There are two important bits of business going on in the skies this month. As always with outer planet transits (Uranus, Neptune and Pluto), the best way to avoid being swept away by their energy is to dive right into the action and flow with the current.
Does your chart contain planets, angles or parts between 2 and 9 degrees of Cardinal signs? Do you have anything at the first five degrees of Mutable signs? During February, all Cardinal signs are being ignited by the energies of the Cross; and Mutable signs are being conjoined, squared or opposed by Chiron and Neptune.
Those who have strong connections with these transits will feel a strong pull to pay attention to what’s going on in the world beyond their personal, everyday frame of reference. For you, the year 2012 is a great broiling sea, into which the sirens are calling you to pour your talents and skills. The urge to know where you fit in may be shifting, right now, from a vague yearning to an all-encompassing compulsion.
This is not a sign that you are flipping out. It’s an appropriate response to the moment. Check your chart, and notice where those degrees reside. What house are they in; what planets do they affect? It is in these departments of your life that you’re being called to deepen your understanding. You are probably being impacted by events from which you’re unable to look away.
Evolutionary Map
The first phase of the Cardinal Cross years is now over. It took place over the past three years, when the Uranus-Pluto square (the Longest Arm of the Cross) was building. We have now entered Phase Two: 2012-2016, during which period Uranus and Pluto will reach exactitude seven times. The third phase will be from 2016 until 2023, when Pluto leaves Capricorn.
Those singled out by the Aries-Capricorn aspect may feel that this riff of years, right now, is the primary reason they incarnated. This period is what puts this lifetime of ours on the evolutionary map. It seems that almost everyone, to one degree or another, feels 2012 to be especially decisive, no matter what their chart has going on and no matter how they explain it to themselves.
Americans are entering into the most expensive election in the history of the world; we will be seeing corporate “citizens” pouring mind-boggling amounts of money into their favored candidates’ coffers. But we’ll also be seeing human citizens pouring immense amounts of time and energy into alternative scenarios. Many people, fired up by the Occupy movement, will no longer be able to stomach the cynical charade of hijacked democracy that they’ve tolerated in past elections. (1)
Missing the Boat
Square aspects between planets this powerful can bring out the very highest of a chart’s potential. Pluto, which is by nature extreme, and Uranus, which is extraordinarily bold, are manifesting in world events that inspire us to respond with our whole selves: to recommit to being alive, wherever we are, whatever our context. Straddling the fence feels like less and less of an option. The great thing about world turmoil is that it prompts us to use all the resources at our disposal to engage with the moment. It’s not going to be possible to just coast.
A long time ago, in the 1960s, when Uranus and Pluto were in the middle of their last powerful transit before this one, one of the catchwords among activists was “If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.” In this more spiritually attuned era, we might reframe it as “if you’re not living through your chart, you’re missing the boat.”
God of the Sea
Neptune’s entry into Pisces on February 3 begins a 14-year transit where the God of the Sea is maximally strong: Pisces is the sign of its rulership (2). Moreover, this year began with transiting Mars conjunct the US Neptune square natal Mars, portending for Americans a double-barreled dose of water energy in 2012. Because Mars went retrograde last month, February begins with the conjunction once again on the exact degree.This suggests that, on a physical level, the systems collapses augured by the Uranus-Pluto square are likely to be take place in Neptunian arenas: with gas, oil and water. Astrologers expect to see plenty of pipes leaking, infrastructures flooding and coastlines eroding.Fossil groundwater irrigating arid lands
Water, the staple of all life on Earth, will be increasingly understood to be the incomparable resource that it is. There should be a surge of consciousness as regards many aspects of this most primal of substances, starting with a calling out of the ways we abuse it. For example, the ill-fated use by agribusiness of fossil groundwater in irrigation: this may be the year that the depletion of underground aquifers comes to the public’s attention. More people will allow to sink into their awareness the resounding Neptunian irony that drinking water is declining while sea levels are rising. Coastal dwellers will start to feel the implications of living on the edge of the sea.
On a less literal level, Neptune’s entry into Pisces is a symbolic threshold, on the other side of which we will feel ourselves connected to the world at large in new ways. This is the planet of inter-connectness and immersion. Given the obtuse nature of the human ego, we may try to hold onto our sense of being different from everyone else, and alienated from what the rest of humanity is going through; but on a psychic level it won’t fly.
Faith, Not Fear
The global crises associated with Neptune and with the Cardinal square are certainly daunting enough to give the stoutest heart pause. But there is a difference between acknowledging the severity of the world situation, on the one hand, and crumbling into a state of fear and passivity, on the other.
Under these skies, non-Pisceans will feel more like Pisceans do all the time. Our focus should be to try to understand this sign’s genius—to model the very highest things about this winsome, intuitive sign—and eschew the quaking-in-our-boots part. Do you know any high-level Pisces folks? Think of the way they can look at even extremely troubling situations with a serene, undiscriminating acceptance. This isn’t about condoning it, or ignoring human suffering. Quite the opposite. An integrated Piscean person just seems to know, deep in her bones, that there is a reason for everything under the Sun.
This is the model for us to follow as we launch into Phase Two of the Cardinal Cross Years. A good habit to cultivate would be to remind ourselves that we had a very distinct set of soul reasons to make the decision to participate, right now, with our fellows on the Earth plane. Getting in touch base with the part of us that knows this is immensely empowering. It awakens the part of us that already knows we have been given all the resources, inner and outer, that we need in order to live out our charts at its highest level.
We may freak out now and again over the state of the world. That’s human. But making a practice of remembering the big picture will keep us honest in times like these.
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Notes:
(1) The activists with Move to Amend, a group formed after the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling in 2010, are dedicated to reclaiming democracy for actual people.
(2) Planets in the signs that rule them are like actors typecast in a part.
Jessica Murray trained as a fine artist before graduating in 1973 from Brown University, where she studied psychology and linguistics. After a stint in political theatre in the heady early ’70s, Jessica moved to San Francisco and began studying metaphysics, where she has had a full-time private practice in astrology for more than 30 years. Her book, Soul-Sick Nation: An Astrologer’s View of America, is available through her website, mothersky.com.
In addition to her column in Daykeeper Journal and the monthly Skywatch on her website, Jessica’s essays appear in “The Mountain Astrologer,” “P.S. Magazine” and other publications. Jessica can be reached by email.
I love that there was a huge lake found under Antarctica that promises fantastic and mysterious information just as Neptune went into Pisces.