The captain has turned on the seat belt sign in anticipation of turbulence ahead and kindly requests that you return to your seats.

You’ll probably be more comfortable if you comply, but not doing so could be a lot more interesting, as long as you don’t mind a few bruises (and your name isn’t Ulysses). You just never know what you might stumble upon or whose lap you might fall into.

This state of instability with inherent opportunities for growth and change will persist through the middle of October. It might not even be possible to stay in one place if you wanted to, and there are no guarantees that it will be any less stressful. The thing with this energy is that you have to be ready for it and to pay attention.

The first thing to prepare for is Mercury’s impending retrograde on Saturday. If you don’t do anything else in the first half of this week, back up your computer, know where your spare keys are, get all your significant correspondence out of the way, and have enough cash on hand in case your ATM machine is down. Don’t snicker. I was at the supermarket Friday night 10 minutes before closing time and couldn’t use my debit card because their system was down. Yesterday, I went to brunch with some friends and there was a notice on the door of the restaurant that their computers were down and they were accepting cash only.

Conversely, if you’re involved in a big editing project, doing investigative research, or catching up on paperwork, you can be more efficient while Mercury is retrograde, so put off those tasks for a few days in order to make more efficient use of your time earlier in the week.

Mercury will be retrograde until October 25, and his retro phase coincides with a pair of eclipses, a total lunar eclipse in Aries on October 8 and a partial solar eclipse in Scorpio on October 23. As it is, both of these eclipses are tied to events over the past two years and especially in April of 2014, in our individual lives and world events as well. Mercury’s retrograde provides another layer of going back, retrieving something we lost, or finding something we never knew was missing.

Mercury turns retrograde in Scorpio but returns to Libra on October 10. Venus, meanwhile, enters Libra on Monday (September 29) and will remain there until right before the October 23 eclipse. With Mercury retrograde in the sign of partnerships and international diplomacy and Venus in her own sign, relationships of all kinds will have opportunities for repair and improvement in October. I just read that Russia is calling for a “reset” in relations with the United States.

Back in April, planets in the mid-degrees of the four cardinal signs – Aries, Cancer, Libra, and Capricorn – formed an intense grand cross, with the Uranus-Pluto square at its base. Mars in Libra formed one side of that configuration, and for an excruciatingly long time. There also were two eclipses in April, making that period extremely volatile in world affairs and in our individual lives. Many of us experienced shakeups – not all of which were “bad,” by the way. Some people reached a major critical phase in their personal transformation. For others, pieces began to fall in place to bring them closer to a new way of living.

Mercury recently retraced those degrees, and as we move toward the eclipse on October 8, Venus and the Sun will take his place. This Wednesday, the Moon conjoins Pluto in Capricorn, and then will move toward the Full Moon position conjunct Uranus and the lunar South Node. The Sun squares Pluto this Saturday. It’s not unusual for us to feel powerful eclipses weeks in advance, and that’s all the more likely with the two coming up in October, given the connections mentioned above.

I know that those connections are complicated and not everyone wants all the details, so suffice it to say that we’re coming up on another high-activity period in the transformation process we’ve been experiencing since the summer of 2010 and especially since last August. Think back to what you were trying to achieve four years ago, how it got blocked or sidetracked, how you might have beaten your head against the wall trying to make it happen, and then (for some) how circumstances change on a dime in a way you never saw coming and that all totally made sense. As I’ve written many times, this process isn’t a matter of “getting it” and then not having to do it again. It has been necessary to repeat it over and over again as we move into completely new and unfamiliar territory.

Part of this transformation has to do with being aware that the external world we call “reality” is a small piece of a much larger reality. Many of us will get a glimpse of the larger pattern this week as Mercury slows down and then stations in Scorpio, and it will be even more apparent toward the Scorpio eclipse on October 23.

So that’s the “turbulence.” The element of surprise and unexpected opportunities comes to us via a fire trine between Mars, Jupiter, and Uranus, which began building last Thursday. This week, Mars approaches a trine with Uranus (exact on Sunday, October 5). He trines Jupiter the following week. It may not seem like a big deal, given all the heavy stuff above, but it is, for the simple reason that Mars provides the “outlet” for those blocked forces, which then can flow freely into constructive and wildly creative ventures. Uranus adds the unpredictability, and Jupiter is the multiplier. Growth can be positively explosive.

It’s also possible that plans could blow up in your face, but that’s likely to happen only if you’re totally deluded about your purpose in life, stuck on a particular outcome, or patently reckless. For example, I don’t advise making your juggling debut with chainsaws.

I should mention that on a global scale, this combination of powerful energies could manifest as violent earth events (storms, etc.) or international crises. As individuals, we have some amount of control over our responses, whereas societies, governments, nations, and so forth, typically don’t. And right now, there is high degree of recklessness among certain groups, some of whom appear to be psychotically deluded and compulsively fixated on a particular outcome. In the case of storms, earthquakes, and such, an open path is conducive to a bigger event.

Another factor to consider is the conjunction of Ceres and Saturn next Sunday. Ceres often is prominent in the charts for natural disasters and far-reaching human events. That said, earthquake and weather prediction isn’t my forte, and I’m not predicting anything like that.

That’s pretty much it for this week. I’ll have more on the eclipses in the next couple of forecasts.

Much love and courage to all,
Pat

© Pat Paquette, RealAstrologers.com, 2014.