This wild week arrives with an unmistakeable snap crackle and pop that will only ramp from here as we bound towards the Leo full moon roaring. More than expecting the unexpected from the already surreal, the next round of storms are designed to alter us forever. Radical by design, their power coiled inside shock value and sudden irrevocable change. Every little notch there is no going back from.

In far less interesting times than these, the annual tête-à-tête between the sun king and our dark lord had a tendency to turn the tables. Happening now in the revolutionary portion of the zodiac, the annual meeting of Pluto and the sun generates a mighty force that ripples new truths through ageing power circuits, blowing all manner of fuses and wiring crossed by design.

Until June, Pluto makes his first foray into Aquarius and a new generational chime rings out. More deep sub than bell tower, Pluto's impact is occulted and works from the ground down and the inside out. The last time he descended into the water bearer's realm was an era of revolution and invention but we cannot infer the same direct impact in the age of information and tech. How Hades' clarion call to our humanity takes root is yet to be understood, cloudy forms taking shape in dark crystals that defy gnosis.

Today in the middle of storm and consequence, an important meeting is transpiring. In a world slavishly built on the false altar of eternal life and endless youth, the refused shadow curls around our ankles like a snake. Anaretica, thy name is transition. The fabled degree at the end of all the mansions holds change in its palm, throwing open a back door into something entirely different.

The unholy trinity at play in Capricornia, as giant swells lash our world in the wake of the new moon, is nothing less than absolute transformation. Shocking and devastating in its way as it pulls the curtain all the way back on late stage humanity and demands we view its full spectrum unblinking.

The strange ripple in this day and the one after is more than the constant glitching of what once was matrix. It is something beyond regular programming and far below its cause and effect. And it has Pluto's spiny fingers all over it, tickling underbellies and shadows out of hiding.

Batten down the hatches and don the Aquarian cyberproof lady armour, darklings. February's day of reckoning has arrived in a strange huffy haze designed to get under your skin. Merc in full retrograde flight today squares off with our twisted firestarter hankering for the clash like a bull in a china shop.

Today the cosmos delivers a welcome chime designed to ripple favourably through dystopia, as Jupiter and old captain chaos himself Pluto meet in Capricornia. This bell will toll three times this year, marking it a key influencer. They meet again at the end of June mid eclipsia and once more in November before their age of Aquarius rewrites history.

Grateful as we may be for the ebbing away of that discerning lunar close up, there's no rest for the wicked. Not this week anyway. Claiming centre stage now as the lights dim are our lady Venus and Uncle Pluto, arm in arm in Capricornia.

just how, pray tell, do we lift the anvil from our chest and drag the shipwrecks from our belly? Because they sure as shit are not sparking joy, their interminable weight crushing our optimism and flattening fresh hope. Letting go, like healing, is a moment to moment wonder. Suddenly it drops or lifts, shifts or evaporates and you wonder how you dragged it around for so long.

One of my most brilliant teachers, a rakish afficionado of high school history, taught me two most important life lessons. The first was critical thinking: that it is crucial not to slavishly believe what you have had plopped in front of you. The second was to remember your history because as he proved to us ad infinitum: those who refuse to remember their history are condemned to repeat it.

If you needed a million fabulous examples of the weekend's agitating astrology engendering very real positive change, here it is. Here they all are and there's plenty more where they came from. Kids forged by homegrown terror and trauma alchemising their pain into take no prisoners advocacy. They are reshaping a braver new world.

If you are waiting for this tetchy energy to subside, we have a few more days to go yet. This ongoing power struggle between Captain Chaos himself (Pluto) and our cosmic enlarger (Jupiter) is peaking all this week, having first smashed into our lives last November.

This is a trigger warning, darklings. And not just your particular flavour when the gun is cocked, oh my word no. Today is an across the board recipe for blown tops, epic frustration and the kind of sandpaper niggling that shreds even the thickest of skins.

When Uncle Pluto crashes the party, the ripples are tectonic. This no holds barred change agent employs chaos and disorder as his primary missile system, smacking his lips as our shadowselves come out to play. None of us are immune to his influence, though not all of us are charmed by his rumblings.

This guy is a walking community service announcement for the back end of this particular eclipse season and we all have Uncle Mars to thank for this. Our planet of Get Shit Done can fast turn into a war mongering trail of destruction when engaged the wrong way.

The next day or so represents the final slam of a series of direct astrological hits between Pluto (why hello chaos and destruction) and Uranus (agent of lightning change) whose sole purpose has been a tilt shift of epic proportions. Since the middle of 2012 we have been running at speed at this wall (or hurled by the hand of our own personal Jesus).