Midlife Transits

It’s hard to say what your mental state or thought processes will be like this March. If you were born in March, they may be pretty intense, as Pluto is stuck at 5 degrees all month, close to a square with your natal sun. Furthermore, your ruler Mars is at 0 degrees Leo for much of the month, giving you March Aries folks an intense shot of helpful energy. Saturn opposing your sun adds another layer of intense energy.

On the other hand, if you were born near the end of the sign, then you will benefit from wonderfully pleasant angles from Neptune and Chiron to your sun.That’s not intense at all. For the rest of you, it partly depends how you respond to Pisces energy. There’s a lot of it in March, and it may lift your mood or make you feel quite tired.

Planets also move into your own sign this month. Venus leads the way, entering on the 7th. Mercury follows, entering on the 17th. The sun brings up the rear, entering on the 20th. Energy in your own sign should presumably help perk you up.

We could also sum things up another way. Until the 17th, your mind is scheduled to be on Very Big Thoughts around issues that relate to the entire previous year or perhaps much longer than that. From the 17th on, your thoughts are scheduled to be on much more immediate and smaller matters. You may also get a single good idea in the second half of the month that proves useful for the next 12 months.

My goodness the skies are thrifty these days, and so, I’ve heard, is the American consumer. You’d probably be wise to follow the trend by making every attempt to live on less than you earn while building up some savings. Pluto is still glaring at Saturn this month, and Pluto is the Grand Planetary Poohbah of debt–so it’s not wise to rile him up by taking on any more than is absolutely necessary. I’m not saying this will be easy, just that it would be a worthwhile effort. Pluto is affecting your chart more than it is many other signs because it is at the very top of your solar wheel, where its influence stands out.

This is also a month with a lot of Aquarian influence. Aquarius governs things like humanitarian efforts, friendships, hopes and wishes. More paradoxically, it governs the need to be a separate individual within the context of a small or large group, the desire to be special and notable yet not alone. Chiron, Neptune, Venus, Mercury, and the sun all travel through this sign in February. Something in your chart wants to heal or be healed, perhaps both. There’s idealism, romance, the desire to help and be helped, to be a part of something larger but to do your part. I say go with it, because these all sound like excellent things to me. If you’re single, Valentine’s Day would be a great day to go out with a bunch of friends. If you’re not single–well just enjoy.

No sluffing off in January! The skies are filled with Capricorn energy, from the sun to Pluto, and Capricorn expects you to do your chores. That means your homework, your housework, and your work work. Jupiter is moving away from dreamy Neptune in your solar house of wishes and into Pisces, where he’ll take a brief nap. The symbolism of this is to stop wishing, get your rest at night, and then get up and go get ‘em. Doing, not thinking, is the order of the day.

It’s kind of like you’re mountain climbing these days, in an astrological sense, as most of the energy is around the peaks of your chart. There’s even an eclipse in the sign at the top of your solar chart, Capricorn, on the 15th. This is the second in a pair. The first one, a lunar eclipse right at New Year’s Eve, occurred at the base of your chart. It dealt with the very basics of your home life, the foundation. If you didn’t feel a dose of energy in that sector last month, you may feel it in January.

As for the rest of 2010, this could well be an exciting year for you. Uranus and Jupiter will enter your sign, putting more of an astrological spotlight on your sign than you’ve experienced in a long time. The challenge will come from committed relationships, as Saturn in the sign opposite yours is likely to brook no excuses for failing to live up to your responsibilities in this area. It’s going to be quite  a year. Get ready!

This is typically a good time of year for Aries. Good friends, a generous spirit all around, gifts and celebrations–what’s not to like? This year, however, for better or worse, career concerns may come calling, thanks to Pluto in Capricorn and the early entry of Mercury into that sign. You gotta get a firm grip on that aspect of your life and make sure all the basics are covered, no matter how sociable you may otherwise be feeling. To put it another way, both aspects of your life–personal and professional–are equally important and need to be balanced this month.

First, get your gifts and holiday planning organized and out of the way so that you will not be stressed when the aspects start piling up from the week of the 13th. Get your holiday cards done as early in the month as possible (by the end of the 1st week). The 16th sees the new moon in Sagittarius, which helps to symbolize the potential for goodness in mankind. Enjoy the optimism.

Then figure on putting yourself forward and speaking up for yourself once the sun enters Capricorn and your career sector on the 21st. Finally, a lunar eclipse at the end of the month is part of an ongoing cycle intended to help bring you good conditions in your home or domestic life. It may not appear that way at first, but that’s what the cycle is supposed to help you do.

Pluto in Capricorn kicks up a fuss with Saturn in Libra this November. Pluto’s in your house of career and visibility, and it’s possible he will try to drive you into the ground with heavy career demands that will take time away from the serious relationships in your life. Thank goodness your health is scheduled to be improving thanks to Saturn finally getting his butt out of your health house. Don’t take chances, though, an apple a day keeps the doctor away, as do exercise, adequate sleep if you can get it, and proactive stress management.

You’re more likely to get your exercise this month if you are doing something fun that will let you burn off tension. No dreary rounds of running the treadmill at the gym this month. Get out there and play if you can. Another form of stress relief can come through contemplating the big ideas for long-term goals and healing the planet and being all idealistic that your chart is still nurturing for you. The current month may be stressful, but if you understand that you are on a journey that is leading somewhere significant, it will help you put things in perspective.

On another note, this is the month when you may get an excellent idea for dealing with marital finances, debts, expenses, obligations and all that other financial stuff that’s so important. Put your thinking cap on!

October is one of those big deal astrological months, because Saturn will leave Virgo for the first time since September 2007. It will move into Libra, the sign opposite yours, on October 29, where it will put a lot of emphasis on the word ‘and‘ in your life. Any time you’ve got a major planet in the sign opposite yours, you’re being asked to figure out how to get around the either/or thinking we all love so much so that you can scooch over toward ‘this and that’ thinking. Saturn in Libra will give you a real workout (a challenging workout) in that department, as it encourages your normally decisive sign to weigh alternatives and nuances.

Example: it may seem perfectly reasonable to you as an Aries to prefer pens to pencils or vice versa or one pen over another or to have an deep fondness for or dislike of Sharpies. Saturn in Libra will do its determined best to frustrate this by introducing you to the world of working with both pens and pencils, your favorite brand and someone else’s, with Sharpies and their alternatives. It will most likely do this through the medium of a significant other that you will be motivated to cooperate with even when you think it’s going to kill you. But you may also find this theme surfacing in other areas over the next 3 years.

As if that’s not enough, Saturn will also be trying to teach you good manners! Libra’s natural instinct is to find your enthusiastic blunt straightforwardness to be not quite tactful and indirect enough for its tastes. So it will try to teach you the benefits of diplomacy. This is going to be really interesting because, come June 2010, Uranus will enter your own sign (yay!) for a few months, where it will turn up the volume on your inner voice, and it’s going to want to shout Saturn down. Plus, you’ll get a nice, warm dose of Jupiter to give you self-assurance. A lot to look forward to in the next 12 months.

In the meantime, rest up. September was a brutal month astrologically, and October is not nearly as bad. You could use the break, and you’ll get one. So take advantage of it.

Pluto goes direct this month in your career house, and you may feel a bit of change in the air, at least in that regard. The change would most likely come in the form of ideas, not bold steps just yet. You still have plenty of work to do before the big stuff happens.

In fact, the month as a whole is a bit (well actually a lot) unstable, which means you may want to hold off on taking too much action, as you’ll probably end up having to re-do everything anyway. Of course, since you’re an Aries, you may prefer it that way, rather than having to sit on the sidelines and wait everything out.

It’s the kind of month wherein you could get all kinds of nifty ideas, and yet find yourself spending the majority of your time having to do mundane things like organize your closets and pick your clothes up off the bedroom floor. Saturn in your house of daily routines is all stern, just as Uranus in your sector of the subconscious mind has decided upon a pure hatred of all routine and discipline.

If you do get nifty ideas about your future life direction (not a bad way to spend an annoying month), mull them over for awhile if at all possible. Use the time spent on mundane chores to daydream, fantasize, and let stuff hatch in your brain.The universe as a whole is just packed with resistance this month, and daydreaming is your escape hatch.

Finally, you might want to take steps to boost your immune system (such as by getting adequate rest) so you can do some resisting of your own of those back-to-school colds and that swine flu thing they say is going around.

Creative insights are likely to be yours for the having in August, Aries. First off, you’ve got the sun and then Venus in your solar house of creativity. You’ve also got Uranus (Mr. Insight) in the creative sign of Pisces rumbling around the backroads of your mind, looking for interesting stuff to toss up to consciousness. He’s been doing that for awhile, but his energy is gaining strength in August. That’s because he’s preparing for a showdown with Saturn in September, and it’s usually the time before the actual opposition when the interesting stuff happens.

The uncreative, uninterested in insight part of your solar chart (Saturn), the part that wants to know where you left your keys, is scheduled to get blasted by the part (Uranus) that doesn’t give a damn about the tangibles and only cares about the life of the mind. The result is that you may lose your keys but get a great idea.

In other news, Pluto is slowing to a crawl as he starts to wrap up a long transit that’s been pounding Aries folks born on the first day of the sign. Pluto’s trying to kill stuff that he thinks you’ve outgrown in your career or reputation, and he’s got eclipse energy on his side. If you didn’t let something go or watch something die in that area of your life in July, you may do so in August.

I know this may not sound good. It may not even look good when it happens. There may be layoffs or cutbacks in your field. But in the long run this is fortunate for you. Really it is.

You’ve also got energy affecting your home situation in August, so you probably need to attend to that as well, and it may not be easy. Last but maybe not least, you may need to let go of a friendship around August 6. On the upside–great month for dating. Good Leo energy for your love life, pretty much all month long.

So…to summarize. All you gotta do is lose your keys, get a great idea or some creative insight, find your keys, let go of something in your career or reputation, straighten out your living situation, evaluate your friendships, and go on a bunch of dates. Piece of cake!

For years now, your solar chart has had this fear of you getting into some sort of rut. Uranus in Pisces has been the planet in charge of this fear, and it has done everything in its power from 2004 on to prevent you from being able to settle into some sort of stable routine. Some of you have had to wait a long time for visible changes, while for some the changes started back then and haven’t stopped. The most likely sectors of change for you recently have been your love life, your relationship with your children, your social life, or your need for friendship and companionship.

In July, the focus of change switches over to your career and possibly to your residential living situation. We start a series of eclipses in July (on the 7th and the 22nd) that affect these areas of your life and that will continue to do so for the next year and a half or so. This new focus is in addition to the sweet vibes currently animating your social life and friendship sector.

Eclipses in angular houses (astrology speak) can be difficult at times, or so the tradition says, but for you these are more likely than normal to be a piece of cake. If you’ve been responding to your chart’s urgings, you’ve built up quite a support network by now. It’s likely that some of your friends idolize you.

Of course, if you were born during the first three or four days of your sign you’ve been dealing with these changes, especially in career matters, since last year, so you’re an old hand at these things. Whenever you were born, the time is favorable this month to lean on others, and perhaps even to date someone new if you’re in the market.

If you were born near the earliest part of your sun sign, you’ve been getting some lessons from Pluto in Capricorn in your solar career house. Pluto’s lessons are rarely easy, and often words like annoying and irritating are a vast understatement. All Aries will undergo this tutelage at some point, which means all Aries could use a few pointers now that Pluto’s retrograde and summer’s here–which mean you might have a moment to catch your breath. Pointer #1: Streamline your work routine and guard your energy!

Really. If your schedule allows you any time whatsoever, do that now, while a bit of the pressure is off. Figure out what you can streamline or nuke (Pluto’s the planet of nuking things) and how you can conserve your energy (Capricorn is the sign of conserving things). You may not think this is all that necessary right this moment, but believe me, by this fall you will be really glad for anything you took off your plate now. Think less, not more.

The other thing to do in June is have your friends over to the house. You’ve got a mighty excess of friendship energy these days, and you’ve got entertaining from your home energy after the 21st. Why not combine them? Could be fun.