By Amanda Painter

Today Jupiter stations retrograde in Scorpio. Like most planetary retrogrades (Mercury being the best known), this signals a phase of review and integration.

Photo by Amanda Painter

But what are you being called to review, assess and integrate? In part, that will depend on what Jupiter has been increasing, expanding or calling your attention to while it’s been traveling through Scorpio since mid-October.

You might want to consider whether anything in your life has seemed to be under a magnifying glass in those months. In other words, is there some inner experience or outer dynamic that has consistently called your attention to it?

Or, you might think about particular types of growth you’ve experienced these last five months — emotional, professional, financial, sexual, spiritual, physical, and so on. Jupiter is the planet of expansion, so the word ‘excess’ might be another way to think of this, depending on whether you feel like ‘positive’ things or ‘negative’ things have been on the increase. Is there anything in your life that seems outsized compared to your ability to handle, understand or guide it?

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By Amanda Painter

Tonight is the Virgo Full Moon. This is the Moon in Virgo opposite the Sun in Pisces, exact at 7:51 pm EST tonight (00:51 UTC) — with some company. Along with the usual Full Moon effects that you might be noticing, Neptune’s presence (conjunct the Sun) is likely making things just a little more slippery than usual.

Earth Under a Full Moon; collage by Stacy Bergener.

In one way, that might be helpful. Full Moons often signify interpersonal confrontations, seemingly stuck situations, or a pressurized feeling like ‘something’s gotta give’. With Neptune adding extra softness and lubrication, you might find it easier to sidestep blowups or shift perspective in a way that opens up your options.

In fact, you might even find that heightened intuition and sensitivity to how others feel enables you to care a little more about their benefit and wellbeing, rather than getting stuck in defending your ego. Mercury and Venus in Pisces are currently in a trine to Jupiter in Scorpio, and appear to be playing supporting roles in the goodwill-and-good-feelings department, including for relationship conversations and sex.

On the other hand, Neptune so intimately involved in a Full Moon — especially involving Pisces — could also heighten a kind of psychological weariness with the world and the desire to escape it. Daydreaming the day away is not the worst thing in the world, and might actually offer just the psychic break needed, if this is how you’re feeling. The place where things can get dicey is if you try to make a full-on effort to evade reality. Modern culture is already playing fast and loose with things like facts, identity, social function and so on, thanks to the internet. Watch out for digital rabbit holes from now through the weekend.

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When confronted by the senseless, it is natural for the mind to seek an explanation. Any accounting of what has already taken place offers an alternative to being confounded. If an explication proves to be spurious, however, it’s no help at all. In addition, no biological being is an exclusively mental construct. Life is more than just mind.

With the Sun only a day or so away from its next annual Pisces ingress, the environment for life on planet Earth is increasingly becoming a product of the human mind. It has not always been that way, nor might it always remain so. For the time being, though, that’s how it is.

Much of what you experience, probably more than you can ever know, has its origins in a thought. Among the most prominent exceptions is the Sun. Along with the Moon, the Sun and other celestial objects keep doing their own thing. Seasons still come and go. Tides continue to rise and fall, heedless of thought or thinking. Somehow, we all know this.

Such innate knowledge, in turn, leads us to look up without thinking. Even as far away as the greater and lesser cosmic lights demonstrably are, their presence makes itself known on Earth, and in your mind. But first, you have to behold them.

For the sky to make a difference in your life, you have to first be simply conscious of it — both long enough, and often enough to leave thought behind. It is perhaps not incidental how so many products of human thought (roofs, cities, artificial lighting and mythologies among other things) function to obscure an unfettered experience of the expanse above. Even so, it is also perhaps more important than ever before to do just that.

Fittingly, astrology’s emblem of consciousness (the Sun) is about to enter the zodiac sign that implies something more. Even though Pisces is justifiably associated with water, the two planets that find astrological domicile there also imply an expansive theme evocative of the sky.

Jupiter, the original ruler of Pisces, is on multiple levels of interpretation consistent with enlargement and extension. Interestingly, Jupiter is now in another water sign (Scorpio), a placement which is functioning to validate Jupiter’s connection to Pisces.

Then, the very name of relative newcomer Neptune (along with its correspondence to Pisces) cannot help but bring up associations with Earth’s counterpart to the vastness of outer space: the oceans.

As an additional point of fact, the Sun’s ingress to Pisces (which uniquely combines its association to water with a mutable quality) also lets us know that there is but a month left in the current season. Whether in the length of daylight, or through the behavior of plants and animals, it is evident that natural changes are in store.

Finally, and with exquisite timing to distinguish this next sign change for the Sun, Mercury (arguably astrology’s foremost representative of mind and thought) will begin rising — and setting — just after the Sun precisely as solar Pisces gets underway. Among the obvious implications of that shift in placement between Mercury and the Sun is one of mind moving to follow, rather than lead, awareness.

In combined result, now that we are on the other side of paired eclipses (and all that came with them) our celestial lights are moving as if to remind. We are being told that the past, incomprehensible though parts of it may be, is not destined to repeat any more than the season now coming to a close.

We are also being called from far beyond the reach of our current dominion of influence to broaden, rather than confine, the experience of being alive, so that life itself will not be further cheapened.

There is more to living than thinking or occupying yourself exclusively with the products of thought. If you do nothing else this weekend, behold the Sun, a tree, a bird, or anything else that did not originate within a human head. Take the time to actually be with it, and make time to do something of the same every day.

If you can do just that until the Sun’s impending voyage through Pisces has concluded, making a difference might very well take on a wider meaning than reason alone could ever provide.

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You can now get instant access to nine signs of the 2018 Planet Waves annual, The Art of Becoming — with more to follow. Order all 12 signs here to read your Sun, Moon and rising sign and those of loved ones, or choose your individual signs here.

By Amanda Painter

Author’s note: I wrote and published this piece without any knowledge of yesterday’s senseless and tragic shooting at a high school in Florida that killed 17 students and wounded many others. Rather than try to rewrite the piece, I wanted to acknowledge the way this event seems to spotlight the shadow side of the dynamics I’ve written about below: the potential to become so accustomed to certain shocks to the system (both our own individual biological/psychological systems and the collective cultural/political system) that they no longer carry the capacity to effect change: we become numb to the stimulus and withdraw into denial and shut down, rather than allowing the shock to help us make needed changes. We double-down on the existing pattern; and in so doing, give up more and more of our power to it.

In the case of this particular shooting, at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, it happened very close to an eclipse that’s sextile the Uranus-Eris conjunction in Aries. In this digital age, in which cell-phone videos — taken by students as their former classmate opens fire — become part of news reporting, can we allow this latest horror to motivate us to release the entrenched pattern of letting our lawmakers do nothing about gun laws and mental health care? Our collective karma is staring us in the face. If repeated crises are not getting us to act, what will?

Today we experience the second of the pair of eclipses for this season: a partial solar eclipse with the Aquarius New Moon, exact at 4:05 pm EST (21:05 UTC). Despite the ‘fixed’ quality of Aquarius, it looks like the theme of the eclipse chart — and of the weekend astrology — is ‘movement’.

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You undoubtedly know what it is like to traverse a tunnel. For some, it is a discomforting experience. To others, the process represents a convenient shortcut. For most, such a passage combines elements of both perspectives. As we near the end of another period between two paired eclipses, it might be useful to keep the example of a tunnel in mind.

With Thursday’s New Moon and solar eclipse in Aquarius, we are coming out on the other side of a two-week period that initiated with the Leo Full Moon and lunar eclipse of Jan. 31. Plausibly, that interval can be interpreted as a tunnel through time, as well as space.

Science has empirically demonstrated that a line-of-sight alignment between celestial bodies behaves like a very functional shortcut. As one example, the gravitational distortion of space-time precipitated during such positionings has allowed astronomers to directly observe the existence of planets orbiting other suns so distant we call them stars.

Employing this “gravitational lensing” phenomenon has provoked a range of responses comparable to the experience of tunnels. Some are pragmatic, and appreciative of how the method enhances our ability mitigate limits imposed by distance and barriers. Others are less than comfortable about the possibility that Earth might very well be the subject of detection and observation by the same means.

The line-of-sight alignment of Earth with our local star and Moon (resulting in eclipses) functions to do much the same thing to space-time as does gravitational lensing, but on a far more subtle level. The relatively short distance between the Sun, Earth and Moon (as compared to the unimaginably vast space between stars) is the reason for such nuance, but the innuendo is no less real.

Indeed, perceptions commonly accompanying an experience of living through a period between eclipses are not only real, but an affirmation of proficiencies conferred by life itself.

By providing a method to apprehend and objectify what would otherwise only be inferred by the quality of life between eclipses, the place of astrology is validated as well. Among other things, astrology provides a context through which we can distinguish what has made this particular pair of eclipses unique.

One prominent astrological context of the Jan. 31 eclipse thematically emphasized the highly personal and often subjective complex of factors that combine to form your unique point of view. Hopefully, you have been able to find, receive or create at least some validation and affirmation of your perspective in the interim.

Implicitly, coming out on the other side of the emblematic tunnel after Thursday will be accompanied by a complementary benefit: appreciation and compassion for any and all others who have taken the same trip.

Should you find yourself wondering whether your experience is all there is, hopefully you will be able to apprehend that your point of view is just one of an uncountable many.

Ideally, you will also be able to comprehend that yours is a fine and magnifying sensibility. Shining like a star, you are — as is any and everybody else — all placed on a vast spectrum (much like the many and varied ways of experiencing a tunnel). That the eclipses may have conferred an improved ability to better discern the details of each and any being’s place on that spectrum cannot help but to make life both much bigger and more personal at once.

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Even if you were to narrow your focus, the next handful of days will probably defy at least some of your anticipations. So long as you see such potential as a good thing, it will not matter what your opinion of astrology is. Given a chance, however, what the zodiac and sky are now combining to say could very well be both informative and useful.

The temptation here is to go all technical on you. That’s because the astrological details are as elegant as they are complex. Such an approach, however, would ultimately and unavoidably be counterproductive for any attempt to gain erudition or solve problems.

If you will allow it, some orientation would be a good place to begin. In a very real (as well as symbolic) sense, the premise offered here is that we are now in a transitional phase. The celestial character of 2017 is tapering down, but still very much a part of the big picture. By the same token, many of 2018’s cosmic trends have yet to distinctly surface, even though they are undeniably ramping up.

It would be plausible to interpret the upcoming Aquarius New Moon and partial solar eclipse on Feb. 15 as the tipping point of this posited transitional tableau. Interestingly, the very same New Moon (only the second since the Capricorn Solstice of Dec. 21. 2017) will herald the next Asian Lunar New Year.

In essence, astronomically derived reckonings from two divergent cultural perspectives are arguably in the process of merging in agreement on an initiating moment. If you can see merit in that argument, you will also have a useful template to frame unanticipated experiences.

On the whole, it would not be advisable to get caught up in all of the technical details contributing to such a template — even if they are delicious. Even so, it would also be a good idea (and not a contradiction) to acknowledge the prevalence of complexity over specificity for the time being.

Paradoxical as it may seem, a narrow focus alone is unlikely to provide either the data or solutions you’re most likely to be looking for next week. Your life could (in the near term, at least) very well require a more diverse and inclusive approach than ever before to achieve the most manageably simple outcome.

The better you can grasp that, the better your hold on what looks to be a slippery future.

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Eric is busily working on The Art of Becoming, the 2018 Planet Waves Annual; and it’s shaping up to be an exciting, information-packed edition. You can pre-order all 12 chapter-length signs here, or you may choose your individual signs here.

By Amanda Painter

With yesterday’s last quarter Moon, we reached the midpoint between eclipses. In a week, on Feb. 15, there will be a partial solar eclipse with the New Moon in Aquarius. This means you’re still within the Eclipse Zone — though you might consider this next week a particularly good time for wrapping up any projects or tasks you’d like to get out of the way, to clear the path to where you want to be.

Photo by Amanda Painter

In the next few days, some of the more prominent astrological highlights appear poised to help you along. The biggest of these is the Aquarius Sun making a square to Jupiter in Scorpio, exact Saturday just after 6:20 pm EST (23:21 UTC).

This is the latest in a series of astrological squares this week that have been urging you to take some direct action in various matters, both internal and external. Sun-Jupiter squares are generally very useful: they represent plenty of energy to get ahead — if you are disciplined about it, and avoid veering into excess.

Astrologer Robert Hand also notes with this aspect that if you’re naturally cautious, a Sun-Jupiter square is likely to give you the inclination and ability to do more than usual. Meanwhile, if you tend to be overly optimistic, you might want to beware of biting off more than you can chew as the weekend approaches.

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