The rare Capricorn stellium is upon us. Five planets, and Ceres (the biggest asteroid), are less than a degree apart. Wowza.
The exact conjunction of Saturn (responsibility) and Pluto (power) is the locomotive that drives this train. It’s the rarest piece of the stellium, the part with the most world-altering impact. There’s no quick, bullet-point explanation for what’s going on here. Complex transits like this kick off several cycles at once, each with multiple layers of meaning.
Each of us has a relationship to this world moment (see “Staying on the Right Side of History”). To understand why your soul decided to incarnate when it did — so as to be the age you’re at now, with the global situation as it is now — the first step is to locate the 23rd degree of Capricorn in your chart (or have your astrologer do so). Notice what house it’s in, what aspects it forms.
These suggest what this milestone means for you specifically. They pinpoint the area of your life where the tumult is being felt for you as an individual. They hint at the karmic reasons you need to be here now.
Group soul
There are important lessons to be learned on the level of group soul. As climate change has crossed over from the theory to reality in the dominant paradigm, the global soul is uniting on a new level, an existential level (to be discussed at the Astrology University Eco Summit in early 2020).
Individual societies also have group souls, each of which has to grapple with the urgency of the times. For example, Americans, as all the world knows, are going through a national meltdown: Uncle Sam is having a Pluto Return.
How will this global pattern affect you personally? It may be that you feel the intensity in the air only obliquely, as it reverberates through the headlines, or conditions your work environment, or in other circumstances that seem to originate outside of you.
As Outside, So Inside
I say “seem to,” because, ultimately, we are part and parcel of our environments, both in the immediate sense as well as the global and cosmic sense. To believe in transpersonal intention is to believe that all of us chose to be alive during these times of collapse. Each of us desired, on a karmic level, to learn the lessons of this time.
So whether events in your private sphere are mirroring those in the collective, or feelings are bubbling up inside of you that seem to be a response to what’s happening in the collective, the lesson here is to try to connect the dots.
The essential lesson of January’s transits: to get us to understand – if not with our mind, then with our instinct – the connection between what’s happening Out There with what’s happening inside our skin.
Uranus station
The direct station of Uranus on January 10th is an auspicious time to say a prayer to the god of change. Set an intention to rouse yourself out of complacency. When we invite The Great Awakener to awaken us, it is less likely to invent an unpleasant surprise.
As our parents always taught us, asking politely leads to the more copacetic outcome.
Yearning
As the month winds to a close, Venus conjoins Neptune while it’s squaring Mars. This restless combination repeats the Pisces-Sagittarius friction that reverberated throughout last year (summarized in the September SkyWatch).
There is an ache of yearning in the air, but it may not be about what we think it’s about.