Conjuring the Festival of Evolution:

Wild Evolutionary Social, Spiritual, Political, Financial Winds blowing hard in 1997
But It's Still Our Job to Put Up Our Sails

By Caroline W. Casey


The word "disaster" means literally in Latin - "dis" - "against", and "aster" - "the stars", reminding us that a disaster is when we pit our petty, small wills against the larger pulse or design, as revealed by the planetary patterns. Whereas the word "consider", meaning literally in Latin ("con" - "with, "sider" - another Latin word for stars) "with the stars", reminds us that when we take counsel, with ourselves, not mattering whether we "believe" in astrology or not - we are lining up with the design. As these two words imply - astrology is at least two-fold. One, we can use it to describe the characteristics of a person, event or time period. Two, astrology is instructive as to how to play the energies, to "consider" the patterns, viewing them as instructions; it reveals not only how to avoid disaster, but how to discern the pattern of evolutionary intelligence (the most enlivening possibiltiy), and align with it. A crucial instruction for 1997.

For 1997 is described as a year of vivid, tumultuous, raucous, inventive possibilities. A climate of revelation, discovery inventions, solutions, cures, and the collapse of systems that gives incentive to this kind of human endeavour. So, let us consider 1997: Not since February 7, 1962 will there have been so many planetary bodies lined up in Aquarius as this February of 1997. Our first theme then is the resonance between the 1960's and 1997 - on many levels - but certainly in regard to an unmistakable, not subtle, sense of huge social movements and historical forces at work.

February 14th (Valentine's Day) sees Venus, Mercury, Uranus, and Jupiter - all lined up with the Sun in Aquarius. In fact, if one were to rise before dawn this week, one would see, with the exception of Uranus (which would require an excellent telescope), this spectacular alignment rising in the Southeast before the Sun. Uranus and Jupiter conjunct (come together) at five degrees (there are thirty degrees to a sign) Aquarius. Meanwhile Pluto will be at five degrees of Sagittarius, Mars at five degrees of Libra, Saturn at five degrees of Aries (and at 5 pm est - the Moon will be at five degrees of Gemini).

When planets are in a rare harmony such as this it describes a time when everything comes apart and everything comes together...Meaning all bills, economic, social, environmental, political, spiritual - come due. And we are reminded that massive evolutionary leaps tend to occur in times of massive external breakdown.

Jupiter represents the enthusiastic drive to make meaning out of information. And Uranus is the principle of innovation, awakening.breakthrough. Wherever we, individually or collectively focus our attention - there will be discoveries.

We enter the age of mavericks. And a climate of revelation. New information enters the marketplace. Lost manuscripts and hidden texts surface. Discourse wants to happen. "News" wants to change - from the addiction to fragmentary sensationalism (in which each crisis is viewed as "news", an isolated crisis rather than a crisis of isolation) to an understanding of the inter-relatedness of predicaments, as well as their solutions.

Aquarius represents, among other things, how we gather, community. Democracy wants to become more lively, and to do that requires alert, active participants, whereas the worst aspects of the market place require passive, asleep consumers. This becomes a wide-spread insight, catalyzing radical, economic restructuring - and the mainstreaming of what comes to be known as "democratic capitalism". Ecologically responsible worker-owned corporations emerge as a viable form.

The seeds of new coalitions and political parties, new modes of transport, breakthroughs in energy technologies, and quantum physics. Not boring. Jupiter and Uranus were aligned during the moonlanding of 1969 - which was also the Summer of Woodstock.

As many of us know there are only two Outer Planet conjunctions this century - describing strategical time periods of unprecedented social evolutionary experimental vitality. 1964 -1968: Uranus (theprinciple of innovative,experimental evolution) and Pluto ( the raw death - rebirth Cauldron) were conjunct. And we had the 60's. But it took Jupiter coming up to join that conjunction in 1968 - 1969 to really launch elctrical exhilerating, terrifying vitality into Mainstream.
Similarly,the only other Change God conjunction this century - is Now. Uranus (same guy), and now Neptune (a culture's Vision, it's Mythos, the ways in which it seeks Transcendance) are aligned over the last several years... Instructing us all to co-create an all inclusive working Vision, of what we're all doing here - And How It Can All Turn Out OK. But! It takes Jupiter coming up to conjoin this powerful pattern at the end of '96, and on into 1997...

Time to lob liberating esoterica into mainstream (pass it on)... Working pragmaticly, aligning with the Invisible Compassionate Evolutionary Ingenuity of the most wonderful thing that wants to happen. CONSCIOUS INTENDING AND WILLINGNESS IS THE TICKET to admittance at this vast cosmic party. Everyone and everything that ever was will be there. Hey,why not - we vote for Reality with our Imaginations.

The astrologer Jim Fournier has been writing about January 23,1997 for years now, delineating the exquisitely powerful beauty and opportunity of that moment... More real ,and more potent, I think, than the (alleged) Harmonic Convergence. He says:

The pattern is called a triple mystic rectangle: six trines, six sextiles and three oppositions. What is special about this one is that it names the peak moment of short cycles at the peak of long cycles.
Uranus conjoins Neptune - one decade every 170 years.
Pluto and Saturn sextile them - maybe every 1000 years?
Jupiter joins them - one month of a 12 year cycle.
Mars trines them too - one week of a two-year cycle.
Sun joins all three - a few days of that year.
Full Moon opposite - a few hours of that month.
Ascendant trine them completes the pattern
and names the moment of that day,12:35 pm (est)
on the twenty-third day of January
giving the magic number 1-23.

Not since the 6o's, and say, the Beatles have we had a truly telepathic pop culture - in which outer pop culture was actually intimately related to the experience of the collective. That possibility is again available. Now sudden emergence of new iconic pop culture figures. New forms of gathering, new credos, and popular will emerge with the arts necessary to bring them alive.

So, who and what will do well - in the long run - in this climate of stirring, social awakening? In this Age of Mavericks qualities of innovation and intuition in the service of the greater good will be welcomed in the marketplace. Politicians will need to jog to keep up with the shifting belief structures ,and emergence of grass roots leadership .In the short run, we beware those who say, "the situation is much too complex - give us your freedom - and we will take care of it for you."

And what of the children born this year? As those born in the 60's, embody the 60's (having in their birth charts the astrological signature of that time), and now come into stride - so those born now embody now. 1997 will be a birth year to many brilliant inventors with irrefutable telepathic capacities.

And (again) the instructions to all of us - willingness to be fully alive, and to be danced into place where we can be enthusiastic participants - is the ticket. We ask ourselves, "what am I good at? With whom am I connecting in a significant way? And how are we being drawn into a collaborative conspiracy - an ingenious, wealth-producing project for the greater good?"

And as always we call upon:
Aries - to initiate, and stir things up
Taurus to consolidate and steward resources,promote beauty
Gemini to communicate, to connect and coordinate through information flow
Cancer to constellate the family, the container, thewomb, create the businesses
Leo to produce the Show, encouraging uniqueness
Virgo to refine and critique, to build the micro-cosmic altars
Libra to connect and make beautiful everyone and everything
Scorpio - to emerge from exile, and contribute its ferocious insight to thecommunity
Sagittarius to research, teach, travel, spread the word
Capricorn - to build the Empire of equals
Aquarius to constellate the community, and the ways in which we gather (Festivals, ideally)
Pisces to be a public dreamer - keeper of the collective mythology
and to all of us - to change the entire climate of culture.


Caroline W. Casey is a Visionary Activist Astrologer who uses the language of astrology to catalyze the awakening of the individual and the collective. Based in Washington D.C., she practices astrology using all media to guide people to discern and collaborate with the unfolding patterns of the Universe.
For tapes of her work, she can be reached at:

800-820-TREE
Outside the U.S. dial: 512-440-1464
3002 Brinwood Ave. Austin, Texas U.S.A.