Over the past several years, I have been sinking more and more deeply into what I call my “Recapitulation Project.” Now 77 years old, I am looking back over five decades of written work, assessing value, deciding what to share with others. There have been times when I re-enter memory to the point where, for example, I spent an entire two week period in late January reliving an intense two year period with a lover in my 40s during which I kept meticulous daily journal notes, as well as documented nighttime dreams that reflected the maddening “ambivalence” I felt from him, and now, only now, nearly 40 years later, do I realize, equally, from me! I now see especially that and other male/female relationships as my own personal way of processing the issues raised by the 1982-83 Saturn/Pluto conjunction, which occurred in Libra, forcing me, through prolonged suffering, to recognize and begin to heal the childhood roots of my relationship issues: When I was 9 months old, my stalwart father left for World War II, my fearful mother’s milk dried up, and she weaned me to a cup. From then on, left alone much of the time, I banged my head against crib walls so forcefully that the crib scooted across the room and my grandfather finally nailed the crib to the floor.
If one looks at the zodiac as a developmental process, then the first six signs, Aries through Virgo, are devoted to an increasing identification and differentiation of “self.” Not until the seventh sign, Libra, is “the other” introduced, as another “self” with whom we must learn to cooperate. This “other,” when fully engaged, offers a mirror, a way of recognizing our projections of unrecognized or denied aspects of our own inner lives. The phenomenon of ambivalence also arises, given that each self needs to learn how to maintain individuality while simultaneously attuning to “the other.” The alternative is “co-dependency,” a mucous soup where each leans on the other to the point of dissolving the boundary between them, and leaving them both confused.
Now we are entering a new Saturn/Pluto cycle, this time in Capricorn. The conjunction between the two planets was exact only one time, on January 12, 2020. However, we will be working with this continuing conjunction, off and on, through much of this year ending in mid-December 2020.
No longer are the Saturn/Pluto issues Libran, personal, how to create and maintain equality in relationship. Now what must be destroyed and rebirthed is structural, focused not just on interpersonal issues but on broad societal rules, roles, and regulations. Whereas we were meant to learn to rework intimate self/other polarity issues following the Saturn/Pluto conjunction in Libra, now the Saturn/Pluto in Capricorn focus is impersonal, and shifts to how humans govern ourselves as a whole: institutions, governments, politics and economics are all up for grabs. The old must be smashed to smithereeens before a new way of structuring society can emerge.
This new way will begin to take visible shape at the end of this year, and will feature, not Capricorn, but the following sign, Aquarius. Capricorn structures are hierarchical, top-down, centralized. Aquarian structures will be distributed, horizontal, networked. The beginning of this great change will be inaugurated by the Jupiter/Saturn conjunction, occurring on Winter Solstice, December 21, 2020, very soon after both Jupiter and Saturn move into Aquarius from Capricorn. Meanwhile, through much of this year we will be seguing back and forth between Capricorn and Aquarius, working with them both, trying to move from the one to the other.
The details:
On March 23, Saturn, moving much faster than Pluto, will enter Aquarius, and remain in 0-1° of that sign until it turns to go Rx on May 11, and then plods back into Capricorn on July 2, not to re-enter Aquarius until December 18. In other words, Saturn will dip its toe in revolutionary Aquarius for a little over three months, before it scuttles back into the status-quo sign it rules. Meanwhile, Jupiter, also in Capricorn, will join Pluto in late March and remain there, within one or two degrees of Pluto’s position at 24-25° Capricorn, until Jupiter too turns to go Rx in mid-May and then slips back, even so remaining within a few degrees of Pluto until December 20, when Jupiter moves into Aquarius for the first time in 12 years.
Thus, amazingly enough, both Saturn and Jupiter enter Aquarius within two days of one another, and furthermore, they actually conjunct one another exactly on December 21, Winter Solstice 2020.
Given that Jupiter signifies optimism, generosity, large perspectives, we are fortunate that it will join strict, disciplined, karmic Saturn during the exact time when human civilization must learn to shift from a tight top-down model to a looser bottom-up model.
Meanwhile, I hear that President’s SOTU this evening is going to feature “relentless optimism.” Good! He knows which way the wind is blowing, and in fact, is heralding the wind before it even starts to blow.
