As we approach the first day of 2012, you can forgive yourself if your expectations are high. After all, with Mercury in new territory for the first time since November, the New Year’s tradition of a fresh start will be reinforced. In the interest of balance, however, you should also be prepared to accept it as a blessing if you don’t see the results you had hoped for. That would correspond to Saturn in Libra and Neptune in Aquarius closing in on an air trine they will not achieve. That is called a “near miss” aspect.
Tracy Delaney of serennu.com defines near misses as aspects that “never become exact on this pass but are within one degree.” The applying trine between Saturn and Neptune has been within one degree since the Capricorn solstice and will remain so until Valentine’s Day, 2012. That’s a long time to be almost but not quite. It is a situation worthy of a closer look, beginning with the nature of the aspect.
Each of the 12 signs of the zodiac is identified with either fire, earth, air or water, the elements of ancient natural science. Each of the four elements are associated with three evenly distributed signs which can be seen to form the points of an equilateral triangle, hence the word trine. Libra, current host of Saturn, and Aquarius, location of Neptune, are air signs (Gemini would be the third). The relationship of planets in trine is deemed to be supportive and flowing with no critical content. In air signs that relationship would be on the mental level, existing in thought. The closer to exact the trine aspect gets, the easier the flow. With Saturn and Neptune, it is as if the flow of a trine aspect is between two entirely different realms.
Saturn is associated with the limits that define and build structure in our lives. Neptune, in the words of Robert Hand, “dissolves whatever Saturn builds.” One may reasonably wonder how two so contradictory archetypes can possibly support each other. The necessary answer is that they do so by connecting polarized states of existence, such as spirit and matter, or dreams and reality. With air signs involved, that implied bridge is on the intellectual level. A near miss would indicate that conceptual link somehow falls short of being realized, at least for the time being.