'Seasons Change' Update

6.19.06


I don't know about you, but I'm still settling into the lessons learned from last week's Mars-conjunct-Saturn testing process.

To recap: Where we meet the highest responsibilities of being ourselves (i.e., those things only we can do best), kudos for a well-earned sense of accomplishment. And where we fall short, or our puffy egos aim us too big, there's a brick wall (or, maybe worse, a stale featureless waiting room) with our name on it… and a list of more tasks, steps, and/or issues to address before we'll be supplied the gold.

Mars's exact conjunction to Saturn fell only two days ago (Sat Jun 17), so naturally we're all still under its spell. Not to mention the fact that, early this morning (Mon Jun 19), Mars formed a square to Jupiter in Scorpio… reminding us further of the added psychological hassles and complicated interpersonal hoo-hah that comes when we don poorly constructed wings and fly too close to inappropriately hot objects.

Sure, you thought you'd heard Jupiter was supposed to be good luck. To that, I must say: Ha. Jupiter, like all planetary archetypes, is simply neutral. Jupiter makes things bigger… which is usually considered 'good' when related to our careers, our capacity to love, our intellectual understandings or (duh!) our cash-wads. But apply it to, for instance, our waistlines or our individual propensity for self-indulgence and drama, and it's something else entirely.

Then, throw in the square to Mars in Leo—and everything less flattering about Jupiter's hyper-grandiosity can rise to the surface, if pride and pompousness aren't kept in check. Especially when we add Saturn to the mix. That's right, do the simple astro-math: If Mars and Saturn are in the same place (i.e., conjunct), and Mars squares Jupiter, then naturally Jupiter squares Saturn, too.

But we already knew that, right? The current Jupiter-Saturn square is a broader transit, lasting throughout much of '06 and representing the "First Quarter" phase of the cycle. This week is the second of its three peaks. At the first peak in Dec 05, I described the importance of this marker in making meaningful chunks out of history—and our lives. I've also written about it this week on the FAMOUS website, as a prime opportunity for evaluating the progress we've made since '00.

Also this morning (Mon Jun 19), Uranus stationed retrograde, which it will remain through mid-Nov 06. Because outer planets like Uranus spend much of their orbital time in retrograde motion, this fact is not as fundamentally significant as the retrogrades of, say, Mercury or Mars. Still, during these couple days, there's a somewhat higher incidence of surprises (esp. with regards to electricity and other technological items) and other 'reversals of fortune'.

The next several months of retrograde Uranus can be interpreted as an opportunity to turn inward where Uranian concerns are concerned—that is, fostering radical change on the inside, so our inner geography can sync up with the abrupt external changes we've made and cliff-jumping risks we've taken while Uranus was direct (since Nov 05). For many, though, this astro-influence should rank rather low on the scale of noticeable experiences.

And of course, Wednesday (Jun 21) marks the entry of the Sun into Cancer… and the start of another new season, be it summer in the North or winter in the South. As with all solstices and equinoxes, the effect is all in the eye of the beholder. Click here to read my previous musings on the relativity of seasonal change, which I experienced full-throttle when I celebrated a winter solstice… er, I mean, summer solstice in Sydney, back in Dec 03.

(By the way, all my Aussie mates out there, I'm tentatively planning to be down under sometime in the second half of '06… perhaps in October. Please stay tuned, and let me know if you'd be interested in arranging a consultation or some other astro-situation with me.)

Get through one more week of karmic reckoning, folks, and the universe will throw us a bone—in the form of Venus's entry into Gemini on Fri Jun 23. Leave it to Venus in Gemini to lighten the mood… and fill the social calendar.