Current Transits for February 2014 Current Transits for February 2014Here's some of the important astrological news this month ...
Ceres enters Scorpio, 2-3
Jupiter Trine Chiron, 2-5
Mercury Retrograde, 2-6 to 2-28
Full Moon at 26Le12, 2-14
Chiron Sextile Pluto, 2-25
Jupiter Square Uranus, 2-26
Ceres Retrograde Station at 1Sc53, 2-27
An online ephemeris for the month is available.
February looks like a very busy and demanding month, with not a lot of down time. It seems to be mostly storm patterns, including some decent Koz Alerts, with only a few days here and there to rest and get your bearings. Not too surprisingly, the planetary pattern behind all this activity is the persistent T-Square of Pluto, Uranus and Jupiter, plus some help from Chiron. (At least Mars is out of the picture for awhile.) I'd be most concerned with the middle of the month (roughly the 11th to the 18th), when most of the connections between planets are harsh aspects. To make matters more interesting, Mercury is retrograde between the 6th and the 28th, creating a mental fog that clouds most of the month. If you've got work to do that requires a clear mind, get it done early. It's intriguing how many planets are standing still in February and March. I call such a situation a "logjam", as it seems to create a sense of stagnation, a feeling that circumstances are going nowhere, no matter what you do. The Logjam is especially prominent the first week of March. There is often much tension or stress being built up during these times that will be released later on in a torrent of movement. The outer planet T-Square is active with 3 "big aspects" in February, so if you encounter resistance to your plans, it's best to stand back and examine your situation at a deeper level. We all seem to be overlooking something these days, something hiding just out of our awareness. This missing piece to the puzzle is the key to making sense of these chaotic times, but paradoxically, it's our chaos that points us to that better direction. We've got our work cut out for us this month...
February is a relatively busy month. There are 3 planets at stationary points (2 of them, Mercury), with 3 or 4 more coming up in March -- the Logjam. Three "big aspects" within the T-Square group of outer planets indicate much collective or unconscious activity going on. Ceres entering Scorpio is the only sign change. Curiously, there are no new moons in February, just a full moon.
Ceres moves from Libra into Scorpio on the 3rd. This is a brief stay, because she only gets 2 degrees into this sign before going retrograde and returning to Libra from Mar 22 to Aug 6. She'll then spend a second time in Scorpio until leaving for Sagittarius on Oct 27. Ceres is normally a caring, empathetic character, a Good Mom, and this dance across the Libra-Scorpio border focuses on relationship issues. The difficulty with Scorpio is the intensity of the emotions and the ego here. When the emotional thermostat gets cranked up like this, it's easy to lose perspective on minor issues (let alone genuine crises) and fall into melodramatic and self-serving soap operas with others. Such dramatic displays actually weaken the relationship, creating needless fear, distrust and uncertainty. While it may make life more exciting and interesting for you, such behavior is the antithesis of a good, loving relation. The more challenging path for Scorpio is to exchange intensity for depth, a quiet love that is rock solid without being flashy about it. People who depend on you want to simply know and trust that you are there for them, without having to "read the emotional tea leaves" of what your latest fleeting mood is. Keep some perspective on your own feelings. Life is bigger than your ego...
Jupiter is trine Chiron on the 5th, the second of 3 such contacts. They met previously on 2013-8-21 and will finish up on May 14 of this year. Jupiter is more or less your social persona, the mask you wear and the roles you play in order to interact with the people around you in a smooth and mutually beneficial manner. The trouble with any mask is that over the years, you learn to identify with the superficial roles until you become a hollow shell of who you used to be. Chiron accentuates this tendency to hide your true self in order to look normal. Eventually, this inner void either sucks the life out of you or forces you (often later in life) to examine this void and reclaim the parts of your nature that you've hidden away in there. All this is happening in the greater context of the outer planet T-Square. As a spiritual influence, Jupiter is rather conventional and stereotypical in his approach -- more a common churchgoer than a powerful mystic or spiritual warrior. His appearance with the likes of Chiron, Uranus and Pluto puts a lot of pressure on him to try something more radical and daring. Fortunately, we're dealing with a trine aspect, which usually has a decent outcome, especially if you approach this time consciously and put in some personal effort to change. The world has been undergoing some incredible shifts the last year or so, though much of it is internal or below the surface changes. It's subtly easier to embrace oddball solutions to our spiritual dilemmas than in the past. This trine actually encourages you to let the old mask slip a bit, revealing more of your inner nature than you would have felt comfortable doing previously. The people who are worth hanging out with will understand, particularly since they are going through a similar process themselves. It's as if we all recognize we are all members of some kind of "brotherhood of spiritual growth", where kindness and mutual support outweighs the more typical social gamesmanship. It's a good time to come out of your shell. Keep in mind that the cycle between these two planets began back in 2009, when Jupiter and Chiron formed a triple conjunction with Neptune, just as the world was experiencing a Neptune Return to its discovery position back in 1846. We are collectively learning to operate at a much higher level as human beings, based on (among other things) a more acute awareness of subtle energies and our higher natures than ever before. Humanity is being forced to grow up, to become more than we can even imagine currently. This trine is one tiny step in this larger process.
Mercury goes retrograde at 3Pi20 on the 6th. He'll back up to his direct station of 18Aq09 on the 28th, at which point he resumes normal motion. Mercury comes within a degree of Neptune in early Pisces and then stops dead in its tracks. The mental fog typical of Mercury retrograde should be denser than usual with such a supporting cast. You may be full of hunches, intuitions, images and vague feelings about all sorts of things, most of them wrong. It's always useful to pay attention to these inner nudges and play around with them in a safe way without long-term consequences, but it's very important that you don't take them too seriously until they've shown their worth. People are full of great, world-shaking ideas that turn out to be more trouble than they are worth when put into action. If you study this stream of images and trace it back into the depths of your own psyche, however, you can catch glimpses of deep insights into your inner nature and the limitations of all things Mercury, especially rational thinking. The role of Mercury in our lives is to bring forth those traits and skills related to language, symbolism and analytical thought, all with the goal of creating a working story of the world around you and how you fit in. The irony of this is, no matter how successful this story is at explaining the world, no story can possibly contain the full complexity and quirkiness of this universe. The typical reaction when faced with some situation that doesn't unfold according to your story is to think it makes no sense and is crazy. A better response is to laugh at this apparent nonsense and proceed to rewrite your narrative. Even deeper is the spiritual realization that all stories, all thinking, all systems are flawed and limited when you push them too far. When Mercury retreats to Aquarius for the bulk of his retrograde cycle, this process of analyzing your Mercury mind will intensify for people on this wavelength. "Thinking about thinking about thinking..." is the source of some of my favorite paradoxes and the beginning of self-awareness beyond the ego level. Mercury turns direct again on the 28th, during a powerful storm pattern. It may take awhile before the world makes sense, again.
The full moon on Valentine's Day is a powerful chart, falling just an hour before the strongest Koz Alert of the month. The chart is a picture of dueling T-Squares. The one T-Square, Jupiter, Uranus and Pluto with Chiron in tow, is obvious. The other one contains Sun-Mercury, the Moon and Saturn, with Mars-Vesta for good measure. These two patterns are thoroughly interconnected by 45 degree aspects, hence the strong 8th harmonic in this waveform. Venus and Neptune are off in their own world.
A little tension can sometimes be a nice spice to a romantic evening, but not this much. This many planets joined by stressful aspects is apt to be more trouble than fun. The first T-Square is our typical outer planet influences that we've seen so much of for many months. It operates on a subtle and not always obvious level that triggers major changes in the world today. The second T-Square is geared more towards our everyday lives. It feels like a lot of restriction or limitation, with Saturn the Taskmaster afflicting both the Sun and Moon. This second group is in fixed signs, that is, zodiac signs where the energies have taken a fixed or static form and are not easily changed or redirected. It often shows up as an attitude of stubbornness or belligerence. Opinions are strongly held and defended, making anything but light conversation difficult. Even though Mars is in diplomatic Libra, he adds some hotheadedness to the mix. Go easy on each other, as misunderstandings are likely and hard to straighten out. The big question is how these two levels interact with each other. Given all this 8th harmonic business, I assume the inner worlds and our more personal behaviors are at odds with each other. You may find that no matter how you act and how reasonably you treat other people, there's still room for disagreement and conflict with others. The outer planets, our unconscious motivations, keep creeping in and making a mess of our relationships. After putting out the fires, it's worthwhile analyzing why things went south with your partners, where the unspoken differences lie. Hopefully you can transform these missteps into a common understanding and a stronger bond. Unfortunately, the more romantic and peace-loving planets, Venus and Neptune, are also the weakest ones in the chart. And even they are 45 degrees apart! Don't we get any breaks? Maybe extra chocolates and flowers will help...
Chiron is sextile Pluto on the 25th, the last of 5 such contacts. They met before on 2012-5-12, 2012-9-6, 2013-4-4 and 2013-10-28. Both of these bodies operate at such a deep, often hidden level of the psyche that the effects of this aspect can be easily overlooked. Chiron is the long process of rejecting and then redeeming the parts of our personality that are important spiritual gifts, but which are unfortunately not accepted by others. Eventually, our personal pain is transformed into spiritual truths, allowing us to grow into our greater potential. Pluto is all about transformation and becoming who we were meant to be when we came into this world. Anything in life that holds us back from this path is subject to Pluto's destructive side, until we are set free of such distractions. Sextiles represent times when two planets are cooperating with each other and constructive progress is possible, if you only roll up your sleeves and put in the effort. The last 2 years have been a time when it's easier to soothe old emotional wounds and see the nugget of truth within, to forgive your "imperfections", to let go of the need to be "perfect" in the first place. It's part of the human condition that we are all individual, quirky, sometimes obnoxious and always falling short of inhuman standards of perfection -- and we're all the more valuable and wonderful for it. The universe doesn't want or need cookie-cutter people. It needs all the crazy wisdom and creative chaos we can bring into the world. There's not a lot of payback from this aspect for being normal, so embrace your quirkiness. It makes all the other changes we're experiencing happen more easily.
Jupiter is square Uranus on the 26th, the second of 3 contacts. Their first contact was on 2013-8-21 and they will meet again on Apr 20, a rather tempestuous time. Squares are always stress times within the cycles of planetary pairs, a period when the original promise at the start of the cycle (the conjunction aspect) meets up with forces that oppose it. That original impulse must simultaneously prove its worth while adapting to changing circumstances. This 14 year Jupiter-Uranus cycle began recently in 2010. On the political scene here in the US, the Tea Party was taking over the GOP and leading to a Republican House. The recent shenanigans in Congress, including the government shutdown last October, has considerably dimmed Tea Party prospects and tempered their fiery rhetoric. Similarly with the Arab Spring several years ago, much of the aftermath has been disappointing. Egypt is sinking back into a military dictatorship, while the bloody mess in Syria (much in the news last August) seems to drag on inconclusively. As I hinted at earlier, Jupiter is rather conventional and geared towards the status quo. Considering he is placed in Cancer, a sign best known for tradition, mom and apple pie, this focus on the past and the way things have always been is very powerful in some people's minds. Radical Uranus in hotheaded Aries is an entirely different matter. Uranus loves nothing better than to blow up the status quo, try change for the sake of change and flirt with seductive ideas like freedom, liberty and a higher humanity. Since this is square, you can practically hear the brakes squealing as these two planets collide into each other. This is your classical paradigm shift aspect, when ideas whose time has yet to come are contending with ideas whose time has past and everything is in chaos until the dust settles. The old ways no longer work, but the new ones have yet to gain our trust or show their value as a useful alternative. They still sound "too weird" to trust. This is a process of constrained chaos, of radical change happening within the confines of traditional structures. While it's easy to see such a process in the outer world, keep in mind that the really important conflict is going on inside ourselves. Values and attitudes are changing rapidly, one person at a time, as we simply start looking at the world from a different point of view. This particular square comes to a head with its last contact on Apr 20. This is a remarkable time when the Jupiter-Uranus-Pluto T-Square has 2 days of really powerful "big aspects", shortly after the Pluto retrograde station and in the middle of several eclipses. All I can say for now is "Wow!" There will be fireworks in April.
P.S. -- the full moon axis on the 14th is exactly on the same position as the Jun 2010 Jupiter-Uranus conjunction. A hint, perhaps?
Ceres goes retrograde at 1Sc53 on the 27th. She backs up to her direct station of 18Li32 by Jun 1. We started talking about this station some in relation to Ceres entering Scorpio. Ceres is the Great Mother of ancient times, the way we care for and nurture the beings who depend on us, the help we receive from our support network, the personal connections that weave all beings into what I call the Great Web of Life. As she enters Scorpio and comes to a halt, there are many ways people can react. We mentioned the way of soap operas and emotional self-absorption earlier. This is essentially the path of the big ego question: "What's in it for me?" It's easy for caregivers to feel taken advantage of or drained by the people under their care, especially when Ceres is backing up and we're prone to questioning this whole Great Web thing. If you have no tolerance of moochers, this could be a tricky time. Emotional dramas that serve your purposes but exclude others could threaten your own support web, and knowing how the universe loves irony, you may soon need the help you're chasing away right now. Such selfishness is not workable when Ceres backs into Libra again, as the focus shifts to the mutuality of one-on-one relationships and the ego takes a back seat. A rough path for everyone involved. Another course is to plumb the depths of what it means to be a part of this Great Web, to understand the spiritual dimensions of your place in the world. Scorpio is good at "depth work" that ultimately transcends the ego level. While in the middle of such contemplations, however, remember to serve others and not just think about it -- it's easy to become self-absorbed here, another ego trap. This is really a Path of the Heart, a testing time when you learn to open up your heart energies more than usual, maybe even more than you're comfortable with, and become a more authentic and vulnerable person with others. This is challenging to the ego, who thrives on "looking good" all the time, but if you can move past shallow ego concerns, vast new possibilities open up. It's not insignificant that the rites to Ceres/Demeter were the highest Mysteries of the ancient world. We trivialize the Great Mom in modern times -- back then, she was the key. Pay attention to your partners and close relationships in the coming months. There's much to learn here...