Wind from an Enemy Sky

I’m half way through a novel, Wind from an Enemy Sky, by D’Arcy McNickle. It opens with an old Indian hearing of a dam that is going to be built in the hills above them, and he refuses to believe it can happen. “They can’t stop water. Water just swallows everything and waits for more. That’s the way with water… The water was there when the world began. What kind of fool would want to stop it?”

The old Indian, of course, is wrong about the dam being built, but the way he feels about streams and rivers is right, because he feels them to be alive.

I came upon this obscure but very well written novel because I overheard an Indian friend – who is a mine of obscure information – talking about D’Arcy McNickle. He described him as the writer who in his opinion best portrays the Indian mind at this transition stage between indigenous and white-influenced culture, which is how both McNickle and my Indian friend grew up.

Anyway, you can get it on Amazon, and it knocks the socks off the western writers on ‘shamanism’ and their claims of transmitting native spirituality, often on the basis of very limited experience. Which doesn’t mean that shamanic techniques don’t work – they do, and often very well – it’s just that the claims of connection to indigenous cultures are usually not what they seem. These claims are therefore perceived by indigenous people as a sort of theft of their culture.

D’Arcy McNickle was born 14 Jan 1904 in Montana and grew up on a Flathead Reservation. He has Sun-Mercury conjunct Chiron in Capricorn, which describes both his strong sense of his tradition, as well as the irreparable damage it was undergoing. Mercury retrograde shows his ability to reflect on, and communicate this. Aged 21 he sold the land allotted to him, and used the money to go to Oxford University in England. He spent much of his life working for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, becoming chief of the tribal relations branch. He had Moon in Sagittarius, describing the long journey to another culture in search of learning, and its probable conjunction to Uranus shows the unusual, non-conformist path he was prepared to take. The Moon’s opposition to Pluto shows he felt his home-culture (Moon) to be under mortal threat (Pluto); by the same token, Pluto gave him the power to address this threat through his life’s work.


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The Dark Side of Pluto in Capricorn

I can’t find this news item now, but I read the case on Monday of a pensioner in the UK who recently attended a demonstration. It turned out his car number plate was recorded by a CCTV camera and passed on to the police. At a later date, because of his number plate, he was stopped by the police and questioned under the anti- terrorism laws, and told that if he did not answer all the questions they asked him, he would be arrested. He asked himself “What sort of country am I living in?”

So it seems clear that the police are quite prepared to use the anti-terrorism laws to intimidate people engaged in valid protests. There have been fears of this for some time, and it has been hard to know how much of it is paranoia by people who dislike authority, full stop. So it is interesting to see a concrete case of this sort of abuse, a case that suggests that it is becoming widespread.

It turned out also that there is a body to make sure that information like this is not misused, but that they have very limited powers when it comes to dealing with the police.

I am more sympathetic now to David Davis, the Tory MP who resigned last year in protest against the gradual erosion of our civil liberties. It is interesting that it should be a Tory who made this protest, and that it has been Labour who have overseen these developments. You would have thought it would be the other way round.

Britain has Sun in Capricorn square to Uranus. I think that Uranus will protect us from the extremes of Pluto in Capricorn, for the people will rebel if things go too far. Davis himself has Sun in Capricorn opposite Uranus, so he is well-tuned in to this characteristic of the British. We want an orderly, lawful society, but only up to a point.

Pluto in Capricorn describes an age of state control, and these days it is through information. The main manifestation I have seen of it so far has been the government’s incompetence at controlling the information it has about us. There has been another wave of information loss over the last week. 140,000 medical records have gone missing from the NHS, and the RAF has lost a ‘dirty’ file on some of its personnel.

One way or another, information about us is passing into the wrong hands, and Pluto is only starting its journey through Capricorn. I think it’s important to remember, however, that it is not all bad, it is not all evil authority out to get us. This information also serves some good purposes, like tracking down dangerous drivers, and arresting criminals.

Pluto in Capricorn and the rise of Christianity

I’m away at the Sunrise Celebration in the South of England, so I’ve pre-published one or two blogs. I’m doing Astrology and Tarot readings. It’s the first time for about 5 years that I’ve been to Festivals, having been needed for some years to take Vajramala out to her horses every day. But I’m free of that now, and in a few weeks I’m off to Glastonbury Festival as well.

So here is a piece by Ed Tamplin that gives us historical perspective on Pluto in Capricorn:

When Pluto moved through Capricorn from the first century 42 AD, St. Paul had experienced his own “plutonic transformation” on the road to Damascus. It set him on a new path of missionary zeal. Meanwhile the Romans at the height of their empire began building Londinium. But their pagan gods were about to fall. Over the next millennium the face of Europe changed under the new banner of the cross. Each time Pluto accessed Capricorn the rate of Christian influence multiplied.

Christianity was a perfect vehicle for Pluto. Here was a religion whose foundations were built on death and resurrection. Jesus taught the resurrection as a Doctrine of Rebirth. One must be willing to die to their former selves to access the true kingdom of heaven. And the martyrdom of the early saints was a physical embodiment of the same principle.

The Roman hierarchy’s suppression of the seeds of change greatly empowered the process. During Pluto’s return to Capricorn in 287 AD, Emperor Diocletian, presiding over a then divided empire, instituted mass Christian executions to stem the religious tide. These mass killings were famous for their failure, and during the same period Constantine the Great was declared the new Emperor. Constantine’s baptism into the new faith would elevate Christianity to the religion of the state, and assist him to reunite the empire.

The following entry of Pluto into Capricorn witnessed the material phase—temple building. It came in the form of the grandiose reconstruction of the most famous church outside the Vatican—the magnificent Hagia Sophia of Byzantium. Dedicating the new building, (which utilized columns from the wondrous Temple of Artemis), Emperor Justinian declared, “Solomon I have exceeded thee.” By Pluto’s fourth and final cycle of the first millennium the devout Frankish King Charlemagne had subjugated the Saxons to Catholicism, in establishing his vast European Empire. The religion and the state were now united across the majority of mediaeval Europe and Eurasia.

The universal church had grown from the true believers to an institution, with its attendant hierarchal corruptions. In doing so it had inadvertently made itself a target for Pluto’s major charter of Reformation midway through the following millennium. On 31 October 1517, with Pluto back in Capricorn, Martin Luther nailed his Ninety-Five Theses to the door of the Wittenberg Castle Church. It led to a new divided Christianity rising like a Phoenix from the old. (more…)

David Cameron's Dirty Little Secret

There is a wonderful scandal going on in the UK at present over MPs expenses. They are allowed up to £20,000 a year towards the cost of having somewhere to live in London and in their constituency. Hundreds of MPs have been fiddling this allowance, and it has all come out since the Daily Telegraph managed to get hold of the accounts.

The basic problem, in my opinion, is that MPs don’t get paid enough, because they award themselves their pay rises, and they have to be seen to be acting with restraint. So their basic pay of about £65000 is towards the lower end of what a GP could expect to earn, and well below the bottom end of what a hospital consultant would earn. In fact, well below the pay of most senior professionals.

So of course MPs are going to feel ‘entitled’ to this extra £20,000, and I don’t blame them really. I don’t count it as dishonesty, more as a very British bodge that keeps the system functioning. The trouble is that as soon as a necessary fiddle on the part of MPs comes out into the open, it legitimises fiddles that aren’t necessary. So it has to be stopped and moral indignation has to be whipped up. Which is what is happening now.

One wealthy Tory MP, Anthony Steen, claimed for a duck-house on his pond. England is a hierarchical, Sun-in-Capricorn nation, square to Uranus. So we need our toffs (Capricorn), and we rebel against them (Uranus). That is why we are so ambivalent about the Queen.


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It was because this duck-house claim looks so ridiculous, and because Steen is wealthy, that he became an easy target. David Cameron, the Tory leader, immediately told him to announce his retirement at the next election, or face losing the whip now. Steen promptly announced his retirement, and then said in an interview that the basic problem was that people were jealous of his house. Cameron immediately demanded he withdraw the comment or be expelled from the Party, so Steen withdrew it.

Which was a pity, because Steen was right. His fiddle was no worse than anyone else’s. At £1800, it was a lot less than some other fiddles. But he was singled out for reasons of class envy. This was why David Cameron acted as he did: because it would look bad in class-conscious Britain. It had nothing to do with the moral standards that he claimed to be upholding.


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David Cameron has Mercury in Scorpio square to his regal Moon-Jupiter in Leo. He went to Eton himself, and is very sensitive about being seen as an old-style upper class Tory. I have said for some time that we need to watch out for nice-guy David Cameron’s Mercury, and here it is: treachery. He put the party’s image before loyalty to a colleague. (Peter Mandelson, the ‘Prince of Darkness’, also has Mercury in Scorpio.)

I think that David Cameron’s Moon-Jupiter in Leo is his dirty little – or big - secret, which even he is probably not aware of. It is the perfect aspect for the old-style, snobbish Tory with his sense of entitlement to rule. Cameron uses his Mercury in Scorpio to hide it. This is why he reacted so strongly and so unfairly to Anthony Steen’s duck house. It was classic shadow projection. He was fighting something in himself that he does not want to admit to. You watch him once he is Prime Minister, and the royal ‘we’ or its equivalent coming out of his mouth. It won’t take long.

In Britain, the upper class are the new lower class, as I once heard Liz Greene put it. This provided much of the motivation behind the move to ban fox-hunting: class envy. And in a very British way, an unworkable law was eventually passed to ban the sport. So everybody and nobody was happy.

In Britain you can make fun of the upper class, in fact it is almost expected, but the working class is sacred. It would be snobbery to define someone as having been to a ‘state school’, but someone who has been to a public school (as we call our private schools in Britain) is always defined as such; in fact, they are forever defined as a ‘public school boy’, as though they have never left it!

Comical as this mess over expenses is, it is also strongly perceived by the public as corruption in high places. It comes hot on the heels of the outcry over excessive executive pay and the scapegoating of Sir Fred Goodwin. This is Pluto in Capricorn, which is still a good way off the UK Sun/IC at 9/10 Capricorn, but increasingly I notice that such transits start many degrees in advance. Add to this that the UK Saturn, which governs state institutions and rules Capricorn, is at 23 Leo. We have recently finished a Saturn Return, and Neptune is also opposing this Saturn.

Our leaders and their institutions are being both Neptuned and Plutoed, and Pluto has hardly started. So this expenses outcry seems to point to a deeper trend that has started – a dissolution (Neptune) of hierarchy, a desire for more accountability, and perhaps a very new system indeed as Pluto gets to work. Provided, of course, that David Cameron’s Moon-Jupiter doesn’t get there first!

Geoff sent me this piece from BBC News:

"Newly-released US census figures show a strong slowdown in the birth-rate that began before the economic crisis hit. The number of babies born grew by only 0.9% in the year to July 2008, compared with a rise of 2.7% the year before. The figures have given rise to speculation that families anticipated hard times by having fewer children. The surprising part of the figures is that they reflect family planning decisions made from early 2007, when there were only a few signs of an economic slowdown in the US."

Isn’t that strange? It’s suggesting that on an instinctual level we know what’s coming before we know it with our ‘rational’ minds. It’s a level that has its own form of reasoning and evidence that is neither scientific nor articulate. There are many stories of animals moving away from earthquakes or tsunamis before they happen, and this is the same thing.

This is the pre-civilised realm of Pluto, which governs the ability to survive. When necessary, it takes over. In the case of the US birth-rate, it also reflect Pluto’s current sign of Capricorn: contraction in the face of economic weakness.

On a more literal note – and I always like astrology when it is literal – hundreds of goats have died in Taiwan, allegedly due to the noise from wind turbines stopping them from sleeping. This is also Pluto in Capricorn: the death (Pluto) of goats (Capricorn).

Jupiter-Neptune-Chiron (again)

Over the next week, Jupiter, Neptune and Chiron will come within ¼ of a degree of one another in Aquarius. Anything begun now has a big dream behind it that will become apparent later in the year, as these planets complete a remarkable series of 3 triple conjunctions. Chiron is not just about healing: he was primarily a teacher of heroes, so there is boldness as well.

There have been a number of news items in recent days relating to sustainable energy, which of course is becoming a big dream for humanity. The obvious one was Barack Obama’s bold move in bringing in federal legislation to require the car companies to produce more efficient, less polluting vehicles. As he said, it was long overdue, and it was astute of him to use the fact that the car companies are in trouble to force the issue. There have also been a number of items about wind farms: the biggest one in the world in Texas (of course!) and the opening of the biggest onshore farm in Europe.

Then there is the big dream of plumbing the mysteries of our universe. Over the last week, 2 new space telescopes have been launched – one with the biggest ever reflecting mirror - and Hubble has had a major upgrade.

In June, the US will conduct a possibly ground-breaking experiment in controlled nuclear fusion. This is another big dream.

And it’s all happening in Aquarius, the sign of Science.

The current times remind of this quote, often attributed to Goethe, but no-one knows quite who said it:

"Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back – Concerning all acts of initiative and creation, there is one elementary truth that ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favour all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it now."

Why Astrology Works

Astrology divides me. On the one hand I am awed and enchanted by the fact that it works. On the other hand, I can see no reason why it should work, and this gnaws away at me. And I do not know to what extent this is a creative opposition within me, that keeps me on my toes; and to what extent it is my cultural conditioning, an over-emphasis on rationality that leaves no room for an ultimately unknowable universe.

Anyway, here is a contribution to this conundrum (which I don't think has a definitive answer), called Why Astrology Works by Brad Kochunas:

I recently read two marvelous articles written by Ivan Kelly, a professor in the Department of Educational Psychology at the University of Saskatchewan, appearing in Psychological Reports, a respected journal in the field of professional psychology. (1) In them, Kelly quite astutely, I believe, dismantles modern astrology with the assurance of a seasoned academician. He notes a wide variety of claims made by astrologers and, to my mind, convincingly raises arguments that are perhaps unassailable by those practicing and believing in astrology as a discipline that literally and accurately describes and predicts human personality. I submit that it would be folly to attempt a point-by-point rebuttal to his arguments. He has us; the jig is up for an astrology conceived as an empirical discipline. (more...)

Bilbo and Frodo: Virgos on their Chiron Return

Bilbo and Frodo Baggins share a birthday: 22nd September. This much is clear from ‘A Long Expected Party’, the 1st Chapter of ‘The Lord of the Rings’. That is all the birth data we have.

The Lord of the Rings is not set within our historical time period. It is in a sense outside of time. Middle Earth itself, while described in great detail, is imaginary, even though we kind of feel we know it. (This is because Tolkien’s creation is rooted in a lifetime of study of European myth.)


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At the same time, Middle Earth is described through reference to our world. I therefore feel free to take the position of the Sun on 22nd Sept as an astrological pointer to the characters of both Bilbo and Frodo.

Between 1931 and 1972, which more than covers the time of the writing of The Lord of the Rings, the Sun on 22nd Sept was always at 29 point something Virgo. Since then, due to precession, it has started to appear in Libra. And before 1931 you could find it at 28 point something Virgo. So Bilbo and Frodo have their Suns at 29 Virgo.

Now Virgo isn’t a general description of the character of hobbits, but rather these 2 particular hobbits. For the general nature of hobbits, I’d probably say Capricorn (respectable and cautious), Taurus (they like their food – remember second breakfast!) and Virgo (clever with their fingers and unobtrusive). Very earthy creatures!

Bilbo and Frodo, due to their Took ancestry, had something else going on. It was rumoured that there was fairy-blood in the Took line, and occasionally a Took would take off and have an adventure, though this was always hushed up by the family.

But adventures are not what you think of when you think ‘Virgo’. Being Virgo does help, however, if you are a burglar like Bilbo: unobtrusive and observant. And if you are on an adventure, Virgos are likely to do so in the service of something, rather than just self-gratification, which was certainly the case with Bilbo and Frodo, who both found themselves heading off into the unknown rather reluctantly. As for the invisibility which the ring bestowed, here we see the 2 hobbits encountering the opposite sign of Pisces.

Using the Sabian Symbols for Virgo 30 we read: Having an Urgent Task to Complete, a Man doesn’t Look to any Distractions. Well that just about sums up the quests that these 2 hobbits were on.

There is, however, another astrological pointer we can look to: Bilbo was about 50 when he set off, and Frodo was 51. In both cases we have the Chiron Return. Dennis Elwell has this to say about Chiron: “On the subject of Chiron, it is as significant as any planet, but I do not go along with the 'woundedness' interpretation… when you are dealing with Chiron in practical work it is better to remember that his mythological namesake conducted a school for heroes…. As old Chiron trains us up towards accomplishments we never thought we could achieve, we need to be able to take the dare, to have an irreverent disrespect for the wise ones who say this or that can't be done. Chiron's style borders on cocky impudence, but perhaps its basic function is to persuade us that nothing is impossible.”

So there it is. The Chiron Return is a time for achieving what we thought impossible, which is exactly what Bilbo and Frodo did at that age.

In the 2 of Wands of the Mythic Tarot deck, we see Jason stepping out on his quest, with his teacher Chiron behind him in a cave. Jason’s quest is to recover the Golden Fleece, which is being guarded by a Dragon. Bilbo’s quest is to recover gold from a Dragon, and he did this on his Chiron Return. I said that Tolkien knew his mythology!

Chiron takes us to the point where we are on our own, where, if you like, we need to discover our own inner teacher. We tend to associate heroic quests with youth; but the real quest is to find the deeper independence of spirit, the gold in our souls, that usually requires age and years of testing. It is in the nature of human consciousness to be collective, to gain its security (unconsciously) from thinking the same as others. Chiron takes us out of that, and this is why there is often an ‘outsider’ quality to those with a marked Chiron. This ‘outsider’ quality, which is also their ‘wound’, forces the issue, as psychological security cannot be found in acceptance from the collective.

Frodo and Bilbo were never the same again after their adventures. Bilbo returned to Hobbiton, but he never fully belonged. He was viewed with suspicion by the more conventional hobbits, even though they appreciated his money. Frodo was so stricken, so marked by his ordeal that he never returned, but went on to the next stage across the ocean with the elves.

The Curse of the Kennedys

I'm away in the south of Spain for 6 days, officially to help fire-keep at a sweatlodge, but I'm also going to do a bit of sightseeing e.g. the Alhambra. So I've pre-published a few blogs. Here's the first one, an extract from a piece by Liz Greene on The Oracle and the Family Curse:

In 1969, when Senator Edward Kennedy faced the collapse of his Presidential hopes after Chappaquiddick, he asked whether there was a curse on his family. Over the decades, a great many people have asked the same question, privately and in print; the history of this extraordinary clan does make one wonder whether some daimon of misfortune dogs its members. The recent death of John F. Kennedy Jr. has once again roused speculation about why the male Kennedys seem to be picked off like wooden ducks in a fairground booth, not to mention the drug-related hospitalisations, virulent divorces, and other human messes which, although more private and less florid, are perhaps no less tragic for those involved. No generation of this powerful family has remained unscathed. Naturally, the Kennedy horoscopes have been pondered by astrologers from every perspective. Anyone who has studied them can recognise factors in each individual birth chart which might reflect, at least in part, the tragedy of that particular life. Yet here is a sequence of tragedies which are strangely coherent in their continuity. Can we link these astrologically? Do they make sense psychologically? Are we looking at what the Greeks meant by a family curse? Are we looking at the products of a lethal but very human mixture of ingredients - a dysfunctional family driven by obsessive ambition and habitually involved with echelons of power and corruption that, sooner or later, would involve danger and possibly violent death? Are we viewing coincidence? Or, as Ian Fleming would have suggested, is it "enemy action"? And if so, what, and where, is the enemy?

The word "curse" conjures up images of witchcraft, black magic, Dennis Wheatley novels, and B-grade films about reanimated Egyptian mummies. It is a word which, understandably, we do not like to use these days, and any mention of the Curse of the Kennedys tends to provoke uneasy laughter. But the ancient mythology which underpins our Western culture and permeates our Western psychology took the concept of the family curse very seriously indeed, and did not associate it with witches or malevolent occult rites. The English word "curse" has obscure origins, but my etymological dictionary suggests that it derives from an Anglo-Saxon word meaning "wrath". The first known example of the word occurs in the 11th century: Goddes curs, the wrath of God. A curse is thus something inflicted by a wrathful deity in response to human wrong-doing. Its roots lie in the past, but it predetermines the future. Most of us do not think in terms of our families being "cursed", whatever difficulties we experience with and through them. Some families exhibit clearly repetitive patterns, but these may involve gifts and good fortune as often as they involve misfortune and pathology. But there are some families which seem to bear more than their share of tragedy, albeit on a less grandiose scale than the Kennedys. Repeating generations of broken marriages, alcoholism and drug addiction, suicide, financial ruin, and functional disease dog many families. Sometimes these patterns are deeply disturbing in their consistency and precision. Lynn Bell demonstrates, in her excellent book, Planetary Threads, the ways in which particular attitudes and experiences, embedded in the family psyche, can unconsciously dominate behaviour over several generations, sometimes emerging only when each individual reaches the precise age at which his or her predecessors themselves re-enacted the ancient story. Family therapists call this "the anniversary syndrome". Astrologers, accustomed to the cyclical nature of transits and progressions, can map it with precision, but its meaning may be more elusive. (more...)

Jupiter-Chiron-Neptune: a Paradigm Shift in Science?

It is some years now since the first exoplanets were discovered: planets belonging to solar sytems other than our own. Because they are so far away, and because the light from the parent star tends to obscure them, their existence has had to be inferred e.g from minute gravitational effects, or from light effects. But last November the first direct sighting of an exoplanet was released, courtesy of the amazing Hubble telescope. Below is Fomalhaut b, the first visually observed exoplanet, which sits inside the giant disc of dust that surrounds the planet's parent star.



On Thursday, with Jupiter, Neptune and Chiron within one degree of each other, 2 new space telescopes will be launched by the European Space Agency. The Planck Telescope will measure the Cosmic Background Radiation, which is a kind of leftover from the Big Bang, and it will take finer measurements than any previous telescope. It will therefore give us new information about the age, shape and evolution of the cosmos.

The Herschel telescope, with its 3.5m diameter mirror, will be the largest ever flown in space. It is tuned to see the Universe in the infrared spectrum, and can probe clouds of gas and dust to see stars being born. It will investigate how galaxies have evolved through time.

And on Monday, the Americans will launch a mission to fix the Hubble telescope. The Hubble was launched in 1990, under the Uranus-Neptune conjunction of the time, and has transformed our understanding of the universe. The latest fix will make it up to 90 times more powerful than it was originally.

The NASA scientists are using the term 'shock and awe' to describe the results they expect from the upgraded Hubble, but they are American! The British prefer understatement, but then again that can mean you set your sights lower. Hubble has in fact 'shocked and awed' in its lifetime, not just through the fantastic pictures it sent back, but also because it upset our basic understanding of the universe. Previously, it was thought that since the Big Bang, the expansion of the universe has gradually been slowing down, presumably to eventually reverse and end in a Big Crunch. Hubble showed that actually the rate of expansion of the universe is speeding up! It is theorised that so-called 'dark energy' is fuelling this inflation of the universe, and scientists hope that the upgraded Hubble will help unveil further this mysterious force, through observing distant supernovae.

So all this is happening under Jupiter-Neptune-Chiron. I see these discoveries about the Universe as creation myths as much as I see them as 'facts'. The Big-Bang, accelerated expansion, a 14 billion year-old universe, dark energy, supernovae... these ideas are not just dry science, they also feed us imaginatively and philosophically. They are therefore myths.

So Jupiter-Neptune is expanding and giving meaning (Jupiter) to our mythology (Neptune) through Science (Aquarius). Bang in Chiron, the teacher of heroes, and you have the adventurous, ground-breaking spirit it takes to develop and launch these telescopes.

I personally am a bit skeptical about 'dark energy'. It is brought in to explain why the laws of gravity as we know them are not obeyed firstly by galaxies in the way they rotate about themselves (the inverse square law no longer seems to apply at such low levels of gravity); and secondly in the fact that the universe's expansion is not gradually being slowed by gravitational forces pulling it inwards towards its centre.

I tend to think that the real issue is that we don't fully understand gravity, which has always been the odd-force-out in attempts to create a Unified Field Theory. It's a bit like when they used to posit an 'aether' through which electromagnetic waves moved, but they could never measure it, and then Einstein came along and said there is no ether, you're just looking at it wrong.

Be that as it may, I think it's great that the mega-universe is throwing up these basic anomalies in our understanding. They are not just glitches - they are huge. This means that the Universe must be very different to what we think it is. Our mythology is not complete.

So these new telescopes are being launched at a very propitious and powerful time, and therefore seem likely to transform our modern, scientific creation myth. It may also be that another Einstein comes along and throws out the inconclusive 'dark matter' theories and the hugely complex string and M-theories ('the theory of everything') and shows us a new way to understand the universe. Who knows, but Einstein was born under a Chiron-Neptune conjunction; the next conjunction was in 1945, when his work found practical embodiment, to his horror, in the atom bomb; the next conjunction is now - time perhaps for another Einsteinian paradigm shift.

Remarkably, there was also a triple conjunction of Jupiter, Neptune and Chiron in Sept 1945, but only briefly and not so closely. This conjunction occurred in Libra, and in its wake came the UN and the reconstruction of Europe, financed by an enlightened USA. It was a big dream (Jupiter-Neptune) of a fairer, more peaceful world (Libra) that would heal the wounds of the past (Chiron).

The triple conjunction of 2009 is much closer, and occurs 3 times between May and December. A big new dream, with hope for the future, is being launched on all sorts of levels throughout the world. The scientific-cosmological level is just one of them.

Can you feel it? The sense of excitement, the sense of something very new and visionary and enriching waiting to be born.

Help! I just bought a Palm Zire 31 handheld PC so I can do astrology readings when I'm out and about. Does anyone know of a simple astrology programme that will run on this? I bought astro-pocket, which I then wasn't able to register because the link wasn't there and astropocket itself no longer seems to exist. Any suggestions?

Saturn Stations; Mars conjoins Venus; the Neptune-Jupiter-Chiron triple conjunction

Saturn is stationing, and will change direction next week; Mars and Venus are half way through their 5 week conjunction in Aries. Issues of defence and security (Saturn) and war and diplomacy (Mars-Venus in Aries) are in the air.

Saturn is in the middle of a series of 5 oppositions with Uranus (the internet), so it was timely that in the last few days an American General called for the creation of a digital warfare force. The US lack of cyber-security has an issue for some years, and the Mars-Venus conjunction in Aries has triggered a military approach to the problem.

Earlier this week security firm McAfee reported that ‘there has been a 50% increase in the number of detected so-called "zombie" computers since 2008. The figures come as a report from Deloitte said a global approach to cyber-security was needed. "Doing nothing is not an option. Everything that depends on cyberspace faces unprecedented risks,” said Deloitte’s. "This issue is moving so quickly, and with so much at stake economically and in terms of safety and security for people, we don't have 100 years to figure this out.” McAfee also revealed that the United States now hosted the world's largest percentage of infected computers at 18% with China a not too distant second with just over 13%.'

There are still 3 more oppositions from Saturn to Uranus over the next 14 months, so during that period I would expect to see cybersecurity become much more established throughout the world as a function of government.

We can also see the combination of Mars-Venus with Saturn stationing in Pakistan’s struggle with the Taleban. As Mars entered Aries in square to Pluto 2 weeks ago, Hillary Clinton announced that the situation in Pakistan represented a ‘mortal threat’ to world security. This was because the Pakistani government seemed to be rolling over in the face of Taleban incursions into its territory. Pakistan has an estimated 60 to 100 nuclear weapons scattered throughout the country. With the Taleban controlling parts of the country, it would be quite possible for one of these weapons to end up in their hands, via sympathisers in the Pakistani defence establishment.

As American pressure has continued – aggressive (Mars in Aries) diplomacy (conjunct Venus) – and as Saturn has begun stationing, so has Pakistan decided to defend itself, launching a full-scale attack on the Taleban in the Swat Valley, forcing 200,000 people to flee their homes.


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Pakistan is coming to the end of a challenging Neptune transit to its Sun at 21 Leo. This period has seen the government become increasingly weak and chaotic – Neptune has ‘dissolved’ the leadership of the country – while militant Islam has been on the rise – hence the success of the Taleban. Neptune will station at 23.41 Aquarius this November, and after that I expect to see this weakening process unfold more decisively.

Neptune is not operating alone this year, but is making a remarkable series of 3 triple conjunctions with Jupiter and Chiron. This is very powerful, and it represents a big new dream (Jupiter-Neptune) for Pakistan, which some will see as profoundly healing, and others as profoundly wounding (Chiron). With natal Sun in square to angular Jupiter in Scorpio, and in wide conjunction to Pluto, a religious fundamentalist government has always been a strong eventual possibility.

Pakistan’s neighbour India was ‘born’ at the same time, but in a different place, so the chart’s for the 2 countries are similar: the same planetary positions, but different house cusps. India’s Jupiter in Scorpio is not angular, suggesting perhaps that the government is less likely to be taken over by religious fundamentalists. But Pluto is angular, suggesting perhaps that the Indian government is even more prone to abuses of power.


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As for the ‘big dream’ that Jupiter-Neptune is also bringing to India, this would seem to be connected to its rise as an economic power, particularly with the West faltering at present. In some ways it is ‘healing’ (Chiron), because so many people live in poverty, while the country as a whole was treated as a mere British colony until 1948. But the capitalist dream is also a ‘wounded’ dream on so many levels. This is perhaps a meaning of the triple conjunction for the whole western world (particularly as it impacts the US Moon – the people – so closely): a big new dream and hope for the world, based on an understanding of some of the limitations of the capitalist system we have been living under.

I am sorry to see Jacob Zuma as President of South Africa. He is a corrupt and violent man, with plenty of potential for violence in his chart: Sun in Aries sextile to Mars-Jupiter in Gemini; Moon possibly square to Mars. And he was inaugurated today under a Mars-Venus conjunction in Aries. His supporters have a song entitled 'Bring me my machine-gun'. Zuma's Sun is conjunct the South African Mars in Aries, so he is likely to bring out the violence in the nation. South Africa has natal Sun opposite Pluto, so sooner or later it was likely to attract this sort of leader. And he has been fairly elected, he is what the people want, despite his well-known history.

The Full Moon in Scorpio today is at 18 degrees, with the Sun at 18 Taurus, lining up along the South African Sun/MC opposite Pluto/North Node. So this was a very significant election, and I'm afraid the Full Moon activates the dictatotial potential within the chart.


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The Slacker Generation

Lynn quotes from a great article about the Pluto in Virgo generation (i.e. us 40 - 52 year olds), the so-called 'slacker generation'. The author doesn't mention astrology, but captures the Virgo archetype very well. Here it is in full:

WE MOVED to San Francisco and Brooklyn and Mission Hill. We jumped from job to job. Put off marriage. Never bought a place. And we never heard the end of it. We were drifters, they said. Layabouts. No respect for work and real estate or the value of a good pair of cufflinks.

But now, in the cold glare of a recession, everything looks different: We've got no house to lose, no career to dash, no school-aged children in need of pricey Wii gaming systems.

Not recession-proof, exactly, but recession-resistant, at least.

Of course, it's not like we saw the crash coming. We didn't plan for this, didn't time the market. And we made some bad choices along the way: The persistent neglect of our 401(k)s, battered stock market notwithstanding, will catch up to us someday.

But in retrospect, it's clear that we did something right. We lived a smaller life, a life we could afford. And as the country rebuilds the economy, as it tries to replace it with something more sustainable than a leaning tower of subprime mortgages and consumer binging, it is time to reevaluate that much-maligned Gen X archetype: the American Slacker.

"Slacker," like most labels, has always been a crude and misleading shorthand. We were a bit aimless, us urban, liberal-arts types. We were a little too enamored of irony, perhaps. A little too frivolous.

But there was something to be said for a life in the moment; for a dalliance in California, for concerts and failed screenplays, for a little fun before the fall. And the truth is, we were always more purposeful - more responsible - than our fathers and uncles and grandmothers realized.

Those of us who took low-wage jobs were not just marking time. Not all of us, anyway. We were doing work we cared about, as journalists and teachers and social workers.

All that job-hopping and freelancing? We were dilettantes, on some level, it's true. But we also understood, before most, that something had shifted - that we were moving to an economy of telecommuters and independent contractors and less-than-loyal employers.

And while the best minds on Wall Street cooked up the real estate mess that destroyed a global economy, we were sensible enough to steer clear of that overpriced condo and move into a dingy, three-bedroom rental with a few of our meathead friends.

You see, while Alan Greenspan and Countrywide Financial were creating a capitalism of disastrous excess, we were busy working on a more workable model. Not without its indulgences, of course. The exuberance of the dot-com bubble was undoubtedly irrational. But we did pretty well, this little slice of Generation X.

We brought you the Internet, worked on green technology, and filled the ranks of Teach for America. We crossed the color line, ate local produce, and bought secondhand clothing. We lived in smaller spaces, drove smaller cars, and took the subway to work.

It all seemed like a quaint liberal fantasy at the time. And on some level it was. But now, with a creaking economy and an overheated planet, it reads more like a survival manual: a guide to multicultural living in an increasingly diverse society, an incubator for the technology that might save the American auto industry, an antidote to our awful adventures in sprawl.

Of course, we could abandon this life as we get older, I suppose. We could grow impatient with our little apartments and cramped hatchbacks. We could set our sights on the kind of suburban existence we've forsaken. But I'd like to think we're smarter than that.

We created something worthwhile - a sustainable neighborhood, a tech future, a life we can manage. And we won't let it go too easily.

At least I hope not. As the nation rebuilds a crumbling capitalism, it could use a little perspective, a little wisdom. Bet you didn't think you'd get it from us.

Counseling Couples

Here is the latest article from astrologer Adrian Duncan:

In life there is what we think happens, and what actually happens. What actually happens is difficult, if not impossible, to establish objectively. There is a Russian proverb that says, “Never trust an eye witness”, and this theme has often been explored by artists and film directors. The most recent may be Vantage Point (2008), which is a film directed by Peter Travis in which a presidential assassination is recalled by six different witnesses. Their combined stories finally reveal the true story. In Kurosawa’s film Rashomon (1950), four different people recount different versions of the murder of a man and the rape of his wife, but in this case no objectively truthful version is established. In the last analysis “truth” is not absolute, but something arrived at by consensus, and this makes the cultural environment we are brought up in a crucial factor in how we all agree about reality (more...)

The Astrology of Sex-Strikes; the 3-month Mars-Venus Conjunction

On Wednesday, thousands of Kenyan women went on a week-long sex-strike in protest at the government’s internal squabbling. The wife of the Prime Minister is supporting the strike, though she refuses to comment on her husband’s opinion of the matter. It is his dispute with the President that is at the centre of the impasse.

The PM’s wife, Ida Odinga, ‘refused to be drawn on whether the fiery wife of President Mwai Kibaki would join the movement. Questioned whether she would ask Mrs Kibaki to join her in the strike, she replied: "Please let me not answer that question, you can ask her." Lucy Kibaki has a notoriously fiery temper.’

It’s fun, but the women are in earnest. They fear that the row could lead to further unrest: after disputed elections in Dec 2007, 1500 people died and 300,000 were forced from their homes. Ida Odinga points out that this tactic worked in Liberia when it was at war. Sex is not talked about in public in Kenya, so the issue is deeply embarrassing for Kenyans.

The strike began on Wednesday, time unknown.


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As you can see, there was a Mars-Venus-Moon-Pluto t-square. So the women of Kenya (Venus) are taking action (Aries) through sex (Mars). They are very angry (Venus conjunct Mars in Aries) on behalf of the people (Moon) and are engaged in a power-struggle (Venus square Pluto) with the government (Pluto in Capricorn), who they do not see as serving the needs of the people (Pluto in Cap opposite Moon). The resolution of this t-square lies in the missing sign, Libra, which is a workable peace between the Presidential and Prime Ministerial factions.


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Kenya has Sun in Sagittarius square to Pluto, so the country naturally tends towards power struggles (Pluto) around its leaders (Sun), and probably eventually it will be a dictatorship, which Sun in hard aspect to Pluto often indicates: misuse (square/opposition) of power (Pluto) by the leader (Sun). Russia, Iran, South Africa and Zimbabwe all have Sun in hard aspect to Pluto.

Kenya also has Mars at 5 Capricorn, which is closely aspected by this week’s Moon-Mars-Venus-Pluto t-square. So the Kenyan men (Mars) are under attack (square Mars) from angry women (Venus in Aries conjunct Mars).

As the strike ends, so on that exact day will transiting Venus move out of an applying square to the Kenyan natal Mars.

Sex-strikes by women have a long history. At the end of last year, the women of Naples threatened a strike unless something was done about illegal fireworks on New Year's Eve. They were inspired by the ancient Greek play Lysistrata by Aristophanes, in which the women of Athens refuse to have sex unless their men folk forge a truce with their rivals from Sparta. The recent Naples strike would have taken place under a Mars-Pluto conjunction. The campaign began some time before in a town called Lettere, possibly around the Venus-Pluto conjunction in November 2008.

In October 1997, the chief of the Military of Colombia, General Mañuel Bonnet publicly called for a sex strike among the wives and girlfriends of the Colombian left-wing guerrillas, drug traffickers, and paramilitaries as part of a strategy — along with diplomacy — to achieve a cease fire. At the start of that month, there was a Mars-Pluto conjunction, and a week later there was a Venus-Pluto conjunction.

In 2003 there was a 2 month sex-strike by Cameroonian women over the destruction of crops by cattle. During that time, Mars squared Pluto and Venus conjoined Pluto.

In September 2006, wives and girlfriends of Colombian gangsters called for a sex-strike to curb gang violence. At the beginning of that month there was a square from Mars to Pluto, and at the end a square from Venus to Pluto.

So in all cases we hard aspects between Mars (men and sex) and Pluto (power struggle), and Venus (the women) and Pluto. In some cases Saturn (abstinence) is involved, and even then not necessarily as a hard-aspect. This suggests that the real issue is the power struggle, rather than the forced abstinence. And the tactic often works!

It is an interesting time for relations between men and women, because Mars and Venus are undergoing a 3 month conjunction – mid-April to mid-July – which is very rare. I can’t find another example of it. It is happening because Venus, which usually moves much faster than Mars, went retrograde for a while recently, and as she backed into a standstill in April, so Mars came up to join her. After a planet has stood still, it only picks up speed again slowly, slowly enough in this case for Mars to be able to keep up with Venus for a while before she finally leaves him behind in July.

For a short time in April, Mars was conjunct Venus and Uranus in Pisces. Then there was a 2 day period where Venus was exalted at the end of Pisces conjunct Mars in early Aries, the sign it rules. This was the time to hit the bedroom, and if you didn’t, I can only offer my condolences, because you are unlikely to see this aspect again in your lifetime. You just missed out on the best sex you are ever going to have.

Until the end of May we have Mars conjunct Venus in Aries. It’s an excellent time for starting relationships, for hot sex and for plain-speaking. But that can so easily turn into a fight, with neither person able to see the other’s point of view. From early June to early July, Mars will be conjunct Venus in Taurus. This will be a lot easier, and a time to focus on pleasurable activities together. After that, Venus will start to move away from Mars, and the 3 month focus on relationships will draw to an end.

The US Progressed Chart (Sibly) has an exact opposition from Mars to Venus at the end of May, and a one degree orb for a year either side of that.


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With Prog Mars in Libra and Prog Venus in Aries, each in the other’s sign, issues of war versus diplomacy are being strongly raised. It is fascinating that this opposition should be exact in the middle of a very rare 3-month conjunction of Mars and Venus. There has been a new approach to foreign diplomacy under the Obama administration, and this coincidence of transiting planets and progressions suggest the intensity and urgency with which negotiations are being conducted, whether or not we hear about it in the news.

The Prog opposition is in the 4th-10th house axis of the US natal chart, indicating that America’s standing in the world, and the perception of that at home, are involved; and this opposition is also in the 2nd-8th house axis of the prog chart, indicating that the weak economy (2nd) and reliance on foreign resources (8th) are also factors behind the new diplomatic strategy. But you didn’t need astrology to tell you all that!

Progressed Chiron is just over a degree from Prog Venus in Aries, and this suggests to me obstacles that will not easily be overcome due to America seeing things too much from its own point of view (Aries). This chimes well, for example, with Obama's outraged denunciation last year of the idea that 9/11 was in any sense 'chickens coming home to roost'. If you cannot understand why your enemies would want to attack you, then you are only going to have limited success in negotiating a peace.

“Many women-only sports clubs and gyms in Saudi Arabia face closure under a government clampdown on unlicensed premises.” In Afghanistan, to appease the fundamentalists, Sharia Law is now being enforced within marriage, in the sense that a wife must always be available for sex. And in Pakistan, the Taleban is on the move, imposing its version of Sharia Law along the way.

Pluto in Sagittarius from 1995-2008 empowered fundamentalism worldwide, and the West was no less guilty of this than the Muslim world. Sagittarius is a contradictory sign, in that on the one hand it is about freedom and adventure and the search for meaning; while on the other hand it can be about the opposite of that, when the search for meaning gets turned into a rigid set of rules about how the universe works.

The end of Pluto in Sag has not seen a decline in fundamentalism in the Muslim world, as perhaps we had hoped. As Pluto has entered Capricorn, so we are seeing fundamentalism (Sag) becoming the law of society (Capricorn). Mind you, in Saudi Arabia it has always been like this, and the West doesn’t mind too much because of the strong economic ties. It is when those Muslim societies are against the West and its pervasive influence that we mind, and then we call those who take up arms ‘terrorists’, as if they are killing just for the sake of it, unlike the 'reasonable' killing engaged in by the West. The Obama administration seems just as keen on labelling its enemies ‘terrorists’, i.e. mindless psychopaths, as was the Bush administration.

In the West we are also seeing an increase in the rule of law as Pluto enters Capricorn, particularly through the attempts to regulate the financial industry. The EU has just issued a directive about this, containing a whole pile of new regulations.

So it is quite interesting. In the Muslim world we are seeing an imposition of law (Capricorn) developing out of the fundamentalism (Sag) that went before; while in the West we are seeing an imposition of law in protest at the free market fundamentalism which came before.