The Astrology of the State of Emergency

April 29, 2009 By

I hope this will be my last post on the swine flu!! Eric Francis has done a beautiful job of analyzing the chart (April 26, 2009, 12:34 pm, Washington DC) for the state of emergency that was announced Sunday and breaking down the climate of fear that surrounds this whole swine flu thing.

Eric writes (my comments are in brackets):

This chart reminds me of a Jaguar with someone riding the clutch. The engine is roaring and the power is not getting to the wheels. It’s an extraordinarily powerful chart — but the Moon is void of course. That is to say, the Moon has made its last aspect and is essentially drifting through Taurus at the time of the announcement.

Mars is square Pluto to one arc minute — 1/60th of a degree. This is just stunning. Check out the 9th house — that is the house of international things. We are likely to see a big response here. Mars is in the international house and Pluto is in the health house, the 6th. They are in a perfect square and that says action: international response.  [Also likely conflict between nations on how to handle the crisis.]

Mars, Venus and Pluto are all activating the Aries Point [0 degrees Aries] (the personal is political), so this is a chart with far-reaching public energy. Uranus is close behind, in Pisces, right on the 9th cusp, adding a sense of urgency, though it’s in Pisces — more emotional than mental. But the Moon void is the first factor that leads one to wonder where it’s all going. Generally, you need a strong Moon to have a strong chart. The activating agent in this horoscope is the very precise Mars square Pluto. [Pluto is associated with viruses as a rule but mysterious illness falls under Neptune's purview.]

The second factor that raises doubts is that Mercury is in a tight square to Neptune. Actually this is Mercury square Neptune, Jupiter and Chiron. …  In a public chart, it warns us that what is being announced simply may not be true. I don’t doubt that there is a flu outbreak; I doubt the importance of the issue, and the relevance of the findings. I know I would look like an ass if the Mexican flu wiped out half the planet, but I don’t think it’s going to do anything of the kind. I have the luxury of talking about this as an astrologer and not a government official responsible for millions of lives. We do NOT know the truth here — the chart is warning this in spades. What is the source of the lie, or the motive? I am not getting data on that, but that group of Mercury aspects is sounding a loud warning. [Breaking it down, we have the Moon separating from a conjunction to Mercury by less than a degree, demonstrating the highly emotional context of the announcement, and this combination is being challenged by Pluto, which aggrandizes the emotion and makes it more important than perhaps it is.  Chiron brings up our fears, and Neptune clouds the issue and facilitates illusion and group-think.]

read more here…

That this issue is predominating the global consciousness is shown by Leo rising, and the ruler of the chart, the Sun, elevated in the 10th house at the top of the chart.  Mars, the ruler of the 10th, is square to Pluto which shows a great deal of fear and possibly death.  Eric says Pisces on the cusp of the 8th house of death denotes “death anxiety,” and this is also reflected by the combination of the confusion of the Neptune square with the intensity of the Mars/Pluto square.

Still, fear is always our own worst enemy.  Fear is the real virus: It’s useful to use caution and be smart, but leave the wolf of fear outside the door.

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Ceres and the Swine Flu Connection

April 29, 2009 By

One of the interesting blogs you’ll find in my blogroll is Todd Chapman’s “Through the Looking Glass.”  Todd is an avid watcher of meaningful connections, and he has over time made an fascinating study of connections involving Ceres.  Todd writes,

Anyone familiar with my entire body of work will surely know that some of my earliest posts centered around the ancient mid-April festival of Cerealia, held in the honor of the Roman Goddess CERES. One of the “highlights” of the Cerealia was the porca pracidanea, the ritual sacrifice of a PIG. In previous articles over the past two years, I have attempted to exhibit some the “pork” related happenings which also seem to coincide with a bloodier human ritual which has become common place during approximately the same dates of mid-April [see Ok. City, Columbine, Virgina Tech]

The festival of Cerealia occurred around April 12 to April 19, although the exact timing is now unknown. The image of Ceres, like Aphrodite and the other goddesses of the ancient world, has been watered down over the years.  Rather than the benign earth mother guise in which she appears today, in ancient Rome and in Greece as Demeter she could be a rather frightening figure who had complete control over the survival of humanity.  Remember that when her daughter was lost in the underworld Ceres/Demeter in her grief allowed her people to starve to death.

Conspiracy theorists are having a field day with the connection of the mass shootings that occurred in mid-April this year to the Cerealia festival, and now the eruption of the swine flu at this time is certainly an interesting coincidence.  The predominance of mass murders in the month of April has caused more than a few raised eyebrows.  The siege in Waco occurred on April 19 1993.  The Oklahoma City bombings occurred on April 19 1995.  The Columbine murders occurred on April 20 1999.  The Virginia Tech murders took place on April 16 2007.

The fact that the swine flu erupted into the news at precisely the time of year as the Cerealia festival which centered around the sacrifice of a pig is an interesting coincidence.  But rather than being an Illuminati conspiracy of Satan worship and mind control, I believe that this type of coincidence programs us to pay attention to our place in the natural world.

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Arlen Specter changes party affiliations: The astrological connection

April 28, 2009 By

Arlen Specter, a moderate Republican senator from Pennsylvania, has served five terms in the US Senate since he was elected in 1980 but today announced that he is switching to the Democratic party:

I have been a Republican since 1966. I have been working extremely hard for the Party, for its candidates and for the ideals of a Republican Party whose tent is big enough to welcome diverse points of view. While I have been comfortable being a Republican, my Party has not defined who I am. I have taken each issue one at a time and have exercised independent judgment to do what I thought was best for Pennsylvania and the nation.

Since my election in 1980, as part of the Reagan Big Tent, the Republican Party has moved far to the right. Last year, more than 200,000 Republicans in Pennsylvania changed their registration to become Democrats. I now find my political philosophy more in line with Democrats than Republicans.

When I supported the stimulus package, I knew that it would not be popular with the Republican Party. But, I saw the stimulus as necessary to lessen the risk of a far more serious recession than we are now experiencing.

Since then, I have traveled the State, talked to Republican leaders and office-holders and my supporters and I have carefully examined public opinion. It has become clear to me that the stimulus vote caused a schism which makes our differences irreconcilable. On this state of the record, I am unwilling to have my twenty-nine year Senate record judged by the Pennsylvania Republican primary electorate. I have not represented the Republican Party. I have represented the people of Pennsylvania.

I have decided to run for re-election in 2010 in the Democratic primary.

Specter’s note that the schism in the Republican party began at the time of the vote for Obama’s stimulus package is interesting from an astrological perspective because it ties so neatly into the timing of the opposition between Saturn and Uranus that we have been discussing in great detail in this column.  Oppositions occur when two planets are 180 degrees from each other and exert a tension and a pull in each opposite direction.

With Saturn ruling conservatism and Uranus ruling progressive ideas, it’s not surprising that the schism between these two modes of thinking have come to such a frenzied peak.  We Saturn/Uranus opposition began on election day, coinciding with the taking over of the White House by Democrats.  The second phase of the cycle was building at the time of the stimulus vote and peaked just a few days later.

Unfortunately, we don’t have a time of birth for Arlen Specter (2/12/1930, Wichita KS) but his birthchart shows his balance of progressive thinking and conservative values.  Saturn (responsibility and hard work) is in its own sign of Capricorn and therefore a doubly strong significator that these values are an important part of his nature.  Saturn also forms a stressful square to his Moon (emotional nature) which can add a touch of rigidity to the emotional nature.

On the other hand, Jupiter in the chart is in Gemini where it tends to be curious about many different ways of thinking, and we see this reflected in Specter’s desire to be part of the Republican Party when it had a “big tent” that permitted many different views.  Specter has the Sun conjunct Venus in Aquarius where it has been transited by the triple conjunction in the sky right now of Jupiter, Chiron and Neptune.  Jupiter is the planet of expansion and liberation, and when we have a transit of Jupiter we tend to want to be liberated from whatever is holding us back.  Specter suffered a recurrence of cancer last year as Chiron passed over his Leo Moon, and no doubt that caused him to think seriously about his life choices.

The transit of Neptune, planet of transcendence and compassion, across his Sun and Venus has no doubt created a desire within him to serve in a way that connects with him on a deeper and more meaningful level.  The transit of Chiron, the Wounded Healer, has brought him face to face with painful experiences that challenge his ability to realign his true Self (the Sun) in a way that supports his own personal evolution.

Specter’s announcement coincides with the exact transit of Jupiter over his Sun and Venus, suggesting that this change is a liberating event for him.  Michael Steele, chairman of the GOP, suggested that Specter merely changed party affiliations because it would be difficult for him to win the Republican nomination for his next term.  But the transits suggests otherwise – they suggest that this is a major event in Specter’s life that realigns him with his purpose in a way that will energize him for the future.

Jill has a different take on this conversion, as do many others.

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The Moral Universes of Liberals and Conservatives

April 27, 2009 By

I’ve written before in these pages about the intensification of the struggle between the more liberal mindset (signified by Uranus) and a more conservative approach (represented by Saturn) as Saturn and Uranus face off in the sky, beginning in 2008 and continuing throughout 2010.

Sign of the Times has an article about social psychologist Jon Haidt who has quantified the differing moral universes of Democrats and Republicans in an effort to foster greater understanding between the two.  Haidt identified five moral impulses:

- Harm/care. It is wrong to hurt people; it is good to relieve suffering.

- Fairness/reciprocity. Justice and fairness are good; people have certain rights that need to be upheld in social interactions.

- In-group loyalty. People should be true to their group and be wary of threats from the outside. Allegiance, loyalty and patriotism are virtues; betrayal is bad.

- Authority/respect. People should respect social hierarchy; social order is necessary for human life.

- Purity/sanctity. The body and certain aspects of life are sacred. Cleanliness and health, as well as their derivatives of chastity and piety, are all good. Pollution, contamination and the associated character traits of lust and greed are all bad.

Democrats, he found, feel strongly about the first two but cared little about the second three.  Republicans valued the third, fourth and fifth value above the first two.  According to Haidt,

“I see liberalism and conservatism as opposing principles that work well when in balance,” he says, noting that authority needs to be both upheld (as conservatives insist) and challenged (as liberals maintain). “It’s a basic design principle: You get better responsiveness if you have two systems pushing against each other. As individuals, we are very bad at finding the flaws in our own arguments. We all have a distorted perception of reality.”

Most of us have a combination of conservative and liberal traits in our charts.  We all have Uranus, we all have Saturn.  Some, like my generation, have those two planets in square formation.  My Saturn/Uranus cohort has famously veered back and forth in crazy radical swings between the desire to stay the same and the need for change.  Part of me wants to live in the Lassie TV show, where mom stayed home and everyone knew their neighbors.  (Saturn) Part of me wants complete freedom from rules and regulations and a constant barrage of technological advances (Uranus). It is often the individuals with this kind of conflict who are the most polarized, such as the example of Rush Limbaugh which I wrote about last summer.

The more we understand the way those we don’t agree with think, the better able we will be to communicate with them.  This is one of the advantages to the wisdom that astrology provides!

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Moon, Mercury and the Pleiades

April 27, 2009 By

Spaceweather offers this beautiful photo by Richard Fleet of yesterday’s conjunction of the Moon and Mercury with the Seven Sisters of the Pleaides:

Pleaides

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Venus and Mars square Pluto: The political connection

April 24, 2009 By

Dharmaruci at Astrotabletalk has a great article today. Mars is gearing up to square Pluto on the 27th, and a stressful aspect between those two can be quite intense.  Mars deals with the more personal issues of anger and boundaries, and Pluto, as the higher octave of Mars, addresses the larger scale issues of rage and nuclear war.

DR writes:

There is a particularly pokey aspect in the sky at the moment: Mars conjunct Venus, square to Pluto. Mars has just entered Aries, and Venus will do so tomorrow (Friday). Pluto is at 3 degrees Capricorn, so this square will be intensifying until Sunday.

No wonder Hillary Clinton has announced that the situation in nuclear-armed Pakistan represents a ‘mortal threat’ to world security, and also that the US is preparing to up the ante over Iran’s nuclear programme. In today’s New York Times we read: Pushing deeper into Pakistan, Taliban militants have established effective control of a strategically important district just 70 miles from the capital, Islamabad, officials and residents said Wednesday. “They take over Buner, then they roll into Mardan and that’s the end of the game,” a senior law enforcement official in North-West Frontier Province said. …

Venus has in fact been stationing at 29 Pisces. What a place to station, the final degree of the zodiac! The end of an era. How fraught with significance are the outcomes we are now seeing! And the sign Venus is in, Pisces, is one in which she can be very powerful. But not in an aggressive way: we have to wait for Aries for that. You could say that Venus stationing at 29 Pisces means you are, in a sense, helpless: you have to yield. What can the USA do about the Pakistan insurgency? Not much. What can she do about the Iran nuclear programme? Not much, it seems, apart from threatening sanctions, which isn’t going to stop Iran….

Venus is also a planet of money, and Pluto a planet of riches and money as power. So we are now seeing the outcome of the first task of the Obama administration which was to pump loads of government money into the economy. As Venus has gone direct, so are there the first signs of stability in the economic crisis. Venus stationing at 29 Pisces is also saying, however, that yes you may have had some success in stabilising the economy, but all that could have been done has been done. You can only pump in so much money without building up ridiculous levels of government debt, and there is growing political resistance to further fiscal stimuli. You can’t do much more at this stage beyond waiting and seeing. The US Venus is at 3 Cancer, hard-aspected by the current Venus-Pluto cycle, which shows how economically defining the past few months have been. Obama’s Venus is at 2 Cancer, again hard-aspected by Venus-Pluto, which shows how defining in terms of personal popularity the last few months – his first real test – have been. Stage one of his Presidency – ‘the first 100 days’ – is coming to a close.

read more here… It’s an interesting read!

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Chiron Neptune and the Swine Flu

April 23, 2009 By

When you combine the Wounded Healer (Chiron) with the planet that inspires devotion and illusion (Neptune), you often get mysterious illnesses among other things.  Chiron and Neptune  are sitting on Jay Leno’s ascendant and induced a mysterious illness yesterday, and now there is news of a mysterious new strain of the swine flu, a never-before seen mixture of swine, bird and human flu viruses.

A conspiracy theorist by nature, I am always a bit suspicious of new flu viruses since we all know that flu bugs are stored in labs all over the world, and then there’s the matter of the epidemic of dead microbiologists. But whenever we are dealing with Chiron, there’s a sense that unresolved psychic debris is coming to the surface in physical form where it disturbs the natural balance of the body’s ecology, and that is true for a society as well.

There’s also news of a mysterious respiratory illness that has surfaced in Mexico but appears to be affecting mostly Canadians, and a mystery illness has swept a high school in Westchester County New York.

Whenever Chiron is activated it’s a good time to try to bring the body, mind and spirit into balance.  That is as true on a cultural level as it is for the individual!

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Why we need to get out more

April 23, 2009 By

Photo from Tony Howell.

From an article on Livescience.com:

In our increasingly urbanized world, it turns out that a little green can go a long way toward improving our health, not just that of the planet.

That could mean something as simple as a walk in the park or just a tree viewed through a window. It’s not necessarily the exercise that is the key. It’s the refreshing contact with nature and its uncomplicated demands on us.

Here is how it works: Modern life — commuting, computing, paying taxes — can place a burden on our brains and bodies. In recent years, scientists at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s Landscape and Human Health Laboratory and elsewhere have compiled evidence that suggests that a connection to nature is vital to our psychological and physical health because it helps recharge our brains so that we’re better able to cope with the stresses in life.

I live on five acres of land in a semi-rural area, but I still get most of my exercise at the gym or in my house, rather than spending time outdoors working with the land.  Now the Wii gives you the opportunity to play all of your outdoor sports at home, using computerized equipment.  I’ve been writing that technology is changing the human brain, and I would think that the less we interact with the natural world the more we facilitate that alteration.

In a 2001 study detailed in the journal Environment and Behavior, Kuo and her colleagues surveyed parents of children aged 7 to 12 who had been diagnosed with an Attention Deficit Disorder. They asked the parents to rate activities that seemed to alleviate their child’s symptoms and which seemed to aggravate them.

They found the children functioned better after a “green” activity (i.e. one that likely took place in a natural setting, such as fishing or soccer) than a “non-green” one (such as watching TV or playing video games).

Kuo and her colleagues think the improvement stems from nature’s ability to capture our attention involuntarily, giving the hard-working, overtaxed part of our brain used to voluntarily focus our attention on more demanding tasks a break, essentially allowing it to recharge

Maybe I’ll go out and take a long walk today and make my dog AND my brain very happy. :)

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Susan Boyle and the Zeitgeist of the Chiron/Neptune conjunction

April 21, 2009 By

The timing of the fervor over Susan Boyle has struck me, coinciding as it does with the conjunction of Chiron and Neptune which are now less than a degree apart.  An interesting blog by Dr. Robert Canfield who is an anthropologist at the University of St. Louis sums this up quite nicely:

Buried within the human psyche are feelings, yearnings, anxieties too deep for words, usually. Only sometimes do we see it in ourselves. Always it is something outside ourselves that touches us, somehow, where we feel most deeply. At such moments we remember that we are humans — not mere living creatures, but human beings, profoundly and deeply shaped by a moral sensibility so powerful that it breaks through our inhibitions; it can burst out, explode into public view, to our own astonishment. And sometimes that objective form — a person, an event, an object, a song — embodies deeply felt sensibilities for a lot of us at once, so that we discover how much we share in our private worlds, worlds otherwise inaccessible to anyone one else. It becomes a social event, so we can all rejoice, and weep, together.

This beautifully mirrors the effect of the conjunction of Chiron and Neptune.  Chiron presides over those feelings and anxieties that are too deep for words, and Neptune rules the yearning for the soul to experience something more transcendent than our ordinary lives.  In these pages we have discussed the pain and fear that have erupted with this conjunction, but the eruption of emotion that has resulted from the Susan Boyle video touches the very zeitgeist of our modern culture.

The superficiality of modern life (particularly over the past 15 years as Pluto transited through Sagittarius and brought with it the rise of celebrity journalism and Botox) has no doubt planted some deep anxieties and despair into western society as we struggled to bring a deeper meaning into our lives.  Chiron opens the doorway to the despair and unleashes it, and the addition of the Neptunian influence brings with it a longing for something more real, for a deeper meaning that will show us the way to a higher experience of our lives.  This to me is the symbolism of the Susan Boyle phenomenon.  An ordinary middle-aged woman taps into something quite extraordinary in the mass consciousness of the affluent West that has had its full of perfectly Botoxed faces and middle-aged bodies that require four hours of exercise to maintain their youth.

I am fairly certain that this phenomenon has not been as strong in, say, parts of Pakistan and Burma where life is a daily struggle to survive.  I doubt that in the Congo, in the midst of a brutal civil war, people have been as overwhelmed by the success of Susan Boyle as the Americans and Brits.  It is only in the jaded West, where the success of musicians depends upon their photogenic good looks and ability to act in music videos that the beautiful song of an average-looking woman has touched the hearts of so many.

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The astrology of singer Susan Boyle: Corrected birth date and time

April 21, 2009 By

Susan BoyleUpdated with new birth date and time.

The You Tube video of Susan Boyle’s audition for “Britain’s Got Talent” has become a sensation all over the world.  When an average person shoots from obscurity to international acclaim literally overnight, there is usually a very interesting astrological background.

Date of birth saga.  A birth date (June 15, 1961, time unknown, Blackburn, West Lothian, Scotland) was posted in a profile in the Sunday Times in the UK, but this was later disputed by the UK astrology website Cainer.com who obtained the date of April 1, 1961 from the publicist at Britain’s Got Talent.  This date was confirmed by telephone by David Nicholson at Cainer who called the Registrar of birth records in Bathgate.  Marjorie Orr had a birth time of 9:50 am on her site, which she told me came from Caroline Gerard, a genealogist in Scotland, and this birth time was confirmed by Kathryn Cassidy (who also works for Cainer) this morning.

This has set up an interesting conundrum for astrologers because we really like the other chart – it fits perfectly with our idea of who Susan Boyle is.  But this is the pitfall of doing an astrological profile of celebrities about whom virtually nothing is known – they become nothing more than a hook for our own projections.  I find that the most surprising readings that I ever do are for acquaintances whom I know slightly.  I have an idea of who they are, and then when I do the chart it doesn’t fit with my concept of that person, but it fits exactly with who they really are..

So I have posted the new chart here, and have thrown away my fantasy of who I think Susan Boyle is.

Susan Boyle has the Sun in Aries, so the quest of her lifetime is to develop the courage and honesty to follow her own instincts and pursue her own adventures.  However, that Sun is opposite the Moon in her chart, which is in Libra.  That Libra Moon longs for the safety and security (Moon) of peaceful and harmonious relationships, and in opposition to the Aries Sun shows an inner conflict between the need to pursue her own desires (Aries) and the need to accommodate others (Libra).

With a 9:50 am time of birth we have 28 degrees of Gemini on the ascendant, which is bleeding into Cancer, and Mars in her chart is in Cancer so there is a strong Cancerian component.  The Gemini ascendant shows an ability to blend in with any environment, and to take on any role that suits at the moment.

Cancer is ruled by the Moon, and has to do with a focus on the family and on nurturing the ones we love. With Mars in Cancer, she is driven (Mars) by the need to take care of others.  With Cancer there tends to be a hope that if we take care of others enough, we will then be cared for ourselves and this is particularly true for those with Mars in Cancer.

This Cancer Mars forms what we call a “T-square” with the Sun and Moon, in which Mars forms a challenging square to both the Sun and to the Moon, which are already in opposition and in a state of tension.  The battle for Susan between the need to do what she wants and the need to care for others is one of the primary issues in this chart and she has likely wrestled with this for quite a long time.

Venus in Susan’s chart is retrograde, meaning it appeared to move backwards at the time she was born, which often creates shyness in an individual, and a reluctance to engage in relationships.  In Aries this becomes an interesting combination of the Aries aggression with the retrograde shyness.  Much has been made of Susan’s claim that she was never kissed, which she later said was “just joking around.”  Still, she was never married, and the challenging square of Saturn to her natal Venus usually depicts an individual who is deeply insecure about her attractiveness and ability to attract a mate.  I have seen plenty of people with Saturn square to Venus who are happily married, but the insecurity tends to run deep.

It appears that Susan never left home, and cared for her eight brothers and sisters, then her father and finally her mother who died in 2007 at the age of 91.  I wasn’t able to find a date of death for Susan’s mother, but that fall, transiting Saturn passed over Pluto in Susan’s chart.  When the Lord of Karma (Saturn) meets the Lord of Death (Pluto), there can be some dark times and surely this was true for Susan as she lived alone in her family home after 39 years of caring for others.  But with Pluto there is always a rebirth connected to death, and an opportunity to begin a new life and this is certainly true for Susan!

The challenges in Susan’s chart are ameliorated by the Grand Trine in water signs between Neptune, Mars and Mercury.  Grand Trines are harmonious aspects that promote ease and bring good fortune, but also can bring a tendency towards complacency and difficulty in moving forward in one’s life.  The combination of a Grand Trine with the challenging T-square offers a more dynamic approach to one’s life, but the desire for comfort with the Grand Trine is difficult to overcome.

Had we taken a look at Susan’s chart before this event we could have predicted that something significant was about to happen for her.  Her progressed Midheaven is exactly trine her progressed Ascendant, by itself a harbinger of an event of significance, and both are in harmonious relationship to Jupiter, the Great Benefic.  Transiting Pluto has been challenging her progressed Midheaven, which could have the effect of forcing a major transformation that is enhanced by all the harmonious energy around these aspects.

At the time of the audition transiting Jupiter had just conjoined natal Jupiter, something we call the “Jupiter Return,”  time of great opportunity. Jupiter was also aspecting many other points in her chart, and clearly this was a time of great expansion and freedom for her.  And then on April 17 transiting Jupiter opposed Uranus in her chart, signaling a surprising (Uranus) opportunity (Jupiter).  Surprising indeed!  That was the day that Susan Boyle went viral on the internet, changing her life forever.

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