Current Transits for February 2013 Current Transits for February 2013Here's some of the important astrological news this month ...
Mars enters Pisces, 2-1
Ceres Direct Station at 19Gm44, 2-4
New Moon at 21Aq43, 2-10
Saturn Retrograde Station at 11Sc31, 2-18
Mercury Retrograde Station at 19Pi52, 2-23
Full Moon at 7Vi23, 2-25
An online ephemeris for the month is available.
February is apt to be more dramatic than it looks on paper. Viewed from the perspective of traditional astrological events, this is a slow news month. In particular, there are no exact aspects between the slow moving planets, one of the key indicators I like to follow. However, just because there are no exact contacts going off doesn't mean there is no outer planet activity -- far from it! Since mid December, we've been following a massive planetary pattern I've called the Double Yod, consisting of Jupiter, Saturn, Chiron, Uranus and Pluto. After reaching a climax around the time of the solstice, these Yods have been weakening somewhat as the planets move in various directions from their exact positions. Between Jupiter going direct again on Jan 30 and Saturn approaching his retrograde station on the 18th, the Yod planets are beginning to drift back together, making the pattern much stronger once more -- March should be an impressive repeat performance. Meanwhile, when the faster moving planets move through the Yods, all this energy is channeled through our daily lives, upsetting mundane situations that used to behave much differently than they do these days. Every circumstance is a mirror on how well you're evolving and growing on various levels and where you're holding on to old problem areas that need to be released. The consensus seems to be some parts of life are advancing quickly and effortlessly, while the more problematic issues are so difficult as to be unbearable. There's a huge planetary storm coming up between the 4th and the 16th as Mercury, Venus and Mars all fly through the Yod planets. We are being overhauled on multiple levels at once, mental, emotional and in our ability to get things done on the physical plane. It helps to mentally take a vacation from your old ways of doing things, to separate yourself from the old stuff we all become attached to, to give yourself some space to try something new. Don't get dragged down emotionally by the roadblocks you encounter -- they are trouble now, but will eventually shift if you put in the effort. Hang in there!
There's not a lot of news this month. Mars moves into Pisces on the 1st. Saturn, Ceres and Mercury reach their stations. And despite all the activity in the Double Yod pattern, there are are no "big aspects" showing up.
Mars moves from Aquarius into Pisces on the 1st. He'll be in this sign until Mar 12, when he heads into his home turf of Aries. You can hear Mars grumbling and complaining already. Pisces is so not what Mars is into. He wants to get up, do things, throw his weight around, change things according to his whims. He's the original action figure of the solar system, a true soldier. So why is Pisces telling him to slow down, look at the big picture, consider how his actions effect others -- here, sit on this meditation pillow and have a cup of herbal tea. (It doesn't help that the first planet Mars encounters is dreamy Neptune, a planet that always seems to deflate Mars' ambition.) If current circumstances are intolerable to your ego, perhaps it is time to stop running around and think things over. Unfortunately for Mars, ego is his job and he often takes it to an extreme. That's when he needs to back down the most. And we hear you -- this is totally infuriating. The universe is amused at your impatience. Settle down and just remember that Aries is where Mars gets to be Mars again. Your time is coming soon. Be patient...
Ceres reaches her direct station of 19Gm44 on the 4th. She has been backing up since her retrograde station of 3Cn43 back on 2012-10-31. Ceres is the Great Mother that looks after and cares for all living beings. She represents all the ways we love and support each other, helping those less developed than ourselves, receiving guidance from those ahead of us, a convoluted network of connections I call the Great Web of Life. She teaches all people that we are in this world together and rely on each other to keep this planet working properly. And when things go wrong, we need to look after those in harm's way. How curious that Ceres went retrograde the week Hurricane Sandy pounded the east coast and here we are at the end of the cycle and Congress is just getting around to picking up the pieces. She started out in Cancer, the sign of mother love, family connections and blood is thicker than water, but quickly backed up into Gemini, a more gregarious and social sign. Part of the message with this cycle is simply that most people aren't used to imagining their connections and obligations to those friends and family outside of their immediate circle. Maybe we just need to stand back from our habitual ways of thinking and let the idea of this Web of Life sink in. New ways of behaving often need to start with a change of mind before a change of heart can occur. When Ceres gets back to Cancer for a second time, this new perspective can penetrate to a deeper level. I haven't mentioned this before, but this retrograde cycle was directly opposite the Galactic Center (27Sa02). Given all the new energies coming in since the solstice time related to GC influences, it makes me wonder if there's an even deeper significance to this cycle than most. Maybe it's a kind of global wakeup call, that we can't postpone Ceres awareness any longer without doing serious damage to the planet, our home. Anyway, we've got a lot of loving work to do. Ceres is direct again -- get busy!
The new moon falls right in the middle of the major storm period and is showing plenty of power, just shy of a Koz Alert. There are two major groups of planets in this chart. The group between 6 and 11 degrees consists of the 5 outer planets in the Double Yod, plus Pallas,Vesta, Venus, Mars and Mercury -- pretty much most of the solar system. There's a secondary group around 19-21 degrees that is weakly connected with the Yods: Sun, Moon, Juno and Ceres. And off to the side is Neptune, the most isolated body in the chart.
It's getting difficult to say anything new about the Double Yod -- it's been the main show for 2 months now. As always, the Yod planets are acting on several levels at once. Uranus and Pluto are the most far reaching in their influence, although it's hard to pin down what this influence is. They are both revolutionary energies, eager to overturn or transform the tired status quo, whatever that might be. They have little concern for how conventional thinking believes the world should be. You either change in an enlightened manner, true to your higher spirit, or the changes will take on a distorted or misdirected quality. Regardless of whether we cooperate or not, change is coming, so we might as well make the most of it. This is a very long term trend -- the Uranus-Pluto square stretches from 2012 to 2015. Currently, the changes are most easily seen on the larger social arena, as Jupiter and Saturn (the rulers of how we connect with the world at large) provide the easiest avenue for expressing all this change. Meanwhile, Chiron points to the forces that inhibit a smooth transition, namely our own fears and insecurities that scare us away from growth and change. Unfortunately, Uranus and Pluto are highly unpredictable and nearly impossible to second guess. While the fact of change is obvious in this pattern, the forms and events that express these shifts are hard to foresee. Perhaps the trends are more obvious in our larger institutions, especially the government. Competing visions of our future are fighting for dominance, with the more conservative forces in a weaker position than they've been for many years. Nevertheless, no one view seems to come out a clear winner. The Yods are feeding into our lives through 3 trigger planets (Mercury, Venus, Mars) as well as several asteroids. There's something a little off about each of these trigger planets. The feeling planet Venus is in Aquarius, one of the most analytical signs. Mercury and Mars are in watery Pisces, a sign that is ill suited to both planets. The Yod energies are most likely felt on the personal level as an inner disturbance of conflicting ideas, images and feelings. I think we're still in the phase of taking in these new forces (it hasn't been all that long since the solstice). The part about sorting through the ideas, making sense of them and putting them into action hasn't arrived yet. In particular, since the Sun and Moon are only loosely connected to all this power, we're still blissfully unaware of much of the confusion going on inside us. Maybe we glimpse some of the ideas or intuitions, but we certainly haven't integrated "the new person" into our daily lives. The coming lunar month is intended to start this slow assimilation process, to really "get" those insights that change the way you view the world and your place in it. Have the courage to break out of those mental ruts that keep you from moving forward. In the long run, it's easier than staying stuck.
Saturn stops at his retrograde station of 11Sc31 on the 18th, starting 5 months of retrograde motion. He'll back up to his direct station of 4Sc49 by Jul 8 before resuming a normal forward direction. I can't say this cycle is going to be much fun, but that's not the point with Saturn, especially in an intense sign like Scorpio. The best way I've found to come to terms with Saturn is as a Teacher. In fact, my nickname for him is the Head Master at the School of Hard Knocks, which is what the world dishes out to us when we don't learn our lessons. It's important to learn responsibility for your actions, take care of yourself as much as possible, know your personal boundaries, play by the rules of society, etc., all the kinds of "virtues" that most of us would rather ignore. Of course, Scorpio has a strong affinity for the intense emotions of your inner life, the urges and drives that push the ego to look after itself, even at the expense of others. This is the sign where all the soap operas of life seem to start. The previous retrograde cycle for Saturn was entirely in Libra, forcing us to clean up relationship issues that were outstanding. This is the first cycle in Scorpio in close to 30 years, so this is the time to shut down those soap operas and grow up emotionally. Once you get past the excitement of intense emotions (an addictive substance worse than cocaine), you can settle into a calmer, deeper, but no less intense level of feeling that reaches down to the core of who you are. The irony of Scorpio is when you discover who you are like this, you find it has little to do with ego and the stories we tell ourselves of how great we are. If anything, the sense of connectedness, of having no boundaries that cut you off from others is more important than a heightened sense of self. Obviously, this is not easy territory to navigate, particularly for those who are inexperienced at dealing with their inner world. The encounter with the unconscious aspects of your own psyche are enough to scare most people away. It takes patience, discipline, courage and elbow grease to make any headway here. That's where Saturn comes in. Take responsibility for your own emotional side, especially when the ego gets out of control. When you're looking at the big picture, it starts by setting the ego to the side. Ultimately, if you get this right, it leads to a depth of wisdom and maturity that moves beyond society's normal, but superficial definitions of these qualities. It pays to lighten your karmic load like this, to let go of these petty crises that have no purpose in the big picture. I tend to imagine Saturn with a sly, hidden smile as he looks at me out of the corners of his eyes. He may not be the life of the party, but there's a quiet joy within him. Spirit measures "fun" by its own scale. That's a lesson well worth learning...
Mercury stands still at 19Pi52 on the 23rd, beginning a 3 week retrograde cycle. He'll go direct again at 5Pi37 on Mar 17. Mercury is the thinking, talking, symbol using part of the psyche. He's the guy that explains how things work, how to interact with others, what the meaning of the world might be. He does all this by being a master story teller. In fact, to a large extent, these inner stories and explanations describe who we really are. Except when Mercury decides to back up for 3 weeks. During this time, the world behaves according to its own rules, not the stories we created to make sense of the situations we run into on a daily basis. People frequently complain that the world makes no sense during Mercury retrograde, that it doesn't conform to the stories we made up. The problem is with our stories. One of the givens about the universe is that it's bigger and more complicated than the thinking mind can comprehend and interpret. Your stories or inner narrative, no matter how sophisticated they might be, can never capture the world entirely. We are all going to be baffled and surprised from time to time, brought up short by some circumstance that totally blows away our expectations. People do this a lot to each other during these cycles. No matter how clearly you try to communicate your intentions to another, you can be amazed at how completely misunderstood you are -- people see things radically differently. Normally these differences are of little account in our daily interactions, but now they seem to happen way too often. As with all planets in retrograde motion, the activities related to Mercury are misbehaving and falling short, causing us to reexamine this whole part of ourselves. The best thing to do with all these surprises and confusions is to use them to debug your narratives and models of the world (including yourself!), get the kinks out of the stories and make them work more effectively in the future. This requires as a first step the realization that our inner image of "what is real and how it works" is not reality itself, but only a fallible imitation of real life. The western world seems to put Rationality on a pedestal as the ultimate arbiter of what is True and Real. The shadow side of rationality is that it can never capture a true description of the world's complexity -- by its very nature, it will always fall short. As my favorite bumper sticker says: "Don't believe everything you think!" When you move beyond the thinking self, it allows you to embrace other parts of the psyche that are often eclipsed or downplayed by the story teller inside.
One last point: this cycle is entirely in Pisces, the most dreamy and ungrounded of all the zodiac signs. Unless your natal Mercury is in this sign, the current cycle will likely be more confusing and disorienting than usual. Prepare to be on a first name basis with totally befuddled. Feelings and vague intuitions, especially tidbits of our deepest fears and anxieties, may bubble to the surface and substitute for logical thinking -- and it may be hard to tell the difference between them. It's important to get your ego out of the picture and take a light hearted approach to daily life. So you're confused -- big deal. Confusion opens you up to new insights and information, while certainty shuts you down. Pisces reveals wonder and mystery to us, the exact opposite of a perfect narrative. Life is so much easier to shoulder when you don't have to be right all the time.
The full moon is the high point of the second storm this month. The chart is largely similar to the new moon: same Yods, different trigger planets. The Sun and Moon pull together the Yod planets in a tight pattern, including a T-square with Jupiter that is nearly exact. Mercury (recently turned retrograde), Venus and Mars are largely quiet and out of touch in this chart. The Sun is nestled between Neptune and Chiron.
Of the Yod planets, the one that stands out the most is Jupiter. The optimism and enthusiasm of Jupiter outshines some of the more difficult planets. Further, Saturn and Pluto form a lovely sextile fan with the Sun and Moon, which dampens their harsher influences to a large degree. In short, this is probably the smoothest and cleanest expression of the Yods since they began back in December. If anything, we're finally starting to take in these new influences in a personal manner, making them our own. Too bad the other fast moving planets are so disconnected from the bigger pattern. It makes it harder to express these changes in our everyday lives. Your thinking is not likely to undergo an overhaul in coming weeks, especially since Mercury just went retrograde. The thinking mind is not working well anyway, let alone coming up with brilliant insights. Venus, the emotions, is not only isolated from the rest of the planets, but is in the final degree of an especially dispassionate sign. Mars, your physical vitality and force of will power, is similarly in a weakened situation in Pisces. It's as if you can sense the new spiritual influences in your life, but you can't really express what you feel or even put your finger on it. We're growing in fits and starts these days apparently, so don't expect everything to come together smoothly right away. The Pisces Sun stuck between Neptune and Chiron is exposed to the deeper emotional tendencies that restrict you. Your confidence may be shaky. To the extent these negative feelings are something to move beyond, don't take them too personally. Better to stay grounded and concerned with practical matters than worrying about worrying so much.