Open your mind and upgrade your software. It’s time to interact.

There are four ingresses into Gemini this month — thrilling news to lovers of mental engagement. With five planets in the sign of communication, the skies favor word-clever dialogues and back-and-forth exchanges.

At the Full Moon eclipse on May 24^th, the Sun in Gemini (discussion) will be opposing the Moon in Sagittarius (teaching). This polarity encourages us to talk back to the teacher, whoever our teacher happens to be. It’s question time: a time to be philosophically curious; to step back and look at our lives – and the world at large – from the big picture.… click here to continue reading.

As the month begins, the air is still quivering from the volatile energy of the Equinox. That blast of aggression we just experienced was Mars, the Sun and Venus igniting the Uranus-Pluto square in late March.

All Cardinal turning points (Equinoxes and Solstices) are paradigmatic: their transits set the template for the season to come. These martial placements are giving us the measure of the themes that will be in our faces this Spring.… click here to continue reading.

March opens with a flood. Both Saturn and the North Node in Scorpio, a tenacious water sign. Since mid-Feb until the middle of this month, half the solar system is in Pisces, a diffused, receptive water sign. In July, Jupiter goes into Cancer, a nurturing water sign.

Sunken Treasure

All year we are being asked to reconsider the importance of water, as a physical substance – that stuff that covers 70% of our planet — and as an energy: the universal matrix whence all life springs.… click here to continue reading.

In Chinese astrology it’s the Year of the Water Snake. In Western astrology, too, 2013 is a year flooded with water.

We will be navigating outpourings and leakages both literal and figurative. In upcoming Skywatches we will be looking at how to sail through the changes ahead in a spirit of love and healing: going with the flow, without shutting down.

When planets in water signs bump into planets in incompatible elements, we need to pay attention.… click here to continue reading.

The day before the solstice last month was the last gasp of an unimaginably old era. The next day marked the start of a brand new one. As we take our first baby steps into 2013, let’s consider the unusual significance of what’s beginning.

To get a bead on any new entity — whether a person, a cat, an empire or a macro-cycle — astrologers draw up natal chart. What stands out in the chart of our newborn era?… click here to continue reading.

Here we are, at last, at the end of 2012: the end of world as we know it.

I am joking. Sort of. I do think that if we play our cards right, we have a chance to make this the end of many aspects of the world, as we have known it. And to usher in a new version of the world. As we want to know it.

The Mayan cycle of thirteen baktuns was 1.8 million days long — 5,125 years — and it ends this month.… click here to continue reading.

It is now winding to a close: that annus mirabilis, 2012. It has rocked the calendar with a chorus of spectacular transits one after another. We’ve had a full-throated Mars retrograde, an ingress of Neptune into the sign of its rulership, a high-pitched Venus occultation, and the Uranus-Pluto square¹ whose first two exactitudes serenaded us in June and September. And in the near distance, you can practically hear the fabled winter solstice transits, like the roar of an approaching crowd.… click here to continue reading.

The crowd was well-pumped, thanks to the Olympics earlier in the summer. When the games in London were over, Americans looked around hungrily for another garishly lit mega-spectator sport to dive into. In late August Mars slipped into Scorpio (until October 6th), whose egoic aspect excels at high-stakes strategizing, manipulation, character assassination and back-stabbing. The stage was set for the bloated orgy of mendacity that is the US presidential election season.

When the transits spiked at the Autumnal Equinox, bringing crescendos of popular feeling (Uranus in Aries) and bloodshed in the halls of power (Pluto in Capricorn), Americans clicked into gear for the next round of photo ops, sound bites, gaffes and gotchas.… click here to continue reading.