Anne’s Lecture: Feb 13, Dallas
January 30, 2011
I’ll be speaking at the Astrological Society of North Texas on Sunday afternoon, February 13, 2011. The topic:
Astrological Archetypes and their Planetary Remedies
A lively series of illustrations and examples will take you deep into the energy patterns of our familiar planets. Then we’ll use this insight, plus wisdom from the Vedas, to discuss practical remedies for any planets that aren’t doing what you want them to do in your life! Both beginning and advanced astrologers will be able to use this information to improve patterns in their lives and in the lives of friends and clients. A limited number of Anne’s book on planetary remedies will be available for $12 each.
The meeting will be from 1:15 – 3:30 at
Stacy Furniture Community Room (upstairs)
1900 S. Main, Grapevine, TX (Dallas/Ft. Worth suburb)
Changing Astrology?????
January 30, 2011
I can’t begin to tell you how many questions I’ve received about the recent spate of “news” stories about the changing zodiac. I confess that my irritation (not with the questioners, but with the source) shows. This is SO stupid! In fact, every few years, some astronomer figures he can get his name in print and bash astrology (about which he knows nothing) with this very same story.
There were actually two stories in one. One was that the zodiac has been changing, slipping backwards, so that the sign you think you are is suddenly no longer your sign. Why this is suddenly news —well, we had some slow news days. This has actually been happening for over 2000 years.
If you want to be literal about constellations and zodiac signs, the sign of Aries would be about a week long and Pisces would be almost two months long. SIGNS are not the same as CONSTELLATIONS. Constellations don’t arrange themselves in the sky in equal-size 30-degree chunks. The zodiac is a circle of symbols. Circles have no beginning and no end, but in order to talk about them, we have to point somewhere and say “Start Here”. Western astrology starts by linking the beginning of Aries, the first sign, with the first day of spring: the spring equinox. India-n astrology usually starts by linking the beginning of Aries with a spot in the sky opposite the star Spica. The Indian system doesn’t drift because it’s linked with a star, rather than with the earth. Both measurements have a complex system of rules and procedures for interpretation that are internally consistent and are different from each other.
And what about the “NEW” sign, Ophuichus??? Well, if you run a chart for the year 0001 CE, you’ll see exactly the same thing you see today. And what is that?
First, imagine a map of the orbit of the sun around the earth. It will look a lot like the equator, but it’s in the sky (and in a different place). This is the ECLIPTIC, the linear path of the sun, that stays the same each and every year. Spread out across the Ecliptic, you’ll see the 12 constellations that give their names to the Zodiac signs. These constellations are ALL laid out, SPLAT!, right across the Ecliptic. The line of the Ecliptic goes right through the MIDDLE of these signs.
And 2010 years ago, exactly like today, one TEENSY corner of another constellation slips over the line. ONE STAR of the large constellation Ophuichus crosses the Ecliptic.
When you have 12 constellations neatly bisected by the ecliptic and one more, with the toenail of its little toe crossing the Ecliptic, and when this pattern has NOT CHANGED for way over 2000 years, you tell me how this is suddenly news!
Video: December-January AstroWeather
December 14, 2010
2011 Important Degrees
November 18, 2010
in Chronological Order
(Central Time Zone)
by Anne Beversdorf
Cap 13 Jan 4 Solar Eclipse, widely square Saturn (at 16)
………..* Jan 13 Mercury enters Capricorn, conjunct N.Node@2 and Pluto@5
……….. Jan 15 Mars enters Aquarius
Can 29 Jan 19 Full Moon, partile trine Jupiter, quincunx Neptune@27. Chiron@28
……….. Jan 22 Jupiter enters Aries
Lib 17 Jan 26 Saturn stations Retrograde (til June 23) partile square Mercury@17
(Sat at this degree from 1/10-2/12)
Aqu 13 Feb 2 New Moon, conj. Mars @14, trine Saturn @17
……….. Feb 3 Mercury enters Aquarius, semisext. Venus@0, sext. Jupiter@2
……….. Feb 10 Chiron enters Pisces (conj. Neptune@28)
Leo 29 Feb 18 Full Moon opposing Mars @26, quinc. Uranus@28, opposing Neptune@28, Chiron@0
……….. Feb 21 Venus enters Pisces, conj. Mars@29, semisext. Sun@1, sext. Pluto@6
……….. Feb 22 Mars enters Pisces, conj. Venus@1, Chiron, Neptune
………… Mar 1 Venus enters Aquarius
Pisc 14 Mar 4 New Moon, conj. Mars@7, sext. Pluto@7
………… Mar 9 Mercury enters Aries, conj. Uranus@29, widely conj. Jupiter@10, square Pluto@7
………… Mar 11 Uranus enters Aries, conj. Merc@4, Jup@10, square N.Node@29, Pluto@7
Vir 29 Mar 19 Full Moon, opp. Uranus@0, Mars@20, square N.Node@28
………… Mar 20 Vernal Equinox 6:21 pm, partile opp. Uranus@0
………… Mar 27 Venus enters Pisces, conj. Neptune@29, Chiron@2, square N.Node@28
Lib 14 Mar 28 Saturn/Jupiter Conjunction, square Pluto@7
Ari 24 Mar 30 Mercury Stations Retrograde (til April 23) widely conj. Uranus@1 (at this degree from 3/27-4/1)
………… Apr 2 Mars enters Aries, partile conj. Moon, conj. Uranus@1, square N.Node@27, Pluto @7
Ari 13 Apr 3 New Moon, opp. Sat@14, Jupiter@16, square Pluto@7
Pisc 0 Apr 4 Neptune enters Pisces, conj. Chiron@4, Venus@10
Cap 7+ Apr 9 Pluto Stations Retrograde, square Mars@6, Jup@17, Saturn@13, Uranus@2
Lib 28 Apr 17 Full Moon, opp. Neptune@0, Chiron@4, widely opp. Jupiter@19, sext. N.Node@27
………… Apr 21 Venus enters Aries, conj. Uranus@2, square Pluto@7, N.Node@27
Ari 12’53 Apr 23 Mercury Stations Direct, conj. Mars@17, opp. Saturn@12, widely opp. Jupiter@21, square Pluto@7 (at this degree 4/22-25)
Tau 12 May 3 New Moon, trine Pluto@7, with Saturn@ 11 Lib (Venus rulership) (note Jupiter conj. Mars @22-23 Aries, exact May 1)
………… May 11 Mars enters Taurus, widely conj. Merc-Venus-Jup@24+Aries, sext. Neptune@0, Chiron@5, trine Pluto@7
………… May 15 Mercury AND Venus enter Taurus, conj. Mars@4, Jupiter@26, sext. Neptune@0, trine Pluto@7
Sco 26 May 17 Full Moon, widely trine Uranus@3, square Neptune@1
Gem 11 June 1 Solar Eclipse, trine Saturn@10+
………… Jun 2 Mercury enters Gemini, square stationary Neptune@1, Chiron@5
Pis 0’56 Jun 3 Neptune Stations Retrograde, conj. Chiron@5, square Mercury@1 (at this degree 4/4 – 8/5)
………… Jun 4 Jupiter enters Taurus, sext. Neptune@0+, Chiron@5, trine Pluto@6+
………… Jun 9 Venus enters Gemini, square Neptune@0+, Chiron@5, trine Pluto@6+
Pis 5 Jun 10 Chiron Stations Retrograde, conj, Neptune@0, square Venus@1, sext. Jupiter@1 (at this degree 5/9-7/4)
Lib 10 Jun 12 Saturn Stations Direct, trine Venus@4, opp. Jupiter@2, Uranus@4, square Pluto@6+ (at this degree 5/18-7/9)
Sag 24 Jun 15 Lunar Eclipse–Total, opp. Mercury@28
………… Jun 16 Mercury enters Cancer, square Jupiter@2, Uranus@4, trine Neptune@0+, Chiron@5, square Pluto@6
………… Jun 20 Mars enters Gemini, widely conj. Mercury@9, widely trine Saturn@10, square Neptune@0+, Chiron@5
………… Jun 21 Summer Solstice 12:17 pm, partile semisext. Mars@0, partile trine, Neptune@0, square Uranus@4
Can 9 Jul 1 Solar Eclipse, square Saturn@10+, Uranus@4, opp. Pluto@6, sext. Jupiter@5
………… Jul 2 Mercury enters Leo, sext. Mars@8, square Jupiter@5, trine Uranus@4
………… Jul 4 Venus enters Cancer, sext. Jupiter@5, square Uranus@5, square Pluto@6
Ari 4 Jul 9 Uranus Stations Retrograde, square Venus@6, Pluto@5 (at this degree 6/2-8/18)
Cap 22 Jul 15 Full Moon, wide, out-of-sign trine to Neptune@1 Pisces
…………Jul 28 Venus enters Leo, conj. Sun@5, square Jupiter@8, trine Uranus@4
………… AND Mercury enters Virgo, partile opp. Neptune@0, opp. Chiron@4, trine Jupiter@8
Leo 7 Jul 30 New Moon, conj. Venus@2, square Jupiter@8, trine Uranus@4
Vir 1 Aug 2 Mercury Stations Retrograde with all-day Void-of-course Moon, opp. Neptune@0, Chiron@4, trine Jupiter@9 (at this degree 8/1-4)
………… Aug 3 Mars enters Cancer (Moon still void), sext. Mercury@1, Mars@29, square Uranus@4, Pluto@5
………… Aug 4 Neptune enters Aquarius (Retrograde), leaving conj. Chiron @4, opp. Venus@8, square Jupiter@9
………… Aug 8 Mercury enters Leo (Retrograde) partile opp. Neptune@29
Aqu 20 Aug 13 Full Moon, widely conj. Neptune@29, opp. Venus@19, Mercury@26, trine Saturn@13
………… Aug 21 Venus enters Virgo, opposite Neptune@29, trine Pluto@5
Leo 18+ Aug 26 Mercury Stations Direct, square Jupiter@10, sext. Saturn@14
Vir 5 Aug 28 New Moon, opp, Chiron@3, Neptune@29, trine Venus@8, Jupiter@10
Tau 10 Aug 30 Jupiter Stations Retrograde, trine Sun@6, Venus@10, Pluto@5 (at this degree 8/16-9/14)
………… Sep 9 Mercury enters Virgo, opp. Chiron@2, Neptune@29, trine Pluto@4+
Pis 19 Sep 12 Full Moon, opp. Venus@26, trine Mars@25
………… Sep 14 Venus enters Libra, square Uranus@3, Pluto@4+
Cap 4’53 Sep 16 Pluto Stations Direct, square Uranus@2+, Venus@1+ (at this degree 8/27-10/7)
………… Sep 18 Mars enters Leo, sext. Venus@4+, trine Uranus@2+, widely square Jupiter at 9+
………… Sep 23 Autumnal Equinox 4:05 am, sext. Mars@2, square Uranus@2+, Pluto@4+
………… Sep 25 Mercury enters Libra, square Uranus@2, Pluto@4+, sext. Mars@3+
Lib 4 Sep 27 New Moon, conj Mercury@2+, square Uranus@2, Pluto@4+, sext. Mars@4
………… Oct 9 Venus enters Scorpio, opposite Jupiter@7+, sext. Pluto@5
Ari 18 Oct 11 Full Moon, opp. Saturn@20, trine Mars @13+, widely sext. Neptune@28
………… Oct 13 Mercury enters Scorpio, partile trine Chiron@1, conj. Venus@5, opp. Jupiter@7, sext. Pluto@5
Sco 3 Oct 26 New Moon, opp. Jupiter@5, sext. Pluto@5
………… Nov 2 Mercury and Venus enter Sagittarius, partile square Chiron@0, trine Uranus@1
Aqu 28 Nov 9 Neptune Stations Direct, opposite Mars@29, conj. Chiron@0, trine Saturn@23 (at this degree 9/12-1/5)
Tau 18 Nov 10 Full Moon, no significant aspects
………… AND Mars enters Virgo, trine Jupiter@3, Pluto@5
Pis 0 Nov 11 Chiron Stations Direct, partile opp. Mars@0, conj. Neptune@28, sext. Jupiter@3 (at this degree 10/15-12/8)
Sag 20 Nov 24 Mercury Stations Retrograde, conj. Venus@27, sext. Saturn@25, (at this degree 11/23-26) 1:21 am Central time—Thanksgiving Day
Sag 2 Nov 25 Solar Eclipse, square Chiron@0, Mars@6, trine Uranus@0
………… Nov 26 Venus enters Capricorn, partile square Uranus@0, conj. Moon, Pluto@6, trine Mars@6
Cap 9 Dec 10 Lunar Eclipse-Total, widely conj. Venus@17, conj. Pluto@6, trine Mars@13, sext. Chiron@ 1, widely square Uranus@0
Ari 0 Dec 10 Uranus Stations Direct, same aspects as Eclipse (at this degree 11/11 – 1/9)
Sag 3+ Dec 13 Mercury Stations Direct, square Chiron@1, trine Uranus@0
………… Dec 20 Venus enters Aquarius, partile square Moon, Jupiter@0, partile sext. Uranus@0
………… Dec 21 Winter Solstice, 11:30 pm. Sun partile square Uranus@0, conj. Pluto@6+
Cap 2 Dec 24 New Moon, conj. Pluto@7, square Uranus@0, trine Jupiter@0
Tau 0 Dec 26 Jupiter Stations Direct, partile semisext. Uranus (at this degree 12/2 – 1/15)
*Degrees are not given for planetary ingresses, or solstice/equinox dates as these degrees will always be zero. This makes it possible to scan the the degree column for significant repetitions or for significant contacts with your own charts without meaningless repetitions of ingress degrees.
Astroweather, Nov-Dec 2010
November 6, 2010
We’ll all be glad that Venus is getting better. As the planet of desire, pleasures, love and money, her retrograde journey in Scorpio (NOT her favorite sign) has been compounded by sharing much of that journey with Mars in Scorpio, where it’s home and powerful. This means she had no good influence at all. Her rulership of money was used against her desire for harmony as money purchased our elections.
And did October feel like Merc Retrograde? It almost was. Mercury was in Libra from Oct 3-19, acting like Venus. Since Venus was retrograde and weak in Scorpio, This means Mercury was acting retrograde and weak because Venus is Libra’s ruling planet, describing what Mercury can do.
Good news comes slowly, but it comes. We’ll get a bit of a break with Venus in Libra, starting Nov 7 (but this day brings some delusions, or even outright lies, as Neptune stations direct, square Mercury.). She stays retrograde til Nov 18, and stays in Libra til Nov 29. Then she’s back in Scorpio, but at least no longer sharing it with Mars, and no longer Retrograde.
The theme for November will be some blend of “Magic, Illusion, Delusion, Lies”. At best, we can experience personal breakthroughs. At worst, we’ll waltz into a mass delusion together. How come?All month, Neptune, Venus, Jupiter, and Uranus will be dancing a waltz, with occasional cut-ins by Mercury and the Moon. These are excessive, idealistic, fantastic (as in fantasy or amazing) planets, and in general are associated with huge spiritual breakthroughs. I’m not optimist enough to predict a global breakout of higher consciousness, but these combos could do it. Most likely it’ll be a widespread series of individual mini-awakenings, but these do add up. Here’s the planetary reasoning: Nov 7: Venus stations, square Neptune station, square Mercury. Nov 18: Venus stations direct, trine Neptune. Nov 21: Full Moon opposite Venus, sextile Jupiter and Uranus and square Neptune. Whew! Find an ashram! Get an energy treatment. Have a meditation retreat!December will bring us some sharp wake-up calls, compounded by Mercury Retrograding for the entire holiday season (Dec 10-30). The chart for Dec 10 demands self-discipline. If you don’t have it, no one will. Rage, anger and potentially violent outbursts are described by a chart with Mercury, Pluto, Mars and the North Node all together within only 3 degrees (click here to read more).The big story starts with a Dec 5 New Moon, sextile Saturn. Just to let you know this cycle is SERIOUS (Saturn). On the same day, and bringing shocking surprises and a tendency towards mass anger, we see Uranus stationing direct, conjuct Jupiter and square Mars.The story amplifies on Dec 10, when Mercury stations Retrograde conjunct Pluto, N. Node, Mars, and sextile Venus. Jealousy, envy, out-of-control rage will be the substrate for everyone, so I’m reminding you now to deliberately KEEP YOUR COOL on the days around Dec 10. This pattern has uncomfortable similarities to the 9/11 chart, so hold on to your hats.If this weren’t enough, Dec 21st gives us a TOTAL Lunar Eclipse, squaring Uranus (the revolutionary) and opposite Mercury. A message to be delivered, and a shocking one.It could be, and we can pray and direct energies toward this outcome, that all these amazing energies are simply a build-up to some dramatic scientific/engineering/technological inventions that will surely come our way once Uranus re-enters Aries for most of the next decade. Quite often these inventions happen below public consciousness and it’s only later that the public recognizes their significance. So let the breakthroughs begin. I’ll vote for that! |
San Diego Constellation Workshops
September 22, 2010
I’ll be in San Diego from Oct 7-12, 2010 for several events. The weekend features the Essene Universalist Temple’s annual esoteric conference, where I will be speaking and conducting two constellations. This is a fabulous conference with a great speaker lineup, and you can find more info about it here.
On Monday, we’ll have an afternoon/evening constellation workshop, with 4 openings left. The end of this session will include a special constellation for the healing of all participants. For more information about this please drop me an email at anne (at) stariel.com.
I will also have limited time available for in-person astrological readings while I’m there, so if you’re near San Diego, it would be a good time to connect personally!
I look forward to seeing all my San Diego friends!
Fall Classes Begin!
September 7, 2010
Fall Classes Begin!
Schedule, Thursdays, 7-9 pm:
Sept 16
Sept 30
Oct 14
Oct 28
Nov 11
Dec 2
In this series of classes we will continue working with “dispositorships” and rulerships, and we’ll compare western charts to their Vedic counterparts to see how the pattern works. We may even take a peek at the Human Design System, which combines astrology with the I Ching, chakra systems, and Kabalah.
If you have not attended previous classes, all is not lost. If you have any astrological background you’ll be able to keep up.
Usual class prices are $15 each, but I know how tight money can be, so classes are offered on a donation basis. If you’re planning on attending (or if you need location info), email me by clicking HERE.
Eclipse reports…
June 28, 2010
Just have to share this amazing story. Last week, during the course of a different conversation, a client mentioned a triathlon to be held in Philadelphia starting at 7:30 am on June 26. A friend had asked her to come and watch him perform in it.
Good grief! 7:30 am on June 26 in Philadelphia was the exact moment of the BIG Lunar eclipse: The one exactly on Pluto and participating in the giant T-square between Pluto (and Eclipse), Saturn, Uranus and Jupiter. What an awful time to start a triathlon! I said I didn’t think this event would conclude safely. It would likely be stopped before the finish, and there was likely to be a bad accident associated with it. I was concerned about water because of the dangerous lunar (watery) eclipse. I wished that he wouldn’t go (the eclipse negatively affected his chart), and told her to avoid it herself if she didn’t want to be caught up in an awful situation.
Today she reported in:
“First, my friend told me on Friday ( the day before the June 26 eclipse/triathlon day) that he decided NOT to particpate at the last minute. He said he felt like his body wasn’t up for it!! You said that his energy wouldn’t be right. Second, part of the triathlon – the SWIM- had to be stopped and cancelled in the middle of the race b/c one of the swimmers was missing under water. They had the police and rescue boats there, and unfortunately, the person drowned!! So the race could not be completed!!”
Isn’t astrology amazing!
The “Cardinal Cross”
June 26, 2010
Much is being made of the “cardinal cross” in the sky this summer. Of course, it is only a “cardinal cross” in the tropical zodiac. In the sidereal zodiac, used by the Vedic astrologers and by astronomers, these powerful planets are in the late degrees of mutable signs.
So what’s the point here? The point is the solstice and equinox points. The REASON the western zodiac is different from the sky is that it is tied to the solstice points. By definition, Zero Aries, the first degree of the zodiac, is linked to the Spring Equinox. By extension, Zero Cancer falls on the Summer Solstice; Zero Libra falls on the Fall Equinox; and Zero Capricorn falls on the Winter Solstice. Zero degrees of all four signs are called, by western astrologers, the Aries Point. Why? Because this is a shorthand way of saying these degrees are linked with the turning points of the calendar.
So when we shift to the sidereal zodiac, where Zero Aries is equivalent to about 23 Pisces (meaning that the same point in the sky has two different names–one being 0 Aries, and the other name is 23 Pisces: A rose is a rose is a rose; a rose by any other name, and all that. It’s the Same Point.) In the Vedic system we don’t call these degrees the “Aries Point”, but it doesn’t mean they aren’t important.
The issue here is that any time you have planets crossing the solstice/equinox points, they carry an additional charge, and that charge tends to be visible in the world at large, because it’s directly associated with the turning points of the earthly year. When we have so many very powerful planets crossing these degrees simultaneously, we can expect that the whole earth will be feeling this charge.
So when you wonder why this year is such a big year, there are two broad answers: Some of the most powerful change-agent planets in the sky are in tightly challenging aspect with each other, AND these planets are also aligned with the solstice points of the year. Big deal!
June 2010 Newsletter
June 1, 2010
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Anne Beversdorf’s Stariel Astrology | PO Box TBA | Austin | TX | 78750
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May Newsletter
May 8, 2010
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April Newsletter
April 30, 2010
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March was a particularly happy month for our family. We were all thrilled when our youngest brother, Dr. David Beversdorf, married the wonderful Shelley Hamilton in a ceremony that surprised us all. As local close friends were arriving for a pre-ceremony buffet, the minister called to let us know he was hopelessly snowbound. Lacking any alternative, I dusted off my ancient ULC license and, never having performed a wedding, googled ceremonies while family and friends chowed down. My sister reassured me that my tears were acceptable, but “snorting” them back was NOT. They tell me it went well, but I don’t remember. They’re a fabulous couple and deserve the very best–which I think they both have found.
This interview is so articulate and profound that I’m sharing it. She was dying–literally dead, of late-stage cancer which led to apparent organ failure. She was given a choice, her organs restarted, and she quickly healed. But that’s not the powerful part of the story. It’s how she articulates what she learned. Here’s an excerpt, and the rest can be found April-May Astro-weather
April 4, 2010
This is an intense and busy spring, setting us up for an intense and busy summer. This is the summer of the FearStorm, and we are already in the build-up to this storm. Why is it important to talk about a FearStorm? Because fear spreads rapidly, like fire, and if we aren’t paying attention it can rage out of control. So April and May are perfect months for practicing good emotional hygiene and for innoculating ourselves from the FearStorms ahead.
What is Fear? For one, it’s a cute acronym for False Evidence Appearing Real. Unless you are being attacked by a bear, or are in a similarly immediate life-threatening situation, fear is always imaginary and is never about the present moment. Even if you have stage 5 cancer, your fear does not refer to the knowable present. It is about the future. Fear may be about what others might be doing in the present or what someone might have done wrong in the past, about what might happen, about how you might feel. It’s always about something you do not know to be true. What you know may bring you sorrow; your physical body may bring you pain, but only what we do not know brings us fear.
Good emotional hygiene can innoculate us against a FearStorm. What is the personal hygiene to counteract fear?
- Keep your awareness in the present moment. When fear approaches you, ask if it relates to the present. Bring your attention back to the present moment.
- Separate fear from reality. Ask yourself if there are alternatives to the scenario you fear. Most fears are concatenations of disaster scenarios: First This awful thing, which will trigger That awful thing, etc. What if there is This wonderful thing, which will trigger That wonderful thing and etc.? Why does one version of an imaginary future seem more real to you than another? They are both fantasies. Neither is real. Fear is our response to the unknown. Choose what makes you happy
- Recognize how you’ve coped with past situations. Whether your fear is personal or is related to grand social issues, remember how you’ve coped with difficulties in the past. Whatever comes up, you will be able to deal with it when the time comes. You don’t have to deal with it now.
- Choose your emotions thoughtfully. Even if the worst of your fears comes true, will staying in a state of fear between this time and that make the situation better? Taking action may make it better, but taking action is not fear. If something bad were to happen in XX years, would you rather worry about it for all those years ahead of time or just handle it when it happens? How many things have you feared that have not happened? CHOOSE to avoid fear.
- Reallocate your emotional energy. Fear is a gradient emotion. When you face a huge rollercoaster you may feel fear, but it takes the form of excitement. Fear can morph into excited anticipation. Fear can morph into an urgency to take action. Fear can morph into the determination to envision the world you want! (Be sure to read Anita M’s Near Death Experience!–and you might enjoy Ricky Gervais’s movie The Invention of Lying). Reallocate the energy of fear into the excitement of Joyful Anticipation!
In April and May there will definitely be punctuation dates in the process of changes that are inevitable in any life. Globally, we still have the collision aspects of Pluto (transformation/power), Saturn (authority, big businesses, rules), and Uranus (freedom, individuation, rebelliousness, revolution). We’re in this dance for the next few years, but punctuations come this summer.
April 6: Pluto, the planet that triggers fear and resistance, stations retrograde, greatly magnifying its influence. It makes this station in a collision aspect (square) to another planet of fear, this time adding the theme of regulation, Saturn; and in a smoother relationship (trine) to Venus–the planet of values, including love and money–and Mercury, representing thought and communication. Expect to see explosions about regulations of the finance system. Or personal fears about money and finance (remember your fear hygiene. It’s all in your imagination!).
April 14: This is a new moon at 24 Aries. Time to take action for new beginnings. No real crises showing up here.
April 17: Mercury stations Retrograde. The station point is 12 Taurus, so if you have planets near that point (or 12 Leo, Aquarius, or Scorpio) expect action in the days surrounding this retrograde point. Why? Because a station point is intensely powerful energy. Even more pointedly, this time Mercury stations collides with (squares) Mars, creating the potential for angry (Mars) words (Mercury), but also for sharp (Mars) thinking (Mercury). (It’s also sextile Pluto, just to spice up the situation with power plays.) Your choice here. Mercury stays retrograde until 5/11. This is NOT a time to sign new contracts, start new projects, send out your advertising flyers–unless you were born with a retrograde Mercury yourself.
April 26: Saturn (authority, the old way, big business & banking) is in an exact opposition (think collision) with Uranus (the new, rebellion, high tech, freedom) –again. As it was on the day of Obama’s election, for one thing. Which will still be in effect on….
April 28: Full Moon at 8 Scorpio. This lunation is in collision with Mercury and Mars and is sextile Pluto, so expect some confrontational energy from the crazies out there. Practice FearStorm hygiene.
May 11: Mercury stations direct at 2’40″ Taurus. Uber power here, as it harmonizes with Pluto. Expect a very powerful message from a very powerful source.
May 13: New Moon in Tropical Taurus… The moon “likes” Taurus–a lot. It is stable there (and stubborn), and this lunation collides with Mars (action? anger?) but harmonizes (sextile) with the most generous Jupiter and with responsible Saturn (trine). The start of something solid and reasonable?
May 27: This Full moon at 6’33″ Sagittarius isn’t particularly notable except that the very next day…
May 28: Uranus (freedom, individualism, rebelliousness, “my way or the highway”) enters tropical Aries (the action principle… and what kind of action? WHAT *I* WANT). Tickle this with the full moon energy and remember that this brings ALL three Fearstorm planets (Pluto, Saturn, Uranus) into cardinal (action-oriented) signs, and we’ve upped the ante on acting out from folks who have little or no emotional hygiene.
May 31: Neptune stations retrograde–the powerful degree here is 28’42″ Aquarius. And it collides with (opposition) Mars, the planet of action. Neptune is nothing if not nebulous, so this can bring a period of delusional actions, or simply the inability to act—sometimes the impulse is there but the carry-through gets waterlogged.
Ok, that’s it for now. Stay healthy, emotionally, physically, and spiritually!
Meeting Pluto on the Road of Life
February 7, 2010
I’ve got a secret which, if revealed, is likely to get me stoned. So I’ll share it here and then surrender it immediately in case things get ugly. Here it is: Pluto is secretly a benefic. The reason it doesn’t feel this way is that we don’t understand Pluto. We can’t understand Pluto because its orbital cycle is so far beyond the limits of a human lifespan that none of us can see the conclusion of the cycle. The only thing we can begin to grok with Pluto is how to engage in the dance without getting our toes tromped on.
When Pluto shows up in the road of our life, it stays for a long time. Slow planets kick up a ruckus in our lives for two reasons. One is we have little experience with them. Mars, for example, demonstrates its two-year cycle when our toddlers hit the “terrible twos”. By the time you’re grown up, you get accustomed to this cyclic energy. But slow planets, especially really slow ones like Pluto, will aspect each planet in your chart by transit basically once (plus retrograding back). So you’ve got no prior experience to fall back on. The other reason slow planets have a bigger impact is that their transits to your chart are SOOO slow they seem to take forever. When Pluto conjoins your Sun it’s not just a few hours or days or a few weeks—it can be for years. You don’t need an astrologer to tell you something’s up: you can feel it. You can’t just ignore it ‘til it goes away, either. You’re faced with an inexplicable set of circumstances that won’t let up.
This is “encountering the archetype on the road”. If we’re astrologers we run to the cookbooks and discover Pluto words like “transformation”, “death and rebirth”, “surrender”, and still we’re caught standing in the middle of the road staring down Pluto. You want to fight… but someone once told me, “If you want to box with God, you’d better have really long arms.”
You don’t need an astrological chart and an ephemeris to know you’re dancing with Pluto. Here’s a short list of Pluto Symptoms:
IF YOU FEEL LIKE THIS IT MUST BE PLUTO.
- 1. How DARE they!
- 2. It’s Not Fair. It’s Not RIGHT. I WILL make them stop.
- 3. Obsessed. You can’t get this issue out of your mind.
- 4. They WON’T get away with this.
- 5. 40 jillion get-even fantasies.
- 6. 30 jillion get-it-back-to-how-it-used-to-be fantasies.
- 7. Boiling blood each time you think about it (which is all the time).
- 8. Freezing blood when you think there’s nothing you can do.
- 9. How DARE they! …..
These may be symptoms for a Pluto diagnosis. But does a diagnosis help us understand Pluto? Does it help you when someone tells you this is transformation at work? In order to dance well with Pluto, we need to enter Pluto stories and roll around with the energy for a while.
A Pluto Tale
In this story, Pluto takes the form of a dog, a guardian daemon—or angel. The story begins with a human being—maybe You, who, like all of us, has managed your life into a nice, pleasing rut. You’ve dug the rut pretty deep, filled it with soft pillows, electronic toys, everything that makes life predictable and pleasant. It’s so deep, in fact, that even when you stand on your tiptoes, you can’t see the horizon.
You may be enjoying your rut, but there’s an old saying:
The only difference between a rut and a grave is how deep you dig it.
In this story, the wise guardian dog, Pluto, is patrolling the ground above your rut and thinking, “This rut is WAY too deep.” Ordinarily Pluto might give you a pass, but right now he sees something coming over the horizon that is just perfect for you and you can’t see it. This fabulous opportunity won’t just fall in your rut. Unless you get out and intercept it, the opportunity will just pass you by.
So Pluto tries to tell you about it. Unfortunately, dogs are limited to barks and growls, and all you know is there’s an obnoxious dog outside your comfy rut, barking loudly, incessantly, and ruining the rhythms of both night and day. You want to scream. Nothing will shut up this dog. Life is getting miserable. You tell your friends “I’ve always loved my rut ‘til now…, and as soon as that danged dog goes away it’ll be fine again.”
Pluto is frustrated too. He’s on to stage two. Maybe if he throws in loamy dead leaves you’ll look up and see him signaling. But now your new sofa is trashed and you’re looking for someone to sue. (How Dare he!) Pluto pauses to think of something new.
“If I throw enough rocks down there,” he thinks, “you can climb up the rocks and see what’s coming over the horizon.” But the rocks break your new flat screen TV and expensive aquarium and you’re fighting mad. (How Dare he! It’s not Fair! It’s Not Right!) In fact, you see you’ve finally got ammunition and throw the rocks out of your rut taking careful aim at Pluto. (He won’t get away with this! Blood boiling.) Maybe you’ll knock him out, run him off, or (hehehe) KILL him!
All gets quiet for a little while. Pluto goes off to rethink his strategies.
“Hmmm,” he thinks. “I’ve got a friend with a sewage truck.”
The next thing you know there’s a sewage truck emptying itself into your nice comfortable rut. There’s no choice now. You’ve gotta get out. Everything you own is stinking, including the clothes on your back. (Blood is freezing.) At this point you’ve got two choices: stand there looking at that stinking hole trying to figure out how to rescue your stuff (you can’t—it’ll stink forever), or turn around and look for that new opportunity coming over the horizon.
Now that you’re out of your rut, if you think Pluto will tap you on the shoulder and point to your heart’s desire, you’ll be sadly disappointed. You’ll be so busy obsessing over the stinking cesspool that used to be your rut that you wouldn’t even look if he did. The hidden beneficence of Pluto remains very hidden, and you’re left staring into the cesspool. Your task now is to break the obsession with what’s been lost. Even in the standard Pluto mythology, Persephone couldn’t get out of Hell if she brought anything with her. That six-months-a-year thing was just a compromise for the pomegranate seeds she ate.
You need to learn to seek joy. Do you remember anything from childhood that entranced you, made you lose track of time and Self? This is the time to resample that experience. At some point when you’re not blotto’d by anger or self-pity, make a list of things you can do that can bring you joy. You’ll discover that JOY requires a singleness of focus, an all-out Paying-Attention, that quite eclipses the negative obsessions of Pluto. So your Joy-List must include your commitment to focus attention on the potential joy experience. You can paint by numbers and get stuck in the rebirthing canal, or you can lose yourself in learning something you never knew. You can take a walk in nature and see nothing, or you can LIVE every scent, leaf, and changing cloud.
As you cross the gulf from bitter obsession to new life, one tiny stepping stone of joy at a time, you will discover, eventually, that you have arrived in an unimagined new world. This is the journey into Joy: the journey into a higher level of consciousness. This is when I hear people say, “That was the worst thing I’ve ever gone through, but in a weird way it was the best thing that ever happened to me. If it hadn’t been for that, I never would have….” (and here they fill in the blank with their version of profound fulfillment). You’re not likely to volunteer to do it again, but you’ll appreciate the result. I promise. These are the facts of the matter when you dance with Pluto.
WHY?
Pluto energy is bigger than we are. Its main purpose seems to be to break open our sense of self. Look at the house placement of Pluto and the house ruled by Scorpio in your chart. This is where you are likely to feel so identified with something that you believe THIS IS WHO I AM. Pluto is here to tell you that concept is too small. You are bigger than that. You must—and with Pluto it’s non-negotiable—you MUST enlarge your perspective.
When we dance with Pluto, we must recognize that the situation is bigger than we are, that the powers are not under our control, and we must knowingly sacrifice. Pluto triggers our biggest fear: the fear that we have no control at all. When Pluto calls, our ruts must change. Maybe we dig a ramp and a loft high enough for us to see over the edge. Maybe we build a ladder and climb out when the dog starts barking. Maybe we wait ‘til the sewage truck arrives, but we MUST expand our perspective. The sooner we get the message the less destruction we suffer. Once we embrace the sacrifice, our lives change in astounding ways. Often the greatest sacrifice is our illusion of control.
Learning to Dance with Pluto
Even though big Pluto transits are relatively rare in our lives, we do get small opportunities to recognize this energy and learn how to handle it. Every month, the transiting Moon makes four hard aspects to our natal Pluto. Every year the Sun and Venus do. You don’t have to watch the ephemeris. All you have to do is watch yourself and your reactions to the world around you. If you can learn how to recognize and respond to Pluto on a monthly basis, you’ll be more skillful when the big Pluto events come along. This is much easier to learn with small things. Here are some silly small Pluto stories that have been part of my learning experience:
The Broken Set
Long, long ago, and just because I fell in love with the pattern, I bought some pajamas at Walmart. They had black leggings for bottoms and a really really cute print top that I found among dozens of different patterns. When I got home, the top was the right size, but the bottoms, hidden, were at least 4 sizes too big. I took them back to exchange them.
The Customer Service staff said “Just go and find another pair and we’ll swap.” I looked, and since there were no others with the same really really cute top that I wanted, I picked a random set in my size, and returned to Customer Service. I suggested we just exchange the pants of the set that fit for the ones that didn’t.
They said, “We can’t break up a set.” I said, “But the one I’m returning is already broken.” (How DARE they!) They said, “That doesn’t matter. We can’t break a set.” (It’s Not Fair! It’s Not Right!) I asked to see the manager, in a state of absurd fury. No help there. He said, “We can’t break a set. We can give you your money back or you can choose another from the rack.”
I argued, got nowhere, got my money back and left, thinking I’d write Sam Walton, the board of directors, the head of marketing (They won’t get away with this! My blood is boiling. I’ll make them give the pajamas I wanted in the first place) … and then it struck me. My reaction was out of all rational bounds. I was being Pluto’d. I wasn’t going to win, and it would cost me more to try—postage, angst, fury, etc., than I’d ever get back. With great difficulty I let it go (but I didn’t forget!).
A New Puppy
Another time, with a much bigger emotional impact, I was looking for a puppy: a female Maltese puppy to be exact. I had just finished nursing a dear friend through his final days, and decided to fulfill a long promise to myself to get a Maltese puppy: small, mellow, and hypoallergenic. So I went off looking in the classifieds. After several near-misses, I went to the home of an elderly lady whose husband decided she needed a doggy companion, and she thought otherwise. Her adorable puppy was tied to the doorknob with about a 2-foot running radius. The pup was bright, friendly, and affectionate, and the woman and I were ready to make a deal. I responded to the woman’s complaint about all the attention the pup demanded by saying “I can definitely deal with the attention demands. I just finished caring for a friend who died of AIDS, so I’m used to being on call at any moment.” At this, the woman said “I’m not letting this puppy go to ANY home where there has been AIDS.” (HOW DARE SHE!) I tried telling her that dogs couldn’t catch it, and I didn’t have it, and there was nothing infectious in the house. There was no arguing with her. (It’s Not Fair. It’s Not Right.) She wouldn’t relent. I was boiling mad, trying to think of what anti-discriminatory agencies I could find to force her to give up her horrible prejudice and sell me the puppy. (She can’t get away with this. I’ll get even. I’ll report her. How DARE she!!) Then I realized my blood was boiling: the situation was purely Pluto. I couldn’t change this situation.
Pluto was acting like the dog keeping the sheep from the quicksand. I couldn’t have that puppy. I had no idea why, but it clearly wasn’t going to happen. Since this wasn’t the first block in my puppy search, maybe my ideas about getting a puppy had to change: I would have to surrender something. Maybe my new puppy wouldn’t be a Maltese. Maybe it wouldn’t be female.
I went back to the drawing board with a larger perspective and saw yet another Maltese puppy for sale. I called, and they only had one left: a male. I asked its birthday (after all, I’m an astrologer), and it was the same birthday as my beloved sister who died and my autistic brother. I visited it, and when the six-inch pup saw me he tore across the room, somehow leaped into my lap, and smothered me with puppy kisses as if saying “It’s YOU! It’s YOU! It’s YOU at long last, my forever best friend!” Now, 14 years later, he’s still my best friend.
Meeting Pluto People: The Tar Baby
In dealing with others who are playing Pluto on you, you have limited choices. You can’t change the other person. You can’t make them behave the way you think they should. Your options are limited to walking away without a fight (quitting a job, leaving a marriage, leaving a home or neighborhood); surrendering to stay in a bad situation—which is sometimes possible but usually not advisable, or you can acknowledge to yourself and others that they have the power and you don’t. If I had said to the Customer Service staff, “You’re the guys who have to follow the rules, and I can’t change that. I understand that. But if there is any way you can figure some wiggle room here I’d sure appreciate it,” the PJ story would have ended differently. Maybe they would relent, maybe not. But I would have surrendered my fury. I know people who actually “won” their Pluto battles by deliberate surrender. This sacrifice of the ego is what Pluto is looking for. A Pluto situation may be totally unfair, but when you are stuck in the small picture and fight the situation, it just drags you in deeper. Do you remember the story of Br’er Rabbit and the Tar Baby? [i]
The Tar Baby, abbreviated
Brother Fox and Brother Rabbit had a natural and ongoing feud. Br’er Fox wanted Br’er Rabbit for dinner, and Br’er Rabbit’s life depended on outsmarting him. So one day Br’er Fox makes a Tar Baby out of tar and sticky molasses. He molds the sticky goo into a little person, perfectly sized to block the path Br’er Rabbit habitually uses, places the object in the path, and hides in the bushes. Br’er Rabbit comes along, jaunty and friendly as usual, and says hello to the Tar Baby who, of course, says nothing. Br’er Rabbit tries again and again to engage the little figure in a friendly conversation, to no avail. Then he gets angry, insults the Tar Baby, (How Dare he ignore me!) calling it names, accusing it of rudeness, and finally hauls off and hits it, (He won’t get away with this!) getting his paw stuck in the goo. By the end of the story, by hitting and kicking with all four paws, Br’er Rabbit gets hopelessly caught. Then Br’er Fox swoops in to take Rabbit home to the stew pot.
“Does the Fox eat the Rabbit?” asks the little boy who hears the story.
“That’s all the further the story goes”, says Uncle Remus.
“Maybe he did and maybe he didn’t.” [ii]
Pluto is the Tar Baby that delivers us to the Fox. This is the place where you’ve lost control and can’t stand it. You want to fight. If self-righteous anger takes hold, you will lose. That’s a promise. Pluto isn’t about whether you are right or not. Pluto is about dropping your ego and growing your idea of who you are.
Pluto Arrives
As I was writing this article, Pluto entered my environment in two ways. Dear friends of mine, soulmates in every way, were facing a serious medical procedure. The wife’s heart was fibrillating, and she needed to undergo a two-step procedure involving a sonar-scope to make sure there were no clots, followed by electroshock to her heart to get the beat back into a healthy pattern. It is a dangerous and painful procedure, though not technically a high risk one, and she’s endured it before, but for some reason this time the fear of death was running strong through both their minds. The other Pluto appearance came as I was reading John Major Jenkins’ definitive work on 2012, The 2012 Story.[iii] And then these two stories came together.
Pluto always evokes themes of sacrifice. We can lose something dear to us willingly or unwillingly. We hear of surrender, but surrender sounds like giving up. Sacrifice is the deliberate letting go of something for a higher purpose. If we recognize a this pattern, we can choose to sacrifice our egoic desires as the price of the Plutonic passage. Interestingly, the World Age mythology of the ancient Maya echoes this theme. To paraphrase Jenkins’ longer and more literally accurate telling of the tale, here is the Mayan mythos on what happens at the end of a world age.
The Mayan Mythology: As Above…
There are three important archetypes in this story. One Hunahpu is the conscious leader: a god-being whose ego is in service to a higher consciousness, with a higher perspective of the greater good than could be attained by ego alone. One Hunahpu cares about the welfare of all the people, and isn’t confused by issues of greed and power. Seven Macaw, on the other hand, is the epitome of ego run amok. With no higher consciousness, no transcendent awareness, Seven Macaw becomes more and more greedy as the age progresses, reaching his greatest power at the end of the age, when he beheads One Hunahpu and declares himself, Seven Macaw, more powerful than the Sun, and owner of all the worlds under heaven.
At this point, the Hero Twins are born—children of the late One Hunahpu. The Hero Twins are beings of high consciousness, as was their father, and they see Seven Macaw racing to take over everything in the world. Seven Macaw realizes the Hero Twins have something he wants, or wants to destroy, so the Hero Twins hatch a plan to make Seven Macaw chase them into the cosmic fire, deliberately sacrificing their own egoic selves but guaranteeing the final death of the Seven Macaw who follows them into the flames. The plan works. Seven Macaw is destroyed, and because consciousness survives ego-death, the Hero Twins and their father One Hunahpu are resurrected to begin a new world age where transcendent consciousness becomes the mode of the world, subjugating ego to its appropriate functions.[iv] These are classic Plutonian themes: death and rebirth, conscious surrender or sacrifice, and a transcendent result when the egoic sacrifice is made.
Then Jenkins offered this quotation:
Whenever a profound experience of change is about to take place, its harbinger is the motif of death. This is not particularly mysterious, since it is the limited view and appraisal of oneself that must be outgrown or transformed, and to accomplish transformation the self-image must dissolve. [v]
….So Below
Which brought the story back to my friends, who were in a panic about death. I couldn’t see a literal death astrologically, and I knew two things about their relationship that were at a tipping point. One was that this Pisces wife with Virgo rising had defined herself as someone who loves by being the servant, preparing meals, keeping a perfect home, saying Yes every time her Leo Rising husband invited folks to dinner. Her inability to outgrow this definition of self was literally killing her. The other problem they had were their two different ideas about how money should be handled. To help her, he was handling all the money issues, but his over-generosity with others and techno-toy addiction was putting her in a financial panic, further stressing her heart.
As they faced this procedure, both of them were acting out in sheer panic. He was spending more, she was cleaning up a storm. It struck me that they could use the necessity for this Plutonic medical procedure to transform the difficulties which were adding so much stress to their lives, and to her very life.
My big, buttinski, Aha! moment came the day before the procedure, so I asked them if I could butt in that very evening and offer some suggestions about what this procedure could mean in the larger picture. I explained that the “motif of death” quote was the key that unlocked the story for me, since they were obsessed, panicked, and fearful of their utter lack of control over life itself as this appointment loomed large. I read the quotation and told them the Mayan story, suggesting that they could repeat this story in their own lives, acting as the Hero Twins offering sacrifices. She would approach the fire of the electro-shock, carrying the ego-sacrifices: her twin-soul would ground her in the physical world as he sat in the hospital waiting room.
I suggested that the Leo Rising husband (I called him the Boy-King) needed to turn over household financial handling to a willing and very capable financial servant, his wife, to whom he would sacrifice his need to spend money by entertaining people at will, and buying techno-toys on whims. He would need to sacrifice his financial control by deferring to her decisions about spending. I asked him if his concept of self was totally tied to his financial autonomy, or if he was bigger than that. This would be a sacrifice celebrating his Leonine love for his wife, who would be relieved of heart-straining worry if she could get their financial affairs in order without his toppling them again. Wise King that he is, he repeated back what he thought he heard to make sure he got it, and then agreed immediately.
Then I asked her if she would be the other half of the hero-twins and take his sacrifice into the fire of the electrical jolt to her heart. Yes, eagerly. And then she went on, and on, and on some more about her feelings of financial stress and her fears when she had no control. I reminded her that this money thing was NOT her issue at all. This was HIS sacrifice of control and all she needed to do was carry it to the fire. I asked her if she was willing to sacrifice her self-image as the perfect servant-wife, who cooked any time he invited guests, felt that her identity would be damaged if the house weren’t spotless, and who failed in her own self-image if she said NO to anything. These ego identities were quite literally killing her. Her heart couldn’t keep up with the physical stress.
Surprisingly, to me, this was the more difficult sacrifice. She started to weep and said she didn’t know how she could do it. I reminded her that the goal was to offer the sacrifice. She needed to intend to carry these identifications to the fire and ask that the fire burn away these ego selves. She didn’t need to understand how she could accomplish it—she just needed to offer and intend. When she said yes, she could do make the offer and intend to sacrifice, I could see the energies around her heart relax.
We talked a bit more, wept a little bit, and I left, confident all would be well. Indeed, I got a call as soon as the procedure ended, telling me it went better than expected, over-qualified angelic substitute staff were on hand (one dripping with amethysts), only one shock was required, and they were home within the hour. By that evening she was out and about, glowing with an inner light I hadn’t seen in a long time.
It seems to me that when we are called on to walk through the underworld we need to have a deliberate purpose. There is a sacrifice to be made, and if we don’t know what we are sacrificing that decision can be made for us. When we take our ego into the fire, we come out a more conscious being.
We can learn to recognize Pluto when we encounter it in the road. We can learn what it feels like, and what we can do. We can even learn to trust that the intention is to reach a higher state of being, and yet each encounter comes with the ultimate fear of ego death. I believe that when we open ourselves to the expanded version of life available to us as we walk through innumerable small and large ego deaths, we are preparing ourselves for The Big One: Death—and our symbolic resurrection as One Hunahpu, the conscious being. As we face Death, we can say.
“OK, I recognize this feeling. I’ve done it hundreds of times. I know there is a bigger version of me on the other side, once I let go.”
Thus One Hunahpu is born again.
[i] (To read the original 19th century story in the African American dialect of “Uncle Remus” as written by Joel Chandler Harris, go to… http://xroads.virginia.edu/~ug97/remus/tar-baby.html)
[ii] This is a very real metaphor of the power system African Americans were living under at in the 19th Century (and continuing on). The power structure was such that they developed teaching tales to help children learn how not to get put in the proverbial stew pot. I’ve discovered that clients who live in autocratic and didactic societies have much less difficulty negotiating Pluto passages than those living in relatively free westernized societies. They have no illusions of control. There are things, unfair things, unjust things, that just happen, and if you know what’s good for you, you don’t fight it. But for most of those reading this, we still have the illusion of control, partly because we usually have some measure of control in our lives.
[iii] John Major Jenkins, The 2012 Story: The Myths, Fallacies, and Truth Behind the Most Intriguing Date in History, New York: Tarcher/Penguin 2009.
[iv] As I read this chapter of Jenkins’ book, the US Supreme Court ruled that corporations had the right to spend as much money as they liked on the American political process, thereby giving them the legal ability to buy the government of the most powerful country in the world. I thought: “Seven Macaw has just cut off the head of One Hunahpu.” There will be two more elections until the changing of the World Age. I wonder, who are the Hero Twins?
[v] John Weir Perry, “Spiritual Emergence and Renewal,” Spiritual Emergency: When Personal Transformation Becomes a Crisis, ed. by Stanislav Grof and Christina Grof, New York: Tarcher 1989, p. 67, quoted on page 411 of Jenkins, op cit.
Podcast: From Here Through 2012
February 6, 2010
This is a recording of a lecture to the Astrological Society of North Texas from December 2009. In it we look forward to themes that are big for the coming several years.
Astrology of Supreme Court Decision.
January 22, 2010
If you looked at my Youtube video on January, you’ll recall my saying that the Pluto/Mercury/Saturn stationary exact square, exact Jan 13-15, indicates a BIG power play. We saw this take place in the Supreme Court decision of Jan 21, giving corporations permission to put as much money as they wish into politics and candidates of their choice. No point in even worrying about lobbying laws. They now can just hand the money out directly.
When planets are “stationary”, (from the perspective of earth, they are standing still in the sky instead of rotating as they usually do), they are exquisitely powerful. In this case, Saturn (rules) stationed in a collision position with Pluto (remember “plutocrats”? –ultimate power, wealth, manipulation) which was sitting right next to Mercury: ideas, communication. Pluto and Mercury are manipulations of ideas and communications. Saturn makes the laws. These planets were so close together, mathematically, that you could hardly see air between them.
We had a 3-truck pileup here, where a manipulation of the idea of “free speech” made it possible for the highest court in the land to hand over governance of our company to the wealthiest corporations in the world. What a brilliant victory for the wealthiest of the world: World corporations can buy and sell laws and policies of the most influential nation in the world.
But there’s another part to this story. The solar eclipse that preceded this pattern was very tied to the chart of our Declaration of Independence. In fact, it was on the PLUTO (power, wealth, manipulation, “plutocrats”) of that chart. This will have the eventual result of eclipsing the “plutocrats”, which is exactly what the American Revolution did in the first place.
And if that’s not enough, we are heading toward the very first anniversary of Pluto’s position in our Independence chart. Soon. 2021.
We have just seen the first shot fired in the next American Revolution. Which, as was the case the first time, will be against government policies that favor corporations and hurt people.
(Historical note: The tax on tea, the impetus for the Boston Tea Party, was a tax on any tea not sold by the British East India Tea Company. You could still buy their very expensive tea without a tax. But any other tea was taxed to the point that it was just as expensive as the British East India Tea Company’s tea. Corporate influence, indeed. And there’s an interesting parallel meme with the current “tea party” movements.)
December and January Astro-Energies
November 28, 2009
As we enter December, Saturn and Pluto are still tightly square. We can’t discount this energy pattern. It WILL continue, although now that we’re in the thick of it, we can begin to get used to it. Remember, Saturn is the fear that things won’t be as we think they absolutely SHOULD be. Pluto is the fear that we can’t control anything. Together they create a potent virus for a “FearStorm”. Remember your good mental hygiene, and remember that at some level we are never “in control of things” and that Pluto rips away our control for our own ultimate good. This particular ongoing square won’t flare up until other planets trigger events again. And they will.
On December first, Uranus will station direct. Uranus is in tropical Pisces and its retrograde motion has been moving it away from an exact 3-way collision with the SaturnPluto square. (Imagine a 4-way intersection with no signage, and then imagine 3 semis moving full speed into the intersection. They don’t have to be aligned with mathematical precision to create a pretty powerful show.) When Uranus stations direct on December 1, it will be moving towards its square with the SaturnPluto series of squares (4 more in the next two years, and the next one is in late January).
What will this feel like? Uranus is the fear of losing freedom. It’s cutting off your nose to spite your face. It’s the urge to break free from any and all constraints, and is the signature planet of the highest technologies–and of revolutions. The energy zeitgeist of this time will be restlessness, impatience, “wired and tired” syndrome, and the pure rebel archetype. Think of Aquarian (the sun sign ruled by Uranus) Sarah Palin. Don’t fence that gal in. She refuses to do what is expected, and reacts to every criticism as an attempt to abrogate her personal freedom. Not the highest form of Uranian energy, but she definitely fits the pattern.
Now imagine that kind of energy combined with (and beginning to trigger) the SaturnPluto FearStorm. It’s reasonable to expect that December and January will show us more over-the-top reactiveness from those who are fearful and angry. But that’s not the only thing we can expect.
This archetypal energy combination is the signature for some of the most far-reaching scientific breakthroughs of all time. As we speak, the CERN research facility in Switzerland is again setting up their “god-particle” experiment… attempting to create the bit of anti-matter that some theorists think was the spark for the “Big Bang”. They’ve failed to perform the experiment several times, due to events like power failures and bread crumbs falling into the device by (they think) a passing bird. I think it’s likely that they will succeed in the next year, and quite possible in the next two months. The implications for energy production alone are world-changing. The implications for humanity’s ability to become god-like in our creative potential is also tied into this experiment. BIG STUFF!
But we’re not done yet. December also includes the relatively rare (once in two years) retrograde of the planet Mars. Mars is the principle of action, of assertion, aggressiveness. An astrological rule of thumb is that anyone starting a fight during a retrograde Mars is bound to lose. This includes barfights and legal challenges. Mars will station retrograde on December 20, and it will be tied up in the PlutoSaturnUranus picture. Just what we needed: More fire. More agitation. Usually Mars spends 2 months in a single zodiac sign, but because of this pattern, it will be in Tropical Leo until June 2010. Sidereally (vedic astrology) it will be in Cancer, which is its sign of debilitation. In the Indian system, retrograde planets are stronger for two main reasons: they are brighter, and they aspect twice as many houses. Two negatives can make a positive in Vedic astrology (retrograde is negative and debilitated is negative), but it won’t do it in any normal way. Mars will be a wild card. Mars goes direct March 10, and then it will only be “debilitated” in the Vedic system, and will remain so until late May.
The Mars Retrograde is a perfect setup for a successful Re-Doing of the CERN Hadron Collider experiment. Mars archetypes include speed and collisons. Unfortunately Mars configured with Uranus can produce accidents, but we’ve got that weird double-negative with Mars going, which can pull the danger out of the fire.
AND one more thing. On Dec 26, Mercury goes retrograde. This happens 3 times a year, for 3 weeks each, so we’re pretty used to it. This retrograde point doesn’t re-inflame the Saturn/Pluto/Uranus/Mars mess, so the normal mail, technology, lost luggage, traffic jam screw-ups will be in play. Plan for extra time in your schedule and don’t sign major contracts unless you have a retrograde Mercury in your birth chart. Mercury is an archetype that includes the mind, manual dexterity, trade, communications, local commerce. Anything along those lines that can be RE-thought is excellent. With both Mercury and Mars RE-trograde, RE-Thinking, RE-DOing, Re-Viewing, Re-Searching, Re-Writing will all go more smoothly than usual. Mercury stations direct about January 15, 2010.
For the next few months, the key is staying clear of the FearStorm virus. Surrender to what you can’t control, Trust that there’s a bigger picture unfolding, and sit back and enjoy the show from what my friend calls the “Bob Uecker Seats”. It’s all Maya–a big play unfolding for our amusement and edification.
November Energies in review.
November 28, 2009
As I mentioned in November, we are building toward a major planetary traffic jam, and November and December are big months. We saw the Saturn Pluto energies in two major ways:
One was the tragic shooting at Fort Hood… In my opinion, the cultural and career stresses on Hasan (the shooter) were a recipe for a breakdown. Just imagine, American born, deciding that serving the military was a reasonable career choice and getting a degree in psychiatry through military funding (an aside here: it isn’t uncommon for people who have suffered psychological trauma to be attracted to psychiatry in an attempt to heal themselves. We don’t know Hasan’s psychological background.) His birth country is now in a war which is loudly proclaimed by extremists as a war against Islam–Hasan’s own religion. He is placed in a position in which those who have been most traumatized by the horrors of war are bringing their broken spirits–and their horror stories from the front–to a man who has already been the brunt of anti-Islamic prejudice. Then he is told they’re sending him to the front. This series of events twists and torture every familial, religious and cultural loyalty the man ever had. It is a recipe for a schizophrenic break—and, getting back to the astrology, the Saturn Pluto energies: Fear of events you can’t control, and Fear that things won’t be the way they absolutely SHOULD be, in your opinion, came together in a perfect FearStorm for Hasan.
The second was the announcement that a major state-owned bank in Dubai has declared a moratorium in paying of tens of billions of dollars of debt. A financial announcement that also triggered a FearStorm across the world’s financial markets.
Look ahead to December in the next post.
Instant Relationship Reports
October 13, 2009
This is a fabulous new service! I’ve arranged with one of the most prominent astrological software companies in the world to offer you INSTANT astrological reports. So far there are only 2 reports, and they’re both about relationships. SO… Day or night, any time at all, when the burning question strikes, you can get answers!
These reports are definitely hot topics: one is about relationship compatibility and the other is about sexual compatibility! Seems to me these are the questions that hit you at the most awkward times. Now you can enter your own (and your partner’s) astrological data and have the report in your email within 15 minutes or less! Just click on the icon below and you’re on your way. (All data totally safe and protected.)
REPORTS and SOFTWARE
Fractal Science and Astrology
September 14, 2009
This article originally appeared in the great astrological magazine, The Mountain Astrologer in the 90′s.
Astrology and Chaos Theory: Fractal Progressions
by
Anne Beversdorf
With an MC in Sagittarius, an Aquarius ascendant, and a Leo sun, I consistently find myself proselytizing avant-garde or unusual concepts. So, of course, as an astrologer, I’m often in the awkward position of trying to get my skeptical friends to see why astrology is a valid and meaningful discipline. Skeptics say they don’t “believe in” astrology, meaning that they do believe it doesn’t work. It’s tempting to say “If you don’t believe in gravity, does that mean gravity doesn’t work?”, but everyone can SEE the effects of gravity, and one can’t see the relationship of astrology to human life without knowing something about astrology. The challenge is, how can you show an astrological virgin something about astrology in their own life without bombarding them with the meanings of signs, planets, and houses, and how all that symbolism relates to life on earth? And how can you give them a rationale for how this works that compares to something they can accept? I’m beginning to realize that the new sciences, combined with some ordinary common sense, can help us take a giant step in this direction.
Some time ago I read James Gleick’s book, Chaos: Making a New Science. It’s a powerful and mind-expanding book, and I strongly recommend it to astrologers looking for possible scientific underpinnings for our field. [Note: Bernadette Brady’s recent book Astrology, A Place in Chaos, is really the last word on the subject.] Gleick’s book has been germinating in my subconscious mind for a few years, and recently something sprouted. Gleick speaks a lot about fractals–a new type of math that has been popularized by the “Mandelbrot Set” a collection of highly colored, computer-generated graphics that resemble nothing so much as a psychedelic paisley. The curious thing about these pictures is that, if you take any subsection of a picture and blow it up enough, you get the original picture again. And if you take a subset of that picture and blow it up enough, guess what–you get the original picture again–and so on and so on, ad infinitum. What makes this significant is that this mathematical picture-building seems to apply to the geometry of nature itself. Mandelbrot has named this geometry “fractals”.
Let’s examine this for a minute. Consider trying to measure the coastline of California. It proves impossible unless you identify the SCALE of your measurements.
To determine the measurements of California‘s coast, we could lay a single straight line running from Mexico to Canada: but that doesn’t take into account any of the coastline’s irregularities–all those bumps and bays and peninsulas. You could place an imaginary grid over the coastline and plot and measure distances between places where the coastline hit grid points–but how large or small will be your grid? It reminds me of my little sister’s statement after we walked home from her first day at school. “You say it’s a mile, but it would be a lot longer if you straightened out all the hills!” She was right! And if you measured the California coast by taking your measuring tape, millimeter by millimeter, around all the rocks and pebbles and outcroppings of the coastline, you’d have a distance that would astound us all, and apparently be not at all related to one generally accepted figure of 1264 miles.
But–is there really no relationship? In fractal dimensions there is, indeed a relationship. Rather than look at the Euclidean measurements of length, depth, and thickness, Mandelbrot asked the question in terms of “dimension”. To quote James Gleick:
A twisting coastline, for example, despite its immeasurableness in terms of length, nevertheless has a certain characteristic degree of roughness. Mandelbrot specified ways of calculating the fractional dimension of real objects,… and he allowed his geometry to make a claim about the irregular patterns he had studied in nature. The claim was that the degree of irregularity remains constant over different scales. Surprisingly often, the claim turns out to be true. Over and over again, the world displays a regular irregularity. (Italics added.)
Let’s apply this to the coastline: what happens is that any sub-portion of the coastline actually corresponds in shape to the pattern of the entire coastline. And a sub-portion of that sub-portion, again, corresponds to the same shape. Realize, we’re talking about patterns here–we’re seeing a mathematics of patterns. (In fact, the science of Chaos is the science of patterns in seemingly random events… does this begin to get interesting?)
Let’s look at something else. The financial astrologer, Arch Crawford, points out that the history of cotton prices is the longest complete data of market records available to U.S. market observers. Funny thing about cotton prices…. If you graph the history of cotton prices for all the years over the 140+ years of record-keeping, and then graph the prices for any period of time–one year, one decade, one week–during that period, the graphs will display the same pattern! So what we are seeing here, again, is regularly repeating patterns.
Okay… how does this relate to astrology: Well, one technique commonly used in astrology is the examination of progressions to look into the timing of a person’s life. A Secondary Progression is a comparison of the pattern of the sub-portion “one day” to the pattern of the sub-portion “one year”. One type of Tertiary Progression compares one lunar cycle to one year. One of the things that blew me away when I first started studying astrology was my teacher’s statement that you could take any recognizable cycle of time in one’s life and make it “equivalent” to one year, therefore using it to “predict” patterns of that person’s future. Try that one on an incredulous friend! But astrologers know that this use of patterns is meaningful. In fact, we can take this quite literally, as you will see in a minute. I’m calling these arbitrarily assigned progression periods “Fractal Progressions”.
Astrology is a language of symbols: a language of meaning. Astrologers apply symbolic meanings to each of the planets used in casting a chart, and take a measure of the patterns between these planets to interpret, symbolically, and sometimes specifically, the type of event likely to occur when this pattern is in place. This is one place where skeptics get tangled up. Since they don’t understand the symbolic language, they can’t understand that “patterns in the sky” have any relationship to their life on earth. They don’t cause events on earth any more than having brown hair causes brown eyes. They simply have a predictable relationship to each other. But in order to give someone an explanation of symbolism, you must use symbols that your listener understands and relates to.
Let’s look at progressions again. Another astrologer once suggested that parents of new babies keep a detailed diary of the first 90 days of the child’s life. This would provide a real-life background for interpreting secondary progressions as the child grows up. This really clicked for me. Although I didn’t have a detailed baby book, I did have anecdotal references for several significant events in my first 45 days. My mother tells the story that, after my birth, she stayed in Houston with her parents for several weeks after my dad moved to Indiana to begin his professorship. Therefore, sometime on my 43rd day of life I boarded a train with my mother to move from Houston to Indiana, changing trains in New Orleans. Late in the 43rd year of my life I quit a successful and lucrative career. Still unemployed after many months, I was conscious only that I was entering a very different phase of my life–what that would be, I couldn’t tell. Looking at this symbolically, it seemed, in my 43-44th year, that I was “on the train” between what I knew and what, in hindsight, I know to be my first home. As an infant, of course, I literally didn’t know where I was going. Did this trip in my infancy cause me to quit my job or drift in unemployment? Of course not. But the events are clearly symbolically related.
A few months after receiving my last income, I decided to use some of my free time and frequent flyer miles to take my first trip to Europe. I asked my mother if she would pick up expenses if I got us two tickets to Spain. (As I write this, I realize our railway tickets in 1949 were also “free”–courtesy of my grandfather’s position with Southern Pacific Railroad.) My mother said an enthusiastic “yes” to the trip, so after checking calendars, I scheduled our flights. Some weeks later it occurred to me that we had not taken a trip alone together SINCE I was 43-44 days old. That the second such trip would occur in my 44th year seemed pretty amazing. Well, I should have remembered that another part of the story might also have a parallel. Apparently, as an infant, I caused my mother some pretty dramatic trouble on the train. After our trip to Spain I was forced to make a wry apology after I jumped all over her for no reason at all: “Sorry, Mom. When we were on that train in 1949, I literally dumped on you. Here we were, on our next trip together, and I managed to dump on you again.”
In astrological language, my Secondary Progressed Chart for July 19, 1993 (last day of earnings) is equivalent to the chart for Sept 27, 1949 at 5:17 pm in New Orleans, where we changed trains and the trouble began. These charts are the same because a secondary progressed chart IS a chart for the exact number of days after birth as your age–in this case 43+ years=43+ days. This chart shows Sun square Uranus, with Mars and Pluto conjoined and square Venus, and Moon square Saturn. My 43-44th year coincided with transiting Pluto at the apex of a T-square with my natal Sun and Ascendant, the Uranus/Neptune conjunction opposing my natal Mars, and transiting Saturn on my ascendant squaring transiting Pluto approaching my MC ( transiting my relocated MC). On July 19, Venus squared Mars and semi-squared the Moon. It’s easy to see the heavy, and similar, patterns at work in both instances. But I didn’t need to know the astrology to feel the impact of the comparison.
“Symbolically parallel event periods….” What a great way to talk about progressions to a non-astrologer. But not everyone has information about their first 90 days. So I decided to check out a pattern of weeks, and a pattern of months. I was 43 weeks old on June 12, 1950. At that time in my life, my parents traveled back to Houston by car every summer, as soon as the school term ended in the spring. I don’t know if June 12 was the day that trip started, but it would have been very close to that date. I don’t know what happened in my life in March 1953, when I was 43 months old. But I was intrigued enough with the possibilities in choosing a periodicity for progressions-via memories to start trying this method of “fractal progressions” with friends, as a way of demonstrating some of the principles on which astrology is based. Here are some of the results:
At a wedding reception I asked a young woman in her early thirties what might have happened between 30-35 days in her life, 30-35 weeks, and 30-35 months. She couldn’t think of anything in particular (it’s probably not unrelated to the fact that her life was going along smoothly at the time of the reception–we tend to remember most vividly the dramatic events!). Then she asked “Why were the years 24-29 so traumatic for me? Those were horrible years. I didn’t know what I was doing, I was totally lost. It was just awful.” I asked her what was going on at 24-29 days, 24-29 weeks, or 24-29 months. As a realization dawned, her eyes lit up. She said “I think it was about the time I was two years old that my grandfather died. He was my primary caregiver and I still remember how awful it was.” She searched the room, found her mother, and asked her when grandfather died. It was during her 24th month of life. I asked her if the period in her 20′s bore any symbolic resemblance to that earlier period. Yes, she said. She kept feeling that something was terribly wrong, something was lost or missing, and she might find it anywhere, but whenever she thought she had, she hadn’t. As a toddler, after her grandfather’s death, she kept running into the arms of bald men, because she identified them with her grandfather, but none of them filled his place. As a result of this conversation, without even identifying her Sun sign, we could talk about the energies associated with Saturn, and different ways this energy can be expressed in life. She could see some of the meanings involved with her five year sense of loss, and her search for a sense of structure and order in her twenties, as part of –and a more mature version of– the same symbolic package as the loss of her grandfather at two.
Another friend has few memories of her early life, so we tried using a different “periodicity”. We decided to look at her life in terms of 2-month periods representing a year. Events up to her first birthday would correspond to the first six years of her life. Using this scale she was able to relate events of her sixth year to her present life. At that time, she entered first grade wearing clothes that caused the kids to tease her about looking “like a boy”. At this time, she is consciously trying to learn ways to express her femininity while still being successful in a career. When we looked at a 4-months equals a year period, she realized she was dealing with issues of femininity strongly again at age 12, when she entered the social world of junior high. A first-house Sun-Pluto conjunction in Leo and a Mars-Venus conjunction in her third, with Mars at 29′ 52″ Virgo and Venus at 00′ 00″ Libra indicates the significance of these issues in her life, and the development of this issue over her life reflect her personal growth, culminating at this time, with a more mature understanding of “femininity”.
As I thought about the relationship between fractals and progressions, I realized that if virtually ANY period could be used as a “fractal progression”, the easiest thing is to simply divide your current age in half–and for fine-tuning, into quarters. I’m 44 now. At 22 I again moved from Texas, where my husband and I had completed our undergraduate work, to my hometown in Indiana, where he would enter graduate school. It was another clear and parallel transition–to home. At 33, I got my first real “professional” job at a “professional” salary. At 11 my second sister was born–the baby I fell in love with and who changed my life. In my mid-40’s new beginnings and transitions were the theme for my life. I asked a friend at a party what happened in her life when she was half her age. Recently widowed, her husband died when she was 46. At 23 her mother died. Another friend, at 53, has been doing whatever “pickup” work she can find in a long period between “real” work. At 26 (half of 54) she was divorced. The period before the divorce was a long, grinding, depressed period. After the divorce, her life improved.
Fractal progressions not only provide non-astrologers with a personally understandable experience of what astrology is all about, it also provides outcomes. It provides a glimpse of “how things turned out”, and therefore “how things might turn out this time”. Astrologers can use this information to supplement interpretations of transits, standard progressions, and solar returns, in much the same way we already use information when we ask a client with a Sun/Saturn square “What happened to you 14 and 21 years ago?”
The point here is not to describe a “simple technique of predicting your future and understanding your past,” although it’s fun to look at the symbolic parallels. I see fractal progressions as a way to demonstrate to skeptical non-astrologers how astrological patterns work. You can briefly describe planetary archetypes involved with the significant memories of a person’s life and guide them into reaching their own understanding of meaning and planetary symbolism. They can clearly see that hating their teacher in first grade, for example, didn’t cause their marital conflicts at 48, but there may be an understandable symbolic relationship.
This approach allows one to step around one of the big misunderstandings about astrology: namely that old bugaboo about planets “causing” events. Just because two events occur at the same time–say, your progressed Saturn transiting your eighth house Moon may occur at the same time as the death of your mother– it doesn’t mean that one event causes the other. They are both part of the same repetitive pattern of occurrences–part of the same fractal pattern.
To a skeptic determined to deny all symbolic relationships, looking at fractal progressions in his or her own life certainly wouldn’t constitute “proof” of anything. On the other hand, we all know people who are genuinely open to different ways of viewing the world and who have no basis for personally understanding how the patterns reflected in the stars relate to their lives. This concept has been useful to me as a way of beginning to relate our field directly to aspects of the new scientific paradigms and explaining it to non-astrologer friends. I encourage readers of this article to experiment with fractal progressions in their own lives and those of friends.
————
Anne Beversdorf is an astrologer living in Austin, Texas. Her practice is directed toward life understanding and spiritual development and she uses techniques from traditional Western astrology, as well Vedic traditions. Anne has worked in the meeting-place between science and metaphysics since her first Science Fair project in 1961. She welcomes conversation, insights, (and clients) and can be reached at email: anne(at)stariel.com. She is especially interested in readers’ experiences using fractal progressions.
This article originally appeared in the great astrological magazine, The Mountain Astrologer in the 90′s.
Astrology and Chaos Theory: Fractal Progressions
by
Anne Beversdorf
With an MC in Sagittarius, an Aquarius ascendant, and a Leo sun, I consistently find myself proselytizing avant-garde or unusual concepts. So, of course, as an astrologer, I’m often in the awkward position of trying to get my skeptical friends to see why astrology is a valid and meaningful discipline. Skeptics say they don’t “believe in” astrology, meaning that they do believe it doesn’t work. It’s tempting to say “If you don’t believe in gravity, does that mean gravity doesn’t work?”, but everyone can SEE the effects of gravity, and one can’t see the relationship of astrology to human life without knowing something about astrology. The challenge is, how can you show an astrological virgin something about astrology in their own life without bombarding them with the meanings of signs, planets, and houses, and how all that symbolism relates to life on earth? And how can you give them a rationale for how this works that compares to something they can accept? I’m beginning to realize that the new sciences, combined with some ordinary common sense, can help us take a giant step in this direction.
Some time ago I read James Gleick’s book, Chaos: Making a New Science. It’s a powerful and mind-expanding book, and I strongly recommend it to astrologers looking for possible scientific underpinnings for our field. [Note: Bernadette Brady’s recent book Astrology, A Place in Chaos, is really the last word on the subject.] Gleick’s book has been germinating in my subconscious mind for a few years, and recently something sprouted. Gleick speaks a lot about fractals–a new type of math that has been popularized by the “Mandelbrot Set” a collection of highly colored, computer-generated graphics that resemble nothing so much as a psychedelic paisley. The curious thing about these pictures is that, if you take any subsection of a picture and blow it up enough, you get the original picture again. And if you take a subset of that picture and blow it up enough, guess what–you get the original picture again–and so on and so on, ad infinitum. What makes this significant is that this mathematical picture-building seems to apply to the geometry of nature itself. Mandelbrot has named this geometry “fractals”.
Let’s examine this for a minute. Consider trying to measure the coastline of California. It proves impossible unless you identify the SCALE of your measurements.
To determine the measurements of California‘s coast, we could lay a single straight line running from Mexico to Canada: but that doesn’t take into account any of the coastline’s irregularities–all those bumps and bays and peninsulas. You could place an imaginary grid over the coastline and plot and measure distances between places where the coastline hit grid points–but how large or small will be your grid? It reminds me of my little sister’s statement after we walked home from her first day at school. “You say it’s a mile, but it would be a lot longer if you straightened out all the hills!” She was right! And if you measured the California coast by taking your measuring tape, millimeter by millimeter, around all the rocks and pebbles and outcroppings of the coastline, you’d have a distance that would astound us all, and apparently be not at all related to one generally accepted figure of 1264 miles.
But–is there really no relationship? In fractal dimensions there is, indeed a relationship. Rather than look at the Euclidean measurements of length, depth, and thickness, Mandelbrot asked the question in terms of “dimension”. To quote James Gleick:
A twisting coastline, for example, despite its immeasurableness in terms of length, nevertheless has a certain characteristic degree of roughness. Mandelbrot specified ways of calculating the fractional dimension of real objects,… and he allowed his geometry to make a claim about the irregular patterns he had studied in nature. The claim was that the degree of irregularity remains constant over different scales. Surprisingly often, the claim turns out to be true. Over and over again, the world displays a regular irregularity. (Italics added.)
Let’s apply this to the coastline: what happens is that any sub-portion of the coastline actually corresponds in shape to the pattern of the entire coastline. And a sub-portion of that sub-portion, again, corresponds to the same shape. Realize, we’re talking about patterns here–we’re seeing a mathematics of patterns. (In fact, the science of Chaos is the science of patterns in seemingly random events… does this begin to get interesting?)
Let’s look at something else. The financial astrologer, Arch Crawford, points out that the history of cotton prices is the longest complete data of market records available to U.S. market observers. Funny thing about cotton prices…. If you graph the history of cotton prices for all the years over the 140+ years of record-keeping, and then graph the prices for any period of time–one year, one decade, one week–during that period, the graphs will display the same pattern! So what we are seeing here, again, is regularly repeating patterns.
Okay… how does this relate to astrology: Well, one technique commonly used in astrology is the examination of progressions to look into the timing of a person’s life. A Secondary Progression is a comparison of the pattern of the sub-portion “one day” to the pattern of the sub-portion “one year”. One type of Tertiary Progression compares one lunar cycle to one year. One of the things that blew me away when I first started studying astrology was my teacher’s statement that you could take any recognizable cycle of time in one’s life and make it “equivalent” to one year, therefore using it to “predict” patterns of that person’s future. Try that one on an incredulous friend! But astrologers know that this use of patterns is meaningful. In fact, we can take this quite literally, as you will see in a minute. I’m calling these arbitrarily assigned progression periods “Fractal Progressions”.
Astrology is a language of symbols: a language of meaning. Astrologers apply symbolic meanings to each of the planets used in casting a chart, and take a measure of the patterns between these planets to interpret, symbolically, and sometimes specifically, the type of event likely to occur when this pattern is in place. This is one place where skeptics get tangled up. Since they don’t understand the symbolic language, they can’t understand that “patterns in the sky” have any relationship to their life on earth. They don’t cause events on earth any more than having brown hair causes brown eyes. They simply have a predictable relationship to each other. But in order to give someone an explanation of symbolism, you must use symbols that your listener understands and relates to.
Let’s look at progressions again. Another astrologer once suggested that parents of new babies keep a detailed diary of the first 90 days of the child’s life. This would provide a real-life background for interpreting secondary progressions as the child grows up. This really clicked for me. Although I didn’t have a detailed baby book, I did have anecdotal references for several significant events in my first 45 days. My mother tells the story that, after my birth, she stayed in Houston with her parents for several weeks after my dad moved to Indiana to begin his professorship. Therefore, sometime on my 43rd day of life I boarded a train with my mother to move from Houston to Indiana, changing trains in New Orleans. Late in the 43rd year of my life I quit a successful and lucrative career. Still unemployed after many months, I was conscious only that I was entering a very different phase of my life–what that would be, I couldn’t tell. Looking at this symbolically, it seemed, in my 43-44th year, that I was “on the train” between what I knew and what, in hindsight, I know to be my first home. As an infant, of course, I literally didn’t know where I was going. Did this trip in my infancy cause me to quit my job or drift in unemployment? Of course not. But the events are clearly symbolically related.
A few months after receiving my last income, I decided to use some of my free time and frequent flyer miles to take my first trip to Europe. I asked my mother if she would pick up expenses if I got us two tickets to Spain. (As I write this, I realize our railway tickets in 1949 were also “free”–courtesy of my grandfather’s position with Southern Pacific Railroad.) My mother said an enthusiastic “yes” to the trip, so after checking calendars, I scheduled our flights. Some weeks later it occurred to me that we had not taken a trip alone together SINCE I was 43-44 days old. That the second such trip would occur in my 44th year seemed pretty amazing. Well, I should have remembered that another part of the story might also have a parallel. Apparently, as an infant, I caused my mother some pretty dramatic trouble on the train. After our trip to Spain I was forced to make a wry apology after I jumped all over her for no reason at all: “Sorry, Mom. When we were on that train in 1949, I literally dumped on you. Here we were, on our next trip together, and I managed to dump on you again.”
In astrological language, my Secondary Progressed Chart for July 19, 1993 (last day of earnings) is equivalent to the chart for Sept 27, 1949 at 5:17 pm in New Orleans, where we changed trains and the trouble began. These charts are the same because a secondary progressed chart IS a chart for the exact number of days after birth as your age–in this case 43+ years=43+ days. This chart shows Sun square Uranus, with Mars and Pluto conjoined and square Venus, and Moon square Saturn. My 43-44th year coincided with transiting Pluto at the apex of a T-square with my natal Sun and Ascendant, the Uranus/Neptune conjunction opposing my natal Mars, and transiting Saturn on my ascendant squaring transiting Pluto approaching my MC ( transiting my relocated MC). On July 19, Venus squared Mars and semi-squared the Moon. It’s easy to see the heavy, and similar, patterns at work in both instances. But I didn’t need to know the astrology to feel the impact of the comparison.
“Symbolically parallel event periods….” What a great way to talk about progressions to a non-astrologer. But not everyone has information about their first 90 days. So I decided to check out a pattern of weeks, and a pattern of months. I was 43 weeks old on June 12, 1950. At that time in my life, my parents traveled back to Houston by car every summer, as soon as the school term ended in the spring. I don’t know if June 12 was the day that trip started, but it would have been very close to that date. I don’t know what happened in my life in March 1953, when I was 43 months old. But I was intrigued enough with the possibilities in choosing a periodicity for progressions-via memories to start trying this method of “fractal progressions” with friends, as a way of demonstrating some of the principles on which astrology is based. Here are some of the results:
At a wedding reception I asked a young woman in her early thirties what might have happened between 30-35 days in her life, 30-35 weeks, and 30-35 months. She couldn’t think of anything in particular (it’s probably not unrelated to the fact that her life was going along smoothly at the time of the reception–we tend to remember most vividly the dramatic events!). Then she asked “Why were the years 24-29 so traumatic for me? Those were horrible years. I didn’t know what I was doing, I was totally lost. It was just awful.” I asked her what was going on at 24-29 days, 24-29 weeks, or 24-29 months. As a realization dawned, her eyes lit up. She said “I think it was about the time I was two years old that my grandfather died. He was my primary caregiver and I still remember how awful it was.” She searched the room, found her mother, and asked her when grandfather died. It was during her 24th month of life. I asked her if the period in her 20′s bore any symbolic resemblance to that earlier period. Yes, she said. She kept feeling that something was terribly wrong, something was lost or missing, and she might find it anywhere, but whenever she thought she had, she hadn’t. As a toddler, after her grandfather’s death, she kept running into the arms of bald men, because she identified them with her grandfather, but none of them filled his place. As a result of this conversation, without even identifying her Sun sign, we could talk about the energies associated with Saturn, and different ways this energy can be expressed in life. She could see some of the meanings involved with her five year sense of loss, and her search for a sense of structure and order in her twenties, as part of –and a more mature version of– the same symbolic package as the loss of her grandfather at two.
Another friend has few memories of her early life, so we tried using a different “periodicity”. We decided to look at her life in terms of 2-month periods representing a year. Events up to her first birthday would correspond to the first six years of her life. Using this scale she was able to relate events of her sixth year to her present life. At that time, she entered first grade wearing clothes that caused the kids to tease her about looking “like a boy”. At this time, she is consciously trying to learn ways to express her femininity while still being successful in a career. When we looked at a 4-months equals a year period, she realized she was dealing with issues of femininity strongly again at age 12, when she entered the social world of junior high. A first-house Sun-Pluto conjunction in Leo and a Mars-Venus conjunction in her third, with Mars at 29′ 52″ Virgo and Venus at 00′ 00″ Libra indicates the significance of these issues in her life, and the development of this issue over her life reflect her personal growth, culminating at this time, with a more mature understanding of “femininity”.
As I thought about the relationship between fractals and progressions, I realized that if virtually ANY period could be used as a “fractal progression”, the easiest thing is to simply divide your current age in half–and for fine-tuning, into quarters. I’m 44 now. At 22 I again moved from Texas, where my husband and I had completed our undergraduate work, to my hometown in Indiana, where he would enter graduate school. It was another clear and parallel transition–to home. At 33, I got my first real “professional” job at a “professional” salary. At 11 my second sister was born–the baby I fell in love with and who changed my life. In my mid-40’s new beginnings and transitions were the theme for my life. I asked a friend at a party what happened in her life when she was half her age. Recently widowed, her husband died when she was 46. At 23 her mother died. Another friend, at 53, has been doing whatever “pickup” work she can find in a long period between “real” work. At 26 (half of 54) she was divorced. The period before the divorce was a long, grinding, depressed period. After the divorce, her life improved.
Fractal progressions not only provide non-astrologers with a personally understandable experience of what astrology is all about, it also provides outcomes. It provides a glimpse of “how things turned out”, and therefore “how things might turn out this time”. Astrologers can use this information to supplement interpretations of transits, standard progressions, and solar returns, in much the same way we already use information when we ask a client with a Sun/Saturn square “What happened to you 14 and 21 years ago?”
The point here is not to describe a “simple technique of predicting your future and understanding your past,” although it’s fun to look at the symbolic parallels. I see fractal progressions as a way to demonstrate to skeptical non-astrologers how astrological patterns work. You can briefly describe planetary archetypes involved with the significant memories of a person’s life and guide them into reaching their own understanding of meaning and planetary symbolism. They can clearly see that hating their teacher in first grade, for example, didn’t cause their marital conflicts at 48, but there may be an understandable symbolic relationship.
This approach allows one to step around one of the big misunderstandings about astrology: namely that old bugaboo about planets “causing” events. Just because two events occur at the same time–say, your progressed Saturn transiting your eighth house Moon may occur at the same time as the death of your mother– it doesn’t mean that one event causes the other. They are both part of the same repetitive pattern of occurrences–part of the same fractal pattern.
To a skeptic determined to deny all symbolic relationships, looking at fractal progressions in his or her own life certainly wouldn’t constitute “proof” of anything. On the other hand, we all know people who are genuinely open to different ways of viewing the world and who have no basis for personally understanding how the patterns reflected in the stars relate to their lives. This concept has been useful to me as a way of beginning to relate our field directly to aspects of the new scientific paradigms and explaining it to non-astrologer friends. I encourage readers of this article to experiment with fractal progressions in their own lives and those of friends.
————
Anne Beversdorf is an astrologer living in Austin, Texas. Her practice is directed toward life understanding and spiritual development and she uses techniques from traditional Western astrology, as well Vedic traditions. Anne has worked in the meeting-place between science and metaphysics since her first Science Fair project in 1961. She welcomes conversation, insights, (and clients) and can be reached at email: anne(at)stariel.com. She is especially interested in readers’ experiences using fractal progressions.
Anne E. Beversdorf: Fractal…..
Anne E. Beversdorf
1119 Anza Avenue
Vista, CA 92084
(619) 724-3622
Fractal Progressions:
Astrology, Fractals, and Human Experience
by Anne E. Beversdorf
Astrology and Chaos Theory: Fractal Progressions
by
Anne E. Beversdorf
With an MC in Sagittarius, an Aquarius ascendant, and a Leo sun, I consistently find myself proselytizing avant-garde or unusual concepts. So, of course, as an astrologer, I’m often in the awkward position of trying to get my skeptical friends to see why astrology is a valid and meaningful discipline. Skeptics say they don’t “believe in” astrology, meaning that they do believe it doesn’t work. It’s tempting to say “If you don’t believe in gravity, does that mean gravity doesn’t work?”, but everyone can SEE the effects of gravity, and one can’t see the relationship of astrology to human life without knowing something about astrology. The challenge is, how can you show an astrological virgin something about astrology in their own life without bombarding them with the meanings of signs, planets, and houses, and how all that symbolism relates to life on earth? And how can you give them a rationale for how this works that compares to something they can accept? I’m beginning to realize that the new sciences, combined with some ordinary common sense, can help us take a giant step in this direction.
Some time ago I read James Gleick’s book, Chaos: Making a New Science. It’s a powerful and mind-expanding book, and I strongly recommend it to astrologers looking for possible scientific underpinnings for our field. Somewhat more recently I read Bernadette Brady’s book Astrology, A Place in Chaos, which is really the last word on the subject. These books have been germinating in my subconscious mind for a few years, and recently something sprouted. In his book, Gleick speaks a lot about fractals–a new type of math that has been popularized by the “Mandelbrot Set” a collection of highly colored, computer-generated graphics that resemble nothing so much as a psychedelic paisley. The curious thing about these pictures is that, if you take any subsection of a picture and blow it up enough, you get the original picture again. And if you take a subset of that picture and blow it up enough, guess what–you get the original picture again–and so on and so on, ad infinitum. What makes this significant is that this mathematical picture-building seems to apply to the geometry of nature itself. Mandelbrot has named this geometry “fractals”.
Let’s examine this for a minute. Consider trying to measure the coastline of California. It proves impossible unless you identify the SCALE of your measurements. To determine the measurements of California’s coast, we could lay a single straight line running from Mexico to Canada: but that doesn’t take into account any of the coastline’s irregularities–all those bumps and bays and peninsulas. You could place an imaginary grid over the coastline and plot and measure distances between places where the coastline hit grid points–but how large or small will be your grid? It reminds me of my little sister’s statement after we walked home from her first day at school. “You say it’s a mile, but it would be a lot longer if you straightened out all the hills!” She was right! And if you measured the California coast by taking your measuring tape, millimeter by millimeter, around all the rocks and pebbles and outcroppings of the coastline, you’d have a distance that would astound us all, and apparently be not at all related to one generally accepted figure of 1264 miles.
But–is there really no relationship? In fractal dimensions there is, indeed a relationship. Rather than look at the Euclidean measurements of length, depth, and thickness, Mandelbrot asked the question in terms of “dimension”. To quote James Gleick:
A twisting coastline, for example, despite its immeasurableness in terms of length, nevertheless has a certain characteristic degree of roughness. Mandelbrot specified ways of calculating the fractional dimension of real objects,… and he allowed his geometry to make a claim about the irregular patterns he had studied in nature. The claim was that the degree of irregularity remains constant over different scales. Suprisingly often, the claim turns out to be true. Over and over again, the world displays a regular irregularity. (Italics added.)
Let’s apply this to the coastline: what happens is that any sub-portion of the coastline actually corresponds in shape to the pattern of the entire coastline. And a sub-portion of that sub-portion, again, corresponds to the same shape. Realize, we’re talking about patterns here–we’re seeing a mathematics of patterns. (In fact, the science of Chaos is the science of patterns in seemingly random events… does this begin to get interesting?)
Let’s look at something else. The financial astrologer, Arch Crawford, points out that the history of cotton prices is the longest complete data of market records available to U.S. market observers. Funny thing about cotton prices…. If you graph the history of cotton prices for all the years over the 140+ years of recordkeeping, and then graph the prices for any period of time–one year, one decade, one week–during that period, the graphs will display the same pattern! So what we are seeing here, again, is regularly repeating patterns.
Okay… how does this relate to astrology: Well, one technique commonly used in astrology is the examination of progressions to look into the timing of a person’s life. A Secondary Progression is a comparison of the pattern of the sub-portion “one day” to the pattern of the sub-portion “one year”. One type of Tertiary Progression compares one lunar cycle to one year. One of the things that blew me away when I first started studying astrology was my teacher’s statement that you could take any recognizable cycle of time in one’s life and make it “equivalent” to one year, therefore using it to “predict” patterns of that person’s future. Try that one on an incredulous friend! But astrologers know that this use of patterns is meaningful. In fact, we can take this quite literally, as you will see in a minute. I’m calling these arbitrarily assigned progression periods “Fractal Progressions”.
Astrology is a language of symbols: a language of meaning. Astrologers apply symbolic meanings to each of the planets used in casting a chart, and take a measure of the patterns between these planets to interpret, symbolically, and sometimes specifically, the type of event likely to occur when this pattern is in place. This is one place where skeptics get tangled up. Since they don’t understand the symbolic language, they can’t understand that “patterns in the sky” have any relationship to their life on earth. They don’t cause events on earth any more than having brown hair causes brown eyes. They simply have a predictable relationship to each other. But in order to give someone an explanation of symbolism, you must use symbols that your listener understands and relates to.
Let’s look at progressions again. Another astrologer once suggested that parents of new babies keep a detailed diary of the first 90 days of the child’s life. This would provide a real-life background for interpreting secondary progressions as the child grows up. This really clicked for me. Although I didn’t have a detailed baby book, I did have anecdotal references for several significant events in my first 45 days. My mother tells the story that, after my birth, she stayed in Houston with her parents for several weeks after my dad moved to Indiana to begin his professorship. Therefore, sometime on my 43rd day of life I boarded a train with my mother to move from Houston to Indiana, changing trains in New Orleans. Late in the 43rd year of my life I quit a successful and lucrative career. Still unemployed after many months, I was conscious only that I was entering a very different phase of my life–what that would be, I couldn’t tell. Looking at this symbolically, it seemed, in my 43-44th year, that I was “on the train” between what I knew and what, in hindsight, I know to be my first home. As an infant, of course, I literally didn’t know where I was going. Did this trip in my infancy cause me to quit my job or drift in unemployment? Of course not. But the events are clearly symbolically related.
A few months after receiving my last income, I decided to use some of my free time and frequent flyer miles to take my first trip to Europe. I asked my mother if she would pick up expenses if I got us two tickets to Spain. (As I write this, I realize our railway tickets in 1949 were also “free”–courtesy of my grandfather’s position with Southern Pacific Railroad.) My mother said an enthusiastic “yes” to the trip, so after checking calendars, I scheduled our flights. Some weeks later it occurred to me that we had not taken a trip alone together SINCE I was 43-44 days old. That the second such trip would occur in my 44th year seemed pretty amazing. Well, I should have remembered that another part of the story might also have a parallel. Apparently, as an infant, I caused my mother some pretty dramatic trouble on the train. After our trip to Spain I was forced to make a wry apology after I jumped all over her for no reason at all: “Sorry, Mom. When we were on that train in 1949, I shit all over you. Here we were, on our next trip together, and I managed to shit all over you again.”
In astrological language, my Secondary Progressed Chart for July 19, 1993 (last day of earnings) is equivalent to the chart for Sept 27, 1949 at 5:17 pm in New Orleans, where we changed trains and the trouble began. This chart shows Sun square Uranus, with Mars and Pluto conjoined and square Venus, and Moon square Saturn. My 43-44th year coincided with transiting Pluto at the apex of a T-square with my natal Sun and Ascendant, the Uranus/Neptune conjunction opposing my natal Mars, and transiting Saturn on my ascendant squaring transiting Pluto approaching my MC ( transiting my relocated MC). On July 19, Venus squared Mars and semi-squared the Moon. It’s easy to see the heavy, and similar, patterns at work in both instances. But I didn’t need to know the astrology to feel the impact of the comparison.
“Symbolically parallel event periods….” What a great way to talk about progressions to a non-astrologer. But not everyone has information about their first 90 days. So I decided to check out a pattern of weeks, and a pattern of months. I was 43 weeks old on June 12, 1950. At that time in my life, my parents traveled back to Houston by car every summer, as soon as the school term ended in the spring. I don’t know if June 12 was the day that trip started, but it would have been very close to that date. I don’t know what happened in my life in March 1953, when I was 43 months old. But I was intrigued enough with the possibilities in choosing a periodicity for progressions-via memories to start trying this method of “fractal progressions” with friends, as a way of demonstrating some of the principles on which astrology is based. Here are some of the results:
At a wedding reception I asked a young woman in her early thirties what might have happened between 30-35 days in her life, 30-35 weeks, and 30-35 months. She couldn’t think of anything in particular (it’s probably not unrelated to the fact that her life was going along smoothly at the time of the reception–we tend to remember most vividly the dramatic events!). Then she asked “Why were the years 24-29 so traumatic for me? Those were horrible years. I didn’t know what I was doing, I was totally lost. It was just awful.” I asked her what was going on at 24-29 days, 24-29 weeks, or 24-29 months. As a realization dawned, her eyes lit up. She said “I think it was about the time I was two years old that my grandfather died. He was my primary caregiver and I still remember how awful it was.” She searched the room, found her mother, and asked her when grandfather died. It was during her 24th month of life. I asked her if the period in her 20′s bore any symbolic resemblance to that earlier period. Yes, she said. She kept feeling that something was terribly wrong, something was lost or missing, and she might find it anywhere, but whenever she thought she had, she hadn’t. As a toddler, after her grandfather’s death, she kept running into the arms of bald men, because she identified them with her grandfather, but none of them filled his place. As a result of this conversation, without even identifying her Sun sign, we could talk about the energies associated with Saturn, and different ways this energy can be expressed in life. She could see some of the meanings involved with her five year sense of loss, and her search for a sense of structure and order in her twenties, as part of –and a more mature version of– the same symbolic package as the loss of her grandfather at two.
Another friend has few memories of her early life, so we tried using a different “periodicity”. We decided to look at her life in terms of 2-month periods representing a year. Events up to her first birthday would correspond to the first six years of her life. Using this scale she was able to relate events of her sixth year to her present life. At that time, she entered first grade wearing clothes that caused the kids to tease her about looking “like a boy”. At this time, she is consciously trying to learn ways to express her femininity while still being successful in a career. When we looked at a 4-months equals a year period, she realized she was dealing with issues of femininity strongly again at age 12, when she entered the social world of junior high. A first-house Sun-Pluto conjunction in Leo and a Mars-Venus conjunction in her third, with Mars at 29′ 52″ Virgo and Venus at 00′ 00″ Libra indicates the significance of these issues in her life, and the development of this issue over her life reflect her personal growth, culminating at this time, with a more mature understanding of “femininity”.
As I thought about the relationship between fractals and progressions, I realized that if virtually ANY period could be used as a “fractal progression”, the easiest thing is to simply divide your current age in half–and for fine-tuning, into quarters. I’m 44 now. At 22 I again moved from Texas, where my husband and I had completed our undergraduate work, to my hometown in Indiana, where he would enter graduate school. It was another clear and parallel transition–to home. At 33, I got my first real “professional” job at a “professional” salary. At 11 my second sister was born–the baby I fell in love with and who changed my life. In my mid-40’s new beginnings and transitions were the theme for my life. I asked a friend at a party what happened in her life when she was half her age. Recently widowed, her husband died when she was 46. At 23 her mother died. Another friend, at 53, has been doing whatever “pickup” work she can find in a long period between “real” work. At 26 (half of 54) she was divorced. The period before the divorce was a long, grinding, depressed period. After the divorce, her life improved.
Fractal progressions not only provide non-astrologers with a personally understandable experience of what astrology is all about, it also provides outcomes. It provides a glimpse of “how things turned out”, and therefore “how things might turn out this time”. Astrologers can use this information to supplement interpretations of transits, standard progressions, and solar returns, in much the same way we already use information when we ask a client with a Sun/Saturn square “What happened to you 14 and 21 years ago?”
The point here is not to describe a “simple technique of predicting your future and understanding your past,” although it’s fun to look at the symbolic parallels. I see fractal progressions as a way to demonstrate to skeptical non-astrologers how astrological patterns work. You can briefly describe planetary archetypes involved with the significant memories of a person’s life and guide them into reaching their own understanding of meaning and planetary symbolism. They can clearly see that hating their teacher in first grade, for example, didn’t cause their marital conflicts at 48, but there may be an understandable symbolic relationship.
This approach allows one to step around one of the big misunderstandings about astrology: namely that old bugaboo about planets “causing” events. Just because two events occur at the same time–say, your progressed Saturn transiting your eighth house Moon may occur at the same time as the death of your mother– it doesn’t mean that one event causes the other. They are both part of the same repetitive pattern of occurrences–part of the same fractal pattern.
To a skeptic determined to deny all symbolic relationships, looking at fractal progressions in his or her own life certainly wouldn’t constitute “proof” of anything. On the other hand, we all know people who are genuinely open to different ways of viewing the world and who have no basis for personally understanding how the patterns reflected in the stars relate to their lives. This concept has been useful to me as a way of beginning to relate our field directly to aspects of the new scientific paradigms and explaining it to non-astrologer friends. I encourage readers of this article to experiment with fractal progressions in their own lives and those of friends.
————
*** (See photos copied from page 95 of Gleick’s book, also color plates from center of book. Xerox copies of each are supplied).
It would be neat to get permission to reproduce the coastline pictures. The fractals pictured in the book are beautiful in color. I’ve seen even more dramatic ones in wall-calendar form, but haven’t been able to find that calendar since working on this article.
—–
Anne E. Beversdorf is an astrologer working in San Diego county. Her practice is directed toward life understanding and spiritual development and she uses techniques from traditional Western astrology, as well as from Uranian and Vedic traditions. Anne has worked in the meeting-place between science and metaphysics since her first Science Fair project in 1961. She welcomes conversation, insights, (and clients) and can be reached at 1119 Anza Avenue, Vista, CA 92084, phone (619) 724-3622. She is especially interested in readers’ experiences using fractal progressions.
© Anne E. Beversdorf, 1994
Viking Press, 1987
Chaos, p. 98