A reader brought to my attention a new storm on the planet Saturn and asked whether these storms have astrological implications. This new storm circles the entire planet, and is unleashing lightning bolts more than 1000 times stronger than those found on earth. In doing a bit of research, I discovered that the last significant storm activity on Saturn occurred between July and December of 1994 so I set about to find astrological and histroical correlations between these two events.... Read more
Mars has been traveling through Taurus since July of last year – a long time for fast moving Mars and the longest time Mars has traveled through Taurus since 1974. Mars turns retrograde only once every two years or so, and since Mars entered Taurus we saw two Mars retrograde periods where actions result more from internal stimuli and tend to be more hidden and less easily understood. Taurus is a fixed earth sign: stubborn and placid and rooted in... Read more
Most people don’t know much about Paul Hackett, but he was beginning to look like a rising star in the Democratic party. An Iraq war and Marine Corps veteran, he ran for Congress in a special 2005 election and was narrowly defeated by Jean Schmidt amidst widespread reports of election fraud. Still, Hackett garnered 48 percent of the vote in an overwhelmingly Republican district and decided to run in the 2006 election. Suddenly today he announced that he is withdrawing... Read more
The history of Valentine’s Day is a fascinating one. In its zeal to replace the beloved pagan gods with Christian saints, the historical truths were often stretched in order to create the appropriate qualities to be worshiped in the stead of the old gods. A variety of legends have survived concerning the origin of St. Valentine, but most agree that he was executed some time in the 3rd century C.E. It’s difficult to fathom what in these legends constituted saintly... Read more
(photo courtesy of huffingtonpost.com) Cheney’s technique for dealing with the press is “never explain, never apologize” but the press is calling on Cheney to come clean about his shooting of his hunting partner over the weekend. This embarrassing episode comes on the heels of his potentially being named by ex-aide Scooter Libby as the instigator for the outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame. Cheney is such a fascinating character (see the earlier profile in this column) – filled with potential... Read more
Mercury (communication) is approaching a conjunction to Uranus (inventive creativity and revolutionary thinking) which will be exact on February 14th. When these two planets interact we tend to see abrupt (Uranus) changes in opinions (Mercury), radical (Uranus) new ideas (Mercury), and sometimes revolutionary (Uranus) reactions to discussions (Mercury). Because Mercury moves quickly any effects of this conjunction will be swift and only last for a few days. In the news, we have the revelation (Uranus) the Cheney instructed Scooter Libby... Read more
You’ve got to admire Kanye West’s cojones. In the most repressive political climate since the Puritans ran this country, West is not afraid to express his controversial (but well-researched) opinions on everything from the origin of AIDS (a man made disease placed in African communities with the polio vaccine, an idea that is gaining respectability) to the lack of caring of the Bush administration for black people after Hurricane Katrina. Now on the heels of his song “Jesus Walks” he... Read more
In ancient Greek mythology, Chiron was the son of the god Kronos/Saturn. Saturn desired to mate with Philyra who, with the help of Hera, changed herself into a horse to escape Saturn’s advances. Saturn, however, became a horse just in time to accomplish his goal and the result was Chiron, half man and half horse. Chiron was no ordinary Centaur; he was half-divine and after having been abandoned as a baby on a mountaintop by his horrified mother he was... Read more
(Art from mandalas.com) As humans, we tend to think that happiness is better than sadness, that good luck is better than bad. We may avoid difficult confrontations and pursue more comfortable situations. When tragedy strikes our well-protected lives, we shout out to our god of choice: “How could you do this to me??” We believe that our birthright is the pursuit of happiness, and we spend our lives trying to protect ourselves from sorrow. The soul, however, has a different... Read more
I am always suspicious when a couple is excessively demonstrative in public, constantly talking about how happy they are as if they have something they need to prove, even if only to themselves. And even though I’m a big Sheryl Crow fan, something about this relationship bothered me from the beginning. Then when I heard her new Wildflower CD it seemed she had changed, softened but not necessarily in a good way. So I wasn’t really surprised to hear that... Read more
Astrological Musings
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