Feb 2017
Rejecting the Intolerable
Mercury kicks off the Uranus-Jupiter opposition on the first two days of February, igniting the year’s big cardinal T-square. (1) Whatever arises during these few days is a statement about the key lessons facing us.
Whether the event is inner or outer, respond to it with awareness. If you find yourself reacting, instead, that’s okay. Notice that’s what you did. And make a decision to learn from it.
The T-square
To get at the general meaning of the Jupiter-Uranus-Pluto configuration, let’s break it down into its parts.(2)
Every twelve years, the world’s sensitivity to fairness gets a boost for about a year, during Jupiter’s passage through Libra. This time round the teaching has a kick to it, as it is intensified by two transpersonal planets through the fall. Uranus (urgency, shock) is electrifying ideological issues, while Pluto (fatal peril) is giving them a life-or-death quality.
Letting ideals slide
It’s a dicey mix of the most accommodating of signs – Libra — with two fiercely uncompromising planets. The transit is trying to re-sensitize us to issues of basic interpersonal decency (Libra). Throughout this year we may start to feel that we’ve been letting our ideals slide.
In early February, we may receive news (Mercury) that pulls us up short. It will probably feel like a slap in the face. 
And, as is usually true of such transits, it may appear to be nothing that we ourselves caused to happen. But the timing tells the tale. It’s here to keep us honest.
Sloppy moral judgments must now be updated. The resolution of everyday ethical questions is likely to be explosively disruptive. Certain of our beliefs have become disconnected from our core, and must be reconnected.
Lowest-common denominator
The T-square prompts us to reject moral positions that have come to feel counterfeit, and to call out social arrangements that have become intolerable. Normally, where issues of justice are concerned, we humans tend to lapse 
into the lowest-common-denominator version of what’s okay. This is what the transit is here to disrupt.
The ways we respond to received wisdom – from our society, our upbringing, our social media enclave – should provoke sharp self-examination right now. Uranus is trying to get us to replace the notions we’ve harbored unthinkingly with newer, fresher values. These may be insights that bubble up from our own depths, or ones that we suddenly encounter from thinkers outside of our ideological comfort zone.
What passes as acceptable legal treatment, for instance (Libra), or even normal dating behavior, may suddenly feel grotesquely wrong.
Jupiter station
When Jupiter stations Feb 5th, light a candle to the god of Right-and-Wrong. Ask yourself where in your life key issues of right and wrong are being shaken up and refuted.
Take your cue from the house of your chart that Jupiter is passing through right now: this is where you are having an audience with your inner teacher. Determine to use this inner-derived guidance to steer your decisions in the months ahead.
The most overt form this is likely to take comes at the tail end of the month, when Mars in Aries goes over the ground Mercury covered earlier. First Mars squares Pluto exactly (2/22), then it conjoins Uranus while opposing Jupiter (2/26-7).
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Notes
1 Especially keep an eye on any cardinal planets in your chart around the 21st degree.
2 For a detailed look at the recurring Jupiter-Uranus-Pluto configuration, see “Truth or Dare: Important Transits of 2017,” The Mountain Astrologer, Feb/Mar ’17 issue.