Later today, the waning gibbous Moon will move on from Leo, and into an implicitly more pragmatic placement in Virgo. Early tomorrow, Mars will leave Libra behind to ingress one of its zodiac dominions (along with Aries): Scorpio. Meanwhile, here on Earth, what has so far been a messy — but overdue — process of sorting out looks to continue.

Looking back, it might be fair to say that Pluto (co-ruler of Scorpio, along with Mars), and its transition through late Sagittarius and into Capricorn as a new century got underway, signified both a literal and metaphorical change of climate in the making.

Now Pluto is just a bit over halfway through Capricorn, and is approaching the position it occupied when a small group of influential men set forth to found a new nation on the east shore of the continent we now call North America. It was that revolutionary action, among many others at the time (and not any celestial body), which initiated a massive disruption in an order that had prevailed for thousands of years.

Ever since, all those who have lived in the aftermath of the American Revolution have taken their turn in the sorting with choices and actions of their own. In the wake of establishing a highly imperfect union in one nation, every human life on Earth has contributed either to going back, staying in place, or moving forward towards a greater degree of refining the principles upon which that union was based.

Now, it’s our turn. Unlike many who have gone before, we have no excuses for lack of information. Literally at your fingertips are the vast resources of the internet — but perhaps not for much longer. As result, those of us now living will determine (among a great many other things) whether knowledge really is power.

Assuming data (and access to it) does confer power, we are those who will serve to demonstrate what human beings truly are. For as long as we have been around, even the smartest people have not been able to prove conclusively whether we are bright or blight. Now, you are among those who will further settle the argument through the choices you make and the responsibilities you take on.

Foremost among those responsibilities is participation in society. It is no longer excusable for any of us to defer to leaders, doctrine or divine entities rather than think for ourselves.

At this point, one of the most crucial issues has to do with the dispensation of justice. The fate of due process, for example, is clearly at stake. Doing the right thing has always been important, but even more vital now is how the right thing is done.

With the ingress of Mars into Scorpio we will have an emblem of where we find ourselves regarding due process and its implementation. After this weekend, and well into next year, seven of the ten sign rulers (the Sun, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn and Pluto) will be clustered in Scorpio, Sagittarius and Capricorn. Such a concentration of symbols in one quadrant of the zodiac represents an intense focus on principles in a crucible of transition.

The faster-moving objects in that concentration (the Sun, Mercury, Venus and Mars) can plausibly be said to correspond to individuals like yourself. Those objects, and people just like you, will be the first to lead the way into a more fixed and in-common collective manifestation, which would correlate neatly with qualities attributed to Aquarius.

In other words, the example you set during the coming weeks is more than likely to start a trend. The form that interpersonal relationships (corresponding with Jupiter and Saturn) and the world at large (relating to Uranus, Neptune and, most notably, Pluto) will take for decades to come — perhaps even centuries — is now implicitly in your hands to determine.

That determination will come through what seem to be insignificant choices you make in the process of living your life. No one decision will make the difference; rather, it will be a cumulative process. Each moment will offer a chance to change course. Every day will be an opportunity to further this long sorting, and to reduce the mess you have inherited — or not.

The foreseeable future of our kind has not yet been decided, but its general shape seems to be forming up. As this year ends and the next begins, you appear to have a very real hand in what will happen to those not yet born, whose own hands will be either more tied or further freed — depending on you.

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By any standards, 2018 will be a distinctive year astrologically. Get your essential guide to riding the waves of the next 12 months and beyond. Pre-order The Art of Becoming, the 2018 Planet Waves Annual by Eric Francis.