Luca Pacioli, the creator of double-entry bookkeeping. (Source:Wikipedia)

Luca Pacioli, the creator of double-entry bookkeeping. (Source:Wikipedia)

I’d like to start talking about medium term trends so you can take advantage of the current energies. 

There are three categories of planets when looking at trends. 

  1. The inner, personal planets and luminaries are the Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, and Mars.  These are planets that move so quickly around the zodiac that they influence our day to day lives but do not deliver a lasting impact. 
  2. We’ve covered some of the very long term transits of the outer planets, Pluto in Capricorn, and Neptune in Aquarius.  Uranus is also a planet with a very long orbit and I’ll cover him in upcoming posts.  These three planets are called the impersonal planets because they have such long orbits that they tend to affect long periods of time and whole generations of people.
  3. There are two transpersonal planets, Jupiter and Saturn, which have orbits somewhere in between, twelve years for Jupiter, 29 years for Saturn.  These planets are not entirely personal as they stay in one sign so long that large groups of people are born under the same sign.  But they’re not entirely impersonal either, as they indicate trends that play out over a manageable group of years and we have some power to take advantage of their influence.  They are seen as a bridge between the purely personal planets and the purely impersonal planets.

We’re going to skip to Saturn in Virgo, because there are only a few more months of this influence.  Saturn entered the sign of Virgo in September 2007 and will leave the sign in late October 2009.  It will briefly revisit Virgo from April to July 2010, but then it doesn’t return for 29 years.  We want to make sure we’ve made the most of it before it leaves!

We’ve spoken about Saturn and how its qualities are beneficially associated with business ownership.  Saturn understands conservatism, budgeting, and the needs for controls, policies, and rules.  Saturn contracts the energy of ideas and inspiration into the material plane.  It sees the goal at the top of the mountain and can patiently follow a prescribed plan to get there.  Saturn does rule boundaries and limitations, yes, but willingly accepts these as a fact of life on this physical earth and knows how to put these things to use to accomplish success. 

We haven’t talked about the sign Virgo yet.  Virgo also has a natural alignment with business, especially the parts of business management having to do with planning, documnetation, auditing, accounting, and finance.  Virgo has a facility with all kinds of information, especially the collecting and categorizing of information that then can be turned into  knowledge.

I once attended a seminar in a business conference that spelled out the following flow:

Data     becomes        Information   becomes       Knowledge     becomes    Future Strategy

 Virgo rules the first step in this process, where data is categorized into information.  Virgo understands the practical need for documentation and systems of testing and analysis so that all the pieces of data can be turned into useful information.  Virgo records the details, in black and white, that must be preserved for future decision-making.  In addition to accounting, bookkeeping, and auditing, it also rules engineering and scientific research.  It is practical and down to earth, cares more for application than theory.   Virgo is fond of precise and detailed rituals, daily routines which performed day after day add up to a storehouse of practical wisdom.

Saturn in the sign of Virgo brings conservatism and material outcomes to business planning, auditing, and analysis.  And since we’re firmly in the second half of the year, why wait to write your 2010 business plan?  Remember, you only have until the end of October to have the support of this energy.  What are some of the items Saturn in Virgo is looking for?

  • Do you and your company have a clearly defined mission with a written mission statement?
  • Do you have a written sales plan?
  • Have you developed an annual budget?
  • Do you have a written pricing policy?
  • Is your inventory adequately controlled?
  • Do you have an adequate bookkeeping system?
  • Are you aware of tax laws and their implications when making decisions?
  • Do you perform cash flow projections regularly?
  • Do you prepare daily, weekly, and monthly financial reports?
  • How do you insure quality control?

This is what Saturn in Virgo loves.  Note we did not mention what you do with all of this information.  Saturn in Virgo is concerned with having the process and systems in place to provide it.  It takes other planets and signs to interpret and form strategies from it.  But without the above, there is no information at all.

So over the next couple of week, we’re going to celebrate Saturn in Virgo by talking about business planning for 2010.  And not just any planning, but a process informed by the astrology of the coming year and how you can take advantage of the trends.  We’ll begin next week by looking at some of the pitfalls of Saturn in Virgo, and business planning in general, and how to avoid them.