This evening, Venus will enter Libra, one of the signs of her rulership. There she will reside, buffing her nails and daintily nibbling bon-bons, through October 8. Sounds lovely, doesn’t it? The world swathed in silk, spiders spinning cotton candy webs, dogs and cats lying down together… right?
Right?
Honey, no. Just… no. (more…)
My sister-in-law tells a story about the man her company hired to sweep the leaves outside their building. He spends most days dancing around the courtyard in a graceful pas de deux with his gas-powered leaf blower while recalcitrant leaves scurry around him. “He’s not very efficient,” she says, “But he seems to be having an absolutely wonderful time.”
Which is more important: results, or process? At this Full Moon, the Sun in Virgo argues for efficiency and results. But across the zodiacal wheel, the fully illuminated Moon in the opposite sign, Pisces, makes the case for enjoying the process of life. For dancing with the leaves and having an absolutely wonderful time.
This Full Moon in Pisces, the closest to the autumnal equinox (September 23), is called the Harvest Moon. At the Harvest Moon there is a virtually seamless segue from sunset to moonrise, traditionally extending a farmer’s day just when it was sorely needed, at harvest time. This is a hard-working Moon of results, of work, of the fine Virgo satisfaction of filling bushel baskets with produce and silos with grain. (more…)
In case you didn’t catch it in my most recent mailing, on Facebook, or on Twitter, I’m running a promotion in a gesture of blatant bribery to encourage reviews of my new book The Essential Guide to Practical Astrology. BEFORE YOU DO ANYTHING ELSE, read the details on this page!
Basically, review the book on Amazon or BarnesandNoble.com on or before September 26, 2011 and you’ll get a free 6-month Sky Log Transits & Progressions report AND be entered to win a free 45-minute reading from yours truly. The drawing will be held on September 27, so get moving! You can order The Essential Guide to Practical Astrology in paperback or Kindle formats, here.
A client was expressing frustration over her untidy house and her struggle to manage the minutiae of her daily life more efficiently. Hearing Virgo and the sixth house in her statement, I summoned my Gemini moon for a lightning fast conference and calculated a response: “Maybe you’ve just formed some bad habits out of fear you won’t be able to make things perfect and keep them that way,” I suggested to her. “Why not focus on forming new habits that help you get this day to day stuff in hand?”
It that was a pithy recommendation, and we were both pretty pleased with it at the time. But remembering it now, I think I did my client and her Virgo planets a disservice by pretending her problem was one merely of housekeeping and habit. It’s not that what I told her was wrong, exactly; but it didn’t go quite deep enough. “Why,” I might reasonably have asked her, “have you turned the maintenance of your life into a drudgery to be avoided?” (more…)
Mars takes about two years to make a lap around the entire zodiac, spending roughly two months in each sign. It’s a nice, human-scale planetary cycle – less breathtakingly speedy than the Moon’s 28 day sprint, but not as tediously protracted as Saturn’s 29 year journey through the signs. In human terms, it’s the happy difference between traveling to a new city for a weekend versus moving there for the rest of your life. Two months gives you enough time to poke around and get a taste of the place’s high points, and to unpack and spend a little time living there, rubbing shoulders with the locals.
On August 3, visiting Mars moved into Cancer, a tourist destination in which the warrior planet is inclined to feel especially cranky – a bit jet-lagged, a tad homesick, with a jangly stomach and an unnerving tendency to burst into tears. Mars is built for arid, inhospitable landscapes; when he ventures to the sandy shores of Cancer’s natural habitat, the result looks less like a quiet, reflective seaside vacation than a recreation of the Normandy invasion. (more…)
Who are “your people”? You recognize one another the moment you meet. They get your jokes. Your conversations have a cadence that is comfortable, familiar. Generally you share the same values, and probably the same politics. It doesn’t matter whether you’ve known each other a few minutes or many years, you get each other.
And then there are the Uncomfortable Others to whom you’re yoked by accidents of birth (relatives, countrymen), blips on your biographical timeline (high school, past employment), or shared interests. You may share an alma mater, a birthplace, a great-grandfather, or an interest in a particular hobby, but that’s no guarantee that you and another person are members of each other’s tribe.
Aquarius is the sign of “friends,” but not of those who are dearest to your heart. Rather, Aquarian friendships are born of shared interests – what we might call friendships of convenience. They are the co-workers who share your office lunchroom, the volunteers at your neighborhood polling place, and the members of your local astrology group. Occasionally, you will find among them members of your tribe, your people; these become your closest friends. The rest exist mostly in your Facebook newsfeed, email inbox, polling place, and at high school reunions. (more…)
Next week, I’ll celebrate my 50th birthday. Isn’t that a sobering number? Perhaps it’s because I’m the youngest of my siblings, or because I haven’t had children of my own, but for whatever reason I find it difficult to relate to the idea of being middle-aged. In fact, let’s be honest: at fifty, the chances that I’m only middle aged are, statistically, not that great.
So it’s a big birthday, and for weeks – if not months – I’ve been trying to figure out how best to mark the occasion. A party? A trip to some foreign locale? A simple dinner with friends and family?
Perhaps… nothing at all?
None of these options sounds quite right. The pressure of trying to imagine Something Special enough to commemorate this Special Birthday has become a bit of a worry, frankly. Doing anything at all, in fact, feels like the very worst Leo stereotype, a grandstanding “Look at me, look at me!” gesture. Yet to do nothing at all would just seem… sad. (more…)
Astrologer Donna Cunningham
Donna Cunningham is one of my favorite astrologers. Her books – especially “Healing Pluto Problems” and “Being a Lunar Type in a Solar World” – had a huge influence on me when I began studying astrology seriously and preparing to go pro. Her blog, Sky Writer, is a marvel – hundreds of useful posts and a lively, involved community of readers (don’t miss the comments sections – great things happen there).
So you can imagine how thrilled I was when Donna agreed to share an excerpt from my new book, The Essential Guide to Practical Astrology, with her readers! It’s a section about retrograde planets, and you might want to haul over and take a look, seeing as how we’re currently in yet another Mercury Retrograde “Shadow Period.” More about that here.
“I’m not here to say please. I’m here to tell you what to do.”
~ Mr. Wolf (Harvey Keitel), Pulp Fiction
Jules and Vincent, professional hitmen, have a mess on their hands. They’ve accidentally shot someone in the backseat of Jules’ car, and they need to get rid of the evidence fast. They retreat to the nearby suburban home of their friend Jimmy, who anticipates the imminent arrival of his volatile wife, Bonnie. With the clock ticking, Jules contacts his boss, who immediately dispatches Mr. Winston Wolf to the scene to manage the situation.
Poised and impeccable in a suit and tie despite the early hour, Mr. Wolf assesses the situation and quickly lays out a course of action: get some towels, clean the car, camouflage the gore with quilts. “Boys, get to work,” he finishes.
“A ‘please’ would be nice,” protests Vincent. Mr. Wolf’s smooth, professional façade turns sharp and bristly. “I’m not here to say please,” he retorts. “I’m here to tell you what to do. If self-preservation is an instinct you possess, you better f—ing do it, and do it quick.”
Mr. Wolf could only be a Capricorn. Smooth, civilized, professional – but just beneath the genteel surface is someone even a hitman wouldn’t want to mess with. After all, Mars, the planet of war and knife-play, is exalted in this sign. In restrained, tactical Capricorn, the savage Mars warrior becomes a general, and the butcher, a surgeon. (more…)
You know, I’m fairly proud of my book The Essential Guide to Practical Astrology. On the other hand, it was written at a feverish pace and edited faster than my feeble brain could cogitate. When you’re working at that speed, mistakes get made. Errors of oversight are committed, bizarre leaps of logic, dubious grammar.
I’ve found at least one that, while truly innocent, nevertheless made me feel completely awful. (See the comments section below for an explanation.) And since it’s obviously too late to do anything much else about it, I’ve started this post to record such boners for posterity. Likewise, should you find anything in your travels through the book that seems weird, illogical, or just plain wrong, please leave a comment! You never know… maybe we’ll get a second printing, and another shot at getting it right.
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