Jul 2013
Sail Away
To those emotionally courageous souls whose path involves feeling everything that’s there to be felt, I have this to say: Get ready for the roiling waters.
July will be replete with strikingly different feeling tones. At times we’ll probably feel we are carrying crosses: boxed in by the squares (90° angles between planets). At other times, we may settle into the effortless fluidity of the trines (120° angles).
When the squares are upon us, we may feel prodded into decisive action we’re not sure how to take. But the trines are there in the background, all month long. They invite us to sail away upon the waiting waters of our life purpose, supported, guided and held aloft.
Cardinal Cross
The most dramatic transits this month are those that trigger the Uranus-Pluto square.When they find their mark, something in our world feels like it’s been hit by lightning (Uranus), and something cracks and shatters (Pluto). This is the sound of our life purpose breaking out of its shell.
During the first week of the month, Uranus and Pluto, now 10 and 12 degrees of Aries and Capricorn, will form a T-square with the Sun. The intensity built up between them will throb through the airwaves for another couple of weeks, at which point Uranus goes retrograde on July 17th (stations of Uranus and Pluto, in either direction, can be counted upon to set off the square).
This explosive period will climax on the 21st and 22nd when Mars in Cancer moves into this zone, hitting Jupiter now in early Cancer. The Jupiter-Uranus-Pluto T-square, peaking out now, again in February and again next April 2014, is the kind of transit that astrologers expect to manifest in unmistakable events in the outer world.
Inner World
Which means we should pay particular attention to our inner world.
Jupiter went into Cancer on June 25th. This is a year-long period of reassessing our ideals about family, home and native land. We recommit to those beliefs that are genuine and independent; the ones that arise from our deepest ethical impulses. We let go of ideas that no longer ring true for us; beliefs that we may have picked up from childhood or church or Miss Manners. It may be that because we’ve grown up, they no longer fit. Maybe some of them never did fit.
This doesn’t mean drop them all, baby-out-with-the-bathwater-style. That’d be too easy.
Soul-searching is not easy. Yet soul-searching is, of course, the whole point of the transit. The Universe doesn’t care what we believe; it just cares that we acquired our beliefs authentically. (This self-examination is especially relevant for Americans, whose national chart is going through its Jupiter Return [see July’s America in Transition]).
Jupiter teaches us to be ideologically responsible: to be a person who stands by her own moral standards and philosophies. This is how we make Jupiter, a social planet, live up to its calling, which is to help us contribute to the collective. We do our best for the world by being conscious of our own energies.
This month, once again, those energies have a water focus. This means that the way we become ideologically responsible is to first become emotionally responsible.
Stellium in Cancer
The Cancerian urge to protect, shelter and nourish is in its glory now. 
There are soul-stirringly beautiful ways to act it out, and there are selfish, self-protective ways to act it out. The difference between the two lies in how spiritually tuned-in we are. With Jupiter in Cancer we may become more conscious of the reasons why being a caring person is a good thing.
But ultimately this kind of sensitivity isn’t derived from ideology. The beautiful side of Cancer pours out of us when we tap into the part of ourselves that knows – not believes, merely, but knows – that all creatures are part of the same family. All need help and sustenance. All were once somebody’s baby.
Water Trine
Mercury is in Cancer for another straight month in a row, steeping our thoughts in tender, subjective feeling. Saturn, still in Scorpio until 2015, has been closely trining Neptune (which, with Chiron, is in Pisces) since May. This trine will reach a peak when Saturn stations on July 7th.
It is a psychic scaffolding just hanging there in the mass vibration. Those who tune into it will be rewarded with a feeling of support that emanates from the background of days and weeks shaken up by the Cardinal Cross. If we quiet ourselves enough to detect it, we can lie back and rest upon it, as on a raft in still water. Like all moments in the cosmic calendar, this one is perfectly timed. Throw up a little prayer of gratitude for it, during the few days surrounding Saturn’s station.
Mercury’s direct station on the 20th, just before the Full Moon, is another one. The potential exists to reach a point of emotional 
equilibrium, from which the genius of water can direct us.
Mercury is usually about linear sequential thinking, but this transit is about a subtler use of the mind. Logical thought is not the only kind of thought. This is our chance to take advantage of the emotional intelligence that’s always there in us, but usually given short shrift (see You Are Not Too Sensitive).
Pushes and Flows
Consciousness must develop. It can’t stay still. The two types of transits we’re looking at here, crosses and trines, represent two styles of moving forward:
1. by flowing into our next phase, as if it were the path of least resistance; and
2. by being forced into it because we feel boxed in where we are.
Neither guarantees wisdom, of course. But having an astrological map sure makes wisdom-seeking easier.
Knowing in advance about the first type of transit — the flowing kind – allows us to maximize that period when the energies in our environment are feeding and carrying us along. Otherwise, human nature being what it is, we tend to take these lovely windows of opportunity for granted.
Whereas when we’re aware of a transit like this, we engage with it full-heartedly, knowing that it’s leading us to the next step in our life plan.
Keep it Moving
As for the second type, transits in the four series,2 give us a pinch to stay awake — a cosmic kick if we need something a little stronger — to wrench us out of one level into the next.
It can be very helpful to know when one of these is coming, especially if Uranus and Pluto are involved. Then we know that just because something is hard – even unprecedentedly hard — it doesn’t mean we’re doing the whole thing wrong.
If a you run into a difficulty like this during that solar T-square as the month begins, or mid-month around the Uranus station, or during the Martial zone a few days later, consider it a message from your over-soul, telling you Shift gears if you need to, just keep this moving.
It might be something at work, or it might not be in the physical world at all. Depending on the part of your chart being aspected, it may be a relationship drama, or a private spiritual one. Or it may be all three at once. Transits are like dreams: they contain as many layers of meaning as we have the curiosity to delve into.
Notes
1 The first few days of summer and autumn have filled in the missing points of the long-running Grand Cross, whose longest arm is the Uranus-Pluto square. Remember the Cardinal Climax of 2010? It set off the by all those planets hitting the Aries Point, the most super-charged of the 360 degrees of the zodiac. Since then, the critical degrees have been a few days after the seasonal turning points, as Uranus and Pluto move further into Aries and Capricorn respectively.
2 In the Pythagorean system, the major transits of the four series are the square (tetrad) and the opposition (dyad). These are often called “hard” or “afflicting” or “challenging” aspects. But I say we retire the benefic-malefic value judgments that bog down textbook astrology. They limit our understanding of the essence of these things; i.e. their basis in geometry. There is a numerological logic behind the meanings they have been attributed. The four series, as well as conjunctions with Saturn, Pluto and Chiron, teach us through putting speed bumps in our path, or seeming to force us into something. “Seeming to,” because just because our ego forgot that it was going to require this jolt doesn’t mean our soul didn’t choose it.