Robert Wilkinson
... we have been living within a SeeSaw pattern for a while. This configuration shows as two or more planets opposing another group of planets. This pattern continues through December, except for Dec 7-10 and 20-24 when the Moon creates a "Bucket" influence. Overall, though, the SeeSaw dominates the astrological landscape, and so we continue to learn how to deal with the oppositions or tensions indicated by this polarizing pattern. Where planets oppose in your chart there will be oppositions in your life in the realm of the inner self or in worldly situations or people you must deal with.
During this time the oppositions will involve Mars in Taurus opposed Jupiter in Scorpio, Saturn in Leo opposed Neptune in Aquarius, and when the Moon is between Taurus and Leo during December 11-20, oppositions between Gemini and Sagittarius. Still, the Mars-Jupiter and Saturn-Neptune oppositions are THE major influence, intensely personal as well as far-reaching.
Oppositions indicate polarizations that bring much to the surface, and often indicate tugs of war, pushes and pulls, and seesawing forces. The opposition also can bring realizations of a greater wholeness and awareness of a larger view of things. The trick to dealing with a SeeSaw is not allow your view to get out on a tangent or lost along the margins or periphery. We've all been practicing staying balanced on our inner equilibrium, and had to deal with resolving contrasting views. It challenges us to be good mediators, and find common ground between opposing views by seeing the "whole view" in situations. Dr. Jones states:
The seesaw temperament has its existence in a world of conflicts, of definite polarities. It is capable of unique achievement, through a development of unsuspected relations in life, but it is also apt to waste its energies through its improper alignment with various situations.
During the first week of December, the Seesaw is defined by 7 planets plus the Moon occupying the span of Scorpio through Pisces opposing Mars and Saturn. December 7-11 the Moon creates a "Bucket" effect, with Saturn the handle that "functionally links" the hemispheres. Expect lots of Saturn activity to express whatever is "contained" in the other 9 planets making up the occupied half of the signs, in this case defined by Jupiter in Scorpio through Mars in Taurus. The Moon creates the return of the SeeSaw between Dec 11-19 with its oppositions to Jupiter, Mercury, Sun, Pluto, Venus, and finally Saturn. After then, the Bucket is reestablished with Mars as the handle, or focal point, to release the energies of the occupied half of the Virgo through Pisces as defined by the Moon opposed Uranus.
I addressed past Bucket patterns and how they influence us in articles last winter when this pattern predominated. As I noted then, the Bucket wants and needs a cause, can be uncompromising and malcontented, but also an "instructor and inspirer of others." Mars or Saturn as the handle indicates the quality of the cause we must pour ourselves into. Mars is a pacesetting influence, and activates many things very forcefully, wherever it operates. Saturn teaches us hard lessons, and indicates where we must grow up and take responsibility for being an adult, and what limitations we must voluntarily accept.
By far the most important factor is the on-going Grand Fixed Cross involving the oppositions mentioned above. The difficulty here is that when Saturn is the nozzle or handle of the Bucket it will throw the energies in one direction. When Mars is the nozzle or handle, it throws the energies in a different direction NOT in harmony with wherever the Saturn focus was. The only bright side is that squares can release pent-up energies, or put the brakes on unhelpful tendencies. So expect that you will be searching for different outlets for your energy that may not mesh well together, but which are equally important if you're to come to a balanced way of dealing with the constant oppositions going on in your inner life or your outer affairs.
We can understand more of these two predominating patterns by examining some famous people who had these patterns. Famous Bucket personalities include Napoleon, "outstanding prophet of the new era in Europe," George Bernard Shaw, encouraging "everyone who finds difficulty in casting off the censorship of society. He speaks for the intellectual freedom of the human soul," Lewis Carroll, "Finding this universal note in a fellowship of rabbits and mice, caterpillars and playing cards, he gave his prophetic message to the world," William Jennings Bryan, "prophetic symbol of utopianism," Dante, "spokesman... for the vast, deep, and hidden wisdom of the Middle Ages," and Evangeline Adams, "modern American prophet of astrology."
Examples of Seesaw people mentioned in a previous Jones Pattern article are Percy Bysshe Shelley, "prophet of free experience or of an unbound Promethian employment of the human mind and its instinctive powers," Emanuel Swedenborg, "brilliant pioneer in modern science," Luther Burbank, "outstanding mediator between the natural and cultivated organism," and Rudyard Kipling, who "drew geographic areas together in the same way that Swedenborg linked the invisible to the visible with a new pertinence, and that Shelley brought many thinkers to realize the value of the irrational as a check upon modern intellectual egotism."
