Things I wish I knew 20 years ago

Astrol­ogy Tips

Cyn­thia Novak, Astrologer

There is always some­thing good about the most dif­fi­cult chart. Look for it.

Mer­cury ret­ro­grade is annoy­ing, but ret­ro­grade Mars really screws things up.

Watch for plan­e­tary Sta­tions: These tran­sits are the strongest for luck or for frus­tra­tion. Give 3 degree orb for great­est impact.

Orbs mat­ter for tim­ing, but you can “feel” a tran­sit com­ing as soon as it enters the con­stel­la­tion. So although a Sat­urn tran­sit will frus­trate on some level for a full 2 ½ years, it is usu­ally most intense for 9 months. This is the period it takes to make 3 passes over one degree.

I look for­ward to look­ing back on a Sat­urn tran­sit. I don’t think it is an acci­dent in the uni­verse that Sat­urn and birth run the same period of time. Once it starts you can’t get away from it until it’s over.

When it’s over you have given birth to some­thing new. Life is set up so that you can’t “know” what that is until you look back on it. There is no way to do that with­out pain. If, how­ever, you focus on the pain, you’ll miss the gift of cre­ation that it stim­u­lates. Sat­urn teaches us to be in present time…even if that time is difficult.

An outer planet tran­sit will dom­i­nate your life. Look to their lessons to find out where you are grow­ing. Watch the degree of an outer planet tran­sit­ing in the heav­ens. Pluto falls at 25 degrees in the Side­real zodiac this year. If you have a planet in any con­stel­la­tion at 24–26 degrees you will expe­ri­ence a Pluto tran­sit effect. It will be more intense in the same con­stel­la­tion or angu­lar, but even at 30 degrees it will be felt and will be a major life theme. The moral of this story: Get used to work­ing with these energies.

Uranus is unpre­dictable. In fact, its unpre­dictabil­ity is about the only thing that you can predict.

The tran­sit has one under­ly­ing desire: “I wanna be free.” Of some­thing or some sit­u­a­tion. Typ­i­cally, that free­dom revolves around the desire to be free from old nag­ging fears and doubts. After all, that is at the heart of the mid-life crises. Ener­get­i­cally it feels as if you’ve got a fin­ger stuck in a light socket and it is puls­ing. Any activ­ity that helps in ground­ing is use­ful: I like to plant or just lie on the Earth.

How to know a Uranus or Pluto tran­sit will be bru­tal: The per­son says: I don’t want any­thing to change. As the astrologer, you know it will and you can “see” the area that the change will manifest.

A Pluto tran­sit feels as if the cur­rent in a river is pulling you. It starts slowly: a nag­ging pull toward some­thing. It keeps com­ing up again and again. It often looks a lit­tle crazy or irra­tional. The cur­rent becomes stronger and the life events more unusual until you just sur­ren­der and go with it. The river knows where it’s going.. Don’t bother to cling to the bank… This is easy to say and hard to do.

A Pluto tran­sit is often fright­en­ing. I’ve seen so many women who get a fright­en­ing pap smear or mam­mo­gram while Pluto is tran­sit­ing the ASC or lord of the 1st. Inevitably they face the fear of death and come out the other side in a few weeks when the test is run again. In fact, Pluto mak­ing this aspect often is indica­tive of suc­cess when you have surgery or radi­a­tion for can­cer: The doc­tor finds it and gets it out.

Nep­tune is a dif­fer­ent bug. “I’d rather be alone.” In fact, you can all just fade into the background.

It would be nice if we could take a sab­bat­i­cal dur­ing an intense Nep­tune tran­sit and go live at the lake. One woman moved into her back yard where she spent many hours, even whole weekends.

Make a space to retreat or get annoyed at those around you. Peo­ple think they want a divorce dur­ing this time when what they really want is some space within the lives they have.

You can read for any­one right out of an ephemeris: Just talk to his or her Trop­i­cal Moon sign.

Aries wants you to get right to it: Tell me what’s going to hap­pen to me. Tau­rus wants you to give them some­thing use­ful, but talk to his sen­su­al­ity. Gem­ini wants to talk: I know you think he wants to lis­ten, but he really wants to talk. Your job is to offer some insight dur­ing the time you are together. Can­cer wants to know about two things: money and fam­ily. They are try­ing to fill or feather the nest.

Leo wants to know about their chil­dren or lover. Don’t bother with false flat­tery; tell them some­thing real. Virgo wants a rea­son to believe what you say. After­ward, they want some­thing to do, so offer some homework.

Libra wants to know about love and how to get along with that one per­son who is dri­ving her crazy. Scor­pio wants to know she can trust you. Talk to her pro­tected sen­si­tiv­ity: The walls will drop.

Sagit­tar­ius is there for the expe­ri­ence; make it a mem­o­rable one: A lit­tle fun mixed with a lit­tle phi­los­o­phy. Capri­corn wants some­thing use­ful about money or fam­ily, a lot like Can­cer but more inter­ested in retire­ment and fun when he gets there.

Aquar­ius wants you to tell them what they already “know” to be true…you bet­ter get it right. Pisces wants romance and some­thing spir­i­tu­ally unique.

Mars and Sat­urn together are just plain hard. The con­junc­tion, square or oppo­si­tion of these two is a sign­post of inter­nal­ized stress. One part of you says “yes”, the other part “no”. One part says “stay”, and the other “go”. This can lit­er­ally man­i­fest as stress-induced health prob­lems. You’ve got to get the plan­ets to work together in some man­ner. Mars needs action and Sat­urn needs a job.

When immo­bi­lized by this com­bi­na­tion, find a job for Sat­urn then push your­self to take action to do it. This helps dur­ing the tran­sit of one to the other. The fear is that you shouldn’t do what you need to do. Fig­ure out a way to cre­ate a struc­ture (Saturn)for the action Mars needs.

We can learn from folks who have very strong plan­ets. Even if you have a weak planet, you can learn from these and apply them until they start to feel more nat­ural. What is a super planet? One that is in its own sign or sign of exal­ta­tion and in an angu­lar house. These are very easy to detect in the Side­real system.

A super strong Mars has to have phys­i­cal activ­ity. Mars will spi­ral into depres­sion if he sits around for too long. Get up and walk or lift weights but move.

When Venus is very strong she needs a lit­tle beauty and romance. While she hates to be on a bud­get, her check­book only has so much in it. Feed her inex­pen­sive facials or a project to beau­tify and a new lip­stick. Go to the resale shop and indulge in a new-to-you out­fit or fall into self-absorbed pity.

Super Mer­cury needs men­tal activ­ity. Give him some­thing to learn or he will lose rea­son to men­tal chat­ter. Bet­ter to find a prob­lem to solve than to fall prey to com­pul­sive think­ing about things that have no last­ing impor­tance: Like what she said or did yes­ter­day. What a waste of a fine computer.

Super Sat­urn needs order and a sched­ule. If your life falls out of order or you are out of work, build a struc­ture and fit into it.

A super Sun needs atten­tion. Find a healthy way to be on cen­ter stage.

A super Moon needs to know that feel­ing is a use­ful trait, not one that needs to be suppressed.