I am. I exist. I am alive. Beingness itself is the first and most mysterious truth. It is self-evident and incontrovertible – nothing can deny existence. So here is the primary cause of faith – the fact of being – and out of it is born optimism. As life opens up more opportunities for self-disclosure, optimism rewards itself with a deepening of faith.

Vitality is made known by its appetite for new experiences. Curiosity and the need for adventure are twin desires that pull us all into undiscovered regions of potential. In this way all new impulses are given form, as the twigs and branches that give greater and richer diversity to shape the metaphorical tree of life.

Similarly, personality is shaped as we seek reassurance and validation that what we dream has value and is appreciated – that it serves to beautify life. This process is continuous and ever-lasting, simply a reflection of the universal pattern of twigs and branches. Thus our dreams become real, embodied in us and expressed as new facets of an evolving persona.

Pursuit of self-fulfilment is directed with courageous enthusiasm towards new frontiers. Rivers are there to ford, mountains to climb. The very process of overcoming obstacles is welcomed as the only route to development. A pioneer is concerned with stepping bravely where no-one has been before, and gaining the advantages of being first.

Arrival is not attractive as a final destination; it is simply a resting place. Fulfilment of dreams would only offer evidence of the poverty of one’s capacity to dream, which has no truth here. We are at the gate of the secret garden, the beginning of the celebration of all desire. The prospect is abundance; a cornucopia reveals itself to be beyond the reach of appetite for a normal person.

Yet there is work to do!  Fruit does not jump off the branch into the mouth, and dreams are ten-a-penny without effort to realize them. Time spent a-dreaming has to be measured against time spent a-doing. Dreams are powerful, creative urges that bind subtle feelings into substantial images. For dreams to come true these images have to become thought and deeds – and that requires effort.

A sense of the eternal comes through the heart as naïve optimism, the arrogance of youth that is as blessed as it is charmed. This arrogance sees an unlimited future of desires fulfilled, only then to be replaced by new desire newly fulfilled – in a never ending tropical garden constantly and simultaneously in fruit, in flower, and in bud.

Aries 22

What is so often imagined to be a creative spin on reality can be nothing more than a witless distortion of values, a twisted perspective of events. Although truth is a subjective, unique experience, ones interpretation surely needs to be kept within the boundaries of reasonableness. Some renderings are simply silly and entirely unworkable as useful models of life.

What is needed is a continuous readjustment of understanding that can only really be brought about through a careful assimilation of personal encounter. Measuring this experience against other viewpoints will provide a degree of objectivity that helps to find a more genuine picture of what is valid for you.

This brings empty concept into the realms of personal significance, so that collective ideals take form within the value system of the individual. And that set of values is an important component of how reality is perceived.

There arises new insight as a direct result of bringing theoretical knowledge into the hard truths of real encounter. These realizations are reorientations on emotional, mental and indeed physical levels. You can feel them change you.

The wisdom of the race is constantly subject to a renewal process that depends entirely upon the dynamic interplay between the idea of collective reality, and the fact of personal experience.

This is by process of trial and error – the feedback system of life. It works on many levels and keeps fresh the heritage that we are collectively keeping revitalised, which has exceptional worth in every aspect of life. It works; the consequential knowledge is a validation of this.

Eventually, bit by bit the eternal progression of refinement leaves its mark. It is seen at the highest level that in each and every aspect of divine truth, a singular principle is dramatising itself in a multiple of forms: One in the many.

Aries 10

Although available to anyone who chooses to employ it, magick does not routinely appear as a realistic resource for any but the smallest minority of those who feel its power as a constant inner fire that awakens all the more with worship.

These people are constantly aware of their certain and inviolable connection to the creative power of the universe and its Source. There is a deep realization that the divine spark is there to be used daily as a practical tool to deal imaginatively with whatever comes along.

With such familiarity comes skill – a truly extraordinary skill – to enlist every worldly advantage and asset to bring exaltation to oneself, and the ready materialization of all aspects of one’s personal desires and ambitions.

A mystery is revealed – that by continually reaffirming the spiritual qualities of one’s aspirations, and the dedication of all one’s possessions and talents to the Spirit of Creativity, then all is accomplished with the mastery and ease that comes from the heart-felt certainty of true faith.

Thus worldly ambitions and aspirations are so completely spiritualized that life is a constant prayer, a continual outreach to the Divine.

It’s true that such an approach has dangers – those in particular associated with overestimation of one’s capacity, against which there needs to be practiced the observance of unimpeachable trust in one’s certainty of success and worthiness of motive.

Such vigilance can lead towards a surrender of all of one’s emotional attachments – one’s state eventually becoming completely independent of one’s circumstances. Otherwise there is a risk of losing all hope of realization of one’s highest potential. When this is achieved, then personal ideals can be brought to the level of miracle.

Capricorn 13

There is no ethical standard that remains untouched by time or geography, no absolute measure of goodness or truth. These are ideals rather than practical working models. Each of us grows towards the ideal that we ourselves choose, and develop competence in being what we choose to become.

The scenes and scenarios that each day pass in front of our eyes stimulate in us an intellectual response and it is helpful to employ these dramatized life situations as if they were mirrors reflecting back to us who we are and what we are doing.

We ourselves write the script for our own life drama. As directors we express our feelings about what we value and, as actors, we dramatize these feelings. A masterly actress is convincing because she is convinced; she gives herself, body and soul, to her performance.

Yet, from time to time, it is wise to detach ourselves from our current involvements. We need to look again at the script and realistically examine whether we are keeping to it, lest we lose the plot. Against this plan we check what we see in the mirror of life.

Absolute personal control stems from clear vision focused by a specific detailed plan of intention. Without a goal, a person is as unlikely to reach safe harbour as a ship with no rudder. Learning to master situations overcomes self-limitation.

True self-awareness requires us to consider ourselves through the eyes of others, and follow up our observations with a process of continual self re-examination and adjustment. Our personal plans are thus coordinated within the greater design.

What arises out of this is a great deepening – when we learn to trust that life offers us much more than we have been able to imagine. Typically, the deeper profundity of personal experience is reached by serendipity, when we go beyond into unscripted realms of spontaneity.

Cancer 16

It is necessary to resist potential inner feelings of inferiority brought on when society disdains our work and worth – as can happen towards those in a Chinese laundry, whose service to the community is actually of real, if hidden importance.

The image hints obscurely at those whose path towards self-optimization requires them to follow a very specialized occupation that might deny them superficial communion with fellows, and even seclusion.

A great richness of life eventually comes through the pursuit of an objective for which the rewards are remote. A somewhat antisocial lifestyle, one that may not even win acceptance, and tremendous concentration is required to focus on goals – whose benefit to society will not be recognised immediately.

In order to sustain the enduring, unrewarded, and even disrespected labour, it takes unremitting dedication and profound faith in oneself, one’s work, and one’s clear imagination, that out of this work will come a better future for humanity.

Because of this, one has to develop exemplary poise. This begins as a necessary facility to maintain a sense of dignity, and yet develops into a masterly attribute – of being able to hold one’s own even in strange or irksome situations.

Seclusion at work – perhaps at first enforced by an unappreciative social environment – is now seen as a path towards, and expression of, an unusual depth of inner awareness and self-possession.

One learns to touch the state of soul consciousness and develop associations with spiritual or angelic forces, whose influence radiates forth. This promotes access to the highest reaches of one’s inspired creative being, which state is a requirement for the pursuit of the specialist occupation.

Sagittarius 22

A triangle is particularly well balanced; wings suggest flight. Here we have a pointer towards an especially well-grounded person who is continually enthusiastic, ever zealous about self development.

Three aspects of individuality are encountered and refined in our interaction with our situations and environment. These are our skills, loyalties and values. Through these we make ourselves known to our self.

It is of key importance to appreciate the profound value of our impulses. As life throws up its adventures and challenges, we will know who we are through the purity of these original impulses and, no matter what occurs, our essential nature will hold us in good stead if we trust them.

Life is necessarily a transformative sequence of events that processes the inner nature of a person through endless experiences. The many aspects of one’s personality and desires are the proof of one’s deepest enduring vision of self.

The goal of life is to determine what we hold to be good and true. Do we assert light over darkness? And for us – what is light?

The basic self goes through unending tests of worth, the higher self unending examinations of conscience – and through these processes, refinement is assured.

Without such an approach we are left with nothing more than the dismissal of every ordinary experience as inconvenient, even pointless, except the extent to which it offers pleasure and promotes in us a blissful state of obliviousness to the truth of who we are and what we are doing.

Aries 5

At all levels of existence – whether shellfish groping around in murky depths, or kids making up games to learn skills – the absolute imperative of individual survival is self-sufficiency – even if the ‘individual’ is in fact an individual group or species.

The lower orders have a wider perspective on what is considered to be self: the ant identifies itself with the colony, and expresses self-sufficiency of the colony, even at the expense of the particular ant. The cell of a human body is equivalent.

By feeling the connection between lower and higher, one can grasp that the individual's path of self-expression is not separate from the group's process of evolution. Each is not only interdependent, but is an aspect of the other.

Self-discovery is the emergence of the individual coming out of the group. The experience of high profile has a special quality that requires a clear statement, since the individual is subject to constant group pressure. They must stand, or fall back and allow another to claim center stage.

Evolution unfolds not as step-by-step ascension of a ladder, but rather like the mist clears – with subtlety, in a non-linear fashion. The group shines its light of attention onto its current hero, whose magnificence elevates one and all, and who is then once again brought down by the mass.

The master does not waste energy by attempting to raise the group. Such divergence of focus would diffuse his will. He waits at the pleasure of the mass until opportunity arises, then strikes out for himself clear and strong, drawing support from those around who develop beside him.

Being oneself is the highest service one can offer to the group and to the Universe. Yet this self has rhythms: now active, now passive. There are the rhythms that vibrate in order to sound one's true note, and this adds to the harmony of the whole.

Taurus 14

There is no merit in following society’s herd instinct and being satisfied just by becoming no more than the others – whose plumage is in any case somewhat mediocre. It will not lead to self-actualization.

Neither will the repetitious habit of following one’s own well-trodden paths, as though such empty ritual could replace the struggle of learning through new experiences.

We need to be guided by the actuality of our own circumstances here and now. They speak to us of our history of preferences and values, and also create a convenient stage for acting out the deeper hidden issues.

From such guidance, there develops greater awareness of who we are. Out of this awareness comes a profound inner clarity that evolves as an increasing strength of faith.

In this way all of our personal goals are raised to the highest level of importance,relentlessly pursued with an absolute determination to attain self-awareness in any and all available forms.

So we learn to put aside our distaste for the shallowness of social rituals and to reinterpret such follies as useful clues to our own inner ambiguities. In fact, the refinement of our own personality requires us to accept such feedback, even if it is presented unconsciously.
There is no limit to the number of variations on a theme; each and every apparent re-duplication of an event can more wholesomely be seen as an expression of diversity of potential. Through this process all the angles of personality are unfolded and greater self-disclosure arises.

Capricorn 11

It is foolish to dwell on the past and exalt the principles of conservatism. The past does not exist and its dreams did not survive. Life is change; we must find a way to adjust.

New phases of human culture wash upon the shores of what seems crystallized as hard fact, eroding the very substance of reality. Shore and tide, essentially different, are eternally cooperating in the mystery of evolution by finding the rhythm of give and take.

It is true that values, hard-won and passed down from generation to generation, promote faithfulness and the bonding power of deep empathy that underpins the love of family, clan and homeland.

Yet these very values are established only by the interplay between old and new, as the frontier spirit of change breathes its life force into what otherwise would decay or become rigid.

The visionary soul is a pioneer, ever seeking to renew and perfect relationships between what was and what will be, as a means to expanding a greater depth and reach of self-realization.

Every intimate contact is the frontier of human evolution, where old meets new, each convinced of its rights and power. The wise and skilful soul demonstrates its special facility of compatibility in such encounters, and so softens the friction of tide upon shore.

Old wisdom and its deeply-treasured beauty will thus be appropriately employed in service to contemporary needs, expressed by youth’s fresh vibrancy, its modern values and naïve joyful fumblings.

Cancer 28

Wishful thinking, unadorned by accurate reflection on the facts of the matter, and absent of the will to achieve, leads to stultification of the self and is to be avoided.

To raise this impulse to its highest level at which it is useful, one simply has to accept the positive evidence that beneath all the sham, the world at large has an underlying fundamental friendliness.

This engenders, even in the cautious soul, a sense that the world itself is nurturing and encouraging place in which to act out ones ideas and fancies. It can be counted on; trust will be rewarded with success.

The pilgrimage, from darkness to light, requires us to press forward with unflagging courage, safe in the knowledge that the journey itself is its own reward – yet also aware that detachment from outcomes is actually what ensures a successful outcome.

When taken seriously on its own terms, life guarantees enduring rewards. Wishy-washy won’t work, and really we wouldn’t want it anyway. We get so much more from a life that is fair, in rewarding courage and clarity with a premium, since this measures and categorises individuals exactly according to our intuitively derived principles of justice.

With this cosmic law operating, we see that our moods and potentialities are fairly and accurately reflected by the scenes and scenarios of our circumstances. This is a deeply satisfying improvement on the alternative: something-for-nothing, and it is the ground upon which is built spiritual integrity.

Since all are subject to the same ruthlessly applied natural laws, what develops in the responsive soul – who sees all suffering as fair yet poignant – is the deepest level of compassionate wisdom and a feeling of spiritual fellowship with all beings.

Libra 28