Energy = Activity

A couple weeks ago, I talked about empty houses and empty chart halves. Again, having empty parts of your chart doesn't mean you don't get to have things happen that are related to those empty houses, because those empty houses have rulers and the rulers live somewhere (else) in your chart. So the point here is not to freak you out, but rather, to point to where your attention naturally goes because there's energy there. Take the person with a bunch of planets in their 7th house and a different person with zero planets in the 7th who is also NOT taking an outer planet transit to their 7th house. If you're a betting person, which of these individuals is more likely to get married before age 30? (If Pluto is transiting that 7th house of the person with the empty 7th house in their chart, I won't bet, because that could mean fucking *anything.*)

So, just look at your chart with your eyes and think about what you naturally pay attention to, and I think you'll find zero surprises.

Now, another thing that's interesting to me: life rhythms. Whether or not you have noticed it, your life has a rhythm to it, and again, it depends heavily on what the scattering of energy in your chart looks like. To the untrained eye, charts really can look like someone had an accident with marbles, you know? ("You mean to tell me the blue marble is *significant*?" scoffs the person who hasn't had the "oh shit" moment when they realize astrology might have some merit.)

I noticed when I was a teenager that it was impossible to have a period of time when all life categories were going well, and back then it was home, relationship, school, and friends, more or less. I'd noticed a perceptible shift every 2 years or so, in which relative calm in one area would devolve, and chaos in a different area would take a surprising turn for the better. I'll never forget the year I discovered I had a surprising aptitude for trigonometry after much suffering with algebra, for example, and then suddenly I didn't feel like such an idiot...but my friend group was falling apart. But guess what? Two years is about the amount of time an outer planet transit takes, and 2.5 years is the amount of time Saturn is in a given sign (house sizes vary). My chart is spread out with planets across 6 signs, and I do have an empty half (and it has come to my attention that some of you have figured out which half it is—good work), but I also have the type of chart where a negative aspect to one collection of planets can positively impact a different collection, depending on where a transit is happening, and I have other points that are either all positive and all negative, and it's only with time and observation that you're going to figure out for you personally what is what (hot tip: track Saturn and Mars and you will know what's what based on whether you are smiling or screaming).

There are some people with 5 or 6 planets in one sign alone. These people are not going to have the same experience as I do. My attempt to constantly keep all plates spinning despite one of those plates being consistently terrible for several years is *my* rhythm. They're (probably)* going to have years of relative calm interspersed with a concentration of serious activity. For example, people born in 1988 - 1990 have at least 3 planets in Capricorn, but Capricorn suns born in that period of time have even more planets there (remember: Mercury can't be that far away from the sun), and Pluto has transited over those in sequence like a steamroller since 2008, so many people with these charts have had some extremely intense shit occur in their lives and the only explanation for all the drama (aside from 'an angry god hates me') is astrology. I bet that's how some of them found astrology, too.

This might (hopefully) sound obvious, but no energy = no activity. Fortunately (?) for all of us, we have a moon circling the earth, which blazes around your chart every 28+ days. Should you track the moon to get information on what it's up to? Only if you don't want to have a life (if I know exactly where the moon is, it's a sign that I need to find something else to do). Having a vague awareness of where the moon is might be helpful, though. For example, if it's Friday at 5 PM but the moon's just entering your 6th house and will therefore be there all weekend (house sizes vary!), you're not going to FEEL like kicking back. If the moon's contacting 3rd house planets, you're going to talk more. Moon transits to planets last *hours*, not days, so moon stuff tends not to be life-changing. Still, there's a rhythm to it. Just like there's a rhythm to the annual cycle of the sun around your chart, as well as Mercury and Venus, though their cycles are more erratic due to retrogrades, but energy = activity.

Given my Scorpionic tendencies, you'll hear me saying most when I'm looking at charts "you have (good) energy for ___ right now." The way I approach this stuff is: 1. where's the energy (birth chart and transits)? 2. what's it doing? 3. what form is it taking in real life**? Boom, boom, boom: you have a narrative and a lot of the time you can follow the narrative along to what's next, or at least be able to indicate a point at which the individual will experience a shift in energy. You might use your 7th house Saturn transit to get married, decide to get un-married, or go to law school. Or all of them! 2.5 years is a long time. I don't know your life! I just see where the energy is. And (say it with me now): energy = activity.

XO,J

*It really depends on what the chart looks like.**If you're doing this for yourself, please remember you can't be objective during an active transit.