Astro­log­i­cal Mus­ings — The New Year, Part 2 

(If you wish to lis­ten to the show instead, here is the link on Astrologer Bill Attride Radio Show or Apple Pod­casts, Spo­ti­fy)

As I not­ed in our last show, 2025 is quite a tran­si­tion­al year, and I expect that it will prob­a­bly turn out to be a rather trans­for­ma­tion­al year too. All of the out­er plan­ets, from Sat­urn to Plu­to, are tran­si­tion­ing from one sign to the next. That so many plan­e­tary shifts are occur­ring in one year, well that is rather rare indeed.

I dis­cussed these shifts in the show of Octo­ber 2024, and I will com­ment on them again in this show, but let us begin with the nor­mal, sort of every year shifts and phe­nom­e­na before we con­sid­er these more sig­nif­i­cant mark­ers of our time. Let us go through our cal­en­dars and mark down these peri­ods so that we are aware of what is hap­pen­ing “up there”.

Eclipses
Let’s begin by not­ing the Eclipses, Solar and Lunar that will hap­pen in 2025. On March 14^th there will be a Total Lunar Eclipse at 24 Vir­go, exact at 1:54 am EDT and vis­i­ble in the USA. Then on March 29, there will be a Par­tial Solar Eclipse at 9 Aries, exact at 5:57 am EDT, and most­ly vis­i­ble in Europe. The influ­ence of any Lunar Eclipse is said to pre­vail until the next Full Moon, but a Solar Eclipse’s influ­ence may high­light that region of the Zodi­ac until the next Solar Eclipse about six months lat­er. For any­one who has a sig­nif­i­cant place­ment around 9 Aries, that plan­et and that house of the chart will be a more sig­nif­i­cant ele­ment and region until September.

On Sep­tem­ber 7, there will be a Total Lunar Eclipse around 15 Pisces, exact at 1:09 pm EDT, so not vis­i­ble in the USA. On Sep­tem­ber 21, there will be a Par­tial Solar Eclipse at 29 Vir­go, exact at 2:54 pm, most­ly vis­i­ble in New Zealand and the South Pacif­ic. Again, any plan­et near that degree, and what­ev­er house the eclipse takes place in will be high­light­ed for the next six months.

Mer­cury Retrogrades
We will have, as usu­al, three Mer­cury ret­ro­grades in 2025. The first begins on March 15, with Mer­cury ret­ro­grad­ing at 9 Aries and turn­ing direct on April 7^th at 27 Pisces. That region of your chart will be one in which you should take advan­tage of this oppor­tu­ni­ty to review, reex­am­ine and con­sid­er the mean­ing, pur­pose and under­stand­ing of that part of your chart.

It would seem to be very sig­nif­i­cant to me that where Mer­cury turns ret­ro­grade on March 15 is the same degree in the Zodi­ac as the Solar Eclipse on March 29th, the ninth degree of Aries. Often, in natal chart read­ings for indi­vid­u­als, I some­times refer to a book of sym­bols for the 360 degrees of the Zodi­ac titled “An Astro­log­i­cal Man­dala” by Dane Rud­h­yar. Whether it is the degree of someone’s pro­gressed New Moon or Full Moon, or some sig­nif­i­cant part of their natal chart, there often can be found some mean­ing­ful inspi­ra­tion in read­ing that sym­bol, (or indeed read­ing the entire series of the 360 degrees as sto­ry of the sym­bol­ic unfold­ing of Zodi­a­cal inspirations).

The sym­bol for 9 Aries is this: “A Crys­tal Gaz­er”, and the keynote is stat­ed to be “the devel­op­ment of an inner real­iza­tion of organ­ic whole­ness”, which is explained as a nec­es­sary step or new tech­nique in the devel­op­ment of indi­vid­u­al­ized con­scious­ness, which has now been revealed, that spe­cial tech­nique is: Con­cen­trat­ed Atten­tion.

Giv­en that we live in a world where our “atten­tion” is the object of so many who seek to attract, hold and extract our atten­tion­al being, this seems quite a time­ly and good reminder that we all need to be mas­ters of what we focus our light of aware­ness upon, so that we will not be dis­tract­ed and con­fused by those who prof­it from our frag­ment­ed and frac­tured con­scious­ness, but that we will instead use our aware­ness and our will to hold and cen­ter our­selves upon what is impor­tant, what is lov­ing and beau­ti­ful and true. You are what you think, and you will be the mak­er of a bet­ter future by remain­ing in the light of under­stand­ing, which is deep and true.

The next Mer­cury ret­ro­grade begins on July 18, stop­ping at 15 Leo and turn­ing direct on August 11 at 4 Leo. Once again, you should use this peri­od for reflec­tion, reex­am­i­na­tion and improve­ment of your mind­ful­ness with regards to the area in your chart between 15 and 4 degrees of Leo.

Final­ly, on Novem­ber 9^th, Mer­cury will turn ret­ro­grade at 7 Sagit­tar­ius and turn direct on Novem­ber 29^th at 21 Scor­pio. You should pay par­tic­u­lar atten­tion to that area of your chart, and take this oppor­tu­ni­ty to go with­in, to turn back and con­sid­er how you might dif­fer­ent­ly under­stand this part of your life.

Anoth­er part of each of these ret­ro­grades, and for all Mer­cury ret­ro­grades, is that we should also shape and fil­ter our reex­am­i­na­tion of their influ­ence for us as shaped and indi­cat­ed by the sign (or signs) that Mer­cury is mov­ing through. So, when it is mov­ing through the signs of Sagit­tar­ius and Scor­pio in Novem­ber, you are remind­ed to weave togeth­er the mes­sages and mean­ings of those two signs dur­ing Mercury’s pas­sage through what­ev­er house or hous­es it is ret­ro­grad­ing through in your chart.

Venus
Then we have Venus, which will be turn­ing ret­ro­grade this year too, from March 1^st until April 12^th, mov­ing from 11 Aries and turn­ing direct at 25 Pisces. That’s right, we will have from March 15^th to April 7^th, both Mer­cury and Venus mov­ing ret­ro­grade! This seems very impor­tant to me, and with the Eclipse in Aries as well, and that Mer­cury and Venus will be ret­ro­grad­ing through Aries and back into Pisces, we are remind­ed and guid­ed to under­stand our jour­ney as being framed by this jour­ney from the first sign to the last.

Sim­ply put, it is in Aries that we emerge from the One to begin our jour­ney so as to become a unique spark of the Divine, as we emerge from the ocean of dif­fused ener­gy-forms and set out on our jour­ney to forge a unique pres­ence, per­son­al­i­ty and path in this jour­ney of light and love. But in the end, hav­ing moved through all of the signs, we real­ize that we must bring our unique self-con­scious­ness back to the eter­nal waters of “the One” again, mov­ing from an egoic con­scious­ness to approach­ing a more self-less and cos­mic con­scious­ness over the course of many, many lives.

It also may be sig­nif­i­cant that Venus reach­es the mid­dle of its ret­ro­grade, when Venus con­juncts the Sun, on March 22, and Mer­cury does like­wise on March 24, because it is at that these moments in any ret­ro­grade when we may receive an answer or mes­sage of the deep­er mean­ing of that ret­ro­grade, and this just reminds us to pay par­tic­u­lar atten­tion to those three days from the 22nd to the 24th this year too.

Mars
Next, we have Mars, which began 2025 in ret­ro­grade, hav­ing turned around on Decem­ber 6, 2024, at 6 Leo, and Mars will turn direct on Feb­ru­ary 23 at 17 Can­cer. Mars, which rules actions and desires, aims and aspi­ra­tions, encour­ages us when going ret­ro­grade to recon­sid­er our goals and the means to reach them. Rather than just act­ing or react­ing, per­haps lack­ing clear inten­tions and self-affirm­ing actions, we should real­ize that before we act out­wards we must first go with­in, so that we might exam­ine and under­stand our moti­va­tion, to refine our inten­tion, and then we will dis­cov­er and be guid­ed by a more mean­ing­ful aspi­ra­tion and so equal­ly find a bet­ter way or means to make our way towards the goals we have set our sights upon.

Jupiter
Jupiter com­pletes an orbit around the Sun in rough­ly 12 years and so that it spends about a year in each sign of the Zodi­ac, year after year. Jupiter has been mov­ing through Gem­i­ni this year, begin­ning on May 25, 2024, and will tran­si­tion into Can­cer on June 9, 2025, where it will stay until June 20, 2026. The influ­ence of Jupiter con­cerns the mean­ings of your life, your spir­i­tu­al, reli­gious, sci­en­tif­ic and cul­tur­al truths that guide and inform your con­duct; Jupiter is your moral com­pass on the Earth. With Jupiter in Can­cer, we are guid­ed to shape our under­stand­ing for this next year by hon­or­ing the roots of our human­i­ty, that we are remind­ed that our most cen­tral need to is to care for one anoth­er, and that we will find this as we con­nect more deeply to the source behind one and all, which is of course Divine and Uncon­di­tion­al Love.

The Four Out­er Planets
And now we reach the four out­er­most plan­ets, and as I men­tioned last year in my show in Octo­ber, we are expe­ri­enc­ing some­thing quite spe­cial this year, as all four out­er plan­ets, that would be Sat­urn, Uranus, Nep­tune and Plu­to are tran­si­tion­ing to new signs or have just done so. This shift of all these long-wave mak­ers and shapers of the larg­er tides of spir­i­tu­al his­to­ry, all mov­ing at once, does not hap­pen very often, and it would seem to me that this cer­tain­ly indi­cates that we are mov­ing through a year with a great many changes for you and me.

Sat­urn
Let us begin with the plan­et of “Real­i­ty”, of sub­stan­ti­a­tion and con­cretiza­tion, our mak­er of form and bound­aries between forms, the plan­et Sat­urn. In a very mean­ing­ful man­ner, Sat­urn is the key for man­i­fes­ta­tion at least for us in our mor­tal frames or body. And what is quite remark­able all year long is that Sat­urn is strad­dling the divide between Pisces and Aries. And being at the end and the begin­ning of the Zodi­ac, it sort of holds this mes­sage that we are at the “end­ing of an age” and the start of a new one.

Sat­urn holds the last test of the Zodi­ac, it brings us to our final chal­lenge, the “Test of Faith”. When­ev­er Sat­urn is in Pisces, we face the ulti­mate divide between the dark­ness and the light, and from this chal­lenge or “dark night of the soul”, we can find the light eter­nal behind one and all so that we might expe­ri­ence our true spir­i­tu­al nature. This divide can be sim­ply put to you as this, “What does it mean to be ful­ly human?” Are you still a cap­tive of fear, cir­cum­scribed by your own self-cast shad­ows, and so a fear-filled fatal­ist about your life? Or have you real­ized that you are a Creator/Dreamer, who can hold to their faith found­ed upon your immor­tal spir­i­tu­al nature? We are here to become ful­ly human, and when you reach in some future life your ini­ti­a­tion and apoth­e­o­sis, you will be a ful­ly con­scious Co-cre­ator of Cre­ation. The Gift of Sat­urn in Pisces is to find your true source of Faith and Hope.

When­ev­er, Sat­urn is in Aries, we face the first test of spir­it, which is to encounter the truth that we all exist in one space only, the ever-unfold­ing moment of the “Eter­nal Now”. Sat­urn in Aries is the “Test of Pres­ence”, and it is here where the past meets the future, where we can redeem our past and cre­ate a more beau­ti­ful future by the very qual­i­ty and nature of our per­sona or pres­ence to meet that moment, to respond to each encounter in the ever-mov­ing moment of the eter­nal now in the most appro­pri­ate man­ner, and by this aware­ness, in this the only space that is, in this pre­cious point of Cre­ation itself, we can and will forge a bet­ter future and redeem our past. The Gift of Sat­urn in Aries is to be an authen­tic leader and cre­ator, to lead by love and to be a light for oth­ers too.

Uranus into Gem­i­ni, Nep­tune into Aries, Plu­to in Aquarius
And, as I men­tioned in October’s show, the fact that all of the out­er plan­ets are at the begin­ning of a sign, Uranus enter­ing Gem­i­ni, Nep­tune enter­ing Aries, and Plu­to at the begin­ning of Aquar­ius, this means that they are all, as we Astrologer’s say, in aspect with one anoth­er, and to Sat­urn. They togeth­er form quite a beau­ti­ful pat­tern, (and I am not refer­ring here to the line­up of the plan­ets vis­i­ble in the night sky right now, where after sun­set you can see from west to east, Sat­urn, Venus, Jupiter and Mars arc­ing across the sky, and yes, Uranus and Nep­tune too, if you use a telescope).

The pat­tern that the out­er four are form­ing this year, which is more or less present all year long, is astro­log­i­cal­ly named a “Sextile/Trine/Sextile”, which in our case is formed by the trine between Plu­to in Aquar­ius to Uranus in Gem­i­ni, while Sat­urn and Nep­tune in Aries are mid­way between those two, form­ing Sex­tiles to either end of the Trine.

The over­all mean­ing of this pat­tern is deter­mined by the trine, with Plu­to begin­ning its 20 year pas­sage through Aquar­ius, and as I have said before, and as we have wit­nessed in his­to­ry in Pluto’s pre­vi­ous times in Aquar­ius, whether in 1778 to 1798 or 1532 to 1553, we humans will now strive and strug­gle over the very dreams and ideals of our soci­ety and cul­ture. We will attempt to find a new way for­ward yet hon­or what is eter­nal­ly true, because we need to estab­lish a new social order and a new form of com­mu­ni­ty that is anchored in ever­last­ing truth, so that we can pre­serve and restore this world of beau­ty. A turn­ing in His­to­ry is being made now, as we move from a time when our mod­ern world broke down dur­ing Plu­to in Capri­corn to the chal­lenge of build­ing a new world, and this will cer­tain­ly lead to con­flicts over what kind of future we will make for ourselves.

And dur­ing these first 7 years of Plu­to in Aquar­ius, we will have the very ruler of Aquar­ius, Uranus, mov­ing through the sign of Gem­i­ni, and for us in this year lin­ing up per­fect­ly with Plu­to. Uranus in Gem­i­ni herald’s new ideas, new ways of think­ing, new forms of under­stand­ing and com­mu­ni­cat­ing. The pre­vi­ous times of Uranus in Gem­i­ni, 1935 to 1942, 1851 to 1859, and 1768 to 1775, each wit­nessed the rev­o­lu­tion­ary spir­it in mind as man­i­fest­ed in the pletho­ra of new agen­cies and pro­grams to meet the demands of the Great Depres­sion and WWII, or the schism and clash between two economies, one slave and one free lead­ing up to our Civ­il War, and in the rev­o­lu­tion­ary ideas of self-gov­er­nance that led to our Rev­o­lu­tion­ary War.

If these pre­vi­ous pas­sages may fore­tell some­thing of our future, if past is pre­lude to what we are mov­ing into now, then the com­bi­na­tion of Uranus in Gem­i­ni and Plu­to in Aquar­ius is sig­nif­i­cant indeed. But then we need to add our under­stand­ing of the sig­nif­i­cance of Sat­urn con­join­ing with Nep­tune for this year, what is it about their rela­tion­ship to one anoth­er and how might that influ­ence this larg­er pat­tern with Uranus and Pluto?

Giv­en that Sat­urn is the mak­er or for­mer of Real­i­ty, and Nep­tune is the avatar of Dreams, their cycle of rela­tion­ship is between Order and Dreams, of mov­ing from dream­ing to real­iza­tion, to man­i­fes­ta­tion, to crys­tal­liza­tion, to dis­solv­ing that form of real­i­ty and then back where we are now, to re-dream­ing real­i­ty again. Their cycle of rela­tion­ship is about 36 years, with the pre­vi­ous con­junc­tions of 1989, 1952 and 1917. For us at this time in 2025, this means that the Saturn/Neptune con­junc­tion in Airies holds the moment where we might begin to bring some new dream or set of dreams into reality.

What this could mean, is that the Uranus to Plu­to trine will be mod­u­lat­ed, per­haps “blessed”, by Nep­tune form­ing a sex­tile to both of them, and equal­ly ground­ed and made man­i­fest by Saturn’s sex­tile to Uranus and Plu­to too. But this does not inform us as to what will hap­pen as much as that we are at a crit­i­cal turning.

For, it is equal­ly true that there are many con­tend­ing dreams and ideas cours­ing through our indi­vid­ual selves, swirling and stir­ring our fam­i­lies and com­mu­ni­ties, bring­ing excite­ment, appre­hen­sion and dis­tur­bances to the many peo­ples, and cul­tures across the whole wide world.

What we need to do, indi­vid­u­al­ly and togeth­er, is to help one anoth­er to remem­ber the ever­last­ing truths that have guid­ed our steps, and to know that it is our priv­i­lege and our duty to try to live by, in and through the ever­last­ing light of the One.

So, when we ask our­selves and we turn to one anoth­er, when we look for the path and what we can do, we need only fol­low the one immutable truth, there in the foun­tain-source of Cre­ation, which is to be that love that made us all.