A newborn epoch is upon us. As we take our first baby steps into 2013, let’s consider the unusual significance of what’s beginning. The day before the solstice just past – as readers doubtless already know -- represented the death of an unimaginably old era, and the next day the beginning of a brand new one.

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.

You could practically hear the buzz, as the Uranus-Pluto square1 disgorged each of its first two exactitudes June 24th and Sept 19th. That is, the animal part of us could hear it.

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.

Get ready to shift gears. As September begins, the personal planets are facing straight ahead. Since August 7th, when Mercury stationed direct, the last of them made the shift from retrograde to forward motion. You may have felt hurdles move out of the way.

It isn’t just you. Everyone who isn’t completely shut down is feeling it. Disruptions on the inner and outer planes are inevitable and absolutely appropriate right now. They are part of our destiny.

Just after the Lunar Eclipse in June, the sky was shimmering with transits.Neptune was stationary and the Solstice was right around the corner, with the first exactitude of the Uranus-Pluto square on its heels.

The 13-year tenure of Neptune in Pisces has a peak this month. As discussed in earlier Skywatches, during the years of the Cardinal Cross, Neptune in Pisces looms in the background. This month it is exaggerated by a station in early June and by a square from Jupiter around the Solstice.