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 …

CANCER SOLSTICE 2010

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The Sun enters the Tropical (seasonal) Sign of Cancer on June 21, 9.28 pm.

It is the Cancer Solstice, Sun’s northernmost declination,

gate of winter in the southern hemisphere and summer in the northern.*******

I am re-posting here THE SOLSTICE CHART from an early article I wrote for the Art of Healing.

The Cancer Solstice Chart

Astronomers and astrologers alike mark the start of the Southern Winter and Northern Summer with the Cancer Solstice, this year falling on June 21. On this day the Sun lingers on its northernmost declination, before beginning to descend again toward the Equator. An important time in the yearly calendar, recognised and held sacred by most cultures, since the dawn of time. Still today, all the promises and mysteries of the coming season are contained in the Solstice Chart.

Click to enlarge

This year the Solstice Horoscope shows the Moon in Via Combusta, that trait of the Zodiac that traditionally is said to span between the middle of Libra and the middle of Scorpio. As its Latin name implies, translating something like ‘burning path’ or ‘fiery road’, I’m reminded here of the feats of walking on hot embers and fire accomplished during initiation ceremonies in diverse cultural traditions, including those of some Australian Aboriginals. The months ahead then we will all be walking on a difficult but enlightening path, a trial of sorts, with empowering potential.

The Moon also forms a beautiful Grand Trine, the combination of three 120 degrees angles, shaping an imaginary equilateral triangle between the Moon (emotions, family), Neptune-Chiron (spiritual healing and karmic suffering), and the Sun itself stationary on 0 degree Cancer, the ancient Gate of Life. Grand Trines are highly energetic configurations, mostly harmonious and positive, opening up new valves of understanding and offering outlets for greater creativity. This configuration seems to redeem the more difficult reading of Via Combusta. There is great potential for healing in this Chart and to overcome the emotional burning with an outflow of higher emotions, compassion, desire to help and heal the world, and all round enhancement of the nurturing quality of Cancer’.

Some fresh thoughts on the Cancer Solstice Season

I add here that this Solstice is embroiled, of course, with the Cardinal Grand Cross we are all worried about (as a 0°03′ Cancer Sun I can testify to this!), the two cannot be separated.

Even a distracted look at the Solstice Chart above would suffice to notice the dominant red square, the Sun making contact with all the known destiny makers: nearly exactly square (90°) Uranus in Aries, applying to a square to Jupiter in Aries, closely applying to a trine (120°) to Chiron in Pisces, separating from a trine to Neptune in late Aquarius and separating from a square to Saturn in late Virgo, and last, but not least, applying to the opposition to Pluto in Capricorn.

The Waxing Moon is on the last degree of Libra also in trine to Neptune and Chiron and in contact to Saturn and Uranus too, thus also contributing her light to the overall picture.

Before these amazing planetary patterns make us really superstitious perhaps we should start looking at them in another way. Like, for instance, as unique opportunities to grow up, individually and therefore globally. At this point I wouldn’t know a better way to put it.

The Moon disposits of the Sun in Cancer in the Solstice Chart, meaning that, at this particular Gate (change of season), the Sun of consciousness pays homage to the Moon of feeling and the psyche. Conscious meets unconscious, revealing to the ego the reality of the psyche, through depth of feelings, flights of creative imagination and psychic insights.

When people ask (and they do at present) how to better utilize these powerful energies, I say: work on yourself, make an extra effort to be aware of the implications of your actions, feelings, words. Participate with these transits rather than seeing them as your doom or the world’s doom.

Something is demanded of us, for sure, greater commitment and sense of responsibility; with the willingness to go looking for the ‘plank’ in our eyes rather than the speck in other people’s eyes. Of course we cannot expect everyone on the planet to be ready to look at themselves with such honesty, but this shouldn’t stop us trying.

These are not aspects which would tolerate avoidance. Facing facts squarely (Saturn), seizing the opportunity to turn things around, your whole life perhaps (Jupiter-Uranus), facing the fear of leaving the past behind and start over (Pluto) will help you to build sounder foundations for a better future.

These transits are global, engulfing the whole Earth and all creatures on it, not just us humans. A way, I feel, we may be able to exorcise them and find some redemption in them is by acting very locally, on the self in fact, each on his/her own self.

There will be tough times for a lot of people. Even if you are privileged enough to live a good material life (and many aren’t, even in western countries) your soul must feel the deteriorating conditions of the world we live in: the pressing social and financial problems; the conflicts of wars and ideologies, the displacement of millions of refugees, the dangers of an unchecked climate change, etc.

The Grand trine both in Water and Air Sign shows to me that the way out of the caginess of the grand cross is through the conscious cultivation (Sun in Cancer) of universal sympathy (Neptune in Aquarius), the willingness to heal what we can and to accept what we cannot change (Chiron in Pisces) and the sensitivity to apply all the above to our daily lives, especially in the area of relationship (Moon Libra-Scorpio’s cusp).

Let’s have a great Solstice season, wherever we are. It is, in part, up to each one of us what sort of world we will be in, in five/ten years time, and what legacy we’ll leave our children.

I feel we have a long way to go yet. In my view we will not find  instant solutions, experience collective illuminations or meet saviours on white horses coming to our rescue. Perhaps I am too much of a skeptic. Let me know what you think; your comments are always welcome.