(If you wish to lis­ten to the show instead, here is the link on BlogTalk or Apple Pod­casts)

As we move into the last weeks of 2022, I thought it would be help­ful to look ahead and see what 2023 holds for the Astro­log­i­cal con­di­tions we will be expe­ri­enc­ing. Although there are no major out­er plan­e­tary align­ments to one anoth­er, no Sat­urn square to Jupiter, or Uranus with Plu­to, there are major shifts that we will be encoun­ter­ing in the months ahead. These include Plu­to begin­ning to move into the Sign of Aquar­ius after hav­ing been in Capri­corn since 2008, and Sat­urn mov­ing from Aquar­ius into Pisces. Before we exam­ine these longer-term shifts, let us look at the year­ly phe­nom­e­na of the Lunar and Solar Eclipses, the Mer­cury Ret­ro­grades as well as the next Venus Ret­ro­grade too.

Eclipses
Typ­i­cal­ly, we expe­ri­ence two Lunar and two Solar eclipses in any year, and this year we will that two of each type in the months of April, May, and Octo­ber. The Solar eclipses are always to be con­sid­ered as more sig­nif­i­cant, and Astrologers often con­sid­er their influ­ence to be in effect for the next six months (until the next Solar eclipse). The Lunar eclipses are much short­er in influ­ence and pre­vail for the next lunar month typically.

Eclipses hap­pen twice a year when the orbital plane of the Earth around the Sun, and the orbital plane of the Moon around the Earth align in such a way that one body or the oth­er cre­ates a shad­ow that is vis­i­ble to us. In a Solar eclipse the New Moon pass­es exact­ly in front of the Solar disc form­ing a shad­ow on that part of Earth, (when at oth­er New Moons the Moon is either below or above the Sun’s posi­tion), and a Lunar eclipse occurs when the Earth comes between the Sun and the Moon and the shad­ow of the Earth falls upon the Moon.

The first eclipse is a total Solar eclipse on April 20, 2023, at 29 degrees, 50 min­utes in Aries. It will be vis­i­ble par­tial­ly or whol­ly in Aus­tralia, Indone­sia, Tim­or, Papua, and Papua New Guinea. To under­stand the sig­nif­i­cance for one­self, you would look to the house that has 29 degrees of Aries, and/or any plan­ets you may have in your chart very close to that degree. Typ­i­cal­ly, the house where an eclipse is locat­ed would be a very impor­tant realm of activ­i­ty in your life for the next six months or so. But you must remem­ber, plan­ets or an align­ment like this do not cre­ate some­thing good or bad, they just elic­it ener­gy-forms that you will need to be aware of and need to work with. The expe­ri­ence will be deter­mined by you, giv­en your past actions and your present spir­i­tu­al awareness.

The next eclipse is a Lunar eclipse on May 5, at 14 degrees, 58 min­utes in Scor­pio, at around 1:34 pm EDT, and not vis­i­ble in the USA. Again, the sig­nif­i­cance of this Full Moon will depend upon where 15 degrees of Scor­pio is in your chart, and whether you have any plan­et near to this as well. But this is also a rather spe­cial Full Moon, which is because for many this is also known as the Bud­dha Full Moon or Vesak, as it is said that the Bud­dha was born, achieved enlight­en­ment, and passed at the Full Moon in Scorpio.

The next eclipse is a total Solar eclipse on Octo­ber 14, at 21 degrees, 58 min­utes in Libra, at around 1:55 pm EDT, and will be vis­i­ble from Ore­gon, Neva­da, Utah, New Mex­i­co, Texas, Yucatan and into South Amer­i­ca, and par­tial­ly through­out much of the USA. Con­sid­er where in your chart you have 22 degrees of Libra, or any plan­et near to that degree to under­stand the sig­nif­i­cance of the area of life being acti­vat­ed for you for the next six months.

And here is some­thing to note, there will be anoth­er very sig­nif­i­cant eclipse six months lat­er on April 8, 2024, that cross­es the mid­sec­tion of the USA from the South­west to the North­east. I men­tioned this eclipse in 2017, because the August 2017 total eclipse also went across the mid­sec­tion of the USA from the North­west to the South­east, and it seemed sig­nif­i­cant that these two eclipses in effect have formed an “X” where the two eclipse paths meet in south­ern Illinois.

Final­ly, the last eclipse of 2023 will be a Lunar eclipse on Octo­ber 28, at 5 degrees, 9 min­utes of Tau­rus at around 4:24 pm, and not vis­i­ble in the USA. Look to what house has 5 degrees of Tau­rus in your chart and that will be the area of your life that you will expe­ri­ence a les­son in the com­ing month.

Mer­cury Retrograde
Next up are the Mer­cury ret­ro­grades for 2023. For each ret­ro­grade, it is impor­tant to note what degrees of the zodi­ac it revers­es through and to see what house (or hous­es) of your chart it is acti­vat­ing. For all of us, the Mer­cury ret­ro­grade peri­od affords an oppor­tu­ni­ty to become more self-crit­i­cal, more reflec­tive, and more deeply intro­spec­tive; it is a spir­i­tu­al gift so that we may cor­rect our errors of per­cep­tion, cog­ni­tion, and communication.

Typ­i­cal­ly, we have three Mer­cury ret­ro­grades a year, and this is true this year, but with an excep­tion. That is because we will begin the year with Mer­cury in ret­ro­grade already, and it will have begun on Decem­ber 29, 2022, and will end on Jan­u­ary 18, 2023.

The first Mer­cury turn­ing ret­ro­grade in 2023 will be on April 21 and will end with Mer­cury direct on May 14, mov­ing from 15 to 5 degrees in Tau­rus. Behind all reflec­tions and recon­sid­er­a­tions for this peri­od we will be need­ing to focus our under­stand­ings with regards to sub­stance and val­ue, of which the ulti­mate truth being that the uni­verse is made of Divine Love.

The sec­ond Mer­cury ret­ro­grade in 2023 will begin on August 22 and end on Sep­tem­ber 15, with Mer­cury mov­ing from 22 to 8 degrees in Vir­go. For this peri­od, we will have to recon­sid­er our under­stand­ings about order and peace, with our need to strive to find our way to the source of ever­last­ing peace, which is found in our own hearts, as it is at the heart of Creation.

The third Mer­cury ret­ro­grade of 2023 will begin on Decem­ber 13 and end on Jan­u­ary 1, 2024, with Mer­cury mov­ing from 8 Capri­corn to 22 Sagit­tar­ius, and this will help us to bring togeth­er our need to not only know the truth (Sagit­tar­ius) but to embody it into our roles and respon­si­bil­i­ties too, (Capri­corn).

Venus Ret­ro­grade
We will also have anoth­er Venus ret­ro­grade in 2023, from July 22 until Sep­tem­ber 3, mov­ing from 28 degrees to 12 degrees Leo. Much like Mer­cury ret­ro­grade, Venus ret­ro­grade is an oppor­tu­ni­ty to turn inward, to heal and repair. Mer­cury ret­ro­grades rough­ly three times in a year, but Venus ret­ro­grades about every 18 months. Rather than a focus upon the mind as with Mer­cury, Venus ret­ro­grade encour­ages us to appre­ci­ate the com­plex hier­ar­chy of val­ues that shape our lives. It is an oppor­tu­ni­ty to bring forth a more insight­ful under­stand­ing about how we are held togeth­er or drawn apart by what we share or do not share with one anoth­er, of the val­ues we share or do not share with one anoth­er. The house that Venus moves ret­ro­grade in your chart will pro­vide the par­tic­u­lar focus for you with regards to the nature of the val­ues you must recon­sid­er dur­ing this 40-day period.

Major Plan­e­tary Shifts
Now we will con­sid­er the two big shifts that lie ahead in 2023, which is Sat­urn mov­ing into Pisces and Plu­to begin­ning to move into Aquarius.

Sat­urn into Pisces
The move­ment of Sat­urn through the twelve signs of the Zodi­ac forms one of the prin­ci­pal shapers of our expe­ri­ence of real­i­ty. Since Sat­urn is the plan­et known as the “Teacher”, and rules Real­i­ty and the hier­ar­chy of insti­tu­tions in the world, its pas­sage through the signs pro­vides the focus for our fac­ing our respon­si­bil­i­ties and devel­op­ing our expe­ri­ence and wis­dom from year to year. Since 2020, those lessons have been expe­ri­enced in the realm of Aquar­ius, (the pre­vi­ous times for Sat­urn in Aquar­ius were 1991–93, 1962–64 and 1932–35), but start­ing on March 7, 2023, Sat­urn will focus its influ­ence through the last sign of Pisces until 2025–26. We should note that the pre­vi­ous times for Sat­urn in Pisces were 1993–96, 1964–67 and 1935–37, and though the con­tent of those peri­ods is very dif­fer­ent from our present day, the basic mes­sage of Sat­urn in Pisces remains the same.

As much as Sat­urn in Aquar­ius will always be a time of test­ing and teach­ing for our social con­scious­ness and con­science, a tester for the strengths or the weak­ness­es in our com­mu­ni­ties, for the integri­ty of our social net­works and the depth of our essen­tial human­i­ty, Sat­urn in Pisces brings us into the final realm in the Cir­cle of the Liv­ing Ones, which is to the very ques­tion of our Faith ver­sus our Fears.

Every pas­sage of any plan­et through a sign is an oppor­tu­ni­ty to rise to the chal­lenge, and we can either move high­er or fall back­wards. Hav­ing wit­nessed the chal­lenges that the world has encoun­tered since 2020, we can cer­tain­ly see how well or poor­ly our com­mu­ni­ties met the many crises of cli­mate change, of a pan­dem­ic, of the many crises and cries for social jus­tice and sim­ple human togeth­er­ness ver­sus our divi­sions from one another.

So, it does seem espe­cial­ly time­ly for Sat­urn to turn our atten­tion to the foun­da­tions of our jour­ney, to the very essence of what dri­ves our human sto­ry which is also the sto­ry of Spir­it. The peren­ni­al ques­tion of spir­it is before us which is this: will we find the way to restore our faith and face our fears, or will we suc­cumb to those fears and fall fur­ther from the path of Truth and Light? What do we mean by this essen­tial nature of Truth, of the Light that makes “all things shin­ing”? What is the Foun­tain-Source of our Faith?

Behind the whole of Cre­ation, encom­pass­ing and per­vad­ing every par­ti­cle of being and every vibra­tion of ener­gy-forms, it is there that we find the mon­ad of Spir­it, the divine spark of Cre­ation. And every par­ti­cle and ener­gy-wave of cre­ation is its own hier­ar­chy too, descend­ing from the mon­ad, the most sub­lime root essence of divine spir­it, on down through the dimen­sions and realms to the most phys­i­cal. That means that with­in each par­ti­cle or ener­gy-form, each of the mon­ads in these realms or dimen­sions of being is striv­ing to rise in its own spir­i­tu­al devel­op­ment too.

That is why the whole of Cre­ation can be seen as a great Jour­ney, of the Invo­lu­tion of Spir­it into Mat­ter-Forms, and then the Evo­lu­tion of these forms as they move up the Spir­i­tu­al Lad­der of Light, for all are inspired by the essence that is the One which is omnipresent and all-encom­pass­ing. Behind it all, the whole pur­pose of Cre­ation is for the One, for the One Spir­it to be and to become, to unfold, through all the hier­ar­chies that are Cre­ation, and that is why we are all here to be the One made Manifest.

This hier­ar­chy of cre­ation is what makes us Divine and human, it is why the very core of us nev­er left (what we might call) “heav­en”, and this is why we say that “heav­en is with­in us”, because it is tru­ly at the root of one and all. But because we are a hier­ar­chy of ener­gy-forms, rang­ing from the most ethe­re­al down to the less evolved, we are each indi­vid­u­al­ly, and as a host of beings, on our own human jour­ney to become more aligned and guid­ed by the light that is with­in our high­er self. It is by this Light that is Love that we will lift our own indi­vid­ual hier­ar­chy and our fel­low humans into ever high­er dimen­sions of a Liv­ing Faith. We humans began our jour­ney as sparks of the divine, we came from a star, and we will even­tu­al­ly return one day to become our very own star too.

Our human self, our human con­scious­ness, ris­es and falls day in and day out, it ris­es or falls from year to year and in life after life. Some­times we are filled with the most lov­ing and self-for­get­ful inten­tions and actions, and some­times there are more trou­bling thoughts and feel­ings that shape our actions and lives. This is what dri­ves the jour­ney of our self-becom­ing, this is what forms the path­way to Per­fec­tion framed by Kar­ma and Dhar­ma. We are on a jour­ney to per­fec­tion, and we learn that we have a choice to do and be bet­ter from expe­ri­enc­ing the con­se­quences of our thoughts, words, and deeds.

Ever inspir­ing us to move high­er on the path of light is our own inner light, our high­er self or spir­i­tu­al mon­ad, our essen­tial link to the One that is Cre­ation, the One that is pure Love. When we lose sight of this or feel alone and apart, we fall down into dark­ness and despair, and when we lis­ten to the gen­tle lov­ing spir­it that is with­in us all, we rise and shine brighter for one anoth­er too.

This is what we must remem­ber every day, and espe­cial­ly now as Sat­urn moves through the Sign of Reap­ing and Redemp­tion, of Kar­ma and For­give­ness. This will be the ques­tion behind the mes­sages of Sat­urn while in Pisces. The Ques­tion is, do you know and live with some form of this under­stand­ing, with this Liv­ing Faith, that you are here to learn one thing, which is how to be a bet­ter human, which means to know how to equal­ly have more self-under­stand­ing and self-mas­tery, yet to live and act with ever greater self-for­get­ful­ness. That your jour­ney is to work with your own com­plex host of hier­ar­chies and ener­gy-forms, to bring them into align­ment with Truth and Love; that your true work is this Great Work, which is to lift your­self and one anoth­er high­er. You will have moments of tran­scen­dence, and moments when you fall. But if you are to climb high­er you must for­give your­self and one anoth­er too. Your path of Light is a path of Love, it is the Path of Wis­dom which is revealed by your Humil­i­ty and Grat­i­tude, and it is this under­stand­ing that you have and will always make your future that will form your Liv­ing Faith and over­come your fear.

This is also one the prin­ci­pal lessons of Pisces, to know why you must, how you should, and when you will make a sac­ri­fice, because this is how you live a sacred life, a tru­ly lov­ing life. A mea­sure of any per­son or soci­ety to which they belong, is how much they reveal the love that they are, and they do this by how they hon­or those who came before them, how they con­duct them­selves with their con­tem­po­raries now, and most espe­cial­ly how they con­sid­er with love those that will come after them. Pisces is the time of Reap­ing; it is equal­ly the time then of the Sow­ing of the Seed.

Pisces is the last Sign, it’s mean­ings and mes­sages con­cern the entire­ty of any cycle, how in these fields of the One we har­vest the spir­i­tu­al gifts of under­stand­ing and love, which are to be held and passed on to the next cycle, to the next gen­er­a­tion, and beyond. You are the fruit of those who came before you, and your gifts to those who come after are formed by your ded­i­ca­tion to make pos­si­ble a bet­ter world for one and all. This is Pisces, this is the Cir­cle of Life; this is the Love of the One. With Sat­urn in Pisces, we must under­stand that we are mak­ing the future for those who will look back upon us, because our thoughts, words, and deeds will have formed their Real­i­ty, their fate.

This will be the heart of the Test with Sat­urn in Pisces, to face our fears and hold to our faith. With our under­stand­ing that we are the mak­ers of our fate, that we have noth­ing to fear but fear itself, we can remain in the light that is love, with our Liv­ing Faith of being co-cre­ators of Cre­ation and we will see the shad­ow that is fear fade.

When we con­sid­er all of the gifts of Life, of all the many lives of all the many crea­tures who form this Cre­ation, we see in the end that the Sto­ry of Cre­ation is about the Light shin­ing through the whole of this Cre­ation. It is your light; it is what is called That. In Pisces we remem­ber that All Things are Shin­ing, and that Spir­it-Life-Con­scious­ness forms the full­ness of Space.

This full­ness that many call empti­ness of space is the Plero­ma of Cre­ation, it is the Light that is Love.

It is the One.

It is you.

I had hoped to have time to talk about Plu­to begin­ning to enter Aquar­ius in 2023, but I see that our time is too short for that now. I will do anoth­er show this year but giv­en the cal­en­dar I will have to do it on anoth­er day of the week, so per­haps on Sat­ur­day the 31^st of December.

I will say this how­ev­er, that as much as Plu­to in Capri­corn was the time (once again) for an End of an Age, the pas­sage of Plu­to in Aquar­ius will be a time when we will be asked to begin to build a new world, to begin a New Age. Though it has been painful (and at times good) to see the end of an age, it will be an even greater chal­lenge to cre­ate a bet­ter world for us and our descen­dants. But this is our respon­si­bil­i­ty, this is our duty and our sac­ri­fice to make.

This promis­es to be a very sig­nif­i­cant shift in the ener­gies inform­ing and shap­ing our jour­ney through the stars, and I look for­ward to being with you all as we move into the New Year.