Neptune and Chiron are inching forward in the sky throughout April, slowly separating from their conjunction in February. They remain neck-and-neck all year, which indicates that they still have a job to do; and they’re doing it at the same celestial location: around 26 Aquarius. Where does this degree fall in your natal chart? This is where you are getting the teaching of a lifetime. By house and aspect, this placement indicates where you are getting glimpses of enlightenment, of a peculiarly modern sort. It also indicates where you are vulnerable to the most curious addiction of our age.

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.

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 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…

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.

Okay, now things are really getting exciting. The Cardinal Cross period has passed another milestone. Saturn has entered Libra, the sign of its exaltation. Throughout November it is within two degrees of an exact square to Pluto, … Meanwhile, Uranus, still in opposition to Saturn, is inching its way closer to an exact square with Pluto. … On the material level, the question asked by this transit is: How will the world handle its wealth, energy and power? Over the next few years, the issue of right use of resources will be topic number one. …. The critical point here is that denial will no longer…

The years ahead are going to challenge our old ways on just about every front. But human nature being what it is, some issues are going to throw us for more of a loop than others. In the mass mind, certain topics are connected to powerful unconscious feelings. These provoke intense reactivity unless or until they are brought to awareness and resolved.

Their first exact opposition coincided with one of those heightened historical moments like the day JFK was shot or the day the twin towers exploded; a date our future selves will remember as a “Where-were-you-when…” event. It was November 4th 2008, the day Obama was elected. Where were you that night the world whooped with relief and danced in the streets