The Karmic Fault Lines of Mars’ Opposition to Pluto

Hey everyone. This is Adam Elenbaas from Nightlight Astrology. Today, we're going to continue taking a look at Mars's opposition to Pluto, which is coming up soon, right before the US election. Of course, it's one of the most dynamic transits of the year, and it is a transit that will also return through Mars's upcoming retrograde and eventually, once more, through Mars's direct motion.

So, I'm going to lay out that timeline today, and then I'm going to tell you about something that I like to call karmic fault lines. We're going to unpack this kind of poetic, metaphorical image of karmic fault lines and how I think it applies to the Mars-Pluto transit. Obviously, this is just a kind creative and imaginative way of thinking about the Mars Pluto opposition, but I hope that you will find it useful. I certainly have gotten a lot out of using this metaphorical image over time in my own practice and in the way that I teach astrology. So yeah, I hope that you'll find value in it as well; before I get into it today, of course, please like and subscribe. It really helps us to grow our channel. We're trying to get to 80,000 subscribers by the Aries Spring Equinox.

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All right, on that note, let's shift our attention to the real-time clock and take a look at the upcoming formation of Mars' opposition to Pluto. So here we are, midweek, October 23, and we can see that Mars is opposing Pluto within about four degrees. Now, this means that everything is heating up. We also have a new moon coming up at the beginning of November that will happen just prior to the opposition from Mars to Pluto and will be in Mars's sign.

So, the New Moon in Scorpio is ruled by a Mars-Pluto opposition. Effectively, that is going to make for a really interesting dynamic unfolding in late October through the month of November. Now, what we want to see here is coming to within about three degrees. Whoops. Let me just back this up a little bit.

So, within three degrees puts us at about October 26, so we are just about to enter what is called the engagement range. This is typically when the events promised start to occur. There's a process that is promised in any astrological configuration, and the process is usually more important than just an acute event. And we need to get better, in many ways, at tracking processes, and not just acute events represented by astrology configurations. So that's something that I emphasize a lot on my channel, which is tracking the process of things, often by looking back in time at previous similar aspects or similar eclipses. But you can notice that things are building right now; that's important. Mars opposite Pluto will then be perfect.

Let's just move this forward a little bit so the actual opposition occurs right here, and this is going to be on November 3. So that is exact. Impact opposition comes across here. This is November 3 at about 5:20am in Central Time Zone, and obviously, I'm in the United States now; of course, what makes this really interesting is that if we go backward to November 1 Friday, we have a New Moon on Scorpio Mars's sign with Mars, the ruler, imminently opposing Pluto.

So, quite a moon cycle to come. Quite a catharsis that initiates the new cycle of the moon. So all of these things are important. When we go forward just a little bit, we're going to notice that by December, Mars in Leo will station and turn retrograde, and that happens right around December 7; then that retrogradation will take Mars back into an opposition with Pluto, And that opposition with Pluto occurs right at about January 3, just into the new year.

After that opposition, Mars will re-enter cancer, which goes through a very long retrogradation back over previous degrees and will be stationed to turn directly right about the end of February. It's about February 24, and so that stationing direct will take Mars forward again, where it will eventually oppose Pluto in the sign of Capricorn, once more after it enters Leo around April 18, then it's in the engagement, and once more, will oppose Pluto, and it opposes Pluto right after Neptune enters the sign of Aries, those events are intimately connected, and this is something that I will be speaking about in the upcoming webinar I'm giving on Saturn, conjoining Neptune and Aries.

This opposition, the series of oppositions, I suspect, will be intimately connected to the new leadership that will be forming in the United States, politics, for example, and potential resistance to it that I think most astrologers are observing. But the reason that I say that I don't usually cover anything political on my channel is that these signatures and their proximity to the election are just kind of undeniable, so it's just very basic and obvious; the likelihood appears to be that there is a process of conflict-related right around the election and then subsequent periods in the early New Year and in the spring that could be connected to a tense transfer of power or a tense transition of leadership, or what have you so. But personally, which is the focus of my channel? Always, right? My channel is always really focused on how we apply these symbols to our personal, individual lives, journeys, spiritual growth, and so forth. That's really my lane, so I just try to stay in it.

So anyway, the point, though, is that this is a process, a long, slow process that we can't see as only connected to the Pluto Mars opposition that's happening in early November but is also connected to the early part of the new year, and then again, late April. And so, I want to use a little bit of a poetic image and metaphor. I don't think I've used this before. I mean, I may have said I may have talked about this idea in passing on my channel, but I don't think I've ever unpacked it for you, so I'm going to now, so I hope you'll enjoy it. I want to talk about what I call karmic fault lines. I think it's an image that can help us understand what the planets signify and what kinds of processes they signify, especially with major eruptive, cathartic kinds of transits. You know, I think back to July when we had the Mars-Uranus conjunction in Taurus. It's a major event that coincided with the collective assassination attempt. You will undoubtedly see these things happening in the collective, and for many of us personally, we will also experience them. I remember that's on my ascendant. We had a tree that almost fell in our house and destroyed our fence as Mars and Uranus were coming together. That was scary.

Anyhow, it's important to note, as I said, in several videos that the positions of planets and critical degrees in your natal chart. It will be very important in terms of, you know, who is most likely to experience major events versus, you know, those people who might notice things, but it's not as disruptive or transformative. A lot of it depends on the natal chart. So keep that in mind. But also remember that you are likely to know someone or have someone around you in your life who will have a very strong experience of these transits, if not under this opposition to one of the subsequent ones, potentially planets in the late degrees of Cardinal signs, or the very early degrees of fixed signs, are the planets most likely to be impacted and to be showing or expressing themselves in your life under these transits? And that is going to be rooted in the natal context of those placements in the birth chart. All right?

Well, I like to use this image of karmic fault lines. But what is a fault line? Everyone knows their hosts are connected to earthquakes, right? But I'm going to read this definition from you. I think it's the US Geological Service or something like that. A fault is a fracture, or zone of fractures, between two blocks of rock. So, let's replace the word rock with karma; a fault is a fracture or zone of fracture between two blocks of karma. What is a block of karma? And again, this is imaginative. I'm not trying to objectively define something that my mind certainly cannot circumscribe, right? So these are images that are helpful for me.

On a poetic level, it gestures towards something that feels true to me. But I'm not trying to tell you. This is how you should literally think about it. A fault is a fracture or Zona fracture between two blocks of karma. What is a block of karma? I would describe a block of karma as a series of interconnected patterns and choices or themes, different kinds of outcomes that we have experienced in our lives, and different kinds of events that are thematically, historically, and narratively connected. So, a fault is a fracture or zone between two blocks of karma. Faults allow the blocks to move relative to each other. So, let's reread that in terms of karma. Faults allow the blocks of karma to move relative to each other. This movement may occur rapidly in the form of an earthquake or may occur slowly in the form of creep. So, let's reread that again.

This movement may occur rapidly in the form of a karmic earthquake or may occur slowly in the form of a karmic creep. Faults may range in length from a few millimeters to 1000s of kilometers. Let's reread that and put a little different language in karmic faults, which may range in size or length or history from a few years to 1000s of lifetimes. Now, I'm just using that creatively. I just don't even know if there are 1000s of lifetimes, guys. I have a feeling that we've lived many lives, we'll live more, but I don't know. But play with that. Faults may range in length or size from a few years to 1000s of lifetimes. Most karmic faults produce repeated displacements over geologic time. Let's reread that most karmic faults produce repeated displacements over many lifetimes.

During an earthquake, the rock on one side of the fault suddenly slips with respect to the other. During a karmic earthquake, one rock or block of karma on one side of the fault suddenly slips with respect to the other, and karmic scientists, I'm continuing to play with the language use of the angle of the karmic fault with respect to the surface, known as the dip, and the direction of slip along the karmic fault to classify faults. I'd like to propose, on a completely poetic level, that this is not dissimilar from what we're doing with astrology and that there is something like karmic geology that we experience, that there is something like blocks of karma that move and slip relative to each other.

So when one pattern rubs up against another in a specific way, you can have something like a karmic earthquake, or more slowly and process-oriented, you have some kind of karmic drifting or creeping of one pattern moving against another and changing the surfaces of one another. Sometimes you can very easily tell where this story or these stories started, and sometimes you can't, and maybe that's because some stories are some karmic blocks and faults and slips and creeps and earthquakes are connected to things that we can see very obviously dating back to a choice we made a couple of years ago, or a relationship we got into ten years ago, or a job we chose, or something like that.

And then there are other times where it just feels so deep and mysterious to us, and we can sense that something karmic is slipping, creeping, that an earthquake is indeed karmic, but we don't know where it all began. It feels so deep, the patterns so deeply entrenched and established, and we can only point toward things like ancestry and past lives, so when I think about Mars and Pluto coming into opposition with one another, I think about, if you think about it in terms of the process that's happening between now and April, as Mars Retrogrades and hits Pluto a total of three times in these oppositions. I think about a karmic creep. A karmic creep would be where the fault lines are more slowly shifting in an overall process that is more gradual and doesn't have maybe that huge eruptive earthquake force.

Even so, during such a process, the important points at which you may notice the creep more overtly would be under the exact opposition. So pay attention to them.

On the other hand, sometimes these fault lines move with sudden eruptions, and you could also probably time those out relative to any of the three oppositions. But note that just because there is an opposition doesn't mean that it will occur. It could very well be that you have something developing right now under this opposition that then has a much more explosive appearance under the subsequent opposition while Mars is retrograde in January or the final opposition while Mars is direct again in April; you have to think about a process like this, and the three exact moments as either, you know, manifestations slightly more acute manifestations of a process of karmic slippage between plates of karma, or in terms of acute events that will be more like earthquakes. It's amazing and interesting to me that karmic transformation, spiritual transformation, evolutionary growth, whatever we want to call it, can occur in either fashion.

Some people will experience this as creep and some as an earthquake. Some people will experience one earthquake under three transits, and you don't always know which one is which, although there are usually clues in the birth chart around planets that are close to one of those points. Or you may be someone who experiences an earthquake around all three. Or you may be someone who just sees more of a gradual, organic process of change related to the overall trajectory of Mars and Pluto between now and the end of April. Isn't it amazing that all of those possibilities exist?

This is why it is also so important that each of us take on the responsibility of tracking a YouTube channel an astrologer who's unpacking the events will almost always go for the jugular. And I'm not saying I'm above it, either. We will usually say Mars is opposite Pluto, which is intense, right? And we'll lay out the potential for an earthquake. That's what we do, especially with Mars-Pluto, which you'd be almost negligent as an astrologer not to describe as a potential moment of tremendous catharsis because that's the nature of Mars-Pluto oppositions.

However, it can be misleading because karma works in this. I think this is why it's such a great metaphor: because the plates, blocks, and rocks of karmic structures move up against each other, and transformations occur very organically. And you can't always point to one event. There's not just one acute expression of how karma is moving and changing. I'm not the first person to say this, but this is something that has been. And a part of the general theory and philosophy of karma in India for 1000s of years, who are the progenitors of karmic science, you might say.

So there are five things that I have noticed about karmic fault lines that I think, if you meditate on them, can really help you track and pay attention to a Mars-Pluto opposition like this that has three movements. One fault lines develop slowly. And so one of the things that it can really help to do is like very naturally as fault lines are starting to press up against each other, and you have more acute moments of these karmic collisions that are happening, these moments of catharsis, or more dramatic shifts in the karmic ecology of our souls. It helps to just pay attention to what you are thinking about that has a history behind it.

So, between now and April, where are you going in the past? What kinds of thoughts, patterns, feelings, memories, events, or people from your past are on your mind? What we don't realize is that often, when those karmic plates are shifting, and they have formed over a long time, maybe years, maybe lifetimes, that one of the manifestations of the way those fault lines are moving, those karmic blocks are rubbing up against each other will be in terms of the history that is present in our mind on a conscious level, or even in your dreams.

So if you, one thing you can do is to remember that fault lines develop slowly. So if you want to know what's moving, what's changing, what's shifting, don't just look at the immediate things right in front of you, but pay attention to what elements of the past are coming up, even if it's just something that you can't stop thinking about. I've been thinking about this childhood friend, or I've been, and if you do a little reflecting on the quality of past stuff that's coming up in your mind, or your meditations, or your creative life, or whatever it is, you will often find that the things that are occupying your mind right now are not solely they're not just coming from you.

They're manifestations of the karma that's shifting, and so knowing that these karmic fault lines develop slowly and have a lot of history behind them, you can pay a little bit more attention, not just to what is immediately in front of you, but to what is serving as some kind of echo from the past. You just pay attention to that kind of subtly, and it can help to understand what is in the process of shifting, even if I don't think the goal is to be in control of everything or to know or understand everything in advance, but it certainly does help to be in some kind of participatory life mode, right? It just helps to have conscious participation. When fault lines are moving, they're big historical blocks rubbing up against each other, deep in the unconscious, deep in the psyche; pay attention to what's manifesting in your mind that has some history behind it.

Number two, Fault Lines often move or shift. Suddenly. We were talking about this at the beginning here, but I want to mention it again and some other thoughts that go along with it. When we have a Mars-Pluto dynamic at an anaretic degree, it suggests a culmination, suggests history behind it. Pluto's finishing up in Capricorn over what, 16 years, so a lot of history, right? And Mars is at an anaretic degree in its fall, opposite Pluto, which is a very nuclear kind of transit. It is not uncommon for these transits to trigger sudden, major eruptive shifts like an earthquake, karmically, at the same time, as I was saying earlier. Sometimes transit like this, especially given that it has two more subsequent passes, will be more process-oriented.

And so, some of the ways that we understand the process are that if we don't experience an acute event, it's not that the astrology is off or wrong again. A lot of factors can be involved from your own birth chart, but one of the things that you can do to get the most out of a series of transits like this is simply to pay attention to what the most obvious, overt, or dramatic events or expressions of the energy are in your life around the time of the opposition.

Well, you might not think that anything much is happening to you, but notice the big thing that was happening to your friend. Notice the big thing that was happening. Does the family member notice the big thing that happened in the life of the co-worker? I can almost promise you that whatever is happening there, we're all a part of the movement of transit like this, and one of the ways that you can feel more connected is if you're not experiencing something personally, take note of the most acute expressions of in events that sort of mirror or represent the Mars-Pluto energy, because often what will happen is they will be like a foreshadowing.

The themes or events around you are the ones that are most intense. It doesn't seem they don't seem like they have anything to do with you; they will often be connecting to the next opposition and then the next opposition, and all of those events, if you gather them together and start reflecting on them as a kind of process, will often signal important and maybe subtle changes that are happening for you psychologically. It's amazing how we're just we're beings who are always in flux. We're in constant motion, and we're in a constant state of evolutionary shifting. And so when transits like this, don't express in terms of an acute event in your life.

Watch what's happening around you because what is around you is intimately connected to you. It's part of your karmic environment. And those things happening around you will often act as foreshadowings. And if you look at what happens then under the next opposition and the next opposition, even if the next two don't have anything to do with you in a very intimate, personal way, you will probably still notice that there will be interconnected themes around you in the environment around you, and those themes, if you put them all together, will most likely signal subtle shifts in your personality, in your values, in your beliefs, in your Outlook, in your sense of purpose, little shifts like that are For some people, that's why we call it a karmic creep, not a big earthquake, but a karmic creep.

And the best way to identify that karmic creep is to remind yourself I am not disconnected from the karmic world around me. What impacts other people in the environment around me is connected to me. And so, if you put those events together, you'll notice that there is probably a process within you. Maybe it's subtler. But if we don't do this, then here's what happens. We go well, that transit didn't really hit. We never take the time to find out why. We don't even realize that we missed some things that were intimately connected to our own development and growth because we didn't track them properly.

And then we start developing a sense of like, well, astrology is really hit or miss, and I would say 99% of the time if you learn the different ways of tracking and paying attention to things, astrology really never misses because it's a form of communication more than it is an objective science. If you communicate in and through astrology, if you reflect on your life and experience in and through the patterns and timelines of astrology, you'll always find that there is just an abundant amount of meaning and value in it. But you have to do it. You can't just sit back and think that you're part of some kind of celestial, you know, mechanics, and well, that one worked, and this one didn't.

So, I like to get that point across, which is to point to the difference between a creep and an earthquake. And a lot of us will experience creeps, and we don't have the patience for it, right? But we should, because, you know otherwise also, we tend to live in the drama we get. We attach astrology to acute dramatic events, and we miss the value of how process-oriented astrology is okay.

Rant over number three fault lines move out of necessity. Here's that beautiful truth that is so easy for us to forget. Nobody looks at an earthquake for the most part. I mean, I guess there are some man-made earthquakes and stuff like that, but nobody, for the most part, looks at an earthquake and tries to blame one fault or rock plate, you know, like, well, it was really that fault that was to blame. You know, nobody looks at fault lines and tries to assign blame. There is a moral dimension to life, a sense of getting things right and wrong, a sense of what is good and bad, and a sense of good and evil that we live with, which is a very real part of our experiences. It is harder for us to place our human lives and our human experience of morality, which is very real, into the scope of eternity, where it is no more or less real than anything else. I think most of us have. A really difficult time.

I know I hold two things at the same time and that two things can be true, which is a great Jupiter in Gemini theme. By the way, I've noticed that coming up a lot more, a lot more people are saying that since Jupiter's been in Gemini, which I think is kind of cool. But the truth is that we there is this way in which we want karma to be all about good or bad. We want it to be about progress or regress. We want it to be about moving forward or moving backward. And in a way, I think we are we.

We become most liberated when we no longer place the values of the virtues that we're trying to develop: peace, compassion, patience, love, charity, and kindness. When we find those to be valuable states in and of themselves, rather than pitting them against other things, that's when we experience the most freedom. Because, in a way, it's like reality is telling us there's absolutely nothing at stake, absolutely nothing. We're like, well, that really doesn't feel right. There seems to be a lot at stake here in our world, and it's as though we can't imagine that. I mean, if there's nothing at stake, what impetus do we have to be good? In other words, right?

What impetus do we have to be virtuous? If there's absolutely nothing at stake in eternity, if it's all just good in some huge, unfathomable way, then what impetus is there to be good? And I think the beautiful response to that is there is no need for an impetus to be good. It's, it's its own reward. It's, it is its own beauty. So two things can be true that's I think that's really hard for us, but it really helps to think about karma through that lens, and here's why because when we think about fault lines of karma moving out of necessity, then what we're thinking about is something as natural and as basic and as beyond the categories of good or bad, as rocks slipping and shifting against other rocks, and that is for most of us, very liberating.

You know, I reflect on this, for example, in my participation in Al-Anon, which is a 12-step program for family members of alcoholics, and when people hit rock bottom, it is a kind of karmic earthquake. Let's call it: you hit rock bottom.

One of the things that often happens is there is this way in which a person who has, let's say, they've had trouble drinking, and they get to a point where they hit them they hit their rock bottom, and then they say, Okay, I surrender, you know, I give up. I have a problem. But one of the key features of that moment that is talked about in 12-step programs over and over and over again is that there is an acceptance of the fact that the person has a problem that goes beyond feeling like you are good or bad; it just is. I have a problem drinking because often, and this is a big part of what 12 Steps helps people with as well.

Often, a person who has hit rock bottom, the reason that they finally hit rock bottom is because they've given up on the struggle to prove to everyone that they're not bad, which often, ironically, keeps the person wrapped up in the behavior because there's this sense of, I've got this, I'm in control, and then, oh no, I'm not, and then I'm not, but I'm not a bad person, so I'm in control. I've got this. This isn't a problem, right? Like that.

So, in a way, when a person hits rock bottom, there's this moment of surrender where they just say, I have a problem. And it's not good or bad; it's just a problem. This is as natural as plates slipping. When a person gets into this space, often it is the beginning of a process of letting go of guilt and judgment, letting go of the feeling of blame, and just learning to accept and surrender to the basic truth of something.

There's a way in which these karmic eruptions bring us back to that kind of rock bottom. It just had to be. This way, it's not good or bad. I mean, on one level, I can look at it and go, what a mess, what a bad thing, what an awful thing. Look at the bad choices, or look at the bad patterns, or look at the lack of virtue, or look at the need for it, or whatever, that level of evaluation is always going to be there. However, one of the things that these karmic fault lines provide us with is this feeling of necessity. And it's amazing how liberating necessity actually is. It's like if you see part of a mountain just crumbling off into the ocean, just literally, for whatever reason, it's reached its time, and it just starts crumbling into the ocean.

You don't look at it and say, who's to blame? You know, you don't know there's a way in which we are so much more generous and forgiving and accepting of the destructive and difficult and sort of violent and chaotic elements of nature, and we don't extend to ourselves the same grace we don't extend to ourselves the same ability to be made up of rocks, like rock faces of karma, rubbing against one each one another and falling off into the ocean. And it's in some ways that these transits are very liberating because we encounter something like karma, which we could also call destiny or fate, and we just have this sense of acceptance. It couldn't be any other way.

I think what is most difficult about these moments is that although these fault lines are moving just as naturally as a cliff face falling off into the ocean because time has come, or a person hitting rock bottom and just having some strange ability to just accept, this is where I am. This is what's happened. We have a hard time with these events because they often cause damage. You know, when a cliff face falls off into the ocean, it could very well, you know, smash a fisherman's hut.

And so there is this byproduct of destructiveness. It is really important that we not bypass or skim over that destructive force or element or the experience of trauma or pain or suffering or loss or grief. I mean, there's a very real way in which, when someone hits rock bottom, there is a lot of pain and suffering that goes along with that pivotal turning point that is also just a natural, a natural kind of earthquake moment. There's we can't skip past that traumatic element, but it's very important that one of the ways we tend to skip past it is by focusing on transformation and rebirth; I mean, again, like, if I just use an image of a rock face falling off into the ocean, would I look at that?

And as soon as that happens, would I go, Oh, well, that's a good thing for the cliff. The remaining, the remainder of the cliff has just experienced a rebirth, you know, like you don't, we're, we're so quick to want to slap that transformative rebirthing, phoenixing quality around these, you know, these moments because it gives us something redemptive or uplifting or positive to focus on. And I don't think it's a bad idea to, you know, eventually we need, we may need that. We may need a positive look. And it will often, you know, it's often the case that we experience a sense of redemption or a positive transformation related to these kinds of events. It's not uncommon at all. These are not just releases of destructive force but also great creative force. But we can't skip past its damage and destructiveness.

This leads me to point number four, which is that we will often try to understand the presence of these fault lines and these naturally occurring slips or creeps or earthquakes; we will try to understand them through the destruction, as if, like, if I just evaluate The destruction itself, then I will be able to understand the meaning of, you know, the event. But that's not usually how it works. Let me just give you an example. I. Oftentimes, there will be under Pluto-Mars transits to a natal chart, a tremendous power struggle, a life-and-death survival scenario, or something like that. Those are the destructive manifestations of the cliff falling off into the ocean.

They hit the fisherman's hut, and we experience that destructiveness in the release of the energy. And then we think to ourselves, Well, I have to analyze and break apart the power struggle that I had with my boss or my best friend or my lover. And if I can break that apart, that power struggle, and figure out the why and everything, just analyze the most destructive part of the transit, then I'll know why this happened. In my experience, it is almost never the event itself, like thoroughly analyzing, that leads to an understanding of why it occurred.

Sometimes, you never know why it occurs. Sometimes, it remains a mystery. Sometimes, it's more of a felt sense of why something happened the way it did than an intellectual understanding that those things may be true as well. But what I'm trying to say is that there will be an acute event that happens for some people, and they'll think, I've got to figure out why this happened, so I'll analyze all of the parts of the acute event. For example, if we were comparing this to someone hitting rock bottom, you might be tempted to say, well, this rock bottom, let's say a person gets to a rock bottom as an alcoholic by getting into a car accident.

Well, the car accident was due to their drinking, and their drinking was due to their denial that alcohol was a problem and like that. But often, as people know who have been through the therapeutic process of a 12-step program over the course of many years, you will get Just layer after layer after layer of the onion, so to speak, is being pulled back in your understanding why I drink, and that drinking itself is a manifestation of other things, other hurts, other problems, other fears, other or shame, and that that comes from mom and dad, and that that came from their parents, and that that came from, you know, the difficulties that they faced During the depression or whatever.

Because my point is that if you were to just blame most people who go through a breakdown like that and a transition in terms of addiction, will understand that it's not actually the substance. It's not that alcohol is a manifestation of deeper, more deeply seated, complex issues. You have to have something like the vision of an owl that can see at night to look deeply into things.

And a lot of the time, what happens when we have these big acute events is we try to analyze them quickly and come up with tidy, easy explanations that are usually rooted in the description of what happened itself rather than taking the time and the process, there's that word process, again, that that stretches out over a longer period, usually to reflect upon the deeper structures of karma that were at work. And I don't want to say that there's even one answer when we do that kind of work. It's just that reflecting more deeply over a long period of time, upon acute events and their relation to deeper patterns is not something that most of us do easily. It is not.

I mean, if we're in therapy, if we have enough privilege to have a therapist, or if we have an active process of reflection in our life through meditation or prayer or ritual or journaling or astrology or whatever, then maybe we have access to some deeper understanding and some deeper insights. But often, what happens when these acute events occur is that we kind of analyze things at a very superficial level. That's the point. It's it's easy to do because it's convenient, and we want a quick explanation. This is why, for example, and by the way, I have no disdain for, uh, medical doctors, or, you know, I'm not a I'm not a hater of of the medical profession.

However, one thing that I, my mom, as a psychiatric nurse practitioner, would talk about is this: Before that, as a nurse and her partner, who was a doctor for a long time, would also talk about this. Sometimes, that sort of the need to explain something quickly because. Because you have so many clients, and, you know, there's a kind of conveyor belt of activity coming in and out of a clinic or a hospital or whatever, it will lead to overly simplifying both diagnosis and treatment and bless all the doctors out there.

You guys are incredible. And I'm not. It's not. I'm not trying to criticize critique or judge things. I think it's the same thing for any profession when you're overworked, when people are coming in and out, sometimes our ability to diagnose, understand, investigate, prescribe, something appropriate, whatever the case may be, we don't go deep enough, and we prefer simple, quick explanations or simple, quick fixes. And I think some of that is just, you know, we're exhausted by the pace of life and so forth.

So, my mom, as a psychiatric nurse practitioner, would be frustrated sometimes with how quickly it was expected that things be diagnosed, prescribed, or treated. She was someone I know who was very thoughtful, and she's retired now, but she was very thoughtful and slow and more careful in diagnosing or treating things that she saw in her client practice. It's the same thing karmically. We just have to be careful that when acute things happen, we don't rush to slap an explanation on it, that we take time and allow process and reflection to refine and provide us with a kind of mandala of understanding.

Number five is that astronomy can predict sudden movements and damage, but understanding requires deeper reflection. So, just kind of putting a bow on it here, astrology is really good at telling you, hey, acute events, acute moments of slippage, acute moments within the creep, the earthquake itself, track it out to those exact transits the Mars opposite Pluto is going to be a more acute expression within the process, or maybe the earthquake itself.

Look at the house placements. Look at the sign placements. You can usually tell what area of life there may be more kinds of overt expressions or damage taking place. In the case of a really difficult transit, not all transits are damaging, by the way, but so this metaphor fails when it comes to things that are more uplifting, right? But when it comes to those shifts, they are often a little bit more challenging, and they often do bring some loss or difficulties with them. We can predict the sudden movements and often where that damage will occur, like what you know where you're likely to see everything getting knocked off the shelves in your shop because the Earth is shaking your You can predict that with astrology, as well as the kind of acute moments.

But understanding the why, learning from the experience, or being able to grow as a person requires something active on our part; it requires a deeper level of reflection and contemplation, usually patience and process, and curiosity and humility will bring us into deeper and deeper understandings. It's as though we also want to find one meaning when, again, the meaning present in events like this is just as multi-faceted and layered as the geological substrate of the Earth is.

So, can we move into the mandala of meaning that is present behind and within acute events? It's very important. All right. Well, I hope that this kind of sermon from the stars was useful today, that exploring this metaphor wasn't too problematic, and that it gives you some inspired ways of thinking. That's the hope that always exists.

After I sign off today, there is an informational video about the upcoming year one program, Ancient Astrology for the Modern Mystic; there's need-based tuition available all the way up until the start of class. If you need that, be sure to take advantage of it on the website nightlight astrology.com; thank you for listening, and we'll see you again tomorrow. Bye. Bye.