About 30 years ago I was at a lecture by Rob Hand, whom I vastly admired (still do), that blew my mind. I haven’t thought the same way again, about history, ecology or the state of the world. But at the end of his talk, he said something that appalled me.
We are in a rare window of opportunity right now, and it’s available to anyone with an imagination.
Neptune (image-making) and Chiron (universal pain) are conjunct in the sky. Saturn (status-quo reality) and Pluto (breakdown) are square each other within a degree, and Uranus (radical change) is moving closer in, intensifying the T-square. Jupiter too, will join the fun in April. What a time to loose the bonds of our minds. 
The world is melting. And I don’t mean just polar ice caps.
Neptune conjoins Chiron to the degree on the 16th -17th of this month. Neptune is the planet of dissolution; that is, what sugar does in hot tea, and what our self-control does when we have an emotional melt-down. Neptune dissolves, erases and effaces things.
On a personal level, Neptune is associated with the little ego-effacements we endure in the course of living: those moments when our sense of competence disappears. It can throw us off-message; make us feel slack, ungrounded and confused. Such experiences weaken our focus on the external world, and humble our pride. This we do not like at all....
As Saturn moves backwards down the ladder of early Libra, it is now returning to an exact conjunction with the Midheaven (top-dog status) in the Sibly chart of the USA.
Saturn authorizes things: it names people and entities to positions of authority. In this placement it is submitting the country’s corporate and moral leadership to an exacting redefinition process, clarifying who bears the staff of state. At the same time, Pluto (corruption) is continuing its long, slow opposition to the collective Sun-Jupiter-Venus conjunction (ethics and values) . The square between them is showing us who really sits on the throne in this kingdom. 
Remember when we were young, and some mean kid would come up behind us and twist our arm, demanding that we “cry Uncle?” That’s sort of what the planetsare doing to us now. But they’re not doing it to be mean.Up in the sky are a series of transits that are designed to humble us; to squeeze the arrogance out of us. I realize most of us don't like being humbled. But as you’ve probably heard me say before, liking has nothing to do with anything except Venus. Whether we like or dislike a transit is neither here nor there. The only question is: Are we going to learn what it’s trying to teach? The Cardinal Cross and the Aquarius transits are major humblings. Their motive is to curb our excesses, clarify our blind spots, and make us more human. 
The period we’ re in is so dramatic, it is downright cinematic --documented not only by astrologers and ancient seers, but by makers of Hollywood blockbusters.1 For a decade now it has been getting more and more obvious to more and more people that we are living in a very unusual period on Planet Earth. As we sweep away the confetti and champagne corks and face the dawn of 2010, let us consider what’s in front of us.
We are beginning not just any old year, but the year when the Cardinal Cross peaks for the first time.
Mid-month features a surge of energy. Saturn’s station on January 13th, just hours before the Solar , just hours before the Solar Eclipse
The Pluto-in-Capricorn years are raking the body politic over the coals. All around us governing infrastructures are showing their cracks and fissures, only to crumble into littler and littler pieces as 2010 unfolds.It’s a good time to consider what we mean by politics.
A lot of people say “I’m not interested in politics” in a way that makes you suspect they aren’t referring to the electoral system at all. The word feels like code. Does it really mean they don’t like to think about global warming? If this is the case, the response only can be: Who does? Now that Saturn is in Libra, it’s time to take a hard look at the issue of fairness. Libra is an idealistic sign, and its tenets are a point of pride for many conscientious folks. Who doesn’t like to think of themselves as fair-minded? Saturn, however, does interesting things to the sign it’s passing through. This planet‘s job is to expose inconsistency, not to indulge self-imagery. Saturn’s two-and a-half-year tenure in Libra is a teaching about fairness in the archetypal sense. Does this deeper meaning of fairness have anything to do with its conventional meaning? That's what we’ll find out.
The squeeze is on. The Saturn-Pluto square, which has been building for several months, has now hit the 90-degree point. With Saturn freshly arrived in Libra and clicking into formation with Pluto at the second degree of Capricorn, the defining aspect of the Cardinal Cross is now in place.
Money as taboo
Pluto is the planet of taboos. How appropriate it is that the god of Hell is the governor of these festering energies, always in the atmosphere but rarely discussed honestly and directly. The danger attached to these ideas causes baroque mythologies to build up around them, a system of apologias which would provide a fascinating self-study if we had the courage to look into them. In our own natal chart, Pluto's placement points to issues we may be semi-aware of but rarely look into, because we simply don't know what to do with them.