This past weekend, the Sun made a conjunction to Uranus in Aries, right on the heels of the Aries Point New Moon. This has come with some high-tension news, much of it racial in nature — such as the situation involving Trayvon Martin, an unarmed black teenager killed by a neighborhood watch captain who has claimed self-defense. In New York City, politicians are finally raising their voices about the “stop and frisk” practices of the NYPD.
President Obama personalized a political issue, telling the world: “if I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon.” Of course for the many people who face this kind of bullshit every day, this is already a deeply personal, and unnecessary, incursion by political forces that seem to be having some serious boundary issues lately.
The result has been a lot of external drama, and not just in the news. With Uranus in Aries, it’s necessary to consider carefully what we do with this thing we call a ‘self’. As the astrology this week develops, it shifts gradually from a statement to a question — Aries Sun is approaching a square to Pluto in Capricorn, exact on Thursday. This is the Sun encountering the other side of the Uranus-Pluto square, the slow-moving aspect that’s defining our era of history.
We will get something like this each time the Sun changes seasons (and even signs): first it will aspect Uranus, which is a highly expressive, mental energy, and then it will approach Pluto, which is a deeper shade of experience, deeper both in sensations and its quality of inquiry.
When we say Pluto, we mean Pluto in Capricorn, an experience that is influencing everyone, and which spans from 2008 into 2024. It’s a long transit. Not everyone feels it every day, but when the Sun (or another accessible planet) makes an aspect to Pluto, we start to notice the energy. Remember that this deep, penetrating planet is still fairly early in Capricorn, meaning that it picks up on the themes of the Aries Point — personal material being made into a political issue; political battles being made personal.