from an email about astrology and the summer

Greetings Everyone,

Here is the latest message from an astrologer’s viewpoint of the summer ahead. I am most hopeful you will find it informative and insightful. ...

The Big Crunch

Has your life seemed stressful lately? Are you feeling overwhelmed or overextended? You are not alone. It seems that every arena of life has been stressed more than usual recently, from the unusual solar activity patterns and our solar system’s position relative to the Galactic Center all the way down to your checkbook and maybe even those little metacarpal joints in your hands. Well, hang on, because the best is yet to come, since all the big planets from Jupiter right out into the Oort Cloud are lining up in the most tense but exciting configurations imaginable. Let’s try to sort through the action one blow at a time.

Saturn (tradition) and Uranus (novelty) have been dancing opposite each other since November 2008. Because of retrograde motion they will reach a point of exact opposition 5 times before they are through. The closer to exactness the aspect, the more intense the activity they represent. The 4th of the five oppositions is on April 26. The effect of the opposition starts to become tangible when the two orbs in question get within 5 degrees of each other. That border is crossed on March 20, the first day of spring. The battle between reform and conservativism will heat up again in all areas of life, from health care reform to financial re-thinking, environmental issues and long-standing military conflicts. The intensity of the opposition builds up to its strongest influence on day of exactness. The struggle between the need for change and the resistance to changing has been permeating everything lately: budgets at all levels, health care, gun laws, whatever. Watching the Winter Olympics back in February, the announcers constantly stressed that the competitors would have to “go over the edge” and do something to push the limit and impress judges or beat the clock. This is Uranus talking and, in Pisces, it is not such an easy mode for Uranus to work in. Saturn, on the other hand, is in Libra, the sign of its exaltation. There is no better sign for Saturn to work from. So, many of the athletes took falls or otherwise overextended and lost out to those who did traditional, conservative performances flawlessly in order to win medals. The conservative opposition has had the upper hand recently.

Uranus moves into Aries on May 28, however, and will gain a lot of power in that sign. Changes will come much easier, especially when Jupiter comes up to conjoin Uranus on June 7, a very powerful combination to help initiate something very new and different. It would be enough just to have Saturn and Uranus opposite, but they are lined up very close to what is called “cardinal points”. Cardinal Points are those four points that define the start of each season. Uranus moves from deep in late Pisces to 0 degrees of Aries on the first day of spring. Cardinal points are important because they stand at the place where the season is catapulted into existence. Things that happen when planets are within 3 degrees of a cardinal point have a long-lasting effect; trend-setting you would say.

It is the big planets that define the scene, while the close-up and personal planets manifest these big energies into personal, daily life. So, even though Saturn and Uranus are exactly opposite on April 26, the Moon comes in to apply the paint to the canvas the day before when it is conjunct to Saturn. Mark April 25 as a “day to watch” in the news or with your family and friends. And with Mars now in direct motion, it returns to the spot of its station by May 17. So, if you have projects that have been fecundating over the winter, you ought to see some effects from your efforts by this time. Mars adds initiative and spark to everything and livens up all aspects of activity. Include the Saturn/Uranus opposition and it’s like turning up the heat under a pot on the stove.

We have Jupiter involved in this, too. Jupiter reflexly brings about an image of being happy and jolly and bountiful. Looking deeper, however, it rules over large organizations like governments, religions and corporations. Too much Jupiter leads to excess, but this planet is always trying to teach us something and sometimes the lessons are bigger-than-life. Jupiter is in mid-Pisces now but will move to the end of the sign to combine with Uranus for a big look into the Great Unknown that lies beyond this 3-dimensional world. How they do that remains to be seen.

On May 22, Jupiter is very close to Uranus at 29 degrees of Pisces and opposite a Moon/Saturn conjunction at 29 degrees of Virgo. Directly on the cardinal points, this can make for lots of stress and lots of opportunity; it is a good time to have your senses open and watching. Pisces/Virgo is always associated with health conditions, and everything from your lumbago to the nation’s health-care system will be under maximum pressure.

Just a week later, on June 2, Jupiter and Uranus are conjunct at 0 degrees of Aries, the zero point of the whole astrological cycle. This means new beginnings in a big way. No longer shrouded under the secretive veil of the Pisces unconscious, when we get to Aries, everything is out in the open where we can all see it. By this time, we get to see the society-wide influence of Pluto.

Pluto is retrograding this spring and summer, moving back towards the 0 degrees of Capricorn cardinal point. The June 2 Jupiter/Uranus conjunction is very close to square to Pluto, meaning that the changes afoot are a direct result of huge social and perhaps even climate changes that mandate changing direction as a culture.

Pluto is very close to the Sun in the chart for the Federal Reserve. Will the dollar lose more status in the world marketplace? Will anything happen to change the philosophy concerning the national debt? Not only are Jupiter/Uranus square to Pluto but so is Saturn, and, classically, the economy is at its worst when Saturn and Pluto are square. They have been in that relationship the past year or so, but it’s not over yet. The last square is August 20, so don’t expect any real improvements to the world economy until then.

In the midst of the twisting forces pulling on the big planets, we have a total eclipse of the Sun on July 11. This is part of the Saros cycle of eclipses that is closest to the fixed star, Sirius. Sirius is the 4th brightest object in the sky and our closest celestial neighbor, only 4 light-years away.

There are certainly plenty of legends about Sirius: how beings from that star are responsible for placing the plant kingdom here on Earth; how they directed the building of the pyramids and that they live still in house cat bodies and watch over Earth as whales and dolphins.

The United States was formed on July 4, when the Sun was exactly conjunct to Sirius. Sirius is the only star that does not precess like all the others; its position remains fixed and does not lose 1 degree every 72 years like all the other stars. January 1 has been selected to start the New Year because Sirius is directly overhead at midnight on that date, every year without variation. The eclipse on July 11 implies that we get input, directions and feedback from the great spiritual entities that reside on Sirius.

Eclipses also go along with changes in the power structure of governments and leaders. Perhaps the US might lose some of its status as a world power in the months and years after this eclipse. This happens simultaneously with Jupiter/Uranus opposite Saturn and Pluto exactly halfway between. This is like looking at the inside of a diesel engine with the piston at the most compressed postion in the cylinder and the eclipse injecting the fuel. This is the power stroke that catapults us into a new way of being.

Just two weeks later on July 26 Saturn and Uranus form the last of the exact oppostions at the critical cardinal point of 0 Aries. It is of historical interest that the exact Saturn/Uranus opposition of June 7, 1920 marked the first day of Prohibition, that great social experiment that was supposed to stop the drinking problem in the US, but instead fostered organized crime and a general atmosphere of lawlessness.

What great social experiment might we all be embarking on this time? Mars is close to Saturn this coming July 26 and marks what is most probably the peak of the stress for all of us. The opposition is square to Pluto, making an intense T-square configuration that is unusual, powerful and profound.

In August 1999 there was a Grand Cross configuration that involved every planet in fixed signs except for Pluto. This event marked a point where every soul on the planet declared which of two paths they were on from then until the fated 2012 rollover date for the long-count Mayan calendar. These two paths are described in the Ra Material as channeled by Carla Rueckert. She states that most souls are on the Service-To-Others path, which basically assumes that we are all in this together and nobody advances until everybody advances and all souls are seen as equal; helping each other is the path of progress. The Service-To-Self path involves trying to climb over others to further one’s own aims. This path is very stressful and makes souls strong, but incurs a lot of karma that needs to be made up later. We can see the stratification in society with a few “haves” and a lot of “have nots”. This is because souls on each path co-exist here, whereas Ra says that usually they are left to evolve and grow in places where there are just Service-to-Self souls or just Service-to-Others. This is one of the things that makes planet Earth a very special and unusual place in the universe.

What we have this summer is a T-square in cardinal signs which means each soul now has to make some effort or key decision to follow their chosen path. The T-square pattern has an empty or balancing point that is at 0 degrees of Cancer. This represents humanity as a whole, or the humanness of all of us. This is the gate that souls pour through into incarnation. It is the common people who will feel the most stressed, abused, and taken advantage of, but they will also exert the most influence over how things finally shake out.

The gulf between the polarities will widen and people will entrench themselves deeper into their chosen perspective. The entire time of Leo, from July 26 through August 20 is a wild, roller-coaster ride of one stressful configuration after another, which is fitting considering the Leo eclipse and Grand Cross of 1999. The only outer planets standing off from this big T-square are Chiron and Neptune, the healer and the mystic respectively. These two are allies to us during this time.

They will remind us to listen to the Navajo prophecy about “tending your own garden” and “don’t look outside”. This simply means that we be kind and respectful towards everyone around us and that we look inside ourselves and discover how we can transform our old ways of being into a new paradigm that speaks to creating a world that is truly equal on all levels of the heart and mind, one that encompasses love, compassion and understanding of the next person we encounter, no matter who he/she may be. May the journey ahead lead you into a peaceful transformation.

© Rick Riedel

March 30, 2010