Star Struck Style

Check out this painting — he’s got my quarantine gut!

Despite how fat I feel after being stuck at home for the past few months, I’m feeling pretty optimistic about my future. I get to go back to work today for a staff meeting and then I have my first official shift on Friday.

What’s interesting about the timing of this transit is that Neptune officially moves out of orb from its opposition to my natal Uranus today and into orb to a trine to my natal Neptune tomorrow. It’s kind of a big deal to have outer planets configured in my horoscope so closely that a shift like this can occur at all, but it’s an even bigger deal to actually see events in my life affected acutely by outer planet transits — especially when Neptune isn’t really personalized in my chart.

Anyway, after a year of dealing with transit (A) I’m suddenly going to be dealing with transit (B) for an entire year. My horoscope on astro.com interprets the latter event as follows:

“This influence is a chance to examine your life and to see within it the seeds for something greater than you have imagined. This greatness is not in the material realm, nor will it give you power over others. Instead your opportunity is to see your life in a spiritual dimension that you have never before perceived. This can manifest itself in a number of ways.

First of all, you may discover an increased empathy for the people in your everyday life. You can put yourself into another’s place in a way that you have never been able to do before; you can see and, more importantly, feel what someone else feels. Consequently you will have more sympathy and compassion for other people’s problems.

Your compassion springs from a realization of the essential unity of yourself and all being. For most people, this is not an entirely conscious realization. You may feel an increased involvement with others, but you don’t quite know where it has come from. On the other hand, this can be a conscious feeling, in which case you may become more attracted to mystical philosophies and metaphysics, which try to verbalize what you are beginning to experience. You may experience a reawakened interest in religion, even if this has long been dormant in your life. Possibly you may even have a profound psychic or mystical experience.

Even if by temperament you are not inclined to mysticism, you will experience its effects as increased idealism and an increased willingness to work for the kind of world you want to see.

Whatever else may happen, you will feel more capable of selfless actions in your relationships with others. You will be willing to help, seeking little or nothing in return because your own ego seems less important to you now.”

I’m not exactly sure how this is going to play out considering that my natal Neptune is in my second house of possessions and transiting Neptune is in my fifth house of self-expression. The last line of this passage seems to be at odds with those house placements. Nevertheless, I’m curious to see how this all turns out. The past year has been characterized by Neptune’s transits to the configuration of Uranus, Pluto and Chiron that everyone born in late 1965 and early 1966 share. Now we’re all moving onto this interesting new phase in our lives. I suppose that the COVID-19 pandemic has done plenty to change the way my generation thinks about everything, so as the world opens back up, it wouldn’t be surprising to learn that many of us have become more compassionate and/or more spiritual as a result.

What’s weird about this entire thing is that I had a “moment” yesterday while out for a walk in the spring sunshine where I was sort of overcome by the idea that the “Age of Coronavirus” was finally over. Even though that isn’t entirely true, I felt as if I needed to thank the universe that I was finally on the other side of this crisis.

Hopefully, I was right. It’s time for me and the people of my generation to move forward. This Saturday’s new moon is just a couple of degrees beyond Neptune, providing us with a symbolic break from the past year. It’s also a great time for me to resolve to lose my quarantine weight. I’m tired of looking like that guy in the painting, but that’s a story for another post . . .