Master’s Musings, August 2023

It’s time for another peek at the school’s chart. A long hard look at your own transits and progressions can help keep you honest, and it’s the same for the entity we call the FCEA. That’s how we walk our talk – we listen when the planets shine a light on our path.

Most of us have seen the school’s chart before – here it is again in case you’re newly part of the family. This time I’m showing it with the current progressions in the middle ring and the current transits in the outer one. As usual, for clarity’s sake, I’m not progressing the outer planets – they’re too slow to be of much practical use. I’m also only using the transits of Jupiter through Pluto – they’re the ones that have time enough to pack the symbolic punch of deep developmental meaning. Everything is set for July 14th. There’s nothing special about that date – it’s just when I happened to be writing this essay. All of these bodies move slowly enough that nothing significant will have changed by the time you’re reading this.  

One glance at the basic natal chart of the school and you can easily see astrology at work. We’ve obviously got a massive 11th house. That’s because we’re a tribe – a group of people who have come together for a common purpose. There’s lots of Pisces energy too – after all, we’re a spiritual tribe. Our path is one of education – there’s the Gemini Ascendant and the big 9th house. None of that tells us anything we didn’t know already, but it demonstrates a good reality check if you’re using an “event” chart like this one – if it’s not true in “obvious” ways, that’s a sign that the chart itself might be flawed. Births are pretty objective things. Not so the “births” of ideas, relationships, or businesses. If the chart doesn’t echo reality in a crystal-clear “duh” sort of way, you’ve probably got a problem. No worry, we’re definitely good to go in this case – the school’s chart represents our reality very well.

Look at all those transits and progressions! As usual, one glance is enough to make you feel like you’re juggling a few too many balls. Birthcharts are complicated enough, but adding transits and progressions can be overwhelming. Much of the art of our work lies in knowing how to edit the clutter – that’s always our first step. Diving in willy-nilly without a plan is invariably a recipe for catastrophe. Those of you who are currently in (or beyond) FCEA201 know that our basic tool here is what we call The Four Nets. If you’re just beginning our program, you can read all about them in The Changing Sky. Basically they are simply a rough method of sorting through a slew of transits, progressions, and solar arcs with an eye on thinking in terms of first things first.

In no particular order (yet), here are what seem to me to be the biggest things currently going on in the school’s chart.

• Transiting Pluto is squaring the school’s Uranus.
• Transiting Uranus will hit the Ascendant in two years
• Solar Arc Saturn is conjunct the school’s Pluto
• Transiting Saturn is sweeping through Pisces, hitting all of those Piscean planets
• Transiting Neptune is conjuncting Mercury 
• The Progressed Moon is in the 12th house heading for the Ascendant
• Transiting Jupiter will soon be squaring our Sun and Moon
• Transiting Jupiter will trine the Sun and Moon in two years

Got all that? The heart boggles in the face of it all. We need a way of getting a handle on the complexity. The Four Nets to the rescue! Be warned though – they’re flawed. I wrote them so I should know! By all means, use them, but only as a starting point. The trouble with the Four Nets is that they suffer from the same limitations we find with the orbs of aspects. What orb should we use for Mercury? The right answer varies with Mercury’s strength and centrality in the chart. If Gemini is rising and the person’s Sun is in the 3rd house, you’ll want to use wider orbs with Mercury – that’s because of that person’s enhanced sensitivity to those areas of life. It’s exactly the same with the Four Nets – a progressed Mercury, say, trining natal Neptune would rise higher in the Nets for people who have that same kind of enhanced Mercurial natal sensitivity – and it would sink in importance if they didn’t!

Remember: use the Four Nets as your launching pad, but not as your crutch!

Let’s apply the Four Nets to the current astrological situation of the school. As we sort through our list of configurations while letting the Nets set our priorities, here’s what we see. (By the way, the numbered lines I quote in italics here are taken directly from the Four Nets handout in FCEA201. They’re also pretty close to what you’ll find in The Changing Sky where I first published them back in 1986.)

First Net

Our transiting Saturn is sweeping through Pisces, hitting all of those Piscean planets

4. Transiting Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, or Pluto making a conjunction or hard aspect to the natal Sun, Moon, Angles, or nodal axis.

Our Progressed Moon is in the 12th house heading for the Ascendant 

2. The progressed Moon passing over the Ascendant or Descendant.

Our transiting Uranus will hit the Ascendant in two years

4. Transiting Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, or Pluto making a conjunction or hard aspect to the natal Sun, Moon, Angles, or nodal axis.

Second Net

Our transiting Pluto square Uranus

4. Transiting Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, or Pluto conjunct, square or opposed to any sensitive point other than Sun, Moon, Angles, or nodal axis.

Our transiting Neptune conjunct Mercury

4. Transiting Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, or Pluto conjunct, square or opposed to any sensitive point other than Sun, Moon, Angles, or nodal axis.

Our Solar Arc Saturn conjunct Pluto

8. Any solar arc planet making a hard aspect or conjunction to any natal planet or point, or changing sign or house.

Our transiting Jupiter square the Sun and Moon

5. Transiting Jupiter conjunct, square, or opposed to the natal Sun, Moon, Angles, or nodal axis.

Third Net

Our transiting Jupiter trine the Sun and Moon

3. Any aspects made by transiting Jupiter not already covered.

What follows is probably the most important thing I’m going to say in this little essay: if you only looked at those First Net configurations and you did an in-depth job of understanding them and integrating them with each other, you would have been of enormous help to anyone who had been lucky enough to turn to you for counsel.

Never forget – we’re working for our clients, not to win some kind of award offered by a team of censorious techno-astrologers.

The bottom line is always to go as far with the Nets as you possibly can, but stopping just before your intuitive sense of the wholeness starts to get swallowed up in a lather of intellectual anxiety.

So what does it all mean? What can we learn about the school’s current evolutionary possibilities?

I’m going to be brief here since a thorough job of interpretation would require quite a lot of time and would be a lot easier to deliver orally rather than in writing. As you’re probably figuring out by now, I actually have two aims in writing this short essay. Obviously, one is to think about the school and our collective journey. The second one is to offer some guidance and encouragement about how to navigate the potentially-overwhelming labyrinths that the astrological symbols always create. Interpretively, this will be a simple strategic overview rather than a detailed analysis, in other words.

Let’s start with those three First Net configurations. They are our foundation. Beginning anywhere else could easily put the cart before the horse. The first thing I see is that while one of these First Net events is currently active, the other two crest in the near future and are thus less active right now. Let’s start with those two:

• Number one, the progressed Moon hits the school’s Ascendant on March 3, 2025.

• Number two, transiting Uranus soon follows, hitting the Ascendant in August 2025, retrograding over it that October, and making a final direct hit in January 2026.

• Finally, Saturn’s current sweep through Pisces – number three – can thus be understood as preparation for the new beginnings the other two First Net events are prophesying.

See how that simple insight based on the relative timing of these three events gives us an initial interpretive structure? We’ll start with Saturn, and try to see how it can prepare us for those Moon and Uranus developments. Saturn entered Pisces in March 2023, but it will be crisscrossing our Sun and Moon between April 2024 and January 2025 – and note that Saturn’s finish in January 2025 comes just a few weeks before the progressed Moon hits the Ascendant and a few months before Uranus joins the Moon there.

We’ve hit upon a developmental sequence – and recognizing a pattern like that is pure gold in our craft.

Again, these configurations are vast subjects, but in essence with the Saturn transit through Pisces, we see the school in its current situation, which is that we are maturing. Reflecting that idea in material terms, we’ll probably be graduating our first class of master-level FCEA astrologers early in 2024 – there’s a very concrete (Saturn!) maturational milestone! Given Saturn’s nature, we’ll probably also be facing various (surmountable) obstacles – that’s usually part of Saturn’s signature too. The process of navigating those obstacles is often what actually matures anyone, the school included. Saturn usually also demands some hard negotiations, some compromises, and some sacrifices.

As one quick illustration of how this Saturn transit has already been at work, think of the big school Zoom Q & A calls that we do. From my point of view, the last two or three of them have been the smoothest ones ever. That’s because – live and learn, Saturn-fashion – we’ve created a format that really works: an hour on the submitted questions, half an hour or so on a chart reading, and the rest of the time for spontaneous discussion. We learned from our experience and improved things. We matured – and that’s pure Saturn.

With those two other big First Net events heading for our Ascendant, we’re focusing on building a vision for the future, but succeeding there requires some reflection  and patience. Building that “vision” is the message of the progressed Moon’s current position in the 12th house. Once that vision is “cooked,” the Moon hitting the school’s Ascendant in 2025 will be something of a “Grand Opening” – and with Uranus hitting the Ascendant at about the same time, we can safely “expect the unexpected.” We will also very probably take off in some novel or surprising directions.

That’s the message of the First Net.

Those novel and surprising directions are echoed further as we move into the realm of the Second Net. There we see Uranus in the spotlight once again, but this time because transiting Pluto is squaring it. That’s happening throughout all of 2024. Meanwhile, transiting Neptune is back and forth over our Mercury between May 2024 and January 2026. That transit echoes the “vision quest” elements we saw in that First Net progression of the Moon through the 12th house. Together these two Second Net transits caution us against the kind of unrealism (Neptune) that could lead to a real mess – something that Pluto squaring a 12th house Uranus warns us about as well. Right now, Saturn is teaching us to keep our feet on the ground. Our job is to remember that!

Solar Arc Saturn made a conjunction with Pluto in July, and that energy is still very active and represents more of the same. There are bumps in the road – delays and maybe a few minefields as well. We acknowledge all that, but we keep perspective – these are Second Net events, not First Net ones. We counsel alertness and caution, but not fear.

Moving on in the Second Net, transiting Jupiter squares the Sun and Moon between August 2024 and April 2025. That warns us specifically against over-extension – and it further focuses the cautionary notes we just struck. Concretely, the chart might be counseling us, for example, against taking on too many new students or new tutors, or simply spending too much money.

A little further down the road, transiting Jupiter moves beyond those squares to the Sun and Moon and slides into trine aspects with them. That happens between August 2025 and April 2026. By then, the progressed Moon is in the 1st house and Uranus is snicker-snacking back and forth across our Ascendant. If we’re careful, if we do the hard Saturn work, and if we let ourselves gradually feel our way into a new vision, we will have built the foundation for that new beginning, and I suspect we’ll be smiling gratefully at what we’ve created – there’s the message of Jupiter trining our Sun and Moon, probably bringing luck and opportunity.

Remember how you felt back at the beginning of this essay when I first listed the eight biggest events that were impacting the FCEA chart? Eight were enough to be overwhelming – and that was just the top eight! What if I’d added a bunch of Net Three events as well? Or Net Four? It’s simply too much for the mind to digest. But think about what happened to your attitude when we passed those eight configurations through the Nets.

• The First Net reduced them to the three most important ones – and with just three events, we could begin to get a handle on the message. Our “overwhelm” was greatly reduced.

• Even better, because they were First Net events we could reassure ourselves that we were keeping perspective and tuning into the big picture.

• Then we noticed a pattern in those three events. We reflected on their timing and we saw how one of them was currently setting the stage for the other two.

A strategic approach like that is how we go from confusion to a story we feel in our bones and which we can tell with confidence. Once we have the First Net figured out, we just plug some Net Two and maybe some Net Three insights into the basic “big picture.” Always, our sense of the integrated wholeness of things that Net One generates for us is our foundation.

Beyond that, we embellish it with lesser configurations until our brows start to wrinkle – or our clients start to look glassy-eyed.

With experience, we improve even further – we sense when that dreaded glassy-eyed moment is about to arrive and we say Amen just before we get there. 

The next thing you know, you’re a professional astrologer and an FCEA graduate.