(c)2009 by Donna Cunningham, MSW
These past two months, amazing events have been mixed in with all the bad news about the economy. Every few hours, I turn on CNN 
to see what’s happened now. The millions of us at the inauguration of our first African-American president, the billions watching and cheering around the world. Someone to believe in again. A cabinet filled with brilliant, capable, ethnically diverse members committed to addressing our pressing needs. A stimulus package devoted to mending our crumbling infrastructures and working for the environoment. Transparency about how our money is spent and what our government is doing made possible by posting it all on the internet for anyone to see.
Many of us have talked about the Uranus-Saturn opposition and how it echoes the placements of the 1960s, and that is so. But another part of these first days of the Obama administration is a combination of transiting planets in Aquarius. From January 6th through March 15th of this year, at least three planets plus the North Node are in the sign Aquarius and sometimes as many as five. Among the players have been Mercury, Mars, the Sun, Jupiter, the Moon, and Neptune.
We could debate about whether or not that combination of planets has been a stellium. To me, when the Sun or Moon is part of the combination, two more will do. If not the Sun or Moon, then probably four planets or features if you include extras like the Nodes, Ascendant, or Midheaven. In the world at large, headlines would reflect the nature of the sign. In the individual chart, it would strongly emphasizes the personality traits and preoccupations of the sign i
t inhabits. The matters of the house where the stellium is placed would also occupy much of the person’s energy and attention.
So what about the babies that are being born with this stellium? What will they be like? They are likely to be quintessential Aquarians. Aquarius is the sign supposedly the most visionary and social-change oriented. It’s the sign of social and technological advances, the sign of the glitterati, and the sign of the unexpected and startling. It’s supp0sed to be the sign of brotherhood (?peoplehood) and equal opportunity. It’s a fixed air sign, often brilliant, eccentric, and devoted to changing the status quo.
Lots of mothers and grandmothers write to my advice column at Dell Horoscope, either appalled or bursting with pride at some unusual combination in a baby’s chart. It’s important to note that striking combinations like these don”t involve just one child–we’re a global society now, and anything that happens, happens to us all. Worldometers http://www.worldometers.info is a site that keeps a running track of births, deaths, and other statistics. It tells me that some 137,000 babies have been born around the world so far today, and it’s only 8:00 AM PST. So we might estimate that in the course of today, some 411,000 babies will be born with a the same stellium in Aquarius. And so in the 68 days that the stellium is in effect, almost 28 million children will be born, all with a much different reality than you and I grew up under. That’s enough people to change the world. We have no idea what the future will hold, but we can have hope.
Is it an unprecedented astronomical event? I seemed to recall that when I first started studying astrology back in the mid-1960s, the pros were wondering what the children born in February, 1962 with a major lineup of 5-6 planets in Aquarius would be like when they grew up. The stellium included Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Mercury, the Sun, and sometimes the Moon and Venus. There was a similar line-up minus Jupiter in early 1965 and 1966. In world events, the 1960s was a memorable era of social change. You can glean data like these from Neil F. Michelsen’s invaluable Tables of Planetary Phenomena (Second Edition, ACS Publications, 1993). This reference book uses computer data to track such major astrological events as ingresses of outer planets, outer planet aspects, eclipse cycles, and planetary clusters such as this one in Aquarius.
Enough technology, enough speculation! Let’s just enjoy watching history unfold.
