CERES

For a really interesting article on the newly promoted dwarf planet Ceres and the newly demoted Pluto (called Pluto 0 - Ceres 1), go to Adrian Duncan's world-of-wisdom.com (use link below). He bases his article on an event in Austria the day before Ceres was promoted, when 18 year old Natascha Kampusch escaped from an underground dungeon where she had been held captive for 8 years by Wolfgang Priklopil. In Myth, Ceres' daughter Persephone was abducted into the underworld by Pluto, whom she married, but from where she was eventually released for 6 months of each year. The mythological correspondences, and the synchronicity, are obvious.

HOW'S YOUR FATHER?

Sun, Mars and Venus have been closely conjunct in Scorpio for about 3 days now, and will remain within 8 degrees for about 12 more days. It is my duty as an astrologer to alert you to the bedroom potential of this aspect. While it's certainly an auspicious time for having a good shag, it's also a time when sex is good for making, or enhancing, real connections between people.

Halloween is in 5 days time, when the veil between this reality and the spirit world is said to be at its thinnest. With Sun, Mars, Venus conjunct in Scorpio on that day - and trine to Moon in Pisces - it is a time for Tantric sex, mystical sex, transcendent sex, if you are that way inclined. If you can get home early from work next Tuesday and into the bedroom pretty sharpish, you'll find Sun, Mars, Venus, Mercury and Jupiter all in Scorpio in the 8th House. If that doesn't get you out of the prison of isolated selfhood, at least for a moment, then nothing will. Sun, Mars and Venus are also square to Chiron, so there's healing potential as well.

The title of this piece may be enigmatic if you're not English. It refers to sex, and a time when fathers were much more proprietorial about their daughters than they are now. A father's opinion around his daughter meeting a particular man would have been much more important than it is nowadays.

On a different subject, has anyone noticed how kids these days are reluctant to leave home, whereas in our day we couldn't wait to be independent? It's certainly true in the UK that kids are leaving home later - well into their mid-twenties, quite often, and I don't think it's just because housing is more expensive. I don't know the reason. Did Pluto's passage through Libra produce a generation who had the advantages of a wealthy, stable, civilised upbringing, but who by the same token are afraid of surviving on their own? Pluto is where we look to for survival - so for those with Pluto in Libra (1971-84), they will look to civilised values and conditions for a sense of safety and continued survival. Living outside of the family home often means sacrificing some of that, at least for a while, and this may be instinctively threatening to them. I only have significant experience of one person from this generation, who fits the type, intelligent and urbane, but reluctant to become independent, and unwilling to take low-paid work ('shit-jobs') despite having no qualifications!

Obviously I don't mean all kids from Pluto in Libra are like this, or even most kids - perhaps just more than in the past.

THE NEXT SATURN-NEPTUNE PHASE and ERIS AS CATALYST

Neptune is due to change direction in about a week. This means we can expect a new phase in the current Saturn-Neptune Opposition, which lasts for about a year, to begin. And the most obvious manifestation of this transit is the developing political realism around Iraq, which any decent mundane astrologer could have predicted a long time ago.

That's one of the things I like about mundane astrology - i.e. the astrology of politics and world affairs - is that in a sense it can be quite easy to predict things, because countries behave in far more predictable ways than do individual human beings. A country tends to behave in an unconscious, collective, instinctual sort of way, while we individual humans, in our better moments, can be a bit more conscious than this.

Anyway, the phase shift in a transit usually begins, I have noticed, in the run-up to a planet changing direction, and we have certainly seen this in the case of Neptune's upcoming change of direction. The news has been full of politicians admitting to the need for policy change in Iraq. Neptune coming up to turn round has been like a bubble bursting. It began with a trickle, and now every day some senior official in either the US or UK governments is admitting to the need for change, and then another official will come along and deny it. They are obviously fudging their way to something more realistic, and doing their best to save face along the way, as you'd expect.

Even though it's not being said, George Bush is obviously in the middle of a political disaster of the first order. But the acknowledgement of this belongs to a slightly later phase of the Saturn-Neptune Opposition. It's the Iraq reality that is currently being acknowledged, and we can expect to see the momentum developing further over the next week as Neptune moves towards changing direction. The next phase-shift will be in early December, when Saturn changes direction: the run-up to this begins soon after the November mid-term elections. So I think we can fairly confidently predict that the phase after next will involve GWB getting his political come-uppance. Neptune changing direction (which it hasn't quite yet) is proving to be about the bursting of illusion. Saturn changing direction could well be about GWB reaping the political consequences of his actions over Iraq.

And it seemed to be that Mars-Eris Opposition of a couple of weeks ago that catalysed the present momentum behind policy change. Eris, the Goddess of Strife, is a newly-named 'dwarf planet'. She was the one who mischievously threw an apple into a wedding feast and ended up occasioning the Trojan War. Eris can be seen as having the keyword 'Catalyst'. The word catalyst comes originally from chemistry, where a small amount of one substance can make a chemical reaction occur much more easily and effectively, without that substance itself being changed by the reaction. The planet Uranus can also have a catalytic quality. What, I wondered, was going on when catalysts first came on the scene? The term was coined in 1835... at the end of an Eris-Uranus conjunction at 23/24 Aquarius!.

ANOTHER HIT FOR THE TAROT and THE END OF AN ERA

Last year I did an astrology reading for someone who had difficulties remaining monogamous, and this was causing pain for his partner and therefore for himself. I looked at his chart and yes, there was Venus in Aries, enjoying conquest, squaring the Moon in Capricorn, his emotional base. So the astrology gave me a degree of insight, but not enough to say much that could actually help him.

I recently did a general Tarot reading for him, and it was this issue that immediately presented itself. The first card I got (the Significator, that describes the general situation), was the Knight of Cups. Here is the romantic adventurer, endlessly seeking the ideal partner. The card of past influences was the Hermit, which for him described how he felt when he was married: alone. Marriage was something he had entered into largely because that was what you do at a certain age.

Putting all this together, his present phase is that of a teenager, at the start of learning about love and relationships, even though he is in his mid-forties (don't laugh: we all suffer from arrested development in certain ways!) This is why he has difficulties with monogamy.

But it is a phase that will pass, rather than a fundamental part of his character. And, going back to his astrology, the transits he has in the coming years show this journey continuing, as firstly Saturn opposes his DESC next year - i.e. a bit of growing up, then Neptune conjoins his DESC after that, and he loses some illusions and barriers around relationships and is able to make more of a soul connection. And then Pluto square Venus followed by Pluto conjunct Moon. He has a ten-year journey of love and relationship ahead of him. But meanwhile it is completely understandable that he is where he is now.

Mick Jagger naturally comes to mind as the world's most famous non-monogamist (or is it Bill Clinton?) Anyway, Sir Mick (who was knighted a couple of years ago, I believe for services to women) was born 26 July 1943, 2.30 am, Dartford, UK. He has Venus in Virgo, which describes his preference for what he sees as classy women (i.e. those hosepipes in leotards that we see on the catwalk), along with his ability not to get too involved with them. Anyway, non-monogamy has been such a long phase of his life that we need to look at the progressions, and what do we find? In 1964, as the Rolling Stones got big and all these women became available to him, his Progressed Venus went retrograde, and has remained so ever since. BUT it goes direct again in December 2006. A 40 year reign is coming to an end! Ladies it is time to grieve! Presumably Sir Mick has been on some kind of extended journey, he has been learning something about relationship that has taken him a very long time. Or maybe he just can't get it up anymore. His latest hosepipe is a young lady called L'Wren Scott who is about a foot taller than him and claims to be quite happy about him seeing other women. Poor girl. I don't think self-knowledge is her strong point.

I WAS WR..WR..WR..WR....WRONG!

The title is a reference to the 1970s TV show Happy Days, which is about a bunch of American teenagers, the coolest of whom is The Fonz. In one episode the Fonz has been so obviously mistaken that he has to admit it, but being so cool it takes him a number of attempts to get it out of his mouth.

Anyway, in my blog of a week ago I claimed, using astrology, that the North Korean bomb wasn't the real thing. And it looks like I was wr..wr..wr..wrong!

Now this is going to sound like self-defence, and that's because it is self-defence, but in my original posting I claimed that the N Korean Bomb was for real, and then an hour later I changed my mind - or rather, I allowed myself to be persuaded by someone else's intuition that the bomb was fake, along with an exhortation to examine Neptune more closely.

So, because the chart ruler, Jupiter, was Square to Neptune, I decided it was fake. I then got feedback from a blog reader, using their greater knowledge of horary astrology in support of this conclusion.

I should have just stuck to the simpler astrology I started with, because that is how I personally get my best results as an astrologer. What I had claimed was that as the chart for the explosion, and the chart for the moment I asked the question about the bomb, both had ASC/DESC axis within range of the nuclear axis (8-10 Gemini-Sag), and that one of the charts also had Pluto within range of the ASC, all this together added up to a nuclear bomb. Simple astrology, and in this case it provided the correct answer. The more complicated, but 'correct' approach gave the wrong answer.

The thing is that as soon as astrology starts veering off too far into what I see as technical abstractions such as midpoints, rulerships, harmonics etc, I stop believing it. When I do a reading for someone, it usually takes about 1 and 1/2 hours, and in that space I've got time to do the Sun, Moon and Angles, how the other planets fit in with them, the major transits in their past, present and near future, and that's about it. In real astrology, where you're giving someone a take on themselves, there's little time for the abstract technicalities - such as midpoints -that don't actually correspond to any bodies in the sky. Nor do progressions correspond to anything that you can point to, and I don't generally find them that much use either. It's hard enough for the client to keep a relationship to the chart without dragging in abstract technicalities. I'm not denying that these things work - they do - but what is most likely to work, what is most likely to say something that is real about a person or an event, is what is staring at you out of the chart. Like the charts for the N Korean Bomb and my question about it both having ASC/DESC within range of the nuclear axis. So the bomb was for real, stupid! Whatever aspects the ruler is making with other planets, and whatever the Moon's last aspect to them might have been.

I have to admit that others' better knowledge of astrology sometimes sends a tremor of self-doubt through me (but not for long!), particularly as I've never formally studied the subject, and doubt I ever shall. But I have often seen myself getting better results just by sticking to the basics.

THE CONJUNCTION IN LIBRA AND MERCURY RETROGRADE

I don't normally comment on the astrology of the next few days or weeks, but every astroblog I look at seems to be doing so, so I thought I'd chuck in a few opinions of my own.

First of all, there's been a lovely Venus-Sun-Mars conjunction in Libra for the last couple of weeks, which for the last week has involved sextiles to both Saturn and Pluto, which are in turn trining each other, while in the last few days the conjunction itself has been getting pretty tight. This will continue to intensify for the next 6 days, with the Moon also joining the conjunction in Libra, at which point we lose Pluto, and then the conjunction starts to change sign.

So the next week is a superb time for diplomacy and relationships. Particularly with Mercury moving into exact conjunction with Jupiter in Scorpio at the same time, it's a really good time for sorting out difficult, deep issues between people. (In the UK, a new landmark has been reached in the last day or two in negotiations over a peace settlement in Northern Ireland.) If there are no pressing issues, just have a wonderful time with your husband/wife/ partner/boyfriend/girlfriend/mistress.

On the 28th Oct Mercury will start to move backwards in the sky for 3 weeks, as it does 3 times year. This is traditionally a time when things don't easily work out well, and it can be best to hold off for a while. And there can be no apparent reason. Normally with astrology we can see external events as mirroring the mind. With Mercury Retrograde we seem to enter the straightforwardly superstitious, fated dimension, where it is not good to do things simply because it is in the stars and there's an end of it. I rather like it!

Anyway, I've found that Mercury Retrograde (MR) can be a good time for sorting out underlying difficulties and obstacles that get in the way of action. This MR is in Scorpio, and will back into an exact conjunction with Jupiter on 30/31 Oct - just in time for Halloween! At Halloween the veil between this world and the Spirit World is said to be at its thinnest, and Scorpio (the Underworld) and Jupiter (the Long Journey) are both associated with death. So if you have those abilities, this year's Halloween will be particularly strong for communicating with the dead.

And if, like me, you haven't those abilities, this MR will also be a good one for sorting out difficult or unresolved issues around dead or dying relatives/friends, or issues around inheritances, divorces and pre-nuptial agreements!

Mercury goes Retrograde at 15:16 on 28 Oct in Washington DC. So what might this MR mean for the US Government? The Saturn-Neptune Opposition is hitting the DESC, the place of Open Enemies, in the MR chart, forcing acknowledgement of the reality in Iraq. Mercury is the main planet in this chart, and with it in Scorpio in the 9th House - foreign countries, and square to Saturn-Neptune, we know we are dealing with the carnage in Iraq. Sun-Venus-Mars are conjunct in Scorpio in the 8th, trine to the chart ruler, Uranus, describing the ongoing carnage and unpredictability in Iraq that the government is having to deal with. Also, the Sun in Scorpio in the 8th suggests that this MR will be a crucible, an underworld journey, for the US government as much as it is for Iraq.

So it's business as usual, in a way, but with an emphasis on trying to sort out the difficulties (MR), and with more secrecy than usual (Scorpio). We know that Bush has asked James Baker to come up with some options for Iraq, so we might see some initial announcement/decision as MR comes to an end around the 18th Nov, or when Mercury gets back to its starting point of 25 Scorpio in early Dec. On the other hand, the mid-term elections are on 7th Nov, so Bush will want to have something positive to say about Iraq by then. He may well try, and find that MR causes it to backfire.

As for the British Government, Mercury Retrograde kicks in at 20:15 in London, UK, and Mercury will be in the 6th House, the House of the Armed Services (as well as other things). A lot of the pressure in the UK over Iraq is to do with the welfare of the army. So we may see some change of policy sorted here during MR, but again with more secrecy than usual (Scorpio). We have just seen the head of the army call for a withdrawal from Iraq, so the astrology suggests discussions arising out of that. Like the US, the Saturn-Neptune Opposition is also Angular (MC/IC here), as well as Square to Mercury, again demonstrating how this wider transit, which is forcing the acknowledgement of the reality principle over Iraq, is driving the changes.

ERIS AND THE UK

Eris, the Goddess of Strife, obviously shares many characteristics with Mars, and we would expect her to be particularly noticeable when the 2 are making a hard aspect. Eris, incidentally, is the newly-named dwarf planet out beyond Pluto, whose astrological function is still a subject of exploration.

So it has been timely, and probably synchronous, that so soon after Eris' naming there has been an Opposition between her and Mars - over the last week or so - enabling us to see her in action. Like Eris throwing in an apple to cause mischief at a wedding, and occasioning the Trojan War, what we are looking for are small events deliberately engineered to cause big waves. We saw that with the North Korean nuclear test (see my last blog).

And in the UK, we have had a couple of quite positive examples over the last week. We had the Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, saying publicly that when he is talking to his constituents, he asks any Muslim women to remove their veils so that he can communicate better with them. A very reasonable, 'minor' point, but with huge implications, coming as it does from a leading politician. And it has caused all sorts of waves, good ones in my opinion. It is so easy to feel that one will be accused of racism or intolerance for making such points, but they need to be made. For our society to work properly, minorities can't be allowed to separate themselves off too much. The trouble is, of course, that Blair caused a lot of it by invading Iraq. So it's complex. But, as I have found in the personal chart of someone who has Sun Sextile Eris, Eris' mischief-making can be necessary and creative, albeit uncomfortable.

Another example in the last few days has been the new head of the army in the UK saying that the British need to withdraw from Iraq soon, because we are becoming part of the problem. This has caused huge waves, with many soldiers coming out and saying thank god someone is speaking the truth at last, and Tony Blair doing his best to neutralise it by pretending it's exactly what he thinks as well.

So Eris does seem also to have this very positive function of stirring up trouble, but not in a malicious way, so that an important truth can come out.

Incidentally, when Mars was conjunct Eris in Aries in July 2005, we had the London Bombings, where 40 people were killed. As I wrote in my blog of 7th Oct, Eris is associated with terrorism, inasmuch as one act is designed to have maximum impact, often of a psychological nature, that goes way beyond the act itself.

In either case, there is a very deliberate intention behind Eris' acts: the perpetrators know exactly the kind of effect, for better or for worse, that they want to have.

Regarding the situation in Iraq, we need to see my Mars-Eris example against the wider background of the current Saturn-Neptune Opposition. I have been saying in my Saturn-Neptune blogs of the last few months that this transit would be likely to bring about a gradual political acceptance of the actual situation in Iraq, as opposed to ravings about bringing democracy to the country. And since that transit began to kick in in August, there have been regular encroachments on the firmly held political fantasies around Iraq. How much those fantasies are held because the leaders actually believe them - and I can certainly believe that about Tony Blair - and how much because to do otherwise would have too big a political price to pay, is hard to say.

One way or another, though, those fantasies are being encroached upon. We had the above example with the head of the British army a few days ago. And in the US, we had George Bush tacitly acknowledging the desperateness of his position by getting James Baker to come up with some new options for Iraq. These are just examples of the way reality is impinging more and more, week by week, on the political fantasies around Iraq, and it is a fascinating process to watch. Blair will be gone before too long, but Bush has two long years to serve, in which to watch the main plank of his Presidency go disastrously wrong.

In my blog of 10th Oct, where I wrote about that other Eris-related event, the North Korean nuclear explosion, I used astrology to conclude that it was a fake. We still don't know, but one emerging possibility is that they did attempt to explode a nuclear device, but it didn't go off properly. Anyway, one person called 'Navigators', who clearly knows more horary astrology than me, commented on my posting, so I refer you to that. Just to confuse matters, my original posting said the bomb wasn't a fake, and an hour later I changed my mind and re-posted. So sorry for any confusion caused!

WAS THE NORTH KOREAN BOMB A FAKE?

There have been reports in the newspaper that the seismic shock wave from the North Korean nuclear test wasn't anywhere near as big as it should have been (as measured by the South Koreans), and that US spy planes have failed to detect any radiation in the atmosphere above the test site. So it may just have been some TNT that the North Koreans set off. Or it may be the West trying to get N Korea to show its hand by turning them into a laughing stock.

I had a look at North Korea's chart - 10th Sept 1948, time unknown (from Nick Campion's Book of World Horoscopes). No luck there. So I did a chart for the explosion itself - 2.36 British Summer Time, 9th Oct 2006, Kilchu.

The ASC/DESC axis for this chart is 3.34 Sag/Gemini. The chart for the nuclear axis is 8-10 Sag/Gemini. (See my blog of 16th July 'Nuclear Alert'. The nuclear axis is derived from the chart for the first controlled nuclear reaction in 1942, and describes a Sun-Saturn Opposition that seems to be very sensitive to transits.)

So the ASC/DESC axis for the Korean explosion was 5 degrees off the nuclear axis. So there is a suggestion of the nuclear axis here, due to the wide orb. And the ruler of the ASC is Jupiter, which is square to Neptune and in Neptune's House, the 12th. This indicates deception.

This on its own isn't enough, and to get chronological about it, it all began when I was sitting in a cafe (Starbucks!) in Wells in Somerset today, and the question occurred to me, "Was the Bomb a fake?" Time for some horary astrology, I thought. But I didn't have a watch! 5 minutes later I got the time, 11 minutes past one. So I did a chart for five past one.

I know very little about horary astrology, which is a means of answering questions by drawing up a chart for the moment you formulated the question. There's loads of rules around it, it's a very traditional method. I doubt I'll ever get round to learning the rules, but I muddle along with it in an intuitive/commonsensical sort of way, and it seems to work.

So what I got first of all was the current Mars-Eris opposition within 2 degrees of the MC-IC axis. As Lynn Hayes pointed out on her blog the other day (see Astrodynamics Link), this opposition describes the event, particularly the Eris-like quality of one troublesome event causing widespread reactions and repercussions. So this means the chart works as a horary chart, because it has a significant astrological connection to the question. The ASC is at 17.54 Sag, and what do we find 6 and 1/2 degrees away from it? Pluto! - which of course is intimately associated with nuclear energy. Like the previous chart, the orb is rather wide, so it is suggestive, rather than decisive. And the ASC is 7 degrees off the nuclear axis, again suggestive.

And again we have Jupiter as the chart ruler, which of course is still Square to Neptune. So over these 2 charts - the chart for the explosion, and the chart for the time I asked the question whether the bomb was fake - we have this repeated almost-connection with nuclear bombs, and both times the chart ruler indicates deception.

So, for purely astrological reasons, I am drawing the conclusion that it was a fake nuclear explosion.

Weird! We're more used to countries developing nuclear weapons but concealing them (like Israel), not countries pretending to have nuclear bombs but not having them!

Nuclear Bomb Korea Astrology Fake

ASTROLOGY, THE TAROT AND ME

I've been aware for some years that the Centre for Psychological Astrology in London, UK runs Tarot weekends, and I finally attended one 10 days ago. I'd had an interest in doing Tarot for years. I particularly remember about 13 years ago, as Pluto was dismembering my youthful, wilful self, picking up a pack of cards and being hit by the power in them - or the power it awoke in me.

But I'd always been put off by the fact that I'd have to get to know the meanings of 78 different cards. Astrology is no less complicated, and that took me years to learn, because since I was 18 I haven't done book-learning well at all. I was good at book-learning at school, but then something switched off in me, as if to say, "We're not letting you learn in that one-sided way anymore." I have a 3rd House (Education) Saturn (Achievement, obstacles), conjunct Moon (Emotional Needs) at the end of the 2nd, and Neptune (Dissolution)was coming up to hit these in 1976 when I got switched off. I scraped through my degree in Mathematics, and I remember the one time I did try some serious revision feeling awful and dreaming about a glowing head. There was something in me that was not impressed by the cultural norms around academic achievement, and was taking me somewhere else - under protest! But it is only now, 30 years later, as Pluto (Transformation of old issues) is finishing conjoining that Moon-Saturn, that I'm starting to feel free to fully use my mind again. In particular, I have always loved reading novels - I'm just finishing George Eliot's Middlemarch for the 3rd time - but it has been a stop-start thing for years due to the residual consumerist, achievement-orientated attitude in me. But it all seems to be finally sorting!

INTERLUDE ON THE EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM
So my history in this regard makes me very sensitive to the sort of pressures they are putting schoolkids under nowadays. In the UK there is this endless testing from a very young age. And what it can do is to stunt children's natural desire to learn. And that's apart from leading them to feel that what's most important in life is getting a degree and having a successful career. Which is bollocks. In the UK they are getting more and more kids to go to university, and it seems insane to me. Unless you have a genuine interest in the subject, or there is some sort of vocational training involved - e.g. to become a doctor, what's the point of it? We're not usually ready to know what we have a genuine and deep interest in, that merits 3 years of full-time study, when we are 18 or 19. And as far as a degree improving your employment prospects goes, unfortunately it does improve those prospects, but in reality the degree will not have proved you any more capable or intelligent than you were when you left school. All it does is amass loads of unnecessary debt. Far better to attend university when you're older and you know what you're interested in. And even regarding the vocational training e.g. to become a doctor, I think those things are often learnt much better 'on the hoof', through an apprenticeship where you're actually using, or seeing used, what you're learning. A lot of this relates to the Sun-Square Saturn theme in my blog of 2nd Oct.

So I learnt astrology slowly - through talking to astrologers, through attending the odd seminar, through looking at charts and by living through my own transits - beginning with the square from Pluto to my natal Sun in 1992/3, which floored me and heralded the beginning of the end of my life as a Buddhist.

So last week I attended this Tarot seminar run my Liz Greene and Juliet Sharman-Burke. I brought some Calcite with me, a stone which is supposed to help you study. And I took notes for every card, and since I've got back I've done 3 readings and they've gone really well, even though I have to keep referring to my notes.

There was I, in my blog of 4th Oct, protesting about people feeling qualified to do stuff after a few short courses, and here's me doing Tarot readings after just one weekend! But at least I know I'm a hypocrite.

More seriously, Astrology and the Tarot have a lot in common, in that both involve attempting to connect symbols with the actual life of a person. So if you have experience as an astrologer, the Tarot is quite straightforward. And I frequently use astrology in a divinatory way, in that I usually draw up a chart for the moment a 'client' walks through the door, or rings me for a phone reading. And that works very well, it often gets me to the central issues they've come with very quickly - too quickly even, before the person has had a chance to work out whether they trust me enough to talk about their innermost dilemmas!

I've known the astrology charts of the people I've done Tarot for so far, and it has been a fascinating overlap, with each discipline enriching the other. For example, one person kept having a difficult time with women, and looking at his chart, which has Moon square to Pluto, and the womens' charts, which all have either Moon square Pluto or Sun Opposite Pluto, it becme clear that the issue was him giving his power to women, and attracting the sort who wanted his power - vampires. I then did him a Tarot, and the 'crossing' card, the card that shows where the difficulties lie, was the Lovers! In Liz Greene's Mythic Tarot (the pack I'm using and which, like astrology, is rooted in Greek Myth) the Lovers depicts Paris having to choose who of Athena, Hera or Aphrodite is the fairest. Being a young man, he chooses Aphrodite, because she promises him the most beautiful woman in the world as a wife. So Paris here stands for the naive judgment that a young man will almost inevitably make. In the context of the reading, it was saying that the person needed to wise up about women (some of them, at any rate!) and see the real nature of the mutual attraction. So it made a really good complement to the astrology reading.

ERIS: PATRON SAINT OF TERRORISTS AND ASSASSINS

In her blog of 1st Oct (see Astrodynamics Link), Lynn Hayes says "I believe that we will come to discover that Eris rules the small events that change the course of history." This was by way of the story of the goddess Eris throwing the golden apple into the wedding feast that eventually led to the Trojan War. I sort of banged my head at this one, because in a way it's so obvious, but I hadn't thought of it!

Eris, incidentally, is one of the 3 newly classified 'dwarf planets', along with Pluto and Ceres. She was discovered in 2003, and is bigger and further out than Pluto. Eris is the Goddess of Strife. In my blog of 22 Sept, "The Bloodlust of Eris", I listed a whole series of persons and events associated with carnage, where there was also a prominent Eris in the relevant chart. Carnage because Eris isn't just about Strife, she also glories in slaughter on the battlefield.

Anyway, back to Lynn's idea. I looked up the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand of Austria in 1914, which triggered WWI. It was on 28 June 1914, and the time was around 11am (according to the author Colin Wilson at Bemyastrologer.com) Eris was then at 28 Pisces, and the ASC for this chart is at 25 Virgo, and the MC 24 Gemini. So Eris was opposite the ASC and square the MC.

Then I looked up 9/11 (see my blog of 22 Sept). Eris was at 20 Aries, opposite the ASC (at 14 Libra) and square the MC (at 16 Cancer). Exactly the same result! And of course 9/11 triggered off the whole War on Terror and the invasions of Afghanistan and then Iraq. It's perhaps this square to the MC ('The World') that is the more significant aspect.

So it seems to work. The 9/11 chart is also a chart for the current War on Terror (see my posting of 23 Aug 'The War on Terror's New Moon'), suggesting a link between Eris and what we have come to call 'terror'. And this makes sense inasmuch as the aim of the 'terrorist', who is generally at a big disadvantage in terms of straightforward military strength, is to cause maximum impact, often of a psychological nature, through a single event. Eris and her apple. And the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand, in which Eris was implicated, was also what we would now call an act of 'terrorism'. So Eris as the patron saint of terrorists!

Incidentally, 9/11 was in fact a small event in the larger scheme of things. It seemed big because it was America that was hurting, and Americans are not used to this. But compared to what happens in many other countries, it wasn't that big a deal. We can, in other words, see 9/11 as the work of Eris.

ERIS AND PLUTO
Eris and Pluto share the characteristic of something tiny leading to something huge. Nuclear energy is a part of Pluto's domain, and it involves the energy contained in the nucleus of the atom, which is absolutely tiny compared to the whole atom, yet contains vastly more energy. In the same way, a nuclear bomb like Hiroshima was caused by the fission of just a few grammes of Uranium.

And Pluto transits can have this characteristic. Though the clearing away and letting go often happen on a big scale, it is so that a seed of something new can be planted. And this 'something new' has often always been there, but we haven't had the confidence or whatever to take it seriously. And though it seems small, it is real, and therefore contains a power that our previous, less authentic self could never have had. But it can take time to see this.

ERIS ON A PERSONAL LEVEL
In my blog of 22 Sept, I talked about someone I know with Sun conjunct Eris in Aries who is not a violent person, but who believes in assassination, and could conceive of being an assassin herself. She has always been aware of the potential for violence in people. I talked to another person with Sun conjunct Eris in Aries the other night, and they were going yes, yes, yes, I'm like that as well! (The point of assassination is to have a big effect by taking out just one person - i.e. Eris) Another person who has Eris conjunct an Aries-Libra Nodal axis has found themselves encountering terrorists at various times, and has had intimations of past-life involvement in this area. And another person with a 12th House Sun sextile to Eris has often found themselves throwing in the golden apple in a positive way, spontaneously coming out with things that are a bit repressed or taboo within group situations, causing a bit of trouble, but ultimately having a beneficial result.

Eris Astrology

THE RULING CLASS

Annabel Herriott informs me that she gave a sheaf of my political blogs to David Cameron at the Conservative Party conference! Will I be seen as a nutter or as a danger to the establishment? If anyone notices strange, bluish spyware hanging around this site, please let me know!

It's interesting that in the UK we had no ex-public schoolboys as PM from 1964 to 1997 (when it had previously been the norm), and since then we've had Blair (Fettes)and quite possibly Cameron (Eton) following not too long after he goes. The Guardian recently ran an article informing us that 15 of Cameron's frontbenchers (out of 130) went to Eton, and 3 out of 24 in his Cabinet. I don't know whether or not to make a fuss. It's not enough to get enraged about, but it's still enough for me to conclude that the old boy network is alive and well at the top of the Tory Party.

David Cameron: 9 Oct 1966 5.51am London

Especially as Cameron has Moon in 11th House Leo conjunct Jupiter in Leo: Ruling (Leo, Jupiter) Class (11th House) or Tribe (Moon). It is this bit of his chart, which is square to Mercury in Scorpio, which I warned about in a previous post. Not only is there a natural tendency to inflate, unless he is very rigorous with himself, but he is also naturally elitist, and Mercury in Scorpio will be (is?) good at hiding these sides of himself.

I think that the British have an ambivalent relationship with the Ruling Class, of which DC is most certainly a member. (And this is not to say that he won't come up with some good policies, and that he isn't also a fair-minded Libra.) I think that on the one hand the British love to look up to a young, charming high-flying toff (and remember that Tony Blair also went to a public school, the 'Eton' of Scotland), while on the other hand the Upper Classes are treated as fair game for ridicule in quite a nasty way that would be seen as completely out of order in relation to a member of the working classes. The 1801 Chart for the UK has Sun in Capricorn on its Capricorn IC, so we can see the ingrained class system. Maybe the wide opposition to the Moon (the people)or the square to Uranus suggests our ambivalence.

Incidentally, I'm not convinced that the USA is any less class-ridden in its own way than the UK. The USA does, after all, have Sun square to Saturn in its chart, which suggests issues around hierarchy.

But actually I don't think we should be surprised. Animals are naturally hierarchical, and so are humans. Much as we might hate ourselves for it, which of us would not behave differently if a 'celebrity' walked into the room? I think it's much better to acknowledge it than pretend it isn't there. For this reason I think it is good that in the UK we have the queen, my reason being that she is fairly sensible and harmless, and captures a lot of the idolisation that would otherwise land on the Prime Minister (who I am sure would not object to having it.) That is why I think it would be good for the USA to have a monarchy, because it would enable the President to be a less hallowed, and more real, figure. The USA has a wide Sun-Jupiter conjunction, so it will tend to treat its leaders like royalty. It could take its kings and queens from some decadent, ineffectual family like the Kennedys, that already has some of the trappings of royalty.

Back to the Conservative Party. The 1867 Chart (Nov 12 1867, 12pm, London) has Sun at 19 Scorpio conjunct Saturn at 26 Scorpio and opposite Pluto at 15 Taurus. Transiting Pluto began crossing this lot in 1990, when Margaret Thatcher was ejected from power, and as Pluto finally moved out of orb of natal Saturn, the game was up and Labour won the election.

As Neptune moved towards squaring this natal Pluto in 2003/4, the Tories began to get serious again about returning to power, they got rid of Iain Duncan Smith and put a caretaker leader, Michael Howard, in his place. As Neptune began to move towards an exact square to the Sun in late 2005, they at last elected a serious contender, David Cameron, as leader - and saviour! (Neptune) In 2010, when Labour are forced to call an election, Neptune will be finishing its squaring of natal Saturn and, we could argue, completing the Tories' return to power.

A RAMBLE AROUND PREDICTION, TRANSITS AND SATURN

One of the things about prediction is that it is hard to know at what point in a transit the predicted event is likely to occur. I like doing predictions, because I really do have to take in what the person is saying about their life and combine it with the relevant planets/archetypes, and see what comes out. At the end of the day, of course, the only thing we can be sure about is that a particular archetypal configuration will be active in a person's life over a particular period, and the rest is probabilities. All the same, prediction in the sense of saying "These archetypes will be activated at that period" IS a certainty, so I find it hard to understand many astrologers' reservations about prediction in that sense. As for linking prediction to concrete events, I think that providing the astrologer is sensible and mentions a number of different possible outcomes, it can do a lot of good, in that it connects the astrologee (I've still not got used to the word client!) to his/her future, it helps them experience the unfolding process that is their life, it helps them tune in to those hints of the future that are already present.

And I've only ever had good results from doing predictions. Of course I'm not always right - and you can learn from that - but I'm amazed how often I am. I'm always having people come up to me and announce how what I'd said came true - even though I can no longer remember what I'd said! - and I really do think it makes the universes a more magical place for them - and for me! And it's not like I'm using 'free-floating' intuition: what I say is fully grounded in what's in the chart and in the person's actual life. But I suspect that contributes to its accuracy.

One of the quite possible outcomes for the current Saturn-Neptune Opposition is an oil crisis. And it looked like that what was going to happen for a while, and now the price of oil is falling back. BUT..the oil crisis of 1973 took place a full year after the last Saturn-Neptune Opposition had ended. It was the outcome of it. Which is why I started by saying that it can be very hard to know at what point in a transit a possible event is likely to occur. We may still get our oil crisis.

Take the classic underworld journey of a major Pluto transit. I've known the transit kick-in in a full-on sort of way a year before the first crossing, and also for it not to kick in properly until the last crossing was over. All you know as an astrologer is that Pluto will kick in, and even whether there'll be a significant 'underworld journey' depends on how much stuff the person has to sort out, how imbalanced they are. They might just go from strength to strength.

Which is why these transits are often less dramatic (though no less profound) as we get older. I've seen older people who know a little, or even a lot about astrology, get needlessly apprehensive about an upcoming Pluto transit, assuming it will be like the last time, or like the classic dismemberment process that we read about in the textbooks. But actually, if you've already been dragged through the mud by Pluto, and managed to stand up again afterwards, there isn't that much too worry about. You know (to some extent) his realm. Which doesn't mean it will be easy!

As an astrologer, where the person is in their lives needs to be taken into account in order to do a good job. We need to get a strong sense of the person outside of any information we are getting from the chart. We need to ask them lots of questions and dig around a bit. Doing all this, I find it hard to understand how it is possible to be a good astrologer under the age of around 40, unless we have been born with a preternatural dose of human wisdom, which I wasn't. So when I see people training to be astrologers - or healers, or therapists - in their 20s or early 30s, I think it's great that they have a vocational sense so young. But I also wonder if anyone is saying to them look, there's probably going to be limitations around what you can do until you're older, and you need to take that into account.

This is the unfashionable voice of Saturn speaking! In some things, there is no substitute for sheer length of time being alive, however gifted we might be. The trouble is that training to be an astrologer etc gets confused with the notion of other 'professional' trainings, where the training consists simply in learning a skill. And we all want to be 'professional'. It is better to be a 'professional' astrologer than simply an astrologer. And if we have a certificate of training as an astrologer or a healer or a therapist, then we have the 'qualification' to call ourselves 'professional', which means we are the real thing. And like any professional, we must always know what we are talking about, we might not feel there is much room for going 'I don't know', or the client might not take us seriously.

As an astrologer or healer, one is to some extent in the position of 'spiritual' teacher in relation to the client, and in a more traditional society there would be a long apprenticeship, maybe lasting decades, because that dimension of human wisdom, outside of any gifts one may have, was more fully understood. A friend of mine left England in her early 30s in order to immerse herself in the Native American culture, and it is only now, 20 years later, that her teacher has started encouraging her to do some teaching and healing herself. And she really knows her stuff. And the basis of it comes from imbibing a whole attitude, a whole way of being from her teacher over the course of many years. Contrast that to the numerous 'shamanic' courses on offer in the west, where providing you have enough money and are not completely round the bend, you will be accepted onto a year long course of say 6 weekends and a week, after which you are let loose on clients, and having written a few of them up as case studies, you will probably get a certificate declaring your competence as a healer.

In a way we have no choice in our culture but to go this route. Some good healers come out of it, and some crap ones. And often with a spurious sense of 'tradition' behind them. But it seems rare for these modern teachers properly to understand what it means to be a balanced and experienced human being, and just how long it usually takes, and just how necessary it is in order to be a decent healer. Or therapist. Or astrologer.

One of the brilliant things about our culture is just how open it is to new influences and ideas. For all our fears around government control and loss of liberties etc, the fact is that if we choose to we can think what we want and say what we want and live how we want and criticise the government how we want in a way that is historically pretty unprecedented, and who knows how long it will last. Though the USA's notion that it is exporting 'freedom' is laughable, particularly in the hands of George W Bush, at the same time our modern democracies ARE free in a way that needs to be cherished.

But one of the causative factors of this openness and freedom is our loss of connection with tradition, a loss of Saturn, so there is a downside as well. And Saturn at his best is precisely that wisdom, that ripeness, that can only come with age, and that I think easily gets lost sight of in our 'professionalisation' of astrologers, healers and the like.

SUN SQUARE SATURN

I was watching a documentary last week by the actor and writer Stephen Fry about his manic depression. He was talking about it as an illness, as a chemical imbalance in the brain, and while no doubt there is truth in that, it was also clear that it had a lot to do with his strong ambition, with the way he drives himself - as it also seemed to be for the other people with manic depression that he interviewed. There were only 2 people who seemed to be coping well with it, and they had both given up trying to be 'successful'.

Time for some astrology, I thought. I couldn't find Stephen Fry's birth time, but I did have the date - 24 Aug 1957 - and he has a Sun-Pluto conjunction square to Saturn. A perfect description of his condition as I saw it: the challenge is to transform (Pluto) his one-sided worldly ambition (Sun square Saturn) or experience the hell of denying his own depths (Saturn square Pluto). On a more prejudicial note, I interpret his contempt for astrology as Sun in Virgo rationality denying Pluto irrationality! No wonder he's manic depressive!

I had wondered for some years why someone who is witty, cultured and erudite always seemed to end up doing such lightweight stuff. Seeing the programme, and combining it with his astrology, it seemed clear that the poor chap simply can't face himself, and without that, there can't be much depth to what he does. I did feel sympathetic to him, because he was being so movingly honest in such a public forum. At the same time, for all his obvious intelligence, he seemed to have a huge blindspot around his own responsibility for his manic depression.

But Sun Square Saturn also spoke to me, because mine and my partner's family backgrounds are full of either the Sun or Moon in hard aspect to Saturn. And 3 out of 4 of our parents have Sun square to Saturn. So I know a bit about it. Sun Square Saturn types don't usually strike me as very happy (except perhaps as they get older) because they are so driven to prove their sense of self-worth through what they achieve in the world, and through that other 'achievement', their children!

There is nothing wrong in itself with measurable achievement - it's often an essential and important part of life. It's when it becomes the sole basis for feeling OK about oneself, when in fact it becomes a compensation for feeling crap about oneself, that we have a problem, that we have Sun in Square (or Opposition) to Saturn. Precisely the challenge of this hard aspect is to learn - probably the hard way, and probably over decades - that real achievement is the product of doing something that you feel to be of value in itself, and that constitutes your own idea of value, rather than (as is very common) the ideas that have been instilled into us.

The most influential culture in the modern world is the USA, and the main challenge in the US chart (i.e. hard angles between Sun or Moon and outer planets) is Sun in Cancer Square to Saturn in Libra. So it's as though this astrological challenge lies at the heart of our western culture, and in my opinion we are not collectively rising to it - if anything, things are getting worse. In Capricornian UK, where I live, people seem to be under more and more pressure to work harder and to 'achieve', even though we are told we are getting wealthier. Surely one of the points of creating wealth is to create more leisure and less pressure, not the other way around? If we're so wealthy, why do both husband and wife need to work these days just to get by, when it used to be just the husband?

This is one of the hallmarks of Sun Square to Saturn, that wealth becomes an end in itself, part of an achievement (which in some senses it genuinely can be, I don't want to knock that). But whatever one achieves is never enough with Sun-Saturn, there is always that hole in the middle that can never be filled, unless one can turn around and face it. Individuals with Sun-Saturn find it hard enough to do this, let alone a whole country or a whole culture, which tends to be much less conscious than an individual.

It would be nice if a more civilised, less neurotic paradigm could gradually take over. But who knows if it will. The whole world seems to be going the American/European way. Astrologically, the US Progressed Saturn went retrograde for the first time ever about 10 years ago, and will remain so well into the 22nd century. Maybe this will start to bring about a change?