ascendant

Step Back and Reflect – Day 930

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‘Cosmic’ Crystal at Linwood Gardens – Photo: L. Weikel

Step Back and Reflect

I have to admit I actually relish the times when planets go retrograde. On some level, deep down, I feel a sense of permission being granted me. After all, when planets go retrograde, we’re told that all the ‘re’ words apply: rework, review, renew, restore, revamp, repair… You get the picture. So giving ourselves time and space to step back and reflect (there’s another one) is a gift. And if we’re paying attention, it’s a gift the Universe sort of builds into our lives: periodically encouraging us to accept some ‘re’ time (instead of resisting it). Ha ha – yet another ‘re’ word that happens a lot during retrogrades!

It’s occurred to me recently that there may be another reason why I generally welcome retrogrades. In looking at my natal chart (the position of the sun, moon, and planets on the date and exact time of my birth), I see that five planets were retrograde at the time I was born: Mercury, Jupiter, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto. It seems to me that I might feel most at home or ‘settled in’ when those planets go back to the way they were traveling at the time of my birth. This is just a guess, but it makes sense to me intuitively.

It’s sort of like putting on a pair of comfortable shoes.

Hold True For You?

Is it possible that you, too, feel a kinship with the energy of retrogrades? Do you know whether any planets were retrograde at the time of your birth?

Once again, I encourage you to visit the Astrodienst site. It’s free and can give you access to an astonishing amount of information about yourself. All you need to know is your date, time, and place of birth.

Most people can find their exact time of birth listed on their birth certificate. Sometimes hospitals send parents home with an ‘unofficial’ birth announcement that contains this information. Others of us have baby books our parents kept for us, in which they tracked all sorts of personal facts and accomplishments.

It’s definitely worth doing some digging to find your exact time of birth, since that time is of particular significance in determining both your Ascendant (the sign that was on the horizon at the time you were born) and your moon sign. Both of these change significantly from minute to minute.

The rest of the planets, because they move more slowly, are less likely to shift from one sign or house to another within a 24 hour period. So getting a snapshot of the position of the planets in the sky at noon (as a default time) on the day of your birth will give you a reasonably good idea of your chart.

Amazing Complexity

The depth and complexity of astrology is remarkable (and not a little daunting). There’s no question in my mind that our lives here on Earth are reflected in the macrocosm. We’re not ‘fated’ by any means. But we’re all operating under influences that can be tracked and understood – and all of us are prone to having our buttons pushed harder at certain times more than others. It’s helpful to know when this might be happening to us and why.

Information is power. Understanding how unseen forces may be uniquely applying to us can be of enormous benefit in making choices, both big and small.

I do not have aspirations to become an astrologer in my own right. Goodness knows, this subject is far more complicated than the simple knowledge of our ‘sun sign’ (the sign the sun was in at the time of our birth) and the blanket attributes associated with that.

But I am keenly aware of how my understanding of the movements of the planets and luminaries can help my clients better understand themselves and their feelings. Understanding our charts can help us have compassion for ourselves and each other, too.

Furthermore, don’t be fooled: every planet is associated with a particular sign and house in the zodiac, and these all come together in varying interlocking and interconnected ways in each of our own unique charts. Where everything is situated, including the specific degrees of each planet in each sign and house, is significant.

We really did give ourselves a roadmap to the challenges and gifts we were bringing into this lifetime. Whether or not we decide to read and attempt to understand those maps is up to us.

Sweet Resource

Of course, it’s definitely worthwhile to have your chart read by a professional astrologer. Your best bet is to seek out a personal recommendation from someone you trust.

In addition to receiving readings periodically throughout my life, I’ve also read about this stuff for years and years. Mostly I’ve just glossed over the details and focused upon cursorily understanding the signs of my sun, moon, and ascendant. But recently I’ve been giving myself a chance to understand things on a deeper basis by, among other things, using Astrology for Yourself – a Workbook for Personal Transformation* by Douglas Block & Demetra George.

If you want to get to know yourself better, I highly recommend using this tool to delve into understanding your own personal map for this lifetime. There are lots of courses you can take as well. But this workbook is quite thorough and, well, tangible. I like that.

*affiliate link

(T-181)

Tomorrow’s Full Moon – Day 896

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Colors of Tonight’s Sunset – Photo: L. Weikel

Tomorrow’s Full Moon

Maybe it’s just me, but it feels like it’s been an especially long two weeks. I’m talking about the two weeks it’s been since the new moon in Aries when we planted all the seeds we wanted to manifest in the weeks and months to come. With tomorrow’s full moon, we’re going to want to check on our sprouts to see how they’re coming along – and make a concerted effort not to yank them out of the ground if they’re not growing as quickly as we’d hoped.

As I do every now and again, here’s a link to Chani’s assessment of the main attitudes we’ll be feeling and confronting with this full moon in Scorpio. Make sure you read both your sun sign and your ‘rising’ sign (known as your ascendant). Pay attention to which one seems to more accurately describe you and your feelings or approach to life. It just may be that your ascendant holds a more accurate key to understanding yourself and your position in life than any reading of your sun sign will ever yield.

Ascendant and Moon

Just in case you’ve forgotten what sign your ascendant is or where to go to find out, I want to remind you that it’s important to know your time of birth. Once you know that, it’s pretty easy: just go to astro.com and create a free account. (You can always look up everything as a guest – but if you create an account, you can save all the different charts you create when inserting birth information about yourself, your family, and people you’re interested in understanding better.) Once you start piecing things together for yourself, trust me: you’ll become ‘curiouser and curiouser’ about all the other people in your life.

Once you’re into the website, click on “Free Horoscopes.” On the far right side, you’ll see a link under “Drawing and Calculations.” The top link is “Natal Chart, Ascendant.” Plug in your birth information there and you’ll be well on your way to understanding yourself better. Plus, you’ll know precisely what two signs to read first whenever you run across a website or article like Chani’s.

Another important placement for you to discover in your natal chart (the position of the luminaries – sun and moon – and the planets at the time of your birth) is the sign the moon was in when you were born. This information, too, will be found on the chart you create on astro.com.

A Rehash

I realize much of this information is a rehash of stuff I’ve written about in other posts. But this basic information is important for all of us to know about ourselves. It’s extremely helpful to know your ‘rising sign’ (ascendant) and moon sign as well as your sun sign (which almost everyone seems to know). Tracking this information and the accuracy of its application in your own life only serves to help you know your own self better.

Intention

It wasn’t my conscious intention to focus upon the fundamentals of astrology tonight. But here we are.

I’m guessing at least some of you will benefit from this refresher and a little nudge to remember who you are, what the cosmos looked like at the moment of your birth, and what that means for you today.

It’s as if the cosmos are reaching out to put their arms around you in a big, loving hug.

Cloud Being Swooping In With Arms Extended – Photo: L. Weikel

(T-215)

Eclipse Season Commences – Day 232

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Eclipse Season Commences           

Just a quick post on the astrological event that’s most prominently being discussed at the moment: tomorrow’s (Tuesday’s) solar eclipse. Tomorrow’s new moon in the sign of Cancer kicks off eclipse ‘season,’ as eclipses never happen in isolation.

The eclipses occurring this month (the full moon lunar eclipse will occur on July 16th) are considered to be particularly significant and powerfully influential on human behavior (although it is not limited to human behavior) because of some of the other influences being created by the position of our celestial brothers and sisters, such as the aspects being created by Saturn and Pluto and their relation to the Sun and Moon.

Other Players Doing Their Dance…

Mercury and Mars are dancing around together, which can lead to some, um, incendiary words. And perhaps a little extra special caution might be warranted as they take their ‘dance’ from the watery ‘feeling’ space of Cancer and move into Leo – which is a fire sign, and thus could lead to putting those words into action.

As I’ve done before, here are links to two of my favorite sources of information on astrological events and how they might play out in our personal lives as well as the greater world environment, Kaypacha’s Pele Report and the report of Chani Nicholas.

With respect to reading Chani’s assessment of what’s going on astrologically and how it might impact you and your life, it’s important to know both your sun sign and your ‘rising’ or ‘ascendant’ sign. I’ve discussed this before, and here’s the link to help refresh your recollection on one of the sites you can go to that will calculate both your sun sign and ‘ascendant’ or  ‘rising’ sign. That way, you can read both and see which resonates with your experience.

My Observations

Eclipses tend to be revelatory in nature. In other words, when the moon gets between the Earth and the sun and blocks out all the light shining upon us from the sun, the metaphoric result is that things that were hidden or in the shadows, things that we couldn’t see because the sun was too bright, are revealed. And with the planet Pluto aspecting all of this, we’re in for some dramatic revelations of things we didn’t know about or failed to see before this.

Quite amazingly, within the past three days or so, as we’ve approached this initial total solar eclipse, I’ve personally witnessed people I know suddenly and unexpectedly discovering information (the ‘truth’) about, a variety of circumstances, such as:

(1) their life partner’s interests ‘elsewhere;’ (2) a health situation that a loved one was attempting to hide from both my friend (and probably themselves); (3) significant misrepresentations and subterfuge being propounded by a company represented by a friend of mine; and (4) six years of royalties not having been paid by the publisher of a book written by someone I know.

Each of these ‘truths’ were exposed literally within the past three days, which I find rather astonishing.

Remember – What’s Your Ascendant?

I urge you to pay attention and take notice if you or the people around you (family, friends, co-workers) are discovering new and often dramatic or significant information touching upon their life in some way.

The links above to Kaypacha and Chani can provide you with more in-depth information that you can apply to your personal situation.

Again, believe me, I know. This stuff is complicated and your eyes may glaze over when you hear a description of all the ‘aspects’ (i.e., the Sun is conjunct the Moon’s North Node in Cancer while in direct opposition to Saturn and Pluto in Capricorn).  It can definitely sound like gobbledeegook. But both astrologers take that technical information and translate it into fascinating understandings of how they can be interpreted.

Plant the Seeds of Your Highest Intentions

Finally, I encourage you to remember that New Moons are the perfect time to plant the seeds of new beginnings! And this New Moon tomorrow is particularly powerful not only because of the eclipse but also because it is a ‘super moon.’

So plant the seeds your soul yearns to cultivate. Create something new. Take a risk. Be courageous. Dream big.

(T-879)

Uranus Enters Taurus – Day 116

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Photo: nasa.gov

Uranus Entered Taurus Yesterday

I mentioned this astrological event in my post yesterday, along with the new moon that occurred in Pisces, but I didn’t say all that much about it.

The movement of Uranus into Taurus, however, has a lot more long-term significance than the waxing and waning of the moon, since Uranus has an orbit of 84 years. Indeed, the last time Uranus moved into Taurus was 1934.

It Takes Uranus 84 Years to Move Through All 12 Signs of the Zodiac

That means that Uranus takes seven years to move through each individual sign. Thus, for the past seven years, it has been transiting through Aries, which is the first sign of the natural zodiac. So, if you happen to be an Aries, then Uranus has been impacting your 1st house over the past seven years: so you may have experienced opportunities to revolutionize or innovate your concept of yourself, how you present yourself to the world, or sudden changes to how you think about yourself, etc.

In order to help you know which house of the zodiac Uranus is impacting, you need to refer back to those two basic and essential aspects of your chart that I wrote about a while ago: your sun sign, and your rising or “ascendant” sign.

Uranus Brings Change – Often the Sudden and Unpredictable Kind

Uranus is a planet that is often associated with sudden change, innovation, and creative insights. Change is a really huge aspect of Uranus, and whatever house it is traveling through for us is where we will probably see the most intense change or shift in our status quo. For me, I always associate the image of a lightning strike with Uranus.

Of course, it helps if you can figure out which houses in particular of yours Uranus is in when it moves into Taurus. You can find that out by reading your sun sign and your ascendant sign in this excellent article by Chani from May 2018, when Uranus first moved into Taurus.

It just so happens that Uranus actually entered Taurus on May 15th of 2018 and stayed in that sign until this past November. So it’s possible that we may have had a preview of what the next seven years will bring us if we look back on how things unfolded for us in that six month period of May – November of 2018.

Uranus Retrograded Into Aries From November 2018 through 6 March 2019

As Chani actually explains in the article linked just above, in November 2018, Uranus went retrograde and returned to Aries for one last kiss goodbye. This retrograde into Aries lasted from November through yesterday – March 6th, 2019.

Just as a point of interest? Following is an assessment from 2011 of what Uranus moving into Aries might bring. Remember, Uranus moved into Aries in 2011. When I read this, I find the possibilities mentioned, knowing what actually did happen, pretty fascinating.

Now, however, Uranus is in Taurus, for good, until April 2026.

I don’t know about you, but when I contemplate these longer transits, I can’t help but wonder how life will change, both personally and globally, for each of us. It is fascinating to track whether the changes we all inevitably experience in life bear some correlation to the ‘house’ through which Uranus is moving in our chart.

My life certainly was struck by lightning in 2011 – and I’ll never think of myself in quite the same way again. I’m an Aries, so the transit that began in 2011 was in my 1st house. The house of Who I Am.

Uranus – nationalgeographic.com.au

(T- 995)

Astrology and the New Moon – Day Twenty Four

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Esoteric Means of Understanding Ourselves Better

As you’re all discovering day-by-day and post by post (thank you for hanging with me), I’m fascinated by a wide range of esoteric means we humans have developed to help us understand our place in the Universe. I’ve been on the quest to understand myself better since my earliest memories. And of course, the admonition 28 years ago by the Taos Pueblo elder to “know” myself, as I describe in my book Owl Medicine , only clinched that early urge to soul search and gave me permission to translate it into a life-long passion.

Numerology

There’s numerology, which, as I’ve only tangentially touched upon, uses numbers based on a Pythagorean system of 9 to set forth a roadmap of our lives and the various gifts and challenges that our souls have come into this particular lifetime to experience and hopefully learn from and use to evolve.

Astrology

Another system is astrology. I’ve been fascinated for decades by this means of cultivating self-awareness, which is incredibly complicated and is far and away so much more in-depth and rich than the trite paragraph we used to read in the newspaper about our ‘sun sign’ when I was a kid.

At its most basic, astrology takes into account your ‘natal’ chart, which is the exact position of a wide range of heavenly bodies at the minute of your birth, from the perspective of where your mother was at the moment you were born. From this snapshot of the solar system, you do indeed know your ‘sun sign’ – which is the sign of the zodiac in which the sun was located at the minute of your birth.

Discovering Your Rising Sign or “Ascendant”

What many people don’t realize is that, while one’s sun sign can be a somewhat prominent indicator of traits that you carry in this lifetime, an actually more intimate and accurate indicator of who you are is what’s called your ‘rising’ sign – or the sign that was ‘on the ascendant’ at the minute of your birth. So, if you have a chance, I strongly urge you to research and discover your ascendant or rising sign.

One way to do this is to access the free website Astrodienst. (There are many others. I just happen to use this one.) You can either set up an account (again, for free) or just log on as a guest. Either way (under the ‘Free horoscopes’ tab, go to the far right and click on ‘natal chart, ascendant’ under the heading ‘Drawings and Calculations’) you can input your birth information. You’ll need the date of your birth (obviously), as well as the time (and this is important, as some important shifts can take place within minutes), but you can always input a default time until you can secure your specific birth time from your mom (wink) or on the ‘long form’ of your birth certificate. You’ll also need to know your birthplace (city, state, country). All of this information will add up to giving you a much richer, deeper picture of the heavens at the moment you arrived.

The three easiest and most basic aspects for you to discover are (a) your sun sign, which you probably know already unless you live under a rock; (b) your ascendant or ‘rising’ sign; and (c) your moon sign. Just knowing and delving into those three aspects of your personal astrological makeup can bring you an incredible amount of insight into yourself and how you ‘tick.’

What I find fascinating is how every form of roadmap that our souls have created for us to discover and work with, if we choose, matches up. In other words, when Alison Baughman gave me a comprehensive numerological reading years ago, it dovetailed in truly eerie and profound ways with every astrological reading I’ve received. (All told, I think I’ve had three or four separate astrologers read my natal chart for me, cultivating decades-long relationships with two of them, which means I would go back to them periodically to have them read my ‘transits.’)

I’ll talk about transits another day.

Roadmaps of Our Souls

My point, though, is that no matter what roadmap you look at, they all pretty obviously chart the same unique challenges and gifts. So it is as if we (as souls) leave cosmic magical breadcrumbs for our ego-selves to discover, in order to help us understand our strengths, weaknesses, and potential destinies, should we have the desire to discover them.

I started this post intending to discuss the fact that we will be experiencing a ‘new moon’ tomorrow and what that might mean for each of us. And then I got sidetracked into writing what I wrote.

But! The good news (for me) is that I just now realized that the new moon actually won’t ‘arrive’ until 2:20 a.m. EST on Friday, December 7th.

So maybe I’ll save what I was going to say tonight until tomorrow!

(T-1087)