Current Transits for March 2011 Current Transits for March 2011Here's some of the important astrological news this month ...
New Moon at 13Pi55, 3-4
Pallas enters Aquarius, 3-10
Uranus enters Aries, 3-11
Full Moon at 28Vi47, 3-19
Ceres enters Pisces, 3-21
Saturn Trioctile Neptune, 3-24
Jupiter Opposing Saturn, 3-28
Mercury Retrograde Station at 24Ar21, 3-30
Jupiter Octile Neptune, 3-30
An online ephemeris for the month is available.
This is the weakest looking month since the outer planet storm broke out about 10 months ago. All of a sudden, it's like somebody let all the air out of the tires. There's not even a single Koz Alert (which start at 500 units) all month -- been a long time since we've been able to say that. Of course, such downturn times can be kind of bumpy, especially after we've absorbed so many intense influences that we've been too busy to assimilate properly. Screaming crazy busy is replaced by a slower, chaotic busy. The big news this month is Uranus taking up permanent residence in Aries finally on the 11th -- well, to 2018 at any rate. As we saw last May and June, this placement is a highly charged release of Uranus' whacky energies, difficult to channel usefully and prone to turn into chaos if you're not careful. (Neptune enters Pisces next month, the last of the big transitions since new years.) The Jupiter-Saturn opposition on the 28th seems to be the focal point for much of the activity in March, so large scale social tensions are par for the course. The wide spread revolutionary spirit in the Middle East is only one symptom of this aspect. Muddle through the month, realizing that the universe may not be backing you up in a coherent manner. Slow and steady works best these days...
There's actually some significant news in March. Important "big aspects" emphasize the Jupiter-Saturn-Neptune grouping that colors the last half of the month. There are 3 sign changes, of which Uranus entering Aries is the biggest news. Mercury starts a retrograde cycle on the 30th. This should keep us busy!
There's not a lot of power and organization in the new moon chart -- the month gets off to an uncertain start. There are a number of small groups of planets that operate independently of each other, but no big pattern that that ties the chart together. The most potent group consists of Pluto, Mars and Jupiter (all around 7-8 degrees of various signs). The Sun and Moon form a weak pattern with Saturn and Vesta. The remnants of the endless outer planet storm (Neptune, Chiron, Uranus) are pretty quiet. Almost all the planets are confined between Capricorn and Aries, with Pisces being especially busy.
A Pisces new moon brings out the emotional side of people, especially feelings connected with a past that still seems limiting or restrictive. Between Chiron just entering watery Pisces and Uranus about to leave, many people are weighed down by the demands and burdens of everyday living that never seem to let up. Of course, each of us has some influence on these matters, but we have little control over some of the larger social changes that are remaking modern life. There's widespread discontent in the wake of the Jupiter-Pluto square of Feb 25, a sense that for every step forward we make to putting life back together, we experience two steps back as the old support structures in our world are challenged and crumble. There's a lot of anger generated by this, but so far, little constructive action to correct matters. Maybe when more of these planets move into Aries, especially Mars, we'll be able to make some headway. In the meantime, don't let perceived limitations get you down. The nation and the world are going through a downsizing of expectations period, a time when our idea of the good life needs to match realistic limits of the real world. It's a healthy thing to face reality head on and accept it. Maybe such limitations will ease in the future, in which case we'll reap the benefits -- icing on the cake of our current karma. Adjust your attitude -- we'll get through this time...
Pallas moves from Capricorn into Aquarius on the 10th. She will stay in this sign for 5 months before returning to Capricorn on Aug 24 for some clean up work, reentering Aquarius on Oct 26. She doesn't make it to Pisces until 2012-2-11. This is a placement that seems designed for mental projects. Pallas is a thinker-intuitive, the gal who simply looks at a situation and has it sized up in a second. She's an expert at figuring out how to work around obstacles and accomplish her goals. Aquarius is also an intellectual influence, a dreamer and idealist perhaps, but definitely someone with a plan for the future. This placement brings out a creative streak in Pallas that can have some constructive, long term results if you put your mind to it. There are a couple of warnings about this lineup, however. First of all, neither Pallas nor Aquarius are known for their emotional sensitivity. When working with other people, remain open to their needs and feelings, since you're likely to space out that part of the interaction. Also, due to the retrograde cycle, Pallas isn't done with Capricorn yet. Yes, Aquarius is a dreamer and a visionary, but Capricorn demands that you be practical and down to earth as well. If your plans don't have a practical outcome, they may not amount to much in the end. Both ends of the spectrum must be accounted for in coming months if the results are to be satisfactory to everyone involved. So be a dreamer and planner for awhile -- just keep the long term in the back of your mind...
Uranus enters Aries on the 11th, ending a long dance across this border. Uranus first entered Aries on 2010-5-27, then moved back into Pisces on Aug 13. He's a slow mover, so his trek through Aries lasts until 2018-5-15, when he starts another slow transition into Taurus. As we saw last spring, Uranus' entrance into Aries is far from a subtle effect. Uranus is a chaotic, transformative influence anyway, but Aries seems to put this energy into overdrive. There's an urgency and impatience now to bring about changes that have been on the back burner for years, if not decades. This sign, like its ruler Mars, can be hot headed or militant when it feels wronged. Along with the typical Uranian drive towards freedom, independence and the desire to "do things my way", there's little incentive to hold back or "play the game" in order to maintain the status quo. The trick is to harness this energy for constructive change -- revolution for the hell of it won't work. If you can't stay on top of all these changes, your situation will surely become chaotic and out of control. Gear up for a faster pace or at least having more balls to juggle at once. Ironically, one of the traits that is likely to backfire is the desire to maintain too much control. Control freaks may have an especially difficult time when the world refuses to play by their rules. Being open and flexible is more likely to succeed, as it allows you to shift and change as the energies move along. The mental-intuitive mind is heavily stimulated -- try to stay grounded and avoid becoming dogmatic or out of touch in your thinking. This placement is not known for its people skills either, so remind yourself to keep the other guy in mind as you tramp about.
Like most outer planet entrances, this transition is not an overnight affair. Uranus is closing up shop in Pisces as we speak. It's last important aspect is a conjunction with Mercury (a double dose of mental energy) on the 9th, followed by a sextile from the Moon early on the 11th. It goes into a phase I call "silent running" at this point, going quietly and under the radar from Pisces into Aries. Although the energies will shift markedly on the 11th when the sign change happens (last May, the change was noticeable in the span of minutes!), Uranus won't be fully open for business in Aries until it starts making new aspects. These include a square from the Moon on the 13th and an octile from Venus on the 14th. The conjunction with the Sun shortly after the equinox is also pretty dramatic. Needless to say, this silent running period is rather short -- Uranus is anxious to get down to business. Hit the ground running!
The full moon is certainly a livelier chart than the new moon was. With the Sun coming up to a conjunction with Uranus in 2 days, as well as contacting Ceres, Neptune and Chiron, there's an intense outer planet tinge to the full moon. A second group centered on Jupiter and Mercury opposite Saturn, with Juno, Venus and Mars on the fringes, is also active. And unlike earlier periods, there are some connecting aspects between these groups.
When you get to the end of Pisces and into early Aries, there's a sense of old patterns in our lives coming to a close and new options opening up. The Sun-Uranus conjunction in particular is apt to really shake things up. It's not worth bothering about situations that seem to be falling apart. With the basic energies shifting, there's no support for old circumstances that have run their course. Just figure out when the next wave is coming and try to ride it out. Once more, with the Jupiter-Saturn opposition dominating the last half of March, it's more the large scale or society-wide influences that are most obvious. Social discontent is still a major factor in the big news stories of the day and if anything, the uproar is growing. Mercury helps to give this mood a voice, albeit an angry one at times. The ideal aim is for cooperation on common goals, such as getting the economy working, etc., an aim that is as elusive as ever. (We're due for a major budget fight in Congress around this time -- again.) The major bright side to this picture is that we at least have some planetary energy behind us. Humanity is not in this alone, but we have to do our part...
Ceres moves into Pisces on the 21st. She'll be in this sign until Jul 11, when she shifts into Aries. It's hard to imagine a placement with a greater emphasis on the connections between people. Ceres is the Great Mother of the ancient world, a symbol of how the Web of Life is woven together by ties of nurturance and support. Pisces is often described as expressing an "oceanic experience" where all things in the universe merge together and become One. This kind of deep love and compassion is a powerful spiritual ideal. However, few people live up to such an ideal, leaving the rest of us to ponder why we don't measure up. Look to where you put limits on your loving relationships with others, especially where there are hidden strings attached. People often bargain in their relationships, holding back until they get something in return -- that's human nature. But we're capable of much more than lives of manipulating each other. Ceres in Pisces sets a high standard. It may sound unreasonable or impractical, but try expressing some Big Love for a few months and see what happens. You might be surprised...
Saturn is trioctile Neptune on the 24th, the second of 3 such contacts. The first contact was on 2010-10-27 (just before the fall elections) and the final one will be on Aug 24. It's really hard to imagine two planets more different than these two. Saturn is the voice of cold, hard reality, the stern taskmaster that insists you take care of every little detail. Neptune is a dreamer and idealist, the spiritual perspective that blurs everything together and is unconcerned with artificial distinctions and separations. Even on a good day, they don't fit together easily. Trioctiles are not a very harmonious aspect anyway, so these planets are more at odds than usual. There's an uneasy tension between the demands for practicality of Saturn and the idealism and vision of Neptune. Both extremes must be accepted and reconciled, a difficult requirement that is full of contradictions and paradoxes. Since we're only halfway through this aspect, the problems are more obvious than ever, but the solutions are still eluding us. This issues are most obvious on the national and international stages, where competing points of view are in no mood to compromise and even the best of intentions have a "shadow" side of unintended consequences. These tensions are nowhere near a resolution -- stay tuned!
Jupiter is opposite Saturn on the 28th, the last of 3 such contacts. They met previously on May 23 and Aug 16 of 2010. I call Jupiter and Saturn the social planets, the bodies that describe the give and take required of us to be members of society. Jupiter represents the goodies and benefits of throwing in your lot with the rest of the world around you, while Saturn is the demands and restrictions you take on to live harmoniously with others. Since this in an opposition, these two sides of the social coin are not very well balanced, leading to a lot of discontent. With these two planets, it's always important to remember the 20 cycle they form which has a lot of influence over the affairs of nations and societies in general, especially the political and economic situations. The conjunction that began this current cycle was in May 2000, as the boom years of the 90's went south. The economic policies of the early Bush years pretty much guaranteed that we'd have a collapse at some point -- the Great Recession of 2008 to the present is our legacy of financial irresponsibility. Oppositions are typically a time when trends and decisions reach their fruition, when we reap the benefits and realize where all the pitfalls are. I'm wondering whether this aspect has anything to do with the popular uprisings spreading across the Middle East this winter. This cycle has been linked with the stand off between Israel and Palestine (the conjunction was on the Israeli Sun), but the situation now is affecting a much larger area. All bets are off in this region until one country after another reinvents how they will be governed based on the will of the people. It's an intriguing moment of reckoning in this part of the world. I don't expect any of these stories to improve noticeably any time soon -- it's a long time until the next positive aspect in this cycle happens. Time to roll up our sleeves and make some improvements.
Mercury reaches his retrograde station of 24Ar21 on the 30th, starting 3 weeks of reverse motion. This period ends on Apr 23, when Mercury reaches his direct station at 12Ar53. Once again, the thinking mind seems to seize up and quit working properly. I call Mercury the thinking, rational, symbol-using part of the psyche, the part that tries to understand and control the world through the power of narrative. We've all got this running story in our heads called "How the World Works" which allows us to navigate our daily lives successfully. Usually this story line is sufficient to help us make sense of situations so we make the right decisions and actions when needed. During the retrograde cycles, however, it seems this story has all the wrong answers. The world seems crazy or unreasonable, miscommunications between people causes misunderstandings, future plans have unexpected gotchas. It's very frustrating and causes lots of trouble. But the problem is that the thinking mind is never able to capture all of reality in its stories and models -- life is more complicated than we think. Use this time to pick apart your inner story, refining it to match the world more closely, letting go of assumptions that no longer work well. We all need to debug our thinking from time to time. These corrections will make life go much more smoothly when Mercury goes direct again.
Jupiter is octile Neptune on the 30th, a quick, single pass aspect. This contact is rather short lived and so unlikely to have a strong, long term effect. It also happens to be one of the last aspects for Neptune before moving from Aquarius to Pisces (his home sign) on Apr 4 -- Neptune is already starting to shut down. Octiles are a subtle form of conflict, more under the surface than in your face. The common, everyday world of Jupiter is not meshing well with the more ideal or dreamy world of Neptune. Normally, I'd put my money on the slower planet to have the bigger impact, but with Neptune winding up his stay in Aquarius, he's an energy in decline for now. Visions of a better world need to bend to the practicalities of the moment and the desires of people for a better life. When conflicts between these desires come up or compromises need to be made, it's not the high minded approach that wins out. However, Jupiter is in a compromised condition these days as well, so the results down the road probably won't meet our current expectations. I'm thinking of the US economic and budgetary situations (now being stressed again by rising oil prices) and the political turmoil in the Middle East, where democratic reforms face a rocky, even deadly course ahead. It will be interesting to see if Neptune in Pisces brings changes to this somewhat pessimistic outlook.