A Missive to Saturn in Scorpio

Dear Saturn in Scorpio,

This is not an epigraph to you, as much as I wish it were. I realize that your departure is more of a sabbatical than a death, and that we'll all be seeing you again next summer. Yes, between mid-June and mid-September 2015 you will once again remind us that we have some unfinished Scorpionic business to deal with.

Saturn in Scorpio, you are an impressive mo'fo. You are an ancient museum housing top-secret treasures. You have tantric and shamanic abilities. Your structure manifests as the three certainties of life: sex, death, and taxes. You live to control, and are the power behind the throne. You are the shadow government and the underworld. You are capable of unspeakable brutality. And you can be one rabid pitbull when it comes to protecting your fears, your hopes, and, y'know, your feelings. You think vulnerability is for suckahs. For you, no matter what side you're on -- sunny-side up or sunny-side down -- it's easy to be hard. You are certainly not over easy.

I can't say that I'll pine for you for the next six months, since I got pretty damned depressed when you passed over my Moon in the fall of 2013, when you also manifested in my body as recurring UTIs, which made me even more depressed. I have also felt old, fat, and unattractive, and have been gradually losing money -- and I don't mean dropping small change on the floor of my corner bodega at two a.m.

That said, I have to admit that when you passed over my Neptune earlier this month and trined my Mercury, I regained my creative discipline. It had been a pretty dry autumn. So sincerest thanks for that. Your dismount, as it were, has been a beautiful one. And I guess it's not how you start -- it's how you finish.

About that unfinished business next summer -- if I try my hardest to face it with dignity and respect, with an open mind and an open heart, will you consider playing fair?

In the meantime, I look forward to getting into Saturn in an entirely different sign, Sagittarius. The lessons of Saturn in Sagittarius will be very different, involving abstract stuff like philosophy, higher education, the higher mind. I am sure there will be long-distance travel for business, not pleasure. I am sure there will be sibling shit to work through. Saturn in any sign can be a pain in the ass, but in Sagittarius it simply won't wrench my heart, guts, and private parts the way you have, Saturn in Scorpio.

Goodnight and good luck. I'd say "See you next June," but you'll undoubtedly see me first and not play hard to get.

Love and kisses,

T.C.

Enough with This Uranus-Pluto Square, Already!

Being an astrologer, like being or doing anything else that is viewed by most as flaky or downright stupid, can sometimes be a real pain in the ass. This past weekend, being an astrologer was particularly frustrating, since I knew with absolute certainty that with the Uranus-Pluto square bearing down on us for the sixth time since June 2012, the media would bring news of another major-league disaster or three -- and there I was, unable to do a damned thing about it.

I knew that even after the Uranus-Pluto square ended at 1:14 a.m. ET Monday, the Moon in Libra would keep "translating the light" (i.e., strengthen the separating square) till the wee hours of Tuesday (later in the day in Europe, the Middle East, etc.), so that more extremely bad news was to come early this week. The recent rape allegations against Bill Cosby, U.S. protests over police exonerations for killing black men, the published CIA torture scandal (which will quite possibly become the U.S. equivalent of Germany during the 1930s -- not coincidentally the last Uranus-Pluto-square era), and unusually severe storms on the West Coast (plus a tornado in L.A.) were simply not enough to mark Uranus-Pluto Square Number Six. There would surely be more instability, violence, and death.

If ever there was a time when I wished astrology would prove itself to be meaningless bullshit, the past two and a half years have been it. But once again, astrology delivered the goods (or bads, in this case): on Monday, a fatal hostage crisis in a Lindt Chocolate Cafe in Sydney, Australia, courtesy of an Iranian-born Islamic gunman who had been arrested previously for extremist activity, charged with being an accessory to his ex-wife's murder, and was out on bail after being charged with sexual assault. On Tuesday, seven Pakastani Taliban gunmen stormed a military-run school in Peshawar and, in a siege that lasted for hours, slaughtered at least 145 innocent students and teachers and injured over 100 more, before the last gunman was killed.

Now, no one who "believes" in astrology truly expects astrologers to predict exactly where such large-scale disasters will occur, how exactly they will manifest, and exactly what kind of backups will be needed, much less be some invincible Superman type who can stop the world from spinning on its axis while battling evil in various corners of the globe. I myself think it's unrealistic at the same time I will sit and stew over inevitable Uranus-Pluto calamities. However, it's a thornier issue for me to deal with that in my own little world, where it was best to tread lightly, I could not quite manage that. In the face of continued work-related hit-and-misses as Saturn lingers in the final degree of Scorpio, I could not keep my hands off third-rail issues and come back another day.

Maybe by next March, when the Uranus-Pluto square returns for the seventh time before going on sabbatical for eighty-some-odd years, I will finally have learned to handle this fanatical, unstable, crisis-driven aspect. However, I am lucky that I am still here to fight this square at all; many others over the past two and a half years have died for it, or from it.

It can certainly help if you know which houses the Uranus-Pluto square falls in your own natal chart, so you can confirm what areas of your life have been quite reliably under siege since 2012 (or as far back as 2010 or '11, if you are highly attuned to the square's vibrations). Still, even if you are ultra astrologically conscious, it can remain a challenge for even relatively placid, patient souls to remain calm, cool, and collected. The Uranus-Pluto square can rage against the machine, but it is also the machine.