Two Lifetimes in One

Introduction by Eric Francis

The cardinal sign alignment we are living through keeps taking new forms. It really consists of many aspects at once, and at different times different aspects come into focus. It’s a little like using a camera on a wide-open f-stop: everything is in the frame, but only certain things are in focus at once. At the moment, the focal point is now the Jupiter-Saturn opposition, which is exact Monday. I haven’t described at this aspect in detail: it’s been a bit lost in the news of outer planets Pluto and Uranus. All Jupiter-Saturn contacts are significant — they are the two largest planets; they are the two transpersonal planets, meaning they are the gateways between the inner and the outer solar system, and are like a vast area of collective experience.

Dr. Marc Edmund Jones, who after the long dark ages helped turn the lights back on in 20th century astrology, called this configuration “two lifetimes in one.” The opposition is the peak of the 20-year cycle that began in 2000 — it’s like a Full Moon between Jupiter and Saturn.

There is potentially a lot of stress in the parallel-worlds alignment of the Earth sitting between these two enormous bodies, approximately like a pea in proportion to two basketballs. That’s what an opposition is — the Earth between two planets. Astrology does not always come with a gravitational effect, but in some cases it clearly does. The distance of the planets does not make a difference — they’re out there, having their effect on the physical and astral levels.

With Jupiter-Saturn this can feel like two similar but irreconcilable experiences; being pulled apart in two directions; serving two masters or two concepts; needing to integrate two different ideas; or many other varieties of two realities that seem to compete with one another and which really need to be integrated. The Aries Point is involved — this aspect goes from early Aries to early Libra. Part of the integration is about coming out of our small worlds and making contact with the wider world. There is a wake-up call to this aspect.

Jupiter and Saturn are like brothers — totally the same, totally different. While astronomically similar, gas giants with rings that are like mini solar systems, each represents a different principle, and these are usually seen to be opposite ideas: expansion and containment. Think of humanity, or a person, or the Earth, as a soft pot on a potter’s wheel. The potter’s hand inside the bowl pushing outward is Jupiter — the principle of expansion. The hand on the outside of the wheel is Saturn, providing structure and a sense of necessary limitation. The wheel spins — time moves on — and the pot takes its shape. Right now the Earth, that is us, is sitting on the wheel, being spun around. And man it feels like it.

Then, we have a third planet within the exact focus of this alignment that is providing a distinct influence — Pluto in early Capricorn. Pluto is square both Jupiter and Saturn. These aspects are currently focused to half of a degree — precise, to a division of the wheel into about 700 thin slices. So, at the moment, we are in three major aspects: Jupiter opposite Saturn; Jupiter square Pluto; and Saturn square Pluto. Uranus is still in the mix, that is true, but it’s about to dip back into Pisces and is out of immediate focus, for now — it comes back into focus later in the year.

The ‘missing piece’ here is Cancer. Cancer is about nourishment, and our human emotional experience. Cancer is about incarnation. There is a point in Cancer — the South Node of the Moon. That’s telling us about our emotional patterns. I say this because the South Node describes a legacy of the past. It describes what we lean on and where we might be stuck. One thing we must confront is how stuck our emotions can get: how trapped in negativity, in obsession, in self-criticism, in the feeling of not having enough.

Pluto in Capricorn provides a point of reconciliation: the evolutionary principle. Whatever it does, Pluto tends to drive evolution forward, whether by focusing consciousness or by taking us kicking and screaming. In aspect to Saturn, though, we tend to contract awareness, and struggle in a kind of ‘conservative’ (which means fearful and reactionary) state. In aspect to Jupiter, we tend to crusade, we get hooked into our beliefs, and have this sense of being right. We can just as meaningfully (if not easily) take Saturn-Pluto and make deep adjustments to the structure of our lives; we can just as easily work with Jupiter-Pluto and make contact with the depths of our innate wisdom, what we think of as our ‘spiritual’ aspect, and put it to work in the world, as a matter of inner necessity for growth.

But before we get there, we have to sort out all these seemingly competing realities; these worlds and aspects in parallel. We need to see the theme in a long, long story. Seeing theme is one of the most challenging things to do in art or literature because the theme is what is not necessarily being said directly — it must be inferred, implied from events, observed in patterns. It is the ‘meaning’ piece of a series of events, or a circumstance; some would call it the ‘lesson’ but it’s more beautiful than that, and life is about more than lessons (which are a crude form of meaning). We are having an experience on this planet, and it calls for something we rarely offer back, which is to see our journey through all these trials and adventures, all these losses and gains, as one experience or journey, along which we evolve and become.

And then there’s the challenging point: to see this prior to everything being all worked out and living happily ever after — that is, to begin to pick up the message in the midst of the movement and the flow and to allow the process of growth and change to become a conscious experience. And with these planets all still aligned with the Aries Point, there is something about waking up and feeling the rhythm and dancing in an original way with the collective. There is something here about not being trapped in our heads. I think that one of the things we fear is that by encountering others, we give up our precious supposed individuality. What we would really lose are the limits of this thing we call the ego, which is a fearful identity concept. We would see, feel and experience the common ground, and in that process actually experience who we are as individuals, making a unique contribution to the whole.

If we’re afraid of losing ourselves, you can be sure we’re doing something other than being ourselves.

By Len Wallick

At 11:30 pm EDT Friday, Uranus contacts the Aries Point, to the arc minute for the second time in this century. It does so while moving retrograde back into Pisces, where another story awaits: two more contacts of the Jupiter-Uranus opposition. This happens one week to the hour after Venus ingressed Libra and one week to the day before Mercury stations retrograde. The changes, they do go on. This one, however, involves a slow moving planet in an epochal turn. We may want to look back, then forward to get some perspective.

But first, a word from the rest of the cardinal T-square still in progress. Saturn direct makes the third degree of Libra today with Pluto retrograde in the last minutes of the fourth degree of Capricorn. One week from tomorrow Saturn and Pluto perfect their final square aspect (exactly 90 degrees apart). The same day Mercury stations retrograde and Venus reaches its maximum eastward elongation, catching up with Mars just in time for a conjunction in Libra. Wow, talk about “all together – all at once”.

Did somebody say that there was some sort of climax before this? No way, Jose. If you think you have seen a climax, you ain’t seen nothing yet.

Jupiter meantime, is still retrograde, still in Aries for another full month. Now, back to Uranus. Close your eyes and remember, remember…

It wasn’t that long ago. It only seems that way. Uranus’ first crossing of the Aries threshold started Memorial Day weekend in the United States earlier this year. Jupiter was close behind. Mercury was direct in Taurus, nearly out of the echo phase of its previous retrograde. Mars was also direct, well past its own echo phase and getting out of Leo’s ‘Dodge’. Venus had just finished occupying the early degrees of Cancer in a pioneering completion of the grand cardinal cross. Saturn was about to station direct in Virgo and Neptune was about to station retrograde in Aquarius. As for Pluto? Well, what’s a couple degrees between friends?

How long ago it seems. The Great Leaper in the sign of self for the first time in nearly 80 years. It was heady. One can still feel it. Self-actualization was the potential and a revision of inter-personal paradigm was the imperative. Still is. But nothing like we thought it would be. There’s something about an unprecedented ecological disaster that tends to rain on any parade. Even one so long in coming.

Then Uranus stationed retrograde to end the next big holiday weekend in the USA, the fourth of July — right smack in the middle of an eclipse cycle. Something about the whole cardinal T-square shifted at that point. It was subtle, like a master pickpocket. Something doesn’t feel quite the same, but then we don’t get it quite yet. Now this first foray of Uranus in Aries is about to wind up. A reconnaissance, a toe in the water, an experience felt so personally its now going back to be remixed and made a part of everything else.

Uranus will station forward again at 26+ degrees Pisces in the first week of December, 2010. That will take place just before some heavy cardinal point action in Capricorn. Between now and then it will have continued to be a functional part of the cardinal T-square but it will have gone through a seasoning process.

By March of 2011, when Uranus emerges from the Pisces marinade for the last time, you can bet it will a different planet. More mature in its expression, focused, intense, ready for the long rematch with Pluto. Ready to mediate the synchronicity that will replace the unsustainable and untenable with something else. Then another case of the seven-year-itch will set in when Uranus moves on to Taurus in 2018. That’s about the time they’ll give the land away, free for the taking. Maybe I’ll be there to shake your hand.

Ahh, isn’t it just like Uranus to get us way ahead of ourselves, even as its going backwards? For the present, Uranus’ reunion with Pisces comes just a week before Mercury stations retrograde at 19+ degrees Virgo. By coincidence, that’s about where the Moon starts off today.

We are now in a period when there is nearly two weeks between the New Moon and the Sun moving on to the next sign. This period sustains the integrated energy of the luminary conjunction for that much longer as Luna moves forward, carrying a bit of Sol along with it. Assuming that one accepts that intuitive assertion, the Moon’s crossing into Libra this evening could serve as a subconscious, emotional anticipation of the upcoming equinox. Shortly after doing so the Moon will become the last object in the solar system to oppose Uranus in Aries until next year.

That’s a fitting send-off really, for the luminary of our intuitive, emotional child to wax with the day’s light of our mature and creative awareness. It should be the last one to reach across the equinox axis as if to say, “Hey, Uranus, check it out. Good start, actually. See you next year.”

Offered In Service

32 thoughts on “Two Lifetimes in One”

  1. Glad I bumped into you again: this article opened up a lot of connections for me. On the last Jupiter-Saturn opposition 20 years ago I was trying to decide where to live -the 2 people I wanted to be close to lived at opposite ends of the country – I can identify with being pulled in opposite directions (and I’m never sure I got it right). Just wondering how I can do things differently this time around, if it is a similar scenario… (but hey, at least I get another go)

    I feel the situation is complicated because the one remaining person shares my sun.

  3. Carrie: I’m with you. I’ve been itching for change this whole year, but everything I try (every job opportunity that opens up, the couple of interesting people I have met that I’d like to get to know a whole lot better) seems to fall apart. It leaves me wondering what I CAN do. I alternate between flailing around in confusion and frustration and trying to stuff all that frustration back down just so I can make it through another work week without breaking down.

    I admire everyone else’s ability to get through this tension with a positive attitude. I’m trying to get there.

  4. paola,

    I agree….I feel the change, change, change pressure too. The thing is, I don’t know what to change TO. Or where to focus the change. I have already changed so much that I am kind of at a dead end.

    Yesterday, my husband had an interview for the job he has always wanted. It was a freak thing that the position even came up in a district that has closed two schools, consolidated others, and laid off teachers. The position was at the school he wanted to work at and of the four-person hiring team, three had told him before that they liked him, inclusing the principal. Yet she called him last night and said he didn’t get the position. From what we have heard via the local grapevine the school is underperforming and the position opened up because the teacher who was teaching it had low test scores. Third grade is an all-important grade because that is when kids are first tested with the AIMS (Arizona) test. Our guess is they hired someone they felt was more experienced; someone they felt would be able to bring up the test scores. This position was really his best chance of getting a teaching job in this area of only one district which has so few openings.

    We are both thinking ” now what?” If the Pluto-Jupiter-Saturn stuff is pulling at us, it would be really good if we could figure out where it is pulling us so we could be more proactive in changing what more needs to be changed.

    Looking at our charts seems to make me cross-eyed because there’s so much energy going on right now. I still feel good about things; good but confused.

  6. Ok, here is what I came to:
    Saturn and Jupiter are usually so next to each other (conjunct in natal theme), that they are ‘coexistent’, their influence is like one thing made of two. Now, they are like s t r e t c h e d o u t, opposing each other. Does this make a difference in perception for me? Hard to say, but let’s observe the objective life situation.
    Financial and health issues are obliging me to make a choice I have been postponing for months. In all those months of postponing I have crossed layers and layers of fear, guilt, etc. Now the decision is made. The moment for action seems to be here.
    They are both square to Pluto, which is now in my first house.
    They are both looking benevolently, and with a smile they say ‘Change, change, change’…!

  7. Indranibe: Hey, I think it’s great that you are getting over your embarrassment re posting online with your comment here today! I can relate to the feelings of trepidation about posting and just want to say that this blog has been an excellent forum to learn cut those communication teeth because of the very affirming responses and encouraging feedback from other posters. It’s been a really neat place for us “bridgers” to learn and grow.

    I am also working my way through the Wrinkle in Time series and agree with you that it does touch on so many of the themes of self actualization relevant to this day and age.
    Cheers.

  8. Yes, “sustain your qualities” and hold that centre! This reminds me of Madeleine L’Engle’s book, “A Wrinkle in Time” where Meg, Calvin and Charles Wallace had to face the dark and rescue Meg’s father. The advice given to Meg was to ‘be herself’ – anger, impatience and all. All of these things, so often seen as nagtives, are also part of our ‘qualities’ list – like that exercise you described Eric. So sustain your qualities doesn’t mean ‘don’t be impatient, angry, etc’. It’s a good time to be everything we are. And as Len and Eric keep reminding us – be these things CONSCIOUSLY. If we’re angry about something, WHY are we angry? If we’re impatient, WHY? And go with it!

    It’s been a difficult time for sure – a lot of ‘inner nakedness’, soul baring going on – difficult, sometimes embarrassing (here am I actually ENGAGING in a public forum – have you noticed Eric?). In the past, I’ve been too embarrassed to do so – I’m learning from my facebook-crazy teenage daughter – their generation is brilliant at it, and as inane as isome of the twittering and facebooking seems, COMMUNICATION is becoming the NORMAL thing to do. It’s my generation that’s slow on the uptake – we are the in-betweeners – in between the old way and the new way, the past and the future – but we can LEARN; we are The Bridge. And as to that embarrassment, those little points and moments of personal contact – they are so totally worth the ‘nakedness’! And all of a sudden, your innerself merges with your outerself and you don’t need the mask anymore.

    What a ride boys and girls!! A bit like the 60s but more real – because WE are doing it without the drugs, so in fact the ‘trip’ – the magical mystery tour, feeling groovy, the whole appreciation of how beautiful we all can be – never has to end, and because it’s not a drug trip but a spiritual trip, we’ll be able to remember it and pass it on! Far out indeed… :o)

  9. wandering_yeti: It is such a pleasure to read your words in this space again. May you be blessed with monetary abundance soon. Thank you for sharing the fruit of your soulful journey.

  10. Ancient Chinese wisdom for the second American Great Depression:

    When Heaven is about to place a great responsibility on a man it first tests his resolution, exhausts his bones and muscles, exposes his body to hunger, subjects him to poverty and besets him with troubles. This is in order to arouse his desire , stimulate his tenacity and enhance his abilities.

    -Mencius

    Anyway, if I had a job what time would I have to cultivate a garden and practice my craft to a sharp point? The crappy economy is pressure to quit feeding the old world and use your spare time to build the new one.

  11. My Saturn completes a grand cardinal cross with this sky thing going on. Evidently I’m cruising through the eye of the storm today. The Saturn pressure has been my inner reactions to outer noise- barking dogs, teenage boy leaving disasters for me to find in the kitchen. I guess since my Saturn is the main part of my structure that’s being stimulated I’m reacting by riding my bike a lot, working in the garden, gongfu/music practice. Getting a job is a pipe dream where I live currently, but fortunately I have shelter and food and a working bike. Increased practice, especially the internal martial arts is the Saturn mark.

    I think for me Pluto’s passage through Capricorn is showing me greater depth in the martial arts I’ve practiced since the early 90’s and particularly in the case of a hybrid of Sun style Tai Ji form practice and Bagua circle walking has become the anchor of all other practices.

    I’ve been a musician since I could hold tools in my hands, but it’s in the space of the Bagua practice that my approach to music transforms as I shed muscular-emotional habits I carved deep into my structure by practicing bass every single day from the time I was 12 until I began undoing myself in the 90’s. I made myself kinda crazy with ceremonial magick and then began to ground the juice when friends began teaching me yoga, tai ji, bagua and treating me with herbs and acupuncture.

    I never made much progress in the martial arts until the last few years because I kept hurting myself until the softer therapies began to cool me off. It took a lot of healing to get to the point where I had the energy to commit to a daily practice at all. I know from experience that with anything like music or gongfu if you practice less than every day you don’t progress. At best you can maintain a plateau.

    Now with daily practice in circle walking I’m doing more than just undoing what damage I’ve done to myself by lack of mindfulness since the last time I practiced. Every time I walk the circle something else I forgot how to relax remembers it’s a muscle and not a strand of steel, some other bullshit I’ve been carrying around comes into the light and melts.

    Well, I’m not making any money right now, but I’m sure getting a lot of work done. Go Saturn!

  13. “If we’re afraid of losing ourselves, you can be sure we’re doing something other than being ourselves.” I really like that line. I also believe there is a celestial invitation writ large across the current heavens, inviting us to trust stepping into ourselves and that “we can just as easily work with Jupiter-Pluto and make contact with the depths of our innate wisdom, what we think of as our ’spiritual’ aspect, and put it to work in the world, as a matter of inner necessity for growth.”

    This is precisely what I’ve been struggling with for about two weeks since beginning an intense therapy group last week. I really wrestled with whether I wanted to cope with the wildly conflicting feelings I found myself facing — an anxiety of being exposed unwillingly to old pain that I know I had worked through, versus the anxiety of tapping into the heart of me and choosing to use the group forum to test drive the real and authentic me, putting me out in the world as a person who could actually choose to co-create that world.
    Once I voiced the conflict to myself (and then to the group and then my therapist along with the experience their heartfelt support), I began choosing to consciously bring myself forward to each and every situation (that being that actual goal of this therapy) and felt a sense of grounding that enabled me to handle the conflicting feelings.

    It also helped to bring to mind Tracy’s recent article: “Saturn in Libra, and Mars about to be” where she wrote that the fulcrum of the scales of Libra is more about “Saturn in Libra in its highest form. The fulcrum can represent the underlying truth that you don’t have to live on the see-saw at all.” That is precisely what has given me a new sense of freedom throughout this whole process, that I don’t HAVE to live on the seesaw and drive myself round the bend. I know I have a handle on these energies when I actually imagine I am the fulcrum instead and when that happens, there is such a rush of confidence and a knowing that I am expressing my potential by holding the conflict.

  16. Oooh Eric and Len. What great writing today! I see this push-pull in my life in this area: my old Satrunian doubting, fearful, pessimistic self changing (by my will and effort) into the Jovial open, accepting, positive, happy, self. I feel the old fear trying to drag me down but I have consciously made a change in my focus and perception to the positive and accepting. My DH is doing the same and both of us are experiencing such joy; our relationship to the universe and to each other has changed for the better. We are experiencing such closeness and intimacy and positive feelings now. It is AMAZING what a small shift in focus, nurtured every day with real actions, can do. For the first time in my life, I feel like I am the deciding person of my life.

    Thanks for writing about this today. Your collective timing is, as always, perfect.

  17. Eric,
    i know your question was directed to sarah but i may be so bold as to write something. The whole idea of “this too shall pass” does not imply being passive, it implies being consistent in applying oneself. When George Washington referred to “fair weather soldiers” he was not implying that those who stuck out the winter at Valley Forge were passive. They were not, as they proved the following summer. So it is now as Pluto returns to the same place it was when General Washington and his men showed the world what they were made of. We all now have the same opportunity once again.

  18. Sarah yes, this too shall pass, but is that the point? Is the idea to passively pass through a learning opportunity, or a creative opportunity, or to make it work for us as best we can?

  19. emily, yes! Eurika emily! You hit on something very important. With Uranus returning to Pisces, water and its management become crucial again, except different now. Water awareness is something we have to practice with a fresh approach until next Spring. That’s one thing about an Aries moon, seeing things anew is second nature.

  20. How synchronious of you!

    I too found the potter’s wheel analogy to be a wonderful visual for understanding the current push-me-pull-you.

    My synchronous “irony” is in the alegory of wheels. Last night I studied the myth/s about Ixion – who happens to be spinning forever round and round in my natal Libra – neatly intercepted by 3rd and 4th houses – the area around town that we all know is now being transited by most everyone else in the family who isn’t squaring or opposing.

    (Except Quaoa who is dancing the family jig keeping Ix company there in my land of unbalanced family dynamics. Perhaps he too is whirling in circles what with these transits. (He is a fitting diety for this SoCal transplant as he apparently has his origins in myth from this geographic area. Did I say this was all about family myth?)

    Back to the wheels – so as the wheels turn now, today, they are no longer just “…seasons they going ’round and ’round And the painted ponies go up and down. We’re captive on the carousel time” (The Circle Game, Joni Mitchell)

    We have much much more to contemplate as surely this is no merry-go-round spinning in endless circles for mindless enjoyment.

    As you – Eric Len Jazz Trio – um duet – show us, we are spinning with a purpose – the eventual growth in structure, beauty, purpose, and potential longevity of use (along with enjoyment).

    The clay R us. And the force most certainly is with us.
    May we spin well.
    ox

  21. Amanda – I am with you on that one. This is, at points, an almost unbearably stressful ride; though I am starting by necessity to take measures to deal with it. Perhaps that’s what it is bringing me: lifestyle changes that simply couldn’t wait any longer.

    And I loved your words today, Len – and I will hold on to the words you also gave Amanda. This, too, shall pass.

  22. Fe and Amanda –
    First of all, many thanks to both of you for skillfully overcoming The Trickster and making this blog happen. Fe’s comments today echo this theme of demarcation that seems to have become prominent this summer. It’s an ambiance more usual to the end of the calendar year. It’s a clue for all of us to heed.

    Amanda – It’s a fine line between being massaged and pummelled. You are a fine-line expert, are you not? This could end up being very sweet in spite of how it appears now. Sustain your qualities and you will prevail. It’s like a planet just before entering the house in which it is exalted.

  23. anyone else having trouble with this whole “integration” thing with regards to the stress? this lil’ ball of clay is feeling a bit more pummeled than spun lately… or maybe like i haven’t quite found the upward thrust in which to channel all this push in/push out energy.

  25. Paola, why don’t you suggest some ideas, opening up about what’s going on in your life and working with the imagery? I have suggested Pluto as the point of resolution.

    ef

  27. Hi Len and Eric,
    I would be very interested in knowing how we can apply the image of the potter and the clay, and the necessity for both Jupiter and Saturn to shape our experience in a balanced manner, in the case one has Saturn and Jupiter conjunct. In the natal chart, I mean.
    Thanks. This could give a new insight to the quest of a lifetime…

  28. be – The potter’s wheel image is Eric’s. Saw him first use it years ago and it really stuck with me as an appropriate comparison of the complementary enegies of Jupiter and Saturn. We need them both working together in a balanced manner in order to give shape to the clay of our co-creations. Anyone who has worked on a pottery wheel knows that the clay will fight you at first – it takes a firm hand – than as it begins to take shape one must shift from the ham-fisted to the subtle.

    Eric,
    It’s really cool to have this jazz-style format with you. The feeling that you put into the experience of the Jupiter-Saturn opposition really expressed itself inside me as i read it. What a masterful solo! i bow down to you as i would to Bird.

  29. It just feels different, but for me in a good way. For a long while now I have been bombarded with a Pluto/Venus-Ceres opposition, Pluto still close to my Ascendant, Saturn sitting on my natal Pluto (now moving away…), Saturn sitting on my natal Lilith (just arrived), and I guess I’m starting to love Hades in Cancer, just entering my 7th house…I’m starting to see how all these inner-movements have been preparing me for this Hades-guest in my own Sun sign. It’s all at the end for a good experience.

  30. Quite a year thus far, gents!

    Let’s start with the earthquake in Haiti, the Icelandic volcano, the spill in the Gulf, the floods in Pakistan and now the fires in Russia.

    Our pea of a planet is getting shaken and stirred by the pressure. Earth, water and fire, all enormously active. The planet Earth herself is a statement.

  31. Len,

    That picture of the potters wheel in part one of your piece toay just knocked me out. The soft clay being pushed from the inside while the outside is held firm to contain the form is just perfect for the Saturn, Jupiter opposition with us in the middle. Just love that.

    Part two was equally as good giving us a way to gauge the slow movement of the big guys, Uranus and Pluto in their transforming process. I’ve been thinking lately about how, many years ago, there were few astrologers providing guidance to few people, and now there are many astrologers giving guidance to many people. Each astrologer seems to be gifted with a special ability to see the movements of the planets in a unique way. This provides the many people with a way to put the picture(s) together in their own creative way. . . .a way that works for them but maybe no-so-much their neighbor. Your special gift of sifting through the data to grasp the core meaning of any astrological pattern has benefited us all greatly. Thanks Len.
    be

  32. ‘Right now the Earth, that is us, is sitting on the wheel, being spun around. And man it feels like it.’

    This image is so beautiful, and helpful. Thank you. One of the weirdest augusts is not ‘an accident’… it’s the potter’s hand!
    Of course nothing is an accident, but we tend to forget it and judge events as ‘inconvenience’ or ‘obstacles’… Argile is soft, and always says ‘yes’.

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