The Back Stories:

Uranus in cardinal Aries Stationary Retrograde @ 12deg. on 7/17/13 until 12/17/13. Uranus’ backward movement is the most powerful event of the next two weeks and beyond. Whenever one of the three outermost planets changes directions, it always brings the energy of that planet into high focus. The essence of Uranus is awakening consciousness and this is accomplished in a variety of ways: abruptly, suddenly, explosively, shockingly, and rebelliously. Uranus represents the creative impulse for truth. It resists rules that limit freedom; it supports counterculture, new movements, and rebellion, in order to achieve an authenticity lost or missing – and those concepts are often challenging to accomplish. Uranus is invention; acts as catalyst to open up stuck systems, and because of this regularly clashes with the status quo. Currently, Uranus is in Aries, a fire sign, ruled by Mars, making it impatient and impulsive in order to reach its goals. Clearly we’re seeing this everywhere in the world. On a personal level, those with Sun in Aries or planets between 8-12 Aries, are feeling a surge of needed renewal. Other cardinal signs in the same degree range are also getting zapped by Uranus: Cancer, Libra and Capricorn. Remember, this is not necessarily a bad thing at all – it can be creative and a renewal, dusting off your life and going after what really makes sense to you as an individual and what really makes you come alive.

Elaboration and Research for those who want to know more:  

Backdrop of current paradigm shift conditions and major configurations affecting all of us. 

Saturn Station Direct @ 4 deg. fixed, water, Scorpio on 7/8/13 until3/3/14 .

 This is the biggest news in these next weeks! Saturn is a cautious energy and with this station we may feel the burden of whatever is stuck, challenging, or problematic in our lives. This feeling is compounded by current Mercury Retrograde. Saturn narrows the focus, so that we are moved to look at what is most important. Whatever needs fixing will be quite obvious and may indicate a challenge to overcome. With Saturn going direct again, the correct solution to some pesky problems you’ve been cogitating are more likely to be found, also because the need becomes more imperative. Implementation may still be a bit slow, until Saturn gets up its forward momentum and Mercury goes Direct on 7/20/13. Saturn will be the natural counterbalance and grounding to the tsunami of emotions with the cluster of Cancer energies in July. With a Saturn emphasis, identifying your priorities is advantageous, and, of course, Saturn will also serve up issues for resolution. Saturn expects confirmation and decision and hates equivocation. It will not be ignored. In fact, Saturn is quite demanding until there’s a clear yes/no.

Jupiter entered Cancer on 6/25/13 until 7/17/14. This is a major planetary shift that lasts for one full year. Think back to where you were and what was happening in your life 12 years ago, as there is a thread that is similar, but not the same, of course, because other planets are in different places now and you’re 12 years older. Yet in general, there was likely some expansion or opportunity in your life, some new learning. This is not to say that all was good because Jupiter expands without discrimination of positive or negative. It also often errs on the side of exaggeration. Jupiter in Cancer, however, is exalted. This means that other than the sign it rules, Sagittarius, Jupiter’s energy works particularly well in the water sign of Cancer, where the focus is on family, community, security, and seeing to it that all peoples have their basic needs met for food, clothing, and adequate shelter. We can expect consumer concerns, the protection of innocents – elders and children – food and housing and community protections to have greater focus and activity. The USA, born with Jupiter/Cancer, is having its Jupiter return and 12 years ago was 9/11. So, the focus is on protecting the public at large and thwarting extremism and protecting the public at large. The USA has used Jupiter/Cancer historically for being open to foreigners and immigrants, so I’m sure we will be hotly debating the current immigration measures during this coming year. Jupiter has an optimism which can mean expansion in activities with our allies, as the USA Jupiter is located in the house of partnerships and President Obama has just agreed to arm the Syrian rebels (which ones?) because the Assad regime has definitely used chemical weapons against its own people. I also hope that there will be more outcry against Monsanto and its destructive practices with seed manipulation.

Neptune in mutable, water Pisces, Stationary Retrograde @ 5 degrees on 6/7/13 until 11/13/13. When an outer planet, such as Neptune, stops and changes direction, it increases that planet’s intrinsic energy and  expression. Neptune’s energy is tricky and sticky, I like to say! Typically Neptune offers up complicated, tangled, and complex situations that we then need to unravel. That can mean scandals, those things that were done covertly or were never meant to be public, including secrets of various kinds. Neptune’s energy is rife with conspiracy theories and questions about motives and what things mean and how they might be interpreted. See what I mean about being tricky and sticky?

Neptune’s energy is nuanced, subtle, and sensitive; that’s why it is also associated with the arts, music, dance, and all that serves to inspire or transcend the mundane world. Neptune is the search for the ideal or spiritual meaning – the failure to reach the ideal or the dream often leads to disappointment, depression, stress, and various forms of negative escapism. The urge to escape is a valid human function; it’s how we recharge, and then reinvigorated, return to tackle the mundane once again. Neptune also governs the immune system and so is implicated in health matters, as it creates extra sensitivity when it impacts your chart strongly. Stress and illness are often the outcome when our systems get overloaded either physically, emotionally, mentally, or through spiritual malaise (a lack of meaning). Sorrow, pain, loss, and suffering are often in the news during this transit since Neptune has a dissolving nature, it is non-material, so its issues must be dealt with through compassion, feelings, and looking deeper into the source of the presenting malaise. Because the news mostly reports the latest disasters, we don’t hear about the amazing discoveries, cures for disease, compassion for each other, or spiritual illumination, which a strong Neptune transit can also reveal.

Lunar Eclipse @ 4 Sagittarius on 5/25/13. This eclipse is the final of three in this Spring season and also belongs to the following family of eclipses: Saros Series 15South, an eclipse family that began in 1472! The primary energies of this eclipse are described in Bernadette Brady’s book, The Eagle and the Lark: “This series is about the release of tension. A situation which has been lingering will suddenly clear. In the clearing of the problem there is also a sense of grief or loss which is not so much personal as belonging to a group or collective.” Eclipses also follow what is called a Metonic cycle of 19 years. Eclipses repeat at or very near the same degree 19 years apart. Consider the year 1994, on 5/25 when an eclipse took place at 3deg. Sagittarius!  Early degrees of the mutable signs (Sagittarius, Pisces, Gemini and Virgo) will feel this eclipse more directly (and if you have planets in early degrees of the mutable signs). Check with your astrologer! Each eclipse is re-triggered three months later by the Sun and the degree of the eclipse remains sensitive for several years.

Uranus in cardinal, fire Aries square Pluto in cardinal, earth Capricorn #3 on 5/20/13. We are nearly midway in this profound cycle of seven exact squares between Uranus/Aries and Pluto/Capricorn. This is the new normal we’ve come to understand. It is a world going through severe growing pains. It is a lesson in letting go and purging and the consequences of accumulated decisions coming home to roost. It is the tense meeting place between the old and established and the new order. Both sides can go to extremes and honored legacies can be lost in the struggle. Balance is the key. We had the first two exact squares in 2012. The next one in 2013 takes place on 11/1/13. There’ll be another two in 2014, and the seventh in 2015. See below in the back stories section for further information on this important series of squares.

Pluto in cardinal, earth Capricorn Turned Stationary Retrograde @ 11degrees on 4/12/13 (until 9/20/13) – This is a big event and will dominate the week before and around this date, and its energy will be evident in the news. This planetary event expresses itself as an applied pressure tinged with potential guilt about the burdens of various kinds of responsibilities in your life. Past events of people important in some way from your past may reappear, so that you can find a way to settle some issues. This is also a struggle for power and a need to adapt to changes in habits, timing, and ways to organize yourself. Stress can come from having too little time to do the things that matter most or realizing that where you’ve focused time and attention isn’t where you really want it to go. Prioritizing is one way to manage this condition. Pluto will retrace its path backwards from 11 Capricorn to 8 Capricorn and so it allows you to process the issues that emerged between 11/22/12 and 4/12/13, and fine-tune your conclusions and actions taken. You may find yourself picking up something left behind during that time segment.

Neptune Stationary Direct @ 0deg. on 11/11/12. Neptune occupied this degree twice before and currently it’s the last time it will activate this degree. So if you have any planets at or near 0 degrees, this is a strong message for you, since Neptune is repeating itself and emphasizing a message. We are still new to the vibration of Neptune in Pisces. It is certainly more subtle and seeks to stimulate our understanding of the tenor of our lives, its meaning, and the quality of our environment. We may feel much more sensitive and those sensitivities may awaken melancholy as we realize that things are not exactly how we dreamt them to be. Take heart – there is no perfection, but there is recalibration. Resist being swept away by fantasy and build your dreams on a real foundation of meaningful attention and activity. What inspires you is what counts for your satisfaction. Neptune slowly erodes or uncovers what we have been blind to. Neptune made a Station at 0 degrees on 6/4/11. In fact it sat at that degree from 4/5-8/8/11! It next reached this degree on 4/4/12 (when it entered the sign for the duration of its 14 year stay!) Currently Neptune reached 0 degrees on 9/23/12 and stays there until 12/28/12.

New Trend Cycle ** Saturn entered Scorpio on 10/5/12, and remains until 9/23/15! We’ll be speaking often about Saturn’s entry into Scorpio, since it is one of the most impactful changes in the sky this last quarter of 2012, and its effect remains acutely obvious for approximately 2.5 years. Saturn was last in Scorpio from 11/30/82 to 11/18/85. It’s worthwhile to remember what took place back then, since Saturn will be moving through the same area of your chart and some common threads can be pulled out. Although always to be remembered is that other planets are in different places, making current situations different, and you have evolved in the past 30 years, yes?

Saturn wearing the costume of Scorpio is darker and has to do with the deeper strata of our lives – our motives, our desires, our passions, our money, our sexuality, and in general, how we deal with all available resources (to name a few).  Recycling, reinventing, researching, developing, processing, and discovering your essential and core needs and motives are other points of focus in Scorpio. This Saturn now combines with Pluto/Capricorn for what is called a “mutual reception.” This means that each one is in the other’s rulership sign, creating a sympathetic understanding. There is so much more to say about this combination, but we are sure to discover and uncover some hidden secrets and find new ways to resolve some of the deepest problems that trouble us. On a personal and psychological level, this can mean ridding your psyche of remnants of old patterns that have blocked your growth, progress, and life satisfaction. Saturn/Scorpio points to difficult and stubborn patterns that stay in place because of some secondary or emotional gain. It’s time to go to the root of issues, face them, release them if needed, and free yourself, opening up psychic space for new life energy to enter in. Choose life or death.

#1 - Uranus in cardinal, fire Aries square (90deg.) Pluto in cardinal, earth Capricorn on 6/24/12 @ 8º. This is the first of seven (7), yes seven squares between these two outer planets over the next several years. The world is changing rapidly and often unexpectedly, violently, and with unprecedented innovation amidst huge power struggles. These two planets made a triple conjunction in mutable, earth Virgo in 1965-66 @ 17, 16, 16 degrees respectively. Now we are experiencing the waxing (opening and challenging square) to that joining of the two planets in 1965 – a challenge to the system status quo with a need for adjustments, forward movement, and invention. Consult with your astrologer to determine what these squares are activating in your chart. Anyone with planets in the first 10 degrees of either Aries, Cancer, Libra, or Capricorn have been feeling these energies for the past year and some as early as late 2008. The urge is to move forward, to progress, to renew and start something new, and yet there is the pull of past habits as well as internal blockages and often the fear of negative consequences. The fear factor is the tension combined with another urge to free oneself from the shackles that bind – those that are external and those that are self-imposed. It’s a heady mix that needs to be resolved.

What we need to remember is that the current meeting between these two planets is in cardinal, active signs – one is impatient and the other cautious. The urge to regenerate, individuate, and have a strong and equal, respected identity within the personal or collective community/marketplace is overwhelming. And, for many, something worth fighting for.

We will not be finished with the active injection of this process until 2015. The dates for the remaining six squares are: 9/19/12 @ 6 Aries/Capricorn, 5/20/13 @ 11 Aries/Capricorn, 11/1/13 @ 9 Aries/Capricorn, 4/21/14 @ 13 Aries/Capricorn, 12/15/14 @ 12 Aries/Capricorn, and 3/17/15 @ 15 Aries/Capricorn.

Neptune re-entered mutable, water Pisces on 2/3/12 for the next 14 years until 3/31/25. It’s time to sing a different tune. Neptune in the very last sign of the Zodiac requires nuance and subtlety for one thing and a lot of faith for another. In fact you may be tested on your faith. Neptune is sticky and tricky (the title of one of my old lectures on Neptune). It is the search for meaning even in the midst of things dissolving around you and events that seem inexplicable. Neptune is the power of the water; it takes everything in and brings it back in another form entirely. It breaches all barriers and so on a mundane level we may find out secrets about people, places and things that have long been hidden.

Neptune is the intoxication with the ideal and all that takes us beyond the harshness of mundane life. And that’s why it’s also associated with addictions. There’s a yearning in Neptune for beauty and union with tastes and glimpses of the divine, with magic, with grace, forgiveness and compassion. This renewed emphasis on the urge to transcend will likely bring a surge of new music, film, and a renaissance in all other art forms.

Neptune in Pisces! On 2/3/12, Neptune returned to 0 deg. Pisces and now continues its journey through Pisces for the next 14 years, until 3/31/25. We can only imagine what changes in the culture and our sensibilities this will bring. There is a grand focus on the environment and greater sensitivity within the web-like network that binds us closer together than ever before. New visionaries will emerge, as well as new ways to believe and questions of what to believe. The way in which each one of us is connected to and responsible for every other living being on this planet will become increasingly and utterly apparent.

Neptune is a dissolving energy and expresses the power of the water! Neptunian themes include: paranormal experiences, illumination about some life themes or experiences, and secrets leaking out, or even some funky illness. Neptune energies can also manifest as melancholy as we review dreams that may not have materialized, make necessary adjustments, all the while maintaining our faith in life, spirit and the meaning of it all.

With Neptune’s foray into Pisces, we have the third outer planet making a sign change since January 2008, setting in motion a series of conditions and events that have global long-term effects. Neptune is entering the modern rulership of its own sign Pisces and expresses itself quite naturally here according to its intrinsic nature. We can expect the need for greater sensitivity and environmental protections, as the harm we have done to the planet becomes more obvious. We may witness the formation of new religious groups and a reformation of existing religion as we know it. Secrets may be exposed and more leaks of information that some people may not wish to be revealed. On the positive side, new artistic accomplishments will flower in all fields, especially music, but all across the artistic spectrum. In essence it is a cultural call for greater refinement and attunement to what we often take for granted or fail to notice. 

 Neptune was discovered in 1846, and entered Pisces on 4/26/1847 through 1861. Oddly enough, Uranus was also in Aries (although farther along in the sign) when Neptune entered Pisces for the first time (since its discovery). This is only the second time, after Neptune came into our consciousness awareness, that Neptune is transiting Pisces! Both Neptune and Pisces are tricky. They operate on a completely different level. Pisces is known for its hyper-sensitivity, compassion, diffusiveness, spirituality, dream-like imagination, second-sight, idealism, patronage of the arts, and the ability to dissolve barriers of all kinds for greater unity. Negative manifestation includes: dissipation, neglect, addictions, deception, drugs, theft, scandals, and secrets. A few highlights of Neptune’s last transit through Pisces include: new social movements, such as Marxism, emancipation of slaves, the start of the US Civil War, the California Gold Rush, the Romantic movement in music, and transcendentalism.

 We experienced our first four months of Neptune in Pisces in 2011, which has not happened for 166 years! As we begin to integrate with this complex energy infusion, you may notice a greater sensitivity or subtlety. Neptune dissolves barriers and that is one of the reasons a positive Neptunian response often allows greater compassion for human error and human frailty. Neptune deals with the unseen and the unnoticed and often accounts for spiritual breakthroughs and even paranormal experiences. I believe that this transit of Neptune through Pisces will loosen the boundaries between the material realm and the spiritual or energetic realms. Many of us will experience more than can easily be explained through the measurable functions of science. This can be a time of high magic but also the stripping away of illusions and deceptions and unless one has a strong inner core, the disillusionment we find may destabilize us. Practice faith in the joy of being alive and the true mysticism of that fact alone, no matter what your religious beliefs may be. Neptune is magical and a component of magic is addiction, as we seek to recreate the transcendence of blissful states that allow us to escape the harsher realities of everyday life. Choose your escapes wisely.

Uranus re-entered Aries on 3/11/11, and remains there until May 2018. This was the biggest news of March 2011 and beyond, and heralds a new upward spiral in social and cultural evolution. In the summer of 2010, Uranus teased us by parking itself and remaining only at 0deg. Aries (the powerful degree of the Spring Equinox) from 5/27-8/13/10. Now it’s fully engaged. Any planet in the first sign of the Zodiac wants to start a fire, begin something new, innovate, and create or reinvent something in its own image. This combination can certainly be aggressive, bold, courageous, willful, and because of the influence of Uranus, unexpected and explosive. Most of the previous text was written well before the popular uprisings (conflagrations) in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and other parts of the Middle East.  We are seeing the effects of individuals asserting themselves in their striving for personal freedoms that they believe are their birthright. Repressive regimes will no longer be tolerated. Aries represents the new and renewal – as it emerges from the dreams of the previous sign, Pisces. It burns with the fire of justice and courage to be free at any cost.

Copyright 2013  Dorothy Oja -- All rights reserved