Announcing a new five-week workshop!
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What astrological transits define “the story of your life”? There is a lot of confusion about how astro transits work. We are now inundated with urgent-sounding content online like “Venus is in Pisces, time to fall in love” or “Jupiter enters Leo, get ready to roar”! What do these events actually mean for us? Will you have a significant event occur whenever a planet changes signs? The simple answer is no. The more nuanced answer is, “it depends.”
Let’s say you’re a Leo Sun and Jupiter transits into Leo. You’re probably going to have a pretty good year! Beyond that, I can almost promise that Jupiter transiting over your natal Sun will transform your life. You’re likely to be consumed with a new philosophy, learn from a powerful mentor, invest your time and energy in Leo-like pursuits, and maybe have some Leo-style four-alarm dramas. Jupiter tends to bring plain-old good luck and abundance, and so these will be raining down around you as you expand your consciousness. Remember, Jupiter is the traditional ruler of Pisces and it is associated with redemption. Some part of you is choosing goodness, or qualities that elevate the spirit, and whatever you integrate into your identity at this time will feed your soul for years to come.
Jupiter transiting the natal Sun by conjunction is an event that determines “the story of your life.” It’s what I call a “top-tier transit,” meaning you’ll be a different person after you live it. When you look back on this time in your life, you’ll have a felt sense that you were permanently changed and can’t go back to who you were before you grew in wisdom and knowledge.
So, will everyone experience the event of Jupiter’s transit through Leo? Yup. But not everyone will have a top-tier, life-transforming event like the Leo Sun folks will. You might think, “But Jupiter in Leo opposes my Sun, (or trines it or squares it). Surely those events are significant too!” Those events are definitely significant. They’re just not as powerful. A conjunction is the most powerful astrological aspect, and represents a fusion of two planetary energies.
As an Evolutionary Astrologer, I’m biased towards top-tier transits. A lot of stuff is going to happen to you in this lifetime, and not all of it is important. That sounds like astrological anathema these days, when content creators infuse every astrological happening with heavy significance to compete in the attention economy. I’m reminded of when I went on spiritual pilgrimage to Egypt, and the facilitator for our New Age tour group described every temple attunement as a “peak experience.” Surely, my inner Virgo skeptic mused, they can’t all be peak experiences. I’m going to vibe with some places more than others and walk away with a clear favorite. You could think about a Jupiter transit the same way. Transiting Jupiter interacting with your Sun in any way is usually pretty cool, but only the conjunction is going to give you the peak experience.
Evolutionary Astrologers, as the name implies, look at the development of your personality and the unfolding of your natal potential over time. It’s not possible to have all the strengths and gifts of your natal chart accessible to you at birth, just as it’s not possible for a baby to emerge from the womb walking and talking. You develop those gifts through astrological transits, when extra pressure is applied to your natal planets for examination and integration. My teacher calls these events “existential prompts.”
I’ve put together a class just focused on these top-tier events or “peak experience” transits. You’re going to notice a couple things about the list I’ve compiled: I’m only including outer planet transits and my target planets are restricted to the Sun, Moon, and planetary returns. Why is that? The answer is simple: the inner planets, Venus, Mars, and Mercury, move too quickly to build up energy at any particular point by transit. You can absolutely feel a pleasant Venus transit, but its influence is usually restricted to a couple days at most. Neptune and Pluto transits, on the other hand, can retread the same ground for years. When you’re reviewing your life on your deathbed, you’re not likely to remember the fabulous purse you bought when Venus transited your Sun, but you will probably recall a Neptune conjunction to your Sun as a major biographical event. Another difference between these events - that Neptune conjunction is a once in a lifetime initiation, whereas the Venus conjunction to your Sun will happen once or twice a year.
As far as the target planets (the transit recipients) being Sun and Moon, that’s an easy explanation too. We’re talking top-tier, and the Sun and Moon are the two brightest lights in our world. To reiterate some basic ideas here, outer planet transits to any sensitive point in your chart are significant. But think of that deathbed perspective again - I’m probably going to recall transiting Saturn’s conjunction to my Sun, when I first met the father of my child, more than Saturn’s conjunction to my natal Venus, when I got a really horrible haircut. (This is a true story. The haircut was so horrible that I flew to Los Angeles from Oregon to have my old hairdresser fix it. I was also dealing with having a too-skinny body from ongoing medical issues, so the transit was significant, but not “top-tier.”)
The other thing you’ll notice is that I’m including different transiting events for each of the five outer planets. The reasons for this are pretty straightforward. None of us will live long enough to have a Neptune or Pluto return (for context, the USA had its first Pluto return just a few years ago). So for those weeks, I’ll be looking at major Pluto or Neptune transits to the Sun and Moon. Those will look different for everyone, and we won’t all experience the same ones. For example, I’ll never experience Pluto conjuncting my Virgo Sun in this lifetime, because I don’t plan on living until the 23rd century. But I have experienced Pluto square my Sun, and that was a top-tier, life-changing event.
Planetary returns and oppositions, by contrast, happen to everyone around the same age. We all have a Saturn return around age 29 and again at 58. The Uranus opposition comes for us in our early 40s. Jupiter returns visit us at nice round intervals at ages 12, 24, 36, 48, etc.
The basic outline of the workshop I’ve assembled is this: five two-hour meetings over Zoom, each one dedicated to one of the five outer planets and its major transits to your natal chart. The format will be familiar to my regular students: one hour of lecture followed by an hour of discussion using examples from student charts.
What can you gain from this deep dive into the “story of your life”? I’m not entirely sure, since I’ve never taught a course that attempts to catch all the major transits of your life! But I’ve been a student of astrology since I was a teenager, so my own consciousness has been forged by knowledge of these planetary cycles. What I can promise is that you will walk away with a deeper sense of the mechanics of astrology, and hopefully a profound respect for the planets as teachers and guides. Benevolent Jupiter puts you in touch with what’s best in you, while Pluto forces a confrontation with your shadow and your hidden reserves of power. I see Uranus as something of a mad scientist visiting from your future, dropping wildcards and triggering evolutionary leaps. Neptune events are spiritualizing, healing, and redemptive, often restoring your link to the collective. And Saturn, as we all know, makes you work; yet the obstacles this planet is forever throwing at you enables you to become clear and focused in your goals.
The value of taking a fine-toothed comb to your “astrological biography” is that it will demonstrate plainly that most of us did not incarnate solely to make money or look cool on Instagram. An outer-planet transit deep dive will give you a potent sense of who you are: your determination (Saturn), your values (Jupiter), your role in society (Uranus), your softness (Neptune), and your capacity to hold power (Pluto). Seeing your inner qualities reflected through the lens of major biographical events can also aid in self-forgiveness, especially if you failed to make money or look cool on Instagram or whatever fill-in-the-blank “sposedas” you’re carrying around. An outer-planet deep dive will foster you falling in love with your own chart and your own story. “Who you are” is typically not defined by your job, but rather by the steps you took to get there, and whomever you served in that role. The story of your life is found in the bonds you make to friends, family, and the larger community, and not in material markers of success as we are so often taught to believe.
Course Dates and Price
We will meet five Sundays in a row at 2pm Pacific time (5pm Eastern) for two-hour sessions. Each student will receive a personalized report of major planetary transits to their Sun and Moon, along with selected outer-planet returns and oppositions. It is expected that you will reflect on the Jupiter events you’ve lived through before the Jupiter class, the Saturn events before the Saturn class, etc., so that you can add to the class discussion. I foster a welcoming environment, and generally attract a pretty woke and conscientious crew. I want everyone to feel safe sharing the details of their lives, and I usually keep these workshops small and intimate, or to 12 participants or less.
March 22: Jupiter, wisdom & values
March 29: Saturn, determination & structure
April 5: Uranus, authenticity & society
April 12: Neptune, vision & healing
April 19: Pluto, shadow and power
The early bird rate for the five session class is $165. The rate will increase to $195 on March 5th. Get in on the discount and purchase below!