Blog
by Steven Forrest
We are a little late on this one, but don’t worry – we haven’t missed the show! On April 28, 2017, the axis of the mean lunar nodes changed signs. The south node left Pisces, where it had been since October 9, 2015, and simultaneously entered Aquarius. (Remember that the mean nodes are always retrograde). That of course tells us that the other end of the axis – the north node – also changed signs. It left Virgo and crossed into Leo.
As usual, the nodes will remain in their new signs for about a year and a half. On November 15, 2018, they will cross over into Capricorn/Cancer.
by Steven Forrest
Everyone seems to know the myth of Persephone where Pluto drags her down to the Underworld “to be his bride.” Her mother, Demeter, expresses her grief at her daughter’s abduction by putting the world into the deep freeze of an endless winter. In the end, the Olympian gods and goddesses broker a deal, both to keep humanity from starving and also to keep the worshipful observances coming. From then on, Persephone spends six months of the year with her mother. The other six months of the year, she is ensconced with Pluto in the Underworld. Demeter is bereft during the months spent without her daughter, and so winter and cold reign over the planet until the two are reunited.
And thus does Spring return every year.
It amazes me how literally astrology expresses itself sometimes. For the past three years or so, Pluto has been transiting through a conjunction with my natal Sun. I’ve lived the myth.
New Introduction to The Night Speaks
This is an excerpt of the new introduction for the 2016 reprint edition of The Night Speaks
Which one of your kids do you love the most? Anyone who actually answers that question obviously has no future in politics. In a similar way, authors, down the road in their careers, are often asked which of their books is their favorite. The stakes are lower, but the dilemma is the same. Books are like your kids.
by Steven Forrest
At the big International Society for Astrological Research (ISAR) conference in California this past October, a panel of astrologers predicted who would win the U.S. presidential election. None picked Donald Trump. Their calculations suggested a Clinton victory, just as the majority of pollsters had predicted.
As they say, “the rest is history.” The astrologers on the panel, along with the majority of pollsters, got it wrong.
This was not a glorious day for our craft. One vitriolic internet article trumpeted, “Astrologers Were Wrong About the 2016 Election, Casting Serious Doubt on Their Predictive Abilities.” The piece opened with the lines, “Astrology is bullshit. But for some reason, many Americans still believe that astrologists have the ability to predict the future.”
For my teaching programs, 2017 brings a “new year” of a different sort too. This month, on January 10, the Apprenticeship Program completes exactly one cycle of the lunar nodes. On that day, the Moon’s north node returns to 5° 35' Virgo – exactly where it was when the whole thing got started.
Reasonable people would give me blank looks and cross the street if I stood on a corner shouting, “A nodal return, a nodal return!” But for anyone who has studied the basic methodology of evolutionary astrology, we understand that the lunar nodes are about as central to the system as your third lumbar vertebra is to your back. We could not do evolutionary astrology without them.
