Taurus Technology Profile

As a Taurus, you are interested in reaping the benefits and enjoying the end results of your hard work. This will not change when it comes to technology. You are looking for the value of your online experience to exceed all expectations. You know better than anyone that you are fond of the pleasures of life, so your mind will be spinning to figure out how computers can contribute. Virtual reality, vivid pictures, and surround sound help you get the feel for the technology at hand. Experiences that involve your senses are always up your alley. Your practical side gives you a purpose to your Web surfing. Shopping online offers you the ideal venue to venture into possessing the finer things in life.

Aries Technology Profile

As a Ram, you are used to catching on quickly, and once you get the hang of computers, you are likely to be wired in more ways than one. You could begin to close the technology gap faster than you first imagined possible. As an Aries, you tend to be the pioneer of any pack. Your willingness to delve into uncharted territory opens up the wonder of what can be achieved through sitting at your computer and tapping into the world around you. Like a chain email that you actually want to read, you can maximize your reach by using your ability to personalize your online experience. Before you know it, you'll be the pied piper of the digital world.

Sun Sign Technology Profiles

Do you dream in HTML or are you a newbie to the ins and outs of the Net? Whether you write code like a Webmaster, lurk on many mailing lists or check your email every once in a while, find out your relationship to technology in this increasingly wired world we live in.

The Sun: Planet of Self

As the Sun puts forth light, so it brings forth life. This Planet (also known as a luminary and a star) represents the self, one's personality and ego, the spirit and what it is that makes the individual unique. It is our identity and our face to the world. The Sun also speaks to creative ability and the power of the individual to meet the challenges of everyday life. One's natural father, husbands and other male influences are ruled by the Sun, as are children. The Sun's energy is a forceful one, and in its wake comes authority, the ability to lead and an individual's essence, their core being. Through the will of this Planet, we learn to manifest ourselves in the world. The Sun is majestic, and in keeping with its regal air, it rules royalty and higher office. This orb also lords over our health and well-being. The Sun's golden glow is a vital life force which imbues us with strength, energy and a will to succeed. It is the Sun which gives strength to the other Planets, which is why this Planet occupies a key role in Astrology. The Sun spends about a month visiting each Sign and takes a year to journey through the twelve Signs of the Zodiac. It is masculine energy and rules Leo and the Fifth House.

Mercury: Planet of Communication

Mercury, much like the winged messenger of the gods, comes in on feather-light wings and commands us to speak. Communication, intellect and awareness are all within Mercury's domain, as are logic and reasoning, our manner of thinking, and how we create and express our thought processes. A mercurial nature brings to mind restlessness and motion. Rat-a-tat-tat -- things happen fast here. Mercury is about a quick wit, quick thinking, possibilities, opinions, reasoning and the ability to rationalize things. Mercurial energy can be good or bad, but it will certainly be energizing! This Planet also prompts us to move from one thing to the next and to get answers on both a physical and psychological level. Further, Mercury's energy is both dexterous and perceptive. Mercury is about short trips: a visit to a neighbor or a friend across town, the workaday commute, a weekend getaway. Siblings, and transportation in general, are also within Mercury's realm. Speaking, writing, books, online communications and learning are all within Mercury's domain. This Planet implores us to express ourselves often -- and well. When Mercury goes retrograde (the appearance of traveling backward), however, our communications will be challenged. Mercury is never more than 28 degrees from the Sun; it takes about 88 days to complete its orbit of the Sun. It is neither masculine nor feminine energy and assumes the gender of the Sign it is in. It rules both Gemini and Virgo and the Third and Sixth Houses.

Find Your Communication Sign

Nothing is more important at work than communication skills -- they can make or break a business deal, a salary negotiation or a hiring interview. Find out what your Mercury -- or Communication -- Sign is and what that says about your talents and challenges.

What are the Moon Phases?

New Moon (0 - 45 degrees in front of the sun) The energy of the new moon is birth and its metaphor is spring. It's a good time to start new projects, begin relationships and plant gardens. You might find yourself feeling impulsive, and you have access to a dynamic burst of start-up juice. Crescent Moon (45 - 90 degrees ahead of sun) Consciousness comes into the picture now with a little bit more light. In our own life cycle, the crescent moon symbolizes the period when you become aware that you're not part of your mother, that you are your own entity. A dawning realization shows you that you have a choice, that you can struggle against the established pattern. Psychologically, it's the beginning of individuation, the setting apart of the self. You may find it very important during this time to broach your own ideas. Some religions have important celebrations honoring the crescent moon. First Quarter Moon (90 - 135 degrees ahead of sun) This is a time when things come to a head -- some might call it crisis time. You feel the friction in the air, but that's not necessarily bad -- friction starts a movement toward solution. Think of starting a fire. You need friction to create the first spark. Rub two sticks together or strike a match; the fire will warm you and cook your food. You may sense a problem but not know what it is. Awareness is still moving toward understanding. It's the time to implement ideas and look at possible solutions if you've identified the knot in a situation. Gibbous Moon (135 - 180 degrees ahead of sun) Now we move to analysis and evaluation, understanding why we've taken action. We appraise our personal progress. This is more intellectual than the first quarter, which was dynamic and intuitive. Full Moon (180 -225 degrees ahead of sun) The full moon is the pinnacle, the climactic point. Now we get answers. You'll see a lot of extremes now. The way you interpret those has a lot to do with your inner landscape -- you reflect what's going on around you. With such a polarity, projection runs rampant. If you go outside and see people acting like lunatics, that's your projection. If everyone looks beautiful, that's also your interpretation. What you perceive depends on how you're feeling. The gravitational pull of both sun and moon, with the earth in middle, sets up these extremes. The trick here is to find balance. If we're out of balance, we'll go one way or the other; we'll either be blinded by the light, or we won't even see it. The moon's magnetic pull makes this a very powerful time. Whatever Sun Sign the full moon is in has a strong effect on our energies. That effect will play out according to each person's individual chart. A lot tends to happen around the full moon: more people end up in emergency rooms, the police scanners go wild. But it's also a time for romance. The play of light over the water, the moon hanging in the branches of trees, the huge orb rising over a cityscape -- all these put us more in touch with our creature sense. Time to howl at the moon. The full moon is also associated with fertilization and ovulation. Disseminating Moon (135 - 90 degrees behind the sun) By now, we've learned our lesson, received the information. The question is, what to do with it? A strong desire to demonstrate to others what you've learned makes this a time to share you knowledge. Your intellect is in charge: You see, you acknowledge, you tell somebody. Last Quarter Moon (90 - 45 degrees behind the sun) Like the first quarter, this phase is about movement. This time you can engage in conscious action. The choice is in your hands and you know it. It's up to you to create the outcome. This is dynamic, conscious movement. You decide whether to take action -- or not. Balsamic Moon (45 - 1 degree behind sun) We have another word for this moon phase -- Karma. This is the closing, the conclusion of the cycle during which you reap what you've sown. If you haven't learned the lessons, taken the action called for in the first seven phases, you can't move on. People born during this phase often have a mission, something bigger than themselves that they must carry out. This energy is greater than yourself. This time, the outcome of whatever's going on is not yours to decide. You have already taken the steps that set up this outcome. It's a time to release the past. women's wisdom reports women's wisdom reports

Moon Phases and Eclipses

The Moon has always been a mystery to us. We watch it change shape and appear in the sky in a different position each night. Our astrologer, Kelli, says that as a child, she felt the moon was following her -- that must have been her "Moon Shadow." Looked at naively, you can say that the sun is reliable. It rises regularly, whereas the moon is moody. It comes up every evening an hour later and fades and wanes and disappears. In Egypt, the moon is the male god Min. In most civilizations, however, the moon is feminine. --Maria von Franz, The Feminine in Fairytales Our language carries reminders that the Moon has affected us since childhood. We speak of the man in the Moon and the cow that jumped over the Moon. Indigenous peoples all over the globe have stories about the image that we see in the face of the Full Moon. Most of those are feminine images. The first person on the Moon is now part of the iconography of the contemporary world. In an Eskimo story reported by Knut Rasmussen, the man in the moon falls out of the sky, "made harmless" by a young woman's magic. "The moon spirit is incalculable and can become dangerous; he takes, but he also gives, and man must sacrifice to him or order to share in the things over which he rules. The Moon doesn't have its own light -- it reflects the light of the Sun. It is associated with the receptive feminine qualities. Some traditions assign it the "passive" feminine nature, that which receives and is fertilized. How do the phases of the Moon affect women? As the Moon moves through its phases, it affects our emotions and moods. Our own physical cycles are connected to those phases, though they may not exactly coincide. In ancient times, the Moon was the major light in the night. With no electricity, the changing phases of the Moon had a much more direct effect on people. Like a child's night light, the Moon was a comfort, like the mother is a comfort to babies. At the beginning of the cycle, the New Moon disappears and we have a black sky for as long as three days. We carry such information in our ancestral memories, even if we now live in the middle of a city with every street lit and night lights in every room. On some level, we still feel the Moon cycles. The dark of the Moon, for instance, may be associated with deeper mysteries and secrets, because without light, things can be hidden. In each of the phases, the Moon's influence represents different life situations. Wouldn't it be great if we could predict what we have to deal with just by following the cycles of the Moon? It doesn't work that way, but we can use our awareness of the Moon's influence, and work with the energy that's traveling to our planet to help with whatever we're going through. Women seem especially sensitive to the cycles of life: there are those who've gone before and prepared the way for present life; in turn, present life will give way to new.... And it is for us to take the best of what we have been given and carry it forward into the future for our children and our children's children. --Marilyn Sewell, Cries of the Spirit Waxing and Waning The first portion of the cycle, from New Moon to the Full Moon, is the waxing period. It is the build up, the beginning of the cycle from creation to consciousness. The second part of the cycle, from the Full to the Balsamic Moon, is the waning period. Now the cycle returns from consciousness to creation. Click here for the Moon Phases. Synodic and Siderial Moon Periods The 29-day Synodic period is the time from New Moon to New Moon. This is called the "lunation cycle" and it signifies the relationship between Sun and Moon as they work together. The myth associated with the Synodic period is that of Apollo, god of the Sun and of wisdom, and his sister Artemis, also known as Diana, goddess of the moon and of wilderness. The Siderial period is 27 days. This is the Moon's own cycle, the relationship of the Moon to itself. Eclipses Eclipses have been powerful mysteries since ancient times. We average four eclipses during a year. Two of those are solar and they coincide with the New Moon. Two are lunar, when the Earth is directly between the Sun and the Moon and its shadow obscures the Moon. The eclipses work together -- two weeks pass between a solar and a lunar eclipse and they occur about six months apart. During an eclipse of the Moon, some tribes of the Orinoco used to bury lighted brands in the ground; because, said they, if the Moon were to be extinguished, all fire on earth would be extinguished with her, except such as was hidden from her sight. --Sir James George Frazer, The Golden Bough Eclipses affect world events. Princess Diana, who shares the name of the Moon goddess, is a contemporary feminine mythic figure. Major events happened in her life during eclipses -- her marriage, the birth of one of her children (William), her divorce, and her death. We are affected on a global level by eclipses. Astrologically, not much is known about the effects of eclipses. Strangely, few people are born during eclipses. But the date of an eclipse that precedes your birth can be significant throughout your life -- you may even notice an annual influence. It's called a pre-natal eclipse and it tends to portend a subtle, not a major event. These may be external events or reflective internal ones, like decisions that signal life changes to follow.

What's Your Moon Sign?

Do your emotions send you into a spin on a daily basis or is your cycle of highs and lows slower, more even? The great reflector in the heavens may also be your best mirror into your own cyclical nature. Since the Moon goddess looks after the garden and the home, your Moon Sign can help you see how and where you ground yourself in your domestic sphere. Are you the gypsy, always picking up and moving? Or do you resist any change in your environment and lose it when somebody wants to trim a branch in the yard? Knowing where your Moon Sign falls will help you gauge whether howling at the moon is just your natural voice or whether you're prone to lunacy and need to have an eye kept on you.

your rising sign

Technically speaking, your Rising Sign -- or Ascendant -- reflects the Zodiac sign that was ascending on the Eastern horizon at the moment you took your first breath in this world. This is why an exact birth time is so vital to finding your accurate Rising Sign. Located on the cusp of the First House of your astrological chart -- or at the nine o'clock position -- the Rising Sign can exert an influence almost as powerful as your Sun and Moon signs. If you were to think of your Sun Sign as your soul -- your inner personality and potential -- and your Moon Sign as your heart -- your emotional core -- then you could say that your Rising Sign is your physical self or the face you present to the world. For example, though your Sun Sign might be Taurus, your Rising Sign could very well be Gemini. While you're feeling laid-back, others will tend to see you as a ball of nervous energy and cerebral wit. At times, your Rising Sign may act as a mask, hiding some aspect of your inner self you don't feel like revealing. What's your mask? How do others see you? Find out with your Rising Sign.