Ask the Astrologer is finally back! After a long hiatus, I now have a couple of questions in my queue and I am reviving this feature. I hope to run it at least a couple of times a month, but that depends on you! Please send me your questions. See the links in the sidebar and below this post for ground rules and how to submit. I also welcome updates from previously featured letter writers.

I have been seriously looking out for overseas opportunities for quite a long time. I've been dreaming about it since my college days. Are there any possibilities that I may do it in a year or two? - Aiming High

Ordinarily, I would say there’s always a possibility, before even looking at any charts, because there always is. Astrology can identify the most likely windows of opportunity for a major transition, such as a job change, a major move, etc., but what you do with them is up to you.  And sometimes the opportunities come when it doesn’t look like such a likely time, astrologically. The most likely-seeming times for something to happen are not always when that something actually happens.

But right now, in 2020, is a different story. International travel is more or less on hold, worldwide. The economy is down. Even if everything looks favorable astrologically, there aren’t likely to be many, if any, companies interested in bringing in foreign workers for at least the next year or so, no matter what country you’re looking in. 

I find, when people ask me a predictive question like this, that what the question actually means to them tends to be more important than any yes or no answer (and I don’t give hard and fast yes or no answers anyway). So, what does it mean to you to work abroad? Are you considering any particular country? Have you already worked abroad, or tried to? And how has Covid-19 impacted your current work situation?

Aiming High’s response: Working in a foreign country would mean a lot to me. The main reason is better career prospects and monetary gains that I have not had so far, in 10+ years of working. I have already worked abroad once, briefly, about three months. [My desire to work abroad] isn’t specific to any one country. The Covid-19 crisis hasn’t much affected my work, as I have been working from home since lockdown was imposed where I live.

I see the desire for foreign experiences in your Moon. It’s in your ninth house of foreign travel, but the same sign (Pisces) as your MC (midheaven, also the tenth house cusp). Moon is where our deepest desires lie. MC/tenth house represents your career (and public reputation, and, interestingly, parents, especially the mother, and a few other things).  With that Moon near your MC, it’s no surprise that your career has included some time working abroad, and potentially could again in the future. Pisces is traditionally ruled by Jupiter, the planet of foreign travel, which also makes working abroad a significant possibility for you.

Yet your Moon is part of a t-square. The orbs are wide, but since your natal Moon is moving into square with your Mars and opposition with your Saturn, instead of moving out of the aspect, it’s a fairly strong t-square. I expect your desires for travel and working abroad have conflicted with other things: perhaps personal, financial, or family responsibilities, perhaps difficulty getting the right permits or visas, perhaps sudden emergencies that prevented travel, or perhaps simply not getting hired for the foreign jobs you applied for. The Saturn and Mars combination could indicate any of those things, and that’s not an exhaustive list.

I also see a strong motivation for maintaining security, particularly financial and/or family security, in the placement of your Sun. Cancer is the sign of home and family. Cancer is also a very security conscious sign. Second house, where your Sun lies, is the house of personal finance and personal values. If making more money is one of your main motives for working abroad, that fits very well with your Sun placement.

In this case, I don’t see a clear yes or no answer to your question of whether you will work abroad in the next year or two. I do see that you are entering a new cycle in your life, and will likely experience lots of change over the next two to three years. 

I looked at your closest solar return chart, which did not seem to address your question for me (in the previous question similar to yours, the solar return chart seemed key, but in your case, it does not), so then I looked at your current transits and progressions. The chart I’ve posted shows your progressed inner planets (Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, and Mars) in green and the transiting social and outer planets (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto) in red, around the outside of your natal chart wheel, as of the date when I cast the chart. 

Because the planets from Jupiter to Pluto do not move more than a few degrees by progression in a lifetime, their transiting positions tell us more, and because the inner planets make fast, fleeting transits, their progressed positions tell us more. In your transits and progressions, I see a new cycle in your life and great change.

Your progressed Moon has recently conjoined your progressed Sun. That is a progressed new moon. Progressed new moons, which happen 28-29 years apart, are the beginning of a new cycle in your life. You may feel that your life before the progressed new moon--that is, before the last year or two--was a different chapter, perhaps even an entirely different act, from what is unfolding for you now. If you do not feel that now, I expect you soon will, not just because of the progressed new moon, but for other reasons as well.

Your progressed Sun and progressed Moon are both on the verge of changing signs, from Leo to Virgo, and will complete the sign changes within the next year (Moon) or two (Sun). When a progressed planet changes signs, the years around that happening are always significant. Sun and Moon changing signs by progression so close together would make this time even more significant. While that may mean an opportunity to work abroad comes in that time, it’s even more significant than that. Something about your life overall is entering a whole new phase.

You also have significant transits happening now, and soon to happen, that are associated with midlife. Everyone experiences a square from transiting Neptune to natal Neptune around the age of 40; it usually starts at 38-39 and ends at 41. You are reaching the end of that transit now. Right on the heels of that, transiting Uranus opposes natal Uranus. By the time Neptune square winds down, most of us are starting to see the Uranus opposition energy building up in our lives.

Neptune is longing, visions of how it could be. Uranus shakes everything up, demands change, insists on living your own individuality. These two transits together spell the classic midlife crisis. The stereotypical midlife crisis: forty-year-old man buys a flashy red sports car and leaves his wife for a much younger girlfriend--is the caricature of that.

Most people don’t take their midlife crisis to that extreme. Those who handle it well don’t even experience it as a crisis. If you honor your desire for change, and take steps to create a satisfying change for you, without shrugging off any actual responsibilities you have, you come out of it with a new zest for life and, likely, a greater willingness to see things in a new way.

Neptune is currently transiting your tenth house, putting its visionary, dreamer energy into your career sector. Your Uranus opposition, though not yet exact, will come from Taurus, the sign of money and personal values (Taurus has a certain resonance with the second house) and your late eleventh house at the cusp of your twelfth. The eleventh and twelfth houses deal with the long term, society as a whole, and the legacy you leave. You may be asking yourself (soon if not already) some very serious questions about what you want your long term to be. At the end of the day, who are you to your society? What contributions do you make? How will you be remembered?

Your desire for career success may, in fact, be the way you’re framing those questions. As hardworking as you are, as security conscious and motivated to succeed as you are, and having so many years of work under your belt, I expect that you’ve already found career success. That doesn’t mean you can’t or shouldn’t have even more. It’s fine to aim high! Just don’t mistake the details of the dream for the substance of the dream.

Whether or not you will get to work abroad in the next couple years depends on the circumstances, which none of us control, and which are changing rapidly (I see Uranus in that). Maybe you will. Maybe, through no fault of your own, you won’t. But even if you don’t, you can still have your dream. This is a good time to reflect on what the real substance of your dream is. What parts of your desire to work abroad and make more money are must haves? Why?

When you have an answer to that, ask why again. And again, until you understand what’s really at the root of your desire. Then, look at it with fresh eyes. If you were a teenager thinking about what you want to do when you grow up, how many different ways could you imagine to achieve your desire? Midlife is, in a way, a second adolescence, with some similar astrological transits to boot, so this is a good time to bring those questions up again.

Let yourself consider absurd ideas if they come to you (don’t worry, considering isn’t the same as doing!) as well as practical ones. This engages the Neptune and Uranus transits, which are all about opening possibilities. Even, with Neptune, the impossible ones. If there’s anyone in your life you can bounce those ideas off of, get them to brainstorm with you. They might have ideas you don’t think of.

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