The Metaphysical Beat at Willow's Web Astrology

 Venus and the Moon in Capricorn on the WWA blog 6th birthday

Photos: Willow

Willow's Web Astrology blog is six years old today. (Has it really only been six years?)

I feel as tired as any mother of a very demanding six-year-old.

Except, I think this blog was quadruplets.

I'd like to take this opportunity to make an important point for readers in light of the tumultuous times through which we are living:

Please do not rely on Willow's Web Astrology blog to keep you up on all unfolding world events.

Willow's Web Astrology is not a constantly updating news outlet. I am not paid to be a constantly updating news outlet.

It's true that I'm a trained journalist, but after engaging in that line of work, I chose to leave the media - both mainstream and alternative - because I do not like the effect it has on people's minds. I've been censored multiple times while working in the media - yes, in both mainstream and alternative. I see public opinion being shaped in erroneous ways by the media. I see important stories being intentionally kept out of the media.

I've seen how reporters start to self-censor after being shot down by editors time and time again on the stories that matter to them. I see how they start to go along to get along. So I've seen the top-down power structure of the media at work, and it's nothing I wish to be a part of.

Since I do not like the energy of the media, I'm not going to emulate its rhythms or style in any way with my own writing, if I can help it. At this stage in the game, I feel the media is, ultimately, a propaganda tool for the powers-that-be, shaping half-truths and weak arguments into stories for mass consumption. I believe the media diverts attention, in many cases, from what's really going on on this planet. I took my leave, and I won't be re-entering that scene.

You'll see a great number of sexy and sensational images splashed across your newspapers, television screens, and computer monitors this cardinal Grand Cross spring and over the following few years. But you won't see them repeated here.

The world is at a boiling point, it's true. Forced into action by conditions too dire to tolerate. But from my perspective, we've always been here. It's always been this bad - it's just that more people are directly affected now and fewer can deny it. Fewer are able to go along with it. They would if they could.

Have revolt and resistance not always burned in the hearts and souls of people oppressed under corrupt and unjust systems? Things are being pushed to points of criticality on this planet, and will be during the exact Grand Cross this April, but the situation is really not much different than it ever was.

The conditions on Earth were never OK. The levels of needless suffering here were never OK.

We are under an umbrella of the same deadly and corrupt Global Governance around the world. Whether the burning rage against injustice and oppression are internalized or externalized and spilling into the streets, the conditions are pretty much the same.

The protests and revolts that get the big media play this spring (and in the following years) will be the protests that are most useful to the agenda of the powers-that-be. As with the Arab Spring, the rage and passion and resistance of the people will be used to lock a vicious new world order called "democracy" and "freedom" and "choice" into place. The only thing is, the good guys aren't really good guys. The European Union is no saviour from Russia. The United States and "Western democracy" are no saviour from the bloody dictators, who are simply more transparent about their ways of doing things.

I write about a great many subjects on the blog, only some of which are news events. The major focus here is and always will be producing helpful astrological articles for soulful guidance and successful navigation of the times.

No journalist covers all subjects. Journalists generally have beats - specific areas they focus on and cover where they develop particular expertise over time. In a usual newspaper, these beats include city news, the courts, arts and lifestyle, sports, crime, etc.

I've been put on my own metaphysical beat here at Willow's Web Astrology, and I receive my assignments. These assignments are more than enough for me to cover, and I don't have energy to go beyond those boundaries.

I feel that many stories being covered by both mainstream and alternative media are overblown, over-hyped, and manipulative, and I will not put any more energy into those subjects except through media criticism.

That said, if you do not see a topic covered on this blog, it's not necessarily because I don't think it's valuable to cover.

It's just not my assignment, see?

One subject I think needs more public attention is fracking (hydraulic fracturing). Again, just because I don't cover it here doesn't mean I think it unimportant.

It's just that, the only way I can avoid "issues fatigue" and burnout is to focus only on my own assignments.

So please continue doing your own research. Find your own sources. Speak out about the subjects that matter to you. And try to appreciate this site for what it is (fabulous, in-depth astrology with a sociopolitical bent), rather than focusing on what it isn't (a daily news outlet).

Happiest of Birthdays, Willow's Web Astrology blog. You're a guiding beacon of light for me, and my life would be much less rich without you. 

Keeping Our Balance as We Navigate Multi-Planet Gear Shifts

Photo: Willow

The North Node of the Moon entered Libra on February 18 where it will stay until November 11, 2015. As we close out February and begin March, the North Node is on the anaretic (29th) degree of Libra. The master balancer. The seasoned diplomat. The skilled harmonizer.

This is a very good thing, too, as we have four planets changing directions over the course of one week (February 28 to March 6), including both malefic planets, Mars and Saturn. Frustration! Depletion! Thwarted will! Stalled progress! General angst and irritation! Time may seem as if it's crawling. People could be getting under our skin. It may seem as if every direction we attempt to go in is blocked. And these potentially frustrating conditions are in full effect from now through mid-March.  

Four planets shifting gears all at once can create a chaotic, energetic traffic jam scenario, so we're being tossed right into the Libra master lessons here, challenged to keep our balance and our social decorum under some pressurized and potentially irritating energies. Perfect anaretic Libra territory.


This is an excerpt from the article "Keeping Our Balance as We Navigate Multi-Planet Gear Shifts." The full article is available to Willow's Web Astrology patrons.  

"Another tremendously helpful article, the kind I know I won't find anywhere else. Good thing I have excellent taste in astrologers!" - WWA patron Donna F.

Keeping Our Heads Above Water During Another End-of-Era Pisces Season

Photo: Willow

The Sun enters Pisces on February 18 (11:59 a.m. CST), where it will remain until equinox on March 20, marking spring, sweet spring, in the northern hemisphere.

We're at the point of the year where only faith in the coming spring and in the new life up ahead can get us through the drag-ass dregs of winter. Symbolic as always, no? Pisces season.

At the tail-end of the astrological Piscean era, it hasn't proven easy to get through each successive Pisces season. With wounded healer Chiron transiting Pisces until 2019, we are dealing with some of the most painful aspects of this sign and of life on Planet Earth, in general. We're overwhelmed by the dysfunction, by the pain, by the exhaustion, by the psychic malaise, by the problems that face us as a whole on this planet, by the too-easily-swallowed deceptions, and by the understanding that no one can escape what is being unleashed now against life on this planet.

One shining light of this particular Pisces season, Pisces season 2014, is that we do not have a seven-body stellium in the sign as we did last year! Pisces season 2013 involved the Sun, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Chiron and Neptune in the sign of the fishies, along with the Moon for a couple days. That Pisces stellium swallowed us whole for a time. We were drowning in Pisces. It was over-the-top and often not in a good way, tipping many of us into the psychic bleak. I lost a friend due to drug use, and my tiny, rural village lost a young man to suicide. I'm sure most people have a similar story from that time period. It was in the ethers - that point of overwhelm where you can't see your way out. I wish I could have explained the astrology and the dangers of that time period to both of them, to everyone who needed to know. You can read more about the stellium and that time frame here: The Pisces Circus Starts Pulling Up Stakes or here: Major Stelliums in Perspective.

This year, we experience a relatively lighter Pisces season, but we do have a potentially difficult New Moon at 10 degrees Pisces conjunct wounded healer Chiron on March 1, 2014. And as we move through that New Moon portal, we head straight to the three-year anniversary of the ongoing nuclear disaster at Fukushima, Japan on March 11.

Three years ago, we heard that an earthquake triggered a tsunami, which washed over the Daiichi nuclear reactors at Fukushima, Japan.

This caused explosions at Units 1 and 3. The explosion at Unit 3, complete with mushroom cloud, likely aerosolized a large amount of Plutonium, which was released as miniscule particles into the atmosphere, along with Cesium, Uranium, Strontium, Tritium, Neptunium and many other radioactive isotopes. That initial release of radioactivity came down in precipitation all along the West Coast of Canada and the United States. It has continued to come down in precipitation all over the northern hemisphere ever since.

Contrary to media reports that the "radioactive plumes" are just now reaching the coastline, radioactive contamination from Fukushima has been found all along the West Coast of Canada and the United States since early spring 2011. It has been here, showing up via ocean currents and air currents, since early spring 2011, and it has not stopped coming in the three years hence. It will not stop coming until the reactions have been contained and until contaminated water is no longer being released into the Pacific.

For three years now, night-and-day with no cessation, nuclear reactor Units 1 through 3 have been in meltdown, releasing radioactivity into the atmosphere, into the ground, and into the Pacific Ocean. You can literally see the reactions underway on the footage streamed from cameras trained on the reactors. They are glowing, flashing, reacting. Things are not under control. Not even close.

Juno in Pisces For Juno Day

This Friday is Valentine's Day, also known as Juno Day, a day traditionally set aside to celebrate love, lovers, romance, relationships, and soul mates.

Fittingly, we have a big, fat Full Moon in late Leo that night (exact at 5:53 p.m. CST) to get us all in the heart-centred mood.

The Moon opposes both the Sun and Mercury retrograde, which form their interior conjunction at 27 Aquarius on Saturday, February 15 (2:22 p.m.). The Sun-Mercury conjunction provides some much-needed perspective as we complete the first leg of the Mercury retrograde, which ends February 28. I hope you're receiving some messages and insight now that make your heart sing with excitement for the future.

If not, well, there's always the chocolate. 

It does seem funny that this day, falling in Aquarius season as it does, a sign related more to universal or humanitarian love, has such a strong focus on romantic, interpersonal love with all the hopes, illusions, ideals, and disappointments that have gone along with it. Seems more like a day for Pisces season, no?

The truth is, though, this day is a day for soul mates of all kinds, not just the romantic, interpersonal ones, and this becomes even more the case the further into the new astrological era we go. The love and bonds between friends also become more important as we head further into Aquarius, with friendship no longer relegated to "second best" behind the much-preferred ooey gooey love relationship. 

With soul mate asteroid Juno transiting the last degrees of Pisces on this Juno Day, some big romantic illusions are falling. These are some of the wounding Piscean-era romantic illusions that have held on with great tenacity, dragging those clinging to them down some nasty and devastating roads. Roads they've perhaps been down again, and again, and again...

From a previous post:

"Juno is showing us what we can count on, what we can draw on, and what we can accept into our hearts as the unchanging and unalterable love from the universe. But it's also showing us the ways in which we have been too naïve, too soft, too trusting, too open, too impressionable, too pie-in-sky, too denial-ridden, too giving, or too forgiving."

Venus is still re-gaining full speed direct, coming out of its direct station at 13 degrees Capricorn January 31. Venus is just about to move out of orb of the conjunction to Pluto, breaking the magnetic Plutonic forcefield and pushing onward on the other side of this Juno Day weekend. The current positioning of love and relationship planet Venus indicates a more down-to-earth and realistic tone for this Valentine's Day - if people even have the energy or money to celebrate it.

We're opening into a whole new rulebook for interpersonal relationships now, a whole new way of structuring our relationships, and this won't always fit the dewy and glistening Neptunian ideals.

So how will this change Valentine's Day?

Hell, I don't know. I'm not a woman who has had the traditional Valentine's experience, to say the least. I find the culture around this day to be over-the-top, a little eyeroll-worthy, and a little bullshitty, to be honest. I have Venus retrograde in Scorpio in the birth chart, and let's just say, I've always seen what lies beneath the candy and flowers and candles and expensive dinners.

To me, it's always been sort of an irritating day - another day when single people are made into the pitiable "other."

(Believe me, there are more people in relationships deserving of your pity these days than people out of relationships...)

This day has never materialized for me the way the broader society says it should, and that's A-OK.

For me, it's about recognizing and celebrating love in all its forms, and particularly - in light of being one of those pitiable "other" singles for much of my life - self-love.

In honour of Goddess Juno, AKA Hera, Zeus' much-beleaguered wife, this is also a day to celebrate the marriages that have stood the test of time, rather than the hyped-up honeymoon phase. Anyone can get through the honeymoon phase. Try the next 30 or 40 years...

On a personal level, this day has been about celebrating the tenacity of my parents and their marriage. They were married on February 12 and, unbeknownst to them, would have an amazingly tough relationship row to hoe. It's all there in the synastry. But they're still at it. And they brought wicked Willow to the world (along with her fabulous sister), so I guess there is some method to the universe's meanness, after all, isn't there?

Juno finishes its transit of Pisces, moving into fresh territory in Aries on March 3.

From there, the soul mate asteroid moves to a rollicking conjunction to Uranus in Aries on March 25, getting Aries season and spring in the northern hemisphere underway with a sizzle.

With Juno transiting Aries until April 26, the soul mates in our lives are showing us the way forward. They're spurring new directions. They're getting us primed and excited and interested in what lies ahead. They're showing us how we need to break new relational trail now, following our own instincts as we take the virgin steps into weird and wild Aquarius. Things aren't going as you had expected? Are interactions making you a little hot under the collar? Is the trajectory of your relationships completely different from what you'd imagined?

That's the vibe to ride this March and April, pretty babies. We're at the end of the Piscean-era rainbow here, and what comes next just might blow your mind a little - in a good way.

Happy Juno Day to all you lovers and fighters out there!

Willow on Cipro Poisoning on the North Bay Astrology Show

Some of the long-term readers here may know that I was poisoned by an antibiotic produced by Bayer called Ciprofloxacin in 2009. I took three little pills, prescribed to me without warning for a very minor health issue, and I have been recovering from complete systemic devastation ever since.

Cipro is from a variety of antibiotics called fluoroquinolones. Fluoroquinolone antibiotics have been infused with a known toxin, fluoride, supposedly to increase efficacy. These antibiotics have devastating, debilitating, and even deadly potential side effects. They attack tendons, connective tissues, neurology, vision, the central nervous system, and the digestive system.

Name brands include Ciprofloxacin, Avelox, Levaquin, Floxin, Noroxin, Penetrex, and Maxaquin. These antibiotics are prescribed as eye drops under the names Vigamox, Zymar, Besivance, Ciloxan, Iquix, Quixin, Ocuflox, and Ofloxacin. They are prescribed as ear drops under the names Cetraxal, Ciprodex, Ofloxacin, and as Baytril in veterinary medicine. These drugs are also being erroneously prescribed to babies and children as ear and eye drops. 

Recovery from fluoroquinolone antibiotic poisoning can take many, many years, and permanent effects are also possible.

These antibiotics are so potentially dangerous that they should never be prescribed as first line antibiotics for minor infections. All safer alternatives should be tried first. Unfortunately, the Big Pharma marketing machine has created a climate where physicians are erroneously prescribing these drugs as first line antibiotics. This is a widespread practise.

Neither doctors nor pharmacists are warning people adequately before dispensing these drugs, and physicians are contravening the Hippocratic Oath to do no harm to patients:

"I will apply diatetic measures for the benefit of the sick according to my ability and judgment; I will keep them from harm and injustice.

I will neither give a deadly drug to anybody if asked for it, nor will I make a suggestion to this effect."

Iatrogenic illnesses and deaths are illnesses and deaths caused by the treatment of a physician. There is currently an epidemic of iatrogenic illnesses and deaths due to the irresponsible prescription of new generation pharmaceuticals like fluoroquinolones.

I recently talked about iatrogenic illnesses, my Cipro experience and recovery, as well as dangerous and fast-tracked pharmaceuticals and the trail of death and destruction they have left behind them. You can listen to the show here: 

Willow Talking about Cipro Poisoning on the North Bay Astrology Show with Matt Savinar


For more: Cipro is Evil

Reeling it Back in Mentally, Verbally, and Psychically During an Era-Shifting Mercury Retrograde

 

Feeling stuck in the snow like this guy?

That's just Mercury stationing retrograde in its fall conjunct Neptune. 

Photo: Willow

Mercury stations retrograde in the sign of its fall (Pisces) conjunct cloudy Neptune on February 6 (3:43 p.m. CST), and this is one overwhelmed little communication/intelligence planet.

This retrograde station indicates a period of time when we can find ourselves mentally and psychically over-active and over-stimulated, particularly from the conversations we have, the words we read, and the media we consume.

It can be difficult to shut our churning, turning brains off now, and quieting the mental and psychic noise is going to require some concerted effort over the next 10 days or so.

This is a time when arguments and debates can go round and round and round, getting nowhere. In fact, it may seem that we are not having the same conversation at all - on completely different wavelengths. Limiting our oratory and social interaction to what's necessary over the next 10 days would be advisable. Use your psychic blocking powers.

Mercury has a tough time in Pisces as it is. The mind is often stuck on "fly wide open" in this sign, and there can be trouble with mental and verbal boundaries. Every word Mercury hears in Pisces leaves a psychic impression, and with all the needless verbiage we are exposed to these days, that can leave a lot of mental chaos to navigate our way through.

Again, practise your mental limits, your psychic boundaries, and your lip-zipping whenever it seems appropriate. Keep your own psychic energy locked down when necessary and within proper limits. This is a time when we could be goaded into over-stepping our boundaries, saying or psychically projecting too much, and this can lead to metaphysical entanglements and drains that are not in our best interests.

Reel that mind back in and clamp down on what's going in and what's coming out of the crown chakra whenever necessary.

As stated, Mercury is in its fall in Pisces and has a hard time verbally encapsulating everything it sees and picks up on in the sign of the fishies. Communication will take some extra effort now. Slow down, and speak clearly. We have to follow our words, directing them right to the intended target, or they may go astray. Misunderstandings and miscommunication are likely, particularly in the days surrounding the Mercury retrograde station February 6. It pays to be extra precise now with information, communication, emails, telephone calls, maps and travel plans, and the like.

The Mercury station in Pisces conjunct Neptune can be a time when we are receiving many "winks from the universe" with dreams, odd little interactions, or snippets of conversations overheard bringing us needed information and insight. Flow with it, even if things are confusing. They more than likely will be.

Mercury will not be in its fall for long, however. Mercury Rx moves back into easier territory in rational, objective, clear-headed Aquarius on February 12 (9:30 p.m. CST), where it will spend the majority of the retrograde period. Mercury stations direct again at 18 degrees Aquarius on February 28 (8:00 a.m. CST).

This Mercury retrograde from Pisces to Aquarius is also related to the shift in astrological eras - from Pisces to Aquarius. We are wrapping our minds around the era shift and what it means for us, gaining insight on how we need to change our thinking in order to align ourselves successfully with the times. Throughout February, we're gaining some much-needed perspective as far as where we are now and how we can best navigate our way out of the confusing, draining dregs of tail-end-Pisces and into more vital and dynamic territory. The house or houses where Mercury is transiting in your natal chart indicates a particular area of focus as far as the era shift underway.

Post-retrograde Mercury will re-enter Pisces on March 17 (4:24 p.m.), and we take a spin with "Pisces for the Aquarian era" until April 7, when the winged messenger ingresses Aries. At that point, we are mentally raring to go into spring 2014 and the exact cardinal Grand Cross forming in late April.


Mercury Rx: February 6 - 28, 2014, from 3 degrees Pisces to 18 degrees Aquarius

Willow's Web Astrology on "What is Mercury Retrograde?"