Blog
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.
by Steven Forrest
Jupiter is in Sagittarius now and it will stay there until December 2, 2019. Since Jupiter “rules” that sign – and also famously has dominion over Lady Luck – there’s a pervasive tendency among astrologers to view this as an innately wondrous thing, as if all of us can expect an avalanche of winning lottery numbers, true love, and weight loss.
Fear not: we are not going to say the opposite! But this big Jupiter event does offer us a chance to think some deeper thoughts about what it means for any planet, and Jupiter in particular, to be “in its own sign.”
Here’s the simplest way to say it: when a planet passes through a sign that it rules, it does not become “better;” it just becomes stronger. The good or bad of it depends, as ever, on how you use that energy rather than on the configuration itself. In that rulership situation, it is as if you are cutting a piece of wood with a hand saw. When you are cutting across the grain, it’s hard work. When you are cutting along the natural lines of the grain, it’s much easier. The lay of the grain and the direction of your efforts are in alignment.
As we enter November, the big news looming on the astrological front is that the lunar nodes are about to change signs. That is always a crucial development even though it happens every year and a half.
What does it signify?
Two things: first, that the nature of the collective “karmic chickens coming home to roost” is about to shift dramatically.
The second is that we will soon see the births of children who are members of a very different soul-tribe than the babies who’ve been born since early 2017. That is because south node energy is what you see in a newborn baby’s eyes, at least once you have stripped away all the required rhapsodic cooing. Babies are as human as you or me, warts and all. As the south node switches signs, the nature of the warts switches too.
Here are the details:
On November 15, the lunar north node – always retrograde – backs out of Leo and enters Cancer, where it will remain until June 4, 2020.
by Steven Forrest
The August 2018 edition of Ed Snow’s wonderful Astrology News Service revealed the results of a survey he had conducted among members of the astrology organizations. It turns out that 68.5% of the five hundred astrologers he surveyed accepted the idea of reincarnation, while only a tiny 12% disagreed with the idea.
That so many of us practicing this craft believe in prior lifetimes came as a big surprise to me. Reincarnation is of course fundamental to evolutionary astrology. But, while it is increasingly popular, evolutionary astrology is still a minority voice in the larger context of our profession. I would have imagined that far fewer astrologers were concerned with who they or their clients were in their past lives. But more than two-thirds of us do.
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.”
