Midlife Transits

A lot of people know that there’s an outer planet cardinal T-square coming up this summer. What that means is that Pluto will be in early degrees of Capricorn, Uranus in early Aries, and Saturn in early Libra. These energies clash with each other, creating a lot of stress. What not as many people know is that the stress from clashes between outer planets often manifests when there’s a considerable distance between the outer planets, often around 8-10 degrees from a square or opposition.

Right now, Pluto and Uranus are about 10 degrees from a square. Uranus is in late Pisces and Pluto is in early Capricorn, creating in effect what is a wide out of sign square. Saturn and Pluto are much closer to squaring each other, less than a degree apart.

Today, a man in Austin, Texas apparently deliberately flew a small plane into an office building that housed IRS workers. This link shows what was in his mind just before he did that.

You can see how his mind was banging around multiple points of conflict and couldn’t seem to find a resolution. Here are some of the planetary themes in his rant:

Laws and justice:  Saturn in Libra.

Government and taxation: Pluto in Capricorn.

Freedom: Uranus.

Greedy, powerful corporations: Pluto in Capricorn.

Healthcare, the drug companies, unions, and the American medical system: Uranus in Pisces with a little of bit Saturn in Virgo energy thrown in.

Accusations of totalitarianism: Pluto in Capricorn.

The corruption of big religious entities: Pluto in Sagittarius and Uranus in Pisces.

Grudges from the past: Pluto.

The system is based on lies: Saturn and Pluto.

The futility of trying to be independent: Uranus in Aries vs. Pluto in Capricorn.

Engineering: Uranus.

Anger over work and career issues: Pluto in Capricorn.

Time to revolt: Uranus in Aries.

Violence as an answer: Uranus in Aries.

Note that with an out of sign square, two signs are represented for each planet. In other words, if Uranus is at 24 degrees Pisces and Capricorn is at 4 degrees Capricorn, the square behaves as if it is both Uranus in Pisces and Pluto in Sagittarius, and Uranus in Aries and Pluto in Capricorn.

Note also that the man refers to patriotism, a concept associated with the remaining cardinal sign Cancer. Cancer is the release point of the cardinal T-square, the point at which a person can find some relief from the ’storm’ of planets in his head. In this case, the concept of patriotism didn’t offer any relief. In fact, it only seemed to make things worse.

Obviously, most people are not going to do something as terrible as fly a plane into a government building as the pressure of the outer planets mounts. But people are going to be under pressure, and some vulnerable people will feel that there is a storm in their heads. It will feel to some people like there is no way out.

It is important to remember that these squares do not last forever. It is not a good idea to reinterpret your entire past in the light of current bitter or despairing feelings.

Yes, there will be problems in our collective and in our personal lives. We do need to address them. And we can’t do that if we let the storms override our basic sanity.

If you’ve got your natal Saturn in Libra, your Saturn return is staring you in the face these days. Today I’ll talk about the social and even personal importance of your second Saturn return in this sign.

If you were born between late November 1950 and late October 1953—you picked a heck of a time to have your second Saturn return. The second Saturn return is a much commented upon astrological phenomenon that occurs for everyone around the ages of 58 to 60. It signifies the time when Saturn returns to the sign it was when you were born.

Saturn’s been in Libra since November 2009, and it will stay there (except for a brief retreat into Virgo during spring and early summer 2010) into October 2012. So why is this a heck of a time for a second Saturn return? Because during most of Saturn’s current stay in Libra, Pluto will be in Capricorn and Uranus will be in Aries. Uranus opposes Saturn during this time and Pluto squares it. In blunt astrological terms, this means we are looking at a time period when three important planets are fighting each other tooth and nail.

What does this mean to you? Let’s look first at a really simple idea of what the second Saturn return can mean. The first time in your life that Saturn returned to Libra, you were close to 30 years old and you were asked to realize that you’re not going to die anytime soon and that what you do has consequences because it affects your future. You were supposed to grow up in a certain sense.

At the second Saturn return, you are asked to realize that you’re not going to live forever and that what you do has consequences because you only have a certain amount of time left to do what you came to do. You need to secure your legacy, fulfill your responsibilities as a member of the human community, and grow up into a hopefully wise elder.

Piece of cake, right? Of course not. The second Saturn return can be difficult because lots of people are not all that anxious to face mortality, don the mantle of wise elder, and accept their responsibilities to the rest of humanity.

One of the main issues during the second Saturn return is often challenges from the outside world to your particular Saturn style. No matter what sign your Saturn is in, part of the task of the second Saturn return is to use your innate Saturn gifts wisely, the ones that come with your Saturn sign. For your generation, society as a whole is scheduled to very overtly challenge your particular Saturn in Libra gift—and you need to stick up for that gift and do your part to help us all get through this rather momentous time of astrological transition.

For example, Libra is the sign of indecisiveness because its mission is to think through every decision with excruciatingly precise thoroughness, balance all factors, take into account all options, contemplate all ramifications and generally take forever to come up with the best possible decision. Saturn in Libra natally works real hard at this task, practicing it and practicing it until you think you are going to go crazy. It practices it until it gets good at it, better than all those other placements that breeze through to decisions without a second thought.

During your second Saturn return, people under the influence of Uranus in Aries are going to be manifesting the opposite approach. They’re going to be bursting with youthful impulsive energy, disinclined to think anything through, overly enamored with new technology while casting nary a glance at the potential implications, and they’ll be in a big hurry. They will look at you as hopelessly old-fashioned, excessively cautious, and as a stick in the mud.

Too bad for them. At your second Saturn return, it becomes your responsibility to stick up for the virtues of making considered, precise decisions, and worrying about the future impact of today’s rashness on tomorrow’s society. Saturn wouldn’t have gone to all the trouble to thrust himself into the big planetary debate of these few years if he didn’t know that sometimes you’ve got to slow the pace of change the heck down and think about what you’re doing. For the next few years, your Saturn contribution is important.

Libra is also extremely concerned with fairness. Saturn in Libra worries about justice, the rule of law, negotiating through disputes, mediating conflicts, and generally using codified procedures to keep people from indulging their instincts to blow each other up and commit acts of violence. Pluto in Capricorn meanwhile, is going to be urging people to use sheer force and power to impose their wills, under the guise of necessity. Pluto in Capricorn will try to convince everyone that we don’t need the rule of law, fairness, and due concern with true justice because our collective security is in danger.

Tough. Your job as a member of the Saturn in Libra generation is to hold out for justice, law, and fairness anyway. To play up the importance of negotiation, procedure, and deliberation even when people want to run around like chickens with their heads cut off, shouting for vengeance, and making earnest mob-like efforts to manifest their baser instincts.

That’s a big important job you have there Mr. or Ms. Second-Saturn-Return-in-Libra. Now I’m not going to tell you that world leaders are going to phone you up and ask for your advice during troubled times. I’m not even implying that you need to be especially politically active. Uranus in Aries and Pluto in Capricorn will find you even if you’re hiding in a peaceful stone cottage in Vermont. You will feel the unrest in the skies no matter where you go.

Maybe it will be your spouse who goes off the Uranian deep end or the corporation where you work that will trot out spectacular displays of Plutonian injustice. Maybe your investments will go south when you don’t want them to and you’ll need to keep your head, even as your children have decided that now is a good time to suck you financially dry by laying guilt trips on you.

Or maybe nothing all that dramatic in your life will happen at all. Maybe the Uranus and Pluto influences will be subtle.

It doesn’t matter. Your chart has been waiting all your life to call upon the very Saturn in Libra qualities it has worked so hard to develop. If you’ve lost touch with your Saturn in Libra gifts, you will get back in touch with them now and learn to use them.

And that’s important. It’s part of your legacy. No matter what happens, this is your moment, your crowning moment perhaps, to display the integrity and values you’ve always had inside.

Go for it.

Take a look at this announcement from Donna Cunningham’s blog, SkyWriter. The blog-a-thon in March will focus on practical solutions to the personal problems associated with the cardinal T-square we’re all staring at in 2010. (The cardinal T-square consists of Saturn, Uranus, and Pluto all in early degrees of cardinal signs getting into something of a massive planetary fistfight, with Jupiter jumping up and down near Uranus to add to the hubbub.)

Donna is one of the best astrology writers out there. Her book Healing Pluto Problems is still a classic, and I know some of her writing on transits has inspired me. I’m sure the blog-a-thon will provide a lot of useful information,  and Donna’s taste in articles is impeccable.

I believe Barack Obama’s campaign slogan was ‘Change You Can Believe In.’ As the recent election of a GOP senator from blue state Massachusetts proves, it hasn’t quite worked out that way. It never does for presidents, at least not in my lifetime. Reality intrudes.

In Obama’s case, the belief in change may have been real enough, but the astrological universe was not on the same page. In fact, it has been downright opposed to many of Obama’s efforts. Literally.

Pluto opposed his natal Venus until near the end of November. That’s not good for one’s popularity, and his poll numbers may not recover from the effects of that for quite some time, especially with Saturn now squaring that same Venus.

Uranus has been opposing Obama’s natal Mars in Virgo (the Mars that wants health care reform, the Mars that has made that a signature issue), and it just stopped doing that at the end of December 2009. So much for rapidly getting consensus on that issue.

Even worse, Neptune has been opposing Obama’s natal Uranus since March 2009. It won’t stop doing that until after mid-term elections in 2010. November 2010.

Uranus is the change part of the equation. Obama’s personal change equation is somewhat hampered by the fact that there’s an inconjunct (150 degree angle) between his natal Uranus and his natal Saturn in Capricorn. He may present himself as a change agent, but in his soul he’s quite conservative and cautious. Liberals are finally figuring this out, although if they’d been paying attention they could have figured it out during his campaign.

Neptune meanwhile is the universe’s gigantic ‘pause’ button. When Neptune opposes you, there ain’t much you can do. Nothing’s going to happen until Neptune is good and ready for it.

The frustrating thing about a Neptune opposition is that you are ready, or at least you feel ready, to express whatever planet is being opposed. But the universe isn’t. You have to wait for the universe to catch up. You have to wait for the time to be right.

In many cases, a transit from an outer planet indicates that the universe thinks you’re ready to grow when you think you’re ready to stay right where you are. The opposite is the case in a Neptune opposition, at least much of the time. You are ready to grow, but the world you live in isn’t quite ready for you to reach the next stage. Something external has to move into place before you can make your next move.

Thus we get change you have to wait a long time for. Neptune is associated with hope. And hope is the response humans often have when they have to wait for external conditions to change before they can get what they want. Something has to occur that is outside of their control.

For the moment, whatever Obama may have meant when he talked about change, the US or perhaps the world is just not ready for it yet. Change comes much more slowly and in a much more confusing, chaotic, and messy manner than anyone’s natal Uranus would really prefer.

The various people who voted for change they could believe in are probably not liking this one bit. The change they wanted hasn’t come, or somehow or another it seems to have gotten all messed up. It’s going to stay all messed up or nonexistent for virtually all of 2010. People are going to be disappointed with Obama. Obama may be disappointed with Obama, although I doubt his huge ambition will fade much.

The truth is, various planets will be attacking his Venus until 2012, and Neptune will be making him wait for one thing or another for the rest of his term. Some good things will happen in his chart and the truly vicious oppositions of 2009 have faded. But the waiting will continue…

It’s eclipse season. The news out of Haiti is sobering, disturbing, sad and tragic. But on the homefront, it has caused nothing but absurdity in the sudden soap opera “As The NBC Late Night Schedule Turns.” You need a scorecard to keep track of all the players, so here goes.

Conan O’Brien: Aries. The current eclipse series affects his solar career/home life axis. The one on January 15 is the career one. Boy, did he get knocked upside the head by that one (they can affect a person early).

Not only did he get the news from NBC in a hurry, he was supposed to make a decision in a hurry. That’s what eclipses often do; they make you jump through their hoops before you have a chance to tie your shoes. This is a solar eclipse, intended to signify a new beginning. The last eclipse in Capricorn in this series takes place in early 2011, so the universe has another year to mess with his career.

But it looks like he comes out all right, maybe even better than all right. Pluto’s on his side, trining his Ascendant. Of course, it is also squaring his natal Jupiter, indicating that none of this is easy for him. He probably feels (as do many others) that he totally got screwed by NBC.

Uranus is jumping up and down on his natal Venus in the 7th house, giving him a sudden and perhaps unexpected jolt of support from many members of the public. Neptune will assist him later this year, and Uranus will make an opportunity angle with his Midheaven (career point). In the end, he’ll come into his own. He probably will not appreciate the process of coming into his own, as it looks a bit rough, but ultimately, he should land in a spot that actually suits him better than The Tonight Show. Hopefully at least.

Carson Daly: Cancer. Poor Carson Daly. He went from being a nobody on the late night talk show scene (airing after Jimmy Fallon) to being mocked for being a nobody on the late night scene. The eclipses affect his Ascendant/Descendant line, wreaking goodness knows what effects on his life. But even worse, he’s got a cardinal Grand Cross going as Pluto makes a mean angle to his sun, his natal Pluto, and his natal Mars all at the same time. Pluto’s passed the one degree mark where so many of his planets fall, but it probably won’t stop bedeviling him until the next round of eclipses this summer. He’s not out of the woods then, either. Once Pluto stops pounding him, Uranus will. If he’s lucky, at least they’ll stop making jokes about him.

Craig Ferguson: Taurus. Eclipses fall in his solar 3rd and 9th houses, typically not a very exciting place for them to occur. If you’re a fan of Craig Ferguson (on after David Letterman) as I am, you could at least hope all this nonsense would end up being good news for Craig, but alas the stars do not support him. Neptune’s busy squaring his sun and opposing his natal Uranus. He has started beating Jimmy Fallon in the ratings recently I hear. In the interests of promoting Craig and piling on NBC, I hope that continues. But Craig’ll probably have to wait for really big progress.

David Letterman: Aries. Eclipses affect his career and home life, as they do Conan. Dave’s already had some jolts, and he’s having a ball with this latest round of foolishness at a rival network. He may get a lucky break (ratings boost) out of all the hoo-hah, but he’ll have his hands full with his own concerns most likely. For one thing, in addition to eclipses, he’ll have Uranus on his Mars this summer. That’s an explosive combination.

Jay Leno: Taurus. The man being blamed for all this mess, perhaps unfairly. Eclipses in his 3rd and 9th houses, generally not too powerful, although they’ll apparently have him moving time slots. Jay’s probably as confused by the whole debacle as anyone else. Neptune’s been squaring his Mercury for quite some time, and that’s about as confusing as things can get. The move to 10 p.m. was a nightmare from a chart standpoint (Pluto square Uranus plus Uranus on Mars), but he comes out both lucky and powerful with Pluto supporting his Jupiter. His less than edgy personality and style probably have something to do with that.

Jeff Zucker: Aries. The NBC executive who dreamed up this crazy dance, perhaps the man most realistically to blame for the whole fiasco. Eclipses affect his career/home life. For some time, there have been a fair number of creative types in Hollywoodland who’ve wished that Mr. Zucker didn’t have a career any longer since he seems to specialize in hacking off creative types. I don’t have his birth time, so I don’t know if any of the angles of his chart are affected. At the moment, however, it all seems to be up in the air chart-wise as Neptune and Uranus are scheduled to weigh in with contradictory advice. My guess for the moment is that whatever ends up happening won’t go as planned from Zucker’s standpoint.

Jimmy Fallon: Virgo. Eclipses affect his 5th and 11th houses. The 11th house does relate to one’s long-held dreams. Mr. Fallon got a big break when Leno was pushed into prime time, but his chart’s in a pretty bad mood now. Pluto’s soon to square his Mars, not a happy thought, just as Uranus opposes his Virgo sun. He’s got a little help from Neptune, but his chart is seething. I don’t have his time o’birth, so I can’t guess how he’ll react outwardly, but his chart is stressed out.

Jimmy Kimmel:Scorpio. Eclipses affect his 3rd and 9th houses, not too energetic a place to host them. It can’t make ABC’s late night star too happy to hear people speculating that Conan could go to ABC. And Kimmel’s chart has been in the throes of mid-life transits. They seem to be affecting his personal and romantic life (e.g., with his ex, Sarah Silverman) more than his career though. Although he’s gotten some good jokes out of the mess, that’s probably all that will happen on the career front. Probably.

Strangely, many of these late night players share all kinds of resonances between their charts. Aries, Taurus, and Pisces are all quite prominent. The 11 degree mark seems to show up over and over again as well as Venus in Pisces. It never occurred to me that there might be chart signatures for late night hosts. Who knew?

P.S. If you can donate even a small sum by text message for the victims of the Haitian earthquake, you would be doing so much good. Earthquakes are perhaps the most devastating natural disasters, and one cannot help but feel for those brave souls trying desperately to dig out their loved ones without equipment and to cope with the aftermath of such a cataclysm.

Who knew there was a word for the mixture of “anxiety and unrealistic optimism”? According to an article in USA Today it’s called ‘hypomania’ and the current generation suffers from it. According to the article, the young people suffering through the Great Depression may have had it rough, but at least they had their mental health. Today’s high school and college students, on the other hand, are supposedly 5 or 6 times more likely to suffer from some sort of an anxiety or depression disorder. And a quarter of those surveyed had what might be called an attitude disorder–they didn’t think ‘the rules’ applied to them.

There are probably all kinds of reasons for the results found by the study cited in the article, including, perhaps, today’s young people being more willing to be honest about how they feel. I’ll focus on the astrological reasons only.

In 1969, a man named Nathaniel Braden published a book called The Psychology of Self-Esteem and started the self-esteem movement. (It wasn’t a very good book, by the way. My mother got it for me and I was not impressed.) The timing of Braden’s book wasn’t a coincidence astrologically.

In 1970, shortly after the book was published, the skies ushered in the Long Era of Sagittarius, patron sign of unrealistic optimism. From 1970 to 2008, with a short break in the 1990s, one of the big outer planets (Pluto, Neptune or Uranus) was in Sagittarius. These planets glommed right on to the notion of self-esteem because it fit their Sagittarian bias toward believing that failure either doesn’t exist or is irrelevant. So for 40 years almost, American children (perhaps children worldwide, the phenomenon was not limited to the US) were fed on a steady diet of self-esteem and unrealistic optimism. No wonder they’re anxious.

Unrealistic optimism is a recipe for anxiety as it is, by its nature, unrealistic. Much like the financial system was, children were taught to balance themselves on a house of self-esteem cards they knew could not stand forever. Another study, summarized in this article, explains why unrealistic self-esteem is so anxiety-provoking. The Pluto in Leo parents of these children fed the phenomenon because the sign of Leo places a great premium on confidence, assertiveness and even, one could argue, on a sense of entitlement.

After 40 years of almost non-stop Sagittarius influence on our culture, we were probably all a bit hypomaniac by 2007 (when the hypomaniac students were surveyed). We’d have been weird if we weren’t. We may have subconsciously known that the Pluto in Capricorn era was coming, that the center wouldn’t hold, that we had to get our piece of the pie before the pie disappeared.

The pie has disappeared now or at least gotten a lot smaller. A new sign is the Big Man on Campus for the moment, Capricorn. Capricorn loves to think about failure and is suspicious of success. I read an article in Vanity Fair this summer about an elite girls school, and the new headmistress summed up the new regime. She takes the attitude that we’re all a bunch of softies, afraid to hurt each other’s feelings.

Her name is Kate Windsor and she says “This idea of a structure of hierarchy or power has been really dismissed as being not part of the American way or the American Dream. We can all do, we can all be, and we’re all successful.” Ms. Windsor dislikes the idea that we can all be successful. She is in favor of formality, matter-of-factness, losers as well as winners, traditions, and purposely making people anxious so they can learn to be tough.

She could be the PR spokesflack for Pluto in Capricorn. Capricorn is hierarchy and Pluto is power. Ergo, Pluto in Cap is all over the concept of a hierarchy of power. It loves formality, unsentimentality, tradition, fear, and toughness. Given that the hypomania-inducing concept of self-esteem has been apparently scientifically discredited now, Ms. Windsor’s view will probably become increasingly widespread.

So I suppose we should all learn that the self-esteem idea was idiotic and that the people who bought into it were equally stupid? I’m not so sure.

The idea was of the times. The Great Depression was long gone. Things were, in many respects, undeniably economically and socially better than they had been a few short decades ago. It would have been foolish to retain the Depression-era stoicism in an era of abundance. People needed to adapt to a new reality.

It was only natural to attempt to articulate a psychology of feeling good in a set of circumstances in which there was every reason to feel good. How foolish would it have been to force an ethic of ‘don’t enjoy anything and don’t be optimistic’ when there was lots to enjoy and seemingly good reason for optimism?

The self-esteem idea and the hypomania that accompanied worked for quite awhile and then it didn’t. The Ms. Windsors of the world with their Capricornian attitudes will work for awhile and then they won’t. Times change and so do our maladies. I’m not entirely sure the Sagittarian generations didn’t get a good deal out of the bargain–hypomania may be a more pleasant malady than a grindingly depressing world in which there are far more losers and far fewer winners.

Someone asked a good question recently. If all these people have learned how to tune into the Law of Attraction to attract wealth, why did we fall into the worst recession in decades? It is kind of ironic, isn’t it? All those people believing in infinite abundance, busy trying to attract riches of all sorts, witnessing the single greatest loss of wealth in human history (in absolute not relative terms). Literally trillions and trillions of dollars of wealth were lost during the financial collapse a year ago. I guess you could call it a cosmic joke. The universe does seem to love a good laugh at human expense.

Or you could say it was those Law of Attraction folks themselves that precipitated the crash. You could speculate that their mass of thoughts of abundance just tipped the financial system right over into collapse and revealed it for the house of cards it was. You could say they thought us into a terrible recession. And they did.

Sort of.

Of course, most of the people scooping up false riches during the run up to the collapse weren’t practicing Law of Attraction folks. At least, they didn’t know they were. But they were believing in a world of infinite abundance just the same. They believed housing prices could never fall. That their mathematical models could never fail. That money was just there for the taking and it would never go away. That the economy would never stop growing. They didn’t believe in limits. They believed in infinite wealth.

They believed us right into collapse–because people aren’t supposed to believe in things like unlimited abundance. Housing prices do fall. Mathematical models do fail. No market economy grows uninterrupted forever. There is no unlimited wealth.

Everybody knows this. By the time the average person is two, he or she figures out that unlimited abundance isn’t feasible or realistic and he or she starts hearing and using the magic word ‘no.’ Because there are limits. The toddler can’t do everything and have everything. It’s precisely because everyone knows this that Law of Attraction gurus worked so hard to convince people to overcome their poverty consciousness.

Everyone sensible has a poverty consciousness and is supposed to. Because everyone has known deprivation. No one has ever gotten everything. (Not even Brad Pitt.) That poverty consciousness is not supposed to go away. It is supposed to inform our experience of life, not determine it, but inform it.

Astrology knows this. Astrology is a lot older than any of the Law of Attraction gurus and it is all about the human attempt to figure out and remember (often with great difficulty) what the average two year old knows. Which is what human life is really like.

Abundance thinking in astrology is indicated by the planet Jupiter. Everyone has one in his or her natal chart. We’ve all got abundance thinking and we’ve all got some form of abundance in our lives. Sometimes we recognize it; sometimes we don’t.

Poverty consciousness, or more upliftingly, the knowledge of limits, is represented in astrology by Saturn. We’ve all got Saturn in our natal charts. We all have a sense of limitation. Of scarcity.

The rule of thumb in astrology is that the further away from the sun a planet is, the more powerful it is. (More or less.) Saturn is further out than Jupiter and Saturn trumps Jupiter. We can fly high in our higher minds (Jupiter is the symbol of the higher mind), but we’ve always got to come back to reality (Saturn). What goes up, must come down. Saturn grounds us. He’s real life.

Consider that until the late 1700s, Saturn was the furthest planet known in the solar system. Saturn and its rings bounded human consciousness. Awareness of scarcity was the final arbiter of human destiny.

Then Uranus was discovered and science opened up the doors to further perspectives on the human situation. Collectively, we smashed through some of our previous limits, endured the Industrial Revolution, and learned to live with never-ending change (Uranus is the symbol of rapid change). Neptune and Pluto opened further doors.

But Saturn never went away. The principle of limits didn’t stop being valid. The awareness of scarcity is still an important part of our human legacy and we ought to respect it. If we don’t, quite frankly, we will probably do as many a previous species has done, and destroy the habitat that supports us. It is the awareness of scarcity that allows us to treat our resources and planet as precious and worth saving.

We’ve just finished up, in 2008, a long cycle of Jupiter abundance thinking, due to outer planets (Uranus through Pluto) transiting through the sign of Sagittarius since the 1970s. Sagittarius (ruled by Jupiter) is followed in the zodiac by Capricorn (ruled by Saturn). Knowledge of scarcity follows knowledge of abundance. None of us will see these outer planets in Sagittarius again in our lifetime. An era is over.

We’re now going through the last 16 years of outer planets in Capricorn. When Pluto leaves Capricorn in 2024, another era will end. Neither abundance nor scarcity will resonate in quite the same way.

But that doesn’t mean that Jupiter and Saturn will go away, nor the human imagination of abundance or fear of scarcity. Without the ability to imagine more, we’d never even try to create what doesn’t already exist. But without the knowledge that nothing is infinite, we don’t have the wisdom to responsibly use what we create.

Someone asked me the other day about transits being more powerful when the transiting planet is stationing, why this seemed to be so. I don’t have the answer to that question, but I think it often has to do with the fact that a stationing planet seems to move so slowly that it has plenty of time to deliver a blast of energy.

But if you don’t care about the jargon and just want to know what happens when a transiting planet stations in angle to one of your personal planets–take a look at Tiger Woods’s life these days.

In his case, Uranus in Pisces is squaring his Sagittarius moon. Uranus is the planet of ‘hey, let’s unexpectedly disrupt everything!’ and a Sagittarius moon tends to think to itself: ‘I’m really not sure I can be satisfied with just one person.’ When Uranus wants to disrupt a Sagittarius moon, outing it would be as good a way to do that as any.

Dropping the wife bomb on a philandering husband would probably be enough for a Uranus square that didn’t have much time to get juice in its grid. But Uranus stationed at the degrees of Tiger Woods’s moon (22 degrees) and is spending not quite 8 weeks there. That’s plenty of time to get juice in the system.

Tiger’s public troubles started when Uranus had only a few weeks at 22 degrees under its belt. It didn’t actually station until the beginning of December (right around the time when everyone figured out what was going on). It’s got another few weeks before it even gets to 23 degrees. The flaming spears of devil Uranus still have some heat on them.

The turning point has already come, though. Right around the time Uranus’s apparent motion stopped and then switched direction from retrograde to forward. The entire (very energetic) transit, which stretches back to 2008, will be over relatively soon. But the public’s perception of him has probably been forever altered. It’s not actually scheduled to stop getting altered until February 2010. For ol’ Tiger is not just facing Uranus’s wrath in square to his moon, but also in square to his Midheaven (reputation). The financial ramifications could stretch well beyond that, as Neptune is getting into the act and will square his Scorpio Venus in 2010. When it rains, it pours.

Supposedly, there’s a point to all this, at least from the point of view of Tiger’s chart. The point would theoretically be something like this:

Uranus in Pisces to Sagittarius Moon: Dude, grow up. Seriously. You’re playing around like an adolescent while people are making sacrifices for you. Namely, the person you are married to. Get a clue.

Moon in Sagittarius: I don’t want to grow up. You only get old once, but you can be immature and heedless forever!

Uranus in Pisces: The mother of your children is being betrayed here. You are warned.

Moon in Sagittarius: I don’t listen to warnings. That’s my nature! I’m Sagittarian. I have lots of good qualities and carelessness of danger is one of them.

Uranus in Pisces: ZAP! ZAP! ZAP! ZAP!

Moon in Sagittarius: What just happened? One minute I was having Thanksgiving dinner, the next minute I was lying in street and featured prominently in the tabloids.

Uranus in Pisces: Perhaps you’d like to reconsider whether it is time for you to grow up a bit?

If Tiger is smart, his moon will grow up a bit. That’s what transits do for us. They update our birth chart placements. What was fine and dandy for a young man or a teenager perhaps, is not so fine and dandy for someone with two kids and the net worth of  a small country to worry about. When Uranus comes around to update your birth placements by square or opposition, let’s hope you get the message before he destroys your car.

One final note: the supposed astrological marker for an athlete is Mars in the 9th house near the Midheaven. Sure enough, Tiger’s got it.

I’ll admit that I really haven’t known much about Glenn Beck. About 6 months ago, I was searching for something on Google and stumbled across what must have been his website. I thought I saw a factual error and fired off an email, not realizing he was a popular broadcaster. I found out later when he started getting a lot of media coverage by Time magazine and so on.

I started seeing snippets on TV of controversial statements he made & saw other coverage, but didn’t investigate too much. I’ve seen his latest book, too. The cover makes me vaguely uncomfortable because the uniform on it reminds me of Nazi brownshirts. Every time I see it out of the corner of my eye, I think “Why are Nazis being prominently featured in America’s fine retail establishments?”

Then today I saw a quote from what Mr. Beck is billing as The Plan. Here’s the quote:

“I have begun meeting with some of the best minds in the country that believe in limited government, maximum freedom and the values of our Founders. I am developing a 100 year plan. I know that the bipartisan corruption in Washington that has brought us to this brink and it will not be defeated easily. It will require unconventional thinking and a radical plan to restore our nation to the maximum freedoms we were supposed to have been protecting, using only the battlefield of ideas.

- All of the above will culminate in The Plan, a book that will provide specific policies, principles and, most importantly, action steps that each of us can take to play a role in this Refounding.”

And I thought–is he an Aquarian? Turns out, he is. February 10, 1964. The clue is this: “unconventional thinking and a radical plan to restore our nation to the maximum freedoms we were supposed to have been protecting, using only the battlefield of ideas.” You can’t get more Aquarian than unconventional thinking, radical plans, maximum freedoms, and the battlefield of ideas. The sign of Aquarius eats that stuff up.

Turns out he’s practically the astrological twin of another popular pillar of post-Bush conservatism, Sarah Palin. They’ve both got Mars conjunct sun, at least three planets in Aquarius, and natal Neptune squaring the Sun, Mars, Saturn triple conjunction.

Aquarius is billed as a ‘progressive’ sign, but the Aquarian interpretation of progressive is rather idiosyncratic. Lincoln was an Aquarius; FDR was one, and Reagan was one. Quite different approaches to government. The highest-ranking Aquarian politician of late has been Dick Cheney, and he’s not high on the progressive’s most admired list.

So, a few words about the Aquarian approach (although Cheney is something of an outlier in the Aquarian pantheon). It tends to be populist and popular, bold, divisive, stubborn, and counter-intuitive. Aquarius has a bit of a superiority complex, and with it an often successful habit of playing dumb. They play the ‘just folks’ card quite often; perhaps it is true, perhaps not.They tend to be good communicators, although in an unconventional way.

Beck and Palin are Aquarians that share a feisty thirst for combat, due to the Mars conjuction. Both are hemmed in by a strict and conservative Saturn. Both, due to Neptune transits, have been perhaps a bit insane of late, quite lucratively so in both cases.

Both have had a nice long bout of Jupiter in their sign this year (economic success) squaring Neptune in Scorpio (conspiracy theories and irrational fears). Both perhaps have a tendency to delude themselves (Neptune square sun in the birth chart, also shared by our current President) as well as considerable charisma. Both also have Jupiter in Aries, which contributes to a philosophy of self-reliance and aggression.

Neptune has been melting the Sun, Mars and Saturn placements of Beck and Palin over the past couple of years. In combination with Jupiter in Aquarius this year, there’s been perhaps a bit of grandiosity and over-estimation of self, although it probably seems quite justified to both of them given their rapid rises to center stage. Until Neptune leaves their Aquarius conjunctions, both will likely have a somewhat distorted view of the world and themselves, perhaps coupled with strong idealism.

The thing that’s interesting to me about Beck is how overtly Aquarian he is in his idea for The Plan. Although Beck is seemingly a free-market type (bills himself as a libertarian), Aquarius is actually the sign of the collective, of socialism and communism, of an ideal of rational planning combined with The Support Of The Masses. Only an Aquarian would have the chutzpah to come up with a 100 year plan.

Most people are lucky if they can keep their plans on track for a week, let alone 100 years. Only an Aquarius would even think it’s a good idea to come up with such a plan on the belief that things wouldn’t change so much in a hundred years that all your former assumptions wouldn’t be outdated. Aquarius can be a very fixed sign, unwilling to admit the possibility that it would have to change. Even though individual Aquarians, like Beck and Palin and even Reagan, FDR and Lincoln, can change key details of their strategies in the blink of an eye.

A 100 year plan is the kind of idea that a socialist or old-style Marxist would eat right up. The masses will shake off the shackles of tyranny vested in The Powers That Be. They will not be held down by the economic elites but will take their rightful place through enlightenment and collective action. And an Aquarian will tell them how to do it–according to the Master Plan. Everything will be reformed and renewed and we’ll just all start over with a fresh slate and the errors of the past will gradually wither away. Everyone will be free once the nasty current structures are abolished.

In some ways, it’s a powerful and touching vision. It never works, though. Neptune, with its promise of Nirvana once restrictions are melted away, is a notorious liar. Things don’t go according to plan; the masses are fickle and contrary, and most of them are actually much more interested in the nuts and bolts of a semi-decent life than the battlefield of ideas.

I can’t blame Beck for succumbing to Neptune’s lure, though, and his ideas may prove influential. We’ll find out the real consequences of them when Pluto enters Aquarius in about 16 years, but til then, I admire the guy’s willingness to dream, if not his grounding in reality.

What can we expect and prepare for in the 2010s?

Here are some of the themes I think we’ll be confronting:

Bad: A sustained economic downturn that doesn’t really bottom out until 2012-2015. Things not really picking up economically on a world scale until 2015 or 2016. There has already been a significant loss of worldwide wealth and it may not be over yet, nor even for a long time.

Good: Infrastructure rebuilding. During the long transit of Pluto through Capricorn (until 2024), we will probably see an effort by nations to regenerate their core infrastructures, including traffic and power systems, etc. Long overdue and sorely needed.

Good: Scientific breakthroughs in alternative energy and other disciplines. Uranus in Aries is traditionally quite good for science. New and world-changing ideas will ultimately emerge.

Maybe Good, Maybe Not: War. War somewhere is a safe bet in any era, but I’m talking about dealing with the roots, the reasons nations declare war in the first place. We can sort of see this in the delay in Obama’s decision regarding next steps in Afghanistan. Saturn in Libra square Pluto creates a sort of compulsion to examine ‘why’ – ‘why are we doing this?’

Maybe Good, Maybe Not: Decreased immigration and global travel. Rates of travel exploded during the Pluto in Sagittarius era. In the US, rates of immigration exploded too. Both will level off, now that the long Sagittarius era is over. The move toward a focus on ‘local’ sources of goods and services will probably increase.

Probably Not Good In The Short Run: Clashes between prudent and cautious governments and impulsive or freedom-seeking individuals and groups. Pluto in Capricorn makes governments want to be security-conscious and cautious. Uranus in Aries makes individuals and groups want more freedoms or to engage in spontaneous demonstrations. This may be helpful in the long run, but often leads to tighter government clampdowns in the short run.

Not Good: More invasive, intrusive, and repressive governments around the world. This combination of Pluto and Capricorn is as potentially pernicious as the combination of Pluto and Cancer was.

Not Good: Potential resource shortages. Pluto in the restricting sign of Capricorn signals the opposite of abundance. Making do with less may become the new norm.

Probably Good: More investigations of the military. In the wake of the Ft. Hood shootings, there are calls for investigations already. The clash between Pluto (likes to get to the truth of things) and Saturn in Libra (one symbol for the military) will create an urge to re-think how the military approaches a number of things.

Partly Good, Partly Not: More rules and regulations. First up for examination is the financial system that caused the crash of ‘08. Probably won’t be the only sector of the economy and society to be put under the microscope, though.

Potentially Good: More determined and forceful efforts toward peace. The upcoming clash between cardinal signs is quite warlike, but during times of planetary clash, greater efforts toward peace are often made. On the other hand, peace can come at quite a price, as Neville Chamberlain can tell you. There may be quite fierce animosity between those who would pursue a policy of something like appeasement and those who favor all out war.

Disruptive: Internal clashes within societies between rationality and emotionality, systems vs. individuals, conformity vs. rebellion or individuality. Expressions of open hostility and even hatred will likely increase. The current lack of civility in discussion will probably only get worse. Tension between governments and their own peoples, as was common during the 1960s as well as the 1930s.

Nerve-Wracking: Very tense foreign relations among nations. Saturn brings to light problems between nations that have been being papered over.

Impressive If It Happens: Major agreements and initiatives. When a cardinal T-square breaks up, a sudden release of energy often leads to significant initiatives and changes. Since this T-square looks to me like it pits countries against one another, it may be followed by impressive and far-reaching treaties or a real agreement to deal with global climate change and other international issues.

Unpredictable Effects: Major Changes in Business and Corporations. Global business has been evolving for a long time; the changes during the next 16 years may be the most extensive ever. Permanent changes in how people work. Cost-consciousness, cost-cutting, efficiency, even ruthless efficiency will probably rule the day. Possibly the Wal-Mart-ization of business and the workforce.

Mixed: Changing values. Virtues like competence, thrift, responsibility, and hard work will become the new black. This is already beginning to happen. Pragmatism will gain traction over ideology. Integrity and reputation will become even more important. Individual households will probably engage in sustained cost-cutting, and a lot of things once considered necessities will become luxuries.

Mixed: Changing demographics. Aging populations in the developed world due to increases in lifespan will probably create new opportunities for developing nations with younger populations. Issues relating to the elderly will become more and more prominent.

Mixed: High-rises and urban density. Cities will become more and more important as rural areas are abandoned and high-density housing gains precedence over suburban sprawl.

Most of these things are continuations of existing trends, which is generally how history works. Things that have been slowly gathering steam under the surface become more and more prominent. Of course, some of these things happen to some extent during any era; it is just likely that some of them will become more noticeable in the years ahead.