The Progressed Moon and Career

Just before Xmas I was asked to do a quick single question reading for a friend. I will call him Mark*- although that is not his real name. He has Ok’d me using his story here, but for privacy reasons, I won’t reproduce his date of birth.

Mark was retrenched last February- just as Jupiter was returning to its’ natal position. With a decent sized separation pay, he didn’t start looking seriously for a new position until June 2009. Despite being in the final two for at least 5 roles, he has been unable to find a permanent position.

In the current economic climate, Mark’s story is not an unusual one. Whilst Australia has absolutely fared better than some other countries, our unemployment figures are higher than they have been. What is interesting about Mark’s story is that it bears a strong resemblance to a number of emails I have received out of this column and its predecessor “Your Career & the Cosmos.”

The major points in Mark’s Chart:

·         ASC 26 Aquarius

·         Stellium of Sagittarius planets in the 10^th & 11^th house: Venus (17), Mars (25), Sun (26) and Mercury (28) all disposited by 12^th house Jupiter at 7 Aquarius.

·         MC 22 Scorpio

·        Moon on the IC at 21 Taurus.

Already we can see that the Neptune/ Chiron/ Jupiter story has been playing out over Mark’s Ascendant for a large part of 2009. Adding to the feelings of disillusionment and confusion over his direction, Neptune has also been squaring Mark’s MC over this period of time.

With Mars as the traditional ruler of his career sector being conjunct the Sun and Mercury, his self expression and ego is essentially tied to his public self. With a fixed water sign on the MC and a fixed Taurus Moon, Mark dislikes change at an emotional level and connects strongly with his job- losing it hurt him at a deep and very fundamental level.

In looking at Mark’s progressed chart, the first thing I noticed was that not only had his Sun, Mercury & Venus progressed into Aquarius (at 15, 16 and 17 degrees respectively), but that the progressed Moon was in the 12^th house and in the last few degrees of a Balsamic Progressed Moon cycle.

I heard Stephen Forrest say (in a lecture series I attended) that sometimes the best thing you can do in a 12^th House Progressed Moon is to (metaphorically) sit on top of a mountain. It is all about letting go of the old and out dated to enable the coming of a new cycle once the progressed Moon crosses the Ascendant.

In Marks’ case, the 12^th house Progressed Moon also coincided with the closing of the progressed Balsamic phase. The Balsamic Moon phase is about endings and finishing things off. This is the dark of the Moon where the 3 nights of the dark Moon are progressed across a 3 year cycle of finishing and new beginning.

This is where Mark is now. Jupiter has crossed his Ascendant and is beginning to track through the 1^st house. Whilst Neptune is separating from the square to Mark’s MC, it will cross his Ascendant 3 more times in the next 12 months.

By the time that Mars is direct again, Neptune will have crossed the ASC and the Progressed Moon will be into the Progressed New Moon cycle and within a couple of degrees of Mark’s natal Ascendant.

Where this is a familiar story is that Mark is just one of a number of people I have looked at who are having difficulty finding long term work who are all having 12^th house Progressed Moon cycles, Balsamic Moon cycles or sensitive chart points being activated by Neptune/ Chiron. In Marks’ case it was all 3. This doesn’t mean that if you are having this type of transit/ progression that you will lose your job. Nor does it mean that you won’t be able to find a new role. It is, however, one of the ways that the transit/ progression may manifest itself and, in my view, an interesting coincidence.

In Marks’ case, he is also using the time to go inward and think about what he really wants to do. No longer as motivated by title and money as he was previously, he is now considering roles which have the potential to use his skills and make a difference.