Feb 2016
Alive and Kicking

Reports of the death of the Uranus-Pluto square have been greatly exaggerated.

Have you, too, been hearing that this transit is over? So wrong. Although their final exactitude ⁽¹⁾ was last March, Uranus and Pluto will be within orb for years. Right now, the transit is only one slender degree away from exactitude.

If your chart contains anything in the middle degrees of cardinal signs, you will harbor no doubt that the square is alive and kicking. No less obviously, for the world at large the transit’s life-and-death teachings are front and center.

Here in the monthly Skywatches, we’ve been tracking the transit’s triggers: the most likely times for its gnarly themes to rear their heads.⁽²⁾ One of these occurs early this month, when Venus kicks the square into heightened activity (peak dates: Feb 5^th and 6^th).

The effects of this kick will be felt, as usual, wherever Pluto and Uranus are crossing your chart. These two houses tell you where breakdowns and shocks have been coming at you for years now. We’ll also feel this particular kick in the areas where Venus holds sway: relationships, aesthetic life and other pursuits of happiness.

Especially during these peak days, Venus’s sweetness and pleasures will be infused by the dark impulses of Pluto. The teaching here is not about what we think attracts us, in people and situations. The teaching is about what lies beneath.

Venus and the Transpersonals

A few weeks ago, something similar happened, and around the same time of the month: Venus was tangled up in the Neptune-Saturn square.⁽³⁾ Especially strong from Jan 5^th -9^th, that one used relationships and aesthetic issues as a front for the great crises of faith upon us right now.

What last month’s and this month’s transits have in common is this: they channel extraordinary lessons through an ordinary part of life. All transits that combine personal planets with transpersonal ones do this.

We think we’re engaged in an everyday behavior – in the case of Venus, it may be social activity — and suddenly find ourselves jacked up by impulse, as if we were plugged into the wall socket (Uranus), or awash in poignant longings (Neptune), or seized by intense desires that bubble up from the basement of our psyche and threaten to take us over (Pluto).⁽⁴⁾

Ego Uprising

Right after Venus’ channeling of the Cardinal Cross, Mars squares the Sun (exact Feb. 6^th and 7^th). It’s one of those planetary overlaps. If interpersonal dramas have been aroused (Venus), the ego will be aroused with them (Mars).

Conflict-o-philes and -phobes, take heed. All combinations of Mars and the Sun make it hard to distinguish between a passing desire and a threat to survival.

It may be our own ego that gets juiced up, or it may be that of the person we’re dealing with. Cosmic-teaching-wise, it makes no difference. The gods do not differentiate between <self > and <other> the way we humans do.⁽⁵⁾

When we’re unaware of a Mars transit, we risk being overcome by an irrational need to prevail, no matter how innocuous the issue at hand. We may get an adrenaline rush that encourages us to fight, tooth and claw. Many an instance of road rage can be chalked up to a square between Mars and the Sun.

And the Waters Descend

On the 18^th, the Sun enters Pisces, and lo, there’s a sea change in the air. A winsome vagueness descends. Those who are open to the seductions of the right hemisphere of the brain will be in their element: the imagination is unmoored. In some instances, imagery replaces thought.

But those who resist the oceanic pull of Pisces are likely to feel frustrated by confusion, missed signals and mixed messages.

Ever since 2011, when Neptune went into Pisces, this part of the year (late February through mid-March) has been an invitation to open wide to the oceanic mind. Rule of thumb: surrender to Neptune’s inspirations, don’t close off to them. When the Sun and Neptune conjoin in the sky on the second-to-the-last day of this month⁽⁶⁾, we get yet one more chance to listen to the fishes.

That’s a Sunday. Schedule sleep, perchance to dream.

Notes

1 An aspect (geometrical angle between planets) with zero degrees of orb; the angle in question here is 90 degrees. For a review of the meaning of this transit, see this article, written in 7 B.C. (before the Cross).

2. Other likely times for the transit to kick in include:

…when an eclipse, a lunation (Sun & Moon conjunct, opposed, or square each other) or a personal planet lands in the degree range Uranus and Pluto are currently occupying (in Feb, this means 15-17 degrees). Especially of cardinal signs, because they’ll involve a conjunction, square or opposition. Unlike trines and sextiles, the four-series aspects don’t gently nudge us awake; they slap us awake.

…when there’s a station of Uranus or Pluto, anywhere, direct or retrograde.

3. Now that we’ve been through it, re-read  January’s Skywatch and ask yourself how it played out for you. Connecting the dots this way gives us a leg up, to meet similar transits upcoming.

4. For the spiritually ambitious – that is, if you’re interested in not merely getting through difficult transits, but using them to further self-knowledge — there are systematic ways to approach these encounters between the personal and the transpersonal. There’s a chapter on Pluto Work in Soul-Sick Nation.

5. See Beware of What You Want, for You Will Get It: Transits of Mars.

6. On the 28^th, this being a leap year.

Image sources:

Photo of statue detail by Sa Iovini

Orestes and the Furies by Jacques Lairesse (1850-1929)

Submerged face: Alex Howitt, La Joconde au bain

Léon Bonnat, Jacob Wrestling with the Angel, 1876

Woman and fish photo by Lara Zankoul