IT TURNS out that the most awesome astrological event of 2006 happens in Sagittarius. I am sure this does not surprise you, but I hope you're interested, given all the other developments in your life, and there are many, and they are coming quickly.

So quickly, in fact, that your talent for being perfectly guided is going to be more valuable than ever -- except for one thing: you are, in many ways, working with entirely new guidance systems, and they are ones you may not fully trust yet. Evolving into new technology is an exercise of its own, and on the spiritual levels you're doing a lot of that lately.

Methods you've used to orient yourself the past few years have grown obsolete, in part because the nature of the territory you're traveling has changed so much and so unexpectedly. I am pretty sure you've begun this adaptation process already, but perhaps the astrological imagery will help clarify somewhat.

Perhaps the most tangible phenomenon is that Saturn has reached your 9th solar house, Leo. You are accustomed to living fuelled by a kind of unmitigated optimism that you temper by an edge of realism about how challenging the physical plane is, and how difficult people can be. Still, you have faith in them, and in circumstances, and this allows you to correspond with people's "better angel" and to keep a wide and far-reaching vision.

But something is calling you to be more down to Earth, and to work within tighter limits, particularly with what is practical. This is not your strong suit; if practical ruled the world, nothing new would happen. But it needs to be a factor in your thinking, in part as a measure to conserve your energy for much greater achievements about two or three years down the road, and in part to build the foundation for those achievements.

To put it in astrological terms, Saturn is a bigger factor in your life than Jupiter is right now, and this calls for a measure of discipline, reduction and focus. If you do this, you will open specific necessary doors rather than many unnecessary ones. The issues you face will focus and solutions will become available; and you will develop a whole new set of skills.


Cognitive vs. Mystical

Your gift for accessing mystical powers is itself more elementary than it seems; you know this, but those around you might see it as more exotic than it is. In essence, you tend to have more faith in humanity than in spiritual agency, but that faith is so strong, it works out being spiritual. It's a cool trick, it's all the world really needs, and your persistence is all the more admirable for the false religion that dominates our thinking these days.

Now it's time to be even more grounded, in what psychologists call cognitive process. That is, thinking. Certain long-term factors (including Neptune making its way across your 3rd solar house) have guided you into being an exceptionally intuitive thinker. Intuition allows one to go around the facts, or skip them over. Usually it is right and I have no reason to believe that you're unable to do this -- but what I see is the gradual increase in emphasis on the details that has suddenly taken on much greater importance.

These details will give you guidance, but it's a different kind of guidance. It may take longer (though it may still be quite efficient). But beware of one possible pitfall: the sense of being a totally inadequate thinker. This is Chiron country, though in a way you may have very little experience with it. Chiron takes us unfamiliar places and then we have a reaction. Then we learn from and adapt to, and around, the reaction; and then we become someone different. It's an ongoing process, but there are points of extreme emphasis, and you are in one now.

Chiron is transiting your 3rd solar house, Aquarius. Having Aquarius in this house makes you a pretty smart fella, and you know it. Chiron can focus you on your psychological faults, or sense of struggle, which may likely run entirely contrary to your usual experience. You need to become fully conscious of this process. Note whatever inadequacies you notice, or feel trapped by; note where your knowledge seems to reach its limits and frustrates you; notice how it feels to use logic; pay attention to how your conversations go, particularly the ones that use reasoning.

You may still be able to overpower people with your faith in them, or with your commonly used maneuver of figuring that people will jump over their hurdles (or not, so it's not your problem). But I'm suggesting that you have to give up your shortcuts, effective as they have been. Now you're being called upon to get into more of the nitty-gritty details about how the minds of your brothers, sisters and neighbors function, and learning to get into that zone with them.

Because people's minds tend to be a lot less spacious than yours, this may be frustrating. But keep in mind you are looking for something in the process: the key to the door; the door beyond the limitations of ideas that can only be reached through language and ideas.

Simply put, when in doubt, talk about it, or better still, write about it. Which deserves more than half a sentence: the intensity of action in your 3rd house makes writing something of an essential ingredient not just of the next year but of the next decade or so. The fact that you will benefit for a long time doesn't mean you can wait a long time; to the contrary, the sooner the better. This should be no problem, as you will soon discover you have a lot to say that is of lasting value, and the thing about writing is that it stands a vague hope of existing for more than three seconds.

And it's good for you; there are few better ways to sort yourself out, think something through or refine an idea than putting it on paper, through as many drafts as are necessary. However long it may take you to get there, you will this year arrive at a point where your inner clarity is all you have to go on.


Pluto and The Galactic Core

In the minds of most astrologers, 2006 and 2007 hinge on one main event, not including the ones we don't know about (I say this because we know we live in an age of astronomical discoveries and one day while the Sun is in Pisces space aliens may land on the White House Lawn, Karl Rove will faint and this will become the chart of the decade).

But under fairly normal circumstances, the series of Saturn-Neptune oppositions across Leo and Aquarius is pretty important, and I've discussed this a bit above. For the slightly more esoteric, two meetings of Saturn and Chiron on the same axis are going to be big news, and I've accounted for those, as well.

I would also mention that the second Centaur planet, a meaningful little world named Pholus, has entered your birth sign, where it will stay for quite a long time. Pholus is the catalyst. It's key phrase is "small cause, big effect," and this is how you need to think of yourself for the foreseeable future.

Yet there is also a series of transits involving Pluto going over the Galactic Core, in Sagittarius, extending into '07. There is no doubt that Saturn-Neptune will make its mark; it always does; indeed, the meeting of something watery and something solid has been in the news every day for the past 13 months, and not just as an aspect or metaphor. This opposition happens about once every 40 or so years.

But Pluto reaches the Galactic Core once every 248 years. In astrology, rare racks up points quickly. Pluto has never done this in the history of the United States, or the modern United Kingdom or indeed, any current government of the Earth. But shortly after the last meeting of Pluto and the Galactic Core, something called The Enlightenment was working: Church ideology was quickly being debunked by science. Today, the corpse of fundamentalist Catholic "thinking" stands as perhaps the greatest obstacle to progress that we know of; science has helped, but humanity's needs have far exceeded the conceptual abilities of science; and we need something better.

You are part of that something better. The fact that this event happens in your primary sign (or if applicable, your rising sign, or Moon sign) makes it highly personalized for you. You are a likely source of insights, breakthroughs and developments, and if you are up to the task, and have your life sufficiently under control, you will have many opportunities to contribute, somehow, on some level; be it the most local and basic (influencing your colleagues, taking a role in your community, gathering information) to something much larger (a leadership role, moving information in a more global way, such as through an Internet project), to something with greater impact yet. I don't know; it's not up to me and it's not entirely up to you, but I am suggesting that there will be doors opening.

Astrologers are just beginning to understand Pluto. This has not been an easy process, and disinformation abounds. Pluto has been in your sign for the past decade and is indeed one of the most vivid, shocking, interesting, strange and mysterious factors of both your life and the current phase of world history.

Some astrologers know that the Galactic Core exists. A scant few are writing about it; I know of two others doing so in any depth. Therefore, this event will be misunderestimated -- and yet there is really no way to overstate that it is one of the great turning points of our lifetimes, and far beyond. I will not attempt to do so.

But for you and for all of us, the evolutionary imperative is on being in the moment and eliminating all your prejudices. Then the real information will come.

Saturn in your ever-important 9th house is providing a clean sweep of all your old beliefs, idea patterns, superstitions, vague fuzzy religious notions from Mom and all the crap you learned in high school, university, MBA school and for that matter, Ph.D. school.

Let it go -- the real information is forthcoming, and the real journey is beginning.

To learn more about the Galactic Core, please see this link.