IT LOOKS like we're in for a rather strange time this month; a sometimes weird, sometimes wonderful, period - thanks to a mixture of mysterious, otherworldly energies alongside some very earthy ones. The whole chart for the month has the feeling of a cauldron on the boil, containing an eclectic and often contradictory mixture of ingredients, with a lot of mysterious goddess symbols thrown into it, driven by some intense and demanding energy in Virgo. So it looks like being a tumultuous month with lots of fantastic potential if you can handle the cross currents.

One of the unusual patterns in this chart is the appearance of some form of the ancient and powerful feminine next to or opposite nearly every major planet, most of which are masculine. Combine this with the fact that the Sun in Virgo is exactly conjunct the South Node of the Moon - that mysterious point that speaks of the soul's journey, past-lives memories and karmic liabilities as well as gifts - and you get the feeling of great mysteries underlying the proceedings of the day to day experience of our lives. Obviously this is always the case, but to have it so close to the surface is unusual. Throwing in a radical partial eclipse on the New Moon of the 11th and that the great Saturn enters Virgo on the 3rd for the first time in 28 years, reinforces the feeling of deep mystery and paradox of this time.

The list of conjunctions and oppositions is impressive and splayed across the wheel: Saturn together with Hekate, Mars with Medusa, Moon with Hygeia, Uranus with Pallas Athena, Pluto with Lilith, and Jupiter with Vesta, coupled with Venus opposite Neptune and Chiron, and Mercury opposite Uranus. Archetypally, much of this represents a purging of the residues from ancient conflicts between the masculine and feminine, the reclamation of the power and instinctual knowledge of the deep feminine, and the restoration of balance and honour between the two. There is great healing potential here, not just from the obvious sources of Chiron and Hygeia but, despite their fearsome reputations, from the shamanic Hekate and Medusa.

On a more personal level, this can get a bit rough, as the turbulence that comes with any great period of healing and transformation kicks in. At the very least, it will get rather chaotic at times, but despite the intensity of these heavy duty processes, even the toughest conjunctions have supportive trines and sextiles. This speaks of much grace behind all of them and supports us the make to most of such an extraordinary time. Whether we're talking of this life or of previous ones, the same applies: this is a time of releasing old traumas, especially around the opposite sex within and without, and reclaiming deeper levels of knowing already within us - call them instinct, intuition, past-like knowledge, accessing the unconscious or the archetypes of wisdom - all in the name of freeing our ability to manifest our creative and spiritual potential, from both masculine and feminine sources, into the world.

As esoteric as this all sounds, these processes come simultaneously with some very earthy demands, and rightly so. Any time of great psychospiritual upwelling requires much attention to some very basic, mundane and grounding aspects of life, in order to hold the Shakti or power. The great Saturn, who rules both our internal structures as well as those that we create in the world, enters the very earthy sign of Virgo. Both planet and sign are worldly realists as well as holders of great intelligence, wisdom and spiritual power, and we should not be fooled by their more practical, worldly personas. Both describe the processes by which we purify and refine the raw material we start with in this life through the overcoming of obstacles and the sifting out of limiting and inaccurate beliefs about our true nature, in order to become the creative authority for our own individual lives. Both point to a direction that, instead of wanting to transcend life (and in most people's systems, to escape it!), we should embrace it, master its rules and, in doing so, honour and manifest the very reasons that we came here as souls to achieve.

Both demand a focus on how we live from moment to moment and day to day, on how we spend our energy, on what we choose to think or believe, and on looking after our bodies, our duties and responsibilities. It is a very disciplined, serious and focuses combination, which in the wrong hands look like a workaholic's dream. But again, to see it through the lens of our conditioning is to miss out on the fact that its combined focus resonates very much with the approaches of karma yoga or guruseva - approaches which teach and practice that attending to the everyday demands of our world is our spiritual path. And by doing so, we strengthen both our physical and our psychic bodies, to provide the safety, groundedness and the psychic muscle to be able to open and hold greater voltages of spiritual power and transformative energy as it becomes available, such as at times like these!

More about Saturn in Virgo next month.

Daniel Sowelu (BSc DipEd) is a therapeutic astrologer, primal therapist and group leader in his 21st year of private practice.