Last week we saw the largest Full Moon for many a month – it fell at mid-Scorpio with the Sun at mid-Taurus. The Moon is closest to the earth right now and so could have an effect on the tides around the world.

Venus is slowing down now and occupies the degree of her station before she turns retrograde on 15th May. As she goes backwards she crosses the face of the Sun. This phenomenon occurs in a pattern that repeats every 243 years, with pairs of transits eight years apart separated by long gaps of 121.5 years and 105.5 years. They always occupy Gemini or Sagittarius. Please see my earlier blog to read more about it.

Venus stations at 24 degrees of Gemini and makes a flowing aspect with Saturn, promising stability and long term planning, particularly financial. 5 days later (20th May) we have the Solar Eclipse at 0 degrees of Gemini on the Pleiades, the star cluster also known as the Seven Sisters. What makes this movement of Venus interesting is that while she is placed in Gemini, her ruler Mercury is in Taurus, ruled by Venus, until the second week of June. This is known as a “mutual reception” as the two planets receive each other’s energies and can in times of stress even exchange places. Traditional astrologers suggested that this phenomenon offered a way out of any pressure, much like two warring nations with ambassadors in each other’s courts. Diplomacy can occur and solutions be found. Let’s see, shall we?

Jupiter crosses the eclipse point on 12th June and activates the energy locked up by the Solar Eclipse as it enters Gemini where it will stay for a whole year. No idea what can happen except that it will impact on young women, publishing, communications, newspapers and information technologies. Busy sign, Gemini …

The Lunar Eclipse of 4th June is total at 14 degrees of Sagittarius/Gemini in front of the “Great Attractor”, one of the most massive “things” known in astrophysics. While they don’t know what it is, they do know that it can bend light and give a front and back view of itself as it does. Weird. And it is attraction writ large.

The square of Uranus and Pluto occurs the day before Venus changes direction to go forward again. This is the combination that has been going on since 2008 and will continue for another 3 years, so no panic there, then. When Mars gets to 7/8 Libra and picks up their combined energies in mid-July we could really see some action. Sabre rattling as a way of diverting our attention from what’s really going on behind closed banks? Hmm

The station and forward motion occurs on 27th July at 7 degrees of Gemini. I will write more on all of this nearer the time.

“Something Understood” BBC Radio 4

I was listening to a BBC Radio 4 programme called “Something Understood” – it airs at 6AM on Sunday mornings. No, I don’t get up to listen, however, thanks to technology, I can hear it at my own convenience online.

Last Sunday it was about Henry David Thoreau writer, thinker and member of the Transcendentalist Movement. He was born in Concord, Massachusetts in 1817 and died on 6th May, 1862 – 150 years ago last Sunday, hence this broadcast.

He is widely known for his book “Walden” which is credited with helping to inspire awareness and respect for the natural environment , years before anyone else gave such ideas the time of day. He lived alone at Walden Pond in the woods not far from his home for two years, embarking on an experiment on simple living. During that time he wrote and thought.

Thoreau was an anti-slavery protester, poet, naturalist, mystic, teacher and humanitarian. During his mid-twenties, he lived with the family of his close friend Ralph Waldo Emerson. And while there, he studied Emerson’s ideas of Transcendentalism, which suggests that the ideal spiritual state transcends, or goes beyond, the physical and empirical; and that one achieves it by direct personal intuition rather than any religious doctrine. In other words, the direct experience of the Divine without intervention from the organised church.

When I heard all this on the programme, I saw Neptune’s working in all this and took to my computer to find that it was so. Through childhood, Thoreau’s chart was attuned to Neptune’s energy as it was opposite his Mercury and Moon at birth, then opposite his Sun in Cancer during his early years, so giving him the subtle drive to find the philosophy to live his, albeit short, life by. While at the Emerson home, Neptune was going over his Ascendant. Neptune can consume a person and create an uncertainty about the prevailing material values of their society at large. This can lead to escapism through drugs and alcohol, but also create an artistic and mystical soul as well, maybe even in the same person, who will search until “something” is found.

Thoreau died at age 44. Typical of his Aquarius Ascendant, he liked his solitude, while spending it on improving the lot of humanity through his writing.

I noticed also that his Ascendant at 18 degrees Aquarius is the same as Barak Obama’s Ascendant. Were it not for the group of abolitionist Transcendentalists: Emerson, Thoreau, Alcott, Hawthorne; Obama may never have had the opportunity to become US President.

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