The Great Conjunction as it is called only happens every 20 years and has been the preeminent method of demarcating historical eras in traditional astrology. Jupiter and Saturn last aligned in a great conjunction in May 2000. When Jupiter and Saturn come together there is both the intensity of old forms dying as well as the fertility of new growth beginning to take shape. In the past century, their cycle has aligned with the transition in between decades, with the conjunctions and oppositions between Jupiter and Saturn marking the start of each decade. Together Jupiter and Saturn combine expansive and imaginative vision with the structure and discipline needed to both manifest results as well as strip away the inessential. While Jupiter signifies generosity and fortunate opportunities, it can also lead to greed and delusions of grandeur that requires the contemplative focus of Saturn to trim the excess and strengthen what is ready to ripen. At the same time, we need the inspirational revitalization of Jupiter to mediate the negative side of Saturn that can bring fear over limitations and obstacles and lead to depressive stagnation.

We were all put through the wringer in 2020. Structure and structures that we relied to navigate life were irrevocably stripped away. All of us have suffered some type of loss, from losing jobs, to losing family members, no one has escaped unscathed. From the simplest of acts like going to the movies, to major life events such as getting married, northing was easy or guaranteed. So now what? There’s no going back, only forward. The universe has taken away, now it gives so we can rebuild. Not the same, but better.

We are here, finally, at the last month of the most tumultuous year in living memory for many of us barring those who lived through WWII. While astrologers anticipated that 2020 would be a history maker, I don’t think any of us were fully prepared for what was to come. This year has challenged all of us in many different ways and has changed our perceptions of what is “normal”.

2020 was always destined to be a year of historic change. The cosmic events we have seen take shape this year indicate a new karmic cycle for the Earth and changes that go on to last for generations. November brings the completion of one of the major cosmic cycles we have been working with this year, the Jupiter Pluto Conjunction. It also brings the fourth and final Lunar Eclipse of the year and it closes all but one of the many retrograde cycles we have been working with. In the first few weeks of November, it feels like the tensions built up in October finally begin to unravel and we can see where we stand.

Halloween, now a secular holiday, gets its roots from the pagan festival of Samhain which is one of the four major sacred days throughout the Celtic territories of England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland and Brittany. Falling on October 31st it began at sunset (the traditional start of a Celtic new day). Exactly opposite Beltane or May Day, on the wheel of the year, Samhain is Beltane's dark twin. It is considered a night of power, when the veil that separates our world from the Otherworld is at its thinnest. A “spirit night” as they say in Wales.