April 9, 2010 - Reversing the Day

When the Moon contacts Neptune it's a good time to indulge in Dionysian revelry.

Intensities involving getting violently happy - ecstatic - or involving a loss of self in any way got revived with the Moon's transit over Neptune. The more I look, the more important Neptune seems, as the sole present arbiter between the major opposition of our age - Saturn/Uranus. Neptune contacts Uranus by semisextile and Saturn by quincunx, which creates what's known as an "Irritation Triangle" in the Huber system of astrology, defined by its urge toward "constant movement and stimulating activity...The energies stored in it are looking for a way to resolve the state of the opposing pressures, the blockage of energy flow and the rigid attitude they produce. Over the quincunx, people with this aspect figure are painfully aware of the liberation of tension as a desperate longing" (Aspect Pattern Astrology, 177, Huber).

I went to a goth/metal concert last night, and it was surreal how many people lost themselves in the music completely. Even the singer was amazed, when the crowd surged and sang the choruses to his music at the tops of their lungs. He stopped singing at one point and mouthed, "fuck, me..." at his drummer while we sang and cheered and stomped and clapped and jumped and head-banged non-stop for about four hours straight. We ended the evening all singing the chorus to one of the songs in unison, over and over, "What will be. What will always be. Never-ending light." There were no drums, no guitar, no keyboards; it was like a spiritual chant. That's Neptune, right there, when hundreds of people crammed into a tiny theater, dressed in black with spikes and eyeliner and lace and leather sing lyrics like that together, completely caught up in the night.

Saturn/Uranus' opposition is stressing us all out, as we all struggle with mounting debt or decreased lifestyle and raised prices, combined with reduced wages, various global catastrophes, and right-wing vitriol pounding the airwaves. We are waking up to find that most young people in this country won't make as much money as their parents made. But we were raised on a steady diet of progress, so if the typical definitions of "quality of life" are regressing, then either we have to come to grips with the flaws in our Western ideal of "progress," (Saturn) and/or we have to create a new definition for "quality of life" (Uranus). This philosophical issue is set against the backdrop mentioned above: these difficult times make us all want to radically reimagine the meaning of a good-quality life and to live according to our ideals, but the lack of money comes back again and again to bite us in the ass. To put it more positively, it comes back again and again to remind us that our ideals can't survive without sufficient material foundations.

It's painful for our revolutionary ideals about life to get hammered by the fact that they're rarely materially feasible (Uranus getting hammered by Saturn). Hence, Neptune; hence the concert of last night. The fact that the concert began just after the partile conjunction of the Moon to Neptune, just minutes after the Moon slipped into Pisces on the cusp of the party-hardy 5th house, only made the concert that much more indicative of the Irritation Figure between Neptune, Saturn and Uranus dominating the sky. People, in their stress about the opposition described above, unconsciously created a Dionysian experience in the concert. Not to escape from the stress (which would have been the case if it had been an Ambivalence Figure, with blue lines to Neptune), but to engage with it in a more mobile way and to come to a deeper understanding of it.

It's hard to define exactly what form this understanding takes, because Neptune is, by definition, formless. However, if we take Neptune to represent philosopher Tim Freke's idea of Big Love, or a sense of oneness with all beings, then the experience of Big Love is, in the archetypal cosmology of the present day, the mediating factor between Saturn and Uranus discussed above. Neptune-esque experiences can provide new information and the impetus to seek out ways to help us bridge the Saturn/Uranus opposition.

I hope the concert was fruitful for everyone. Especially for the two people I accidentally smacked in the face in my excitement. I hope everyone came back to the struggles of their lives afresh, with new understanding that only comes from entering a different reality. This is only achieved by spiritual experience, which is what Neptune and last night were all about.

April 9, 2010

Between today and yesterday, what was lost what was gained?

Well, the moon came up and contacted Neptune there in Aquarius. We remembered dreams from the previous post - well, keep on contacting with those strange heartful ghosts that nighttime gives you in return for your, in connection with the directions you decide to move during the day.

Or rather, the cycles above you are such that contacting those freshly planted spirits is a little bit easier. Much easier today than it has been in, well, a month. Water not fire will cause them to grow. The scars upon the earth that were formed yesterday will heal over and the little wispy half-there curling ferns, blue smoke from a rusty plain will emerge.

If you don't look at the screen of your life it will be easier to connect with, and thus be, the head of your fated self-army.

Today I'd much rather be a sage than a saint, much rather be a hermit than a hero, much rather be a mystic than a Mentat, though both would seem to be ideal.

April 8, 2010 - Predicting the Day

Nighttime dreams and romance take precedence over the next two weeks as we continue our ongoing struggle to make our ideal world manifest. They won't be good dreams, but they will be interesting ones, and our struggle with the unknown variables they represent will be a constant, perhaps unconscious backdrop to our lives. Care should be taken to understand that there's this dream-laced struggle underlying all that we do, because we won't be reminded of it anywhere else.

Indeed, it's the more tangible aspects of relationship that will seduce our attention all day. Well, maybe relationship. The notion of The Other is curious, because sometimes The Other can be our work instead of a lover. Sometimes The Other can be felt as a surrounded self, and other times it can be a dynamic sense of interconnectedness. Archetypes are what the planets define and archetypes are multivalent.

That's what makes generalized predictions so difficult. Harder to tell specific stories. I use new-age and mythic language which glosses over the juice. Multivalent writing is at best academic and at worst a complete waste of time.

What happens when storytellers run out of stories? What happens when narrative gets chucked in favor of free language experimentation? This: the third tiny triangle up in the top corner.

The language has been walled off. Just: try not to let the walls fall in. Compartmentalize. Divide and conquer the different parts of your life today. It will be easier.

March 31, 2010 - Predicting the Day

Every time I go out drinking, it ends up bad for self-driven productivity. I missed a blog post last night and was late for a blog post this morning. Now why is that?

"There is a reason why Lynn likes to go out and drink," I said on my other blog. People need to maintain the gel they share in order to stay friends. Friendship is subject to the laws of entropy, which is frustrating for people who have Venus in fixed signs, who feel like the houses they build keep on crumbling into sand.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FG6JkOOoo8c

"Es solo arena...es solo arena."

All of this is valid to today's chart, which features Venus slipping into Taurus, the most fixed sign of them all. With the Moon opposing Venus in Scorpio, creating that green rectangle with the Saturn-Uranus opposition, living in a state of communication would be appropriate today. Communication as a solid state is challenging, but it's what the day demands. How do we relate to communication? Es solo arena, yes, but in order to build a fixed structure of relationship, it is a constant sand-castle-building process, time-lapsed to show a constantly shifting structure, created in a never-ending dance with the waves, the wind, and human mistakes.

And that's all I'll say for the day. I've come to feel that less is more with these daily poetic astrology blog posts, plus I'm busy busy busy with the day. I have to cut down a big branch from a tree and I have to write a lot of articles, put together a reading, send off two letters and figure out how to sell publishers a book about astrology!

Good luck to everything you may be trying to accomplish today.

March 30, 2010 - Predicting the Day

Trying to make these posts more edible. Little bite-sized chunks of...mmm...shrimp scampi. Yum. Half an hour tops for post. Intuition be on-target!

Yesterday Jupiter and the Node made an almost-connection to the Moon. I'm talking about internal, it seems, almost-connections are lines that terminate. Terminus points.

What does it mean when you're worrying and thinking and stressing, and then you run into a wall inside your head, like, "well that's just how it is." Unconnected line-endings in a chart are its terminus points, the walls which, when reversed, end the world.

So that was yesterday. The day before yesterday, Pluto was a terminus point. Today, however - for the morning of the day - they all began to collude and now there are triangles.

***

In predicting and preparing for this day, I think it's useful to refer to yesterday's chart. To see the changes. Luckily I have that on this blog.

The most obvious changes always come from the Moon, which moves quickly. You can see that the Moon comes into orb with the Node and Jupiter today and loses orb with Pluto. And you can see that Mars, actually, picks up the orb with Pluto. So these are the three aspect gains/losses I'll discuss today.

The Node and Jupiter were sextiled apart from the rest of the chart. Hope and growth, those Springtime emotions, were married in a house on the rocks by the sea. Floods washed out the road. They each formed their own terminus to the other. Well now the road's back up, and we walk alongside the Moon in its fullness, who tells us that as we decide what we're meant to do with our lives, we can either have touch or we can rest in hope, but we can't have both. But we refuse to accept that today, and that refusal to accept is why we walk alongside the Moon. It seems as though the world demands us to touch it, today, at cross purposes to what we think we want.

This morning I woke up and my apartment was flooded. No more being a hermit - time to call the landlord. No more assumptions that The Good Life involves disconnection. Jupiter in Pisces gets green-touched by Moon in Libra...at least the touch is sweet.

Even though we walk next to the capacity to touch - even though the blood or water or ambrosia floats beside us - it's not necessarily a friend. But it goads us to make our lives active today. Listen for that today, to those points where you are asked to touch any Other, don't run from them, and you will not be disappointed.

***

Regarding Pluto...

It loses its Moon square and gains its Mars quincunx. The loss signifies an end to an impulse. Impulsive energy demands that things happen, and different people deal with impulses in different ways. Some people don't like red aspects because they are pushy...so the Moon's loss of its red square to Pluto removes the drive to transform our edges. Not sure if that's so accurate though, so moving on.

Regarding a Mars/Pluto quincunx in the air, that's some blood desperately seeking its source. Flowing backwards, as it were.

We are seeing the pointed spear toward Saturn discussed in the previous entry lose prevalence starting today, as it begins to fracture and be replaced by an odd accordion, with our drive to create and the sense that life is about growth at opposite ends, forced together and apart by backwards-flowing blood. Or not backwards so much as in circles, confusedly trying to create perfection.

ps. This all doesn't make much sense, and I want to apologize for that*, but neither does astrology at first touch-upon, and that's why it's a daily practice for me. I can see that this is not going to be a translation blog - it doesn't have the time or the space. It's a raw blog, in the language of my initial contact with the symbols and archetypes. Not all writing is edible or reproductive and neither is this writing.

* Kurt Vonnegut wrote, "Pity the readers - They have to identify thousands of little marks on paper, and make sense of them immediately."

March 29, 2010 - Reversing the Day plus Full Moon

Today I made a grand total of $60 in about 8 hours of work. Difficult articles about the Pygmalion Effect and Vinpocetine. Today seemed to come apart at the seams around midway through regarding my grit. The Moon slipped from Virgo into Libra, and I started to think about romance somewhere along the way. It is fascinating how the day can change when you're a writer, responsible for being aware enough to track moving objects like ideas...

My words are slipping off the page in this reversal of the day.

My sentences are elongating themselves to become paragraphs. The Full Moon happens tonight.

So what is a full moon? It's when the purpose instilled two weeks ago is most blooming and fruitful.

The Saturn-Uranus opposition provides a lot of fodder for people who wish their lives were different, which is many, many people. The sea change is pushing you to feel stretched taut between what you've got to do for money and what you want to do for love, joy, satisifaction.

"What if I could have both?" Neptune dreams. "What if..." it muses.

What is this coming full moon looking like? Let's run it...



Look at those green aspects blooming like crocuses on campus. This next lunation cycle will be filled with a lot of creative life-imagination - which is as it should be! This next lunation will be a gradual stripping away of language, until what's left are just words - sticks floating on a still pond.

There is one triangle that will remain for the next two weeks, which I should discuss, which will be our learning place. The red-green-green one between Uranus, Saturn and Neptune. Is your life not ideal? Get to sleep early then. And listen to your dreams.

Dreams will be crucial this next lunar cycle. If you don't dream at night, set aside some time to dream during the day, and take those daydreams seriously. In about a week, the proclivity toward self-preoccupation will filter away like sand and you'll be left with whatever life structures you devised to hold you. If you didn't devise any structures, then you'll be like the Aries-Solar people I described in the last post - wandering through the wilderness of your mind and heart for the next few weeks. If you don't want that, you would do well to build structures for yourself over the next week!

ps. I am tracking my language development of this blog, and I hope that new language comes as new aspects come. Curiouser and curiouser! I don't know where this is going, but I'm still playing, still having fun with the astrology and the verbiage set forth from the initial intention. Readers, you're welcome to skim or sink wherever you feel is appropriate.

March 29, 2010 - Predicting the Day

Later start than I'd intended, today. Working late last night to try and get this batch of articles I'd procrastinated on for someone who wanted everything done by today. Also, I decided that I wanted to predict the charts of sunrise and sunset, rather than chosing 6 AM and 6 PM as arbitrary times. I messed up on the timing of last post's chart - the Sun should be over on the right side, but somehow I had my astro.com file in Universal Time. All in all though, a good start.

So what do I think of this chart? I try to be a socially-aware astrologer, especially when I'm consulting for the transits of the day. Mainstream news, while it may not do a very good job of capitalizing on important information, now plays a different role - it's gotten very good at capitalizing on shared collective emotion. Sometimes unethically.

So the big headline of the day is that two female suicide bombers blew themselves up in a crowded Moscow subway, killing at least 37 people and delivering one of the most lethal suicide attacks outside of the Middle East since 9/11.

What does this have to do with astrology? The day rose with a new sort of solidity coming into view. Its most definitive element centered around a powerful, ego-driven opposition between the Sun and Saturn. Mom and Dad are at odds in the collective psyche, with Mom wanting some semblance of well-ordered rightness and Dad wanting nothing more than to move forward impetuously. Hyper-masculinity, in its present-day incarnation is in constant dynamic conversation with the need for order, peace and conversation coming from the feminine side, from the Saturn in Libra. Why do women perform such a masculine act of aggression - of life-denial and death?

With the Moon coming to fullness right on top of Saturn, opposing Uranus and its associated Neptune-Venus peaceful triangle, today is the day to put the unfocused observations and dreams of yesterday into tangible, material action.

You'll notice the wedge-shaped figure that just came into being as Saturn inched into Neptune's sphere - this is the solidity I'm talking about. Labeled by the Hubers as a "Striving Figure," we become suddenly aware of the purpose of any sense of dazed retreat we may have felt over the past week. Strong oppositons depend on a person's individual house placement to determine their impact. I, personally, want to understand what it is to survive and how to go about existing as a human being (the 12/6 axis which this transit crosses in my chart is the "existence" axis), while someone else might feel something different. The green wedge-shaped exterior of the figure shows that I might gain some valuable insights through mere survival work today.

If you're wondering how this opposition might affect you, post in the comments with your astrological information (birthdate, birth time, birth place), and I'll do my best to help you out! The Saturn/Uranus opposition has been around for awhile, so it may be important to look at, in order to see how the Ocean of the Era has been buffeting you about.

Just looking at the signs, however, whatever you get your grit-hardened insights from, you'll feel definitive tension between, "but I want to do THIS!" when the world seems to be pulling you to put it in order. I would maintain that the proper way to handle this is to put your talents for observation, honed over the past couple of days when the world has seemed out of order and all you've had is your eyes and your ears, to work paying attention to how you feel. And then to do the necessary work despite it.

All the energy in this chart is on Saturn and the Moon on the cusp of Libra - perhaps it might not be so unpleasant. Take care of yourself - remember that the reason you're putting the world in order is to make it better for everyone in your life, including you. Pleasantries today will come from the quieter places of paying attention, not from following your heart at the expense of what has to be done. Just because you have a feeling or a desire doesn't mean you have to immediately act on it. The Sun is making one last jockey for intense attention until it dips under the beams of importance in the chart.

Personally, I am glad that the world is coming into some semblance of order now. It's been awhile since we've had such a powerful four-sided figure in the chart. With the Moon's influence here, we should be careful not to get into arguments with loved ones on the periphery of our hearts. Most are tempted to take the side of rational Saturn, but for solar-inclined and Aries-influenced people, the opposition to the Sun in Aries creates a bit of tetchiness. Sun in Aries is the wild card in this chart, and people with a lot of Aries influence might not like this reading.

And that's fine. But just know that if you choose to follow your heart and your dreams at the expense of obnoxious/conservative/conservational practicalities, the next couple of weeks will be a period of lonely wandering through your interior wilderness, and you probably won't get much "done," unless of course you get your best work done on your own in the woods. But for me, broke as a joke, that isn't a very viable option.

ps. Just as an addendum, every chart contains so much to talk about. I didn't even GET to the other almost-figure between Mars, Venus, Neptune and Moon/Saturn in this chart. That Mars/Neptune almost-quincunx might actually provide more meaningful information, especially as regards the collective sentiments in the air combined with the recent suicide attack...Mars + Neptune = spiritual violence...but my time is up. Until tonight!