Tag Archives: political astrology

Weekly Forecast June 15: New Moon in Gemini, Sun Enters Cancer

Composite by Osk Ingad Alden, 2015.

Composite by Osk Ingad Alden, 2015.

We’re still floating along in a Neptunian fog, but this week has a couple of positive shifts that should make life more bearable overall, maybe even fun.

Oh, dear. Did I just use the “F” word? Must be all the sleep I got over the past week. Apparently it has made me feisty. If I could put that in a bottle, I would be a millionaire, and all those Lunesta moths would be out of work. (Did you know that luna moths belong to a family called saturniids?)

There’s going to be a lot of feistiness in the air this week, for better or for worse, with the New Moon in Gemini conjunct Mars. Continue reading →

Uranus in Aries: Acting To Change the World

Uranus, ruler of electricity. Power lines extend from Grand Coulee Dam into the far distance. ©Pat Paquette.

Uranus, the planet we associate with rebellion, innovation, and change, is in Aries as of Thursday, May 27. We won’t get far into pioneering territory before he turns retrograde and returns to Pisces for several months, but we’ll have a chance to explore and experiment.

Simply put, Pisces is about dreaming, imagining, and reflecting. Aries is about doing. We’ve had seven years to reflect on our dreams and visions for the future, how we want our world to be. Uranus in Aries now asks, “So what are you going to do about it?”

Pisces is, among other things, about our beliefs. Ruled by Neptune, Pisces can be wonderfully imaginative and spiritual or totally delusional. Blind faith falls within this category. There are many forms of blind faith. Usually we think of it in terms of organized religion, but it can apply equally to blind faith in our government, blind faith in our societal values, and blind faith in our political and economic system.

How many people do you know who say they have faith in the system, just not the current elected officials who are running it? At some point, we’re going to need to realize that it just isn’t working, and then what?

The 29th degree of every sign is sensitive, but this is particularly true for the 29th degree of Pisces, the last degree of the zodiac and known as the “weeping degree.” Venus stationed there last year after a retrograde period in Aries, sensitizing this degree even further. It was a special moment in time, when Susan Boyle created an overnight sensation with a song about a broken dream.

As Uranus crossed 29 degrees Pisces, protests were rampant in the euro zone, and oil gushed unchecked into the Gulf of Mexico from BP’s well a mile under the surface. What beliefs are we being asked to sacrifice? If you don’t have an answer yet, you’ll know by March 11, 2011, when Uranus re-enters Aries for a seven-year stint, much of which will be in a politically volatile square with Pluto in Capricorn.

In the ingress chart set for Washington D.C., Ceres is rising, conjunct Pluto and square Uranus, Jupiter and Saturn. This suggests that the biggest issue for the United States will involve the environment. Set for Brussels, the ingress chart has 13 Aries on the Ascendant, with Ceres and Pluto on the Midheaven. This also suggests issues of food supply and an impending environmental crisis.

As much as we’d like to blame BP for this disaster and force them to pay, that will not solve the underlying problem. The way the scenario is playing out, BP may be sacrificed (but more likely not) so that oil drilling and the obscene profits being reaped by oil companies at the expense of the environment can go forward unimpeded. If you watched President Obama’s press conference on May 27, you know this to be true. He said BP would pay, but offshore oil drilling would continue.

We are dependent on fossil fuels, period. And exploiting fossil fuels has dire environmental consequences. That is a fact. We are addicted and disempowered. How will we reclaim that power and remake the world according to our vision of love, joy, and abundance? Is it even possible? Should we even try? Or should we adjust our beliefs to be more “realistic?” Should we accept that we can’t meet our material needs without lasting, long-term damage to our food chain and life-support system? Will we keep searching for some technological fix (also the realm of Uranus) to make it possible to have all of this and a clean environment, too? When, exactly, can we expect that to happen?

Uranus in Aries requires us to act, and I would add that we’re at a point in the evolution of human consciousness when it’s imperative that we act in accordance with our values. Some people will take this as their cue to participate in mass demonstrations. That’s not inappropriate, and it’s probably inevitable. For the next five years, Uranus will remain in a close square with Pluto, suggesting massive political unrest. As I mentioned above, this unrest is likely to be related to the breakdown of the environment and food supply chain.

However, limiting your actions to political protests is a bit like going to church on Sunday and then acting wantonly the rest of the week, without regard to whether you’re being kind and maintaining your integrity. Acting must include changing our fundamental beliefs to shift into a different way of living and being.

This can’t happen overnight. But it’s something to start working on while we’re working to change the world.

Weekly Forecast May 24: Uranus Enters Aries, Full Moon in Sagittarius

Lewis and Clark on the Lower Columbia, by Charles Marion Russell, 1905.

The preparation phase is over. As of this week, the wagons are loaded, and we begin our journey to somewhere else. We’ve heard about it and read about it, but until we actually make our way to this new and mysterious place, we won’t know what’s in store for us.

Uranus enters pioneering Aries just after the Full Moon on Wednesday. This is a major milestone in the building cardinal T-square. Jupiter enters Aries next week, and the two will form a conjunction on June 8.

We can imagine our pioneering ancestors leaving the comfort of the familiar and venturing into the unknown, lured by a better life, wide-open spaces, land of their own, and the bounty of nature. Some of them just wanted adventure or were called by a primal human need to go beyond the limits of the known world. Those who survived the hardship of the journey paved the way for others behind them, as explorers and immigrants have been doing since time immemorial.

For this week’s image, I chose a painting of the Lewis and Clark Expedition by Charles Marion Russell. Not only does this historical event represent the spirit of Uranus in Aries, but it also took place during a Jupiter-Uranus conjunction. Jupiter, Uranus, and Mars all were conjunct in Libra when the party left Pittsburg on August 31, 1803 — which, incidentally, was a rare six-eclipse year. Lewis and Clark were dispatched by President Thomas Jefferson to cross the Louisiana Purchase, which had been acquired from France earlier that year, effectively doubling the size of U.S. territory.

Expansion, of course, is the realm of Jupiter. Although the Big Guy currently is conjunct wild, unpredictable Uranus, which might lead to explosive growth in all things, he’s also opposed to Saturn, which limits and constrains. Jupiter opposed Saturn yesterday (May 23), in the first of three oppositions between now and the end of the March 2011.

All activities this week are very much still under the power of this influence, which I wrote about in last week’s forecast. From Monday to Wednesday, we can expect a lot of financial developments, including news of regulatory bills before the U.S. Congress. The legislation ostensibly is aimed at preventing another banking crisis like the one that occurred in 2008. However, it’s hard to believe much is going to be fixed. The astrological signature of that meltdown, the Saturn-Uranus opposition, isn’t over yet and is about to be complicated by a tight square to Pluto in late July. Moreover, the square between Pluto in Capricorn and Uranus in Aries will continue into mid-2015.

On Thursday, we have the Full Moon in Jupiter-ruled Sagittarius, briefly emphasizing mutable rather than cardinal energies. Although a lot of change can happen during mutable periods, mutable signs also are adaptable, so this could present us with a short window to adjust to recent shifts before more change comes piling on.

And so it will, with Uranus entering action-oriented Aries less than three hours after the Full Moon. I’ll have more on Uranus in Aries in a post later this week.

Neither Uranus nor Jupiter will remain in Aries for very long. Both turn retrograde this summer and return to Pisces until next year. But they will be in Aries in late July and early August, when the cardinal T-square will be at peak power.

While these noisy transits are occurring, Saturn quietly returns direct in Virgo on Sunday. His first order of business is to put severe obstacles in the path of Jupiter and Uranus, who would leap into anything without so much as a cursory look. This will apply to everything from natural disasters to political unrest and financial activities. We actually may thank our lucky stars that Saturn is such a stick in the mud, as it may be he, in the end, who prevents all hell from breaking loose.

Wishing you all much love and courage,
Aquarius, the sign of astrologyPat