In Which Your Intrepid Astrologer Performs Her Poetry to a Largely Indifferent Audience!

Ironically, my progressed Moon was exactly conjunct my critical-degree Jupiter at 26 degrees of Libra the night of this featured performance, and I actually received a travel stipend from the curator. I'd thought the Sun in late Scorpio and the Moon in Sagittarius would only add to the luster of the evening, but I was so wrong. Still and all, I am proud to have gotten through it. Enjoy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6mwivmkaBY

Update from My Exploding Head: 4 Major Transits to Natal Planets

I knew it wasn't going be easy. Somehow, though, I thought if I knew to watch out for things coming to a head on December 3, I'd be able to prepare for it.

But nothing on earth could've prepared me for so many transits to my natal planets that my head really feels like it's about to explode. Even though I've seen some of these transits before.

If even one person who is going through one or more of these transits sees this and doesn't feel as alone, I will feel slightly better. And I know that writing this down will make me feel slightly better anyway. Here goes:

Neptune in Pisces has been opposing my natal Pluto in Virgo for the past year and a half, while also conjuncting my Pisces Descendant. This is a generational opposition about which not nearly enough has been written (just as Gen X has been more or less invisible except for the first half of the '90s, from the publication of Douglas Coupland's Generation X novel to Kurt Cobain's suicide), and it's a heavy one that has more than earned the right to sing the blues. When an outer-planet transit of this magnitude occurs on the angles (whether it's Asc./Desc. or MC/IC), it's amped to the max, unavoidable to deal with. In my case, this opposition largely manifested in the long goodbye that was the dissolution of my not quite a dozen-year relationship with a Pisces Sun. Another person was involved, though not in the usual way (i.e., a current lover), but my first love, who'd broken my heart and ghosted me before such a term existed, before we technically Did It. Neptune in Pisces is like a supersize, deep-fried order of the past. This particular ghost from my past was a bit too old for me at the time and probably did me a favor leaving me relatively intact, but ... Older Ghost Guy contacted me out of the blue to apologize, and we had this messy correspondence that turned even messier when I went back to reread my teenage wasteland diary from the spring I knew him and realized how cruel he'd been, far crueler than he'd acknowledged or that I'd allowed myself to remember. It made me question everything about all my relationships, and I recognized a pattern of no boundaries, a Pisces specialty: both intruding and being intruded upon emotionally, even psychically. Here, there, everywhere, and nowhere. As a Cancer Sun with a Scorpio Moon, Pisces has always "completed" me, but now that feeling began to dissolve ... and my Pisces did not have my back because I was so infuriated about the correspondence gone wrong. My Mars (anger) conjunct Mercury (communication) is very close to his Moon (emotions/instincts/home), and that was really his main beef with me: I was just too damned angry all the time. OGG contacted me twice more, most recently two weeks ago (by which time I finally knew better than to respond), but I have to wait till New Year's Eve before the fifth and final opposition. (No pressure there!) Note the number: not one, not three, but five passes for an extended wake-up call from the front desk. I only hope I've really, truly learned my lesson this time as they pertain to relationships. And for the first time in my life, I am not looking to jump back into one.

Next up we have transiting Pluto in Capricorn opposing my natal Mercury in Cancer from the 5th-house cusp to the 11th, which also began in the spring of '22. In fact, both oppositions were exact when I first heard from OGG. I believe that it was this opposition that saved me from forgiving OGG too soon, because Pluto is the planet of investigation, and That Little Voice Inside My Head told me to excavate my diary. It really, really hurt, but it was better this way, because my 15-year-old self saved my 51-year-old self. Just like the Neptune-Pluto opposition, this one also had to happen five times (final pass exact tomorrow). The fourth pass, exact this past August, was when I realized I had to break up with my Pisces; I'd done it before (with Pluto coming up on an opposition to my Sun) and had hoped with all my heart that it wouldn't happen again, but I felt like I was dying (Pluto opposing my Mars hadn't helped matters). The fifth and final opposition finds me single again in a place I fought like hell to get back to, with my head about to explode from the stress of being utterly lost in my new part-time job; I need to pick up nitpicky formatting skills ASAP so I can relieve my overworked supervisor. I am also unable to set up my new apartment because I have too much stuff for a studio, not enough money to put stuff in storage, and suck at assembling semi-disposable shelving units. If only I'd Marie Kondo'd most of my things (not counting books; sorry, but I have to draw the line somewhere). I haven't had the energy to go on Nextdoor or Facebook Marketplace or see if Goodwill or Salvation Army can pick up stuff. What else? Feeling closer to my Scorpio sister (Mercury) but estranged from some other friends (11th house). Deep thinking, even to the point of obsession. Heightened sensitivity to power-tripping while tripping over my own shadow.

The third opposition involves transiting Saturn in Pisces opposing my natal Venus in Virgo. Same signs as the first opposition, but this time from the 12th house to the 6th, and this time I "only" get it the standard three passes instead of five. Still, it's been enough to manifest in health issues (not just my own, but my precious cats) and Venus troubles in both love and money. I was unexpectedly laid off from my full-time salaried position this spring, less than a month after the first pass. I miraculously managed to secure an apartment this fall, shortly before the retrograde second pass, but now, on the third pass (also exact tomorrow), I am officially losing money and do not feel at all optimistic over getting back my security deposit on the apartment my ex and I shared, even though my ex, who has just moved to greener pastures, has enlisted the assistance of the city council. I am back where I want to be, but I am literally paying a very high price for it. How, you may well be asking, could I possibly be taking such a gamble on myself given this particular sobering opposition?

Because transiting Uranus, the planet of reform and revolution, is also conjuncting my stodgy-pants banker-wannabe Saturn in the money sign of Taurus, that's how. All bets are off. And since it involves the cusp of my 9th house, at least I can still write. The second pass is exact tomorrow, and the third pass happens next March. Since this foundation-shaking conjunction sextiles my Sun as well, I have to have faith (the opposite of Saturn) that this revolutionary-for-me gamble will pay off in 9th-house areas such as publishing, education, and travel. Wouldn't that be nice?

It's been such a long time since I've posted on this blog I have no idea if I even have any readers left, but I do hope that someone searching for the meaning of any or all of the above transits will find this and know they're in good company.

The Beginning of the End ... or the End of the Beginning?

Quite a Kid, T. C. Gardstein, 2003

So long an absence, so many planetary changes, so little time.

We are teetering on the edge of Pluto in Capricorn, assuming the crash position for Pluto ingressing into Aquarius this Thursday for the first time since 1798. We are still getting our sealegs with the newborn Aries season and Saturn in Pisces (as of 3/7; Saturn spends 2.5 years in a sign). The New Moon at 0'50" Aries Tuesday at 1:23 p.m. EDT is especially important as it's a critical degree, and most likely will launch us in the Northern Hemisphere into spring with a bang.

Plus, the U.S. has only been on Daylight Saving Time for a week. So we have literally just jumped ahead by an hour as well as being on the verge of a major Plutonian shift, a cosmic quantum leap on a par with the monolith of 2001. The rumblings of this new era have already been afoot in the form of a new generation of chatbots, but we ain't seen nothing yet.

Pluto is not going gentle into that badass Capricorn, to be sure. It's been one institutional crisis after another; not surprisingly, institutions and the status quo are associated with this Cardinal Earth sign. We came into this era with the financial collapse of 2008, during which we bailed out the banks that were "too big to fail," and just two years later the Citizens United case gave the green light to unfettered corporate interests in politics. Corporations essentially were recognized as people with the right to free speech and unlimited donations, though people still could not fight City Hall.

The Uranus-Pluto square of 2012-15 terrified astrologers, as it was the chief aspect of the Great Depression 84 years earlier (and the out-of-context "end of the world" prophesized in the Mayan calendar) -- but it was the deranged Saturn-Neptune square of 2016 that proved more dangerous, with the rise of Trump.

The Saturn-Pluto conjunction of 2020 was the signature of the Covid pandemic. Our home planet Earth itself is ill, as the climate emergency ramps up floods, draughts, extreme heat, extreme cold, and extreme storms. The U.S. Pluto Return of 2022 was marked by an increase of mass shootings at home and a war on women, although Neptune in Pisces continued to soften the long-standing War on Drugs. And once again, failing banks are scandalous, pearl-clutching news.

I am hoping that Pluto in Aquarius brings the kind of monolith that will advance technology in such a way that we can actually save the planet even if we are toast as a species. What concerns me at the moment is that Pluto backs up into Capricorn two more times before it moves into revolutionary, electrified Aquarius for good (well, for the next 20 or so years, anyway). In other words, Pluto will be at the tail end of Capricorn during the election of 2024.

Yikes.