Caspar David Friedrich “Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog”

2020 is now half over, but we are still very much in the early stages of the Great Dismantling. As Jupiter and Pluto align for the second of three conjunctions, and Saturn returns to Capricorn for the next six months, we are experiencing a reprise of the same song and dance that has formed the soundtrack to the year so far. The difference being, this time, the major players are all retrograde. All three as close to the Earth, and as far from the Sun, as they will be all year.

Zeus meets Hades: the ruler of Mount Olympus shakes hands with the god of the Underworld, and in this time we all experience glimpses of our own personal heavens as well as our own personal hells. Saturn, then, keeps us from veering too far in one direction, reminding us of our purpose and our soul contracts—there is far too much work to be done here on Earth first. What I hear them saying is: change for the world will happen from the top down and from the bottom up; for the individual, it will happen from within. 

Tibetan Buddhist Pema Chodron wrote, “Nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know.” If Jupiter, Pluto and Saturn, retrograde in Capricorn, are our teachers in this case, then what we need to know has something to do with power and authority, fear and faith. Where we find those things internally and where we source them out in the world. To whom and to what do you relinquish or exercise your authority? What empowers you and what disempowers you? Does your faith come from within or from without? What is your internalized archetypal image of The Father, and how do you project that onto the world around you? What is worth investing in and what needs to be scrapped and rethought? With all these major forces at play, it is crucial we keep our fingers on our pulses and our ears attuned to our hearts, and try to follow the guides within.