We get different kind of years as we go through life. Bad years, good years, so-so years. And then there are years when one of the outer planets – Uranus, Neptune, or Pluto – crosses the angles of your chart. The angles (Ascendant / Descendant, you and your relationships & marriage, and Midheaven /Imum Coeli, your career and your family, also your mother and father) are your personal Cross of Matter: they uniquely reflect the place and the moment of your birth, and thus firmly attach you to this reality. Whenever an outer heavyweights crosses the angle, it guarantees excruciating changes to your life by circumstances beyond your control. If it sounds dire, that’s because it pretty much always is. An average human being can get a handle on changes brought about by a Saturn transit, as difficult as they may seem, as those are meant to restructure one’s reality – through hard work, hard lessons, taking more responsibility, etc. If you work with Saturn, Saturn will work with you – and give you long lasting rewards. Hence, these transits happen on a 29 year cycle pattern, with reality checks every 7.25 years.
Outers, on the other hand, tend to tear your reality apart. Their transits are very hard because we find that we have absolutely no control over events – and our human nature doesn’t do well with that. Uranus blows things in your life to pieces like a lightning bolt, leaving you thunderstruck and shocked (“hey, you are liberated now!”). Neptune dissolves things, like mirage disappearing in a desert (“hey, you now learned to let go and to go with a flow!”). Pluto… well, Pluto anihilates your reality – and then you rise from the ashes (“hey, you didn’t die – consider that a bonus!”). Thus, it’s appropriate that they happen rarely.
The way the angles go, the areas of life will be affected in the following sequence, which can start from any point in this list, depending on your birth chart:
– you / your body (ASC),
– your roots / your family / father (mother) (IC),
– your relationship and partnerships: your marriage / your spouse / your partner (in love or in business) (DSC);
– your career / self-fulfillment / your mother (father) (MC).
Uranus’ cycle, the fastest of the three, takes 84 years to complete. In terms of crossing the angles of your chart, it will hit at least 3 during the life time and, with today’s span of life, has all chances of hitting all 4. Neptune takes 165 years to complete its cycle – so in all likelihood it will touch your angles only twice. Pluto, the dark force far out, takes 248 years to complete its cycle. You will experience its unforgettable transit to one or two of your angles, depending on your chart.
Considering the slow pace of the outer planets, when they transit any of your personal points they take their time and touch them at least three times – Direct, Retrograde, Direct – before moving on. This makes it for a very long year. Depending on how close their Retrograde point is to your personal point, the experience of the transit will fall somewhere on the scale between “fast development, peak, long time to leak the wounds” and “long heavy build up, peak, quick inner release.” If the outer planets stations on your personal planet, hovering like an implacable angel of change (Uranus), loss (Neptune), or destruction (Pluto), that’s a whole over ball game.
So long story short, Pluto is crossing my Cap MC in the 8th house this year (Equal Houses). It made it’s first pass just a few weeks ago. Last week I got a call that my father, who lives on the other side of the world, is in the hospital with the third stroke, partially paralyzed and with prognosis uncertain. Life is starting to uppend…