involved.  The results of toxicology reports will be available for the Houston family and for the world in the coming weeks. 
In the next few days, the sun sign of Aquarius will have set and the next sign, Pisces will have ascended.  The results of the exact cause of the pop star's death will be revealed during the sun in Pisces time period. 

There must be a takeaway that comes from this sad and tragic end to a still young star's life, I believe it will be that once again, drugs have taken someone, in this case, a talent of great magnitude away from us. 

The takeaway must in some context be made clear that for the youth who so often experiment with drugs and altered states of consciousness - our youth must see it as an example of a needless sacrifice not worth the early, unnecessary loss of life.  But "see" this loss as a closing of the door on the possibility of drug use by themselves. 

I hope this sad and terrible event is not just an occasion to sing Whitney Houston songs and bring flowers or listen to her music.  I hope the loss of her life is in some way authentically meaningful and that our youth learn something they can strengthen themselves with now and take that with them going forward with their lives. 

The benefit or good that can come out of this universal loss, if it can be seen as a benefit, should be that, we need to strengthen and not weaken ourselves going forward.  Realize the obvious, drugs kill.  Drugs are not sexy or glamorous but destructive and deadly.  Recreational drugs ruin lives and families suffer. 

No matter what our age, we need to take a clear and honest look at our lives.  Ask ourselves whether we care if we live or die.  Is it a 50-50 balance of will to live or death wish? 

The fact that our world is changing so rapidly with many opportunities but with so much denied our youth and really people in all age categories and walks of life, lower class, drug class, middle class and luxury class, we simply have no other choice.  We must strengthen not only ourselves but each other, our friends and neighbors.

We need to find a way to help our young people rid themselves of the destructive lifestyles of drug use and the sale of drugs.  I think this is the perfect time to see the need to do so although; it is a sad time for so many people, this loss of a star who gave us so much.  It can be a final gift from the star if we see it as such, a lesson to learn from her loss with which we can and should strengthen ourselves and each other. 

Recreational drug use is a killer.  It ruins lives and generates sickness, disease and a pathology of infection of others who are too young, too weak or too brainwashed, who want to buy, use and get into drugs and the drug culture.  

It will be extremely interesting to see how the Hip Hop and Rap music community responds in the press as well in their musical recordings with this loss.  Was Whitney Houston too far removed in terms of age, from our youths today to make an impact on Hip Hop and Rap stars and their audiences?   

My personal prayer on this day of Whitney Houston's final services and burial is that. at the cusp of a major planetary movement, signaled by Neptune in the earliest degree of Pisces, we see this sign for what it is, powerful, seductive and at times deadly. 

We come from the water of our mother's very body.  Water is our life source but we cannot return to it in destructive ways, drugs and alcohol abuse - we must strengthen ourselves against these options.  Jimi Hendrix who also lost his life because of drug abuse sang of it when he sang that "...man cannot live or breath in water." 

We honor our lives going forward in the evolutionary sense when we can recognize this simple fact.  We cannot live or breath in water and it is water that we need to respect now more than ever going forward in our lives and in the life of our beautiful planet, Earth.  A planetary shift has taken place and simply stated, the power is with the water. 

• Respect yourself and your life here on earth.  
• Respect marine life and the waters of our beautiful, blue planet of water.

Farewell, Whitney, God bless you and thank you for giving us so much beauty, so much beautiful music. 

 No one should judge you unkindly, each one of us has our own individual destiny and our own individual end. 

Your loving family, friends and fans the world over cry for you today but, you have left us so much of yourself. 

God bless you and keep you always.

Portrait from the 2012, A Woman is not a Flower, Series of Photographs, Joyce Dade

Venus Transits Aries from the 2012 Superimposition Series of Photographs

When they tell you (and the time may very well arrive when they will tell you), "A woman is not a flower," you have every right to question exactly what it is that they mean by that statement.  Is it that a woman is not as fragrant as a flower or that a woman is stronger than a flower?  Or perhaps they mean to say, a woman is something more than a flower.  Or that a woman simply symbolizes a flower and beyond that, a garden of flowers.