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When is the following declaration the saddest, bitterest thing you've ever heard? "I will always be your friend."

Sweet words, most of the time. Real friendship is precious. But most of us have felt that terrible sting--the word "friend" when it comes out of the mouth of someone with whom we are in love in a romantic, mating way. Being downgraded to "friend" means rejection. Something upon which we have staked a big piece of our lives is taken away. We know it and our lover knows it too.

True friendship is a rare and wonderful thing; I don't mean to belittle it. We share interests; we celebrate each other's victories and commiserate in failure and pain. We share values and assumptions. Unspoken understandings abound. Like good jazz players, we even interrupt each other at exactly the right, comfortable moments. You can feel that kind of friendship instantly. You meet someone at a party and there's an instantaneous sense of being on the same page. Everything a friend does is all right.

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A Quest for Wisdom and Balance
by Douglas "Dag" Rossman

In seeking to develop a personal philosophy that is both emotionally and intellectually satisfying, many of us shallow-rooted European-Americans have been drawn to the world views expressed by Native Americans or peoples of the Far East. Appealing as this approach may be, it is very difficult for most people to become completely attuned to a cultural heritage that is not their own. While one can respect and admire "the Other," most of us will always remain to some extent an outsider, a visitor in someone else's culture. The sense of truly belonging that we all crave continues to elude us.

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by Jodie Forrest
This article first appeared in The Mountain Astrologer magazine. Reprinted with permission.

Do you give astrological readings? What planet are you most likely to hurry through if time is pressing? Mercury, most likely. And little wonder: the Mercury-Hermes of classical Greek and Roman mythology could be passed over as a message-carrying youth, a glib and quicksilver lightweight. Mercury is a quick-witted deity of logic and order--lord of the logical left brain, as it were.

Certainly that can be an accurate description astrologically. Accurate, but incomplete. Even the classical world also saw Mercury as a psychopomp--a guide of souls to the Underworld--and as the ruler of crossroads and other transitional states.

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I am often asked to comment on the old "fate versus free-will debate." My short answer is a very emphatic focus on personal responsibility, creativity, and choice. Here's the long answer.

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The Runes were the letters with which the ancient Norse wrote until approximately 1000 A.D., and they can be seen carved on Runestones across Scandinavia to this day. They also had oracular, mythological or psychological import. The chief Norse god, Odin, was said to have been voluntarily wounded with a spear and hung for nine nights on the nine worlds of Norse cosmology's axle-tree, Yggdrasil, in order to obtain knowledge of the Runes' meanings and magical uses--a kind of Norse shamanic initiation.

Many historians, mythologists, occultists and modern pagans have studied the Runes. One good place to start reading about them is Freya Aswynn's book Leaves of Yggdrasil, Llewellyn, St. Paul, MN 1994. The following interpretations were researched and elaborated by Jodie and Steven Forrest. They are not the definitions of a Norse scholar, nor a modern day godhi or gytha (Norse priest or priestess) but those of a novelist and an astrologer. As in Jodie's Nordic-Celtic historical fantasy novels , which feature the Runes, some poetic license has been taken! Still, we think you'll find them interesting.

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First, a review of the full Moon: Remember that the Moon rules the ocean's tides, and that water is a primordial symbol of feeling. Everyone's emotional "tides" are running higher (or lower) during a full Moon. This effect is more emphasized if you have a Cancer Sun, Moon or Ascendant, or a full or new Moon natally, or the Moon in an angular house natally. Try to give everyone a bit more compassion and understanding, and remember that they (and you) are more subjective under the full Moon. 

If the transiting full Moon falls within about 4 degrees of a conjunction OR an opposition to one of your natal planets, then how you express that planet *vis-a-vis other people* is lunarized for the two lunar months before and after that full Moon. The month before the full Moon is probably felt more strongly, and the month after involves more reflection and processing.

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by Jodie Forrest

Four planets are retrograde all month (August 2009):  Jupiter, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto. The Earth temporarily overtakes them in its orbit, so they temporarily appear to be going backwards in the zodiac. As above, so below--retrogradations of the outer planets are times when their energy goes "widdershins," or backwards. I like the fanciful term "widdershins" more; it implies there is a purpose to this energy doubling back upon itself, a method in this reversal of motion. What's ruled by a retrograde planet is commonly supposed to go haywire during its retrogradation. I suspect that's more likely to happen if we either don't pay conscious and reflective attention to the affairs of that planet, or if we try to push its affairs forward too fast without such reflection.

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by Jodie Forrest
Copyright 2000. This article first appeared in The Mountain Astrologer magazine. Reprinted with permission.

Wouldn't it be grand to be able to use our Mars function as easily as we can learn to understand it? At first glance, Mars, the warrior planet, seems to rule some pretty basic, organic and instinctual material. Fight or flight. Assertion and aggression. Boundaries and self-defense. Courage. Initiative. Drive. The ability to act. Knowing what we want, and doing what we have to do to get it.

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