Autumn Equinox 2016

Autumn Sprite by Margaret Tarrant

Autumn Sprite
by Margaret Tarrant

 

The Autumn Equinox this year,  Spring in the Southern Hemisphere,  arrives on Thursday 9/22  at 10:22a EDT, 7:22a  PDT and  2:22p UT. The Farmer’s Almanac has fun Equinox  facts and a live stream too.   National Geographic has interesting  info and even discusses equinoxes on other planets (very cool!).

The Equinox marks the beginning of a new season and the chart for the exact Equinox moment reveals the season’s astrological trends.  I cast the Equinox chart for Washington, DC because the US Presidential election will be held this Fall.

Chart for Autumn Equinox 2016

Chart for Autumn Equinox 2016

 

The Autumn Equinox is the exact moment the Sun enters  Libra each year and this year Mighty Jupiter is also in Libra at 2*  forming a close conjunction to the Sun. Jupiter represents opportunity and expansion so this is a very fortuitous connection! Elegant Venus, ruler of Libra, dances happily in her own sign at 28* Libra, while Muscular Mars is in compatible Sagittarius at 26*, which is the very degree of the cosmically potent Galactic Center! Right from the jump this portends  interesting and powerful dynamics for this new season.

The Moon, harbinger of  public emotions,  is in airy Gemini vibrating nicely with the fellow air sign Libra Sun, Jupiter and Venus.  Gemini Moon is light hearted and filled with fun but also scattered and fickle.  On the upside this brings in playful energy and aids in taking life less seriously, but at the same time the Moon forms a tight challenging square to wounded-healer Chiron in oh-so-sensitive Pisces. This tense  angle accents the severe contrast between the gloomer/doomers and the’ Life is Beautiful’ folks.  The Gemini Moon also squares mental Mercury in Virgo (who went direct a few hours before the Equinox, thank ye gods) and Merc also forms an opposition to nebulous Neptune in Pisces who in turn squares Lord of Karma Saturn in Sagittarius.

This configuration creates a full grand mutable square repeating the same frustrating, itchy  pattern in high gear for over a  year. A major part of this mutable madness is the Saturn/Neptune square which has been creating wonky energy for months and is still in strong force in the Equinox chart.  The weirdness this square creates is also the reason why I heard over and over this summer, “Mercury must still be retrograde!”  Here’s a good article by Insight Astrology on the effects of this challenge,  Sweet illusion meets cold hard reality.  Mars is in Sagittarius too and forms a hard angle to Chiron in Pisces echoing a similar tune with the variation of rough-riding reality galloping over hopes and dreams with nary a glance back.

Adding more tension to this mutable square are Mercury  close to the North Node in Virgo and Neptune conjuct the karmic South Node in Pisces, all of which square Saturn.  Like a cosmic compass  the North Node points  to the direction we must go in order to become more evolved, while the South Node reveals what we need to integrate and understand so it won’t continue to trap us in limiting past patterns. The nodes entered Virgo/Pisces last November 15 and remain in these signs until May 9, 2017.

South Node in Pisces while beautifully spiritual, loving and artistic can also be delusional and believes you can live off of  honeysuckle and cantaloupe forever while frolicking with unicorns in fields of poppies.  North Node in Virgo indicates the need for intelligent, discriminating thought process and researched concepts versus the “I drank the cool-aid so don’t bother me with facts”.  Yet again this year’s  US election insanity pops out as an obvious example of this dynamic.  Even after fact-checkers reveal the actual truth,  true believers could care less. They peer through rosy glasses at what they hope is their winning Trump hand and wait for things to go back to the way they used to be.

The time has come the Walrus said to talk of many things.
Of shoes and ships and ceiling wax, of cabbages and kings.

Transformer Pluto in in solid earth sign Capricorn plays into this too,  reaching out to Mercury/Virgo in a helpful exact trine .  Capricorn has a lot to do with the status quo – the conventional movers and shakers who create the worldly structures we all function within.  Conventional wisdom has been thrown on it’s ass this year, with both Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump’s unexpected rise and the European Union’s turmoil with the Brexit vote.  The typical powers that be are hoping the public won’t notice them running in circles bumping into each other.  This trine helps anyone with eyes to see, view those crusty powers spinning ever more out of control,  and leads people to realize it’s easier than they thought to take power back into their own hands.

Other Equinox trends show up through rebellious Uranus whose rebellion is held in check while he travels retrograde. Uranus is stationed at 23* Aries and forms a high voltage trine to Mars in fellow fire sign Sagittarius and also an opposition to Venus in Libra. The trine with Mars at the cosmically active Galactic Center (see above) to cell tower Uranus tunes into high vibrational frequencies which have the potential to break through long-standing barriers revealing the many emperors with no clothes and all the wizards behind the screens.  When Uranus turns direct and reaches this same degree again in March-April next year the transmission will come through loud and clear.

The Uranus opposition to Venus/Libra indicates the swinging scales between what Venus wants – peace,  diplomacy,  working together in harmony versus the hot-head Aries energy of “Bomb the enemy to oblivion!” and “Build the Wall!”.  Sometimes the see-saw leans toward Libra and other times it heaves to Aries.   Jupiter has just begun his journey on  the Libra end,  and his hefty weight can tip those scales until they stop swinging wildly and finally come into balance.  May it be so!

At the personal level when you tap into the positive themes of the Equinox you’ll be able to laugh at the world’s political carnivals while realizing your own part in the process.  (No one is innocent.) You’ll stop taking the status quo ‘reality’ for granted and make yourself more informed about the issues that matter to you and yours.  And above all the best Equinox energies help you lighten up, enjoy life and appreciate your relationships more than ever.  I wish you a new season filled with the wonderful, elegant Libra qualities of  peace, beauty and more love!