Midlife Transits

Saturn

Note: This article will form part of the International Astrology Day Blog-a-thon, March 19-21. There will be links to an entire collection of articles on Saturn on March 20 at the following URL: http://mandilockley.blogspot.com/2010/03/look-after-saturn-saturn-will-look.html. Check it out!

If you were born between late November 1950 and late October 1953 and your natal Saturn is in Libra, you are either experiencing your second Saturn return or will experience it soon. The second Saturn return is a predictable astrological phenomenon that occurs for everyone between the ages of approximately 58 to 60. It marks the time when Saturn returns to the sign it was when you were born.

One of the issues that almost inevitably comes up during the second Saturn return is aging. Saturn rules the aging process, and it is obviously pretty normal for a person approaching their 60s to think about getting older. For the generation experiencing the second Saturn return in Libra during the next couple of years (Saturn will be in Libra, with the exception of a short break in spring and summer 2010, into October 2012), the second Saturn return will be impacted by the presence of Pluto in Capricorn and Uranus in Aries. Both of these other energies clash with Saturn in Libra and therefore throw issues into sharper relief.

Let’s look briefly at how Pluto and Uranus can affect, although not fundamentally change, the dynamics of the second Saturn return.

Potential dynamic #1: Uranus in Aries represents, among other things, a rush of youthful impulsive energy, the desire for heedless, even reckless change. You may feel that events in society are making you all the more aware that things are changing faster than you’d like. You may feel like, or even be accused of being, a fuddy-duddy who wants to stand in the way of change. On a more personal level, the opposition between Uranus and Saturn could make you even more aware that your body isn’t what it used to be, and maybe your outlook isn’t either.

Potential dynamic #2: Saturn is a pretty lonely planet by nature, and in Libra, the fear of aloneness can be quite acute. You might think about being lonely if you retire, about not having a spouse or companion, about losing friends to death or illness. You’re ‘supposed’ to think about these things during the second Saturn return, because Saturn, a realistic and self-reliant planet, wants you to understand your own resources and to plan for a deeper confrontation with yourself, now that typical life tasks such as raising children or building a career are essentially complete. With challenges coming at you from two important outer planets, you may even feel a bit isolated in your point of view on things, as though you have accidentally stepped out of the mainstream.

Potential dynamic #3: Confronting mortality. At the second Saturn return, you realize your actions have consequences because you will not be living forever. You need, in essence, to make the most of the time you’ve got. With Pluto in Capricorn closely squaring Saturn in Libra off and on during this cycle, you may feel that death and mortality are getting all up in your face these days.

So…how to confront these things? I have a few suggestions that should apply regardless of when your second Saturn return is. I’m not saying they will make the current times wildly fun or that they substitute for the hard work of being yourself. But at least they can give you something to think about as you face this important transition in your life.

Suggestion #1: Face the fact that you’re not going to be who you used to be and that’s a good thing. Do the Saturnian thing and prepare for your future. If fear of loneliness and isolation are creeping around the edges of your thoughts, run a movie of your future in your mind. Make it come out with a happy ending.

How wonderful could it be to be able to do what you want, instead of what everyone else wants? How wonderful could it be to be a mentor instead of an employee, part of a girls’ trip to Las Vegas instead of a doting wife, and so on. Play around with the pictures in your head. I can almost guarantee you that there are parts of your subconscious mind that are just itching to shed some elements of the identities you’ve built up. Remember, if society’s values seem to be morphing away from what’s familiar to you, that your values count too. It’s okay to speak up for your own Saturn perspective. Goodness knows, we’ll likely need it.

Suggestion #2: Learn something. Not something easy. Something hard. Something that could be of benefit in your community. Like how to be a volunteer mediator or arbitrator (great for Libra energy). How to speak Spanish if there are many in your town who do so. How to program a website. Okay, I know these kinds of things could be daunting, but there’s a big payoff. You will grow new connections between your neurons. Literally. New connections will help keep your brain healthy and your mood stable.

The key to Saturn’s heart is contributing your fair share to society (it rules the community-minded 10th house). It wants so much for you to leave some kind of a tangible contribution or legacy. Make it happy. Step up to the plate and make a contribution of a type you’ve never been able to make before. Not only will you make Saturn feel useful, you’ll soak up some of that restless Uranus in Aries energy, energy that also cares about society, learning new things, and making changes. It won’t exactly make you feel young again, but it will alter your understanding of what aging really is. Furthermore, since the clash between outer planets indicates that society is going through some fundamental shifts, any contribution you can make to the larger community helps us all by easing the transition a bit.

Suggestion #3: Confront mortality as directly as you can. Okay, this is hard for a lot of us, including me. But Saturn has every right to be curious about it, and so do you. It is only natural to want to prepare for something none of us are going to be able to escape. I’ll give an example of a woman I met who made exquisite use of the second Saturn return. She went to school to take classes in biomedical ethics. She learned how to give counseling to families who have to make end-of-life decisions for their family members. Talk about confronting an issue in a useful way. Talk about making a contribution to society. She got to satisfy the Saturnian (and Plutonian) urge to find out what death is all about and to prepare, but she also got to help other people in a very important way. And…she kept her brain, heart, and soul sharp by challenging them with a new activity. She participated in the changes in society rather than hiding from them.

You can do these things, too. Maybe in a slightly different way than I’ve suggested, but you can do them too. You just might find, as many of my clients do, that when the second Saturn return is over, you actually feel like you have a whole new lease on life.

Blogger Victoria Bazeley specializes in the astrology of midlife, the key time periods between age 38 to age 60.

Other Articles on Saturn and Saturn in Libra:

Got Natal Saturn in Libra?

Saturn in Libra Horoscopes for Aries through Virgo

Saturn in Libra Horoscopes for Libra through Pisces

What Changes Will Saturn in Libra Bring?

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.

Signs that are having difficult Pluto transits this year and next are Aries, Cancer, Libra, and Capricorn. In all cases, those whose birthdays are within the first 5 days of the sign are the most affected or have been the most affected. If you have any natal planets within 2 to 5 degrees of these signs, you are also going to experience a challenging Pluto transit in 2010. Since I fall into that category, I thought I’d resurrect this post I wrote some time ago.

A reader wrote in to ask if there’s a way to work with difficult Pluto transits rather than against them.  There are ways, and I’ll use this space to mention a few of the ones you don’t hear about too often.

So…what can a person do to work with Pluto energy instead of against it? I don’t have all the answers, but here are a few thoughts.

1.  Figure out what the heck the purpose of the transit is and start implementing it immediately.  How do you figure out what the purpose of the transit is?

Sometimes it’s obvious because your insides are screaming with it.  “Get out of this marriage!!!” your miserable soul shouts at you.  “Get a different job; this one is killing you!” your gut keeps growling at you.  And so on.

Pluto transits are so often about giving things up.  Often they’re about giving up things you don’t want to give up because it will be scary or difficult to do so.  A limiting friendship, a business partnership, a career, a home, a way of approaching life, a romantic attachment that will never work, a toxic relationship with a parent or sibling.  There are an awful lot of things in life that a normal person doesn’t want to give up even though they’re not good for him or her.  Pluto tries to force us to give them up.

If you can’t immediately tell what the purpose of your Pluto transit is by sheer instinct, move on to figuring it out astrologically.  My method is to look first at the house of the planet being squashed by Pluto.  Transiting Pluto squaring your natal sun in the 7th house–most likely Pluto is taking aim at your relationships.  What he’s usually trying to do is smash up your relationship template like a dinner dish.

It might be helpful to know why Pluto does this. In my experience, Pluto does this because your old templates are standing in the way of what you really want, the things you dream of.  You don’t necessarily realize this at the time (or at least I don’t), but Pluto does.  An unhealthy attachment to your aging mother might seem like a source of support and validation of your caring nature to you.  To Pluto, it might seem like the thing that holds you back from real physical and romantic connection with people of your own age.  Although what you have may feel like love, it may hold you back from the love you really want and are capable of experiencing.  You may not realize that you’re finally ready for a mature romantic love–but Pluto does.

If looking at the astrological houses doesn’t help you analyze the purpose, look at the planets involved and then the signs.  Transits to the sun, for example, often involve an update of identity or role in life.  They very often have to do with a deep inner sense of purpose.

Sometimes Pluto purposes are kind of abstract, so don’t feel you have to figure out some deep meaning to work with them. I recall having Pluto conjunct a planet in my 9th house once.  The 9th house governs one’s philosophy of life. I couldn’t believe I would be experiencing Pluto distress over something as simple as my philosophy of life.  Besides, I liked my philosophy of life. I thought my problem was related to my father or overwork or deep issues or the jerk in my life who was driving me crazy.  Then one day I was bitching and moaning and whining about my Pluto transit when I heard myself say “My philosophy has always been blah, blah, blah.”  The person I was with then snapped (in a rather brutal way) “And that’s wrong then, isn’t it?  Because other people aren’t always going to approach things as nicely as you do.”

Bingo!  The light went on. My freaking philosophy of life was wrong.  I actually started crying at that moment because I knew I was finally getting it, what Pluto was on about.  I updated my philosophy of life to take into account that no, other people aren’t always going to share my “nice” approach. Pluto stopped bothering me almost immediately.  What a relief! So don’t overlook the obvious.

2. Pluto’s lessons often have to do with the reality that other people can be bad, wicked, evil, unhealthy, toxic, or morally bankrupt.  I’ve come across many astrologers who swear that Pluto transits are always a manifestation of one’s shadow self, and that we are always just projecting our own bad qualities on to others when we have a difficult time with someone during a Pluto transit.  I’m tempted to acknowledge that this may be true on a deep level, but what I’ll actually say is that’s bull.

Sometimes Pluto doesn’t give a flip about your shadow self.  Sometimes Pluto just wants you to get it through your thick head that someone else’s behavior is morally unacceptable and you should stop accepting it.  Pluto is the most intensely moralistic planet there is.  Pluto believes in right and wrong.  The rest of us think we do and sometimes feel guilty (often for good reason) about our judgmental sides.  But in reality, our sense of morality is much more ambiguous.  Yeah, Mom’s a thief, Dad’s a child molester, and our siblings are sociopaths.

But…we kind of don’t look at it that way.  The situation seems so much more subtle and nuanced because we’re in the thick of things.  We have attachments.  Attachments that fog up our moral compasses.  We accept things because we don’t want to give up our attachments, ego-based ones and otherwise.  So even though the husband, wife, lover, boss, or best friend has betrayed you umpteen times and made it behaviorally clear that he or she feels no moral obligation to treat you with respect–you hang in there.  Then finally Pluto gets fed up with this, steps in, and essentially says “I will make your life miserable until you finally cut the damn toxic cord.  Enough already. Get a clue!”

You can really speed up the difficult aspects of a Pluto transit by getting in touch with your primal sense of morality.  Cut out the ambiguity that Pluto doesn’t acknowledge as valid any longer, and just make a bold and definitive acknowledgment of your moral compass.  ”Such and such behavior is unacceptable to me and I will not tolerate it any longer.” (It can be behavior that took place in the past, by the way. Sometimes Pluto likes to brood over past injustices.) Clearly identify what you believe is right and what you believe is wrong.  This is one of the most effective and under-utilized tricks I know of to tame Pluto.

3. Understand the role of emotions like bitterness and hatred. Pluto is the patron saint of bitterness and hatred. When Pluto gets mad, he doesn’t just get mildly peeved, he taps into a primal well of hatred and rage. Naturally, this scares the living heck out of us mere mortals.  Very few things scare us like Pluto on a rampage, and the really scary thing is finding all the hatred and rage inside oneself (it can happen).  Most of us are pretty much convinced that we’ll be kicked out of society and left to starve if we experience or express the hatred, rage, and bitterness that Pluto blithely embraces. Yet we all have it.  So we might as well know what Pluto’s got in mind.

What Pluto has in mind is that hatred can be cleansing and protective. Hatred, in Pluto’s decidedly unusual lexicon, is the ultimate moral emotion. Hatred and bitterness are the emotions that tell us that something is so wrong, so hurtful, so against the laws of human decency that only furious rejection will save our souls.  Think of a kidnapping victim who sustains herself with hatred of her captors.  That hatred is the last bulwark of her integrity, her inviolate self.  Victims who don’t generate hatred become entangled with their victimizers and subtly began to adopt their values and beliefs. This is usually called the Stockholm Syndrome and it doesn’t just apply to hostages. It applies to workers in punitive corporations, people in abusive marriages, and everyone else who comes to subtly accept their own victimization by believing that it’s okay.

Hatred is not a politically correct emotion, and probably never will be.  But Pluto’s not a politically correct planet.  Pluto hates things that are fundamentally wrong, and he has no intention of changing his mind about that. During a Pluto transit, you can safely (usually, if you keep your head) tap into your own hatred and in the process cleanse your soul.  Sounds a bit high-falutin’ but my goodness I’ve seen it happen with almost miraculous results.  Pluto is not the planet of rebirth for nothing.  Rebirth, it appears, is not pretty–but it sure is impressive.

4. Cry.  Literally. Pluto doesn’t just hate the things that are wrong in your life (even if they’re not as dramatic as what I’ve described), he grieves. He grieves for all that you’ve missed, all that could have been, for time wasted, for hurts endured, for things that can’t be taken back, for losses sustained, and for goodness knows what else.  Pluto is the ultimate grieving planet. Sometimes, you’ve just got to grieve with him.  Just cry it out.  The things you have to grieve may seem very small–petty insults, annoying obstacles, personal character flaws; or very large–deaths, disasters, and losses of gigantic proportion.  Large or small, though, they’re yours. You owe them the dignity of a bit of grief.

Pluto’s ultimate aim is to take what used to work in your life but doesn’t any more–and get rid of it.  Whether it’s an attitude, a habit, a person, a situation, a place, or something else–the sooner you are willing to work to get rid of what’s no longer functional, the sooner Pluto will reward you.

And Pluto does dish out some pretty handsome rewards when he’s done torturing you.  So you might think of what you most desire and set your mind towards the idea that if you can fulfill your Pluto task, you just might get it.

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.

Today I want to refer you to an excellent post by Donna Cunningham on Mars/Neptune and the recent deaths of 2 people (and the illnesses of many more) who participated in a “Spiritual Warrior” program run by James Arthur Ray, a man perhaps best known for his association with “The Secret.” The people died as a result of being in what was labeled a sweat lodge but what was apparently a concoction of Ray himself, one utilizing extreme heat in ways not generally used by those who organize a more traditional sweat lodge ceremony.

Cunningham talks specifically about Mars and Neptune in her post, and I have to admit ‘Neptune aspects’ was my first thought when I thought about what Ray’s birth chart might look like. It turns out that Ray’s chart (accurate birth time not known) also contains a Mars/Uranus square.

In my own personal experience, if you want to be associated with sudden, surprising and bad accidents, the Uranus/Mars square is one you want to seek out. It turns out that Ray’s previous ’sweat lodge’ events have been associated with bad events in the past, although not on this scale.

The chart for the event itself also contains a wide Uranus/Pluto square (out of sign), and it is these wide squares that I see most commonly in events that affect many people.

But it would be foolish to say that any time these squares show up bad things will happen. Billions of people got through that day without any untoward events. While such squares may show up in after the fact analysis, they are not predictive.

The presence of Neptune aspects isn’t predictive either, although I’ll take a few words to weigh in on the planet of delusion at this point. The thing about Neptune is that he is the planet of transcending limits. In this respect, he is otherworldly, because real life (something Neptune is not fond of, real life) is full of limits.

Overly Neptunian people have a devil of a time reconciling themselves to this. They just do not want to believe it. It seems incomprehensible and illogical to them. If the mind can do many things, they reason, why can’t it do everything? Why acknowledge the existence of anything else?

These people want to live in a world of imagination, in which many of the normal limits do not apply. Sometimes they twist reality around so violently that they turn very real limits (e.g., the amount of time a body can go without being properly rehydrated) into irrelevancies in their own minds.

And then innocent people pay the price.

You could say it is the insanity of Neptune that makes Saturn so necessary. Saturn gets a bad rap because he insists on facing limits, getting grounded in reality, and understanding that suffering is a legitimate and appropriate response to many of the conditions of the real world.

The problem with Neptune is that it does not want to accept the legitimacy of ordinary human suffering. It attempts to escape it, transcend it, ignore it, deny it, and spin it into something entirely different.

Hence, we get Ray purportedly saying to his followers that the people who died attracted their deaths to themselves. No need to grieve, mourn, suffer, contemplate, acknowledge responsibility or limits. It’s a happy thing and we can all escape the legitimate sorrow that should accompany such an event by pretending that the deaths were the fault of the people who died. No one dies unless they want to. There are no tragedies, no accidents, and no evil in the Neptunian world. Just magical thoughts and magical outcomes that have no use for the reality that everyone else has to live in.

I could get real cynical at this point and say that the people who died did indeed attract their own deaths by signing up for a g*dd*mn scam by a semi-cult leader preaching bullsh*t. Their Saturns didn’t tell them to get the hell out of the tent and scram before something went horribly wrong. Or I could say that pushing responsibility for the deaths on the people who died is a strangely insidious and Neptunian form of evil. Perhaps I will get real cynical as my own personal buttons get pushed by this story.

But that would be mean, so perhaps I’ll just run a PSA from Saturn:

Hi folks, Saturn here. Remember that reality is a beautiful thing no matter how much you may not like it at any given moment. You don’t need to run around trying to think magical thoughts in order to get around its existence. You just have to respect it.

You don’t need to be attracting wealth all the time, turning your critical thinking faculties over to a guru, or believing that there’s some secret that will make life wonderful all the time if you just think the right things. Because it isn’t wonderful all the time. That’s what makes the times when it is wonderful so incredibly precious. Seriously.

So, as the official planetary sponsor of reality, I just want to remind you to be grateful for me occasionally. I may not talk as pretty as Neptune, but I am your friend. Really.

A lot of people have asked me lately: which is more important for your horoscope, the house a transiting planet like Saturn in Libra falls in your solar chart (the one based on your sun sign) or in your natal chart (based on your rising sign).

My answer is that the energy of the planet will usually be felt in both houses. I well remember my first Saturn return in which outer planets were clustered like bees around a hive in my natal 10th house, which happened to be my solar 12th house.

All kinds of weird things were happening with my career, but I was just as caught up in diving into the depths of my subconscious at that time–and the two areas of life were linked. Now, depending on your circumstances one area may be more important than another, but things will generally make the most sense if you look at both.

Let’s use Pluto in Capricorn as an example:

Pluto’s in the 1st house for Capricorns and it will enter the first house for those with Capricorn rising. Pluto in the 1st house signals a profound personal transformation, often occasioned by some sort of scary event or events that clear out of prior attitudes. It can lead to a very visible change in how you present yourself. It does not change your basic personality, but it does strip away a lot of old ways of functioning that were interfering with a meaningful life. For Capricorns this transformation will often take place when Pluto passes over the sun. For those with Capricorn rising, it is usually triggered by Pluto passing over the Ascendant.

Pluto’s in the 2nd house for Sagittarians. It will also enter the second house for most people with Sagittarius rising, although this varies based on the natal chart itself. Sagittarians have already been through the personal transformation stemming from Pluto in their sign. Now they are transforming values, possessions, and sources of income. Sometimes large purchases are made, like a first house. Careers may be changed or the amount of money made from the existing career may change drastically. This will often occur in connection with other transits, but sometimes it occurs gradually over a number of years.

Pluto’s in the 3rd house for Scorpios and will enter the third house at some point for those with Scorpio rising (usually, check your own chart). This transit can produce all sorts of different effects, from a change in how you communicate (e.g., you take up or drop writing, public speaking, or media work), your educational status, your ideas, your environment, or your relationships with neighbors and relatives like siblings and cousins. This could happen during a transit of a natal planet like Mercury, gradually, or in response to some inner urging that plays out during the time Pluto is in this sign.

Pluto’s in the 4th house for Libras and those with Libra rising (depending on your personal chart). This can change family relationships, where you live, your sense of your own history, and even your career (if Pluto opposes your Midheaven). Some people do extensive home remodeling, downsize as children leave the home, or even lose a home and the associated memorabilia due to a disaster. Other people think seriously about end-of-life issues, as the 4th house rules this area of life also. For other people, the effects are quite subtle, resulting in a gradual change of perspective on family or even the unearthing of buried family secrets or an intense interest in genealogy.

Pluto’s in the 5th house for Virgos and those with Virgo rising (check your own chart for when it enters). The effects of Pluto in the 5th vary widely. Some people enter into a powerful love affair that does not result in marriage. Other people find their relationships with their children transformed. Some will have their first children now or will have another child after having thought they wouldn’t. Others enter into a prolonged period of creative power. Others take up intense forms of recreation, such as sky-diving or very active sports. Others engage in gambling or speculation in the stock market. The exact nature of the changes depend on the circumstances of your own life.

Pluto’s in the 6th house for Leos and at some point for most people with Leo rising. The two main areas of the 6th house are work and health. But the 6th house can also relate to daily routines. Compulsive exercise is not uncommon. A drastic change in employment resulting in an entirely different daily routine (e.g., from truck driver to lawyer or vice versa) could happen. Some people get almost obsessively organized. Others volunteer (6th house also relates to volunteering) to help with extreme circumstances, such as disaster relief or for people in hospice care. The entire attitude toward work and/or health may change.

Pluto’s in the 7th house for Cancer people and Cancer rising (check your own chart for when Pluto enters your 7th house). Intense committed relationships can occur. Divorce and marriage are not uncommon. Power struggles with business partners or outright rivals can occur. When Pluto passes over the Descendant, some people become much more public and less private. Others become involved in lawsuits. It may be difficult to let go of a relationship or there may be a total break with someone who was once important to you. The transit in general represents transformation in relationship.

Pluto’s in the 8th house for Gemini and Gemini rising. Pluto in the 8th is good for things like psychotherapy, as the 8th house deals with the past and with healing. It can change your entire attitude toward sexuality. For some it means things like a life-changing inheritance or other significant financial change. For others, it represents divorce, or profound changes in the marital finances, joint ventures or similar matters. Many will contemplate the meaning and/or reality of death when Pluto transits this house. Others will shed themselves of things they don’t need, even body weight. I’ve seen some undergo weight loss surgery while Pluto was in this house. Others rid themselves entirely of debt. As the 8th house of regeneration, Pluto can work rather deep changes here, in his natural home. Some will feel a distinct before and after feeling as a result of Pluto’s transit through this house.

Pluto’s in the 9th house for Taurus and Taurus rising. In this house, one can find a philosophy of life, religion, or other system that allows one to find meaning in life. Pluto can gradually shove old beliefs to the side and bring in new ones that work better in the long run. Attitudes toward travel or higher education may change substantially and some will get advanced degrees during this transit. One’s definition of adventure may change. Others will move to foreign countries during this transit, permanently or temporarily.

Pluto’s in the 10th for Aries and Aries rising (at some point, check your own chart). This is the most visible spot for Pluto and it seems to correlate most strongly with changes in reputation (good or bad, scandals fall in this house) and with a transformation of career. There is often some sort of a sensation of reaching a peak during this transit, a peak in one’s ambitions, fame, striving in the material world. For others, there are power struggles that come with this transit, or clashes with authority figures. Others become an authority themselves. Some people become quite powerful under this transit. A fair number of people start their own businesses during transits to this house.

Pluto’s in the 11th house for Pisces and Pisces rising. This house deals with friendships and groups, so your involvement with both of these may undergo substantial changes during the transit. This house also deals with the feeling of belonging. It is possible during this transit to find a sense of belonging one never had before. Others become more involved in social issues, humanitarian causes, mass media, or  idealistic endeavors. This is also the house of step-children and income from business, so some will see changes in this area. Finally, one’s goals and hopes for the future may get a lot of focus and undergo a transformation.

Pluto’s in the 12th house for Aquarius and Aquarius rising. Pluto here can plumb the depths of your psychological functioning, attempting to scrub away things that hold you back. Attitudes toward isolation, withdrawal, and retreat may change. Hospitals and prisons fall under this house, so some have literal involvement with these kinds of institutions. All kinds of therapy can lead to transformations while Pluto is in this house.

With floods and earthquakes and tsunamis, there’s a lot more to worry about in the world lately than the lives of talk show hosts and movie directors. But just the same, these lives do get media coverage and people do get interested in them. These lives also give us a chance to take a look at how transits can affect people, sometimes in dramatic fashion.

David Letterman’s transit of note is Pluto square Mars. Hopefully, you will not be blackmailed if you go through this transit (not everyone does), but it’s usually quite the challenge, to put it mildly. The astrological symbolism of Letterman’s situation is fairly straightforward. (Click here to see Letterman’s chart on astro.com. )

Letterman has his Mars in Aries in the 12th house. Mars is a symbol of, among other things, a person’s sex drive or sex life. The 12th house is a symbol of secrets or things you keep private and hidden from view. It is also an area vulnerable to hidden enemies. Pluto in Capricorn is greatly concerned with reputation. Pluto tends to destroy (or at least try to) when squaring by transit. Pluto can also be a symbol for crime and criminals.

Hence, a fairly easy astrological equation: A hidden enemy uses criminal means to try to destroy Letterman’s reputation by revealing the secrets of his sex life.

This Pluto square Mars transit attacked publicly starting right before Pluto went direct and it is near its end. Seems unlikely but it’s possible this matter will largely fade away within a few weeks or so.

Polanski’s situation is more ambiguous. (Click here to see Polanski’s chart.) He’s got Neptune in opposition to his sun these days, which is ambiguous enough to begin with. This is not a happy transit, but it doesn’t usually put you in jail. Meanwhile, Neptune is also trine his Mars in Libra, which is a happy transit.

Uranus in Pisces is making a yod (sometimes called the eye of God) with those same sun and Mars placements, which only makes things more complicated. Even more ominously, Polanski is undergoing a transit in which Uranus in Pisces opposes his natal Jupiter and Venus. Uranus, the planet of surprise, apparently pounced in an attack on his freedom (Jupiter). Given that the crime was more than 30 years ago, you’d think at least one planet could have pounced earlier than this, but apparently not.

Meanwhile, Saturn had moved into his 12th house at the time of the arrest and was squashing his Venus. Saturn in the 12th house doesn’t throw most people into jail, but then most people haven’t plead guilty to unlawful intercourse with a minor and then fled the country. If you have plead guilty to a crime, Saturn in the 12th house of confinement will do its best to put you away.

On the other hand, Uranus is also going to be making a trine with his moon and his Pluto in Cancer. (They’re conjunct by the way, one astrological indication of the death of his wife at the hands of the Manson family.) Uranus will be stationing in December, so perhaps more surprises are afoot. The whole thing is rather messy from astrological standpoint, but it’s probably not going to get any less public, given that his Pluto and moon are so elevated in his chart.

Of course, the irony is that he landed in Zurich to receive a lifetime achievement award. I suppose no one thought that his ‘achievements’ included the sex charge.

Fire planet Mars moves into fire sign Leo this month on October 16, 2009. It remains in Leo until June 7, 2010. That’s a long time, almost 8 months. Mars usually remains in a sign for about 6 weeks, but approximately every two years retrograde motion means it stays in a single sign for longer than usual.

We haven’t had Mars spend a long time in a fire sign since 2001, when it spent almost 7 months in Sagittarius, starting in February of that year. During the rest of the decade, we’ve seen Mars retrograde in water signs and the earth sign of Taurus.

So…what will a double dose of fire energy to mean to us? I’m going to a put positive spin on this transit, because I’m hoping/thinking that having Mars in a fire sign like Leo will help us out. For one thing, Mars in Leo is in a nice sextile by sign to Saturn in Libra until April. In April, Saturn retrogrades back into Virgo.

Saturn in Libra has a tendency to reveal problems in relationships, but Leo is such a warm-hearted sign that the sextile with Saturn has the possibility of showing us all a way out of our difficulties. It makes harmony and sympathy a bit more realistic as a way of negotiating through our conflicts. Now admittedly, it is possible that Mars in Leo will turn some susceptible folks into raging egomaniacs. Double fire can do that. But Saturn will hopefully help put a bit of a brake on that tendency as well.

What does the Mars/Saturn sextile mean for each of the signs? Read on for some possibilities.These are based on sun signs, but if you know your natal chart, you can look at the forecasts for your rising sign as well. For more articles on Mars and keywords for the houses and signs, you can visit my other site Practical Astrology.

Aries: Mars will be spending its long sojourn in your happy 5th house, a good spot for your ruler. It should energize your sun. It may also energize your love life, your dealings with children, and any creative projects you have in the works or that you undertake at this time. The sextile with Saturn in Libra puts the emphasis squarely on relationships. In some ways, it’s an odd mix of energies. Theoretically, it should bring any conflicts in relationships (of any sort) to the fore, but it should also give you the tools to deal with them in good faith and with good will. For example, if you’ve recently begun a romantic relationship, then the inevitable differences of opinion will probably arise. The relationship negotiating period should begin. But the combined energy of Mars and Saturn should hold the relationship together while you work things through and display what a good person you are at heart. The same dynamic would apply to dealing with problems that surface in a long-standing relationship.

Taurus: Mars in Leo will inhabit the part of your chart that deals with family matters. This could be your family of origin or a family you have started yourself. Dealing with other types of domestic matters (home repair, etc.) are also covered by this house. The idea would be that you would expend a lot of energy dealing with this area of your life, but that things would hopefully work out well in the end. Saturn in Libra deals with, among other things, relationships with co-workers and people you employ. A sample combination of Mars and Saturn energies in these houses would be hiring contractors to work on your house. Having the work done would be challenging (it usually is), but you would be able to work things out to a satisfactory conclusion. Other possibilities would include doing more work from home for some reason. Again, potentially challenging but successful if you put your mind to it.

Gemini: Mars in Leo will be in your 3rd house of mental work. This is an ideal combination for getting intellectual work done because your thinking is energetic but not cold or unmindful of other people’s input. It’s great for devoting yourself to a sustained project that requires a lot of thinking.  Combine this with Saturn in Libra and you potentially get an opportunity for a meaningful collaboration with someone else on such a project. There would undoubtedly be disagreements with your collaborator if you are doing things right, but the disagreements could allow you to produce a better product than you could on your own. Collaborators could include lovers or children, but any creative person with whom you have a basic amount of simpatico could prove to be  very helpful.

Cancer: Mars in Leo will be in the sector of your chart that deals with possessions and income. Traditionally, Mars in the second house can be considered a recipe for laying down big bucks. With Mars in Leo it could be considered a recipe for laying down big bucks on the kind of luxury items Leo loves. The combination of Mars and Saturn could indicate things like spending a lot of money on redoing your home, decorating it up in a grand style. There could be conflict with the people you live with over how much you want to spend. If so, if you’ve got someone riding your butt about your proposed expenses, consider that person a friend who could help you make wiser purchases. If you’re constitutionally opposed to spending money for 8 months straight, then you could use Mars in Leo to amp up your efforts to bring home more dough. Again, this could cause conflict with family members who want you at home instead of burning the midnight oil to bring in the cash. You’d probably end up having to compromise, which again would not necessarily be a bad thing.

Leo: Mars in your sign for 8 months! What could be better! It could be so nice to have energy in your sign instead of having all your energy drained by Neptune in the sign opposite yours. This is really a time to put yourself out there and pursue your own agenda for awhile. Whatever creative Leo project you have in the works, pursue it with gusto. The combination with Saturn in your 3rd house of mental work could indicate that you need to put some serious brainpower into making the most of your creative opportunity. It could also indicate that it would be to your benefit to collaborate with others who have different ideas. A little constructive disagreement could be just what you need to take yourself to the next level.

Virgo: Mars will be in your 12th house, an odd place to host Mars for a long time. The 12th house likes to withdraw and contemplate the universe or your own psyche. It’s not an especially sociable house. Mars here could be uncomfortable but also potentially useful if it helps you do things like forgive yourself for grudges your self-critical sign has been holding against you. The most useful thing I can see from the combination of Mars and Saturn is the potential to let things go. Literally, let things go in a material sense. Get rid of a bunch of your possessions, strip down your life, and free yourself up to travel leaner. Mars in the 12th actually loves to root through your closets, sort through your memories and get things all organized. Since many of us can spend decades pretending we’ll clean out our closets and never getting to it, this may be an opportunity not to be missed.