It’s the Year of The Horse, in Chinese Astrology. Although I’m no Chinese Astrologer, and I’ve been too busy to read absolutely anything about this perspective, I can feel Snake Year giving up the ghost, and horse energy at the gate. In the mystic tradition I study, horses symbolise missions, goals with a sense of purpose about them.  Horses swiftly carry us places. We yoke our dreams, hopes and wishes to the harness of an able, strong animal. In a vision, reading or dream when a horse crosses my path it signals to me that this is a time of goal fulfilment, and this is also a very busy time. What’s been “waiting at the gate” is ready. Rest up, and finish up now because once a horse leaves the gate, they keep going. A horse can ride to the bitter end, ride to their death even, if the rider so wills it. Logically, it’s a good time to think about goals and mission, to ask whether our goals are aligned with purpose. If not, we could be in for a wild, headless horseman kind of ride.

But it’s an exciting harbinger -a horse. In life, there are limited windows of opportunity for setting plans into motion, and horses alert me to the fact that this is one of those few times plans can move ahead. Plus, horses are just cool. I’ll never forget the wild mustangs I saw in the Baja desert one year, their beautiful, wild freedom. New moons are new beginnings, too, but not every new moon has horsepower behind it (I couldn’t resist the joke) as this one does. This Aquarius New Moon welcomes the Year of the Horse, to the day.

Aquarius breaks up patterns of winter stagnation. It takes a little effort to think outside the box, and a little more to risk doing something that not only goes against the grain of our conditioning, but human habit. Human habit can be good; it gets us to work on Monday mornings. But it can also be deadly to the soul of life. When habits calcify, they hi-jack our happiness, decrease our spontaneity and make our lives rigid and routine. With its invitation to breakaway, Aquarius Moon is the antidote to stagnation and boredom.

Where has your life to become too routine, rote and rigid? And how can you prepare yourself for a horsey year? The answer may be one in the same. With Venus in Capricorn station retrograde about to turn direct, near Pluto, we’re all being drawn to clear out old unsatisfying patterns that no longer make us happy, ingrained ways of relating, to both our self and others, that feel stagnant and limiting. I’ve found myself saying: I do NOT love (this)! several times over. I’ve also been working on old conditioned Venus patterns by using EFT. It turns out that The Pleaser, a defensive strategy my inner child developed to cope with a difficult childhood, is still trying to run the show from behind the scenes, as I discovered while exploring anxiety about a talk I’m giving, and I burst out with “…I just want to make everyone happy!” Uh-oh.

Aquarius could care less about making others happy. That’s good news, and the magic of Aquarius. This moon can break up stagnant old patterns, bring us more freedom to march to the beat of our own drum or dream, and set what’s already “at the gate” into motion.  To get ready, hold tight to the wisdom you’ve earned and jettison what you’re ready to leave behind from this Venus retrograde period. Set an intention for something positive and different to occur. Prepare, polish your saddle. Know you are the rider of your horse, the reins are in your hands. The horse is ready. Then let Aquarius work its magic.

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