2005 Planet Waves Annual for Aquariusby Eric Francis
WHEN CHIRON ENTERS your birth sign on Feb. 21, returning for the first time since 1961, the world commences a new era, as do you in your personal journey on the planet. Yet more than for any other sign -- and I speak of you, and to some degree of any person whose natal chart has an emphasis on Aquarius, be it by Moon, ascendant or midheaven, or the natal placement of Chiron -- the connection between what is seemingly personal and what is obviously collective is emphasized. In other words, you become part of something greater than yourself, which is first and foremost the theme of Aquarius. The cosmos begins this era close to your birthday, with a rather impressive, even shocking performance centered on the Aquarius New Moon of Feb. 8. On that day, Venus, Neptune, Mercury, the Sun, the Moon and Juno join forces in your sign, accompanied by a planet much like Chiron, called Nessus. Whatever happens around that time will be memorable and, I trust, will point you toward the future, informing you in clear terms both of what you want and what you do not want. One result will be that you suspend one or more major life patterns, and begin the process of recreating them. Pattern making is in the top five qualities of Aquarius, and perhaps the one to which you need to pay the most attention. Yours is the sign of energy, and energy is intelligent. It learns and responds. It learns, like anything else, from repetition, practice and accumulated experience. In the first instance, the presence of these two powerful centaur planets -- Chiron and Nessus -- making three conjunctions in your sign in 2005, represents a radical shift in your awareness that takes you past your prior beliefs. Yet you're not going to be responding to psychic or inner forces. I have a clear feeling that something happens in the world -- an event, a trend, or a change in the political or social climate fairly early in the year -- that gets your attention and wakes you up. This something calls on you to participate in the life outside your own in an immediate and meaningful way. You may notice this as a professional calling, but you're more likely going to feel it as a new reality that has come into focus both within you and outside of you. In the process, you lose a few shades of that Aquarian objectivity, and you gain, in a very fair exchange, a few deeper shades of your humanity. Most importantly, a shift occurs in which you mature from feeling like the odd-person out, something that nags almost everyone with strong Aquarius in their chart, to something much more integrated with your community and your role in the world. For those who have been alive that long, this is something very much akin to the mid- to late-1970s, particularly evoking the events and developments -- both personal and worldly -- of 1976 through 1978. Chiron's transit across Aquarius is a long one, and will become a more or less permanent feature in your life for the foreseeable future. Between 1989 and now, Chiron has covered about half the zodiac, from Cancer to Capricorn. That occurred in 15 years out of a 51-year orbit. This is because Chiron was at its closest point to the Sun (perihelion) during those years, peaking in Libra. Chiron now covers the other half of the zodiac in about 36 years, taking from six to nine years to cover one sign (Aquarius, Pisces, Aries and Taurus, with the longest time being spent in Aries). Chiron begins transiting out of Aquarius in the spring of 2010 and completes the process of going into Pisces in February 2011 (covered extensively elsewhere in this section). So in essence, Chiron in Aquarius is a bridge that takes us from 2005 through 2011 -- right before the momentous events of 2012, and through many, many memorable, intense peaks that will call upon your intelligence, your social vision and your high sense of responsibility. I suggest you plan for the best years of your life, and strive for them as well. You are born with the broadness of vision to see the world, and your peers, through such an intense time of rapid change. Plan to work, to love, to grow, and to become the person you know you are inside, and give yourself the whole six years to do it. You are an Aquarian. You were made for high-voltage transits. You could dance around in a meadow in a lightning storm and catch the bolts in your bare hands. Chiron is intense, and in Aquarius extremely so, but due to many other factors, you're well prepared for this and more than that, you need what you're going to experience. Live your life consciously and you will live it all the better. Earlier birthdays will begin feeling the full strength of this transit earlier, but I and just about everyone else who writes these Sun sign columns knows that the entire sign is sensitive to planetary transits, beginning with the first moment, and in some respect affecting every single person. We need to discuss the transit of Saturn into your 7th solar house, the house of relationships. This happens quite close to the entry of Chiron into Aquarius, so it's part of the same process, for you and for everyone. This is a serious, sobering transit and represents for you a vivid focus on your relationships. Saturn through the 7th is almost always a clean sweep. Many people get married or divorced at this time; any relationship will go to a new level that can be a transformation as well. While you would need to check your proper natal chart for more information, Saturn in your solar 7th, Leo, will provide you with many opportunities for clarity and for making concrete, tangible changes that help you build a new way of relating to people. Aquarians relate in many ways; you cannot really nail them down as a group. All strive for a measure of true equanimity and generosity. Aquarians are often accused of being dispassionate, but Chiron's presence will bring into focus the struggle and the ecstasy of being human in a way that is anything but detached. It is significant that Neptune, the Lord of Waters, is visiting the sign of the Water Bearer. In the coming weeks, Neptune reaches the exact midpoint of his 5,118-day journey across the terrain of your soul, which began in early 1998. To put it mildly, this has been an odyssey; for much of the world, it has felt like drifting out into nowhere and discovering that's exactly where we are. For Aquarius, it has been about filling up that big jug you're always depicted holding. You need to have plenty of the water of life to share with the people around you. Neptune has presented some nearly unbearable tests of your patience and endurance; everything you thought you knew about yourself has somehow been taken away. You've had to learn how to breathe under water when really you would much prefer air. But there can be no denying that your awareness of the spiritual world has been enhanced enormously. Though it defies all logic, the unseen world is now your first home. Yet you can never have confidence in what you know if you haven't subjected it to practical tests, put it to work in your relationships, and most important, applied it to your community. You've learned far more than you think lately, but you've also reached the time when you can no longer keep knowledge for its own sake. The test of your true genius will be applying what you have gained to every situation in your life, finding evermore-intelligent ways of making contact and working with like-minded others to solve the problem of alienation -- a problem you know about all too well -- which is the one problem we need to solve before we realize it's just us people down here on the planet, and we're all in this together. PW 
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