Annular Eclipse on Oct 14th; PLUS: A lot is about to happen in a short period of time.

By David A. Wheatley
​​https://www.bridges.academy/astrologycorner.html​

Annular Eclipse on Oct 14th

There’s an annular eclipse of the Sun by the Moon on October 14th. It will be visible in the US, Central America and parts of South America. In the US its path enters on the northwest Pacific coast and arcs southeast across southwestern Texas. More importantly, the event is at approximately 20 degrees of Libra. Anyone with natal planets at 20+/- degrees of any sign but especially in Libra, Aries, Cancer or Capricorn will notice an effect of the eclipse but depending on their natal planets and houses involved the impact may be anything from subtle to dramatic. Anyone with planets at 20 degrees of other signs may be touched by it, but don’t expect much.

There are a number of places online to get a proper natal chart done, for free. I can safely recommend that a reliable chart is offered at: www.astro.com

​Traditional Astrology attributes some importance to an eclipse falling exactly on a natal point, modern Astrology gives a wider range of milder impacts. The effects of an eclipse can last for months, kind of like taking a detour on a long drive. It doesn’t alter where you are going but it could alter how you get there. 

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ALL the trans-Jupiter planets are about to change signs

​Beginning in late 2024, Pluto will move into Aquarius where it will stay for about twenty years. It’s been flirting with this move in the last year and will again in 2024 while retrograding back temporarily into Capricorn, making a profound change seem more gradual.
This shift of a major psychological planet is all by itself a huge shared experience for mankind. Also, in the natal chart of the USA there’s a return of Pluto to where its natal placement is, coming in the first quarter of 2024. Some Astrologers think that the Pluto Return has already occurred, but in fact, if an adjustment is made for Pluto’s ponderously slow movement around the zodiac for the movement of the zodiac itself (precession of the equinoxes), then the Pluto Return will occur between February and April of 2024. This required adjustment only applies to features in the zodiac whose positions advance over centuries, longer than a human lifespan. 

The Pluto Return in the US chart has to impact material values more than simply the economy, as some people suggest, because it is in the US 2nd House of material values. Of course, there are corresponding impacts on the economy, but ‘material values’ is a broader reference to the nation’s material values or simply values than it is specifically the economy.  Naturally, economic well-being is directly related to our values, but there are other factors we would like to believe are more crucial to the nation’s values than the economy.
Historically, one of the easiest values to identify circulates around discrimination towards Native and African American people, and others. (All non-white people whom white people discriminated against after subduing Native peoples and engaging in the slavery and slave labor of people from other continents like Africa, China etc.). There are economic factors related to this issue both in the past and the present, but overall, the values at the heart of it go beyond economics and these issues still require work. Because of the inherent power around Pluto, these issues rose to become public issues years before the actual exact time of the Pluto Return. We have seen issues of racial inequality and our social conscience surface in the last several years, becoming a major part of the contest for social and political definition. Who are we? This and other issues are the levers forcing the needed regeneration of old unresolved historical values in a Pluto Return. Resistance to the evolution required gives Pluto the power to force us into harder and harder choices, digging deeper and deeper as necessary. If we want to make the road ahead less stressful, we can not only welcome the need to change, we could even be grateful for the agents that bring this to our attention. 

Pluto, Agent of Growth
and the least destructive way to work with it

​I have mentioned before for those who are interested, while astronomers diminished Pluto from planet to planetoid or asteroid, it remains among the more potent bodies in Astrology. While as physical beings we appraise the planets as physical objects, their value in a greater dimension is non-physical and that dimension of the psyche is where Astrology values the planets. It’s not physical size, it’s psychological spiritual potency that makes a planetary body important.
Pluto is the face of the unconscious, individually and collectively. We identify the unconscious in the psyche body distinct from consciousness, but without a doubt, it dwarfs consciousness in potency and can at times overwhelm it when awoken from its deep slumber. Consciousness dips into the unconscious body all the time to make associations, finding meaning and storage for what we can’t immediately process. It’s a many-dimensional part of the psyche where everything mingles outside conscious direction, but will respond to dialogue with consciousness as easily as throwing a ball against a wall, constantly bouncing back.
In the Astrologically defined psychic body, Pluto seeks to process what it feels and have that reenter consciousness, which we associate with Mercury. One planet closest to the Sun, one far, far away. As an agent of growth in our total being, Pluto is often described as a process of breakdown and rebuilding, or regeneration. What’s broken down are usually patterns we grooved deeply into our unconscious individually and collectively, even nationally. Eventually, the new reformed structure becomes deeply grooved and sometimes an obstruction to further growth, and when in this case the Pluto Return happens 255 years later, once again it’s time to tear down old structures and build new ones. Growth evolution or refinement, the new learning often requires unlearning what’s become the automatic programming of the past. Loosen them up or break them down, whichever is required, then rebuild.
Usually the power of Pluto, or the strength it requires to enact evolution in our consciousness, comes from our resistance to let it happen. The more successful manner of managing the often awesome tsunami that Pluto seems to often be, is to not automatically resist the momentum of changes. Better to work with it as a good director to share in the shaping of the outcome. This is the least destructive way to work with Pluto. Admit that it will substantially win, then work with it. Away goes fear and darkness. Awe may remain. Pluto was discovered at the dawn of the atomic age and is associated with atomic power, once again a reference to the gargantuan transformative power of something small. 

​There are other asteroids/planetoids of significance, discovered in the last century and more recent decades, and as they enter into human consciousness by discovery, they are more available as metaphorical analytical tools. Eris is close to the same size as Pluto and has an orbit that at times interacts with it. It was discovered in 2005 and as it enters human consciousness like other planets, asteroids and so forth, it finds its place in the Astrological psychology of associations; in the case of Eris with the emergent power of the feminine in our society and hopefully conscious lives.

But what’s even more incredible than Pluto’s Return and then changing signs, is that all the trans-Jupiter planets are going to change signs between 2024 and 2025

All of them. ​

​I am not alone among Astrologers looking for a similar event in human history, when all the major psychological, metaphysical or spiritual planets change signs in a cosmically short span of time. If that happened in the past, it was before human beings were conscious that the planets beyond Saturn existed; therefore they were not integrated into the consciousness of Astrologers or anyone except perhaps in the parade of allegorical mythologies.  In those times, lacking a level of consciousness to attempt making psychology a medical study, humanity experienced the psyche telling its stories in myth. The psyche wastes no opportunity to speak its language. Many mythological allegories tell psychologically valuable stories, and by coincidence (?) the planets/planetoids/asteroids have been named with synchronistic mythological associations. Each name carries a body of information. 

​What’s happening now and over the next few years with all the major planets changing signs and in relation to each other is a condensed version of what our psychological spiritual metabolism would probably prefer be spread out over a lifetime. A lot is about to happen in a short period of time. 

Saturn recently entered Pisces, sharing temporary occupation of that sign with Neptune 

​Saturn is the rules and structure cop of the cosmos. Pisces isn’t a great habitat for Saturn, though some structure, definition and border-making may be overdue following Jupiter’s recent passage through Pisces. Neptune blurs the edges of definition, and some people are lost in such an environment. Neptune in Pisces creates a habitat in which imagination opens a magical illusory window into another reality, or weaves a delusion that does the same thing. Neptune doesn’t separate illusion from delusion. Saturn does that. Jupiter passing through Pisces two years ago amplifies it all. Finally though, Saturn is here to sort out the delusion from the illusion as it passes through Pisces and eventually rendezvous with Neptune. 

Eventually, Saturn catches up to and conjuncts Neptune in Pisces in an extraordinary way. It catches up at the first degree of Aries, to commence a new cosmic cycle together. Neither Saturn nor Neptune are in a warm friendly environment in Aries.  Saturn becomes more impatient, austere and thrifty; far more than usual. Neptune turns the lights off and goes rather quiet. Compared to its time in Pisces, Neptune’s higher-minded refinement is more remote in Aries.
To begin with, Saturn catching up to Neptune isn’t a comfortable reunion. These two gas giant planets are rarely good together in any sign. Neptune has no limits to the places it can refer or connect consciousness to. Saturn puts up fences and makes strict borders, which can be a comfort when we need borders in place. They can on occasion work together though and we should aim for that. Aiming high (Neptune), Saturn provides the structure to reach the heights we strive for. Or Saturn, which can’t help but edit out distraction, clears a path for what the mind could reach with Neptune, for those who are able. Aries is an expressive Fire sign. It’s usually not great for Neptune, the master planet of subtly. But in Aries, if it’s a spiritual Fire then we have another order of combustion. A spiritual fire does not consume air, it produces ether. 

The most attention-getting transit among the major outer planets will be Uranus leaving the Fixed Earth sign Taurus where it was grounded and subdued

​Uranus in myth is a primordial sky god, parent of Saturn (Kronos), grandparent of Jupiter (Zeus) and it naturally inhabits the sky environment as formlessness. No up or down, no dimension, just space filled with the inherent energy that Uranus could enter with intention and manifest momentarily as the lightning bolt. Once Uranus leaves Taurus it enters Gemini, a Mutable Air sign, in 2026. This is more like it, as far as Uranus goes. The restraints come off. Unleashed seemingly spontaneous energy flashes. 

​Uranus is not going to be subtle when it gets even one little toe into Gemini. It will probably enter with a series of flashes. As it approaches the beginning of entry to Gemini, Uranus will make a trine aspect to Pluto which has just wholly entered Aquarius. This is very fortunate long-term, though perhaps a bit of whiplash short term. Pluto in Aquarius trine to Uranus in Gemini is going to usher in a sustained period of remarkable innovation. While this no doubt excites the technology geeks, keep in mind that Pluto likes to break down what exists that isn’t healthy before it introduces what is better. So, while those who love technology will expect this to bring in super-advanced Star Trek devices to their hands, I expect first Pluto along with Uranus to cut off some of the technology we have for an extended period. It remains cut off long enough to realize the negative impact some technologies have had, and require a new way of integrating technology into our lives. Ultimately yes, I think we rocket far ahead of where we are now but even with this, it’s under the pressure of necessity. 

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We need brilliant solutions to major problems and this can happen with the trine between Pluto in Aquarius and Uranus in Gemini. This should not give us the comfortable notion that we can solve problems because we are clever. I expect the situation to be more desperate than calmly analyzed. There are winners and losers, and probably some of the brilliant ideas have consequences we don’t like.
As these two outer planets blend their methods in this trine relationship, Saturn and Neptune will occupy the midpoint between them as they enter Aries. Saturn and Neptune will make sextile aspects to both Uranus and Pluto being in the midpoint.  This dials them all up into one huge, massive operation within our psyche and here on this planet, a level of extremely rare planetary timing we have never seen. 

The history of Uranus in Gemini is popularly known as war-like. The US has Uranus natally in Gemini. Eventually, the US chart will have a Uranus Return at 8 degrees of Gemini, beginning July 2027 into the following year. The US fought both its War of Independence and the Civil War with Uranus in Gemini, making its Return from the natal position established when the US struggled through its War of Independence. The last time Uranus was in Gemini was for the duration of World War 2. The US emerged from each of these chaotic, painful episodes as a growing world power, and perhaps more importantly the whole world surged forward with inventions made in wartime to produce tremendous growth for decades after. Hopefully, we do not require a significant military war in order to be innovative this time. Other kinds of struggles challenge survival at this time; indeed, we are at war with ourselves in the battle to survive the consequences of the Industrial Revolution and a planet with 8 billion people on it. The planet Earth may seem to be at war with humanity. It’s probably more likely the USA has war or severe struggle on its mind when Uranus transits to conjunct the natal US Mars in Gemini, in 2031-32.
Neptune was last in Fire Sign Aries the day after the American Civil War began. Saturn was in Virgo, where it eventually made a conjunction with the US natal Neptune in the 9th house of ideals and higher learning, learning from connections to foreign cultures. This time, Saturn is in an exact conjunction with Neptune entering Aries. If again Neptune contributes to a dulling of our ability to covet life so that brutal war happens, Saturn will leave us all hungry and miserable. Saturn brings karma, government structures will fall that do not serve as the overarching psyche requires, like cutting out a cancer. Saturn has no sympathy and loves efficiency, a perfect executioner. We could hope Neptune softens it in Aries, except that the history shows Neptune in Aries has brought a lot of war and suffering. 

​The meeting of Neptune and Saturn spans a couple of years during which time by retrograde motion they conjunct three times. Saturn catches up to the slower-moving Neptune for a conjunction about every 36 years. This means many people will have experienced it before, though in a different sign (Aquarius last time). What’s remarkable now is the synchronicity of movement - Saturn and Neptune are so precisely connected at the time and place of the midpoint of the Pluto/Uranus trine. 

A lot is about to happen in a short period of time

​Another important feature of these synchronistic planetary entries into new signs at the same time, is that they are all leaving feminine sun signs and entering masculine sun signs. This underscores my belief that a general decline in nurturing is likely, though the reasons may be that the problems to be solved leave little time for care. The emphasis on masculine signs for all these planets suggests to me an increase in the attempts of mankind to engineer society and the planet, for compelling reasons. The increase in masculine sign orientation does tend to suggest war is more likely than peace. The role that the atomic planet Pluto plays does suggest that both the riddle of fusion energy is solved but also possibly a war with at least some nuclear exchanges. The sky is the limit on a scale of possibilities with Uranus - a war waged from space. We thought drone warfare was going to replace conventional large heavy war machinery, but we have seen how quickly it became possible to shoot down and neutralize drone swarms and reduce their impact to minimal, compared to what was imagined. Is the next thing to shoot lasers from space or something else sky-oriented? 

​A decline in birth rates because of man-made toxins, exposure to radiation, psychological causes, wartime losses, weather-related crises, a water or food crisis….. you name it, is possible. It’s also possible that facing extraordinary challenges, we have extraordinary people with ways to avoid the worst of what’s possible and remove impediments to the growth that’s required.
Accelerated technological breakthroughs between Uranus in Gemini trine to Pluto in Aquarius should surprise no one familiar with these two planets and the signs they will occupy. Invention that inspires great optimism can compensate for coping with a changing environment. There are also the perils of inventions rushed to development before we know if they work, because we are existing and competing with the clock. Everything seems to be happening at once, and people feel out of control. I don’t think there’s time to indulge in the false promises of snake oil salesmen. Saturn and Neptune in Aries will remind us there really isn’t time to indulge in the delusions entertained while Neptune was in Pisces. Neptune in Aries tends not to be too concerned about environmental degradation, leaving that for another day with time for more reflection. The pressure of necessity will compel risk-taking. 

I haven’t included the remaining outer planet, Jupiter, in this telling. Jupiter’s influence will contribute mightily to everything I have described, amplifying the moments it factors into and requiring our minds to expand to contain what we need to know.

​Like the person waving the flag to start the race, Jupiter will conjunct Uranus in Taurus in April of 2024. This comes as Pluto’s return has unfolded, and as Jupiter makes a fortunate trine to Pluto shortly after meeting up with Uranus. Uranus remains mostly grounded in Taurus, but Jupiter amps it up enough to momentarily flash a bolt of lightning and make a change in the world. Jupiter/Zeus is also a sky god and his famous tool is also the lightning bolt. Things can happen in a flash. This is a break in tensions in the world after which whatever is expressed commences a release, that while it seems to happen in an instant, will take years to play out. 

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​Contact David at [email protected] for a personal astrological consultation.
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