Not everyone is having an easy time with the Uranus-Pluto square. Both Uranus in Aries and Pluto in Capricorn are leaving us with very little we can take for granted.

Photo by Eric Francis.

With Uranus, the concept of ‘self’ is under near-constant assault or at least ongoing rapid revision.

You might say that revision process is daily or perhaps as leisurely as the pace at which Firefox comes out with new updates.

Uranus in Aries is a caution that we are indeed being defined by our technology — until we become conscious of that fact and choose to define ourselves.

With Pluto in Capricorn, there is nothing to cling to. No structure, no institution, no tradition, is steady or stable. What we do have is the guarantee of change. The concept of ground has become shifting ground. In the style of Pluto, that is necessitating making contact with something deeper than the material world — contact with your soul.

When put together, these transits can be explosive. They describe a scenario under which everything is changing, and there is a particularly busy intersection where ‘self’ meets ‘society’. The world we knew as children no longer exists, it will not come back, and the changes will continue.

Monday at 12:14 am EST (05:14 UTC), the sixth of seven exact Uranus-Pluto squares happens. The aspect goes back to 2012, though the social and inner processes go back at least to 2008. So we are at a major turning point in this journey. The last exact square is in March, then the two planets begin to separate.

Continue reading →

With the Gemini Full Moon behind us, we’re really down to one major (and distinctive, as in new) event remaining in 2014 — the ingress of Saturn into Sagittarius. This is a change of pace from recent years around the time of the year-end/Yule type of holidays lately, when we’ve had all kinds of stormy weather, eclipses and inner planetary retrogrades in the vicinity (Mercury, Venus, Mars).

Spiral galaxy, looking a bit like our own home, the Milky Way,
might appear if we could see it.

I propose that this is the right moment for arranging your plans and your activities to wrap up your year-end business and to make some choices for a sane holiday season.

This seems to be an unavoidable cultural ritual for much of the Western world. Though it’s been watered down some in recent decades, there are still the associated rituals of travel, of spending a lot of money, and of obligation. Those are purely the social level. Were you willing to think through these rituals and make up your mind what you really want, I think you would find that you have more freedom than you think.

The whole topic of family obligations around the time of the holidays deserves a good airing out and I propose we have it here on the pages of Planet Waves.

On what you might think of as the psychic or environmental level, the days are very short this time of year where many population centers are focused in the U.S. — the entire Northeast up to metro-Montreal and Toronto; across to Chicago and the San Francisco Bay area. I know you may be watering your plants in Australia these days, though for many people there is an intense veil of darkness that surrounds us — sometime seeming to cocoon, sometimes to subsume and swallow.

These short days are compressed, and there is potentially the biological sensation of panic about where the heck the Sun went. As the Earth approaches solstice, there is a sensation of compression, and of something having spun out to an extreme — one that we haven’t quite reached yet but will soon.

Continue reading →

The Sun is in Sagittarius, along with Mercury, Ceres, Venus, Pholus, Vesta and a whole bunch of other minor planets. Jupiter is in Leo. And the Moon is about to enter Aries (at about 8:30 pm EST Sunday (01:14 UTC Monday), where it will join Uranus, Eris and the Moon’s South Node. Monday we will have a werry werry fiery day — the Moon will emphasize the grand fire trine.

Very cool stock image initially found in Google, then purchased for a nickel from Dreamstime.com.

You can expect people to be reactive. You don’t have to be. You can expect them to be more passionate than usual. You can do so on your own terms.

There will be plenty of enthusiasm to focus — and it will indeed benefit from focus, which you may be the one to provide. Note, it may not be easy, as your mind may want to run in every direction at once. But you can do it.

Take a breath and set a goal, then go there.

This story could use a little background. Right now Mercury in Sagittarius is exactly square Neptune in Pisces. That is exact at about 11:26 pm EST (04:26 UTC), then it will begin to separate. This has been an interesting aspect, all about sorting out truth from lies, sorting through layers of image, and investigating self-deception.

Those themes don’t end after the aspect begins separating; the really interesting thoughts and ideas may come out in the wash of Neptune.

Continue reading →

Note: This article is available to all readers, though you will need to register for Planet Waves to read below the fold. Registration is free; just tap this link or the little button to the right and tell us your first name, email and Sun sign and you’re into lots of great articles, seven days a week. –efc

This week the main event is an alignment of the Sun and Saturn in late Scorpio. That happens Tuesday at 3:50 am EST (08:50 UTC). The Sun and Saturn form a conjunction once a year, and this is our event for 2014 — and notably the last alignment of the Sun and Saturn in Scorpio.

Artist’s rendering of a Sun-Saturn alignment, seen from the night side of Saturn. This is a beautiful image, though the Sun is probably shown a lot larger than it would be from this distance — about 900 million miles.

When we get to those last-of-a-kind (for this long cycle) events, we’re in the transition phase; the next Sun-Saturn conjunction will be in Sagittarius.

This conjunction is the full activation of the Saturn principle. I’ll come to that in a moment — first a comment on the emotional nature of this aspect. Sun-Saturn alignments can feel heavy.

They can also indicate an emotional struggle, pressure or depression. They can feel like your life force is leaking out. They don’t always feel that way but it is possible that you’re picking up on this. If so, take care of yourself on that level first. Pace yourself, distribute your workload or lean on a friend for some support. Sun-Saturn can also have a spartan feeling, so make sure you eat well, drink water and stay in contact with others. You will feel better and right now that counts for a lot.

The fact that this is in Scorpio adds to the emotional dimension of the experience. In another sign, it would have a different sensation. In Scorpio the feeling tone is placed on the emotional level.

Continue reading →