Thursday, December 1, 2011

Venus conjunct Pluto

I have to admit, finally and after months of consideration, that I'm not sure I want people to read my blog. It has become my journal, in the most literal sense of the word; when I am studying past planetary configurations and want to recall what I was doing or thinking at that time, my blog is a record with the exact time of publication included. I first noticed this when composing the post about the mechanics of the chart; it occurred to me that I could look up the exact time I started the blog by looking up the publishing time of the first post. This week when considering a period in Dec 2010, I went back to my posts for that period and was amazed to find such a telling record of what was occupying my mind at that time.


This morning I hit the send button at 9:16 am to send a warm and informative bit of electronic correspondence to my sister. I told her of a strange dream I had last night about our parents. This has been the best meeting of venus and pluto, only because I was able to make the connection between the planets and what was happening to me.


Blessings to astronomers and astrologers all over the world who make time so rich and fascinating.

Wednesday, October 19, 2011

October Horoscopes

Aries: This makes me think of the guy from Jesus Lizard diving over the mosh pit; and the ocean of hands taking him to the back of the room and up to the stage again. He was floating on the real thing, and so are you. The 9th a friend begins to help you distinguish what you really want, from what you are fighting for. On the 27th you’ll see how to be free as a child with a right to adult privacy.

Taurus: You begin the month as a happy student with cool teachers; the responsibilities are heavy but the shared load is light. On the 9th you enter the smoke filled room, on the 10th we all get a little jolt from nowhere, on the 13th you get a chance to see where the power is coming from and by the 25th you’ll be figuring out how to control it.

Gemini: Last fall when you passed through your annual karmic crucible you got to slap hands with a friend passing in the opposite direction, but this year you have a buddy waiting to hang out with you on the other side. On the 13th when you decide you have to figure the mystery out, you’ll be within shouting distance of your partner, and by the 25th when you’re about to crack the code you’ll be thick as thieves.

Cancer: Today the Political Junkie on NPR said the election campaigns are trying out their new slogans, testing to see which ones stick. A river puts roots down by washing sand from the bottom of its path and carrying it all the way to the sea. Which slogan will move the most sediment?

Leo: When the emperor of Byzantium asked Pope Urban for help in beating back the invading Turks, he got it; and ended up hosting the First Crusade. Your rowdy element stays till Nov, but by Oct 24th you will be making sure the party has soul.

Virgo: Soon after you have fulfilled your responsibility of surveying and sharing intelligence with the opposing camps, you’ll come upon someone struggling with vision problems. Oct 13 you’ll be drawing close enough to show them how to adjust the angle of the blinds and bring in more light. It will be like demonstrating how to tie shoe laces, but you have the whole month to do it.

Libra: Do you feel like you’ve been through the sailors’ induction of being dunked (the old fashioned way) at the equatorial crossing? Aren’t you glad to be on a ship with veterans who don’t humiliate pollywogs? The rose colored glasses will start clouding up on the 9th, and though you’ll have a dispassionate friend who knows what you’re going through, it won’t be the kind of realization you can share casually.

Scorpio: You may not notice it till after the 13th, but as the month progresses you’ll see more and more people scratching at guilt, putting a band aid over it, or suddenly shamed by the awareness of it. Don’t laugh and ask them what made them take their head out of the sand; listen and come up with a story to suit the occasion.

Sagittarius: Sagittarians do not have high expectations, as much as knowledge that they can make music regardless of the instruments at hand. When venus enters Scorpio Oct 9th, someone will be down. What do you say to the apples left on the ground for gleaners? The 13th will be an inspired day in the school of human arts.

Capricorn: The first 2 weeks of Oct are filled with friendly conversation. As the month progresses you’ll know you have established real rapport when people feel safe enough to tell the truth instead of boring stuff they think you want to hear.

Aquarius: Even if you are not a traveler, the people passing through can broaden your view of the world. The ones in your life now are eager to sing their hit songs and tell their popular stories.

Pisces: The refresher course in psychology as a second language begins Oct 9. Compared to accepting people as they are and doing what needs to be done, probing for motive can seem high handed and foreign; the problem is that heroes who are unfamiliar with the unruly winds which govern emotions, have a tendency to fly right past the landing target.

Saturday, September 3, 2011

September Horoscopes

Our Sky Horoscopes appear each month in The Triangle
The LGBTQ Resource for the Raleigh  - Durham - Chapel Hill Area

Aries:  On the 19th mars enters Leo and by Fri Sept 23 the celebration will be in full swing.  This will be like those weddings where people shoot rifles in the air; while you are accustomed to this level of enthusiasm don’t be surprised if some of us keep a careful distance from the festivities.

Taurus:  We see venus meet the sun once every 9 months, first on the far side and then between us and big sol.  In mid Aug she lined up on the far side, in Leo; which means you made a Lion happy.  On Sept 14th she’ll enter Libra as she swings back on her return to us; a good time to give feedback that will help friendships mature.

Gemini:  The getting to know you fun and games comes to a grinding halt on the 9th and you get down to the nitty gritty business of giving and receiving.  On the 26th horizons will open up for you and the social pace will be back up to speed.

Cancer:  You begin Sept finishing up partnership responsibilities that had you running the last two days of Aug.  Sept 5, 6 comes the monthly check in with grim reality.  Things will be stirred up on 13-15, but generosity will prevail on the 16th.  The big news is the 19th mars moves into greener pastures and the hardest part of declaring your territory is done.   Sept 27,28 will be a sweetened repeat of Aug 31.

Leo:  The 19th brings a challenge which will not peak until early Oct.  If you can hold off on negotiating till Sept 23rd you will be less tongue tied.  This will be more about self preservation than the courage to create, and you can prepare by making a thorough inventory.

Virgo:  The closer you get to the 25th, the more thinking on your feet will be required.  Sept 7, 8 you can put a ‘gone fishing’ sign out front.  Make a list on the 9th but don’t panic if it loses meaning on the 10th.  On the 12th you will smell conflict, but still have time to think.  While tensions will be released by the 22nd, events after that will begin to unfold quickly, and you’ll be proud of your ability to respond intelligently.  Beginning the 26th you can just toss a coin.

Libra:  “She’ll be riding six white horses when she comes,” is the line that follows “She’ll be comin round that mountain.”  That’s you on Sept 15 when venus rounds the far side of the sun and enters Libra.  Your diplomatic skills will be needed before then but you’ll be like a scared performer in the final dress rehearsal of a play.  You won’t know until you settle into your role on the 17th that practice made perfect. 

Scorpio:  On the 19th your mature sense of humor begins to spark, but before you make light of sacred cows there’s more higher learning to do.   While you are irrigating wounds and changing surgical dressings your faith in the secret power of calamity will be renewed.  The increased energy on Sept 13-15 will signal your returning strength.

Sagittarius:  You are such an eager student teacher, you won’t realize this month that you have your students’ undivided attention.  That will change on the 15th when the reflection of your life in their faces will come into clearer focus.  On the 19th your passion to reach out and touch will put on a clown suit and you’ll have people seriously glad to be under the big top.

Capricorn:  For Capricorns born on or before Dec 26 the worst is over.  Not everyone makes this passage like a camel through the eye of a needle in their life time, but Capricorns are least prepared for the procedure.  Dec 27-31 b-days get ready to shed baggage between now and April.

Aquarius:  Right now you’re resigned to the current status as the logical outcome of past events.  On the 16th you’ll gain a broader perspective, which will be critical on the 19th when the revelers start blasting their music.

Pisces:  This month your planet (Jupiter) comes up around 11:30 and catches the eye all night long, like venus with the ability to go wherever she wants.  Free love; it will steal over you on the 15th after 24 days of mental exertion.  Peace.

Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Return to The Consolation of Philosophy


(You are not lost-the next 10 or so paragraphs have nothing to do with the above chart.  I’ll get to Boethius after this rant about Rousseau.)

I’m back, and transiting mercury, that little devil, is trining my natal mercury in Aries. The sun is currently in Virgo, so putting all that info together means transiting mercury can only be in Leo; in other words good luck getting me off my soap box.  Here goes…

So, as per the Confessions of an Astrologer post I am trying to make myself read Rousseau.  Ugh!!!  I made it through The First Discourse and am now trying valiantly to wade through the second.  Only thinking about guys getting picked off by snipers as they wade through rice paddies on the far side of the earth, or dying in moon suits while disarming IEDs in Afganistan, makes me stop feeling sorry for myself as I plow through this Cancer native’s hypocritical tripe.  (Now, for you people innocent of the vocabulary of astrology, what I’m doing now is a perfect example of natal mercury in Aries inflamed by transiting same in Leo; even though I’ll regret this later I’m spilling it all and won’t stop till after I’ve hit the publish button.  That’s Aries!)

I try to pick at the sides like a healthy guest forced by courtesy to eat food overly rich with cream and sugar, that is I go to the Stanford on line encyclopedia of philosophy, where I might get a more objective view of this …man of letters… who should have just gotten a job and earned an honest living instead of writing about how the world would be better if everyone would just work and earn an honest living.  The Stanford people present a fine overview of his life and work, but I just can’t get with the program.

So I take my dog for a walk; she is so cool, she loves me so unconditionally since she thinks she needs me so completely, which I guess she does.  I hate having to bathe her, and worry about her legal status (rabies shots, leash laws) and I’m just not into being responsible for other lives, so I really appreciate how her needy love has forced/challenged me to be a more responsive person.

On the walk I think if I had money to throw away on one of those people that hypnotizes folks to go into the past (another example of firey☿-I have ‘thrown away money’ on a past life therapist and had a very enlightening experience, but that wouldn’t support the argument I’m spewing right here) anyway I would ask to be taken to the desk of Mr. Jeanne Jacques as he is writing and thump him upside the head every time he writes the word ‘patriot’ or ‘virtue’.  That’s a lot of thumping and I start to feel like I’m getting control of the situation as I think about all those satisfying thumps.  I would say for every thump. “Get a job!” Thump. 

“Get your baby back from the orphanage where it is sure to die!”  Thump.

I’m starting to feel better.  Thank God for souls and past life regressions.

Now I can be a little more objective about this: Taurus should have no problem getting along w/Cancer (Me Taurus/Rousseau Cancer).  There are other things (which I won’t list here) in my chart which I use as my excuse for having so much trouble w/Cancer.  (When I got pregnant at an advanced age I feared by my calculations that the baby would come out a Cancer, and was very relieved when the woman at Planned Parenthood got her little wheel-of-life out and predicted a birth date in Gemini.  Ok, a Gemini is flighty but it’s better than Cancer.)

I’m going to lose my few Cancer friends.  I don’t deserve them anyway.  But I need them.  They teach me about love and how people help each other out.  They teach about forgiveness.  They teach that feelings are real and though we should not always act on them we should always trust them.  So forgive me Cancer natives, but this guy’s just pissed me off with his talk about utopian states where every body loves each other and obeys the laws and it’s all so blissful and orderly I want to set off a bomb.

2 pages and I’m not even started.

Let’s see.  What’s next?

Cancer and government.  It was the anniversary of Pluto in Capricorn that got all this started.  I had to read Rousseau because his career took off, (and he fled Paris soon after) when transiting Pluto entered Capricorn which means it was opposing his natal Cancer sun.  Big daddy government (Capricorn) and the children or obedient, happy citizens (Cancer).  Cancer is water and as such needs something to give it form, to contain it, to direct it-citizens need government like a river needs banks to take it to the sea.

So, Ok I guess I’ve just got too much fire under my butt right now to swallow his recipe for social bliss; which brings me to my hero of the month and I suspect for many years to come- I think this guy is bigger than Jesus,  Ancius Boethius.

Ahhh.  I’m going to go wash some dishes before proceeding with the good part.

So the chart at the top is of a moment I picked as a possible time for when Boethius was in prison- we only know it was 524 or 525.  We have his year of birth (480AD) but no date.  Pluto, the year of his death, was about 14°.  I chose a date following the conjunction of sun with mars in Scorpio, which I think is a time any astrologer would expect a leader to come under the influence of corrupt forces.  I picked Dec 16 because mercury was in Sagittarius reflecting the mental anguish tormenting him on death row; but it was coming up on Jupiter, so we got that soaring work of genius where he records his conversation with Philosophy.  What a heartbreaking, but truly inspired end to a well lived life.

I chose 4:30 in the morning to show mercury rising, his mental anguish being transformed by action in the first house.

In The Confessions of an Astrologer post of a couple weeks ago I included the paragraph about “The whole of this earth’s globe” to present documentation that people knew long ago that the earth is a globe which occupies a minimum of space in the vastness of the universe.  I don’t know about education for everyone else, but I was taught that Columbus sailed to America to prove that the earth was round; it has been a valuable eye opener to read ancient writers like Ptolemy and Boethius and discover that people way back when knew a lot more about the real world than I realized.

Last of all I am including a chart for the year Boethius was born.  I hope people will note

 
Saturn coming up behind Neptune in Libra, the sign of diplomacy.  I always mention when I do charts for people born around 1952 (when Saturn and Neptune were again conjunct in Libra) that their generation grew up to be the most serious about civil rights for all members of society, and as a group they emulate that ideal in cooperative marriages.


All accounts portray Boethius's marriage with Rusticiana, the daughter of his adoptive father, to have been a happy union.  He was a man blessed richly in life and left the world a great work of philosophy to repay his good fortune, even after Fortune had abandoned him and left him to die at the hands of corrupt statesmen...
 
Rousseau was just a wussy wanna-be intellectual that should have gotten a job, which probably bothers me because I’m afraid that’s what I am.  Wait a minnit!  I do have a job.  Whew!




Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Confessions of an Astrologer

 
I am observing the modern passage of Pluto into the sign Capricorn a couple of years late; Pluto is now at 5°.  I have begun reading The Social Contract by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, published in 1762, the year Pluto entered Capricorn in its previous incarnation.

When Pluto is in Capricorn, it is time for serious talk about civilization and its effects on the quality of human existence.  I hope to return soon with relevant information about this influential philosopher and putative bad dad...

But I keep falling back to The Consolation of Philosophy written by Ancius Boethius during his imprisonment in 524 before being executed by the state.  I'm so late coming to these seminal works, but glad to at last be reading them.  Pluto, by the way, was in Sagittarius when Consolation was written.  Here is a link to the full text of what is copied below --->The Consolation of Philosophy: Nero's Infamy


The whole of this earth's globe, as thou hast learnt from the demonstration of astronomy, compared with the expanse of heaven, is found no bigger than a point; that is to say, if measured by the vastness of heaven's sphere, it is held to occupy absolutely no space at all. Now, of this so insignificant portion of the universe, it is about a fourth part, as Ptolemy's proofs have taught us, which is inhabited by living creatures known to us. If from this fourth part you take away in thought all that is usurped by seas and marshes, or lies a vast waste of waterless desert, barely is an exceeding narrow area left for human habitation. You, then, who are shut in and prisoned in this merest fraction of a point's space, do ye take thought for the blazoning of your fame, for the spreading abroad of your renown? Why, what amplitude or magnificence has glory when confined to such narrow and petty limits?
 From The Consolation of Philosophy by Ancius Boethius  written 524 AD

Thursday, August 11, 2011

More about Mars Opposing Pluto

Monday I posted one chart for 1763 showing Pluto in Capricorn and then two showing our current Pluto about to 'return'.

The only people who experience Pluto returns are vampires or any one that lives to be 250; that’s how long it takes Pluto to make a complete circuit around (mostly) the perimeter of the solar system.   

The actual conjunction will occur in 2022, so it may seem premature to be talking about
our Pluto return now.  It may also seem strange that I have posted a USA chart for 3:10 am; right now I can’t remember where I got that time, but I do like to imagine someone finishing up the famous Declaration of Independence in the wee hours of the morning, feeling the incredible exhilaration of taking such a tender diplomatic leap, as venus and Jupiter were about to rise with the sun in Cancer.

But getting back to our nation’s Pluto return; this makes a Saturn return look like a child eating pudding.  Think of how many nations have not even survived to their first Saturn return, much less one of Uranus or Neptune.  We are fortunate in the length of time we have managed to hold together as a nation.


Saturn returns, Pluto returns; what does return mean?  It means a planet has circled all the way around and come back to the place it occupied at a designated moment.  We are taking the Declaration of Independence as the designated moment, with Pluto at 27°34; and looking at an ephemeris (Thank you ASTRONOMERS!!!) to see when Pluto returns to that spot.  (Feb 2022) 

Returns are occasions that mark the repetition of cycles, just like birthdays mark a return to a special day in the year (sun/earth cycle).  So returns are like birthdays, or in the case of slow going Pluto, birth years.  2022 is our Plutonian birth year.

Now we come to the part that makes a lot of people squirm, where we talk about the meaning of Pluto.  Pluto in Greek mythology is the god of the underworld.  The story goes that he felt humans' life spans should be limited so they would have more respect for the gods.  This could be because he got stuck with ruling an obscure and thankless area of experience compared with Jupiter and the rest of the heavenly celebrities.   Can you see why modern astronomers would attach his name to the virtually invisible planet in the farthest reaches of the solar system?  

'The lines were dead.'  'Dead air.'  These are common expressions to indicate a failure in real communication.  This is the signal of the exile; too faint to be visible or audible.  This is the signal coming from distant Pluto, a planet that may as well exist in the middle of the earth considering how little we know about it.  


Monday, I posted charts that highlighted Mars opposing Pluto.  Mars is the will, or the light of the sun rising up through existence; it is animal, animus, or animated mud.  What are animals?  They are something spun out of countless revolutions of the earth the same way plants were, but these organisms animated with the energy that comes from the sun, can travel at will.  That’s mars.  It has nothing to do with following a map or morality or any soulful reflection on the cause and effect of actions.  Just an animal with the will to survive.


So what’s highlighted this month (mars opposing Pluto) is the brute struggle for survival in the face of exile; or we could say the hero (in the sign of the family) opposing the god of mortality (in the sign of institutions).  The other planets have not disappeared.  In fact the moon is visible tonight in the same sign (Capricorn) where Pluto is invisible; and Saturn, bless the souls of Libran’s everywhere, is still highly appreciated in the sign of diplomacy. 
 

Right now, there is a fear that diplomacy is failing because we feel overwhelmed with three planets in Leo stoking the Uranian bonfire in Aries.  The temporary Leonine roar is making it hard to concentrate and take a balanced, critical look at this struggle, which as rational adults we are craving.  On August 22nd when venus leads the sun and mercury into the sign Virgo, we will see the fireworks calm down a bit and have a chance to begin sorting out the mess; all part of the real gift of still being alive.

One more thing.  Since we are still 10 and 1/2 years away from the actual conjunction between transiting pluto and its position in our national chart, this anxiety about our existence as a nation will continue building for some time.  While the martial peaks will only occur every couple of years, there are other opportunities for stumbling along the way.  Pluto appears to be moving so quickly that Uranus will not complete its square with it until 2015 when there will be three planets in fire signs for the occasion.

Now is the time to learn about the history of governments and come to a better understanding of current events.  Though fortune is indeed fickle, providence favors  prepared minds.

Monday, August 8, 2011

Mars Opposing Pluto

I wonder how many tea party activists know they are a text book example of how astrology works.


In 2009 pluto entered Capricorn, the same sign it occupied in the years leading up to the American Revolution. 

You are probably wondering what the Siege of Fort Pitt has to do with the Tea Party or the American Revolution.  I chose a chart for June 22, 1763 because, like Aug 2009, it is the first time mars opposed Pluto during Pluto’s unbroken transit through Capricorn.  246 years, that’s how long it’s taken Pluto to return to the position it held after the Seven Years War when tensions between the colonists and British authorities began the inexorable build up to the American Revolution.

Pontiac’s Rebellion was a series of attacks made by several banded Native American tribes against British colonial forts soon after the French and British signed the Treaty of Paris.  Many of the Indians in the Ohio Valley fought on the side of the French and did not like the way they were treated by the British colonists.   Meanwhile, the colonists resented the way they were excluded from service in the British war against the French and Indians; and the British resisted the colonists’ drive to expand westward fearing their growing power and the troubles it would stir up with the Native Americans.  As soon as the French were gone there was no common enemy to bond the colonists to the crown and they started to get uppity.

♇ ♇ ♇ ♇ ♇

The tea party movement comes on the plutonian anniversary of the colonists’ drive toward independence.  People all over the world are learning how to govern themselves while fighting to throw off the yoke of oppressive institutions.  This is more than the return of a single planet to a previous moment: note Uranus in Aries in the above chart, another astrological repetition from 1763 that we are experiencing right now.  So the tea party is on schedule, but something does smell fishy.

Below is the chart for Aug 16, 2009 when the protesters were breaking up town hall meetings on the health care bill.  See if you can spot the similarities and differences between the chart for 1763 and the one for 2009.
 
And now, a chart for mars opposing Pluto this month, the second of about 7 mars-Pluto face offs that will occur while Pluto is in Capricorn.