by Robert Wilkinson
Last January I composed an overview of various themes in play throughout 2023 and posted them on the site, as well as some personal forecasts for each sign. Today and tomorrow we’ll take a new look at the first article, and I’ll post the personal forecasts on Monday.
These are my notes on the “action beats” for the past year where I break down what was happening into main areas of focus. As it originally ran 8 single spaced pages, I’ve decided to give you the first half today and the second half tomorrow. I’ll be doing another of these for 2024 over the next couple of weeks.
For your renewed consideration, “Themes for the year of 2023 – Transfigurations, Harvests, and Saying Goodbye.” We’ll launch this voyage with:
Quick Beginnings With Maximum Productivity
2023 is a mixed year, combining the past and the future as competing energies overlap at the dawning of a new 20 Aquarian era. We’ve now ended a 200 year Earth era, where all the Jupiter-Saturn conjunctions except one have been in Earth sign. The December 2020 Grand Mutation conjunction at 1 Aquarius began a new 200 year Air sign dominance in human history, which we last knew in the 13th and 14th centuries. We now pick up where we left off in the early 15th century with the first Air sign conjunction since 1405.
In 2019 and 2020 we built Capricorn structures which will serve us for many years to come. In 2021/2022 we’ve used those structures to move into a vision of a better future and a better view of a greater good. Jupiter’s 2021 transit of the promise of Aquarius heralded what Saturn has crystallized in 2021, 2022, and 2023.
Jupiter’s transit of Pisces between May and July of 2021, and again from January through early May of 2022 brought us vast feelings, an expanded connection to the collective field, and quick endings before launching a new adventure in Aries. We got a glimpse of things to come between May and October before getting one last look back at what was ending and what we wanted to see made manifest in the future in November and December 2022.
2023 brings the rapid fulfillment of the transfiguration phase of Aquarius in February and March before Saturn enters Pisces followed immediately by Pluto entering Aquarius since 1777. At the same time, Jupiter is racing through Aries before it enters Taurus in May. So the first part of the year is primarily Aquarius and Aries focused, while from the Spring forward we find Pisces and Taurus as the primary energies.
Once this happens, Saturn will no longer be in its home sign of Aquarius, and in Pisces will be disposited by Jupiter. While Jupiter is in Aries in March, April, and early May, it is disposited by Mars in Gemini and Cancer. From May forward, while in Taurus, Jupiter is disposited by Venus in various signs, primarily Leo because that’s where Venus goes retrograde. This year Venus will be in Leo from early June to early October, making Leo a powerful behind the scenes force in all things ruled by Jupiter and Saturn for almost half the year! Many will re-evaluate what they like and why they like it with Venus RX in Leo. Let go of pride.
As We Begin the Year
When Mars and then Mercury go stationary direct, we’ll have NO planets retrograde until Mercury goes RX in late April. That gives us about 90 days of total forward motion by the rulers of all our houses.
Last year’s Jupiter conjunct Neptune at 24 Pisces certainly foretold the major flooding and rains which have been continually triggered in a huge way since last March. However, it also opened a new enhanced empathic connection with collective consciousness, the Earth, and life itself. That conjunction was the last of the Neptunian expansions of the previous Age, lasting until 2035, when Jupiter conjuncts Neptune in Aries. Given the favorable sextile to Pluto, we’re looking at a 12 year cycle of productive reorganization of the collective opening a greater compassion with many things ending quickly.
When Jupiter entered Aries in May 2022, it began new self-initiated expression of greater truths for all of us in the early Aries sector of our charts which rapidly expand the first 4 months of 2023. This also heralds Neptune’s entry into early Aries in 2025, foreshadowing where collective consciousness is heading. Jupiter’s position in the last two degrees of Pisces in November and December will be the same span Neptune will occupy between April 2024 and March 2025. So late 2022 gave us a glimpse of long term atmospheres to come.
With Jupiter accelerating in Aries, racing through the fire to break on into Taurus in May, many beginning will take off quickly over the first 4 months of the year which should stabilize quickly as Jupiter moves deeper into Taurus.
The entire first third of the year is one of dynamic change. Everything is in direct motion by late January, accelerating through February. Saturn moves through the Transfiguration zone of 29/30 Aquarius in late Feb and early March, entering Pisces in early March. Then 2 weeks later, Pluto leaves Capricorn and begins its initial entry into Aquarius.
This will begin to sprout the seeds and bring to life the larger evolutionary pulses set into motion at the Grand Mutation at 1 Aquarius in Dec 2020 which opened the door to a 20 year Aquarian era. The focus is on a shared vision and spiritual touchstones which will outlive us. Pluto the purifier will bring the appearance of “pure forms” of those Aquarian ideals which began to grow in 2020.
Speaking of Mars and Jupiter
They began their current cycle in late May 2022 with their conjunction at 4 Aries, promising us freedom and enjoyment in the life area this conjunction happened. That is a source of a long term adventure for each of us, which Jupiter expands in January as it returns to this degree. Mars makes a waxing square to that degree in early April, an opposition to it in early September, and a waning square to it in early January 2024, these mark the changes in that 2 year cycle.
As Mars has been in Gemini since August 2022 and remains there until it enters Cancer in late March 2023, that has been the primary point of aggravation, redirected energy, blunted momentum, or a return which had to be confronted before certain things could move forward in 2023. It brought us to a new way of seeing, understanding, or communicating, and gave us alternative views wherever we have 9-26 Gemini in our charts.
As Mars moves forward, it will make many of the aspects it made with Jupiter in December and early January. It begins with a bielftile (65+ degrees) through all of January and February, and then moves into a quintile for all of March and early April, mirroring the retrograde quintile in December. Mars then binoviles Jupiter from mid-Cancer to mid-Aries in mid-April before activating a HUGE shift in energies when it enters Leo in mid-May when it makes a square in late May from 1 Leo to Jupiter at 1 Taurus with Pluto at 1 Aquarius.
This is an extraordinarily powerful T-square with the potential for extreme things to happen in rapidly escalating movement. The problem and the solution are seen at 1 Scorpio, the willingness to find a deeper connection with Self, Life, Source and each other. 1 Scorpio is the void helping us to integrate the energies of the oppositional awareness of things erupting from the Mars opposed Pluto, driven to manifest by Jupiter a 1 Taurus.
This promises major upheaval and breakthroughs in the nations and people who have planets or points near 29-30 Aries, 1-2 Taurus, 29-30 Cancer, 1-2 Leo, 29-30 Libra, 1-2 Scorpio, and 29-30 Capricorn and 1-2 Aquarius. Also affected are 14-17 Gemini, Virgo, Sagittarius, and Pisces.
In January 2022, Mars is in mid-Gemini. It occupies the last decan of Gemini in March, putting pressure on late Mutable sign positions. It enters Cancer just after the March Equinox and stays in that sign through May 20, putting pressure on the Cardinal signs. It’s in Leo putting pressure on the Fixed signs the last 10 days of May through July 10 when it enters Virgo.
Mars is in Virgo from July 10 through August 27 and in Libra from August 27 to mid-October. It’s in Scorpio from mid-October to late November, and in Sagittarius from late November through early January 2024. So in 2022 we got an experience of Mars in Sagittarius to Mars in Gemini, in 2023 we get an experience of Mars in Gemini to Mars in Sagittarius.
Where Mars transits our charts, that’s the life area where there will be new initiatives, or a need to “attack the problems of life,” or even deal with agitation or aggravation. A Mars transit over a planet indicates the end of a 2 year cycle and beginning of a new one. Wherever you have Gemini through Sagittarius will be activated by Mars this year.
That means in 2023 Mars will be outside the span occupied by the outer planets, and when the Moon is between Capricorn and Taurus, Mars will be the nozzle for all the other planetary energies. It will be how we get a handle on things, the cause we must address, or the specific focus to express in that moment and circumstance.
That also means that this year breaks from the past year, when we had no Mars oppositions to the outer planets. This year Mars makes an opposition to Pluto in May, an opposition to Saturn in late July, an opposition to Neptune in late August, and an opposition to Uranus in mid-November. Each of these will bring spiritual realizations on how to activate their energies, or use them to take the initiative or cut through an obstacle.
Eclipses
This year we have the usual 4 Eclipses. The first is the April 20 Hybrid Solar Eclipse at 30 Aries. This is only visible in Argentina, parts of Chile, and not visible anywhere else on Earth.
Then, two weeks later, on May 5 we have a Penumbral Lunar eclipse at 15 Taurus/Scorpio. The whole eclipse is visible in Madagascar, Yemen, Somalia, eastern Iran, all of central Asia over to Japan and western New Zealand. It’s visible at Moonset in the Pacific Ocean to Hawaii. It’s visible at Moonrise in Africa, the Middle East, all of Europe and Scandinavia, and all of west Russia.
On October 14 we have an Annular Solar eclipse at 22 Libra. That will be visible in all of North, central, and South America (except for the southernmost parts of Chile and Argentina). The most intense path cuts from Oregon through Utah, NM, all of SW Texas, through the Yucatan, through Belize, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, down through Colombia and finally east through northern Brazil.
The October 28 Partial Lunar Eclipse at 6 Scorpio/Taurus will be visible in New Zealand, Japan, eastern Russia, Alaska, all of Canada west of Manitoba, and all of the western US up to a line from SE AZ to West Colorado to western North Dakota. It’s visible at Moonset in all of the central and eastern US and Canada, all of central and South America, and southern Greenland and Iceland. It’s visible at Moonrise for all points east of Iran, eastern Ukraine, St Petersburg, Finland and Sweden all the way to east Oz, Japan, and far eastern Russia.
That closes this part of the class. Tomorrow we’ll take a new look at the Spiritual Field influences, Mercury retrograde themes throughout the year, the times of expected friction (yes, specific points were very accurate!), and the strengthening of the long term global Aquarian transformational growth. See you tomorrow!
© 2023 Robert Wilkinson
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