HAPPY BIRTHDAY MZANSI
It’s 30 years since we first raised our flag. I know we have a holiday for voting day and the official chart for our country is set for that 27April date. It was 13 days after I gave birth to my son, so I remember well every smell and birdsong as I walked to vote. It was my first time alone and out the house for weeks; talk about freedom 😉
The chart I will be working from is set for 10 May 1994, 12h20, Union Buildings, Mzansi. “Mandela said his mission was to build a nation that included everyone as full citizens. South Africa would only succeed if the talents, skills and assets of everyone were put to their fullest use. He was both a modernist and a nation-builder.” (Wilmot James, Daily Maverick, 6MAY24)
Our official birthday @19TAURUS32’ is today 9MAY24 @18h44. Looking at our country’s birth chart we note the recent rapture of Uranus-Jupiter @21TAURUS49’ very close to SUN and the exalted, but balsamic MOON in Taurus (our people). Somatic Taurus Sun is with the North Node of Mars (19TAURUS), while Moon lurks on the South Node of Mercury @18TAURUS (long stories from long ago). Ruling both is Venus in ‘talk-up-a-storm’ Gemini.
Key transits for us now with voting day coming 29MAY24, are Chiron with Mars (the wounded masculine), Jupiter with Mercury (who shouts loudest) and Mercury with his wand upon our Sun’s light. Uranus into Gemini and transiting SA’s Mercury, will be changing OUR mind 7AUG25, 3OCT25 and resolving 15MAY26.
Uranus is done transiting our Sun and yes, we may have won the world cup rugby, but we are not who we thought we were. On voting day, the Sun will be with Aldebaran, royal watcher star of strong integrity and eye of the sacred Sky Bull Taurus. Maybe that’s why King Jove has rushed in to bless this moment splitting its seams. God knows we need divine intervention.
The Old Testament GOD Uranus, is focussed on our shadow (South Node), getting close-up to the toxic and putrid to separate truth from lies 26MAY, at Christmas and resolving 6MAR25. Uranus is also coming to oppose Pluto 4AUG24, 2OCT24 and 11MAY25. This complexity demands the destruction of old attitudes and ways of being…power changes hands.
Transiting Chiron will be square Neptune’s deception/redemption from JULY24 all the way through to FEB26. Uranus-Neptune is our longing for an altogether different reality. We are lightning bolt change-agents and want to use the power of the human intellect to transform reality, but we feel powerless currently. We need to remember that for a body/vessel to hold light this bright takes at least 42 years to fully charge, meaning 2036 our rainbow gets real.
Chiron is currently showing us how wounded we are, with his conjunction to Mars in rulership in feisty Aries. He is being taken to task via opposition to Juno, wife of this chart; who needs fidelity, commitment and contracts that work best for the relationship, not absent father Saturn in Pisces, nor underworld bossman Jupiter in Scorpio. We have to deal with the grief and toxicity of our innerness, before we can move forwards.
SA’s progressed chart speaks volumes on the completion of our first Saturn cycle and 30-years of freedom. We are adult now.
We had a NEW MOON @18GEM17’ 10APRIL24 with Ceres @17GEM37’, who takes pride in small things. This reboot happened very close to SA’s natal Venus @17GEMINI11’ and Venus’ heliocentric North Node @16GEMINI. Venus by progression is now in Cancer on Saturn’s North Node (23CANCER), reflecting how upstanding we are capable of being for the world we currently find ourselves in, by standing up at the International Court of Justice for the Palestinian people earlier this year.
Progressed Mercury (ruler of Gemini) is emotional in Cancer and partile sextile with deep-soul Black Moon Lillith, generating space for the voice of the outcast and homeless seeking ‘home’ and belonging. Taurus, who WE are, gives us ground to earth where healing energy comes from the earth; soil to grow and ‘hold space’ where we can be free of conflict and where nothing lacks. WE are reminded of our diverse family origins whose trees have rooted and received sanctuary in this land.
Progressed Saturn is yin sextile Mars, now debilitated/alternative in Taurus, hopefully doing the right thing in a different way. We have no fire currently. Our fire, like our passion, has gone out. GOOD NEWS is that Venus goes into Leo in March 2030, the heartiest heart-fire to have and perfect for us Southers who get to process northern fall-out. Best we do so in our own way. Our daimon star is, after all, Alpha Aries Hamal, who likes to make his own path.
The other really important thing to know about this chart, is that Mercury stations retrograde 31AUG2028 @8CANCER22’, now under half- a-degree away. For the rest of this century, we get to revise every bad decision and selfishness of these past 30 years, by rewiring OUR brain and creating new neural pathways. For those of us the revolution didn’t manage to eat, we know now how to grow our own food and medicine, build our own homes and make our own electricity, like famine-Mfecane-apartheid-Zuma survivors, VIVA!
Mercury’s alchemical wedding happens MAYDAY2040 @3CANCER37’ when progressed Full Moon in Saturn-ruled Capricorn will be as-good-as-it-gets for a time. Mercury’s Nigredo (breakup) began 5MAY2016 and Rubedo (creation) begins in 2061, born from the 2040 union of dark and light. 2016 – 2061 makes a 45-year bubble to work the magic out.
What is interesting is that progressed Mercury will station @29GEMINI25’ in 2051 spending 12 years at this cusp of Gemini-Cancer from 2045 – 2057; that 1969 Venus Star Point @29GEMINI08’ AND Mars Star Point @0CANCER15’, when Uranus-Jupiter took us to the MOON. What new voice / new mind shall be leading us then, I wonder….
A few days after we voted in 1994, the most gorgeous, zero-degree-Aries Ayrton Senna died on the racetrack in Italy. Motorsport rules and safety measures totally changed and there has only been one death since that fateful Mayday. Our young women and men like Ayrton, cannot continue to die slowly for nothing.
We move from New to Crescent Lunar Phase in February 2028. Moon will be in Leo then and the people start warming up.
By birth we have Chiron in Virgo opposite Saturn across the relating axis from I/ME 1H – 7H US, good and bad. This is a background theme continually demanding the healing and release of old fears. Progressed Saturn got to 13PISCES in 2016 and remains there until 2060, turning retrograde in 2039. This means direct Saturn-Chiron confrontation will take place in 2085, Virgo-Pisces with honest feedback finally.
The Sabian symbol for 13PISCES is, ‘an ancient sword, used in many battles, displayed in a museum’ and speaks of lionhearted courage and brotherhood.
Mirroring the heavens this year, transiting Saturn conjuncts 13PISCES from 18-26MARCH24 and again 28OCT24 – 4DEC24, going direct on this degree 15NOV24. So, what we are experiencing this year is critical karma. Saturn will be FULL-ON midnight star @16PISCES01’ 8SEP24 and square our recently birthed New Moon @18GEM17’ 23MAY24, 6AUG24, resolving 8FEB25, when we’ll find our new feet and flock. Thinking like a waterbird helps me anyway.
In SA’s birth chart Chiron squares Mercury, which is why traditional/alternative healers will always be the first port of call in this country. Chiron-Mercury is more creative than rational. This wound of ours around issues of control, either OCD or lawless (particularly in health), needs to change to redeem our thinking and heal inter-generational disfunction and trauma. Chiron ensures we do this when we turn 50 in 2044. Perhaps one day we can release all the pain of being stuck-in-a-dark-place and allow the Promethean genius of ‘that-which-we-are-because-of-one-another’ to start speaking, singing, praying, shouting, chanting and being. I do miss us!
Saturn has now conferred adulthood and commences a repeat lesson in compassion and forgiveness; the true healing of what it means to be here in SOUTH AFRICA.
Happy Birthday SA, my EARTH STAR
Natasha, Knysna, 9MAY24
