The Universe Gets Showy
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Bend Without Breaking
Occasionally, the universe gets showy. It decides that in order to get our attention it needs to pull out all the stops; to send, for instance, a Lunar Eclipse AND a Uranus station AND a Saturn/Pluto conjunction in our path, all within a few days.
This is that kind of week. But it begins quietly enough, with the Sun’s first major aspect of the new calendar year, a sextile to Neptune (Jan. 6, 2020, 10:21 pm PST). The sextile is a promise that if we take advantage of an opportunity, the outcome will be a helpful one. The sextile is inherently flexible – which is not an adjective that usually comes to mind when the Sun is in Capricorn.
It’s been some year, and this is some week. But it begins with a promise, that we can be exalted through kindness, compassion, and humility. We just have to be willing to bend, and able to do it without breaking. The Sun in Capricorn bows to no one… but if he will make an exception this week, make a stately bend at the waist to Neptune, he will find that it comes at precisely the right moment to avoid taking a blow to the head.
The Repair Shop
As I mention in this week’s episode of the podcast, I’m obsessed with the BBC’s The Repair Shop. For hours on end, I watch as a succession of hopefuls make the pilgrimage to the Barn of Second Chances with treasured heirlooms – many of them admittedly preposterous to modern eyes – to implore the master craftspersons to make them whole again. The objects, I mean… or do I? There are a lot of tears on The Repair Shop, and they have nothing to do with a clock or a piece of pottery.
After an entire year of the South Node in Capricorn skirting around Saturn and Pluto, most of us have got a few chips and cracks, too. But look, yonder comes learned Jupiter to connect with that South Node (Jan. 8, 2020, 8:08 am PST). Not even the Greater Benefic can fix everything – even Will and Steve and Jay and Kirsten have occasionally had to settle for less than perfect results – but Jupiter gives us something better than perfection: context, and a story.
We’re none of us without a few scratches at this point. But at least we’ve got a story to tell about the damage. Sometimes it’s the toughest years that move our narrative the farthest along.
Get grounded
Two days before the heavyweight bout between Saturn and Pluto come a pair of unsettling astrological signatures: A Lunar Eclipse at 20.00 Cancer (Jan. 10, 2020, 11:21 am PST) and a station of Uranus (Jan. 10, 2020, 5:48 pm PST), as it turns direct.
With the eclipsed Moon facing a wall of Capricorn – the Sun closely aligned with Mercury, Saturn, and Pluto – we might be tempted to fear for her. She’s in the tender sign of Cancer; surely she’s outflanked.
But remember that the Moon’s North Node is still in Cancer, and has been for more than a year. The Full Moon has the rising tide on her side, and also the earth, which is aligned with the Full Moon. At the Lunar Eclipse, get grounded. Literally – go out and dig your bare feet in the earth, or dangle them in water.
Especially good advice on this day, when Uranus stations (slows to a halt) before turning direct. Feeling unsettled and rebellious without cause are hallmarks of a Uranus station, an irrational impulse to do something that can’t be undone. There are moments in life when that’s just what’s needed. But today, we’ll all be a little bit prone to overreaction. So, feet on the ground, toes in the water.
Saturn, Pluto, and the Unfolding Story
In the wee hours leading up to the great Saturn/Pluto conjunction (Jan. 12, 8:59 am PST), Mercury places two phone calls, first to Saturn (1:51 am PST) and then to Pluto (2:13 am PST). As the embedded reporter, the witness on the ground, Mercury expects to run ahead and give the news to those awaiting word: How will the established order, our societal foundations (Saturn), weather the destructive forces that have battered them in recent years (Pluto)?
But Mercury won’t be heard from again until Jan. 18, two days after he changes signs to Aquarius. In the interim, the Sun – the leaders – will have conjoined first Saturn and then Pluto on the 13th, and outlined the official story. So the moment of the conjunction itself might be seem anticlimactic. Its story will take time to unfold.
In your own life, it’s not so different. Your sense of who you are in the changing landscape of time will be quickly assimilated into a new reality. It will take a little while to begin to question it, and to put a name to it.
This week on the podcast, Jen and I explore this week’s Lunar Eclipse and offer more thoughts on the Saturn/Pluto conjunction. For more insights into the eclipse’s influence in your birth chart, order my Moonshadow Eclipse Report! And if you’d like some help plotting your strategies for 2020, book a personal reading with me!
© 2020 by April Elliott Kent
