A. No, your career is not doomed. Based on the waves of intense planetary activity you’ve encountered over the past several years, your current professional volatility makes sense. Although it’s normal to desire stability in your mid 50s, the planets now exhort you to move in new directions. The cosmos challenges you to create significant change — not only in your career, but throughout your entire life.

With natal Uranus in Gemini, close to your Cancer Ascendant, you have a natural talent for self-reinvention. However, with a predominance of birth planets in fixed signs (resistant to change) and with those planets in a challenging relationship to each other (natal Pluto in willful Leo square to Venus and the Sun in stubborn Taurus), you sometimes hang on to situations longer than appropriate. This predisposition is heightened by your security-oriented Cancer Ascendant and Moon. I imagine you’ve experienced other periods when change forced itself upon you and you resisted mightily until you simply had to relent; later, you looked back, thinking, “What took me so long?”

Like many of us, you’re a complex soul with contradictory qualities that naturally become better integrated as you mature. The rubber meets the road as your innate need for stability comes up against the potential for reimagining your life — with a little help from your planetary friends.

Your Progressed New Moon (March 20, 2003) planted the seeds of new possibility.¹ The Progressed New Moon is the beginning of the significant 30-year progressed lunation cycle. Learn more about this important astrological event from The Lunation Cycle: A Key to Understanding of Personality by Dane Rudhyar, Aurora Press, 1967 and in the article, An Overview of Dane Rudhyar’s Approach to Cycles (TMA, 2/98), by Nicki Michaels. Now, several years into this cycle, it’s time to imagine the life you’d love to grow, the soil you long to plant yourself in, and with whom you wish to share your garden.

Transiting Uranus (your chart ruler, due to it’s prominent natal placement near the Ascendant) is now crossing the natal Midheaven (career transformation), as both transiting Saturn (consolidation) and your Progressed Moon (adjusting to regain comfort) complete their movement through your natal 2nd house (all resources, including finances). Transiting Neptune (dissolution) squared the natal Sun (goals) and is currently squaring natal Venus (all that you value) while opposing natal Pluto (one’s sense of destiny), thus leading to your feelings of vulnerability.

Concurrently, the solar arc Midheaven (current status) conjoins natal Mars (action), while the solar arc Ascendant (your ever-developing persona) is nearing a conjunction with natal Pluto (radical transformation). The Progressed Sun, approaching a trine to the natal Midheaven, reveals your capacity to create career opportunities. To sum it all up, big change is afoot, both internally (as shown by the progressions) and externally (as expressed by the transits).² This includes 2° orbs on all outer-planet transits and all progressions and directions, unless specified otherwise. Transiting Uranus conjoins the natal Midheaven from May 5, 2004 through February 21, 2006; the Progressed Moon through the 2nd house from June 19, 2004 through December 27, 2005 (no orb); transiting Saturn transits the 2nd house from August 13, 2004 through July 19, 2006 (no orb); transiting Neptune squares the natal Sun from April 14, 2002 through January 25, 2005; squares Venus from April 13, 2004 through January 28, 2007; and opposes Pluto from March 13, 2003 through January 6, 2006. The solar arc Midheaven conjoins natal Mars from October 30, 2003 through January 8, 2008; the solar arc Ascendant conjoins natal Pluto from November 18, 2004 through June 3, 2010; the Progressed Sun trines the natal Midheaven from February 20, 2005 through May 2, 2009.

Your fear of a doomed career is understandable, but think of this as the planetary call of the wild (transiting Uranus and friends) prodding you to conjure up your independent, feisty, bold, eclectic, and creative capacities (natal Uranus rising with natal Mercury in Gemini trine Jupiter in Aquarius) to make courageous and authentic choices.

Though this process is likely to take several more years to unfold, your finances may stabilize somewhat (the Progressed Moon leaves the 2nd house shortly) and more so next summer, as transiting Saturn follows. Prepare yourself for your second Saturn return (summer of 2007), shifting you into your wisdom years, which can be rich on many levels.³ Including a 2° orb, the second Saturn return is from August 12 – September 12, 2007.

Give yourself over to the process of change, asking, “If I could do anything I want, what would that be? If I could live anywhere, where would I go? If I could create community with anyone, who would I choose?” Allow yourself to think big and move boldly!