Category: Monthy Horoscopes

The lunar eclipse on September 17/18 is at 25° of Pisces. Pisces, a water sign is highly intuitive. Pisces rules suffering, merging, giving, self-sacrifice. It rules dreams, fantasies, and visions. It rules imagination and creativity; it’s the ruler of the Internet and film. It is spiritual and mystical. It rules all forms of escapism including plant medicines that take us on a journey. It’s also intoxicants and addictions. It is the ruler of fishing, shipping, oil and gas products.

Pisces is ruled by both Neptune the modern ruler and Jupiter the traditional one. The moon is making aspects to both of its rulers. The eclipsed moon is conjunct Neptune and it also makes a wide square Jupiter!

The conjunction to Neptune connects us to a sea of feelings and unconscious emotions. Neptune is in its last days of being in its home sign. It’s been in the sign since 2011 and early next year it will leave the sign. While in the sign of the fishes, it has taken us on a journey. For some of us, this is been a journey into a spiritual realm, for others a spiritual realm assisted by plant medicines, and yet for others, it has been a journey into conspiracies or conspiracy theories. We’ve gotten lost in the fog, lost in the fantasy. We’ve now reached a point where we have a hard time deciphering fact from fiction. Misinformation, disinformation, and deep fakes are all words that were not part of our daily lives before 2011. The eclipse will help us to sift through and sort out some of the truths from the lies. This is because when the moon is eclipsed, the earth comes between the Sun and the Moon, casting a shadow onto the Moon and blocking out the Sun which normally lights it up at a full moon. Earth’s shadow is an experience in the shadow. In the darkness, we must find our way to the to the light. No light means no facts, no lists, no Virgoic details…. Just the darkness and our intuition. At the moment of the eclipse when the light has been removed, we can go inside and know intuitively what is true.. Or at least what’s true for us.

The traditional ruler of Pisces is Jupiter. Jupiter is in a wide square to Saturn, which is also in Pisces. Saturn is a bit of a downer and can bring some depression or low feelings, but it’s also a reality check. The square between Jupiter and Saturn is a tension between expansion, optimism, belief and restriction, constraint and realism. At this eclipse, we may feel like we are on a seesaw. We’re optimistic one minute and pessimistic the next. Maybe we feel duped by a realization and this brings pessimism. Yet whatever we thought to be true at the time was instrumental in helping us to learn something very special and important…. and for that, we can be optimistic!

Two asteroids, Niobe and Atlantis and the fixed star Alkes are opposite the eclipsed moon with the Sun.

Niobe was the mother of Zeus, Apollo, Artemis and 11 other children. She was very proud of them. To her, they were all golden children and perfect in her eyes. Her hubris led her to lose all of them after boasting to another goddess who only had two children! Niobe cried so much that her tears ended up turning her into a stone. Astrologically Niobe is related to falls from grace, bitnerness and issues with children.

The asteroid Atlantis bring in the energy of Atlantis and Atlantian lives. Edgar Cayce, the sleeping prophet, described two groups of Atlantians. Both he described as highly advanced, one spiritual and the other power-hungry. In his readings, he called one group “The Children of the Law of One”. This group was focused on spiritual growth and development. Important to them was a harmonious relationship with nature and a connection to natural laws. The second group called “The Sons of Belial” exploited natural resources and the technological advancements of Atlantis, disregarding the consequences for the planet and its inhabitants. They were driven by a desire for power and control and by greed. Casey describes a technology called “The Great Crystal” in which the children of the law of one used for spiritual growth and the sons of Belial used for power. This led to misuse which was responsible for Atlantis sinking. Casey claimed that records of the technology are kept in three places; under the paw of the sphinx in Egypt, In an area of the Bahamas, possibly Bimini Road, and in the Yucatán peninsula. If we were to find these technologies today do we know which group we were in? Would we use the technology responsibly? Do we know ourselves when in possession of power?

Alkes, also known as Alpha Crateris, is a star in the constellation Crater, the Cup. According to Greek mythology, Crater represents the cup carried by Apollo’s crow, which was sent to fetch water from a spring. The crow, Corvus, took the cup but was distracted by a fig tree with unripe fruit and waited a few days for the figs to ripen. When it returned to Apollo, it blamed a water snake for its tardiness, claiming it had blocked the spring. Apollo was angered by the crow’s obvious lie and condemned it to a life of thirst. As punishment, Apollo placed the crow, the cup, and the water snake in the sky, commemorating the incident. The three are represented by the constellations with Crater (or Alkes which means the Cup)

We are asked to consider these three energies pride, power and responsibility, and honesty and the role they have played in our lives. It’s time for inner truth and for discarding any self-destructive energies.

The Sabian symbol for the eclipse is “a new moon that divides its influences”. Interestingly, the Sabian symbol speaks of a new moon at a full moon! This however is a symbol that suggests the moon will not affect us all in the same way. Its influence is divided between various influences and outcomes. This suggests that what is right or true for us, may not be right or true for someone else. It is not for us to decide for anyone other than ourselves.

Happy Eclipse in Pisces!

Full Moon May 23, 2024

The Full Moon is at 2 degrees of Sagittarius. Sagittarius rules beliefs, international affairs, travel, publishing, and religion. In its lower form is fundamentalism, international issues and issues related to publishing.

The Moon is conjunct with Lilith and opposite the Sun conjunct Venus, Jupiter, Terpsichore and Admetos…. So for this post, I will focus on our beliefs!

In my upcoming book Mary Magdelene; The Sacred Relationship Path to the Age of Aquarius (tentative title), I explore Lilith in depth. From the book:

In early Sumerian mythology, love poems between Innana and Dummuzi were sexual and explicit. One story of Iannana involves Lilith. The more familiar story of Lilith is that she was Adams’s first wife. The lesser-told story is the one told in the epic of Gilgamesh; a Sumerian tale that involves Inanna and a Huluppu tree. In this story, a snake is in the roots of Inanna’s tree and is described as ‘uncharmable’. The dark maiden Lilith is at the trunk and an Anzu-bird (lion-headed eagle) is seated on the branches. Innana has been growing and nurturing this tree, but now she wants to use it to create a seat and a bed. The clash of Lilith, the snake and the bird in the tree stops Inanna from being able to transform the tree into the creations she desires.

The Anzu bird is said to be the stealer of destinies. The snake, however, was a symbol of fertility and sexuality, and Lilith is traditionally a wind demon. Lilith’s name comes from the Sumerian word lilitu, which means a wind spirit or a female demon. But what exactly is a wind demon? In Akkadian, the four winds of the cardinal directions were wind spirits with the South West wind being female and the other four male. The wind was considered the breath of the demon.

It should be first understood that demons were not necessarily bad. Mesopotamian academic Irving Finkel reminds us that we cannot impose our conception of demons onto the ancients. Demons in this period held both good and bad qualities. They were simply spirits on the earth plane, intermediaries between the gods and humans. For example, the demon ruling over the Lilith, Pazuzu, was feared as the king of the southwesterly wind that brought famine and loved as the demon that protected children from other child-destroying demons.

In Mesopotamia, the wind direction associated with Lilith, the South West direction, was stormy and hot. It was recorded that many rainstorm came from southwesterly winds and that the wind moved counter to the “normal” wind, which blew in the other direction. Normal wind in Mesopotamia was North Westerly wind.

But why would wind be a demon? The wind is not uncommon in the world of ancient medicine. In Tibetan it’s called rlung; translated as ‘wind’, the Greek equivalent is pneuma, (where pneumonia comes from) and it is qi in the Chinese tradition. In the astrological/hermetic tradition wind can be inferred to be related to the humours (hot, dry, cold, wet), which in turn are connected to the cardinal directions. Wind is related to the seasons; heat in summer, wet in the shoulder seasons such as spring and autumn, and cold in winter. The manifestation of wind is matched to the seasons.

In Chinese medicine, healing is related to yin and yang, the balance of energy and it is often winds that throw this balance off causing illness.

Wind can be considered good until it becomes too much! Imagine your mother telling you to do up your jacket or you’ll “catch a draft”. Or that you are trying to light a fire… some ‘wind’ is needed to stoke the fire, but too much can blow the fire out!

Going back to Inanna’s story, we can say that the snake is energy (sexual energy) and Lilith, the wind demon is a hot and stormy wind which stokes the energy. Lilith was said to come and have sex with men at night, hinting at a wet dream or something that would cause him to be uninterested in sexual relations with his wife. In women “The ardat liliµ is a sexually frustrated and infertile female who behaves aggressively toward young men.” So to put it bluntly, Lilith is a hot summer wind that can throw sexual energy out of balance.

With this new understanding of Lilith and with Lilith conjunct the moon at this full moon, we can shift the winds of our understanding, allowing us to release or balance belief systems, specifically around sexuality. We can let go of our traditional idea of demons as all good or all bad. We shift its connection to our beliefs about sex, sexual expression and sexual health.

The ruler of the full moon is Jupiter. Jupiter is conjunct Venus at the last degree of Taurus. This expands and increases our desire for love and relationships to a heightened place. It has a feeling like “now or never”. Jupiter and Venus are also in an out-of-sign conjunction with the Sun now in Gemini. The Gemini Sun is curious and needs to explore. We want to explore love. We want to explore sex and sexual expression!

This is further evidenced by the Sun conjunct the asteroid Terpsichore. In Greek mythology, Terpsichore is one of the nine muses and goddesses of dance and chorus. Terpsichore is related to dance, aerobics, flexibility; coordination, agility, grace and mobility; It is also connected to body image/ego and body language. We have a strong desire to move, dance, sing and express!

The problem comes with Admetos (a hypothetical planet). Ademos is also conjunct the Sun. Admetos is associated with matters that get blocked and come to a standstill.

Pull it all together and it can be said that this full moon is an astrological retelling of the story of Inanna and the Huluppu tree. Venus and Jupiter are expanding our desire for love, and Terpsichore is enchanting us with a need to express ourselves. Lilith with the moon is stoking the hot winds of desire… putting the flames of our desires out of balance, and Admetos like the Anzu-bird is blocking our expression. We are likely to feel hot bothered and out of sorts!

Fortunately, the Full Moon is creating angel wings with Neptune at the last degree of Pisces and Pluto newly in Aquarius. This provides a place for the full moon to express her emotions and sense of being. One angel wing is the moon is trine and the Sun sextile to Neptune.  This connects us with our intuition and feelings and provides an outlet for self-expression and creativity, especially if connected to a sense of spirituality. The other angel wing is the moon sextile and the Sun trine to Pluto. This gives us access to emotional control and the ability to channel our emotions in a desired direction. It also connects us to personal power, and since Pluto is in Aquarius, we can also connect to the power that comes from groups and cooperation.

All in all, this energy provides a means for transmuting “bad demons” or negative feelings about sex and sexual expression, and to channel any traumas into art or artistic expression. We have an opportunity to balance the winds, to release and to invite into our lives whatever will help bring yin and yang…. what is it for you? aligning chakras? tantra? Abstinence? A Pole dancing class?

The key to accessing the full power of this full moon is expressed in the Sabian symbol “two men playing chess”. The goal of the game is “checkmate”, which is to put the king in a position where he has nowhere else to go. Chess can teach us how to be strategic, aware of the entire board (our surroundings) and to tame our impulses. Ultimately it is a game of balance; the chess board being a famous symbol of good and evil, yin and yang.

Happy Full Moon in Sagittarius