the truth is revealed

the september 2003 forecast

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go to past forecasts.

mercury, mars, chiron, uranus, and neptune are retrograde.

sun sextiles saturn	10°52' virgo/cancer	september 3
venus squares pluto	17°15' virgo/sagittarius	september 5
mars opposes jupiter	2°28' pisces/virgo	september 7
mercury (rx) conjoins venus	20° virgo	september 7
moon occult mars	2°07' pisces	september 9
sun squares pluto	17°17' virgo/sagittarius	september 10
full moon	17°34' virgo/pisces	september 10
sun conjoins mercury	18° virgo	september 10
mercury squares pluto (2nd of 3rd)	17°17' virgo	september 11
uranus re-enters aquarius	0°00' aquarius	september 14
venus enters libra	0°00' libra	september 15
chiron returns to direct motion (stationary direct)	12°23' capricorn	september 18
mercury returns to direct motion (stationary direct)	12°24' virgo	september 20
sun enters libra	0°00' libra	september 23
new moon	2°38' libra	september 25
venus squares saturn	12°23' libra/cancer new moon at 4°02' virgo	september 25
mars returns to direct motion (turns stationary direct)	0°07' pisces	september 27
mercury squares pluto (3rd of 3)	17°29' virgo/sagittarius	september 28

all dates are based on pacific time.

i waited too long to do the forecast. i wanted to see what was going to happen at the end of august, on and after the 28^th, so i had some concrete results to write about. well — the energy swept me away, and now i’m surfacing for air. i suspect that others’ lives will mirror my own experience, since i am probably responding to the energies in a typical way. so what has happened?

there was a spurt of truth-telling around that date — about the failure of the liberation of iraq, the failure of nation-building and the liberation of the women in afghanistan, even a little about bush’s wanton heedlessness for the health of the planet. there were even reports about the ineffectiveness of the war on terrorism, our loss of civil liberties, and as seldom comes up now — the rising power of al qa’eda. in short, doubts surfaced about the effectiveness of the bush administration in achieving its intended goals. there were signs of admitting weakness as bush’s budget-busting go-it-alone scheme for “rebuilding” iraq was subtly set aside as colin powell revealed a u.n. resolution for bringing funds and other nations under u.n. auspices to the rebuilding effort — something that is anathema to the neo-cons currently in power.

unfortunately the truth was nowhere to be found in california, where schwarzenegger was still able to get away with saying that he was going to do away with budget problems in some unspecified but wonderful way.

in the lives of those around me, i could see a crescendo of activity and tension, even as i felt the tension rise within myself, partially in response to outside pressures and unexpectedly imposed short deadlines.

the planets formed a “cluster opposition”, with three planets on one side (sun, venus, and jupiter) and two on the other (mars and uranus). in addition, both mercury and pluto changed directions. it was a set-up, and as the moon triggered them each in turn (adding a final explosive flourish to events as it ran pluto’s gauntlet), and we may have felt set up by circumstances or the people in them.

but what of september?

at the start of september, the crunch is dissipating, but that doesn’t mean there won’t be “echo” events — in fact, there are guaranteed to be, as this pattern casts a long shadow over the next few months. some of these events will occur in september, and that’s what we want to anticipate and work with. principle among the dates is september 11^th. mercury and pluto interact for the second of three times on that day, preceded by the full moon, which triggers them on the 10^th. the first time they came together, we had the (first?) great blackout of 2003, revealing our third-rate electrical infrastructure. i expect other weaknesses to be revealed on the 10^th and 11^th, since these planets specialize in revealing weaknesses. this does not mean that there will be another attack on that day, but we do know of al qa’eda’s love for anniversary events, as well as its penchant for re-attacking targets that were previously incompletely destroyed. more truths will be revealed that day as well, both in the news and in our personal lives, and we pray not too explosively. the weather is sure to be distinctly out of balance at several places in the world around this date, perhaps producing a hurricane or typhoon of unusual intensity, or coinciding with extremes of heat, cold, or wetness. mars and jupiter oppose each other on the 7^th, adding to the heat, whether meteorological, personal, or political.

other dates of relatively high profile are those when mars and mercury return to direct motion. mars retrogrades are always a bit of a wrench, and this one has been especially for many of us because of the other “planetary complications” that coincided with its biennial perversity. from the catholic priest molestation scandal (what a perfectly piscean-religious misuse of mars’s sexual-aggressive energies!) to the obscurantism of the bush administration’s handling of iraq and the war on terror.

mercury is the first to give us reason to breathe a sigh of relief — perhaps in terms of gasoline prices, on the 20^th, but we will really feel a difference once mars returns to its dominant modus operandi on the 27^th. this event with merge with the final mercury square to pluto, which occurs on the 28^th, producing a release of information and subsequent change in direction in some misdirected initiatives.

looking further ahead

even though these are the only dates in september that stand out in this pattern, there are other dates further ahead that i’d like to mention, because they will all tie together. these are related to the sensitive points established at 0° and 10° pisces, where mars made its stations (direct and retrograde, respectively). the first of these dates is january 2^nd (uranus conjoins the point of mars’s direct station), but then there is a series of dates in 2005–6, principally may–july 2005; and around february 18 and november 20, 2006 (mars’s retrograde station).

how does this affect our lives?

symbolically, mars is giving us a glimpse of what lies ahead under the uranus-in-pisces transit. the coming seven years of this transit will give humanity a chance to explore the virtues and vices of various expressions of idealism and teach us more about which current forms are useful and which ones are dangerous. what we have seen (or will have seen) by the end of september will presage our experience for the next three years, as uranus transits the first decanate (1/3, or 10°) of pisces. the first decanate is typically the time when we discover what issues are at hand and what we stand to lose if we don’t change in a particular direction.

one thing that occurs is the opposition of uranus to the position it was in when it conjoined with pluto in 1967. while this will not come for several years, we are already feeling it a little. in addition, uranus is in the sign square to the one that pluto is in (sagittarius), even though they will not square each other until they go into aries and capricorn, respectively. we are experiencing a backlash against the freedoms gained as a result of the cultural movement spawned in the 60s, spearheaded by george w. bush. if british psychologist oliver james (“so george, how do you feel about your mom and dad?”, in the guardian, 9/2/03) is to be believed, he is the betrayer-in-chief of his generation — something we will have the chance to see more explicitly demonstrated in the coming years (since he is likely to be re-elected).

in our own charts

for now, we get a glimpse of how we ourselves need to shift our own ideals — or our path to fulfilling them. we are quite likely to find ourselves disillusioned with notions that we have long held dear to our hearts. how we respond to these new insights will determine how we experience this uranus transit.

if we have planets in the mutable signs (gemini, virgo, sagittarius, pisces), we will experience the effects most in terms of those planets and the way we express them. for instance, if we have mercury in a mutable sign, we will find our awareness increased in the area in which it is found in our chart, and we may have to rethink how we deal with information that we “learn”. no matter what planet is involved, we may find that we feel stressed out with respect to the things it rules, and we may need to find new coping mechanisms. we will need to take care of our health in the areas ruled by the sign and make sure that we are in balance with respect to the substances ruled by the planets. we may find our breathing, digestion, mobility, or immune system compromised.

one of the key processes we will be required to manage with more finesse is our ability to surrender. we will need to know when to do so, why and to what extent. we first need to know what surrender is. surrendering is not giving in, it is going with the flow. it doesn’t mean that we shift our intention, we merely bend with the forces that flow around us so that those forces don’t cling to us and delay us in our task. this flexibility is at the core of the mutable signs — it is the source of their strength.

other fronts looming ahead

when the sun enters libra on the 22^nd, the energy emphasis downshifts on the mutable signs (the sun is where the “heat” is) and up-shifts on the cardinal signs. now that saturn is in cancer, we can expect new crises to arise. the current empire-building phase of american foreign policy is the expression of the ideals of our very cardinal (cancerian) president. while these issues will emerge more in october than september, we will see them foreshadowed in the last days of this month.

if this month goes off without a real hitch, we can consider ourselves lucky — even if it means that we are in a part of the world not directly affected by the energies. however, we will experience them indirectly, even if it takes time for the effects to radiate into our sphere. certainly, we’ve all felt the energies on a personal level. if we can rise above our personal needs to see the urgency of some issues larger than ourselves, we may yet be able to thwart some of the long-term problems that are developing around the world right now — problems that won’t manifest materially for another seven or so years.