You won’t find a more uplifting description of Saturn’s placement in Sagittarius (where the planet will transit until December of 2017) than astrologer Marcia Moore‘s:

This position of Saturn “gives the capacity to concretize ideas and to bring abstract concepts down to earth. In this respect, Saturn is like a crystal which concentrates the light of the Sagittarian mind into a flame that can start a fire. Sagittarius, in turn, warms the austere formality of Saturn with the genial glow.”

Rational optimism like this is a welcome shift after Saturn’s final pass through Scorpio which often felt like a cathartic slog: A Roto-Rooter attached directly to the collective’s unconscious.

Astrologer Michael Lutin aptly associated Saturn’s transit through the last degrees of Scorpio with “death anxiety.” He listed several markers that were particularly difficult to resolve during the last couple of months. I’d imagine that you can relate to:

“The feeling of helplessness while awaiting a decision, diagnosis, judgment, revelation, miracle, change, or new direction.”

He also mentioned: “The anger brought by having to accept enforced change.”

And probably most painful and confusing, a kind of sadomasochistic “…holding on to improper attachments.”

I think we’re all welcoming the new Saturn through Sagittarius transit. So let’s talk about it.

Saturn’s New Abode

But first:

Imagine listening to only the trombone section playing a Haydn concerto. How weird. Something similar happens when astrologers attempt to define lone planetary transits, detached from the whole. Like I’m doing here, with Saturn’s transit through Sagittarius.

You can’t really pull out a single planet from the pantheon and then describe the possibilities inherent the transit. All of the planets participate in the solar system’s symphony simultaneously. So, keep this in mind whenever you read about significant planetary shifts in astrology. Only a facet is examined, a facet that is removed from the totality of the cosmic field. It is incomplete.

That said, of all the planets Saturn is the easiest to form a distinct impression of when you consider the planet’s placement in any of the twelve signs.

Meaning, wherever Saturn moves in the Zodiac, the reality principle under which we all abide, shifts. So you sense it palpably. It’s like changing the lenses in your glasses. The effect is immediate. Various qualities of the sign Saturn transits are made distinct and specific, and, Saturn being Saturn, we’re pulled in — like Brer Rabbit with the Tar-Baby — until we decipher the code.

So, if Saturn in Scorpio is tied to “death anxiety,” will Saturn in Sagittarius involve life anxiety?

Not exactly. But kind of.

Sagittarius, of all the signs, is related to the flame of optimism, a faith in the ultimate good that resides within or beneath every experience in life. It sounds corny, but think of where you’d be in life if you didn’t have faith? (Not belief, mind you — but faith. Think about the two words and faith’s meaning will become emphatic; Saturnine).

So this is the promise of Saturn in Sagittarius: The realistic benefits of exercising faith. This might show up in your life (at least initially, on the heels of the Scorpio transit) as a super-effort to remember why life is worth living. Read more

The revelations related to the vicious hack of the Ashley Madison website (the cheating spouses’ watering hole you’ve read about everyday for the past week) have — once again — shocked puritanical America. In the way puritanical America is always shocked whenever it discovers that people are having sex outside the confines of the missionary position (and sanctity of marriage).

Recently, several of the Scarlet-Lettered individuals — publicly exposed victims of the hack —  have committed suicide. I’m very sad about the suicides (I’ve experienced that shock first hand to understand the impact). These extreme reactions point to a gigantic schism within the culture’s attitudes about sex. Judeo-Christian prohibitions that inextricably link sex and shame, forever and ever, until the end of time.

To sustain porn star-like passion within a monogamous relationship is sorta oxymoronic. It’s not impossible (there is now Viagra and Addyi — female Viagra), but the misconceptions people project onto monogamy — the levels of romantic passion they expect to be constant, over time, aren’t germane to the natural arc of a relationship.

Those sustainability dreams are borrowed from the realms of fairy tales and online porn. Symbolic idylls meant to instruct or entertain. But people being people, we literalize what shouldn’t be made literal.

This delusion hasn’t been helped by New Age, Oprah-esque goofiness: If you dream it — goddamnit you’re entitled to it.  Think hard enough about a new car and you’ll either win the lottery or the death of your spouse will free up his life insurance policy so you can buy one.

The Ashley Madison hack is throwing the epidemic of romo-sexual magical thinking into high relief.

Astrologically the events surrounding the Madison hack mirror the slow-building Saturn/Neptune square…

• The Truth About Mercury Retrograde
• Planetary Ennui: The Nostalgia for Samsara
• How To Make Facebook Your Slave and Preserve Your Creative Drive
• The Power, Beauty, and Wonder of the Horoscope’s 12th House
• Imbeciles at the Gate: How The Internet Destroys Astrology
• How To Escape From the Torture of Self-Help Hell
• Depression and the Solar Consciousness
• Secrets of the Heart: Love is an Action Not A Feeling
• Create Your Own Archetype & Call It You: An Escape from Evolutionary Astrology
• Redefining the Oxymoron of Sex and Marriage
• Death is the New Black
• How To Write About Astrology (Especially How Not To)
• Astrology, Ants, Hives, Essence, and Types: A Gurdjieffian View
• Final Notes About the Life-and-Culture-Changing Uranus-Pluto Square

Your wife just gave birth to a baby boy. You’re sanctioned a father now. And all of the experiences that accompany fatherhood await you.

You are a woman who just turned 68, and with this new chronological phase arrives an array of feelings and sensations. Your wisdom continues to develop but you pause now, to consider your options: To share your knowledge with others or live a quieter life of solitude.

Viewed from the archetypal realm, the new dad will soon be channeling the archetype of The Father. And the older woman is now ready to embody the archetype of The Crone or The Wise Old Woman.

But what does any of this mean?

As I’m typing this right now, I don’t feel the archetype of The Writer possessing my mind and my fingers on the keyboard. It’s just me, enjoying the process of sleuthing syntax and feeling a dull ache in the low of my back.

Another question.

Can’t the two individuals mentioned above have their own unique life experiences without the depersonalizing intervention of an archetype?

Yes, they can. And they do. And archetypes need not be involved.

Archetypes are not literal structures that, once evoked, descend and encapsulate us within Platonic bell jars. But this is the conjecture that spurs everything that’s been written about, expounded upon and woven into the world of modern astrology.

Why are we hypnotized by archetypes?

My theory goes like this: In an attempt to explain the human predicament — the big questions about ‘who we are’, ‘what we are about’, ‘where we are going’ — we’ve cut ourselves in two and crawled up into our heads: The conceptual realm of the archetypes.

By abandoning a full-bodied experience of reality, we feel safer from life’s unpredictable and impermanent nature. Human bodies (and lives) have a short run. Archetypes are forever.

Many Annoying Questions

What do those archetypal dimensions have to do with the you that is sitting here, right now, reading this sentence? The you that is a unique phenomenon, the you that there is only one of, and will only ever be one of within this particular moment within the time/space continuum — and future moments too.

If you abandon the archetypal scaffolding (and as astrologers many of us have been cornered into this conceptual framework for decades), you’re left to fend for yourself. The rawness and freshness of your being becomes the ‘lens’ that life is viewed through.

What if your style of being a father is completely revolutionary to the category of ‘being a father? What if you bring to the ‘father-child’ relationship a way of being that has never been documented? Is an inspiration to other fathers in-the-making?

Why must we be cut off from our ‘is-ness’ and have our lives circulated through something that is essentially an imaginary, lifeless concept? This makes no sense. Worse, for astrologers, it generates a force field of nonsense that hovers around the sensitive relationship between the astrologer and her client.

If, as an astrologer, I can not communicate with my client without employing archetypes, then I have cut us both off from the human experience of engaging in an inquiry that is present-based, vital and alive.

Here’s an example of what I’m talking about:

• The Truth About Mercury Retrograde
• Planetary Ennui: The Nostalgia for Samsara
• How To Make Facebook Your Slave and Preserve Your Creative Drive
• The Power, Beauty, and Wonder of the Horoscope’s 12th House
• Imbeciles at the Gate: How The Internet Destroys Astrology
• How To Escape From the Torture of Self-Help Hell
• Depression and the Solar Consciousness
• Secrets of the Heart: Love is an Action Not A Feeling
• Create Your Own Archetype & Call It You: An Escape from Evolutionary Astrology
• Redefining the Oxymoron of Sex and Marriage
• Death is the New Black
• How To Write About Astrology (Especially How Not To)
• Astrology, Ants, Hives, Essence, and Types: A Gurdjieffian View
• Final Notes About the Life-and-Culture-Changing Uranus-Pluto Square

A group of therapists came together in Europe to participate in a ten-day workshop.

As was the custom, at the start of the gathering, the attendees gathered together in a circle to take make introductions and share a little about their practice and history.

About halfway into the process, a woman explained how she’d worked for years in a mental institution counseling dozens of patients each day. And then, after a pause, her face became grim. She continued:

One day while she was eating her lunch one of her clients committed suicide by jumping off the roof of the institute. The patient fell right past the therapist as she was eating her salad.

The woman’s breathing became rushed, she was crying and right on the verge of losing control.

But the leader of the workshop sensed that something was ‘off’ about the woman’s state; there was something not quite genuine about her demeanor. She was working herself into an agitated condition to alert her colleagues about the intensity she’d experienced throughout her career and how that intensity made her special.

At the end of her story she looked to the leader of the group for acknowledgment. And then everyone else in the circle turned and looked to the leader too. A concerned silence hovered in the air.

And then, after a pause, the leader shrugged his shoulders and announced:

“Okay. New rule. No jumping from the roof during lunch.”

The woman and all of the other participants in the circle burst into laughter.

You Didn’t Jump. So You’re Still Here!

I like this story as an allegory for looking back and reviewing the past seven years that accompanied the just-finished square between Uranus and Pluto; two of astrology’s most misunderstood and misinterpreted planets.

If you haven’t jumped off of a bridge yet, well, congratulations, you’ve passed a series of initiations that you were destined to encounter (should you consider your soul an agent of consciousness that traverses from life to life).

Your presence continues within the pulse of life. You’re still here and entwined with — and required to participate in — the incessant woof and warp of living.

This circle story also shows how we might expand beyond our pipsqueak sense of self, with its attendant stories and dramas that color and define us. The story also shows how the ordinary can shift to the extraordinary by involving humor as a transcendent ingredient. Life is tough, it sucks sometimes and then we laugh (or cry) and then we carry on.

I’ve written a lot about the alignment between Uranus and Pluto on this site, and discussed in detail some of the socio-cultural fallout with my colleague Jessica Murray. But now, as the final square clicks in and out of exactitude, I’m going to share some personal anecdotes, observations and insights with you.

Some Backstory First

Modern astrologers write from a Jungian perspective about the trio of planets that reside beyond Saturn (Uranus, Neptune and Pluto). Because those planets orbit the Sun at a glacial pace it’s easy to associate them with ‘collective’ time — cultural trends and geopolitical movements; or even the rise and fall of civilizations — when you consider Pluto’s 248-year orbit around the Sun.

But let’s not forget that cultures and civilizations are aggregates of individuals. Folks like you and me. And, should you be open to an atypical perspective, the outer planets also mark moments in life that deconstruct your conventional sense of self.

If you are committed to upholding the values and standards you inherited from your family, church or the various authority figures that influenced your life, well, it’s likely that your ability to find resonance with the outer planets hasn’t developed.

Many people do not ‘register’ the outer planets in a personal sense, in much the same way most people do not practice Zen or involve their lives with depth psychology or spiritual practices that unravel the dominance of the ego and its allegiance to the instincts. This isn’t a judgment, just an astrological statement of fact.

The dominate theme of my work with clients during the past seven years has involved the personal particulars of accommodating the acceleration of consciousness that’s symbolized by the Uranus Pluto square. An unrelenting pressure that feels (to those aforementioned instincts) like a battle to the death.

Here are some notes, observations and insights I’ve gleaned by tracking my own experience and that of my clients. Make what you will of this. Nothing is etched in stone.
Read more

“We are not stamped at birth with our destiny, nor even our personality — there is no imprinting — but, being the person we are, we are born at a time that announces who we are.

Our destiny may be indicated at birth, but its realization lies in the future — indeed tragically it may never find complete fulfillment.

It is a pity that the idea of destiny has almost completely slipped from human consciousness, thanks to the propaganda that physical causation is the only causation in town, so that everybody must look to the past for meanings. The answers must lie in the genes, or in the childhood situation, and so on. Some of the answers may indeed be found there, but the true significance of our journey — like all journeys — lies in where we are going, not where we are coming from.

Aristotle wrote in the fourth century BC that the ‘nature of man is not what he was born as, but what he is born for.’

And I like this quotation from Nietzsche: ‘Our destiny exercises its influence over us even when, as yet, we have not learned its nature: it is our future that lays down the law of our today.’ ”

— Dennis Elwell
from Astrology is a Foreign Language on Skyscript

Break, blow and burn. Van’s incantation will take you up and out; this song amazes me over and over again.
 
Rave on John Donne, rave on thy Holy fool
Down through the weeks of ages
In the moss borne dark dank pools

Rave on, you left us infinity
And well pressed pages torn to fade
Drive on with wild abandon
Uptempo, frenzied heels
Read more