Archive | 2009

Show Biz Politics

decblog_elephantThe Pluto-in-Capricorn years are raking the body politic over the coals. All around us governing infrastructures are showing their cracks and fissures. We can expect their disintegration to accelerate as 2010 unfolds.

It’s a good time to consider what we mean by politics.

Sometimes the word seems to mean the outer world in general. As when you hear someone say “I’m not interested in politics” but you know they’re referring to something more all-encompassing than governmental systems.… click here to continue reading.

December 2009
Fair and Balanced


Now that Saturn is in Libra, it’s time to 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 does not indulge our self-imagery; it exposes our inconsistencies.


Saturn’s two-and-a-half-year tenure in Libra is a teaching about fairness in the archetypal sense.… click here to continue reading.

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.

We are going to need Saturn in the years ahead. If used with clarity, Saturn will build new infrastructures when our planetary karma hits the fan.… click here to continue reading.

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.It is human to resist confronting this realm of the psyche.… click here to continue reading.

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.… click here to continue reading.

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).

Libra is an air sign, and air is about ideas. Saturn is getting ready to give us a show-and-tell about the neglect of the mind and the abuse of ideas that has turned American public discourse into an orgy of irrationality.… click here to continue reading.

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, the planet of death and rebirth. And because Saturn is the ruler of Capricorn – the sign Pluto is in — the energy between these two dark gods has an especially ambivalent and intense quality.… click here to continue reading.

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).… click here to continue reading.

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.… click here to continue reading.

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.

Money is one of the hottest of these hot buttons.

… click here to continue reading.