In the Eye of the Storm—How Outer Planet Transits Work

©9-1-2010 by Donna Cunningham, MSW

As the east coast waits for Hurricane Earl—the fifth storm in this year’s hurricane season—I’m struck by what a perfect metaphor it is for the way outer planet transits work.   Any one of the slower-moving planets is likely to cross over the same degree three times and thus to make three aspects to any planet or point you have at that degree.

Occasionally, it crosses that point more than three times, sometimes—if you’ve already learned a particular lesson and learned it well—only once, but most likely three times. Like the path of a hurricane.   Stay with me…you’ll see it, too.

 Let’s pretend you know nothing about how hurricanes work, never been through one, never watched one on CNN. You do know there’s the potential for a big storm…they’ve been monitoring it for days, hoping it will turn out to be nothing more than a tropical storm.

 You sense it in the sweltering air. If you’re prudent, maybe you’ve stocked up on food and emergency equipment.  Maybe even boarded up a window or two as it got closer.  Thought about evacuating, decided not to. How bad could it be, really?

 But the weather gets rougher and rougher…winds and waves higher and higher.  And suddenly it’s right up on you…a full-fledged hurricane, the kind you’ll tell your grandkids about.  Earl, back in 2010. You hang on tight…hold on for dear life…pray, make vows to change your life if only you make it through this. 

And, suddenly, miraculously, the winds stop.  There’s an eerie quiet, but the winds stop.  You catch your breath, thank God with all your heart that it’s over, and that nobody died. Your home is still standing, it wasn’t that bad, life will go on like always. 

(Remember, we’re pretending you don’t know how hurricanes work.)

 And just as you start to let go of the fear that you’ll lose everything, the wind picks up again, stronger than ever, the waves higher.  You turn the radio on again, and they tell you that blessedly calm interval was just the eye of the storm, a point dead center of the hurricane’s path.

 Now Earl is back, stronger than ever.  You still have to make it through the second half of the storm.  Oh, shit!  

 The three passes of a typical outer planet transit are sometimes a lot like that.  The first pass can be rough, especially if you’ve never had the benefit of astrology to guide you through a transit from that planet or to that part of your chart. 

You can be overwhelmed, at sea about how to manage and control those energies. You can make a variety of costly errors in judgment, groping blindly in the dark with no hurricane lantern.

Then the planet goes retrograde and backs away from that point. (Like Saturn backed into Virgo and like Uranus is backing up into Pisces before they both go Cardinal.  Like the Pluto-Saturn square now close for the 3rd time. )  Like the calm at the eye of the hurricane, things settle down. 

 The crisis passes or seems to, and you rejoice that it’s over.  It was just a short storm, you tell yourself, an isolated incident.  Nobody really got hurt, nothing has to change, we can go back to the way things were before. Maybe pick up a tip or two about living better, no biggie.  

But no, the planet turns direct and goes back over the exact aspect.  The problem comes to a head again, and now you have to confront it or it confronts you. You engage it, you ride the storm, you sort out the damage, take in the changed landscape and rebuild.

If you prepared prudently, having heard the cosmic weather forecast and understood the implications, maybe you’re even in sounder shape than before the storm.      

Here’s a small segment of a table that covers transits from 1990-2012.  Download the whole table here: Transit Tracking Table for 1990-2012.         

2009	Saturn: 15 VI-3 LI	Uranus:19-26 PI	Neptune: 23-26 AQ	Pluto: 0-3 CP
2010	27 VI-14 LI	23 PI-0 AR	24-28 AQ	2-5 CP
2011	10-25 LI	26 PI-4 AR	26 AQ-0 PI	4-7 CP
2012	23 LI-6 Sc	0-8 AR	28 AQ-3 PI	6-9 CP

 

 That’s earl, folks!  Do you have planets in the early degrees of the cardinal signs, and have you been in the eye of the storm while they’re retrograde?  What have you done with that interval to prepare for the next passes of Saturn, Uranus, and Pluto?  Tell us about it in the comment section.

Some Articles that may be helpful:

• Uranus in Aries and the Cosmic Soup
• Uranus in Aries—a Heads Up for the Accident Prone
• Facing the Difficult Potentials of a Transit
• In a Crisis? Rescue Remedy Can Help You through It
• What to Tell Astrology Clients about Pluto in Capricorn
• Pluto-Saturn Preparedness Kit #1—Houses & Areas of Life Affected
• The Pluto-Saturn Square—Two Examples of How It Works
• Pluto-Saturn Preparedness 2: Best Case/Worst Case Scenarios

LINKS TO THE BLOGATHON ARTICLES COLLECTIONS ABOUT THE CARDINAL T-SQUARE:  The International Astrology Day Blogathon was dedicated to helping people understand and work with the Cardinal T-square and included collections of more than 70 articles about transits by Pluto, Uranus, and Saturn.  Go directly to the individual collections here:   

• Pluto Problems Got You Perplexed? Here’s What Helps!
•  Look After Saturn and Saturn Will Look After You
•  Uranus in Aries: Claiming a Self-Reliant Future 
•  Passing the Tests and Trials of Saturn to Build Better Relationships
• A Collection of Articles about Combining Essences and Astrology