Mars Retrograde

Mars goes retrograde for eighty–really, eighty–days on January 23rd.

Mark your calendars because you won’t want to buy anything with moving parts until after April 13th.  Or, if you must buy sooner, you’ll want to buy the best extended warranty you can get.

Mars doesn’t just affect purchases, though.   It’s the planet of energy, male sexuality, surgery, war, penetrating perceptions, stamina, muscle tone–huge implications for all of us.

I’m hosting a free teleconference call about Mars retrograde, and you can join my conference call list here

In 2012, I’m doing a free teleconference call or webinar every month on metaphysical or creative topics.    If you join the list, you’ll get an autoresponder the following day with details about the next call.   After that, you’ll get an event announcement before each call.

These calls are my gift back to the community I love.  The call is complete in itself, not a pitch for something else.   (If I’m doing something related, I’ll say so.   If I know someone else’s book that’s helpful, I’ll tell you that, too.   But these calls are the real thing, not the come-on pitch for something expensive.)

Researching Scottish Dragons

Our guest today is Nancy Lee Badger, and she’s talking about Scotland and dragons (and her new book, of course).   I hope you’ll all be as fascinated by her research as I am.  Nancy, the blogstage is yours, and thank you for sharing your dragons with us.  

Scotland has a history of dragons. Though the stories are not as numerous as those found in Asia, I was thrilled when I discovered fascinating folk tales while researching Scotland’s history for my paranormal novellas. Scottish mythology is filled with stories about creatures of various descriptions, but I have always been intrigued with dragons. I think they are sexy. Who doesn’t?

Once I realized dragons were as popular in Scotland as Faeries and Selkies, I made my hero in DRAGON’S CURSE (Whispers Publishing, 2010) a young man who was unjustly cursed by a witch to change into a dragon at inopportune times. Set on the actual uninhabited island of Staffa, a volcanic island near the Isle of Mull, Draco MacDonald was the only survivor of a massacre on the Island of Eigg. The curse has given him leathery wings, sharp talons, and an appetite for seals. Read more »

Are All Transits Created Equal?

Not on your life.   Literally, not on your life.

Your personal horoscope shows where all the planets were and how they were connected to each other at the moment of your birth.

Image via Wikipedia

Ongoing transits–the daily horoscope, for example–show where those planets are and how they’re interacting in the sky today.

Mundane astrologers look at the ongoing transits and research broad patterns that can be tested statistically.   Astrologers then suggest you avoid things like buying a new car when Mercury is retrograde.

But some of those aspects in the sky will have little or no effect on you because they won’t have a strong connection to the planets in your personal chart.   Other transits may have powerful impacts on your own life, but not be statistically important for the world as a whole.

The Sun’s return to the degree and minute it was in when you were born is personally significant.   Saturn’s return to the degree and minute of your birth is a hugely important time period–and Saturn conjunct your personal Ascendant is also personally important.

Sun sign and transit-to-transit columns will help you interact with the public and the world around you.   For your personal planning, you need to have a list of transits to your natal chart.

If you click on Free Astrology on the right sidebar, you’ll have a chance to get a free copy of your own horoscope wheel and to purchase transits for the entire year, using the same professional software I use for private readings.

Shop Early or Late?

Have you noticed how early they’re playing “Jingle Bells” and showing Santa in TV commercials this year?   In Albuquerque, the stores are offering Christmas shopping promotions during the weeks when they’re usually promoting Thanksgiving turkeys and travel.

You’d think the merchants had all hired astrologers.

Jupiter’s already retrograde and will stay retrograde until Christmas Day.  Jupiter retrograde is good news for shoppers (less demand, lower prices) and bad news for merchants (less demand, lower prices).

By November 24, Mercury, the other shopping planet, will also be retrograde.   Mercury retrograde doesn’t affect demand as specifically as Jupiter retrograde.   When Mercury is retrograde, though, shoppers are more inclined to buy their usual things and less inclined to try something new or extravagant.   Shoppers are less ready to splurge and more picky about what they buy when Mercury’s retrograde.   Returns are higher–and the higher returns are partially from faulty products (Mercury retrograde, when things go wrong) and partially from buyer remorse (Mercury retrograde, when people have other problems and are easily dismayed).

Some of us, of course, just like our holidays in sequence.  Thanksgiving first, then Christmas shopping.   Or we shop for other holidays.   If I lived where gifts were exchanged on Twelfth Night, a Spanish tradition that used to prevail here in New Mexico, I’d be thrilled about the possibility for post-Christmas sales this year.  But like the rest of you, I have to shop early or late to avoid the Mercury retrograde shopping hurdles.

Early means more variety and discounted prices this year.   Some stores are offering the pricing now they usually reserve for the day after Thanksgiving.   I’m guessing that prices will be even lower, especially for electronics, after Mercury goes direct December 13th.   Unfortunately, choices may also be limited.

I’m suggesting private clients shop early for childrens’ gifts (especially the trendy ones) and late for high ticket items that aren’t quite so faddish.  If your favorite stores offer rainchecks when they sell out of major items, late shopping for the adults in the family makes economic sense.

Or, where you live, it may all be about the weather.   We just had 20 inches of snow high in the New Mexico mountains.   So here in New Mexico, the real question is:  How much shopping can I get done before the ski season opens?   And this year, plenty.   You night even find a good buy on snowshoes.

Saturn, Lead, and Creative Focus

Saturn’s metal is lead. The origins of planetary correspondences are lost in time, but they come down to us in metaphorical language as well as in ancient wisdom.

Saturn is one of the two primary planets in the business cycle, where we see Saturn as the accountant, accountability, responsibility, and the bottom line.

Image via Wikipedia

Saturn’s association with death is actually closely related to its connection with business accountability. Saturn isn’t death by violence; it’s simply the boundary, the end of life in the body. From Saturn as old age and death, we get Saturn as Father Time and the end of the old year on New Year’s Eve and Saturn as aging, the heavy hand of time and limitation.

When you think about Saturn, you may turn to metaphors like leaden, heavy, weighty or depressing. Whole books have been written about Saturn as life’s adversary and limiter.

Read more »

Where’s the Money?

Jupiter’s in Taurus.  Why isn’t there more money in everyone’s pockets?  Why is the economic nes so dreary?

The long-term economic cycle peaked in 2000, near the end of the Clinton presidency.  If we follow our long-established national trend, we’ll hit the peak again in 2019.   Maybe 2018 or 2020; there’s some play in the cycle.   It’s the cycle we’ve been following since 1776.

At this point, we seem to be on track.   Bottom out in 2009-10, then an upswing followed by a plateau.  After that, we hope, the cycle will continue with a sharp upswing.

Jupiter in Taurus, though, is a placement that usually lifts us above the trends.

Two important factors to consider:

Jupiter is retrograde until December 25th, so we won’t get its full blessing (or mercy) until after Christmas.   While Jupiter is retrograde, illusions about the economy loom larger than usual–and one of those illusions may be our certainty about the job market.   The statistical analysis looks shaky to me because it’s so hard to tell what’s happening with people who are no longer drawing benefits–or those who are using their benefits to go back to school or start a new business.

Politics is nastier this year than usual, and it’s affecting the economy and jobs.   Even if you count politics as part of the smoke screen or illusion, you have to figure both parties will want to look better to the public by Election Day 2012.   Jupiter rules public relations.   Don’t discount the negative impact of propaganda now.

What should you do personally?   A little financial wisdom from Kaye Shinker:  Start a savings account for yourself or a special project while the Moon’s in Taurus.   Plant the financial seeds in Taurus and, just like a farmer’s seeds, they grow faster than if they’re planted at other times.  Start your savings account (even if it’s just pennies in a piggy bank) between 1:24 PM MT Thursday, September 15th, when the Moon enters Taurus, and 1:08 AM MT Sunday, September 18th, when the Moon goes void just before it moves into Gemini.

Retrograde Mercury’s Planning Phase

Did you feel an energy shift August 17th as Mercury moved from its completion stage to its planning stage?

The technology:  While Mercury is retrograde, it forms a conjunction with the Sun.  Before the conjunction, we’re in a completion stage.  After the conjunction, we enter a powerful planning stage.

No shopping yet.  No new action yet.

It’s time to visualize, make lists, gather resources, develop your blueprints.

Mercury retrograde gets a bad reputation becasue it stops our headlong forward motion.   It’s almost like having income tax time come three times a year and force us to clean up our desks, look at what’s happening in some stage of our lives, and then plan what to do next.

Plotters relish this time.   Clients with Mercury retrograde in their natal charts sometimes feel more at home in the world when Mercury is retrograde.

But the ones who live in the moment, the writers who call themselves pantsers because they never plot–this time is less comfortable for them.

Less comfortable doesn’t necessarily mean the time is less valuable, only that it’s less familiar or resisted.

In whatever way is comfortable for you now, make lists of what you want to accomplish in the next 90 days, or visualize yourself 90 days from now with new accomplishments and understanding.   Some of you may want to write a journal entry as if you were celebrating your successes 90 days in the future.

These are the marching orders you provide for your subconscious mind.   As you make the plans your subconscious mind (Mercury turned inward) begins gathering the memories and resources and making the connections to support your ventures over the next 90 days.   It’s the Law of Attraction in action–a cycle that repeats approximately every three months plus three weeks.

Clear the deck.  Plan ahead.  Live and accomplish in the moment for three months after Mercury goes direct.

Forward motion begins (quietly, without a starting gun) on August 27th.   Until then, dream up your highest and best goals and plan to feast on the results by Thanksgiving.

Saturn Direct Monday Morning

Saturn ends its retrograde period and goes direct Monday–which means the optical illusion of backward movement ends and we’ll again see Saturn moving forward if we look at Saturn in a telescope.

Metaphorically, Saturn’s switch from retrograde to direct is often felt more as a change of pace than a change of direction.  Working through Saturn retrograde is like walking in cold molasses–slow and sticky.

Tomorrow’s change should be more noticeable.   Saturn retrograde was part of a T-square configuration in the sky with Uranus and Pluto.   As one of my friends described it, it’s been like going through an intiation.   And she didn’t mean the high that comes after the aha! moment.   She meant the grubby work that precedes it.

Saturn has been opposing or balancing new ideas, new growth–and holding down the stock market.   Pluto destroys and recycles what can’t be used again in its present form.   Saturn and Pluto represent, respectively, death of the physical and the principle of transformation, death and rebirth.

We saw the three at work in Joplin, Missouri, as tornadoes and in the Mideast as wars.   In our personal lives, intolerable and barely tolerated situations and conditions (as well as those we pretended were wonderful when they weren’t) are falling apart, breaking up, getting reshaped forever.   Hard to love that process.

It may, in fact, be the first stages of the death and rebirth of consciousness that comes with the end of the Aztec and Mayan calendars and the onset of the New Age predicted by Western astrologers.

So the question for Monday is:   What steps can I take now, as Saturn moves forward and makes new structures possible, that will create something better?   If my life has just suffered a disaster, or if I’m helping people who lived through one, how can we rebuild sometimes even better?

It may take a long time to find that answer.  If your home is in ashes, it seems like a ludicrous question.  But asking that question is the first step to rebuilding.

Astrology’s work is to help us live with life, not just to predict what’s going to happen.  So today:  What’s the first step you could take toward making life even better than it was before the hard times struck?  And then what’s the next step?  And the next?

Is Oprah having a good day?

Oprah’s smart enough to make every day a good day, with or without her biorhythms.

But do you know how to use biorhythms to get the most out of every day of your life–or do you just use them as an excuse for a bad hair day?

If you look at Oprah’s biorhythms for May 2011, you’ll see a horizontal line with lines curving above and below the line:

The red line is the physical cycle; blue is emotional; green is intellectual

Everyone knows to be cautious when one of the lines is crossing the horizontal line.  We call it a critical day because it’s the day the cycle shifts from extraversion to introversion.

The real key to making every day a good day, though, is noticing how much more adventuresome and outgoing you are when a line is above the horizon.  When it’s below the horizon, you’re like a sponge, soaking up someone else’s ideas.

But some of us write or perform every day.   So what do steadily creative people do?

You can probably ad lib or write like a pantser if you have two or three lines curving above the horizontal line.  Interview people, prepare presentations you may have to give on a less extraverted day, get out and meet people, take pictures, put your whole self into your work.

If two or three are below the line, study things you just have to learn without question (like chemistry tables or vocabulary words for your historical novel).   Give yourself extra time for meditation, planning, playing with ideas.   If you have to present, use materials you prepared in advance.  Or offer to be the moderator and let your more outgoing friends do the talking.

A Day for Rockets of Change

T-Squares are always powerful energy patterns in an astrology chart.   Two planets are opposing each other and a third is squaring both opposing planets.   Think of a schoolyard with two angry boys and a third one egging them on.   That’s a T-Square.

Right now, we’ve got a triple T-Square in the sky, and every planet involved is powerful.

First, we’ve got a stellium, five planets in Aries.   Aries is action–dynamic, electrical, I’m-in-charge-and-I’ll-do-what-I-please action.   No wonder it’s named for the Ram and the god of war.

Saturn is in Libra, opposing and balancing all those Aries planets.   Saturn can hold its own–but in this case, it’s just adding a little weight and stability, like handing a fireman a helmet as he rushes off to jump into the flames.

Pluto, the planet of total transformation, is squaring three of the Aries planets and Saturn, making a loose but powerful transiting T-Square.   For once, we should be glad Saturn’s around to slow down the action.

What can you do personally?   Make a short list of three to ten changes you absolutely want to make in your own life.   Take at least one step a day toward each one–even a tiny step like a phone call asking for information.  Then post a comment to tell me what happened.

And remember–someone is going to use that energy.   It might as well be you going for your dreams.