2004 annual horoscope
from Planet Waves

NOAA

It was.

Will Pitt is not given to hype, and he's not an astrologer.

Big changes are coming, as in big big, as in changes that push, stretch and test us. One interesting thing about the division between 03 and 04 was that one of the major events behind all this change quietly occurred on Dec. 30, which was the last ingress of Uranus into Pisces, for good; no more retrogrades into Aquarius. The Roaring Noughties have begun.

The wave of progress that's shot through my personal world and the people around me in these two weeks has been pretty astonishing; all kinds of changes, all kinds of decisions, movement, movement, movement.

Movement excites some people, it annoys others, it makes some sick and it makes some mad. A lot just go along unconsciously. In most respects, the choice is yours. One thing is for sure: we're not coming back this way. All you can really change is your attention. You can be as awake as you want, or as asleep as you want.

Now, when I say change, I mean two things. One is of course the world changing. I think things will be getting interesting in late July when the Democratic National Convention comes to Boston (the 26th to the 29th). I'm feeling one of those big, fabulous protests coming, though I've read nothing about it. Then we all take the ride though the rather shocking astrology around the All Soul's Day election, which promises that this will be a genuinely important election not merely for who is elected, selected or erected, but rather for the election process itself.

I think we're going to see some of the rather extreme polarization of United States society come out at this time -- both MoveOn and the fundamentalist Christians have big, vocal constituencies, and with all the political movement already happening around us, anger about the war is likely to come to a head, or one of its many heads.

I have described the election astrology in other places and I'll have more to say about it. But the months of October and November deliver eight eclipses -- one of the Moon, one of the Sun, plus six eclipses of planets by the Moon. The election chart itself is like an electromagnet in the computer repair shop. Nobody is coming through that one with the data on their hard disk intact.

Yet there's an event June 8 to which the winter and spring are a long introduction. That event is the exact transit of the Sun by Venus. The last time this happened was in the 1880s, and the next time is 2012. While 2012 and its implications are matters of mystery and speculation, the seasons we're approaching are a tower in the bridge to that time. Metaphors like 'leap beyond technology' and 'ascension' have been used to describe what happens around that year, but we can, for sure, look for clues this year, and make decisions to shape the future.

I think this is a big point to living consciously -- that in experiencing the present, we shape the future. Most folks are so far removed from this process it's rather amazing, given how obvious the connection is. In thinking of the future as something separated from the present, we break the continuity of time through which we can travel consciously from one space to the next.

I tend to see the issue -- in part -- politically. I know that may be a trap, and I know there's more to it. I guess it's like this for me. On the path to getting free, sooner or later we encounter politics. Given how long the political process takes, it may as well be sooner. But taking an active and conscious role in politics on any level involves a big step: taking personal responsibility for collective destiny.

How we run the city of our lives, our community, our country are all intimately connected with the people we are becoming. Whether we shield ourselves from the good, bad and ugly with a veneer of denial or not, we are subject to what happens in this world, and we help create it. Ignorance is not an especially happy state of mind. It's a form of darkness.

The most harrowing connection I have made between my work as a personal consultant and that as a political observer is the extent to which people in our society tend to be abused replays itself over and over in the political arena. As an astrologer, I am aware of how many people were raised in abusive environments. This prepares us for abuse; it sets up the emotional expectation and what are called the limbic pathways; and it closes down our ability to see other possibilities. We accept the presence of abusive politicians, who screw over every constituency including their own, because so many of our parents were so mean to us.

And, while we're polluting the world with dioxins that pass through the genetic material for seven generations, we're creating debt that will endure perhaps as long. And that, really, is quite vicious.

If we want to be free from this one, we need to do something new. We need to make the personal connections between what we experience in the governance of our society, and how we organize our homes, companies and our communities, and our family legacies. The healing of our society is the sum total of the individual healing we experience, but that total needs to be added together by people doing something that would be quite radical and daring, which is getting together for a purpose other than to make money or harm people.

We can do it. This is a big change, but change is thick in the ethers and bursting in the hearts and minds of many. Just remember, if you're feeling fear, deal with the fear first.

Continue: Water and the World