Alchemist Heat­ing a Pot, by David Teniers the Younger

Astro­log­i­cal Mus­ings — 2024 Pre­view, a look ahead

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

As we move into 2024, it is time for us to con­sid­er what Astro­log­i­cal con­di­tions will pre­vail dur­ing this year and beyond. The major plan­e­tary align­ment of this year includes the first major aspect of Sat­urn to Plu­to since their last con­junc­tion in Jan­u­ary 2020, which is a semi-square that is exact in May, Sep­tem­ber, and Jan­u­ary of 2025. 2024 will also be the final year of Pluto’s tran­si­tion from the sign of Capri­corn to Aquar­ius, and it will the final full year for both Nep­tune in Pisces before it tran­si­tions to Aries, and final full year for Uranus in Tau­rus before it tran­si­tions to Gem­i­ni. Those shifts indi­cate that we will cer­tain­ly be in a much dif­fer­ent world by 2025 and beyond.

This year will also have the usu­al repeat­ing phe­nom­e­na of the Solar and Lunar eclipses, three Mer­cury in ret­ro­grades, and Jupiter chang­ing signs. I will do anoth­er show soon where we will look at some of the major nation­al and lead­er­ship charts to see what we might under­stand about the year ahead from that per­spec­tive as well.

Sat­urn semi-square Pluto
The most impor­tant aspect in the heav­ens this year is the first align­ment of Sat­urn with Plu­to since their con­junc­tion or “new moon” of Jan­u­ary 2020. The cycle of Sat­urn and Plu­to, from con­junc­tion to con­junc­tion, lasts from between 33 to 38 years, and it con­cerns the inte­gral bal­ance between Order (Sat­urn) and Will (Plu­to), or Struc­ture and Sacred Space, or Spir­it mate­ri­al­ized and the Alchem­i­cal force that is behind the entire­ty of Cre­ation. In Mun­dane or World­ly Astrol­o­gy, this cycle informs the birth/death/rebirth of new polit­i­cal, eco­nom­ic, and social struc­tures. Often the cycle begins with the end­ing of some kind of order, a break­down and then a rebuild­ing of the ways of the exer­cise of pow­er through struc­ture, of the ways in which order and dis­or­der and reorder echo down the ages. The most recent con­junc­tions have been:

The first of the 20^th cen­tu­ry occurred in 1914, with World War I which we could see as the penul­ti­mate war in the his­to­ry of col­o­niza­tion. The sub­se­quent semi-square of 1918 brought the end of that war but also the great Influen­za epi­dem­ic of 1918–1919. The con­junc­tion of 1947–48, saw the real begin­nings of decol­o­niza­tion, with the par­ti­tion of India and Pak­istan, the emer­gence of Chi­na final­ly free from for­eign con­trol, but also the estab­lish­ment of the state of Israel. The sub­se­quent semi-square in 1951 saw the Kore­an War, and many oth­er South Asian and African wars of post-colo­nial strug­gles; the Saturn/Pluto con­junc­tion of 1982–83 saw Israel invade Lebanon, (which it did not com­plete­ly leave until 2000), but also the “birth” of the inter­net, and a num­ber of mil­i­tary gov­ern­ments being replaced by civil­ian ones in as in Argenti­na and Turkey. The sub­se­quent semi-square in 1988 saw the first inter­net virus, and the begin­ning of the end to the Iron Cur­tain and cold war as the Sovi­et Union tried to open up its eco­nom­ic sys­tem and Hun­gary opened up to trav­el between the east and the west.

Now we have our most recent con­junc­tion of 2020, and we have cer­tain­ly expe­ri­enced the struc­tures and sys­tems around the world being over­matched and over­whelmed by a world-wide pan­dem­ic. We have been made aware how our sys­tem of meet­ing human needs by means of an intri­cate glob­al trade struc­ture has been proven to be vul­ner­a­ble and lack­ing in resilien­cy. The very way in which we have become inter­con­nect­ed and inter­de­pen­dent, both mate­ri­al­ly and vir­tu­al­ly, has over­whelmed and thrown into dis­re­pute the gov­ern­ing insti­tu­tions with­in and between nations, as what had been assumed to be a uni­ver­sal lib­er­al polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic order has been bat­tered and some­times shat­tered by forces of reac­tion and rev­o­lu­tion, by extrem­ists on the right and the left. What we are see­ing around the world is a glob­al expe­ri­ence of Mil­len­ni­al move­ments, whose adher­ents either want to return their world to a myth­ic “gold­en age”, or to a final judge­ment in which their fol­low­ers will be spared and exalted.

What this year’s semi-square may hold for us, there is tru­ly no way to know for cer­tain. All we can know is that the essen­tial inter­de­pen­den­cies and inter­con­nec­tiv­i­ties of the nat­ur­al world, the beau­ti­ful yet vul­ner­a­ble hier­ar­chy of nature’s ecosys­tems, com­bined with the effects of our eco­nom­ic world dri­ven by infi­nite con­sump­tion on a finite plan­et are grow­ing not fad­ing. We will cer­tain­ly expe­ri­ence ever greater waves of dis­tur­bances, mass migra­tions of peo­ples flee­ing cli­mate dis­as­ters and insti­tu­tion­al fail­ures, and this inescapable real­i­ty is being brought to bear as the pri­ma­ry and exis­ten­tial chal­lenge fac­ing human­i­ty is the threat of cli­mate change, a trans­for­ma­tion of our world that we have cre­at­ed, and which is becom­ing ever weird­er and wilder.

The Out­er Planets
But we must always remem­ber that the plan­e­tary indi­ca­tions from Uranus, Nep­tune and Plu­to are still the major shapers for any peri­od of his­to­ry. We have looked at them recent­ly, and we will look at them again in a lat­er show, but we need to remem­ber that we are at the cusp of three major tran­si­tions. Plu­to is mov­ing into Aquar­ius in 2024 until 2044, Nep­tune is begin­ning its move into Aries next year until 2039, and Uranus is begin­ning its move into Gem­i­ni next year until 2033. The last time Plu­to was in Aquar­ius was 1778 to 1798, the same time as the Amer­i­can and French Rev­o­lu­tions and Napoleon Bona­parte. The last time Nep­tune was in the sign of Aries was 1862 to 1875, encom­pass­ing the US Civ­il War and Recon­struc­tion. The last time Uranus was in Gem­i­ni was 1935 to 1942, the first half of the Sec­ond World War. As much as we may have been frus­trat­ed by the rigid­i­ty between groups and fac­tions over the past many years, these shifts of the major plan­ets will mean that we are going to see a rearrangement/realignment of issues and peo­ples from 2025 onwards.

With so many out­er plan­ets mov­ing into new signs, the com­bi­na­tion­al or ener­getic spir­i­tu­al vibra­tions will cre­ate new oppor­tu­ni­ties (and new solu­tions) to our present-day chal­lenges. But they will also nec­es­sar­i­ly give rise to new prob­lems too. It is upon each one of us to under­stand the mean­ings and mes­sages of the plan­ets, but most espe­cial­ly remem­ber the fun­da­men­tal truths and wis­dom that should guide our thoughts and shape our actions year after year. If we can remain cen­tered by the ever­last­ing truths, then we will be able to respond much bet­ter to these plan­e­tary influ­ences and not react with fear.

Eclipses
Nor­mal­ly every year we will have two Solar and two Lunar eclipses, and this is also true for 2024, with a Lunar eclipse on March 25, a Solar eclipse on April 8, a Lunar eclipse on Sep­tem­ber 18, and a Solar eclipse on Octo­ber 2.

Solar eclipses are more sig­nif­i­cant, and their influ­ence can be expect­ed to last until the next Solar eclipse around six months lat­er, until the next Solar eclipse. The Lunar eclipses are under­stood to influ­ence the next 30 days, until the next full Moon.

Solar and Lunar eclipses hap­pen when the orbital posi­tion of the Earth around the Sun, and the orbital posi­tion of the Moon around Earth match up so that either the Moon cre­ates a shad­ow by block­ing out the Sun (at the New Moon), or the Earth cre­ates a shad­ow that falls upon the Moon when it is full.

The March 25^th penum­bral lunar eclipse, which means the Moon only enters the penum­bra of the Earth’s shad­ow and just dims, hap­pens around 3 am EDT at 5 degrees and 7 min­utes in Libra, and weath­er per­mit­ting it will be vis­i­ble in the USA. If you have any plan­et or chart angle around this degree, it will be impor­tant to con­sid­er its mean­ing for the next month or so.

The April 8^th total solar eclipse is exact at 2:20 pm EDT at 19 degrees and 24 min­utes of Aries, and the eclipse path of total­i­ty will sweep across the USA from the south­west to the north­east. If you have any plan­et or chart angle around this degree, it will be very impor­tant to con­sid­er its mean­ing to you for the next six months, and the area of your chart it falls in will be high­light­ed for that same period.

The path of total­i­ty will sweep from Mex­i­co and into Texas, then up through Arkansas and Mis­souri into South­ern Illi­nois, and into Indi­ana and Ohio, then on into west­ern New York and through north­ern Ver­mont and New Hamp­shire, through Maine before final­ly end­ing in the east­ern provinces of Canada.
Here is a map of the April Eclipse Path:

I had actu­al­ly men­tioned this eclipse in 2017, because in August of that year we had anoth­er total eclipse sweep across the USA from the north­west to the south­east, start­ing in Ore­gon and arch­ing through the Mid­west and inter­sect­ing the 2024 eclipse in south­ern Illi­nois and mov­ing fur­ther south­east to exit in South Carolina.

It seems rather sig­nif­i­cant to me, and I am sure to many oth­ers, that the USA will have expe­ri­enced two total Solar eclipses, 7 years apart, that form a per­fect “X” cen­tered just east of the con­ti­nen­tal cen­ter of the USA, and actu­al­ly right on the medi­an spot for pop­u­la­tion of the USA. Here is a map of the two Eclipse paths:

The Sep­tem­ber 17^th par­tial lunar eclipse, which means the Moon enters most of the full shad­ow of the Earth, but a small cres­cent appears on one side, is exact at 10:34 pm at 25 degrees and 41 min­utes of Pisces, and weath­er per­mit­ting will be vis­i­ble in the USA. If you have any plan­et or chart angle around this degree, it will be impor­tant to con­sid­er its mean­ing for the next month.

Final­ly, the Octo­ber 2 annu­lar solar eclipse, which means the Moon is a lit­tle too far away from the Earth, so that a small ring of sun­light, which is called the “annu­lus”, is seen around the Moon and is exact at 2:49 pm EDT at 10 degrees and 4 min­utes of Libra. It begins in the Cen­tral Pacif­ic and arch­es down to South Amer­i­ca pass­ing through south­ern Chile and Argenti­na. If you have a sig­nif­i­cant plan­et of chart angle around 10 degrees of Libra, you will expe­ri­ence this area of your life becom­ing more con­se­quen­tial for the next six months.
Here is a map of the Octo­ber Eclipse path:

Mer­cury Retrogrades
Let us now con­sid­er the Mer­cury ret­ro­grades for 2024. Usu­al­ly, we will have three Mer­cury ret­ro­grades in a year, and that is true for 2024. Of course, we did begin this New Year with Mer­cury turn­ing direct on Jan­u­ary 1, as it had been ret­ro­grad­ing since Decem­ber 13^th.

The mean­ing and mes­sage of each ret­ro­grade peri­od will be indi­cat­ed by what sign or signs Mer­cury is mov­ing back­wards through, and for each of us indi­vid­u­al­ly by what house or hous­es of your chart it is mov­ing through as well.

No mat­ter what, the Mer­cury ret­ro­grade peri­od presents an oppor­tu­ni­ty for every­one to become more reflec­tive and pen­sive, more drawn to and more able to take advan­tage of this time of intro­spec­tion, so as to help clear up poor think­ing or com­mu­ni­ca­tion by self-crit­i­cal analy­sis. In so doing, your man­ner of observ­ing, think­ing, and com­mu­ni­cat­ing with one anoth­er is improved and uplifted.

But each peri­od also requires that we remem­ber that the “weath­er” has changed for one and all, and although every­one is affect­ed by this shift of ener­gy-forms, many do not know what is hap­pen­ing or how to man­age it. That is why we expe­ri­ence a rise in mis­com­mu­ni­ca­tions and a surge of mis­un­der­stand­ings in the world gen­er­al­ly. In each encounter between one per­son and anoth­er, the gen­er­al con­di­tion for all minds means that either one or both indi­vid­u­als are not receiv­ing as well as they might think, nor are they trans­mit­ting as well as they should.

So, dur­ing these peri­ods we should use this time for mind­ful, thought­ful self-renew­al, but when engaged in com­mu­ni­ca­tions with oth­ers we must strive to lis­ten or read more care­ful­ly and speak or write more clearly.

The first Mer­cury ret­ro­grade of 2024 begins on April 1^st and ends on April 25^th, with Mer­cury mov­ing from 27 degrees of Aries back to 16 degrees of Aries. What­ev­er area of your chart this involves, by which I mean what­ev­er house or house it is mov­ing through and what plan­ets it may con­tact, you will find it impor­tant or nec­es­sary to review and revise your thoughts about this area of your life. For one and all, since this ret­ro­grade is in Aries, behind the issues being addressed will be the Aries expe­ri­ence of being more mind­ful of your “pres­ence”, by your atti­tude and demeanor, so that you can meet each moment of the eter­nal now in the most mean­ing­ful manner.

The sec­ond Mer­cury ret­ro­grade begins ear­ly on August 5^th for the USA east coast, but in the late evening of the 4^th for the rest of the USA, mov­ing from 4 degrees of Vir­go back to 21 degrees of Leo when it turns direct on August 28th. Again, what­ev­er area of your chart this involves you will need to review and revise your under­stand­ing of that. For one and for all, since this ret­ro­grade involves both Vir­go and Leo, it will encom­pass and link both sign’s mean­ings. For the Vir­go phase, a time to reflect and amend the “order” of one’s life, to strive to main­tain or bring into greater inte­gra­tion all the parts of your life, and dur­ing the Leo phase to reflect on the mean­ing of respect for one­self and for one another.

The third and final Mer­cury ret­ro­grade begins on Novem­ber 25, and ends on Decem­ber 15^th, mov­ing from 23 degrees Sagit­tar­ius back to 6 degrees Sagit­tar­ius. As before, what­ev­er area of your chart this involves, you should use these three weeks to reflect and revise your under­stand­ing of that. For one and all, the ret­ro­grade through Sagit­tar­ius will pro­vide a peri­od to ques­tion the hier­ar­chy of truths and beliefs that form and guide your under­stand­ing and actions.

Jupiter
The plan­et Jupiter is the largest in our solar sys­tem and com­pletes an orbit of the Sun rough­ly every 12 years. That means Jupiter will spend about one year in each sign. Since May 16, 2023, Jupiter has been in the sign of Tau­rus. It will enter Gem­i­ni on May 25, 2024, and remain there until it moves into Can­cer on June 9, 2025.

Jupiter is the path­way to and the ves­sel of Truth, whether those truths be Spir­i­tu­al or Meta­phys­i­cal or Sci­en­tif­ic or Cul­tur­al. What­ev­er sign your Jupiter is in your chart, it will indi­cate the type of truths you will guide your life by, and the path­way you will fol­low to reach a greater under­stand­ing. But just as there are many paths that will lead us to our even­tu­al awak­en­ing, we should be open each year to the var­i­ous forms of truth that Jupiter will hold for us as it moves through the signs.

When Jupiter is in Tau­rus, it will fos­ter a pur­pose­ful and per­sis­tent search for the truth. Those who have Jupiter in Tau­rus will hold to a firm belief in Teach­ings and Val­ues that are Eter­nal. Any indi­vid­ual with Jupiter in Tau­rus has an under­ly­ing opti­mism and faith in human­i­ty, or real­ly in all of life or Spir­it. Most indi­vid­u­als with Jupiter in Tau­rus have an abid­ing belief that human­i­ty is on a con­tin­u­ous and upward path that will lead to the ful­fill­ment of some form of a Divine Plan. Dur­ing this past year and until May 25^th, human­i­ty has been influ­enced by Jupiter to fol­low a path to Truth that is found­ed and forged by Ever­last­ing Val­ue, which is of course Divine Love.

When Jupiter is in Gem­i­ni, it will fos­ter a path of devel­op­ment that is formed by an insa­tiable curios­i­ty and con­stant exchange of infor­ma­tion. Any indi­vid­ual with Jupiter in Gem­i­ni will be more able to take the often-times chaot­ic mul­ti­plic­i­ties of inputs from the uni­verse and be more capa­ble of orga­niz­ing and giv­ing them coher­ent mean­ings, where­as for many for oth­ers they might expe­ri­ence this surge of ener­gy as noise or even chaos.

Dur­ing the upcom­ing peri­od of Jupiter in Gem­i­ni, human­i­ty will be influ­enced to fol­low a path to Truth that is filled with insa­tiable curios­i­ty and won­der. The injunc­tion with Jupiter in Gem­i­ni is that no mat­ter what lev­el of under­stand­ing you have achieved, in order to remain true to your spir­i­tu­al nature you must fol­low the eter­nal Voice of the Silence which whis­pers, “Walk On!” Those who claim to have all the answers will be seen for who they tru­ly are, they know nothing.

More­over, 2024 will be the first of the four major align­ments that Jupiter will make with Sat­urn dur­ing their cycle of 20 years, which is the wax­ing square. The begin­ning of their last cycle in Decem­ber of 2020 was his­toric, as it was the start of a new 200-year cycle of Jupiter and Sat­urn con­junc­tions in the Air signs, start­ing with Aquar­ius. The pre­vi­ous con­junc­tions of Jupiter and Sat­urn were: 1980–81, 1961, 1940–41 and 1921. And the moments like our own of pre­vi­ous wax­ing squares were: 1986, 1965, 1945 and 1926.

What was released at the end of 2020 has reached a crit­i­cal turn­ing point. The oppor­tu­ni­ty is put before us to choose which way we will go now, either to rise with courage and faith, or to fall back­wards because of fear.

The wax­ing square presents us with a chal­lenge, whether we should choose one way or the oth­er, or whether we can find a way to hold togeth­er two very dif­fer­ent ener­gy-forms, to find a way to blend two very dif­fer­ent mes­sages and ways of act­ing in order to meet this moment of the chal­lenges laid before us, (and we must always remem­ber that those real chal­lenges are what we forged in the past by our pri­or actions and inactions).

The ques­tion posed by the square is in our case between Sat­urn in Pisces and Jupiter in Gem­i­ni. If we can find a way to hold them togeth­er, we will find the wis­dom that is there on the mid­dle path of spir­it. If we choose to hold to one and deny the oth­er, then we will like­ly fail to make the most of the choic­es we need to make.

Since Sat­urn is the “slow­er” mov­ing plan­et in this pair­ing, we should con­sid­er that its mean­ing and mes­sage should shape and guide the expres­sion of Jupiter as we face what­ev­er chal­lenge is before us. Sat­urn in Pisces reminds you of your ulti­mate test, which is that the only thing you have to fear is fear itself. That means if are you still a cap­tive of fear, cir­cum­scribed by your own self-cast shad­ows and a fear-filled fatal­ist about your life, if this is so you will be unable to pierce through the cacoph­o­ny of Jupiter in Gem­i­ni, with those count­less points of views and dis­trac­tions will lead you into a morass of half-truths and confusion.

But if you have begun to under­stand that you are a Creator/Dreamer, who has a liv­ing faith that is found­ed upon your Immor­tal spir­i­tu­al nature, then you will know that you have noth­ing to fear what­so­ev­er. Anchored by your high­er self, you will be able to dis­cern fact from fic­tion, truth from half-truths, and you will know in your heart and in your mind what you must do. You will see through the shad­ows and fog, and the bright shin­ing light that is there with­in every one of us, the light sub­lime, Divine Uncon­di­tion­al Love, will inspire your thoughts and guide your steps as you meet the choic­es that 2024 will bring.

May the Light of Truth, Love and Under­stand­ing be with you all, now and for­ev­er more.

May it be.