The Future of Astrology
Steven Forrest discusses the future of astrology in this keynote address recorded at the NORWAC astrology conference in May 2007.
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Solar Deities in Norse Mythology
The Norwegian artist Edvard Munch's painting, 'The Sun' (left) shows a huge, radiant solar disc rising over a fjord, where a diminutive house clings to a rocky cliff overlooking the water. Munch's sun emits kaleidoscopically multicolored rays of pulsing, almost animate, light, all streaming out from that immense central core, illuminating and virtually setting fire to the landscape below. The original hangs in the Festival Hall at the University of Oslo. A print hangs in my office and often stops first time clients in their tracks.
The Pluto Brothers Measure the Night
An Interview with Steven Forrest and Jeffrey Wolf Green
by Hadley Fitzgerald, M.A., M.F.T.
This article first appeared in The Mountain Astrologer (TMA), and is reprinted by permission. For Ms. Fitzgerald's bio and contact information, please scroll to the end of the article. For Steven and Jeffrey's definition of Evolutionary Astrology, please scroll to the end of the article, or go to our About Evolutionary Astrology page.
In ancient times, as cultures appropriated one another's deities, the Romans latched onto a god named Pluto as their correlative to the Greek god Hades, lord of the underworld. This god's realm gradually became synonymous with "hell" down through the ages in repetitive cross-cultural mistranslations. We've forgotten that the Greeks commonly referred to Hades by his more popular epithet, "Pluton," the name used in the mysteries to designate the wealth-giver.
"Pluton" is a direct lift from the Greek word "ploutos," which means "riches, wealth, fortune." As in treasure. And it is in the nature of treasure that we do not reach up for it. We must dig down deeply into the netherworlds of our lives and psyches to find the wealth buried there alongside the dark and creepy-crawly things.
Steve Forrest quips that he and Jeff Green have become known in certain circles as "The Pluto Brothers," that the theme from Shaft can be heard in the background when they step onto a stage these days. Both of them have Scorpio rising and Pluto in the 9th house, and everything about their astrological work digs deep and aims high. They re-mind us that the descent into the redemptive darkness is an essential, grounding counterpoint to the New Age "flight into light" that I see at times in my clinical practice. Steven and Jeffrey are treasures, and we are richer for the work they are doing on this Earth.
The Craft of Chart Rectification
by Steven Forrest, copyright 2000.
This article first appeared in The Mountain Astrologer
PLEASE NOTE: Steven no longer does chart rectifications. Contact Braden Diotte or Shirley Waram to have your birth time rectified.
"I don't know the time of my birth." Any working astrologer hears that line a few times a month. In rectification—the craft of discovering the true Ascendent of a birthchart—the first rule is never accept an "I don't know" statement on face value! Always, without fail, make a strenuous attempt to discover the recorded birth time...which is often actually available, many times quite easily. Don't let a client's hesitation to search compromise your work!
Love Handles: Practical Synastry in Action
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.
Ancient Nordic Spirituality
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.
Odin As Mercury
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.
Fate and Freedom: A Middle Path
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.
Norse Runes
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.
Lunar Eclipse July 2009
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.