Vesta in Virgo/Saturn at the North Node

Almodo Ora (Computergrafika) by Benedek Jeno

Asteroid Vesta is about to enter Virgo. It will do so tomorrow (as posts go) on September 10th and 5:06 in the morning UT/+0 time…which would be just about when Saturn enters 8 Scorpio, the degree the lunar North Node is currently transiting.

8 Scorpio is a degree which has a reputation for creating problems when passion overwhelms intelligence. It’s one of those vibrations under which we can outsmart ourselves or think we can ‘get away’ with something which we find we can’t get away with. Life has a way of finding our vulnerabilities and blind spots under 8 Scorpio influences, maybe so that we’ll remember we’re human after all.

Saturn, of course, is the symbol of time, responsibility, repercussions and results. With anything Saturn we get what we earn and that suggests that this is a prime (or primal) moment to be minding our p’s and q’s. After all, the lunar nodes are always about relationships and what all goes into relating…or comes out of it. So it may well not be the moment to be taking on risks – especially those which could ‘cost’ you time. Or which would require you to do/deal with something you rather not be saddled with.

One would guess this is a good moment to know our limits…and to heed those limits no matter what.

Saturn of course is actually pretty good in that regard: depending on whether you work well with the ‘I need to do this in order to achieve my principal goals or not, Saturn could here act as the ‘monitoring’ energy which keeps you on track…or the devil-may-care energetic which gets you into a mess which then you have to take care of.

That all depends on you. And, of course, your natal Saturn and the condition of Scorpio in your chart. (And anything which is in Scorpio, of course.)

The ‘temptation’ factor here is (not shockingly) Plutonic. Scorpio is always about a weighing of factors – the ‘in’ door of choosing to do, or not to do (Mars), and the Pluto ‘out’ door which either transforms our life in a good way or becomes a terrible headache (or worse) as a result of our not having chosen well.

Or – as seems pertinent here – our failing to choose based on the facts, opting rather to get carried away by some passion.

You know passion, right? Passions can get the best of any of us. And the cost for passion can be…well, a downright passionately painful one.

On the other hand, there is that allure, that promise of delight which goes with all things Scorpio. The glitter of romance, the Siren call of carnal pleasure, the longing for personal power – all that.

Just do yourself a favor here: think before you do – and once you think, think again. Scorpio is always about testing our values, and 8 Scorpio is one of those degrees which is ‘smarter than we are,’ and not always in a fun way.

This Saturn/North Node exactitude of conjunction will be in effect from September 10th through September 20th. As distinct from that, Saturn has been within a five degree orb of the Lunar Nodes since August 15th - and it will remain in orb to the Nodes until October 27th. So if the issue of relationships and how you relate to others (or how they relate to you) has already come to the fore, that makes sense - and it will continue to make sense. As distinct from that however, this conjunction at 8 Scorpio is ONLY in effect from September 10th through September 20th.

Think of it as the difference between a general issue regarding relationships (and how you relate to that or your success with relationships or your need to deal with how and who you relate to - and why that would be)...and a very specific, detailed scenario having to do with a moment when some facet of relating...which may have to do with a particular relationship or may pertain to how you go about having relationships as a whole...comes into focus.

Got it?

Vesta compared to other asteroids

(photo credit: NASA-JPL)

Speaking of possible costs, there’s also Vesta to contend with. Vesta asks that we protect ourselves, lest the cost of not protecting our right to be our Self go beyond what we’re prepared (or able) to pay. Vesta is an interesting symbol in that it’s all about keeping our promises…which suggests the first promise we have to make (and then keep) is a promise to our Self to be who we are and to live our life in such a manner that we don’t…um…screw things up too badly.

(Yes, this is a g-rated blog. When I set it up, I promised Blogger on that score, so I’m sticking to my promise - which is very Vesta of me.)

Considering that Royal Star Regulus is sitting at 0 Virgo, we are all called upon to take responsibility for what we do/don’t do in particular at this moment – and by implication for the full run of Vesta’s move through Virgo, a passage which will last until November 16th, after the eclipse and just after Neptune goes direct.

If you’re not familiar with Regulus, here’s a link to the ‘master post’ on the subject here at astroPPM:

- link to -

The Royal Stars of Persia (Part Two): Regulus

Though there’s all sorts of nifty nuance connected with this star, the basic premise of all Royal Stars is that they promise success IF (and only if) you don’t fall prey to a particular human habit. With Regulus, that ‘habit’ is revenge – or vengeance, if you prefer. So as Vesta enters Virgo, particularly in this first little while (which this astrologer would think would run at least through Pluto’s September 18-22nd station window)…we are being told that we really truly absolutely kind of have to own our personal choices.

And that means we need to have made some – or be making some.

Given that Pallas is at 2 Virgo and in opposition to Neptune (read: Neptune/Fomalhaut) in Pisces, we can expect some wiffling and some soft focus thinking about now…which is not exactly what this sort of transit really calls for.

So let’s put it this way…if you absolutely, positively HAVE to fudge or break some sort of tryst with your normal boundaries for Self, let it be in some area which has minimal risk and minimal long-term cost.

And beware of anybody doing the ‘I’m so innocent act.’ Chances are they aren’t. They may be innocent but..."so innocent"? Maybe not.

I know I sound a bit like a broken record on this subject, but there’s also the fact that this Vesta-Virgo ingress, which at some level is about working to be the person you will respect yourself for being in the long run (i.e., the person you really are on the inside, regardless of expectations and desires – your own or those of others)…is happening under the auspices of the ‘breaking down’ period heading towards November’s Solar Eclipse at 11 Scorpio. Being that this ingress will raise something of a 3/11 harmonic (it being three signs from Virgo to Scorpio and an eleven sign count from Scorpio to Virgo)…the viability of how we relate to others and what we think relating is about in the fullness of our presence in this world…that’s a natural thing to be talking about.

Or even doing something about, should you need to clean up your act! Let’s face it – Virgo is always about how clean our act is, and when we’re discussing astrology, though the temptation is to project it and think of astrology in terms of what ‘they’ are going to do or be to us, the reality is that the cause/effect principle rules. So if YOUR Virgo whatever needs work, this is a time to consider what that means and the (Vesta) cost of whatever your promises are in regards to those concepts.

Third harmonic: the thought. Virgo's 3rd harmonic being Scorpio speaks to the need to purify or to have control of what's going on, lest it not function well. This combination tends to eliminate rather than add on.

Eleventh harmonic: questions of acceptance and acceptability which generates a sense of satisfaction. With Virgo being Scorpio's 11th harmonic, the thing which works is easiest when it's not scary...but if it's not genuinely who you are, and about who you are at your core, it will ultimately undermine you, feel "toxic" or be a burden to your life.

The challenge here is really about an inner-outer perspective. In other words, there’s the ‘what’ or ‘who’ we each want to be, and the what we think others will like, appreciate or (to some of us) even ‘let’ us be or become.

Reconciling who we really are – on the inside – with what others think of us as, or want to think of us as is a big, big step in our lives. We all have someplace in our world or life where we don’t really ‘feel’ the “popular” thing. Or where we really don’t want to go with what everybody else does. Many of us have faced that moment of dealing with the truth of what our parents have hoped for us and who we really are. My father, for instance, was dead set against my being a writer and someone who thought metaphysics is for bubble heads.

So here I am, a full-fledged professional astrologer about to release a four-volume epic fantasy.

My father and I had a testy sort of relationship, no question. But before he passed, he certainly knew who I had become. Production finance person… astrologer… writer… he saw it happen and wasn’t enthralled that I hadn’t relegated myself to cooking, cleaning and saying ‘yes, dear’ to my hubby (ask the guys I know best how often I say ‘yes, dear’ in a dutiful tone and you’ll hear laughter)… but when he saw that I was good at what I did and was doing the thing which fit my psyche, he realized that there’s a difference between raising a child for whom you have hopes and seeing the adult you raised from a child become their own person.

My dad had many (many) flaws. He was a Hollywood tyrant par excellent (there are still people in LA who don’t want to talk to me because of who my father is) and before that he helped build a paperback book empire. Here’s a little post I wrote about him:

- link to -

Saul David: My Father the Producer

That he was able to get past his own “rules” for me and finally (!!!) agree that so long as I worked to be the best I could be at my chosen thing is one of my dad’s greatest personal accomplishments. (Yes, he was that stubborn!) And at some level, that embodies this Vesta/Virgo ingress, particularly seeing as it is conjunct the ‘dispassionate perspective’ symbol we call Pallas and in opposition to Neptune/Fomalhaut in Pisces, a combination which at its best is all about letting go of the dream as a dream and getting used to a reality which may be just FINE…it’s just not the dream you’ve been holding onto, maybe for a long, long time.

One other little tidbit… As Vesta is entering Virgo, the Moon is moving through Scorpio. The Moon enters Scorpio on September 9th at 1:45 in the morning and exits Scorpio on the 11th at 6:37 in the morning (both times UT/+0). In fact, as Vesta moves into Virgo, the Moon is just crossing over 15 Scorpio – one of the zodiacal cross-quarter points.

This reiterates…or if you prefer…reinforces the idea of choices begetting consequences at every level and whether what you’re dealing with now is going to help you get where you want to go in life…or whether (Saturn/North Node) it could just screw you up royally.

(No offense to Royal Stars intended with that “royally,” of course.)

Sometimes something must be given up so that something else can be earned. Life isn’t always the way we want it to be or as we were ‘taught’ it would be, or as we have imagined it to be. Life is just life. And this is one of those moments when life is not a ‘game’…it’s a reality which we see, we feel, we sense and which we have the opportunity to learn so much from that it’s absolutely breathtaking.

So take a deep breath, and then remember who you are. Peel back the trappings and assumptions and think of what can be gained by accepting that the fantasy illusion is inspiring, but a satisfying reality, the life we really want is not about what things look like…they’re about the honesty and honest quality with which we go about existing. 
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News Flash: Earth to Einstein...We Love You!

Albert Einstein during a 1921 lecture in Vienna, Austria

photo credit: Ferdinand Schmutzer 

NASA Science News: Earth really does live in its own personal and private planetary time-space vortex.

Call it a bubble! Call it a field. Just don't call it late for dinner. (Yes, I know, old joke.)

Want to read the whole article? It's a teeny bit techy, but just don't stress on the intricate stuff and give yourself over to oooh-ing and aaaah-ing at the very fabulousness of it all! 

Link HERE to Nasa's page...or past the following into your favorite local browser: http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2011/04may_epic/ 

This is SO what we might think would be part of Edisona moving into Gemini today, as we discussed in the earlier post. News! New ideas! A better grasp and  understanding of how things work. 

And of course - now this prompts new questions, as all information should. Isn't astrology interesting if you follow it in some sort of detail?

Personally, I'd also love to have been at a table listening to Edison and Einstein chit-chatting. How about you? Now that we know Earth's spin does in essence create a very small time/space vortex, that may well open new doors to the idea of how to move back and forth through time! We're a long (looooong) way from being able to do that, of course....but it doesn't hurt to dream.

If you could sit down with a couple of people who have lived on Earth, bringing them together from different points in time, who would they be?

My dad (Saul David, who would become a force in publishing and motion pictures - LINK to Blog) actually met Einstein when he was a young man. He and his buddy went down to Princeton where Einstein was living and teaching and staked out a spot along the route where he was known to take a daily walk.

Sure enough, along came Einstein and my dad (never one to be shy about such things) struck up a conversation. He ended up being invited back to have  tea on the porch of Einstein's house.

Dad said the thing which got him about Einstein was how really and truly fascinated by what he was doing Einstein really was. Yes, he enjoyed the fame (at least parts of it). And yes, being acknowledged for his work was really nice. But science and physics...they were  truly Einstein's passion.

Which is something of a statement to us all...if you follow your gifts, your passions, your abilities and share them with others and the world, who knows what can happen.

Maybe you too could impress NASA...or someone equally important to you. Like maybe your children's children, perhaps?

Saul David: My Father the Producer

When in the early 1990's my dad announced to me that he had no intention of going into the 21st century, that struck me strange. After all, he had made Logan's Run, the epic welcoming everyone to the 23rd century.

Right up to the moment when I started digging up clips and posters to write this, all I'd really remembered about Logan was how it had been so on the cutting edge of Special Effects (known in Hollywood abbreviationland as 'FX') - though only bits and pieces got into the movie, there was a whole effort to see maybe sections of the film could be done in holographic imagery. When dad died I found that test reel in his house. And like any dutiful daughter and handmaiden to the film industry, I delivered same to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for preservation - along with his personal copies of The Wizard of Oz and Behind the Green Door and much else.

But as I say...I'd mostly remembered Logan for its effects, it's wonderful color palate (dad was a trained artist, after all) and the Peter Ustinov character at the end of the movie. The character was that of an old man living outside the bustle and bliss of the controlled city environment, a man who though plainly freed by his exclusionary lifestyle was tinged with a haunting loneliness which...well, was very much my dad.

Strange too was how through total coincidence I ended up going to school with Ustinov's daughter Pavla for two years. No, we weren't friends. But at least we weren't enemies - and in an upper crust girl's boarding school/high school, that's saying a lot.

My thanks to Pavla, wherever she may be.

Besides Logan, dad was probably best known for Fantastic Voyage...

...the making of which was notable in my world for strange stories of effects experiments (many of which were simply total 'no go's), dad's continuing fights at the studio (particularly when over one weekend the crew from Lost in Space snuck on his brand new set to film without so much as asking 'may I?') and Raquel Welch's not infrequent visits to the house. 

Raquel was very kind to me, which in the pantheon of women in my life puts her way up near the top. When I wrote my 'early years memoir' nothing would do but to immortalize her encouraging words to me in a budding teen moment when I had just been humiliated by my parents. 

Dad really liked Raquel - and not just for the obvious. There was a begrudging respect in his voice when he talked about her at the dinner table, as if he was impressed that a woman that beautiful could also be intelligent and sensible.

Looking back, when I think of Fantastic Voyage the last thing I come to is how dad had doctors from nearby UCLA Medical Center come to the stage and 'approve' what he had built. Did it look like the real thing - the real human body? 

I gather these MDs had a great time wandering around a 'lung' which filled an entire mammoth sound stage. 'If only...' they probably said in their minds, never knowing microsurgery was soon to be in hand.

But one great truth about this movie never gets talked about - that in many ways its a tribute to my father's desperate fight to keep my sister alive. Debby had Cystic Fibrosis (CF) and from the time I was born my whole live revolved around his fight to keep her alive. That's why he knew those doctors from UCLA. 

Dad lost that fight when I was 14. He never quite got past it.

  

The Flint movies (there were two of them) were very fun. Dad didn't take a writing credit but he noodled with every line. As the original editor-in-chief who helped build Bantam Books, he had literature in his blood...not to mention the sharpest editing blue pencil on the block.

This being at the tail end of Studio System Hollywood, dad had a few perk cards to play. One of them allowed him to put his savvy artistic fingers (not to mention his twenty-five cents worth) into set design for the two flicks. Because of this, he had made and installed on...I think it was the first Flint set a very beautifully made reproduction of Rodan's Hand of God.

  

Yes, dad the artist at work.

Following the natural 'way of doing things' of the time, that statue ended up in our house after the picture was finished. I spent my early teen years dusting it once a week - and when dad passed away, that was the first thing I wrapped up ever so thoroughly to have brought to my home. 

Where yes, I continue to dust it once a week.

Dad's first picture was Von Ryan's Express...

...shades of Frank Sinatra, Trevor Howard, Edward Mulhare and a host of talented others. Von Ryan provided me with my first trip overseas - to Rome - and four months of eating flan (otherwise known as creme caramel or caramel custard) for breakfast. Much in the famous mold of Bill Cosby's routine where he's been assigned breakfast 'dad duty' and figures 'hey, chocolate cake is made of wholesome things like eggs, milk and flour, right?', my sister made a brilliant case for 'crema caramella' (as it was known) as the perfect breakfast food, leading to Tony, a handsome, gracious and highly tolerant hotel maitre'd becoming a virtual flan pusher.

The big thing about Von Ryan was not just the elegance of its cast (it was a really good cast) or the great locations, but that 20th Century Fox needed a hit and dad supplied it, becoming - for a time - the studio 'golden boy' until his naturally rebellious nature wore that welcome out.

As I look back now, I get that Ryan was my dad's ode to his own WWII experiences, just as Flint was the embodiment of his personal alter ego - a citified, smart-ass James Bond who didn't just date all the girls but who kept a personal harem devoted only to him.

Oh, how those loyal acorns do fall close to their tree, too...

Dad made two others films, Ravagers...

... and Skullduggery...

...which few people seem to know about. Ravagers was his ode to 'what's happening to this world?' and Skullduggery a display of his endlessly restless intellectual bent - a quality I have inherited to the max, if not always to my benefit. There's a very interesting question dug into Skullduggery, namely: if you found the missing link, would it be man, and therefore entitled to the rights and privileges of humans - or would it be an animal, and therefore to be consigned to being treated as a beast or beast of burden?

There's a whole lot of personal history in that question which I won't go into here, but that would be obvious. Artists, be they writers, producers, painters, musicians - we all write from the well of personal history and internal qualm, quest, confusion or agony. That's just the way it works. If we were happy people, we probably wouldn't be artists - we'd be living in oopsie-poopsie town, USA and repainting our white picket fence once a year would be the highlight of our season.

All this brings me back to Logan's Run. Back when it was made (and dad was head of production at MGM, snarling about the insanities which come with movie studio life) I got that a good portion of Logan was about his own feelings of having been betrayed by society. When he was born, the world venerated the wisdom which only comes with age. So that's what he worked for and looked forward to - he wanted to be a venerated, wise elder in the tribe of mankind.

But somewhere along the way, the rules changed. Old and wise was out, young and naive if filled with promise came in. So if you ever see Logan, wonder not that dad made a film about everyone's life being over at thirty. Astrologically, thirty is just when we emerge from the end of the first Saturn round - the growing up cycle. Society has all sorts of markers about when we become adults: religious tradition puts this in ancient terms around age 12 (one Jupiter cycle being 11.86 years), schools and the military tend to pick 18 (one round of the societal lunar nodes being 18.6 years long) and there's the lingering but still popular notion of 21 - the first Chiron square (to its natal position) which is a clear indication that at 21 we have to figure out how to be adults whether we feel like we know how or not.

But it's really Saturn's 29.46 year-long cycle (and it's half cycle at 14.73...and it's plural cycles) which maps life's 'structure.' And that's  fitting, seeing as Saturn represents time, maturation, dedication, responsibility, earning and achievement and ultimately, the 'as far as we can go' thing. When we reach 29.46 years of age it dawns on us that we're not going to be young forever...so we marry. Or we get serious about a career. Or we settle down and buy a house. Or we do all that, plus the family thing. 

Being that dad was born in 1921, this (let's call it) thirty-year mark came in 1951, which is when my sister was born. That says so much which is so plaintive, so sad and so real about my father's life that I scarcely know how to express it. 

Released in 1976, Logan's Run was the first film to be made using Dolby Stereo and it won a bunch of awards, one of which is an interestingly odd 'goddess-robot' statue from the Science Fiction Award people which (no disrespect intended) I tend to think of as my household Buddah. What can I say...? I inherited my father's love of science-fiction and fantasy. I'm just not as good at getting business to listen to me as he was.

(Hello? Book publisher or literary agent needed for memoir and epic fantasy manuscripts. Anybody got one on tap?)

(Dad's probably chuckling. I can almost feel him patting me on my little coconut head.)

The astrological point here is that Logan's Run was made when my dad was 55 - almost at his second Saturn return. It was pretty much the culmination of his work - after that his career...and life...began a slow unraveling which ended with his death in 1996.

I hadn't looked at anything about Logan's Run in plural decades when I decided to write this piece. But as I watched the clips on youtube I was struck by how creepy the Carousel scenes actually are. When I was young, all I thought about was how cool it was to fly all those actors on wires - and how interesting it was that Stefan Wenta (former master of the Warsaw Ballet) was brought in to literally choreograph the scene.

Now all I can see is the haplessness and cruelty of any society which would throw its people away - and the sadness of the Peter Ustinov character who though freed of societal tyranny, did so at great cost to mortal self.

My dad was a very 'old style' guy who valued strong emotions over all else. He hardly was comfortable with love. From my family I learned longing, which finally blossomed not long ago when someone written about elsewhere on this blog finally took the patience of his time to gift me with the warmth of human sanctuary...in which I finally learned to love.

The last solar return of dad's life (1995) pictures him having the exact Ascendant-Descendant line of my natal chart. Given that the Asc/Dsc is how we reach out in the world, our relationships to others and the legacy we ultimately leave, this is a perfect picture of his last-minute attempt to connect and make peace in a father/daughter relationship he had endlessly postponed and criticized relentlessly, treating the child on the other end of the stick (me) as possession, object and utterly less than perfect.

And when he reached out, I took his hand because for all the strain between us, my father had rescued me when life itself was at stake. So I would happily...if tearfully...stand with him in kind. Even if I was an 'also ran' to my sister - his pride and long-dead joy - he was someone I respected and yes, feared, but also someone I understood was someone who had undone and undermined himself.

As so many of us do, yes. At some level we are all Logan living in that city under threat of dying at thirty, we are all Logan running from vulnerability or inevitability, we are all in some way that old man living outside the knowing of anyone but ourselves.

And when any of those becomes all we are, that probably becomes our waste. So often what we really need is right there in our own back yard and yet we neglect it, throw it away or undervalue it in some misguided search for richer, newer pastures. It's so what Dorothy (of ruby slipper fame) learns at the end of The Wizard of Oz.

And maybe why dad owned a print of the film. I don't know. But it seems worth thinking about.

I miss my father. He was more than a bit of a tyrant, but I knew I loved him then and can...finally...feel myself loving him now.

So happy birthday dad. Your daughter of blood and soul and talent misses you...as does the world, I'm sure.

Okay, so maybe not the studio heads. But the world? Yes indeed.

Or 'indeedie-do,' as you would say.