Image for this week: You’re driving on an eight-lane highway in the pouring rain, with a semi-truck passing on your left, buffeting your car in his draft. It seems like he’s been there forever, but thankfully he moves on.

And then the spray from his tires hits your windshield with a big splat. It’s not like you didn’t see it coming, but you can’t prevent being blinded for a second or two. Still, that’s no big deal, as long as you’ve been paying attention and know what’s in front of you.

As the week begins, we’re still in the draft of Saturday’s lunar eclipse, and the Uranus-Pluto square is activated by the Sun and Mercury. Nonetheless, we’ve passed a critical mile marker, there’s been a shift, and the pressure has dropped. We know what we have to do, we know it’s not going to be a piece of cake, and that’s OK. It doesn’t hurt that spring is in full bloom in the Northern Hemisphere, and the days are noticeably longer.

Put another way, this week’s challenging aspects have been in play, and while they culminate in the next few days, it’s really more like a continuation of familiar circumstances and situations. New developments are possible, some of which may be unanticipated. Then, in looking back, we’ll likely see that we could have foreseen certain outcomes. Sometimes we miss cues because we wish for things to turn out a certain way or because our beliefs don’t match reality. The latter is often the case in world affairs, especially for those who rely on the Western media for news.

I don’t have a lot to add to what I’ve written in the past couple of weeks about the separating Uranus-Pluto square. It’s “officially” over, but will reverberate into the next few years, especially when faster moving planets connect with it, as they do this week. On Monday, the Sun squares Uranus, after squaring Pluto on Sunday. This configuration occurred so close to Saturday’s lunar eclipse that it seems to have manifested early. On the world stage, a new crisis in Yemen is raging, Iran has reached a historic agreement to curtail its nuclear energy program in exchange for the lifting of international sanctions, and Russia apparently made a quiet deal with the United States and Europe over the conflict in Ukraine. All of these situations remain volatile and will take years to resolve, but events in the past two weeks marked an important shift.

News about these situations and other ongoing events will come fast and furious all week as communications planet Mercury squares Pluto on Tuesday, conjoins Uranus on Wednesday, and aligns with the Sun on Friday (Thursday in Western time zones). There will be more than the usual amount of saber-rattling and combative words. You can save yourself some time and stress by ignoring any article about a politician making a political statement. So what if some idiot general says we should start killing Russians? It’s outrageous and hateful, but it’s only political theatre. The real news is what’s going on behind the scenes that isn’t being reported, such as the United States installing its own people in the Ukraine government to be in position when the time comes to divide the spoils. Russia’s deal to keep sending natural gas through the Ukraine pipeline system also was major news, but it got very little coverage, because it’s “boring.” Killing Russians is click bait. Natural gas prices, not.

Although the news headlines will be more hyped than usual all week, Monday could be especially dramatic, and probably in a good way, with Mercury trine Jupiter in Leo. Jupiter is especially potent this week, as he turns direct on Wednesday after four months in retrograde. For those of you with Jupiter aspecting natal planets, be alert for new opportunities. Jupiter is said to be “lucky,” but you have to act. Although anything’s possible, it’s not likely that a call offering you your dream job is going to come out of the blue while you’re lying on the couch in your underwear watching reruns of Alaska Moose Men. Jupiter will be stationed at the same degree for nearly three weeks, which is a big open door for something positive to come along.

Speaking of doors, I just have to throw this in. The Doors, icon of the sixties counterculture of sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll, have just been added to the National Recording Registry of the Library of Congress. In a brief article for The Huffington Post, former band member John Densmore noted the irony, since they were on Nixon’s hit list. As it so happens, the band was formed in the summer of 1965, at the beginning of the current Uranus-Pluto cycle. The band’s name came from The Doors of Perception, the title of a book by Aldous Huxley about his experience with psychedelic drugs. Huxley in turn took his title from a line in William Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven and Hell: “If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.” I’ve written before about the recurrence during the Uranus-Pluto square of themes from the mid-sixties.

Over the weekend, there are two additional planetary events. On Saturday, Venus leaves her own sign of Taurus and enters Gemini. This puts her in a three-way energy exchange with Mercury and Mars and adds to the flurry of news headlines, although the rhetoric might be toned down some. On a more personal level, communications between friends are more important, with a lot of texting.

On Sunday, Mars in Taurus sextiles Neptune in Pisces. This is a laid-back pair that would be quite comfortable lying on the grass in the park getting stoned and listening to The Doors. Or lying on the couch in underwear watching faked “reality” TV, Neptune being the planet of deception. But it’s good for down time in general, especially for sitting quietly in deep meditation, unplugged. I’ll be glued to the second episode of Wolf Hall. The first was phenomenal, one of the best historical productions ever made, with amazing acting by Mark Rylance as Thomas Cromwell. I’m totally sucked in and should probably order it on DVD so I can lie on the couch in my bathrobe (too cold for underwear) and watch it in a proper Neptunian marathon.

Wishing you all much love and courage,
Pat

© Pat Paquette, RealAstrologers.com, 2014.