Outer Planet Transits

By outer planet I refer to the three planets that orbit the Sun beyond Saturn - Uranus, Neptune and Pluto. Transit simply means the movement of a planet through a sign of the Zodiac. The time spent in each sign varies with the planet. Uranus spends about 7 years in a sign, Neptune 14 years, and Pluto anywhere from about 12 years to about 30 years.

As each of these outer planets moves through a sign, it challenges the current forms through which the archetype of that sign is being expressed. In both our individual personalities as well as our social/cultural wholes, each archetype takes on a defined and established form or structure. While that form may initially make sense, that is contribute to the health and welfare of the whole, as time goes on it must change, transform. This is due to a combination of inner and outer forces - the natural development of the entity to a more mature stage, as well as environmental changes that require adaptation. The transiting outer planet catalyzes the transformation of sign's expression.

Each planet does this in its own unique way. Uranus creates a longing for freedom, a desire to break out of limiting structures. Neptune stimulates an urge for release from definition, for connection to essence, and thus a dissolving of boundaries. Pluto brings a desire for new life, and with it the necessity of the old to die.

The old form or structure does not, at least at first, give way willingly. Saturn's job is ensure survival by maintaining the status quo. And so it resists the change, reinforcing the old structure with whatever resources are at its disposal. Some structures remain healthy and vital, and so the resistance is appropriate and successful. Others have outlived their usefulness, and so in their resistance become unhealthy and distorted. They weaken the whole that they should instead be contributing to. The specific method and result of this hanging on depends on the particular sign and transiting planet involved. In an individual's chart (or that of a larger entity such as a nation), we must also look at the house being transited.

Saturn may at some point recognize the folly and cost of its resistance. By tuning into its higher calling, its responsibility to wholes greater than itself, Saturn can find the courage to allow the structure to transform. The archetype is reborn, the entity evolves.