The Flow! April 7 – 21, 2013

Wild and Wooly World

Welcome, one to the new www, the Wild and Wooly World!

Gun violence (at least in the US) is up, way up, so that there isn’t a day that goes by when there isn’t a report of someone being gunned down keeping the world safe for people wearing tin-foil hats to have Smith & Wesson wet dreams.

As if that weren’t enough, heads are exploding on the right as visions of a world ruled according to 16^th Century strictures, scriptures, and governance of behavior evaporate before their very eyes. And on the other side of the aisle, heads are exploding on the left as hard-fought gains for social justice and economic fairness get hacked at by the very people in whom they placed their trust to protect them. And not to be left out, (write out?) anyone who dares stands in the middle is the target of slings and arrows from both directions.

And it’s not all limited to political and cultural battles.

Individually, you may have noticed people increasingly restless, frustrated, and angry. Fuses are shorter. Explanations are not tolerated, alibis hollow, and apologies not accepted. It’s “shoot first and ask questions later.” Our collective patience is at an end, our minds are made up, we’re tired of waiting, and know what we want, but just don’t know how to get there.

If you see someone smiling and happy, they’re either not paying attention, or check the back of the head to see how that mask is attached.

The most likely expression of all this pent up energy is with passive-aggressive behavior: covert accusations, sarcasm, and honey-laced words surrounding decorated tablets of arsenic.

With Mercury, Chiron, and Neptune all still in Pisces, few are willing to come out and actually say what they mean. Everything is veiled, hidden, and meant to misdirect — lest their vulnerabilities you suspect. If you feel misunderstood, outcast, or alone, you’re not at least, alone in feeling so.

And with Uranus, the Sun, Venus, and Mars still marching through Aries, we feel more willing to take chances, step out on that limb, and push for what we want. Aries is forceful, direct, pioneering; an initiator, instigator, and inventor. They are a resourceful, energetic, spirited, and forceful. When fully charged, they are a dynamo incarnate, relentless until the task is done — or they lose interest. And ruled by Mars, god of war, they shirk from battle on pain of death.

With all that feisty energy, sometimes Aries needs a chill pill, nor are they are known for sitting still. Brusque, abrupt, and in your face, sometimes they don’t realize how strongly their actions affect others. But they’re not mean, in fact there isn’t a mean bone in their body. But they are upfront, frank, and honest. In their eyes, they tell it like it is — and to blazes if the rest of us see things differently.

Which a point of caution, There is one thing that Aries abhors more than any other — psychological games. Mind games give most Aries people the eebeejeebees, so be careful. The best approach during this time (until April 20th, when the Sun enters Taurus) is to play it honest. No ulterior motives, no hidden agendas. If you must hold your cards close to your chest, do so with a minimum of fuss and drama. You don’t want to be butt in the butt by the horns of an irate Ram!

For more about Mars in Aries, you might want to check out the March 2011 edition, “From Pillar to Post” when Mars last entered the sign.

So, if there are so many forward directed energies , why aren’t we making better progress?

Usually it’s Saturn that acts the villain, and he is sitting in Scorpio twirling his handle-bar mustache chortling at our struggles below. But in this position, especially retrograde, the biggest danger he poses is that we make the same mistakes as have made in the past, fall for the same pitfalls, stumble over the same rocks.

If you find yourself faced with a problem that did not turn out favorably for you, and you manage it in the same way, you are heading toward Saturn’s trap. Especially in the emotionally charged sign of Scorpio, he will tie you up like a spider and roast you over the flames of your own remorse.

Leos, Scorpios, Tauruses, and Aquarians are the most in danger here; Cancers and Pisces least likely to feel the flickering of the fires.

Why? Because the Leos, etc are being prodded to be different because of the lessons they should have learned from the past, and take actions that stem from a different attitude about the situation as a result of personal growth, insight, and development over the past several years. Cancers and Pisces are less apt to feel this effect because rather than grow, Saturn is nudging them to express themselves more clearly. And usually, expressing one’s self is an easier task than growing up.

That doesn’t necessarily mean that a new approach will lead to rainbows, candy canes, and lollipops, but it will form a new foundation from which you operate that, even if it doesn’t provide immediate rewards, will be substantially beneficial in the long run.

But no, Saturn is not the villain here, Pluto is.

Pluto is sitting and playing in in the “Toys in the Ward of a Hospital” portion of Capricorn, and it doesn’t want any pesky Aries planets around grabbing and trying to play with his toys. He needs them for healing. A healing that will end dysfunction, on political, social, and personal levels, and help us all prepare for the next phase, coming in early 2015 in which we need to be able to work together to jointly solve our problems and move ahead.

It isn’t going to be easy, and there are likely to be bruises on all sides of the battle field, but in the end, it’s highly likely that we’ll all be better off for it.

So right now, Pluto is acting like the old school game of Space Invaders, taking aim at the Aries planets and shooting down those aims and objectives that keep us apart and make us more dysfunctional.

If you’ll notice in the image (which is only mostly tongue-in-cheek), you’ll notice Uranus at the back of the pack. The planets are arranged in order of increasing speed up front, and Uranus, plodding on in the rear is by far the slowest of the lot.

But there’s an added symbolism to the image in that Pluto and Uranus’ conflict is at the heart of many of the meta issues we face. As mentioned before in this blog, the Pluto-Uranus square is the result of the conjunction in the mid-60’s that kicked off the civil rights movement, youth rebellion, sexual revolution, and same-sex acceptance and integration.

As the first square after the birth of this social progress, the first square represents a moment of crisis for each. Asking the question: “what is at the core of what you are trying to accomplish?” puts each under the scrutiny of our culture as a whole, and a reformulation of its purpose, meaning, and scope. Some, like the civil rights movement, which may have been coasting along on substantial success without reformulating its purpose and may begin to feel like future progress may be stalled. Similarly, young people may no longer feel the need to collectively rebel against their parents. And some, like the gay rights movement, may feel more energized as they have been forced to reformulate their goals and objectives due to their own success and changing circumstances.

There’s much more coming about this astrological configuration as we get closer to the next incidence of it on May 20^th.

Meanwhile, closer to home, is the New Moon on April 10^th at 2:36am PDT. It is in the part of Aries in which there is substantial energy for manifesting your desires. Just be careful what you wish for, and are willing to carry the responsibilities of getting what you want.

The Moon’s potency grow from a few days after New, until it reaches its peak during the Full Moon period starting on the 24^th.

In other astrological news, the Sun and Mars are locked in a tight embrace that will last until the end of this month, so on the whole, our vitality should improve and we should have plenty of energy for the items on our to-do lists. Whether we want to get to them, though may be a different story.

And speaking of wants, Venus is now an Evening Star, setting ever so briefly after the Sun. However, she will rise in the night-time sky throughout spring and summer, reaching her peak in late October. With Venus setting after the Sun, there is a predisposition for us all to take our relationships more seriously, and be more deliberate in our interactions with others. We also tend to want our relationships to better fit our expectations, and can therefore be a little more critical than we were with Venus ahead of the Sun.

Some of you may notice the blog has a new look, I hope y0u enjoy it. This is my interim solution until I migrate the blog to another host. Be sure to check out the Blogroll, there are some interesting sites in there! If you have a site you would like me to add, let me know, I’d be glad to oblige, if it’s germane to the site.

That’s it for this post, be sure to check out the Mercury Mall, and test drive some of the new features of the blog!

The Flow! Week of March 18 – 24, 2012

The Flow is a weekly blog published to better understand the flow of astrological, celestial, and magickal energies for the week, and how best to use them.   It is intended for those with little knowledge of astrology. 

For newcomers, the idea is to consider celestial influences as part of a larger whole, or the Flow.  All too often, astrologers tend to write about astrological events as if each were an isolated specimen as if pulled out of the sky and analyzed by itself – and there is no dearth of astrological sites on the net that write that way.  Here, it is the movement and interactions that are important and form the basis of discussion.

If any of the material is unclear or unfamiliar to you, it is probably unfamiliar to others as well, please leave a comment and I will be glad to answer your questions. 

If you like what you see, please share it with friends!  If you would like to get email notifications for when The Flow! is updated, or have a private question please email me at skywatcher888@yahoo.com.  Thank you!

The Flow! is updated every Sunday.

Please note: all times are in the Pacific Timezone.

Synopsis for the week: Happy New Year!

Bet you didn’t see that one coming!

But yes, it’s true. This Monday, the 19^th at 10:14pm the Sun enters Aries marking the start of the astrological new year.

New years can begin at any time, and lord knows over time we’ve had a few.

Before the adoption of the current calendar England used to use Lady Day or March 25^th as the beginning of the year. Judaism often begins the year with the New Moon nearest the AUTUMNAL equinox, though technically it is set from the date of Passover, which is the first full moon after the Vernal equinox. Many Asian cultures celebrate the new year with the new moon closest to the beginning of February. And the Islamic calendar sticks to 12 simple lunar months and the new year retrogrades about 11 days each year.

It’s all about time, and that’s the culprit — time. How it functions, how we measure it, and how we use it are all so totally incompatible it’s no wonder it has changed so much over the years.

Even talking about time sets in motion all sorts of complicated theoretical discussions that would bore even the wonkiest of nerds, except to watch their eyes light up like LEDs on Christmas when you mention things like Einstein’s theory of special relativity and the Space-Time Continuum. You wouldn’t need to set your phasers on stun, your brain would be frozen solid in a babbling stupor. Even Mr. Spock would scratch his cute pointy ears trying to explain it.

For us here on Earth, we measure time by the motion of celestial bodies, primarily the Sun’s, the Moon’s, and our own.

Since time immemorial, humanity has measured time by the phases of the Moon. In some cultures to this day, the new month (the very word comes from the Moon) begins with the New Moon. That is how many ancient civilizations used to measure them.

Yet while knowing the months is important, especially if you are going to be paying rent and other bills, the most important cycle to be aware of for survival is the SOLAR cycle, which we use to measure years. This makes it easy to remember when the seasons change, which is useful information to know when to plant, when to harvest, and when to buy snowshoes.

And then finally, we use the Earth’s motion to set the length of day so that we know when to eat, sleep, go to work and watch Dancing with the Stars.

None of the these measurements are as precise as we’d like, which is why every once in a while we see a headline such as, “Scientists add another second to day.” Well, fine by me, I could use all the extra seconds I can get my hands on, just so long as they don’t fall between 9-5, but just exactly how do they get to add them? What are they adding them to? Do they pull out the stem of a stopwatch in some godforsaken bunker somewhere

Just last month we had a leap day on February 29^th, but what exactly are we leaping? I still had to go work. If we had a day we could all spend in bed, that’d be a much better use of that extra day.

But seconds and days are small potatoes compared to whole months that need to get added to better align lunar calendars to the solar year. Doing payroll in those places must be a trip.

For many of us, the finger of blame points to the Babylonians, although to be honest considering the iPad hadn’t been invented, they did pretty well with what they got.

The Babylonians, who were wearing funny hats and blowing into noisemakers at the Vernal equinox, liked to count different things in different ways. Much like we count cups, pounds, and inches or liters, grams and meters if you’re sensible and metric.

Using sun-dried bricks, sticks and bits of string, they reasoned that a circle was most usefully divided in 360 pieces that we now call degrees. 360 is a pretty sweet number. It is easily divisible by 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 12, 15, 18, 20, 24, 30, 36, 40, 45, 60, 72, 90, 120, 180 and itself. Which is very helpful if all you have to count with are clay tablets and your fingers.

The Babylonians used a lunar calendar. In fact, the names of the Hebrew months of the year to this day are very similar, adopted as they were during the Babylonian Captivity. Like a baker’s dozen worth of time, the Babylonians used to count time by 60’s. That’s why to this day even Rolex’s count seconds and minutes by groups of 60, and hours by another set of divisors of 360 – 12 and 24. And, it didn’t take a Babylonian Einstein long to figure out that the length of the year in days was pretty close to that 360 with 5 or 6 extra days thrown in to whoop it up. Astrologers, of course, and scientists of all stripes still use the Babylonian 360 degrees to a circle.

It was a very, very neat system and the best we had until Julius Caesar got his paws on it and made it a true solar calendar. Making a lunar calendar fit into a solar calendar takes quite a bit of fiddling, and the Romans were too busy fiddling with other things to be bothered fiddling with a calendar.

Some of the “months” came from the names of gods like January and March, but apparently the Romans weren’t all that creative when it came to naming the months because the ones after August are all just their number in Latin, Sept- 7, Oct – 8, Nov – 9, and Dec -10. July used to be Quintilis or 5^th until Julius thought it was only proper that if he were actually creating the calendar he should name a month after himself, and Augustus Octavian who came right after was not to be slighted so he glommed on to Sextilis – 6^th, and named it after himself.

As smart as he was, the Julian calendar had its flaws, too. The Catholic church, which used the calendar to set important feasts and holidays began to get annoyed when Easter began falling in the middle of winter, so in 1582 Pope Gregory sat down and scritched out modifications of his own, more accurately conforming the calendar to the actual length of a year.

This calendar was first accepted by Catholic countries, and then slowly made its way through the Protestant ones. England didn’t adopt it until 1752, and the most recent country to adopt it — Turkey, did so only in 1926, though bits and pieces of China hung on a bit longer, to 1929.

Contrary to popular belief, Gregory did not set the new year to January 1. What he did do was include tables of saint days and holy days, and this table ended December 31^st.

Circles can begin anywhere. True, Aries is considered the first sign of the zodiac, which makes it the sensible place to begin. But what is perhaps more important is the understanding that what was most important to the ancients about the annual solar cycle was the return of the sun in its path to the more northern stretches of the sky where it supplied them with more light and warmth. The time when this occurred was at the Vernal equinox, the day of equal night. Certainly a day worth celebrating!

And that’s the story for why Monday is the beginning of the astrological new year. May it be a happy, successful, and healthy one for you and yours!

To the Daily Details!

Venus, Jupiter, and the Moon redux

 

Venus, in all her glory 3/11/12

Sunday, March 18^th

Sun octile Moon at 10:06am at 15º Aquarius

Mercury conjunct Uranus at 10:21am

The Moon is in Aquarius all day, so what can I say? Saturday was strange, and Sunday is likely to be too.  While nothing major is really wrong, things FEEL wrong, or perhaps a better way of saying this is that our emotions are so very much out of whack that we feel as if we’re skating on the edge of a razor. And falling down frequently. Our attempts to connect with others fall short, and it just generally feels weird. Well, what do you expect of an Aquarian Moon, tea and sympathy? Not this Moon! Just smile a lot, look as pretty as possible, and take comfort that tomorrow the Moon enters Pisces. If your plans for the day didn’t quite work out the way you expected, it wasn’t your fault. What do you expect with Mercury Retrograde? You’ll get another chance next month when Mercury goes direct. Keep the faith!

Monday, March 19^th

Sun enters Aries at 10:14pm

The early morning hours on Monday are likely to be concerned with our resources, getting them together, putting them to work, or wondering when and where more of them are going to come. If you get a flash of inspiration, it’s the universe trying to lead you in a particular follow. If I were you, I’d listen – who’s to argue with the universe?

As the afternoon gets underway, we knuckle down and get busy with the day’s tasks at hand. We feel motivated, there aren’t many interruptions, and we seem to have the materials we need to make good progress. If you make the most of this time you may be able to coast a bit through the rest of the week.

The Moon enters Pisces at 5:05pm and while we FEEL better, for the first few hours, it’s a bit touch and go. Refrain from making any decisions during this time or of making any statements in absolute terms. Things are not as stable as they seem. Don’t build any foundations in a swamp!

Tuesday, March 20^th

No major aspects

The Moon is in Pisces all day, and the middle part of the day may turn out to be rather nice. In the early morning hours, we’re a bit unsure about where we stand with things. There’s lots of stuff floating up there in the air, and while we have hopes, there’s little certainty about where they’re going to land. Remember that others are in the same boat, so have a bit of sympathy and understanding if you get cut off driving to work, or a friend or co-worker cuts you off mid-sentence. Everyone’s feeling as freaky as you, so cut them some slack. In the mid-day period, though, things come together nicely. You can see opportunities for advancement, and there isn’t much in your way that prevents you from moving in that direction. Don’t be bombastic, don’t be boastful, and don’t push your luck, but if you just accept and acknowledge that things are going to go your way, they probably will. Also, try to formulate your plans in terms of win-win, if you try to get ahead at another’s expense, I have grim news for you. This evening, they’re plotting revenge.

Wednesday, March 21^st

Mercury octile Venus at 1:16am

Sun conjunct Mercury at 12:20pm

Again, the Moon is in Pisces all day. Mercury and Venus don’t often form an aspect, so this one is fairly rare. Mercury is communication and our thinking processes, Venus is our emotional processes. The octile is a bit of a challenging aspect requiring that we be who we say we are, and do what we say we are going to do. Therefore, with regard to your relationships and emotional well-being, today is a day for standing up for yourself and taking ownership of your thoughts and feelings. This is no time to discount your accomplishments or neglect your responsibilities to yourself. Aspects like these set the tone for times to come, so it’s a good idea to pay attention and pay yourself the respect you deserve!

The conjunction of Sun and Mercury means we’re half way through the Mercury Retrograde period. Hallelujah, brothers and sisters!

Thursday, March 22^nd

New Moon at 3º Aries at 7:37am

The Moon enters Aries 2:47am at and soon after meets up with the Sun forming this month’s New Moon. Because of its placement, it is very much a New Moon of beginnings. For the next couple of weeks until the Full Moon on April 6^th, is a perfect time to set in motion any plans or projects you have in mind. That’s because during this time, the power of our will is enhanced. Not only is it more powerful, but it is also clearer, purer, and more effective. In esoteric astrology, it’s the force, power, and intelligence of our will that creates. The dividing line between discorporate thought and material manifestation is crossed by one’s will. Whatever you desire, now is the time to WILL it. Your thoughts will become flesh on the bones of your destiny, but they will forever remain disembodied without flexing the mental muscles of your will. Today is apt to be another one of those days in which very little goes as planned. Don’t worry, and don’t try to fight it. You’re not the only one in this position today, everyone else will be looking for a fresh start tomorrow. The only problem is is that it ain’t gonna happen tomorrow, but early next week.

Friday, March 23^rd

Mercury Re-enters Pisces at 6:22am

Venus octiles Uranus at 11:24am

Eh, why bother? It’s unlikely much good is going to come from today. Our feelings and means of expressing them are out of sync. Furthermore, everyone seems hell bent on driving you insane, so why give them fodder? Take it in stride, count to 10 a lot, and remember to take deep breaths. The weekend is coming, although tomorrow is likely to be a carbon copy of today…if not worse. Don’t let people get the better of you, but not by fighting them aggressively, but killing them with kindness. Grit your teeth, if necessary, but grit them behind a smile. Especially in the evening hours, people are likely to be the most out of control. If you are on the road, by all means take precaution to stay out of the way of rampaging lunatics. They’re out there tonight, don’t make it easy for them to find you!

Saturday, March 24^th

Sun conjunct Uranus at 11:20am

I warned you. For the most part, today is likely to be a continuation of yesterday. The loonies have woken up the zombies and they’re both out looking for blood and trouble. At least until the Moon enters Taurus at 2:43pm. Before that, things are hectic, erratic, and nothing seems to go according to plan. It may even feel like you have an unwelcome monkey on your back. Usually I’m all for being out, out, out there, but today it might just be better to stay indoors with the curtains drawn. Once the Moon enters Taurus, things relent; there’s less commotion, and we don’t feel the need to climb all over each other’s back. By early evening, the general mood is even calm, mellow, and smooth. Tomorrow is looking to be a genuinely fine day, an immense improvement over the past couple of day, and an excellent day for outdoor activities, especially visiting, exploring new places, hiking, or gardening.

Wishing you all a wonderful week!