Time for another Ask the Astrologer question! A couple of times a month, I answer a question in a way that aligns with what you might hear in an actual astrological consultation. This is not your usual advice column, and not your usual astrology column, either.

HOWEVER: THIS WILL BE THE LAST ASK THE ASTROLOGER POST UNLESS I HEAR FROM YOU! I currently have no more letters. So this feature doesn’t disappear completely, please ask those questions!

If I start hearing from more of you, it will continue and may even become a weekly feature. See the bottom of this post for ground rules and how to submit.

I am seriously focused on my future career right now and currently applying to internships, including some at companies that operate overseas. I really want to work abroad. Is there any possibility I will do that this year, either during or after an internship?

A little background: I’m 25 years old and recently started working as a car washer at a rental company. My dream is to design cars. I went to design college for two years, but could not continue because my father died, leaving me unable to pay the tuition. The internships I’m applying to are in the auto industry and do not require a degree, just skill. While I’m grateful for the job I have, I really feel there’s so much more for me out there than a car cleaning job. I want to work in another country, but also really just want to know if there’s anything more in store for me. - Iceyou

Of course there’s something more in store for you. You’ll make that happen. With your chart, there’s no way you won’t. It just might take longer than you expect. 

Capricorn, where your Sun resides along with Neptune and Uranus, is a highly motivated sign. So motivated to achieve that, if we think of Capricorn, archetypal Capricorn, as a student, he’s the one who’ll earn straight A’s and graduate with honors even if he faces the worst possible personal circumstances. Death of a parent certainly qualifies. I notice that when you gave your father’s death as the reason you didn’t finish your degree, you didn’t mention any personal ways that kept you from finishing, just finances--very Capricorn. If you’d had another means to pay the tuition, it sounds like you would’ve finished despite your personal feelings. 

All that stops a Capricorn-motivated person is external obstacles, and even those are not permanent, though they will often seem like it. In your case, with a Capricorn Sun in the second house of personal finance, and your second house ruled by a very well placed Jupiter that’s closely squared by limiting, obstacle-throwing Saturn,* any external obstacles you encounter are more likely to be financial obstacles than any other kind. Or perhaps family-related obstacles, since Saturn is at your IC, which indicates family. In the case of your education being interrupted, the obstacle was simultaneously financial and family-related. 

The result: your track to your dream job wasn’t as straight as you’d hoped. But you’re still working at it. Which is the way to make it work with a chart like yours.

Capricorn’s M.O. is to keep plugging away at whatever it is until success is achieved. If a setback occurs, the plugging away takes longer, but Capricorn will still do it for however long it takes. Taurus, your Moon sign, acts in a similar fashion, and your Moon easily shares its efforts with your Sun through a nice trine. In that way, your chart sets you up for success. If you do what is necessary to achieve the job of your dreams, you will achieve it--unless the job of your dreams turns out not to be the real job of your dreams, or just not realistic, for whatever reason (sometimes things happen that way), or you stumble into something else first that you like even better. Either way, you get the something more you desire.

Moon rules your ninth house of foreign travel. Meanwhile, lucky, helpful Jupiter, which handles matters related to foreign travel (and higher education, too) has an exact, to the degree and almost to the minute, sextile with your Mercury, which rules your tenth house of career. The chances that you will end up working abroad are quite good.

This year, Jupiter is transiting your Sun. You get three direct passes of that transit: once when Jupiter is direct, once when Jupiter is retrograde, and once more when Jupiter has turned direct again. This sharpens your longing for something Jupiterian: in this case, travel. Since Jupiter is also trining your Moon during this time, the desire is likely even stronger than if it were just a Jupiter/Sun transit. Moon is where our very deepest desires reside and are most easily triggered by transits. It’s very, very Jupiterian to just plain want something more!

Not only that, Jupiter is your time lord this year. Time lords are part of a traditional technique, called profection, that helps determine how your year, as counted from your solar return,** will go. In profection, your ascendant is moved one sign each year. The ruler of that sign is your time lord for the year. For the first year of your life, age 0, your actual rising sign is profected and its planetary ruler is your time lord. On your first birthday, your profected ascendant*** moves to your second sign and your second sign’s ruler becomes your time lord. On your second birthday, third sign, and so on. The cycle starts again when you turn 12, 24, 36, or any other multiple of 12. 

For the purpose of profection, only traditional rulers are used and houses are counted in whole sign.**** So your time lord is Mars when you’re in a first house profection year, Jupiter in a second house profection year, Saturn in your third and fourth house profection years, and so on. Since you just turned 25, you are in a second house profection year.  

Your time lord is the planet that looks out for your interests that year. How well it can look out for your interests depends on the following: 

•  How strong it is in your solar return chart by sign and house

• Whether it has more or less going for it than it does in your natal chart. If it’s stronger in your solar return chart than in your natal, it works for you more effectively; if weaker, not as well. 

• Whether or not it has a Ptolemaic aspect (conjunction, sextile, square, trine, or opposition) by sign with any of the following: itself in your natal chart, or Venus or Jupiter in either your natal or solar return chart, or Mars or Saturn in either your natal or solar return chart. If the planet in question is Venus, Jupiter, Mars, or Saturn, there’s one less factor to count. Note that we’re just looking for aspects by sign, not by degree, although if an aspect is within orb, it manifests more strongly than if it’s not. Out of sign aspects do not count for this purpose.

If the time lord sees itself in your natal chart (it does if it’s in the same sign as its own natal placement or if it’s two, three, four, or six signs away), it has some help, and the year is very much on the topic of your life theme. If it doesn’t, then this is a slightly off topic year--you’ll take a slight detour from the overall trajectory of your life to tie up some other loose ends--and it doesn’t have that boost. If the time lord sees the solar return and/or natal version of one or both of the benefics--Venus or Jupiter--it gets some extra help. If it sees one or both of the malefics--Mars or Saturn--you encounter problems.***** (If the time lord is Mars or Saturn, seeing itself in the natal chart doesn’t count, although if a Mars or Saturn time lord has no helpful factors besides seeing itself, it’s likely to be an especially challenging year.) 

Saturn means Saturn problems: limitations, obstacles, restrictions. Mars means Mars problems: injury, accidents, or surgery (which could happen either to you or to someone close enough to you for that to affect your plans), or encounters with violent or difficult people, or disasters like fire or hurricane, to name a few possibilities. All those things wouldn’t necessarily happen, but something with a Mars theme would.

At your solar return a couple of months ago, Jupiter was in Capricorn, and so was Saturn. No aspect to natal Jupiter or Venus--they’re in Sagittarius, which doesn’t see Capricorn--and no aspect to solar return Venus, which was in Aquarius. No aspect to solar return Mars, either, thankfully. While SR Jupiter does see natal Mars by sign, it’s not a close aspect, and it’s a trine, which is one of the easier aspects. You’re not likely to have any major Mars problems this year. Maybe a few small ones, but that’s it. SR Mars was conjunct your natal Venus and Jupiter. That probably doesn’t spell major problems because it doesn’t involve the SR position of your time lord, but it likely contributes to your sense of urgency. 

Mars is impatient. That impatience is prodding your Jupiter: hurry up and go abroad! Must happen now! (Quite possibly, you’re having similar feelings about romance if you’re not already in a satisfactory one, Venus being both the relationship planet in general and the ruler of your seventh house.) But to see what’s most likely to happen, let’s look at what Jupiter is doing.

Jupiter in your solar return is weaker than in your natal chart. Your natal Jupiter is domiciled. Solar return Jupiter is not. In fact, it’s in detriment. Capricorn clips Jupiter’s wings a bit. Capricorn insists on settling down, focusing, taking things slowly, and limitations. Jupiter is the no limitations planet. Jupiter wants to just leap and have faith. Being in Capricorn frustrates Jupiter.

On top of that, your SR Jupiter has to share Capricorn with Saturn, which loves being there. Capricorn is Saturn’s domain. Saturn is all about limitations and restrictions and settling down and focusing and taking things slowly. Saturn doesn’t want anything done if it’s not done right. Saturn is thoroughly insistent on this.

Your solar return Saturn, and Pluto and Mercury and Sun, cluster together in close conjunction to your natal Sun and dreamer planet Neptune. This is apparently reflected in your feelings about your current job: the “career” you have now (Mercury) feels too limiting, small, and restrictive (Saturn) and you don’t see your dream manifesting (Saturn-Neptune). It also seems to affect your sense of identity (Sun): “I am not meant to be just a car cleaner! I mean more than that!” On the positive side, serious focus is a Saturn gift. Saturn-Mercury to Sun-Neptune reflects your serious focus on your career.

Because you are working on manifesting your dream, and even a weakened Jupiter boosts your efforts, your dream is likely to manifest. But all these limiting factors in your solar return seem to indicate it’s not coming that soon. Maybe there are other things you need to take care of first. Maybe this is something that simply takes time to work out. 

Next year’s solar return (chart not shown) looks even better for going abroad. Jupiter and Saturn will again be sharing a sign, but they’ll both be in Aquarius, which, although traditionally ruled by Saturn, is not as restrictive as Capricorn. Saturn will be your time lord, and will be strong: in domicile, helped by SR Jupiter, and also helped by natal Venus and Jupiter, which it will be in close sextile to. When Saturn is your time lord, if it has much going for it, it ceases to become a hindrance and becomes a help. 

This year, Saturn slows down Jupiter (going abroad) and may throw up some obstacles. Next year, your efforts to go abroad (Jupiter) boost Saturn--it’s like Saturn says okay, yes, you’ve satisfied me and now you may go. Furthermore, your next solar return will see both Jupiter and Saturn transiting your natal Mercury, with transiting Mercury coming in for a return. Your career (Mercury-ruled tenth house) gets a lot of help that year. This year, it’s still struggling to come to fruition.

So it looks like this year, or most of it, is a year when you’ll be working on ironing out the details and making it possible to go work abroad. Some setbacks and frustrations are likely. But if you persevere, those frustrations and setbacks will ultimately lead to opportunity. You may see this opportunity by late 2020--solar return starts to manifest about three months before the actual solar return. 

Author’s Note: Sometimes I receive multiple letters close together, in which case I write my responses as soon as possible but stagger publication. This post was written before the COVID-19 pandemic broke. In light of that, we have another interpretation of the chart. The Pluto/Saturn conjunction correlates with this pandemic. Since it took place in conjunction with the letter writer’s Sun, and at the time of his solar return, his year is particularly affected by this global event. The pandemic provides a good reason why his efforts to work abroad are unlikely to come to fruition this year.





*His Jupiter is actually the focal planet of a t-square. It squares both Mars and Saturn, which oppose each other. That could put some Mars-related issues in place as well, but Mars doesn’t throw up obstacles the way Saturn does. Saturn blocks things. Mars makes things happen, and  those things are not necessarily obstacles in the moment they happen but can become obstacles in the aftermath. Accidents and injuries are Mars things. So is surgery. So is violence, which can be physical, verbal, or emotional. Mars near the MC might indicate a difficult, abusive boss (MC represents bosses) or parent (the MC/IC is the parental axis) or an injury or surgery happening to a parent, to name a few possibilities. I’m focusing on Saturn here because it’s much more relevant in his current solar return and transits.

**Solar return is the moment that the sun returns to the exact degree and minute where it was at the moment of birth. That happens on your birthday, give or take a day or two. A solar return chart is cast for the moment of solar return in the location where you currently live (some astrologers use birth location, whether you still live there or not, but I do not). The way the solar return planets and houses align with the natal ones, and the condition of the time lord in the solar return chart, gives a general overview for the year.

***Profected ascendant is not the same thing as actual ascendant. In the natal chart, the ascendant always stays where it is. Any technique that moves the ascendant is a chart on top of the chart. It’s a predictive tool, not to be confused with a whole new birth chart.

****Whole sign is a system of counting houses that makes each sign into a house. The rising sign is the first house, next sign after it is the second house, and so on. I cast charts in Placidus houses, which does not make a sign the same thing as a house. In most charts, including this one, there’s some discrepancy between sign order and house placement. In this case, Jupiter is a first house planet in Placidus but second house in whole sign. Aquarius is his fourth sign but is entirely inside his third house Placidus (we call this interception). All of his Capricorn placements are in the second house Placidus but third house whole sign. 

This can be confusing to beginners, but rest assured, if I use different houses in different paragraphs of this post to talk about the same placement, it’s not an error. It’s just a difference between house systems.

*****Malefics and benefics are a traditional concept. The idea is that in general, Mars and Saturn cause problems (malefic) while Venus and Jupiter bring good things (benefic). It’s not always that cut and dried, and because those terms can be scary (especially malefic) and make everything seem fated, I don’t use them much. They are useful in certain techniques, though, such as evaluating the time lord’s strength.

Do you have a question for Ask the Astrologer?

This feature currently runs twice a month, and may increase if there are enough submissions. Click here to read the ground rules for Ask the Astrologer questions and here to submit your question. Pseudonyms are used for all letter writers, including the one above.

Interested in a more in depth consultation?

Contact Megan to inquire about current rates and availability. Consultations last an hour and a half for new clients and an hour to an hour and a half for returning clients. Available everywhere in the world by Zoom, Skype, or Google Hangout. For residents of the San Francisco Bay Area, California, USA, in-person options may also be available.

New to astrology? See an unfamiliar astrological term in the above post?

Look it up in the astrological glossary. If you don’t see the term you’re looking for in there, please drop me a line. The glossary is an ongoing work in progress.