Astrology Now and Then: 2009 and 1995

Dear Friend and Reader:

Welcome to another day on the planet. What do you remember about yesterday? What were you wanting to do today? Do you remember and does it matter?

The Moon appears to be creeping through Capricorn: a slow Moon, in a sign intimately connected to the past. I can tell the Moon is slow because since getting into Capricorn yesterday it’s only gone about 10 degrees.

Checking Serennu.com for a more scientific assessment, the Moon’s motion is currently 11.8 degrees per day, which is indeed slow considering that it can approach and rarely exceed 15 degrees per day. This is due to its elliptical (egg-shaped) orbit. When the Moon is closer to the Earth, it will appear to go faster through the zodiac; when it’s farther, it will appear to go slower. There are some ideas about what a slow or fast Moon means in a natal chart (Elizabethan astrologer William Lilly, for instance, said that a slow Moon is the equivalent of the Moon being retrograde).

The Moon made a square to Venus earlier this morning — generally astrology textbooks file that aspect in the ’emotionally needy’ category. When you reduce our emotional nature to binary functions, it often works out that we are all kids who need to be held and loved. In the absence of our parents to do that for us, we need to remember that we’re the only ones who can offer that to one another. Of course to hold someone, or be held, you have to get close and the paradox so many live with is wanting to be held without the risks of getting close. Here is the question that comes to mind: can you trust yourself?

Mercury is currently retrograde in Gemini. It’s about to ingress Taurus, retrograde. As mentioned before, this mercury retrograde is a process of Mercury crossing the Gemini-Taurus line three times; this week’s is the second. Mercury will station direct in Taurus on Saturday, May 30, coincidentally with the first very near-miss conjunction of Chiron and Neptune.

Memories of Another Day: 1995

One of our readers asked about the astrology of 1995. Bill Clinton had just begun his second term. The Internet was referred to more often as AOL or Compuserve. If you had described an iPod or an iPhone to someone they would have laughed.

Here is the chart from a key point in that year, the conjunction of Mars and Chiron in Virgo. This is the first year that I was a practicing astrologer, and the chart is for the one conjunction of these two points while Chirion was in Virgo, a sign with which it has close associations. That occurred at 22+ Virgo (for Sabian Symbol purposes, that would be 23 Virgo, and the degree is about a lion tamer displaying his dangerous skill).

In 1995 we were still at the end of the Hrauns-Neptune conjuncton in Capricorn. That was exact through 1993 and very close through all of the early to mid-1990s. At the time this was the astrology of the Berlin Wall coming down (though this was a few years earlier, the astrology was well within range, and these two outer planets in Capricorn were the perfect image of that development). This was followed by the dissolution of the Eastern Bloc governments.

Pluto was in late Scorpio, about to embark on its much-predicted-about trip through Sagittarius; the predictions were just about all accurate — we knew there was a big jihad coming, and on a very positive note, cultures blended and the world became a smaller place. The Pluto in Scorpio phase had a lot to do with AIDS, and the rise of the Neoconservative movement.

Saturn was in late Pisces. The eclipses were happening in Taurus and Scorpio.

Chiron was in Virgo, close to its perihelion. Like the Moon and indeed like any orbiting body, Chiron’s orbit is shaped like an egg (an ellipse) and Chiron’s is pretty elongated. So at this point it was passing through Virgo in about two years whereas it will take well over five years to clear Aquarius and by the time it reaches Aries it will take nine years go pass through that sign. So Chiron was moving fast at this point and it was making a lot of aspects to everything else in our charts. In this chart and through much of the year, Chiron is opposite Saturn.

Therefore people with Chiron in a mutable sign, or other key planets in a mutable sign, were getting important Chiron transits.

At this time, Chiron was the only centaur planet acknowledged by astrology and the only one named. Nessus and Pholus had been discovered (Pholus in 1992 and Nessus in 1993) but they had not been named and only a couple of astrologers even knew they existed. At the time it was considered daring to even use Chiron. To some it still is.В  Soon after Pholus would be named at the recommendation of astrologers (Robert von Heeren, Melanie Reinhart, Zane Stein and others) and, soon after that, Nessus would be named. Neither of these is in common use as of 2009, but they are included in the chart. Pholus is the flourescent green planet in Virgo and Nessus is the bright blue in Scorpio.

One last thing. Notice the aspect between Uranus/Neptune and Pluto: approximately a sextile. That sextile moved through the heavens for a long time, and when another planet was at the opposite midpoint of that sextile (in this case, at approximately 28 degrees of Gemini) this would form a yod aspect. So if you had something in your natal chart at that focal point it was going to come under aspect by all three outer planets; and this would include anything in Gemini over a fairly long period of time. At the time some astrologers referred to this as the transiting yod.

And that’s the way it was in 1995.

Love and lovingly,