Moon, Neptune and Sun Progessions

I was playing around with progressions the other day when I noticed a little configuration in the mutable signs and houses. Last November my progressed moon conjoined Neptune in Sag in the third, squaring (within one degree) my progressed sun in Pisces in the sixth. November was not pretty. I was miserable after a brief relapse with drugs and was forced to get honest about a lot of stuff for the first time. The pain was great enough to make me change, and since then my life has gotten consistently better, in a way I've never experienced before. Oh yeah Pluto is also transiting my natal Neptune at al Nadir. "Inward transformation" they call it.

So I'm at a twelve-step meeting the other day and somebody mentions how he's seen a lot of people relapse after seven or eight years. I got to thinking... Saturn transits? Progressed moon? Probably some of both. But I did look for the last hard moon/Neptune/sun aspect, and it was a significant time for me. January 1999, progressed moon in the twelfth in Virgo made a T-square with Neptune (Sag, third) and progressed sun (Pisces, sixth). In January 1999 I went on a school trip to the Netherlands and started drinking and smoking pot in earnest. My personality underwent a major transformation around that time. In 1993 my progressed moon and sun squared, but it wasn't in aspect to Neptune yet. Drinking and drugs were not in the picture... I was also eleven.

So I'm quite inexperienced with progressions, but they seem to factor into how I handle difficult transits. Hard transits + hard progressions = bad news.

This progressions business sheds some light on my extreme Piscean nature. "Oh, Pisces," sighs Scorpio. I'm actually a cusper (Aquarius-Pisces) and I only have one other planet in a water sign (Jupiter in Scorpio). Progressed sun square Neptune, however... that's probably significant. And in that pivotal 1999 progressed chart Neptune was at the bottom of the chart, in aspect to practically everything.

Now if I could only figure out what to say to my friend who hasn't had a boyfriend since her progressed Venus conjoined Saturn, she got divorced and went bankrupt...

When Jupiter Opposes the Sun

Yesterday morning the Sun opposed retrograde Jupiter. My aunt (Aries, Scorpio moon) had a massive heart attack at the same time. Her birth time's a mystery; I'm tempted to say she's Cancer or Capricorn rising, which might place the Sun-Jupiter opposition in her 6th-12th house axis, but really I don't know. Scorpio and I have talked before about Jupiter's presence in some of the nastier events we've charted, and I've wondered whether it's only thanks to him that we've lived to chart them or if he actually made things a lot worse. The doctors said that less than 25% of patients who suffer the kind of heart attack my aunt did ever make it to the OR, so she's actually pretty lucky. Surgery lasted over six hours. Let's hope she makes it.

I Love the Taurus

Last night my Taurus gave me a good example of the second house association with "one's relationship to his or her own body." After a hot hot day at the beach, Taurus was still milky white due to frequent applications of appallingly high-SPF block (I think it was 15 or something). His freckles had, however, managed to come out a bit- maybe twenty or thirty of them on his body. I probably wouldn't have noticed, if Taurus hadn't given me a guided tour. He has an intimate awareness of the exact location of every single freckle on his body, and was able to locate them in a club with almost no light. Furthermore, he made the probable hours or perhaps days spent in self-inspection seem totally cute and natural, rather than self-centered and neurotic. Yay Taurus. Today Taurus is back at work earning money. I should mention that Taurus has a perfect Virgo Midheaven job. He's a pharmacist!