Tag Archives: Lunar Eclipse in Scorpio

Weekly Forecast April 29: Mars Opposite Saturn, Trine Pluto

Then the Awful Fight Began, illustration of Ragnarök by George Wright, 1908.

As we begin this week, we’re well into the destabilized zone between eclipses, with Uranus moving toward an exact square with Pluto in May. Many of us are feeling unsettled, shaken, irritated, and anxious, with that “other shoe about to drop” feeling.

We can’t help but feel unsettled in a rapidly changing world – or, perhaps to be more precise, a rapidly disintegrating world. This is an important part of the rebirth process, and unfortunately, it doesn’t happen fast enough to suit the expectation of instant gratification that’s ingrained in industrialized societies. It takes place over time – many years, in fact – and if we hold our breath waiting for the other shoe, we’ll turn blue and faint. Which, come to think of it, might not be such a bad idea. A little consciousness can be dangerous, as one is tempted to think he knows what’s best for the world.

From where I sit, it looks as though events are unfolding in perfect harmony with planetary movements, which themselves are in perfect harmony with the rhythm of the Universe. We just happen to be in a turbulent, breakdown phase that feels anything but harmonious. Could we just get this over with and get on with rebirth? In a word … no. Just as individuals go through periodic breakdown and rebirth (some more than others), society as a whole goes through these cycles as well. It takes as long as it takes, and that can feel very threatening, especially when our survival is at stake.

In astrology, upheaval is most closely associated with Uranus, while Pluto is the planet of death, transformation, and rebirth. (For more on the approaching Uranus-Pluto square, I highly recommend the latest article by Barbara Hand Clow.) The Full Moon eclipse in Scorpio brought these difficult themes to the fore. Personally, I’ve had to confront serious issues in the past week that could change my course. I’ll share them with you in a moment, but first let’s look at this week’s aspects.

Throughout the week, the Sun and Mars remain in conjunction in Taurus by less than 5 degrees, and both oppose Saturn and trine Pluto. Saturn and Pluto are in sextile and also in a special relationship called mutual reception. Before Saturn entered Scorpio last October, these two hadn’t been in mutual reception since the American Revolution. With Uranus and Pluto also in aspect, the energy for radical change and upheaval is multiplied by orders of magnitude. By the time this is over two years from now, political boundaries likely will have changed, and the world will look different. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

The Sun and Mars both represent the individual – our personal identities, desires, ego boundaries, and self-expression. The most materialist of all the signs, Taurus tends to be placid and non-confrontational but also has a well-deserved reputation for stubborn resistance. Taurus doesn’t win by outright aggression but by outlasting everyone else in the fight. Long after others throw their hands up in frustration, Taurus is still plodding along, holding out, holed up, and prepared to hang in there until the very end. However, Saturn in Scorpio takes no prisoners and smokes out the resistance, and Saturn and Pluto are working in tandem, so there’s no refuge. If you’re still living for material goals and judge success – your own and others’ – by how much stuff you’ve got, you may be forced to rethink your position. As an example, there seems to be a feeling of entitlement (in this country, at least) to more stuff for less money. For some people, it’s their main goal, which is how we got Wal-Mart – a bargain with the devil, if ever there was one.

But there is a way out, and that’s through Neptune and the collective unconscious. Neptune dissolves ego boundaries. We spend so much time trying to figure out who we are and what makes us special that we tend to forget we’re supposed to be working together. The point of finding your true purpose in life isn’t to make you more competitive and marketable, but to give your special gift to the world and thus make the world a better place for everyone, yourself included. There’s a difference between selfishness and enlightened self-interest. At 12 degrees Pisces, Chiron also is in the mix, reinforcing the idea that healing will come through compassion, empathy, and seeing beyond material reality. Even those who are waking up to the energetic underpinnings of physical reality (my definition of “spiritual”) tend to think of the material world as more important and “real,” and the spiritual world as an afterthought. In fact, the reverse is true.

Mars opposes Saturn and the Sun trines Pluto on Wednesday. On the same day, Mercury enters Taurus, which may slow us down and help us focus on practical matters. Mercury sextiles Neptune on Saturday and opposes Saturn on Sunday, and he’ll trine Pluto next week. So the foregoing themes are going to remain in play right up until the New Moon solar eclipse on May 9.

As for my own eclipse experience, I’m being forced to confront two harsh realities. The first is my own mortality. Shortly after my birthday in February, my older sister died. We were estranged, so I’d already done the bulk of my grieving years before, and I bore her no ill will, not even for her fundamentalist viewpoint that I was practicing witchcraft. A few days before she died, I sent her a heart-felt note wishing her love, deep peace, and serenity. What hit me hardest was that all of my older siblings were gone, and of seven children, I’m now the oldest living. In other words, “I’m next.” Given the ages of mortality of my immediate family, I have another six or seven years – maybe ten, if I clean up my diet and start a sound fitness routine. Then, maybe not. My father’s doctor recommended that he walk more. He had a heart attack on an evening walk to the corner store and was dead before he hit the ground. I’m not afraid to die – provided, of course, that it’s quick and efficient. Dropping dead on my daily walk would be OK, second to going peacefully in my sleep. A protracted illness is quite another matter, especially since I have no health coverage.

The second harsh reality is more immediate (unless, of course, I drop dead on my daily walk this afternoon). As much as I value spiritual concerns, one does need to pay for food, shelter, Internet, eye care, and an occasional visit to the dentist. When I first began RealAstrologers, I had a five-year plan to create something resembling what Christopher Witecki has done with SoulGarden. Going to film school was part of my strategy. In the meantime, I’d hoped to grow the business with my unique “hybrid” reports, plus telephone consultations. I live very simply, and yet I’ve not been able to make it work. A few years back, I tried getting a day job to help support the site, but as many of you know, I suffered a serious back injury that makes it impossible for me to go that route again. And because of my age and the economy, it’s not likely I’d even find some menial office work.

This reality was hit home in a post on Willow’s Web (thanks to the reader who sent me the link) in which she responded to a reader’s comment that her blog wasn’t worth a donation equivalent to $2.50 a month. I’m sorry to have to say this, but most people come to my site for the free content and leave, perhaps to go to other free sites. As Willow wrote, if you continually come here and take what I offer without giving anything back, you are acting as an energy drain. Until now, that has been my choice, but I have a hard decision to make, and it will depend on your response. If you’ve recently ordered a report or sent a donation, please ignore what I’m about to say. For those who have not, I ask you to please use the donation button in the sidebar or click here. If you are blessed with relative plenty right now, please leave a little extra, because there are readers who truly cannot afford to pay (and not because they just remodeled the kitchen).

I know from the e-mails I receive that many of you love what I do and rely on my forecasts to help you make sense of these turbulent, unsettling times. But if there aren’t enough of you – or not enough who are willing and able to help me sustain the site – then I’m going to be forced to stop blogging. Sharing what I know is important to me, not because I have some deep-seated desire for followers or groupies but because it feels like a calling. However, if I see that not that many people value my work enough to pay for it, then I’ll have to face the harsh truth. Better to know now, while I’ve still got a few years left to do something else.

Wishing you all much love and courage,
Pat

Weekly Forecast April 22: Full Moon Lunar Eclipse in Scorpio

At this week’s Full Moon, we have the first of three eclipses in a row and potentially the most difficult. As I write this post, we’re already within the pull of its dark energy.

Eclipses can provide windows on the past and future, and that’s especially true of a lunar eclipse in Scorpio. Pluto, ruler of Scorpio in modern tropical astrology, was named for the Roman god of the underworld, which morphed into the Christian concept of hell. But for some cultures – notably, the ancient Celts – there wasn’t so much an “underworld” as an “otherworld,” not underground but behind a veil. Julius Caesar remarked in his famous commentaries that the bravery of Celtic warriors stemmed from their belief that death on the battlefield meant only a brief detour to the otherworld.

Death and destruction are on our minds a lot lately, with deadly events three days in a row last week. Monday was the horrific explosion at the Boston Marathon. On Wednesday, a fertilizer plant exploded in Waco, Texas, killing 14 people and leveling the surrounding area. There was also a major earthquake on Tuesday near the border of Iran and Pakistan. Although the Boston explosion had the fewest casualties of the three, it’s the one that has dominated the news and unleashed the largest torrent of hate, fear, and ignorance. After all, one can’t hate the earth for moving or chemicals for reacting. Never mind that the factory owners previously had been fined for safety violations … or, for that matter, that the FBI had previous contact with Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the older of the two brothers suspected in the Boston bombing.

I predicted that facts would surface as Mercury approached a square to Pluto, but it seems that the Neptunian fog in the bombing chart is just getting thicker. The FBI claims it dropped its investigation of Tamerlan in 2011 because it didn’t have the right to keep an open file on a legal immigrant. Since when did that ever stop the feds? It’s also interesting that they mentioned the connection only after the suspect’s mother spilled the beans. Were they really going to try to get away with that? My sensitive Pisces nose smells rotten fish.

As I sifted through the news articles, one of the things that struck me most was the degree to which we are all under surveillance in a growing police state. This is Pluto in Capricorn, aided and abetted by Saturn in Scorpio. Some say it’s a good thing, that surveillance cameras helped quickly identify the suspects and provided irrefutable evidence of their guilt. Predictably, a lynch mob was ready to kill them on the spot, with no investigation or trial, and the citizens of Boston readily agreed to stay inside, turn off their cell phones, and close their businesses. As a drill for future uprisings and rebellions, the Boston lockdown was a resounding success. Homeland Security (sic) must have been pleased indeed.

While I was contemplating this trend and the possible scenarios under the Uranus-Pluto square, I came across a curious comment by veteran Washington journalist Howard Fineman in an editorial for The Huffington Post. “As if we needed any further proof, this week in Boston proves that there is no ‘over there.’ Ours is not a planet in which distance matters; nor does the passage of time. It may be that centuries-old grievances are erupting worldwide like volcanic lava,” he writes.

In other words, we’re all connected, not only in this time and place, but across all dimensions of time and space. And the veil between these dimensions is thinning, about to get thinner still with the eclipses. It’s a safe bet that Fineman isn’t a fan of astrology, but he sure was onto more than he thought when he wrote that apocalyptic sentence. I mentioned in last week’s post that I suspected the eclipses would open up a window on time, and I’ve also written a lot about the true meaning of the word “apocalypse,” which literally means “unveiling” – the lifting of the veil. What veil are we talking about if not the boundary that keeps us separated from other dimensions of time and space?

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Fineman begins his article with the eerie connection between 26-year-old Tamerlan and the historical Tamerlane, a 14th century warlord born in what is now Uzbekistan. Often called a successor to Genghis Khan, Tamerlane was born on April 9, 1336. (My source for this information is Tamerlane: Sword of Islam, Conqueror of the World, by Justin Marozzi.) Tamerlane is the English corruption of his given name, “Timur,” which means “iron.” Yes, as in Mars. Tamerlan Tsarnaev most certainly knew about his namesake. Hang onto your seat, because it gets creepier.

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Converted to the modern calendar, Tamerlane’s date of birth is April 17. That puts his Sun at 27 Aries, less than two degrees from the Sun-Mars conjunction in the Boston bombing chart. Tamerlane’s Saturn was retrograde at 6 degrees Scorpio, just 3 degrees from retrograde Saturn in the Boston chart. His North Node was at 2 degrees Aries – precisely the degree of Mercury in the Boston chart – and he had Pluto at 3 degree Aries. Pluto on the North Node strongly suggests someone with a powerful mission to transform. Of course, he also left unfathomable death and destruction in his path, another signature of Pluto. Asteroid Pallas in the Boston chart is conjunct Tamerlane’s Mars by exact degree. Pallas is named for the Greek goddess Athena, whose attributes included military strategy. In his own time, astrologers would have noted Tamerlane’s Mars-Jupiter conjunction as the sign of a great military leader.

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Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s Sun is at 27 degrees Libra, the sign opposite Aries. As it so happens, that’s the exact degree of the Ascendant in the chart for the Waco explosion, as well as for a similar explosion that took place in Toulouse, France, in September 2001. I don’t know yet what to make to make of this synchronicity. In ancient times, Libra was considered the sign of generals, but there’s no obvious connection to an explosion at a fertilizer plant, and as far as we know, Tamerlan wasn’t commanding an army in any sense of the word.

In one last bit of trivia, you might remember Tamerlane as the title of a poem by Edgar Allan Poe. The collection in which it appeared was published in Boston in 1827, not under Poe’s name but by “A Bostonian.”

I’d like to hear your thoughts.

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Returning to our era, let’s have a look at Thursday’s lunar eclipse, which promises to be intense. The Full Moon is at 5°46′ Scorpio, opposite the Sun at 5°46′ Taurus. Mars is still in conjunction with the Sun by less than 2 degrees, while the Moon is conjunct Saturn by three degrees. Put another way, we have a Mars-Saturn opposition superimposed on a lunar eclipse. Although modern astrologers don’t look at Mars and Saturn with the same fearful eye as our medieval predecessors, we nonetheless can’t ignore the challenges implied in an opposition between these two bad boys. Mars in Taurus is less aggressive than Mars in Aries, and perhaps the worst tension will be due to stubborn resistance and stonewalling. In general, there’s a feeling of sorrow – not that we don’t already have enough losses to grieve, and that brings up the point that much of what has happened in the past week could correlate to the eclipse. Nothing says eclipse-related events can’t happen before the eclipse date. In some cases, they can occur months in advance. So, although it’s not a bad idea to stay alert, I don’t think we need to hide under the bed.

There are two strong energy outlets in this chart, which is some cause for hope that we can spin challenges into opportunities. First, the Sun and Moon make a harmonious sextile/trine to Neptune. On the positive side, this is a reminder of how connected we really are, and not just to those we sympathize with or agree with. Neptune and Pisces, the sign it rules, are associated with deep compassion and empathy. It is through Neptune’s idealism that we can strive for a better world, while Saturn injects practical considerations and Mars represents action. The downside of Neptune is the tendency toward escapism, whether through drugs and alcohol, compulsive shopping, too much television, or any number of other addictions. Sure, we need to give our minds a rest from all the dismal news, and I certainly understand the urge to drown our sorrows. Just don’t stay there for too long.

The second outlet is a trine from Venus in Taurus to Pluto in Capricorn. This is a lusty, passionate combination that typically is interpreted as good for your sex life. And it might be. But Venus and Pluto also are about wealth and finances, and Pluto is, above all, about personal power and transformation, while Venus is the planet of love. There is strong energy here for transformation through love. For clues about how you can best use this energy, look at where Venus and Pluto fall in your chart. If you don’t know where that is, you can find out by ordering your StarGuide Spring forecast, which is now on sale for 25 percent off. It includes interpretations of all three eclipses, plus the New Moon in Gemini on June 8. The monthly report for May also is ready.

As I mentioned last week, the festival of Wesak falls at the Full Moon in Scorpio. In Eastern countries that go by the sidereal zodiac, Wesak will be celebrated at the next Full Moon, which is on May 25 and also happens to coincide with an eclipse. Since Wesak is essentially an Eastern festival, I feel that it’s more appropriate to celebrate it according to the sidereal zodiac. I’ll explain more about the differences in the zodiacs in Thursday’s Q&A. In the meantime, I’ll be making preparations to make full use of the energies of this powerful Full Moon in Scorpio. I don’t say that lightly, as my experience last year shook me to the core.

But isn’t that the point?

Wishing you all unconditional love and infinite courage,
Pat