Midlife Transits

The month opens with your chart’s mind on your job or your health. By mid-month, it switches to thinking about something that’s more up your alley–attraction. For most of the month, you have the power to attract. What can you attract? Well, love for one thing. Money may be a bit more of a stretch.

Of course, if we’re going to be realistic, Libra almost always has the power to attract love; that’s one of the characteristics of your sign. It’s just that this month, there are a whole lot of planets in Aries, which is a love sign in your solar chart. And this can ease any feelings of deprivation in this area that you may have felt due to mean old Saturn being in your sign for the past several months.

The kicker comes in the form of Pluto in your family sector not being in a good mood with all that Aries energy. Neither Pluto nor Saturn is feeling all that generous these days, whereas Aries is a very generous sign by nature. So the happy generous love feelings of the Aries planets could feel a little crimped by Pluto and Saturn. Quite frankly, Saturn and Pluto both would be just as glad if you thought about nothing but work.

Maybe you need to work due to family reasons. Or maybe work is your escape right now. Or maybe you do something creative and fulfilling for a living. Whatever your own personal situation, the reality seems to be that you need to balance your Libra nature, the one that values relationships, with the reality of the times, which value gainful employment.

Job and career. Job and career. Job and career. Those are big themes for Scorpio in March.

Maybe you love to learn on the job or maybe you find extraneous learning generally tedious and uninteresting. Regardless of how you usually feel, the second half of March is specifically designed to highlight learning all you can about job-related stuff so that you can utilize all the energy that’s still glowing in your career sector thanks to Mars in Leo. Even if you think of your day job as just a job, for the moment, you need to treat it like a career.

Attend or organize events to raise your visibility. Go after a promotion, some kind of an achievement, or an honor. Do something important; step in and save the day when there’s a crisis. Concentrate on the here and now and leave aside for a moment your sign’s normal attraction to research and the past. Learn by doing and by taking action. Be opportunistic. What you have is a nice conglomeration of influences designed to reward ego, confidence, and your own individual contribution, so make the most of them. This is also your best month all year to attract what you need in terms of a new job or allies in the job you already have.

Finally, take heart if this job stuff is not what you want to emphasize this month. You also have the possibility of enjoying love (Venus in your love life house from mid-February through March 6!). You could also gain a little money through creative endeavors.

Same old, same old for Sagittarius in March. Which is kind of a good thing. More happy home vibes for Sagittarius, especially from mid-February through March 6.

Mars continues its stay in your solar 9th house, turning direct on the 10th. This can help energize your enthusiasm for almost anything in your life. Saturn continues its stay in Libra–pointing out potential problems with your friends, with groups, or with a sense of belonging. Some susceptible Sagittarians will also be very annoyed with the direction that society is taking these days.

Money continues to be a major area of transformation for Sagittarius folks as well. Neptune in Aquarius meets up with Chiron in that sign again this month. This potentially means that you will find yourself repeating thoughts or ideas or things you said way back in the middle of 2009. This is part of a kind of a rehearsal process, wherein you learn what your healing vision is by re-imagining it several times.

The one thing that’s kinda sorta new is an emphasis on your love life, your children, your creativity, or play. Venus spends most of the month in your love life house, helping to make you attractive to those very people you want to attract. Money could also come through creative projects or even through your children. Love of anything and everything is in the air, including love of a hobby. As far as these trends go, March is just the opening round in a volley of energy that’s going to come your way on these subjects in 2010.

Energy is very concentrated around the angles of your chart in March. What that means is that this is a very high energy month indeed, one of many for Capricorn in 2010. It’s also a month (and year) of alternatives. So let’s lay some of them out.

One alternative in March involves concentrating on home, family, your emotional needs, habits and routine. All those homey things that are supposed to give you security and a firm base to stand upon. Another involves concentrating on your career. A third involves concentrating on your own personal interests and fulfillment. Put another way, everything’s competing for your attention.

So how to resolve the competition or choose your path? Well, I’ll suggest that the main focus in your chart is really on your own personal transformation right now, transformation that may involve many areas of your life. Mars is just burning up with energy in your transformation sector and transformation planet Pluto is plunked very solidly in your sign, barely moving all month. When Pluto plunks himself anywhere, he gets very powerful.

The key is just to figure out what area of your life to start transforming first. You could do that by analyzing where your greatest power really lies these days. One thing that could help is that March’s emphasis on family could mean that you can attract desirable assistance and help from family members, including parents. Another thing that could help is using all that Mars energy to get some very vigorous exercise. Moving is its own form of meditation, and just moving your body could help break up any logjams or indecisiveness you feel.

Finally, eat some chocolate. This has nothing to do with your chart, but it’s almost always good advice anyway.

Mars is the planet of the month for Aquarius. It stations (gets powerful) this month and then it moves direct (gains energy). It gives you the opportunity to take the initiative in matters of love or money or whatever it is that you desire. Since it is in the sign opposite yours, you could also feel that it is just taking you to school in March and teaching you stuff that you didn’t really realize you needed to know.

So your first step is…to take your first step in whatever direction you want to go. If you want to sing–start singing. If you want to stay home and out of the spring rains–stay home. If you want to go out with your siblings, neighbors, or acquaintances–go out. In other words, practice doing what you actually want to do–and see how other people react. They may react with alarm or anger, or they may react with admiration and support. Mars’s job is to let you know what effect doing what you want has on other people. Only by getting this feedback can you learn where you really stand with the people in your life.

Your second step is to communicate. Let people know your thought processes. Actually reach out. If no one calls or no one reacts to your initiatives, make the calls yourself. This month is very much oriented around other people, how you relate to them and how they relate to you.

Finally, if all that relating gets a little tense–get some exercise or play a game. That’ll help burn off some of the excess Mars in your chart this month.

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.

If you’re in the LA area, check out my new location for in-person consultations. It’s at the Raksa Wellness Center in Culver City. In addition to getting an astrology reading, you can take a yoga class, get a facial, eat healthy food, experience Reiki or acupuncture and more.

I’m also available for telephone consultations, as well as consultations by email, instant messaging, or Skype.

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…