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As I think about the state of change we find ourselves in at this particular moment in history, I’m drawn to step back and take a bigger view. I want to enter the controversial territory of The Age of Aquarius. The energetic shifts it embodies casts long shadows over all contemporary events and all the various paradigm mutations we are experiencing. I call this territory controversial because while there are many astrologers who say we are already in the Aquarian Age, there are others who claim it is still four centuries away. As is often the case, there is a lot of intellectual posturing, and behind it, quite a mountain of ignorance.
As I write these words, I am sitting in a hotel in Beijing, China. I am about to teach the second day in the first of a pair of seminars I am offering here. I’ve got about forty students. Many are now friends and familiar faces from my previous visits to this country. When I was a kid, I thought China was another planet. Times change: The concerns of my students here are not so different from those of people in my classes in America, or anywhere. And maybe I am not so different from them either: For one thing, I ate breakfast with chopsticks this morning! I did that while reading about the US government shutdown on my Android smart phone.
When I was a kid, if I had seen a picture of my future self holding a smart phone, I would have thought Star Trek had come true. To say I am living a life that my grandparents could not have imagined understates it. I am living a life that I myself could not have imagined not so long ago. And nowadays “not so long ago” might as well mean the Late Jurassic. That’s true for me, and also for my Chinese friends and students.
On Saturday, February 1, I am going to do something I had pretty much decided that I would never do—a Webinar. I will be talking intimately to my laptop computer. I will cling to the belief that somewhere out there in the vague world of electrons, ones, and zeros there are some actual human beings who are listening, watching, and hopefully getting something out of the whole enterprise.
I will also moan to myself about the absence of what I have always found to be critical elements in my teaching: eye contact, body language, and that whole critical, vague, rich territory we call “vibes.”
While I am doing all that, transiting Saturn will be standing just one-quarter of a degree from my Ascendant.
by Steven Forrest
Venus turned retrograde on December 21st, right on the Winter Solstice. Those two pregnant moments coinciding is a rare event and it tells me that we should pay a lot of attention to the strong Venusian signature on the coming year.
On January 11, that retrograde Venus conjuncts the Sun at 21°12' of Capricorn. It remains retrograde for the usual forty-day period, finally turning direct on the last day of January at 13°33' Capricorn.
The Sun-Venus alignment on the 11th is called an “inferior conjunction.” Despite the term, there’s nothing wrong with it! “Inferior” here only means that Venus is directly between the Earth and the Sun. On the other side of its orbit, Venus again aligns with the Sun, but this time with the Sun between us and Venus.
We can usually count on nice weather in Portland in September. It's often like a much-needed extension of summer – a sweet memory to tuck away for the rainy months to come. But no such luck this year. In fact, it's been raining cats and dogs. And it usually only rains butterflies and hummingbirds here, if you know what I mean (light sprinkles and mini drops).
So after about 5 days in a row this week without seeing the sun, I started getting grumbly. But now as I prepare October’s newsletter, it's all perfect fodder for this month's subject: The Grace in Debility! Because if we're evolving well in life, we learn to appreciate the benefits in "taking our medicine," whether that means eating our greens for health, or accepting the first frost, which might signal the start of winter, but also lays the stage for the coming rebirth of Spring.
