by Jodie Forrest

Four planets are retrograde all month (August 2009):  Jupiter, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto. The Earth temporarily overtakes them in its orbit, so they temporarily appear to be going backwards in the zodiac. As above, so below--retrogradations of the outer planets are times when their energy goes "widdershins," or backwards. I like the fanciful term "widdershins" more; it implies there is a purpose to this energy doubling back upon itself, a method in this reversal of motion. What's ruled by a retrograde planet is commonly supposed to go haywire during its retrogradation. I suspect that's more likely to happen if we either don't pay conscious and reflective attention to the affairs of that planet, or if we try to push its affairs forward too fast without such reflection.

Retrogradations are "look before you leap" times. Time to review, reflect, process, ponder, inquire about and meditate upon what that planet rules, and about however it's affecting your chart by transit.

So what do these planets rule?

Jupiter:  hope, faith, optimism, vision, higher learning, temporal law, wider perspectives, resilience, possibilities, benevolence, opportunities, expansion

and/or:
grandiosity, dogmatism, fanaticism, excess, inflation, a sense of entitlement.

Uranus:  individuation, independence, authenticity, originality, self-sovereignty, inventiveness, genius, divergent thinking, non-conformity, rebellion, surprises
and/or: 
anarchy, anti-social behavior, sociopathy, contrariness, trauma, dissociation, flakiness.

Neptune:  mysticism, spirituality, the divine, egolessness, boundarilessness, oneness, altered states, meditative states, the transpersonal, the transrational 
and/or:
delusions, illusions, co-dependence, addiction, escapism, victimization, helplessness.

Pluto:  Here, it is harder to make the and/or distinctions in the descriptions above . . .
Our wounded or damaged side, where we may have wounded or can wound others, that we repress or suppress, the shadow, our personal underworld, the underworld of the shaman, that which we need to face about ourselves if we want to know ourselves as well as possible.