Sometimes I just have to share the astrology that swims in and through and around me on a daily basis. Especially during times when transits deeply affect my own natal chart, like now, this week, and until around the end of the first week of December.
Transit Saturn at 6°09 Sagittarius now sits directly opposite my own natal Saturn at 7°37 Gemini, nearing exactness.
So what? You might ask. Aren’t transits always occurring? Aren’t planets continuously going round and round, blinking our natal planets into and out of conscious awareness, and, if we’re not careful, very careful, precipitating unconscious behavior into the external world?
Yes, they do.
But some transits are more important, way more important. These are those that travel slowly. The slower the transit, the larger the cycle that planet circumscribes, the vaster the “meaning,” i.e., the field of operation and energy and understanding that it (its cycle) encompasses.
Saturn’s cycle is 29.5 years. This is exactly the third time in my life when Saturn sits opposed (180° apart from) to its natal position. In other words, it’s now tracing out its halfway point through its cycle, for the third (and presumably final) time.
Okay. So that’s one of the planets that is operating in a “deep background” context.
The other planet that’s affecting me (and billions of others whose natal planets are at or around 7° of especially the mutable signs: Gemini, Virgo, Sagittarius and Pisces) is Neptune, which has a cycle of about 165 years! This means that no matter how long we live, we will never complete a full cycle of Neptune, never really comprehend that large of a space/time field. Instead, we live inside its vastness, and all we can do is submit, surrender, attempt to ride it consciously without really knowing what we are doing, since without being able to predict, we have no control.
Neptune now sits at 7°01 Pisces. Which means, in terms of the geometry, that transit Neptune is currently coming to an exact (90°) square with transit Saturn. The confusing, spiritual, mystical planet of the boundless squares off with the planet of clear-headed form, structure, goals. That which keeps us separate from one another (Saturn) dissolves (Neptune). Geopolitically: no matter how much Saturnian nation states attempt to “close their borders,” it doesn’t work. And personally: no matter how much we try to control what happens, something else is in charge.
Case in point.
I just about got creamed, due to my own unconsciousness during this intensely Saturn/Neptune time. Here’s the chart for yesterday’s event, a near miss with me gunning my car forward during a yellow light and swerving hard left, to just barely miss a big truck, also gunning forward from the opposite direction, and turning left.
Geez, was I “lucky”! And humbled, however briefly. Something (what?) woke me up just as the event initiated, and the larger mystery that sometimes makes itself known prevented a collision by a combination of factors: my perfectly calibrated braking plus deep swerve left to avoid his left turn; his high speed, — and most crucial, higher dimensional insertion to spread of the 3D time/space matrix enough to allow us to barely pass safely.
This was the second time in recent months that I have just barely survived such a swerve — and with higher dimensional insertion help.
The Swerve: Or how, yesterday, I almost died.
In all my 72 years, these left-turn incidents have never happened so severely before. And now twice in less than three months. Is something “out to get me”? I think not. Though the other one was a total surprise, this one was my own damn fault. Had I not been suffering from my usual (Mars) impatience, I would not have been gunning my car through a yellow light. I bow my head in gratitude for both the lesson and the other-dimensional blessing.
And, I have a hunch that perhaps, just perhaps, these “swerves” have been to teach me, twice, how Neptune can disrupt Saturn, how higher dimensional realities can take charge of lower dimensional ones. In other words, no matter how hard I try to figure something out in this 3D world, its rules and laws are always subject to surprising disturbances in the field.
Looking at that event chart above, notice that transit Mars was crossing 3° Libra, which happens to to exactly conjunct my 2° Neptune and 4° Midheaven (top of natal chart). I look for Mars (and/or Uranus) when I pull up a sudden event, accident or near-accident chart. And I’m rarely disappointed. Notice also that the MC/ID (vertical line) of the event chart was at 21° Sagittarius, conjunct the Asc/Desc of my natal chart. Bingo. Twice, the angular exactness, involving the Midheaven (natal and transit). Mars giving the impulse, the impatience, the double angular exactness precipitating the near-accident into the external world.
Okay, now here’s where it gets really interesting. But first, a backgrounder in planetary dynamics.
How to think as an astrologer
Let us learn to think in cycles, cycles within cycles, cycles interpenetrating other cycles. Conjunctions of planets as origination of further cycles between them. For that is “how to think” as an astrologer.
It’s confusing, at first. There is no ground to stand upon. We are, each of us, occupying the exact center of the limitless vastness, surrendered to myriads of repeating cycles that swirl within larger repeating cycles, affecting one another in uncountable ways and shooting through us as energy. All we can do is attempt to center ourselves within this changing, flowing bombardment, this infinitely regenerative abundance, and attune to the present moment, its fresh and unrepeatable unfolding of the ongoing symphony of ensouled beings of every size, from quarks to humans to planets to galaxies — and beyond, both ways, to the infinitely small, the infinitely large. There is, literally, no end to it. And no beginning! No “big bang” other that the one that accompanies this realization.
And once we do this, once we let go of the single line linear time we think (with our left brain) we’re occupying as the now moment that doesn’t exist sandwiched between the linear “past” (that is frozen and that we probably either regret or long for) and the linear “future” (that we’re either afraid of or long for as worse than or better than the past); once we release that absurdly narrow squint slit of so-called “reality” and open open open! — to the continuously expanding awareness that includes all sorts of space-time cycles, each of them with a beginning, a fullness, and and a closing, each of them, in short, a birthing, growing, maturing, decaying, and deathing process — then we can begin to truly live! Our little lives here on Earth become much more interesting, indeed fascinating, and utterly miraculous — as we attune our centered selves here, right here, feet planted into the ground of Mother Earth, head open to the sky — and its myriads of cycles, each with its own space/time, its own “meaning.”
The longer cycles, especially, fascinate me. And in astrology, that means the cycles of the planets beyond rule-giving, framework-determining, habit-forming Saturn, with its near 30 year cycle. For those “outer planet” cycles — Uranus, Neptune, Pluto at least (though we can also include the 51 year cycle of Chiron, the 561-year cycle Eris and all sorts of asteroid cycles in between) offer realms of experience that are forever mysterious because forever unfinished, when considered from the perspective of this one lifetime on earth. Unless, that is, if we live to be 84 years old, when the cycle of Uranus closes for the first time. “Aha!” we might then exclaim, as always surprising, unpredictable Uranus offers us a sudden departure (“heart attack,” “accident,” “stroke”) from this body for regions unknown to our embodied selves.
This fascinating juncture in my life
Okay, hopefully this is enough of an introduction to help you see from my point of view just how fascinating this particular juncture of my life is, when Saturn opposes itself (which it does every 15-years, i.e., half-way through its near-30 year cycle). It’s fascinating, especially because, at this point transit Saturn at 6° Sagittarius, as I mentioned above, also happens to be square one of those extraordinary outer planets, namely Neptune, at 7° Pisces!
Now, cue Mars during yesterday’s “near-accident.” If you recall, it was crossing my natal Neptune! So, a double Neptune effect, both by transit Mars, and transit Saturn square transit Neptune square and opposed to my natal Saturn!
I know this sounds like gobbeldy-gook to anyone not consciously immersed in astrology’s cyclical thinking. But please bear with me!
Saturn: form.
Neptune: dissolution of form.
The near-accident: sudden aggressive (Mars) gunning of the gas pedal exactly (Saturn) and miraculously (Neptune) countered by some kind of reach down through a higher dimension into this 3D one that spread out “space” and “time” enough for the two drivers to (barely) miss colliding.
The reach down itself, I also ascribe to Neptune. Something is “taking care of me.” Some kind of guardian awareness. Taking care of the other driver too. It was not our time to die.
Here we go again. Realizing that the world is way, way, way more mysterious than any of my tiny stabs at understanding it.
Here’s yet another wildly synchronous incident, this one from two days ago:
I’ve been seeing an intuitive healer who shall remain unnamed, for the past year. As this whole Saturn/Neptune period has “heated up,” so have my subtle symptoms, which I decided, need to be addressed directly, and in a permacultural fashion, NOW, during this very period when they present themselves. Without getting into details, let me just say this: it was not until I sat on the toilet before my appointment with her two days ago, that I realized that not only were the transits of Neptune and Saturn making a T-cross (90° and 180° aspects) with my natal Saturn, but her decision (which she says is my decision, reached by asking my body through muscle-testing) several weeks ago to not see me until November 17 was timed exactly for that day, the day Neptune went direct (which it does only once each year). Whew!
I flew into her office and to tell her that. She was of course, utterly intrigued. And she wondered about her own chart. I asked her the day of her birth: May 28. BINGO. Transit Saturn sits exactly on her natal Sun. No wonder I picked her as my healer! Looking at the two of us together, her natal Sun and my natal Saturn oppose transit Saturn, and square transit Neptune.
Again, without getting into details, we also discussed how this transit exactly matches what’s going on with her now.
So perhaps you can see why, even though I tend to be unusually affected, or perhaps I should say unusually aware of being unconsciously affected by current planetary and geopolitical energies, I’m also utterly blessed with a continuous reminder of the remarkable synchronicities that pop up on a daily basis, whenever I look for them. And these synchronicities are like an overlay of bright, colorful, sunlit lotus blossoms, covering and fertilizing the muck underneath. I live both inside the muck, I feel myself as one of the blossoms, and I float above the blossoms bathed in sunlight, immersed in the ever-swelling LOVE.
And guess what? SO DO YOU.
Hallelujah
Below: same lotus, two slides, opens and closes with the sun.
