Strengthen and support

The latest in a long line of renovation nightmares: shoring up our 80-year-old garage, which has been threatening to topple into our neighbor's yard. Since it's the nice neighbor and not the one who hates our cats, Jonny is parlaying the recent Solar Eclipse opposed his Saturn (poor guy) to strengthen and support this tenuous structure - a good use of Saturn energy, but not necessarily a fun way to spend your days. He found a pleasant Quaker fellow to give him a hand, however, and the two have been out back for the past couple of days wielding hoists, support beams, a jackhammer, and saws in a valiant attempt to rescue the old dump.

Mars is building up to an opposition with Pluto next week, though so maybe they'll decide it's too far gone and just pull it down. It would probably be smarter, in a lot of ways. But we like our old garage. It's old and crappy and crooked. It goes with our house.

Wait, that didn't come out right....

astrology

Me and We

There's another eclipse this week, this one a solar eclipse at 8.35 Aries early Wednesday morning. What's been stirring and awakening in your life these past couple of years? Aries is the sign of quickening, or coming alive; somewhere inside you, a seed is trying to push through the earth's frozen crust after a long winter. The birthing takes place in the house of your chart containing 8.35 Aries, and involves any natal planets between about 4 and 12 of cardinal signs (Aries, Cancer, Libra, Capricorn).

This is the conclusion of an Aries/Libra eclipse season that began two years ago. Specifically, this eclipse falls opposite the eclipse point of the October 3, 2005 solar eclipse at 10 Libra. Relationship issues that were raised last fall are ready for review and reconsideration now. But relationships are always a dynamic process of negotiating "me" (Aries) vs. "we" (Libra), and while the October eclipse in Libra focused your attention on others, this Aries eclipse emphasizes the "me" part of the equation. Right now, taking meaningful steps to define and assert yourself as an individual will do far more to improve your personal relationships than trying to figure out what others want you to do or be.

Let's not take that message as a license to be self-absorbed or insensitive, however. The chart for this eclipse features the Sun and Moon in a sober trine to Saturn in Leo. The work of this eclipse seems to be about proactively assuming individual responsibility (Aries Sun/Moon trine Saturn) for the state of your life, including doing what you can to become a better partner and friend.

Overall, this eclipse should feel relatively benign after the rather horrid March 14 lunar eclipse. That one featured the eclipse point square Pluto, and was the first in the Pisces/Virgo eclipse series that will dominate for the next two years. We're out of practice with the Pisces/Virgo eclipses - it's been seven years since our last Pisces/Virgo season ended - so that one was kind of rough, stirring up a compost heap of all kinds of old muck. Alternately, this week's eclipse is a graduation of sorts; look back at how the landscape of your relationships has changed since 2004, and hopefully it will be with a sense of satisfaction at what you've learned and how you've grown.

And if not, you'll get another crack at it all beginning in 2013!

Sinuses and clean socks

Ugh... what a miserable week for the old bod. First a nasty stomach bug, now a sinus infection. What Virgo lunar eclipse?

Other than that, I can't complain. (pause for riotous laughter) Okay, so I can complain, but I won't, because the heat has been turned down just a notch and I've been able to catch my breath after pushing full steam ahead for weeks. It really does feel like spring around here, with just enough rain to keep the air clean and nice, nippy days with lots of sun. I've actually had time in the past couple of days to get our tax stuff together and drop it off to the accountant, catch up on my invoicing, and do some laundry.

Take it from someone with Mars in Virgo: Nothing makes life seem quite as sweet as clean socks.

Balm for my Virgo midheaven.

More celebration of Virgo's practical magic in this excellent article at Oculus Divinorum, entitled "From Subservient Secretary to Ritual Priestess."

It's easy to forget, in the push to simplify astrology for the masses, to look a little deeper at the signs of the zodiac and what they say about our style of doing things, perhaps more so than the kind of things we do. I am a recovered executive secretary myself (though not exactly subservient - my MC is flanked by Mars and Pluto, which often got me into trouble) with a Virgo midheaven. It's work I respect, but ultimately it wasn't right for me (too many Leo planets), even though all the astrology books claimed it was the perfect career choice for a Virgo MC.

While I wouldn't exactly call myelf a ritual priestess these days, I do find a very Virgo-like satisfaction in work that allows me to help people sort things out - websites, wedding dates, lives. Now, if I could do the same thing in my own office...

Living by the Moon

Astrologer Pam Ciampi has just launched an online calendar called Living by the Moon, with daily tips for... well, living by the moon! I'm not entirely objective, since she's a friend and we designed her site and calendar for her; but I do think it's a pretty neat and unique service. Have a look-see!

Move along, nothing to see here.

Update April 1, 2006: If you got here via a Google search and are looking for your Astrology Zone forecast for April 2006, go here.

Thank you to Susan Miller and the errant poster at Susan's blog for rectifying the problem I noted in my previous post. The apologies were prompt and gracious. I overreacted a bit and was completely wrong in assuming Ms. Miller would ignore my complaint; the person who tipped me off to the original problem implied that other such problems in the past had not been addressed, and I figured a high-profile astrologer like Susan Miller would have more on her plate than to deal with my hissy fit. Anyway, here was her gracious reply, posted on the board:

Thank you for your note. I am mortified that my readers on my board would take your copyrighted material and post it on my board.

No one is allowed to post another author's material without permmission and credit. The rules of this board is that no only shall the person doing the posting notify the author, they have to notify ME that they plan to do this as well. This selfish poster has done neither, obviously feeling that all rules do not apply to her.

Thank you for bringing this to my attention. It has been such a problem with posters running rampant on this sort of thing that I am considering shutting the board.

I am terribly, terribly sorry, April.

Classy, and appreciated.

What is WITH some people?

Update April 1, 2006: If you got here via a Google search and you're looking for your Astrology Zone forecast for April 2006, go here.


Honestly. What is with some people?

I had an email today from an alert reader who noted that an article from my website has been lifted verbatim and posted at Susan Miller's Astrology Zone message board without attribution.

Otherwise known as plagiarism. Theft. Which is pretty fucking annoying. I might be inclined to give the benefit of the doubt (maybe they just... forgot?), but from what I gather, this particular poster has had a long and infamous history of doing this kind of thing without getting kicked off the board. Kinda makes you wonder. So I posted a stern message on the board and shot off an email to La Miller, which I expect will go absolutely nowhere.

Grrr! I guess as eclipse aspects to my 10th house Mars go (what with the potential for bloody public attacks, a la Caesar in the Senate), this ain't so bad.

Here's a rather more amusing 10th house story. As longtime readers know, I've had a problem with people capriciously revising the spelling of my name. Yesterday I got the most hilarious interpretation of my moniker yet, courtesy of the American Federation of Astrologers. They sent a very kind invitation to their upcoming conference to April WILLIOTT Kent. Well, at least they got that extra "t" in there, I'll give them that!

Mercury Rx: Lather, rinse, repeat.

Tomorrow the Sun makes its opening square to Pluto following the conjunction last December. I seem to have mercifully blocked out December from my consciousness, and my meager blog updates that month are no help in jogging my memory. I know November was hideous, so maybe I simply spent December in a convalescent state. But in any event, that was ground zero, if you will, of much of the past week's unpleasantness. The snake that's been coiled in the bottom of the laundry hamper for the last three months has suddenly reared up for a venemous strike.

Look for this square to unleash even more of the latent energy of last Tuesday's lunar eclipse. The degrees of the Sun and Moon (24.15 Pisces and Virgo) were within spitting distance of this square to Pluto at the eclipse, and now the aspect is perfecting in real time. It's been a pretty nasty eclipse season so far for a lot of us; that Virgo purging stuff has been harsh, and I'm hearing many stories of serious illness. I suspect that, after tomorrow, the worst of the shocks will be behind us. One hopes.

Naturally, it hasn't been dreadful for everyone. One friend parlayed all this cosmic energy into the purchase of her first house; other pals are in the throes of joyous passion of varying degrees of seriousness. Their stories are welcome dinghies in the storm-tossed ocean of lousy news.

Mercury retrograde hasn't been terribly helpful either, has it? I mean, Mercury Rx is a nuisance more than anything, but this time around it's been an expensive one, too, for us at least. A couple of weeks ago, both the power pack and battery for my beloved laptop went belly-up. Then I managed to kill my little comb binding machine just before an onslaught of eclipse report orders hit my inbox. And a few hours after I brought my new machine home from Office Depot and was all geared up to kick out a bunch of reports, the toner cartridge on my laser printer crapped out. Back to Office Depot, excessive $$$ for new toner cartridge, etc.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

The Espresso: Drink it, read it.

My old friend John Rippo has been dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st (well, the 20th at least) century with the launch of the online version of his venerable San Diego newspaper, The Espresso. A wifely shout-out to my darling spouse, who designed the site: http://www.theespresso.com

Sending positive thoughts and linky goodness to our friend Susie Madrak, who is having a bitch of an eclipse season, and to the lovely Ethereal Girl, who is bouncing back after her recent surgery.

Full Moon in Virgo: Practical Magic.

In honor of tomorrow's Full Moon lunar eclipse in Virgo, I've posted a new article at my website called Practical Magic:

But most of us are not full-time priestesses or everyday saints. We're just people with jobs, carpools, and colicky pets. We may wish for more time - and tranquility - to spend in meditation, but as my friend Dana once pointed out, it's Virgo and the sixth house that represent the everyday world where we spend most of our time. Do we feel well? Do we have work to do? Is there bread for tomorrow's breakfast? Traffic snarls, paying the bills, balancing the checkbook, washing the dishes: this is the Virgo stuff our days tend to be made of.

And an extra essay at MoonCircles about Lunar Eclipses:
Lunar Eclipses and Earthly Instincts.
Be well, all.

Venus opposed Saturn: This can't be good.

Venus in sizzly Aquarius is moving in on an opposition to Saturn in Leo tomorrow. Not a biggie - it'll all be over by Saturday - but just long enough to make you wonder what you ever saw in your sweetie and to temporarily tighten a tourniquet around your bank account.

Let me break it down for you.

With Venus in Aquarius, the impulse is toward unrestrained individuality. But Saturn in Leo is all about the dark forces that insist we kowtow to The Man. Or whoever. So someone in your sphere is gearing up to play Strother Martin's badass captain in Cool Hand Luke ("What we have here is a failure to communicate") - Saturn in Leo, if you will - to your irrepressible, nonconformist Paul Newman (Venus in Aquarius). In turn, in a kind of karmic relay race, you'll no doubt pass on the favor by getting all Strother Martin on somebody else.

Here's some insider information about Leo: just tell us what we want to hear, and then you can do whatever the hell you want. Just pretend to be respectful, and we won't have any trouble. But of course, that's the one thing Aquarius is constitutionally unable to do... unless....

Well, it is Venus in Aquarius, after all; and if anyone knows how to get around Leo, it's the Venus-ruled, particularly Libra. Libra definitely has something to teach Aquarius about handling the Big Cat. Observe him closely, and emulate his methods: When the tension gets too thick in the next day or two, just compliment Strother Martin on his hat, and we can avoid all that unpleasantness with the billy club.

Refurbishing

What kind of astrologer launches a complete redesign of her website while Mercury is retrograde, you ask?

This kind.

Let it roll!

The Sun conjuncted Uranus in Pisces early this morning, so take care - you don't want to go dropping the blow dryer in the bathtub. This is the kind of aspect that can make folks a little accident-prone, typically because Uranus makes us want to shake up our usual routines, and then we forget to do a lot of the things we normally attend to automatically.

We woke up this morning to the sound of sirens, and it seems like they haven't stopped all day; we live near several freeways, and we soon found out what all the noise was about - the traffic reports have been dire. It's been a pretty good day in our little world, though. The New Moon on Monday was energizing. We finished a website project, and work is flowing in again. The weather is gorgeous, we're catching up on our sleep, the cats are frisky; it is, in fact, one of those extraordinary moments when everything is lovely, and we really can't complain. The pessimist in me says, "Knock on wood." But the optimist says, "Let it roll, baby!"