All This Water

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.