Meaning of the Upcoming Venus Occultation

This rare transit – described as Venus passing across the Sun as in a minor eclipse – will occur on June 6, 2012 (my father’s 80th birthday). These rare transits occur in pairs that are 8 years apart, separated by a long interval of 121 years. For the past 2000 years, they have only occurred in Gemini and Sagittarius.

WHAT DOES A VENUS OCCULTATION REALLY MEAN?

The following represents my best guess. Venus strongest associations are love and money. She is normally associated with pastel colors – light pink, pale blue, faint peach. Her colors are said to become vivid during occulation – very hot pink, vivid tangerine-orange , shocking purples, etc…

Sure enough, the fashion industry has followed suit, and my local Target is full of neon tangerine and electric pink clothes. None of this stuff is going to sell very well, I feel, and a lot of it will be deeply discounted before the actual date of the occultation. There is something overdone or extreme about the energy of Venus during an occultation, and the consumer senses this.

Venus will be retrograde between mid-May and June 23, 2012 as well. This means consumers will get a good deal on goods that others don’t recognize the value of – it’s a great time to hit the yard sales. But this isn’t the time to shop for new products. My guess is retailers will be seeing a lot of returns.

The Venus occultation highlights the myth of Venus, so stories related to her may play out in the lives of those around us or in the national news. Women may leave deficient men the way Venus left Hephaestus, or handsome young men may end up dying under sacrificial circumstances, recalling the love of Venus for her beloved Adonis, who she tried to protect but ultimately could not. (The ancient Greeks held an annual sacred ritual called the Adonai to commemorate adolescent and young adult males who died prematurely.)

Not all of these men will necessarily be young. A few days ago, Micah True, the 58-year-old extreme-distance runner who was featured in the book, “Born To Run”, set out for a routine 12 mile run in a remote area of New Mexico’s Gila Wilderness and disappeared.

My favorite photo of Micah True is on the right.

As I write these words, his cause of death is still undetermined. But two things stand out in my mind: True was stunningly gorgeous as a young man, and many people remarked on the purity of his facial expression as an older man. As a long-distance runner, he was a seeker who was constantly motivated by an inner quest or search. Adonai was a young hunter who adored the hunt and was killed by a wild boar that he failed to kill first.

PEOPLE WHO COME BACK INTO OUR CONSCIOUSNESS FROM THE PAST

Since this is the last Venus Occultation for more than 100 years, people who lived out the myth of Venus on a wide scale may return to our attention even though they have passed away. For some reason, Marilyn Monroe has been on my mind a lot lately, ever since I saw the incredible portrait of her by Michelle Williams in the Oscar-nominated “My Week With Marilyn”.

Michelle Williams somehow taps the myth of Venus and Adonis herself – recall her love of the doomed Heath Ledger, and also the beautiful tangerine-orange dress she wore to the Oscars which looked stunning on her but would have looked awful on nearly everyone else.

Michelle Williams amazed us with her ability to "channel" Marilyn Monroe. She was said to be the only actress director Simon Curtis wanted to cast for the role. This author can't help but notice her birthplace in Kalispell, MT (spell of Kali).

As I said, I can’t seem to get away from Marilyn Monroe. I’ve rented her movie, “Some Like It Hot”, even though I’ve never wanted to watch it before, and I haven’t watched her other films either. I did a little research in preparation for an article, but keep putting it off because I don’t have time to read a good biography. I know Marilyn Monroe had a tight Venus-Chiron conjunction, and that her Sun was closely joined to an intimidating fixed star, as was her Saturn – the focal point of her natal horoscope. Yet what keeps coming up over and over in my mind is not Venus but Lilith.

Lilith was said to be a beautiful woman and a shape-shifter who was associated with the death of babies and was also said to be at the head of armies – and Marilyn Monroe fulfilled each of these associations in her own life. Since I hadn’t been paying attention, I went back and re-checked the asteroids in her natal horoscope. Sure enough, she had Black Moon Lilith partile conjunct the royal fixed star Regulus.

It occurs to me that I really ought to try to write about Marilyn in time for UAC 2012, which will start just two weeks before the Venus occultation. Perhaps Lilith should be explored as a darker version of Venus, and maybe her myth comes to the fore during a Venus occultation as well. These are only my speculations, but we will see…

UPDATE ON MICAH TRUE

The New York Times published a eulogy for him on Sunday, May 20, 2012. It is titled, "Caballo Blanco's Last Run: The Micah True Story". It is well worth reading.

The AP reports that he died of heart disease, more specifically an enlarged heart. This symptom is associated with very thin long-distance runners of both sexes.

Thoughts on Pluto in Capricorn (and Aquarius)

I’D LOVE TO HEAR YOUR THOUGHTS, READERS. PLEASE LEAVE SOME COMMENTS.

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Pluto has been in Capricorn for three years now, and we’ve all seen what it has to offer.
It’s entry into Capricorn inaugurated the largest economic meltdown in the United States since the Great Depression, and I think most American adults will remember how their financial picture changed in September, 2008 for the rest of our lives.

If any metal out of the earth passed Pluto’s smell test, it has to be gold, which climbed from roughly $400.00 an ounce in 2005 to more than $1300.00 an ounce today. Pluto should be fascinating every astrologer right about now.






Buffalo Gold Coin






This article takes a closer look at what Pluto in Capricorn actually means for many Americans, and how its trends will drive the future events of Pluto in Aquarius. As the Sun moves into Aquarius this year, I took a day off work because I felt like I HAD TO WRITE this article.

SATURN

Capricorn is all about Saturn. Saturn interacts synergistically with Pluto, and Pluto manifests more strongly with Capricorn. A lot of smart thinkers have pointed out different facets of this idea. Raven Kaldera (see the blog entry) observed that Pluto delivers us into Saturn’s hands. Pluto in Capricorn values the treasures of the earth, anything from minerals to buried treasure to the Periodic Table of the Elements in chemistry. Someone on another blog pointed out that lead is the only metal used to contain deadly plutonium, and lead is one of the metals associated with Saturn. Astrologer Maurice Fernandez also observed that Pluto in Capricorn is “sixteen years of Lent”.

THE MYTH OF PLUTO AND PERSEPHONE IN OUR DAILY LIVES


Jeff Bridges as Pluto/Odin in "True Grit", a movie made by the Coen brothers in 2010. Odin is depicted as wearing an eye patch over his bad eye.




Pluto in Capricorn determines the nature of the stories that you see in your daily newspaper - everything from the porn explosion, older men marrying or having sex with very young women, the emphasis on the Hollywood careers of very young movie starlets who are still children, the sexuality of pre-teen girls(with almost no attention being paid to pre-teen boys),
14 year old Hailee Steinfield as Persephone in the film, "True Grit"







the unearthing of long-forgotten buried treasure, the high price of food in the developing world, and the revealing (or “unearthing”) of wide-scale military, diplomatic and corporate corruption by Julian Assange and his organization, Wikileaks. Nearly every one of these topics is associated in some way with the myth of Pluto and Persephone.


A sharp-talking Persephone gets her Pluto in the Coen brothers' movie, "True Grit". It's a clean movie. Pluto doesn't take advantage of her.


By energizing Capricorn, Pluto has an effect on the way all other planets manifest in Capricorn. Saturn is strong in Capricorn, and we have already seen how industries involving conservation and farming have more than their fair share of the media’s attention at the moment. Less attention has been paid to industries associated with Jupiter. Jupiter is fallen in Capricorn, so professions associated with Jupiter are really going to be in trouble for the next decade (more on that later).

DEMETER IS PART OF THE MYTH, TOO

Demeter doesn't get a good rap in the myth of Pluto and Persephone. She is depicted as having an extraordinarily close relationship with her daughter but she also smothers her. How well does this turn out for Persephone? She ends up married to the Underworld CEO. (There's also that little matter of rape or ravishment, depending on your take on it.)



"Helicopter" moms are Demeter's modern manifestation. Bitch mother Amy Chua just made the cover of the Jan 22, 2011 issue of Time Magazine, I see.

My Note: Ivy League dominatrix Amy Chua makes the case for Demeter in no uncertain terms. Her memoir has caused a splash, because it implies that China and its children will soon rule the world because of their competitive mothers who demand the best.


Little attention is being paid to boys at the moment, which may be a good thing, because it will allow them to grow up without having to participate in an archtypal energy pattern. At least one boy who is effeminate enough to be able to tap the Persephone myth has managed to make a fortune, however. Justin Bieber will represent Best Buy during the Superbowl - companies are eager to cash in on the drawing power of young girls (or those who appear to be girls).



Justin or Justine?

My friend's daughter posted this photo of herself dressed as Justin Bieber on Facebook. The Persephone archetype seems fairly obvious.






CAPRICORN IS ALL ABOUT THE OLD-FASHIONED

Everything old-fashioned has come back around. Folks are making their own jam, distilling their own fruit-flavored brandy (shhhhhhhhh), crocheting their own shawls, or keeping chickens again and making a big deal out of selling truly fresh eggs. Small farmers are finally making money again, although most find that selling at the farmers’ markets is more lucrative and less aggravating than participating in community supported agriculture (CSA’s). Most Americans are tapping this energy in some way. I started knitting in 2009, and I love it. Knitting is wonderfully portable, and it helps me fill all the “dead time” in my day that annoyed me to no end because it went to waste and I felt I had nothing to show for it.

On Friday night, a knitting circle gets together at Border Books in Frederick, MD, and from week to week we see as many as fifteen women show up – this never would have happened just a few years ago when Pluto was in Sagittarius, because the same people were probably too busy renovating their houses, and also because just a few years ago, knitting wasn’t “cool”.
Toronto soccer-mom Stephanie Pearl McPhee, a yarn goddess who started a blog called “The Yarn Harlot”, was still “under the radar” during Pluto in Sagittarius. Now she’s a best-selling author who can shut down traffic in a small city when the word gets out that she is doing a workshop at a wool convention.

The motivation behind all this has to do with a revolt against the computer. Americans love our technology, and we delight in our I Pods and our Blackberries and our Mac Book Pros, but on some level, we are also sick of these things. There’s a real yen for handmade things that are imperfect and made in small batches because, well…., those things are the exact opposite of the computer I work on every day.

PLUTO AND THE POOR

An odd thing is happening in America, and it’s a difficult thing to see. Pluto isn’t kind to the poor or the unemployed, and the gulf between rich and poor is an abyss gaping wider by the day. While the official unemployment rate is stuck at 9.6%, the unofficial rate of the unemployed, those working part-time jobs while they look for full-time jobs, and those who have stopped looking and are no longer being counted is conservatively estimated at 17%. None of these people have enough money to make ends meet, let along enjoy what life has to offer. Capricorn is an ambitious, ladder-climbing sign, so the poor don’t get our attention at the moment – they’ll muddle through somehow, I suppose!

PLUTO IS WHERE THE MONEY’S AT…

The wealth at the top has become rather obvious to everyone. What’s left of Wall St. is doing better than ever before. 500 or so partners at Goldman Sachs have become extraordinarily wealthy in the last two years, despite the fact that few if any actually drew a salary. These Plutos (87% of current partners are men because few gals are promoted) cashed out more than $20 billion in Goldman shares in the past 12 years, according to results of a recent study. The Chief Pluto and CEO, Lloyd Blankfein, cashed out $93.8 million since 1999, and remains sitting on a tidy pile of some $355 million – not bad for a boss of a company that doesn’t actually make a tangible product.

PLUTO IS ALL ABOUT HIDDEN WEALTH AND OUR CHILDREN (SOCIOLOGY 101 FOR OUR TIMES)


Pluto for planet-hood, or Pluto for parenthood? You decide.


Wealthy Americans are having more children than an earlier generation of wealthy folks did. When I was young, yuppie women wanted a career outside the home as well as a family, and all the upper-middle class parents in the community where I attended high school had two kids, or maybe three. Solidly middle-class adults who came from working-class backgrounds like my parents, on the other hand, had lots of children. I was the oldest of five, and households with seven or eight children in my childhood neighborhood were not uncommon.

Now the wealthy are having three and four children, or even five and six, because wealthy women are no longer as concerned about having an identity outside the home – most of them worked until some point in their late twenties or early-to-mid thirties, and then happily quit for good, while some of them manage to have it all with lucrative, non-traditional careers that can be managed out of the house.

It’s the middle class where a revolution is occurring, one that doesn’t get much attention. The middle class now is afraid to have kids. One child is the new norm. Middle class parents are afraid for the future, even if their jobs are stable. They know that their kids are going to have to compete against the children of the better-connected wealthy for jobs, and that four years of college at a public university now costs $100,000. Middle class parents with a sharp-as-a-tack first born child are eyeballing the price tag on an Ivy League University – currently $260,000 for four years with limited financial aid. By the time the kid grows up, a four year education at a public university education could cost $200,000, and an Ivy League education will top out around $500,000 – that’s right, $125,000 a year!

If the child is graduating during the next decade of Pluto in Capricorn, they will be lucky to get a starting salary of $35,000 a year, if they find a job at all. Middle class parents aren’t stupid – they’ve done the math. College is no longer worth the money, but society’s view on the necessity of a college degree hasn’t changed yet. So one child is all they can afford.

The only children of the middle class are poised to inherit quite a bit of money, however. There’s quite a bit of hidden wealth in the current middle class that will only become apparent as these only children grow up. If these only children marry each other and combine resources, they may enjoy a wealthy lifestyle even if their earnings remain middle-class. In terms of inherited money, the next generation of families will benefit even if only one parent is an only child.

In Vedic astrology, Jupiter is a karaka, or indicator, for children. Jupiter is fallen in Capricorn, but is said to do well in Aquarius. Surfing the web for this article led me to read Lynn Koiner's astrological research, and a respondent who goes by the name of “Raz” supplied the missing piece of astrological data for the trend regarding children noted above.

Raz writes,

“Rearding Pluto cycle and the USA: while transiting Pluto will enter Aquarius in 2025, progressed Jupiter, in the US chart, will turn direct after more than a hundred years, (US progressed Jupiter is retrograde since 1906). These are just my own thoughts: since Jupiter is the lord of the US chart this is important. Progressed Jupiter is wondering around in Cancerbetween the eighth and seventh house….

JUPITER IS FALLEN IN CAPRICORN, AND SO ARE ITS PROFESSIONS!

Jupiter does not do well in Saturn’s sign of Capricorn, and the two professions most associated with Jupiter are education and the law. Teachers are under siege at the moment, particularly if they teach in under-performing, inner-city schools, where they are blamed immediately if a child fails to learn – the current belief is that student failure must be due to shitty teaching instead of student laziness or unwillingness to do the difficult work of learning, because the teacher is a scapegoat (Capricorn is the sign of the scapegoat).

The other profession under assault is the law. Newly graduated law students are defaulting on student loans of up to $300,000 because there are so few entry-level jobs available in law. Many of them are bitter because they will never be able to repair their credit or obtain a home mortgage to buy a home (Capricorn is associated with the past, one’s roots, and the home). It isn’t just law students, although they are the most vocal about their plight. A lot of young people have gotten totally screwed by education lenders.

Unless we change the law to permit students who have defaulted on education debt to discharge this debt in a bankruptcy, a whole new group of young people will never be able to rebuild from the catastrophic effects of this recession. For as long as these young people remain in the U.S., their wages will be garnished and their tax refunds will be seized. These students have had their entire careers destroyed before they ever had a chance to begin them, all because bankers and money-lenders (represented by Saturn) are so busy making money off of poorly regulated education lending. Allowing students who default the same legal protection available to homeowners who lose their homes would kill the education-lending cash cow for good, so the Plutos of Saturn are fighting it tooth-and-nail.

MORE PROBLEMS WITH THE KIDS…

A Capricorn era magnifies the power of beautiful young girls, represented by Persephone, but other children are being hurt before they are even born in ways that are still “under the radar”.

ADD, ADHD, and autism are all topics that engage our awareness, but nobody is talking about the sheer number of children with learning disabilities that are clogging the American public school system. Some of these special education students, known derogatorily as “SPED” kids, have clearly defined disabilities, but others have a combination of learning problems that don’t even fit a precise category of disability. Many of these children are being born to parents who had mild learning disabilities that did not prevent them from becoming functioning adults with jobs; the same cannot be said for their children who are experiencing more severe, lifelong disabilities.

Why is this happening to our kids? High levels of carcinogens in the parental diet may affect sex cells and the developing fetus, and chronic exposure to chemicals in drinking water probably play a role as well. Another cause is the utter failure of public health authorities to convey the message that having twins is not “low-risk”. Any child born prematurely has a much higher likelihood of learning disabilities, and twins born to mothers over 35, many of whom underwent IVF, are particularly likely to arrive prematurely. Overall in the United States, when conceived naturally, 11 pregnancies in 1000 produce twins. Principally as a result of fertility treatments, 32 pregnancies out of 1000 now result in twins, and 60% of these children are born prematurely. Why do so many kids have learning disabilities? Do the math.

Should the birth of these children continue unabated, we may be forced to consider genetic manipulation as early as the mid-21st century, although it seems unthinkable now. This may possibly prove to be the dark side of Pluto in Pisces (2043 – 2067). Pisces is normally depicted as intertwining fish immersed in fluid - very symbolic of our DNA – and Pluto has a transforming quality to it.

WHO LET THE OLD GODS OUT? PLUTO-IN-CAPRICORN BRINGS BACK THE ANCIENT BEINGS…

The strangest thing I’ve noticed about the last three years is that angels and demons seem to be more palpable. This past Christmas, candy-cane demon horns were available at my local CVS – I bought a pair, and quickly noticed that everybody on my Facebook page had found some excuse for getting a pair, too. I went to Borders Books, and books with demons on the cover (or angels that looked a little like demons) popped out at me. One was a book on dinosaurs, and another was a new translation of Milton’s Paradise Lost. A magazine with Lady Gaga on the front of it caught my eye – I opened it to find an article featuring her with demonic looking back-up dancers, and fans she calls “Little Monsters”.

The most recent issue of The Mountain Astrologer Magazine came in the mail. It had a beautiful poem by Alice O Howell titled, “Pluto: My Descent”. The poem was originally published in a collection that came out in, you guessed it, 2010. In it, she recounts a dream-journey descent into Hades, and an encounter with Pluto (it is up to each individual reader to decide whether this dream actually happened to the author, or whether the poem is merely a poem). The most powerful part of the poem is when she makes love to Pluto, although she deliberately leaves this part out, making us even more aware of the poem’s invisible climax.

The demonic world is full of misshapen, ugly, powerful beings that frighten us. In fact, I’m not sure that their greater access to us during Pluto in Capricorn is a good thing.

O Howell writes, “The cavern walls are streaming
with tears and flashing with slime
and the usual assortment
of creeping red-eyed monsters are
mewling about, obviously not housebroken.

Yet sex with one of the old gods was said to be incredible – this was the one way in which they connected with humans in a way that delighted us and did not frighten us.
Old tales of witches who confessed to having sex with demons flitted through my mind as I read this poem.

In Lynn Koiner’s article on Pluto in Capricorn, a respondent who goes by the name of “Sai Grafio” must have perceived something similar, for he also noted the following:

The Bible tells us of pre-Antediluvian patriarchs who lived to almost a thousand years and some were giants. The legends say there were men of renown but the knowledge only led to wickedness. Titans ruled and along with the fallen angels, Nephilim and the like, they were condemned to Tartarsus.

The old gods are making their presence felt, and a lot of them feel suspiciously like demons. The angels don’t seem to be as active in this era of Capricorn, or maybe it is just that I don’t perceive them as easily – I don’t doubt their existence – something has to hold the demons in check!

PLUTO IN AQUARIUS 2024 – 2043

Quick – what do you associate with Pluto in Aquarius? Here’s a quick summary of what’s circulating out there among the futurists:

An era of technological revolution.

We finally get our Constitution back.
(This means different things to different folks.)

The collective is more important than the individual or the family
or the corporation. A return to communal living that isn’t just for
aging hippies anymore.

Computer terrorists – hackers run amok!

Babies born from a scheduled C-section are delivered between 8am and
noon, placing their personal planets in the 10th, 11th, and 12th houses
(the collective houses) of the horoscope. These children will become
adults as Pluto enters Aquarius.

The last one on children born from scheduled C-sections sparked my interest. Carrie Cooperman wrote an article on this topic in the Aug/Sept issue of The Mountain Astrologer. We don’t know what percentage these are of U.S. births, but the author mentions that these children may possibly be more cooperative and collaborative, and more likely to be oriented toward the local and global community. For my part, I would love to know whether women who only plan on having one child are more likely to schedule a C-section, but we don’t have this data available either.

My niece was born from a scheduled C-section in the final year of Pluto in Sagittarius (2007). She is a bright and cheerful four year old, with all of her personal planets except Mars in the 11th and 12th natal houses. Her loving aunt isn’t much inclined to worry, but the thought has occurred to her that these kids will have a strong technological bent, but may also be too swayed by their friends, and too focused on doing anything to be popular, particularly if they are only children.

The other thought that went through my mind is that girls with all of their personal planets in the 10th House tend to marry the CEO – and their own achievements usually pale by comparison. Fortunately, my niece was born a little too early in the morning for this configuration.

Here’s what I think will happen during Pluto in Aquarius:

College educations will finally become so expensive that both
corporations and the middle class will finally change their minds about
the necessity of a college degree.

The coin of the realm will shift from gold to electricty.
Expect the price of electricity to spike sharply and remain high as Pluto
enters Aquarius. Companies that make back-up generators will also do
very well.

Pallas Athene is associated with Pluto in Aquarius, and her myth will
replace the myth of Pluto and Persephone in our consciousness.

HERE IS WHAT I WOULD LIKE TO SEE HAPPEN IN PLUTO IN AQUARIUS (2024-2043)

Education is how the collective shapes the individual, and education as we know it will be totally transformed by Pluto’s transit through Aquarius. Young people coming of age after 2024, or possibly toward the end of the period in 2043, may attend college courses that interest them, but they will no longer have to get a college degree in order to get a good job. Obtaining a specific technological expertise will get these kids a job, and you don’t need a college degree for that.

Ivy League schools will still be around, because interacting with an elite collective in one location is what gets you a job if you attend one of these schools. Medical schools will still train students on cadavers in one location. Law schools might even stage a comeback, as Jupiter gains strength in Aquarius. In general, though, students will have more options. Four consecutive years of training before accepting a job will hopefully no longer be a rigid requirement for these kids.

Online education currently has a number of drawbacks, but the demand for online education is going to reward colleges and universities that eliminate the drawbacks. The rest will simply go out of business. Look for a lot more flexibilty and detachment related to the high school and college experience once Pluto enters Aquarius.

The powerful generation from Pluto in Leo calls themselves "The Greatest Generation", a byword for elitism. Pluto in Aquarius will be an extremely anti-elitest era. Expect the largest cultural shifts to occur in education, where elitism is bred to begin with.

ONE FINAL WORD ON PALLAS ATHENE…

The Greek goddess Pallas Athene was a warrior, and an unmarried woman who maintained her independence from men. The city-state of Athens was dedicated to her.

As her energy replaces Pluto’s during Pluto in Aquarius, women will likely be allowed combat positions in the military. A woman with a strong combat record may become the first female President of the United States. At the very least, the first female President is likely to have a military background of some sort. Her election may inaugurate the Pluto-in-Aquarius era, much as Obama's landmark election occured just as Pluto entered Capricorn.


Temple of Pallas Athene at Delphi.


Women will still marry. Pallas Athene was not a feminist in our sense of the word, and the fact that she remained unmarried does not mean that women won’t marry during Pluto in Aquarius. But single motherhood may tick back up, because the Sun represents fatherhood, and it is fallen in Aquarius.


Pallas Athene, Venus, and Juno by Hans von Aachen



Pallas Athene was known for leadership and detachment from men. Women who aren't married, widows, divorced women, and wives who are perceived as independent of their spouses are going to dominate the consciousness once Pluto-in-Capricorn is over. This is a very different dynamic from the current focus on demanding mothers, powerful old men, and pre-pubescent and adolescent girls.

A lot of barriers to female achievement and advancement will finally fall once Pallas Athene's energy predominates, in what will otherwise be a fairly conservative era. Yet the irony is that feminists won't be able to take credit for the upsurge in female achievement, just as traditional black leaders were not able to take credit for Obama's election.



SOURCES

For a source on Wall St. wealth:

Craig, Suzanne and Dash, Eric.
“Study Points to a Windfall for Goldman Partners”, New York Times, Jan 18 2011.

Source of quotes by “Raz” and “Sai Grafio”:

Lynn Koiner's Astrological Research

For a source on severe financial hardship experienced by young lawyers:

Segal, David. “Is Law School a Losing Game?”, New York Times, Jan 8, 2001.

For a source of statistics on twin births:

Thiernstrom, Melanie.“Meet the Twiblings”, New York Times Magazine, December 29, 2010.

For a source on the poem, “Pluto: My Descent”:

O Howell, Alice. From the Archives of the Heart, Lindisfarne Books, Great Barrington, MA, 2010. Republished in The Mountain Astrologer Magazine, Issue #155, Feb/March, 2011.

For a source on the astrology of babies born from scheduled C-sections:

Cooperman, Carrie. “Changing a Baby’s Birthday”, The Mountain Astrologer Magazine, Issue #152, Aug/Sept, 2010.

Jupiter in Aries...will you look at that dress?

We're going to be drowning in red this year, now that Jupiter is in Aries. Take a look at the gown Michelle wore while visiting China with her husband recently. Oh, I was in love with a dress...



If you've been itching to wear scarlet and crimson, this is the year to do it. You won't stick out like a sore thumb this year, because all around you, folks will be picking up on Jupiter's color energy in Aries, and doing the same thing.

Jupiter shifted from Pisces to Aries right around December, 2010. Did anyone notice those deep, rich blues that bordered on purple? That was Pisces blue morphing into Aries red. It lasted about a month.

When Jupiter shifts out of Aries at the end of 2010, we may see darker reds and even some true purples, as the color wheel swings over to robin's egg blue of Jupiter in Taurus. Once again, it will only last about a month.

One other thing: I was wondering if the color pink would tap the energy of Aries along with all these vivid reds. But I haven't seen much of this.

"Mystery" Horoscope

This horoscope does not have a known time of birth. It belongs to a man who arguably has become the most well-known member of my graduating class of Walt Whitman High School Class of 1988. He is now a comedian and performance artist who lives in LA and goes by the name of Bad Ass Frank.

Here is a link to his website:
www.badassfrank.com

Be sure to read some of his articles, which are wonderfully funny. Frank is no feminist. In fact, he is currently "channeling" Pluto in Capricorn to the core, and has a beautiful "Persephone" named Lisa Marie to prove it. According to Frank, she is 17 years younger than he is. He appears very devoted to Lisa, just as Hades was devoted to Persephone.

Frank wrote a book called "Pimpin' Aint Easy", which is available on the website. Most pimps are too busy dominating their girls to be funny, but Frank made plenty of money with one foot planted in a seamy subculture, and the other foot in more respectable mainstream media. I learned a lot about porn from reading this book. I also noticed how much writing craft goes into making porn into literature...it takes more mental effort and careful editing than one might assume.

Originally, I posted this "Mystery Horoscope" on the forum at www.skyscript.co.uk, Deborah Houlding's website. Readers there had little interest in a horoscope with no birth time, and lost no time in telling me so. However, my description of the native and the resulting comments is interesting reading, if I may toot my own horn a little.

Look for the "Mystery Horoscope" thread under "Nativities and General Astrology" in the forum at www.skyscript.co.uk

By the way, Bad Ass doesn't like astrology or astrologers, and loses no opportunity when it comes to mocking us or having fun at our expense. So I'm sure he won't mind seeing himself on a blog like this. If he doesn't sue me, he'll find a way to roast me.

Which Vedic Techniques Actually Work?

Beginners in Vedic astrology get exposed to so many different Vedic techniques, but a lot of novices may wonder how many of them “actually work”. This is a good question from a sharp mind – because Vedic wisdom was collected from respected sages over the centuries in India, but it was also a racket in which techniques of questionable value were passed down from father to son in order to preserve the reputation of families who did astrology for a living. Over the centuries, useful techniques got mixed up with those that don’t appear to work very often, and it is now a challenge for modern Vedic astrologers to figure out the difference.

The problem is that a lot of Vedic students are more interested in learning all the obscure features of a tradition than learning whether or not they actually work. James Braha writes about this phenomenon, and James Kelleher mentions it frequently as well. To get respect in Vedic astrology, you need to be familiar with all of the intricacies of the system. To appeal to clients who want a traditional reading with all of the typical Vedic techniques interpreted in the context of their horoscope, you need to know the jargon. But it also helps if you “don’t outsmart your common sense” - these techniques actually have to work for them to be valuable, and unless you’ve made careful comparisons on at least a couple of hundred charts you may not be certain about some of them.

So, here’s a quick guide to what works and what doesn’t:

WHICH TECHNIQUES WORK?

1. Ruling planets, exalted planets, and fallen planets work. Understanding how these planets impact the house they reside in and the houses they rule is the most crucial skill needed to accurately interpret a horoscope. Try to remember that there is no such thing as a “debilitated” planet, at least not in the western sense of the term. Vedic astrology uses fallen planets, but not debilitated ones.

2.Traditionally, the navamsa is a chart that describes a woman’s first husband. In a modern context, it has been shown to represent a general description of the lives of both men and women from the age of 35 to roughly retirement. This technique is one that I have used often enough that I would stake my reputation as an astrologer on its accuracy.

3.The nakshatras are an amazing technique for pulling out small details that will be very meaningful to the individual born under each asterism. The novice would do well to study the nakshatras thoroughly, before even thinking about learning other Vedic techniques.

WHICH TECHNIQUES DON’T WORK?

1. The degrees of exaltation do not appear to make a planet any more exceptional in a native’s life. Example: The Moon is said to be exalted at 2 to 3 degrees Taurus. I have also read that the Moon is considered exceptionally powerful in the last degrees of Aries, because it is so close to the degrees of exaltation in early Taurus. In practice, I haven’t seen any difference between a native who had the Moon in its degree of exaltation, and those who have the Moon anywhere else in Taurus.

2.The concept of “moolatrikona” does not work. James Braha first observed this, and he appears to be correct.

3.Rahu is not “exalted” in four different signs; it probably isn’t exalted in any of them. This is a modern technique that doesn’t hold up. In traditional Vedic astrology, Rahu and Ketu had no lordships at all.

Rahu does have a strong association with air travel and advanced technology. Originally, it was said to be especially strong in Gemini, and many astrologers do feel that Rahu has a particular strength in the third house. Unfortunately, astrological “creep” set in after this. Rahu is said to be “like Saturn”, so folks started saying that Rahu must have special strength in the air signs of Libra, where Saturn is exalted, and in the air sign of Aquarius, where Saturn is lord. Then came the idea that Rahu must be powerful in Scorpio, because the western associations of Scorpio are so similar to Rahu’s qualities.

There is no traditional basis for any of this. This author has Rahu in Aquarius, and has compared it against other charts with Rahu placed in average signs, and also in the air signs or Scorpio. No difference is apparent. Rahu will manifest more strongly when it is tightly conjunct a planet or an angle. The sign has nothing to do with it.


A WORD ABOUT YOGAS…

They work. That’s not the point.

During traditional Vedic instruction, students had to memorize hundreds of yogas before they were ever allowed to interpret a horoscope – mastery of the jargon shaped the discipline and became its overarching principle. The “common sense” approach to interpretation got lost somewhere during the centuries – many yogas are combinations of two planets in a ruling, exalted, or fallen position. It’s not the yoga that matters in many cases – it’s all about the underlying planets.

The student who really understands how a ruling, exalted, or fallen planet behaves in the house that it resides, and also in the houses that it rules, is ahead of the game. He or she can accurately interpret a Vedic chart without ever resorting to a single yoga. I would never say that it is a waste of time to learn the formal intricacies of the Vedic system with regard to yogas. That said, I have never memorized even fifty yogas, and I probably never will.

Being familiar with yogas helps to preserve the tradition in it entirety – they were such an important part of traditional astrology that forgetting them does a disservice to the profession. Yet it is possible to competently interpret a Vedic horoscope without knowing a Satkalatra yoga from a Downward Dog – I do it all the time.

Yogas do yield up some very specific insight if we know the lore associated with each one. For example, I have some obscure yoga which promises that I will “maintain the archives for the common man” at age 39. Sure enough – I started this blog right on schedule. But I also have a yoga which should have brought about a marriage at age 24 – and this never happened. Knowing how to determine which yogas are true for the native and which are never destined to manifest is the real issue behind using yogas. The gap in our knowledge in this area is huge.

Mayan Day-Counters...Some Background

The final article on “The Jagaur Magicians – Mayan Day-Counters” will be published at some point this fall. Meanwhile, I came across some background material on the Maya that does a good job of explaining the context in which they developed their calendar and their astrology. What follows is excerpted from Susan Wise Bauer’s History of The Medieval World.

BACKGROUND ON THE MAYA

Both the Maya and the Zapotec wrote. The development of writing in much of the world was driven by economics, by the need to keep track of goods and payments. But for the Maya, writing was developed to keep track of time.

The Mayan calendar had a sacred calendar that placed great importance on birth dates and auspicious days. Its core was a series of twenty days, each with a different name. Each one of these days occurred thirteen times during the Central American “year”, each time paired with a different number and a different name (example: 5 Deer, 12 Flower). This yielded a total of 260 days before the sequence of names and numbers began to repeat again.

The 260 day calendar ran side by side with a 365 day calendar. It took 18,930 days, approximately 52 years – for each permutation of the two calendars to play themselves out, and each of those days had significance. The skimpy records of the Maya and the Zapotec fit each birth and death, each marriage and conquest, the ascension of each ruler, into this framework. The passage of time, and the connection between the day and its sacred meaning, was at the center of each kingdom’s history. Every creative act, every god, and every human came into being already slotted into the intricate patterns of the calendar.

On the day of his coronation, a king might glance at the written chronologies and see that on the very same day, in a previous cycle, a king had died or been born. Each of the 18,930 days of the cycle was the site of both past and present events. (See the source for Boone below.)

In this way of thinking, the past was always present; and the rulers of Central America kept their power by connecting themselves to the legendary beginnings of their world.

***

In 500, Teotihuacan was the 6th largest city in the world. It was home to 125,000 people who probably spoke a range of languages. They lived almost entirely within the city walls. It had the densest occupation of any Central American city. Observation of sacred time was built directly into the streets and walls. Its map was not shaped by rivers or the rise of land, but by the phases of the moon and the places of the stars.

The city’s main thoroughfare, the Avenue of the Dead, ran from the Pyramid of the Moon, on one end, to the Pyramid of the Feather Serpent (later known as Quetzacoatl). His greatest deed was to restore life to humanity after all men and women had been destroyed in a battle between rival gods.

My NOTE: There is an interesting parallel between this myth and the Norse belief that a man and a woman are said to shelter in the World Tree, and repopulate the world after the total destruction of Ragnarok.

Quetzacoatl went down into the Land of the Dead, ruled by the Bone Lord Mictlantecuhtli, and retrieved the bones of a man and a woman. He then slashed his own penis, dripped blood over the bones, and restored them to life. In the view of the Mayan and the Zapotec, bloodshed generated life.

The people of Teotihuacan, like the Maya and the Zapotec to the east, believed in a force called tonalli, a sort of radiance or animating heat that brings life. In the words of religion scholar Richard Haly, tonalli was the “blood link that binds generation to generation”; it “comes down to humans at the time of their birth, linking the newborn to the ancestors.” In return, humans offer blood back to the sky, in order to complete they cycle.

Carvings and pictographs hinted at complicated bloodletting rituals, echoing the shedding of blood that first gave life to humanity, carried out by kings. The king who cut himself on the top of a pyramid was not simply copying Quetzacoatl’s actions in the distant past; he was with Quetzacoatl, acting alongside of him, as his representative – and perhaps even as his incarnation.

There was a LOT of blood sacrifice in this culture. Some of it was voluntary and non-fatal. From what we know, however, much of it was coerced, performed on captives, and fatal in outcome. For example, Chichen Itza had one of the most elaborate ball courts of any Mayan city, a court where players who represented life and death battled to slam a ball through a stone ring in a sacred ritual that remains obscure to us (although reliefs of decapitated players suggest that bloodshed played a large role).

Most of the Mayan records – the elaborate calendars, genealogies, and chronologies – break off at 534, and the silence lasts for nearly a century. Archaeology must fill the gap: outlying fortresses of the larger Mayan cities were burned, the population dwindled, tree-rings show long, cool, wet summers. Hunger stalked the Maya as well –skeletons show malnutrition dating back to around 540. Susan Wise Bauer connects this decline with the explosion of the volcano Krakatoa in Indonesia in 535. (See my note below.)

The eruption had a devastating effect on the Mayan culture, which may have collapsed due to malnutrition and internal dissension. People voted with their feet and left the major Mayan cities to return to farms in the hinterland where they might have a better chance of eating. The people survived, but the kingdom died.

***

NOTE ON THE ZAPOTEC:
Southwest of the Mayan territory, in the fertile plain of what is now Oaxaca, lived another people, the Zapotec. Monte Alban was the capital city. It was occupied by over 20,000 people and extended for fifteen miles across ridges and valleys.

NOTE ON KRAKATOA:
Contemporary reports from around the world point to climatic devastation caused by the eruption of Krakatoa, most likely in 535.

Krakatoa darkened the Sun for four to five years, which caused major famine in many parts of the world. Procopius reports in 536 that the sun “gave forth light without brightness, like the moon…and it seemed exceedingly like the Sun in eclipse, for its beams were not clear”. Michael the Syrian writes, “The sun was dark and its darkness lasted for eighteen months; each day it shone for about four hours, and still this light was only a feeble shadow…the fruits did not ripen…”

In early 538, the Roman Senator Cassiodorus, serving at the Ostrogoth court in Ravenna, writes, “We marvel to see no shadows of our bodies at noon…and the phenomena which accompanies a transitory eclipse prolonged through an entire year. The Moon too, even when her orb is full, is empty of her natural splendor. We have had a winter without storms, a spring without mildness, and a summer without heat. Whence can we look for the harvest, since the months which should have been maturing the corn have been chilled?”

***

SOURCES
Elizabeth Hill Boone, Cycles of Time and Meaning In The Mexican Books of Fate(2007), p 14

Richard Haly, “Bare Bones: Rethinking Mesoamerican Divinity,” History of Religions, 31:3 (1992), pgs 280-281.

Susan Wise Bauer,The History of the Medieval World: From the Conversion of Constantine to the First Crusade (2010), pgs 187-190.

Obama and the 2012 Election

Just thinking ahead, as my brain turns on the giant wheel of time. I want a drama-filled election, even better than the last one, don’t you? There’s not much to do when the economy is this bad, and its not like the American people can afford a lot of entertainment these days, so the thought of politics over two years away is the most exciting thing on the plate.

Now, I think we all know the election is going to be VERY CLOSE. Don’t need astrology for this. Pluto goes opposite the U.S. Sibley Jupiter in 2012 – all of our emotions are going to be coming straight out of hell by then. Another contested election would be so exciting, but I don’t think the Supreme Court wants the precedent of getting involved again. We’ve got European astrologers predicting that states will start seceding from the Union in fury – they don’t know anything about how we States really operate. I bet Arizona is cooking up secession right now as we speak, but it will never happen. Mexico would invade immediately, and before the Tea Party could raise a militia, they’d be looking at annexation!

Now, Obama has Pluto trine natal Pluto during 2012 – possibly one of the most powerful transits of his life – he is really going to be on top of all the rabbit holes to underground power in this country during this year.
Plus Neptune is making a trine to his natal Venus – and if you have any doubt about what that means, take a good look at how cute he is without a shirt on in Hawaii!

But there is one whammy of an astrological detail that no celestial bean-counter had better miss – Obama’s progressed Sun is at 29 Virgo two years from now – and the U.S. Sibley MC is at 1 degree Libra. Talk about magnetic attraction. Talk about soul mate synastry. It doesn’t seem possible, given how much the American people are blaming him for the atrocious economy. But as a wise astrologer (Dr. Z) once pointed out, there’s nothing to stop soul mates from killing each other. Still, any Republican candidate is going to have to go one better with his natal chart and the U.S. Sibley, or else I fear The Big O may have it in the bag…

NOTE

Those who want to better understand the love affair between Barack Obama and the American people (represented by the U.S. Sibley Chart) should check out the first item titled "Magnetic Attraction" at the recent article Dr. Z's Top Six Soulmate Clues in Astrology on his website.

This is reinforced by a partile conjunction between Barack Obama's natal Ketu and the U.S. Sibley Moon. In electional astrology, the Moon represents the people. In Vedic astrology, when Ketu conjuncts any planet, it is said to make it behave in a weird, unexplaniable way.