This month’s astrology, and that over the last few months, has been wrapped around the Saturn Uranus Square, which by now most of you will be aware of! However, there is another phenomenon related to this one which has significantly influenced this year’s astrology.

The movement of Chiron, Saturn and Uranus have all been in sync with each other in their respective signs of Aries, Aquarius and Taurus, all around the 13° mark plus or minus about 5°. (Alongside the Uranus Saturn square, this also incorporates a Chiron sextile Saturn, a significant transit that positively connects this father-son combination of wisdom, healing and the dealing of tough challenges, karmically and psychologically.)

Consequently, when the Sun is around the 9 to 12° mark at the start of each and every month, it aspects each of these three simultaneously, a kind of triple whammy depending on the quality of those aspects. Geometrically, this will mean that at the beginning of each month the Sun will form some good aspects to some of these players and difficult ones to others.

This is all part of the contradictory nature of this time and is a phenomenon that contributes to our entanglement in the challenges of the Saturn Uranus tug-o-war.

As we will see, this month the Sun sextiles Uranus, squares Chiron and inconjuncts Saturn, which means simplistically that we get better access to Uranus this month and tougher challenges with Chiron and to a lesser extent Saturn.

Let’s see how this unfolds!

On its own, this is a good aspect, as it has enough energy to generate some positive, freedom enhancing changes but in ways that are more sober and measured. An incredibly deep, warm and heart full energy when its operating well, the Crab also has a tendency to hide and to resist change. As the change-maker Uranus is in Taurus, this revolutionary is not in his normal extrovert mode, but moves more slowly in a way that is far less threatening to something like Cancer within ourselves.

The changes that can be initiated here are more about slower earthmoving than radical earthquakes (although you can never totally trust him because he can leap radically from slow to go very quickly around tectonic change). This then can be a recipe for deep prolonged change to the element of earth and therefore, reflects progressive changes to all the security systems in our lives, economically, politically, socially and environmentally. At least for this month, we can learn how to move with such changes with less resistance and with more awareness of the positives within the crises we are in.

Here the emotionally based Cancerian Sun is confronted with two very challenging energies joining in Aries. While the essence of Chiron is profoundly healing, his unhealed forms inside us can be very masculine and very wounding. Cancer’s response is to withdraw and protect itself from any real or perceived threat. In such a collision, there can also be a great deal of fear arising, not just from Cancer but also from Chiron in Aries, the fear that naturally arises when our natural fire energy has been suppressed and is imploding.

(Those of you who are in your Chiron returns, happening around 49 to 50 years of age, will be well aware of the amount of fear absorbed during childhood, around stepping into the new and claiming your individual fire! I am in the process of designing both a six-week zoom group and an experiential workshop in November specifically for the Chiron return people and, anyone else who is in great transition at this time. Stay tuned!)

The Sun then is presented with one of the great paradoxes of this month, with Uranus encouraging us to leap into the new, while Chiron presents us with ancient fears that resist the very same.

As for Lilith, she is formidable at the best of times and is a direct threat to unconscious, conservative and emotionally repressive energies within ourselves. She, like many of her sister dark goddesses, is a carrier of ancestral forms of trauma and rage, some of which is likely to arise in her joining with Chiron, particularly where these ancient wounds to the deep feminine collide with the wounding aspects of the masculine Chiron.

However, if we are able to stay with the challenges, this combination is also a great healing opportunity. Some of the necessary eruptions and cleansing can be unpleasant, but on the deeper levels both Lilith and Chiron are great spiritual warriors and their meeting is a form of tantric union that generates a great deal of healing power, shared between masculine and feminine for the benefit of both.

(This combination supported some incredibly deep and liberating work around both distortions to the sacred feminine and with the wounded and wounding masculine in last weekend’s workshop!)

This generates itself across the chart, to the Mars Venus conjunction in Leo, to the Saturn Kali conjunction in Aquarius (yes, this is still going on!), to the Nodes of the Moon and to the goddess of marriage Juno in Sagittarius.

Moon Neptune alignments heighten the general emotional, psychic and spiritual sensitivity within people and, on a collective level, can make the psychic environment very fluid, fluctuating and at times chaotic, by generating a great deal of psychic flux impacting everybody. It is also a brilliant transit for deep inner work and for our meditation practices.

Some of this can be very confusing particularly for the conscious mind but is equally brilliant around creative and intuitive pursuits. The former is heightened, at least initially in the month, as this conjunctions squares the now forward moving Mercury in Gemini, so first 10 days of the month are going to feel like the planet is still retrograding!

The rational sides of our intellects will feel like they are on a small boat bobbing around a choppy ocean with big swells running. Once again great for meditative and creative practices but not so much so for clear conscious thinking and communication.

Having the fiercely intelligent Pallas Athena in this mix is a curious thing. While Pisces and Neptune are oceanic and diffusive, her actions are one pointed and penetrating. I get the sense that her own leanings towards the rational masculine are getting a dunking, and an induction, into the mysteries of the unconscious.

Equally, she can be seen as diving deliberately into these mysteries, like a free diver exploring what’s behind the scenes and under the superficial. And then bringing the gifts of this exploration to the surface to be shared for the benefit of all.

Both of these processes can be happening at the same time.

It would be a mistake to think that the Moon Neptune combination is only a debilitating one, as she has positive aspects to three of the great purificatory, transforming and empowering archetypes within ourselves. This lunar combination effectively lubricates the wheels of transformation, of death and rebirth within ourselves, in ways that can support us to be more available, surrendering and fluid in our responses to these great challenges within. Basically, it supports us to trust more, to let go more easily and to release the excessive need to control.

This applies both to deep spiritual practices, all forms of healing and, with the Moon in particular, with working with emotional release practices. It can also do wonders for our sex lives as well, the very same reasons!

What a fabulous dynamic expression of conjunction, the marriage between masculine and feminine, between this archetypal couple! Exact on the 13th and 14th, this combination is full of passion, creative and sexual juice, with a great need for physical expression through dance, joyful play and, of course, lovemaking.

This in fact is one of a number of brilliant relationship oriented line ups this month. They are a part of a grand trine that I mentioned earlier, between Chiron, Lilith and Juno. The Eros asteroid in Sagittarius is in a grand trine with two great tantric goddesses in the form of Parvati in Aries and Hygeia in Leo.

However, Venus and Mars will face of significant challenges as they travelled through Leo for most of the month.

This has many of the characteristics of a potentially explosive pressure cooker. Bisected by a Mars Saturn opposition, the normally gung ho and sometimes arrogant Mars in Leo can crash and clash with the brick wall of Saturn in Aquarius. Traditionally this is associated with intense frustration, ego drives meeting harsh reality, conflicts with authorities and power struggles in general with significant others, producing a great deal of boiling anger.

On another level, this can represent necessary checks and balances to the excesses of ego, selfishness and self-absorption. This union is also a test, to see how we respond to challenges and to how much we can learn from them when things get increasingly tough. This includes the arts of surrender, re-evaluating our goals and submitting our will to being honed into something far more effective than being adolescently reactive!

Fortunately and unfortunately, depending on your orientation, Venus also gets drawn into her own version of the same grand cross in the first week of the month, before both of them oppose the Kali asteroid from the 9th to the 13th.

As Saturn and Uranus are still closely squaring each other, stressfully enough, then Mars followed by Venus simultaneously squares Uranus, while locking horns with Saturn. This is a very explosive combination, more so with Kali involved, so it’s important to be careful in the first two weeks of the month.

The kind of pressure that gets created here can produce great outbursts of anger and violence, and if the pressure doesn’t get enough effective releasing, particularly physical and emotional release, it can set us up for accidents, relationship blow-ups, or for having it implode badly into our bodies and affecting our health.

This is not a time to sit on your energy, however it may be responding, but to keep it moving, whether through intense exercise, dance, using punching bags, shaking meditations, screaming into pillows or finding something you can safely and satisfyingly break! If that’s not possible or appropriate, then write out your grievances and do anything else that honours and validates your feelings. (when you haven’t a safe way of raging, the Golden Kali meditation here or go to the website through this link https://danielsowelu.com/product/kali-meditation/ is also brilliant for working with destructive toxins) 

However, less dramatically, this is also just the kind of transits that handled well, can produce major breakthroughs, in awakening your fire energy, releasing old forms of trauma and rage, standing up for your rights and equality in relationships, for reawakening your sexuality after periods of stagnancy.

By doing so, we invoke the best of the simultaneous grand trine involving Chiron, Lilith and Juno, who act as guides and allies towards healing and eventual rebalancing once the dust has settled and the drama has passed.

Go well, stay safe,

With love and blessings,

Daniel