Moon Enters Taurus

Tonight Eastern Standard Time, Moon passes from urgent Aries to keep plugging away Taurus.

That's Northern Hemisphere.  In Southern Hemisphere Moon currently appears on the descending stretch of the ecliptic, passing from Libra to Scorpio.

Remember not to confuse zodiac signs with constellations.  We will all, north and south, see Moon at end of constellation Pisces.  I put a blue mark in the screen shot of Pisces below to show approximate location of Moon and Uranus.  It's a blue bar crossing the ecliptic right after the 2 hour line.  The zodiac sign Aries goes from 0 hours to 2 hours.

Next is a screenshot from the astro.com ephemeris file (free!) showing Moon ingresses (sign changes).  I put a blue mark where it shows the GMT time for Moon entering Taurus.

Converting 00:28UT/GMT to East coast USA time we get 7:28pm Jan 31.

You can see Moon next to Uranus in upper right quadrant of the chart.  It is a little more than 2.5 degrees from Uranus. It will catch  up with the rolling planet about 5 hours later.

Can you see how the Moon and Uranus disappear under the horizon (horizontal line in chart) while Moon is overtaking big U?

Folks in Boise, ID with the right kind of telescope and clear skies might be able to see the lineup.

I go back and look at my posts after hitting the publish button and always find mistakes.  This morn I fixed 2 faulty links in yesterday's post.

Mars enters Neptune's House of Respect

The second thing I noticed looking at this morning’s chart was Mars in the very beginning of Neptune’s !0^th house. In a very general sense, a planet in the 10^th house of anything is near the midheaven when the ‘anything’ in question is appearing on the eastern horizon. (Click here for page about houses)  But first things second - the first thing I noticed was the Moon entering Aries. I should point out Moon's current ruler, because it took me years to incorporate this consideration in my astrological meditation, and when I finally did the fuzzy lines of connection and demarcation became more focused; when Moon is in Aries it is ruled by the planet that rules Aries – Mars.  (Link to page on Rulerships)   So, though I’m not comfortable with beginning this post (I should probably be resting before going to clean a house) I’m taking an Aries risk and doing it anyway. I’m driven by an urge stronger than the usual caution that holds me on the couch. Mars is ruling the Moon for the next 2 days while Moon passes through Aries.

So let’s get back to Mars, which is currently in Sagittarius.

The chart above is for yesterday when I was at the dentist. I had arrived 10 mins late for appointment and Nikki, the super cool hygienist was working on a tooth with bleeding gum. I’ve lost a few, and she remarked that this was my new problem tooth. She was not cracking as many jokes as she usually does, and I noticed when we were talking after she finished on my teeth that she was yawning a lot. I asked her if she had not gotten enough sleep the night before. On the way, late, to the office I was thinking how wonderful it is to have these people in the world who get up early every work day to be ready to help people like me, who spend so much time on the couch. She had not noticed the yawning and said she would get some caffeine as soon as I left.  Now that I think of it, I guess my customers appreciate the work I do for them, but yesterday i felt humbled by the discipline of the people in the dental office- always having to be on time, and polite to patients who arrive late with bleeding gums.

At that moment I was not thinking about Mars being 1/12 of a degree into Neptune’s 10^th house. I think about these things when I’m on the couch. I fiddle with charts and numbers to get the exact time some event will happen, sometimes I even write it down, and then I forget about it. During recent sessions of playing with charts I have been thinking of Jupiter now in Capricorn. Mars has been in Sagittarius for almost all of Jan, and Jupiter would be ruling it, except that it went into Capricorn a month before Mars passed into its territory. Jupiter rules the gambling sign of Sagittarius. But it’s not there anymore. The year of the gambler is over and since Dec 2019 the high roller is in the austere land of Saturn. And Saturn is home. Saturn (its so called angels referred to as Thrones in old time esoteric theology, maybe because Saturn seems to sit while the other planets from Moon out to Mars race around the snake of the ecliptic) is ultimately ruling just about every planet right now.

It’s kind of a relief isn’t it? The rubber might burn a bit when it first hits the road, but soon enough the tire comes to a steady relationship with the pavement and propels the vehicle forward. The noise and smoke gives way to movement.

But I started out thinking of Mars entering the last quarter of its cycle with Neptune, which is even slower than Saturn, 5 times slower. Now that’s a heavy throne. I wondered when this cycle began, and in which sign.

Well, since Mars takes about 2 years to go around the zodiac, and we’re in the last quarter of it’s cycle with a nearly stationary planet, I figured a little more than a year, but less than two. 

 

Above is the page for Dec 2018 ephemeris from Astro.com. You can see that they met in early Dec 2018 in 13^th degree of Pisces. I thought about how I had realized on returning from my short journey to Maine that aside from the expense of a crown for a broken tooth, I really needed to invest in repairs for my house that I had been ignoring for years. In fact, the day a repair person came I got a long and scary list of repairs that would cost more than $10,000. I was kind of freaked out, and realized this is the kind of situation where people get sucked into spending money they don’t have, in other words borrowing money. The repair person said the value of the house would increase and pay for the loan his company could set me up with. “This is how so many people wind up with houses in foreclosure!” is what came to my mind as I struggled with the panic. I knew I had to get that guy out of my house so I could think things through and find my own way of moving forward with a big problem.

Now, 13 months later it seems like it’s been at least two years since a very competent friend did about $3,000 worth of work and I have no more awful worries about my house crumbling or spewing water from a broken pipe. In the months between Mars meeting Neptune in Pisces I gained a more realistic understanding of what the risks were of letting certain things go, and I was blessed with a new friendship with a person highly skilled in home maintenance. I look back on the dental crown a year ago and another dying tooth that finally got pulled this summer, and think, “Yes I have a new problem tooth, but I know the worst of my dental problems are behind me.” Just like with my house, I put off going to a dentist for years, so the last 5 years have been expensive in that department too. Mars has circled all the way from panicky, what-is-going-to-happen-next Pisces to we-can-do-anything-with-next-to-nothing Sagittarius. Mars knows that’s just a figure of speech, because Jupiter is in sober Capricorn. Remember, Jupiter rules Sagittarius. Saturn rules Capricorn. And both Jupiter and Saturn are now in Capricorn.

Then I went back way further and thought about where Mars was in its cycle with Neptune when my son was born. It was in Neptune’s 8^th house. That’s not as far as the 10^th, but it’s a mature place with respect to Neptune. When Mars gets more than half way into its cycle with Neptune, it’s got Neptune’s number; the worrisome surprises are no longer surprises, they’re things that can be looked back on.

Here’s the chart for today, showing Mars ¾ of a degree into Neptune’s 10^th house. You can also see Moon now in Aries. 

 

Yesterday I cleaned for a couple of former customers that have been in a retirement community for 4 years. I haven’t been for over two years. I’ve been too busy resting and they have been too busy dealing with health emergencies. We spent an hour just talking about their hospital/doctor adventures and my latest news. Then I moved all the furniture in their bedroom to get hidden dust that the community cleaning crew does not have time for. It was like old times from the years when I cleaned their house. I sent the husband to his reading chair when he expressed worry about me moving a dresser.  I said, “Does it feel like old times?”

He smiled and nodded “Yes”.

As I prepare to post this from the library parking lot (free internet!) I'm noticing that Moon was still near Venus and Neptune yesterday when I arrived late and felt terribly grateful for disciplined health care professionals.  This morning it was just entering Aries.  Yesterday morning it was at 19 Pisces.

Hercules Awake

7:16am

I got up a few minutes after 5:47 this morn. The chart for that moment showed the old crescent moon a couple degrees above the horizon, so I knew it would be visible soon. It was below freezing and I really didn’t want to go out, though I knew the sky was clear. Then I remembered that the moon in Capricorn rises a good 20 degrees south of east and I could probably see it from my south facing (not exactly south, about 30 east of south) front door window. There are 3 small panes of glass right around eye level for a 5ft8in adult. Well, I looked and looked. It seemed time for the old queen to enter stage left. Finally I went outside, crossed the street and there it was, on the other side of the giant canvass of dark foliage spreading like a thick fan above the trunk of a live oak, one of the few not yet turned into wood chips in the park my house faces.

7:20 break to check for sunrise.

Not showing yet, bout 15 more minutes. This morning I woke up thinking, among vague memories of a dream and other forgotten stuff, about a note I came across recently: Hercules wakes up in January. I’m guessing I came across it in studies of ancient philosophy. I wondered how much later in the year Hercules reappears in the morning sky now-a-days. Or if Hercules 'wakes up' a bit earlier.  Guessing the fourteenth hour would be near the MC I picked up my little phone and did a chart. You can see the MC for 5:47 this morn in Raleigh was at the end of Libra. Libra goes from about 12hours to 14 hours. Every sign extends about 2 hours along the equator, more or less. It’s that more or less that makes each sign special, unique, for reals as in real estate that surveyors measure and map, but this is heavenly real estate, which still belongs to all of us, since aren’t we all children of God and isn’t that where God lives? I might be using slippery logic there. 

 

7:37 the Sun is up

It is a degree above the naked trees. I was waiting to confirm, to get a good sense of the actual body, as opposed to the little white circle on Stellarium, or the symbol in the chart, that the Sun would come up a few degrees north compared to the old Capricorn Moon. A handwidth to the left (since I live in the northern hemisphere* and face south to view the planetary highway, aka ecliptic) of this morn’s Moonrise. I treasure, literally, the way Silas Marner counted the rolling coins when he was living in exile from the Christians that banished him from their community – I treasure the ability to guesstimate where a planet will appear on the eastern horizon. It doesn’t seem so important on a map, every thing is on the same page; all we have to do is scan the symbols to find what interests us, which is especially easy when we’re familiar with what those symbols (or the planets they represent) do. An electronic engineer, familiar with the language, can tell where the voltage increases or decreases in the map of a circuit; an accountant can review financial records and tell where a company is losing or gaining capital; an astrologer, knowing how fast each planet moves and the directions of various intersecting cycles can quickly locate her target on a chart.

But the actual sky is sooo much bigger! It is the difference between reading the little guidebook for the Appalachian Trail that describes where the next spring is; a hundred paces beyond the hairpin turn in the trail, take a right at the opening in the rail fence. Follow the blue blazes 500 yards. The spring is on the left. When the Nalgene bottles are all empty the faith in those directions is sorely tested. But testing those directions is what we do. And when we get confused and take a left where it said take a right, or somehow miss some little detail, and have to go back and check, and do it all over, and wonder, did the people writing this guide know what they were doing? And look! There it is! Cool water hopping over little rocks and pebbles! Something we would surely have passed over on the trail had we not put faith in that guidebook, had we not put it to the test.

It is sweet indeed, as water from a cool spring, when we are hot and thirsty, carrying food on our back and a bag to keep us warm when we lay down under the stars at night. It is sweet to have a guide to where we are in heaven as well as where we are on earth.

Thirty years ago I had know idea where or when to look for the Moon on any given night. Now I do. I don’t have to use timeanddate.com or even my romantic old timey charts, they only confirm my estimate and provide easy access to extremely accurate pinpointing. The real logistics are now well germinated in my mind. My mental map of heaven is almost as comprehensive as the mental map of my body.

I know if the Sun is entering Aquarius, the old sliver of a crescent Moon will rise in Capricorn. The nature of Capricorn is that it always comes up right before Aquarius, that it always appears most southerly on the eastern horizon, and always makes the lowest ark across the sky. The secret, in the days of Pythagoras and Plato, was that we saw it low in Capricorn because we were in the highest part of our daily revolution on tilted Earth, or Gaia. Gamma eta. The word at the root of Genesis and generate. We see any planet low on the horizon in the sign of the goat, because we are as high as we can get with respect to the celestial equator.

We won’t see the sliver moon rising this low until next year. We can see the not quite so old, or skinny Capricorn Moon rise Feb 18, but we’ll have to get up 2 hours earlier (3:57am) to catch it. The charts and east coast astrologers will say it’s in Sagittarius. But here is where numbers help. In Raleigh the Moon will be at 29 Sagittarius when it rises, which is closer to the low tropic than 3 Capricorn where it rose this morn.

For Van in Memphis TN that translates to 3:35am. And check out who it will be near! Mars, Jupiter, Pluto and Saturn. A nice parade of planets traveling through the lower tropic of the ecliptic! We all get to see that, not at once, we have to wait our turn on the giant carnival ride.

Well, I have a new job, not sure when I start. Canvasser for Power Up NC. Who knows how this will affect my vice of blogging.

I guess that’s why I started this post. Thinking about Hercules coming out of hibernation, seeing it rise in the early morning sky after months of being obscured by the Sun, and how the ancients called it ‘waking up.’ I didn’t actually look for Hercules, I saw the Big Dipper over Polaris, so I knew it was in the north east. I also knew since the 14^th hour was crossing the meridian, the !6th-18th hours were rising in the east.

Hercules is a northern constellation stretching from the !6^th to the 18^th hour. But like I said I didn’t look for Hercules; instead I ran over to the parking lot looking for the show stealing Moon hidden behind that massive old live oak. I’ll spot Hercules tomorrow morn. I can probably see it without even leaving my front yard. I’ve been missing the night sky, falling asleep early, or reading under blankets instead of stepping outside. I’m getting a blog post and a few nighttime glimpses in before my work week gets busier.

10:04am Wed Jan 22, 2020

*I’m thinking about folks in southern hemisphere. After all it is part of the same planet. I usually imagine someone viewing the sky from Valdivia Chile, since that’s about the same longitude as Brooklyn NY. They would see the skinny old Moon rising way north of east (Cancer the Crab – from the southern hemisphere the same stretch of the ecliptic that we see low appears high in the sky!)  Also they are facing north instead of south to see the ecliptic, so they see the Moon rising on their right. That, to me, is like the midnight Sun in Alaska - hard to believe without actually seeing.  This link shows how I alter astrodienst charts to look more like the actual sky in the southern hemisphere

10:17am

12:54pm at public library

Inserted the images, made a few changes and now going to post.  Gotta go clean a big old house for some big hearted customers.