Summer 2008 Planet Retrogrades

Summer 2008 Planet Retrogrades
At the moment, only Saturn is direct in the outer planets. Jupiterand Pluto go direct in early September but the context of this uniformretrograde activity is very important to our awareness. There are twotypes of transits in your natal chart. One is when a planet is on themove like Venus and Mercury bombs through your aspects for a day ortwo and they are gone.
Then there is the retrograde transit where a planet goes over theaspect, then retrogrades back over again and then makes a direct moveover it for the third time. The farther out the planet is likeNeptune and Pluto, the slower they move and the longer the transit.For instance, Jupiter retrograded at 22 degrees Capricorn in earlyMay. It will come back all the way to 12 degrees Capricorn bySeptember. So anyone born from January 3rd to the 13th will have aJupiter three phase transit on their sun. Uranus began its currentretrograde in late June at 22 degrees Pisces and will not go directuntil after Thanksgiving at 18 degrees. Any Pisces aspects in thisrange or any water aspects in this degree range have favorable accessto their intuition.
The retrograde phase of the three-stage transit has a creative postureto it. The first pass is cleansing, the second, creation, and thethird pass, manifestation. Neptune has been in a tight five-degreerange in Aquarius since December 2006 when it went to 18 degreesAquarius. It is now staying at 22 degrees and does not make it to 24degrees and out of this five-degree range until mid February 2009. Sowe are dealing with over two years of Neptune hovering in the sameplace affecting growth in air aspects in that degree range, butplacing a lot of pressure on all fixed aspects like, Taurus, Leo andScorpio aspects in that range. Finally, Pluto is playing the cusp gamebetween Sagittarius and Capricorn, presently retrograde in Sagittariusaiding late fire aspects in Aries and Leo, but putting contractpressure on mutable aspects like late Virgo, Pisces and Gemini.Remember, elements trine and types square. Gemini would trine anotherair sign but square any mutable.
Peter Phalam is a Campanus Astrologer living in Northwest Arkansas.To learn more about him and his work, visit http:// www.celestialvision.org