Pam,
Just viewing your nieces chart again, I would still be looking to her Mars opposite Saturn rx, even though out of sign.
Pluto is too gradual and too slow moving, although intense and transformational, but throughout her life will probably bring up tests in the use of personal power or potency.
Often with Mars - Saturn it can feel like maximum effort or energy input for very little or slow reward or results. With Saturn being rx, in a house of its detriment and in Pisces, it still feels like throughout her life, lessons in patience and looking at long term goals, would be testing but eventually rewarding.
Excellent addition, Robynne. Don’t know how Pamela will respond but I feel like this is the best (most astute and useful) comment about her niece’s Mars-Saturn opposition so far.
I’d add that her niece's emphasized natal Pluto (Ascendant ruler in her 1st House) squares this natal Mars-Saturn opposition, forming an angular, fixed T-Square. Looks to me like a strong stabilizing foundation for learning how to successfully manage (Pluto) Mars acceleration (personal initiative, courage, enthusiasm) and Saturn brakes (such as difficult circumstances, unfulfilled expectations, and self-doubt). Perhaps she’s especially wired to experience-develop personal confidence, resourcefulness, and faith in herself (with the Leo-Scorpio-Pisces emphasis).
Pamela, hasn’t she already encountered this dynamic, in a way? If I recall, didn’t she come up against personal rejection in college – loving to act and perform, but being passed over for roles which led to personal reevaluation and a change to the technical side of theater arts?
Still, I don’t see the above in emphasis on June 25, so I’m having a hard time considering it a direct reflection of your niece’s firing. However, now that we know her chart included SA Sun=Uranus potential (thanks, Barbara), referencing and emphasizing contacts to her natal Uranus, I think there’s a compelling case for transiting Mercury to be the firing trigger on June 25 – when it was conjunct her natal Mercury (10th co-ruler, referencing work) and opposing her natal Neptune-Uranus (fitting the 'suddenly let go' scenario).
Thanks, pdw. You're absolutely right. She had thought, all through high school and on into university, that she wanted to perform, either as an actress and/or a singer. She loves to perform; she just loves being onstage with people watching her. She never suffered from stage fright even when she had to sing or give piano recitals in front of hundreds of people; I would have been a basket case, but she just eats it up.
She still loves performing but somewhere along the way, in university, she either lost confidence in her abilities or just decided, for whatever reason, that she was not cut out to be a professional singer or actress after all; I don't know what the process involved. It's true that, after her first year in university was over, she did not make it into the acting stream in her theatre arts programme, and was put into a more general stream which in large part focused on behind the scenes stagecraft, like lighting and scenery painting, etc. Not my niece's cup of tea at all; she doesn't want to be behind the scenes! She was particularly interested in acting in films and TV, not in theatre itself so much. And when she finally finished the four years of her B.A., she told her parents that she felt she wasn't talented enough to compete successfully with those who were, and that she'd made a mistake going into the programme in the first place. She had honestly thought it was what she wanted, at the time, but she ended up changing her mind.
As I read this, it does sound like it fits Mars opposing Saturn, doesn't it?! Especially with her Mars in Leo, the sign of performance, in the 10th house of career, and Saturn in Pisces (just barely) in the 4th house of home and family; Saturn in Pisces could be read as a fear of the arts, or of performing as an artist, and being in the 4th could indicate that this was somehow involved with family or paternal roots.
The interesting thing, as I think about it now, is that she got her love of performing from her father, who also happens to have a Mars-Saturn opposition; his is almost exact - from Mars at 27º Leo (yes, the same as his daughter's) to Saturn at 28º Aquarius. His Sun is at 8º Scorpio, thus conjunct his daughter's Ascendant in the 1st house. He would have liked to have been a professional musician, or be involved somehow in the arts. His mother was a semi-professional singer who, like my niece, loved performing and never suffered from stage fright, far from it. My niece's father has Libra (art) on the MC (career) with both Moon (mother) and Venus (women; art) in Libra; I kind of wonder now if my niece was trying to live out the life he would have liked to have had, which he may have felt would have honoured his mother.
A lot of parents would have thought it was totally impractical to even attempt to have the kind of performing career that my niece thought she wanted; her mother certainly thought she was probably wasting her time taking Theatre Arts in university, but her father considered such a career a genuine possibility, I guess because his own mother had sung professionally, and he would have liked to have followed suit. I wonder now if maybe my niece was trying to please her father and do what she thought he wanted her to do, which would honour both him and her grand-mother and fulfill their wishes. I doubt this was conscious on her part; I think she really thought it was what she herself wanted. But I gather she came to see that it was not perhaps the best path for her.
Well, I'm just speculating here. She certainly still wants to work in the arts in some way, especially film or TV. And by the way, when I said in a recent post that she has a gift for editing, I meant film editing, not the editing of the written word.
P.S. - Edited to correct what I previously wrote, that her father's Sun was conjunct her Ascendant from the 12th house; it's conjunct her Ascendant, in her 1st house. I misspoke; duh.
