Too many people travel through the underworld blind because they (or their astrologers) are so determined to see the light, they refuse to learn to see in the dark.
Loss is painful. Even when we know that it’s natural. Even when it’s loss we choose.
A complete astrology needs to hold space for unavoidable human catastrophes or it’s no use to anyone at all.
That means talking honestly about difficult transits.
What is a Difficult Transit?
Astrological time moves in a cycle. To the ancient Egyptians, the planets are born in the east and die in the west. Every day, they journey through the sky like the sun. They travel through the underworld before they rise again. Just like the planets moved through the cycle of life and death, the Egyptians recognized that times of retreat, isolation, and death are part of the cycle of things, as natural as the way that winter follows autumn.
In astrology, the difficult patterns in the cycle correspond with transits. Transits are ways of talking about the way the planets move and the seasons that correlate with their movements.
Transits are transitory times in life, which means that they have a beginning and an end.
In the hardest times, that is the greatest comfort astrology can give, the knowledge that this too shall pass… and a rough idea of when things will start to get better.
Difficult Transits to Look Out For… And How to Deal With Them*
Northern Hemisphere Transits
In a birth chart, planets under the horizon (in the northern hemisphere of the chart) are said to live in the underworld. Like seeds that are buried in the soil and waiting to germinate, they prefer live in the darkness of our minds, avoiding the spotlight, so they can set down roots and grow.
When a planet is transiting through one of the night houses (houses 1-6), that planet is in a time when it is doing something that will be more difficult to do out in the open. It prefers not to be seen. It can be difficult to access consciously.
Working with that planet can feel like stumbling around in the dark, but those growing times are necessary, even when they last decades. When a dark planet comes into the light again, you will be surprised how much you’ve grown.
Progressed Waning Moon
The moon waxes and wanes. There are times every month when the night sky seems to be empty of all light but starlight while the moon retreats into the shadows.
In the same way, the human life has periods of waxing and waning, represented by the progressed moon. When your progressed moon is in a waning phase, you are in a time of loss and retreat. A Saturn transit that might, under other circ*mstances, signal hard work and success might actually signal a time when it is best to get your hermit on.
Like all transits and progressions, the progressed waning moon is temporary. When it waxes again, the same transits that brought losses become indicators of gains.
The Moon Period in Firdaria for Day Sect People
The moon period in the Firdaria of solar people is a dark time. Day sect people are people who are ruled by the sun. They crave solar things like visibility, accomplishment, and clarity of purpose.
In their 30s, day sect people reach a point in their lives where they need to make friends with the moon. Their lives seem to hit a wall. For almost a decade, they wander through a mist where the sun never seems to shine.
This time can be scary, but it can plant the seeds of some of the life’s greatest accomplishments. Psychologist Carl Jung went through a period where he seemed to fall into the same mental illness he was treating in his patients. Jung himself said of his work during this time: "To the superficial observer, it will appear like madness."
But out of this “madness” came the seeds of some of his greatest work. Until he composed the material that would become the Red Book, his work was merely theory. It was only by entering into what he called his “nocturnal work” did he begin to put those ideas into practice.
Toward the end of his life, he said:
"The years ... when I pursued the inner images, were the most important time of my life. Everything else is to be derived from this. It began at that time, and the later details hardly matter anymore. My entire life consisted in elaborating what had burst forth from the unconscious and flooded me like an enigmatic stream and threatened to break me. That was the stuff and material for more than only one life. Everything later was merely the outer classification, scientific elaboration, and the integration into life. But the numinous beginning, which contained everything, was then."
8th and 12th House Transits
The 8th house and 12th house are dark places, too. The 8th house is the house of death, and the 12th house is the house of retreat. These houses were called bad houses in ancient astrology because humans are (as a rule) social creatures who don’t like to be isolated, and nobody likes it when someone they care about dies.
Sometimes, 8th and 12th house transits are just difficult. Just like it is obnoxious to tell someone, “It will get better,” at a funeral, there are things that happen during 8th and 12th house times that… well… just suck.
The good thing about bad times in the 8th and 12th houses, though, is that you know things are bad. You don’t have to wait around biting your fingernails wondering if something awful is happening behind your back.
And if you’re going through an 8th house or 12th house transit and nothing seems to be happening? You might be surprised by a new inheritance (8th house), or you might have the opportunity to go on a retreat.
When you are offered gifts during 12th house and 8th house times, take them.
Saturn Transits
Astrologer Steven Forrest likes to say that during Saturn times you will either work hard, or you will be depressed.
Depending on what you think of hard work (or depression, I suppose) that can be very bad news.
Saturn comes to the place in your chart where you have some very hard work to do, and during Saturn transits, there is a focus on that great work. And if you don’t get the memo about what you’re supposed to be working on, it can feel like everything else in your life is blocked.
The high-side of Saturn transits, though, is that it isn’t that difficult to know what to do when you’re having a hard time. Figure out what work has been given to you to do and do it. No shortcuts allowed.
Uranus Transits
My favorite story about Uranus involves its discovery.
Uranus was the first planet to be discovered since ancient times, and astrologers in the 18th century were delighted to have the opportunity to figure out what the new planet signified. One astrologer noticed that Uranus was going to be passing over his 4th house cusp (the house of home), so he hurried home on the day the transit was exact to see what had happened while he was gone.
He came to his house and found that it was on fire.
He danced around like a maniac yelling, “I know what Uranus means! I know what Uranus means!”
The rest of us don’t have the privilege of being the first to make a marvelous discovery when Uranus burns our house down. And Uranus transits will, on occasion, correlate with things in your life burning down.
The thing about Uranus transits, though, is that they come at times when we have become prisoners, and Uranus arrives like a liberator to free us from our chains. Even if our chains look very much like home sweet home.
Neptune Transits
I was going through a Neptune transit when I was working with my astrology mentor Paul Richard. He described Neptune transits as being a bit like rebooting your computer. Things have gotten crusty in the way your mind is working, and it just needs to shut down and start over for awhile.
Unfortunately, most of us don’t have the luxury of shutting down our minds for awhile and allowing all of the system updates to install. This is why Mercury retrograde is a crisis of massive proportions 3-4 times a year. In that sense, Neptune transits are even worse because, instead of lasting for three weeks, they can last for a couple of years.
Neptune transits are absolutely amazing for undertaking art projects, though, even if your idea of art is (like mine) tearing pictures out of magazines and drawing geometrical patterns.
Pluto Transits
In Roman mythology, Pluto was the lord of the dead and god of the underworld, and Pluto transits can feel like dying.
It is commonly said in the astrological community that Pluto transits remove things from your life that are already dead. That is, often, not the way it feels, though. These things that are (theoretically) dead can be important parts of our identity. A Pluto transit can, in a very real way, feel like dying.
It is important not to diminish this experience.
That said, Pluto was also the god of treasure. Gems and precious metals are found under the ground. We have to descend to the underworld to retrieve them.
In the same way, during those dark passages through the underworld during Pluto transits can leave us with a handful of gems. It can take some time before we appreciate them. Who cares about rocks when you feel like you’re dying? But years later, you can often see that the road you were traveling before Pluto’s intervention was a dead end, even if it really didn’t feel like it at the time, and the pretty shiny things are a nice consolation prize.
The Magic of Dark Times
There is something in us that rebels against our lives being pruned, but denying our pain isn’t the answer. The heart isn’t meant to be wetlands. Our emotional ecosystems are healthier when we allow our feelings to flood us like the Nile and drain away in their time. After the flood, the soil is richer and better able to support life and growing things.
Dark times are the moon’s time. We move by feel, following instincts and intuition. We do things that don’t make sense to our rational minds. We learn the reasons for our instincts later, if we ever figure out the reasons for our instincts at all.
Dark times are when the veil between the worlds is thin.
We meet people we never expected to meet. The girl from a rich family really meets working class people for the first time when she goes to a support group for cancer survivors. The breakup of a marriage leads a man to discover emotional needs he never knew he had and the people who are able to help him meet them.
People we meet during these times aren’t necessarily good for us. Thieves and grifters like to travel at night, too, but our defenses are stronger. Our instincts know that humans are not naturally nocturnal creatures. We move through the world with the caution of creatures in unfamiliar territory.
The other senses get stronger when vision is taken away. There are voices of desire that only speak when we are awake in bed staring into the night. Magical things happen when lovers reach for each other in the dark.
* Some astrologers will point out that not all of these events are, strictly speaking, transits. That is correct, but “transits, progressions, and Firdaria periods” is very awkward to type over and over again, and we don’t have a commonly agreed-upon word to encompass all of them. Transits, being transitory, in my opinion, fills that slot nicely.
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