Try not to resist the changes
that come your way. Instead let life live through you.
And do not worry that your life is turning upside down.
How do you know that the side you are used to
is better than the one to come?
Rumi
2023 is a Game Changer
The year takes shape as three outer planets and the Moon’s Nodes change signs. Big shifts begin in March when both Pluto and Saturn launch a new agenda of challenge and transformative growth. The shifts continue as Jupiter changes signs in May followed by the nodal axis changing signs in July. Slower moving planets change signs infrequently. Multiple outer planets shifting their focus in the same year mark 2023 as the biggest astrological year since 2020.
Historically, when an outer planet enters a new sign, the event is accompanied by sudden shifts, or a dramatic unfoldment, in the collective. We may experience intensity in our personal lives, especially if we have planets at 29, 0 or 1 degree of a sign. New themes are surfacing to be faced and managed as our lives are transformed in the months and years that follow.
This newsletter gives an overview of the three key planets changing signs
January and February: months of preparation for change
March 7: Saturn enters Pisces
March 23: Pluto enters Aquarius
May 16: Jupiter enters Taurus and squares Pluto
April /May: The Eclipse Season and a Mercury Retrograde
July: The Nodal Axis moves to Aries/Libra
July to September: Venus & Mercury Retrogrades, & Pluto square the nodal axis
October: Second eclipse season
December: Final Mercury Retrograde of 2023
Clarifying, Aligning and Preparing
January and February
2023 gets off to a slow start (Mercury and Mars both Retrograde), prodding us to take added time to mull over variables, options and plans. There is a measure of inertia and sluggishness and we feel restrained from making big decisions or taking decisive action. This is a preparation time where we ready ourselves to commit to a course of action. If we resist the retrograde motion of Mercury and Mars, we may find ourselves spinning our wheels, chaffing at the bit and feeling frustrated that life isn't moving forward at the pace we hoped it would.
Mid-January, the energy shifts dramatically (Mercury goes direct January 12 followed by Mars going direct on January 18). And finally, when Uranus, the planet of dynamic change, goes direct on January 23, all planets are direct. Life is greenlighted to accelerate forward. The pace of life begins to pick up slowly and gains speed as we move towards March. We feel the wind in our sails and look to set our course for the year.
The January 20 New Moon supports us in synthesizing and integrating all that was learned or discovered over the last months so that there is clarity needed to commit to a decisions and plan of action.
Jupiter in Aries, the sign of the warrior, until May. We are emboldened to act with courage, to trust our gut and take a risk. Jupiter is flying through Aries further fueling dynamic action. Until Jupiter enters Taurus in May, the pace of life is accelerated, and we may find ourselves making quick or daring decisions.
February invites us to dedicate ourselves to practices of self-care, to clearing out and letting go of what no longer is a match for our life as we further clarify future goals. Some of us may know what we plan to do with our life and are ready to take decisive action. Others of us are doing the work needed to ensure we our ready to seize opportunity when it arrives. Either way, we all need to leave room for the element of surprise and to welcome unexpected twists in the plot of our lives that arrive through the course of the following months.
Without technology, humanity has no future,
but we have to be careful
that we don’t become so mechanized
that we lose our human feelings.
Dalai Lama
March: The Month that Shapes a Year
Big shifts in March set the tone and course for the rest of 2023 and beyond. When a slower moving planet changes signs, it introduces new lessons to be learned and potentials to be realized.
Saturn and Pluto change signs within weeks of each other. Saturn moves into a new sign every 2-3 years, introducing a new life arena where we are to be more accountable and responsible. Pluto, in Capricorn since 2008, has been reflected in the transformation we have experienced in the status quo – the breakdown societal norms, structures, systems, and laws – exposing vulnerabilities and revealing where structures or leadership lacks integrity. There has been a slow, but sure, deconstruction of systems that are not working or true to their values. There has been a dawning realization that societal norms we have relied on are not adequate to meet our needs in the future. Saturn in Aquarius, the last two plus years, has opened us to a vision of how to move forward in a way that is a departure from our past and what we already know.
Pluto in Aquarius will revolutionize technology and how society functions. Saturn in Pisces will dispel magical thinking and force decisions to be made based on the reality of what the facts show. Simultaneously, Saturn reveals that to move in a beautiful way through the changes, realizations, and disappointments, we are to develop an expanded perspective of what is happening through a deepened relationship with the divine nature of life.
We are the representatives of the cosmos;
we are an example of what hydrogen atoms can do,
given 15 billion years of cosmic evolution.
Carl Sagan
Magical Thinking is Dispelled
Surrender to the Divine is Cultivate
Saturn in Pisces Mar 7, 2023 – February 13, 2026
Saturn is the realist and rewards the responsible and pragmatic. Its transits test us, restrain us and mature us through the activities and themes of the sign it inhabits.
Saturn in Aquarius (December 2020 – March 2023) compelled us to see larger and larger perspectives as a means to envisioning our North Star, the goal that shapes our actions today. We were encouraged to break away from what we have known and reach for a new untried possibility and then to take responsibility for the vision of our future self.
Saturn In Pisces, the sign of Dreams, gives us a reality check that exposes where we have deluded ourselves and succumbed to magical thinking. We are to come face to face with the realization of how certain dreams we invested in nurturing had us operating in a fantasy. Hard decisions may need to be made with respect to the facts of what is actually happening, not what we imagine is happening.
Pisces, the last sign of the zodiac, is the realm of endings and beginnings, where everything goes back to seed to be quickened with new life. Certain aspects of our life may end to make way for something new. The accompanying grief over what has been lost is not to be minimized, but felt. Our tears are the fertilizer for the seed of new life ready to sprout. In the world at large, businesses that have been struggling, living on a hope and a prayer, will face the music. We may see multiple closings of brick-and-mortar businesses we have grown accustomed to having around.
The impermanence of life will be more and more apparent over the next three years, to successfully integrate the lessons and gifts, we will be compelled to open to a divine perspective. From this perspective, we understand that death is not the end and that nothing ever truly dies. The energy that enlivened some form simply takes on a new shape when the old form ends.
We are to accept that everything we have built in our life will at some point end. Some things may hang on decades and other things break down long before we had hoped. Saturn’s lessons will move us towards rooting ourselves something that is enduring. To put our faith in something that can crumble at any moment can engender anxiety and worry.
Looking to the divine breath that inspires and makes all life possible, we are to build a relationship of deep appreciation for the mystery of how the divine nature inherent in all things moves, changes, and continues to unfold and become. We are to strengthen our faith and trust that everything that is happening is what is needed for growth and wellbeing, and foster surrender to something larger than ourselves that is guiding and moving the unfoldment of our lives and the life of humanity and our precious planet.
We are compelled to contemplate Nature, the Cosmos and our Eternal Soul. In this, we deepen our connection to what existed before we were born and will be around long after we die. Otherwise, we may get stuck in grief, disillusionment, or addiction. A meditation practice, prayer practice or a habit of spending time in nature are ways to increase this awareness that will guide and illuminate our perspective. A relationship with the perpetual creative source that generates and regenerates our world and cosmos will help mitigate disappointment or grief and help strengthen our faith in the future and beauty of life yet to come.
Saturn in Pisces will help to offset the intellectual, objective and innovative qualities that Pluto in Aquarius ushers in. In Pisces, Saturn has us recognize what is real and what is truly unreal through the vehicle of our intuitive mind and the wisdom of the heart.
o
Today it is more important than ever to raise human consciousness,
so that technology becomes a means of empowerment,
not destruction.
Jaggi Vasudev
Human Potential and Technology: A Revolution
Pluto in Aquarius (March 23, 2023 – March 8, 2043)
Pluto, the Last Outer Planet to enter Aquarius
Slow moving planets rarely travel through Aquarius, yet each of the outer planets has moved through Aquarius in recent years, compelling us to think about the future, about humanity and the collective betterment of us all. We have looked towards building an ideal way of living, to consider how our impact on the collective, and to pursue innovative, new technologies.
Recent Movements through Aquarius:
Neptune completed a 15-year journey through Aquarius in 2012 which had us dreaming of our ideal future. It was less about taking action and more about opening to a vision of a new world in conjunction with our interrelatedness with nature and experience of the divine.
The Great Junction, which happens every 20 years between Saturn and Jupiter, occurred in December 2020 at the very first degree of Aquarius, marking the onset of a 200-year movement - an Aquarian movement of unprecedented innovation and development of human potential. Integral to this will be harnessing air as our greatest resource. The last two hundred years, we sought to harness the earth’s resources to fuel a better life. Oil, gas, gold, diamonds, and other precious metals and substance accelerated civilization and created great wealth for some and a comfortable life for many. Moving forward, Intelligence and knowledge will be the measure of a person’s worth, more than how much gold or money they possess.
Jupiter hung out in Aquarius throughout 2021, giving us confidence to move towards feeling the freedom to move towards the future we see for ourselves.
Saturn will complete its 2-year sojourn in Aquarius on March 12 which gave us a reality check on dreams we have for ourselves, and compelled us take responsibility for and become serious about how to actualize our hopes for the future.
Uranus is the only outer planet not moving through Aquarius in the first part of the 21st century. However, Uranus is the ruler of Aquarius and so its presence is being felt throughout as the outer planets move through the area of sky ruled by Uranus, drawing out the wild card energetic, freedom-loving, rebellious, innovative, progressive, maverick energy that is Uranus.
Pluto is the last of four outer planets to move through Aquarius in a relatively short span of time. Pluto enters Aquarius March 23 and will remain in Aquarius for 20 years! This is when the real Aquarian revolution will be felt and seen. The other planets moving through Aquarius were just the warmup act.
1778 – 1798, the last time Pluto was in Aquarius, is remembered as a revolutionary and transformative period of time that saw monarchies fall and democracies rise. The way the world viewed power, money, technology, and society as a whole was turned on its head and reinvented. We can expect no less of Pluto now as it reshapes societal structures, monetary systems and marks the introduction of technologies that change how we live and work.
Technology and innovation may aid, speed, support
and even prolong the human race -
but only love and compassion can save it.
Rasheed Ogunlaru
Aquarius is the sign of the human being. Focused attention will be generously given to identifying and fulfilling human potential and what it means to be fully human. One distinct potnetial is that oppresive hierarchies will fall and the people themselves will be more empowered. For some, it means transcending the 3D reality and entering a 5D world, where the experience of polarity is resolved, there is an absence of judgmental thinking and strong emotions like anger, greed or jealousy dissipate. There are others who believe that the human potential is realized only after death and many of these people await the time of the rapture. And still others believe that our potential lies in recovering indigenous wisdom for how to live in harmony with the earth and cosmic law. If we watch where the money is flowing, it is in the belief that AI (Artificial Intelligence) is our future and the transhuman is the next stage of our evolution as humans.
A transhuman, is a person that with an AI chip implanted in their brain. They will have mental capacities that far exceed innate human functioning. There is a belief held by many that this is the next step in our evolution as a species. As one person said, “Our intelligence is what makes us human, and AI is an extension of that quality. Artificial intelligence is extending what we can do with our abilities. In this way, it's letting us become more human.”
Are we to transcend our humanness, embrace it, or upgrade it? Does intelligence define the human? To what degree is the realization of our human potential the realization of love, compassion, human feeling, and intuitive connection with something larger than ourselves? There will be a profound exploration and crisis within society in the search to understand and realize the true potential of the human experience.
Aquarius is the sign of technology, electronics and the internet. We are at the precipice of a technological revolution unlike anything we have already seen... or have even imagined. Social media, cell phones, the internet, computers and all technology that we are currently will become archaic, if not obsolete.
We can anticipate fantastic advancements in medicine both in diagnosis and surgical treatments that include advancements with sound healing. AI will also have a profound effect on how we treat and care for ourselves and those we love.
AI will phase out a large portion of our workforce as the take on menial and white collar jobs, the work of artists and engineers. Communications will be revolutionized. The accelearted usage of ChatGBT is a sign of Pluto moving into Aquarius, but even this technology is only the beginning of what is coming. ChatGBT has sparked debates around moral and ethical concerns of its usage. New tools at our disposal can enhance our businesses and lives, but how we use them can determine how beneficial they truly are.
Aquarius is an Air sign. Air conducts communication, electricity, travel and knowledge. Harnessing the air as a source of energy, we will see space travel and exploration increase. There will be more and more of a shift to electric vehicles and new technologies for air travel. The internet as we know it today will be considered rinky dink compared to what will be using a decade from now. The intelligent person, the innovative thinker will be more valued than the richest person.
Pluto returns briefly to Capricorn May 1 - October 10 to finish the business of uprooting structures and systems that no longer serve us. We will feel pressed to take a good look at our life, and acknowledge what no longer serves us. Dysfunction is exposed and what lacks integrity to move forward will break down as we turn our heart and minds towards building a sustainable and empowering future (Pluto square the nodal axis). We are making more room to embrace the transformative, innovative and radical potentials that will continue to emerge as Pluto traverses Aquarius over the next 20 years.
'When you realize there is nothing lacking,
the whole world belongs to you.
Lao Tzu
Security and Abundance
Jupiter in Taurus May 16, 2023 – May 25, 2024
Jupiter transits reflect where we can expect growth and expansion. This past year up until May 2023, as Jupiter occupied Aries, we were growing courage. We have had the opportunity to build self-confidence and better trust our gut feelings. We felt emboldened to take risks and make decisions based on a new sense of confidence. We were healing low self-esteem, insecurities and traumas that have taken a toll on our confidence (Chiron in Aries).
Jupiter enters Taurus on May 16, indicating we are ready to grow our material stability. We become more conservative (than Jupiter in Aries). We seek to solidify our resources and give care to our earthly needs. We will exercise added patience and move at a more realistic pace. We are growing our sense of harmony and pleasure in what we have.
Jupiter supports the enhancement of our self-worth - in our culture, this translates to growing our net worth and assets. But its meaning is broader than this. There is to be growth in what we truly value, to feel an abundance in the life we do have, and luxuriate in the sensual experience offered in each moment – whether it is taking time to savor the tastes of our food, feel the water running down our skin in the shower, or the smell of fresh flowers we put in the center of the table. Prosperity is balanced with appreciation for the abundance of what the earth provides and fostering gratitude for all we have received.
Uranus is in Taurus (2018-2025) has been disrupting stability, exposing what no longer serve us in the way we work with money and the earth. It has compelled us to discover what creates sustainability in a lasting and healthy way.
Jupiter (growth) and Uranus (freedom) together in Taurus, the sign of finance, can bring big money opportunities. A new digital currency (not bitcoin) or banking system may be introduced. We can anticipate one or more of the following: big discounts and big bargains, free offers, tax cuts, pay raises, sizeable stock market gains, and opportunities that increase the value of our assets.
Money to Be Made and Care of the Earth
Contemplating, Jupiter’s movement in Taurus that accompanies the movements of Saturn and Pluto, the opportunity for our wellbeing has more dimension and potential than: Let’s Make Money. Many of us would welcome greater financial stability, and we are to work towards this. Still, Uranus’ movement through Taurus has created an unstable and potential volatile climate around wealth and the source of wealth, and cautions us to not just operate out of habitual beliefs around acquiring wealth or what constitutes wealth.
Uranus in Taurus until 2025 can still cause financial volatility in arenas not aligned with how security and sustainability will be found as we move into the future. The earth provides us with enormous wealth that we have used to fuel modern society. Oil, gas, lithium, uranium, gold, silver, nickel, coal, wood...not to mention, food, water and air…we have been a consumer society, taking and consuming the wealth of what our planet offers. A sense entitlement to the resources permeates modern society, where we take what we have for granted, with no substantial thought about how to give back, replenish, appreciate or responsibly manage the resources. Uranus is pointing out the great imbalance that has been created in our relationship with earth's resources and will continue to cause upsets that have us recognize the precious resources that allow for an abundant life.
With Jupiter in Taurus, the real potential is in how to live in a balanced and reciprocal relationship with the earth and its generous resources. We can move towards building and enjoying a simple, good life, thus reducing our carbon footprint. This will help heal the seismic imbalance created by a culture that rewards the person who takes and takes, and to use whatever means prove necessary to satisfy our excessive appetites.
The earth’s resources are being depleted. Our culture of consumption and waste are making our planet a toxic place to live. As much as it is not about taking and taking all we can get, it is also not about vigorously trying to save the planet. Jupiter in Taurus is ultimately about coming into good relationship with the earth and living in a way that creates not just stability, but harmony and wellbeing. If we each take steps to do this, we can slowly create a world that is more inhabitable and less toxic. Jupiter in Taurus ultimately has us identify our basic needs and to take the steps to ensure they are met. It is not about being greedy, or hoarding, or compromising our most cherished values for the sake of securing increased financial wealth.
'Save the planet' reality check:
Please don't say we are trying to save the planet.
The Earth is 4.5 Billion years old,
life has existed on this planet for 3.5 billion years,
modern Man has existed for only 200,000 years,
civilization for 6000 years. 99.9% of all the species
that have lived on this planet are extinct.
So be honest, we are trying to save our place
on this planet as top of the evolutionary heap,
mostly modern man is interested in preserving our standard
of living, smartphones, Wi-Fi and two cars in the garage.
We are 'not saving the planet' the planet could not give a flying fuck
about mankind and would not even notice if we joined the 99.9%
of species that went before. -
Drive for Transformative Growth
Jupiter is square Pluto the latter half of May. This fuels ambition. We will feel the drive to do whatever needs to be done to achieve our goals. Depending on how transiting planets are interacting with our natal chart, success, power, and influence are all possible - but without some care, we may pay a price for this, especially in our closest relationships. Ruthless determination, greed, and corruption may make us a bundle of money but at what cost? . It is advisable that our goals are shaped by our soul’s desire, our most cherished values and with a respect for ourselves, others and the planet.
Jupiter in Taurus favors sustainable growth that participates in a reciprocal exchange with the planet. But we can easily fall prey to greed and hoarding, and further feed the imbalance of our lives and the planet. We can foster a reciprocal relationship with the earth or elect to doggedly continue to mine it for all its worth. It is up to each of us to decide how we will work with the potentials.
In Summary,
We are on the verge of a technological revolution and processes that pave the way for us to embrace our humanity and realize our innate human potential (Pluto in Aquarius). Success will be found in the recognition of our inherent relationship with and trust in the divine (Saturn in Pisces) and in establishing a material security that is in harmony with the earth and natural law (Jupiter in Taurus). We will experience losses of what we had hoped would be part our lives (Saturn in Pisces), but we are to be curious about opportunities that are opening for us as we continue to live in a time of exponential change and transformative growth.
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I am so l grateful for your posts. Many powerful insights and i always love the quotes. I am looking forward to a chart reading with you.