Monday, January 31, 2011

Jupiter in Aries Square Pluto in Capricorn: Uprisings Are Expected. The Global Governors Are Waiting. Freedom is a Complex Dance.

In the thick of last fall's Venus retrograde in Scorpio, we had a very important conjunction of the North Node, Ceres and Pluto in early Capricorn. This conjunction flew under the radar for many astrologers, but in fact, these two dwarf planets coming together with the North Node was pretty big news.

Ceres and Pluto have a long and hardcore history between them. Pluto kidnapped Ceres' daughter and dragged her off to the Underworld to be his forced bride. Ceres responded by making the Earth barren and cold. And things have been pretty rocky ever since.

Ceres, asteroid of cereals, grains and the fertility of the Earth, coming together with Lord of the Underworld Pluto on the successful forward path (North Node) in October 2010 dug up plenty of information about the way our food sources and the growing of food, in general, are being manipulated. This remains a potent theme for the entire 18-month Venus cycle.

At the root (Pluto), the advance of the corporate oligarchy is coming about to a large extent through the manipulation of our food (Ceres). This relates to the implanting of genetically modified material into our food supplies by massive chemical corporations more at home producing chemical warfare for the military industrial complex than staples for your kitchen. And it also relates to the purposeful inflation of food prices through manufactured shortages and rampant speculation.

Here is the real Plutonic dirt: the exorbitant inflation on food is, in big part, a result of criminally deregulated derivatives markets and the stampeding of capital, beginning in 2008, from the collapsing U.S. mortgage scheme into a generally much more stable arena: food.

From an August article on the subject:

"One of the things coming to light under this transit is how food has become part of the derivatives scheme, creating a massive speculation bubble based on wild gambling on agricultural commodities prices. In 2008, this speculation drove food prices up (wheat by 80 percent, maize by 90 percent, rice by 320 percent) driving 200 million more people into starvation...

A lot of things have been blamed for the rising cost of food - fuel costs, supply problems, overpopulation, cash crops, diverting food crops to create ethanol. These all contribute.

But a major factor, probably the major factor, not often mentioned is the derivatives scheme on food and resulting price jumps. It was really this that spiked prices to the point that 200 million more people could not afford to fill their stomachs. This was the basis for the 2008 food riots in 30 countries. Haiti, Mexico, Egypt, Bangladesh, Mozambique...

When Haitians were eating biscuits made from clay and lard to stop their gnawing hunger, they had these speculators, their clients and the people who allowed (and continue to allow) the deregulation of the financial system to thank...

Once the mortgage scam collapsed, the ticks had to go looking for a new dog. They found one with our food supply. These speculators bet on the price of food rising, and the higher the price of staple goods like wheat, rice, corn, soybeans the bigger the profits for the speculators and their clients...

From an article by Johann Hari "How Goldman Sachs gambled on starving the world's poor - and won":

"Here's how it happened. In 2006, financial speculators like Goldman's pulled out of the collapsing US real estate market, and they were looking for somewhere else to make their stash of cash swell. They started to buy massive amounts of derivatives based on food: they reckoned that food prices would stay steady or rise while the rest of the economy tanked. Suddenly, the world's frightened investors stampeded onto this ground and decided to buy, buy, buy.

So while the supply and demand of food stayed pretty much the same, the supply and demand for contracts based on food massively rose - which meant the all-rolled-into-one price for food on people's plates massively rose. The starvation began.

The food price was now being set by speculation, rather than by real food. The hedge fund manager Michael Masters estimated that even on the regulated exchanges in the US - which take up a small part of the business - 64 percent of all wheat contracts were held by speculators with no interest whatever in real wheat. They owned it solely to inflate the price and sell it on.""

Now, in early 2011, following massive flooding and crop failures in the spring and summer, prices have been pushed even higher than 2008 levels.

The recent uprisings in Tunisia, Algeria and Egypt are pretty simple, really: people can't afford to buy food. Or anything else. They're hungry. They're unemployed. They're desperate. They see little future.

It's a common refrain, a pre-planned sociological theme across the globe.

And the people are rightfully fingering corrupt government structures - more corporate interests than representatives of the people.

Jupiter in Aries is squaring Pluto in Capricorn, exact February 25, blazing the same trail Uranus will follow when it enters Aries March 11. At that point, we will have the planet of rebellion, revolution and sudden change (Uranus) locked into a series of seven squares to Pluto in Capricorn (consolidation of power among the corporate-sponsored Global Governors) until 2015.

There's only so much pressure and deprivation that can be tolerated. Those applying the pressure and deprivation know this. It's a matter of survival.

Uprisings of the people are expected. And the Global Governors wait to use them to their advantage.

As the mainstream media-imbibing public looks on, talking about the spread of democracy in Egypt (ha) or humanity standing up and saying no more, we are prescribed the usual solution brought to us by United States fighter planes, helicopters, tanks and artillery.

The Canadian and U.S. middle managers Harper and Obama bleat the same interchangeable words into the cameras. We no longer have even the appearance of two separate countries.

The Global Governors ride the wave of public revolt up to the peak and take their places atop the same corrupt hierarchies with a slightly new cast of characters.

Freedom is what we're here for, it's true. But it isn't happening overnight. We grind it out, wriggling out of the shackles together, step-by-step, each revolt injecting fresh energy, inspiration and movement for the longer-term dynamics of Uranus in Aries square Pluto in Capricorn. We wiggle through the cracks and make them wider.

It's exhausting, devastating to know what is going on, to live accordingly amongst people who go on as if nothing is amiss, who don't really give a good Goddamn unless it directly affects them and their's. They don't see that it already does. That a pre-set history is in danger of repeating. That the last time Uranus in Aries squared Pluto we had the rise of the Third Reich leading into the second World War. That their willful ignorance gives it all a pass.

But we have to stay with it. We have to maintain the Plutonic X-ray vision, make the connections, share them and gain strength from the body of knowledge, from the spirit rising from it. We find our openings within the vise-like Pluto in Capricorn grip - and take them.

And we thank our fellow human beings in Tunisia, Algeria, Egypt and around the world for doing just that.

We'll be ready when it's our turn.

Sunday, January 30, 2011

Saturn Retrograde in Libra and the Via Combusta Venus Themes Come Up For Review

Saturn retrograde, 17 to 10 degrees Libra - January 26, 2011 to June 12, 2011

"This is not your standard Neptunian-glossy, Hollywood-manufactured love and relationship, either. This is Saturn in Libra dispositing Pluto in Capricorn love. It's gritty business. Remaining Neptunian illusions about love and togetherness are unceremoniously stripped, a big part of which being the money drying up, and people stop being able to fake it."

This is what I wrote after Saturn first entered Libra in June 2010 and moved into cardinal t-square formation. It remains relevant, as difficult as it is to hold relationships and relationship dynamics under the cold, hard light of day without Neptunian buffer.

Neptune is messing with us on multiple fronts this far into tail-end Pisces, and following its familiar siren song is a surefire false path designed to waste time we don't have time to waste.

Saturn has just dipped into the early Via Combusta degrees of Libra and gone retrograde. Until June 12, we're doing backtrack restructuring of the relationships (and relationship issues) that have come into focus since October 22, 2010, post-cardinal t-square summer. Things shifted in a big way this past summer. They got very real very quickly. And during this retrograde, we work on getting our legs solidly under us with the partnerships we find present in our lives after the dust has settled.

Jupiter is back in Aries, heading to its final incendiary square to Pluto in Capricorn February 25, and the themes stirred this past summer of movement, forging out way out of the muck, dynamism, action, new territory and survival in the face of brutal Pluto in Capricorn corpo-governmental oligarchy intensify.

There is a necessity here to work together with those compatible with us in whatever ways will catalyze win-win forward progress, especially along structured career lines.

Banking on glossy potentials and wished-for outcomes remains perilous. Concrete, here-and-now, show me my return on investment.

The themes of the most recent Venus retrograde through the Via Combusta degrees of Scorpio and late Libra also remain potent until May/June 2012 when Venus retrogrades again in Gemini.

Because Saturn is in Libra and Venus is considered by most to be the ruling planet of Libra, Venus' transits through the signs until October 2012 add a crucial layer of influence to our successful dealings with Saturn in Libra. Venus in whatever sign it is transiting is referred to as the dispositor of Saturn in Libra.

Regardless of the sign Venus is transiting, though, until the next Venus retrograde in Gemini, the overarching thematic flavour of our relationship work has been set to "Scorpionic deep" and "cut the crap." There is a necessary ruthlessness here, a clarifying realism, with an impetus to intricately rebalance and restructure especially the subtle energetic and vibrational levels of relationship.

We're working for and carving out a new level of justice - energetic justice - in our relationships "related to the hidden energy exchange (Scorpio) between the sexes, which includes money as well as misuses of sexual energy. Huge issues, culturally reinforced for millenia."

Scorpio is a healing energy. It intuitively knows where the trouble is and gets right to work, divining and digging to trigger multi-layered release points. It isn't just treating symptoms, either. Scorpio knows it's either go deep or go home, and it puts forth immense stores of energy to go to the mat for people, driving right to the root of the problems that keep them locked up, inauthentic, programmed, and less effective than they could otherwise be.

Scorpio digs the poisoned thorns out - and if it's masterful enough, it gets them all.

But Scorpio's mastery is also it's downfall. Here's where the betrayal aspect of the sign comes into play. Scorpio is a liberating energy, an almost magical transformer of all things oppressive and stagnant and intolerable - and its emotional, psychological and psychic currency is woefully undervalued. Quite often, it's used and abused with little to nothing offered in return. It's left holding the bag with nowhere left to put the shit.

What Scorpio does is mostly in the energetic realms, and because so few people have developed the sight to see this type of energy work, people take it and run. Often, they take it and run right back into the same unhealthy patterns and dynamics Scorpio was expending so much energy to extricate them from in the first place.

Moving out of the ass-burning, should-have-known-better depleting and into the vital and mutually sustaining. Choosing carefully when and how to apply the potent Scorp medicine. Determining the most worthy recipients - and ensuring they are ready and willing to take full responsibility for what is given. This is Scorpio territory, and this is a major theme embedded in our Saturn in Libra relationship work.

"We're in the midst of a five-year gutting, restructuring and energetic rebalancing process in relationship that will not reach ultimate completion until the end of a period of mutual reception between Saturn in Scorpio and Pluto in Capricorn when Saturn leaves Scorpio September 2015...Our collective progress out of the Pluto in Capricorn rubble hinges on the successful rebalancing and restructuring of relationship constructs and dynamics, especially related to the ways men and women interact."

So all these tricky, winding, hidden dynamics are being brought back into play for a Saturnine sober second look during the Saturn retrograde in Libra.

We've got a blazing opportunity now until spring of 2012, infused by the Via Combusta Venus retro, to forge through and beyond complex layers of relationship dynamic detritus and half-decayed constructs that will constrain us, keeping us from the love that will truly nourish and sustain, if we allow it.

More on the Via Combusta Venus retrograde review later...

Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Mars in Aquarius Cools the Fiery Creative Passions. No Overheating.

Mars is currently transiting Aquarius, marking the halfway point of our current two-year Mars cycle, which began during the Mars in Leo retrograde December 20, 2009 - March 10, 2010.

Mars in Aquarius is opposing the degrees of the previous Mars retrograde (0 to 19), bringing us to a 'Full Moon' culmination point in the ongoing process of fully reclaiming our personal primal creative force and then directing ourselves with and through it.

Mars retrogrades relate to a discharge of previous goals and ways we have directed our energy, especially physical energy, to meet those goals. They also kick off a new cycle with an infusion of new goals, new drives, new directions. There is a redirection of primal personal force and a shift in how we go about getting things done in our lives. A shift in how we battle our way through, surviving and (sometimes) thriving under the conditions in which we find ourselves as human beings on Planet Earth.

During the most recent Mars retrograde in Leo, we energetically recalibrated and reclaimed this primal creative force amidst rapidly changing conditions. We accepted redirection of our creative drives and a new shaping of goals and basically held on with all our might as we were zipped through a very rocky 2010.

From my Mars in Leo post at the official close of the previous two-year Mars cycle:

"With Mars in Leo, we are deeply desiring joy and fun in our lives and in our creations now, however that may come. We need to know, and to experience, that life can still be exciting, inspiring and loving. That it and we are still meaningful. That we're still loved. We need to take comfort and solace in the things that bring us and those around us delight and will need to throughout the next years. This is the balance to the glut of Aquarius energy.

We're living in times that are often bizarre, frightening and traumatic, aware as never before of possibilities for the future of humanity that are difficult, often impossible, to accept...

So we've filled our brains with information through the Aquarian technological mediums and now, in light of all that, Mars in Leo asks: Knowing all that you have come to know, what do you desire to create? And do you have the courage to follow the direction of the love in your heart? What will bring joy and love not only to you personally but to your fellow human beings and to your communities? How can you direct your personal creative power and energy in the ways most relevant within the context of the times in which we are living?"

At this halfway point, Leo's ruling planet, the Sun, is conjunct Mars in Aquarius (exact February 4) and our progress is lit up. We get a cool, detached status report and gain some perspective, an objective view of where this creative redirection has moved us from the winter of 2010 to now. How close we are to finding our place with it.

At this point in the cycle, with Mars in Aquarius, the focus turns to the broader community and how we take our places within that community as individuals, especially through what we create. This theme has been with us for a while now and is ongoing as Jupiter and soon Uranus in Aries spur increasing levels of individuation. Successfully meeting our goals means fully claiming and taking responsibility for our identities and individuality, harnessing and directing that energy, our personal instincts, as we buck the stream attempting to force us into robotic, manufactured, homogenized Human-Type Beings (TM).

Our success lies in being ourselves for the community, bringing the flavour only we, as individuals, can bring to friend and comrade groups, shaping every rough edge into a vehicle that serves our forward movement.

And at the same time, Saturn goes retrograde in Libra just after midnight tonight. It will be retrograde until mid-June, moving back over the degrees we have been in since late October 2010. There is some yielding necessary as well as some self-exertion. A delicate balance.

As much as our raw talents and individuality are drivers, we do have to be willing to take our place within larger groups, to work together when necessary, determining how to be part of the crowd without compromising ourselves heart and soul. We can't go it alone, but we have to stay true to ourselves and as Aquarian self-contained as possible. The Piscean leaning and energy propping is over.

Luckily, in the airy sign of the Aquarian water-bearer and trine Saturn in Libra, there is a tempering of the raw aggression (and anger) of Mars that will make it easier to take our places socially and community-wise over the next month. Just don't let anyone force your head under.

Sunday, January 23, 2011

Jupiter is in Aries. You Are Here.

Jupiter entered Aries yesterday morning at 11:11 a.m. CT. Yeah, yeah. 11:11. CENTRAL time only, y'all. So I guess only those of us on Central Time are the Jupiter in Aries chosen ones?

We emerged yesterday from another layer of tail-end Piscean era with the big one yet to come March 11 - Uranus re-entering Aries.

Today, the Moon enters Libra at 5:59 p.m. and makes the very first aspect to Jupiter re-planting its flag in Aries. (Jupiter was in Aries June 5 to September 8, 2010 before retrograding back into Pisces.) This inaugural aspect is an opposition, exact at 6:22 p.m. A fresh new line is drawn. 'You are here.' And where you are has a lot of possibility that was not available - was not ready - when Jupiter was in Pisces.

At the same time, it's challenging as we work the balance between our expanding individuality and emerging personal directions (Jupiter in Aries) and the relationships and relationship dynamics that serve as our emotional anchors (Moon in Libra). Being ourselves 100%, honouring the feisty Aries fire spurring us on while also working together without stepping on anyone's toes. It's a delicate balance.

All morning and afternoon, the Moon is in late Virgo, opposing Uranus in Pisces and conjuncting Juno, just stationed retrograde at 29 Virgo.

Emotionally, we're reconciling the past two years - two quite traumatic years for many - as we see-sawed between disorienting Uranus in Pisces shocks to the collective
system and crushing Saturn in Virgo depression and lethargy during the opposition cycle between those two planets. Now, that is mostly impression, recovering energetically from the aftermath.

As the Moon enters Libra and opposes Jupiter, we can feel that we are on new ground - whatever it will bring.

And yet, it's not all fresh starts and blazing exciting new trails. The Moon continues through Libra into a square with Pluto early tomorrow morning, and we're made aware of the broader Plutonic circumstances uneasily simmering beneath the surface.

For the past two years, we have also experienced the Pluto in Capricorn wrecking ball laying waste to financial and employment structures while consolidating power at the top in fewer and fewer hands.

We are heading to a Jupiter in Aries square to Pluto in Capricorn February 25, and our propulsion forward is met with the resistance of behemoth and often traumatic structural change and lock-step movement toward corporate homogenity. Our fresh starts strain at the reins against some heavy and pressurized collective circumstances on this planet.

Nonetheless, daylight has broken here - at least on one layer. And we ready ourselves for motion.

Wednesday, January 19, 2011

Fourth of Five Anaretic Full Moons - This One At Home in Cancer

The Moon grows full at 3:21 p.m. CT today in water sign of the crab, Cancer.

The Moon is at home in its own sign here on the last degree of Cancer and holds within it the entirety of the inner, emotional experience of being alive on planet Earth at this tail-end Piscean era. This Full Moon is exactly trine Jupiter at 29 Pisces - the very last degree of the zodiac - and it's full to the brim. So are we. Held captive within the watery moonspell. But with sextiles to the Sun on the last degree of earthbound Capricorn and to Juno stationing retrograde at 29 Virgo to ground the proceedings.

Watery trines to Jupiter and Uranus permeate the collective ethers with a memory created from myth. The background music plays deluge myths on repeat as manufactured (sur)realities reflect them across the globe.

And now the version with the Moon.

It was the gravitational capture of the Moon into orbit around the Earth that created the catastrophe, they say. The lost continent. The destruction.

And there the anger starts. The hatred toward this lunar relationship, the violent disconnect from emotional connection, from feminine wisdom, from mothers. It fuels the destruction to this day.

The anaretic degree connections bring multi-layered culmination points enveloped in this lunar movement. We're at the end of an era. The Cancer Full Moon trines Uranus and Jupiter in late Pisces, both about to re-enter Aries, the first sign of the zodiac, for the duration of their transits. Our emotional experience shifts here along with the accelerations. What it means to call this planet home during our human lifetimes shifts. Comfortable understandings about our place here, our roots here, our place on Earth within the cosmos - if we ever had them - start to change rapidly as we are propelled into Jupiter and Uranus in Aries.

The Cancerian idea that everything is OK as long as me and mine are OK starts to fall away en masse. No longer can social privilege keep the majority "safe" while the world and their fellow human beings are destroyed all around them. The crab shell has been permeated. The home has been breached.

The culmination point is reached this afternoon. The Moon enters Leo at 4:16 p.m., and Toto, we sure ain't in Gaia anymore.


Anaretic Degree Full Moons

October 22, 2010 - 29 Aries
November 21, 2010 - 29 Taurus
December 21, 2010 - 29 Gemini (total lunar eclipse)
January 19, 2011 - 29 Cancer
February 18, 2011 - 29 Leo

Thirteenth Degree New Moons

November 5, 2010 - 13 Scorpio
December 5, 2010 - 13 Sagittarius
January 4, 2011 - 13 Capricorn (partial solar eclipse)
February 4, 2011 - 13 Aquarius
March 4, 2011 - 13 Pisces
April 3, 2011 - 13 Aries

Monday, January 17, 2011

Juno Stations Retrograde on the Anaretic Degree of Virgo, and Your Soul Mates Are the Ones Who Are a Pain in Your Ass

Juno stations retrograde on the last degree of Virgo January 19 and moves retro until May 2, heading back over sticky, tricky, neglected Virgoan details until it enters Libra July 27. It is opposite Jupiter at 29 Pisces, the last degree of the zodiac, and there are some details that need attending to before we cross the threshold into full-on Aries energy.

Juno is the soul mate asteroid, though not always the kind of soul mate we have been trained to understand. Mythologically, Juno relates to Hera - Zeus' wife. Hera's marriage duties dragged her through all kinds of enraging, intolerable horseshit as Zeus boned pretty much every attractive little nymphet that crossed his path.

Juno relates not only to covenant marriage/soul relationships but also to the type of difficult emotional experiences and power dynamics that type of commitment can bring with it. The type of difficult emotional experiences and power dynamics any type of soul commitment can bring with it.

One issue Juno raises is misplaced anger (raging at the nymphets, for example) along with women not holding the men they're in relationship with fully responsible and accountable for shitty behaviours - often due to some level of dependence, conditioning and/or being on the subjugated end of power dynamics. Hera more often than not blamed the attractive little nymphets - not her philandering man. This can work the other way around, too, of course. We see this pattern played out over and over again in relationships.

Juno is in Virgo now to get down to the nitty gritty on this front. Fine-tuned analysis of what did go on and what is going on is the path to practically changing it and healing it. There has been more than enough glossing over of bad behaviour. More than enough letting things slide. It's time to dig in and really make things crystal clear.

So the adjustments that need to be made in ourselves and in our lives will be triggered as Juno brings people into our spheres to catalyze the changes that we could not bring about alone. In Virgo, these Juno figures may come through small interactions with people on the street, in stores, while driving - or it could be within our closer relationships.

Basically, there are adjustments that must be made, and Juno is retrograding through late Virgo infused with the Solstice eclipse backdrop change vibes.

Juno in Virgo played a big role in the rare total Gemini solar eclipse on Winter Solistice, acting as the grounding fourth leg for the big, erratic energies of that time period. Juno in Virgo held its ground opposing Uranus and Jupiter in late Pisces as the Sun-Mercury and Moon opposed in Sagittarius and Gemini. This formed four mutable squares or a Mutable Grand Cross, kicking off lots of change and movement for the next quarter year on Planet Earth. And yes, haven't we seen some big changes and movement since New Year 2011?

From that article:

"Soul mate asteroid Juno at 26 Virgo makes the Full Moon mutable t-square a mutable Grand Cross, and the analyzed and verballized distinctions matter. Saying what you mean and meaning what you say...while things shift and slide all around us.

A sloppy, glossed-over idea of Piscean unity doesn't cut it anymore. Under the more Aquarian overlay, our differences are actually what make us strong and recognizing, honouring and utilizing them is what makes us truly unified. The Virgoan details count in a big way to place us in the positions and within the tribes where we most fully belong...

The longer-term communications shift indicated by this Gemini Full Moon lunar eclipse square Uranus in Pisces brings the heightened possibility of psychic communication, non-verbal interplay and transmission, and telepathy over long distances among like souls. But the placement of Juno in Virgo, again, shows us that this is not energy to be mucked around with. We're meant to be doing something - usually quite specific somethings - with it. This is actually not a "fly wide open" time with all these squares and oppositions, though many seem to be pumping things up to that point. Boundaries that must be closely kept.

Juno in Virgo brings people and experiences into our lives to help us make the refining and grounding adjustments and effectively work with these cosmic vibes. Juno will make itself known in your life to keep you on track, drawing attention to any areas that need a little tune-up, any rough spots that need smoothing, any neglected details that could trip you up in the long-term. This is the lingering impression of the Saturn in Virgo - Uranus in Pisces opposition cycle. Remember that? How could we forget? These Virgoan tune-ups, coming through the soul mate asteroid, will be especially prevalent coming from contact with other people. Remember: this isn't soul mate as in your one and only true love. It's soul mate as in someone who compells some change, work, adjustment, refinement or improvement in you or your life. These 'soul mate' connections could be irritating as all hell...but they're necessary."

Now Juno is stationing retrograde on 29 Virgo - the same degree of the lunar eclipse. It will move back to 14 degrees Virgo, where it will station direct May 2. It will enter Libra July 27.

Sunday, January 16, 2011

Jupiter at Tail-End Pisces, the Deluge Myths and the Implanting of the Serpent

"The world was once a great tortoise, borne on the waters, and covered with earth, and then when one day, in digging the soil, a tribe of white men, who had made holes in the earth to a great depth digging for badgers, at length pierced the shell of the tortoise, it sank, and the water covering it drowned all men with the exception of one, who was saved himself in a boat; and when the earth re-emerged, sent out a dove, who returned with a branch of willow in its beak."

Digging for badgers or digging for black gold beneath the surface of the Gulf of Mexico?

Implanted deluge myth meme travelling through time and space? True story of the past? Blueprint handed down for the Global Governors of the Aquarian Age?

We have quite a horror show mystery on our hands, folks, as Jupiter (myths, stories, cultures) camps out on the last degree of Pisces (water, oceans, sacrifice, energetic connection) before entering new territory in Aries January 22 at 11:11 a.m. CT.

More than 600 people are dead from flooding in Brazil. Officially, 47 are dead in the Phillipines and 1.5 million are affected from flooding there caused by torrential rain. More than 300,000 have had to flee their homes along the eastern coast of Sri Lanka after flooding and mudslides there. Australia is under water. Eighteen have been confirmed dead with hundreds of thousands affected.

This follows the deaths of at least 1,500 and displacement of over a million people in Pakistan due to floods this past cardinal t-square summer.

One word is being used to describe all this flooding: biblical.

Fragments of cross-cultural deluge myths are suddenly becoming (sur)reality as we traipse through fin-de-Pisces - set off as part of the long-term plan by a version of "God" that is strictly man-made and a version of life on Earth that is strictly symbolic.

A mass sacrifice to purge and cleanse the Earth of evil, evil scourge human beings, say the true believers. One last Piscean cacophony symphony as Jupiter and Uranus sit on the very end of the sign, about to enter Aries. Sorry, all. The orders are coming down from the Big Guy! Or Ascension. Or the Starry Brethren. Or our Alien Overlords.

We've brought this on ourselves, say those who allow manufactured guilty consciences to be played like violins.

Ha.

The true cause of these floods and of the bizarre weather around the globe can more than likely be rooted to a combination of things: the disruption of the Gulf Loop current by the BP oil/Corexit disaster, the bombardment of the skies by weather-modifying Chemtrails, which have reached a critical mass as far as their effects on both health and weather, and the use of the HAARP and other frequency devices that screw with the ionosphere. Incidentally, NASA reported a collapse in the upper ionosphere this past summer that they could not explain.

At the same time, a marker has been thrown into the collective consciousness through viral mass media. Ophiuchus, the serpent-bearer and 13th constellation of the sidereal zodiac, hit social media like a shot this past week, planting his foot in millions of psyches as a tired, this-is-not-news astronomy/sidereal astrology article became meme.

This triggers and energizes another part of the long-planned and purposefully set-off story. If we hone in on North America and the Lenni-Lanapi or Delaware River Indians' version, after the deluge, a period of snake-worship is secretly brought to Earth. Under worship of the God of the snakes, Wakon, this period brings evil, crime, unhappiness, bad weather, death. Just what the doctor ordered for those looking to rid the Earth of 'excess' humanity while controlling the remainder.

Sure, we've got deluge and serpent-bearer hitting at the same time right now, but that's the way it's being played during this interwoven cross-over period of Pisces to Aquarius.

The implanting of Ophiuchus at this time is also a marker for the passing of Bill C-36 in Canada and Bill S.510 in the United States in December - the suppression and crack-down on natural health and healing. Ophiuchus is associated with Asclepius, a healer who was struck dead by Zeus with a bolt of lightning (Uranian) for bringing people back from the dead. Asclepius was placed within the constellation of Ophiuchus.

The rod of Asclepius, a staff entwined with a snake, is the symbol for mainstream medicine today, and Ophiuchus rising to prominence is a symbolic drawing of attention to the dominance of patriarchal Big Pharma modern medicine and the now-legislated suppression of natural healing and the regenerative powers of the human body through herbs, natural foods and alternative healing techniques.

As this 13th constellation stuff is coming up in the midst of the series of Thirteenth Witch New Moons, bringing with it the emergence of long-denied feminine realities and influence, this especially relates to the historical suppression of the healing abilities of women. These inherent understandings and abilities have always been a threat to the controlling patriarchal set-ups, and women who practised healing through the ages have been unrecognized, vilified, criminalized, intimidated, kept on the fringes. Nowadays, they are put under the shackles of masculine-dominated hierarchy within the mainstream medical establishment.

And yet another masculine astrological symbol coming to prominence at this time within the already imbalanced, masculine-heavy zodiac does not help matters...

Friday, January 14, 2011

Has My Sun Sign Really Changed? Nah, the Siderealists Are Just Acting Up Again

Every year or so, an article about how the zodiac signs have shifted comes out and gets a lot of hype. You're not a Sun sign Scorpio, it will claim. You're actually a Libra Sun, and everything you have ever learned about yourself through astrology is complete bunk!

A couple sidereal-based articles have recently come out making these claims and have gotten a lot of play, including one about a 13th sign called Ophiuchus. This has set off a ripple of panic through Facebook about what the real and true zodiac signs are.

The truth is, they can be either, depending which system you prefer.

See, there are two major branches of astrology - sidereal and tropical.

The sidereal zodiac uses the placement of the physical constellations in the sky, and they do move gradually. Things shift in the cosmos. We're in an ever-changing universe. This is true.

Tropical astrology uses the solstice/equinox points - the seasonal changes based on the relationship between the Sun and the Earth - and the zodiac is a sort of band that goes around the Earth based on those points. In the tropical system, March Equinox (Spring Equinox in the northern hemisphere) coincides with the Sun entering Aries, the first sign of the zodiac, which marks the astrological New Year.

In the sidereal system, the position of the Sun at March Equinox is currently at zero degrees in the physical constellation of Pisces and is just about to move into 29 degrees Aquarius. This is the "Age of Aquarius" stuff - the precession of the equinoxes bringing a shift in astrological eras from Piscean to Aquarian.

So yes, the equinoxes have precessed in sidereal astrology...not in tropical. And the difference right now is 30 degrees or one full sign. So it's correct to say that if you are a tropical Sun sign Scorpio, you would be a sidereal Sun sign Libra. If you are a tropical Moon sign Gemini, you would be a sidereal Moon sign Taurus. If you are a tropical Mercury sign Leo, you would be a sidereal Mercury sign Cancer, etc.

The problem, and what is generally the problem with these types of articles, is that the dudes in them are talking about sidereal astrology and are saying that their system means tropical astrology is bunk. This is not actually the case. They're just two different systems.

At one point, when the zodiac was first carved out, the two systems matched - the Sun entered the physical constellation of Aries at March Equinox. But over the centuries, there has been a divergence as one group of astrologers (tropical) used the original settings of Sun in Aries at March/Spring Equinox, Sun in Cancer at June/Summer Solstice, Sun in Libra at September/Fall Equinox and Sun in Capricorn at December/Winter Solstice. The other group (sidereal) followed the shifting physical constellations.

Astrology is basically a lens, a perspective, that we use to (hopefully) more deeply and intricately understand life on Planet Earth - especially natural cycles and energetic themes. Knowing these cycles and themes, in theory, helps us live our lives attuned to natural forces with at least a ballpark idea of what is being asked of us at certain times in our lives.

Sidereal and tropical are two different astrological lenses looking at life on this planet from different perspectives, and as an astrologer, I find both valuable. Both have merit. It just depends which system speaks to you more strongly (if either speaks to you at all). For me, it's tropical, so that's what I practise. But I also enjoy the sidereal perspective from good sidereal astrologers and integrate some of that perspective into my own - especially the shifting astrological ages from Pisces to Aquarius. This just hits me as true based on my own observations of the energetic shifts of these times.

It would be nice if people in articles such as these would explain the two different systems in their "everything you have ever learned about astrology is crap" stance, but they don't. I'm not sure why they don't. Maybe they don't know, maybe they don't care, or maybe they are just trying to tip the scales to more mass use of sidereal astrology.

Pop astrology horoscopes you see in all the magazines and newspapers are based in tropical astrology, and I can see it getting annoying and oppressive for siderealists that their system is so downplayed in the West.

Incidentally, most pop horoscopes also focus only on the Sun sign. We're Sun/masculine/yang heavy here in the West. And this makes for a highly simplistic astrology, as we actually have a zodiac sign for every body in the solar system and more: the Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto along with a bunch of asteroids and geocentric points.

Inevitably, once the media interviews some tropical astrologers to balance things out, the hype simmers down. Some people decide to investigate the sidereal system or to make a switch. And a lot more learn that there are two astrological systems. So no harm, no foul, I guess. It's always good to see things from a different perspective...or at least to know that other perspectives do exist.

Things ARE shifting...very rapidly this year, in particular, and astrology will continue to shift and change along with the times.

But has your Sun sign changed? Only if you've decided to adopt sidereal astrology.

If you've already got it tattooed on your body somewhere, I'd suggest just sticking with tropical.

Tuesday, January 11, 2011

What's a Post These Days if it Doesn't Mention Dead Birds, Nazis and Twitter?


Have we entered an Ice Age already? Nah, it's just the Canadian prairie in December. Weeks of unnatural grey and cloud with only the slightest of sunny breaks. All Winter in a Day.
Photo: Willow

I know the world has gone all to hell since entering 2011 (when isn't it, though, really?). 'Biblical' floods in Australia, birds falling dead from the sky, haywire weather all over the damned place, high profile killing after high profile killing. There has been a definite acceleration, and it will keep getting faster.

The purge is on to remove anyone who isn't a "true believer" from the ranks as we head ever-closer to the first in the series of seven squares of Uranus in Aries to Pluto. The last series of Uranus in Aries squares to Pluto coincided with the Nazi purges of their ranks. It also coincided with the beginning of Stalin's. Just for a little context. That was closer to the end of the square series, but as I noted before, they're getting a jump on it straight out of the gate this time around.

And this is not to be flippant about it.

The Gulf Loop Current being severed has sort of left us screwed, blued and tattooed. We've got not only floods to look forward to but major temperature fluctuations and probably drought, if the scientific predictions are on the money. Add your standard HAARPicanes, tornadoes and frequency-induced earthquakes, and well...we've got a whole big manufactured 'End Times' shindig going down on this little spinning planet. Par-tay. They don't call it Revel-ations for nothing!

People are starving to death as manufactured food shortages and stock market speculation/derivatives schemes drive the price of food globally to "record highs." Remember that 'biblical' flooding in Pakistan's breadbasket this summer? And the flooding and devastation of crops in Canada's breadbasket? Unbeknownst to most supermarket shoppers, that's where food comes from. So flooding out those areas = not good.

But if some overprivileged dipshit with a stylish, stylish life isn't yipping about it on Twitter, no one pays all that much attention.

The injustice of purposeful starvation, leaving people to wither and languish...well, I know many find it cliched to actually care about your fellow human beings this far into Pisces, but it makes me weak. It makes me feel ill. It makes me want to burn myself in protest...

Oh, wait. I already do that. Via Combusta gal and all.

So yes, this is all kinds of miserable. And intolerable. I want to write about it. Expose it. Put it here in black and white so no one can go on denying what's happening. But you see, Saturn is stationing retrograde right now smack dab on my natal Pluto. Pluto plays a major role in my chart and in my life, and this transit is taking up a lot of energy.

So bear with me as I trudge through the waves of existential horror. (The worst part about Saturn transits is they make it all so concrete and in-your-face!) I'm hanging by the skin of my teeth here at times.

The good news is:

Jupiter is about to move into Aries January 22. New territory in the biggest of ways. One more layer of tail-end Pisces drops away.

We're in that period of time when every single body in the zodiac is moving forward, so you know a lot of progress is happening. I wouldn't really know due to that aforementioned Saturn stationing on Hellzone, but I'm sure it is. I'm sure of it! Saturn breaks the spell January 25 by turning retrograde at 17 Libra.

Mercury moves into Capricorn January 13 and out of its retrograde territory (yes, we're still in retrograde shadow degrees!) January 17. My computer has been buggy since Mercury entered the shadow, so we'll see if this improves things at all. Sure, Mercury hits a conjunction to Pluto immediately after leaving the retro shadow degrees, but you know...it's at least SOME news, maybe not the best news.

Mars leaves Cappie for Aquarius January 15. We're at that point in Canadian winter where you just have to get weird to get through it. The Sun enters Aquarius January 20, bringing the full-on detached bizarreness of it all.

January 19, we have our fourth of five anaretic degree Full Moons. The Moon will be at home in its own sign here - Cancer, of course.

Wednesday, January 5, 2011

Venus in Scorpio Works its Magic on the Era-Shifting Mutual Reception and Fighting for the Right to See Through Our Own Eyes...Part Two

Four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie,
Five thousand and twenty blackbirds fall from the sky.

Venus in Scorpio is just moving out of its square to Neptune-Chiron in Aquarius and trine to Jupiter-Uranus in Pisces.

Venus is the last body to march through Scorpio, applying the Scorpionic X-ray vision to the astrological era-shifting Uranus-Neptune mutual reception, which comes to an official close March 11 when Uranus re-enters Aries.

The Venus aspects were exact the day of the January 4 Capricorn New Moon/partial solar eclipse, and we're experiencing a little Neptunian media-driven deja vu.

In late October, as Mars in Scorpio passed through this hot spot in the zodiac, the official line on three massive fish kills in Louisiana was: oxygen depletion unrelated to Corexit or the BP oil disaster.

This despite independent testing that found oil in the gills and livers of the fish.

Now, as Venus moves through late Scorpio, the last in the cavalry of the asteroids and personal planets to move through these aspects from Scorpio, we hear "experts" telling the mainstream media that the deaths of 5,000 red-winged blackbirds and starlings near Beebe, Arkansas just before midnight on December 31, 2010 were caused by: a loud noise (possibly fireworks) that startled the birds into flying into low-lying structures like buildings.

Yes. All 5,000 of them. Flew into buildings. To their deaths. In a town of 5,000 people. At the very same time. One last hurrah for 2010.

The blood clots and internal hemorrhaging found in the birds is simply evidence that they experienced a "traumatic event."

Another massive fish kill of 100,000 drum fish in the Arkansas River, 125 miles from Beebe, and the deaths of 500 more birds (red-winged blackbirds, sparrows and starlings) in Labarre, Louisiana at around the same time are unrelated, these experts say.

Apparently, the location of the Pine Bluff Arsenal outside Pine Bluff, Arkansas, a U.S. military facility that stores and distributes chemical and biological weapons, is also unrelated. It hasn't warranted a mention in the mainstream channels.

Here's the deja vu.

"A robotic, manipulated, insane official explanation that defies all basic, human logic - and the requirement to shrug that off and dig for the real story ourselves.

Getting beneath the permeating official line created by such crafty manipulators of the collective ethers takes all our skill, determination and courage. Tearing multi-layered masks off the soft-lit illusions that persistently work to keep people enmeshed in insane constructs not their own is a step-by-step process requiring us to go slowly and carefully, countering every official line with raw, gut-level Scorpionic authenticity - and research."

A CNN story shows a drugged or poisoned John P. Wheeler III, ex-Pentagon official, defense adviser and expert on chemical and biological weapons, stumbling through surveillance videos two days before his body turned up in a Delaware landfill. Wheeler was a Council on Foreign Relations member, an adviser to both Reagen and Daddy Bush.

The Wheeler murder story runs two stories prior to the official line blackbird story.

In plain sight, but the connecting threads are not offered by the coiffed and make-upped CNN anchors.

Saturday, January 1, 2011

Lucky 13 Capricorn New Moon/Partial Solar Eclipse and the Grande Finale Venus in Scorpio Status Report

The new track emerging for us at the Lucky 13 Capricorn New Moon is a further disengagement from and propulsion out of dead-and-dying, skewed-to-the-masculine power structures and set-ups, including - with Jupiter conjunct Uranus in Pisces - ones related to spirituality.

Venus in Scorpio is strongly involved here with the 'denied realities of the thirteeth witch' astro energy. The resources and energies being kept tied up and tightly controlled within corrupt, unjust, masculine-heavy constructs, within the "way things are," have been Scorpionically stirred.

And after our Venus retrograde in Scorpio and late Libra through the Via Combusta degrees, we've gotten wise in a big way to our own energetic currency - social, emotional, psychic, soulful, sexual. Rather than unconsciously pouring it outward to fufill every demand and request, we're keeping it close, maintaining our own personal control.

The power-hungry at the top of the crumbling Pluto in Capricorn pyramid schemes want to starve us out? Make us their fin-de-Pisces sacrificial lambs? Replay Jesus and the gang en masse in one big, symbolic puppet show? Pin us down and tell us because we don't hold enough of their phony fiat currencies that we're worthless, meaningless, purposeless, that we don't deserve the basics of life?

All right then. We'll have a little game of chicken. How about some Libra tit-for-tat?

There's that wily, crafty Venus in Scorpio motherfucker rocking it into the new decade that I was talking about. We don't go down without quietly using every trick in OUR book, without playing every...last...card. And I still say we hold the biggest trump in the deck.

There comes a time when even the most staunchly consensus reality individual can no longer use their personal resources to support what is going on - and we inch ever-closer to that domino trigger point. Uranus in Aries square Pluto in Capricorn should bring it.

With Venus involved so strongly, this plays out in personal relationships and relationship constructs, with self-esteem, money and values, as well as in the broader social and political realms. As always, these are inextricably inter-related. The personal is political.

The New Moon at 3:03 a.m. CT January 4 is a partial solar eclipse and marks the third of six New Moons at 13 degrees of the signs, interspersed with five anaretic (29th) degree Full Moons.

Our Cappie New Moon is surrounded by powerhouse aspects including the final Jupiter-Uranus conjunction of this Uranus in Pisces era, which happens at 27 degrees Pisces. We take a step at this New Moon toward more fully trusting our own authority, especially spiritual authority as it applies to our physical lives, slowly gaining the emotional wherewithal to responsibly deal with the abrupt changes up ahead.

In November, I wrote about the divergence being Scorpionically carved out in wave after wave by the personal planets and asteroids (Pallas Athene, Mars, the Sun, Moon, Vesta and Mercury) transiting Scorpio throughout the transit of Venus in Scorpio. All these bodies travelling through late Scorpio formed, almost simultaneously, a square to Chiron-Neptune in Aquarius and a trine to Uranus-Jupiter in Pisces. This is the Uranus-Neptune mutual reception we've experienced over the last seven years, which indicated the most densely interwoven crossover period between astrological Piscean and Aquarian eras. This mutual reception is about to come to an end when Uranus re-enters Aries. Big shift.

"The personal planets in Scorpio, a sign that does what it knows it has to do whether it really wants to or not, are doing their thing to break this party up, triggering some separation and distance. A divergence point is being carved out on the most nitty-gritty of levels, in the hidden areas of which only Scorpio is aware. We have to know exactly what (and whom) we're dealing with in order to know what direction (Aries) to take right out of the Aquarius gate. Every individual's movement and choices count. Don't be fooled into giving your influence away...

On the most basic level, we're being asked to examine the motivations of our own souls (Scorpio). Divining to the core, to our source, to the reason we are here at this time. We're being asked to draw in, to keep our deepest spiritual values close, and to determine what is so important to us that there is nothing in this Earthly experience that could make us give it up.

These configurations also have to do with the human soul and spirit in relation to our biology and our connection to Earth and to the life force here. This connection is being used against us in the most heinous ways by those who believe they have harnessed the life force, life itself, and have become the source of it altogether. Our biology is being poisoned and our DNA manipulated by these fools.

And we're asked to determine what it means to us to be human - at a time when our survival as biological human beings is coming into question under the current conditions and possible future trajectories...

The transitions are fast now, but it's nothing in comparison to the speed with which the realizations of where we are will strike when Uranus re-enters Aries, no longer buffered and obscured by the Piscean veil...

We're having to strip the dead energy of the Piscean Age overlay layer-by-layer in preparation for Uranus in Aries tipping the scales further into Aquarius at the upcoming Spring Equinox. This doesn't mean Pisces energy itself is dead - though, I think many in "power" would like this to be the case. It's because true Piscean wisdom and understanding are going to be so crucially important as we shift into a stronger Aquarian overlay that we have to Scorpionically carve away and drop what is no longer effective or relevant to the times. Pisces energy is being born anew in an ongoing process - as all the signs/energies of the zodiac are - as we head to the Aquarian infusion marker of Uranus in Aries (beginning March 11)."

Scorpio is about the merging of energy, lives, souls and the power of transformative change available through successful mergings. But before the merge comes the purge.

Throughout the Via Combusta Venus retrograde in Scorpio and into late Libra, which I've written a lot about, the divergence points were carefully examined and painstakingly extricated so we had the power to consciously eliminate detrimental combinations of energy and take new routes. Old attractions and patterns, especially related to the acceptance of mistreatment or misuse of our personal energies, love and effort, were shed. To create the kind of alchemy, especially relationship alchemy, we need, there can be no errors. We must be working with the finest characters, the highest quality, the strongest compatibilities. No improper ingredients in the alchemical mix.

At the time of the New Moon, post-retrograde Venus is the last member of the Scorpy cavalry to make these aspects to Neptune, Jupiter, Uranus, and Chiron and we have our final checkpoint status report showing us how far we've come - as well as any final adjustments and eliminations that must be made.

The Venus square to Neptune comes at the very end of the Dark of the Moon period, just a half-hour before the New Moon, and this indicates that there are some very fast, in-the-nick-of-time shifts that need to be made, especially emotionally.

Some of most tenacious wounding Neptunian illusions and misdirections have held on until the end, and these shifts onto firmer and more reality-based ground need to be made so that we do not become entrapped once again in what keeps us stuck, unmoving, tricked and played.


Capricorn New Moon eclipse - January 4, 2011

2:27 a.m. - Venus in Scorpio square Neptune in Aquarius
3:03 a.m. - Capricorn New Moon/Sun conjunct Moon at 13 Capricorn
6:53 a.m. - Jupiter conjunct Uranus at 27 Pisces
7:33 a.m. - Venus in Scorpio trine Uranus in Pisces at 27 degrees
7:39 a.m. - Venus in Scorpio trine Jupiter in Pisces at 27 degrees
Venus in Scorpio squares Chiron in Aquarius later in the day

January 7, 2011

6:30 a.m. - Venus enters Sagittarius


Anaretic Degree Full Moons

October 22, 2010 - 29 Aries
November 21, 2010 - 29 Taurus
December 21, 2010 - 29 Gemini (total lunar eclipse)
January 19, 2011 - 29 Cancer
February 18, 2011 - 29 Leo

Thirteenth Degree New Moons

November 5, 2010 - 13 Scorpio
December 5, 2010 - 13 Sagittarius
January 4, 2011 - 13 Capricorn (partial solar eclipse)
February 4, 2011 - 13 Aquarius
March 4, 2011 - 13 Pisces
April 3, 2011 - 13 Aries