NEXT WEDNESDAY, Sept. 22, the Sun enters Libra, beginning the autumn season in the northern hemisphere. The first day of autumn is the day the Sun's rays rain on the Earth square the equator and, as a result, day and night are equal throughout the world. Yet this is no ordinary equinox, as the Sun is soon followed into Libra by Jupiter, Mars, Mercury and Ceres. This is the beginning of what promises to be a rather memorable autumn, even as we live deep within the age of forgetting. Maybe for once we'll forget to forget.

The obvious question is what does this mean for someone, personally. The only right answer is something. Most of the specifics of interpretation would be determined by what you have in the cardinal signs (Aries, Cancer, Libra, or Capricorn) and perhaps more significantly, where Libra falls in your chart. Where Libra is, you will have action, and on the personal level it has the potential to be genuinely positive and productive. In my weekly and monthly horoscopes for September and October I have been sketching out the details as far as I can, based on the position of your Sun sign.

Meanwhile, yes, this could be stressful, but it will be a good time for action and making big moves, Year of the Monkey style. There are some people who like a lot of concentrated energy all in one place and there are some people it freaks out. I say take a breath and start paddling your canoe.

For the wide world, the one we share, we're entering a distinct era of collective events, the most noteworthy of which is the United States presidential election later in the season. The US president is not king of the world, but apparently thinking you are is enough to have an effect on the whole planet. I can hear China laughing.

The Aries Point

The beginning of Libra is of course opposite, in both time and space, the beginning of Aries -- which is the vernal equinox and the first day for spring in the northern hemisphere. In a number of recent columns, I've been writing about the Aries Point, which has been observed by many astrologers to have some unusual properties: public contact, a collective quality, the personalization of large events, and lasting effects through time among them. The example of an Aries point effect I've been using is the June 21, 2001 summer solstice total solar eclipse, which occurred in the first degree of Cancer, exactly square the Aries Point. The summer of 2001 is of course a time nobody who lived through it will forget, truly heralding the dawn of an era.

We could speculate about why this particular point has so much influence. It is, for one thing, the degree of reckoning between the tropical horoscope (the one we're all familiar with) and what's called the sidereal horoscope, or the backdrop of actual stars (used in Vedic astrology; sidereal is another word for stellar). The 'sidereal vernal point' is another name for the Aries point, meaning the place where the tropical horoscope begins. Because of precessional movement, that is, the slow wobbling of the Earth making the heavens appear to rotate, this point moves. It slides backwards through the stellar backdrop, and the calendar, so that each century, spring begins about one day earlier. This is why the sign we call Pisces, for example, is mostly located in the constellation Aquarius. In 12,000 years, assuming we survive the 21st century, you will be able to go sunbathing on Christmas in Maine. But if climate change proceeds on its current course, you may be able to do that a lot sooner.

That's all very interesting. But it doesn't illustrate much, or give us anything too tangible to hang onto in terms of understanding the unusual power of the Aries point. Like many things in astrology (such as the ascendant, to which it is symbolically related), it may derive its strength from consciousness, which is not too shabby.

M87

Yet consider this. In the 2nd degree of Libra, that is, the point the Sun crosses each Sept. 24, there is a rather large galaxy. A galaxy is a mini-universe that can contain hundreds of billions of stars. This particular galaxy in early Libra is about 50 million light years away and called M87, the 87th item cataloged by French astronomer Charles Messier back in the 18th century. Monsieur Messier, astronomer to the astronomers, was making a list of objects for his colleagues not to confuse with comets; it was essentially a list of things to look out for. Look out indeed.

We now know that M87 is a massive, elliptical galaxy, not the kind of spiral galaxy we're used to seeing such as Andromeda (and the one in which we live). It has quite a few globular clusters, or mini galaxies, around it. And at its core is a black hole some 3 billion times the mass of our Sun, but compacted into a space the size of the solar system. Because of its enormous weight, M87 exerts gravity on 3,000 galaxies that surround it, called the Virgo Group. It is a kind of central Sun for that region of the galaxy.

For quite some time astrologers have been observing the behavior of the Aries point. Could it be that they have really been observing the effects of M87? Sure it could be. While there are many factors in astrology that require no mass to have an observable effect (such as the lunar nodes), objects with mass certainly do show up in consciousness, in events and in turning points in the history of the world. And if anything would, old Mr. M87 would.

I learned something extra interesting today, which is that Messier catalogued M87 within one week of the British astronomer Hershel discovering the planet Uranus. Uranus was the first discovery of a new planet by science; these are basically twin discoveries. This was in March of 1781. Messier discovered M87 on March 18 of that year, when it was at full opposition to the Sun (where many discoveries are made), and just two days shy of the vernal equinox. Uranus, a planet which came to signify revolution, invention, liberation and science itself, was discovered five days earlier, on March 13. Both were discovered with the Sun in Pisces. The discovery degree of Uranus, in case you were wondering, is the 23rd degree of Cancer [Sabian symbol: The meeting of a literary society, go figure.]

Now, black holes are interesting birds. They are extremely dense, as in a teaspoonful would weigh as much as the Earth; not a good sweetener if you're trying to lose weight. According to Wikipedia, the classical definition of a black hole is a "concentration of mass with a gravitational field so strong that its escape velocity exceeds the speed of light. This implies that nothing, not even light, can escape its gravity, hence the term black. The name black hole is very widespread, even though the theory does not refer to any hole in the usual sense."

No, not the usual sense. The super duper bizarre sense.

Alberto Einstein's General Theory of Relativity does not speculate about black holes, but its mathematics allow for their existence. Tracking down this bit of science, Tracy (on fact checking detail) writes: "Apparently he didn't exactly theorize black holes, but his General Theory was later used by others to do so. Their existence was therefore considered a form of proof for the General Theory of Relativity. It seems to be debatable whose idea black holes were, as everyone built on one another's theories, but Pierre-Simon La Place proposed something along their lines in 1795, well before Einstein, based purely on Newtonian physics."

Thank you Tracy. Hello Pierre, this is the first I've heard of you. We must have coffee some time.

The existence of black holes was not confirmed until fairly recently; observations of M87 were critical to the process. What we get with a black hole is something so heavy and so massive that it warps the fabric of spacetime. Sorry to sound like Scotty warning Kirk not to go too fast on the way to Romulus for a pitcher of ale and a good brawl, but that's the way of it. I propose that anything that can warp the fabric of spacetime can warp anything it pleases. These early degrees of Libra (where there's a lot more than this going on) certainly have impact. The only thing I can think of with equal, equivalent or greater impact are the 15th degree of Sagittarius (the Great Attractor, which could, and would, eat M87 for a snack) and the 27th degree of Sagittarius (the core of our own galaxy, also a kind of cosmic bonbon).

Now, for the practical effects. Through late September and early October, a lot of planets are going to align, one by one, with M87 as they cross into Libra. They will oppose the Aries point, and as discussed recently, square the degree of the June 21 total solar eclipse, which you could view as one of the birth charts of the 21st century. The season will change; then Jupiter will follow the Sun by about three days beginning its one year journey across Libra. Jupiter magnifies things. Then comes Mars, which can instigate action; then Mercury, which sends a message or two; then Ceres, which is about emotion and nourishment, and in particular, mothers and what they go through.

Alice A. Bailey emphasizes that the central theme of the sign Libra is decisions. It would seem that, like it or not, we will be making some of those as the next few weeks progress, and they will no doubt be experienced on an individual level; that is to say, we're all going to feel this, whatever that feeling happens to be.

But with a Sun-Jupiter-Mars-M87 (Aries Point) alignment, incidentally, leading right into the Aries Full Moon on Sept. 28, we are also talking about something big, international, fiery, impressive, historical: collective. Something that may well tip the scales. With so much in Virgo in the sky right now, I recognize that this seems like a lot of abstraction, like a puppy with an astral chew toy. By contrast, and we're not there yet, Libra is sensory, aesthetic, and oriented on action (despite the reputations of some Librans for thinking things over as they watch trees grow, but this could be the influence of Virgo).

The mutable signs have a tendency to be slow; things born there develop very gradually; they are not generally the times to commence projects you want to develop rapidly. But they are the spaces, people and times in which things, events and ideas do germinate and develop. Soon we go cardinal; puff. The cardinal signs, those that begin the seasons, emphasize action, intensity, impact -- and, again, choice. So be it. ++