The Astrology Blog 7 November 2022
All times in BST
“Don’t it always seem to go, You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.”
Joni Mitchell – 7 Nov 1943, Sun conjunct Mercury 13-15 Scorpio
https://www.astrotheme.com/astrology/Joni_Mitchell
“Nothing in life is to be feared; it is only to be understood.”
Marie Curie – b 7 Nov 1867
https://www.astrotheme.com/astrology/Marie_Curie
If you’d like to receive the weekly blog straight to inbox on Monday mornings, it’s free, and you can either send an email address to me joannaw@otenet.gr to be added to the mailing list or anyone can sign up from the website. Here’s the link for the sign up box –
If you want to see the visual of the wheel with the sign and degree of the planets in your own or any other natal chart, to check against the signs and degrees important this week as outlined in the blog, here’s the link to Astrotheme.
Enter your data into the boxes provided, and you’ll also find an invaluable databank of thousands of celebrities. You can also store up to 200 charts of your own:
https://www.astrotheme.com/horoscope_chart_sign_ascendant.php
WHAT’S HAPPENING THIS WEEK?
As I flagged up last week, this coming week is packed out. Here’s your “at a glance” picture for the week and we can see immediately that we have the Sun, Mercury and Venus all moving through the middle degrees of Scorpio. Am including Venus’ aspects from this last weekend that completed this morning – not yesterday (Sunday) morning as I mistakenly put in last week’s blog –
Saturday 5 November
- Venus 17 Scorpio opposite Uranus 17 Taurus 22.23
Monday 7 November
- Venus 18 Scorpio square Saturn 18 Aquarius 07.35
Tuesday 8 November
- Full Moon/Total Lunar Eclipse 16 Taurus 11.03
- Sun conjunct Mercury 16 Scorpio 16.44
Wednesday 9 November
- Mercury 17 Scorpio opposite Uranus 17 Taurus 02.41
- Sun 17 Scorpio opposite Uranus 17 Taurus 08.27
Thursday 10 November
- Mercury 18 Scorpio square Saturn 18 Aquarius 07.53
- Venus 22 Scorpio trine Neptune 22 Pisces 12.24
Friday 11 November
- Sun 18 Scorpio square Saturn 18 Aquarius 08.05
Saturday 12 November
- Mercury 22 Scorpio trine Neptune 18.37
Sunday 13 November
- Venus 26 Scorpio sextile Pluto 26 Capricorn 09.39
So we had Venus in Scorpio playing into the big Saturn – Uranus square that is still a dominant feature of our skies, even though the two are now “separating” – ie the gap between them will continue to get wider between now and the end of the year as Saturn gradually picks up speed and Uranus continues to go the other way.
This is challenging stuff because Saturn and Uranus are both slow moving and in themselves opposite in nature. In short –
- Saturn makes the rules, Uranus breaks them. Saturn likes stability, familiarity, the word “should”, can be happy being miserable and pessimistic.
- Uranus likes things like raising eyebrows, change of any kind, new ways of doing things, rebellion and drama. Put them together and it can get very messy!
Literally. This weekend our glorious Indian summer vanished with a massive storm and my garden is trashed. The winds were so strong that they blew a heavy sunbed and large plant pots off the balcony. Most of Nidri had a two hour power cut but the next village had no power at all until the next day.
Uranus rules electricity and technology, and everything’s been packing up. My internet is still more off than on, especially in the evenings, I have to wait 15 days for a part for my oven and grill, the dvd player is defunct and my phone charger died on me just a few hours before the storm hit. Fortunately I had enough time to dash out and buy a new one.
Stories going on around me, for other people, include the death of a lifelong friend, at least two serious health issues, an eviction order and a couple of very wobbly relationships – and that’s all in the space of the last two days. I’d like to say that there were some surprises of the nice kind too but I haven’t heard of any as yet!
So this week it’s Mercury and the Sun’s turn to repeat the same pattern – opposing Uranus and then squaring up to Saturn, aspects that will take up until Friday morning to complete. In the process they also meet up with each other (a conjunction), and it’s all wrapped around the Lunar Eclipse at 16 Taurus.
TOTAL LUNAR ECLIPSE – LOVE, MONEY & LOTTERY
Eclipses always travel in pairs (a Solar and two weeks later a Lunar, or vice versa). If you have natal planets or Angles (beginning of the 1st/4th/7th/10th Houses) at or very close (up to 5 degrees away) to the Eclipse degrees then this will be an especially important time period for you. The Eclipses can signal different events but for some there will be a link to whatever unfolded at the time of the Solar Eclipse of two weeks ago –
- A Solar Eclipse – occurs when the Sun is obscured by the shadow of the Moon at the time of a New Moon
- A Lunar Eclipse – occurs when the Moon is obscured by the shadow of the earth at the time of a Full Moon
This time around the two Eclipses are both underlined by the fact they fall in very close aspect to other planets –
Tuesday 25 October
- New Moon/Solar Eclipse exactly 2 Scorpio, conjunct Venus at 2.40 Scorpio 11.50
Tuesday 8 November
- Full Moon/Lunar Eclipse 16 Taurus, opposite Mercury 16 Scorpio/conjunct Uranus 17 Taurus 11.03
Also note that the Solar Eclipse was conjunct Venus, while the Lunar is in Taurus, Venus’ feminine sign. Top issues for Venus/Taurus/Scorpio are love, money, power so it’s extremely unlikely that the Powerball jackpot in the US will stay un-won, even though the odds of winning it are a staggering one in 292.2 million.
Lottery fever has gripped the country as the pot has risen to a head spinning world-record prize of $1.9bn (£1.7bn) after 39 consecutive draws (Mondays, Wednesdays & Saturdays) without a winning ticket. So I would expect the Monday (today) draw to be the most likely for finding a winner, as the Eclipse will be “in the making” (exact tomorrow) or, if not, then either of the other two draws this week.
When should you play the lottery based on your own horoscope? No easy answer to this one – of course, or else I would’ve done it by now J But, as I was taught by one of my very first teachers the wonderful Derek Appleby, the first step for any question is “natal promise”.
In other words, do you have a good chart for being blessed with money? Or any other question, do you have a good chart for relationships, family life, career, particular skills and so on? Derek used to say that unless the natal chart “promises” the possibility then no amount of Eclipses or lucky Jupiter transits are going to make any difference. I’ve found this to be true on countless occasions.
WHAT MAKES A GOOD CHART FOR MONEY?
Start by working with the following points –
- Ignore over simplified “cookbook” one size fits all interpretations – an empty 2nd House does NOT mean no money (Elon Musk) just as Saturn in the 2nd does NOT equal money problems (King Charles)
- Find the ruler of the 2nd House of money (the planet that rules the sign on that house cusp)
- Then note if there are any planets posited IN the 2nd House of money
- Assess the condition of the ruling planet AND any planets in the house – are they strong by sign, eg in their signs of dignity or exaltation?
- Are they weak by sign, eg in their signs of detriment or fall?
- Are they in aspect (linking) to other planets in the chart? It doesn’t matter if these aspects are the so called difficult ones like squares or oppositions
- Locate Jupiter – the Greater Benefic who rules expansion of all kinds, incl abundance, luck and opportunity
- Locate the Sun – natural ruler of the 5th House of pleasures and gambling – and note any planets IN the 5th
- Any other helpful factors? Eg Mutual Receptions seem to be powerful for money, which means two planets in each other’s signs. Elon Musk has a Moon (Virgo) – Mercury (Cancer) reception and Charles has a Sun (Scorpio) – Pluto (Leo) reception
- If you “make” the reception you change the sign but hold the degree – eg Charles has Sun at 22 Scorpio and Pluto at 16 Leo, so the reception would move Sun to 22 Leo, exactly conjunct 5th House cusp, and Pluto to 16 Scorpio
- Rishi Sunak, who was appointed Prime Minister on 25 October, right on the last Eclipse – b 12 May 1980, 12.50, Southampton – gives him an Ascendant of 29 Leo, a Fixed Star called Regulus, associated with fortune and fame. He has a mutual reception between Mercury (in Taurus) and Venus (in Gemini), with Mercury being ruler of the 2nd House, Venus being love, money and women. He marries into millions and the reception is made
- Test your money planet/s by transits for any past successes with money and see what shows
- I’d love to wager a bet that the winner of the US Powerball lottery will have planets at or very close to the Eclipse degrees and relevant transits to bring them to life, but the chance of ever being able to do that are probably zero!
Back to Eclipses and what do they mean? They get mixed press as this is not an area of cut and dried symbolism but basically they’re points of significant change that often involve power issues and/or the crux points of triangular situations, ie as symbolized by the intricate relationship between the three bodies of the Sun, Moon and Earth. Who is going to overshadow whom?
Key themes to look out for –
- Sorting winners from losers between twos or threes (Sun, Moon, Earth), eg affairs, job applications, house buying, any competitive situation. One person’s loss is another person’s gain – eg Liz Truss/Rishi Sunak
- Being overshadowed, feeling in the dark
- Themes of empowerment – disempowerment
- Themes of inevitability – Eclipses light a fuse
- Themes of loss/endings that change our life and set us on a different path
- Themes of symbolic death/rebirth – out with the old, in with the new, literally or psychologically
- Dealing with that which, until now, has been hidden from us in some way
- Revelations – sometimes on the run up to the Eclipse, sometimes even exactly on the day
- Revelations in the not very distant future, when we learn what happened when we weren’t looking, when we were in the dark or “when the light went out”
- Tipping points of change and goodbyes – no going back to something belonging to our old life
Final word on this Lunar Eclipse, just taken in itself, is that it happens opposite Mercury (news, info, communication, decisions etc) and conjunct unpredictable, wild child Uranus. It’s also a Total Eclipse – nothing partial or half hearted going on here.
If I had to sum this up it feels like some kind of scenario that is out of control or the grand finale of a situation that has just been waiting for some kind of derailment to sort it out. Out of the change and chaos new chapters will start but, as I said, it can be messy, like lids coming off pressure cookers. But any situation of the “something’s gotta give” variety is top of the list for being resolved under these celestial conditions.
THE SUN – MERCURY CONJUNCTION
The Sun – Mercury conjunction happens approximately every 2 months, so 6 times a year, 3 times when Mercury is moving direct like now (the superior conjunction) and 3 times when Mercury is retrograde (the inferior conjunction). So these alternate –
- Last superior conjunction was 16 July at 24 Cancer
- Last inferior conjunction was 23 September at 0 Libra
- This superior conjunction 8 November at 16 Scorpio – same date and degree as the Lunar Eclipse
- Next inferior conjunction will be 7 January at 17 Capricorn
Any planet, not just Mercury, conjunct the Sun to within 17 minutes of arc (ie just over a quarter of a degree) is said to be “cazimi” – defined as being in “the heart of the Sun”. The symbolism of this is about the other planet drawing strength from that heat instead of being burned up by it. It’s a window of opportunity, the stuff of light bulb moments, vital information or having the chance to get your point across exactly in the right way and at the right time. In that hot spot is a golden nugget of truth or a lifeline of help.
- This Mercury cazimi period lasts for nearly 24 hours as the two are travelling side by side, Mercury being at full speed
- This cazimi will therefore be from approx 6.00am on Tuesday through to 3.00am on Wednesday in the UK. Adjust to your own time zone – eg Greece 8.00am on Tuesday through to 5.00am on Wednesday
- Look out for that Mercury moment, especially things that shine a light into your understanding, help you to make a decision, negotiate a deal or find the right words to get an important conversation started. Information that surfaces on the cazimi is often invaluable and can make a real difference
- The fact that this cazimi period coincides exactly with the Lunar Eclipse heavily underlines the themes of light/shadow and vital info – pay close attention to whatever comes to light for you as this will point the way forwards and reveal the full nature of your life event, concerns or challenges for the coming weeks
Towards the end of the week Mercury and Venus both reach the end degrees of Scorpio and therefore pick up aspects to the slower moving planets, Neptune and Pluto who are also both late on in their respective signs of Pisces and Capricorn.
The Sun will do the same next week, and all three will then make the harmonious trine to Jupiter before moving on into the next sign of Sagittarius. Venus leads the way, aligning with Jupiter next Tuesday and changing sign early Wednesday. In other words, the middle of next week could hardly look more different from the middle of this one, and new cycles could present the classic silver linings. Jupiter just loves to work in disguise which may be all part and parcel of the secrecy and shadows of the moment,
Until next week, with love from Greece
Joanna