Live-in relationships and the sixth house

March 31, 2009 By

sixth houseJeffrey Kishner has a great article up today that illustrates the flexibility of house rulership in the astrological world of symbols.  It’s easy when we’re studying astrology to become rigid about certain things, like house rulers.  For example, we tend to always put relationships in the seventh house of marriage and partnership.  But relationships can fall under quite a few houses:  casual romances in the fifth house, making a home together in the fourth, sexual intimacy and joint financial ventures in the eighth, creating a business together in the tenth, and developing a solid friendship in the eleventh.

But when we’re living with someone else, the mundane realities that we find in the sixth house come into play.  As Jeff writes:

So much of a long-term relationship is the sharing of life on a day-to-day basis. The mundane, daily activities — grocery shopping, fixing up the house or apartment, taking the kids to soccer, reading the paper — are 6th house activities. They’re routine.

The routine can be comforting — it is often what draws people into relationships (e.g., “I want someone with whom I can share my bed every night”) — but it can also be stifling. Perhaps the question of whether an affair is “real” is whether this relationship can survive the 6th house experience. If you leave your boyfriend/husband for your lover and move in together, the habits might be different, but this is also when many of his flaws become apparent — those habits that annoy you.

The little details can be endearing, or they can drive you crazy.

Of course, you don’t have to live together if you are in a long-term relationship, even if you’re married. There are couples who choose to stay in separate residences so that the passion of their relationship isn’t weighed down by the humdrum routine of daily life. But most couples choose to live together. An affair is appealing because the romance exists on another plane, in which you don’t have to see each other brush teeth, wake up with bad hair, go through the stomach flu. Yet, could it be that as long as you haven’t integrated the romance into your 6th house, you cannot know if it can move “to the next level?

I like Jeffrey’s later analysis that we fall in love in the 5th, and have to manage the day-to-day details of living together in the 6th before we can really establish the partnership of the 7th.

Anything that falls under the realm of human life can be experienced through the lenses of different houses.  Our job may be a career and the expression of Self through dharma in the tenth house, or it can be just a job in the sixth house of the mundane details of life.  Children are usually found in the fifth house of creative self expression, but they may also be soulmates in the seventh or friends in the eleventh.

These subtle nuances are what makes astrology and all study of human behavior an art, rather than a science!!

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Digital Astrology: What kind of tech user are you?

March 30, 2009 By

smartphonePC World brings us this interesting report from the Pew Research Center on the different types of tech users and suggests that perhaps there’s an astrological connection:

With all the various forms of smartphones and laptops entering our lives, it sometimes seems like the Internet is becoming a part of us: The connection is always on, and information is always just a click away. It turns out, though, the majority of Americans don’t feel that mobile electronics are tethering them to the digital world — in fact, most adults see the devices as being distant and unimportant parts of their lives.

A new report by the Pew Research Center attempts to categorize people into 10 different types of tech users. You could call it a kind of astrology for the digital age: a set of memorably named designations that tell you your preferences and personality when it comes to the electronic world. (Sorry — no “heavenly bodies” involved in this pseudo-science.

OK, there’s only ten categories, but if we get creative we can come up with sign correlations:  Remember that each of our charts is made up of many different sign combinations, so this is for entertainment purposes only!

Digital Collaborators: 8% of adults use information gadgets to collaborate with others and share their creativity with the world. These are the Libras – the ones for whom relationships and connections are critical, and probably also the Leos who feel that everything they do is important enough to be shared with the greater universe.

Ambivalent Networkers: 7% of adults heavily use mobile devices to connect with others and entertain themselves, but they don’t always like it when the cell phone rings.  It would be Aries and Scorpio, the Mars-ruled signs, that like to control when and how electronic communication takes place.

Media Movers: 7% of adults use online access to seek out information nuggets, and these nuggets make their way through these users’ social networks via desktop and mobile access.  This would be Gemini – the adept processors of information.

Roving Nodes: 9% of adults use their mobile devices to connect with others and share information with them.  This would be Capricorn, ruled by Saturn for which technology is primarily for practical uses

Mobile Newbies: 8% of adults lack robust access to the internet, but they like their cell phones. Our Taurus friends are usually the last to jump on a fad bandwagon.  They are just discovering cellphones but find the rest of it just silly.

Desktop Veterans: 13% of adults are dedicated to wireline access to digital information, and like how it opens up the pipeline to information for them.  The Virgos among us are practical and find browsing the internet on a phone far less practical than the desktop computer.

Drifting Surfers: 14% of adults are light users – despite having a lot of ICTs – and say they could do without modern gadgets and services.  These are the Sagittarians who would far rather be outdoors having adventures and meeting real people that browsing the internet on their cellphones.

Information Encumbered: 10% of adults feel overwhelmed by information and inadequate to troubleshoot modern ICTs.  This would be our Pisces friends, who find it easy to get lost in the barrage of information technology and the need to continually update their products.

The Tech Indifferent: 10% of adults are unenthusiastic about the internet and cellphone. This is most likely to be the Cancers, who thrive on the personal touch and the emotional connection that you can’t get through a cellphone and internet.

Regardless of the pressure being put on us by the Digital Age, each of us processes information in different ways.  This is revealed in the birthchart by the location of the planet Mercury along with other aspects and planetary placements.  It is no surprise that our relationship to the world of technology has so many varied signatures!

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More thoughts on Planetary Reincarnation and how astrology works

March 29, 2009 By

Edgar CayceI’m reading an out-of-print book by astrologer Ry Redd called Toward a New Astrology that is quite interesting.  Redd went through thousands of Cayce’s readings and extracted the astrological signatures for each individual.  It is astounding that Cayce, with no astrological training and without casting a chart, was able to pick up the planetary vibrations at work in the astrological charts through his clairvoyant readings while in a trance.

I remembered that I had written a post a couple of years ago on this very subject after finding an article online.  If this subject interests you I suggest that you go back to the original post and the article to which it links on near-death.com which includes these paragraphs:

… Cayce revealed that our life experience involves more than just the earth. It involves our entire solar system. Through the principles of astrology, each solar system in the universe is like a “university” – a place for higher learning. Our solar system has nine planets and each planet is a physical representation of a particular afterlife realm (or dimension). Our universe is only one realm out of many afterlife realms. Our universe (including the earth) is the third realm in the afterlife hierarchy and represents three-dimensional life.

Because Cayce associated each planet as a physical (three-dimensional) representation of a particular afterlife realm, Cayce referred to these afterlife realms using the name of the planet associated with it. For example, when Cayce uses the name Venus, he is referring to the afterlife realm that are associated astrologically with the planet named Venus. When Cayce mentions that souls inhabit Venus, he does not mean that souls live on the surface of the planet Venus, he means that souls inhabit the afterlife realm named Venus which is associated astrologically with the planet Venus.For example, the planet earth is a physical representation (three-dimensional) of the third afterlife realm (i.e., our universe).

The planet Mercury is a physical representation (three-dimensional) associated with the second afterlife realm, also named Mercury, in the afterlife hierarchy. The afterlife realms are dimensions which souls can experience when not active in the physical body on earth. These non-active states include death, deep sleep, or other altered states that free the subconscious from its normal physical constraints. The planets exert an astrological influence on us.

The seven traditional planets represent archetypes of human experience, and the three transpersonal planets (Uranus, Neptune and Pluto) are archetypes for experiences that enable the individual soul to transcend and transform.  The seven planetary archetypes correspond to the human energy system through the chakra system, and thus there is a microcosm and macrocosm.  In all of the Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) there are seven heavens.  There are seven days of the week, each corresponding to one of the seven traditional planets. In esoteric literature there are seven rays of divine intelligence. even is the number of Saturn, the lord of space and time that confines us in physical form. .

Is it the actual planets in physical space that provide the impetus for the astrological influences that we experience?  I would argue that the influence has more to do with the planetary archetypes that penetrate all of life’s experience.

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Venus retrograde, financial markets, and the Mayans

March 26, 2009 By

Mayan calendarVenus is the goddess of love and pleasure, and she rules over the principle of attraction as well. In that guise she oversees our ability to accumulate wealth and talents as well as loved ones, and it’s therefore not surprising that since Venus turned retrograde the financial markets have improved and there is a bit of optimism lurking underneath the darkness.

Venus is at its brightest just before it turns retrograde, but it is during the time when it makes a station as it prepares to turn direct that it slips into darkness. During this retrograde period that time will come around the 15th of April.  According to Bruce Scofield as quoted by Erin Sullivan in her excellent book Retrograde Planets: Traversing the Inner Landscape, the ancient Mesoamerican cultures believed that Venus “takes the form of a man and walks the Earth.  Here he meets the goddess Xochiquetzal, goddess of love, who abets him in breaking his vows of purity.”  Venus couples with the goddess and is sacrificed when the planet Venus is hidden from view, only to be reborn as the Morning Star and back in her female guise.

This pageant reflects the fact that when Venus is retrograde we often are forced to view that which is hidden and dark within us and in our relationships.  The Mayans evidently used the astronomical movements of Venus to plan their wars and sacrifices at the time that Venus emerged from the underworld.  This celebration of Venus as Goddess of War would exalt Venus in Aries, the sign ruled by Mars, god of war, rather than refer to Venus in Aries as being in her detriment.  Is this a symbol of our sanitized culture which even from an astrological point of view prefers the cartoon character Venus Aphrodite, emerging as a sex goddess from the sea, to the raw and brutal Mayan vision of Venus, “still sticky with the blood and bones of the dead after her forty-day journey in the arms of the Sun.” (Sullivan, Retrograde Planets).

As a culture we are learning to reframe our values during this Venus retrograde period.  The stress of the financial crisis has caused many people to re-evaluate their lives now that they are out of work, and some are finding that there are some benefits.  What do we value, and who are we really underneath the veneer that we present to the world?  This is what is being asked of us now.

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New Moon in Aries

March 26, 2009 By

The Moon is now in Aries along with Mercury which entered that fiery sign yesterday, and Venus is retrograding back through Aries so we have a strong Aries focus right now.  Mars-ruled Aries is well known for being the sign that is most adept at expressing anger due to its rulership by the god of war.

I like to say that Mars rules the way we feel about the things we want.  When we don’t get what we want, we get angry.  If we don’t speak up for ourselves, we get angry.  If we don’t set good boundaries and someone violates them, we get angry.  There are levels of anger that are useful, and then there is the anger that comes when we have not honored ourselves and what we need.  ”I shouldn’t feel that way.”  ”That shouldn’t bother me.”  We tell ourselves these things, and then the anger erupts anyway.

April Elliot Kent writes about Aries:

Anger is the emotion of last resort, which kicks in only when other warning signs have failed to get our attention. When someone crosses the line with you, a quick and assertive response is in order. We need to stand up for ourselves, and when fear, good manners, or pride keep us from doing so, anger is the natural result. But anger is the nuclear weapon of the relationship arsenal – its only power lies in its ability to intimidate or frighten others. Anger stamps a vintage from the grapes of normal, healthy, Aries wrath, bottles it up and places it in a dark cellar for months. What results might be a great wine – but will more likely turn to vinegar, corrosive and sour.

Aries isn’t all about anger and boundaries though – it is also about simplicity and idealism.  Aries sees the world through a lens in which might should be right, and noble ideals prevail.  There is an innocence to Aries that is often overlooked.  Like the infant human, the infant of the zodiac sees life through a simple prism of needs.  When the needs aren’t met, the anger is expressed.  There’s no hidden agendas – no long-lasting grudges.

The New Moon in Aries occurs at 12:06 pm EDT on Thursday, and forms a square to Pluto.  Pluto will intensify the question “What do we need, and how are we going about ensuring that those needs are met.”  Pluto suggests that those needs are life and death matters, and may devise elaborate power plays in which we play out the drama of our needs and who meets them and who does not, and how we respond when thwarted.

Pluto takes the Aries simplicity and convolutes it.  Where Aries gets angry and has forgottten it the next minute, Pluto holds on.  Pluto also forms a square to Mercury in the New Moon which can enhance our discussions with an intense and argumentative flavor.  Who has the power? is another question that is asked under this New Moon.

Aries also brings courage.  Aries is virtually fearless, and the innocence and blind trust of Aries in That Which Is Right can help to defuse any lingering fear that has taken over our consciousness in the current climate of economic anxiety.  Under the influence of Aries we are more easily able to summon the courage that will assist us in our Quest.

As the Moon moves towards its conjunction with the Sun that signals the new lunar cycle, it will form a square to Pluto at around 7 am EDT, bringing the first hint of intensity.  Remember that this New Moon is a beautiful time for awakening our inner sense of personal power and further developing our own personal identity in a way that takes care of all of our needs while maintaining a healthy balance in our relationships.  The Pluto factor will show us if there are any areas where we still feel weak and unable to protect ourselves, but it will also show us the way to improve that circumstance.

The intensity will soften in the afternoon as the Moon transits Venus which is retrograding back towards a conjunction with the Sun.  Venus is about our values and our relationships, and the presence of Venus will want to ensure that the Aries energy for conquest does not leave our relationships behind in the process.  Moderation and balance will be called for once the New Moon culminates at around noon EDT.

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The astrology of the healthcare bill

March 26, 2009 By

This issue is so emotionally charged that it’s difficult to take a rational and reasoned stance in doing any kind of astrological analysis, but I think Jamie Funk has done just that in his analysis of the signing of the healthcare bill.

The bill was signed into law at the moment that the Moon hit the 5 degree point of Cancer, opposing Pluto in Capricorn exactly and setting off the square from Saturn which is nearing its opposition point to Uranus.  So with the Moon, Pluto, Saturn and Uranus we have a very tight Grand Cross, the most challenging aspect possible.  Uranus is still what we call “out of sign” because since it is in Pisces, which is a mutable sign rather than the cardinal signs that make up the Grand Cross, the effect of that GC is weakened somewhat.

Jamie points out that the Moon in the chart conjoins the ascendant, with Pluto on the descendant.  Both planets are angular (on the ascendant) and therefore have a more powerful effect.  There is a sense of life and death as the planet of the Underworld (Pluto) threatens the Moon’s security which, in its own sign of Cancer, is even more important to both sides of the debate.

Jamie also brings he fixed stars into the discussion, making this a very interesting read although for astrological newbies it may be a bit complex.

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Do “Celestial Portals” really exist?

March 25, 2009 By

celestial portalsAs new and ever more incredible scientific discoveries expand our awareness of what is possible, the new knowledge is beginning to overlap with ancient knowledge that was previously dismissed as fantasy or myth.

A new article on Thunderbolts.info outlines this phenomenon in great detail:

Curiously, peoples on both hemispheres held that such sky holes open and close with great rapidity, not unlike the ‘Symplegades’ of classical mythology. As part of their initiation rituals, prospective shamans of the Wiradjuri people, of southeast New South Wales, Australia, used to believe that they were led upwards by their spiritual guides to the celestial abode of the supreme god Baiame.

From an anonymous medicine-man or ‘doctor’ of the kangaroo totem of the Muri subclass of this nation, interviewed before 1887, comes the following account: “We went through the clouds, and on the other side was the sky. We went through the place where the doctors go through, and it kept opening and shutting very quickly.” Just so, the Tsimshian, of northern British Columbia, observed prior to 1909 that the sky, “a beautiful open country,” “is reached through the hole in the sky …, which opens and closes.” The Buryat are an ethnic minority in Siberia, who envision the sky as a giant inverted ‘kettle’ that alternately lifts up and comes down to the earth; ‘when the cover of the sky is raised, an opening arises between its rim and that of the earth.’

A similar belief was subsumed in the esoteric tradition of Hind?ism. According to this, the universe consists of three layers, the earth, the ‘air’ or atmosphere, and the sky, that look like ‘bricks’ with a perforation in the centre of each. As the soul of the visionary ascends towards the sky, each of the three holes must be cleared to make way: “When the person goes away from this world, he comes to the wind. Then the wind makes room for him, like the hole of a carriage wheel, and through it he mounts higher.” In this metaphysical brand of Hind? belief, the “wind” behaves suspiciously like what is now called the solar wind.

Last fall NASA scientists found “a giant breach in Earth’s magnetic field.”  Project scientist David Gilbeck said, “”This finding fundamentally alters our understanding of the solar wind-magnetosphere interaction.”  The writers of the Thunderbolts article add:

A computer simulation revealed that two holes frequently develop in the magnetic field of the earth, “…one at high latitude over the Northern hemisphere, and one at high latitude over the Southern hemisphere. The holes form over the daylight side of Earth, on the side of the magnetic shield facing the sun.”

It is believed that the openings form above the earth’s equator and then roll over to earth’s winter pole, which is in the north in December and in the south in July. The holes close as rapidly as they open, NASA’s current estimate being that the two fields of the sun and the earth “briefly merge or ‘reconnect,’ forming a portal through which particles can flow” approximately “every eight minutes.”

If there are spatial portals in the apparatus of the Earth’s atmosphere, then perhaps it’s not so far-fetched to consider the existence of dimensional portals, and what the heck – why not time portals as well!  I would be interested to see if there is a connection between these openings of the Earth’s magnetic fields and the ley lines that appear to connect neolithic sites of ancient mystery along what could be energy fields.

The opposition between Saturn and Uranus that began last fall is likely to bring even more new discoveries (Uranus) that turn established scientific and archaeological understanding (Saturn) on its ears.  This acceleration of scientific knowledge has been growing steadily over the past fifty years, but it seems to be increasing in speed and intensity.  I will continue to cover these astonishing discoveries as they appear to change our world and blow our minds!

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Pluto in Capricorn: AM is Banned in Australia!

March 24, 2009 By

Perhaps one of my Australian readers can enlighten me!  The ACMA Secret Censoring Blacklist has included my post onAstrology and the False Identity, according to the website Wikileaks.org.  I’m listed right there along with babesf*%&k and brutalsexpics.

Has Astrological Musings become a victim of Pluto in Capricorn’s desire for more and more Big Brother-type control?  Wikileaks seems to think so:

The Australian communications regulator’s top-secret blacklist of banned websites has been leaked on to the web and paints a harrowing picture of Australia’s forthcoming internet censorship regime. Wikileaks, an anonymous document repository for whistleblowers, obtained the list, which has been seen by this website, and plans to publish it for public consumption on its website imminently. Wikileaks has previously published the blacklists for Thailand, Denmark and Norway. University of Sydney associate professor Bjorn Landfeldt said the leaked list “constitutes a condensed encyclopedia of depravity and potentially very dangerous material”. He said the leaked list would become “the concerned parent’s worst nightmare” as curious children would inevitably seek it out.

But about half of the sites on the list are not related to child porn and include a slew of online poker sites, YouTube links, regular gay and straight porn sites, Wikipedia entries, euthanasia sites, websites of fringe religions such as satanic sites, fetish sites, Christian sites, the website of a tour operator and even a Queensland dentist.

“It seems to me as if just about anything can potentially get on the list,” Landfelt said. The blacklist is maintained by ACMA and provided to makers of internet filtering software that parents can opt to install on their PCs.

However, if the Government proceeds with its mandatory internet filtering scheme, sites on the blacklist will be blocked for all Australians. The Government has flagged plans to expand the blacklist to 10,000 sites or more.

Fortunately, only the one page of this blog is banned.  But it does bring up some interesting questions about government censorship and the scope to which the power (Pluto) of government (Capricorn) will be stretched during this period of economic and social reorganization.

update March 26: Evidently the Australian government is cracking down on identity theft,  hence the trigger of my post on “false identity” to their banned list.  It’s a relief to know that astrology itself is not the problem for the Australian government.

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Worship of Zeus may be much older than supposed

March 22, 2009 By

ZeusExcavations at Mount Lykaion in Greece have unearthed pottery shards that date back over 5,000 years.  Mount Lykaion is one of the mythical birthplaces of Zeus (later known as Jupiter in Roman mythology), and this has led to speculation that Zeus may have been worshipped in this location 1,000 years earlier than previously supposed.

David Gilman, senior research scientist, says:

The fact that the ash altar to Zeus includes early material dating back to 3000 BCE suggests that the tradition of devotion to some divinity on that spot is very ancient. The altar is long standing and may in fact pre-date the introduction of Zeus in the Greek world. We don’t yet know how the altar was first used, and whether it was used in connection with natural phenomena such as wind, rain, light or earthquakes, possibly to worship some kind of divinity male or female or a personification representing forces of nature.” .

Evidently there are layers of archaeological findings that span thousands of years, and early 20th century excavations suggested the earlier activity there to be 700 bce.  One of the arguments against ancient civilizations such as Atlantis is that no evidence has yet been found for such a civilization, but as archaeologists continue digging deeper and deeper into the millenia they keep pushing back the limits of the earliest civilizations.

Was Zeus a human person that was literally born on Mount Lykaion?  In mythology he was one of the Titans, the children of Gaia (Earth) and Ouranos (Sky) that later battled with the gods for control.  This is very similar to the Genesis myth of the Daughters of Man (Earth) mating with the Sons of God and bearing children:

The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of men, and they bore children to them. Those were the mighty men who were of old, men of renown.

Men of renown: Zeus and Kronos and the other characters of Greek myths?  It’s all very fascinating to me and the archaeological evidence keeps getting closer to the truth.

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An interview with Deb Houlding on traditional astrology

March 22, 2009 By

When I was at the Blast astrology conference in September I attended a lecture by Deb Houlding, proprietess of the fabulous Skyscript website, on the ancient art of Horary.  Although my astrological skills fall squarely in the field of modern astrology, which is more humanistic and geared towards spiritual evolution than the more ancient methods, I confess I am fascinated by the ancient techniques and their claims to exactitude and details.

Skyscript has an extremely interesting interview of Deb by Garry Phillipson which I recommend for everyone.  Even if you don’t know much about astrology you’ll find the story of how she became interested in astrology in general and in the Renaissance techniques of William Lilly in particular quite fascinating.

The more we learn about the incredible field of astrology, the more there is to know.  Not one of us, no matter how learned, can ever claim that we have mastered it!

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