Midlife Transits

New moon in your career house this month, Scorpio. The new moon itself occurs on August 20. Before that, the sun will be in your career sign (Leo) and then Venus will be. Time to get creative when thinking about career options.

Sometimes Scorpio as a sign wants things to be black or white when the universe would prefer something entirely different like fire engine red or tartan plaid. Part of your job this month is to start looking for career colors you normally ignore. This can mean things like mixing part-time careers, expanding the range of what you do, tweaking your path, or devising ingenious ways to dodge a bullet. The economy has got a lot of people in a career spot these days, so creativity and flexibility are more important than ever.

If you’re already where you want to be career-wise, use the moon to do a brief ritual of gratitude. Many people are not so blessed.

Finally, there’s a lunar eclipse in the sector that governs your home and family. If you feel it, it would most likely be to say goodbye to something that you no longer need.

I saw this as a news headline somewhere–that President Obama’s ‘honeymoon’ period is over. I don’t know about Obama, but for the rest of us there’s a ring of truth to that.

Jupiter is now retrograde, as is Neptune and Chiron. These are the 3 placements that conjoined each other in May and June and half of July, giving us all a nice bump of unearned optimism and confidence. The time period has had its harrowing moments, at least partly due to energetic eclipse action, but the media’s relentless pushing of bad economic news eased up.

It was as though everyone forgot for a bit that we are in serious trouble and that our fundamental institutions need to be rebuilt.

Well now Jupiter’s zooming away from Neptune and our collective confidence is scheduled to wane. I know mine took a noticeable dip as soon as Jupiter went retrograde. If your confidence is waning a bit these days, there’s a reason for it.

And this is not necessarily a bad thing. We can all step back a bit. We can get more clear-headed with Neptune not fogging things up. We can prepare for what we need to do instead of jumping in all deluded. After all when the honeymoon’s over, the real marriage begins.

If you want to know in what areas of your life a dip in confidence or a need to step back might be indicated, look to see what house the sign of Aquarius represents in your solar chart (or natal chart if you know your rising sign). They are listed below.  You can visit my other site Practical Astrology to see what the houses mean. (Scroll down the page.)

Aries: 11th house

Taurus: 10th house

Gemini: 9th house

Cancer: 8th house

Leo: 7th house

Virgo: 6th house

Libra: 5th house

Scorpio: 4th house

Sagittarius: 3rd house

Capricorn: 2nd house

Aquarius: 1st house

Pisces: 12th house

Lunar Eclipse 2007 over Sydney © Jenny Rollo

If you’re curious about the astrological effect of eclipses, read on because this has been one hell of an eclipse season. I’ll be using Sarah Palin and her recent announcement that she quit her job as governor of Alaska as an example. But first, some background.

Officially, the eclipses for this mid-year take place on July 7, July 21, and August 6. But eclipse season typically starts about a month to 6 weeks before the first eclipse of the season. The keynote of an energetic eclipse is a sense of shock or surprise.

This season has already delivered more than its share of shock in the form of the death of Michael Jackson. That feeling you got when you first heard the news–that’s an eclipse feeling.

That kind of sensation can show up in your personal life too. Already I’ve heard from a number of people who’ve encountered shocking events in their own lives. Sudden realizations and personal changes can also be signs of an eclipse in your life, and I’m hearing about those too. Changes in outer circumstances fit the bill, too–and yup those are occurring for people around me. These changes are affecting everything from job status to relationships to income to living situation to family and friends to…a bunch of stuff. This is all the more noticeable because the past several seasons have seemed awfully quiet.

For a closer analysis, let’s take a look at Sarah Palin’s situation. Palin is an Aquarius. She’s got Mars near her sun (that feisty reputation), and Saturn near her sun (beloved by what’s referred to as the conservative base). Last year when she was selected as the Republican Vice-Presidential candidate, she was undergoing a transit of Neptune conjunct her sun (the meltdown that she seemed to undergo after her sudden rise to fame–Neptune will melt anything it can get its hands on).

Now she’s undergoing Neptune conjunct her Saturn (apparently melting her sense of obligation to her job and maybe making her idealistically think that she can accomplish things without a job). And she’s not finished with Neptune conjunct her Mars. So she’s had plenty of stuff going on astrologically.

And…she’s an Aquarius with an Aquarius Mercury and very possibly an Aquarius moon (popular with the public). So that tends her toward the unorthodox and the unconventional right there. So add those things up and we’ve got plenty of astrological excuse for some odd behavior. Neptune by itself could easily have pushed toward being a bit too unorthodox for her own good.

But now let’s add in the eclipses. The eclipses in 2008 and early 2009 have been in Palin’s sign and in the opposite sign of Leo. An eclipse series spans a pair of opposite signs over the course of about a year and a half or two. Eclipses usually seem to operate in solar houses, that is, based on your sun sign.

So an eclipse series in your own sign relates to very personal changes taking place over the span of a year or two, changes that will affect your life for about a decade. Solar eclipses typically relate to starting something new, lunar eclipses to giving something up or losing something, some sort of ending.

Well, Palin, in spite of her troubles with Neptune, has most definitely undergone very personal changes. Although she didn’t become VP, being nominated changed her life in ways that probably will affect her for at least a decade. She became a national figure.

The last eclipse in the Aquarius series takes place on August 6. Right on schedule (about a month before the eclipse date), Palin is ending something. And in a surprising, eclipse-y way (that fits with her impulsive Mars-like way of acting). This final eclipse in the series wraps up a journey that she took very rapidly, from obscure governor of a non-Continental state to a person with potential Presidential aspirations. That’s what eclipses do. They take you on a long and important journey very quickly. And they interact with whatever important transits are going on in your life at the time.

Now, for most people, the journey isn’t quite that dramatic or public. It can be as simple as journeying from not being a parent to being a parent. But you travel a great distance in particular area of your life at a faster clip than you’re used to.

The eclipses of this July are in new signs–Cancer and Capricorn. And so we’re all tumbling toward a new journey in a new area of our lives. If you want to learn a little bit more, you can look at your July horoscope.

To craft your own interpretation, count round the zodiac starting with your sun sign to find Cancer and Capricorn. The number of signs is the solar house number likely to be affected. (E.g., Cancer is the 4th house for Aries, 3rd house for Taurus.)

The eclipse in Cancer is a solar one (new beginnings); the one in Capricorn a lunar one (endings). To look up house meanings, scroll down the Practical Astrology home page. And let the journey begin.

Sometimes the strangest things come to my mind. I just realized why pirates, of all things, have made such a comeback. Uranus in Pisces. Pisces, symbol of the vast oceans. Uranus, symbol of disruption, sudden violence, excitement, and rebellion.

Uranus in Pisces in opposition to Saturn in Virgo has brought real pirates back into the spotlight as governments battle pirates off Somalia. In April, US snipers rescued American Capt. Richard Phillips after he was captured by pirates on a commercial ship.

Not so coincidentally, I looked up when the extraordinarily popular Pirates of the Caribbean movie series began, and it was in 2003, around the time Uranus first entered Pisces. Before that, attempted pirate movies were tanking at the box office.

In honor of Uranus, a trailer for one of the Pirates movies below. I’m never one to pass up even a halfway decent chance to take a look at Johnny Depp. Enjoy!