Jan 2013
Beatrix and Between
29/Jan/13 09:08
To me, it all looks pretty complex... there are several different charts for the Netherlands, which after all has a long history. But the abdication of Queen Beatrix on January 28th has some interesting resonances with the chart for the coronation of King William I in 1815, which Nicholas Campion says is the chart many Dutch astrologers use.
Most prominent for me is that the sun on January 28th was at 8 degrees of Aquarius, conjunct the coronation chart's Saturn. Now, what really grabs me about that is the Queen - royalty, a Leonine quality - abdicated at a time when the sun is in the progressive, democratic sign of Aquarius, which is in many ways the antithesis of Leo (it certainly is opposite in the zodiac!).
It makes sense that the Netherland's Saturn is in the sign of the Water Bearer. The country is known for being tolerant (generally) and politically progressive. It's appropriate that the Queen would publicly call it quits when the sun was in a sign associated with democracy, and as it passed over the government-oriented Saturn. It's a way of royalty bowing to the people - and royalty is not famous for bowing to anyone.
The abdication also comes just days after the full moon at 7+ degrees of Leo, essentially conjunct the country's Saturn. And Saturn now stands in Scorpio, square to that full moon (the square to the sun is exact on January 30th). In other words, the full moon "lit up" the country's Saturn, and placed pressure on royalty. And at the time of her speech, the moon was on the IC (opposite the midheaven) of the country's chart.
All in all, it looks like a tough week for Dutch royalty. But the Queen made the best of the pressures - it must be bittersweet to abdicate the throne, but Beatrix made the most of it. We'll have to see what the new King's coronation chart looks like.
But hey, it's the Netherlands, and I bet it's all good.
Most prominent for me is that the sun on January 28th was at 8 degrees of Aquarius, conjunct the coronation chart's Saturn. Now, what really grabs me about that is the Queen - royalty, a Leonine quality - abdicated at a time when the sun is in the progressive, democratic sign of Aquarius, which is in many ways the antithesis of Leo (it certainly is opposite in the zodiac!).
It makes sense that the Netherland's Saturn is in the sign of the Water Bearer. The country is known for being tolerant (generally) and politically progressive. It's appropriate that the Queen would publicly call it quits when the sun was in a sign associated with democracy, and as it passed over the government-oriented Saturn. It's a way of royalty bowing to the people - and royalty is not famous for bowing to anyone.
The abdication also comes just days after the full moon at 7+ degrees of Leo, essentially conjunct the country's Saturn. And Saturn now stands in Scorpio, square to that full moon (the square to the sun is exact on January 30th). In other words, the full moon "lit up" the country's Saturn, and placed pressure on royalty. And at the time of her speech, the moon was on the IC (opposite the midheaven) of the country's chart.
All in all, it looks like a tough week for Dutch royalty. But the Queen made the best of the pressures - it must be bittersweet to abdicate the throne, but Beatrix made the most of it. We'll have to see what the new King's coronation chart looks like.
But hey, it's the Netherlands, and I bet it's all good.
Generational
15/Jan/13 13:35
When we look through a chart, astrologers tend to put what we call generational aspects into the background. Generational aspects are aspects of slow-moving outer planets to each other - they move so slowly that an entire generation (or at least everyone born for a few years) will have the same aspect at the same time.
No big deal for any one individual, right? Everybody in your third grade class has the same aspect by transit, so it can't be too important.
Well, yes and no. Aaron Swartz, the 26 year old web developer that killed himself of Friday, would seem to suggest a different story. Although I don't know his birth time, the major planetary transits he was experiencing are really very much generational.
Okay, he had a Pluto transit to his Venus, too. But there is no indication that he killed himself over a love interest.
And he has a Scorpio sun, so even if he wasn't in the midst of an exact aspect, he was feeling that, too, as Saturn is now in his sign. Many Scorpios are having a hard time of it to one extent or another.
But what really seems to describe his relevant transits at this time is a conjunction of transiting Saturn to his natal Pluto in Scorpio. Now again, everyone born in 1986 has more or less the same position of Pluto, so they'll all be undergoing this transit this year. Not everyone is going to have such a rough time of it. Yet we can look a little deeper and see why Aaron may have been in the crosshairs of this transit.
Saturn is the planet we associate with authority, rules, and regulation. Pluto is power and power structures. Saturn is the Cosmic Cop, Pluto is the Celestial Power Broker. When transiting Saturn aspects Pluto, the "book" says that it's a bad time to try to get away with something that breaks the rules. No judgement implied - it's just that you're likely to get called out on your violation. It's not a good time to pad your tax return with fake deductions, for example.
Swartz was in real trouble, facing prosecution for illegally downloading academic journal documents from MIT. He was facing trial this week, and was apparently looking at six months of jail time. However, even the database that he stole from didn't want to prosecute, and it seems odd that the government was going after him on such serious charges when he essentially snuck into the library.
But that's Saturn and Pluto. The Plutonian energy is no-holds-barred and Saturn is a stickler for the rules. And Aaron Swartz was a smart, inventive, creative, Scorpionic iconoclast. A danger, some might perceive.
Because he was well-known, Swartz didn't get to hide his Pluto the way many others can. Being in the public eye can take those generational planets and make them very personal. That's especially true if you use your Plutonian energy to transform the way people relate via the internet, as Swartz did.
Then there is the question of suicide. It seems an extreme response. On this we'll have to wait and see, because the Pluto-in-Scorpio generation is young and just coming under such pressures. There does seem to be a kind of nihilism that runs through this astrological cohort, a group that finds vampires (dead people) sexy and seems ready to accept death as part of life at a very early age. For better or worse, the group that was born in the era of AIDS and Chernobyl doesn't seem ready to buy into the idea that everything will be okay, and may be quick to reach for the Escape button.
No big deal for any one individual, right? Everybody in your third grade class has the same aspect by transit, so it can't be too important.
Well, yes and no. Aaron Swartz, the 26 year old web developer that killed himself of Friday, would seem to suggest a different story. Although I don't know his birth time, the major planetary transits he was experiencing are really very much generational.
Okay, he had a Pluto transit to his Venus, too. But there is no indication that he killed himself over a love interest.
And he has a Scorpio sun, so even if he wasn't in the midst of an exact aspect, he was feeling that, too, as Saturn is now in his sign. Many Scorpios are having a hard time of it to one extent or another.
But what really seems to describe his relevant transits at this time is a conjunction of transiting Saturn to his natal Pluto in Scorpio. Now again, everyone born in 1986 has more or less the same position of Pluto, so they'll all be undergoing this transit this year. Not everyone is going to have such a rough time of it. Yet we can look a little deeper and see why Aaron may have been in the crosshairs of this transit.
Saturn is the planet we associate with authority, rules, and regulation. Pluto is power and power structures. Saturn is the Cosmic Cop, Pluto is the Celestial Power Broker. When transiting Saturn aspects Pluto, the "book" says that it's a bad time to try to get away with something that breaks the rules. No judgement implied - it's just that you're likely to get called out on your violation. It's not a good time to pad your tax return with fake deductions, for example.
Swartz was in real trouble, facing prosecution for illegally downloading academic journal documents from MIT. He was facing trial this week, and was apparently looking at six months of jail time. However, even the database that he stole from didn't want to prosecute, and it seems odd that the government was going after him on such serious charges when he essentially snuck into the library.
But that's Saturn and Pluto. The Plutonian energy is no-holds-barred and Saturn is a stickler for the rules. And Aaron Swartz was a smart, inventive, creative, Scorpionic iconoclast. A danger, some might perceive.
Because he was well-known, Swartz didn't get to hide his Pluto the way many others can. Being in the public eye can take those generational planets and make them very personal. That's especially true if you use your Plutonian energy to transform the way people relate via the internet, as Swartz did.
Then there is the question of suicide. It seems an extreme response. On this we'll have to wait and see, because the Pluto-in-Scorpio generation is young and just coming under such pressures. There does seem to be a kind of nihilism that runs through this astrological cohort, a group that finds vampires (dead people) sexy and seems ready to accept death as part of life at a very early age. For better or worse, the group that was born in the era of AIDS and Chernobyl doesn't seem ready to buy into the idea that everything will be okay, and may be quick to reach for the Escape button.
All Ashore
09/Jan/13 13:01
This probably won't interest nonastrologers, but the moon is void, so why not?
The Seastreak Ferry crash in lower Manhattan this morning has interesting resonances with the 2003 crash of the Staten Island Ferry as it approached the dock on Staten Island.
The ascendant degree and midheaven are virtually the same (2 Sag 06 MC in 2003, 3 Sag 15 MC today). In 2003, Neptune was in the 12th house, just two degrees off the ascendant, while today's Mars is within a degree of the 2003 ascendant (and hence conjunct the 2003 Neptune. Neptune today is at 1 Pisces 19, just a bit more than a degree away from the 2003 Mars.
The moon of today's crash is just a smidgeon past the 2003 Pluto. Mercury was square Saturn in the 2003 crash, and it is opposite Saturn today. There are also interesting correlates to the May 2010 crash of the same ferry boat as the 2003 crash, available in this archived Astroblog.
The Seastreak Ferry crash in lower Manhattan this morning has interesting resonances with the 2003 crash of the Staten Island Ferry as it approached the dock on Staten Island.
The ascendant degree and midheaven are virtually the same (2 Sag 06 MC in 2003, 3 Sag 15 MC today). In 2003, Neptune was in the 12th house, just two degrees off the ascendant, while today's Mars is within a degree of the 2003 ascendant (and hence conjunct the 2003 Neptune. Neptune today is at 1 Pisces 19, just a bit more than a degree away from the 2003 Mars.
The moon of today's crash is just a smidgeon past the 2003 Pluto. Mercury was square Saturn in the 2003 crash, and it is opposite Saturn today. There are also interesting correlates to the May 2010 crash of the same ferry boat as the 2003 crash, available in this archived Astroblog.
Speaking Truth to Power
03/Jan/13 08:05
The Uranus-Pluto square that dominates the years 2012 - 2015 gets aspected strongly from late December 2012 through the first week in January 2013. While holiday spirit was not entirely dampened, there has been enough going on in our personal and collective lives to keep an anxious eye on tense matters even as we celebrate the New Year.
The sun and Saturn both got into the mix in late December, heating up power issues. The wrangling over the Fiscal Cliff deal and gun control in the U.S. was prominent, but Russia's decision to ban U.S. adoptions and Egypt's adoption of an Islamic constitution were also signs of the times: the need for change countered by consolidation of power.
As we race through the first week of January, the feel becomes more erratic and electric. Now it's time for Mercury, the Cosmic Messenger, to stir up the Uranus-Pluto square. Although Saturn continues to help the powers-that-be maintain a lockdown on the status quo, Mercury pushes us to express the truth (at least as we see it). And sure enough, we can see some significant examples of speaking the truth to power:
In an almost amazingly Uranian rupture of the powerful Republican Party in the U.S., New Jersey Governor Chris Christie openly blamed the Republican-led Congress and (Republican) House Speaker John Boehner for failing to bring to a vote an aid package for Hurricane Sandy. New York Congressperson Peter King said that Republicans from around the country who come to New York to raise funds for their campaigns should stay home: "Anyone who donates one cent to the Republican Congressional Campaign Committee should have their head examined," King, a staunch conservative and Republican congressman for 10 years, told CNN.
Other Mercury-Uranus news includes the sale of liberal Current TV (a U.S. television station) to Al-Jazeera.
The erratic world of Mercury-Uranus-Pluto also includes the arrest of a Brooklyn man who was arrested for being naked in front of a Connecticut church on Wednesday (and hey, he went all the way to Connecticut - Brooklyn is known as "the Borough of Churches").
And finally, French actor Gerard Depardieu was granted Russian citizenship - he has been protesting a tax on millionaires in France. Everyone's gotta have a cause.
For those of you with a real head for astrology, Argentina is honoring the Saturn return of the Falklands War by asking Britain to return the islands.
The sun and Saturn both got into the mix in late December, heating up power issues. The wrangling over the Fiscal Cliff deal and gun control in the U.S. was prominent, but Russia's decision to ban U.S. adoptions and Egypt's adoption of an Islamic constitution were also signs of the times: the need for change countered by consolidation of power.
As we race through the first week of January, the feel becomes more erratic and electric. Now it's time for Mercury, the Cosmic Messenger, to stir up the Uranus-Pluto square. Although Saturn continues to help the powers-that-be maintain a lockdown on the status quo, Mercury pushes us to express the truth (at least as we see it). And sure enough, we can see some significant examples of speaking the truth to power:
In an almost amazingly Uranian rupture of the powerful Republican Party in the U.S., New Jersey Governor Chris Christie openly blamed the Republican-led Congress and (Republican) House Speaker John Boehner for failing to bring to a vote an aid package for Hurricane Sandy. New York Congressperson Peter King said that Republicans from around the country who come to New York to raise funds for their campaigns should stay home: "Anyone who donates one cent to the Republican Congressional Campaign Committee should have their head examined," King, a staunch conservative and Republican congressman for 10 years, told CNN.
Other Mercury-Uranus news includes the sale of liberal Current TV (a U.S. television station) to Al-Jazeera.
The erratic world of Mercury-Uranus-Pluto also includes the arrest of a Brooklyn man who was arrested for being naked in front of a Connecticut church on Wednesday (and hey, he went all the way to Connecticut - Brooklyn is known as "the Borough of Churches").
And finally, French actor Gerard Depardieu was granted Russian citizenship - he has been protesting a tax on millionaires in France. Everyone's gotta have a cause.
For those of you with a real head for astrology, Argentina is honoring the Saturn return of the Falklands War by asking Britain to return the islands.