Astrology’s Spiritual Masters

When astrology’s spiritual masters stop by your birth planets for a visit, their appearance can shake up your world. They can make you feel like you’re tiptoeing through a mine field or you’ve fallen down Alice’s rabbit hole — or you can feel as though you’ve been freed from bondage and are capable of achieving anything.

Astrology’s spiritual masters are the planets Saturn, Chiron, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto, also known as the outer or transpersonal planets. Their location in your astrological chart at your birth can be very important, but the real excitement begins when their everyday movements (called transits) bring them into contact with other planets in your birth chart.

These contacts (called aspects) can last anywhere from a month to three years or more. They teach by bringing people and events into your life to challenge and inspire you. And when they do, astrology’s spiritual masters require that you step beyond your everyday habits and assumptions about the world to learn from them.

Their visits often surprise anyone but an astrologer and whether you learn anything or grow from the experience, is up to you. If you don’t get it this time around, they’ll be back in a few years to approach you from another angle.

The lessons shift focus, depending on which of your birth planets are being contacted, and what houses of your astrological chart are involved. You can get those details either by consulting an astrologer, or on your own by comparing current planetary positions with your birth chart.

Planetary questions
Here are astrology’s spiritual masters, and a question from each one to use as a compass to guide you through times when they contact your birth planets, or to integrate any challenges they may have presented in your birth chart. These questions are not for your rational mind, but for your dreaming mind or right brain. And, there is no right or wrong answer — only the journey.

Saturn asks…
The planet Saturn, named for the Greek/Roman god Kronos was father of Zeus and ruler of time — a structure which dominates everything on Earth. Saturn is about structures, rules and society’s expectations, and he expects you to live within them while being true to yourself. With Saturn, what goes around comes around. Saturn’s basic question is this: “Can you fully express the person you are and the person you can become, through the life structures you have created consciously and unconsciously?”

Chiron inquires…
Chiron was a Centaur, an Immortal in Greek mythology, and the first physician. Chiron is known as the Wounded Healer because he received a mortal wound but, because he was Immortal, he could not die, nor could he heal. He exposes your most painful weaknesses, so that they may be accepted and integrated into your life. Former addicts who become drug and alcohol counselors do Chiron’s work. Chiron asks “How is your greatest weakness also your greatest strength — and how is your greatest strength your greatest weakness?”

Uranus probes…
Uranus is the sky god whose lightning bolt teaches through surprise and sudden changes. Uranus teaches through pitfalls (usually yours!). Many people find Uranus transits particularly upsetting because they are usually about letting go of old structures and ideas which are restricting your possibilities. Uranus asks the question: “What are you clinging to as if your life depended on it? And what in your life is ready to break free and become more?”

Neptune wonders…
Neptune, also known as Poseidon, is God of the seas. Neptune invites you to immerse yourself in the Ocean of Being, to leave behind everyday life and merge with “all that is,” not to escape, but to return with transformational understanding and express it through your life. Because Neptune is the great dissolver, boundaries are weak under its influence. If you are not cooperating with its higher purpose it can cause allergies, illness and substance abuse. Neptune’s question is “How can you remain an individual and be one with “all that is” at the same time?”

Pluto examines…
Pluto is lord of the underworld, also known as Hades, and is best known for abducting Demeter’s daughter Persephone. A Pluto experience is much like what happens after a caterpillar spins its cocoon. The caterpillar basically disintegrates and over time its cells, which hold the butterfly blueprint, create a new creature from the old substance. Pluto can hit your life like an abduction, temporarily snatching you out of ordinary reality and creating very dramatic situations, full of power struggles. Pluto’s question is “What possibilities can you access only through complete surrender?”

The more you cooperate with the lessons of these spiritual masters through astrological contemplation, and then action, the more you gain from the time you spend under their influence. Here’s an affirmation that helps when these planets visit your chart and stir up your world: “I welcome this opportunity to evolve.”