2008: Wake Up
Heather Roan Robbins

The tide begins to turn as 2008 progresses, but which way will be up to us. We’re not talking a little tweak in the status quo here; we’re talking real change in mind-set and modus operandi. It’s time to find common ground so we can work together and weave a global web across the chasms that divide us, weave this web to support and direct the changes that will be initiated this year and will come to boil over the next five years as several astrological cycles peak together. We’ll need one another.

The headlines for this year: lots of change with the energy and the know- how to pull it off, if we work together. Pluto enters Capricorn in January; solar flares begin to pick up speed, Jupiter trines Saturn for most of the year while Saturn opposes Uranus in November. Let me break this down:

Our Sun’s natural 11-year cycle of activity reached its quiet minimum in 2005-7, we’ve had very few solar flares or solar discharges for the last few years. Solar minimums are great for personal work, but are a hard time to catalyze any political or cultural change; we tend to do what we’ve been doing. Under a solar maximum increased energy reaches the earth turning up the volume on political excitement and cultural action, turning up the volume on history. People refuse to accept situations that just don’t work.

Our Sol is just beginning to cook; its cycle of increasing solar storms and sunspots is predicted to peak with usual intensity between 2010-13. As the Sun, whose energy pours in to enliven each of our cells, grows active, we humans grow existentially restless, more robust and hungry for innovation. Politics simmers and the spotlight shines on collective experience more than personal. We seek new answers. Our culture will no longer be entertained by celebrity faux-pas, but will want something more substantial to chew upon. So it’s time to take our talents out to the streets and into the circle, because our efforts to instigate creative change will now have the Solar winds behind them.

For more info, see http://www.spaceweather.com for Sunspot science, and www.carolmoore.net/articles/sunspot-cycle.html for Sunspot cycles and history.

2008 began with a catalytic Mars-Pluto opposition which shook up our complacency, stirred up the coals on a few long term conflicts, but also woke up a desire in many of us to make constructive changes in the year ahead. The milieu may be as warm and cozy as hot buttered rum in most daily interactions, but with deeper changes simmering underneath. Over the first few months of 2008 we open our eyes and look about, become more aware of our community and less focused on our intimates, ready to meet strangers and begin a new chapter.

Willful Mars is full of heroism and rebellion as an adolescent male, wants decisive action whether it’s wise or not. It opposes magnifying Jupiter and intense Pluto exactly as January begins, and stays within orb all month long, and reprises again in early March. This catalytic Mars-Pluto opposition shakes our complacency and stirred the coals on long term conflicts, but can also wake up a desire in many of us to make constructive changes in the year ahead.

Some argument, power juggling, or other crisis of will that percolated at the end of September 2007 when Mars first opposed Pluto reactivates now. Whatever we don’t resolve now will come back for the next chapter of work the first week of March when Mars and Pluto finish this dance for this Mars-cycle. As a textbook example: Benazir Bhutto arrived in Pakistan with the first Mars-Pluto opposition and was assassinated near the second. Pakistan’s election results will become public in the weeks before this cycle’s final opposition.

There’s real potential for rebellious acts and military maneuvers that will be regretted later, let’s not make the same mistake personally.

Most of us will just feel energized, ready to exercise our Mars abilities; to set some healthy boundaries and initiate new adventures. Mars brings out our bold, entrepreneurial sides. This aspect offers high energy with a short attention span; it activates great ideas and strategic thinking, but watch the urge for dominance or the temptation of quick and surgical solutions throughout mid-March. And keep an eye on the safety factors; watch for mechanical problems or accidents when in a hurry or under distraction.

Later in January we get a hint of new co-operation from an exciting and collaborative trine between the two symbolic arbiters of our social world, freedom-loving Jupiter in Capricorn and its traditional counterpoint planet, frugal thoughtful Saturn in Virgo. These two alternate between a low-level, tension-producing sesqui-square and a productive trine exact on 1/21, 9/9, and 11/12. Look towards the end of January for clues as to how this will unfold.

Jupiter and Saturn trine form a cosmic bipartisan committee and encourages disparate groups to ally for common purpose. We can make friends out of former adversaries. Within our own psyche we may find a new agreement between our expansive, big picture nature and our realistic hardworking side. This trine supports any practical project where structure has to serve a vision; it supports architecture, farming, business; building systems into the world of the mother made manifest.

This Jupiter and Saturn trine encourages practical manifestation of our dreams; it opens doors, but we have to walk through to make it happen. Our interwoven web will often be tested; we’ll have to hold the vision of cooperation in the lean times. We may unite in response to some pretty tough challenges, but these tests can just give us the opportunity to make it real and keep it real.

We’ll need all the support we can get as Pluto enters Capricorn Jan 25, retrogrades back into Sagittarius 6/14, then back into Capricorn for the next 16 years on 11/26. Pluto challenges, then evolve, the province of whatever sign it occupies. For the last decade it’s been in Sagittarius, sign of our relationship to the natural world, as we came to terms with global warming, dealt with hurricanes, tsunami, and other intense natural events. Now it heads into Capricorn, which governs structure, authority, mountains, and the right to manifest dreams.

As Pluto enters Capricorn inaugurates a generation of a change in how we govern, whether it’s the PTA or a form of world government. Pluto is slow, last time Pluto danced through Capricorn was 1761-78 (when the Sun was also wildly active); its turmoil induced the American Revolution and birthed our country, changing the international power structures for good. But the labor pains included a governmental crackdown as well as an international jockeying for position. It will transform old structures into new and enduring ones, eventually. May it now re-invigorate our great vision statement crafted at that time, the American Constitution.

Watch the political circus leading up to the election and an intensification of our global efforts to course-correct the ecosystem. Because Pluto in Capricorn can start off with a power-struggle, pay attention in local and national politics; sharp observation increases the odds for fair play.

Pluto in Capricorn also brings a gift, it can loan us the strength of mountains. It can revitalize our ancient wisdom teaching, the earth-based approach to spirituality that came so close to the surface in the 1980’s with intuitive Neptune in Capricorn and investigative Pluto in Scorpio, but which receded from collective spirituality for the last decade. This tributary of indigenous wisdom and a spiritual approach to earth will begins to pour fourth again, we find new wells to that deep, old spiritual ocean we all share, in the depths of our collective psyche.

And to make sure we get this political transformation off and running, Saturn in Virgo opposes the planet of change, Uranus, on Nov 4th, just in time for our American elections; we’re already getting a whiff of what this may mean. This aspect could shake our foundations quite literally; there may be an increase in earthquakes. The last time we experience this aspect was the mid 1960’s (yet another time of great solar activity, hmm), which exemplify this aspect’s ability to shakes up the status quo and shift the paradigm. Though it tends to do so by opposition, and can precipitate a clash between those that would hold on to tradition and those that seek deconstruction. Just as it can precipitate a clash in each and every one of us between the side that wants to hold on to how things were, and a side that longs for innovation.

This whole year is time to reexamine our work and our personal concept of security. It’s time to question habit, jobs, or lifestyles that do not further, to compost the old crop and fertilize the new.

To help this change though its labor pains and help us birth a productive future, we need hold our vision-- both politically and in our own lives. When we react to other’s ideas, we assume they own the paradigm. Where we are in leadership, we create the paradigm, and lead others into a new vision ourselves.

So how can we best prepare for 2008’s new growth and change? It helps to practice something we might call soul yoga, and increase our personal flexibility. Our ability both hold our own center, yet to adapt, adjust and respond to old conflict in a new way, or to respond quickly to new opportunity, may be the deciding factor in how we resonate with the changes to come.

This fall will challenge us, but those challenges bring an opportunity for these new alliances to really begin to work. Follow up on any opportunity to weave this new web of connection as the year matures.