Articles

Growing Pains: The Saturn Return and Quarter Squares

Originally published in The Mountain Astrologer, Oct-Dec 2021

All transits invite us to grow further into ourselves, each planet in its own way. Jupiter, for example, motivates by giving us a green light forward; Mars motivates us with a boost of adrenalin. Less comfortably, Saturn motivates us by showing us what we could be, but are not yet.

Saturn plays a long game: that of getting us to know ourselves better and better through the passage of time.… click here to continue reading.

The Capricorn Stellium Unfolds

Originally published in The Mountain Astrologer, Dec’18/ Jan’19 as
Seeing the Big Picture: Working with the Transits of 2020

In the scope of one year, 2020, several important planetary cycles are launching.

> On January 12th 2020, the Saturn-Pluto conjunction will reach exactitude, the standout transit in a line-up in Capricorn.

> In December 2020, the Jupiter-Saturn conjunction will reach exactitude in Aquarius.

> Over the course of 2020, the conjunction of Jupiter with Pluto will go in and out of exactitude.

… click here to continue reading.

Truth or Dare: Major Transits of 2017

Originally published in The Mountain Astrologer, Feb/Mar 2017

The opposition between Jupiter (understanding) and Uranus (shifts and shocks) will be asking Americans to get real in a new way this year. Worldwide, it will rattle complacencies. Starting in December ‘16, we saw an upswing of urgency against a backdrop of long-term crises. The confusion and chaos of 2016’s Saturn-Neptune square has quickened into a more wakeful mood as the major transits of 2017 return us to the themes of the Cardinal Cross, now in its assimilation phase.… click here to continue reading.

Donald Trump and the USA Chart

Originally published in The Mountain Astrologer, Feb/Mar 2017

With his progressed Sun moving into his first house (significant beginnings) and Jupiter trining his Sun/Uranus for most of 2017, Donald Trump’s electoral success makes astrological sense. This is the year of his Jupiter Return, a year to cash in on many fronts (2nd house).

Cardinal Cross

But it also means that the transiting Jupiter-Pluto square impacts him all the more powerfully (peaking in Jan, July – early Sept, and Nov 2017).… click here to continue reading.

Citizen Snowden

Originally published in The Mountain Astrologer, 2015.

What makes someone risk his personal security for a public goal? Some people seem fated to embody the big, difficult ideas with which their collective is struggling. Edward Snowden, for example, was leading a remarkably unremarkable life that exploded into something extraordinary. This happened after he leaked classified data from the National Security Agency (NSA) to the media in June 2013. It was a move with profound ramifications for himself, his society, and the age we live in.… click here to continue reading.

Right Use of Power

The US Pluto Return

Originally published in The Mountain Astrologer, 2014.

None of us will live long enough to experience a personal Pluto Return. It takes this planet around 250 years to cycle through the zodiac. But Americans will experience a Pluto Return collectively, in 2022, when this tiny clump of power reaches the degree of Capricorn that it occupied on July 4^th,1776.¹

When a planet returns to its natal position, the native hunkers down with the archetype in question.… click here to continue reading.

Years of reckoning

Originally published in The Mountain Astrologer, 2016.

In any given period, Saturn represents the status quo, while the outer planets represent threats to the status quo. When we track the key angles between these planets, we see the unfolding of humanity’s learning curve: its growth spurts, turning points and breakdowns. Such transits are an astrologer’s best guide if we want perspective on the history-making trends of our times. They allow us to glimpse the cosmic meaning behind societal patterns, culture wars and sweeping global trajectories while they’re happening.… click here to continue reading.

People over Profit

Occupy Wall Street

Originally published in The Mountain Astrologer, 2011.

Throughout 2011, astrologers have watched the Uranus and Pluto square approaching like a revolutionary advance guard.¹ Everywhere in the world, infrastructures are crumbling in the face of this long-awaited transit. The epochal Arab Spring has segued into winter; the European Union threatens to break apart at the seams; there is mounting chaos in Russia, Africa and India.

The weekend before the Autumnal Equinox.… click here to continue reading.

Disaster in Deep Water

It was apparent right away that what happened on April 20^th in the Gulf of Mexico was no ordinary oil spill. Within days, the disaster moved through several meaning changes in the public mind: from that of an accident brought on by the failure of a mechanical device, to that of an example of how government fails to regulate oil companies, to that of a call to reevaluate our position on travesties against Nature.

The skies under which the Deep Water rig went down indicate to astrologers that disturbing questions are meant to be asked, right now, about the way we live in today’s world. It was a literal explosion that triggered an even more far-reaching kind of explosion: one of collective consciousness

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.

Higher Ground: World-Altering Transits in the Years Ahead

Upon the inauguration of America’s new president, millions of people felt something extraordinary happen; something that went beyond a mere political victory party. It felt to many as if a flood of inspiration was unleashed —- not just in the USA, but, remarkably, all over the world – whose power astrologers chalk up not to a man winning an election, but to the epochal transits upon us. The fact that Americans selected their candidate on the very day of the opposition between Saturn (the past) and Uranus (the future) is only one piece of the story.

The Cardinal Cross Years: 2008-23

Troubled times have always been astrology's stock in trade. From the lunar calendars of Ice Age shamans to the glossy magazine horoscopes at the grocery store, in one form or another people have looked to the sky to explain their distresses, large and small. Throughout human history astrology has provided a spiritual constant.

The Mystery of the Winter Solstice

As the month with the most buzz in the Western calendar, December is a worthy subject for astrological study. Let us take a look at what makes this time of year so highly charged, with the goal of opening up as fully as we can to its power. If we want to know what makes a month tick, the obvious place to start is the Sun sign. The fact that the Sun occupies Sagittarius from late November until the winter solstice tells us that the overriding issue of the period is search for meaning.

Mars in Transit: Beware of What You Want

All of us who read charts have at some point been spooked by transits of Mars. It is perhaps the most closely watched and most cursorily interpreted planet in transit astrology. Not known for subtlety, Mars' transits can be a revelation when they trigger more inscrutable underlying chart patterns, because with Mars something usually happens; something that we can point to. But considered alone, the very obviousness of Mars tempts us to remain on the level of symptom rather than meaning.

Mars' deeper significance is as available as any other planet's; but with Mars it is easier to miss. More likely than any other celestial indicator to coincide with actual events, Mars is notorious for

Reining in the Mind

Secrets of Mercury Nicknamed "the lower mind" by medieval astrologers, Mercury doesn't get pursued very deeply in most interpretation. A planet whose governance includes such mundane activities as <b>walking, talking and thinking</b> is not often plumbed for existential meaning. Astrologer Robert Hand calls Mercury's operation "automatic thinking": the rote intelligence we use in everyday functioning.

Pluto and the Media

To understand the fraught topic of American power metaphysically, we must first strip it of its connotations. Interpreting a chart is like painting a still life: if we want to truly observe the object, we start by forgetting what we think we know about it.

What would most astrologers, using straight-out-of-the-textbook astrology, make of a Mercury-Pluto opposition, if they found it in any group chart? They would probably say that the group's information system may be undermined by an underground power source.

The system in question is the American mass media, a phenomenon whose immense reach extends well beyond this country into popular culture throughout the modern world -- from Shanghai street vendors hawking knock-offs of J-Lo perfume to Nigerian gangsters using street language inspired by Eminem CDs.

And what is the underground power source? Who controls the media, how they do so, and what are the implications of this control?

Tips on Visiting an Astrologer

Both skeptics and masters in the field will agree: astrology is not an exact science. It is a fluid, subtle symbolic system with interpretive results as varied as those who practice it. In the ancient world, when there was less distinction made between art and science, and none at all made between science and religion, astrology was considered a philosophical art form.

And there is an art to going to an astrologer. It isn't like signing up for a workshop or going to a lecture, where you just sit there and listen to information that could apply to anybody.

The Big Death Scam

To early humans, the circularity of the life cycle was a given. Evidence from archaeological findings and creation stories the world over suggests a universal world view which held that all living things, human beings included, follow ever-repeating cycles: birth leads to death leads to rebirth. This, in a nutshell, is the law of Pluto.

Before the sky-god religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) rose to dominance, a movement that began around five thousand years ago, spirituality was Nature-based. The Earth was seen as a Great Mother, and all living things were her children. When death came to a member of the tribe, it was the crone priestess who presided over last rites. It is said that she cradled the dying in her arms like a newborn child, crooning the funerary version of a lullaby. The pronouncement of anathema was the priestess' official statement that the dying person was about to cross the mortal threshold, and should prepare for the great surrender.

Ancient View of Death

Before the sky-god religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) rose to dominance, a movement that began around

Saturn without Suffering

Among the ten planets used in popular astrology, Saturn is far and away the most likely to get negative spin. Indeed, if we were trying to assign a planetary rulership to the concept of negativity itself, most astrologers would chalk it up to Saturn.

But all this presumed malevolence has less to do with the planet’s essential meaning than with our interpretations, which are still weighted down by dusty old notions from a fatalistic and pre-individualistic time. Astrologers are rightly covetous of our link with the past, but it is worth considering that many of our assumptions rely upon planetary designations that had lost much of their numinous power by the Dark Ages, at which point Saturn started to acquire the cranky and doomful pedigree we still use today.

Astrology changed radically at the turn of the last century when it was broadsided by psychology, which offered new terms and models to map the mysteries of the human psyche. Over the decades since, astrology has discarded many of its rustiest anachronisms. At least, we no longer repeat to our clients the old warnings about the likelihood of being beheaded if Argol is placed at the Midheaven.

The Buck Stops Where? Saturn Transits to the USA Chart

You don't have to be an astrologer to see that the United States is at a dramatic turning point. Whether we understand what is happening in astrological, political, moral terms -- or just want to duck under the covers and not look at it at all, every one of us who identifies as an American feels a sense of fatal decision in the air. What is it all about?

The USA and Neptune

It is fitting that Neptune should be the most glamorized planet in popular astrology. Neptune has long been associated with glamour, both in the prosaic sense -- cosmetics and fashion -- and in the esoteric sense -- the illusion behind the material world, known to the Hindus as Maya. In facile interpretations of natal Neptune, the planet's complex range of meanings is often obscured by the same utopianism of which Neptune is itself a symbol, making the native sound like a veritable saint.

Pluto in Sagittarius

At this writing (early 2004), we have about four more years of Pluto through Sagittarius, four more years to get our collective values straight. This transit has a lot to accomplish, and when it’s over it will not be back for a while. Every two and a half centuries, when Pluto goes into Sagittarius, the world is given thirteen years to re-establish its essential values. For the past couple of millennia, the business of establishing essential group values has belonged more-or-less exclusively to religion. In the Holy Roman Empire, this was simple: there was only one Church in town.

America’s Search for Security

Saturn will be conjoining our country's Sun and our president's Sun over the next several months and will spend two years in the sign of its detriment. Now is the time to sweep away the cobwebs around Saturn's lore and dispense with some superstitions. To work properly, Saturn's function should express the principles of consistency, practicality and preservation. But the core meanings of a symbol can become lost in the translation from archetype to societal expression. There has been a lot of bad press and confused thinking about Saturn's modern face, and looking at it through the lens of the old planetary laws raises some interesting questions.

Soldiers of Misfortune: Contrivance vs. Reality in the U.S. Military

The USA has never excepted itself from the timeworn tradition whereby a nation uses its poor people to fight its wars. When country calls, the underemployed and underpaid flood into the front lines, while young folks with connections to power and money tend to be busy doing other things. In dictatorships as well as in putative democracies, the fact that foot-soldiers are disproportionately drawn from the working and indigent classes is almost universally accepted as an uncondoned reality. Hardly anybody talks about it except socialists and sociologists. The media discusses the make-up of the military almost not at all, pandering instead to a vague, unexamined consensual presumption that we who share the same landmass are more or less equally likely to die in its name.

Halloween and the Veil Between the Worlds

Halloween arrives with the brisk autumn wind, when our sensibilities are undergoingthe same subtle but profound changes as Nature herself. The energy in theair is ambivalent, prickling with unease but alive with the promise ofconnecting us to life in a new way, a deeper way. Halloween reminds usof the existence of powers we cannot see, and yet still somehow understand.

Thekeen sense of nostalgia many of us feel at this time of year may be dueto cellular memory, which keeps us in touch with Halloween's long, richhistory. Archaic collective imagery of a very special kind re-awakens everyyear when the sun is in Scorpio, sweeping us under its spell.

Children of the Moon

The recent black-out in New York City got me thinking about how rarely we get to experience a pure, velvety black night sky, studded with Moon and stars, shimmering with information. These days we city dwellers may even forget the Moon is there, unless we catch a glimpse of her as she rises between buildings, her magical luminosity not quite drowned out by the city's electric lights.

Though the Moon is a universal icon, ubiquitous in our romantic language, in our psychology, literature and popular song, millions of us never actually see her. But there was a time when the Moon was humanity's primary religious and temporal reference point, as comforting as a child's nightlight, mysterious as a sovereign goddess.

Saturn on America’s Sun: We Meet the World Outside our Borders

The planet Saturn is potent this year. It is orbiting in perihelion -- as close to the Sun as it gets-- with a peak period in July 2003. In this state of maximized strength, Saturn will ingress into Cancer in early June, which means that for the next couple of years, all charts with Cancer planets have an appointment with their karma. Saturn, governor of karma, completes its turn around the zodiac every 28 years, necessitating the native to reap that which he or she (or it) has sown. There is nothing mysterious about the operation of this law. It is one of the least opaque principles in metaphysics.

The Cowboy Hat vs. the Black Beret

"There may still be two superpowers on the planet: the United States and world public opinion." The New York Times, WASHINGTON, Feb.16, 2003 Saddam and Bush: one would think it was a showdown at the OK Corral, two guys, two guns, and a dusty street lined with spectators. The media is presenting the proposed war as if it were all about these two guys; as if all we needed was to see their picture often enough and know what they had for breakfast, and we'd understand what was happening.

Clock Time vs. Cosmic Time: What good is telling time, if it is an illusion?

As astrologers, we are the appointed timekeepers of metaphysics. Throughout history we have been the jealous guardians of the astrolabe, the hourglass, the ephemeris and the computer tables, clocks and calendars which use the sky to tell what time it is. Sky calendars are our lingua franca. Yet we must grapple with a basic conundrum: clock time and calendar time do not exist in cosmic reality. This is one of those things that is obvious once you think about it. But we don't usually think about it. Ever since humans have been on earth, they have been looking up, gazing at the sky, tracking time. The Julian Calendar used so widely today is a very recent invention. So are all linear calendars.

America’s Crisis of Maturity

Ours is a notoriously immature culture. One could even go so far as to say we pride ourselves on our adolescent ethos. Youth is king; juvenility is cool. Our president was not offended when he was portrayed as a comic-book super-hero on the cover of the satirical German magazine Der Spiegel. He was flattered. Our mass obsession with physical youthfulness has been widely noted; the very word "mature" has become a euphemism for "no longer young and beautiful". But far more insidious is the damage our cult of immaturity has inflicted upon the non-physical aspects of our beings. As a group, we lack a maturity of mind and soul.

America’s Crisis of Maturity: The Saturn/Pluto Factor

Poor old Saturn, the planet of responsibility, is usually quite narrowly considered. We tend to think of its lessons as material tasks and calls to filial duty: I must go to work on Monday morning; I must call Grandma on Tuesday; I must settle down and become a parent before I'm thirty. But Saturn has to do with being grown-up in all arenas of life. Its recent duet with Pluto has intensified the question of what it means to mature in all of our human roles, not just the immediate ones.

Limiting the Dark, Deepening the Light: The Saturn-Pluto Opposition

The Flaming Arrow Astrologers have been talking for years about the likelihood of holy wars during Pluto's tenure in Sagittarius, the sign of religion. On September 11, the fiery arrow that is this sign's symbol took the form of a speeding airplane (Sagittarius again) crashing into New York's proud mercantile towers.

Hidden Faces of the Asteroid Goddesses

During the last few decades the inequities of patriarchy have been challenged in virtually every realm, from the legal to the linguistic. Celestial symbolism may be the last bastion of the old boy's club that has defined civilization in the Western World, but there are stirrings of change even there. The discovery of the four major asteroids, just now, at the advent of the Millennium, symbolizes that change. From pagan sky-gods through Jehovah and Allah, male divinities have reigned in heavens perfectly suited to male-dominant cultures. Classical theologians, from whom contemporary astrologers draw so much of our imagery, voted Jupiter/Zeus as king of the sky and we have retained the male focus, with our pantheon of eight male and only two female planets, ever since.

Coming Back Home to the Cosmos: Humanity’s Re-embrace of the Feminine

"Patriarchy is best understood as the 5,000-year birth-canal of the Great Mother Goddess." -- Richard Tarnas, at the Cycles and Symbols III Conference, San Francisco February 1997 A long, long time ago, the cosmic creation force was seen as female: the spark of life that had begun the Universe was likened to a biological mother giving birth. The earth, which fed everybody, was seen as maternal. People saw her caves as wombs, and buried their dead back within the belly of the Mother, vagina-like cowry shells clutched in their hands.

Physics vs. Metaphysics: A False Divide

<i>"Everything you see has its roots in the unseen world."</i> --Rumi

The physicist Will Keepin, a scientist with a distinctly metaphysical bent, has organized the objections he hears to astrology into two categories: the first being the claim that there is no evidence for astrology, and the second being the claim that there is no theoretical mechanism for it.

The no-evidence claim is invalidated by the much-touted studies of Michel Gauquelin, who began with a quest to disprove astrological correlations and ended up compiling reams of data validating them. Whether all this statistical corroboration is relevant, however, is perhaps a more interesting question than whether it exists. It must be stated up front that astrology has a preeminent spiritual component, and any attempt to reduce a numinous symbolic system to patterns of numbers has built-in problems. At the very least, much will be lost in translation.

Attempting to answe

"Everything you see has its roots in the unseen world." --Rumi The physicist Will Keepin, a scientist with a distinctly metaphysical bent, has organized the objections he hears to astrology into two categories: the first being the claim that there is no evidence for astrology, and the second being the claim that there is no theoretical mechanism for it.