Welcome to a moment that we have all been focused on all year, even if we weren’t aware of it. The social planets, Jupiter and Saturn, reflect the experience of life on Earth outside of our own embodiment. The inner, fast moving “personal planets” connect to how we move, think, feel and choose at the individual level. The outer planets are the 5-dimentional, transpersonal energies that connect us to much greater aspects of our divine consciousness, and the universal connection that we all share. The planets in the middle, the gas giants, and by far the biggest bodies in our conscious awareness, relate to and reflect everything that happens in our shared experience out in the world. This includes all societal structures from the street on which you live, to the governments that run the place you call home, the enormous institutions that serve humanity, and everything in between.

These two planets come together every twenty years, and when they do, we are marking a generational shift. The sign they come together in counts, and this one has gotten a tremendous amount of attention because it takes place at the 0-degree of Aquarius, the Age we have entered in our lifetime. Many people are marking this as the beginning of the Age of Aquarius which it is not, not by a long shot. Aquarius is innovative and futuristic and can be thought of as the inventor of computers and the internet. In this way, you can consider the discovery of binary code and the power of computing in the middle of the last century as the first beginnings of the Age. A few decades later, the personal computer is invented, and we moved more fully out of the Age of Pisces and into the Age of Aquarius. As computers became more ubiquitous and the internet was created, the Age was truly upon us, and when social media was introduced to our experience about fifteen years ago, the Age of Aquarius was unequivocally begun in earnest.

There is no astrological marker of this; there can be many gear shifts that indicate it from a planetary perspective, and there is no firm agreement in the world of astrologers of when this occurred. I myself point to the Conjunction of Pluto and Uranus in Virgo in the 1960s, followed by their Squaring each other around 2012 as key. There was also an event in the 1980s known as the Harmonic Convergence, which was not that big of a deal astrologically, but it got the attention of the collective (through media) in a way that astrology had not done before that moment. For the first time, astrology moved out of the woo-woo circles that embraced it, and began to be taken up collectively in a way that – cut to decades later – social media has made completely ubiquitous and available for mass consumption.

So, while this is not the beginning of the Age of Aquarius, we can certainly consider it the grand opening party after many decades of a soft open. There is the power of the collective in this as well; millions of people, through social media, are looking to this moment as a marker of the new age, and allowing it to muster hope for the future of humanity. Now THIS, I can get behind. It may not be astrologically accurate to say that this is the beginning of the Age of Aquarius, but if you consider all the past decades of building what is possible in the realm of global connection of humanity, it is social media that will save us, if we can figure out how to not allow it to destroy us as we try and figure it all out. Our technology has evolved faster than our humanity, and so there is a great deal of catching up to do in the psychology of being so connected in this way. But as I am fond of saying, we have two thousand years to get it right.

The Solstice takes place at 2:00am PST this morning, as the Sun will cross over between Sagittarius into Capricorn at that moment. Just seven hours later at around 9:00am PST, Jupiter and Saturn come together in the Great Conjunction. This Solstice offers the least light in the northern hemisphere, and the most light in the south. It is the moment on the planet where we are at extremes, and the sense of balance and harmony we seek can only be understood if we imagine the entire planet as one unified consciousness. We in the north are in the dark, where we must find the light within. Our brothers and sisters in the south celebrate the most light, and the beginning of spring renewal. We are whole and complete, but only when we remember that we are all part of this incredible global collective consciousness. This very idea – of blending the Solstice energy Northern Hemisphere and Southern Hemisphere united in your perception of us – this is a very Aquarian notion. This is why, when it comes to the Solstice, I never write Winter Solstice or Summer Solstice, but just Solstice.

We must all begin to take more responsibility for our global, united consciousness, if we are to survive this very trying time. If you are reading this, then you are one of the way-showers. Thank you for your service, and get ready for the wild ride to come. This very challenging year really just opened us up to a new expression that, while it has pummeled many people and destroyed lives in its wake, is also waking humanity up to a new level of conscious awareness, and that woke state is pure Aquarius. Celebrate well this powerful moment, and remember that when our faith is strained and tested, hope is the answer.