I heard on the radio yesterday that in Senegal they say that when an old person dies, a library is lost, because their knowledge and wisdom dies too.

So, this part of my article is about two huge libraries of wisdom and courage.

1) A friend recently wrote to me and asked me if I realised that both Jane Goodall and Gloria Steinem were born within 9 days of each other and were both celebrating their 80th birthdays last week.

I quote from her email: “Both have “changed” the world. One on behalf of women and one on behalf of our world’s wildlife, especially Chimpanzees. Each of the women have been enormously successful with their causes and have mounted world attention.

What do you see in their charts that speaks to that? The more I think of it, each had chosen a segment of the population which had been overlooked and each has moved fearlessly for some 40 years to bring their views and studies to the world’s attention AND with great success. What is there in their charts that these two women have in common?”

I love a challenge like this – in fact, I imagine that all astrologers worth their salt would enjoy a nose around these two women’s charts to find THE thing that singles them out as special. However, to be honest, it isn’t as simple as looking at their charts and saying “Eureka! I’ve got it!”

Looking at what they have in common, I notice that they both have their Sun in Aries; Goodall has her Moon and Ascendant in Sagittarius – so a deep emotional connection with large animals and the environment. Steinem has a Scorpio Ascendant and her Moon in Leo, so has a passionate and profound need to be seen and valued for who she is i.e. a woman. They both share a conjunction with Sun and Mars, so are prepared to fight their corner when need be. Also, I notice a shared conjunction between Saturn and the North Node, which would bring a drive to improve the world as they experienced it – Saturn in Aquarius being very idealistic about personal projects – and the Moon’s Node being deeply Karmic. So their close relationship would indicate that they were both driven by Destiny to make a difference in the field of their choosing.

However – and here’s the thing – the moment they were born all those years ago, so were a million other babies who would have the same chart and planetary aspects. In Goodall’s case, as she was born at midnight of that day i.e. 3 April, the Ascendant would remain the same in England, her birthplace. In Steinem’s case, the day was almost done for her birth, too – she was born at 10PM on the 25th March, so the Ascendant would go through half of Sagittarius and that was it – all of the Ascendant changes had happened prior to their births throughout both days.

So, why those two women, as my friend asked? I think that humanity, like the rest of nature, will tend to overdo with the number of seeds, babies, kittens, puppies, etc born at any one time. Nature does this to ensure that some get through and survive. And just like the picture on a seed packet that shows the perfect outcome, survival will depend on sunshine, rainfall, good soil etc for their success – and they won’t all get that. Just like human children – many starve, are beaten, etc, which stunts their ability to grow into their own perfection.

Would that not show on a birth chart? Well, in some cases it does, but if you are born in a war zone where starvation is rife and refugee camps are all that is on offer, I guess a different struggle will pertain.

And I just don’t know, is the honest answer.

Back to Steinem’s and Goodall’s births, you could imagine that given the right conditions, all those babies born around their month, would certainly have a profound effect on their families in some way or another, that’s for sure. And that may be more due to the conjunction of Saturn and Moon Node in Aquarius, driving the ideals, with the Sun/Mars conjunction enabling them to fight to support those ideals. It could be an interesting study for someone.

With thanks to my dear friend Hannelore Hahn for her question. Hannelore is the founder of The International Women Writing Guild of New York – a powerful woman herself, who nurtured, tutored and encouraged women throughout the world to write and to dare to call themselves writers. Thank you, Hannelore, with love from us all.

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And now to something completely different:

(2) We are now into April with the Grand Cross looming over us – and yet, many countries are experiencing a return to better days, certainly in their finances. I think that we can over-hype this major life-changing planetary configuration between Pluto/Uranus/Jupiter and Mars and cast doom and gloom over the readers of astrology websites out there.

Looking at how things seem to be emerging, chiefly Pluto in Capricorn, I would suggest to you in this article (as I have been doing in private to friends) that the likely movement of political energy will be a move to the Right in most countries, maybe even Far Right which brings with it nationalism, conservatism (meaning a holding on to resources rather than sharing them), a dog eat dog mentality, corruption in high places and a desire to control populations; particularly through withholding resources and engendering fear among those in the community who are disadvantaged and who need help.

And we may have to wait until Pluto enters humanitarian Aquarius (in 2024) before things change again.

And this won’t be a quick fix i.e. over next year – Uranus and Pluto face each other off until 2017/18, so we have some time to go with it yet. The one thing we can be sure of is that the way things are now will change out of all recognition. And that change will affect us all

Certainly these energies of Pluto power, Uranus extremism, Jupiter exaggeration and Mars violence and rage will result in some escalation of wars in those countries that are on the brink. If people are starving and religiously inflamed, then the build up of the above energies in their psyches will be uncontainable and will spill over into violence. It’s inevitable, to be realistic about it.

For the rest of us who just watch the skies and wonder, well, we know what’s happening out there and recognise that there’s little we can do to change things – we can’t move planets, we are not Gods yet.

For the beginning of next week we might want to look at the two latest upcoming eclipses – Lunar on 15th April in Aries/Libra; Solar on 29th April in early Taurus – 10 degrees away from the Moon’s South Node in Aries, so not truly a Total Eclipse. The Lunar Eclipse is close to the Mars/Uranus opposition, so could inflame the anger of those who are already rattling their sabres. This could mark some surprising events that push us closer to some kind of collective Destiny on our wonderful planet. Both the Eclipsed Moon and Sun signs are ruled by Venus, and so may suggest some kind of peace offering being made by nations that must be tired of warring now. Or it could bring the rise of another Gloria Steinem or Jane Goodall – heaven knows, we need them!

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