Mars in Aries, Venus in Aries, Neptune into Shadow

Venus and Mars by Botticelli (c.1483)

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No sooner do we dive into our second month of Aquarian mental sparking (and barking) which embodies our best and worst mortal and oh-so lunar  instincts than the Sun enters Pisces.

That was yesterday ... February 18th.

And by now, barely twenty-four hours later, it’s already old hat because now we’re not entering the Piscean solar mode, we’re in it. Okay, we tell ourselves. I can make it through ... whatever lies ahead.

We hear our voice telling our Self some form of that. And yet the truth really is ....well, if we didn’t need to hear those words, we wouldn’t be muttering them, either verbally or mentally.

And no, we don’t know what’s ahead - which is one of those special Piscean quirks. Under Sun in Pisces, we either live in the moment and deal with each thing as it comes for what it is ... or we drive our Self (and often enough, others) batty by fighting some inevitability we’ve conjured from some inner fear.

Of Self, that is - specifically of what we might have to experience ... or to put the Piscean twist on it, to feel ourselves experiencing.

Fear of how others feel about you ... or what they could do to you, that’s Scorpio (and you know how we all feel about Scorpio, right?). But fear of what you could do to you - principally through your mind and emotions?

That’s Pisces. People talk about Pisces as a ‘trash can’ ... but if it is, it’s our trash can - it’s where everything we’d like to throw out (but can’t) gets put.

But since it’s out of sight, since we’re refusing to deal with it ... that doesn’t mean that it isn’t true. Or it doesn’t exist. We just don’t like admitting it - which is (in Piscean terms) why it literally haunt us.

The reality here is that ‘it’ isn’t haunting us - we’re haunting us. We’re haunted by those things in and about our Self we dread to know, deal with or embody.

But life is life, so occasionally we have to - and that would be part and parcel of the Sun’s passage through Pisces, a passage which this year is going to be barely a day old when Neptune, the ‘outcome’ ruler of Pisces which determines whether we’ve won, lost or deluded ourselves ... when Neptune enters the shadow of its 2015 retrograde cycle.

Mind you, we haven’t yet reached the end of the 2014 cycle. That doesn’t happen until March 6th (UT/+0), which means we’re still wrapping up a Neptune sub-cycle which began  when Neptune went retrograde last June (2014) ... and which some people will identify better as having begun on April 24, 2013.

Not that we’re any of us in any position to have real perspective on that yet. That’s one of the things about Neptune: while it times out periods of overall clarity, it’s not a fabulous influence when it comes to hard judgments in the moment - unless what you’re deciding is to not care ... in which case, you may care later.

Or not at all.

The practical and positive side of Neptune’s several weeks of overlapping cycles (which ends March 6th) is likely to be an ability to correlate and relate for reasons you can’t quite define. The impractical and negative side of Neptune’s several weeks of overlapping cycles (which ends March 6th) is that we may ignore something which seems obvious to others, but not us. It may be important. Even very important. Then again, it may matter not at all.

Now you know why Neptune is associated with romance. It’s genuine ... if often genuinely naïve and richly innocent. And more to our point here, Neptune is that ‘force of nature’ (read: our nature) which teaches us how unwise it is to romance our Self.

In other words, knowing our Self requires being honest with ourselves about who that Self is, and said quotient - without exception - includes some good and some bad, all of which we have to know, own and work with (or against, or in spite of) if we want to be truly fulfilled.

And here the reason why is simple: life wants us to be whole. For us to think that some point of our nature has no reason for being part of our nature is to question Nature itself - an idea which as curiosity is just fine, but when embodied as a matter of judging or judgment runs counter to Neptunian principle.

Neptune stands as a symbol about the fact that life is always ready and well equipped to prove (to us) that we neither know everything ... nor are we even up to having a full list of things we should be wanting to know about.

Existence is simply bigger than we are. And periodically, we humans forget that.

Neptune’s crossing into 2015 Cycle territory isn’t anything you’re likely to feel, sense or point to as part of your day. It’s something we’re all likely to slowly pick up on (if we bother to, that is) in the week or months to come as our orientations change, as things which were important yesterday fade into our mental woodwork.

However, there is another influence to talk about here - and that would be Kalypso. 

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Kalypso is going retrograde on Saturday, February 21st at 28 Libra, a degree known for the ability to inspire not just listening, but hear what people are trying to say (which is not always the same thing) with something of a built-in ability to discerning fairly well between real and faked needs.

In combination with Kalypso (an asteroid which confronts us with the idea that real love is not about ‘getting’ or being loved but rather about caring about those you love in terms of what they need, whether that makes you comfortable or happy (or not), this points to a period of days (February 19th through the 23rd) when it occurs to you - as it will to others - what projection and judgment really are.

And how terrible (even guilty) we can feel when we see or come to realize that we haven’t been listening.

Or at least we haven’t heard - some of which may simply be about not having any reference or experience with something.

So maybe you’re coming to such a realization about someone or something you’ve been involved in as Neptune crosses into its 2015 shadow. You may feel bad ... and at the same time you may feel inspired because you finally understand what it is you need to know - whether about yourself, something you’ve said, done or felt, or some situation which you have “judged” to be a certain way when maybe everything isn’t quite so cut and dry.

All of these energies sweep into our life and life’s atmosphere as Planet Earth moves through Thursday, February 19th.

And then on Friday (February 20th), Mars and Venus finish their transit of Pisces and head into Aries ... which means Mars will be moving through 29 Pisces (the degree of the March 20th solar eclipse) on the 18th and 19th before reaching the border of Aries-land at twelve minutes after midnight on the 20th (UT/+0 time).

Why is that worth stopping to think about?

Thought (and bearing this Mars factoid in mind) will be useful as emotional things happen on the 18th and 19th as things of this moment fall into two very different metaphysical groups: that which we are owning as our own feeling amidst all ... and that which we respond to, like as not blindly.

'Les Parques' (the Fates) by Alfred Agache (c. 1885)

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Pisces being about the experience of Self, either version can lead us to the reality which is the metaphysical purpose here. But to be exact, that purpose is the exploration of Self, not doing or getting anything from anyone else. With Venus following Mars into Aries at 20:07 (8:07 p.m.) on that very same day, Venus’ presence in Pisces speaks to depth of feeling which is surely genuine even as Mars at 29 Pisces evokes, promotes and provokes our feelings through processes and situations which tend to make us feel more or less ‘accepted’ by some Whole ... some of which will surely stir reactions, responses and a few instances of swallowing-of-one’s-words (or gum) for any of a bevy of unscheduled reasons.

The perfecting of this Venus-Mars conjunction won’t occur until just over a day after Mars hits its symbolic home sign - which, considering this means Mars will be at 0 Aries (a degree Mars is well suited to) as Venus moves through 29 Pisces (which exalts the Venus side of this equation) ... it would seem that we are in for at a day (or so) of personal confrontations with who we really are - and how that may differ from who we think we are, or who we want (or think we deserve) to be.

As noted, the conjunction follows after both ingresses (at 5:15 a.m. on the 22nd, UT/+0) and won’t even occur at 0 Aries, a degree which though thoroughly willing to stand up for what it believes is often not yet fully informed, which can lead to all sorts of ‘iffy’ moments (hence some of the Mars actions we will see on the 20th and 21st). Instead it occurs at 1 Aries, a degree which tends to ‘push’ (or be pushy) simply because there is a recognition that more does need to be known or understood for whatever reason.

And why would we be wanting to know whatever it is we want to know? Given that asteroid Klotho (beginnings) will be at 1 Aries as Venus and Mars meet up by conjunction, it would seem we need to know something or have some information in hand before we start something or commit to some course of action or stance.

And with this ingress also in trine to Saturn and Juno we have a grand trine in process coming into this time which will have begun ‘setting up’ (‘coming into force’ being a more astrological way of putting it) exactly as Mars reached 29 Pisces, from which position Mars would be in an out-of-sign trine to Saturn at 4 Sagittarius.

Alone, Mars-Saturn connections often refer to strengths. Badly aspected, they can refer to a militant attitude which can be violent, but which can also be entirely contained, trained and disciplined through (Saturn) efforts, training or structures which prevent acts an actions being taken ‘out of turn.’
Also alone, Venus-Saturn contacts often refer to  stability and the ability to act or interact in such a manner as to advance one’s aim or goal, particularly in business.

However ... while Mars in Aries is ‘at home’ in its surroundings, Venus in Aries is not - which either suggests that ‘business’ (be it personal, financial or otherwise) may already be... or it may now become something of a problem.

Metaphysically, this is an issue all about Self - you know, that integral and singular Aries Self (or in some cases, the ‘thing’ you identify with). Yet because Venus is a symbol all about what we get back in response to that which we have put out there ... or which we have been to others, there’s every chance that during this ingress-to-conjunction (and beyond) point we aren’t going to be happy precisely because we aren’t ‘getting’ what we want to be ‘getting’ from others - be that the answer we want to hear or otherwise.

Some part of us knows that we’re not in the ‘free and clear’ when it comes to why things aren’t going perfectly at the moment ... but we aren’t going to be in the mood to get all moody and philosophical about such things now. Throughout Venus’ traipse through Aries (which ends March 17th just after Saturn goes into retrograde) we’re going to be asking a lot of ‘why couldn’t things just work - just this once!’ and no doubt muttering other more decorative if possibly less polite commentaries from time to time.

Sisyphus by von Stuck

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And yet, is it really that we aren’t getting what we want to get from others and life which is really at stake here?

In this grand trine, Juno - standing for the ability to ‘manage’ things - being conjunct Sisyphus will ask whether we can ... or can be bothered to avoid our own most perilous nature. Perilous to others? Yes, on occasion - as the story of Sisyphus makes clear, Sisyphus is one of those impulses which says ‘if I can ... why shouldn’t I?’

And the answer there is simple: because you shouldn’t. Not all of Sisyphus’ intelligence and cleverness could save him from a Self which was determined to think he didn’t have to follow eternal and incontrovertible rules - the most basic of which (in the original story) involves the killing of those who are a.) going about their independent business doing nothing to harm anyone, b.) those we are in a previously promised alliance with, and c.) those who we are taking care of or in charge of in some capacity.

In the story, Sisyphus is a person of advantage who uses his advantage to do harm to people. And when taken to task, Sisyphus doesn’t bother denying what he’s done - he just turns to trying to avoid paying the price for what he’s done, working his way up the Olympian god ladder as Sisyphus diligently works to evade and avoid inevitability.

It doesn’t work. For his pains, Sisyphus ends up not merely being assigned to a particularly futile end rolling a rock up a hill it will always roll back down. But perhaps because of Sisyphus' demonstrated love of drama, he's also given a prime position at the entrance to Tartarus (the Greek underworld) where with fellow sinner Tantalus, Sisyphus stands as eternal warning to all who would attempt to and take fate - that which should never be the decision of any human - into their own mortal hands.

Juno-Sisyphus will work both ways in this grand trine: it will represent the (Juno) ‘management’ of destructive (Sisyphus) impulses ... and the efforts and lengths some will go to so as to (Juno) ‘manage’ to do what they want because they (Sisyphus) feel entitled to.

And yes, because they can.

That Venus moves more quickly that Mars is evident if you just look at the length of time it takes each planet to go once around the Sun: Venus takes 224.7 days and Mars takes 687 days (1.88 years) - which is just over three times longer than the Venus cycle. So even though Venus reaches Aries after Mars does, from their conjunction point on the 22nd Venus will continue moving ahead until the orb of conjunction between Mars and Venus ends on March 6th-7th (the date depends on where you are) - which is a couple of days after Mars’ trine to Saturn ends on March 4th-5th.

Most people will experience this as feeling like they have more latitude of choice ... and a lessening of preoccupation(s) with desire-based notions. With Saturn slowing (in terms of zodiacal movement only) in anticipation of taking its station on March 14th we’re all reaching a point where we have to reorganize and catch up with ourselves, all of which is part and parcel of Saturn’s passage through Sagittarius, a transit which is sure to chop a few outmoded items off of each one of our ‘to do’ lists in life.

Some of us will change priorities in the weeks ahead as Mars’ transit of Aries (which doesn’t end until March 31st) continues emphasizing the realities of our day-to-day, life-on-Earth life.
Some will merely ask why others won’t be who we want them to be.

Who we are between these two paths is going to be defined by whether we are trying to base today on yesterday ... or whether we live our todays with an eye to building better tomorrows.

You know ... without killing anyone - including our most precious and preciously human Self.
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Three Degrees of Unity

 Based on 'Obrazvaetvient' by Michael Kyrstek (2008)

As World War II was drawing to its destructive close, a celestial formulation took shape. Neptune and Pluto moved into sextile. They’d been dicing about with this aspect for a few years, but as the 1940s wore on, the sextile came into 3-degree orb and it stayed in that three degree orb (give or take a month or two here and there) until the mid/late 1990s.
 
This roughly corresponds to a period of time when the world realized that we really are all in this life together. Though there were competitions and cold wars and famines, diseases and despots, there was an overarching understanding realization that life is better for everyone when everyone has a better life.

That ‘grasp’ of the need to change things which was motivated by the willingness – even the ability to grasp the pain or suffering or confusion of others, that was Neptune sextile Pluto. The connecting, the understanding of another’s situation in our heart and soul, that was the Neptune part of the thing. And the conviction that we could change things – and that we grow the interpersonal fabric of support, supportiveness and productivity from helping others…that was the Pluto part of it all.

Pluto’s metaphysical management of situations where we join or don’t join with others is never about them, no matter what we like to think. The axis of polarity testing through which we learn those lessons and thus are transformed on the Pluto level is Taurus/Scorpio, a duo which when all else is said and done is very basic. We can call it survival, and it is survival. But it’s also all about the respect we gain for ourselves when we stand for what we could do – those ‘better angels’ of our nature - not just what we can do.
 
Neptune’s influence being Pisces/Virgo, Neptune always depends on and pits us against a more evolved…some would say ‘more mature’ sense of being. That’s easier to understand simply by thinking about Virgo versus Taurus.

Taurus is the second sign of the zodiac. It corresponds (on an innate level) to the years between two-and-a-half and five years old, this is about our basic ‘grasp’ on life, and knowing we are secure in this world.
 
Virgo is the sixth sign of the zodiac, corresponding more to the age of about twelve-and-a-half to fifteen or so. Virgo is about taking on the task…most of all, the task of being ourselves.

With a sextile being a sign of interaction and possibility, it’s little wonder that the fifty or so years of Neptune sextile Pluto had the world in a very dynamic, progressive, ‘we can do this!’ mode.

It’s also not surprising that once this transiting sextile (which has a maximum orb of 3 degrees) began to dissolve during the mid-1990s, things began to feel less positive and more problematic. Or maybe you see it as less fruitful and more threatening. Even less productive and more coercive.

There are (obviously) several generations whose natal charts include this Neptune sextile Pluto dynamic. All but the very first of the Pluto in Leo Baby Boomers have Neptune sextile Pluto in their birth charts, with Pluto in Virgo (the Yuppies) and Pluto in Libra (Gen X) also being part of this collective.

Once we get to Pluto in Scorpio (a generation so stealth they seem to have avoided a nickname) that’s where things begin to get in to flux – particularly towards the end of this group. Pluto left Scorpio and entered Sagittarius in 1996, beginning the social network-worthy generation which is increasingly being referred to as the Millennials.

The Millennials don’t have Neptune sextile Pluto in their chart. On one side, this reflects in the Millennial entrepreneurial bent. On another, it marks this generation as lacking expectations about the world being the ‘good’ place the Pluto/Neptune natal sextile people always hope to prove the world is.

Neptune’s symbolic marshaling of the Pisces/Virgo axis as ‘outcome ruler’ of Pisces has marked literally billions of lives with a ‘can do’ altruism which though crushed when it meets up with disappointment also weathers that disappointment to try, try again.

That isn’t about the world…that’s about us. It’s our willingness to try which is the Neptunian/Piscean hallmark, and no matter when you’re born it’s always balanced off against our ability to deal with or tolerate reality. The best of us are constructive: we accept reality and go from there.

In the years since the mid-1990s Neptune-Pluto ‘parting of the sextile ways’ we have also seen the growth of marked separations in society. We have seen Neptunian illusions overtake some lives, manifesting with a harshness of judgment as to the way things should be or how people should live at a level which seems very ‘un-Neptunian.’ We have seen the very structure of society’s values evolve and transform very strongly, if in ways which were often not universal and not geared to be universally accessible.

Thus we arrive at 2013, in the thick of a time where governments don’t seem to have any real connection to their citizenry and when the gap between ‘have’ and ‘have not,’ however you measure it, whether in wealth or access to health care or food or opportunity to climb the social ladder…a financial system which seems out to serve nothing but the finances of the financial people.

The challenges feel harder than ever with the stakes being higher than ever.

For the billions alive with charts emblazoned with Neptune sextile Pluto, there’s a dichotomy between the inner ‘knowing’ of what life should be and the outward scramble to (Pluto) survive. And that dichotomy drives us in the direction of the many pluses and minuses of Neptune – the indulgences, the fantasies, the intoxications, the abandonment of reality in spirit or spiritual form, the emotional imbalances and mental health issues…however, whatever…it’s here.

The ills which the positivity of Neptune sextile Pluto covered up for so long are upon us. So out come the scandals and the many issues which force us to deal with reality.

Does this mean we should all become cynics?

No. It means we have to learn to tolerate the ambivalence of reality, and from there to do the best we can, because to do less than that is not the world’s ‘fault’ but a lack of our own respect and regard for who we are.

From around 1995 through around mid-2021, Pluto and Neptune will fly separate. That’s about twenty-five years worth of seeing reality for what it is and falling prey to our lesser angels…and even our mortal demons.
 
After that, with some in-and-out orbital and retrograde skips and gaps, Neptune and Pluto will come back into sextile. That will be just about the time that those born early in the separation are reaching their modern adulthood, which astrology now associates with the first Saturn return at age 29.

Yes, we the astrologers of the world know: in a long-ago day and age, people only lived about thirty years. Now we’re routinely living three times as long.

But that’s Saturn - a different blog. In the meantime, we return to the nebulous and dauntingly inspiring world of Neptune and Pluto and face the need to accept – (Neptune) – that realities are likely to get bad enough that we, the human race – recognize that our vulnerabilities, be we in the position of strength or weakness, increase proportionately as compassion decreases.

What it means that the generation born as Pluto and Neptune went out of sextile (the Millennials) will be coming to their adulthood as Pluto and Neptune renew their association is a clue to us all – a clue about human life. We are not born to simply grow up and ‘become’ something.

We are born to evolve, going in and out of universal focus, eternally learning and forgetting that what we have in common is the fact that our divergent uniqueness is the very stuff of…indeed the very strength of unity which starts within our Self and becomes our congruence with the world.
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In Tune with Polyhymnia, a Reflection

 'View of Toledo' by El Greco (1596-1600)

  

As this post goes up on March 6th, Polyhymnia goes direct at 14 Cancer. Given how Cancer is a water sign and thus all about life’s feeling moments and emotional bents and one of Polyhymnia’s great themes is that of ‘reflection’ (or reflecting), this is me doing a little astro-reflecting…and sharing my reflections on Things Astrological with you.

One of the things which interests me about astrology is a concept the ancient Mayans put well with their phrase ‘wheels within wheels.’ That most often being a reference to their multi-place calendar system and the sacred Tzolkin ‘count of days,’ what it comes to suggest to me as an astrologer is how and why different lives are so different – as reflected in the machinations of emanation.

Or to put it may be a bit more simply, the solar system in all its glorious workings. A good astrologer can ‘tell time’ in your life because as Einstein put it so nicely, E=mc2’d. In other words, we’re all energy. You, me, your dog Fido, the doorknob and Pluto – we are all essentially made of the same stuff.

This actually brings up a really good question: if we’re all energy, how is it that we think we’re separate people or different things? (You know, you not being me, neither one of us being Fido and Fido being neither the doorknob or Pluto…unless he’s a Disney dog named Pluto!)

But that wasn’t really the place I was going here. Where I was going was with regards to the long and short signs (zodiac signs, that is) of orbits.

You’ve probably heard me refer to Pluto as having a very ‘eccentric’ orbit. And while I’d like to say that means Pluto wears a funny had and tells odd jokes at holiday dinners (which may be true in some other universe, but not this one), what I’m really referring to here is the fact that Pluto’s orbit around the Sun is not round like the hula hoop, but rather egg shaped – very much so, as it happens.

Et voila…! A pictorial rendition of Pluto’s orbit:

See? Mucho egg shaped.

What this means in an operative sense (astrologically) is that since the zodiac is a ‘belt’ which surrounds Earth with a nice evenness attributed to the 360 degrees of a circle being divided by twelve sign parts, that means that as Pluto travels along its 248.09 year-long orbit around the Sun, as we live here on Earth that would have Pluto “lingering” longer in certain signs that others.

Being someone with way too much curiosity to keep confined inside one head, one day I took it upon myself to track down how long Pluto had been in successive signs – not for the last hundred years, no. Not even for the last complete orbit of Pluto!

Naw – too simple.

No, what I did (really…don’t ask) is track down the basic time periods/durations for Pluto’s passage through the signs for the whole of the now-ending Age of Pisces.

And having done that, I put it in a table.

If you’re wondering, the two numbers in red are the longest and shortest Pluto transits I found.

But besides being a sterling example of just how geekish I can actually be (and no, I don’t own any pocket protectors, but I do wear glasses!), what this really tells us is the difference between Pluto passages if, say, you’re born in 1800 as opposed to if you’re born in 1970 and in each case live to the age of 70 years old.

Here’s what it looks like…

Born in 1800:

Movements of Pluto through 'standardized' chart

wheel for a person born in January 1800

Born in 1970:

Movements of Pluto through 'standardized' chart

wheel for a person born in January 1970

This is the same chart wheel being used for both examples. It's no one in particular - it's just "a chart" which ends up showing us that for the person born in 1970, Pluto will end up moving through more signs because of where it is (given its very rather highly egg-shaped orbit) when you were born.

Now...remembering that each one of those houses of the horoscope represents a 'department of life,' let's look at that same chart, same date, same born in 1970 scenario - but this time let's have the person born in the morning as opposed to the evening.

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Movements of Pluto through 'standardized' chart

wheel for a person born in January 1970

The 'morning' person experiences Pluto moving through houses 9, 10, 11, 12, 1 and 2. The 'night' person's life is colored by Pluto moving through houses 12, 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5.

And though I've only pictured one chart for the 1800-born person, they only have Pluto moving through four houses during their 70-year lifespan, not five.

So would you say the person born in 1970 is experiencing more...? Or that the person born in 1800 is born in a time which gives them a deeper experience in fewer areas?

It's sort of the quality versus quantity discussion - and truthfully, you could argue quality or quantity on either side!

Now! Let's come back into real time. Let’s think about  someone born in the 1920’s who lives to be 90….and there are plenty of such people happily among us!

When they were born, Pluto was in Cancer. As they reached 90 (or are reaching 90) in 2010 (and/or beyond) Pluto has reached Capricorn.

Capricorn is the opposition sign to Cancer, right

(Answer: yes it is.)

Given Pluto’s full orbit is 248.09 years long, we would assume no one would live (currently) to be old enough to experience Pluto opposition Pluto, considering that half of 248.09 is 124.45 (years). And to my knowledge, nobody’s lived to be 124.45 years old. I could be wrong, but…

However! Due to Pluto’s eccentric orbit, there are a whole bunch of people who are actually living to see  Pluto oppositions - aka transiting Pluto opposition natal Pluto. And that is due to the fact that Pluto is currently in the ‘quick’ part of its orbit.

So what’s the key word for Pluto? Yes, there’s the triad slogan of create, deny, destroy. But the overall keyword is…?

Cammon! Lemme hear it!

Yes!!! TRANSFORMATION!!!

And what do we hear often from people who are now in their 90’s? They talk about the incredible pace at which the world has …CHANGED. 

You know, how their lives have been transformed by life at a really rapid pace.

What’s interesting is that if you arm yourself with a really good social history book (I happen to us Timetables of History) what you find is that every time Pluto gets to Leo (which is when people born under Pluto in Cancer would be hitting their adult stride) things in society start changing at pretty much a lickety-split rate.

Interesting, right?

So that’s one of ‘time’s wheels.’ Astrologically (using signs) we can see a relative ‘speeding up’ and ‘slowing down’ of a particular functionality we know as Pluto’s – emotionally transformational circumstances. 

Now, I’m not here to argue or describe anything close to why those ‘motion effects’ which Pluto’s orbital movement through space sends out as tiny shifts and ripples which reach us and translate into the plethora of emotional transformations we go through. Heck no! Look how long it took science to catch up with the assertion made by early astrologers back in ancient Babylon that there was a connection between the Moon and the tides!

Oh yes – by the way…next time you hear someone talk about astronomers of biblical times, I suggest a chuckle. Why? Because there weren’t any! Astronomy (the science) didn’t come into being until Greek/Hellenistic times, that being when science as a concept separated from religion, metaphysics and philosophy.

Interesting how they're coming back together again, isn't it?

Anyway…back to this wheels in wheels thing. Here’s a chart – a cut-down of one of my big worksheets.

(What, you think I keep all these planetary notes and numbers in my head? Dream on!)

(Nice thought though….sigh…)

In this chart, what I’d really like to point out are the columns labeled ‘Aphelion’ and ‘Perihelion.’ The first is the farthest a celestial body is from our Sun and the other is the closest that celestial body comes to our Sun. And to put it concisely and yet generally (a feat in itself) the greater the difference between these numerical values, the more egg-shaped the orbit is. So Chiron is very eggy. Comet Swiff-Tuttle is so eggy as to almost be its own omelet. And Sedna breaks the eggshell mold in the egg-shaped orbit department!

But even if we’re talking Mercury or Saturn, there is a variation in how fast planets move through signs. And there is – as we saw above in the Pluto chart – a ‘regularized’ area of the zodiac where each planet moves quickly and each planet moves slowly.

Given that each planet represents an attribute and ‘department’ of mortal life, that gives us a ‘pacing’ at which those attributes speed up and slow down as a matter of development.

Saturn for instance, has a total orbital period of 29.457 years. Divide that by 12 (signs) and you get 2.45 year as the average length Saturn spends in a sign. Saturn first ‘touched’ Libra territory at the end of October 2009, went retrograde then re-entered and committed to its transit of Libra in July 2010.

But Saturn doesn’t even begin to leave Libra for Scorpio until October 2012. And once in Scorpio come October 2012, it then rushes on, beginning to dabble its toes in Sagittarius in December 2014, with rolling on into Capricorn taking place in December 2017 and the Saturn/Aquarius ingress taking place in March 2020.

Do the math yourself and though the differences are not huge when we talk Saturn, we see to be in the ‘quick’ portion of Saturn’s orbit, equaling rapid developments and quick rise and falls in leadership – and probably in our opinion of leadership.

So Saturn and Pluto seem to be in the quick portion of their orbital cycles. How about Eris? A full Eris cycle takes 557 years, giving is an ‘average’ one-sign “theoretical duration” of 46.416 years. Eris began to transit of Aries in 1925 and it’s not only still in Aries, but will stay in Aries begins dabbling discordant toes in Taurus come 2048 – which is over a 120 years no matter how you toast it.

(And no matter whether your toast lands butter side down if you drop it, too!)

Eris in Aries is the discord of self. We’re in a long period when human beings are experiencing and acting discordantly. Since we’re talking about a period of time which began back in the 1920’s that fits perfectly with our discussion of Pluto; Eris has been signaling discordant times and Pluto has been signaling a lot of emotional transformation in life and emotionally transformative times.

Then let’s add Neptune. Neptune’s 164.79 year-long orbit divided by 12 (signs) giving us a 13.73 ‘one-sign-average.’ About to change signs (into Pisces from Aquarius), Neptune committed to its transit of Aquarius at the end of 1998 and is going to move into Pisces in 2011 and from there into Aries in 2026.

That gives us about 12.25 years in Aquarius (roughly) and a smidge under 15 years in its home sign of Pisces. We are evidently moving from the quick to a ‘slower’ section of Neptune’s orbit as we speak.

What does that mean? A whole lot of things. It means there will be more confusion and nebulous circumstances – those things which require us to allow ourselves not to know (the great Neptune slogan!) It also suggests that in spite of all, we may be moving into a very inspirational period of time. And yes, a time when inspiration means a lot to us.

More on Neptune (in specific) later. There’s plenty of time to chat about the celestial big blue.

But maybe from all of this you’re beginning to see some of what I grok (as they say in science fiction)? There are – as they ancient Mayans said – wheels within wheels.

Yes, the planets will repeat their own cycles over the long run. But how they overlap each other…? That is the uniqueness of time, what astrology is really good at sorting out...

...and really a pretty interesting concept to marvel at.

Welcome to my world, right? And to think, I used to be a wiz kid at accounting. From the finitely precise to the infinitely operative.

Anyway...so we all of us do grow! Fascinating stuff, eh?

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