Here’s a story told through two back to back transits of outer planets to the IC. Transits of outer planets to the angles are always quite telling, and often lead to major life changes.
A man born in May 1964 joined his father’s business after finishing college. A part of the business that he was heading moved to another city, and he was forced to relocate and establish a new home there. This happened in June 1986.
Here’s the transit chart for the move, using June 15 as the epicenter of the move. (As you can imagine, a major relocation of business and home doesn’t happen overnight, so we’ll take June 15 as an arbitrary marker. But we expect to see activity well before and after that date):
Right away you see transiting Neptune approaching his IC at he bottom of the chart. Throughout 1986, Neptune was between 3 and 5 degrees of Capricorn, while the IC is at 8 Cap 51. The move is already happening, however, and there must be some other data in the chart that reflects this—Neptune seems to be foreshadowing uncertainty and confusion in the home that is to come. In the next year, 1987, Neptune advances as far as 7 Cap 58, still shy of the IC but much closer now.
This is the thing about Neptune: it hardly ever exactly homes in on a hit to an angle (or planet) in full accord with the actual event. This is not surprising because Neptune is the planet of confusion and obfuscation! More often that not, it presages an event by being close enough to the point of contact, and some other planet assumes the function of pulling the trigger at some fate-induced opportune time.
In February 1988, Neptune finally comes to an exact conjunction with the IC.
The monthly ephemeris for 1987, 1987, and 1988 trace the path of Neptune through these critical degrees around the IC (the monthly ephemeris shows the positions of planets Mars through Pluto, plus North Node, on the 1st day of the month at midnight of UT):
In the leftmost figure, for 1986, Neptune starts out at 5 degrees of Capricorn at the beginning of June. But right around then (sometime in May) it has started its retrograde motion, so by June 15 it has receded to 04 Cap 43 (as shown in the transit chart), and it keeps sliding back through all of July. Then during the May-June-July period of 1987, it advances to 7 degrees of Capricorn, coming tantalizingly close to the IC at 8 Cap 51, but then goes retrograde again. Finally, toward the end of 1987 it picks up steam and keeps marching forward, and by Feb 1988 it has advanced to the IC. It moves on past, but then goes retrograde again, and returns for another hit on the IC in June-July. It keeps going backward, then straightens up again, and gets to the IC once more in Dec 1988. So in 1988, transiting Neptune transits over the IC three times – first in direct motion, then in retrograde motion, then in direct motion again.
Such multiple hits to any point or planet are quite common since all planets (except Sun and Moon) periodically go retrograde. If the target point happens to be an angle (or Sun or Moon), the transit is felt very powerfully.
Even as Neptune is doing its dance around the IC, there is another developing story involving Uranus which is right on the heels of Neptune. At the beginning of 1989, Uranus has just entered Capricorn, at the time when Neptune has just slid past the IC. And it short course, by April-May, Uranus has moved up to 5 degrees of Capricorn, within sniffing distance of the IC. So this bottom of the chart, which is still very much in Neptune’s zone of fog, is now experiencing that unsettling Uranian energy. Imagine driving haltingly in the fog, not knowing what you will come upon the next moment, while at the same time hearing this rumbling, disruptive sound that emerges out of nowhere, and is getting louder and louder. It’s uncertainty topped with a sudden rush of adrenaline–anything could happen!
Then, in the March through June period of 1990, transiting Uranus meets the IC head on. The dam must burst at this point. (Maybe the fog was hiding a river flowing right next to the road, and that rumble was the collapse of a dam that was being pounded by the the Neptunian floodwaters!)
What happened in this March-June period was that this man got married, and it wasn’t in the most pleasant of circumstances. Both families were very much against the marriage, but the couple went ahead anyway. Of all the outer planets, Uranus offers the most precise timing of events because its nature is to zap with a single-pointedness, a sharpness of focus that is hard to miss. By the end of 1989, it has turned direct and passed the IC one more time, and then moved beyond. The dust has settled, the home has been completely dismantled and restructured in a different place. Out of the disruption and confusion emerges a new beginning: a new business, a new home, a new family. Such a major transformation of the life is such a short period! Blame it on the outer planet transits.
