Midlife Transits

It’s your month, Pisces, from February 18 to March 20. Your birthday wish new moon occurs on February 24. The full moon on March 10 may bring up issues with lovers, as it occurs around the same time as the opposition between the sun in your sign and Saturn in Virgo. The tension between Saturn and your sign should not diminish the love in a relationship that’s strong. However, relationships that have serious issues will continue to be tested, as they have been, off and on, for over a year.

The good news in March is that your solar chart has decided that it has such a strong liking for money that it’s going to host Venus in your solar 2nd house for four months–way more than the the usual amount of time. If you need financial assistance, you have the opportunity to go after it in March, especially during the last week of the month. If you need funds for a civic or humanitarian project or for an activity that brings many people together for a common purpose, even better. If you’re a business owner, participation in civic events could also pay off for you financially. On the other hand, the presence of three planets in your solar money house could also prompt you to consume or spend more than usual during the second half of March.

Mercury and Mars, meanwhile, start March believing that they love all humankind as they transit Aquarius, but then switch over to deciding they love you better as they enter your sign. Mercury’s in Aquarius from February 14 to March 8 and then in your sign until March 25.

Mars enters your sign on March 15. This makes the second half of March a good time to be all creative and indulge in things your sun sign is said to love: music, reading (or writing) novels, paintings, and just generally being all creative and nice.

As for the Pisces year ahead, your solar chart has pretty much dropped any long-term emphasis on work and co-workers (an emphasis that was still in play in 2008). Personal development and relationships continue to be the main theme, with behind-the-scenes reflective personal development dominating. The concept of cooperation also dominates, for 2009 is a very Aquarian year and Aquarius is the sign of cooperation.

The sign of Aquarius also refers to a person’s general relationship with society. With happy Jupiter in Aquarius, your relationship with society at large should be quite beneficial, provided that you take care to keep a low profile for the moment. Next year, when Jupiter enters your sign, you can take center stage. This year is your chance to lay low while planning how to capitalize on the goodwill you are intended to build up this year.

I saw a story on ABC News this evening in which people were encouraged to complain about the unfairness of defaulting mortgage holders receiving assistance and incentives from the federal government to stay in their homes and keep their mortgage payments current. People said things like “I bought a house I could afford and made the payments. Where’s my bailout?” And so on.

This kind of complaining has only just begun to surface if Saturn has anything to say about it. Saturn’s rumbling and grumbling along in Virgo right now, where he’s been very busy encouraging what’s turned out to be an incredibly devastating crash of the real estate market. It’s no wonder astrologers of days long gone did their best to give Saturn a bad reputation (they called him a ‘malefic,’ which basically means really bad planet).  Planets that encourage devastating real estate crashes are not usually the most popular planets at the party, if normal people have anything to say about it.

But Saturn in Virgo is not as chatty as he could be. He’s just going along doing his work (known in economic circles as a ‘correction’ or in Saturn’s mind as  ‘what goes up, you over-optimistic deluded fool, must come back down to a realistic level as soon as I get ahold of it’). His work wouldn’t have been so devastating either, would have been just a natural and healthy correction to bring home prices back down to historically sensible levels, except that Pluto in Sagittarius was busy tossing prices so high into the stratosphere that any landing whatsoever was going to have to hurt big-time. No, Saturn’s not too chatty right now; he’s just going along with the new Pluto in Capricorn regime and encouraging people to downsize and save and do other sensible, dreary, frightened things.

But just wait til Saturn gets into Libra toward the end of this year. He won’t settle in for awhile, and he’ll sneak back into comfy Virgo before hauling his baggage into Libra for good, but he will dip his toes in Libran waters this fall. And when he does, expect some serious whining. Saturn in Libra puts a premium on fairness and he is not going to be in a good mood with the thoroughgoing Pluto in Cap economic overhaul.

He’s going to be in a very bad mood indeed. He’s going to be in such a bad mood (square) that we may feel the reverberations of the Pluto/Saturn dogfight well before it becomes exact. Pluto/Saturn dogfights are not supposed to be pretty, and they’re usually a good sign for ordinary human mortals to duck and take cover. In this case, Saturn is going to be furious, at the very least, with the unfairness and injustice of the new world economic order and how it’s being implemented. This means plenty of other people are too, and they’re probably going to be extremely vocal about it.

If these people get real mad, they may get more than vocal about it, and there are bound to be ugly scenes of one sort or another. Of course, given what we’ve seen already, you don’t need astrology to predict that. Wasn’t it Bette Davis who said “Fasten your seatbelts, it’s going to be a bumpy ride”?