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).