My Christmas Sock

 Earthrise on the Moon - a shot taken by Bill Anders

of the Apollo 8 crew on December 24, 1968

photo credit: NASA

I don’t get a stocking, I get a sock. Why? Because Christmas to me is a holiday, but not all that religious. My regard for religions – all of them – have changed over the years.

Most of all I think of religion as a repository for the customs and lessons humans have accumulated. That’s why they all seem to have encoded in them similar lessons about death and grieving. Not the rites or rituals…I mean the fact that people seem to go through such metamorphic changes in the year after someone important to them passes on. At a year, something shifts. Nearly every religion has something about this cycle in its teachings.

It’s there because whether or not you believe in God, religion reflects – at least in part – what we have learned about human life.

Last year, my holiday sock came all unraveled. I was done a dirty deed by someone and wept all the way to early spring – just in time to hear that my mother was going to die of cancer, which she did about three weeks later.

Two months after that, while sitting at a red light in beastly hot weather, I became involved in a car accident. It was my (recently) late mother’s birthday – which as I put it to my brother suggested that even though she had passed, she still had the capacity to be a pain in the neck. And the very (very) low back.

He laughed. He said it was the first time he had laughed since she had been diagnosed. Ours is an odd family – much drama, little closeness. I learned astrology to teach me what my family didn’t …or maybe couldn’t…be bothered to impart.

All this comes back to me now in these few days after at Lunar Eclipse at the “critical” degree 29 of Gemini.

In this past week, I could cite some really interesting examples of this eclipse at work, which is really what I meant to blog about.

Two members of my family – my brother and my cousin – both had epiphanies about how to communicate better. As we talked about it, I could feel the light growing in their hearts as they recognized not only how to be better understood by others, but how to feel heard, and how to be heard in a way which would lead to being better appreciated by the important people in their lives.

That’s very Gemini. Gemini is thought and choice – thus how we choose to express ourselves so that we not only convey our thoughts well, but are thought of well enough that we get where we thought we were originally choosing to go!

Eclipses are universal things. So it stands to reason that the lessons they teach are global – how my brother speaks. How my cousin regards her sense of priority and what her responsibilities are. And aren’t! No one is in charge of everything. We all only have to do our part as well as we can.

Then came the more personal moments. I had a conversation this past Monday night – as the eclipse was starting to occur – with a friend I trust enough to explore uncomfortable ideas with.

It all turned out fine. He even texted me on Tuesday to express his happiness that we had shared on a subject he knew was hard for me.

Sometimes all we need to know is that someone really is safe. That we really can talk about something. That it may not just turn out fine, but things could be better because we went over that line not with someone else, but with ourselves.

Then I put up my post on Senator Mitch McConnell. It promptly drew critique not on the astrology as presented, but on the civics side (my having used an incorrect title for Senator McConnell) and apparently just for good measure, the astrology I could have done which this particular astrologer would have done.

For those of you who think I’m some sort of chiseled-out-of-granite kind of girl, I sometimes am, but mostly am not. It also bugs the holy tar out of me when those who can’t be bothered to run a blog themselves complain. (Like, grrrrr.)

Yes, he wrote me later when he realized I had resented getting hit with an email cattle prod. He said he is sorry, but that had already brought out the notice...a version of which is now sitting in the blog sidebar...about how I’m pretty darn sure I really need to be taking the bulk of my limited functional time and devoting it to something which can actually pay the bills. That’s Gemini as ‘thinking it over’ and ‘making decisions’ and – important to all Gemini processes – priorities. 

I’ve heard from a couple of people since the announcement went up. But in the end I’m not sure but that I may have been right in what I said….for a lot of reasons.

I spend a lot of time exhorting all of you to be who you have the capacity to be. I believe in that, and I believe in that.

Being an astrologer is an interest of mine, but it’s not my life-long passion. My life passion has been to become a fantasy writer. No, my model was not JK Rowlings – it was JRR Tolkien. Actually, I knew what I wanted to be when I was 7 (a quarter of a Saturn cycle old)…and Lord of the Rings wasn’t even out yet. So my inspiration? I think it was Disney’s Fantasia – the original one. That and all the Oz books by L. Frank Baum (there are a whole bunch of them in case you don’t know).

Tolkien came along when I was in my teens. For the record, I had a hard time getting into Lord of the Rings…that Chapter Three filled with history put me to sleep. Since everyone said the book was so good though, I decided to skip that and go on reading. By 200 pages later I understood why you needed to know all that history and went back to read it.

Those of you who have had Peter Jackson to help you out here with the films – you’re lucky. Actually, my dad almost made Lord of the Rings as a film…he was approached by director Ralph Bakshi, who had a demo reel I remember watching with utter awe and amazement. It was mostly in Rotoscope, a process Hollywood doesn’t use any more…and no, it’s not what finally got released. What I saw was very eerie and very wonderful - and I was horrified when Ralph and my father snarled at each other like two lions on the veldt and went their separate ways. (No, I’m not going to tell you what got said. It’s Christmas, after all!)

In the end however…that’s all okay. I think Peter Jackson came to the project just as the technology of motion pictures had gotten to the right place to make the film.

Those films, by the by, were each released at Mercury stations. Look at the box office – it’s an interesting commentary on astrological timing.

Anyway…I’m still iffy about what’s going to happen next. Your closing week of December and January are already blogged and busy – not to worry about that. And maybe once the book is published I’ll have more time to blog – who knows.

Bottom line, I really want to have a chance to be the person I want to be in this life too. Preferably before it’s all over. I don’t want to be one of those authors who is only known after they die. It’s not the fame – it’s the fun. And it’s not the money, though I want to be able to take care of myself, eat properly and sleep at night, sure.

There’s a lot of that going around, yes. But it’s because this is a time for a lot of us to change. I’m not unique – I’m one of you.

If I make a lot of money, you may be assured I will use a goodly portion of same to help others. In my 56-plus years I’ve seen more than a few gaps which need filling and whole groups of people who deserve help. That’s what I’d focus on.

Okay, and maybe a sequel to the fantasy.

But we’ll have to see what happens. Rest assured, those of you who have written me – we will be in touch. Those of you who want to write me, the email is in the sidebar – be in touch.

And for those of you who don’t care one way or another, that’s okay too.

So! Now I’m going to stuff a sock (my Christmas sock) in it and move on, wishing you all a very peaceful and happy Christmas, Kwanza…or even a belated Hanukkah. I hope the wax came off the menorah without a hassle.

Jingle bells all around, I say!

Boots Hart, CAP

Capricorn Ingress 2010

 An Aries wheel (non location specific) chart of the

2010 Capricorn solstice cast for (+0) Universal Time.   

Welcome to this year's discussion of the Capricorn ingress - which of course centers on the Sun.

And if we look at this chart...what do we see?

We see a Sun conjunct Mercury (retrograde in Sagittarius)...and Pallas, North Node and Pluto/Eros!

Well gosh! And this whole bunch stands in opposition to fixed star Betelgeuse at 28 Gemini….! What oh what could that mean?

Answer: a lot of things, of course!

Let's start with the idea that this is one of those moments when wisdom (Pallas) is inspired....and when wisdom (Pallas) is probably (North Node) needed. Even required! So though our yearnings and desires may be strong (Pluto/Eros), we know that what we do…or don’t do (Sun/North Node) ultimately determines the quality, stability and longevity of our life and lifestyle (Capricorn, Saturn as ruler of Capricorn).

Though we like to think of this time of year as one filled with joy and peace and family time, the truth of it is that astronomically, this is the shortest day of the year in the north hemisphere and the longest in the south. So the Capricorn ingress is a moment of shift – from northern waning to waxing and from southern waxing to waning. And this is reflected in the idea that in entering

Capricorn, the Sun leaves its six months in receptive-responsive mode and takes up six months in pro-active and explorative mode.

Come to think of it…

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an astrologer’s daydream….

I wonder if anyone has ever considered the different paths, attitudes and cultures of nations in northern and southern hemispheres based on this fact?

Southern days wax while the Sun moves through signs which whether yin or yang function in a receptive-reactive-responsive mode and northern days grow longer while the Sun is in pro-active, assertive, explorative mode.

From the astrological point of view, surely this would have an effect on people and the countries they build/live in north and south?

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Enough of that! Back to the subject…

There are many sorts of transit points throughout the whole of the zodiac. There’s the shift from sign to sign, the shift from quadrant to quadrant (from personal learning to personally operative to worldly interactive to world participant) the shift from lower to upper hemisphere and vice-versa…

…but only the shift from the left to right half of the natural zodiac wheel – from pro-active-assertive-experimental to reactive-receptive-responsive and back again – only those transitions are actually known as difficult. Yea verily, even problematic.

And that’s not hard to understand. Going from private/personal to worldly/public is something most of us do everyday. We go out our doors into the public, we come back home into our private realms. There’s a little ‘oh do I HAVE to?’ when it comes to hauling ourselves out of bed in the morning…

And there are those who even when they get home find it near impossible to just ‘stop.’ Housework, work brought home from the office, personal paperwork, returning phone calls, emails…it’s a whole list – which only proves that you don’t have to be out in the world to be being assertive and pro-active!

For many, the shift from proactive to passive, from directing traffic and living in the fast lane of their own brain to letting go and just sitting back…that shift is notoriously tough for a lot of folks. It’s even specifically mentioned when we look at lore and notes astrologers down through the ages have taken for 29 Gemini.

Yes, that 29 Gemini – the degree of yesterday’s Lunar Eclipse, and part of what was discussed in the blog on same.

But for others, getting out of the more passive, receptive/responsive gear may be just as hard. Some of us like risk. Some of us loathe risk. Some of us like the new, some of us like the known.

Every December Solstice – and thus Capricorn Ingress – is about this moving from a more contained and ‘responding’ (to circumstances, information, data, etc.) mode into a purely ‘let’s do it and see how it works out’ sort of mode. That idea colors the Ingress moment…and the whole of the Capricorn quarter – that being from here into March, this quarter being the signs of Capricorn-Aquarius-Pisces.

The concept of this quarter remains wholly worldly. This is about how well any ‘world’ works – be it that in your family, that in your nation, that of the globe, that in your head, that in your profession…and so on.

The next three months (the 'ingress quarter') is also ‘colored’ by the concept of Mercury retrograde. Mercury is in Sagittarius, telling us that the details are important and that we need not rush, but we need to find out why we aren’t getting where we want to go…or what is holding us back perhaps…or what we need to do in order to move forward in some new and more assertive, proactive way in whatever ‘world’ (or ‘worlds’) are not as functional (Mercury/Sagittarius) or structurally sound (Sun/Capricorn) as we’d like them to be.

Or as we need them to be…let’s be real here!

A lot of people are going to hold themselves back this quarter. You’re going to see it, hear it and maybe even experience it. The purpose for that hesitation is the key to whether it’s useful or not. If it’s just a biding of time, or dawdling because of not liking to risk, change, leave the comfort zone – that’s not all that productive. If there is a directed purpose – the ‘getting it right’ sort of thing – that’s a positive.

So on some level, we can really think of these next three months and a time in which to get right with OUR world(s). 

However…for those who hear this and think ‘oh, so I don’t really need to do anything for real until March’ that may or may not be so. Why you would think that is pretty Mercury retrograde (is it an excuse or is it really needing the time to get something right or ready?). But this goes back to that daydream about the solstice as a universal factor.

The two yearly equinoxes (spring and fall) are as implied: moments of equal metaphorical, emphasis – aka power, potential or more to the hemispheric point, ease of functionality.

The solstices are inequality incarnate. This moment is where the whole of the southern hemisphere (and thus everybody living or operating) in that hemisphere has as much potential and responsibility on their side as they will have during this ‘solar cycle’ with the northern hemisphere being in just the opposite situation.

So people who live (or who were born) in the northern global hemisphere should be thinking they are facing ‘the uphill battle’ now. In other words, this is a time of building. People in (or born in) the southern hemisphere are capitalizing on what has been done or dealing with results (sometimes also called consequences!).

  A glorious photograph of Planet Earth taken by Apollo 17 astronauts

photo credit: NASA

And for you who were born in one hemisphere and who are residing in the other? Since our innate (birth) nature is endemic to us, especially with Mercury retrograde you’re are likely to be learning about or maybe even confronted with matters pertaining to your own personal rhythms. Or maybe how you differ from those around you – which could be yes, a problem…but then, it could be just the kind of uniqueness which allows you to get noticed, shine and make big advances.

Wherever you live, the fact that Uranus commits to its transit of Aries mere days before the end of this calendar/zodiacal quarter tells us the object is to reincarnate our lives. To reinvent ourselves. To do something new. To renew who we are in our own world. To get real about what’s real in real life.

Given that, and that there will be a Solar Eclipse in Capricorn barely two weeks – a fortnight for you poetic folks – into the quarter? That tells us that old ways of doing, old (Capricorn) structures in life and that have been our life are passing away. With Venus in Scorpio at the ingress, a lot of the problems raised in us during and by the Venus retrograde cycle remain active now and moving forward, contributing to these changes.

How well have you learned those lessons? Have you figured out where and how you are either trying to get blood out of a stone? Have you recognized that some of your desires (or those of others you have chosen to deal with) are so personally ‘me-me-me’ oriented that what results is an unworkable situation?

To have Venus in Scorpio, Mercury in Sagittarius, Sun and Mars in Capricorn (an obvious zodiacal sequence) is a pretty sure sign that our values (Venus) and ways of going about getting where we want to go in life (Mercury) are lagging behind what we really want. We need to – in essence – catch up with our potential and what we actually believe in about ourselves. 

This ‘truth of self’ is pretty much the whole point of this quarter. Phrased a thousand ways and coming at you from a dozen quadrants, life is seeking to prompt you through events and promptings both happy and sad, positive and negative, productive and restrictive…the point is WHO ARE YOU?

And from that…are you headed in the right direction? Are you being a responsible person to yourself, to others and in this world? That’s the other part of the shift into the zodiacal 4th quadrant well worth discussing – and pretty fitting as a way to round up our chat. In the 4th quadrant, that land of Capricorn, Aquarius, Pisces…ultimately the Capricorn world, the Aquarian society and the Piscean moral-social-humanistic standard always, always, always, ALWAYS wins.

And Uranus working over the very end of this quadrant is a reflection of how so many of us are trying desperately…maybe fervently…to old ways, whatever they may be.

Those ways, dreams, beliefs…whatever they are, they represent comfort zones. Uranus makes this transition once every 84 years. So we haven’t seen this cosmic ‘give it up!’ vibe roll through earthly life since 1926 - just before depressions rolled through a lot of national economies, setting the stage for WWII. The cycle before that was 1842. Not the same set of nations, not the same circumstances, but anyone who knows their history knows the kind of giant changes political (Capricorn), scientific (Aquarius) and humanistic (Pisces) which happened in the 20, 30, 40 years which followed 1842.

This is not a prophesy of war. Or economic collapse. What is it? One person pointing at a cosmic clock saying the ‘change’ alarm is about to go off – loudly. If you are someone who interprets change as a disaster…? Then yes, you may feel a lot is very wrong going forward. But if you’re willing to change in your head and in your life…if you’re willing to be a participant in change – this is truly a good time.

Those who linger will find things getting harder. Those who take it upon themselves to get out of their ‘hoping its all going to be okay the way it is’ mode will like as not prosper.

The bad news is…it’s all about what you do. It’s all about whether you are willing to become pro-active in your own life and in life in general.

The good news however is that it’s all about you! You have every reason and opportunity now to be pro-active in creating the life you want to have in a world which is more expansive and interesting than ever.

Lunar Eclipse at 29 Gemini

 A lunar eclipse as photographed by NASA from Merrill Island, Florida

The holidays are always an emotional time. And since this year we get a Lunar Eclipse tossed in on top of the whole deal just as the Sun is about to mark a major yearly transition by arriving at the Capricorn solstice…?

Solar eclipses are associated with the rise and falls of nations. And major personal life transformations. But it’s a safe bet that if we took a poll, almost everyone would remember events marked by Lunar Eclipses.

It’s that kind of mundane astrological event. (And don’t get me started on why something global is called ‘mundane’! Technically it may be correct, but why anything truly GLOBAL is referred to as mundane…? That just seems wrong!)

Getting back to the subject…unlike the Solar Eclipse process which evolves and unfolds over three long years, Lunar Eclipses are prompt.

Seriously prompt!

So when I tell you that this season’s Lunar Eclipse is going to happen on December 21st at 8:15 in the morning UT/+0 time, if you know your chart would be aspected by an event at 29 Gemini, set your clock and buckle up!

(About that aspecting thing? We’ll get to that in a few minutes, too.)

So what do we know about this eclipse?

Well, we know it’s going to take place at 29 Gemini.

Twenty-nine degrees of any sign is referred to as ‘critical’…meaning ‘high intensity.’ So this is where all the Gemini precepts of making choices and learning how things work/don’t work, or how they go together (or don’t) come to a high water mark. Particularly if this eclipse aspects your chart.

If it doesn’t? Well, it’ll probably just be a bit of a red letter day anyway. Too much of this, too many 'that's.. …people calling, strange driving, odd news…you know, one odd duck of a day even though nothing specific goes on you would point a finger at!

Lunar Eclipses being one particular version of a Full Moon, the basic image is Moon opposition Sun: the Moon faces the Sun in full aspect and thus the ‘full face’ of the Moon reflects the Sun’s light.

Always a ‘high water mark’ (think: high tide) and always a marker of increased emotionalism, the Lunar Eclipse brings in a quality of grounding issues by involving Earth (symbolizing a big dose of reality) and the Lunar Nodes (society and/or ‘how life goes along’).

In this particular eclipse, it’s the Moon which is at 29 Gemini – the Sun is at 29 Sagittarius, straight across the zodiac. But 29 Gemini has a reputation. And what is that reputation? That rep is all about ‘difficult transitions.’ It’s said that the more difficult the problem you confront, the greater rewards can be.

But first you have to deal with the challenge, slay the dragon, climb the mountain – and all that stuff.

The ‘challenge’ is personal and emotional – the lunar part. And its intense – the 29 part. And it involves making choices, organizing yourself, dealing with what your priorities in life should be (never mind what you’d like them to be) and learning how to do something either from the ground up, or better than you know how to do it going into this moment.

As for what ‘that thing’ is, that’s represented by the other side of the Lunar Eclipse coin: the Sun and Lachesis sitting cozied up together at 29 Sagittarius.

 'A Golden Thread' (the Greek Fates) by Strudwick

Again, this is an intense degree. So whatever the issue is, its in your face, in your gut, in your way.

Second, Sagittarius (never mind the 29 part) is part of the zodiac’s interactive quadrant. So this isn’t about how you feel about yourself (exactly)…it’s how you interact with life. Sagittarius being a fire sign, the issue is either about what you have imagined will work and whether it does…or your feeling like there’s nothing out there for you – the proverbial ‘life is empty, I can’t imagine anything good can come of anything.’

There are certainly shades between these extremes, but especially with the Earthy/reality and societal eclipse note thrown in, the question of the moment is basically about feasibility, workability and functionality.

This last comes particularly into focus as we consider Lachesis, one of the Greek fates. Her job was to ‘measure out’ how long a life (or something) would last.

And that goes rather well with Lachesis the asteroid, an object which has a rather notably stable orbit and apparently stable speed. So the combination brings us to ‘duration’ and ‘consistency’…or how long a particular situation or status quo will last. Or maybe can last.

The lore for 29 Sagittarius speaks to physical fitness and in a more general sense, our ‘fitness’ for anything and how extreme stress at/on/through this degree can produce a physical or mental-emotional breakdown. As an interesting sidebar, there are also commentaries in the text about lacks of self-confidence, self worth and/or maturity.

So that’s what we’re getting ‘past.’ Providing this eclipse tests your chart, this could be a grand moment of petulance, or a complete break down. With the Moon of this chart just one degree past fixed star Betelgeuse, either that we thought would be easy isn't - or we sure wish it was. And with this pair (Moon/Betelgeuse) being ruled by a Mercury which, still in retrograde, is at this moment atop the Galactic Center gives us the clue that whatever it at hand, it's the result of choices past.

And since Mercury in Sagittarius is so often an indicator of imperfect/incorrect positions or choices made in haste, there could be some 'oops' in the mix.

No matter what happens, there is a choice of how to deal with it and ultimately, the need to sort out what we do choose in our life versus what we simply have to deal with.

And how we react to either? In most cases, that’s a choice too. Not all obviously – but most.

For those with planets, axis points or nodal positions between 25 Gemini and 4 Cancer, this eclipse has your name written all over it. Just remember – lunar eclipses are events, not life changing epics….unless of course, your chart is also aspected by 13 Capricorn (the January Solar Eclipse)? If so, then this is likely to be a situation which is part of an extended life upheaval. Your job is to sort out what your choices are and to deal with them realistically.

For those with planets, axis points or nodal positions between 25 Sagittarius and 4 Capricorn, you’re facing a need to assess a situation clearly and rationally. Wishing and hoping isn’t going to fix things – decisions are in order.

For those with planets, axis points or nodal positions between 25 Pisces and 4 Aries (OR) 25 Virgo and 4 Libra, you are being challenged. On the Pisces/Aries side the question is can you deal with the choices which need making. On the Virgo/Libra side, the challenge is to make the choice with some degree of clarity as to what the aim is and what you need to take into account along the way.

For those with planets, axis points or nodal positions between 26 Libra and 4 Scorpio (OR) 26 Aquarius and 4 Pisces: this is an opportunity to express yourself more fully. On the Libra/Scorpio side, this is about gaining access to answers and possible new options. On the Aquarius/Pisces side the options are social and societal. Will you choose to go out there now and build on past efforts?

For those with planets, axis points or nodal positions between 27 Capricorn and 1 Aquarius (OR) 27 Scorpio and 1 Sagittarius, this is a strenuous moment – specifically one which calls upon you to make changes. The Capricorn/Aquarius vibe is all about recognizing that ‘your way or the highway’ doesn’t work and the Scorpio/Sag side needs to pick up the personal slack. There is a marked tendency to try to evade responsibility here which won’t work – you can make the changes or face the emotional bruises which will result from clamming up, resisting and in general, refusing to get your ego out of the way.

For all involved…whoever you may be…the good news is that Lunar Eclipses go off like an exploding firework, then they’re over. By the time three months has passed, we generally are already moving on.

The sole exception here is as stated: IF you are someone whose chart is also aspected by the incoming January Solar Eclipse at 13 Capricorn, then this is just the beginning of a three year evolutionary shift described by the point about to be (solar) eclipsed.

And you probably already know what that’s about.

Meanwhile, here’s to a good Lunar Eclipse! May all your choices bring you happiness, health and the joy of personal prosperity!