A Very Casual Chart Reading

This is a reading for Leela a new friend from an astrology forum.  I start out trying to talk about progressions and then give up and just ramble.

The most far reaching realization that has come to me from meditating on progressions is that we are defined by the first cycles we experience, not just the first moment.  Using only the natal chart and transits, without considering the first cycles, we develop a sense of one moment, incarnated in the native at the minute of birth, encountering other moments as the individual goes through life.  While this leads to astonishing insights, it is not until we consider progressions that we see how the first celestial changes we experience provide a reference to live by as we mature and age in our Earthly bodies.   The short first cycles of the day are our introduction to the longer cycles of the Moon going around Earth and Earth orbiting the Sun.  The first cycles of the Moon going around Earth are our longer primers, giving us a more extensive intro to the Earthly year.

I will only look at secondary progressions in this post.

A day for a year-  before we compare the two cycles let’s take a good look at what happens in a day, in this case a day at winter solstice in the Northern Hemisphere.  The Sun had recently set and the waxing new Moon was fairly high in the western sky at the moment you were born in Durgapur, India. 

In the Northern Hemisphere we look south to observe planets along the ecliptic, so the midheaven at top is due south, and east is on the left side of the chart. 

 Here is a chart for earlier in the day when the solstice Sun was on the MC.

Notice that the vertical line for the meridian is perpendicular to the horizon in the 2nd chart but leans to the west in the first.  The MC is straight up in the chart for midday because Durgapur was at the top of its daily revolution on Earth's tilted axis when it faced the Sun on winter solstice. (Link to page about signs of zodiac on the MC)

By the time you were using your nose and mouth to breath and eat, and the umbilical cord had been severed, Durgapur was half way down as shown by Aries on the MC, and the 12th degree of Cancer was just coming into view in the east.

While a civil day in western culture begins at midnight, we could pick any point in the cycle as the beginning.  Your first day began about an hour after sunset when the 5th, or Scorpio, duad of Cancer was rising.  Google dodecatemoria or duads if you don't know what those are.  I don't have a page for them yet.   You are a responsible spirit, driven to serve your community, with the mask of a canny mother.  You come across as loving but not naive.  

According to the equal house system of division the Moon had just entered the 8th house of investments.  (Link to page about Houses) It was in the 5th or Cancer duad of Pisces; your soul is like a long buried seed that is beginning to imbibe water.  The protective sheath is softened enough that water can enter more freely.  Your soul is diligently forwarding the communications that your executive ego must manage. (I'm leaving out some of the logic behind these statements to make this more readable.  I hope I can remember why I made them if you ask!)

               *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *


I am going to try a more casual approach without deleting that beginning.  I deleted another attempt that may have been helpful if I had saved it.  This little airplane is just not taking off!

What I really want to get to is talking about several dates that interested me.  The first was when progressed Saturn backed into Taurus.  I wish I had saved the pages I wrote about that.  If you do a progressed chart for Aug 16, 1989 (chart is further down) you will see Saturn backed into the very end of Taurus.  At that time your progressed Moon was at 6degrees Scorpio in the 4^th house.  Your AC was still Cancer, but very near the end.  But let’s back up a bit to when P Mars entered Aries.  Whoops I did not do a chart for that.  Your P Mars was 1degree Aries 31minutes and your P Moon was conjunct Saturn July 29, 1977.  OK….I just looked it up ….P Mars had been in Aries since March 25, 1975.  You know what that means.  In your case, as in most, Mars does not change houses in progressed charts.  Mars and the Sun usually stay in the same house throughout progressions.  So you went from being a cobbled warrior, forbidden to use force, to wielding a blunt weapon.  Soon after that transition you had the responsibility mentioned above of P Moon meeting Saturn July 29, 1977.  You were still very young.  Then May 5, 1978 P Mars was opposing P Pluto, not even 7 years old?  And your warrior was fulfilling the mandate of the diplomatic exile in the 3^rd house.  I guess you were young enough that the extra fire did not freak you out as much as it did the people around you.  To have the P Moon around Saturn then (11^th house) looks like public accountability….the first thing that comes to mind is school since you were so young.

Then I was curious about P Venus entering Pisces in Feb 1996 (skipping ahead several years!)  It was still (barely) in the 7^th house.  What a change from asceticism to mysticism.  Like the mind turning to mush.  Values  ….what happens when that self discipline falls by the wayside as I imagine it must when Venus entered Pisces.  In Feb 1996 the P Moon had just met P Sun at 25degrees Capricorn 35  minutes.  If you don’t use duads I think you might like them.  Dodecatemoria is the term in Greek.  It means 12ths in Greek and I can’t remember exactly what duads mean, but they are different words for the same thing.  I hate to send you out into the interwebs but I can't remember the best sites for learning about this.  It is a really cool way of getting more specific about where something is in the zodiac.  I use it all the time.  I hardly ever think of something as just being in a sign or house, dodecatemoria or duads really add the neatest little details to your meditation and they go way back to the early days of astrology. Thinking about them also makes you dizzy.  I say if it doesn’t make you dizzy it’s not real astrology!


Back to Saturn backing into Taurus.  Aug 16, 1989.  I give specific days, but most of these things take weeks at least to unfold if not months.  The last duad of Taurus is Aries.  What I really thought about was how Saturn had reached the beginning of Pluto’s 9^th house before you were born.  Then when Earth came between Sun and Saturn it looked like Saturn backing up, and all that ground appeared to be lost.  I was reading about some history of Bangladesh.  That region is so close to Durgapur.  That looks like what the Vietnam War was for my generation in America.  You were too young to understand what was going on but as an adult you can read the history and use it to understand the behavior of your parents and authority figures.  So you came in at a time when Saturn was backing off from this philosophical (9^th house) relationship and returning to the more difficult 8^th house position with Pluto.  I know next to nothing about history of India.  Here in US the Vietnam War was blowing up in the government’s face in 1967-68 when Uranus met Pluto.  By 1971 the social revolution of students in the streets here and in Mexico was off the ground, it had been out of control for some time.  The older generation was at a serious loss to understand what was going on the in the minds of the youth.  What began as a revolution on campuses had spread though out the whole cultural fabric.  When Saturn reached 3-4degrees Gemini people probably thought there was some way they could finally talk about things and hear each other out.  But when it backed up I’m guessing there must have been some old entrenched problem that resurfaced, something that one or both sides of a struggle were not yet prepared after all to let go. 

When your P Saturn hit Taurus in 1989 you must have experienced something along that line, or felt that in areas where you once could communicate, even though it was with a sobering sense of concern for the outcome, you were able to move the message…..no more….as though the wires are crackling on a radio but the signal just can’t get through.  Geez, radios don't have wires anymore!  The quartz crystals are hotly buzzzing but the signal just won't come through.  How's that?  Meanwhile the P Moon in Scorpio in the 4^th house really wasn’t too keen on giving information away.
I am going to stop here and post this.  I have to work through Friday and will probably need at least 2 days of rest after that.  I have finally figured out most of the puzzle that bedeviled me about the Milky Way and the Greek myths for constellations (aside from zodiac) so distractions should be behind me.
I have several other charts and lots more on my mind.  This is a real mess.  I hope we can sort it out as we move forward.  

Here is the chart for Aug 16, 1989 when Saturn progressed back into Taurus.

 And progressed Venus into Pisces.  Looks like your AC went to Leo about 3 years before that.  

well now I am all revved up but I have a lot of house cleaning to do tomorrow.  What a MESSY beginning!  I hope it will be worth the trouble to read and the long wait! 

 

Mars Entering Cancer

Tomorrow morning (1:04 pm in Greenwich, England) Mars will pass into Cancer, bringing an end to the info mission.  For more than a month Mercury has had ultimate (not counting the unseen creator) rule over most of the planets.  While the Sun was in Gemini, Jupiter in Leo came under the communicator’s influence and Saturn in Sagittarius through Jupiter.  Now that the Sun is in Cancer, and Mars will be too, the pile of planets ruled by Mercury will come under the aegis of the changing Moon.  Aegis is one of my new words from reading Greek mythology.  It sounds like no one is exactly sure what an aegis is; a goatskin shield, or a protective talisman, but it was a must have for heroes on scary missions back in the day.

So beginning tomorrow Mars will be wearing the image of the Moon goddess over its brave shoulder.  To understand how things are going for the one risking all we will look to the Moon, which moves into a new sign every 2 ½ days.  This will be like a resident physician making the rounds in training through all the different specialties of medicine.  The Moon will be at 3degrees Libra so the first 2 ½ days will be in the diplomacy ward, followed by a stint in the invisible spread of corruption ward, the philosophy and music ward and then the Capricorn integrity ward.  Participation in each new sign will require consultation with a different ruling planet.

 

Planets, because they stay in a particular orbit, each have a distinct cycle.   Mercury’s cycle is close to the Sun and fast and associated with communication, which is the principle activity of Gemini and Virgo.  Gemini and Virgo are two steps in the unit cycle of the zodiac where the changes from one degree to the next are minimal and take a keen, methodical eye to distinguish.  It is ironic that they are called mutable signs because they are the final steps toward a major change but are actually refinement of significant changes that have already taken place.  Gemini and Virgo are like taps on the putting green after the wide arc line drives over the golf course.

The Moon’s cycle is faster than Mercury’s and close to Earth instead of the Sun.  It is a very small body, but because it is so close it has a visibly profound effect on Earth.  In the sign Cancer we see all planets go from wax to wane.  It is the turning point in the zodiac where planets go from progressively more time above the horizon to less.  So the Moon rules the sign Cancer.  The body of Luna rules the turning point in the life cycle from receiving to giving.

Mars, the blind hero, goes from sifting through the scattered pieces of a puzzle to moving them around.  Motherhood is a process of trial and error.  The needy new organism sprung from the body is a mystery.  The nurturing blind hero has to try various strategies to support the divine new creature in its path to the future.  Mars in Cancer.  Heroic giving.

We depend on the soldier to save us from catastrophe.  We all have a soldier within that rises up to take action when the future of our existence is most uncertain.  The inability to see what’s coming is scary, and we develop an inner hero to face that darkness.  In Cancer that hero is nurturing life regardless of what he or she cannot see in the future.  

 The last time Mars was in Cancer was July 14- August 28 2013.