The most significant event of Summer 2003 is the long conjunction of Mars and Uranus in Pisces, with both perigee (at closest passage to the earth) during the final week of August. Astronomers have calculated that Mars will be closer to the Earth that week than at any time in some 60,000 years. Mars will also be at perihelion that week, closest to the Sun. To be both perigee and at perihelion the same week is unique indeed.

In mid June 2001 Mars opposed the Sun at 23º Sagittarius (and therefore was closest to the earth), but that opposition found Mars so far south in declination that visibility was not clear from the northern hemisphere. That event came just three months before the attack on the World Trade Center. The last time the Mars opposition was as significant as the year was in late September of 1988 in Aries, but video techniques have improved so spectacularly in the last fifteen years that astronomers all over the world are waiting with great excitement to find what the visual images will reveal about the red planet.

The New Moon chart for August 27 shows Mars and Uranus close together in early Pisces, both retrograde and opposite Sun and Moon at 4º Virgo, flanked by Jupiter at 0º Virgo and Venus at 6º Virgo. The Moon itself will be perigee four days later on August 31, and Mercury perigee a week later. Adding to the planetary tensions will be the stations of Pluto and Mercury on August 28, the day after the New Moon. Pluto will turn direct at 17º Sagittarius and Mercury will go retrograde at 26º Virgo.

I was reminded of an evening in the early 1970s when a group of astrologers involved in the beginning days of NCGR were walking along a Manhattan street on our way to dinner, and Rob Hand remarked: "Have you looked at the charts of these little kids who have just been born in the last decade with Uranus and Pluto conjunct in Virgo? They are going to have one hell of a mid-life crisis!" And here we are some 40 years later and my own forty-something children, plus their peers, are all in the middle of that crisis! My own midlife crisis in the 1970s with Uranus and Pluto both in Libra opposing my natal Uranus in Aries seems tame indeed in comparison. At that time in my life I was becoming deeply involved with the fledgling NCGR, which has consumed much of my life during the thirty years since. I had also just met Joseph Campbell who was to have a profound influence on my understanding of astrology, and yes, Joe Campbell did have a very great interest in the science of astrology as well as his passion for all the world's mythologies. Born with a stellium in Aries trine his Leo Moon in the midheaven, he also was born with Uranus in Sagittarius in his third house, and his favorite theme concerned the role of the hero in mythology. And just as Uranus opposed its natal position in my chart, I began the study of Jungian psychology. My father died that year, having been hospitalized for 36 years, a more personal experience of that opposition: Saturn transited my Sun and my progressed Sun opposed my natal Saturn.

The sixties generation will get this Mars-Uranus transit full blast, as well as those persons born in the last few years of the 1950s when Pluto moved into the sign Virgo. Another age group experiencing this transit is those senior citizens born during the 1920s when Uranus made its last passage through the sign Pisces. Most of them had Pluto in Cancer trine Uranus, and those born in the middle of the 1920s who had Saturn in Scorpio were blessed with a Grand Water Trine.

The 1920s was a dynamic decade with spectacular change. Dubbed variously the Jazz Age and the Roaring Twenties, these creative people included writers, musicians, artists, jazz singers, television personalities, film directors, and there were many famous, even scandalous love affairs. Wallis Simpson lured a King off his throne, and William Randolph Hearst moved into his San Simeon castle with Marian Davies. In 1923 Adolf Hitler founded the Nazi Party, and Benito Mussolini secured his fascist dictatorship in Italy. Josef Stalin became dictator in Russia in 1926. The Middle East underwent dramatic change as Persia underwent a bloodless coup when Riza Pahlevi in 1920, just as Uranus entered Pisces, expelled all Russian officers from his country and installed a new regime. His son Riza later became the Shah of Iran. Syria's Faisal I arrived in Basra and was placed on he throne of Iraq. And in the United States the Teapot Dome Scandal tarnished the Harding administration.

In 1927 "The Jazz Singer" became the first talking picture, and Chicago became the new Jazz capitol, replacing New Orleans. It is interesting that in 2003 just as Uranus entered Pisces once more, the movie "Chicago" won Academy awards. Persons born during the 1920s with Uranus in Pisces included many celebrities from the entertainment world including Broadway actors and singers. Uranus was in Pisces when the following were born: Timothy Leary, Art Buchwald, Marilyn Monroe, Truman Capote, Allen Ginsberg, Hugh Hefner, Merv Griffin, Eartha Kitt and Fidel Castro. The theme of the 1920s was not spirituality, as many astrologers have theorized, but rather a rebellion against the Victorian values of their parents. Women cut their hair and shortened their skirts, threw away their bras and danced the decade away with the Charleston. Hedonism and an exuberant celebration of life marked this decade. The over indulgence in alcohol resulted in Prohibition at the end of the decade. The greed, excess, exploitation and materialism of those years ended with the economic crash of 1929 and the Depression of the 1930s. By that time Uranus had entered Aries to square both Pluto in Cancer and Saturn in Capricorn.

On August 28, 2287 there will be an even closer approach of Mars to the Earth, but for astronomers and star gazers now alive on Planet Earth, this is as good as it gets. Residents of the Southern Hemisphere will claim the best seats to view this passage of Mars on the night of August 26, but even those of us far north of the equator will be treated to an interesting sight as Mars passes directly overhead in the midnight sky that last week of summer.