Author: Jessica Murray

Astrologer, writer and cultural commentator Jessica Murray brings to light the spiritual underpinnings that shape both the personal and collective experience of our time.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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