Happy Birthday, WWA blog!

My blog is three years old today. Not quite a baby, but not quite drinking at the big kid fountain yet, either. I posted the first post here February 25, 2008. At the time, I was writing longer monthly Astro Perspectives before switching to this more fluid format in January 2009.

This is an interesting Solar Return chart. Lots of exact aspects.

The Jupiter in Aries - Pluto in Capricorn square is exact today infusing its feisty, balls-to-the-wall themes for the next year. Basically, it's on, people. Globally, personally and on this blog.

Venus is exactly conjunct Pallas Athena in Capricorn, and the sisters are doing it for themselves. Don't...mess...with us. Pretty please with a cherry on top. Eye bat, eye bat.

There is also an exact conjunction of the Sun and Mercury in Pisces exactly sextile Pluto in Capricorn. This Sun-Mercury conjunction happens within the Pisces stellium of Uranus, Mercury, Sun, Black Moon Lilith, Mars and Chiron.

It's going to require a lot of spiritual communication and guidance to navigate this next year on the planet and on this blog - with a little help from our friends, both here and not here.

The big Pisces stellium falls mostly in the 7th house of this Solar Return chart. Not much interference with the Sun and Mercury exactly conjunct, so this should allow for some pure, relevant, spiritually-instructive communication. This stellium in the 7th puts an emphasis on the metaphysical relationship to the readers here as well as to other physical and non-physical entities helpful in achieving the objectives of this blog.

I say "helpful in achieving the objectives of this blog," and that's what I mean. There are clear objectives here, both sociopolitical and spiritual/philosophical. There's a defined identity and trajectory. This is not a blog that tries to be all things to everyone. I've never pretended it's a democracy or that I enjoy being flooded with perspectives I've already personally rejected. When your perspective is already in the vast minority, the goal is to strengthen your position and consolidate, not dilute it.

Willow remains the filter on this front, and I run a tight ship. That's what I'm here for. Nothing gets past the gate on my watch that shouldn't be welcomed in. I couldn't do it otherwise. This is a big part of the service, and it's the philosophy behind my readings, also.

That doesn't mean I don't have to go back and weed stuff out at times. Relationships as well as relationships to the etheric realms have the tendency to slip us things that aren't good for us these days. It's a constant process of weeding, pruning, tailoring, sifting and stopping the leaks.

This stellium could involve combined professional-spiritual partnerships to the blog (that would be nice), but with Neptune in Aquarius on the Descendent conjunct Chiron in Pisces, this continues to be tricky. An abortive attempt last year on this front proved to be more surface-level bluster than true compatibility, resulting in a feeling of being burned and used. Not everyone attracted to my New Age critiques truly wants to be free of those influences. Taking a prescribed track is generally easier than forging your own.

The only expansion that is going to make it past the Pluto in Capricorn demolition orders this year is based in real, raw, non-compromised identity with compatible, mutually-achievable goals. Knowing who you are, what you're connected to, what you believe, what you value, what you want, what truly motivates you - in short, knowing yourself and entering partnerships that give those things the room they need to breathe. Root motivations continue to be key, and the glossed-over unity/oneness/everyone's one big happy family overlay continues to make it difficult to suss these out thoroughly.

The Jupiter square Pluto aspect in the Solar Return chart relates to maintaining the identity of this blog, doing what it does best and having faith that those principles will blaze the right trail.

There's one thing I would like to clear up entirely today to set the tone for this upcoming year:

What I do for free is written here on the blog. If you'd like me to analyze your personal chart or answer personal questions, you'll have to buy a reading. This is my work. I do it for a living.

I know some don't understand the amount of focus and energy that go into astrological analysis or a blog like this. All I can say is, it's a lot. There are a lot of astrology hobbyists out there. I'm not one of them. There are a lot of hobby blogs. This isn't one of them. If you're looking for freebies, you'll have to go to a place where people are willing to provide them. I'm not.

I have a reading sale on for two more weeks. You can even buy a reading at the sale rate now and save it for later - like a chipmunk.

Happy, happy birthday, Willow's Web blog!

The North Node Heads for Sagittarius

North Node in Sagittarius March 3, 2011 to August 29, 2012

There is one more week of North Node in Capricorn before it crosses into Sagittarian territory March 3, and this shift is going to be a relief. For the past six months, our successful path forward has driven us straight into the heart of the Plutonic beast, complete with multi-layered, to-the-core terror training. We've gotten up close and personal with the corruption, abuse and yuck Pluto is unearthing in Capricorn as it excavates our structural hierarchies and the power dynamics within - and we haven't even drawn any danger pay.

The North Node formed an exact conjunction to Pluto at 3 degrees Capricorn on November 9, 2010. The Pluto-North Node conjunction happens on average every 17 years:

February 11, 1909 at 23 degrees Gemini
August 25, 1926 at 15 degrees Cancer
November 28, 1943 at 8 degrees Leo
December 31, 1960 at 8 degree Virgo
October 31, 1977 at 15 degrees Libra
February 22, 1994 at 28 degrees Scorpio
November 9, 2010 at 3 degrees Capricorn
November 15, 2027 at 4 Aquarius
June 3, 2062 at 25 Pisces

The North Node in Capricorn was also involved in that super hardcore, stone cold serious meeting with Ceres and Pluto during the Via Combusta Venus retrograde in Scorpio this past fall.

Suffice it to say, things have gotten tight.

Since the North Node entered the sign of the sea goat in August of 2009, we've had to suck it up, get on with it and slowly and painfully make our way forward amidst ongoing destruction, doing in-the-moment restructuring and making whatever progress we could as Pluto in Capricorn steamrolled on. It has been traumatic, picking up on the unresolved business of the Pluto in Cancer generation. The emotional, psychological and psychic weight and pressure of all that has remained unsaid, undealt with, unrecognized, unredeemed, suppressed since the hey day of that generation (and before) is immense.

Now, we're on the very outskirts of Capricorn North Node territory - in the really depressing, run-down industrial area - and things are looking pretty bleak.

But we can sense a shift coming on. The North Node in Sagittarius March 3 and Uranus in Aries March 11 bring a strong push into fire - creativity, inspiration, expression, aggression, movement. There's some expansion coming on our path. New experiences. New mixes. The next 1.5 years on Planet Earth are going to require an ongoing development of deep, Sagittarian faith.

As we've seen with the uprisings in Egypt, especially, we're going to be connecting across cultures, drawing on and sharing information and stores of cross-cultural knowledge, especially feminine knowledge - not because it's trendy and cool, but because we have to in order to survive.

We're going to be exploring a world that has ceased to have much truly untapped territory, a world under Pluto in Capricorn lock-down in many ways. There will be limitations to our freedom along these lines, and we'll be required to seek inspiration in new ways, discovering rich, new sources. Always, there will be an impetus on reframing and transforming belief systems, making them relevant for the current moment and situation, shaking valuable kernels of truth out of the dogmatic, masculine-heavy belief structure hierarchies that exist almost across the board at this point in human history.

And then we have the Gemini South Node.

"On some level, our communication and connection in this internet age have reached a peak. The interplay of ideas and information has reached critical mass, and things shift greatly on that front from March until August 2012.

We're getting booted out of some of the emotional and social reliance on this form of connection and turned down the North Node Sagittarian path of direct experiences with the big, bad world, relying on our stores of information, the connections we've made and what we've learned through the interactions as the fires of Sagittarian faith and inspiration propell us forward. This will be a refreshing shift in the long run (barring a total internet crackdown by the Global Governors)..."

We've already had both metered internet usage (put down in Canada for the time being due to mass public outcry) and the infamous Obama Internet Kill Switch fly onto our radar screens, and further attempts at controlling, censoring and eroding can be expected over the next 18 months with the Gemini South Node/Sagittarius North Node.

We're driving toward the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth with a Sagittarius North Node and those who would like us diverted from that goal will also be working this polarity for all its worth.

One cool thing about this placement is a movement into more of a natural, law of the jungle way of things. The law of cosmic grace, the law of the cosmos, the grace in truth - all these things become empowered. This is very different from the current rigid, hierarchical/patriarchal and generally corrupt Capricornian versions of law and order.

Metaphysical law is different from the standard variety. This shift is going to be very interesting.

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

Jupiter re-entered Aries January 22, 2011, and as a CBC story puts it: 

"Since mid-January, North Africa and the Middle East have been gripped by revolutionary fever." 

Jupiter in Aries is currently locked into a square with Pluto in Capricorn, pitting humanity's rising urges for freedom, independence and survival against the vise-like grip of the corpo-governmental oligarchy, complete with militarized police state enforcement. The beginning of the uprisings is being linked to a single act: a 26-year-old Tunisian fruit vendor named Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire in early January and later died after police seized his goods, claiming he did not have the proper permits to sell them. 

An extreme act of violence against the self (Aries/fire) in protest of a crushing level of corruption and abuse of power by government hierarchies (Pluto in Capricorn) taking away people's basic livelihoods. This incident indicates the level of desperation shared by people around the world and the extremes to which we are being pushed as this square forces things to a head. 

The re-entry of Jupiter into Aries and final square to Pluto in Capricorn (exact February 25, 2011) has coincided with: 

- uprisings of the people in neighbouring Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt and Sudan due to widespread poverty, under-employment, record high food prices and government corruption and brutality 

- anti-corruption protests in Yemen, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and Iran - the deaths of over a thousand peaceful Libyan protesters at the hands of security forces, ordered by Moammar Ghadhafi to open fire on unarmed civilians 

- a deadly earthquake in Christchurch, New Zealand 

This past summer, Jupiter and Uranus were conjunct on the zero degree of Aries square Pluto in Capricorn before retrograding back into late Pisces. That initial ingress of Jupiter and Uranus into Aries and the later squares to Pluto in Capricorn (exact July 24 and August 2, 2010) coincided with: 

- the G8 and G20 Summits in Huntsville and Toronto, Ontario 

- a rare earthquake and a tornado in Ontario preceding the Summits 

- the flooding of Pakistan's breadbasket, ruining crops, killing almost two thousand and leaving millions homeless 

- flooding and hailing of Saskatchewan and Alberta 

- a large portion of Canada's breadbasket 

- ruining many of the crops that were planted after an abnormally wet spring had stopped many farmers from getting a crop in the ground 

Jupiter in Aries Pushes Through Amidst Lots of Soggy, Boggy Pisces

Jupiter is blazing a trail through Aries right now, using all its might to bust through the pressure and constriction of a square formation force field to Pluto in Capricorn. Our instinctual actions move us toward what's alive, toward what's next for us, burning a path through the oily, greasy Plutonic layers pressing down on us, expanding our lives in ways necessary for our continued soul survival.

And yet, the movements are widely constricted. The expansion is able to happen only through cracks in the Pluto in Capricorn hegemony, and they're not easy to find as the attempts at complete domination and fusion close in. We're enmeshed in the Pluto in Capricorn sociological themes.

Me going into a grocery store and having complete sticker shock at the price of basics here means people can't afford food and are starving to death elsewhere. Twelve dollars for a pack of razor blades. Seven dollars for a small bag of rice. Six dollars for what used to be considered the cheap shampoo. The inflation is mind-boggling, eroding, inhumane.

As Uranus enters Aries and starts its long-term series of squares to Pluto in Capricorn, the cookie cutter one needs to fit into in order to be accepted into the Pluto in Capricorn structures gets tighter and smaller. No distinctions. No special requirements. No requests. No distinguishing details allowed.

It's darkly amusing to catch a glimpse of yourself from the eyes of this paradigm. Horrifying, but darkly amusing. We're people, human beings, not sad cases of misfits to be sacrificed in the never ending game of Aryans versus losers. But this is the undertone. To be who you really are if it doesn't fit is considered an act of high treason.

They've got us all on the run in this way. This game of chicken between living true to ourselves, to our souls, to our spiritual impetus, and maintaining a toehold in the structures-that-be for the sake of monetary survival.

Once Uranus hits Aries, the force of rebellion spurring us to be true to our own individuality and identities in the face of increasing fascist vise-tightening becomes a blazing, erratic force we're unable to ignore or deny on a personal or global level. This is about our spiritual survival as a species. In many respects, we're not in control.

There's nowhere left to hunker down and hide with a Cancer South Node on the zero degree. We have to go. And it's taking all our courage to believe in the possibility (Jupiter) of new directions (Aries) after so many in the past have proven stagnant, enervating dead ends.

The Jupiter-Pluto square is exact February 25 at 2:40 p.m. Moving beyond the most pressurized influence of Pluto in Capricorn should have Jupiter humming a happier tune as it leads (hauls?) us forward. Neither Jupiter nor Aries like pressure or constriction of movement of any kind, and coming out of this square and into Uranus in Aries (March 11) and Spring Equinox, things really start to move.

At the same time, action planet Mars moves into water sign Pisces by this evening (7:06 p.m.), forming a Pisces stellium with Chiron, Mercury, the Sun and Uranus.

Soggy.

Mars in Pisces is the dispositor of Jupiter in Aries and dampens its blazing movement just a bit. Things are not moving in an ever-expanding straight line, as Jupiter in Aries would prefer. Our movements are Piscean-charged, diffuse, spacey - guided by a flowing, ethereal presence and intelligence that can be maddeningly oppressive with its all-is-up-in-the-air feel.

We're under the completion requirements of the entire Piscean era and do not make it to intended end points in a direct manner. This is bigger than just us, living on this planet at this time. We go from Point A to Point F to Point Y to Point G to Point B. Expect it. Accept it. But keep moving.

To stubbornly resist this Mars energy overlay means we diffuse and waste our personal energy, which we don't have to waste at this point.

But April 1, Mars bursts into its own sign of Aries just in time for a massive Aries stellium propelling us forward.

Currently, we're like those primordial fishies that have just grown feet that you'd see in New Yorker cartoons. We've just hauled our asses out of the sea and onto dry land for the first time ever (because, you know, the sea has now been contaminated with oil, Corexit and synthetically produced micro-organisms that are now contaminating the DNA sequences of all of life on this planet), and we're like, "What now?"

The next evolutionary step is unfolding, gaining speed by Spring Equinox. Expect many things to dissolve between now and then, freeing energy for a more vital and effective path.

The old road ran out a while back. We've been running on fumes trying to get something to catch in a solid way with not much progress. Now we're at the deepest surrender point - the last Pisces season of the tail-end Piscean era with Uranus on the 29th degree.

There's no way we can logically see our way over this hump. The ends just don't meet. The way things worked before is not the way they work moving forward. So we go on faith because it's the only thing we can do at this point. Pisces is the sign that brings it all together - making the ends meet in ways we could not have forseen.

We've taken it as far as we could, and now we ride the Piscean wave across the crevasse.

Chiron, May We Pass?

The Sun enters Pisces this evening (6:25 p.m. CT) and immediately conjuncts wounded healer asteroid Chiron, back in Pisces for its eight-year transit until March 2019.

Over the next five days, the Sun, Mercury and Mars move into Pisces and pass through this conjunction to Chiron, infusing us on a very personal level with the awareness of the totality of devastation and desecration of life that has gone on on this planet. Devastation and desecration we continue to see and experience to this day, beneath the Neptunian diversions and fog.

If you feel your head being pulled underwater this week, this is why. Keep treading.

This is what we could lightly call a "Man, the Piscean Era Has Been a Bummer" series of aspects. It's not going anywhere, either, despite those who believe we can simply trash this dimension and move onto the next...

Still, the astrological Piscean era has taken us to wonderful spiritual heights and to a deep awareness of our spiritual natures. It has taught us about the flow, the way, about the power of connection and shared effort, and about the depth of pain and suffering of humanity and all living things as our own.

Chiron sits on the opening gateway of the sign while Uranus sits on the final degree. Bookends. We hold a powerful spiritual vantage point as we tip the scales further into Aquarius, and these conjunctions to Chiron, kicking off Pisces season, provide us the tools we need to heal things on a very immediate personal level.

We're being infused as potent Chirotic healers. Shifting into Pisces for the Aquarian era. But as we wait to tip into a whole new energetic flavour with Uranus in Aries March 11, we're made all too aware of the things left unresolved and unhealed.

How many years does it take to heal something like the Gulf of Mexico? Or the destruction and irradiation of Iraq? The echoes back through time and space, the threads, the cyclical horror show events set on constant, multi-layered repeat?

How long does it take to clean our soil and water of chemtrail poisons? Or our bodies? How long does it take to restore our seed supply from the assault by genetically modified varieties?

How long to heal the hearts hurting for those sacrificed, generation after generation, by and for the privileged few? How long to heal the spiritual catatonia we have been pushed into, the overloaded circuits, the numbness? When it's so big that we can no longer really put it into words?

Is it years? Centuries? Millenia? More?

Does it ever heal or do we just keep swallowing it, choking it down, dissolving it? What happens when we're at the saturation point - past it - as we are now, and it just keeps coming?

These are some of the themes the conjunctions to Chiron bring forth. There is no easy answer, just as there was no easy answer for Chiron's wound. No magic pill makes it all better. We're past the point where concessions and tokenism soothe in any form. We don't want to be thrown another bone.

Until the underlying wounding dynamics are truly addressed, rectified, discontinued, no long-term healing is possible. We're just treating symptoms.

And the army of people bleating about victim consciousness and creating your own reality works very effectively, moving us further from the depth of understanding of power dynamics and structures on this planet that would get us to the true healing points. Every flippant use of those concepts is another pound of pressure pinning Sedna down, suffering in betrayal on the ocean floor.

Snapping in and out of overlays, Piscean, then Aquarian, then Piscean, then Aquarian, is demanding and exhausting work - especially for those consciously facilitating the transitions. These themes continue.

Yet, we're on the precipice of something. This is the final Pisces season of the Uranus in Pisces-Neptune in Aquarius mutual reception, which marked the most intensive cross-over period in energetic overlays from astrological Piscean to Aquarian eras. That ends March 11. Done. Finit-o. Something else starts.

We're moving - hurtling through the transition points, actually. There is an excitement and a new vitality growing, spurring us out of the enervating Piscean quagmire. This push-coming-to-shove renewal picks up speed as Jupiter pushes forth into new territory in Aries and into its final square to Pluto in Capricorn February 25.

This movement despite overwhelming emotional anxiety and loneliness attempting to pull us back into what we perceive as safer times-of-yore constructs. The South Node is on the final degree of Cancer before the nodes shift signs March 3, and it's agonizing. The painful lack of foundational support for the feminine is eroding on the deepest levels. There is no denying the difficulty of our emotional conditions at this time.

The movement of the nodes into Sagittarius and Gemini March 3 is a welcome shift, followed by Uranus ingressing Aries March 11 and an uber Arien March Equinox as the Sun joins Mercury and Jupiter, conjuncting Uranus on the first degree of the first sign of the zodiac March 20. Powerful new directions. Stand by.

Fifth and Final Anaretic Full Moon in Leo

The series of five anaretic (29th) degree Full Moons comes to a grand finale tonight and early morning tomorrow as the moon reaches its fullest illumination in Leo, opposing a Sun-Neptune conjunction in late Aquarius.

We slip through multiple layers here. They fall away like water, released by the culminations indicated by these five Full Moons on the final degrees of the signs they lit up. The final degree, the anaretic degree, distills the lessons of all 29 previous degrees of the sign. The complex and multi-layered master lessons reside there, and here, we either pass or fail.

Despite our exhaustion, despite being so tired of it all, we're required to apply what we've really learned, to hold that heart-deep energy to its fullest point - rather than surrendering to the emotional pull of soft-lit Neptunian karmic loops, living out yet another dramatized play of wishful thinking motivated by dangling-carrot diversions and idealized potentials that haven't yet once come to fruition.

All the world's a stage with this anaretic Full Moon in Leo. Be one of the players who knows what's going on behind the scenes, under the glossy social dramas, and act accordingly.

It's all very lovely, it's all very beautiful under Neptune - but Neptune can be one of the cruelest planets with some of the nastiest tricks around, especially at tail-end Piscean era. The Neptunian pull grows to overwhelming this week as we head into Pisces season and a triple conjunction of Mercury, Mars and Neptune at 28 Aquarius on Sunday. Diverting smoke and mirrors abound as Aquarian future furor moves to fever pitch.

Where I'm living, that big, juicy moon on its way to fullness in Leo has had thick chemtrails dispersing their gray haze across its face the past two nights. Still, I knew I was fortunate to have spent time with it at all. Today, for the night of the Full Moon, we have the all-too-common full blanket of gray-white cloud cover. It will last for days.

There is a concerted effort going on to disconnect us from our relationship to the sun and moon, the skies, the bodies in the heavens, the natural rhythms. It's an old trick. The co-opting and diluting of astrology is an attempt along the same lines.

It won't work.

Nonetheless, there is no obscuring what we face on this planet as the personal planets head through conjunctions to wounded healer asteroid Chiron in the earliest of Pisces. There is nowhere to hide from what's going on, no comfortable place to sit in denial of how we're being eroded, mistreated, poisoned. This is a good thing.

Venus in Capricorn is square Saturn in Libra during this Full Moon, and we're required to hold our full authority, setting the foundation for long-term progress, especially career progress, within tense relationships. We continue to move gingerly, step-by-tiny-step, out of the Pluto in Capricorn rubble. There is strategic manoeuvring going on under this swirly, nebulous Full Moon opposite Neptune. Don't let your eye be diverted from the prize. Don't be lulled into the Piscean unity-oneness complacency by people invested in, capitalizing on, your passivity and complicity and diluting of identity. Don't be persuaded to give up your advantage.

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

Venus Conjunct Pluto in Capricorn Square Jupiter in Aries. And On With the Show.

Venus is coming up on a conjunction to Pluto at 6 degrees Capricorn Wednesday evening (7:52 p.m. Central), and this conjunction is square Jupiter in Aries.

We're starting to pick up where we left off as far as the new directions initiated during this past cardinal t-square summer. We've made a few false starts coming out of the gates, chomping at the bit as Jupiter and Uranus dipped into the first sign of the zodiac for just a taste of fresh territory. Retrogrades this fall and winter into late Pisces brought some nebulousness, illusion, anxiety and confusion as far as which was the fresh track forward and which was a siren song drawing us back into the same old, same old karmic loops.

This dissipates somewhat as Uranus enters Aries March 11, but we have Chiron re-entering Pisces tomorrow for an eight-year stay until February 2019. The wounding illusions do remain potent. You didn't think the Piscean era was going to go that easily, did you? Keep peering through the veils.

We've had a sober second look and a (necessary) dampening of the Aries charge through these retrogrades in watery Pisces. We've cooled our jets a bit and gotten a deeper understanding of the Plutonic undertones demanding our full awareness. The collective situation in which we find ourselves on this planet remains hugely influential as far as the most potent directions open to us. Understanding the sometimes dark and disturbing Plutonic context bolsters our courage, reminding us of our influence at this tipping point time in human history.

From this summer when Jupiter squared Pluto:

"There is a real soul reckoning afoot. Those complicit within corrupt and murderous structures, those cutting corners, those looking the other way or skimming by while reaping the rewards for doing so are going to be faced with some major decisions about what is truly important to them during their trip to this little planet."

Root motivations of the people we are involved with, especially in business, become crucially important. Only true compatibility along those lines is going to fly as far as we need to go.

We move into a period of rising tension until the end of February as Jupiter in Aries closes in on its last square to Pluto in Capricorn. Expect some meltdowns and some breakdowns in partnership as the cardinal impetus moves us, no apologies, onto our most vital track forward.

We're starting to move again, picking up speed as Jupiter clears the square (February 25), as we are propelled into Uranus in Aries March 11 and a super-charged Spring Equinox March 20 with the Sun conjunct Uranus at zero Aries. Big changes, big movement coming.

As Uranus ingresses Aries, ends the mutual reception with Neptune in Aquarius, and tips the scales toward a stronger Aquarian overlay (flavoured by Aries), there's no more pretending. We're not one big, happy Piscean family, anymore. Though energetically interconnected on this planet, we never really were. Honouring our distinctions, being true to our differences and finding the points (if there are any) where we can be allies as individuals become the keys to our success.

Wednesday's conjunction between Venus and Pluto in Capricorn has been delayed by Venus' retrograde through Scorpio and late Libra (October 8 - November 18, 2010) in much the same way that Ceres' conjunction to fellow dwarf planet Pluto was delayed. Ceres came within one degree of an exact conjunction to Pluto in April 2010 at the Scorpio Full Moon before turning retrograde, gathering necessary strength and inspiration in Sagittarius for its meeting with the Lord of the Underworld October 19. The conjunction of Ceres and Pluto happened during Venus' retrograde through Scorpio, and it strongly colours relationship themes until June of 2012 when we experience the second Venus Transit (basically, an eclipse involving Venus) and a Venus retrograde in Gemini.

We've only just begun feeling the reverberations from this Ceres-Pluto conjunction. Trust me.

And now Venus steels itself for its own conjunction.

Let's just say, the ladies of the zodiac are finding it a wee bit distasteful coming this close to the depth and breadth of corruption and abuse of power Pluto is forcing to collective awareness in the sign of structures. The feminine force is aware of the level of toxicity running through "the way things are" and of the destruction being brought down on life on this planet through it. It's not all that keen on coming into contact with what Pluto is digging up.

But come into full contact and awareness it must, as this is how the feminine (and women) gain the potency, effectiveness, authority and influence to move this shitshow into a better and more sane way of doing things. Push has come to shove. We don't survive if things continue the way they are - definitely not on a soul or spiritual level and probably not even on the physical.

"The relationships we enter into now cannot be entered into lightly. We need people in our lives who can be counted on when the chips are down, in light of the times in which we are living. There will be many decisions about what relationships to enter into, what ones to keep and how to restructure them and what ones are no longer viable moving forward."

As Venus crosses paths with Pluto, we should be closer to settling out in the alchemical relationships, especially business-wise, that will buffer the storms of seven squares between planet of revolution Uranus in Aries and planet of from-the-core transformation Pluto in Capricorn.

But keep tending the connections, keep pruning where they need to be pruned.

Pluto relates to the evolution and transformation of the collective through the soul-driven experiences and work of the individual. Pluto requires that we hit our evolutionary marks during our lifetimes so that, at the end of our lives, we're fully satisfied. Pluto doesn't want anyone regretting that they could have done more, they could have gone deeper, they could have been more effective, catalyzed more change, altered the course more strongly. So it's demanding. It's demanding as all hell.

And it's compelling the feminine to take action - as part of the process of coming to the table as full business partner, full decision maker, full power sharer, full authority figure. The feminine (and women) are working away behind the scenes now, coming together in strategic new formations.

It's all new steps, and we're learning, together, as we go.

Willow as Cruel, Vicious, Lowdown Dog Beater and Other Dark Feminine Projections

Willow's lesson-giver on how to cowgirl up. Sun in Virgo, Venus in Scorpio.

Photo: Willow

I don't read astrology blogs often - mostly because I find my own demanding enough as is, and when I've battled out another article, I just want to move out of that world as fast as possible. But the day before yesterday, I was drawn to read astrologer Elsa Panizzon's blog. I hadn't read it in quite a few months and read through the past little while, which I enjoyed.

In one of those odd 'psychic coincidences' (I'm not a Jung fan so don't use the other word typically associated in astrology circles), she then wrote a post about me yesterday detailing her side of an incident that happened on her blog just under two years ago during the Venus retrograde in Aries.

Elsa also wrote a post about it at the time characterizing me as a vicious attacker who came out of nowhere to beat down one of her regular commenters for absolutely no reason other than that I am a horrible witch of a person who has a pitch black heart and no soul (heh), and she basically repeated the claim in this one.

I don't see it that way, of course, and wrote a reply to her post at the time.

Both Elsa's posts exclude details as far as what really happened, so here is my perspective on it from the previous posts I wrote:

"[The poster] made a comment that she agreed with a quote by Yogananda that a "truly enlightened person" has no need for the astrological birth chart.

I begged to differ on that one and rebutted that many "enlightened" people take on very difficult life circumstances and use astrology to navigate them more skillfully than they could without this tool. I also said that I believed the poster had an old Piscean concept of "enlightened." IE. Someone sitting on a Neptunian cloud sipping pomegranate juice...

Sure, I was being a bit cheeky there, but really! Who making a comment like that in an astrology forum wouldn't expect some opposition to that statement?

Apparently, this person.

She launched a four-paragraph, expletive-laden diatribe telling me to fuck off unless I had something "positive and agreeable" to say, telling me I obviously wasn't enlightened and reiterating that enlightened people have no use for astrology. She claimed I was "harassing" her and called me a troll.

I replied that I was not harassing her but rather rebutting a comment that I didn't agree with."

Your standard online pissing match.

For me, it was a case of defending the practice of astrology from the New Age claim that "astrology is not for the enlightened." I find that there are many, many things wrong with that statement, beginning with the New Age definition of enlightened, which I pointed out to the blog commenter in my colourful little way. A little too colourful for that particular astrology forum, it turns out, but I will explain later.

For me, there's a difference between battling an ideological tenet that threatens to discredit my vocation - something I take seriously and value highly - and a vicious personal attack. If we don't defend astrology, we won't have an astrology to defend. Though I used a strong critique of that commenter's claim, I didn't really take things to a personal level - the commenter did in her reply.

I can take my licks, though, so I won't quibble there.

As I've mentioned before, I came up through tribe.net message boards, which were pretty no holds barred. The philosophical battles got heated, and they were meant to. What we're doing here is more than tapping out messages on little machines, and I'm cognizant of that. I wouldn't be doing it if it were not meaningful and effective.

So I've been the lone non-New Age voice being shit-swarmed by ten or more people of that ideological persuasion on many occasions and managed to come out unscathed with my points across. I believe there are righteous battles, and extricating astrology from an invisible (and I would say insidious) merger with New Age beliefs is righteous to me. It's something I do, though it's not always pretty, and it's almost never popular. My methods are not for everyone - especially anyone not willing to get in and get right into the meat of the subject.

I am a Libra Sun, though, and I do understand Elsa's beef on blog social decorum.

In fact, I wrote Elsa an e-mail a little later on explaining my background and apologizing for my fault in breaching the social rules of her blog. As I explained, I was very new to the world of blogging at that time - especially to the social/community aspects, which I barely realized existed - and I wasn't up on the social rules. I blew in there with the charge of 101 throwdowns with the New Age in my words, and it just didn't fit the scene. I can see how this was not the right vibe for a group of people unaware that that battle even exists.

There are people you can take out of the country and put in the city and have them adapt and fit in quite well. Then there are people like me. Social integration is a slow process.

So I breached Elsa's rules on her blog and apologized for it almost two years ago. As far as I knew, it was a resolved matter. I guess not.

Let me take this opportunity to explain some of the dynamics here astrologically:

Elsa has Mars in Libra. She says she doesn't like to fight, but the way I see it, she is fighting in classic Libra style. She's fighting socially, passive aggressively, using her large social platform, her standards for social decorum, and her like-minded following (heavy on the Mars in Libra, according to the comments section) as a shield, all while denying doing so.

To compare, I'm a Mars in Scorpio with roots in a spiritually-guided warrior clan. I grew up on the prairie in the Dirty Eighties when the earth was parched, the grasshoppers were swarming, and the Pluto in Scorpio pressure on independent ranching and farming families was brutal. If rage and battling weren't a big part of your fuel source, you didn't have the snuff to get through it.

Mars in Libra versus Mars in Scorpio. Passive aggressive versus aggressive aggressive. Guess which one is more socially acceptable, especially for women?

Elsa has a stacked southern hemisphere (top half) of her birth chart. This means that she lives a fairly public life. She has a large public forum, a large public following, and has the opportunity to be very visible in her career. She has become known to many readers through her blog and has become known to many astrologers through the AstroDispatch - an "astrology star" if there is such thing. This public realm is a place where her rules go and her perspective reigns supreme, backed up by many like-minded readers, and that's fine.

What needs to be clear, though, is the Mars in Libra wielding of this southern hemisphere public prowess and Libran popularity. Elsa often talks about having Mars conjunct Mercury in Libra, and she is wielding a definite social and public power when she decides to use her blog as a platform to write about someone, especially another astrologer, and especially when she has closed the discussion to that person's point-of-view. This, again, is a classic way of Mars-Mercury in Libra battling. With Saturn just stationed retrograde in Libra, she is using the social structure she has built and her status within it to throw daggers.

In comparison, I have a northern hemisphere (bottom half) stacked chart. This means my life is not highly public. My vocation is not highly visible. I fly under the radar for the most part - purposefully. My achievements and successes are often not readily apparent to others and are often defined in completely opposite ways than they would be for a stacked southern hemisphere chart person. I don't write accessible astrology for the masses - though I could if that's the direction it took. I write complex astrology for a honed, niche audience.

I have a strong influence (for which I do my best to be responsible) and am among the best at what I do - but very few know it. My work is often hidden. So when I write a rebuttal post like this one, let's just say it doesn't have the same public legs as an Elsa post. I'm sure she is well aware of this fact and that it factors strongly into her southern hemisphere, Mars in Libra fighting style.

In vast contrast to someone with ease in the southern hemisphere (public/career life), my opportunities are few and far between, mostly eked out with blood, sweat, and otherworldly determination. If I did not know this was the way I needed to go in life, it would be sheer insanity for me to continue.

I also have a strong Black Moon Lilith influence - meaning, I'm on the edge, on the outside with my creative perspective, interacting from outer limits, expressing things most don't want to hear and causing big reactions, mostly unintentional, through doing so. When I trigger something, it lasts for a while - apparent in the fact that a five-minute incident on her blog has now warranted two fairly over-the-top blog posts almost two years apart from Elsa.

The strong Black Moon Lilith is the 'wicked witch' vibe along with the projected dark feminine stuff - cruel, vicious dog beater and baby eater, etc.

I have never been nor will ever be accepted with open arms by the mainstream - and this includes the pseudo-alternative mainstream. I will never have thousands of followers backing me up on every word. I have to be willing to say what I know is right for its own sake and stand behind it alone if need be, so this is what I do.

I find it unfortunate that as much as Elsa has written about this, she has never acknowledged the underlying philosophical issue and the issue pertinent to our profession - the merging of New Age beliefs with astrology, in particular in this case with the "astrology is not for the enlightened" claim.

I had a similar experience this past summer and fall with another blogger who refused to speak on the real underlying issues. He, coincidentally, also had a lot of Libra in a southern hemisphere-heavy chart and used his considerable platform to speak about his perspective on me without getting into anything real.

With that, I'll leave with this excerpt:

"This might be a controversial assertion, but I don't think the sign of Libra alone is all that skilled in the creation of peace. Libra is the peacekeeper, maybe. But peacemaker? Peace creator? No.

Libra can often maintain, through it's slick social skills and airy diplomacy, a form of peace that has already been established, but getting to a state of real peace often involves getting into it, and Libra is a sign that, especially when squared by Cancer or Capricorn, prefers to avoid that unpleasantness.

This avoidance is problematic because getting to a real state of peace often involves complex and longstanding disputes, injustice, imbalance, hurt, and oppression that have been hidden, covered over, smoothed over, let slide, reinforced - made worse, in fact, by Libra's glossing over of realities and nervous insistence on everything staying nicey nice.

Slapping a Band-aid on it and forcing a phony handshake over drinks without addressing underlying issues is not the recipe for true, longstanding justice or the peace that stems from that. Keeping everything Libra light and pleasant isn't really the goal when you get right down to it - getting to the root of the discord and injustice is, as well as to a mutual understanding of what caused and continues to cause this so it can be addressed and the chains broken.

The drawing up and divining sign of Scorpio, then, becomes instrumental in the process of peace creation. The road to peace might be initiated in cardinal air Libra, but it's fixed water Scorpio that digs in and takes the process beneath the surface, where it needs to go to be crystallized.

It's the catalytic power of expressing the raw human experiences of millennia of oppression on this planet, especially the emotional realities, that starts the process toward real peace, equality and harmony. If we can't get to and express the core realities, we don't get to any real healing, peace or understanding."

Lucky 13 Aquarius New Moon and Things are Popping

We're in the Dark of the Moon in Aquarius all day. The old hopes and dreams we held for our future and for the future of this planet - you know, that ones that didn't quite materialize - are folded into the Balsamic soup.

It's all OK, somehow. Listen to the Moon as it whispers to let go.

Our niches as elegant and freedom-forging Aquarian revolutionaries with Piscean sage mastery in our back pockets are unfolding. The times of our greatest relevance are still up ahead. Your life has more meaning today that it ever has. You're a thorn in the side and sand in the underwear of all those who want humanity placated, drugged, accepting, docile, handled.

The track you carve out stirs them, shows them how it's done, that it's still possible under Pluto in Capricorn. The weight and pressure you bring yourself through - immense - inspires. Taken to the breaking point and almost beyond a million times. You get through so others can, too. So we can't be broken. The most difficult links are strengthed by your efforts. The tightest and trickiest knots untied. Honour.

The icy coolness of five bodies in Aquarius soothes the hot and stormy mass of unrealized wishes and hopes flying around, quenching old, under-the-Piscean-veil desires with a sizzle and then a glorious wave-lapping neutrality as we wait to see what really unfolds.

The lists made of the Dream Guy, the Dream Girl, the Dream Home, the Dream Job are yellowed and old. Pictures torn from magazines of happy families with your specially chosen names for the kids written in. It's not so hard to let go now.

Things fade to black and we're relieved of our Balsamic soup-making tonight with the New Moon at 8:31 p.m. Central time. We rub our bleary eyes as a new sliver of light starts to reveal to us what the infusion of Aquarian planets has in mind from here.

The Sun, Moon and Mars are conjunct in mid-Aquarius with Neptune and Chiron bringing up the rear in the sign of the water-bearer. This marks the halfway point of our two-year Mars cycle.

The path has been twisty, turny, bumpy, scary, heartbreaky - but it's our's. It's meaty, heady, potent with meaning. Our time of being alive on this planet.

We're past the halfway mark in our series of Thirteenth Witch New Moons at four of six, moving through wave after wave of new territory in the domain of the denied feminine realities. The burst of forward movement we need to make it through. Translating and utilizing these insights - spoken in the language of emotion - is necessary from here.

The thirteenth floor of the building is suddenly becoming accessible to us, and it holds the final puzzle piece that makes the thing whole again.


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