Now that Pluto is in Capricorn to stay (for the next 16 years), and approaching an exact opposition with the USA Venus and Jupiter, it is appropriate that Americans should be obsessing (Pluto) about their values (Venus). This most materialistic of nations is facing ugly truths that would be much less distressing to a culture that cared less about money.

Value and worth For those sky-watchers tracking the trajectory of the world economy as it careens giddily under the influence of Saturn and Uranus, the next chapter in the drama will arrive with Pluto’s opposition to America’s Venus and Jupiter (Sibley chart). Coming to a head in March and April for the first of several peaks, this opposition suggests a radical shift downwards in the value of – of what?

Picture lightning striking a sturdy old clock tower. The cataclysmic Saturn-Uranus opposition gave us the perfect modern symbol of this ancient tarot card image, when the most reputable banks in the world (Saturn) collapsed (Uranus) like a house of cards at the Full Moon in September.

At this writing, the gargantuan Wall Street “bail-out” has proven itself to be anything but the panacea its proponents claimed. Washington's attempt to cut interest rates in tandem with international central banks has been revealed as too little too late. Whether the US government's partial nationalization plan will do anything to slow the downward spiral remains unclear, while the prospect of putting bank ownerships into the hands of a government as corrupt as this one are ominous indeed.

“’My country, right or wrong’ is a thing that no true patriot would think of saying… It is like saying ‘My mother, drunk or sober.’” -- G. K. Chesterton This month the Saturn-Uranus opposition officially goes into orb. After the Equinox (9/22 8:46 am PDT) the transit’s impact on humanity will become stronger and stronger, and its worldly parallels more and more obvious. So will its impact on the metabolic, mental and emotional bodies of individuals. This is the most important mundane transit of the rest of the calendar year, and our goal should be to mine it for understanding.

To conscientious Americans it is nothing short of unbelievable; to international observers it is beyond insanity. The group of militarists who brought us the War in Iraq are actually getting ready to attack Iran. Apparently willing and eager to follow up the most notorious military blunder since Viet Nam with another whose outcome promises to be downright dystopic, Washington has put the bulwark in place in the Eastern bloc to launch the assault.1 It is a scenario right out of Stanley

Saturn Direct This month Saturn is direct again, climbing up through the early degrees of Virgo. Readers whose natal charts contain a planet in this degree range will feel a pinch they may remember quite well -- from last October, and then again in February -- when Saturn was in this same place.  But you aren’t in the same place, are you?

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.