Show Biz Politics
The Pluto-in-Capricorn years are raking the body politic over the coals. All around us governing infrastructures are showing their cracks and fissures, only to crumble into littler and littler pieces as 2010 unfolds.It’s a good time to consider what we mean by politics.
A lot of people say “I’m not interested in politics” in a way that makes you suspect they aren’t referring to the electoral system at all. The word feels like code. Does it really mean they don’t like to think about global warming? If this is the case, the response only can be: Who does?
December 2009
Fair and Balanced
Now that Saturn is in Libra, it’s time to take a hard look at the issue of fairness. Libra is an idealistic sign, and its tenets are a point of pride for many conscientious folks. Who doesn’t like to think of themselves as fair-minded? Saturn, however, does interesting things to the sign it’s passing through. This planet‘s job is to expose inconsistency, not to indulge self-imagery. Saturn’s two-and a-half-year tenure in Libra is a teaching about fairness in the archetypal sense. Does this deeper meaning of fairness have anything to do with its conventional meaning? That’s what we’ll find out.
Whose Tradition?
The squeeze is on. The Saturn-Pluto square, which has been building for several months, has now hit the 90-degree point. With Saturn freshly arrived in Libra and clicking into formation with Pluto at the second degree of Capricorn, the defining aspect of the Cardinal Cross is now in place.
American Materialism: The Elephant in the Middle of the Room
Money as taboo
Pluto is the planet of taboos. How appropriate it is that the god of Hell is the governor of these festering energies, always in the atmosphere but rarely discussed honestly and directly. The danger attached to these ideas causes baroque mythologies to build up around them, a system of apologias which would provide a fascinating self-study if we had the courage to look into them. In our own natal chart, Pluto’s placement points to issues we may be semi-aware of but rarely look into, because we simply don’t know what to do with them.
What to expect from a Session
What is astrology?
Astrology is a language of symbols. Astrological birth charts are maps of a person’s life purpose laid out in this coded language. A chart is derived from the arrangement of planets in the sky at the exact time you were born, from the vantage point of the exact place you were born.
Translating the symbolic configurations of a birth chart into terms the client can understand is the art form that the astrologer practices.
Open the Window
A window opened wide in a rank and fetid room. That’s what we’ll get from the next two years of Saturn in Libra, if we play our cards right.
Air is the antidote to sentiment (excess water), lack of imagination (excess earth) and bloviating blowhards fired up by their own pseudo-convictions (Rush Limbaugh.)(I mean excess fire).
November 2009
The Empire Strikes Out
Okay, now things are really getting exciting. The Cardinal Cross period has passed another milestone.
Saturn has entered Libra, the sign of its exaltation. Throughout November it is within two degrees of an exact square to Pluto, … Meanwhile, Uranus, still in opposition to Saturn, is inching its way closer to an exact square with Pluto. …
On the material level, the question asked by this transit is: How will the world handle its wealth, energy and power?
Over the next few years, the issue of right use of resources will be topic number one. ….
The critical point here is that denial will no longer be possible, even for the wealthy. Meanwhile, the denial in which many of the non-wealthy are shrouding themselves is at least as poisonous.What is the conscious person’s response to the perils of economic meltdown, climate change and the global systems collapse associated with peak oil?
Pumpkins and Pagans
Today is the first day of Scorpio. Every year at this time I ask myself whether there’s been any change in the blasphemy that’s been made of Halloween.
I have written elsewhere about the original meaning of this holiday, once a holy day in the truest sense of the word. Samhain, as it was known to the ancient Celts, is a Minor Sabbat: it falls midway between an Equinox and a Solstice (the Major Sabbats).
Laying Down the Law
As I type these words, Saturn is only three degrees away from Libra. This should provide a refreshing change.
For two and a half years Saturn has been in Virgo, the sign of health and sickness. Although there were other transits that went into making health care reform the 500-pound gorilla that it has become, we can chalk up to Virgo (unconscious Virgo, that is) the obsessive parsing that has surrounded this charade of a debate. With Saturn moving into an air sign, I am looking forward to a fresh breeze of reason and rationality to waft into the American conversation.
October 2009
The Color of Money
The years ahead are going to challenge our old ways on just about every front. But human nature being what it is, some issues are going to throw us for more of a loop than others. In the mass mind, certain topics are connected to powerful unconscious feelings. These provoke intense reactivity unless or until they are brought to awareness and resolved.