This is the month for cel­e­brat­ing friend­ship, com­pan­ion­ship and our social ideals. It’s time to dis­play your inven­tive­ness and orig­i­nal­i­ty. Who says those col­ors don’t go togeth­er? Chal­lenge con­ven­tion, break out of those boxes.…yes, you should even take the path less taken…you nev­er know what you might find, or who you might encounter.

From now until Feb­ru­ary 18th the Sun will be in Aquar­ius whose sym­bol is the “Water Bear­er”. Now many peo­ple at first assume that that means that Aquar­ius is a “Water” sign, but it is not. Aquar­ius is the last of the “Air” signs. Air is about the intel­lect, about thoughts and ideas; it’s about reflect­ing, con­nect­ing and communicating.

There are 3 Air Signs: In Gem­i­ni the focus is on devel­op­ing intel­li­gence and per­son­al con­scious­ness. Then, in Libra the focus is on devel­op­ing social intel­li­gence and inter-per­son­al con­scious­ness. Final­ly, in Aquar­ius the focus is on devel­op­ing group intel­li­gence and col­lec­tive consciousness.

Remem­ber, one per­son alone can stand for the truth of being excep­tion­al. And two peo­ple, togeth­er, can stand for the truth of under­stand­ing anoth­er. But when many gath­er togeth­er, unit­ed in com­mon ide­al and pur­pose, then Truth, Love and Spir­it will lead us into our future.… 

The Moon in Can­cer oppos­es the Sun in Capri­corn today.…it’s a Full Moon! Yes, yes I know we have all heard the sto­ries that dur­ing Full Moons ener­gies seem to “ramp up” and mat­ters can spin out of con­trol. Yes, that can hap­pen. And cer­tain­ly, with the Moon in its own sign of Can­cer feel­ings and emo­tions can tend to be strong…but that can and should be a beau­ti­ful experience.

The oppor­tu­ni­ty of each Full Moon should be cel­e­brat­ed, inte­grat­ed and act­ed upon. Each Full Moon is a time of rev­e­la­tion, a time to pause and won­der at the beau­ty of the “lights” above us. It should be a time to hon­or the mes­sage they illus­trate about our expe­ri­ence. We should reflect upon the last 2 weeks, just as the Moon reflects the light of the Sun, and look at what we have done since the New Moon of Jan­u­ary 4. Now, in the light of the Full Moon, we should look for the mes­sage our heav­en­ly com­pan­ions offer up to us.

Here we are expe­ri­enc­ing the truths and ten­sion in the rela­tion­ship between Can­cer and Capri­corn; it is between our Roots in our fam­i­ly, eth­nic­i­ty and cul­ture, and our Des­tinies in our pro­fes­sion­al, social and spir­i­tu­al responsibilities.

Can­cer acts from the truth of feel­ings and the meet­ing of needs through intu­itive spon­tane­ity. Capri­corn acts from the truth of tra­di­tions and struc­tures as it seeks to pre­serve the hard won achieve­ments of civ­i­liza­tion. Can­cer pro­vides secu­ri­ty; Capri­corn pro­vides order. Can­cer says “fol­low your feel­ings, be spon­ta­neous”; Capri­corn says “fol­low your tra­di­tions, be responsible”.

So, which is right? .…well of course they both are! You can­not have one with­out the oth­er. If we were just to go with our feel­ings, with­out being guid­ed by the wis­dom embod­ied in our insti­tu­tions, well then mat­ters could swing from one extreme to anoth­er. But if we just become order­ly, if we become just automa­tons, then that could well lead to a life with no heart in it whatsoever.

Okay, okay…but what are we sup­posed to do now? Well, this is Capri­corn’s time. The Sun in Capri­corn shines with its bril­liant mes­sage and points to the sub­stan­tial proof of what we have achieved, of what we have built up, and what we will pass on to those that fol­low. Capri­corn shines with the light of achievement.

But the Can­cer Moon is remind­ing Capri­corn of where it all start­ed, and what it is for. The Full Moon of Can­cer says that we built it all up because we felt a need; we were respond­ing to the needs of our fam­i­ly, of our neigh­bor­hood, of our cul­ture, of one and all. We answered the call to meet our needs for one anoth­er and so cre­at­ed this soci­ety to meet those needs.

The Can­cer Full Moon reflects the light of the Capri­corn Sun and shows that the word of Capri­corn, “Respon­si­bil­i­ty” tru­ly means the “Abil­i­ty to Respond”; and what we have always respond­ed to and what we will always be respon­si­ble for is one anoth­er’s needs.

So, in the light of this Full Moon turn to one anoth­er, feel for one anoth­er, and take care of one another…because it feels right…and it has always been so.

Deep thoughts ahead! When Mer­cury “the mes­sen­ger” teams up with Plu­to “the will­ful” you are going to greater depths of think­ing. We are talk­ing x‑ray vision, pierc­ing through the veil of illu­sion vision. You will uncov­er and dis­cov­er what is real­ly real.

Now it comes, your test and chal­lenge. If you try and push the truth on anoth­er, you com­mit a great untruth in spir­it. Like­wise, if some­one is push­ing a thought onto you they vio­late your space, it is tres­pass­ing and you must not yield to force. Your space is sacred, their space is sacred. Self-con­trol is the only con­trol that matters.

Instead turn the ener­gy around and reform, rebuild and renew your own thought pat­terns. Self mas­tery begins with your mind; the “men­tal” diet is the hard­est but most reward­ing. Right think­ing leads to right action. It’s not about winning…it’s all about understanding…which leads to accep­tance and grace.

Dive deep if you want the “pearl of great price”!

We turn our atten­tion now to the oth­er major “Tran­sit to Tran­sit” align­ments of 2011 and oth­er phenomena.

Jupiter Square Plu­to (Feb. 25)
The cycle of Jupiter and Plu­to, again from con­junc­tion to con­junc­tion, is rough­ly 12 years long. Their last con­junc­tion (New Moon) occurred at the end of Decem­ber 2007. That con­junc­tion released a new poten­tial for inte­grat­ing our Will (Plu­to) and Beliefs (Jupiter) with­in the con­text of the sign of Sagit­tar­ius, the seek­er of truth.

We arrive at their wax­ing square on Feb­ru­ary 25, 2011, and again we face a choice. Now we are at cross­roads, we must find a way to inte­grate Jupiter in Aries, which seeks to pur­sue new and ide­al­is­tic forms of rela­tion­ship, with the demands of Plu­to in Capri­corn, which seeks to main­tain con­trol as demand­ed by tra­di­tion and estab­lished author­i­ty. The spir­it of Jupiter yearns to bring about new forms of per­son­al and social advance­ment, but the will of the sta­tus quo as expressed by Plu­to may lead to a dif­fi­cult reck­on­ing. The way through is to hon­or what has worked but not to yield to those who mere­ly wield pow­er with­out hon­or­ing their responsibilities.

Jupiter Sex­tile Nep­tune (Jun. 8)
The cycle of Jupiter and Nep­tune is about 12 to 13 years long. Their last con­junc­tion was dur­ing 2009. With Jupiter pro­vid­ing the prin­ci­ples to guide our rela­tion­ships, the align­ment to Nep­tune in Aquar­ius cre­at­ed a renewed sen­si­bil­i­ty of com­mu­ni­ty and com­pas­sion. It was no acci­dent that the biggest push to uni­ver­sal health care in the US was attempt­ed dur­ing this time.

Now at the wax­ing sex­tile on June 8, 2011 the more prac­ti­cal work­ing out and man­i­fes­ta­tion of this impulse is seen. What were once inti­ma­tions, ideas and pro­pos­als have become real pat­terns of how we now see we must relate to one anoth­er. There is a sense that we have come to under­stand that fol­low­ing the path of truth requires that we must con­duct our affairs with tol­er­ance, com­pas­sion and for­give­ness. This under­stand­ing will be chal­lenged, and we will have to choose which path to fol­low, a year lat­er, in June 2012, when our present beliefs and dreams about our future face a test.

Jupiter Trine Plu­to (Jul. 7, Oct. 28, Mar. 13, 2012)
The cycle of Jupiter and Plu­to moves into this more pos­i­tive phase for the next 9 months. Hav­ing faced the chal­lenge in late Feb­ru­ary, we will find our­selves able to expand more effort­less­ly now in our mate­r­i­al life and spir­i­tu­al under­stand­ing. Because Jupiter has moved into Tau­rus (Earth) and Plu­to is in Capri­corn (Earth), this cre­ates very pos­i­tive con­di­tions for real eco­nom­ic growth. Though there are always expand­ing and con­tract­ing forces at play in any year, this is cer­tain­ly a strong fac­tor sup­port­ing those areas that are capa­ble of growth, espe­cial­ly those which have read the signs of change and adapt­ed. Spir­i­tu­al­ly, to the extent the right choic­es were made in Feb­ru­ary, the oppor­tu­ni­ty now is to bring about a real evo­lu­tion in our moral affir­ma­tion of one anoth­er. We are will­ing to seek accom­mo­da­tion with each oth­er as an expres­sion of our under­stand­ing for one another.

SOLAR ECLIPSE/LUNAR ECLIPSE
The Solar and Lunar Eclipses pro­duce effects that draw our atten­tion to the lessons to be learned in the signs of their occur­rence. In a way, they pro­vide an oppor­tu­ni­ty, through dra­mat­ic and visu­al excla­ma­tion, to have a deep­er expe­ri­ence and con­nec­tion to either a new release of ener­gy (Solar) or rev­e­la­tion of mean­ing (Lunar). Much more exten­sive analy­sis will be offered when the eclipses occur. Here is a sum­ma­ry of what to expect.

Solar (Jan. 4)
The Solar Eclipse of Jan­u­ary 4 was already cov­ered in my post­ing for that event: Solar Eclipse (Jan 4)

Solar (Jun. 1)
The Solar Eclipse of June 1 her­alds a new series of lessons for us since it occurs in Gem­i­ni. The Lunar nodes are mov­ing from Cancer/Capricorn to Gemini/Sagittarius. Yes, that’s right, these points in space move “back­wards” through the Zodi­ac. They are estab­lished by two inter­sect­ing “spheres” formed from the orbital paths of the Earth around the Sun, and the Moon around the Earth. Where those two orbits inter­sect is the time, every 6 months, where the Sun, Moon and Earth line up with one anoth­er. This is what allows for there to be the phe­nom­e­non of the Moon’s shad­ow pass­ing across the Earth (Solar Eclipse), or the shad­ow of the Earth pass­ing across the Moon (Lunar Eclipse).

The June 1 Gem­i­ni Solar Eclipse is say­ing that in order to use this new release of ener­gy that comes at a New Moon, you will first have to go back and repair, cor­rect or fin­ish some aspect of your think­ing. Gem­i­ni rules intel­li­gence, but true intel­li­gence is found­ed upon crit­i­cal self-aware­ness. Just hav­ing the “right” answer does not make you spir­i­tu­al­ly intel­li­gent; the real issue is are you ask­ing the right question?

Lunar (Jun. 15)
The Lunar Eclipse on June 15 is in Sagit­tar­ius and we ordi­nar­i­ly expect that a Full Moon would pro­vide some new rev­e­la­tion about the rela­tion­ship between our low­er mind (Gem­i­ni) and high­er under­stand­ing (Sagit­tar­ius), between our Future and our Past. But with the eclipse our present real­i­ty is obscur­ing the mes­sage. We must con­front some­thing in our present state of mind in order to receive the Full Moon message.

Solar (Jul. 1)
Back to back Solar Eclipses adds an urgent tone to the mes­sages from the stars. This time the New Moon is in Can­cer, and the new begin­nings for how we can secure our lives requires we more deeply under­stand where secu­ri­ty real­ly comes from first.

Solar (Nov 25)
The Solar Eclipse of Novem­ber 25 is in Sagit­tar­ius. The release of a new ener­gy in under­stand­ing must first address the need to repair our notions of truth­ful­ness. Do you know where you are going? Oh, then you know from whence you came? Remember.

Lunar (Dec. 10)
The Lunar Eclipse on Decem­ber 10 is in Gem­i­ni. The illu­mi­na­tion pro­vid­ed at the Full Moon is inter­rupt­ed by our present cir­cum­stances. Though we wish to think more clear­ly (Gem­i­ni), old pat­terns and assump­tions need to be con­front­ed. The issue is “how intel­li­gent are you?”

PLANETARY INGRESSES
The move­ment of a plan­et from one sign into the next is called an ingress. The Moon is in sign for about 2 ½ days, the Sun for rough­ly 30 days, and an out­er plan­et, like Uranus, for about 7 years. As these shifts occur we expe­ri­ence a new melod­ic blend­ing of and mes­sage from the stars.

Jupiter Enters Aries (Jan. 22)
Jupiter has gone into and back out of Aries in the past year. We have already felt its mes­sage of new begin­nings, which were quick­ened and height­ened by the pair­ing with Uranus. Now until June, we feel the urge to race ahead because we want to be in the future already!

Jupiter Enters Tau­rus (Jun. 4)
Jupiter moves into Tau­rus for a year on June 4. With sol­id foun­da­tions and patience there is tan­gi­ble progress now. There is steady growth, and phys­i­cal secu­ri­ty will increase for many. With the end of the Jupiter/Saturn oppo­si­tion, com­bined with the trine of Jupiter and Plu­to lat­er, Jupiter in Tau­rus should cre­ate a much more pos­i­tive result for those economies posi­tioned to ben­e­fit. The gen­er­al US eco­nom­ic fore­cast will be revised upward.

Uranus Enters Aries (Mar. 11)
Just as with Jupiter, we have already had a taste of Uranus in Aries in 2010. Now the plan­et of inde­pen­dence, orig­i­nal­i­ty and inven­tive­ness moves into the first sign to stay for 7 years. The pre­vi­ous swing through Aries occurred from 1928 to 1934. Now that may look a lit­tle omi­nous to some, but there were many oth­er fac­tors con­tribut­ing to the social and eco­nom­ic dis­rup­tions that took place then.

Uranus in Aries brings about sig­nif­i­cant advances in sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy. There is an urgency and eager­ness to make new begin­nings in many aspects of life. The pace of life quick­ens, but impa­tience will also be stoked. The rise of pro­gres­sive lead­ers and move­ments advo­cat­ing change will go head to head with the old order as Uranus and Plu­to line up with one anoth­er from 2012–2015.

Nep­tune Enters Pisces (Apr. 4, Aug. 4, Feb. 3, 2012)
Just as with Jupiter and Uranus last year, Nep­tune dances back and forth between one sign and the next this year. It has been in Aquar­ius since 1998 and it will stay in Pisces start­ing next Feb­ru­ary 2012 until March 2025. This is a com­ing home event, since Nep­tune is said to rule Pisces.

The last time Nep­tune was here was 1848 to 1862 and the pur­suit of dreams (and fan­tasies) grew apace. In the US, the west­ward expan­sion was accel­er­at­ed as the vision of gold sparkled in the eyes of “forty-nin­ers”. In the spir­i­tu­al world, on the heels of the “Sec­ond Great Awak­en­ing”, a grow­ing reli­gious fer­vor spurred the calls for jus­tice as abo­li­tion­ists strug­gled to make our coun­try con­front the great evil and shame of slavery.

For the next 13 years, a path­way has been offered for a renew­al of under­stand­ing, com­pas­sion and sac­ri­fice. We are mov­ing into a peri­od of spir­i­tu­al revival and growth. Dreams, romance and the imag­i­na­tion will take flight.

Be pre­pared to wonder…be ready to embrace… and be able to sur­ren­der, so that the gifts of Spir­it may enter our hearts and so remind us that we are one. “E Pluribus Unum”

What’s Next?
In the next Gen­er­al Fore­cast post­ings we will begin to look at spe­cif­ic play­ers on the stage of his­to­ry and see what the align­ment of the plan­ets has in store for them, and us. In this tech­nique, we will look at what are called Tran­sits to Natal; that is observ­ing the plan­e­tary motions as they inter­sect with and influ­ence the birth charts of nations, world lead­ers and notable fig­ures, orga­ni­za­tions and many oth­er “birthed” entities.

In addi­tion, dur­ing the year when inter­ests, cir­cum­stance or whim indi­cate, I will look at these and oth­er rel­e­vant charts to illus­trate the astro­log­i­cal per­spec­tive. More­over, I will also respond to rea­son­able requests for sub­jects for analy­sis dur­ing the year as well.

Part Three

As I men­tioned in the intro­duc­tion, the year ahead seems to offer a brief respite from the pow­er­ful align­ments we have expe­ri­enced in the recent past. Plan­e­tary motions, how­ev­er, are not cir­cum­scribed by our cal­en­dar and often align­ments and their effects spill over from one year to anoth­er. So too in this year some of the sig­na­ture events of 2010 are fin­ish­ing up here in the first quar­ter of 2011.

Jupiter Con­junct Uranus (Jan. 4)
Among the more sig­nif­i­cant of these align­ments was the sub­ject of what I wrote in the post­ing for Jan­u­ary 4, Jupiter Con­junct Uranus. This event was the third and final con­junc­tion (New Moon) of Jupiter with Uranus. Their cycle, from con­junc­tion to the next con­junc­tion, lasts about 14 years and each con­junc­tion her­alds the release of ener­gies that stim­u­late the devel­op­ment of dis­cov­er­ies and break­throughs in arts, sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy. More­over, on a social lev­el, their impulse serves to quick­en the evo­lu­tion of new forms of social devel­op­ment and inter­ac­tion. This more per­son­al or social aspect of the align­ment was explained in the post­ing for Jan­u­ary 5, Jupiter Con­junct Uranus- World­ly vs. Per­son­al.

Though they have “fin­ished” their con­junc­tion, we will see the effects of their align­ment in the years to come in the wider prop­a­ga­tion of the sci­en­tif­ic and tech­no­log­i­cal advances they stim­u­lat­ed. We will also see the social aspects of their quick­en­ing play­ing out in our rela­tion­ships with one anoth­er too, as the urge to estab­lish greater free­doms with­in and between one anoth­er accel­er­ates the devel­op­ment of var­i­ous cul­tures and societies.

Jupiter Oppo­si­tion Sat­urn (Mar. 28)
The oth­er “car­ry-over” align­ment from 2010 is the oppo­si­tion (Full Moon) of Jupiter and Sat­urn. Their cycle, from Con­junc­tion to Con­junc­tion, (or as in this case, Oppo­si­tion to Oppo­si­tion), is 20 years. In 2010 they came to an oppo­si­tion in late May and mid-August, and their final con­tact will be on March 28, 2011.

With Jupiter rul­ing prin­ci­ples, truths and beliefs, and Sat­urn rul­ing struc­tures, insti­tu­tions and real­i­ty, their oppo­si­tion pro­vides a sharp con­trast for us to see how much what we believe to be true is being lived out in fact. In oth­er words, it is a time for a reck­on­ing between the belief or mean­ing behind the form and the form or real­i­ty itself. More often than not, (and this depends upon what else is hap­pen­ing down here and “up there”), this oppo­si­tion can cre­ate a cri­sis of faith in our belief sys­tems or a loss of trust in our insti­tu­tions… or both. Cer­tain­ly, here and around the world, this was a year of reck­on­ing, and more than we might at first realize.

The Great Muta­tion of Jupiter and Sat­urn
For this dance of Jupiter and Sat­urn has a sto­ried his­to­ry for astrologers. We have used their ser­i­al align­ments as they progress through the ele­ments to under­stand some of the larg­er forces at play in our uni­verse. What we have dis­cov­ered is that Jupiter and Sat­urn will come togeth­er in their con­junc­tion in the same ele­ment, (Fire, Earth, Air and Water), for about 180 to 200 years, before they move onto the next ele­ment. This move­ment from ele­ment to ele­ment is called the “Great Mutation”.

Since 1842 their con­junc­tions have been occur­ring in Earth and their last such align­ment was in the spring of 2000. While in an ele­men­tal phase, those con­di­tions estab­lished by that ele­ment per­me­ate and pro­mote the devel­op­ments in cul­ture and soci­ety. So, the last 169+ years have wit­nessed an explo­sion in the har­ness­ing of ener­gies and mate­ri­als of the earth, lit­er­al­ly. It has been an “age” of mate­ri­al­ism, of the rise of our car­bon fueled soci­ety and the cre­ation of a very spe­cif­ic kind of real­i­ty. But there is change in the air already, and our real­i­ty is about to be transformed…

For what we have also found is that there is often a sign of things to come right before the next Great Muta­tion. Often, it seems, the sec­ond to last con­junc­tion occurs in that next ele­ment in the series. So in 1802 there was a pre­cur­sor align­ment in Earth. And most recent­ly, it was the 1980–81 Air con­junc­tion in Libra, before we reached the final align­ment in Earth via the Tau­rus con­junc­tion of May 2000.

The Next Age
What these seem to pro­vide is a “seed­ing” of what is to come, a taste of the new world that will be inau­gu­rat­ed at the next Great Muta­tion, which for us is just ahead in 2020. As the 1802 con­junc­tion jump-start­ed the “Age of Mate­ri­al­ism”, so too has the 1980–81 align­ment ini­ti­at­ed what we might call the “Age of Virtue”. Though some aspects of this Vir­tu­ous­ness or “Vir­tu­os­i­ty” have man­i­fest­ed in rather phys­i­cal forms, such as in the devel­op­ments in the 1980’s and 90’s which wit­nessed the pro­lif­er­a­tion of com­put­ers, cel­lu­lar phones and the inter­net, (our inter­con­nect­ed­ness was accel­er­at­ing), and which has now lead to the evo­lu­tion of vir­tu­al worlds and com­mu­ni­ties, (such as expe­ri­enced in phe­nom­e­na like Face­book), we will see that the 2020’s and beyond will wit­ness the con­tin­u­ing unfold­ment of forms of con­nec­tiv­i­ty that will tran­scend these phys­i­cal forms and their lim­its. But we are, (I am), get­ting ahead of ourselves.

Jupiter and Sat­urn Now
At the present moment, the final oppo­si­tion of Jupiter and Sat­urn with­in the Earth series pro­vides us with this moment in time to see to what extent we have trans­formed our­selves and our world through our mate­r­i­al “mas­tery”. And, it equal­ly reminds us what lim­its and chal­lenges have been cre­at­ed by this earthy par­a­digm in our con­scious­ness as well. We may mar­vel at our cre­ations, yet we must mourn what we have sac­ri­ficed of this Earth to bring about our mate­r­i­al world. 

What’s ahead?
In the next post­ing we will exam­ine the oth­er major align­ments of 2011, as well as oth­er phe­nom­e­na such as Solar and Lunar eclipses and oth­er mat­ters that reside in the “Tran­sit to Tran­sit” category.

Then, in lat­er post­ings, we will turn our atten­tion to the oth­er great method of Astro­log­i­cal Insight, pro­vid­ed by the “Tran­sits to Natal” aspects, and exam­ine the var­i­ous align­ments of the plan­ets to spe­cif­ic charts of nations, world lead­ers and oth­er orga­ni­za­tions and indi­vid­u­als. Stay tuned…

Part Two