the weather inside me

the february 13th aquarius new moon: It's a little crazy, but it's a start...

New Moon on Saturday, February 13th!

I'm having a hard time putting this New Moon into words. New Moons are about new starts, but this one is a little strange.

First off, whatever life innovation is in your sights --health, home, family, love, work, creativity-- gets a big Cosmic Kiss this coming week. If you're willing to experiment, do. Listen to what you've been learning about your personal preferences; you'll know what step to take.

So here's my visual summation --Captain Kirk in tights. The theme? It's a little crazy, but it's a start.

Kirk here has got the vibe. Easy into the change. Sometimes just the toe shoes and tights are all you need. You know, dress up a bit and then go hang out on the Bridge. See how others respond to you. See how the tights feel. It's just a dress rehearsal for this part of the New You. Experiment.

With Valentine's stuff all wrapped up in this astrology, you might have a relationship question on deck now. My answer: Yes, as long as you keep yourself honest.

This means, primarily, honesty about your attraction to the Other and honestly about your devotion to a New You. Since October (even more since late December) Leo's been teaching us a lot about what our hearts really want and what truly inspires us. Don't deny that or distort that. This is a rehearsal for new directions. Be clear about keeping the conversation open and the intentions on the surface. There's a little bit o' Instant Karma coming this summer, so play nice and you'll like life a lot more come August.

For everyone: We've got 3 more months of Leo Mars, so more ideas are on the way. Focus on the experimental nature of the moment. Imagination and a playful Piscean kookiness will keep all the tete-a-tetes on the right waves length.

You know it sounds crazy, but it is a start...

a special january eclipse week note to Capricorns/Capricorn Rising

If you're a Capricorn or Cap rising --be kind to yourself right now. Really.

You so easily dog yourself about what you have/have not done on the road to success (whatever that road is to you), but this week don't indulge that stuff. Instead this is a good week to think hard about liking yourself for the right reasons, and deciding what sort of leadership you truly want to give to the world.

You like being seen doing the "right thing," whether that's promptly sending thank you cards or knowing the company vision statement by heart. You don't see yourself as a complete suck-up to the job because like all cardinal signs, you've got an independent, self-starting streak within you. You prefer to think you decided what the right thing is. It just so happens that your version of "right" has an air of long tradition hanging around it, which might sound to some folks an awful like like "status quo". But is it?

Just because something is time-honored doesn't make it bad, you think. You have no problem with time. I am here to ask you about "honor" though. Specifically, I want to ask you "what's worth honoring?"

Now is the time to rethink what the "right thing" is in your life. If you are more honest with yourself, you'll admit you're too often driven by an authority or voice of authority outside yourself. What is this authority you revere --or fear? Your boss, your friends, your perceived reputation, your family faith? Pick one --or two or three. 

You want an accumulation of worth and you definitely want the esteem of others, but someone else seems to be defining that worth. What are you working towards? 10 million frequent flier points on your credit card? Another company recognition plaque on the office wall? An "appropriate" partner for that next marriage/project/committee? What is it? There's some delectable fruit you're after; I know because every Capricorn is always working toward something.

Working towards something implies we're also working away from something. For many of you that something is a fear that keeps you in constant motion toward your goals. Maybe you had a hard childhood; maybe you once knew poverty; maybe you lost a parent at an early age; maybe you grew up in an emotionally hostile/cold/or enmeshed family. Whatever it is, it's the fear that that monstrous memory coming back to you that pushes you out, away and up into some kind of carefully controlled (and I mean controlled) need for civility and accomplishment combined. No more chaos and crazy people, you vow. (Nope, those folks are getting side-lined quicker these days.) Like Scarlett O'Hara, herself, you vow you'll never go hungry again.

And no more fear of rejection. Ah, the fear of rejection: your very painful achilles ouchy spot. You know exactly what I mean.

Perhaps this is an expression of Capricorn's fishy side: the symbol of the climber is also has a tail of a fish. The fish within you vibes more like Pisces: it's the trembling, sensitive, secretive and (potentially) spiritual side of you. Do you remember the last time you stunned a friend who discovered your secret passion for crop circles? That stash of weed --or your tarot collection? "I had no idea you were into this stuff! I mean, I thought you were so straight." Uh, yeah... Your fishy secret self is also the side of you prone to (self) deceptive illusions. Exhibit A: Tiger Woods, the Capricorn of the hour and control freak extraordinaire. If you want to be an illusionist, take care. All Caps have some weird side, and so do you. Pluto, however, has a way of outing your weirdness. Digging in the basement, so to speak. Some honesty may be necessary if you haven't found some peace between your goat (climber) and fish (dreamer) halves.

With Mercury still in retrograde in your sign of Capricorn, take some time right now to think about who --or what- exactly is driving your ambition. And your fears of ambition. What is your ouchy spot, anyway? Are you self-medicating that spot with shopping and power grabs? Or maybe hitting the hooch a little too hard? Or have you buried your brain between the pages of Harlequin Romances?

This week as we prepare for a solar eclipse in your sign, the Sun, Venus and the North Node are clustered together in Capricorn, too. All are pressing you forward toward a more authentic expression of your leadership potential. Which means, you've got a really good opportunity this week --and I mean a really, really good opportunity-- to tune into what's attracting you to your future. With all these signs in your sign (or rising sign) the attraction signals should be coming from you.

Tune into yourself and listen deeply to your own heart. What is the most noble and life-affirming leadership you can offer? --First, to yourself, and then to others. You've got stuff in there that bears no resemblance to the rat-race, corporate/parental authority kow-towing you've known for most of your life.

Capricorn is the sign of revolutionaries. That's an amazing thought because most everyone has written you off as pretty uptight in these tell-all, happy-clappy Facebooking times. But you know, stuff doesn't change without someone with backbone in charge. Real change requires people who commit to long-term visions. That, Cappy, you've got in spades --long term vision.

So be the one with backbone. Be the one with vision for the long-haul. Just make sure the revolution you're starting is your own heart's fire; don't settle for anything less.

eve of the new moon and where's my hobby horse?

As I type this, the Moon is exactly, and I mean exactly to the arc minute in full lip lock with Venus. Just a degree away from my Ascendant. How charming. Venus rising for me. No wonder I'm feeling the need to reach out from my self-imposed break from the world and touch someone. [wink] And no --I did not plan this. Synchronicity just kills me.

Ah, there she goes now, the Moon is separating...Adieu, sweet Moon! We'll meet again.

Really, if you've got a Mac, go get yourself an Io Sprite. It's a whole lot of fun watching this stuff in the sky do its thing, real time. Even on a cloudy night. Seeing how quickly the Moon moves, for instance, deeply impresses upon me the sensitivity and importance of the Moon's placement in any chart. With a toy like the Sprite you can finally see what astrologers mean when they call La Luna the second hand of the celestial clock.

Right now the Moon is at 17+ degrees Sagittarius, but by the time I have finished this paragraph it will have reached 18 degrees. Does that matter? For most, not really. What's one degree over another? But esoteric symbol systems like the Sabian images do count each degree has a distinct theme, so one degree's difference matters to them.

And because you asked, I'll tell you that this moon's Sabian symbol is about hobby horses. 

I like New Moons in Sagittarius because the sign implies new vistas, new horizons, new ideas. Fresh starts and newness everywhere! Sagittarius is not a backward looking sign at all. What happened in Las Vegas, stays in Las Vegas. In fact, by the time Sagittarius has made it to the plane, he's only thinking about his next adventure not the last one.

The hobby horse has multiple meanings. Some bawdy, some benign. Here, I think the Sabian interpretation emphasizes idealism and the practice that comes from working out your hopes and dreams with enthusiasm and joy. It's not nose-to-the-grindstone practice, but nose-almost-to-the-horizon practice. You know, practicing your galloping before someone hands you a real horse and saddle.

I've been thinking about this image all week. It's been a good week for me here at my friend's home in Chicago. We've had some good 'horizon' conversations about our futures, and the practical realities we're negotiating as parents.

The Venus trine Mars stuff all week has been brilliant for me, too. I'm not redefining the novel, but the words are coming quickly and my work has been very productive. And we've played theater a little, too. Not everything has happened as we'd planned, but I expected that. My host is a Fish --a Pisces girl. So she comes and she goes, we make plans and then everything goes sort of wonky and we rearrange them. But Fish are fabulous for letting you swim off for the day and not getting hung up about it. Loners like me do appreciate that; Fish folk do too.

This past day I've been particularly tired, something I've noticed at the end of dark moon phases. So it helps to have a friend who appreciates my need for alone time.

Mars is slowing down (which could account for some of my foot-dragging, too) all this week. So while New Moons imply new beginnings, Mars is about to turn retrograde. A Sun, New Moon and Mars all in fire signs is a recipe for hot enthusiasm, but your flame probably isn't so bright right now. So if you're feeling a bit low on fuel, it's not because you're already exhausted with the holidays. We'll see, but I think tomorrow you'll feel brighter. Enjoy the perk.

And about that perk: the New Moon is sextile the Jupiter/Neptune/Chiron connection in Aquarius. Lots of perkiness there. Or rather sparky thoughts. Insights, sudden vistas open when you thought some door was closed.

Think about the people you spend the most time with --or wish you spent the most time with. This is an Aquarius theme, and it's been running pretty hot since last January. Something's been shifting since then, and that something is your place in your crowd, your culture, your peeps, your milieu. Whatever it is, your relationship to the people who help you do "your thing" is shifting, and has been for a long time now. Part of this is because you are shifting. (This is Pluto work, which deserves a different entry.)

December's New Moon gives you potential to shift a lot more. It's likely a mental shift, but as I've come to learn, mental adjustments precede practical implementations, often by months and years. But it's important that you see the door that's open to you now. Likely some very different people are on the other side of that door. Note the opportunity and the people. Note what you think they mean to you now. Most of all, honor the far-sighted enthusiasm of Sagittarius in your personality. (It's in there somewhere.) You don't and can't have all the information you think you need now. There's a bit of "you've got to believe" in this moment, so keep an open hand and an open heart.

In the next couple of weeks we have some hot astrological action, and my chart is loaded with contact points this month. I'm wondering a lot about it myself, but for now I'm content to observe this new moon on it's own merits and think about my shifting future. 

Happy New Moon.

make your new moon a moxie moon

Exhausted from weeks of illness, so no big new moon report here. But it's a good Scorpio laden new moon, a moxie kind of moon for all of us. The astrology parlance for a Scorpio new moon is "regenerative". Up from the dust, the phoenix from the ashes and all.

Me, I say it's a Moxie Moon. Put a little fizz back into your life. Put some hair on yer chest. The Moxie Man is pointing his finger at YOU. Yes, you.

You've grokked a thing or two this past week and now it's time to swallow the medicine. Not necessarily time to do something about it, but a good time to seep in the new point of view.

I've been observing a heavier conversations about parents and parenting these past few days, too. Maybe you've noted shifts in your thinking about them, too. I'd throw in any authority figure or unbalanced/power-heavy relationship just to make the moment complete. They're fair game for all this shifting p.o.v.

Think MOXIE. No need to be victim; no need to whine. Saturn/Pluto certainly won't reward whining or whinging of any sort. Just take your meds and grok your new insights. Be kind to yourself. Like recovering from a bad cold, adjustments do take time.

Later in the week we'll have three days or so of Capricorn moon, so hold the iphone, the Blackberry and the GTD list until then. You can wait --I promise.

Photos: Moxie Soda, one of America's first mass-marketed sodas.

happy new moon in virgo. get to work.

You just think you are.

A New Moon in Virgo conjunct the Sun and Saturn at the end of Virgo means WORK IT OUT. Turn off the idiot (fear) box and get crackin'! Your only salvation is good, old-fashioned elbow grease. 

This has been a HUGE week, astrologically. Big milestones. Pluto turned direct; Saturn and Uranus faced off again at exact degrees, as they did Election Day last November. Note any changes in your thinking and admit something must evolve in your life.  We've got an abundance of Earth signs at play, so stay basic and grounded with your thinking. No freak-outs allowed.

Diligence, reliability and good manners will get you everywhere right now.

Mercury is still retrograde, so if you've stressing over communications (or the lack thereof), follow up your emails and phone calls --and most of all withhold assumptions about the other party until all the facts are in. And the facts won't all be in until, oh, mid-October. Really.

Photo source here.

the eclipse effect debate

There's a lot of debate about how eclipses function in our lives, both on a symbolic and functional level. Most astrologers see them as moments when something leaves our lives so that another thing can take its place. This is an extension of what ancient people believed about eclipses, except the modern astrologer usually has a emotional/psychological spin on that tale. The ancients, on the other hand, expected the literal deaths (or births) of kings.

Sometimes, though, it seems as if we moderns haven't forgotten the old folk wisdom of our ancestors. A little knowledge about eclipses, and suddenly we're expecting the worst.

Ahem. So.

Another debate centers around the importance of eclipses on individual lives: some astrologers give credit to everyone, saying we should see the effects of an eclipse in whatever part of our lives the eclipse sign functions. For instance, if 15 degrees Capricorn lies in the area of your chart that rules your career, expect (with a lunar eclipse) something significant to shift in the emotional (lunar/moon) tenor of your relationship to your workplace/career. Other astrologers say this interpretation is far too generous: look for exact degree conjunctions or hard angles for any effect in the individual's life.

I imagine both are right. If you are a particularly introspective and aware person you could probably track the history of eclipses in your personal development --and the first interpretation would hold true. However, most of us only recognize the larger (read: painful/momentous) shifts in our lives, which we would most likely feel if an eclipse hit a prominent planet or angle in our natal or progressed charts.

For the record, here's the general interpretive rule-of-thumb about lunar and solar eclipses, however and wherever they happen in your life:

Lunar eclipses help us shift our emotional/intuitive development. This is the inner life. Solar eclipses change how we (and others) perceive our identities. This is the outer image or role. Solar eclipse shifts are must more recognizable because we usually want to identify and relate to a new image or persona. Or, alternately, we feel as if some beloved bit of our ego structure is forcibly ripped from our hands. What's important here, says the astrologer, is the timing of the eclipse: if it's going, it needs to go.

Keep this in mind as we move through this eclipse season. Again, here are the dates:

June 22: New Moon 1+ degree Cancer opposed Pluto at 2+ degrees Capricorn
July 7th: Full Moon/lunar eclipse at 15+ degrees Capricorn
July 22: New Moon AND Total Solar Eclipse at 29+ degrees Cancer  ...and finally

August 6th: Full Moon/Prenumbral eclipse at 13+ degrees Aquarius

Photo credit: boofer pea creek.

"to boldly go where we've been before": the Jan. 2008 Eclipse Report

From Planet Waves: to go boldly where we've been before...

Dear Friend and Reader:

If you haven’t already noticed, we’ve entered eclipse time again — in Aquarius — and the theme of this eclipse is the stuff of science fiction. Or to paraphrase an enduring legacy of an earlier Aquarian age, we’re on a mission to “boldly go where no man has gone before.”

An model kit from the original Star Trek series, c. 1967. Photo courtesy of AMT, manufacturer.

Today’s solar eclipse, in the sign of Aquarius, arrived at 2:55 am EST, Jan. 26 and peaked over the Indian Ocean, where sailors surely got a terrific view of an annular eclipse’s thin ring of sunlight in the early morning sky. It won’t be visible by those of us in the northern hemisphere, but we’re sure to notice its effects.

This solar eclipse, with its Sun, Moon, Jupiter, Neptune, Chiron, Nessus and the North Node in Aquarius, should give us a big new lesson about the currents of time. Aquarius brings the future to us. It’s innovative, quirky — unconventional. Aquarius brings revolutions to us, too. With seven planets or points in Aquarius, this chart is unmistakably a giant shove into the future.

The Hammer and the Flame: The New Moon Report of Dec. 27, 2008

from Planet Waves

Dear Friend and Reader:

On Saturday, the Sun and Moon align in early Capricorn and form the New Moon. This is exact Dec. 27, 7:22 AM EST. For many of us, this will be a life-changing New Moon that calls us to a new (and truer) understanding of selfhood and service. This an extraordinary chart, because Pluto is in Capricorn for the first time during the [Northern Hemisphere] winter solstice season. Mars will be right there, in a conjunction. The two are aligned on the Aries Point, which is a kind of cosmic magnifier that will bring whatever unusual news occurs that day or the days surrounding it, into a deeply personal context.

Landscape with Vesta temple in Tivoli, Italy, c. 1600. By Adam Elsheimer.

The most potent aspects of the chart make a close trine to Vesta in Taurus. Vesta, for its part, is precisely on the discovery degree of Chiron. So this chart opens up a flow of energy from that Chiron/Vesta dimension.

Not long ago I read about a French woman (let’s call her Vesta) who, for 30 years, lived with and cared for the people in a Cairo trash dump colony. By choice. The community — men, women and kids– tended the burning piles of trash and raised pigs for their meat. No devout Muslim would touch them because they ate pigs and lived in filth. Their kids climbed mountains of other people’s broken furniture, and the stiffest brush couldn’t scrub the smell of burning refuse and pig shit from their little bodies. Even straight from a bath, they were grimy, as if the soil were part of them.

This amazed me, so much so that she lived in my mind for weeks afterward. Whenever I threw out my own trash, I added some detail of what I imagined her life was like. My potato peelings and the onion skins became her dinner. My snotty tissues, her kindling. My foot-high pile of mail order catalogs, a guilty offering of expiation to the recycling gods. “Please, please forgive me: I signed up because I thought the stuff was pretty; I never had an intention to buy it. So sorry…” I offered them to this woman, too, who once tended the flame and smoke of Cairo’s burning trash heaps.

After her death, Dr. Mounir Neamatalla, a leading Egyptian expert in environmental science and poverty reduction who worked closely with her, marveled that this woman chose “one of the worst qualities of life on the planet… [she] was living right among them, the garbage collectors, the pigs, the whole mess. I had never seen anything like this in my life.” Together they created a composting plant to process the tons of pig manure and sold it as fertilizer. In time, Vesta also brought a school and medical care to these unwanted people.

People like this are unforgettable because they’re so rare. But they are a type of modern day Vesta, the Roman goddess of selfless and devoted service. Traditionally Vesta was the original keeper of Rome’s eternal flame, and her mortal servants, the Vestal Virgins of the Roman Empire, served to keep Rome’s flame alight, night and day. As any camper knows, maintaining a perpetually burning flame requires careful, sustained attention and patience. Call it investing. Today when we invest, we’re likely to think of money instead of attentive service. While there’s nothing wrong with money, it’s a poor substitute for Vesta’s original meaning. We haven’t forgotten Vesta; we just renamed her.

This is because our culture defines us by our spending power. At the bank and in shops, we heap our offerings upon a false Vestal altar hoping that somehow our little flames of self-importance might not go out. With devotion we cultivate our next contract, our next project, our next gig that might lead to the kind of connections and wealth that guarantee our worth to others — and ourselves. It’s so pervasive, it functions like an autonomic response in the body politic. Someone would have to throw us into a burning trash heap of a town to get our attention.

Sacrifice — Janis and the Vestal Virgins stoneware with mixed media. Rebecca Reagan Boatman.

This New Moon we might just get that experience. Right now Vesta is approaching the Chiron discovery degree. This is a degree that functions as if Chiron is always present. Chiron is our astrological marker for the struggle or quest for awareness, and so we’re approaching a moment where lots of us will find ourselves standing, latte in hand, negotiating the next “deal,” more aware that the whole thing’s a sham and uneasy about why.

Excuse Me, But Your Spine Is Ringing: The New Moon Nov. 27 and the Dawn of Pluto in Capricorn

from Planet Waves

Dear Friend and Reader,

Do you feel the shift? The sense of renewal? The sense of arrival?

Do you feel your spine ringing?

New Horizons at Pluto. Artist's concept of the New Horizons spacecraft during a planned encounter with Pluto and its moon, Charon. NASA Images.

If you do, you’re not imagining it. It’s the universe calling you. On November 27th, 11:54 am EST, a New Moon rises in the sign of Saggitarius, asking you to respond. In future editions of Planet Waves, we’ll have a closer look at where this moment places us in history, but for now, I’d like you to remember just three things:

1. Pluto is sitting on an Aries Point.
2. Uranus is finally ready for forward motion.
3. A cluster of planets and asteroids in Saggitarius lets us look back one last time at the past 15 years and take notes.

The simplest message here is “Welcome to your new life.” What will this new life look like? Good question. I’d say this chart is saying your new life will appear like whatever you’d want it to be, as long as you are willing to explore that thing that runs from your brain to your butt — you know, your spine. (Highlight that part, will ya?)

This is because the biggie moment of this New Moon is Pluto’s ingress to Capricorn. We’ll get to the significance of your spine and Capricorn soon, but first let’s put Pluto into context, astrologically.