Category Archives: Astrology in my world

Astrology in my world: Mars, Pluto and the Astrological Musings blog

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If you’re on my mailing list you received an announcement about the change to this blog, but some of you have emailed me wanting to know what has happened so here’s the scoop (the abbreviated version):

Many of you have been with me since the beginning in 2005 when I was on the Blogger platform.  In 2007 I was contacted by Beliefnet who wanted to carry my blog on their site, and in 2008 I agreed and signed a contract with them.  They pulled the RSS feed of all of my posts at that time.

As some of you know, over time the advertising on Beliefnet became more and more offensive and I started carrying an ad-free copy of the blog on my own website.  Last year Patheos contacted me about moving my blog to their site, and in January of this year I made the decision to move to Patheos. (Mars was stationing before turning retrograde but it was about a week from the retrograde turn.)

Everything was going fine until Patheos received a threatening letter from Beliefnet attorneys stating that they OWN the trademark and the blog Astrological Musings.  Rather than provide me with an opportunity to defend this charge, Patheos followed the advice of their attorneys and took the blog down.

Of course all of this is occurring with both Mars (aggression and defense) and Pluto (destruction and nuclear warfare) stationary in the sky, forcing latent conflicts into the open where they must be fought.

I have filed for the trademark Astrological Musings and have sent a letter to the Beliefnet attorneys but in the meantime Beliefnet has hired another writer to write Astrological Musings on their site.  It’s hard to say how much effect my letter to Beliefnet will have – after all, I am just a tiny fish and Beliefnet is a large corporation with a phalanx of lawyers on staff.

It doesn’t really matter – and other than fighting for the principle of the matter it’s the writing that’s the point here at this blog – there are plenty of other sites that incorporate “Astrological Musings” into the title.  Transiting Uranus (innovation and change) is in an exact trine to my progressed Ascendant (my evolving persona in the world) this week, so there is a sense of liberation here and freedom for greater self-expression.

So I thank you for your support, and for continuing to find this blog no matter where it lives!

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Astrology in my world: The Grand Trine at work

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I apologize to my readers about the light posting lately, I have been pulled in about 100 directions at once.  I generally do have my fingers in a lot of different pies: I am an astrologer, I have a real estate business, I’m a musician of sorts and play several instruments without playing any of them very well.  I’m very accustomed to having a lot of things going at once and with Gemini rising I enjoy all of the stimulation and change.

But over the past few weeks since this Grand Trine has been in effect I feel like I’m in the middle of a whirlygig – like a circus ride that’s spinning and spinning with no way to get off. The Grand Trine closely aspects Chiron and Mars in my chart, and my wound (Chiron) tends to be in my need for DO-ing (Mars in Capricorn).  The circular energy of the trines feels somewhat like a whirlwind that lacks a cohesive or stable reference point.  Everything in my life is so amazing, and pretty fabulous, but there is just so much of it.  This is the burden, if you can call it that, of the Grand Trine.

I’m reminded of a show that was popular when I was young called “Stop the world, I want to get off.”   Fortunately, as an astrologer I understand that once Mars turns direct again in April the sense of chaos will lift.  For now, though, I’m trying to remember to breathe and find my own center in the center of the maelstrom.

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Sunday inspiration: Musings on aging and friendship

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Last night I went to a birthday party for someone I have known for over 30 years, since I first moved to North Carolina.  A large group of us that were involved in the same meditation group relocated to North Carolina at the same time, but because I left that group in the mid-1980s there were quite a few people I haven’t seen for many years, so there were people at this party that I hadn’t seen for years.

As many of you know if you’ve been following this blog for some length of time, I like to say that I have one of the hardest charts I’ve ever seen.  Saturn and Neptune straddle my Sun and square Uranus.  My Moon conjoins Pluto and the South Node at the IC, the root of the chart, and the whole mess squares both Jupiter and Venus.  And I just discovered recently that the Black Moon Lilith, a new tool in my astrological arsenal, conjoins Pluto and sets off that whole configuration.

If all of that makes no sense to you it doesn’t matter: suffice it to say that I had an extremely challenging interior experience and a great deal of psychological pain for much of my early life.  Since my first Saturn Return I have been on a path of healing, and since I’m now in my second Saturn Return that path has lasted for the past 30 years.  During this time I am glad to say that the hard work has paid off and resulted in a much happier individual than the one that started out on this planet back in 1952.

Over the past couple of years I have reconnected with three of my very closest friends from whom I was estranged for varying lengths of time because of my own inability to express my needs and my certainty that no one really loved me.  It’s a fascinating process to begin a new relationship with an old friend that necessitates stepping out of the patterns of the past and the reactions that became embedded in that relationship and begin anew as the person I have now become: a person of greater confidence and self-love.

One person at the party last night was my ex-husband who was rather a victim of my desperation and agonizing lack of self-worth.  I hadn’t had a real conversation with him for quite a long time and my interaction with him provided a mirror to me that showed me how much has really changed in those years (20) since we were together.

I have often thought of working on a suicide line because of my own experience that life can and really does get better if we can stay open and work to heal the challenges that we are given.  Unfortunately there is no easy way to navigate a difficult chart – you can’t just ignore the problems and hope they will go away.  You have to do the hard work of healing because on a soul level that is why you came in with the chart you have.  But the benefits are so enormously gratifying.

I don’t often see how far I’ve come in my life.  People that I have only recently met think I’m just lucky to have such a nice life – they have no idea what it has taken to get here.  And no small part of this healing has come from my current husband, for whose patience in my healing process I am exceptionally grateful.  But the healing did not come easily, and much in myself had to be confronted and dealt with in order for this marriage to succeed.

We can’t help but live as though the world revolves around us, since we are “in here” and everyone else is “out there.”  The people around us are always a mirror of who we are inside, and our old friendships can be the truest mirrors for how far we’ve come in our lives.

Here’s the thing about aging: You just don’t get these experiences of growth and healing without it.  My mother always says “youth is wasted on the young” and it’s true that young people have no appreciation for their vibrant energy and the world of possibilities that await them.  Maybe it’s just that cranky old Saturn sitting right on my Sun that has taught me this, but to me the greatest gift is surviving to this age and being a witness to the transformation that has been my life.  And there’s nothing particularly special about me – anyone can do it.  All it takes is the courage to walk through the fire of your own emotions and the tragedy of your story, and allow your soul to take you down the path to that divine being that you truly are.

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My Saturn Return ate my Skywatch

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At least that’s what I’m blaming it on.  Those of you on my mailing list already know this story, but after spending over two hours writing the November Skywatch a template glitch ate the entire thing before it could be posted.  Thanks to those of you who suggested writing the article in a Word document and then transferring it into the website  - I will definitely do that next time!  The weird thing is I kept saving the document because I had a feeling something was going to happen.  Anyway… Saturn transits tend to create delays and disappointments and events that frustrate us, all in the name of keeping one’s nose to the grindstone. My chart has Saturn, Sun and Neptune all in a nice little triad and while Saturn has completed the transit to my Saturn and Sun it is now sitting right on my Neptune.  A very apt significator for the confusion of the disappearance into the ethers of my writing (Neptune rules fogs, mists, illusion and all things confusing, as well as the higher aspects of transcendence.)

But I will make up for it by posting everything that WOULD have been in Skywatch here at Astrological Musings.

During the month of November there are still no major interactions between the outer planets to create havoc, which means that any planetary transits to our own chart will be singular rather than the influence of a collective.  It also means that we are likely not to have any significantly huge global events, so this continues to be a time of rest and rehabilitation as we gear up for the fun with Uranus and Pluto in 2012.

Neptune turns direct on November 9th after traveling retrograde since the summer.  Since mid-October Neptune has been virtually stationary, shining its laser beam of inspirational light on us, and that will continue until late in November.  Neptune urges us to transcend the boundaries of our ordinary day-to-day world, but can also lead us into confusion and delusion so care must be taken to honor that line between them.

Venus and Mercury both move into Sagittarius today, lightening the mood and bringing us out of the Scorpionic darkness into the more social season of adventure and travel.  But both planets are in a square to Chiron over the next couple of days which may bring us into experiences of old wounds and deep feelings that perhaps we would rather ignore.  Recognizing that feelings are just energy is a big help in allowing that energy to simply flow through and be released, and this is the Chironic process of healing.  That process will be made easier by the trine of Mercury and Venus to Uranus, the planet of innovation and new ideas.  As we open up to new ways of looking at the world the old wounds fall away effortlessly, releasing us into a new future.

So far so good!  Stay tuned for more planetary guidance.

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In the shadow of Saturn

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Beth Owls Daughter and I met for lunch yesterday and commiserated on our upcoming Saturn Returns – although we are a year about, our Saturns are close to the same degree and we both are in the shadow of the Saturn Return right now.  I hadn’t read her blog from Wednesday where she posted this amazing photo of Saturn from NASA’s Astrology Picture of the Day:

Saturn's Shadow (Nasa APOD)

Synchronicity in motion. There seems to be a lot of misunderstanding about the second Saturn Return.  Someone I know insisted to me the other day that the Saturn Return lasts from age 58 to 62.  Clients will often call me when Saturn enters the sign that their Saturn falls in, thinking that is the time of the Saturn Return.  A few years ago a client became extremely angry with me when I suggested that her second Saturn Return would not have the same horrific impact that the first Saturn Return did. Because Saturn’s role is to teach us how to be responsible adults, the first Saturn Return can be exceptionally difficult.  Some of us don’t want to be adults yet at that age and we resist the lessons, and have to deal with the resulting consequences. Many of you know that I have come to think of Saturn as a mentor; to me this image is more accurate and less fear-inducing than the “Celestial Taskmaster” that we usually use for Saturn.  The voice of Saturn within us tells us when we really know we could do better; sometimes it comes from outside of us instead.  Under Saturn transits we may experience financial losses or the famous delays and disappointments in putting our dreams in motion.  Saturn requires patience and endurance – there’s no way to alchemize a Saturn transit.  You just have to wait it out. For Beth and I the second Saturn return only comes once and moves away – there will be no retrograde period and final exam as Saturn runs back and forth over Saturn in our charts.  Saturn sits on my Sun in my own chart, so I have become intimately familiar with Saturn.  In fact, I wrote an article called Saturn: Beast and Prince because to me he is like the misunderstood Beast in fairy tales. This makes it easier to endure the personal dramas occurring to me know as I sit in the shadow of Saturn, waiting for him to realign my priorities and restructure my plans for the remainder of my life (or the next 30 years, anyway).  I know now without a shadow of a doubt that if there are lessons for me to learn, they will be of great help to me in the long run.

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Astrology in my world: Adventures in Astrology

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Maybe it’s because I am heading into the vortex of my second Saturn return (three degrees away it already is a doozy!), or maybe it’s because my progressed Mercury is getting ready to turn direct after being retrograde for many years.  In any case, I have been expanding my astrological repertoire, something I haven’t done since… well, really – ever.

When I started working with charts in the early 1980s Chiron was already on the scene and he hopped right into my charts and started speaking quite loudly.  But despite the fact that I was studying goddess archetypes at the time, the other asteroids didn’t talk to me and in fact seemed to clutter the chart, making it more difficult for me to read the essence of what the chart had to say.

spring I stumbled on Dawn Bodrogi’s website which is a wealth of information for the intermediate and advanced astrologer.  I have been working with her on advanced progression techniques and since she works with all of the asteroids PLUS the Vertex and Black Moon Lilith, I am slowly but surely getting more comfortable with adding all of these points back into the chart.  I am particularly fascinated with the Black Moon Lilith since that point conjoins Pluto and the south node in my chart and explains some traumatic events I experienced as a child and horrific memories that seep in from previous lifetimes.  Here is Dawn’s article about the Black Moon Lilith.

From what I have gathered so far, and I am embarking on a study project on the Black Moon, that this point relates to a primal rage and terror and power that exists in its raw form, unlike the Pluto archetype which takes those primal emotions and uses an alchemical process to achieve transformation and enlightenment. In the Judeo-Christian pantheon, Lilith was Adam’s first wife who was exiled because of her desire to be considered equal to him.  In later forms she became a witch or succubus and a symbol of female power that was feared by men.  Some stories say that when she left the Garden of Eden Jehovah sent angels to bring her back and when she refused the angels began killing her children. No wonder she’s angry!

Astrocartography is another field of study that I have intended to pursue for many years but have not made time to do so.  Last weekend I was at the Body, Mind Spirit Expo in Raleigh and had an astrocartography reading by astrologer Darrell Steen.  Darrell told me, “This is a very bad place for you – you are living on a Pluto line.”  I found this very interesting because the moment I arrived in Chapel Hill I felt I was home, and I’ve lived here for 32 years!

Think about it though – if Pluto is prominent in your chart, and you came with Pluto work to do (as I did with Mercury in Scorpio, Venus in Scorpio square to Pluto, Pluto conjunct the Moon and as I just discovered the Black Moon Lilith conjunct Pluto), what better place to live than on a Pluto line where you are forced to face the Plutonic experiences that strip you to your essence to transform you?

Any Saturn requires some hard work and focus, and my upcoming Saturn return is just a “one hit” transit, meaning Saturn will return to my Saturn just once and move on without retrograding back over it.  But since Saturn is square Uranus in my chart, and Uranus requires new ideas and a radical departure from established habits, I plan to honor Saturn with some serious study in new astrological techniques and ideas.  An adventure for me, and hopefully for you too!

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Astrology in my world: Pluto transit to Chiron

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Pluto ChironEarly in my career as an astrologer, each day I carefully studied all of the bumps that the planets and luminaries (Sun and Moon) would make to my chart. After a lifetime of emotional disarray, it gave me tremendous comfort to see how when the Moon made a 90 degree angle to Saturn in my chart I felt depressed for a few hours. I could predict by watching the movement of Mars in relation to my chart when I would blow up at a friend or colleague. I was almost obsessive in my correlating the planetary cycles with my behavior.

Understanding these relationships between the movement of the planets and our personal experience helps us to ride through periods of distress in a way that I don’t think is possible without that knowledge.  I have clients come to me in a terrible depression or some other kind of psychic distress, and when we are able to identify the planet that is at work in that client’s chart we can identify not only the nature of the distress this person is experiencing, but also the timing of the difficulty and when it will begin to lift.

“So I’m NOT crazy,” the client will say.  It’s only Chiron.  Or one of the other Big Guys: Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto.

When I was younger I feared the intensity of my emotions and worried that if I let them, they would completely take over my psyche.  Over the years I have learned that emotions are simply energy, and that if a planetary cycle brings about emotional distress there is something to be learned and observed.  If we run from those feelings or try to block them, exterior situations such as relationship problems or physical illness can manifest in the outer world.

Pluto transits are nearly always intense.  Pluto’s job is to strip away any veneer of BS and reveal the ultimate Truth that lies at the core of our lives, and this is not always a comfortable process.  When Pluto in the sky makes angles to the planets in our chart we are forced to face patterns of behavior that don’t serve us – we are often confronted with issues from our past that need to be released.

Pluto is at a virtual standstill, having just turned retrograde (just like a car making a U-turn, when a planet prepares to change its apparent direction from our viewpoint its motion slows down to a crawl and its influence is at its most intense during this “stationary” period).  Pluto is making its U-turn at the exact degree of  Chiron on my chart.

Chiron is our sore spot – our wounded place.  Chiron’s sign in our chart reveals something about this core wound, as does the house Chiron falls in and any planets that aspect Chiron in our chart.  When a planet hits our Chiron by transit, any unhealed wounds that are ready to be processed and released are activated.  This feels painful and the temptation is to run away from it and avoid those feelings, but if we can instead remain calm and present in the face of these intense feelings and allow them to make themselves known, we can facilitate real emotional healing.

This is a very different process than using meditation or other tools to try to control our emotions.  This is generally not effective since the feelings that are stored in the psyche and the body/mind/spirit system tend to remain there until they are fully processed and digested.

I saw this coming, of course, and marked my calendar that from mid-March to mid-May I would be having this Big Transit that could make my life difficult.  I planned a light work schedule and did not schedule any vacations.  I have to say, the transit (at its peak right now) is not as difficult as I had imagined it would be but I am having to take a lot of my own medicine.  Pluto is like a Roto-Rooter going right into the core of my wounds – rather like a root canal into the raw nerve of the psyche.

Still, I am eager for the opportunities for healing that this transit offers.  I have done a great deal of healing work over my lifetime, but there are still raw wounds remaining in my psyche and in my heart and over the past couple of months I have definitely been made aware of them.  I have had to open up my heart to the raw anguish that seems to reside in the core of my heart and listen to its cry of pain.  But through it all I am feeling ultimately more balanced and courageous as I venture into the depths of the wound.

The trickiest part of the transit so far was earlier this week when transiting Mars brought its aggressive energy into the mix, squaring Pluto in the sky so that the whole Mars/Pluto battle was brought into the healing room of my transit.  Mars and Pluto both deal with fear on some level – they are both primal forces of fear, aggression and self-protection.

Fortunately I was able to identify the transit and warn my husband that it was coming, so that when I appeared like a crazy person to him I could say “this is the Mars/Pluto square hitting my Chiron” and know myself that no, I wasn’t going crazy.  It’s just a planetary cycle.

For me, this is one of the greatest gifts of astrology.

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Astrology in my world: Conflicted about success

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One of the challenges I run into often with clients who  come to me for Visioncrafting® work is a complex combination of emotions relating to success in our chosen field.  On the conscious level we want to be successful writers, business people, artists.  But lurking in the subconscious are old patterns and belief systems that keep us from bursting out and claiming the sense of accomplishment that rightfully belongs to us.

Fortunately, we can address those patterns and change the tapes that continually reinforce those belief systems once we can identify them, but digging them out of the subconscious isn’t always easy.  Fortunately we have a map in the form of a birthchart that helps us to discern where these patterns likely originate but then the rest is up to us.

I was just selected to speak at the United Astrology Conference 2012.  This is the biggest astrology conference in the United States – members of several different organizations convene every few years to illuminate each other.  This conference draws the best of the best so when I received the email informing me that my application to speak was accepted I was shocked.  Like other astrology bloggers I consider myself an outsider in the world of astrologers.  I don’t hold a certification, I haven’t published an astrology book … yet!!  Those of us who blog instead of publish books are renegades – we seek our own path to public recognition.

My friend April evidently also was shocked by her being selected to speak at UAC:

I’m not a big name, I don’t have a gift for schmoozing influential people, I haven’t spoken for a lot of astrology groups. If you have any two of those things going for you, and you keep at it, I’m willing to bet your odds in the future will be much better than mine were. As for me, taking nothing away from the hard work I’ve done in the last 20 years to establish myself in astrology – my progressed Sun is trining Jupiter this year, and to be honest, I think I just got lucky. That’s not to say I haven’t worked to earn it; it’s just that a lot of the people who didn’t get chosen have worked hard, too.

This is one thing I hate about competitive sports.  A team can work hard all year, have a great season, and then in one game lose everything.  But I digress…

I have the Moon in Leo, so you know there’s a big part of me that longs for fame.  My fifth house Sun echoes that need to seek experiences that will enlarge me and give me greater self-expression.  However, Pluto conjoins my Moon, which has a tendency to make one afraid to peek out the door of one’s secure space, and Saturn conjoins my Sun with its relentless pressure of inadequacy.  I’ve been an astrologer since the mid-1980s, yet it was years before I felt confident  enough to put myself out there with any real comfort.

For some reason this isn’t true of my life in real estate.  Perhaps it’s the Saturn component, and the fact that my Mars is in Capricorn, but I have always felt comfortable achieving in my real estate business.  I have practiced what I call Visioncrafting® for twenty years now and it has helped me to create great success in that world.  It is only recently that I have been able to unlock my fears around success in astrology.

I like to think that I’m perfectly happy in my small astrological world, where I speak occasionally at the local NCGR chapter and write my blog where face it, I am pretty much an anonymous face.  But SOMETHING made me send in my application to speak at UAC, and I suspect it was the part of my soul that knows without a doubt that practicing astrology is my true path and it’s time to stretch out of my comfort zone.

Like April, I have some guilt around having been chosen.  To renew the sports analogy, lots of other astrologers have played an excellent game all year and my winning one of the coveted 30 spots for new speakers means that 210 others did not.  But guilt is one of the major monsters that can prevent us from living the life of our dreams.  It encourages the idea of scarcity and keeps us from continuing to expand and grow.

Chiron and Neptune have been transting back and forth over my midheaven for the past two years or so.  The midheaven is the point that refers us to the calling that we feel from the soul to impact the world.  Typically this is considered to be the career, but it is not always the job that we hold.

In the early days of the Chiron/Neptune conjunction I wrote:

Chiron facilitates this aspect of soul work by uncovering any wounded places that have been left unresolved so that we can be freed of the blocked energy that our unreleased wounds hold within the body/mind/spirit system. Neptune assists by reminding us that there is a world of experience that lies beyond the boundaries of the material world.

As Chiron and Neptune complete the passage over my Midheaven, it appears that it is time for me to start opening those doors to that world of experience and walk through them.

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Astrology in my world: The creativity of Saturn and Neptune

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I found Diane’s recent post on Saturn and Neptune interesting because I have these two planets conjunct in my chart, straddling my Sun. Diane’s post is entitled “Productive creativity” and she writes, “It takes these two very different planets working together to make the intangible tangible – pragmatic Saturn is the best at harnessing Neptune’s dreams and visions and producing marvelous works of art, music and dance.”  Saturn is the left brain, with its focus on logic and discipline and hard work; Neptune is the right brain – artistic, flowing, spontaneous.

She goes on to say:

Having Saturn in aspect to Neptune natally does help. Some of the hardest working, productive artistic types I know have a Saturn-Neptune conjunction usually in aspect to a personal planet (Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus and Mars). These are the folks whose lives revolve around their particular form of artistic expression. They seem to draw inspiration from the very air they breathe and use it to start working on their next creative project/piece . . . amazing.

It’s interesting to hear this description because from the inside, what this feels like (for me at least) is an intense drive (from Saturn) to keep pushing out the creative product (Neptune) into a form that will have some sort of use in the world (Saturn once again).  And when the Sun is involved as it is in my chart, this process is essential to one’s sense of Self and well-being.  It feels rather relentless and oppressive, and makes it difficult to relax into a more enjoyable experience of allowing one’s creativity to flow with ease.

Conjunctions are funny aspects – the experience of them differs widely depending on the nature of the planets involved.  Because Saturn builds form and Neptune dissolves it, these two are not natural allies and I often feel a struggle between the spontaneity of Neptune’s creative flow and the rigid taskmaster of Saturn’s pressure to succeed.  But when I embrace the gifts of these two planets and welcome them both into my psyche, I am grateful for the balance that results.

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Thoughts on Neptune direct

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Neptunian fog

Image from Templatesfactory.net

I have a bifurcated work life.  (bi·fur·cate (b f r-k t , b -fûr -). To divide into two parts or branches.)

As many of you know, I have a real estate business and I have an astrology practice.  That’s not surprising because I have Gemini rising – the sign of the twins governing the arena of my persona.  I am happiest when I am living in two worlds at once.

The conjunction of Chiron and Neptune has been wandering back and forth over my Midheaven, which is the point of the chart at which we find our place in the world.  When Neptune crossed my Midheaven the first time, along with Chiron at about 26-27 degrees, I decided to quit the real estate business.  With the market tanking anyway, it seemed like the perfect time.  Beliefnet picked up my blog, everything was moving forward in that direction.  Finally I could do astrology full-time.  I had little interest in the kind of left-brain efforts required to run a business, I just wanted to do readings all day long (Neptune) and pursue a path of healing and helping others to heal (Chiron).

Then Chiron and Neptune retrograded, going back over my Midheaven last spring and summer.  Suddenly I didn’t want to do anything but play music.  I cut my reading schedule way back, and continued to enjoy the slow real estate market.  I was living a life of Neptune: meditation, music, yoga, daydreaming (fortunately I have a healthy savings account thanks to Jupiter in Taurus).   My usual workaholic self was nowhere to be found.

Then Neptune and Chiron turned direct, once again within a few days of each other, and just as suddenly I find myself throwing myself back into the world of business.  The fog  lifted, and I longed for the opportunity to organize something.  Neptune and Chiron will remain within a degree of my Midheaven throughout November and December, which will hopefully give me an opportunity to integrate the realm of spirit (Neptune) into both branches of my work life, allowing the wisdom of the healing path (Chiron) to penetrate all aspects of my world.

I thought about this as I read April Elliot Kent’s experience with Neptune turning direct, which mirrors my own so closely:

My individual Neptune matrix had gotten ensnared in a more pervasive and universal fog. The outer planets inch along at such a glacial pace, and stay retrograde for so long, that it’s easy to overlook their stations. But what they lack in activity, these planets more than make up for in heft.  Fleet little Mercury turning retrograde or direct is irritating, yes, but it’s like a goldfish that’s jumped out of its bowl and is flopping back and forth on the table; just pick it up and toss it back in the water, and that’s that. Neptune turning retrograde or direct, on the other hand, is more like a whale that’s beached itself, and it often requires valiant efforts to push it back out to sea.

Today, my inner sky began to clear. I woke refreshed, leaped into the shower, and prepared to take off later today for a few days of R&R.  The fog has lifted, and my great white whale has pushed itself back out to sea where it belongs. For now.

The Neptunian fog has a purpose: it helps us to see where we are too entrenched in the details of the material world.   If we use these Neptunian times to open up to that transcendent influence and embrace it, we can navigate through the fog with greater ease and  be transformed as a result.

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