Dancing with Gods

Greetings, and welcome back to Journeys! This month we’re going to explore how to tackle some of the more challenging and traumatic transits that astrology can present us with.

for Shan

In modern astrology the most challenging planets that we must deal with are Saturn, Chiron, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto, but we may have to add Eris to this list. Traditionally, that is before the discovery of the outer planets beginning with Uranus, the list of troublemakers was shorter, being limited to Mars and Saturn with some problematic situations also being connected to Mercury. The fast moving orbits of Mercury and Mars meant that most serious trouble-making sky stories were assigned to Saturn alone, making him the number one malefic. It is extremely telling that as our collective power grew with the creation of globalist technologies in the late 1700s that we started discovering even slower moving planets to keep track of our collective impact, since slow moving objects describe influences that hang around in time for much longer. The individuals karma or impact in terms of cause and effect has been massively amplified by the arrival of this kind of technology and every individual human being now has a footprint which impacts the entirety of life on Earth. This brings about greater need for individual humans to awaken so that their collective power does not behave unconsciously. For this reason encountering these new titans of the sky can have overpowering effects on our individual lives as we must now awaken to their immense power and their presence or be consumed by it.

The slow-moving nature of these planets means that they will have few opportunities to interact with us compared to fast moving planets, but (in transits at least) the frequency reduction increases the power exponentially. Saturn, the fastest moving of these objects, takes about 28 or 29 years to orbit the entire chart, thus meeting with every part of it three times over the course of a lifetime. Uranus on the other hand takes about 84 years to orbit the entire chart, thus meeting with every part of it once over the course of a lifetime, but on a scale of power that is approximately three times greater than that of Saturn. On the other end of the scale, Pluto takes about 240 years to orbit the entire chart and so it will not reach every single part of it, and will only make it a third of the way around the chart by the time we are around 80 years of age, placing it on a scale of power relative to Saturn that is approximately eight times more intense and overpowering.

However even though most of these planets won’t make it around the entire chart in one lifetime they don’t have to do that to stir up challenges for us. They can make contact with parts of a chart by square or opposition instead of by conjunction, so there is no avoiding the fact that we will encounter them many times during the course of our lifetime, often multiple times in different forms. It is even possible and actually common for entire decades of our lifetime to be dominated by challenges that are being issued by one or more of these planets because they can chain their influences into mammoth endurance tests.

This month’s article is about how the way we approach these experiences determines what we will experience and how we will experience it. As I’ve explained in detail in my book The 26 Keys there is a way to consciously engage with astrology that transforms the way we experience it. You can find the details of that approach in my article here, this month I’m instead going to talk more generally about the ways we can welcome these planetary challenges and benefit from them the most, and I will be speaking about every kind of aspect these planets make. What I share with you here comes in the form of 6 pointers drawn from my own direct experience of transits from these planets, mostly from my own personal experience but sometimes from the experience of people I have been close to while they were happening.

FIRST POINT: BEING PRESENT

The first point is that there are two broad problems with the way people approach astrology today. One is that they may not believe in it at all and consider it either entertainment or garbage. These people remain completely ignorant of astrology and the influences that it undoubtedly has on their lives. In fact their lack of awareness of what they are dealing with when they are dealing with it strongly inclines them to manifest some of the worst behaviour that these transits can produce in human beings. If you are an astrologer you will no doubt understand this. We have all seen what happens when someone is having Pluto opposite their Sun or Moon and they have no idea that they are supposed to go through a major transformation and shed off the skin of the past. They resist and deny the death process and thus block the rebirth, forcing Pluto to turn up the intensity until they crack. That is just the way he works and no human consciousness can control him. So the first problem is that if we don’t know about an astrological challenge we cannot be present to meet it, we will at least be taken by surprise when it arises and may not ever embrace the necessity it represents.

In this case the unconscious awareness of the person becomes part of the problem and they must first be made to awaken to the need for transformation in their life at that time. Otherwise what they will experience is an unpleasant sweeping away of things they are still attached to. The experience will be extremely traumatic in this case, but the real trauma will stem not from the need for transformation but from the resistance to that need.

The second problem however is less well acknowledged among the astrological community but just as trauma inducing and affects people with an awareness of astrology rather than people who have none or just a little. This is the problem of anticipation. Simply put, anticipation of an upcoming ‘bad transit’ leads to the consciousness suffering from that transit before it even begins, sometimes many years before it is even there. You can spend years in dread of a particular Pluto transit you know is coming, for example, thus greatly and unnecessarily extending the trauma that this transit produces, when it might not even produce any when it arrives. Additionally you can have a hard and negative attitude towards such transits going into them, something that makes it very difficult to accept what they are bringing when they do arrive. And then you might even spend years looking back on that transit, cursing it, thus extending its influence indefinitely. This would indicate that you have not properly processed what it has introduced into your life.

This second problem can gradually diminish through experience as you realise that not all of these transits that seem bad on the surface actually produce traumatic experiences, but sometimes they are actually extremely positive even when those aspects are squares and oppositions, and that there are certain attitudes you can take to troublesome planets that greatly reduce their need to be severe on you. I will give some examples of these later. The second problem then is that if we anticipate an experience in a way that alienates us against it, we will suffer more. Nothing is alien to the one self.

In both cases the problem solves itself if we are present in the moment, and this is the most important point in dealing with challenging experiences – staying in the moment reveals the path, step by step. The unconscious person with no knowledge of astrology will then find their own way to navigate through the experience without the guidance or framework of knowledge that astrology provides, while the student of astrology will avoid falling into the trap of anticipatory stress before the transit occurs and will be able to apply their astrological knowledge to the moment by moment emergence of the energy field in their lives – they will not be ‘swept away’ or ‘blown away’ by the force of the collective planet. It may still come with stress because all of these planets bring change, but that stress will remain in manageable levels.

SECOND POINT: KNOW YOURSELF

Knowing yourself means knowing how you behave and react in various situations. If you know, for example, that you have a short temper then you will be more prepared to deal with angry situations. If you then also know what kinds of situations tend to cause your short temper to evaporate (for example, a particular person saying a particular thing) then you have a further advantage over just knowing that you have a short temper. Finally, if you are able to recognise your own reactions as they arise, you can withdraw from them and then if you wish replace them with a consciously chosen reaction. When your reactions are unconscious, i.e. when you react without being in control of how you react, then you create further causation within the Akasha principle designed to teach you about your reaction. When you are in control of your reactions to things, however, you will learn far more quickly from the planetary intelligence interacting with you because you will not have to learn about how your own baggage is shaping the meaning of what you perceive is happening. Communication between you and the emissary of change will be clearer and more flowing.

Inner reflection is always the true way but astrology is of course our greatest asset in objectively symbolizing the self and its experience of life. You can gain a great deal of insight from astrology that will help you greatly in gaining knowledge of yourself. It is an incredibly complicated area of study, though, which can be very off-putting. Boiled down to its basics, however, it is about the Sun and the Moon. Understanding the positioning of these two objects in your natal astrology will greatly help you to understand how you will experience life changing challenges. This includes understanding the essence of meaning the Sun and Moon symbolize, the qualities that arise from their sign positions and aspects, with the houses or temples showing where these factors really come alive. Simply put the Sun is the essential self or the spark of consciousness, the experience of being alive in the present moment and the form in which the inner light of intuition (inner tuition) arises, while the Moon represents the way in which we react to everything that happens seemingly beyond the self and the ongoing narrative or story about ourselves and life that we create through those reactions.

So if you have an Aries Sun sign, which is a Fire Element sign, then intuition will arise as a need to act (Fire) without knowing why. However this intuition will mostly arise when you are present in the moment in a state of readiness (Aries) like a warrior waiting to strike or to fight in a battle. If you also have an Aries Moon and you are lost in the reaction of impatient thoughts about how great a warrior you will prove yourself to be, then you will not hear your intuition and will be governed by your thoughts and instincts instead. You will be drawn into the astral dramas of the soul and its story about who you are and you will not hear the whispering prompts from your true self, your Greater Self. As another example if you have a Taurus Sun sign, which is an Earth Element sign, then you may feel intuition as a bodily sensation, perhaps a fluttering in your solar plexus or heart, and if you have a Moon in Libra you may have the habit of reacting to that intuition by seeking contact with another person to seek their opinion on it, which will draw you into the classic way of reacting that Libra Moon has, that of endlessly weighing up different points of view seeking to arrive at an equal partition between them. The intuition supplied to the body by the intelligence of Taurus then becomes smothered in the intellectual reaction of Libra Moon.

Instead of having the Moon lead the way the natural light of the Sun must shine upon the face or surface of the Moon, illuminating it, just as it does in nature. This means that your solar nature must guide the reactions of your lunar nature and bring them to life without becoming lost in them. The qualities of your Sun sign nature and the qualities of your Moon sign nature must both be worked on and elevated so that you are fully conscious of them and express them at the highest level that you are able to, but ultimately you must use the energy of the Sun to bring life and meaning and commanding equilibrium to the energy of the Moon. What this means exactly varies from individual to individual and is very unique, and it is further shaped by the aspects that the Lights are involved in with other objects, but it always means being in control of your own reactions and for this you need to be in the present moment, as per point one.

THIRD POINT: KNOW YOUR DANCE PARTNER

This third point is spooky to some people, but its not really anything to be scared about, it is instead something sacred. The planets are alive, conscious entities just as we are, but on a vaster scale of physical form. The Earth is not the only living planet in the universe or even in the solar system, nor are any moons truly lifeless either. Everything is alive and aware of its aliveness in its own way, because everything is consciousness in a different form. Surface life in the form of biological organisms are just one form of expression of a universal consciousness of being that permeates all things equally.

This means that you have a dance partner that you need to know too – the emissary of the intelligence of the planet coming to visit your individual awareness. They will arrive with their own moves planned and in their own time. These moves, due to the overarching intelligence that these beings have (an intelligence which allows them to perceive the ways in which we need to change, when and how and so on) are to be trusted and responded to sincerely, not rejected. Their agenda is our awakening and our growth but they each use different methods to do so and sometimes those moves are very strong ones. We can only begin to sense what those moves are near to the time the transit begins, they begin to take shape in our lives and in our awareness and that is when we can begin to comprehend what is emerging.

Therefore, in the months and/or weeks leading up to such a challenging transit, it is wise to look deep into the eyes of the planet that is approaching and ask them what they are bringing to teach you. The heart must be open and it is also helpful if you prepare offerings in the form of loving words and thanks for the life changing opportunities that are set to emerge, but its not necessary, the only necessity is that you shift your consciousness to being aware of their approach in your realm. The signal you want to give is a receptive and co-operative one. You want to be ready to learn and to interact. They have come quite a long way to be with you 🙂 You would not dread the arrival of an old friend in your home, even though you might be concerned about the mess it is in. You would instead tidy up your space and make it a comfortable environment to stay in, looking forward to your time together with an open mind and heart. Do the same here.

If you are looking for them you will eventually see them coming down the road towards you and their aura will be very large. During this period (as the transit approaches and is in orb, but sometimes even before this if you are alert enough) you may well learn things from your upcoming partner about the agenda that is in focus. You might even be able to ask something of them and later receive it. This can happen in a number of ways, by intuition or hunches, in dreams, through synchronous messages and events, in signs and omens, psychic impressions and feelings, visitations by their helpers or by yours, serendipity, etc. The universe has so many ways of communicating to an open heart and mind that is in the present moment that there is really no way to predict how this contact and communication will occur. However many things can be said about the aura these planets bring and how human beings tend to react to these auras in ways which set them up for greater difficulty and trouble during the interaction period. Each of the slow moving planets under consideration has a specific quality in its aura that challenges human beings and this aura serves to prepare us for its arrival.

Saturn brings an aura of fear and of being gripped in a vice or cornered. We sense things not going so well or as easily, and we tend to tighten our energy field against him in response, hardening ourselves against life. It will only make our burden heavier, and so the appropriate response to this aura is to instead to be brave and open up and accept what is emerging without fear by welcoming it as an experience that will make us very rich come the end of life. He is the god of time and he often comes to mark the hour, to sever and to harvest, in other words to end things. He does not make mistakes, so the key is to bless him for this task and to stand aside as he gathers what has come due. He is patient and will wait for you to learn the lessons he brings, but eventually he will pressure you to make your moves. Remember that one day he will come for you, too, and you don’t want to be mad at or afraid of him when your hour comes around. Treat these experiences as rehearsals for that final one.

Chiron brings an aura of futility and of being split, divided or out of alignment. We sense all the ways in which we are not living in harmony with nature as an awareness of disorders and dysfunctional resonance (within us and also in the external world), and so we tend to respond to this aura by imagining all kinds of things being wrong with us or others. The key here is to understand that Chiron brings an awareness that is holistic and so we are being made aware of the way in which we operate as a whole, an integrated system, wherein problems in one area create problems for the whole. It is not that we have many things wrong with us or many potential problems to deal with, it is instead that Chiron is illuminating the ways in which we exist as parts of and expressions of the whole that is nature. The key is to get into alignment with the healing process that he is bringing, by which I mean more than just physical healing but also psychological and mental and the healing of the individual relationship with other beings and the world around them. If we are completely unconscious of the need to learn about these things then Chiron can introduce some kind of injury or breakdown in the system which creates the need for us to understand these things or to begin looking at them.

Uranus brings an aura of chaos and of having nothing to hold onto for very long, of impermanence. We can feel tremors in the ground and hear rumbles in the sky months before he arrives. We sense a wild lack of reliability and dependability in the external world, usually in other people, and we fall back on focusing upon ourselves and only ourselves so that we do not have to deal with them. We cannot keep up with the pace of life which has vastly quickened, and so we attempt to shut it down. It is a selfish response doomed to failure because by focusing only on ourselves we invite Uranus to teach us harsh and shocking lessons about our interdependence with others as part of a human species. Another reaction to the quickening that these challenges bring is to break down instead of shut down (you take too much on board instead of shutting it out to focus on yourself), while yet another is to be overexcited by all the possibilities that are apparently unfolding and thus be off balance when they do happen. Uranus is unpredictable and aloof, not revealing what is planned until the moment of its emergence and so there is not much you can prepare for except something novel and fresh, but during the dance itself there is an amazing level of interaction possible (see the fifth point). The key attitude to cultivate in the approach to a major Uranian transit is one of open minded, openhearted curiosity regarding both the self and others and an open embrace of the need to make radical change of some kind in order to experience something new. It may also help to consciously slow down.

Neptune brings an aura of confusion and doubt and of being haunted by something nebulous but pervasive that we cannot name or grasp at all. There is a feeling of dissolution and quicksand, of being cast adrift without an anchor, of surrealism. Consequently we tend to respond with dismissal or skepticism, a kind of mental and astral hand-waving away of something insubstantial and probably imagined, or we respond with paranoia and suspicion, with deepening detachment from reality and deeper immersion into the escapism of the imagination. Yet the aura of Neptune is meant to prime us for contact with the transcendent and otherworldly, with the dissolution of the ego self in a glimpse of something more universal, and so a more appropriate response is to seek contact with the invisible and the spiritual dimension of being, to invite Neptune to reveal the invisible world to us. We must signal that we are ready to make the sacrifice of the lower self (the making sacred of the personality and the individual self) in order to embrace the transcendent self. So a key attitude to adopt in the buildup to a Neptune transit occurring in your life is to begin seeking in the direction of the spiritual, opening your third eye, and to begin by anchoring yourself in the present moment of time because this is not only an insoluble anchor (unlike, say, a relationship or an ideal) but also the gateway to spiritual awareness. Put your awareness on awareness itself. This anchoring is extremely important in both Neptune and Pluto encounters. In the case of Pluto encounters, it might even save your life or prevent a major trauma.

Pluto transits come with an aura of catastrophe and heightened emotional intensity, sometimes a sense of being stalked by something predatory or even the notion of being cursed. We have the feeling of tension building which will explode violently like a volcano and we also experience a growing obsessiveness or fixation in some direction. Our sense of contact with safe reality is subverted. As a result we tend to react by putting up our guard and summoning our willpower, but this is inappropriate because there is no defence possible. Surrender is more profitable in this case. Pluto comes to remove those things which no longer serve us and he is ruthless about it. His compassion is extreme and it is this extreme compassion that inflames our emotional body. If our heart chakra and crown is open (i.e. we are in an empathic state of awareness that includes the realisation that each self is part of the one consciousness) we are able to receive this influx of compassion directly, understanding ahead of time what we must release, finding the inner strength to face it directly (the true will) and thus aligning with his purpose, otherwise this powerful lovingness is translated by our other chakras into intense desires and fixations for things, in particular for full control over what is emerging, a resistance to what is, or the taking of refuge in something that will be swept away. Ultimately we are destined to lose control over this gambit with Pluto, experiencing a death and rebirth as what we have become attached to we have strongly identified with and therefore it feels like death when Pluto ultimately claims it, which he will if it is necessary. However after the experience we are revealed to have survived somehow, awakening us to the indestructible nature of consciousness. This is true even after we actually die. Thus an appropriate attitude is to welcome him in allowing him to remove from you whatever he needs to remove, returning it to the Earth where it originated from, whatever it is, allowing him to keep it as one of the treasures he keeps in the underworld and trusting him with it. This will release the meaning that you have placed in it back to you without a struggle on your part, and you will only grow in power and awareness. He has much in common with Saturn in that he is continually preparing us for the death process in which we must let go of everything. As with Neptune transits we must remain centred in the present moment in order to stay in direct communication with him while the experience is occurring. This is especially important with Pluto because he can cause traumas to emerge both from this life and other lifetimes as well as within the collective experience which we encounter, and during such crises being present can mean the difference between life and death, both yours and others – more commonly it won’t but you will still need to be centred in the present if you are not to be overwhelmed by the transformation energy he delivers.

Powerful transits like the ones we are discussing can bring dramatic change of all kinds and orders, not just traumatic experiences but life changing events of all kinds. Falling helplessly in love, for example, is a common reaction to a strong Neptune transit, especially to Venus. One overriding feature of the planets from Uranus outward (i.e. not including Saturn or anything nearer to the Sun) is that we often experience them as matters over which we have no outer control, like the process of falling in love with someone or something, yet at some level we retain the ability to respond to it as we choose. The experience can pull us in and dictate our reactions very easily – such as when the object of our affection smiles at us – and we may then find that we react automatically – we can’t stop ourselves from smiling back, or even blushing – but we still have the choice of speaking or not speaking, acting or nor acting, and we get to choose what we do or say, most of the time. If the power of the experience overwhelms us, though, we may blurt out something we do not really mean or want to say, or behave in a way that we do not consciously choose. If we are in love we might just embarrass ourselves, but if instead we are enraged, we might do ourselves or others great harm. Pluto and Uranus both tend towards this kind of enraged and destructive kind of response to the overpowering events, but Saturn at high pressures can also lead us to be quite harsh and severe on others or ourselves.

FOURTH POINT: KNOW THE DANCE

Keeping this simple, there are 3 kinds of dance – the conjunction, the square and the opposition. They are like the difference between a waltz, a jitterbug and a dance-off. The dance is also affected by the signs and temples involved in the transit as well as by the nature of the partner, the transiting planet, but here I will focus on the basic 3 kinds of dancing, the aspects.

I have written extensively about the magic of interacting with conjunctions in my book, providing an entire system for dancing with this aspect. You can also find many posts about that topic here along with the free practice manual which provides you with all the material to begin practicing this magic. The essence of the conjunction is synthesis or alchemical fusion, a merging of self with the essence of the planetary visitor. The dance is intimate, close, eyes are locked together for the duration and you can feel one another’s heart beating and smell their skin. It’s often deeply personal and private, and you must learn to integrate the energy and message of the planet within your being. You might even miss them when they go.

The square is like the jitterbug – partners are joined but not close and the energy of the dance is dynamic and electric, not a fusion but a constant mutual action and reaction chain. It is an exhausting and sweat inducing interaction with the planetary visitor, a shaking of the body and a bringing of things to life. It has the energy of corners and edges, making the movements abrupt and spasmodic and leading to crisis (from the Greek for decision, or turning point). It generates a storm of energy that has to be given direction and leaves the atmosphere charged and the space around you alert. Squares also come in pairs, one where the transiting planet is ahead of the natal planet in the zodiac and one where it is behind. As a general rule squares which have the transiting planet ahead of the natal planet are about building something up, while those where it is behind are about the deconstruction of something, or letting it go.

The opposition is like a dance-off because it is a continual upping of the stakes and the amplitude of the interaction. There is a competitive edge to these encounters as the two partners try to impress themselves on the other or outdo or elaborate upon the moves their companion just made. Usually the planet makes the first move an impressive one and we are left feeling that we must respond, and so we are drawn into the dynamic. This first event is very much an invitation for us to give something our best shot. If we ignore the invitation or wait too long before taking our turn, they usually come and take us forcefully by the hand, drag us into the middle of the stage, and then leave us there alone. There is a balancing act in this interaction that gradually emerges as you start bringing out the best in one another, but it is a face-off and face-offs with these beings can be overwhelming.

FIFTH POINT: BE THE DANCE

Being the dance means that you engage with what is emerging as fully as possible. It means being witness to the energy moving through you and your life without losing your sense of being to that energy and is a delicate balance between a passive and open allowing of what emerges and an active response to it. You must know when the time comes to act, and when it is time to witness. I can only describe this moment to act as a pause in the music or an opening, a passing of the beat, or a pregnant breath held in silence. You must also know when you are done responding, when it is time to pass the beat over to the planetary partner so that they can react to you. All of this requires you to be paying close attention to what is going on. If you are too busy freaking out over that, you will be out of the flow.

If the transit brings great challenges into your life try to welcome them as a necessary growth experience. If these planets bring negative or painful karma then you must attempt to learn from that experience, while if the planets bring positive or joyous karma then you have to ask them where to direct it, where to share it, where it is needed most. Depending upon your relationship to the planet you may be able to perceive them in some way. This happened to me when my mother was dying during the period when Saturn was last in Scorpio. I have Capricorn rising and Saturn is the ruler of my chart but most of my planets are in Scorpio. I was able to learn from Saturn as he came into view that my mother’s time to pass from this world had arrived. He reminded me that the last time he was in Scorpio he took my father with him. When my mother’s illness was detected a few months later I became her primary carer and during this time Saturn was present with me at the start of every morning and throughout the day. He guided me, lifting his hand as a signal for when I should do nothing and nodding at me when I had the right idea but never speaking directly. He didn’t need to. In this way he navigated me through the maze of karmic entanglements surrounding my mother’s terminal illness and her eventual death. I did not navigate that maze perfectly well at all, but I did better than I would have done had I not been aware of the help he was giving me. This also happened to me when Pluto in Capricorn crossed over my ascendant and earlier in the 1980s and 90s when Pluto was in Scorpio, but with Pluto instead of Saturn as the one communicating with me. It’s impossible to prove but I believe that by taking a positive and openhearted approach to letting go of whatever Pluto was going to remove from my life I experienced his dramatic transformation mostly as a rebirth and less as a death and I believe that he revealed deep things to me that I would not have been able to comprehend otherwise.

While all of this may sound completely crazy to many people (understandably) I would argue that it is not where the craziness of these transits usually arises from. Usually that craziness arises from us denying, suppressing, blocking, rejecting and throwing tantrums because of what is emerging. It arises from us not taking responsibility in the true sense of responding maturely, of acting out because things are not the way we want them to be. Nor does spiritual maturity and spiritual awakening mean that we will necessarily handle these things better – I saw two people go through the same transit of Uranus conjunct their Sun while Pluto was square it, one of them a teacher of spiritual awakening and another who worked in an office, and the person who worked in an office went through enormous stress and pressure as one thing after another bombarded them and they were constantly saddled with multiple challenges but remained deeply involved in the lives of others that they cared about, while the spiritual teacher experienced a very similar overload but lost all interest in spiritual wisdom and behaved at a level of consciousness where they could only think of themselves. The office worker awakened through their transits but the spiritual teacher closed down completely. As I was witness to both of these things happening at the same time, I could see that the difference was in their attitude to what was emerging, not what was actually happening. One was ready to open deeper and wider to life, the other was not.

In another example earlier in my life (Spring 1989) I had both Saturn and Neptune hovering on my ascendant with Uranus very nearby at the same time someone else that I knew had the same configuration, and while I ended up with a broken heart writing poems about falling in love and finding spiritual awakening, they became involved in deceptive criminal activity and refused to look within, instead imagining things in the external world as the problem. The difference here was in the willingness to look within and examine the unconscious, the source of our inner wisdom. Again this is really about the attitude to what emerges and the way that consciousness responds to it, since we both experienced the visitation by Neptune but by embracing the need to focus my life in a spiritual direction and look inward for spiritual guidance I took a more helpful attitude towards what was emerging. It is the choosing to orient yourself a certain way that holds great power here.

With the correct orientation or proper attitude everything that transpires during the transit will be easier to deal with. Additionally, the spiritual laws involved tell us that in adjusting our approach we are actually transforming what will happen before it happens, in other words we have an even greater degree of control then we think we do and are actually able to shape not just the outcome but the kind of experience that emerges as well. Remember the example I gave about Chiron sometimes bringing about an injury or pain if we need to be opened to a healing journey of some kind. If we are already conscious of that need thanks to astrology and we elect to be on that path before Chiron arrives, he does not have a need to awaken us to the need to be on a healing path.

During the event the nature of the partner you are interacting with can determine a lot of the experience, especially it’s tempo. With Saturn and Neptune the pace is slower and more graceful, allowing us more time to process before we react. With Chiron the time we have to respond is relative to the urgency of the healing journey we are on. Uranus and Pluto have little patience in comparison, with Uranus being very active and attention grabbing while Pluto has an ability to wait a long time but will eventually come at you with an intense wave of energy and then will not stop until you react, often just increasing the volume or intensity of what you are dealing with. During interaction with Uranus, especially by square or opposition, he can throw multiple situations that you have to deal with simultaneously, and this can be deeply destabilising, throwing you off balance, as your mind races from one thing to another. The trick with this is to remember that you only have a single moment, always, and so you can only focus on what is present. Stop thinking about the other situations entirely when they are not in front of you. You have to learn how to react fluidly and spontaneously in order to stay in the rhythm with him. Otherwise you get burned out. This outcome forces you to turn your attention back upon yourself, but it doesn’t mean that you should leave that attention there and spurn the happenings beyond your skin. To avoid this, when there is a pause in the flurry of activity, treasure it. Go into yourself and make contact with how you are doing in coping with all of the external juggling, assess where the priorities are now (they are always shifting under strong Uranian activity) but most importantly take your time out. If you can stay in the groove during a strong Uranus interaction, meeting the challenges that he throws at you moment by moment and juggling them without losing your mind in them, then the quick and rapid rate of interaction that you have together with this planet makes these transits some of the most productive of all.

Essentially, being the dance means knowing when to act and when to listen or observe and learn, not getting in your own way when doing any of that, and seeing the entire process as a dialog that is occurring between you and an aspect of the universal consciousness. You may have been able to see the shape of what is emerging long before these events are transpiring but during the happening it is important that you keep an open mind for new things to emerge that you have not foreseen.

SIXTH POINT: ESCORT THEM HOME

This last point is about the winding down, the time after all the major activity fades out. The first thing that people usually do after a major transit has passed is try to figure out what it all meant and assess where you are now. This is very important but only part of the process and actually it should be the latter part of the process. The first part of the process is to give thanks to the partner for having danced with you and to show them safely home, even if they crushed your toes under their size 13s several times. There are many ways you can do this, I like some kind of unique ritual designed just for that experience and for that planet, perhaps including some of its incense or offerings that are sacred to its nature. In human etiquette it is customary to exchange gifts for many occasions and this is one such occasion in which we should apply this custom. Even if the planet has brought you trauma after trauma, broken your life into pieces or hospitalized you, you must have learned things from it that you can be grateful for knowing now. The experience of interacting with these beings is itself sacred, something that we come into physical incarnation seeking and yearning for, so giving thanks is always appropriate. This is not to say that we deserved everything. Sometimes these transits manifest themselves in the unconscious behaviour of the people around us.

The process of giving thanks to the planetary intelligences for being with you during this period of your life and for teaching you or providing you with benefits for your growth is also the way you escort the intelligence back to its own realm. It sends a loving signal into the universe which removes the attachment you have made to that planetary force while you were interacting with it. Otherwise remnants of the experience can hang around in your energy field causing you to think about it again and again. You can then develop all kinds of thought forms connected with that experience which prolong its effect unnecessarily. This is obviously not a good thing to do with a traumatic experience, which is why the giving of thanks after a traumatic experience is even more important.

Beyond this, there is the period of reflection after you get home, as you lay in bed still whirling around the dance floor in your head, your life now at rest but integrating everything that has happened. Things come up and we relive them naturally during this cool down but this time we get to review our own reactions. This can be a very telling process, more telling than the interaction itself. Additionally with some planets (Pluto and Neptune especially), the full meaning of the experience does not transpire until many months, even years or decades later. We might need to be patient with some enigmas of life.

This cool down period is the time for us to try to make sense of it all, to ask our questions and wonder what it all means. If we try doing that during the experience we risk not seeing all of it clearly and drawing the wrong conclusions, especially if we get drawn into a drama involving something that has also lived in our past. This is generally good advice for any kind of spiritual or magical encounter in life – don’t question it or try to figure it out while it is happening, experience it, and ask questions of it later.

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That’s it for this months journey, I hope you enjoyed it, thank you for reading, and may you be the music!