On Bees and Bad Transits

I promised you a post on what’s been happening in my life. I decided to write this because I wanted to share with you some of the startling astrological correlations and also to talk a bit about ‘bad transits’. It’s a personal post but I hope you find something of value in it.

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I think it began with the bees nesting outside my living room window earlier this year. My grandmother always used to tell me how her grandfather kept bees and every evening at sunset he would go down to the bottom of the garden to tell the bees what had happened that day. She told me it was most important to tell them of a death in the family.

So I’d got into the habit of watching the bees, fuzzy babies at first, then growing into full size bumblebees. In my head I’d talk to them about my day. I knew they were symbolic. I knew that they were bringing honey into my life – but it would be sweetness with a sting.

If you’re a regular reader, you’ll know that 3 weeks ago, on the 13th July, the building I worked at in my part time day job was destroyed by a massive fire. Something I forgot to mention in that post was that aside from the strange appearance of the death messenger pigeon, on the day before the fire a HUGE spider had one of my colleagues leaping up out of her seat. Another colleague rescued the spider and put it outside. What I remembered only afterwards was that the spider was sat squarely on the fire alarm. Spider to me is about ‘fate’ and also the number 13.

Whilst I think that for the vast majority of our lives we choose the paths laid out before us, occasionally there are ‘fated’ situations: things that plant us squarely in a new path. I don’t know how or why but it comes with an unmistakeable sense of ‘meant to be-ness’. But even then, we have a choice as to how to respond and that sets the course of the next part of the journey.

After the fire, I was set up to work from home. We had a meeting. I handed in my old keys as they were no longer of use. Something tickled the back of my neck – the symbolism of handing in my keys. This was no longer the key to my life. I no longer had access…

Transiting Saturn is currently making a waning opposition to my Sun, is square my Ascendant-Descendant axis from the edge of the 4th house cusp and square my Moon. I’d been feeling it since the beginning of the year! All the typical associations of these Saturn transits – feeling trapped, feeling abandoned, aching loneliness, feeling like everything was just too hard, not enough time to do too much work. Some of you know I’ve had health issues, chronic tiredness, dizziness, insomnia. My body was shrieking at me – “Get out of this job!“ but I refused to listen because I was afraid.

My Solar Return this year saw the Sun conjunct Mars with Mercury conjunct Uranus all in the 10th house. After the fire, I thought it couldn’t be much more symbolic – the HEAT of the Sun with Mars, the SHOCK of Uranus with Mercury. The transiting South Node was also just past a conjunction with my natal Mars in the 10th house (the South Node typically connects to endings).

But is was Saturn that bothered me as Saturn does, wondering how things would manifest with the square to my Moon. I took on the need to work hard despite my exhaustion, to become more emotionally secure even though sometimes I wanted to cry my eyes out with frustration (and sometimes did). There was and is so much I want to do with this site, with my tarot site, with writing and I resented every second kept away from it. As Saturn transited my third house, he reminded me over and over that it was my mental chains that kept me bound and nothing else. The 8 of Swords became almost a permanent fixture in my own readings. All I thought, day after day was how to leave the day job and do what I love all day, every day. I knew I was no longer living. I’d slipped into just existing. Reality was bearing down on me. I was afraid of losing security so much that it had locked me in.

Meanwhile, in my progressed chart, my progressed Moon was coming up to conjunction with natal Pluto in the 2nd house on the 25th July. I spotted it, noted it. Change is coming and it’s big and with Saturn too, it’s final. I carried on working from home, my head still in the sand, my mind reeling – what do I do, what do I do? I began to be aware that working from home indefinitely for the company was not going to be a long-term option but the new office was too far away to make it worth my while travelling for the few hours worked. Both time and money would suffer and I was already beyond desperate for more time not less. Time is ruled by Saturn.

And then on Wednesday 24th July, just 11 days after the fire, my friend called. I knew immediately, I said to her “This isn’t good is it?” and she burst into tears and told me our beloved friend Helen had died. My beautiful Pisces friend had slipped quietly away in her sleep the night before, after a long illness. She was a year younger than me. She’d had an inkling it was coming. She wrote something to me earlier in the year that let me know she knew but we always like to think the best don’t we? We always want to have hope. The last thing I sent her was a clip from Monty Python ‘Ministry of Silly Walks’, to make her laugh because that’s what we always did best together. True to her Pisces Sun, she had unending kindness. As she passed away, Jupiter crept into my 12th house. Right now, I still can’t believe these words as I type them. It still feels unreal.

I’d written the cosmic tides the week previously as normal. The post for Thursday, the day after the call, was an hauntingly fitting tribute to Helen who smiled all the time, hugged fiercely and saw the good in everyone. Everyone remembers her for her kindness most of all.

“Moon in Pisces – The Moon in Pisces makes a swathe of helpful aspects to the other planets today. After a sweet conjunction to Neptune, it’s trines and sextiles all round as if the Moon is giving each planet a gentle hug, a smile, a wave. There’s something soft about today, like the calm after the storm and you could do no better than simply letting it happen. Let life happen. Put any differences aside and seek out the good in others as well as quietly accepting all that you are. Write a gratitude list. Be thankful.”

When death comes knocking, I’ve found something curious happens. It’s like all the doors to the world of spirit are suddenly wide open. I have a feeling of being carried. Even in grief, I felt an odd sense of complete peace. Suddenly all my own drama and fear and ‘stuff’ felt unimportant. I’d had a large influx of readings just prior to the news and they kept coming. I worked steadily. I cried. I worked. Somewhere along the line, I realised my mental chains had broken.

And so, on the day of the Grand Sextile on the 29th July, I went for a meeting with my boss. There was still a job for me there – as long as I went to the new office. I think I had made my mind up even before the meeting. “I’m done” I said “I quit”. We went for a coffee, then a drink, had a good chat. The end of an era of my life passing.

My friend died and suddenly fear had no place in my life.

That day, the Quarter Moon of the Grand Sextile lay exactly on my 10th house cusp and the Sun exactly on my Ascendant. I felt it. I felt touched by the Star. I felt some magical sense of a weight lifting off me, as if Saturn breathed a sigh of relief and said “About time, Leah!”. I had written and posted the article about the Grand Sextile the day before the fire. On completing the post and about to search for a picture of a bee, a bee flew into my window and buzzed loudly – just as though she was trying to get my attention that the date was going to be important.

I have 5 weeks left at the day job then, just as Saturn takes his first steps into my 4th house and Jupiter squares my MC from the 12th, I will take the step back into full time self employment as an astrologer/tarot reader/writer. Transiting Uranus is just three degrees away from my 9th house MC. It’s all I want to do. It’s all I’ve ever done. Since I was 14 years old, I have studied, practised and worked giving readings. Somewhere along the line I got a little lost. I got a little knocked by life when Saturn passed over my Ascendant and into the 1st house. To be frank, I got knocked off my feet and flattened by a steamroller and I couldn’t get up. I lost my faith. I didn’t do the work then. I found it hard to do this work then and so found myself in a ‘normal’ job. I didn’t do what Saturn asked of me because I was in too much emotional pain. Sometimes it happens like that. Sometimes fear makes you stop listening. Sometimes you’re screaming so much, you can’t hear anything else.

But the thing with Saturn is that you have to do the work anyway. You have to paddle your little boat across the stormy seas. You have to grow muscles, get stronger and master yourself. And sometimes you have to grow up and take on more responsibility and aim for the New World like the Portuguese Discovers setting sail. Saturn as old ruler of Aquarius makes a lot of sense. Saturn’s transits are like growth rings in a tree; they mark you for life but they fortify you for future experiences. And like the rings of a tree, Saturn will take you full circle, giving you repeated chances to grow.

Very occasionally, bad things happen under ‘bad transits’ but we can’t live in fear of what may or may not happen. In truth there are no ‘bad transits’. There are just challenges and changing tides. It manifests differently for us all. What we can do is focus on bringing out the best of their potential and use the energy to our benefit. Now I am looking to Saturn to help me steel myself for the changes I need to make. I’m asking for his help instead of barraging him with abuse. I’m honouring Pluto – there is death in life and life in death. I’m grieving yet I also feel empowered. I’ve started singing again. I’m toughening up fingers on the guitar. I feel like a bird let out of a cage – like the pigeon who came to visit the old office, carrying a message on her wings.

Let your soul fly free. Let your heart sing.

Most of the bees have left the nest now. But I’ve told them the whole story as I have told you. I told them of the fire, the fear, the death and the decision. I’ve asked them to make me busy as a bee doing the work I love doing. It’s my purpose, as is it theirs to make honey.

With love always to you Helen. This is for you my dear.