Current Transits for February 1997 Current Transits for February 1997Here's some (and I do mean some) of the important astrological news this month ...
Uranus sextile Pluto, 2-5
Mars Retrograde Station, 2-5
New Moon, 2-7
Jupiter sextile Saturn, 2-9
Jupiter sextile Pluto, 2-13
Chiron Retrograde Station, 2-13
Jupiter conjunct Uranus, 2-15
Saturn trine Pluto, 2-19
Full Moon, 2-22
So much for the warm-up act (I hope you survived January). Starting on the 5th, when the final sextile of Uranus and Pluto checks in officially, we enter a period of about 4 weeks when there is more activity between a bunch of heavy-hitting planets than we see in some entire years. This, of course, generates a planetary storm pattern that leaves January's intense energies in the dust. To give you an idea of what I mean, I counted 11 separate Koz Quakes (see Energy Patterns), 2 of them bigger than last month's blockbuster. 5 different "big aspects" go off in February, compared to 1 or 2 in the average month.
I think the best description for all this came out during a recent phone call with a friend. It seems the doors to the collective unconscious, the deepest layers of the psyche, are flung wide open in coming weeks, inundating our everyday ego awareness with experiences that leave it struggling to cope with the onslaught. This is a "time out of time", a period when the normal rules of our existence (which, afterall, reflect the inner world more than the outer one) just plain don't apply. The inner urge to grow and change, to let go of an old way of being and step off into a completely new one, are irresistible. The worst possible response is to freak out and hang on to old, worn out ways ever more strongly in the face of this pressure, because in a battle between the ego and the unconscious, the ego always loses in the end. Cooperate with the process, give yourself permission to transform your life in totally unforeseen ways. The world we live in now frequently doesn't work well and now's the time to mend it. Change and transformation can happen (quite easily and joyfully even!), but it has to come from inside you first. Only a catepillar can make a butterfly.
Need I say it -- the Grand Finale is here, finally. Stretching from the Jupiter-Neptune conjunction of January 9th, to the sextile of Uranus and Pluto on February 5th, to a solar eclipse (with Pluto at its retrograde station!) on March 8th, this is an astrological roller coaster ride like none I've ever studied in 20 years. All the planets from Mars on out to Pluto are part of the main pattern here, a large fan of sextiles stretching across half the zodiac. In their turn, the Sun, Mercury, and Venus all join in (as do all the asteroids). In short, everybody in the cast of planets is out there on the stage together -- quite a production! Depending on the exact position of the Moon that day, the A5 Spectrum waveform can shoot up into the Koz Quake stratosphere (600 units or above), sometimes way up. It's unusual to have a Quake or 2 once every 6 months -- I've never seen them show up every day or two for weeks on end before! This alone qualifies the Finale as a "major event" -- but there's much more.
An average month has 1 or 2 "big aspects" -- connections between the slower moving planets (Jupiter to Pluto) that have an important, long-term energetic impact on us earthlings. February has 5 all by itself; there are 7 all told in the Finale. I can't begin to cover all of them in detail here, so pardon the broad brushstrokes in places.
The keystone of this whole month, in my opinion, is the sextile of that Dynamic Duo, Uranus and Pluto, on the 5th. (Curiously, most astrological authors I've read recently seem oblivious to this contact.) Uranus is a planet of revolutionary change, the Trickster, rebel, and anarchist. No respecter of the status quo, his quest is to disrupt any structure that has become deadening or static. Pluto is the ruler of deep spiritual and psychological transformation, a force that strips away anything in our lives that is inessential so that we may live in a more authentic fashion. His call is not often welcome or easy, but he has a way of being irresistible, nonetheless. We think of sextiles as a time of opportunities, a chance to work with planetary energies in a very creative manner. However, both of these planets work from the unconscious mind, the parts of ourselves that we don't even know are there, making this contact a tricky one to understand. We literally have had no idea what hit us (that's what "unconscious" means!). Fortunately, we've had some time to mull it over, because the sextile was persistent enough to repeat 5 separate times over a 2 year span, starting in April 95 (remember Oklahoma City?). With each repetition, the doors to the other side were opened a little wider, forcing all of us to dig a little deeper into ourselves. Well, here's the last sextile -- whatever it is that's emerging from within us is here and the gates are flung wide open. Your personal "reality" will never be the same. Unless you've been working steadily on yourself during this 2 year process, the results might be quite startling to you and take quite a time to assimilate. Stay with it -- the rest of the Finale should help you.
This series of sextiles is also part of a larger cycle of Uranus and Pluto that takes 125 years to complete (how's that for a BIG influence?). The last cycle started in 1966, a time of revolution in consciousness and in the streets. The sextiles are rightly seen as another milestone in this spiritual revolution.
Don't touch that dial -- there's more still! The 5th has other tricks up its sleeve. After entering Libra on 1-3, Mars made contacts to all the outer planets in January. On the 5th, though, after the sextile, Mars the planetary Road Warrior puts down his heels and grinds to a halt. Through the rest of February, he proceeds to back up, hitting all the outer planets a second time. (He'll get around to running them over a third time later this spring.) This station (standing still point) of Mars, 5Li55, places it squarely in the middle of all the 5 degree action in the Finale. Mars in reverse gear, especially in the relationship sign of Libra, is a portrait of frustrated activity. The urge to just do whatever you feel like doing, to play by your own rules, is apt to backfire. Frankly, the brash, reckless approach typical of our young warrior is totally at odds with the larger story going on. Until Mars gets with the program, he'll experience constant reprimands from the Big Guys running the show. Part of tuning into the bigger spiritual story is learning how to mesh your energies with other people around you that are working toward the same goals as you. This is not about grandstanding and looking out for Number 1. We all get more done if we leave our egos out of the situation. This goes double until Mars shifts back into forward motion (4-27, at 16Vi44) -- get used to anything taking twice as much effort as it usually does.
This new moon, one of the first triggers of the sextile energy, is definitely none too subtle. And the next new moon (the unofficial "end" of the Finale) is a solar eclipse, nature's way of saying "stay tuned..." Who knows what some of us will be like by the time that eclipse rolls around. Yesterday and the new moon today are important "triggers" of the Uranus-Pluto sextile, acting like a lightning rod that grounds the outer planet energies deep in the substance of our mundane existence. There's a connection to the deepest layers of your being that is being forged today, and every power of your psyche is attuned to making you fully aware of its impact. Just open up to this transformative process and take it in, no matter how bizarre the twists and turns may get. Fighting it will only make a good situation turn really nasty and draining for you ("resistance is futile!"). Good luck on your journey!
Jupiter is zipping through Aquarius now, making 3 big aspects this month. The first is a sextile to Saturn on the 9th. Jupiter-Saturn contacts often have broad social implications, as they rule the privileges and responsibilities of living in the world. Saturn, which has been part of the Uranus-Pluto package for 10 months now, is about the hard work and duties we needed to do, including the spiritual disciplines necessary to simply keep functioning during this very chaotic period. Jupiter is the planet of abundance and rewards, however, so this sextile is letting us know all the difficult work has been worthwhile. The buoyant and optimistic energies of Jupiter are shifting our attention from working on ourselves internally to enjoying the fruits of people working and playing together in a more enlightened fashion. (This contact is the first of 3 such sextiles, stretching out to 11-14 next fall, so it will take awhile to assimilate this lesson.)
Are you still experiencing blockages in your life, a sense that nothing good ever happens for you personally? It's easy for people to undermine and sabotage their own happiness without even realizing it. Pluto is here to remove these blocks, since suffering and limitation are not an essential part of who we are on this Earth-trip. Joy and abundance are easier to attain than we realize -- you simply have to be willing to ask for them and accept them when they show up. As a friend of mine puts it, "How good can you take it?" Don't tune out ecstacy, just because you're not used to it.
Also on the 13th, Chiron hits its station. Chiron, the Wounded Healer and the teacher of Crazy Wisdom, just recently entered Scorpio (on December 29th, to be exact). He doesn't get too far (only 2Sc05) before halting and backing up into Libra again. But it's enough to form aspects with the planets in the Finale, and it's enough to trigger our discomfort with all the changes going. One of the ways to look at Chiron in Scorpio is relating to the fear of transformation. For whatever reason, most of us equate change with some kind of emotional trauma. Change feels like we are being forced to do something against our will. In fact, change is growth and life -- to remain static and ever the same is truly death. If we're going to be able to survive times like the Finale, we need to be comfortable with transformation in our lives -- welcome it even! Chiron's passage through Scorpio will give us until 1999 to learn this lesson.
Jupiter's final contact, a conjunction with Uranus on the 15th, has been receiving a lot of press lately. It's the start of a 14 year cycle that promises to overhaul the "mental environment" we all live in. Jupiter and Uranus are joined by Mercury and the asteroid Ceres at this time, a four-fold contact, in the mental sign of Aquarius. On the social level, this is a time of breakthroughs, especially in the areas of science and technology. On a more personal level, this energy is helping us bust through our own prejudices, biases, and blindspots. It's possible to interact with the world in a lighter vein, without all the mental baggage of "shouldas and couldas" that keep us in our place, strangling the life out of our lives. Check to see whether your ways of perceiving and interpretting the world need to be replaced by something that works better. You'd be surprised how fun life can be if you just get out of your own way.
In short, all these Jupiter contacts are about opening ourselves up to a sense of abundance and happiness, fully supported in our spiritual journey by the world around us. You've just got to get out of your own way and let it happen more often, until joy becomes a habit. Remember that you can't dance and shoot yourself in the foot at the same time.
Saturn makes the next move, trining Pluto on the 19th. This is the last of 3 such contacts, extending back to last April 27th. Since Saturn rules structures and Pluto oversees transformations, it's no wonder the structures in our lives have been changing. Whether it's been a change in jobs, shifts in relationships, new attitudes, or even shifts in the physical body, anything standing in the way of our receiving and expressing the new spiritual energies has been under pressure to get out of the way. Of course, such changes haven't come easily, since Saturn is the "reality" we all cling to (nobody in their "right mind" ignores "reality", do they?), but Pluto is relentless. At the very least, we've all caught glimpses of how things could be different; the braver souls have stepped out into a whole new way of living. Of course, the flip side of all this change is that we need to consolidate this "higher life" down here on planet Earth. Pluto may turn your life upside-down, but it's Saturn that allows you to put it back together in a different fashion. This final trine is telling us the dust is about to settle. It's time to take a look at the "new you" and see what you've become. Hopefully, you've learned to make the spiritual perspective of Uranus and Pluto an everyday part of your life.
The full moon is a time to assess how well you're handling this tumultuous month. Undoubtedly, your circuits are all fried by now, but if you're doing OK, it should still be fun. You may need to make some critical decisions shortly, as though your life reached one of those "forks in the road". If you need to retire from the world awhile and go within, take the time to do so. (Literally, take it -- the world's not going to give you a break unless you make your own.) Most of the Finale is behind you now, so persevere and keep telling yourself "Life is good" until you really believe it. Curiously, it really is...