Blog
We say “astrology” as if it were one unified entity, but of course it is not. How many house systems are there? Do we use asteroids or not? What about Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto? – many traditionalists prefer to ignore them. Meanwhile, Uranian astrologers use hypothetical planets that no one has ever seen – Poseidon, Zeus and so on – and swear by them. I hear they get good results too. As an evolutionary astrologer, much of what I say revolves around the south node of the Moon – but most commercial astrology programs do not even show its position unless you ask them to.
Even more fundamentally, is astrology about the stars or the seasons? To a Vedic astrologer, the sign Aries and the constellation Aries are the same thing – but not to a western “Tropical” astrologer, where Aries starts with the northern Vernal Equinox, which has actually drifted back into Pisces over the centuries.
To put it charitably, astrology is a “big tent.” To put it more pointedly, the many different branches of astrology contradict each other in fundamental ways. Inevitably, this reality leads to the question of which form of astrology is “the right one” – and there begins a slippery slope.
On September 17, 1981, sexy Doors’ singer Jim Morrison’s bedroom eyes gazed out from the cover of Rolling Stone magazine. The caption read “He’s hot, he’s sexy and he’s dead.” It might not mark a milestone on the history of good taste, but astrologically, the event has always intrigued me. What was going on in his chart? Or more pressingly, would his chart still work “even though he was no longer in it?”
Morrison had died, probably in a bathtub, probably as a result of a heroin overdose, in Paris ten years earlier. That had put an end to The Doors, which had formed six riotous years earlier in Los Angeles.
Ten years gone, and yet Jim Morrison’s career was suddenly on a roll.
Looking at 1980, sales of every single Doors’ album had doubled or tripled compared to 1979. Joe Smith, the chairman of Elektra Records, said “No group that isn’t around anymore has sold that well for us.” The Doors’ magnum opus, The End, had been featured in Francis Ford Coppola’s hit film, Apocalypse Now, in 1979. The following year, a Morrison biography, No One Gets Out of Here Alive, by Jerry Hopkins, sold unexpectedly well.
Jim Morrison was born in Melbourne, Florida at 11:55AM-EWT on December 8, 1943. Even though he exited that chart in 1971, it seems that it lived on, even without him.
As I write these words, I am in voluntary self-quarantine. I suspect that many of you are too. It’s the right thing to do. A few of you have contacted me, wondering about the astrology behind the pandemic, how long it will last, and how bad it might get. I don’t know the answers to the two latter questions, but let’s peer into the crystalline mirror of the heavens and see what we can learn about the first one: why Covid-19 is upon us right now. I do think that we can at least get some sense of its purpose.
Many astrologers have been pointing an accusing finger at the current planetary traffic jam in Capricorn, with the Saturn-Pluto conjunction as the main culprit, and Mars currently helping it along. Neptune in Pisces has a correlation with contagion too, as Maurice Fernandez has emphasized. All that is solid astrology, but it leaves out an important piece of the puzzle – one whose significance has been banging us over the head since 2005, but which astrologers still tend to ignore. That is the planet Eris, which is currently squaring the Pluto-Saturn conjunction, and doing so from the edgy sign Aries. That is what I want to explore with you in this newsletter. I believe the Eris-Pluto square is actually the heart of the matter.
Many of you are probably only dimly aware of Eris. It still has not gotten the press it deserves in the astrological community. Let me be the first to admit that I have not integrated it properly into my own teaching and counseling myself yet. That’s a big mistake, as I believe we will see clearly in the light of Eris’s unmistakable fingerprints in the current viral situation.
Exciting, busy times here – with Jupiter, Saturn, and Pluto all in Capricorn, and with my having my natal Sun and two planets there, I am feeling alive, engaged . . . and also run pretty ragged. Along with my usual client work, we are in the late stages of pre-production on The Book of Air, which should be out very soon. I’m also diving into writing The Book of Water, which will be the last volume of my Elements Series . . . whereupon I hope to finally get time for a vacation!
In these four Elements books, my essential aim is to write down “everything I have learned” in half a century of astrological practice. (Saturn is especially fond of impossible aims.) Put any of the planets in any of the signs, houses, or any aspects to each other, whether natally or in motion somehow, and I have an instantaneous first impression of the core issues involved. All of that has to be put in the context of the rest of the chart, and that’s where the deeper arts of interpretation come into play. No book would be fat enough to include all of those integrative perspectives – but in these four Elements books, I at least want to record my “instantaneous take on those core issues.” It’s all “cookbook” astrology with its inherent limitations – but I remember how helpful those kinds of thumbnail sketches were to me when I was learning the craft. I spent a lot of time looking up configurations in Robert Hand’s Planets in Transit or the books of Charles E.O. Carter, Dane Rudhyar, or Ronald C. Davison.
Astrologer: Pluto is creeping toward your 7th house cusp.Client: Is that ... bad?
Astrologer: Well, let’s just say that the God of Hell is entering your House of Marriage.
Client: What can I do ...?
Astrologer: Let me recommend an attorney and a psychiatrist.
The dialog above is exaggerated, I hope. But maybe not. I know that I have dealt with its apparent aftermath in the counseling room many times. What is the impact upon a client of such a bleak prognosis? After hearing such dispiriting words, he or she may cringe before Pluto as if frozen in place before an oncoming train. An astrologer speaking this way might unwittingly poison a decent relationship with fear or suspicion — and do so right at a time when what is really needed is emotional courage.
Let’s insert a second imaginary dialog, substituting Jupiter for Pluto. Here, the same fatalistic astrologer might paint a rosier picture. There is a new sweetheart on your horizon, one who resembles all the romantic films currently playing in your psychic Cineplex. A star! An angel! Generous — and probably wealthy enough to put a little muscle behind that generosity.
