The American Ephemeris

The hardest working book in your library.

There are free ephemerides on line- I have several 10 year ephemerides downloaded on my phone from Astrodienst.  They take about 500kb memory, a lot less than a photo.  These are fine for looking up info for specific dates.  But, ultimately you want to enter sustained contemplation of longer cycles, such as Saturn's meetings with Pluto, which happen about every 35 years. (Oct 1914, Aug 1947, Nov 1982, Jan 2020)

The American Ephemeris for the 20th Century and the American Ephemeris for the 21st Century are essential references for gaining a sense of familiarity with these historic cycles.  You need to be able to flip back and forth within 200 years worth of daily data while reading about modern historic narratives. 

This morning I was thinking about the north node cycle and Hitler's appointment as German Chancellor.  I opened The American Ephemeris for the 20th Century to Dec 1931 when the NN backed from Aries to Pisces and followed the German empire rebuilding trajectory through the end of WWII.  I was able to easily back up to the Saturn Pluto meeting at the beginning of WWI, when Germany invaded Belgium.  I could hop from consideration of those two cycles, North Node and Saturn/Pluto, to thinking also about Saturn meeting Uranus in early May 1942.

With more data to ruminate on organic time your attention is distracted from emotional responses to history and drawn into deeper consideration of the delicate web of cause and effect that reaches ......far.....back.....like before tetrapods emerged from the salty sea.

We are less than 3 years from Saturn meeting Pluto.  Right now Saturn is 21Sag and Pluto 17 Capricorn.  So every month the Moon lines up with marginalized Pluto just 2 days after meeting sober Saturn.  It also means Pluto rises every day less than 3 hours after Saturn.  The  punches of life's grim realities are coming closer as the 2020 meeting approaches.

I used to read about people in war zones and wonder how they could sanely survive under such chaos.  I wonder how I would survive, how I would stand up as a responsible citizen in such situations.  The one answer that often comes to me is that chaos does not errupt from out of the blue, unless we make a concerted effort to ignore its existence.

Revolutionary change is often near to hand and we naturally adjust to its approach as all life forms do.  Do we think of ourselves as Herculean individuals charged with Olympian tasks, or do we take time out, while we are able, to contemplate the waves of change that we fear or struggle to hasten.

Today's chart shows Saturn near the red Sagittarian arrow rising in Raleigh (left side of circle just below horizon) as the Moon meets Pluto. 

Saturn and Pluto would be lower in chart for western US location at same Greenwich Mean Time (Universal Time).