Blog — Newsletters

Tem Tarriktar, the beloved publisher of The Mountain Astrologer magazine, passed away last July 8th. He had thyroid cancer. In the Age of Facebook and Instagram, most of you reading this probably knew of his illness and his heroic battle against it over the past many months. Likely, you knew of his passing within hours as well.  Astrology is a small world, and at times such as this, our field and all of us who comprise it feel like a family. Death draws us all a little closer to the ancient hearth-fire.

All the standard things one might say in the face of such a loss remain true, even though familiarity might weaken them to the point that they sound like cliches: Tem will be sorely missed. Our hearts go out to those he left behind. We will always remember him. We know he lives on in spirit and in his legacy of great work.

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Saturn is transiting over my natal Sun, so I am trying to walk my talk – working like a maniac, in other words, trying to keep my eye on the prize.

At the same time, my progressed Moon is passing through the twelfth house. True to form, I don’t know exactly what I am doing.

It is a strange astrological combo-platter, as you can plainly see.

At times such as these, my appreciation of astrology really goes through the roof. I look into that bright mirror in the sky and, among other benefits, I feel a whole lot less crazy than I might feel without astrology.

I bet that you feel that way too, or you wouldn’t be tuning into my monthly astrological ramble.

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by Steven Forrest

Let me start by getting the obvious stuff out of the way. The long-awaited Book of Fire by best-selling author Steven Forrest is now available! Act Now! Act Now! These savings won’t last! Be the first on your block . . . etc.

I know you’ve heard it all before. And of course I would like for you to buy the book, but only if you think you might find it helpful. So far as I know, Linda Goodman, who wrote Sun Signs back in the 1960s, is the only astrological writer who ever wound up wealthy for her efforts. For most of us . . . well, it reminds me of the old joke about how to make a million dollars playing jazz: just make sure that you start with two million dollars.

Astrological writing is a labor of love, in other words. In all honesty, even though I’m probably among the more successful astrological authors, most of the profits from my books have come in the form of spinoffs: readers getting inspired to come to me for consultations, invitations to lecture and teach – things like that.

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by Steven Forrest

Facing any kind of crisis or heartbreak in life, most of us would find an eye-to-eye session with a living astrologer to be more satisfying than a computer screen offering us pre-packaged nuggets about our current transits or progressions. There are a lot of reasons for that, most of them rather obvious at the human level. People and machines may be developing an interesting symbiosis, but when the emotional chips are down, human-to-human, heart-to-heart, interactions are still the most appealing option for most of us.

Beyond the obvious touchy-feely realities, there is another level to this distinction, something more intellectual, something that goes beyond empathy and a hug. The human mind can do something that no machine can do. It can meld all of the symbols together into one clear, coherent, emotionally connected package. Developments in artificial intelligence may change all that someday, but for now the human heart is still the premier instrument when it comes to pulling the diverse messages of many planets into a meaningful, coherent statement.

When I am teaching the more advanced kinds of astrological interpretation, I constantly beat this drum: integration, integration, integration. One day I realized that I could boil this critical skill down to one single pithy statement: always remember what you have already said. So simple to say, but it really encapsulates all the critical integrative principles.

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by Steven Forrest

If you live in North or South America, the sky will put on a very fine show on the night of January 20/21. Lunar eclipses are not rare, but ones that coincide with a so–called "Super Moon" are a lot more unusual. And that's exactly what you will be seeing, provided that no clouds get in the way: a particularly big Full Moon going dark, maybe even turning coppery–red in the process.

Caveat: absolutely guaranteed, the media is going to oversell it, leading to lots of disappointment among people who've been jaded by special effects in movies. I can see the hyperbolic Yahoo! headlines now: GIGANTIC MEGA-MOON ECLIPSES ENTIRE SKY! And of course somebody somewhere will have their fifteen minutes of fame by proclaiming some grand governmental conspiracy to conceal the fact that the Moon will collide with the Earth, probably due to some alleged malfeasance on the part of Hillary Clinton.

Ignore the hyperbole, but please, if you possibly can, have a look at this sky–show! Just keep your expectations somewhere south of seeing a real–life Star Wars up there that night.

Lunar Eclipses are languorous affairs, to be savored like long, slow winter sunsets or your last piece of chocolate. Totality, for example – the period of total lunar eclipse – lasts about an hour. Compare that with the frantic few minutes of a total solar eclipse. That's an entirely different beast, and admittedly a lot more spectacular. January's Moon–show, from the first, nearly–unnoticeable "penumbral" contact of the outer edges of Earth's shadow with the Moon to the final " not–with–a–bang–but–a–whimper" end of it all, runs about five hours.

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by Tony Howard

The Mr Rogers documentary Won’t You Be My Neighbor has been the sleeper summer indie movie hit, suggesting that its poignant message is just right for the times we’re living in. With a focus on the short supply of human decency, respect, compassion and tolerance, at this moment in history the film feels, as Alissa Wilkinson at Vox points out, “radically subversive.” How did we get here?

The answer to that question is of course long and complex. But it’s my hope that everyone receiving this email resonates with Fred Rogers’ mission, which is distinctly Piscean: We’re all sisters and brothers here, with insecurities, fears, problems. So why not support each other with care and kindness?

Rogers had such a lasting impact, in part because, as the documentary shows, he walked his talk.

Like many of you, I’m so jaded by the high drama of the news cycle and of sensational documentary exposes that I found myself waiting on the edge of my seat for the “big reveal.” But it never came. It turns out that the big revelation was that Rogers was the guy we all thought he was - and that his mission hasn’t lost its power or importance.

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With its eighty-four year orbit, Uranus – the fabled Lord of Earthquakes and Lightning Bolts – enters a new sign of the zodiac about every seven years. As befits its dramatic title, when it enters a sign, any area of life connected with that symbol is due to hit some choppy air. Underlying the “chop,” however, is a deeper process: old, outdated structures are shaken to make way for breakthroughs and pulses of evolution. As befits the lightning bolt metaphor, these pulses can happen very rapidly. Like earthquakes, they can, in the blink of an eye, change the shape of the landscape forever.

What does Uranus’ entry into Taurus portend for us, both as human societies and as individual beings? In this month’s newsletter, I want to wrestle with the “big picture” perspective – what this event means for the world. We are also simultaneously releasing a two-hour program I recorded regarding the event’s more personal dimensions.

Before we stroll out on the thin ice of global prediction, let’s remember that of all the planets, Uranus is the least predictable. Seeing it arriving at a sensitive point in a client’s birthchart, many an astrologer suggests a strategy of “expecting the unexpected.”

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by Steven Forrest

Chiron makes a Station on the Fourth of July, turning retrograde at about 2.5 degrees of Aries. Meanwhile, Saturn is already retrograde at about 5.5 degrees of Capricorn. So they are making a square aspect within about a three-degree orb right as those Chironic energies come to a peak.

Here’s where it gets strange. Since both bodies are retrograde after the 4^th, Chiron is already “ahead” of Saturn in the backwards race – and Saturn is too slow to catch up. Chiron escapes into Pisces on September 26^th. Saturn, already seeing the futility of the chase, gives up on September 6^th, turning around at about 2.5 degrees of Capricorn and heading direct again.

Chiron doesn’t venture back into Aries again until mid-February 2019. By then Saturn is too deep into Capricorn for the square to form. The next perfect – or “partile” – aspect that the two bodies make does not happen until 2021 when they are sextile for a few months. By then Saturn is out of Capricorn and into Aquarius, while Chiron is still in Aries.

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Uranus is famous for providing surprises and it sure worked for me a couple of days ago! I was speaking at the United Astrology Conference in Chicago. On Monday night, transiting Uranus was just 0°28' from conjuncting my natal north node of the Moon. “Expect the unexpected” is the classic advice. And it sure worked! I won the Regulus Award for Astrological Education.

I don’t mean to sound disingenuously modest here. I know my work is popular and that I have a high profile in the world of astrology. It seems that winning an award should not come as a total shock. But it did. Some of my surprise derived from simple experience. I had often been nominated, and never won. I had no reason to think this time would be any different.

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by Steven Forrest

Call me old-fashioned, but in this age of digital relationships, I like to ring the bells for the magic of good old face-to-face, eye-to-eye human contact. That is especially true when I am teaching astrology. Something special happens between my students and myself in my classes, something beyond what is available in any other way. My favorite way to say it is that, unlike the digital world, life is composed of more than audio and video tracks.

I think of a treasure: my friendship with Robert A. Johnson, the great Jungian writer and thinker. I had read all his work avidly. It had sunk into my own thinking and had made a real impact on the way I practiced astrology. But when the fates brought us together as neighbors a few years ago, I felt that I understood his work in a much more multidimensional way. It had already entered my mind; but after getting to know him, it sunk into my heart.

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