Can you feel the shift? There are so many endings and beginnings right now. Uranus has just entered Aries, and Jupiter is just about to.

I’m definitely feeling it in my own life. I spent the last week haunting the halls of two different hospitals. First my nephew (at the local university) had a crisis which sent us on a pre-dawn taxi ride to the emergency room. As a diabetic, he has an extra level of stress that the average student doesn’t have, and with the press of exams, he got out of balance.

Then my spouse had knee surgery. Far from being unexpected, we had been waiting and waiting for this surgery date. Although the hospital administration was a hotbed of chaos, the surgery itself went beautifully. And so soon she will be able to ditch the crutches she’s been leaning on for the past six months.

In both cases, an ending and a beginning. For both my nephew and my spouse, a shift in their relationships with their bodies. In both cases, the shock of change: a sharp rise in blood sugar, a knife to the knee. And in both cases, a new beginning on a different basis.

How many other people are experiencing this? Some of my friends and relatives are attending a lot of funerals, while others are getting long-coveted new jobs and promotions. Everything seems to be happening very swiftly for everyone. Old chapters close with the finality of slamming doors, and new chapters open invitingly.

Jupiter and Uranus come together in Aries about once every 84 years. When it happened in 1513, Ponce de Leon became the first European to sight the territory that would eventually become known as the United States. This was a tricky voyage, since nobody was expecting the power and the authority of the Gulf Stream. And, for the descendents of Europeans living in America, the Gulf Stream is still tricky. It is the Gulf Stream that could spread the oil from this Gulf of Mexico leak, killing fish and starving humans all over the world.

Aries is the sign of the Human Being. I have to be a feminist here, although it would sound much more dramatic to say: Aries is the sign of Man. But even after all these years, I still don’t feel completely included in that, and in many ways, I’m not. The characteristics of Aries - courage, daring, valor, competition, innovation – are all valued more by men, and attributed more to men.

What a piece of work is man! You can recite that as it was written, or in a rather more despairing tone. You can refer to all humans, with our bravura and rashness, our tendency to meddle madly with everything. Or you can refer to the male part of the species, who are just that much more prone to get into trouble.

I’m like the rest of my sisters, half included, half not. On the one hand, I’m definitely one of those pesky human beings. I’m not a dolphin, singing in the ocean, content to be happy and peaceful. What would that be like? What are the dolphins thinking about us right now? Are they wishing they had developed more technology so that they could come out of the ocean and throttle us? I can just hear them clicking to each other, “OMG, what is this crap coming in on the current? I bet the humans did this.”

But on the other hand, my ideas of how to make this world have always been a little different from the prevailing ones, and that’s partly because I’m a woman, and because women have been marginalized. As a woman, I hold certain beliefs: Giving life is not easy, caring for others is important work, mindful trust is imperative, and a gentle approach to the environment allows every new generation to thrive. My feminism is the part of me that encourages, defends and justifies my basic stance as a woman.

Okay, notice how I’ve spent the last paragraph defining myself? That’s so Aries! Yes, the influx of Aries energy has definitely affected me. It’s made me more conscious of myself as an entity, more likely to act from a sharper sense of self.

As a human, I have to take responsibility for this colossal ecological disaster. As a woman, I have to bring forward other ways to live. I have to introduce new paradigms. This is also a function of Aries energy. The world is getting ready to go in a new direction, and I might as well put my own current into the flow.

Aries rules blood, and the earth’s waterways are its bloodstream. We drink from the ocean, we breathe oxygen produced by the ocean. Whenever we are near the ocean, we feel its strong vitality, and we know it as the source of life. And so it is fitting that the first major challenge of this Aries period will be to clean the earth’s blood, to remove the poison.

How will we do this? Technology is part of the answer, and I have no doubt that the Jupiter/Uranus conjunction in Aries will express itself in a lot of new and exciting technology. We are tool-using creatures, we like to create better replicas of our arms, legs, eyes and ears.

And the other part of the answer is attitude, and that’s also one of the functions of the Jupiter/Uranus conjunction in Aries. This is the time when that central question looms larger for everyone. Who am I? What am I doing in this world? How can I live here responsibly? This is the time when a new answer can come forth, a collective experience that feels unique to each person.

Aries is heroic, and at this time, the damsel in distress is our beautiful mother, the Earth. We do not want to see her imprisoned by sludge and steel, weak and poisoned. And so the heroic rescue comes first. Oil is the dragon, and the deeper dragon is our endless thirst for power.

But it’s not just about the rescue. We have to learn to live with her afterwards - as equals, as companions, as friends. At this point, we have taken on that Messy Boy persona, and – like the Mischievous Boy, the Bad Boy, and the Cowboy, this is another face of Aries. The Earth may be our mother, but it’s also true that we have to grow up someday.

We’ve reached that moment. Destiny is pushing us to emerge from the undifferentiated sludge of the past, and to become our true selves. We are taking shape. What shape are we taking?

Index of Jenny Yates' Writings on Lesbian.com