August Horoscopes

Aries:  Two years ago, when mars opposed Pluto as it does this month, angry protesters were shouting down U.S. Senators at town hall meetings for health care reform.  The four way wrestling match then was government versus family crossed by technology facing compassion. (Remember death panels?) Passions will ripen every two years over the theme of family, but the tech/compassion dichotomy has morphed to marriage versus individuality.  Your task is to sniff out the truth and advocate honest debate.   

Taurus:  The party is just warming up, and peaks on the 15^th.   The love you feel among friends will warm your heart for a long time to come.  On the 22^nd, your coach turns into a perfect pumpkin; so, no worries about too much fun.

Gemini:  You’ve got some paper work through the 7^th, and though the pushy presence from last month clears out on the 3rd, Jupiter remains dogging your steps with boring stuff that fascinates neither of you.  He can’t leave you alone, but note how he makes the mundane fun with scathingly brilliant ideas.

Cancer:  When Mark Twain wrote about life as a river boat pilot on the Mississippi, he gave vivid descriptions of whole sections of land swept away by the river from one trip to the next.  Experienced pilots were indispensable as the only people with intimate knowledge of where a boat could get caught and damaged on hidden obstacles.  You will be challenged Aug 9&10, 16&17 and the 25^th to safely navigate strong emotional currents.

Leo:  Anything special happen Aug 2003? Like an amazing friendship, that out of the blue opened your eyes to new horizons?   Something a bit less dramatic is in store for you this month.  It won’t be as unexpected as 2003, but you’ll get plenty of appreciation and a sense of inner peace.  You will also get a nice boost to your idealistic tendencies.

Virgo:   With Jupiter in Taurus since May chances are good you are enjoying some new physical activity this summer.  Exercise gives Virgo a mental jolt that’s just as potent as a good book of philosophy.   You can expect to be faithful to this regimen through next May, so don’t hesitate to take advantage of the continuing opportunities for entertainment this month, especially around the 14^th.   The most spiritual thing a Virgo can do is wear something colorful and radiate pleasure.

Libra:  There is not whiskey in the water; this month people really want to hear what you have to say.  The attention of the audience will peak around the 18^th, but you have until the 21^st and then venus begins her retreat in the nunnery.

Scorpio:  The invitations to converse that tormented you last month will feel like a welcome opportunity to discover new ideas this month.   Mars advances from garrulous Gemini to prostrate Cancer, where it is weak as a critically wounded warrior.  So why do I expect this month to be easier?  Scorpio frowns on recreational conversation like society censors sex and death; but enjoys discussing the transformative power of strong emotions.

Sagittarius:   The only way to study the wheel of fortune is to board it like a carnival ride and spin until your time is up; watching others scream with delight is like reading the math book before the test instead of picking up a pencil and solving the equations.  This month you explore how people stash the fickle mover’s blessings with the amused perspective of a true philosopher.

Capricorn:   These really are hard times for Capricorn and this month the passions are peaking.  (See dates in Cancer.)  Hold your head high and know that no matter what is taken from you, you will come out stronger.   Dignity is yours; exercise your power to choose it.

Aquarius:  Whatever brought confusion and a sense of unreality to your life, from 1998 through this past March, returns Aug 4 and stays until January for a reflective epilogue. Meanwhile, your sense of humor and ability to command the audience’s attention will work diplomatic wonders.

Pisces:  You should be to the point now where you can talk about the drama instead of dealing with it.  With venus and mercury meeting the sun in Leo (Aug 16^th is the big day) it’s a good time to add some entertaining hyperbole to the telling of your adventures.  We could so use some twisted fairy tales.

Mechanics of the Chart

The chart has a fixed inner  wheel divided into twelve parts, called houses, and an outer wheel (bottom figure) which rotates clockwise around the houses every 24 hours.

The outer revolving circle is the zodiac.

.   The twelve signs of the zodiac cross the ascendent every 24 hours

Every time we see the bowl of sky rotate once from east to west, we see the sun step one degree in the opposing direction.  (There are 360° in the zodiac; twelve signs of 30°each.)   In the northern hemisphere we see the ecliptic in the southern sky, so, unlike road maps, east is on the left and west on the right:  the sun rises on the left side of the horizon, ascends through houses 12-10 to the midheaven at noon, and sets on the right side of the chart (west) in the evening.

Think of all the planets as being attached to the outer wheel as it rotates around the inner wheel of houses.  

In the hand drawn chart above, 4°♋45’ is coming up on the eastern horizon and the sun is at 25°♒58’ in the 8^th house.  If I had made the post 4 hours later, the sun would have been about to set (followed by Neptune, the moon and venus). When I did publish the post at 1:44pm, Pluto was setting.  

Pluto has been in Capricorn since 2009 and will not cross into Aquarius until 2023; it's a very distant object that takes a long time to orbit the sun.

A 5:44 publishing time would have put 24°♌43’ rising, and mars, instead of being in the first house, would have been above the horizon in the last house.

 

In the four hours after I published my first post, Mars rose, Mercury set, the Sun advanced to two minutes behind Neptune, and the Moon went from 3°Pisces 09’ to 5°Pisces 07’ and overtook Venus.

Why Planets go through the Last House First

You might wonder why Sun and the other planets go backwards through the houses; in other words why is the 12^th house the first place we see the Sun when it rises?  Shouldn’t it be called the first house?

Actually houses are a relatively modern addition to astrology charts.  Originally the planets were spaced out around a square page more or less in a circle with their zodiac signs and sometimes the degree of the sign indicated.  Houses come from the Greek ‘topoi’ which in old manuscripts could mean a couple of things.

In one usage, a planet was ‘located’ a certain number of signs from another planet, for instance the Sun in Aquarius is the 7^th sign from Mars in Leo.  This is usually translated as the Sun being in Mar’s 7^th mansion or 7^th house.  The second way ‘topoi’ is seen used is where we get the modern concept of houses;  locating a planet a certain number of signs from the ascendant.  In the Birth of a Blog chart the Aquarian Sun is in the 8^th sign from the Cancer Ascendent  (counting Cancer as the first).  Another way to think of it is that Aquarius will be the 8^th sign to rise after Cancer.   We went from a sign being located 8^th in line to ascend, in manuscripts before the Renaissance, to a sign covering the 8^th house in the modern chart.

If you find this difficult to understand you are not alone.  All you have to do is go to the Astrodienst  Extended Chart Selection area for picking the kind of house division system you want to use- the 15 choices listed will give you an idea of just how unsettled the modern concept of houses is. 

The thing to remember is that houses indicate the order in which things appear above the ascendant.   As soon as a planet or sign rises it goes to the back of the line and must follow the rest of the wheel around before it can show itself again on the eastern horizon. 

For more on houses with a couple of example charts go to Houses

Sun, Moon and Earth

Spirit, Soul and Existence

The circle, the crescent and the cross are the three basic symbols of the planets.  Spirit, soul and existence are the root words of astrology.  We each live in a physical body that has limits in time and space.  We each carry a flame originated from the sun.  We come from past generations and our lives are a result of countless events that led up to the present moment; so too, everything we do affects the world we inhabit-we are sentient drops in the river of life.  In astrology we call the consciousness that we are connected to all events past and present ‘the soul’. 

The circle has a dot in the middle.  When I draw simplified maps of the solar system with the sun at the center, I skip the dot and draw little rays, like blades of grass or a comic character’s hair.  A circle with a dot for the sun in the middle: circles with dots, x’s and o’s, who can resist the promise of objective accuracy offered by a coordinate system?

We are employing a language that has survived thousands of years, since before calculus, the coordinate system and algebra; it is the great- grandparent of math and geometry.  What a thrill.  Oh well, as a Taurus it makes me feel much better about living a very imperfect life; I see myself as a mini chaos bumping around in a big stirred up soup of chaos, we’re all stirred up, or sometimes we’re bubbling.

A lot of people get squirmy at the thought of fate, or that their lives might be governed by it.  They want to believe they choose when they relinquish responsibility and that they can always be consciously controlling their lives through their own will.  And I say “Girl, you’re so fast!”  I know that’s old fashioned; nowadays we say “You go Girl!”  But you know I think it’s great to strengthen the will and exercise consciousness as much as possible; I’m all for that.

But sometimes, we all have to face the fact of existence that we are basically corpuscles with consciousness; we find ourselves trapped in endless tunnels from which we find no escape.  Sometimes, life gets the better of each of us.  Why some and not others?  How do the circumstances differ? 

How circumstances differ is what astrology is all about.  To see things from a philosophical point of view we must employ a language that facilitates analyzing an event from all points of view; past, present and future.  Astrologers assigned each category of experience a mascot; so, for instance, what we know about lions or rams helps us imagine what philosophers over two thousand years ago were saying about the fifth (Leo) or first (Aries) sign of the zodiac.

We have a good idea of what they thought about the moon and how they, as a culture, viewed its cycles.  The same is true of the sun; and though some of this cultural treasury is celebrated in modern holidays, the stories that describe the rest of the planetary cycles have been left behind in the industrious scramble to reshape our environment. 

Time and space is how we physically get a hold on existence.  If you wonder about the idea behind time and space, how your ancestors thought about it, what they thought was the purpose of life; then you are wondering about astrology.  It is more about analyzing our own behavior in the context of events, than it is about reshaping existence to improve our lives.

When we turn to astrology we turn to the sun, the moon and earth’s horizon; we think of how the existence we have now is born of countless cycles of the earth circling the sun.  How many times has the cycle of leaning our head into the fire given way to leaning away and warming our feet as we make our watery rocky way around the sun?  How many times have people on earth passed from light to darkness without a candle and match, or a switch to flip?  How did the sun give birth to us?

How does the moon change our world from day to day?  How does the sun change the moon?  How are we all connected?  These are the questions astrology answers, this is the gift of our ancestors.

Follow the sun, follow the moon, look at the real horizon.