Progressed Sun enters Sagittarius

[Jim Eshelman]

Tomorrow, my progressed Sun enters Sagittarius. Here are the dates progressed Sun (in Virgo at birth) has changed signs through my life:

Entered Libra May 21, 1962
Entered Scorpio May 11, 1992
Enters Sagittarius December 16, 2021

More comments on this later when I have a few minutes.

[Jim Eshelman]

In posting this, for whatever interest or value it may have, I think I should reiterate my views on progressed Sun's sign - and how little importance I think it has.

I'm pretty confident that progressed Moon's sign registers in our lives. It's not a gigantic factor, but it's a distinctive factor of marking out stages, its sign transitions marking opening of new things to us. (I studied astrology intently as an adolescent with Moon in Virgo, first puppy love with Moon in Libra, first sex (and a non-stop orgy with the woman I first married) with it in Scorpio, first boarded a plane in my life and relocated to California the day Moon entered Sagittarius, and so forth). Most recent example: Marion's progressed Moon recently entered Libra and, for a while, she's helping out a friend pushing a new line of fragrances in upscale department stores, something that has historically been of no interest to her.

But progressed Sun's sign is another matter. I cannot, for example, look back across the three large, demarcated periods of my life and see sign trends (8 years that were most Virgo, 30 that were Libran, 30 that were Scorpian). What I did feel I could discern at the last transition was a significant shift in energy, but nothing as concrete as an event or a demarcation of one set of themes before the switch and another set of themes after.

For example, I can't look at the time from age 7 to 37 and say that I was suddenly really Libran or dominated by Libran themes. Not at all. Quite the opposite. Sure, sometime in that 30-year period I got married the first time and began another long-term relationship. But, really, I was about as un-Libran as could be. Come up with a list of the top 10 Libran themes and the only one likely to fit, especially during those 30 years, was that I always wanted to give peace a chance.

Or, there might be one other exception: Part of my strong conflict with and rebellion against my father was a decision not long after age 7 that "if this is what 'being a man' is all about, I don't want anything to do with it. I was pointedly anti-masculine for perhaps 20 years. It would be an exaggeration to say I was fem, but I was quite anti-masculine. It's not at all unusual, of course, for a young Virgo male to show gender-neutral or counter-gender traits, and I actually think that's where I got my sense that gender boundaries and roles were pretty arbitrary and dumb. This then resolved itself around my Saturn return - late 20s - as I dealt with most of the father issues I was carrying around and just got on with unfolding myself without locking out classic male trait when they were useful.

Notice, though, that this only lasted about 20 years, not the full 30 years of the progressed sign passage. It's hard, therefore, for me to attribute this to 30 years of progressed Sun in Libra.

Jumping to age 37 when Sun progressed into Scorpio, I felt I could tell that energy shifted significantly. However, things that might fit the new energy objectively straddled that time, from several years earlier to several years after, so I don't think they really were about the sign change. For example, one could look at my law practice which had me doing combat for a living: It had gone on for more than five years before the sign change and, while it went on five years longer, 1992 marked the year I could see I was starting to see the eventual end. Do we credit this "combat for a living" law practice to Sun in Libra (for the legal profession) or Sun in Scorpio (for doing combat for a living)? Or perhaps to neither?

Were the last 30 years of my life a Scorpio stage of my life in some fundamental way? Mostly, I don't think so; however, given that progressions show incidental (internal, inherent) changes (in contrast to transits which show accidental, or arising from the environmental, changes), I can think of one thing: I had been partnered with a double Scorpio for nearly 20 years and this sign transit was about the time that things were setting up for our eventual separation a few years later. I can accept that I'd reached a place where - in my personal psychological unfolding - I no longer needed her to be the Scorpio for me, that I could now manage that myself. This is quite subtle, quite internal, but in a sense that's where I'd expect such a change to occur.

So... you probably shouldn't hold your breath waiting for me to become a world-travelling sage, college professor, religious figure, academician, or archer beginning tomorrow or soon.

But it might be interesting to witness whether there is an energy shift that, over the next few weeks and months, will become evident from this.