If you woke up suddenly out of stage-four sleep, with no idea in the world what time it was, which hand of the clock would you look at first?  If you are like most of the denizens of Earth who have learned how to tell time the old-fashioned way,1 your eyes would naturally seek out the short little hour hand. In astrology, the transits that correspond to the hour hand of a clock are those of the mysterious outer planets.

Last winter, the astrologer Ted Denmark hit the nail on the head: “2007 will be the last normal year.  We are now in the whirlwind of the big economic storm like going down a slide--there's no turning back.” Though Pluto will be tending to the last flickers of the Sagittarian flame until late 2008, the portents of its entry into Capricorn have been astonishingly obvious since it made the big crossing on January 25th.1 And we would expect no less.

Well, it happened like clockwork. Cosmic clockwork. Just as Pluto entered Capricorn, the sign of financial infrastructures, the economy hit the skids. Pluto's job is to expose the rot in the areas governed by the sign it’s in. The last time this planet changed signs, its impact was similarly immediate: in the mid-nineties, as soon as it went into Sagittarius (religion), the pedophile priest scandal broke. The time before that, within days of its ingress into Scorpio (sex and death) in the mid-eighties, AIDS hit the headlines.

The Mars- Pluto opposition reaches exactitude again on March 6th- 7th. What might we expect from the second go-round of this notorious transit? Before we venture into the guessing game of “What’s going to happen?,” let us consider once again the nature of cosmic laws, which are never boring; given that they are utterly consistent and, at the same time, completely inscrutable.

On January 25th, Pluto entered Capricorn. When the Tiny Little Planet of Great Big Power crossed that line into the first degree of Capricorn, humanity was introduced, once again, to a new chapter in its evolution.  Pluto’s tenure through this no-nonsense earth sign will restructure humanity’s vision for about 15 years.

In my last Skywatch I wrote that the 13-year-tenure of Pluto in Sagittarius was not going to be finished with us until its fiery swan song of late December. Not only Jupiter and Pluto but the Sun and Mercury too were going to be overlapping in the sky, deepened in significance by their alignment with the Galactic Center.1

The Jupiter-Pluto Conjunction We are not quite finished with Pluto in Sagittarius. Or, if you will, it is not quite finished with us.This month the transit will begin its swan song with a fabulously apt coupling: The Dark God will conjoin with Jupiter, the planetary ruler of Sagittarius. What a way to mark the receding tenure of the planet of destruction in the sign of crusades.

The Saturn Return is one of the most talked-about transits in astrology. It is known as the time when the chickens come home to roost, responsibility-wise. Here comes adulthood, ready or not! Provided that we live at least thirty years, all of us will experience a Saturn Return. The question is whether we will step over this threshold with an attitude of acceptance, or kicking and screaming.