The Astrology Blog 13 December 2021
All times in GMT
“As my mother, her support for me was unconditional – she taught me to embrace my dreams, reject conformity and challenge the dark voices of fear and self doubt.”
“As a writer, she taught me to defy genre boundaries and surrender to my obsessive passions.”
Christopher Rice – son of Anne Rice (author of Interview with the Vampire)
https://www.astrotheme.com/astrology/Anne_Rice
ANNE RICE – who died at the weekend, age 80
In the face of all the death fear connected to Covid and the new variant Omicron, and the Armageddon devastation of the tornados that ripped through six US States this weekend (the wrecking ball of Saturn – Uranus), it was strangely moving to read of a natural passing.
Anne Rice’s son Christopher wrote that the immensity of the family grief could not be overstated, a reminder that absolutely nothing ever prepares us no matter the age/cause, but his heartfelt epitaph quoted above for his mother are somehow words that resonate for all of us in these dark days. What a wonderful life teacher she was for her children, and now for us? Somehow I think that as a writer she would love that, in capturing her essence, her son touches a deep chord in all of us.
I wasn’t familiar with her horoscope but when I read her son’s words, about fearlessness in life and in feelings, and how he sat with her at the end in awe of her strength and courage, and then how she also wrote erotic fiction, the astrologer in me couldn’t help but think that she would have very strong Scorpio or Plutonic factors in her chart. So her Sun sign is Libra, but she has Mercury and Venus in Scorpio (there’s the erotic), with the former also square Pluto. Mercury rules everything to do with the spoken and written word, Scorpio rules life and death – so there’s your interview with the vampire.
COMPUTERIZED ASTROLOGY – ONE SIZE DOES NOT FIT ALL
Thank you Anne Rice for helping me to lead straight in to an issue I want to address about reading computerized astrology reports, and the dangers of putting any faith in these. I was particularly keen to “meet” a new client last week as our correspondence ahead of her reading referenced the fact that she’d looked up her chart on astrotheme and that “what I read gave me a sleepless night.”
Astrotheme is absolutely brilliant for looking up horoscopes in terms of all the info being checked and calculated for us, the website has a huge database of celebrities, a section for calculating your own horoscopes and creating your own database of up to 200 people, for whom you can then look up progressions and solar arc directions. It also tells you exactly where all the planets are the moment you log on.
Unfortunately, the moment any website ventures into interpretation is when it all starts to go horribly wrong. I was horrified to read from my client that when she looked at the “meaning” of her chart that it included, “being absolutely penniless in later years due to someone else, a brutal death, and being a burden to my family due to an accident from a drunk hit and run driver, war or something else!”
When I looked at the report myself I could see how alarming it was, with comments like life starting really well but being ruined by ungrateful family, and “advice” such as, “One must carefully distinguish between genuine friends and flatterers, if one is to prevent one’s life from ending in painful poverty and loneliness.” FFS!! As it turned out this lovely client has a mind-bendingly hard enough life already without reading this crap.
All of this kind of stuff can be easily and instantly dismantled. For example, some of this was based on having an 8th House Sun in Gemini – um, so does Nicole Kidman. The chances of her life ending in painful poverty and loneliness I would say are zero.
So stay away from scary and irresponsible “one size fits all” generic astrology. It can only ever be totally wide of the mark with the occasional lucky hit. And that, my friends, is what so many people think astrology amounts to, and who can blame them. Part of my job as I see it is to promote how astrology really works – eg not everyone with Mercury in Scorpio will write about vampires or eroticism.
There’s only way to understand your own horoscope and that’s to interpret the natal and current pictures within the CONTEXT of your own life. This is also how dream analysis works, another language of the symbolic. Your own unconscious selects the images for you to decode, someone else could dream about the same images but to them they would mean something entirely different.
This is also how the tarot works, and is easier to demonstrate as it’s so less technical than astrology, so here’s an example using the notorious Death card, which speaks of endings or loss and the consequent need for change and adjustment, often in a way that is painful or extremely challenging.
In a reading for a woman in her mid forties the Death card came up as the center card of the Celtic Cross. The center card can be read as “the heart of the matter”, the card that speaks of where we are right now. Before I could say a word she put her finger on the card and said, “That’s how I feel. Dead.”
Her story was one of giving up her personal dreams and a great deal of freedom because of a controlling husband and a demanding grown up son. The Death card was incredibly powerful for her as the card spoke to her in a way that moved her, making her see that she was too young to “die” or to offer up her own life as a sacrifice to others.
For another woman asking about the future of a relationship the Death card showed as the outcome. This did not mean that he or she would die but that the relationship would. When I broke that news to her she admitted that it was already “dying on its feet” (listen to your clients, they will speak their own spread or chart for you). He was another wrong choice in a series of doomed love affairs and the Death card reinforced the message that she needed to stop and look at why she was attracting “dead end” relationships.
From these examples we can see how the Death card fulfills its symbolic role even though the stories are totally different.
WHAT’S HAPPENING THIS WEEK?
Some weeks have significant astrological activity every day, some weeks everything goes quiet while others have important events spread throughout the week. Either way it seems that putting the “at a glance” astrology for the week ahead at the beginning of the blog is something that students in particular like to see, so I’ll include this in the format from now on.
This week falls into the category of big events falling at either end of the week with a stack of minor aspects in the middle –
Monday 13 December
- Mars ingress Sagittarius 09.54
- Mercury ingress Capricorn 17.53
Tuesday 14 December
- Mercury 0 Capricorn semi-sextile Mars 0 Sagittarius 00.17
Friday 17 December
- Sun 25 Sagittarius semi-sextile Pluto 25 Capricorn 05,19
- Sun 26 Sagittarius semi-sextile Venus 26 Capricorn 04.29
Sunday 19 December
- Full Moon 27 Gemini 04.37
- Venus turns retrograde at 26.29 Capricorn 10.37
Monday 20 December
- Sun 28 Sagittarius sextile Jupiter 28 Aquarius 00.33
MERCURY AND MARS – NEW CYCLES
So the week starts with two personal planets changing sign –
Monday 13 December
- Mars ingress Sagittarius 09.54
- Mercury ingress Capricorn 17.53
Tuesday 14 December
- Mercury 0 Capricorn semi-sextile Mars 0 Sagittarius 00.17
This takes Mars out of his own but very intense sign of Scorpio (been there since 30 October) and as he has a 2 year cycle he won’t be back in Scorpio until October 2023. The red planet isn’t in “dignity” in Sag but is generally happy in the fire signs and Mars will be travelling through this sign until 24 January.
Mars in freedom loving and travel seeking Sag (a Jupiter sign) would usually be a great big tick for foreign holidays and for being on the move over the festive period, and for many that may still be possible if you’re on top of the necessary paperwork (Mercury), but his change of sign does happen hand in hand with Mercury entering Saturn’s sign of Capricorn.
These two planets then align by a minor aspect, the semi-sextile, ie half a sextile, formed when two planets reach the same degree when exactly one sign apart, considered mostly harmonious but a lot depends on the nature of the planets involved. In this instance we have door slamming Saturn in the mix.
Minor aspects tend to indicate just that, minor things that work through quickly, but on this occasion also add into the mix that 0 degrees of anything is powerful and known as a “critical degree”, not as in crisis – although it can sometimes be the case – but as in highly sensitized. This combination adds up then to things like serious decisions, erring on the side of caution, back to the drawing board, starting something from scratch or toning down more ambitious plans with a dollop of common sense, moving to plan B.
But it’s also really good for planning ahead in terms of Christmas but also work ideas and projects of any kind. In business matters pay close attention to what comes your way as the week kicks off, the sowing of seeds or making new contacts could be the start of productive things taking shape.
A COMPLEX FULL MOON
The rest of the week is a slow build up to the Full Moon that falls in that awkward aspect the “blind spot” quinqunx (planets aligning exactly five signs apart) to Venus and Pluto. These two made their first exact conjunction on Saturday (next one will be Christmas Day – eek! – and the third and final one will be 3 March) so see last week’s blog for more on that.
But basically that conjunction is being highlighted again as the Sun picks up both of these planets at the end of the week, again by the minor aspect semi-sextile –
Friday 17 December
- Sun 25 Sagittarius semi-sextile Pluto 25 Capricorn 05,19
- Sun 26 Sagittarius semi-sextile Venus 26 Capricorn 04.29
Sunday 19 December
- Full Moon 27 Gemini 04.37
- Venus turns retrograde at 26.29 Capricorn 10.37
The exact moment of any Full Moon is when the Moon reaches the position exactly opposite the Sun, hence receiving all of the Sun’s light and making the full disc of the Moon visible in our night sky. This is therefore a moment of illumination literally and symbolically, only this time with Venus-Pluto in the shadows.
Boris Johnson has an almost exact Sun – Venus conjunction at 28 Gemini, so the Full Moon lighting up these personal planets is firstly a showing for the birth of a daughter this week (Venus = feminine, lunations very powerful in the astrology of pregnancy/childbirth). The pregnancy was announced back in July but, is it just me, or had anyone else forgotten about it? There was no press hoo-ha, just the news that the baby had arrived. It felt very “under the cover of darkness” – just like the quinqunx to the hidden hand of Pluto.
https://www.astrotheme.com/astrology/Boris_Johnson
Boris’ address to the nation last night was also sprung on us and a great fuss was being made about the fact that it was pre-recorded, his accusers saying that this was to avoid questions from the press about the Christmas parties last year and also to deflect attention from those. Probably true given the astrology. The tricky or clever side, depending on your point of view, to Gemini is the ability to slide out of confrontation and to throw up a third ball to distract your attention from the two already being juggled.
From a Covid point of view this blind spot from Venus-Pluto in aspect to the Full Moon is not great. Boris’s address was to alert us to, well, the obvious, an Omicron Emergency, and in mythology remember that Pluto wears the helmet of invisibility. Venus is pleasure seeking, that could now come with a heavy price as thousands are exposed to the rapid spread of an unseen virus that is desperately mutating in order to stay alive.
But mutations also weaken the strength of the virus, apparently, so the only plus side could be less intense symptoms. But as I said the other week, the damage has probably been done for Christmas plans for thousands. And Boris’ waning credibility may well now start his undoing. He needs to find a way of coming out of this smelling of roses (Venus) lol.
VENUS TURNS RETROGRADE, CONJUNCT PLUTO
The Full Moon is followed just six hours later by Venus turning retrograde at 26.29 Capricorn, still conjunct Pluto at 25 Capricorn. The first exact conjunction of the two fell at 25.19 Capricorn this last Saturday afternoon (11 Dec), what were you doing then? At the time I was messaging with my niece about the fact that several kids in her daughter’s class at school had tested positive for Covid. I said keep her off school, she said let’s wait till after the weekend, I said the astrology is horrible, she messaged me the next day to say that her daughter’s two particular friends in class had now tested positive – so no more school.
This little cameo brings it all much too close to home of course but it’s also an indication that the infectiousness of the new variant, and its killjoy (kill – Pluto, joy – Venus) consequences has found a perfect breeding ground in schoolrooms and am sure elsewhere as well.
Apart from the obvious links to the pandemic, what else might a retrograde Venus mean? Is this goodbye to love, or discovering that love isn’t love? Well, yes, for some. If you’re in an impossible relationship of any kind (stuck in a miserable one, feeling trapped, having an affair, trying to get a new attraction off the starting blocks and so on) then these are not ideal conditions. Seeing an unhealthy relationship for what it really is, however, could be an eye opener but wanting to leave or start a new life with less than two weeks to go before Christmas isn’t what you’d call great timing. No wonder the busiest time for divorce lawyers is January.
But the great thing about astrology is that it’s always reminding us that this too shall pass. The Venus-Pluto double act will be running until March but at least Venus herself will turn direct again at the end of January. That will be the literal turning point for many in resolving romantic issues, whether you’re ending or mending or somewhere in the middle. Venus also rules money so financial matters will also take a general upswing in about six weeks time. Venus is also as already mentioned not just love and money but everything to do with pleasure seeking and enjoyment. If anything in your own calendar gets cancelled you can blame it on Pluto.
The best aspect in the making is, after the Full Moon, the Sun moving on to align harmoniously with Jupiter –
Monday 20 December
- Sun 28 Sagittarius sextile Jupiter 28 Aquarius 00.33
This aspect is exact just as we tip into next Monday so it definitely counts for the coming weekend. It falls just ten hours after Venus turning retrograde so there are definitely some silver linings here, especially as Jupiter just loves to plan surprises, rules everything to do with luck, opportunity and liberation, and is the master of luck of the 11th hour variety. So this combination smacks of a door closing but a window opening.
Pay close attention to whatever or whoever claims your attention. And if nothing else Sun – Jupiter combos are packed with optimism and fun potential, so get creative. Whatever it takes to keep your spirits up, do it.
But not recklessly. Remember that Jupiter’s other role is the Protector and is currently ending his long journey through Aquarius, sign of the collective, the sign that’s ruled by both Saturn and Uranus. These two major planets have their finale square to come next week so I honestly think that it’s better to give up gracefully on anything that’s too risky for this Christmas. When in doubt, play it safe.
Until next week, with love from Greece
Joanna
