Mars Slowing Down and The High and Low of a Daily Revolution

Before diving in to these Aquarian maps of the solar system I want to tell the story of a friend learning Tai Chi.  She is taking Tai Chi for the second time after an aborted attempt over 15 years ago.  After plenty of concentration, practice and returning to the first level class right after completing it, her joy in what she has learned is infectious.  Every time she talks about this new skill she is learning she recalls the first time she tried, so many years ago, and how discouraged she was.  There was only one teacher for more than 10 students, and she was taking the class at night after a long day at work and caring for a family.  This time she is retired and taking the class with a group of people dedicated to sharing this physical form of meditation with the wider community, and this time she is having much more success.

When she showed me some of the movements she has learned, it seemed as though energy was being made visible through the graceful motions of her hands, arms and entire body.  The motions looked elegant, yet had required weeks of sorting out which direction to move, and when, for every part of the body.  Even as I was amazed at the beauty of her movements, she was laughing about how clumsy she was compared to more experienced members of her group.

Like Tai Chi, astrology is a lot harder than it looks.  Even with someone leading you through the concepts, it requires diligent concentration to visualize what seems like a very simple system of planets circling a fiery ball.  Do not be discouraged if you have trouble making sense of the pictures and numbers.  Begin with something that intrigues you- for me it was the moon.   Study just one planet- and when you have 30 minutes where your mind is not occupied with daily tasks, try to picture how its cycle unfolds in the actual sky.  One short glimmer of life on this revolving sphere will make you feel so connected to real heaven - that chances are good you will want to see more. 

Earth catching up to Mars

The 3 featured planets for today are colorized; Earth, Sun and Mars.  Earth is getting ready to catch up with, and pass Mars.  Each day as earth gets closer to Mars, the planet of war seems to go a bit slower.  A month ago we were seeing Mars move forward 23 minutes a day, which is still pretty slow compared to 45 minutes a day last April.  Today it will only advance 10 minutes, or 1/6 of a degree.  (The sun appears to move about 1degree/day.) 

Next Friday Mars will advance 6 minutes, or 1/10 of a degree.  Friday, Feb 28 it will advance 1 puny minute, or 1/60 of a degree.  It will stand there, like a bunch of soldiers waiting for orders, Sat and Sun; then Monday it will go backwards one measly 60^th of a degree.

Fast forward to the future:

We will be lined up between Sun and Mars April 8.  Mars, the first planet beyond Earth’s orbit, is the cycle of separation; Venus and Mercury never get far from the sun, while Mars, with a cycle of only 2 years compared to Jupiter’s 12 gets to wander far and wide with the big ones.  So we associate this cycle with the process of separation.  This time around Mars spends 8 months in the sign Libra, it entered the sign of cooperation in early Dec 2013 and will not pass into Scorpio until July 26 of this year.  Every night, for the next several months, we can see the planet of war move across heaven at the balanced elevation of the celestial equator.  The warrior is learning to walk the tightrope of diplomacy.  Anyone born Oct 19-21 is energized by Mars today.

You can see Mar’s big sister Venus has recently overtaken Earth in her orbit.  She is now on her way and this summer will be approaching the far side of the sun from us. 

The High and Low of a Daily Revolution

Next up in this post –the first time on this blog - we zoom in for a close-up of earth, and show Raleigh’s high and low points in her daily trip round earth’s axis.  Today we reached our high point (Capricorn the goat) at 8:38am.  We were half way down to the bottom at 2:38pm. (Aries on the Midheaven)  Then, depending on the clouds, we will see Jupiter high in the sky when we are at the bottom (Cancer the Crab) at 8:38 pm.  

A point in the Northern hemishpere at its highest elevation is facing Capricorn on the Midheaven (MC)- while a point at its lowest elevation is facing Cancer on the MC.

Here are three charts for today showing when Capricorn, Aries and Cancer were on the Midheaven for Raleigh.

Raleigh was at the peak of her daily revolution at 8:38 this morn - the sign Capricorn was on the MC.  The midheaven is what we see when we look due south where the Sun is found at midday.

At 2:38pm Raleigh was half way to the bottom of her daily revolution and had already turned so the sun was getting ready to set in the west instead of rising in the east at 8:38am.  Any point on earth halfway down from the top faces Aries on the MC.

Cancer the Crab on the MC means we are at the bottom

Notice how the line for the Midheaven is straight up in Capricorn and Cancer, but inclined to the west for Aries.  When we are at the top or bottom of our revolution we can see as much of the ecliptic coming up in the east, as what we are turning away from in the west.  It is like climbing up one side of a mountain, and, upon reaching the top, being able to see equally what is on the side of ascent and what is on the other side where you are about to go down.  When you get half way down the mountain (Aries) you can’t see much of what was on the side where you came up, but you can see a lot of the side where you are descending.   When Aries is on the Midheaven and we are half way down, we can see more of the ecliptic coming up in the east than what’s going down in the west.

In a somewhat similar way, when we are at the bottom of our daily revolution, we see the path of the ecliptic highest in the sky, and we see an equal amount of it coming up in the east and going down in the west. 

There is not a chart today to show Libra on the midheaven.  When we are rotated half way to the top we can't see much of the ecliptic in the east, but we can see a lot of what is setting in the west.  Any chart for the northern hemisphere should show a line for a Libra midheaven inclined to the east, since the visibility of the plane of orbit is cut off in that direction.