As February begins, things are coming to a head.
Every month, the Full Moon period lasts roughly five days: 2½ days on either side of exactitude. This month, that exquisite moment of culmination — when the Moon opposes the Sun to the minute of arc — occurs right out of the gate: on Feb. 3rd (3:10 pm PST), just after our calendars have turned over their pages.
Consider the oddity of beginning the calendar month with the lunar cycle not at its beginning, but maxing out (although it happens all the time). This incongruity should remind us that cosmic cycles may or may not have anything to do with the Gregorian calendar, 
a jerry-rigged cultural construction that we have come to think of as definitive.
The great wheel of Nature, by contrast, has its own logic, one that matches up far more intimately with our psycho-spiritual cycles.(1)
Whatever happens for you during the first week of this month had its genesis around January 20,th when the Moon was New. Think back to that day. It was the first day of Aquarius, too, so it was a double beginning. Take a moment to consider what had its inception then. An important concept reared its head: the Sun and Moon were both in air, so what was inaugurated that day was a prompt to our mental creativity.
What idea was born? As February begins, it is coming to fruition.
Mercury Direct
Mercury goes direct on Feb 11th, at the first degree of Aquarius, a fixed air sign. Fixity means stick-to-it-iveness. We need to watch the impulse to dig in our heels.
If you have a planet(s) in the first couple of degrees of any of the fixed signs (Taurus, Leo, Scorpio or 
Aqua), be especially alert. It may be that a tenacious response is exactly what’s called for. Or it may be that you’re just being stubborn.
The only way to tell the difference is by paying close attention to what’s happening.
Rambunctious month
Venus and Mars enter Aries at around the same time this month, and conjoin on the 21st and 22nd. Sparks will fly in many relationships, stoking some with vigor, others with burnout.
What this means for you, personally, will be determined by a.) where your own chart stands vis-à-vis the Aries point, which this transit will conjoin, 
and b.) whether you welcome impulsiveness in yourself/ your partners, or find bold moves pushy and overwhelming. (If relationships are on your mind, this would be a good time to get your chart read.)
This placement, which fires up the skies throughout March, brings out the best and worst of the ego. Mars is a real pistol in Aries, the sign of his rulership. There’s a tendency to rush in where angels fear to tread.
Again, how you respond to this hotheaded energy depends on how your individual chart is predisposed. Generally speaking, it’s easier for charts that are already full of fire to respond positively to a transit like this; folks low on fire may find it threatening.
But regardless of our natal chart, it’s our understanding, or lack of it, that ultimately determines how we’ll experience Mars in Aries. Misused, it might provoke episodes that leave us feeling bullied or appalled. Used well, it gives us a shot of courage, inciting us to action where action is needed.
Water world
As the month draws to a close, the Sun conjoins Neptune in Pisces. We had a preview of this on the 1st of February, when Venus made the same conjunction. Peaking on 2/25-26, the transit gives us one more excursion into the underwater world.
It’s a zone we’d better start getting used to.
Saturn is creeping into a square aspect with Neptune, to reach its first exactitude in November 2015. At that point we’ll be nose-to-nose with the god of the sea. Until then, we’ll do well to meditate upon the symbol and the substance of H2O, called by occultists the Universal Matrix.
In the sign of its rulership until 2025, Neptune in Pisces is a teaching about all the myriad dimensions of water: the idea of it, the psychological meaning of it, the physical reality of it; including its lack, its abundance and its misuse.(2)
Notes
1 Our life circumstances match up with it, too, sometimes. Transit trackers know that external events tend to cleave to the lunar cycle. We’ll notice that something that begins when the Moon is New will build for two weeks, blossom in some way around the Full Moon, and then resolve during the two weeks that follow.
More often, however, this month-long drama is a piece of a longer process: a microcosm of some greater whole. By analogy: We might start writing a play when the Moon is New, and find that its first chapter climaxes at the Full Moon and draws to a close over the following two weeks. The next chapter begins at the next New Moon.
But we need not be tied to the idea of a literal month. The lunar cycle is a paradigm. Whether we 
understand it in a 4-week context or as a template for longer or shorter periods, this waxing, culmination and waning is the name of the game. It’s how the Universe works.
The Moon was the first celestial body to be used as a clock and a calendar. Whether it was in a waxing or a waning phase told our ancestors whether circumstances in their lives were heading to a climax, or receding into resolution.
Consider the universality of this symbolic process: Everybody, from everywhere on Earth, was watching the same phases. Everybody was an astrologer. You didn’t need a clock, wristwatch or cell phone to tell what time it was; you just tipped back your head and looked up. Details in my essay Children of the Moon.
2 In my webinar on Neptune I discuss in depth its many mysteries, terrors and truths.
Photo by Chance Gsmble: “Where Marines and Angels Fear to Tread”
