Well, hello everybody and welcome to the Cosmic Connection. Today we are going to be talking about life changing transits. Those transits that happen and you are just never the same again. So Rick's going to be going through what the biggest ones are. For those of you who don't know me, my name is Amanda Poole-Walsh. I'm the founder of Astrology Hub and I'm here with. I don't know me, I'm Rick Merlin Levine and this is my Thursday afternoon, hanging out with all of you guys and with Amanda Poole-Walsh. So much fun.
Alright, so before we dive in, I just wanted to thank all of you who are writing in your praise for Rick's Astrology Foundation's class. We are receiving so much feedback and it's so fun. And one of my favorites, I think it was an inner circle member. She posted about how every Sunday when the module is released, the next module is released. It feels like Christmas morning and that Santa is basically like dropping a present under her Christmas tree and just how giddy, like childlike giddy she feels. So it's just fun to see how it's impacting your lives and helping you understand astrology and helping you fall even more deeply in love with astrology.
So Rick, thank you. And we probably should tell people that even though the course has officially started, it's a do it at your own pace course. And it's open for anyone who feels like, gee, I should have and I didn't or I didn't know about it. And maybe that would be interesting. I mean, you can as you know, most people know we priced it very reasonably. And people can join in. They can watch the first two modules at their leisure. The third module will be released this weekend. And the life Q&A is the ones that they've missed. They can watch the recordings of the other ones that can join. So we're happy to have you along. Definitely.
If you want to join us, it's astrology hub.com slash foundations. So astrology hub.com slash foundations will put it in all the show notes and descriptions and stuff too. Yeah, we'd love to have you in the live Q&A we had last week. Ended up being two hours. And we're time stamping it though. So you can see where your specific question may have been answered in the video. And Rick was on fire. I just couldn't believe it. Yeah, it rocked.
And one of the things that I mean, we probably will talk about this at tomorrow's Q&A, obviously more in depth. But we just can't possibly answer every question. The questions are so amazing and so good. We could spend the rest of the day, you know, answering those questions. But thank you all for everyone who took the time to put a question in and we're doing our best to get to as many as we can. We got there a lot. I should count. I mean, it was a lot. But okay.
So let's talk about life changing transit. First of all, what is that? What are they? Well, for some people, they're every day. And for 2020, they might seem like they're every day. And you know, if you think about it, we go through life. And there are days, weeks, months, when, you know, things just happen. That happened. It's no big deal. You know, we go through our regular thing. Oh my God, the car has a flat tire. I forgot to take the trash out. Yeah. Um, kid sick. What am I going to do for it? You know, I mean, these things are just things that we deal with. And, um, and, and, and I don't want to say any of them are unimportant. But they come and go and come and go in their part of the fabric of our lives.
And you don't have to be an astrologer to understand that as we live our lives, we hit certain bumps in the road and certain things that, um, you know, we just deal with as a, as a matter of its life. You know, it's like a, gee, I didn't expect that, but I'm dealing with it and life goes on. And then there are those days, weeks, months, years, decades that alter everything that things are just not the same. Lion Watson, who I've spoken about here before, who's not an astrologer, or at least never wrote about astrology, um, had a book called life tied.
And in it he describes how the tides rise and fall every day. And that then there are certain times when the tides are greater than they are at other times. We call these spring tides, regardless of what time of year they are, but they're tides that are stronger. And then every now and then there's a tide that alters everything. It changes the face of the ocean. It alters the beach. The ocean comes over the tide wall or the normal boundary of the ocean. And once it does that, everything is transformed. It doesn't go back to the way it was.
We have Thursday mornings like that. We have decades of our lives like that. There are things that happen in our life that are like these. And he called them life tides, rather than spring tides or just regular, regular tides. And astrologically, there are those tides that we can talk about astrologically, that we all have around the same times of our lives. And then there are those tides that are these life tides like events that one person might have and another person might not. And so there are different kinds of events astrologically.
And every now and then there's what one might call a perfect storm, you know, where there's this tide that everyone gets at that age, plus this one that only you're getting, plus the arrangement of the planets up there that are making it like maybe March of 2020, where it's like, oh my god, what the hell just happened. And they're all happening at the same time. And those definitely alter the fabric of our lives. There are times in our lives when we look back, when we get old enough. We look back and go, oh my gosh, when I was 24 years old, I'm a different person now.
And I was a different person at age 25 than I was at age one through 24 that year altered my life. And so that's kind of what we're talking about when we're talking about life-changing, astrological events. And we're calling these transits because those are the simplest to understand the most obvious astrological events. But for those of you who are astrologically informed, you know that there are progressions and directions. And there are things that happen from relationships. There are other ways in which we can get this.
However, when you look at a chart and unfold it in time, one can see major periods, not major periods of change, but periods of major change that was a dangling adjective in the wrong place. Periods of major change. And it's that that we really want to talk about today. Is what are those periods? What are some examples? I don't think we can cover all of them or quantify all of them in an hour's period of time. But they roughly fall into the descriptors of the four outermost planets, although they certainly can have other influences also.
And on top of that, they can combine the influences of multiple planets at once. So for example, there are changes in our life that are Saturnian. Saturn is the planet of responsibility. It's the planet of karma. When we undergo a Saturn life-changing experience, it's often the result of 20 years of work coming to fruition. Or 20 years of work dissolving into a frustration and going away. It's karmic. With Saturn transitions, it can be like the promotion to a new job that has a huge amount of responsibility because Saturn is about responsibility.
It can be the birth of a child or a new relationship that isn't just fun and gains, that it brings on a whole level of responsibility. Or it can be the loss of a loved one. I mean, there are many different types of events. But Saturn events are often... Karmic was the word that I used, but they're often apparent, even if only retrospectively. What do I mean by that? It's like usually Saturn transits are not surprises. If we're paying attention, we know that if we cut class all year and don't do any of the assignments, we shouldn't be surprised when we receive a failing grade for the course.
However, there are those of us who are surprised anyhow. But that's just because we're in denial. But Saturn stuff is you get what you deserve. And there are points in our lives when those Saturn events pile up. And either things seem to happen externally to us or we take responsibility and do it. Saturn events are also things often where we have to make real important choices. Let me just go through the four planets and then we'll come back and talk about the specifics.
So there are Saturn events which are no surprises. You get what you deserve. They're Karmic. You do good, you get good, you do bad, you get bad. I mean, I'm over exaggerating it a bit. But that's basically how Saturn works. You know, to every action, there's an opposite and equal reaction. The next planet out is Uranus. And remember when Uranus was discovered in the 18th century, it was like a total shock because for hundreds of years, for a couple of millennia, it was understood that Saturn was the slowest moving planet.
And then all of a sudden Uranus was discovered and the real estate of our little solar system tripled overnight. It was like, and so there are events in our lives that happen that are like they're like lightning striking. They're like the shock of awareness. They're like getting hit over the head, you know, with an awake, with a cosmic alarm clock. That's mixing metaphors. I don't think we get hit over the head. You get what I'm saying though. It's like, oh, wow, what just happened.
And Uranus is like lightning. And we all have events in our lives that we didn't see coming. We couldn't see coming. And yet all of a sudden, out of the blue, something happened and it changed everything. Maybe our company that we worked for for 22 years was sold. The new owners came in and they fired everyone in middle management, even though that worked for 23 years and gave great service. Boom. Where did that come from? Uranus transit can be meeting someone and falling in love, like Kapow, whether or not you're in a place in your life, whether you're looking for love or even in a relationship or whatever. It's like, what the heck is that about?
A Uranus transit can be an accident. However, I like to say that Uranus transits that are accidents are really purposes. Because often, what Uranus does as it creates sudden life-changing events is Uranus is like the lightning that is releasing tension. And if there's no tension, there's no lightning. So you can hit a Uranus point in your life and we'll describe what these are in a few minutes. You can hit a Uranus point in your life and nothing happens. And to someone else, their marriage breaks up. You know, their kid leaves home. They get fired from a job and their house gets foreclosed and they win the Nobel Prize. All on the same day or within a week. It happens.
You know, it's like nothing happens. Then a shit ton happens. So Uranus is the sudden. It's the unexpected. And it often has to do with releasing built-up tension that we didn't even know was there. It's not like we were just in denial over it. It was just outside of the realm of perception. The next planet outward is Neptune. And Neptune is a bit more mysterious. Before we went online, my camera wouldn't focus. That's Neptune. It's like it's like it's like this hazy. If Uranus is like lightning striking, Neptune is like magnetism. What is that mysterious force pulling me this way? You know, it's not like like lightning. Boom! It's like sudden.
Neptune is like it's like it's hard to understand. Neptune is about things that are confusing and misleading. And we have places in our lives or times in our lives. When we reach a point and we go, holy smokes, I was in a relationship for three years. And it wasn't the relationship that I thought I was in. Or I've been doing this job. And I've been thinking that it's been absolutely amazing. And my boss and my employees all hate me. I mean, you know, but it's not about like a boom, something suddenly happens. It's like reality is out of focus. But Neptune is also the beauty of spiritual imagination because when things are out of focus, we make stuff up. And so that's fantasy.
And of course, the word spirit is actually also like alcohol because spirits dissolve into the air. There's nothing there. It's the ethers. And so Neptune transits, I think, the hardest to understand because they're not clear. We know it's almost like we know what we're doing. We know where we're going. We have wind in our sales where we have maps, the Saturn stuff we've put in the time, you know, the Uranus stuff. We've kind of dealt with all of that. And then we're out there on the seas. And the wind stops blowing. And we're in a sailboat. Now what? It's like we're drifting. And with Neptune trans, it's often, it feels like we're drifting.
One can say, well, that's kind of cool. It takes some time off. Well, that's true. But what about the six years that I prepared to get to this point? Because I was in the middle of a PhD program. And four years into my PhD program, I have this Neptune transit. And I just want to go to India and hang out on an ashram for a couple of years. Now, I'm not saying that's a bad thing, but that's Neptune transits. And they're life changing because all these outer planets are slow moving. I'm going to come back to that in a moment. All these outer planets are slow moving.
If I don't come back to it after I talk about Pluto, remind me because that's an important piece. So Saturn is you get what you deserve. It's karmic. Uranus is sudden, unexpected, and unpredictable. And sometimes it's brilliant. When the lightning strikes, it's, oh my god, I can see everything. It's brilliant. And then it's dark again, but I know what was there in the dark. With Neptune, everything is gradual. You know, there's this story that it's a horrible story, but I'm going to tell it anyhow. That if you put a frog in cold water and gently bring it to a boil, that the frog will just die. It'll boil to death.
But if you put a frog in ice cold water or boiling hot water, it'll jump out. That's the opposite of Neptune. Because with Neptune, things change so slowly. We don't notice them. And we become accustomed to the aberration that can be very difficult and very harmful. And then it's a struggle to find our way to the other side of it. You know, but Neptune transits can be totally life changing. You know, if you have a friend who had been going for their PhD in physics and began to get more interested in spirituality and then joins a born again Christian church, that might be a Neptune thing. Now, Neptune isn't bad. It's just having to do with beliefs and imagination and certainly can be spiritual. And it may be, in fact, all of our beliefs in some way are Neptune. Because what we believe as true this year or this decade, 10 or 20 or 30 years later, we might go, did I really believe that when I was in my 20s? Because that Neptune is always gradually shifting, but it can be very life changing.
The last of these four planets that I want to talk about, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto. And Pluto even moves slower than Neptune. But for whatever reason, the speed at which Pluto moves grabs our attention in ways that are very profound, have to do with shadow work, have to do with the underworld. Liz Green, who is a PhD psychologist, a Jungian, said that Saturn, Pluto's Saturn's only friend. Saturn's a hard ass. But Saturn is like everything is karmic. This is it. And Pluto goes nope. It's when something happens that's it with a capital I and a capital T. That's not the event that's just the beginning of a deeper transformation. In fact, Saturn, which is the grim reaper, Father Time, Saturn is related to death in a way. Because its finality, Pluto says nope, death ain't final. That's just the beginning of another transformation.
So with Pluto life changing, Plutonic events, we find ourselves pushed into the shadows, into the unconscious, into journeys that are, they can be a year, five years, a decade, they can be tremendous, they can be lifelong. But they're not necessarily where we thought we were going. But they're very obsessive and compulsive. It's like we have to do this, we have to go there, and we have to go deep. And we're not going to finish this until we've actually gone through the complete and total transformation. So those are the four types of life changing events from an astrological point of view. Certainly the faster moving planets can be life changing if they're connected with an outer planet. I mean, Jupiter can be, you know, good luck. Jupiter can be winning a, you know, million dollar a year lottery for the rest of your life. That's certainly going to change your life. Maybe not for the better as much as you think. But it may change your life.
But chances are if something like that, that big happens, there's another outer, outer planet connected with it. And now I'm going to come back to what I asked you to remind me about, but just looking at you, feeling the pressure to kind of be sure to the punch and talk about. And that is this. In astrology, the slower moving the planet, the deeper the note, the longer lasting the change. Now when we're talking about the astrology of change, it's a little bit different, although it's intimately tied to the astrology of your birth called natal, natal just Latin for birth. Your natal chart or birth chart is your chart. And in your chart, those planets don't change. Your birth chart is your birth chart. So if you were born with the sun at nine degrees of Virgo, the sun in your chart will be at nine degrees of Virgo forever. If you were born in 1963 or four and Pluto was at nine degrees of Virgo also, will you have Pluto lined up with your sun in your chart forever?
That's part of your signature. And that has a whole meaning about how the depth and the intensity and the power and the transformation of Pluto becomes part of who you are. But that's not what we're talking about here when we're talking about life changes. We're talking about we all have a chart. We all have a chart with an ascendant and a mid heaven and a sun and a moon and mercury. And all these planets are at different points. That chart is a snapshot of a moment. The universe, the cosmos, the solar system does not stop spinning revolving at your birth, even though it feels like it does when you look at your chart because I'm like a stop gap animation, stop action animation. I'm like a freeze frame. I'm like a Polaroid picture taken at that moment.
And even though I go through my aging process, there's something about the shape of who I am that holds that moment. Meanwhile, Pluto, nine degrees of Virgo, my son at nine degrees of Virgo, not my chart. But meanwhile, Pluto is continuing on its journey around the sun. And Pluto takes 243 years to go around the sun once. Well, no one no one here will ever experience Pluto going around every point in their chart. Compare that to the moon because by by the second month in our life, the moon has moved through every point in our chart, which is why the moon is home and familiarity and nurturing because the moon is so familiar.
By the time we're in our 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, the moon has been around our chart hundreds of times. And so we're so familiar with it that we might forget where it is until something happens, especially if we're biologically connected to the moon like women are, we go, oh, oh, I'm at that part of my cycle because the moon is very familiar. We've been there before again and again and again every month. We're back to the same place in that cycle. But meanwhile, the slower planets are all changing at different speeds.
And the rule is this, the slower moving the planet, the longer lasting the event is that it's associated with that's unfolding in your life. And therefore, the more profound, more long lasting and more powerful, the change is going to be in your life, which is why when we talked about these life changing events, we started with Saturn, which is already a 30 year cycle. Many people only get one Saturn cycle. Most people probably get two. Some people get three or even more. You know, because a lot of people check out on their first Saturn return, the 27 club, you know, 27, 28, 29, you know, you can't quite get it together.
Boom, I'm out of here. I don't mean that consciously, but that can be one of the things that happens. But that Saturn return is the first example of astrological life changing events that it doesn't matter what your chart is. Everyone gets at the same age. Why? Because it takes Saturn 29 and a half years to go around the Sun once. Now with retrograde motion, it can be back in the same places it was when we were born in 28, 29, 29 and a half years at varies.
It's not on our 29th birthday. It's not exactly at 29 and a half, but an astrologer can pinpoint when Saturn returns to where it was when you were born. This is the infamous air quotes Saturn return. Every planet has a return. In fact, you have a lunar return once a month. That's, you know, but you don't notice it because it happens every month. It's familiar. Monday happens every week, you know, oh, it's Monday again. I mean, it's that kind of thing.
But when you have a Saturn return, you only have that once every 29 years, 29 and a half years. And Saturn as the planet of responsibility, maturity, karma, when we come into our Saturn return, whether we know it or not, we have to grow up. We take new responsibility. If things in our lives are not going well, we are forced to make changes. If we don't make those changes, it becomes much harder for us to make those changes in our mid 30s or 40s or even later.
And so one of the important things about understanding these transitions is that as we're coming into the Saturn return through our mid late 20s, most people automatically just begin looking back and going, hmm, where have I been? What have I done? What's worked? What hasn't worked? Where do I want to go? What do I want to be? How am I going to get there? I mean, these are just things that we think.
And often during the Saturn return period, which is not a day, it's a phase that can be weeks, months, or even a year or so. But often during a Saturn return, the following events may be events that someone would have. Buy home, sell home, change jobs, change careers, go back to school, get married, get divorced, have kids, decide not to have kids, move back in with their parents, kill their parents, go to jail. I mean, there are events that are the result of karmic things that have been building up and then we're forced to make decisions.
And often, the decisions that we make, the decisions that Saturn would like us to make when it returns to where it was when we were born, are decisions that have to do with taking responsibility. Like buying a home, or like getting married, or like having children, or like taking a new job, or like going back to school and taking a course of study that would lead in a certain direction. And you know, this is the, there's a cultural thing that people refer to as the under 30 over 30 thing.
If you're under 30, you don't trust anyone over 30. Why? They're grown up. They're different. They're funny duties. They're sticks in the mud. If you're over 30, even a precocious person under 30. And I say 30, it's really 29-ish, you know, but it's, but if you're over 30, it doesn't matter how cool someone is who's 27 years old. They're not passed through the gates of maturity. And so that Saturn return is a life-changing event for everyone.
But here's something to consider. And that is that if we go back to the birth or natal chart, some people have a Saturn that works. We all know people who just are disciplined, they work hard, they don't think of anything, you know, differently, it's like when they make their mind up to do something, they just do it, they go for it, they put things together, they get to where they're going, they run into obstacles, they go, oh, that didn't work, I'm going to try something. That's someone with a functional Saturn.
And then we know people who are the opposite end of the spectrum. Nothing works for them because they're always trying to think of the fast and easy way around things or to get out of work or they don't want to make commitments or they're not willing to take responsibility for who they are or what they've done or whatever. So, depending upon your Saturn and your chart, everyone has Saturn returning at the age of 29-30. But for some people, it's just a confirmation of the last 10, 20, 30 years of their life. And for other people, it's not an easy time. Go ahead.
Yeah, so what about the second Saturn return? Are there going to be similar themes? It's true. And the thing about the second time around. Well, the difference between Saturn and the second at around age 58, 57-58, or the third time around at the age of 86, 87-88, the difference is the experiences that we've had. Because Saturn, if it's karma, we can always alter our future karma by what we do in the present. And so, as we, and Saturn is the taskmaster and Saturn is the teacher.
So, if we learn our lessons from Saturn, Saturn's transits theoretically should get easier or at least more manageable to move through. However, we're human, so they don't necessarily. Because there are pieces of our life, for example, that at a Saturn transit that may come together, areas that we've been working on, like we may get the promotion at work, but our husband or wife may leave us because we'd not been paying attention to them for the past 14 years. So, it's not just a one thing or another. The thing is that Saturn rewards the discipline.
And so, at the second Saturn return, one of the most important things that we can do, halfway between the first and second Saturn return at around age 42, I don't know if you know anyone around that age. No. But around that, and that's the Saturn opposition, that Saturn halfway around on its second time round. By the way, if Saturn is a 29 year cycle, let's say, let's round it off to 30. At age 15, that means Saturn's halfway around. That's screaming adolescence. That's looking maturity at the face and not being mature.
And then at 30, roughly, Saturn has returned to where it was. But then, roughly at age 42, 42, 43, that's roughly when Saturn is at the halfway point again. Now, it turns out that that 40 to 42 period is also a point of a Uranus transit that everyone experiences at the same time, because Uranus is basically three times Saturn. Saturn is roughly 29 years, and Uranus is roughly 84 years. So, you know, 29 times 3 is actually 87. It's a little less than that.
But it's roughly, it roughly, Saturn goes around three times while Uranus goes around once. And a lot of the planets have this intricate kind of gears of clockwork into relationship. But what that means is around the time of our Saturn opposition. That's halfway between our Saturn return at age, let's say 30. And our second Saturn return at age 58, let's say, that around age 42, really 44 in that range. It varies as the time goes on because of the retrograde motion.
But at the time of that Saturn opposition, halfway between our first and second Saturn returns, during that same time, Uranus, which takes 84 years to go around, is now staring itself at the face, and that's the halfway point. This is often what's considered to be the opening volley of the midlife crises. And I used crises in the plural rather than crisis in singular. Because that Uranus opposition, basically, if Saturn is about responsibility and karma and getting what you deserve and doing the right thing, and Saturn is about the heaviness and the weight of the past and tradition and following the rules, if that's all Saturn, Uranus is basically the rebel.
Uranus is basically the, I'm adding, you know, it's like, I don't care if I have a job, I don't care if I'm married, I don't care if my kids are expecting me to bring home, you know, money and drive them to school. I'm just got a bonus and I'm buying a red sports car and I'm driving it to Guadalajara. And I'm going to stay there until I want to come back, which may be never. Now, I'm not saying everyone who has a Uranus opposition does that, but that's what, often what happens is that saying, just like the difference between the under 30 and over 30, there's another saying life begins at 40. Why? Because at 40, we're getting flavors of that Uranus opposition and Uranus looks basically what happens as we approach 41, 42, we're looking back and going, oh my god, what happened to the excitement that I had in my 20s?
You know, I'm now working a boring job, I have three kids, I'm doing, I mean, I get that this was all good and this is exactly what I wanted, but I'm not old yet, but I'm not young. And if I don't do it now, I'm never going to get the chance to do it. So I'm going to go out and buy that fast, you know, racing car, or I am going to take the trip to Africa and climb Mount Kilimanjaro that I've always wanted to do, because if I don't do it now, I'm going to lose the chance. And it may be irresponsible to do it and it may piss people off that I'm doing these things that seem self-indulgent, but screw them, that's what I'm doing.
And the Uranus return, the life begins at 40, is often about reclaiming that, Mr. Fransford, Joy DeVive, yes. Joy DeVive? Oh my god. But the joy of life, it's close enough by Fransford. But it's often about reclaiming that buzz. And there's often something else that occurs in the late 30s, early 40s, whether we are spiritually inclined or not. There's often a spontaneous rising of Kundalini, Kundalini or Chi or Chi or Life Energy or whatever you want to call it, depending on what tradition you come from. One of the reasons why we follow spiritual traditions and do yoga and all of those kinds of practices is to build this life energy and to bring it up, which is about the buzz that we would like to have as we move through life.
But during the Uranus opposition, often that energy comes up hard, strong suddenly and whether we asked for it or not. And this is the client that I would have that the person who comes in has been married for 20 years, has kids in their teens and is basically I'm crazy because I've just met this guy and I've totally fallen in love and I'm not doing anything stupid, but I'm ready to because my marriage is kind of a disaster. But it's you see the energy is coming up and it's not about the person that they are attracting or are attracted to, which is often what someone thinks and then they leave their marriage and go chase a dream, which is not based on reality, is just based upon the fact that you are magnifying this energy internally.
Therefore, it's sending signals out that are attracting you to it. And I like to tell people that no, this person that you've attracted is basically, it's basically an acknowledgement of the intelligence and power that you have because you've attracted a reminder that you're capable still of feeling these things. It has nothing to do with that person, although that's the illusion. The illusion is that if I don't follow that person in my life, then I'll lose that chance. That's the Uranus, the lightning striking, but the fact of the matter is that it really is it's an awakening. It's the great Uranus is called the Great Awakener, age 42.
So those two, you know, then there's the second sat and return, which like I said, if you've kind of paid attention to your life, the second sat and return should be easier than than your first. I remember I was on the phone during my second sat and return on the day of it exact. Now I'm an astrologer. I knew that I've been in my second sat and return and kind of been dealing with some stuff and some some financial stuff that you know, just stuff. And I was on the phone with an astrologer friend who said, hey, I just noticed I'm looking at your chart. Hold on a second. Do you realize that your sat and return is exact today? I said, no, I didn't know how to make it.
And she said, so what's going on? Anything happened? I said, well, you know, there's a bunch of things we could talk about. Hang on, there's someone at the door. And I went and opened up the door and I was a person standing at the door and said, are you Rick Levina? I said, yeah, they said, you've been served. IRS. Now I dealt with it. I mean, it was Saturn. You got to deal with it. But it comes around. I'd sat on returns and yet, and yet if we're paying attention, and there was a part of me that was because I was kind of prepared for that kind of, but if we're paying attention as we get closer to the Saturn return, the second one at 58ish, we look back again and we go, so gee, I don't have my life ahead of me anymore. I've lived the middle part of my life. I still have life in front of me, but it's like, it's like the third third of life.
The first third youth, Saturn return, middle third, between the first and second Saturn returns, roughly 30 to 60, middle age life. Then third, third, 60 to 90, roughly. And so at the second Saturn return, rather than looking back and saying, what do I want to be when I grow up? Now it's, what do I need to do in my life to make changes to stabilize it so that I can gracefully move into this third phase, which may be the last phase of my life. So the Saturn and the Uranus returns and oppositions. The Uranus return, by the way, happens in 84. Anyone who lives to 84 goes through a second childhood. Why is that? Because it's like a new moon. It's the beginning of a Uranian cycle.
Uranus is the planet of weird eccentric and old age. And when Uranus returns to where it was when you were born, if you're graced with living to 84, you know, it's okay for you to be weird and forget. Now, when it comes to those kinds of cycles with Neptune and Pluto, because Neptune and Pluto never complete a cycle, and because they may not even get halfway around, and because they're both so elliptical in orbits that there are times when Pluto's moving so quickly that we can get to the opposition at age 60. Let me just think. Yeah, at age 70, 75. And then there are other times when we don't get to the opposition until age 130.
Because Pluto can move very fast or very slow. You know, right now Pluto is closer to the sun, so Pluto has been going through the signs roughly, you know, 12 to 18 years. But Pluto can take 30 plus years to go through a sign. So for that reason, there's, it's more difficult to associate a Pluto transit by a particular age in relationship to how Pluto moves against where it was when you were born. So those are all one class of life changing events that are age related. They happen to all of us at the same time. Now, I'm going to open up the second class, but I think rather than diving deep and talking about them, we'll just open the door to this because this is in itself, you know, a very deep and wide conversation.
But the second class of life changing astrology transits is this. Let's say, let's say that you were born with with the sun in Sagittarius, okay? And it doesn't matter what the sun is in Sagittarius every year, you know, in late November early December. So let's say you were born with the sun, let's just pick an arbitrary, let's say 15 degrees, that's halfway through the 30 degrees in Sagittarius. It doesn't matter whether you were born in 1928 and are 92 years old or whether you were born in 1950 and are 70 something years old or 70 years old or whether you were born in 1990 and you're 30 years old, your sun in your chart is going to be at the same place.
It's going to be at 15 degrees of the 30 degrees of Sagittarius. So that becomes a marker. Now every time a planet moving around the sky lines up with that point in your chart, your sun, that's going to create a buzz in your life. Now the moon does it one to move. And if you're sleeping, it might just pass off as a dream, you know, because it only lasts for an hour or two. In fact, if you're having breakfast one morning with your spouse and you're having your coffee and whatever and you have your newspaper and you're reading the newspaper and you kind of look out over the newspaper and go, oh my god, I can't believe I'm married to this person.
This is awful. Look what he, look what she is doing. I made a mistake. I'm well, yeah. And you go back to the paper and whatever. And an hour later, everything's fine. You know, I mean, it happens. You know, maybe they were dripping coffee out of the, whatever. What that means is you were in a foul mood, right? Moves change. Moves equals moon. The moon always changes. But if at breakfast the next day you felt the same way and at dinner you felt the same way, and then you went away for a weekend and you couldn't stand because you still felt the same way, you're not in a bad mood or moon. You're in a bad Mars or maybe a bad Saturn.
And those planets move slower and therefore the event is going to last longer. You with me here? Yes. All right. So back to your son at 15 degrees of Sagittarius or wherever the son is in your chart. The planets move around the moon hits that point once every month and might create some sort of emotional because the moon is reflective and emotional reaction or response. But Saturn will line up with that point in your chart once every 29 years. But it has nothing to do with how old you are because you could have been born with Saturn anywhere in the chart. If you were born with Saturn at early Sagittarius as it was I think in the late 80s Saturn was in early Sagittarius.
So if you were born in early in early December in let's say 1988 I may be off a year or two here. But what that means is that maybe a year or two later in early in your life Saturn would have lined up with your son. And then 30 years later at roughly age 31 or 32 or 33 Saturn would have lined up with your son again. Now let's say that you were born with let's say you were born like me let's say you were born in 1949. My Saturn let's say it's at zero degrees of Virgo, the beginning of Virgo. I'm in Aries.
So Saturn in the sky wouldn't have reached my Aries son until it had gone through Virgo Libra Scorpio Sagittarius Capricorn Aquarius and Pisces. It would have had it would have had it gone through I can't say English or I can't speak English anymore. It would have had to go through seven signs before it reached lining up with my son which means that it was probably probably would have been 20 years old before I experienced Saturn lining up with my son. So we can experience Saturn lining up with our son at any age. It's what we call an age independent transit.
But at once it once you know when that happens that's going to happen every 30 years at that same degree. The Saturn takes are 29 and a half years. So from that standpoint we look at life changing transits and I would do this in my head with any client who walked in. Now we go oh this person is this person as a Capricorn. Oh my god Saturn's in Capricorn right now. Well it's almost moving on to Aquarius. I imagine the last year or two would have been really structurally important in how this person took on new responsibilities or how they didn't deal with old responsibilities because Saturn was lining up with the sign that their son was in.
Now if someone else walks in and they were born let's say they were born on January let's say they were born on February 6th. So that would make them an Aquarius. In my mind I immediately know that in about a year or so and again with my tools I could pinpoint this exactly but I would know that Saturn in the sky is coming toward lining up with their son. And I would want them to begin to think about if they were over 35 or so I was like what went on in your life when Saturn was lined up with your son you know 28, 29 years ago.
You might have only been four years old but maybe your dad lost his job and began working at home and your family moved and you went into daycare that you hated. It doesn't have to be bad stuff. Maybe you had a sibling born but there are things that happen even early in our life that become part of a larger repetitive cycle. So Saturn lining up with the son is one thing but Saturn lining up with the moon also and it's an amazing exercise. You can do this with almost any of the astrology programs.
You can do it with an ephemeralist which is a book with all the planets locations in it day by day but that is to take your entire life and map out when Saturn lined up with your son in your moon but also when was it 90 degrees square when was it opposed when was it square again and then when did it line up again and do this all the way around through your life because this will give you the architecture of some of the major life changing events in your life and Saturn does that but Saturn is the backbone.
It's the it's the main spring of the clock of life and you can see how that Saturn actually how it how things change when Saturn hits those sensitive points when it lines up with or squares or opposes your son in your moon and for that matter all your planets but the most obvious are the Sun and the Moon but now as we move outward the slower moving planets have heavier weight. So when we look at Uranus you know back to the person who is a Capricorn for example I know right now Uranus is in the sign of Taurus.
Uranus spends about seven years in each sign. Uranus was in Capricorn again; we're back to the late 80s, or the 80s even into the early 90s. Late 80s, early 90s, Uranus was moving through Capricorn. So if I know someone has a Capricorn Sun and I can figure out when Uranus was lining up with their Sun, I know that was probably a pretty explosive and unstable and maybe incredibly exciting "rock and roll." Oh my god, this is like really cool, but I can't sustain this forever period of time because it doesn't have the stability of Saturn. It has the unpredictability, the genius, the eccentricity, the awakening, the craziness of Uranus.
So when Uranus lines up with the Sun or with the Moon, again for example, these are times when there's the potential of these life-changing events. For that matter, when Uranus lines up with any planet in your chart, when it lines up with Venus, it might be a time because Venus is related to love and money. It might be a time when if you're in a relationship, something happens that shifts the energy and that something new and different comes along for either you or your partner or both of you in some way. It's almost like if you can change the relationship and capture that energy of the change, well, you're good; otherwise, that relationship might either go away or stay and be stale.
But Uranus lining up with Venus is an attraction to things that are outside of the norm, that don't follow Saturn's rules. When Saturn lines up with Venus, often it feels like we're isolated in a relationship. It's heavier; we have to deal with it. It can feel like we don't have enough money; it can feel like we're not loved. When Uranus is there, it's like, "What the hell just happened?" None of these are good or bad unto themselves; it's how we react and work with what happens. So this is kind of the background energy of how outer planet transits or life-changing transits work.
We go out to, by the way, with Uranus. Uranus basically is going to release tension that's been built up. Uranus can, in fact, create an event that's not pleasant, that changes our life in a way that pushes us in a direction that is perfect and we couldn’t have figured out a way to get there except the lightning strike struck, burned down our house, and freed us to take the insurance money and take that sailboat trip around the world. I mean, I'm just making this up, but if that was always our life dream and we couldn't have done it, the Uranus basically, that abrupt change is what frees us to take, you know, to do what's next.
The problem though is that with Uranus, often the changes are not what we think we would like, you know? And so Uranus can be either positive or negative depending upon how we react to it, depending upon how our chart is built, depending upon the angle that Uranus is making to other planets in our chart aside from lining up with one planet. But, you know, Uranus transits can be totally that; it's the life-changing, the epiphany, it's the "I never realized" moment, and everything changes. That's Uranus; it's the lightning striking.
You know, and we talked a little bit about Neptune, but when we get to Neptune and Pluto transits, they're harder to pinpoint an event. Here, an interesting thing comes in, and we're not going to delve down this rabbit hole too deeply, but with Neptune and Pluto, it's like things kind of come in and we're drawn either onto a journey or into shadow work or into some sort of realm of fantasy or delusion or into some spiritual imaginative transition. I mean, some of the most creative artistic, poetic, and musical works have been done while artists are in the midst of Neptunian transits, so they're not bad.
But often what happens is that we might be kind of experiencing these Neptunian transits that are so slow that the exact transit can happen instead of direct-retrograde-direct three times. Three times in your out, that's a typical astrology passage; you know, a planet will go over a point, retrograde back over it, and then go direct again, making three times part of the one larger process. But with Uranus, I'm sorry, with Neptune and Pluto, those planets can go so slowly that aspects can repeat five or seven times over the course of a year or two or three.
What that means is, what is the event? Well, often if I'm, let's say, in the midst of this two or three-year process of Neptune lining up. Neptune right now is in Pisces, and so those people who have, you know, who are mid-late Pisces, have Neptune, you know, kind of messing around with their Sun. Of course, Neptune is at home in Pisces, and Pisces Suns are Neptunianly aligned anyhow, so it might not be as dramatic, you know, for them as it was 15 or 20 years ago when Neptune was going through Aquarius lining up with someone's Aquarius Sun.
But when Neptune lines up with your Sun, it can be a process of years, which means that it sometimes takes a faster-moving planet than Neptune like slow-moving Uranus or Saturn, both of which move a lot faster than Neptune and they can act like the trigger that that pops the event because the event is kind of like the scenery is changing the dynamics are building and then into that comes a faster moving planet like an or like an eclipse or like a Mars retrograde that is making an aspect to your own planets in your own chart.
And so when we look at these outer planet life changing events we're often looking at the slow moving planets building pressure and then faster moving planets somehow igniting the fuse that actually create the event to precipitate into the three-dimensional world. Once a major life changing event occurs oftentimes it's a one-way street there's no going back you know we're through it and we we can't there are those events in our lives whether those events are changes in relationship or whether those are things that we did that were really stupid that then we got caught and then we went to jail or whether those are things that that that were like a major promotion and then we took a new job and we moved to this new city.
Often these kinds of life changing events change the trajectory they they change the direction of our lives and and they their windows of potentiality and of course here's where the use of astrology comes in is because astrology doesn't say where you're going it just says where those junctions are and so if I know which junctions I'm standing at and what the alternatives are and what the repetitive patterns are around that point and then I can see what's coming up it doesn't answer my questions but it gives me a fabric a map upon which to put my existence on.
So it can kind of get a sense of how important is this decision that I need to make today where does it fit into the bigger scheme of things what's acting as the trigger what happened when this event happened before this event being a Saturn lining up with my Venus by conjunction by square by opposition anything that creates tension what happens when other slow moving planets line up with my Venus. In other words this this layers of an onion to to unpeel which is why this kind of work is so fantastic and powerful for anyone doing depth therapy contemplation spiritual work shadow work.
Astrology is just another tool in the toolbox that gives us an ability to make a map of these psychic or or cerebral terrains invisible terrains wow okay did you ask me a question I literally don't think I have since the very beginning which is fine it's one of those days where you just rolled and so I'm going to do my best to summarize go for it.
So basically you life changing transits are brought about by the four slower moving outer planets yes and other things but those are they I mean this is a simplification but yes okay all right so that that includes Saturn Uranus Neptune and Pluto yes sat Saturnian life changing transits are about things like responsibility and karma they're not surprising this is kind of like you reap what you sow yeah it's it's it's it's a culmination of a lot of different choices all of a sudden being obvious.
Yeah one of my favorite astrologers who I know I've mentioned here before grant Louis who was an English professor at Dartmouth College and retired from the academic life to pursue a full-time career as an astrologer he wrote that when just this is just an example when transiting Saturn lines up with your birth or natal sun he he wrote this is a time when the chickens of ambition come home to roost is a brilliant writer you know and he goes on to say if you've been tending those chickens they come home fat and happy lay in golden eggs but if you haven't they come home scrawny hungry sickly and even if you don't have resources or food they're yours you need to deal with them it's a beautiful image and it's just one image of how that works but yeah that's Saturn okay that way you deserve these things okay so they're not surprising you get what you deserve all right.
Uranus is has a very different flavor it's more shocking it's sudden it's releasing built-up tension it may not be pleasant in the moment but oftentimes it's lining up something that is even better for you but you wouldn't have been able to do it on your own it was like you needed the drama the shock the whatever like and that possibly true of Saturn also a good Saturn transit often is like when you're going through it it's like this really sucks this is the worst period of my life I can't believe I'm having to do this and then five years later you look back and you go you know I'm so glad that happened because of that hadn't happened I would have never realized I would have never done this and I wouldn't be here so that so yes what you're saying is true but in all fairness it's true of a lot of the outer-climate transits right well that's what makes some life changing I mean we humans don't often change because everything's pleasant and we you know it's a lot of times takes that tension.
Okay so then we have Neptune these are harder to pin down it can be a period when you were speaking it it was almost like you were speaking in a fog it's like confusing sometimes misleading the realities out of focus this is also a time where fantasy or spirit you can feel like you're drifting it's it's out of body experiences astral travel dreams you know we can make ourselves sick or healthy when Neptune transits are occurring if we feel like we got something weird going on in the body during an Neptune transit get it checked out I mean I'm not a fan of many medical procedures but if you get it checked out and you find it's nothing then you don't have to worry about it if you worry about it you'll manifest the damn thing that's that's the way Neptune works.
Okay all right and then we have Pluto which this uh these uh this is like profound shadow work deep transformation metamorphosis I wrote down the word initiation it's like those is it or not but they all kind of are they all kind of are in a Pluto is Pluto is definitely Pluto is like roto router you know it's like it's like Pluto comes in and burns down everything but Uranus burns down everything but Pluto make sure that there's no there's nothing that survives plu here's the action of Pluto Pluto when Pluto happens as a transit it's the action of a caterpillar becoming a butterfly where's the continuity there is none on the surface but on an imaginal level something happens microscopically that takes the black ooze of the disintegrated caterpillar and it buzzes it and it realigns the energy and it creates the butterfly the phoenix that arises from the ashes of the ruins of destruction and so Pluto is often these deep transformations they can be initiatory but so can other things but they're their one way streets they're deep their death rebirth but not physical death they're they're letting go and recreating from from that.
Okay so the slower the moving so the slower the the planet is moving it it is striking a deeper note there's it's more dramatic change longer lasting event so again it's this more profound change the longer the slower moving it is so of those four the slower moving ones are Pluto and Neptune correct okay all right so then we have oh I had a question as you were talking about the Saturn return you said it could be a week it could be a day it could be a month it could be a year what determines how long it is well a few things one is whether or not we get the whether or not we get the memo read it and deal with it you know there are people who deal with their Saturn return before it even happens because they're so ready for for making it happen but because the planets go direct retrograde direct it's possible that if my face is my planet and Saturn goes direct over it and then retrograde and then direct and moves on that period of one two three passes can be nine months.
That's typically it's like a gestation period and so I deal with the opening events of it and then I get some replay of it and then I move through it and and and even still I might be feeling it for weeks or months or even a year or so if my antenna are up and properly attuned and I may be dealing with it for for weeks or months or even years afterwards however compare that with someone else who Saturn comes along and it comes almost up to their there's of place where it was when they were born and then it retrogrades and then it goes direct and so by the time it goes across their point it's moving fast and then it doesn't ever come back that far so that person gets it on a one time sweep and it seems like it's totally arbitrary and many people make the mistake of going oh I got a senator return coming but boy am I glad it only happens it happens on Tuesday you know April 19th 2022 and so food I don't have to deal with this long term well unfortunately that thinking is not the way it works because often the gradual one two three gives us more time to adapt and to work with it and to where as the one time passed sometimes can turn our life upside down inside out and backwards.
So there's no quick and easy answer to your question but there's many things that can make it last longer or shorter. One is the actual motion of the planet; the other is how well we integrate it or deny it or not or don't work with it. I mean one could arguably say that if we have a Saturn transit we've been ignoring the law and we do something terrible and we end up going to jail and it's a you know life sentence, how long are we dealing with it? Well for the rest of our lives, that's a life changing event, and I mean that happens to people right?
Okay so the first Saturn return is around 28-ish, it's yeah 29. It's technically 29 and a half but because of that retrograde direct it can vary up to nine months or so. Okay and then the second Saturn return is 58-ish, yeah age. Okay and then we have the Saturn opposition which is when Saturn opposes the natal which happens it around 14 and a quarter and maybe 44. It's 43-44, it's just right after the Uranus opposition. The two of those kind of interplay depend and you didn't really, yeah right the Saturn opposition, the Uranus opposition oftentimes create that midlife crisis period. Those are happening around the same time.
Yeah it also can be, it also can be, but depending on the motion it can also be the opening square, the first square of Neptune and or Pluto. So there's many things that you see so the nuances are how many outer planets are involved. And again we can be getting a Saturn return that everyone gets at 29 and a half but we might also at the same time have Uranus exactly lined up with our moon so we're getting two. We're getting an age-related transit that everyone gets at our age but then we're also getting something that has our name on it only at the same time, yeah wise changing event.
All right so this is the time where you may be looking back and going wow I've been really responsible but I haven't had any joy or any excitement or any fun. Or you know I've been so responsible my question there was is that when we've—and this I'm just asking for your opinion on this—is that when we've been responsible from an external expectation more than like responsible to our purpose or responsible to who we actually are? Would you say that's more like that happened?
That rebellion against the responsibility happens more when we've taken on a bunch of sheds that might not be our own? Yeah I think of Ram Das saying I've been shod upon long enough that that's Saturnian, but that's the Saturn from external. But a healthy Saturn are those same things come from a moral imperative on the inside out. And so yeah that varies and I think I think it's harder to integrate the outside in and to re-correct that than it is when you're working from the inside out. It's easier to continue riding that with you know with power.
Right and then would you say that if someone has been answering to both of those impulses so the more Saturnian responsible impulses plus the more I want to use a word vital but like that Uranus-like energy that maybe they would cruise through that period of time easier as well if they've paid attention to both? Yeah perhaps.
Yeah the second Saturn return, a question, so that's around the 58-ish. Is that a time where the question of legacy is coming in like what is the legacy I'm leaving? Maybe I've really thought about that but I think that's a possibility. I think people often—or some people—I think around that time begin to think of retirement but yeah certainly legacy. I don't think everyone thinks of legacy but I think the people that do that might be something that comes in around then. Well what they're leaving behind.
Yeah okay and then we have the Uranus return around age 84 and that's like a second childhood. So that's, that sounds fun. Okay and then and I'll let you know soon, yeah you've got to wait a second, right? So Pluto opposition, um these ones vary right? Like the Pluto opposition all these the timing on this very so it started to get a little bit less you know structured.
Yeah and so then you started talking about the second class of life-changing transits which are age-independent transits perfectly soon. Okay and these still include those outer planets. Um but now the outer planets aren't making a relationship to where they were when you were born. They're making relationships to other planets where they were so they're making a relationship to your son or your moon or your do you ascend them Mars any of them.
Yeah okay all right and that's a whole different conversation. I mean I can see as we're talking about this that every single one of these topics is a huge topic that we could go into for a long time, but this was really an amazing beginning. And I don't know about all of you but it like started to click in the structure of it which is really nice so thank you for that. But basically the bottom line is these kinds of transits they change the trajectory of your life and they're like windows of potentiality that open up that like events happen and things change and then that window closes and you look back and life is different.
There are some windows that we get thrust through like like like over the edge of a cliff and then there are some windows that open that are potential and that it takes personal effort to walk through the door of opportunity. Oftentimes these outer planets will create an event that we have no choice but to deal with but oftentimes they'll create an opening like you said a potential and it's totally up to us as to whether or not we engage or not so interesting I love that okay Rick you're amazing thank you so much this has been this has been like very very rich and full so thank you.
And is there anything that you want to say before we close out Instagram? I know you guys are like heading for 20,000 so yeah you know Rick Levina Strola ger on Instagram and the daily piece which I have to say because of my efforts with the with the foundations of astrology my dailies they haven't suffered in quality but they've suffered in timing a bit and so for all those people who are patient enough to read them when they come out they're not getting them as far in advance as I would like but sooner or later that'll be corrected.
So yeah Rick Levina Strola ger on Instagram or Facebook daily kind of cosmic weather reports if you will and we I call it I call it the daily planet pulse. I love it and you have inspired us to up our Instagram game which you are featured in like all the time so but we're doing a lot more with our Instagram as well. So if you want to get like little snippets from these talks that help you reinforce the ideas if you want to get more information about timing and different things that are happening at different times and how to work with that energy we're doing a lot more with our Instagram too and you've been a total inspiration yay.
And we love to highlight you and what you say so we inspire one another not just you and I but we all inspire another and in these times that is so important not to lose that flame of potential because you know we were talking about these outer planet doorways you know let's not forget that these planets also in relationship to each other in the sky create worldwide potential doorways and events.
And 2020 from the very beginning of the year all the way up through early 2021 this is one of the largest gateways doorways turning points whatever you want to call it significant moments inflection points in human history that we've seen in centuries and so you know it's important to inspire one another to keep playing to stay in the game because it ain't over ever.
Wow that's a very amazing reminder and in that again that term window of potentiality this 2020 event time is a potentiality so yeah all right everybody thank you so much for being here thank you for being a part of our community as always thank you for making astrology a part of your life and we'll catch you on next episode.