Generational Horoscopes for Mid-2010, Part 3

8.6.10


For your reading pleasure, allow me to present the third and final installment of my generational horoscopes, written to provide a bit of extra astro-insight to folks born in certain years. (For Part 1, click here. You can find Part 2 here.)

I suppose I should, yet again, point out that I have not included passages for all birth years. Why not? Due to the differing astrological profiles, I didn't feel I had especially important or insightful info to pass on for every year. And far be it for me to produce even more words, without any real inspiration, just to fill space, obligation-style.

If you were born in 1970-1974…

During your birth period, Pluto was traveling through the tail-end of Virgo and into the early parts of Libra, the same zodiac region where Saturn's currently traveling. Just as I told those born in the mid-to-late-1960s, this transit of Saturn across your natal Pluto is a signal that it's high time to 'walk your talk'—that is, to put into motion real-life expressions of whatever improvements to society's (and especially industry's) most unfair practices you have been quietly engineering. Sharp-tongued critiques are not a sufficient method for effectively challenging the existing power dynamics.

Particularly for those born in 1970 and the first three-quarters of 1971 (Pluto in late Virgo), when it comes to transforming yourself and the world around you, your first line of response must be in profoundly altering your day-to-day habits and patterns. Act to create empowering alternatives to what you don't like about your present relation to 'labor' (i.e., how you apply your efforts toward some tangible result, and what you get for it) by investing your passions, day in and day out, in ways to conduct your work differently. You'll know you're progressing by first (1) experiencing the alienating sense of struggling against a seemingly invincible 'this is just how it's done', then (2) recognizing how invigorating it can be to flex your muscles and finally (3) starting to notice a distinct increase in satisfaction from knowing your efforts mattered, though there may still be 'a long way to go'. Your ultimate proof of progress must come on the practical 'show me something' level; yet, you're unlikely to get there without an underlying faith that it is possible to fight a Goliath and gain ground. You 1971 babies especially have no shortage of idealistic fervor, a flame that's presently burning hotter than usual, to keep your engines fired up.

From late 1971 onward, Pluto was in early Libra, suggesting your most potent transformations are likelier to occur through how you manage your interpersonal relationships. Considering rabble-rouser Uranus was also in Libra at your birth, you possess a strong impetus toward greater independence and other coolly 'evolved' stances in your relational behaviors… perhaps also as a generational response to growing up during the post-'60s-free-love shakeups to marriage as an institution. Your natural instinct for fostering interpersonal equality and mutual freedom also comes with its shadow: an overreliance on calm dialogue or intellect-based fairness as an antidote to our less polite, more complex moves and motivations in relationships. As many know from experience, when it comes to our interactions with others, our behaviors sometimes don't line up with our professed beliefs.

Nothing spurs us to unconsciously act out quite like our desire to get our needs met by other people, though we may later come to regret having been so short-sighted, people-pleasing, conflict-averse or otherwise inauthentic. This is the issue, thanks to the outer-planet dance, being forced onto you lately. Are you clear on what your interpersonal 'needs' actually are? Can you become more direct in seeking their fulfillment?

Folks born in 1972 (under a Jupiter-Pluto square, now recurring) must beware of robbing yourselves of opportunities for increased intimacy, due to clutching to preconceived notions of what your ideal relationship situation would be (based upon an excessive need to retain control over the 'direction' a coupling will take?). Such idealization, of course, takes agency away from the other person in co-creating the relational form likeliest to suit your unique union of two individuals. Meanwhile, folks born in 1973-1974 (under a Saturn-Pluto square, also now recurring) are presently contending with a deeply-ingrained cynicism regarding what payoffs are actually possible through relationships… a distrust that has led many of you to maintain a safe 'arm's-length-distance' interpersonally, via impeccably negotiated boundaries and/or properly respectful rhetoric. The potential cost? Missing out on the connectedness when circumstances intensify, collide with stated philosophies, and/or require you to bend in uncomfortable directions, with no guarantee an orderly equilibrium will ever be restored. And the challenge now? To embrace the fact that, yes, all relationships are inherently 'unfair'—after all, each of us brings a different set of assets and liabilities to the table. Figuring out how to navigate the inconsistencies and inequities as equitably as possible is ultimately where the biggest payoffs lie.

If you were born in Apr-May 1975…

Take care not to project a demonizing attitude onto certain individuals whose 'demands' rile you up to a point beyond what's warranted, based upon what they're actually asking from you. Right now, it's crucial that you push yourself extra-hard to listen to their concerns, both to the precise words they're using and to what's ultimately motivating them to speak out. At the same time your enthusiasms for a new, reenergized and/or inspiring endeavor are heating up, external circumstances—and likely a particular person who's the 'face' of said circumstances—may feel like they pose a threat to your capacity to throw yourself fully into it. Don't fixate on an outer 'villain', and unnecessarily embolden your inner mean-streak. This is a lesson in understanding that to own both poles of this apparent faceoff (i.e., to see your own need to honor others' questions, considerations, exceptions or problems, in terms of benefiting you too) is to eventually have your cake while also eating it.

If you were born in late 1980 or 1981…

You're at the infamous Saturn return, my burgeoning adults… the first moment of official astrological maturity, which occurs when transiting Saturn revisits his natal placement and asks that you bid adieu to the unfocused wanderings and the refusals to discriminate between what's right and wrong for you, those folly-filled trademarks of our teens and twenties. Going forward from here, the consequences you'll reap from disregarding reasonable boundaries of personal responsibility will start getting worse. You can't get away with the same crap anymore. And for those of you who are realizing that, likewise, you don't derive the same youthful pleasure from repeating fruitless exercises in pure freedom… well, this rite-of-passage can simultaneously feel like a relief. Ready to put everything you've learned until now to good use, to accomplish what you're here to do, to enter your 30s with sleeves rolled up and foolish youth behind you? If you're not, you'd better be working on it.

Having entered life at a Jupiter-Saturn conjunction, your Saturn return is simultaneously a Saturn transit to your natal Jupiter. Due to this natal aspect, your birth-group holds a special knack for cleverly and charismatically negotiating agreements that deliver all sides greater rewards than they would've snagged in competition with each other. It's this quality you're now being charged with finding meaningful applications for. If you see a situation where productive dialogue isn't happening, consider stepping in to translate, in non-threatening terms, for the divided parties. In your own life, be increasingly conscious of not going too far in negotiations that you sell your integrity down the river. Yes, this includes watching out for fast-paced super-persuasive individuals who'd like to pull you along on their adventure, whether or not it's appropriate for you… and on the flip side, not stalling on necessary advances because manipulative partners or family members are playing to your guilt-indulging tendenices.

If you were born in 1983…

Go, go, go! You have an unusually ripe window of audacious risk-taking now opening up, which only expands upon (or exaggerates?) your intrinsic lust for meaningful excitement. Born with a Jupiter-Uranus conjunction in Sagittarius, this current recurrence transit of Jupiter and Uranus conjoining in Aries (another fire sign!) merely adds fuel to the fire always already burning inside you. Perhaps your worst possible life-scenario would be getting stuck in a tedious routine doing something that doesn't provide a significant daily purpose. (No hamster wheels for you, right?) Now and over the coming months, you've got a chance to make one more dramatic leap away from trivial tedium… and toward whatever substantive passions get your heart pumping with a zest for life. What you do with it has everything to do with how you experience your looming Saturn return (beginning late in 2011)—with indomitable strength to drive those guiding passions further, or with brutal resentment for letting yourself get 'trapped'.

If you were born in early 1984…

It's time for a bit of a reality check when it comes to your tendency to romanticize how much of life you're capable of planning for in advance, as a result of arriving under a Jupiter-Neptune conjunction. Pluto's current transit across this natal aspect reminds you not to neglect the (nefarious?) influence of external power-structures, which seek to preserve their own position, in preventing your perfect visions from making it to manifested reality. You must be prepared to steer and swerve, compensating for the unstable and oft-illogical manner in which real life unfolds, rather than obstinately cursing the collective forces for not bending to your will. Cherish your idealism, but learn to work it into the system, playing by those (sucky) rules at least long enough to finagle yourself in. Once in, you'll be much more successful at dismantling its faulty supports.

If you were born in 1988-1990…

You're the pivotal age-group associated with the paradigm-busting technological advances that brought us to the superconnected Internet Age, having been born when Saturn, Uranus and Neptune aligned roughly in a wide triple-conjunction. So you folks know, deep in your bones, that it is possible to radically reconstruct the entire fabric of daily life by combining an innovative vision for the future with focused, enterprising persistence. You've seen it happen with your own two eyes and, as a side-effect of experiencing this miracle at such a young age, developed a knack for quickly learning how to interact with such inventive new practices. Maybe it's you, then, who's going to come up with the next great technological leap?!? Will one of you attack the unsustainable energy crisis now brewing, rescuing us from the continuance of certain ecological disaster? Hurry up. The clock's a-ticking…

I understand, of course, you may not be rushing to the lab to reconceptualize modern human existence in the next week or two. You're still young. There are beers to pound, wild oats to sow, selves to find however it is you kids 'find yourselves' these days. May I also suggest another factor that may be at play… that, along with tons of mind-blowing technology at your fingertips, you've grown so (excessively?) accustomed to so many self-satisfying conveniences, you don't feel such a pressing sense of urgency to immediately evolve? This is not a personal critique, mind you, merely an observation about our having reached some peak in our collective affluence: We cannot continue doling ourselves out such riches without paying a higher and higher price. To help us break out of this intensifying dilemma, you must first emotionally grieve a way of life that's on its way out… rallying your courage to weather these short-term losses like champs, in order to bank much more gratifying gains later.

There's a balance to strike, then, between (1) harnessing your tremendous capacity for creative reinvention, which ought to trigger your optimistic investment in building something new for the world to profit from, and (2) unflinchingly facing the serious real-world problems that demand you get to the reinventing sooner rather than later (whether you're 'ready' or not!), which comes with its sadder sentiments. You can't take your conveniences for granted any longer, pretending the patterns you're engaged in will last for years to come. Here's hoping your desire for continued efficiency, opportunity and connectedness spurs you to actively participate in conscious future-building. It's a lot of work, sure, but the bonuses are inconceivably massive.