Yesterday I saw a robin hopping around in the yard for the first time this year.
For me, nothing says spring more than the return of birds who fly south for the winter.
Spring migration reaches its peak in May, with hundreds of different kinds of birds migrating through. I often think of how wonderfully audacious it is that there are so many different kinds of birds.
Speaking of audacious, this is the start of Aries season and the beginning of the new astrological year.
Hexagram 25: Innocence of the I Ching is our hexagram host for the beginning of Aries.
Because Aries is a masculine fire sign ruled by Mars, the audacious part fits, but at first glance it might not seem to correlate well with innocence.
The image of this hexagram is thunder underneath the heavens: as above, so below.
As Wilhelm says in his translation:
In springtime when thunder, life energy, begins to move again under the heavens, everything sprouts and grows, and beings receive from the creative activity of nature the childlike innocence of their original state.
The Sun is exalted in Aries because Aries is the beginning of the solar half of the year where there is more light than darkness. By contrast, Saturn is exalted in Libra because it begins the Saturnian half of the year where there is more darkness than light.
Britten LaRue, in her new book Living Astrology, writes that Aries is often perceived as “blustery in its self-possession.” She provides a necessary corrective to this stereotype:
It’s important to understand that Aries is born out of the collective dream from Pisces. The precociousness of Aries grows from the wells of love inherent in the sign before it. We need the audacity of our springtime Aries self to catapult our dreams forward. It’s the audacity of being a child of this world before we’ve known hurt or grief or danger.
She also provides some questions that are worth pondering in the week ahead:
What would you do with such audacity?
What would you do today if you could trust that you can always start again?
REFERENCES:
I Ching or Book of Changes translated by Richard Wilhelm
Living Astrology by Britten LaRue
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