Was it the Neptune incense that brought the dreams…?  Perhaps…or maybe was it the eclipses and endings they bring that are circling me like vultures ?  Three hours of sleep, waking three times and three times falling back asleep to the same nightmare.  Such is growth…tilling the same ground another year for a different harvest.  (Threes are Mercurial, exploratory, growing. )

Neptune (rules dreams, hiding) is my most highly aspected planet and has all my difficulties growing through it, including some lovely fixed squares to the secretive 8th.  Toss in a 29 degree Sun (endings- each house has 30 degrees) conjunct Uranus (astrology), Pluto (struggle) ; all three in opposition to Chiron (the healer) in Pisces -and you have an astrologer reluctant to reveal anything personal, regardless of the fact it would be the most helpful in lighting the spiritual path for others.  Hang tight…I’m workin’ on it…follow the breadcrumbs into the labyrinth.

While reading “Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art of Remembering Everything” by Joshua Foer, I read something that reminded me of fixed squares.  It is mentioned that “memories are nomadic until revisited and reinforced thereby making them impervious to erasure. It’s thought that sleep plays a critical role in this process of consolidating our memories and drawing meaning out of them.  Rats that have spent an hour running around a track apparently run through the same track in their sleep, and exhibit the same patterns of neural firings with their eyes closed as when they were learning the mazes in the first place.  It has been suggested that the reason our own dreams so often feel like a surreal recombination of elements plucked from real-life is that they are just the by-product of experiences slowly hardening into long-term memories.”

Fixed squares in a chart are the maps leading to the deeply ingrained patterns made over many lifetimes; places where self-will is strong.  (Fixed signs are: Taurus, Leo, Scorpio and Aquarius.)  Fixed squares indicate a need to bend the will; give as well as take; a need to find balance between the two.
Look in the chart for help from any trines, sextiles or otherwise easier aspects for a more favorable expression of the squared planet.   (In my case, Neptune sextiles my stellium and Mercury sextiles my 8th.  So I’m usually happy to talk about spirituality, metaphysics, music and art)  In the case of a chart without sextiles, trines or easier aspects to the squared planets – concentrate on vibrating to the highest most positive expression of the planets involved.
For example; Saturn can be restrictive and pessimistic or concentrating and disciplined, and Venus can be vain or loving.
Turn your face to the sun and the shadows fall behind you.  ~Maori Proverb

Myth of Sisyphus: http://www.mythweb.com/encyc/entries/sisyphus.html