Rich took this beautiful photo a few days ago while we were in Florida – you can see Venus (the brighter planet) with Jupiter just above it.  Venus and Jupiter will conjunct in Capricorn on Sunday night around 2 am EST, and if the sky is clear you will see a beautiful sliver of a crescent moon adjoining them.  

We had no internet connection so my only link to my cyberworld was via a dialup connection using my Treo, so I didn’t write another post about the New Moon on Thanksgiving Day that occurred as Uranus turned direct.  However, the effects of Uranus changing direction are making themselves known (it was traveling retrograde and has not switched to be moving forward (from our perspective here on earth).  Uranus rules sudden change and revolutionary behavior, and in its change of direction we see the worst terrorist attack in several years in Mumbai India that has killed over 200 people including astrologer Alan Scherr.  

Uranus changed direction just one day after Pluto re-entered Capricorn, bringing both of those planets squarely into focus.  The chart of the first attack (11/26/08, 9:30 pm, Mumbai) shows Jupiter (religion and faith) sitting right on the descendant, the cusp of the seventh house of allies and open enemies suggesting that the attack is of an ideological nature.  The Sun, Mercury and Mars are all conjunct in Sagittarius, ruled by Jupiter and sharing similar identification with ideology and points of view, and the Sagittarius planets are in the fifth house of public enjoyment (such as hotels).  

This is not to say that religious terrorism will be on the rise in the near future, but the combination of the Uranus change of direction with Pluto changing signs is a powerful one and may offer a signal of what we can expect when Uranus squares Pluto beginning in 2010.   I do believe, though, that the religious fervor will begin to fade and the conflict over these next few years will have more to do with finances and inequities in economic situations (Capricorn) rather than religion.