2023 News and Editorial Archive

 

Wake up, wake up, AstroCocktail is changing it's format and the Sun is feaking out!

 

Cosmic changes as major planets switch sign this month, only time will tell what long range shifts portend..

March is musical chairs, in which the majority of the planets jump up and change signs, like a celestial play-party dance. Not just the usual Sun and inner planets monthly shift (all three move on this month), but it’s the big world-movers that may change the whole style of what’s going on down below:

Mars, after dawdling around retrograde in Gemini since the fall finally escapes into Cancer and energy levels rise again, the urge to get up and get going gets palpable. Normally, that happens every two months, but after this long retro, it seems like a welcome big deal. Not that big, but feels like it in the recent context. The overall effect: time to get a move on again.

Saturn, which grinds down every sign it passes through for two and a half long years is leaving beaten-up Aquarius and will have a similar-length shot at Pisces. Saturn is relatively happy in Aquarius (it was the sign’s old, secondary ruler before more-recently-discovered Uranus got pushed ahead into the spot. Saturn’s hard-nosed, down-to-minimum, bare bones, get-real style is not at all happy in Pisces, where intuitive, non-specific, dreamy kind of otherworldly inclinations hang out. There will be casualties from this one.

Pluto, which simply wipes out what it touches so you have to replant, rebuild better again, takes a minimum of twelve or more (up to thirty-plus) years to demolish a sign, and after beating up on Saturn’s sign it’s moving on to twenty years of putting the squeeze on Aquarius (so Saturn’s getting a little back-feed from that, too). If you thought the cell phone was disruptive technology, try AI, and who know what other norms will crash down in Pluto’s wake. Individually, it’s whether Pluto or Saturn is on some important area of your chart, but worldwide it’s about new powers coming in old ones in disarray. Last time Pluto was in Aquarius the newly-born USA came to power in the name of democracy, and France went about guillotining everyone in sight, also in the name of democracy.

And lastly, though not this month, Jupiter is speeding through Aries and will be on to join Uranus in Taurus by June, when you might see some of that incipient disruption lay its seeds.

 

As Earth moves out from the rest, nothing retro, we still have to get past Saturn to reach Jupiter next month...

February hits the throttle as the multiple retrogrades of months past have evaporated and there’s no reason you can’t put the pedal to the metal dawn to dusk. Earth is now on its own on the other side of the solar system from everything else, so we’re floating free with a minimum of celestial trammels. If you make a mistake, you’re on your own, but if you win the lottery, you don’t have to share. 

But, there’s still a lot of recovery to achieve to make up for the long, slogging Mars retro – Mars won’t be back to where it was when it went retro until the middle of next month, so it’s like you’re going to spend this month just getting back to the starting line.Similarly, last month’s Sun and inner planets push past Pluto was a chops-buster and this month repeats the same kind of journey, except it’s Saturn that has to be got around, which may seem a bit like having the accelerator down but the parking brake still dragging. But it’s time well spent, as next month it’s Jupiter that we all play catch-up with, speeding through Aries, so now’s the time to get clutter off the road for when things open up then. 

And open up they will, as we’re headed for both Saturn and Pluto changing signs in March and a whole new set of troubles where there weren’t any, but also the end of those planets' unique hold on Aquarius and Capricorn. And Pluto will be hovering right where the recent 2020 Jupiter-Saturn conjunction was, so expect to see a new understanding of what went down then, and the eradication of illusions about it as well…

 

Jupiter racing through Aries, Mars direct, Saturn-Uranus square departing,  it's time to get moving again...

January pumps the accelerator into the new year, as the last retro planets (Mercury, Mars, Uranus) turn forward and it’s all-things-go with no retro planets at all by mid-month. As the tangles of the last two months recede, earlier-suggested trends when Jupiter dipped in to Aries now catch fire as Jupiter rips through the sign.

Most notably the two- year square of Saturn to Uranus breaks up, and with it a lot of the ongoing hostilities between the new and the old, of how things were vs. how things must be as progress limps on. It is time for these points of view to get over fighting and start cooperating for the good of all. Toward that goal, it’s a relief to be out of the two-month Mars retrograde period so that the energy is available to power forward movement instead of fighting a slow retreat. Time to retake lost territory , consolidate uncertain maneuvers, and get the show on the road again.

The other lesson to take here, as we rush toward new goals and make new promises, is that we are still in the bowl-sky rollercoaster period that isn’t over until 2027. Until then , there will continue to be back-and-forth seasonal changes where short-term campaigns of hastily-arranged decisions are overthrown just six months down the line, due to built-in errors that no one noticed at the time. The just-in-time, low inventory convenience planning, so subject to catastrophic breakdowns, is still the go-to philosophy and we will all suffer from it until the lesson sinks in, coming out of a decade of learning from mistakes to favor more long-term and mistake-proof ways of organizing our lives, individually and socially.