Astrological Highlight February-March 2023: Saturn in Pisces and Pluto in Aquarius

Puppet of ‘The Old Man and the Sea’ by Bernd Ogrodni

In February and March two major planetary actors will be moving to new Signs: on March 8 Saturn will enter Pisces, after nearly three years in Aquarius, and, on March 23, Pluto will enter Aquarius, after sixteen years in Capricorn.

February then will be an interlude, perhaps a mix of hopeful expectations and off-putting apprehensions. While Saturn will not return to Aquarius for another thirty years, Pluto will make a brief foray back into Capricorn from June 12 this year to January 22 next year.  In this article I am mainly focussing on Saturn’s passage through Pisces.

Saturn in Pisces (March2023-May2025):  a series of unfortunate events or order into chaos?

One thing is certain: Saturn is not in an ideal environment in the Water Sign of Pisces. This planet’s function is in fact to build strong and durable foundations upon which, individually and collectively, we create a measure of practical know-how and psychological maturity to deal with life’s many demands.

In Pisces Saturn will have to erect those foundations in an often shifty, murky environment, where, to make headways, this planet’s rigid nature will have to acquire greater flexibility. It would be like building a solid, safe bridge over a fast and deep river, full of hidden currents and even dangerous maelstroms! Certainly not impossible, but not easy either.

Pisces is all about the un-spoken and inchoate world of emotions, psychic awareness, dreams, ideals, often at odds with our experience of reality. How are we going to reconcile Saturn need for order and structure in this fluid, ever changing setting? Adaptability is one key word and another could be ‘planning’. Without these qualities we could fail to make the best of this opportunity. And there is a lot of positive that we could derive from this transit.

We could manage, during these three years, to get our act together, tackling the issues that have surfaced in the last thirty years but remain unresolved. It is true that Pisces, last of all Signs, represents a time for reaping the fruit of previous actions, paying the price for our errors etc. Acceptance of our collective responsibility about the state of the world and our own personal lives will be a necessary if painful first step toward realistic solutions. It is time to face the music, take stock of things realistically and find viable rather than fanciful solutions to problems. For example we could benefit from Pisces’ fertile imagination to perceive practical solutions that linear thinking could not possibly offer.

At the same time we may be able to better scrutinize, in the light of reason and realism, the wild beliefs and theories that, as a global psychological pandemic, have infected the world in recent years, especially via social media.

Saturn tends to throw a realistic light onto the weak aspects of any Sign it transits. In Pisces its scrutinizing lenses will focus on beliefs and make believe, on fanciful notions and shoddy thinking which are Pisces’ weak points.

Saturn could be the raft we build to navigate the world’s troubled waters as well as our own inner currents that risk to bring us astray from our spiritual destination, the peace and contentment we all aspire to. Let’s remember that in Pisces is distilled the whole wisdom of the zodiac and no cycle ends where it began.

More pandemic pandemonium?

A number of astrologers feel that the passage of Saturn into Pisces is an indication that the Covid conundrum will worsen in the coming years, and new pandemics could even emerge. What is the origin of this belief? Saturn is known as the Lord of Fate, whose role is to test humanity thorough all sort of difficulties and limitations; and Pisces is the Sign associated, among other things, with fatalism, passivity, and extreme susceptibility to external influences, even literally to infections. While there is a certain logic to this thinking, I would like to explain here the difference between this upcoming transit and those that foreshadowed the 2020/21 Covid crisis.

In its orbit around the Sun Saturn returns to the same Sign every 29 and half year. Does the world experience an exceptional pandemic every time Saturn is in Pisces? If this was the case such a crisis would be a regular, cyclical experience. What happened in 2020/21, on the other hand, was a series of rare cosmic events, namely the alignment by conjunction of Jupiter, Saturn, Pluto and the then current Capricorn-Cancer Eclipses, adding the Sun, Moon and Mercury to the mix! For years previous to those alignments astrologers pondered on their possible long term significance for the world.

No transit as intense as those are on the card this year. Because of this I am not inclined to predict a doom and gloom scenario of a world gripped by pandemics while Saturn transits Pisces. However, due to the fact that Covid variants of various severity are still emerging and vaccines haven’t been the solutions we hoped for, while many are still living with the challenging aftermath of this illness, a semi-square angle (difficult) between Saturn and Chiron (a planet associated with medicine, illness and healing), occurring in February, August and November this year, and another semi-square between Saturn and Pluto next year could yet prolong the effects of this virus, three, four long years after its inception.  These possibilities, if they are meant to manifest, are remnants however of that 2020 historical alignment rather than simply the product of the passage of Saturn through Pisces.

Saturn in Pisces and You

The Signs more directly impacted by this Saturn’s transit will be the Mutable Signs Pisces, Virgo, Gemini and Sagittarius, and, to a lesser degree, the other two Water Signs, Cancer and Scorpio. This transit’s difficulties and opportunities could apply to you more than other people.

Also people born in 1935/37, 1964/67, 1994/96 (for greater accuracy check your date of birth with Saturn’s position in your Birth Chart) will be experiencing, between March this year and May 2025, their Saturn Return, a time of consolidation, ending a thirty years cycle and beginning a brand new phase of experience.

An outline of some encouraging long term effects of Pluto in Aquarius

Just two days past the Aries Equinox, traditional start of the new astrological year, Pluto will enter Aquarius, for the first time since 1778, 245 years ago. Next time this shift will happen will be in 2270, 247 years from now! In 2023 though Pluto will be transiting this Sign only until June 12, moving back into Capricorn for a brief seven months spell. Its permanent ingress into Aquarius will happen in fact only from January 22 2024.

Here are few random concepts that could describe the potential positive significance of this historical passage: power to advance humanity; new eco-industrial revolution; profound and far reaching transformation of science and technologies; humanity working together toward ultimate regeneration to allow a rebirth of ideas and communities, shedding old national identities and political ideologies; new revolutions; people power.

May the Force be with us, to make the best of this amazing passage into a Brave New Age …

Historical planetary shifts unfolding: December 2022 and January 2023 Astrology: Jupiter in Aries, Saturn in Pisces, Pluto in Aquarius, Mars Retro in Gemini

A shorter version of this article was published by the Uki Village News, issue 127

DECEMBER 2022

This month is not just the close of another year but also the completion of the difficult 90 degree angle between Aquarius Saturn and Taurus Uranus, active since 2021. The November 8 Total Lunar Eclipse in Taurus, aligned by conjunction to Uranus and by square to Saturn, has intensified and prolonged the effect. The whole configuration has in fact generated extreme tension between the urge to progress and embrace evolutionary changes and the need to maintain a sense of permanency and the safe foundations we have relied upon for a long time, in our personal lives as well as our collective experience. 

For many this transit has signified having to move away from their comfort zone, further away perhaps that they may have envisioned possible. For others the change may have come as bewildering but otherwise positive developments, causing rapid psychological advancements, even epiphanies, brought about perhaps by unusual circumstances or encounters. The end results of this long lasting influence will become more obvious early next year, in ways that perhaps we didn’t see coming.

December and January will also be the forerunners not only of a new year but of imminent cosmic shifts destined to affect all our lives in 2023 and beyond. 

MARS RETRO

Until Mars continues its backward appearance (until January 13) the progressive effect of other transits (in particular the expansive effect of Jupiter returning to Aries) may seem to stall, forcing us to go over again old terrains we thought we have covered. Forward action may be held in check for a while, but there are visible openings, especially when the next Mercury’s retro period in Capricorn will also end (December29-January19). The Mutable Signs will be the most obviously affected by this transit (Gemini/Sagittarius-Pisces/Virgo).  Not only this retrogradation will keep Mars in Gemini for nearly five months (from October 30, 2022), but Mars will also be out of bounds’ (exceeding the Sun’s north declination), operating like a maverick, in unpredictable ways. A recurring square angle from Mars to Neptune in Pisces calls for extra caution too, to avoid falling into make believe traps that could bog you down for a while (last pass on March 15, 2023).

JUPITER RETURN TO ARIES

Just in time for Christmas, school and work holidays, on December 21, Jupiter will enter Aries and transit there until May 16 2023. This transit represents a four and half months window of opportunity to embrace a more optimistic, confident, forward looking mind set, encouraging energetic, enterprising, even militant perspectives, particularly in the Fire/Air Signs (Aries-Leo-Sagittarius-Libra-Aquarius-Gemini) and the other Cardinal Signs (Libra-Capricorn/Cancer). 

The time will be right to take decisive initiative and to make bold choices, putting into actions matters we had to keep on the back burner for a long time. Driven by faith and vision in better things to come we can sweep aside difficulties that might have seem insurmountable earlier. For many it could mean also to take a courageous stand to fight for what they believe in.

MERCURY RETRO

Mercury will retrograde in Capricorn (24°-08°) from December 29 to January 19. It could be advisable to postpone serious New Year’s resolutions until after the retro effect has passed. People more directly affected will be the Cardinal Signs (Capricorn-Cancer-Libra-Aries), having to revisit practical matters and commitments that may not be as solid as they thought they were. These are only temporary glitches however and, positively, they will urge you to be more conscientious and methodical when dealing with important practical matters next time.

SATURN INGRESS INTO PISCES

Now direct and gaining speed Saturn will cover five degrees of Aquarius during December and January (20°-26°). The ringed planets is in fact preparing to leave Aquarius (February 7, 2023) to begin its nearly three years transit through the Water Sign of Pisces. The whole transit will last until May 24, 2025; then return between September 2025 and mid-February 2026,  the cycle ending with the historical conjunction to Neptune on the threshold of Aries (February/March 2026), another game changer, like the alignments of 2020 have been (Jupiter-Saturn-Pluto).  

Saturn is the most solid of all the planets, intent at growing roots, establishing rules and limits, helping us to deal successfully with the practical demands of life. Saturn will find itself in a strange environment in the inconstant, emotionally receptive waters of Pisces, the least firmly anchored Sign of the whole Zodiac! How the world is going to deal with it this time around?

Saturn’s transit through the last zodiacal Sign marks, I feel, the end of an era on so many fronts, from down to earth experiences of the world to our collective spiritual path. Would we put our ability to build and make secure on less materialistic foundations? Or would we be swamped by escapism and make believe, becoming victims of our own blundering?

Aquarius and Pisces, last two Signs in the cycle, in a world-based astrology, represent our evolutionary struggles as a collective,  entire cultures, Eco-systems etc, toward progressive thinking (Aquarius) and spiritual realization/redemption (Pisces). All the way to the end of 2025 the opportunity is here to take responsibilities and work for the benefit of a wider world than our own private, egocentric domain. Could we as a collective meet the challenge of chaos and misinformation with disciplined minds and facts-based perspectives? I hope we will.

In my view, to all of us Saturn in Pisces will not be a care free period. Pisces, as the last Sign, encapsulates in fact collective and individual karma accumulated in the last thirty years, now materializing in our lives, mostly past our ability to control. 

PLUTO FIRST ENTRY INTO AQUARIUS, 2023-2024

2023 will be the testing ground for this twenty years long transit, lasting until 2044. After sixteen years in Capricorn Pluto will take its time to leave, at first transiting Aquarius between March 23 and June 12, to enter this sign for good only on January 22 2024.

To get an idea of the type of influence we are looking at, the last time this transit occurred was during the ground-breaking end of the 18th century (1778-1798), period epitomized by the French, American and industrial revolutions, marking the beginning of our modern version of the world, a powerful upgrade that changed everyone’s lives and also the natural world in very radical ways. 

Changes of immense magnitude seem to be on the cards for our planet then; not just because Pluto is changing Signs but because Uranus and Neptune, the other two giant at the edge of the solar system, will also shift Signs by 2025, respectively in Gemini and Aries. We are in for a mighty turn of the screw; hopefully we will not crack under such pressure.