Astrological Events Transitioning into 2022
By David A. Wheatley
We draw to the end of another year. There’s a greater willingness to let some things go and an optimism about a fresher attitude for what’s ahead. The movement of the planets in our psyche-solar system doesn’t usually respect the calendar, but in the last couple of years the turning of the human calendar to a new year has coincided with big planetary transits, and once again the astrological events in late 2021 are transitioning into 2022 like the calendar matters.
Like last year, the first weeks of January 2022 once again dovetail with the ending of the prior year and the astrological themes throughout.
Epochal shifts mostly circulating around Pluto and Capricorn continue, as Pluto remains in Capricorn where it has been since 2008. Pluto is dwelling a little longer at the very end of Capricorn and once again as 2021 ends and the new year begins, Pluto continues to be engaged and heightened in its ongoing transformational themes with the support of other planets. Where Pluto continues in transit will resonate in anyone whose astrological chart has planets at an astrologically relevant degree, as it has been doing for a few years. Pluto brings attention to parts of individual and collective psyche that need to be broken down, using the raw material and energy to eliminate toxin and create something useful from it. Pluto is about transformation from the molecular level on up and uses everything, or breaks it down and uses the raw energetic essence of what’s left for something else. On psychological levels its relevance is mostly in the unconscious because our daily consciousness can’t be burdened with these never-ending processes, but when the handiwork of Pluto manifests in the open on the therapist’s couch, it won’t go away by denying it.
The work in front of us must be done.
Thus, we continue to face Covid surging again; chapter three, four or more. If we transform ourselves and integrate with the process, we evolve with a minimum of stress. If we refuse to evolve what happens is Pluto patiently, obsessively keeps the problem around, finding other opportunities to teach as they come along. Life after life. Decade after decade. Season after season.
This New Year’s Eve, Pluto is joined by Venus for the last weeks of December in late Capricorn. Venus is normally a little bit of a light weight compared to the outer planets which include Pluto, but Venus turns retrograde while in its meeting with Pluto. Venus sits stationary on that degree, backs away and then returns to conjunct it again turning what might be a passage of a week to ten days into months. By lingering with Pluto in the underworld, the influence of Venus is inflated in potency. Venus gets deeper and a little dirtier with Pluto; no longer just the enchanting goddess of beauty, she expresses her darker side. The manifestation of it comes in the continuing vessel of Pluto’s transformative power: Covid19. Venus’s effect is the spreading of Covid by allure, being drawn to enjoy many otherwise beautiful almost intoxicating pleasures of social interaction especially around Christmas and New Year’s celebrations when people love to indulge in food drink and spend time shopping. Venus is a social diva, and as Winter moves in around the annual solstice people gather in groups and feast. The perfect Venus Fly Trap.
This New Year’s Eve, Pluto is joined by Venus for the last weeks of December in late Capricorn. Venus is normally a little bit of a light weight compared to the outer planets which include Pluto, but Venus turns retrograde while in its meeting with Pluto. Venus sits stationary on that degree, backs away and then returns to conjunct it again turning what might be a passage of a week to ten days into months. By lingering with Pluto in the underworld, the influence of Venus is inflated in potency. Venus gets deeper and a little dirtier with Pluto; no longer just the enchanting goddess of beauty, she expresses her darker side. The manifestation of it comes in the continuing vessel of Pluto’s transformative power: Covid19. Venus’s effect is the spreading of Covid by allure, being drawn to enjoy many otherwise beautiful almost intoxicating pleasures of social interaction especially around Christmas and New Year’s celebrations when people love to indulge in food drink and spend time shopping. Venus is a social diva, and as Winter moves in around the annual solstice people gather in groups and feast. The perfect Venus Fly Trap.
Venus lures us with all the intoxicants in her tool box.
This get together of Pluto and Venus or Hades and Persephone will be a reminder of the failings in old habits in the context of Covid 19, faced with choices that if they don’t include a willingness to adapt and change lead to the misery of sickness. This reminder or revisitation of a ghost of Christmas past will not last for many months as it has before. Because Venus is temporarily changed by association with the god of death, the underworld and the unconscious, there will be many other manifestations besides Covid including many of the same themes we’ve faced as a society because of Covid. The experience of Covid forced us to face knowing our values which does not mean we all agree what they are, it just means it becomes obvious what each individual really values no matter what they said in the past. Pluto points our addictions to behavior; Venus lures us with all the intoxicants in her tool box.
Responsibilities to ourselves and to those we live around have never been so challenged. We are forced to ask whether our lifestyle is more important than anything else as Venus lures us after denial for 18 months to two years. Pluto is the specter that we know, but we are caught in an obsession for pursuing the intoxications of Venus. The Phoenix seeks a fire to be consumed by and then to be reborn from. Death is transformation, so if one succumbs to the virus and dies, one is completely transformed and evolution here on Earth ends for now. If one manages to survive it, one is transformed without dying and continues to have opportunities in life to evolve.
Responsibilities to ourselves and to those we live around have never been so challenged. We are forced to ask whether our lifestyle is more important than anything else as Venus lures us after denial for 18 months to two years. Pluto is the specter that we know, but we are caught in an obsession for pursuing the intoxications of Venus. The Phoenix seeks a fire to be consumed by and then to be reborn from. Death is transformation, so if one succumbs to the virus and dies, one is completely transformed and evolution here on Earth ends for now. If one manages to survive it, one is transformed without dying and continues to have opportunities in life to evolve.
Keep in mind Pluto remains in this neighborhood until late 2024.
Venus’ style of entrapment will come and go, and Pluto will still be at it. Other related issues with Pluto’s entire time in Capricorn will not clear up until after it leaves Capricorn and enters Aquarius. Pluto in Capricorn stirs up the need for exorcising corruption within powerful bodies of authority, government, military authorities and corporate power. In general, the hierarchical structure of our lives comes under a cosmic scrutiny and need for reform.
Pluto in the USA return chart.
Pluto in this area of Capricorn is hugely important in the USA chart at present because it is having a Pluto Return - Pluto returning to where it was when the US was born. It’s taken this long to get all the way around in one orbit of the Zodiac, something no individual will ever experience unless they live two and half centuries. This Return is dredging up all the ugly sludge the nation tried to bury in its first transit of Pluto around the whole 360 degrees, 12 signs and Houses of the US natal chart. We could call it growing pains, the mess we need to clean up from the psychotic behavior in the nation’s last two and a half to three centuries. It’s taken all this time since the nation was born to fill the wheel barrel Pluto is bringing: that’s a Pluto Return. It’s a kind of rebirth but maybe not one to be proud of, seeing all the failings and pain caused over this entire time all brought to the surface. We cannot change the past, and we cannot deny it.
The real news about 2022...
I will get back to the US Pluto Return another day, right now we are looking at the shift into 2022, a smaller focus. This Venus Retrograde conjunct Pluto is powerful and we should pay attention to it, be in the present moment. In myth, Persephone or Venus consented to be Hades’ or Pluto’s consort for part of the year in return for having six months out of the darkness commencing with Spring. The Winter Solstice is the depths of her stay in Hades. Life began to die at harvest time in the Fall. She returns to bring new life in the Spring. We just passed the Winter Solstice, and we all enter the New Year with a hope for new life, reawakening life, a fresh start. We celebrate the past seasonal cycle with feasts, revelry, food and drink. Shopping. As social creatures we need to observe these rituals to have relationships to each other and to our vague ideas of existence beyond the immediate present.
The really interesting difference coming in 2022 is only related to Pluto, in that Pluto has created the darker environment that the coming phenomenon will contrast with.
The real news about 2022 is Jupiter enters Pisces on New Year’s Eve 2022. Jupiter won’t stay there long, it flies through Pisces and moves on into Taurus in May where it will meet up with grandfather Uranus, another story for another day. It’s a swift passage for Jupiter through Pisces. While there it will catch up with Neptune which has been in Pisces forever it seems. Most people are not conscious of what Neptune does and its weaving in our lives, our dream lives. At least most of us are not fully aware while it’s happening. In 2022 Jupiter catches up to Neptune and amplifies it, shoots off fireworks and gets attention for it by mid-March peaking in their unified expansion of our consciousness through the third week of April. At that time as Jupiter moves on past Neptune, Venus arrives to also conjunct Neptune in Pisces.
The really interesting difference coming in 2022 is only related to Pluto, in that Pluto has created the darker environment that the coming phenomenon will contrast with.
The real news about 2022 is Jupiter enters Pisces on New Year’s Eve 2022. Jupiter won’t stay there long, it flies through Pisces and moves on into Taurus in May where it will meet up with grandfather Uranus, another story for another day. It’s a swift passage for Jupiter through Pisces. While there it will catch up with Neptune which has been in Pisces forever it seems. Most people are not conscious of what Neptune does and its weaving in our lives, our dream lives. At least most of us are not fully aware while it’s happening. In 2022 Jupiter catches up to Neptune and amplifies it, shoots off fireworks and gets attention for it by mid-March peaking in their unified expansion of our consciousness through the third week of April. At that time as Jupiter moves on past Neptune, Venus arrives to also conjunct Neptune in Pisces.
Only people in a coma will not notice this.
Given the uphill challenges of Covid culture we have been and are in now, this will transport many of us right out of it. Please enjoy it while it lasts; though it can lift your spirits high, it won’t last forever. We’ll come back down to earth and have to deal with Earthly things in due course. Anyone with a planet, asteroid or abstract point in their natal charts around 22 degrees or another astrological aspect in any sign will feel this, experience this.
Jupiter always expands the mind as far as it can go, up to the limit of Saturn which is the next planet out. Saturn always contains and adds structure to the expansion Jupiter brings. Jupiter has limits. Neptune is out past Saturn and has limitless horizons because Neptune’s limits are subtle, not strictly physical. Neptune is the planetary vibe that connects us like an umbilical cord to higher realms of abstract spirit. Neptune is said to rule Pisces in modern astrology. It was only discovered in the middle of the 1800’s; before that Pisces was ruled in traditional astrology by Jupiter, because both planets hearken to a higher ethical spiritual standard that expands our soul beyond what the container can usually carry. Jupiter does it to the mind, inspired ideas, high ideals at best. Neptune tries to connect to the divine essence of creation.
Jupiter always expands the mind as far as it can go, up to the limit of Saturn which is the next planet out. Saturn always contains and adds structure to the expansion Jupiter brings. Jupiter has limits. Neptune is out past Saturn and has limitless horizons because Neptune’s limits are subtle, not strictly physical. Neptune is the planetary vibe that connects us like an umbilical cord to higher realms of abstract spirit. Neptune is said to rule Pisces in modern astrology. It was only discovered in the middle of the 1800’s; before that Pisces was ruled in traditional astrology by Jupiter, because both planets hearken to a higher ethical spiritual standard that expands our soul beyond what the container can usually carry. Jupiter does it to the mind, inspired ideas, high ideals at best. Neptune tries to connect to the divine essence of creation.
Jupiter in Pisces is meant to imply that this is a naturally favorable environment for Jupiter and Neptune.
In some people’s lives Neptune can be a false god, spiritual values that are toxic to the soul. These people also experience a profound inflation of the connection to that psychotic state, they are inspired by this transit equally. While witnessing this one has to try not to judge and have faith that those caught in a psychotic episode must have the need to experience that. We rely on civil authorities to bring the laws of the land to corral those who break civil laws and with Jupiter present this seems likely to happen. Neptune by itself doesn’t tie itself to ethics and civil law, it sees all experience as potentially useful to a developing soul, even what we consider ‘bad’ experience. No one can determine this except the individual who apparently seeks their fate by diving deeper into the psychosis.
Each of us lives in a bubble psychological reality of our own making. For those whose basic state of mental health is sound, the opportunity is presented to be inspired by a greater reality beyond the mundane and feel a connection to the universe. This sounds like a wonderful opportunity.
The source of inspiration that transcends our thinking beyond our normal domain can take a shape apart from normal human experiences and values in the mundane world. Transcendental experiences are not necessarily good or bad, but because of them we transcend the normal place our consciousness occupies. Seeing a major comet streaking across the sky can do this. Even if the comet hits and destroys, this also transcends our usual scope of consciousness, it takes us out of the ordinary. 9 11 was a transcendental experience. A natural phenomenon on a large scale transcends day to day routine and briefly we are outside our familiar perspective of SELF and in touch with an unfamiliar yet familiar reality forcing us to contemplate a deeper spiritual value. We don’t stay in that moment, in that mental space, but the resonating waves continue to wash ashore on our beach.
Each of us lives in a bubble psychological reality of our own making. For those whose basic state of mental health is sound, the opportunity is presented to be inspired by a greater reality beyond the mundane and feel a connection to the universe. This sounds like a wonderful opportunity.
The source of inspiration that transcends our thinking beyond our normal domain can take a shape apart from normal human experiences and values in the mundane world. Transcendental experiences are not necessarily good or bad, but because of them we transcend the normal place our consciousness occupies. Seeing a major comet streaking across the sky can do this. Even if the comet hits and destroys, this also transcends our usual scope of consciousness, it takes us out of the ordinary. 9 11 was a transcendental experience. A natural phenomenon on a large scale transcends day to day routine and briefly we are outside our familiar perspective of SELF and in touch with an unfamiliar yet familiar reality forcing us to contemplate a deeper spiritual value. We don’t stay in that moment, in that mental space, but the resonating waves continue to wash ashore on our beach.
Some people have life-changing experiences around this planetary chemistry.
If they need to see Jesus then they could. It doesn’t mean it is Jesus, but they connect to that aspect in their higher selves. The psyche alphabet speaks with symbols. If they need to see their dead grandmother, they might. The window opens for a month or so before gravity reminds us that we are bound to earth. While you may think it’s really a shame Jupiter doesn’t stay in Pisces longer, it’s more likely even with the best of experiences you will be better off when it leaves and you come down to Earth, retaining the glow or after effect that forever colors your view of the world and yourself. It doesn’t have to be a dramatic event; Neptune is incredibly subtle, that’s why people usually miss being able to identify its effects.
Jupiter likes a big stage though, so I expect most of us get more drama than subtlety.
Take advantage of this period by at the very least devoting time leading up to it with regular meditations. Taking courses offered here at www.bridges.academy will prove to be a great opportunity to work with the energy at hand. Planning a vacation or retreat at this time is going to be very rewarding if enlightenment or escape is your desire. After the Jupiter rendezvous with Neptune, Venus catches up and repeats the general tenor of the period, perhaps making things more personal and tangible. If you decided to buy a mountain for the location of your private country cottage, the bill will come in May to remind you how reality works. You will still enjoy it but only when you have time to go there; that’s how reality is.
David A. Wheatley, December 28, 2021
David Wheatley
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David A. Wheatley has been a Fine Artist/painter since first exhibiting in Soho, New York during the 1970’s. David developed another talent first as a tarot reader then extending into astrological theory, a practice which lead to the development of ideas in his book, 2012 Before and After. Working occasionally as a full time tarot and astrological counselor, David grew familiar with many other related disciplines through the years that add great dimension to astrological traditions, including psychological perspectives and the development of quantum physics. David currently resides in Florida.
Contact David Wheatley at [email protected] for a personal astrological consultation |
