April’s been a tough month for a lot of people. If you’re reading this, hey, you
survived. Mostly, there was a sense of
pressure coming from all directions, and there were also quite a few accidents
and health scares among my family and friends.
And spring never really got a foothold. As I write this, two days of cold rain have
flooded my yard. This has happened
before, and I know it will drain when the water stops, if it ever stops. The birds don’t seem to mind it; they perch
on half-submerged logs and peck at the bugs floating by. But it makes me nervous, especially when
thunder rumbles and signals a bout of even harder rain. And when my phone makes a sudden jangling
sound, warning me of flash floods.
Tomorrow begins a new month, and it should be a calmer
one. Gradually the Jupiter/Uranus/Pluto
T-square loosens its grip on us. Emotions will cool down, and rebellious urges
diminish.
The Uranus/Pluto T-square is not completely gone; it will be
back twice more, bookending the next winter.
So we’re still living through a tense time, geopolitically. But this particular passage has been the most
stressful, with Jupiter - the planet of hubris – encouraging a tendency to
strut and goad. We’ve seen this
especially in the Ukraine, a stress point between east and west, a country
slowly being ripped in two.
For a leader struggling to maintain power, in a country
which doesn’t have much in the way of term limits, war is not a bad
option. War unleashes emotion, and if
you know how to surf that emotion, you can have a sweet ride. World leaders through the ages have practiced
this art, relatively safe for them, not so safe for the young men in the
field. Vladimir Putin promises his
people excitement, victory, expansion, and a slap in the face of NATO.
And no matter how reluctant Obama is to wage war – as he
should be – he may not be able to escape it.
Everyone who runs for president promises to kill the bad guys. Like the pope’s set of ceremonial robes, the
machinery of war comes with the office.
And many Americans want it too. They watch TV, they go to movies, they know
the heroes from the villains. They want
to see Vlad’s butt kicked, and they want President Obama to do it, one way or
another. Hey, he’s the Guy, right? His currently low poll numbers could be a
byproduct of his reluctance to go in with guns blazing.
Although his pride may be hurt - and we see this because
Pluto is currently inconjunct his sun – he has little impetus to wage war. Unlike Putin, Obama won’t be in power
forever, and he’s thinking more about long-term legacies than popularity
polls.
But May won’t be quite as belligerent as April was. For one thing, Jupiter and Saturn will make a
watery trine – between May 17 and 30 – and this will be a stabilizing
force. It will be good for the economies
of the world - for trade, for access to food and water, and for humanitarian
aid. In harmonious aspect, Jupiter and
Saturn give wisdom, balance, and controlled growth.
This is not to say the threat of war is over. We live in a very emotional time, and this
has to do with Jupiter moving through the tender sign Cancer. Cancer is a kind, sympathetic sign, but that
doesn’t mean that it’s always peace-loving.
The U.S. has a Cancer sun, and so it’s a very sentimental,
family-oriented place, but at the same time, there’s a tendency to blow people
away if they don’t share the same sentiments.
It’s a movie cliché that, in the midst of mayhem, a puppy or baby gets
rescued.
However, in harmonious aspect to Jupiter, Saturn plays the
role of the adult in the room. It points
out the long-term effects of any course of action, as well as the underlying
causes. Saturn is in Scorpio, a watery
sign of transformation, and this isn’t the easiest place for the planet of
structure. But Saturn in Scorpio points
to possibility of building structures that will aid in transformation, that
will promote a better world, given time.
Saturn is always about time.
With three outer planets in water signs, though, it may be a
wet month. I look out at my yard and
can’t imagine that it could get any wetter.
But all these watery planets don’t just signify rainstorms and
flooding. Water is a connecting force,
dissolving differences in the universal experience of wetness. We’re born in a surge of water, and inside
we’re mostly water too.
Water carries away all the old junk, redistributes it,
brings people together, and creates a muddy fertility. With the structural help of the
Jupiter/Saturn trine, we can do some rebuilding this month, working through our
immediate emotional reactions. We can
find the points of intersection between our needs and interests, and those of
our neighbors in the world. Us humans, we’re all family, and that doesn’t mean we
don’t fight. But it also means it’s not
so easy to get away from each other.
