A few nights ago, we watched a beguiling ghost story called From Time to Time, by filmmaker Julian Fellowes, who also created Downton Abbey. (See trailer for film.) It's a family film that I highly recommend!

It's enchanting because it avoids the common depiction of spirits locked in time. The timelines between two eras affect each other, in the perfect setting -- a mansion in southern England.

I won't give away the plot, just to say here it's shown how the changes in the past affect the future. And the present alters the past. I'm down with this idea that all time is happening at the same time -- time itself is an illusion that fixes us in a point in that matrix of time.

Astrology of course is the study of time, from the Moon's waxing and waning, to the longer cycles of yugas and world ages. This film is Neptune Pisces cinema, drawing us into a world where we move in and out of time. We get hints of this in dreams, or a sense of deja vu. Films like this that enchant, rather than just scare the living daylights out of us, are rare and wonderful. They speak to the part of us that knows we're spirits that exist beyond time, and within it, too.

See more images from Around About for Photo of the Week/Wordless Wednesday.

Venus is retrograde as of today, and set to dance backwards in high heels across the face of the Sun on June 5/6th. This is known as the Transit of Venus, and it's the second of two, with the first back in 2004.

Writing about Venus, says astrologer Judith Goldberg was a labor of love. She writes on Venus' retrograde and the rare pass of the love planet over our ginormous Sun. Looking across the timelines through the lens of Venus (and this transit), she makes some amusing connections. She writes, "In 1518, for example, Magellan circumnavigated the globe and proved that the world was round!"

Mostly, she looks back on recent history -- 2004 -- for impressions in culture and politics that could pass this way again. On a practical note, Judith notes that during Venus retrograde, "the maxim caveat emptor (let the buyer beware) is sorely tested." She adds, "Purchases made in these times rarely hold their value or live up to initial expectations."

• For the complete lowdown: Transit of Venus & Retrograde

Butterflies remind me of mutable Gemini, with their erratic flying style, seemingly making decisions on the fly. They alight here and there, depending on what's in their flight path. Bees also buzz like Gemini, and I love watching them stuff pollen in their little side pouch, as they go.

This week, we descend into the flighty atmosphere of the Gemini Solar Eclipse, Sunday, May 20th. Let's see how mentally agile we can be with all the wild and weird revelations and matrix-busting happening these days. One mutable friend of mine is bemused by high strangeness, simply saying, How curious..... as she takes it all in. Sometimes, there are no logical answers, only more questions. This is the open mind of the magical child, asking why, how, what, in the sing-song rhythm of curious gathering.

Being okay with uncertainty goes far these days, as much is up in the air. What's being perceived may not make sense in the moment, but fall into a bigger picture down the path.

Use this week to let go of habits that put you into a funk, and possibly even create dis-ease. The Mars (Virgo) square to this lunation adds tension, and perhaps shows where your life needs more of this, less of that. In what areas, do you get locked up in analysis paralysis? How do certain activities affect your mind, and beyond that, your spirit's compass through consciousness (or higher mind)? I know I'll be taking a close look at this all week!

I'll be breaking ground on my butterfly and bee garden today, so that's serendipitous! I hope you have a great week with the doors of perception swinging wide open.

The origin of Mother's Day here in the United States is out of the ashes of the hellish war between the States. In some borderlands, neighbor fought against neighbor, and blood relations faced off on the battlefield. In the decades after the Civil War, women organized Mother's Friendship Days, to meet as mothers of young men lost to war, and reunite families on different sides.

The fascinating character in history, Julia Ward Howe, put her considerable soul force into leading a Mother's Day for Peace on June 2nd, 1872. Considered a powerful orator, this Mercury in earth sign Taurus (note that she adds her voice to that of the Earth) read a Mother's Day Proclamation that begins:

Arise, then, women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts, Whether our baptism be of water or of tears!

Say firmly: "We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies, Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience. We, the women of one country, will be too tender of those of another country To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."

From the bosom of the devastated Earth a voice goes up with our own. It says: "Disarm! Disarm! The sword of murder is not the balance of justice." Blood does not wipe out dishonor, nor violence indicate possession. As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil at the summons of war, Let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel.

Julia Ward Howe was a Gemini (born May 27, 1819), and showed that mercurial dance with language as poet, travel writer and playwright. She's best known for the war anthem Battle Hymn of the Republic, though after the heartbreak of war, she was singing a very different tune.

Her birth chart has a spectacular set of squares and conjunctions of outer planets, with Pluto-Saturn nearly conjunct in Pisces in a square to Neptune-Uranus in truth telling Sagittarius. With Pluto exactly squaring Neptune (27 degrees), in these signs of spiritual questing, we see the intense urge to overcome the scourge of war, and transcend the politics of regional interests. She appeals to a common humanity, speaking up for values of "charity, mercy and patience."

And to a nation in grief, having lost so much, she reaches for common ground with other women, so a new foundation of peace can be built. Though there's no birth time for Howe, she falls into the range for Moon in Cancer, for an instinct to bond through womanhood and the mother-child bond.

Hers is the astrological blueprint of a very fired-up evolutionary with a gift for visionary messages, who blazed a trail as a voice for the highest human values. Her N. Node (evolutionary path) was Aries, exactly conjunct bursting Mars! A force to be reckoned with, and though her language rings of another era, the message continues to be an urgent one, that of "the great and general interests of peace."

• See also, Julia Ward Howe, Mother's Day and Peace.