Potential and Promise

By Len Wallick

I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty to accomplish small tasks as if they were great and noble.”
— Helen Keller

As we said yesterday, the first aspect the Moon made after entering Libra was to oppose Jupiter on the Aries point. Today, still in the same sign, Luna conjoins with Saturn in the same degree and at the same arc minute at which Saturn stations retrograde tomorrow. On the surface that tells us that the lesser luminary is traveling fast and the ringed one is moving really slow, which is true of both. On a different level, this information links the two trans-personal planets and their closely concurrent transitions. Our blog today explores that link and takes a closer look at Saturn’s station.

If we were to say one word about the Moon in astrology, a likely candidate would be ’emotion’. Luna ebbs and flows from one aspect to another over the course of a day as do the feelings of all but a special few who are either severely disabled or substantially evolved. Even given that side effect of rapid apparent motion, yesterday and today have been exceptional with 37 lunar aspects to planets, major and minor. That’s more than one every hour and a half and that counts only the major aspects of conjunction, sextile, square, trine and opposition. That’s a lot of emotional to and fro and attests once again to the continuous potency in the cardinal signs during this year of transition between outer planets on the cardinal points.

Emotions, of course, are a factor in relationships of all kinds. Even business relationships, governed by contractual boundaries and legal regulation are subject to emotional investment even if final decisions are determined by an economic bottom line. Among the many touches the Moon had and will have yesterday and today, none seem more auspicious than those with Jupiter and Saturn. Both of them have something to tell us about transition in relationships right now.

The lunar opposition with Jupiter on the Aries point is a pointed reminder of the need to negotiate. Given what appears to be the beginning of an expansive trend of energetic and probably well-intentioned personal aspiration, relationships may suffer. It will probably be necessary to consciously balance that trend by being strong enough to proactively offer more inclusive, non-confrontational options. We say necessary because in the long run, one thing that will probably prove true about the cardinal sign continuum is the need to navigate the course through supportive and constructive relations with others.

Today’s lunar conjunction with Saturn encounters the same situation from a different perspective. First of all, retrogrades are really optical illusions. No planet moves backward in reality. All planets, however, trace different sized orbits around the Sun. The larger the ellipse, the longer the path. It is this difference in distance covered, combined with the degree of elongation and its inclination from the ecliptic that makes any given object appear to have a different speed compared to others from our own moving perspective.

Visualize a track meet. With bodies moving at about the same pace while keeping to their lanes on an elliptical track, it appears those on the inside track occasionally catch up to and lap those on the outside. It is this phenomenon that leads to a periodic appearance of backward motion from our point of view. Over the history of astrology, planetary retrograde periods have been found to synchronize with changes in how humans perceive and recall that planet’s expression. In more modern times the words ‘debility’ and ‘crisis’ have faded from the astrological vocabulary and replaced by the word ‘process’. In other words, retrogrades are not inherently bad. They are just, once again, synchronized with a cycle of change in our own nature of how the planet is experienced.

Saturn is in apparent retrograde motion for almost five months every year. Accordingly, it will station direct in mid-June. That’s a long while and we will have plenty of time to discuss it. The most important thing, however, is not to condemn yourself to suffer until the Cancer solstice because of an outworn and narrow-minded idea of what the process will entail. So, what else will that be? First and foremost, all retrogrades have one thing in common. The object in question covers the same longitudinal ground on the zodiac three times. It’s like reading a book, or seeing a movie or taking a class. After three times you know the subject matter pretty well. Not only that but you will also have the same planet in the same degrees as a constant while nearly everything else in your life varies.  There are two positive potentials of a retrograde period, especially a long one. First, you get to know the territory by travelling over it repeatedly. Anyone who follows a regular commute knows the advantages of efficiency that can bring. Second, you have the opportunity to view concurrent changes to nearly everything else from the perspective of stability.

Taken from that point of view, we are already one third of the way through the process and it has not hurt too much at all. By that we mean that Saturn passed the point where it will turn direct way back entering the last week of October. At that time, many were looking askance at Venus back-pedaling through Scorpio, about to pass Mercury and the Sun. We may also have been keeping a jaundiced eye on Jupiter and Uranus rolling back into Pisces or Neptune and Chiron doing the same in Aquarius. Few of us noted what Saturn was up to at that time, slipping into the first echo phase of an upcoming retrograde. An even smaller number were worried about it. How should tomorrow be any different?

In mid-June, Saturn will reach the same point it was late last October. By that time, we will in fact been twice blessed. By the time Saturn recovers ground to where it is today — just before the September equinox — that blessing will have been tripled. We will have seen a lot of changes and we will have been able to appraise then from the perspective of about seven degrees of Libra. Rather than being in dread, anyone with a sincere interest in astrology should see it as an opportunity to engage three times in a sweeping tutorial. If you missed the first chance, you have two more. The key is to take it one day at a time and either keep a Saturn diary or make mental note of what have been the high points.

What starts today — a conjunction — is among other things a combining of energies. If we focus on the word emotion for the Moon and the word relationship for Libra, we will have completed two thirds of that combination. After that we need a key word for Saturn. For the sake of argument, let’s say limits. Finally a description of the territory that will contain the retrograde process, say, framework. If you can live with all of that, we have captured somewhat a picture of today’s point in the process. A point that, because of its placement in a cardinal sign, will probably give us a useful perspective far beyond today. That viewpoint combines the energies of our fluctuating and changeable emotions with the idea that it is the limits and framework of relationships that are in transition, not necessarily their quality or sustainability.

In other words, things are probably not going to fall apart. Chances of being abandoned or ending up alone are small. Betrayal is not clearly in the cards. While we will probably be called upon to make an adjustment in our boundaries, our willingness to actively participate in the process will entitle us to request the same sort of adjustment from others. That brings us back to Jupiter and shows us how the Moon connects both. That’s just one day. There are so many other things going on. One would hope that you do not consider that to be dreadful but rather exciting, full of potential and promise.

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