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Jupiter and Saturn meet on the winter solstice in Aquarius, ushering in a new normal that changes everything.

December marks the arrival of the much-anticipated Jupiter-Saturn conjunction on the day the winter solstice, in the very beginning of Aquarius.  It is said to be the beginning of a couple of hundred years of social change marked by the repeating conjunction in air, when competition and change supposedly will shift from the physical (conjunctions in earth) to the mental and conceptual (air).  It’s also the closest conjunction (in latitude as well as longitude) since 1226. Where was it in 1226? Why, the very beginning of Aquarius, so it’s an almost perfect repeat of a roughly 800-year civilization cycle. Google what was going on then …let us hope past is not prologue…. The folks back then hadn’t even gotten to the Black Death, yet  to come 125 years later, itself at the last time the conjunction was, as today, inside the bowl of the outer planets.

Well, back to the present, the mostly all-planets-direct period of the roller coaster is back, so expect things to move precipitously fast, with mistakes put off to correct when they all go retro again. But at least things will be getting done, as the first part of the month sees Mars direct and making up for past dawdling, though it will be back to squaring Pluto and then Jupiter and Saturn from mid-month into next, so recovery will be a push for all concerned.  The second of the eclipse set, a solar at 23 Sagittarius, is also mid-month, so expect the unexpected, especially if you personally have something near there, like both the USA and Donald Trump do.

Never a dull moment this year, and  next year, more of the same, but evolving into a new normal, which will redefine everything for a long time to come…

It's finally hit the fan, no more beating around the bush, like napalm in the morning...the game is on.  Duck...

November smells like napalm in the morning…whether than means victory will depend on which side you’re on. But after a month of bitter mutual pounding, the final engagement is here, as first Mercury turns direct then Mars leaving only Uranus retro for the remainder of the year.  It’s full-tilt boogie as forces of the past struggle to resist the giant forward movement of Jupiter and Saturn headed for Aquarius, conjoining inside the bowl of the outer planets for the first time since the plague years of the mid-1300s. It’s a mixing of politico-economic forces against a matrix of multi-generational cultural and environmental change, in which the latter eventually win out, regardless of what shorter-term decisions are made. One can only hope the two will wind up running in sync, or the long-term picture will be even more disastrous than usual.

If you were waiting for the bombardment to cease and the invasion to begin, so to speak, this is the month. Still, with lunar eclipse at month’s end, followed by a solar eclipse next month, the fog of battle will not likely lift until the great conjunction itself on the day of the winter solstice, December 21. By then, you’ll have a better idea if your situation is at least hopefully on the mend or whether it is time to flee the wreckage and find safer ground elsewhere.

The” interesting times” are upon us, willy-nilly. What will be more interesting is their aftermath, and where we all may come down to rest like weary sea birds, battered by the storm...

Incoming surprises punctuate pounding Mars retrograde skies, as monster stellium realigns for coming D-Day.

October rain is falling…not like drougt-relief from the sky, more like a storm of heavy shelling incoming before an invasion. If you didn’t take September to batten down, it’s too late now, best duck and cover while the fire rains from afar and before the main event comes pounding on your door.

All in all, the heavens themselves don’t look that bad, for the moment, but it’s all about final rearrangement – the history-making Jupiter-Saturn-Pluto stellium is making its final alignment and will be all systems go until winter solstice, but there are still four planets retrograde, so all is not organized yet. Mars is retrograde all month, and Mercury for most of it, so you can’t do a full-tilt boogie until your feet get untangled, and that won’t happen until next month.

Nevertheless, mostly splash skies mean a new major lunar aspect every day and something explosive to go along with it, and before you can deal with that, the next surprise is already upon you. Each new development can look decisive, but then it turns out to be deflected or flipped by the following response or another reset out of the blue. So, keep your head down, but don’t go all in quite yet because the situation isn’t clear enough for a clean shot, as there are more misses than hits for the moment unless you unnecessarily overexpose yourself.

Then, over the following two to three months, the main events will emerge, helter-skelter…if you’re in the midst, have courage, and if you’re on the sidelines, stay there…

Amid retrograde explosion, Mars suddenly brakes, flinging passengers onto the next train: quo vadis!?

September ramps up the action, more than it usually does when ending summer doldrums, as suddenly-arrived splash skies mean a new aspect nearly every day, more news coming in before the last blast has been digested. That doesn’t mean progress, necessarily, as most of the planets are still retrograde, still working their way out of corners they thoughtlessly got trapped in last winter. Just lots more on the plate, not all of it yet in edible condition.

Most notable in this stew is Mars going retrograde, a two-month-long biennial occurrence that always slows things down the most when there seems the most urgency to get things going. Mars, the energy-provider, is further debilitated by its ongoing square to the Jupiter-Saturn-Pluto stellium, so what efforts do get underway often find themselves thwarted or redirected into draining spirals of repetition.

But this is the pause before things get irreversibly underway, like those few hours before the incoming hurricane when organizing a tangle of ropes to tie down the ship, finding shutter bolts to secure the windows, double-checking the supplies inside for when outside becomes untenable. That’s because the rolling retrograde of the great stellium is about to cut loose as Jupiter, Saturn, and Pluto all straighten course and speed to the conjunction of the winter solstice, the pivot point for the directions of the next twenty years for certain, and likely the next 200, as the twenty-year Jupiter-Saturn conjunction cycle moves to air signs.

As so many positive-spin, self-help astrologers grope for suggestions that these times are ripe for individual personal growth, valuable introspection, a new take of life, suffice it to say that is already happening willy-nillly on a global scale in a furious and ineluctable fashion. The change is already upon us, erupting beneath our feet, no need to pursue it, just ride it as best you can. If you are fortunate enough to be in a quiet spot as the storms rage, that may be the truest progress of all. Stay there. History is described by the survivors, and it may be your destiny to write history when the storm is over…

August editorial:

August pulls Mars into a trap, which will color the rest of the year. Destined to remain stuck in Aries until next year, the red planet is ever slowing as Earth pulls up to pass it next month. This energy-sapping trend is compounded by its now-lingering square to the destiny-driving stellium of Jupiter-Pluto-Saturn, creating an impotently-repetitive spiral of outlash that truly paints the heart of the vortex we entered in 2016. That’s a world trend, but particularly difficult for those with natal charts directly impacted by it – such as the U.S.A. whose  Pluto-afflicted Mercury is doubled-up by the transiting stellium opposition, rolling downhill from the Pluto opposition to its Sun in 2016.

This tie-up lasts well into the fall, with a brief break, and then reasserts in January as Mars again makes the square to Jupiter and Saturn, with Uranus added to the mix on January 20. For this month, Jupiter-Pluto-Saturn-led locomotive skies predominate with the Moon bringing a brief splash pattern toward month’s end. Three to five retrograde planets make back-pedaling the now-repetitive roller-coaster game of the day, but to little avail, as this train is headed straight for the gorge and the brakes are blown out (forgot to check them last winter, when all planets were direct, but who reads the manual, anyway?)

If you’ve been washed onto the sidelines for all this, it will be a good idea to stay there if you can. If you’re in the middle of the fray, you likely haven’t time or resources to even think about it…only the nodes aligned with the Galactic Center may remind all that there’s a stronger pull than even our own star, at a scale we do not inhabit…

Mars entering shadow is shot down in flight as Jupter, Saturn, Pluto reshuffle for coming sea-change shift.

July divides and spreads issues in a similar way to the virus that has been the center of attention since spring. A third, lunar, eclipse adds a new set of surprises and the single-issue focus branches into multiple unanticipated developments. That’s due to the sky shape shifting from a more centered bowl to a splash pattern that brings news daily from all points of the compass.

The multiple retrograde planets, which will stay that way into the fall, are predictably forcing rethinking and restructuring of ill-conceived decisions and trends established in the winter when everything was soaring along, blissfully direct. It is the classic pattern of the roller-coaster sky period long-covered here and still underway.

Although events may seem like they are hurtling forward, the skies themselves are actually in mid-reshift, as Saturn steps back into Capricorn, Jupiter retrogrades over Pluto, and everything is rearranging and consolidating in preparation for helter-skelter forward motion and change in the fall, made especially excruciating by smacked-down retrograde Mars which will make progress seem more like digging out than moving on. It just went into Aries, enters its retrograde arc ("shadow") there July 25, and it will remain trapped and struggling in that sign until next year…!

What is happening now is not yet the recovery some tout, but expanding, rearranging, and completing the situation from which ultimate recovery will be required…

When the storm is raging, stay inside -- hurricane parties are disasters for participants and rescuers alike.

June is for jumping…out of the frying pan and into the fire. Two eclipses pull the rug out from the best-intentioned moves as almost the entire available sky retrograde means rethinking everything and regretting the direct-planet mindless sailing that got us into a lot of what could have been avoided.

The sky is either dominated by an emotion-driven moon (the handle of a lunar bucket) or bowl skies led by Pluto, when fear, death, and implacable forces make boasting talk useless, with evasive action the only recourse to survive the tumult. When it’s storming outside, don’t go out there just for the thrill of it, like a hurricane party. Those who do likely will be swept away,  and too many of those who have to go out to save them will also suffer when fools rush out who should have stayed in. The last day of the month marks the second (retro) conjunction of Jupiter  (expansion) with Pluto (death).  The last will be in mid-November.

Although the news focuses on the disease, or the the economic destruction it has wrought, there may be more, and different, to come…riots already as Mars runs square with the Sun and then collides with treacherous Neptune (disease complications, for a strart) mid-month: big hurricane season expected, extreme weather down here below as the globe heats…and above, the magnetic field is weakening, letting in solar storms…the main pivot of the Jupiter-Saturn conjunction on the winter solstice is still six months away. A lot could happen in that time…and will…

Planetary King Tide has overtopped our flimsy docks,  leaving all fleeing the still-rising flood, more to come..

­­­May is for mourning – not just for the pandemic dead and dying but for the foolish decisions (or lack of any) made during the all-planets-forward winter and spring. During this roller coaster period, when the planet have the pedal to the metal, hasty actions abound, little thought is given. Then, as all the planets go retrograde in the following six months, life is tied in knots with redesigning and regretting earlier obliviousness.

Never has this been so evident as right now. In a single month, four planets go retrograde (Pluto, Venus, Jupiter, and Saturn). Everything regarding those planets and what they rule needs re-attending, directly the result of ignoring them before. That, in order, covers: death, needs and necessities, new horizons, and enduring restrictions. As Neptune and occasionally Mercury (both next month, Mars in the fall) add to the reverse motion, four to six planets, will be retrograde until October. That means in this coaster dive all the planets that ever can go retro will. Time to rethink and reset everything, everywhere. We saw this coming this winter and last fall before there was a hint of Corona, and now it’s here.

As we said last month, it’s about astrological tides – the big 20-year King Tide of Jupiter-Saturn (still rising) in a rare combination with the additional slow, powerful pull of the outer planets. It sounds like just a seaside metaphor, but it’s not. These are real astronomical tides, triggering a swelling of historical events spilling over and drowning our dockside lives. Here’s what we face:

To survive, any dock or seawall must stand as tall as the highest possible flood, but ours was built to withstand only a routine spring tide. Now it’s already underwater, boats irretrievably tied to it dragged under and swamped, the rest floating about, detached, searching for a mooring. It’s too late for a quick fix, and this tide has not even reached the full. For now, it’s about loosing our lines and riding out the storm – personally, locally, and regionally – until the full flood is past and the waters have receded. And that will only be after the Jupiter-Saturn conjunction on the coming winter solstice, six months away. So this deadly but quiet isolation may be only an opening gambit akin to the late 1939-40 Sitzkrieg or Phony War that preceded the August 1940 Jupiter-Saturn conjunction and the deciding Battle of Britain. Our advantage: then, the two planets went on to meet explosive Uranus and world war, whereas now they will have already hit Pluto (two more to come with Jupiter 6/29 and 11/5), so we may hope the worst lies ahead of, not subsequent to, the 12/21 conjunction.

The monthly overview: the Moon rides lonely outside the bowl of planets the first half of the month, then tucks away inside and makes contact with everything the second half. Details on the Skies page…

Next month, eclipse time: three of them…

Coming Jupiter-Saturn conjunction is already manifesting, beginning with pandemic...more is on the way...

April will be the cruelest month…so far. For the daily details, see our April Skies. But more generally:

Our predictions (and other astrologers’ as well) of large-scale social and economic change and upheaval in 2020 (largely from the peaking 20-year cycle of Jupiter and Saturn) are coming true. The Corona pandemic is the start, but there is more to come – the conjunction/cycle peak is still nearly nine months away.  What more can we know of it now, and why?

Here’s the physical/astro explanation:

Just as the ocean tide rises highest when the Sun and Moon come together once a month, social and economic tides peak when the two largest planets Jupiter and Saturn come together roughly every twenty years. World-wide change in society’s styles and trials tend to erupt within a year of this, most recently 2000, 1981, 1961, 1940. Events that bring resulting wars, political turnovers, economic crises, and technological revolutions find their focus at these points.

The other, even heavier-hitting outer planets (Uranus, Neptune, Pluto) and their reciprocal cycles help determine just how these 20-year cycles work out. They are slower, with longer combined periods (up to 500 years), so they represent even larger-scale evolutions of financial structure, spiritual, and social norms. In recent centuries, the span of their positions and the locations of the Jupiter-Saturn peak have been in different parts of the sky, or nearby but not overlapping, so there has been a lag between the effects of the longer and the shorter. So, for instance, you may get a depression or a war, followed by major social change – or, sudden social evolution (like disruptive technologies or religious beliefs) followed by some set of separate but associated traumatic events or developments. The closer they are, the more lasting the consequences, as in 1940. And when all the planets are on one side of the sky, as now, the effects are even more dizzying. And now, for the first time in modern history, the Jupiter-Saturn conjunction is happening right on top of the 1/3 of the sky where the outer planets lie. We first described this back in 2006 in “Which Side Are You On?”

So, we have arrived at a long-expected period of upheavels. But why can’t we be more specific about just how and where it will manifest? Simply, because it acts like a tide (it is one) and its effects are felt everywhere, and wherever the weakest points turn out to be, there it will break through and spread out like a flood overtopping a levee.  In this case so far, the weak spot turns out to have been insufficient epidemic preparedness, with a cascade into the economy and on from there. But it could have been (and may yet be) from a lot of other potential starting places, as the world has recently adopted such a universal policy of just-enough-just-in-time which provides endless weak spots that, once breached, can explode into a catastrophic landslide of snowballing events. Further, shifting climate change greatly adds to the potentially volatile starting places.

How well we all contain or recover from this now depends on how quickly we can turn away from the “me-first” trendline we’ve been on (since the 1980s) and readopt supportive community commitments designed to staunch the flow of disasters and reestablish a robust, resilient, and interconnective society. The price we will pay along the way is yet to be determined, requiring new, enlightened leadership on the outside, across nations, and an inner turn away from bottom-line self-centeredness.

As enormous as this crisi already is, ironically it has begun with the tiniest of creatures, the Corona virus. Corona means “crown” – a crown of thorns, a crown of victory…a story still to be written, in the stars (a big comet coming!) and on the ground…

Triple hits of MARS stir conflict as SATURN moves to AQUARIUS, foreshadowing big changes at year's end.

Bundle of all-direct planets is led by aggressive Mars, ended by explosive Uranus, morphed by the Moon.

February bristles with a veritble throwing-star of forceful, edgy and hysterically emotional situations concocted by shifting leads of Mars, Uranus, and the Moon. Mars is the rising edge of a compact bundle sky pattern that spreads out to a bowl or locomotive pattern as the Moon slips around its rim, then pulls away to form the handle of a bucket chart. Mercury going retrograde is the only thing that slows down a full-tilt planatery pack all going directly forward like there was nothing to lose, augmented by a lack of air the second half of the month, where thinking doesn’t get in the way of action. That brings surprises a-plenty as explosive Uranus makes up the caboose of the tight sky wedge.

If all this potential chaos seems just too much, it is the price of world-wide change seeping down to the individual level, and the helpful part is Jupiter ripping up through Capricorn and planting new seeds in the smoking ground just blistered by Saturn and Pluto. It is the beginning of the shape of things to come, which will finally be evident after December’s Jupiter-Saturn conjunction. In the meantime, there are a lot of fireworks to watch if you can find a safe seat where a stray rocket or two is not going to hit the stands…

Lunar eclipse with Saturn and Pluto augurs the  rain of 2020's long-awaited world-wide blowout changes.

Diamonds of the Lost Planet (Sentinal) – A Mars-sized planet that didn’t make it has just dropped its jewels to Earth..

Godless Gatherings (WildHunt) – Under the full Moon, but not godless, just a different pantheon...

Rappin’ the Stars (Complex) – Astrology in hip-hop music, for real...some wonderfully stretched sign-rhymes here...

Obnoxious Uranus (Gemini) – Add another quality to its shock value: rotten eggs.

Solar Tornadoes That Don’t Spin (EWASS) – We just imagined they did, sounds like a lot of astrology...

Order in the Cosmos (RUB) – Chaotic galaxies turn out to produce very ordered magnetic fields. There’s a lesson here for physical astrologers...

Mercury Retro: Who Cares? (Time) – More folks than ever, it would seem, as now Time magazine weighs in on the current Millennial-astrology meme...