Summer Solstice 2017

Here is the Greenwich-based chart for the Southern Hemisphere's Summer Solstice and Northern Hemisphere's Winter Solstice:

What's particularly noticeable and applicable world-wide is the very close conjunction between the Sun and Saturn in Capricorn. Here is the timetable of Saturn's passage over the next few years:

Saturn will occupy the sign of Capricorn from December 19, 2017 --> March 21, 2020; and then finishes up its transit from July 1 to December 17, 2020. Here are some key dates:

• December 19th, 2017 - Saturn enters Capricorn 
• March 21st, 2020 - Saturn enters Aquarius 
• July 1st, 2020 - Saturn Rx enters Capricorn Dec 17, 2020  Saturn enters Aquarius

Of course Pluto has been in Capricorn for quite some time now, entering most recently on January 26, 2008, at 2:50 AM in Greenwich Mean Time and "because of retrograde motion, Pluto backed into Sagittarius on June 14, but re-enters Capricorn on November 27, to stay in this Zodiac sign until March 2023, making its first entry in Aquarius on March 23.
So we have some fifteen years of Pluto in Capricorn" (taken from this site).

Saturn will be conjunct Pluto on January 12, 2020 at 22d37m (for one time only during the current cycle). The period around this time should be pivotal in ushering in a new world economic order.

Synodic Periods

A friend of mine had noticed that significant events or changes in a person's life occurred at 47 years of age. I decided to see what Wikipedia had to say about the number 47 and was surprised to discover the following:

The 47-year cycle of Mars: after 47 years (22 synodic periods of 780 days each), Mars returns to the same position among the stars and is in the same relationship to the Earth and Sun. The ancient Mesopotamians discovered this cycle.

The synodic period is defined as "the amount of time that it takes for an object to reappear at the same point in relation to two or more other objects ... the time between two successive oppositions or conjunctions is also an example of the synodic period." Source. In the case of Mars, the 47-year cycle relates to the positions of Mars and the Sun. After 47 years years, the Sun and Mars should return to their original positions. My calculations showed that the exact figure is 46.97856377 years which seems close but is actually almost eight days less than 47 years. Further calculations revealed that there is a much closer alignment after 79 years or 79.00940271 to be more exact. This turns out to be about 3.43 days past the 79 years.

It's a fairly easy matter to set up the calculations in a worksheet. The formula is:

where SP1 and SP2 are the sidereal periods of the two bodies of interest. The sidereal period by the way is "the amount of time that it takes an object to make a full orbit, relative to the stars." The table below, copied from my worksheet, shows the sidereal and synodic periods for the various planets.

The multiples of these synodic periods when divided by 365.24217 give the number of years that have elapsed. When the number is very close to an integer, it means that the configuration between the two planets at time zero recurs near the same point in the zodiac. For example, such a conjunction between Venus and Mars recurs after 31.99799406 years which is very close to 32 years (about 0.73 days less to be precise). The synodic period of Venus and Mars is less than a year (333.9 days) and for someone like myself, with the two planets conjunct, it is important but because of its frequency there is a tendency to undervalue its significance. The synodic cycle becomes more meaningful when viewed as part of a larger, "super-synodic" cycle in which the two planets return to the same relationship but in close proximity to their original zodiacal positions.

For Venus and Mars, this larger super-synodic cycle involves 35 synodic cycles and, because the prime factors of 35 are 5 and 7, the 5th, 7th, 10th, 14th and so on cycles become particularly important. They resonate with the larger cycle while the others (2nd, 3rd, 4th, 6th, 8th and so on) do not. Other patterns emerge: the 14th/15th and 20th/21st cycles form twin resonating pairs and occur after 12.79919762/13.71342603 years and 18.28456803/19.19879644 years. The next pairing is the 49th/50th and 55th/56th occurring after 44.79719168/45.71142009 years and 50.28256209/51.1967905 years. In the life of an individual with Venus and Mars conjunct in the natal chart, the periods around the 44th/45th and 50th/51st birthdays should be significant, especially in terms of relationships. I can assure you that they were.

These resonating cycles can be applied of course to all super-synodic cycles. For example, the 47 year synodic cycle of the Sun and Mars occurs after 22 cycles. The factors of 22 are 2 and 11 so every even numbered cycle is resonant but so is the 11th. This means that the 10th, 11th and 12th cycles are all resonant and thus the energy of the Sun-Mars relationship will find emphatic release during the period from 21.35389262 through 23.48928189 to 25.62467115 years. This is illustrated in the diagram below:

For someone like myself with Sun conjunct Mars, this period from my 21st to 25th birthdays was a very energetic time. It is of course for most young people but during this time I was indeed very focused, completing a university degree that I had started years earlier but never finished. After this period, I rapidly lost focus again and never quite summoned up that same level of motivation and concentration ever again. The second time around the 32nd, 33rd and 34th cycles are all resonant corresponding to 68.3324564 through 70.46784566 to 72.60323492 years. Now that I'm approaching my 68th birthday, I'm hoping for a similar infusion of energy. I can only hope my old bones are up to it.

Of course with the outer planets of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto, the synodic periods are less frequent. Jupiter and Saturn have a famous synodic period of a little under 20 years that has been linked to the deaths in office of United States president taking up office in 1960, 1940, 1920 etc. This pattern of deaths is known as the Curse of Tippecanoe or Tecumseh's Curse (source). While it is not likely that two outer planets will return to their natal positions during the life of an individual, their return would be important in mundane astrology.

Autumn Equinox in Brisbane

The above chart shows the configuration of planets at the time of the 2017 Autumn Equinox in Brisbane, corresponding to the Vernal Equinox in the Northern Hemisphere. Since the Northern Hemisphere is the dominant one, the chart marks the official start of the astrological year. Below is the same chart with annotations.

The almost exact ☽/♄ conjunction suggests considerable control and constraints ♄ will be imposed on the public ☽ by governments and their leaders ☉ especially since the two luminaries are in a square aspect ☉ □ ☽. The trine from ♅ to ☽/♄ suggests some help in resisting this control will come from sources independent of governments like Wikileaks. The T-square in cardinal signs between ♃ and ♅ and ♇ is potentially dangerous throughout the year if other transits cross or aspect the three sensitive points. Where ☽/♄ on an angle, the oppression felt by the public should be more acute. In Caracas, Venezuala, the conjunction is at the MC with ☉ on the Ascendant. 

In Beijing and Jakarta, the conjunction is near to but not exactly on the IC with ☉ on the Descendant.

Using Astrological Symbols in LaTeX

LaTeX provides some support for astrological symbols. Here are two screenshots from The Great Big List of LaTeX Symbols.

However, for these characters to appear, the packages wasysym and marvosym need to be present and there doesn't seem to be any easy way to get these into the Blogger template. They are already present in MacTeX and it is simply a question of loading the packages using the usepackage command before starting a document. However, the packages must be loaded after the amsmath package. 

For the moment, it would seem that the special characters feature in Blogger is the only way to access astrological symbols. Well, that's not entirely true. The special characters features is just a convenient way to insert the appropriate alt code into the HTML e.g. the alt code for Mercury is ☿ and it displays thus ☿. You can do this by simply going to a table of alt codes, copying the code and pasting it into the HTML of your blog. Easier of course just to use the special characters feature. A complete list of all possible characters, not just astrological one, can be found here.

Using Astrological Symbols in Blogger

Here are the astrological symbols that can be inserted using the special characters option:

• Sun☉
• Dragon's Head ☊
• Dragon's Tail ☋
• Conjunction ☌
• Opposition ☍
• Moon ☽
• Mercury ☿
• Venus ♀
• Earth ♁
• Mars ♂
• Jupiter ♃
• Saturn ♄
• Uranus ♅
• Neptune ♆
• Pluto ♇
• Aries ♈
• Taurus ♉
• Gemini ♊
• Cancer ♋
• Leo ♌
• Virgo ♍
• Libra ♎
• Scorpio ♏
• Sagittarius ♐
• Capricorn ♑
• Aquarius ♒
• Pisces ♓

Not all the symbols are here of course but some can simply be inserted from the keyboard e.g. sextile aspect * or from other character sets e.g. trine aspect △ (from geometric) or semi-square aspect ∠ and square aspect ⟎ (from Maths). The quincunx aspect ⌅ or a close approximation of it is available from Technical. 

Mars-Venus

Given that I have Mars-Venus conjunct in my natal chart, I'm always interested in the relative positions of the two planets. At the moment of writing (morning of 27th January 2017), the two planets can be seen close together in the evening sky. Mars is quite faint in comparison to Venus because it over three times further away and has a markedly lower albedo anyway. Here is a depiction of the situation using a screenshot from Stellarium, with annotations added afterwards.

Mars is now in the last degree of Pisces and about to enter Aries. The picture shows the proximity of Mars to the Vernal Equinox, where the Ecliptic and Celestial Equator intersect. As described in my previous post, with screencast added, the two planets will move in tandem through Aries over the next couple of months but will remain a few degrees apart until Venus turns retrograde whereupon the zodiacal distance between the two will increase rapidly.

While Mars is faint at the moment, it isn't always like that. Less than 14 years ago, things were very different as the following paragraph describes:

Figure 1

Mars was closest on August 27, 2003. On Aug. 28, Mars arrived to its "opposition." This is the moment when the Sun, Earth and Mars are in alignment (see Figure 1). Mars grows larger and brighter every time a Mars opposition occurs, about every 26 months (780 Earth days), but this specific event is unique for two additional reasons. The orbits of Mars and Earth are elliptical rather than exact circles—that of Mars even more so than Earth's. At the time of the alignment, Mars was at its closest point to the sun in its orbit (called a Mars perihelion). This phenomena (a Mars perihelic opposition) occurs about every 15 to 17 years. In addition, Earth is quite close to its furthest point from the Sun (call an aphelion), which actually occurs a bit earlier in the year. Thus, Earth is pushing outward toward Mars while Mars is reaching inward toward Earth. This rare coincidence of events brought Earth and Mars extraordinarily close (about 55.8 million kilometres).

That record close distance of 55.8 million kilometres is far closer than Venus is now, at 86 million kilometres. As for the time between the zodiacal conjunctions of Mars and Venus (the synodic period), this can be calculated using the formula: 1/(SPM-SPV) where SPM is the sidereal period of Mars and SPV is the sidereal period of Venus (687 days and 225 days respectively). The result is slightly less than 334 days. However, this is clearly just an average because the actual time between conjunctions can be wildly different.

To illustrate, let's go back to August 29, 2015 when Venus and Mars were conjunct. A relatively short time later, on November 3, 2015, they were conjunct again but they not meet at all in 2016. While the two planets are moving closer together at the current time, they are not conjunct until October 5, 2017. This is a gap of almost two years. However, the gap of 768 days between the first conjunction and the third is 768 days, giving an average of 384 days. There is another conjunction on August 24th 2019. The time between this fourth conjunction and the first is 1456 days, giving an average of 364 days. So the trend seems to be toward the figure of 334 days.

on July 13th 2021, the date of a Mars-Venus conjunction

Using Screencastify with Astrolog

I thought I'd experiment with using Screencastify to record actions in Astrolog with accompanying voice commentary. The resulting video looks good when opened in a web browser but uploading to Blogger using the video upload button produced a dreadful result. It seemed to make use of the Adobe Flash plugin which is weird because the webm format that Screencastify uses is meant to work in HTML5 without any plugins. The resulting video was small, dark and using the expand option zoomed the video to what seemed like 200% or more with most of the screen lost.

Fortunately, YouTube rendered the video beautifully and provided the embed code that I've used here. I'm very happy with the result. Technology aside, the purpose of the video was to show the movement of Venus and Mars through Pisces and Aries over the coming couple of months. The planetary positions are shown from January 17th until March 4th when Venus turns retrograde in Aries, almost exactly conjunct my native Sun. At the same time, Mars has just passed my Ascendent. Uranus remains active during the whole time of course.