The big news this month is that the major transit of our times is having its last exact hit. All of March reverberates with the Uranus-Pluto square.

It’s Venus that sets it off. She conjoins Uranus and squares Pluto on March 4th – 5th. Mars follows up even more explosively on March 11.^th

Right smack in the middle of the month — around the Ides of March – the square comes to exactitude.

Two thousand twelve

Remember all the hoopla about the year 2012? That June, the Uranus-Pluto square reached its first geometrical peak. Regardless of the myriad misconceptions flying around about the meaning of 2012 – most of which were as ridiculous as the eponymous Hollywood movie — it’s undeniable that the mass mind knew something was up.

Astrologically speaking, the 2012 phenomenon began in 2008.⁽¹⁾ Now, seven years in, we’re at the point where we can start grasping its significance. The forces of revolution (Uranus) and breakdown (Pluto) are putting every living thing on Earth through irrevocable change.

The exact square on March 16^th-17^th is the seventh and last time in our lifetimes that this will occur, and transit trackers will want to acknowledge it in some way. However we do so — lighting a candle is a fine gesture – it should involve taking a moment out of our busy week to consider the times we live in.

Don’t think of these times as mere background. This epoch is not just scenery for our life stories. Its wrenching tumult and  change supply the context into which our souls needed – for their own mysterious reasons — to incarnate.

Our karmic purposes could not have been met in any other.

A biography of you

Though its last exactitude is upon us, the transit is far from over. It took years to build, and it will take many more to assimilate.⁽²⁾ This is as true for each of us personally as it is for the world at large.

The transit’s meaning for each of us individually will depend on what houses of our charts Uranus and Pluto have been passing through, which of our natal planets they’ve been aspecting, the degree of our sensitivity and readiness to accept these lessons.⁽³⁾

Try to identify what themes in your life have reared their heads in these years.

Imagine that you are a biographer from the future – an extraordinarily insightful one – who’s studying this fascinating subject: you. As you review the various life events since 2008, you’re looking for the connecting thread. You’re not confining yourself to the literal level; like the very best biographers, you’re interested in the mystery of individuality.

You want to get a sense of the emotional and psycho-spiritual growth arc of this person. You’re looking for clues about how their creative and ethical maturity developed.

Begin your investigation by trying to pinpoint what began about seven years ago, ratcheted up a notch about three years ago, and perhaps went through a jolt of intensity six times in between.⁽⁴⁾ The object of this exercise is to try to get in touch with how these years fit into the overall meaning of your life.

If it seems too elusive to pinpoint, right now, that’s okay. The transit has a long tail; its lessons will take years to settle in.

Saturn station

Several other planets are singing back-up to Uranus-&-Pluto’s star turn this month. Saturn makes a retrograde station just before the exactitude, on March 14^th. Heads up, readers with planets in the early degrees of mutable signs.⁽⁵⁾

The station will highlight the issues introduced by Saturn’s ingress in December. Used well, Saturn in Sagittarius defines and solidifies our beliefs, making our theories solid enough to give our lives structure. Used badly, it calcifies belief into dogma. Saturn is authoritarianism; Sagittarius is right-vs.-wrong. We’ve seen no lack of this acting-out in the world lately, in the form of political reactivity and religious violence.

As appalling as they are, we can learn from these distorted expressions of the transit. Whenever we find ourselves stiffening into a certain moral certitude, or using knowledge (or the seeking of it) to close ourselves off from others, we might ask ourselves whether we’re expressing, in our own small way, the self-protective righteousness of dark Sagittarius.

New Moon Equinox

The Equinox this year is on Friday, March 20^th (3:46 pm PDT) – a few hours after the Sun and Moon conjoin in a solar Eclipse. Although it falls 2/3 of the way through the calendar month, astrologically this is the day the lunar cycle begins, as well as the zodiacal New Year.

Whatever we begin, may we do so knowingly.

Gaia painting by Alex Grey

Notes

1 This was when Pluto entered Capricorn and the world was rocked by a global financial crisis. My book At the Crossroads goes over these global themes in detail.

2 The Cardinal Cross lectures, downloadable from this website, address these two planets’ influences between 2008 and 2023.

3 For those who don’t know how to read their own charts and/or who would like to refresh their perspective, now would be a good time to get a professional reading.

4 The six exactitudes that preceded  this month’s: June 24^th, 2012; Sept 19^th, 2012; May 20^th, 2013; Nov 1^st, 2013; April 21^st, 2014 and Dec 14^th, 2014.

5 Saturn will station at 4°55 Sagittarius, so if you have planets around that degree of Sagittarius, or of Gemini, Virgo or Pisces, all month you‘ll be feeling the pinch. In order to know what area of your life needs particular attention, locate the house of your chart where Saturn is transiting.