You DO Have Free Will---or “Lessons Learned”

This month I have Uranus in transit squaring my Mars, and Pluto in transit squaring my Sun. At the end of March I’ll have solar arc Pluto opposing my Sun. If this was thirty or forty years ago, and I were my client, I’d be alarmed and forecast some pretty dire things—and with some people they might be correct. However, I’ve learned a lot in the interim and now have a better understanding of how these things present opportunities to use our free will. Or as “A Course in Miracles” says, “We can look at this a different way.”

My first clue actually occurred early in my career in the mid-seventies. I was doing the chart of an elderly woman (who then was younger than I am now), and saw something similar (by a different math system) having just occurred to her shortly before. I asked her what happened. She said that had she been younger, she would have exerted her temper and expected everyone to “shape up.” But, she had learned that she could not make the world stop spinning (her words) and so just let her recent grievances go. Instead, she used the energy to move 200 plants from one house to another. That was all that happened externally. Internally, she had learned the lessons of excessive will power, which Uranus and Pluto together can express, and chose to use it a different way. I never forgot that lesson, and it also taught me to look at rulerships of houses because invariably that is where the potential action is.

The Sun rules my 4th house (family, foundations, early childhood). Mars rules the 12th and is in the 8th—the unconscious and also the judgment of other people based on THEIR values. You know how it is when you choose to be (gasp) an Astrologer (!) and your family is Southern Baptist. The 4th, 8th and 12th houses are connected inasmuch as they are the ones in various ways representing the vast subconscious reservoir where our emotional responses are not necessarily rational. The natal indication is that I am very angry about being unfairly judged by people using *their* values, which may very well be irrational, and so might my own opinions. It’s all too “knee jerk” reactionary to be able to even discuss. Finally, in my old age, I’m accepting that I cannot change that. I have to just let it go and choose different companions if I don’t want to deal with it. Currently, I could have chosen to use the energy in a futile way that would have changed nothing. (There is much more to this—like the houses Uranus and Pluto rule and tenant, but I’m keeping it simple.)

And so, right now I have “excessive will power” and instead of trying to change the world and other people, I’m going to bite the bullet and do a de-tox of my system and change myself. This is a Pluto exercise. Uranus is expressed by it being sudden. My poor body will wonder what happened to all the caffeine and all forms of sugar. It will go into withdrawal. But, in the end, it is a better use of the energy and will produce something positive. To validate that this is a good choice, a client recently sent a gift of a detox product without my even asking!! She just thought I might be interested in something like that and wanted to send a gift. Synchronicity, as Carl Jung would point out.

Fourth house is also your home, and I have recently moved probably for the last time. I’m in the process of renovating—like building stairs to turn the attic into an art studio/guest room, among other things. This is also a Pluto/Uranus expression suitable for the fourth house. It will produce a better result, as well. So, if you have something like this affecting you (particularly Aries, Cancer, Libra or Capricorn people born around the middle of the sign), look for ways of using this powerful energy for your benefit instead of letting IT use YOU by default. The main reason for these energies is to nudge you to grow and become stronger and wiser.