Astrological Meanderings: 2022

Thursday 22 December 2022

Solstice in Jakarta

At a little before 5am in Jakarta, on December 22nd 2023, the Sun entered Capricorn. This marked the winter solstice in the Southern Hemisphere and the summer solstice in the Northern Hemisphere. As Jakarta is the capital, the chart shown in Figure 1 should be indicative of events in general for all of Indonesia. 


Figure 1

One of the most outstanding features of the chart is the T-square between Ceres, Jupiter and the Sun with the Sun being at the apex. Ceres is in the first degree of Libra and Jupiter is in the first degree of Aries. This is a very active aspect that takes place in cardinal signs close to the angles of the chart. The Sun can be taken to represent the government and so there will be pressure on it to handle newly emerging and rapidly escalating developments domestically (Jupiter in the fourth house) that will involve food and other basic resources (Ceres in the tenth house). 

Saturn is in the third house and, to paraphrase from this source, it is associated with communication and travel, but short travel (by bus, car, bicycle, etc. It can show the way people move around, how they interact with one another, how communities come together, and things like traffic, mass transit, local newspapers. The presence of Saturn indicates that all these activities will be restricted to some degree, especially as Saturn is loosely aspected by Mercury. The close semisextile of Saturn and Neptune suggests that things will not quite be as they seem. There may be deception or chaos and confusion.

The population at large (represented by the Moon) will not be happy. The Moon is opposed by Mars and both are in mutable signs (Sagittarius and Gemini respectively) and close to the Ascendant-Descendant axis. Mercury, Venus and Pluto seem to crowd the second house, a house that represents finances, wealth, and possessions/property of the people as a whole. Both Mercury and Venus are in trine to Uranus at the cusp of the sixth house. There will be surprises and sudden developments in this department but with earth placement of these planets, hopefully stability will be maintained. Let's see how things play out.

I've never been sure how important these solstice/equinox charts are. The exact moment of their happening is largely ignored by the public unlike the start of the New Year which is tracked to the second by billions of people around the world. I'll make sure that I draw up a chart for the start of the new year in Jakarta.

ADDENDUM: December 23rd 2022

The chart shown in Figure 2 is cast for the day after the solstice when the Moon and the Sun were conjunct and when the T-square was made even stronger by the presence of the Moon at the apex.


Figure 2

Tuesday 22 November 2022

Earthquake in Cianjur

An earthquake struck Cianjur, about 75km from Jakarta, at 1:31pm. The location of the epicentre was 6°50'S and 106°06'E. Figure 1 shows a chart drawn up for the time of the quake.


Figure 1

The most obvious feature of the chart is the T-square between Neptune, Ceres and Mars whose longitudes are as follows:

  • Neptune in 22°41' R in Pisces
  • Ceres in 21°12' of Virgo
  • Mars in 22°13' R of Gemini
The square and opposition aspects are close and the T-square is closely aligned to the Ascendant-Descendant and MC-IC axes. Jupiter is also involved but less closely. Mars is also involved with the Moon and Saturn in a grand trine. The positions of the three are:

  • Mars in 22°13' R of Gemini
  • Moon in 23°53' of Libra
  • Saturn in 19°18' of Aquarius

  • Again, the trine aspects are fairly close. The Moon is ominously on the cusp of the eighth house in sextile to Pluto. However, Mars seems to be the key player here located very close to the nadir as befits a disaster than is generated beneath the earth. It is prominently aspected by four celestial bodies, the Moon, Ceres, Saturn and Neptune, that form two structures: a T-square and a grand trine. 

      Tuesday 8 November 2022

      Minute by Minute

       


      Figure 1


      Figure 1 shows the external monitor connected to my laptop with a real time display of the planetary positions via Astrolog. As I work at my computer, the screen is constantly updated with the latest planetary positions. Minute by minute the Ascendant is changing and one can't help wondering about the charts of those born under these configurations. The chart shown has the Moon in Taurus conjunct Uranus and the North Node right near the Descendant. The Moon and Uranus are squared by Saturn at the Midheaven and opposed by Venus, Sun and Mercury in Scorpio on the Descendant. Quite a configuration.

      The chart is configured for Jakarta and given the size of its population there's doubtless someone being born within a few minutes of the configuration shown. From the perspective of mundane affairs, it can be seen that Jupiter is still moving backwards through Pisces but not for much longer. On November 24th, it will station and then move forward again and back into Aries, reaching that sign very close to the solstice on December 21st. Jupiter will roar through Aries and reach Taurus on May 17th 2023 and not return to Aries till its next cycle. So the first five months of 2023 should see some rapid expansion of food supply problems. As Jupiter enters Aries it will be opposite the granary body of Ceres which gives some idea of what might be in store for humanity.

      The chart drawn up for the moment of the Sun's entry into Capricorn, the Solstice, is quite revealing. It shows a very sharp T-square formed by the Jupiter-Ceres opposition and the Sun at right angles to both. All three bodies are in the first degrees of their cardinal signs, quite a powerful configuration and one that promises action. See Figure 2.


      Figure 2

      We'll see how things pan out in 2023. It should get off to an interesting start.

      Tuesday 4 October 2022

      More About Pluto's Peregrinations

      I want to revisit some of the points that I raised in my post of Saturday, 19th March 2022, titled Pluto in Aquarius. Before I do, it just struck me that Pluto is ocated in the middle of Leo in my natal chart and yet the planet (yes, planet) has an orbital period of 248 years. The reason of course for its rapid transit of half the tropical zodiac is its highly eccentric orbit. Here is the introductory information about Pluto from Wikipedia:

      Pluto (minor-planet designation: 134340 Pluto) is a dwarf planet in the Kuiper belt, a ring of bodies beyond the orbit of Neptune. It was the first object discovered in the Kuiper belt, in 1930. It was declared the ninth planet from the Sun, though it was always the odd object out. Following the discovery of additional objects in the Kuiper belt and scattered disc starting in the 1990s, particularly the more massive dwarf planet Eris, Pluto's status as a planet was increasingly questioned. In 2006 the International Astronomical Union (IAU) formally re-defined the term planet to exclude Pluto, which was classified as a dwarf planet. (Many planetary astronomers, however, consider dwarf planets to be a category of planet.)

      Pluto is the ninth-largest and tenth-most-massive known object to directly orbit the Sun. It is the largest known trans-Neptunian object by volume, by a small margin, but is slightly less massive than Eris. Like other Kuiper belt objects, Pluto is made primarily of ice and rock and is much smaller than the inner planets. Compared to Earth's moon, Pluto has only one sixth its mass and one third its volume.

      Pluto has a moderately eccentric and inclined orbit, ranging from 30 to 49 astronomical units (4.5 to 7.3 billion kilometers; 2.8 to 4.6 billion miles) from the Sun. Light from the Sun takes 5.5 hours to reach Pluto at its average distance (39.5 AU [5.91 billion km; 3.67 billion mi]). Pluto's eccentric orbit periodically brings it closer to the Sun than Neptune, but a stable orbital resonance prevents them from colliding.

      Pluto has five known moons: Charon, the largest, whose diameter is just over half that of Pluto; Styx; Nix; Kerberos; and Hydra. Pluto and Charon are sometimes considered a binary system because the barycenter of their orbits does not lie within either body, and they are tidally locked. The New Horizons mission was the first spacecraft to visit Pluto and its moons, making a flyby on July 14, 2015 and taking detailed measurements and observations.

      The artice goes on to give some interesting information about how Pluto got its name and associated glyphs:

      The name Pluto, after the Greek/Roman god of the underworld, was proposed by Venetia Burney (1918–2009), an eleven-year-old schoolgirl in Oxford, England, who was interested in classical mythology. She suggested it in a conversation with her grandfather Falconer Madan, a former librarian at the University of Oxford's Bodleian Library, who passed the name to astronomy professor Herbert Hall Turner, who cabled it to colleagues in the United States.

      Each member of the Lowell Observatory was allowed to vote on a short-list of three potential names: Minerva (which was already the name for an asteroid), Cronus (which had lost reputation through being proposed by the unpopular astronomer Thomas Jefferson Jackson See), and Pluto. Pluto received a unanimous vote. The name was published on May 1, 1930. Upon the announcement, Madan gave Venetia £5 (equivalent to £336 in 2021 or US$394 in 2021 as a reward.

      The final choice of name was helped in part by the fact that the first two letters of Pluto are the initials of Percival Lowell. Pluto's planetary symbol (Pluto monogram symbol.svg, Unicode U+2647: ♇) was then created as a monogram of the letters "PL", though it is rarely used in astronomy today. For example, ⟨♇⟩ occurs in a table of the planets identified by their symbols in a 2004 article written before the 2006 IAU definition, but not in a graph of planets, dwarf planets and moons from 2016, where only the eight IAU planets are identified by their symbols. Planetary symbols in general are uncommon in astronomy, and are discouraged by the IAU. 

      The ♇ monogram is also used in astrology, but the most-common astrological symbol for Pluto, at least in English-language sources, is an orb over Pluto's bident. The bident symbol has seen some astronomical use as well since the IAU decision on dwarf planets, for example in a public-education poster on dwarf planets published by the NASA/JPL Dawn mission in 2015, in which each of the five dwarf planets announced by the IAU receives a symbol. There are in addition several other symbols for Pluto found in European astrological sources, including three accepted by Unicode.

      The name 'Pluto' was soon embraced by wider culture. In 1930, Walt Disney was apparently inspired by it when he introduced for Mickey Mouse a canine companion named Pluto, although Disney animator Ben Sharpsteen could not confirm why the name was given. In 1941, Glenn T. Seaborg named the newly created element plutonium after Pluto, in keeping with the tradition of naming elements after newly discovered planets, following uranium, which was named after Uranus, and neptunium, which was named after Neptune.

      I wasn't aware of the naming tradition mentioned in the previous paragraph. Interesting. Getting back to Pluto's astrological significance, the great conjunction of mid-January 2020 that kicked the whole scamdemic nightmare involved the Sun, Ceres, Mercury, Saturn and Pluto. Clearly Saturn and Pluto are the long term players here and remarkably, given the divergence of the latter from the plane of the ecliptic, the latitudes were almost the same (+0°02' and -0°40' respectively) at the time of conjunction. The synodic cycle of the two planets is about 38 years and so the semi-square and square will be significant as well as the entry of Pluto into Aquarius.

      Should we consider the semi-square of Saturn to the original conjunction point or should we consider the relative positions between the transiting Saturn and transiting Pluto. Probably both are significant. On June 17th of 2023, Saturn will turn stationary retrograde in 7°12' of Pisces with 7°50' of Pisces being the exact semi-square between Saturn and its original position. Pluto will enter Aquarius on March 24th of 2023 for a few short months before returning to Capricorn on June 12th 2023. It will enter Aquarius again on January 21st 2024 for a much longer stay. Looking ahead I'd say that the period from March 2023 until June 2023 will be quite active as the global mafia attempts to push forward with its agenda.

      Saturn will enter Pisces on March 8th 2023 which only adds more weight to the importance of the March to June period. It's interesting to look at the chart that I drew up for the conjunction at sunrise in London on January 13th 2020.


      Venus in 29°28' sits on the cusp of the second house opposing the Moon in Leo on the cusp of the eighth house. Transiting Saturn will pass over Venus as it enters Pisces. Saturn will turn retrograde later in the year but will remain in Pisces, turning stationary direct in 0°30' Pisces on November 5th 2023. The significance of Saturn in Pisces of course is the dissolution of the old structures and systems that we have gotten used to over the centuries. The abolition of cash is an obvious example but more generally the imposition of Communism by stealth will accelerate since Pisces is associated with selfless, idealistic notions of making sacrifices for the perceived "greater good". In reality, everyone will be poor except for our overlords who will benefit from the greatest wealth transfer in the history of the planet.

      Some unexpected disruptions to their plans may come when transiting Uranus turns stationary retrograde in 27°15' of Taurus, exactly conjunct the Nadir of the London chart and aspecting the original conjunction as well as the Venus-Moon opposition. One can only hope.

      Monday 5 September 2022

      The Return of Astrolog

      After returning to Jakarta from my rural isolation, I finally managed to get Astrolog running under Linux Mint on my 2013 MacBook Pro. Firstly it required the installation of WINE and after that all was well. Figure 1 is a screenshot of the current transits to my natal chart.


      Figure 1

      Astrolog is a program that I've been using for many years and it was very difficult to conduct any astrological research without it. As can be seen in Figure 1, transiting Venus was nearly conjunct my natal Saturn on the cusp of the fifth house at the time of my successful installation. Doubtless this helped. Now I can resume my investigations and I am looking forward to doing so. It's been too long.

      This is only a short post but it's a significant one as it marks my return to serious astrology.

      Monday 8 August 2022

      State of Play

      Living in rural isolation since late June of 2022 and not having access to Astrolog since long before that, the frequency of my astrological posts has decreased markedly. I must another effort to get it up and running on my laptop that is running Mint Linux. The problem is better discussed in my Pedagogical Posturing blog.

      There's a case to be argued for moving completely online however, and abandoning my reliance on Astrolog with all its attendant installation problems when using non-Windows devices. Looking back at an earlier blog post titled An Absence of Astrolog, I mentioned astrowin.org, an online-based chart generator, and today I logged back into it. There is only my birth data there so I should add the birth details of other people that are stored on my airtable database.

      Figure 1 shows a screenshot of the current planetary positions where I'm located:


      Figure 1

      The chart looks good. I'll discuss the current transits as they affect my personal chart in a post to the blog that I've set up for that purpose: Astro Watch. Meanwhile I'll get to work updating my database on astrowin.org.

      Saturday 19 March 2022

      Pluto in Aquarius

      The tiny size of the menu text in Astrolog has resolved itself and I've created a new database in Airtable for my lost data. I'm gradually rebuilding my former charts in Astrolog but the initial data will always be there in Airtable should disaster strike. Figure 1 shows a chart for the entry of Pluto into Aquarius, that should take place on March 24th 2023. This is only a little over a year away.


      Figure 1

      Pluto is moving at the rate of about 1 minute of arc per day. This is when the changes promised by the Great Reset will really start to be felt by a suffering humanity. Pluto will remain in Aquarius only until June 11th 2023. It's return to Capricorn may mark a lull in the pace of change but when Pluto returns to Aquarius on January 21st 2024, to begin its twenty-year passage through the sign, the pace of change will accelerate and the technocratic dream will move closer and closer to reality.

      The following source has some interesting observations to make about not only Pluto but also Neptune and Uranus:
      The years 2024, 2025, and 2026 (when looked at as one cohesive period) delineate the beginning of the next global chapter following the breakdown brought on by the January 2020 Saturn-Pluto conjunction.

      Why? Because that is when the three transpersonal planets (Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto) will change signs. Due to their slow speeds, it’s rare to see these three planets change signs back-to-back.

      In my eyes, this major shift in the mid 2020s means we’ll still be dealing with COVID-19 — as a global village — in some fashion until then. That isn’t fear-mongering. It’s just a fact. Some nations will recover much more quickly than others. But, others will need until then to return to something that resembles pre-pandemic life. I also think we will see many COVID-19-related public health measures in effect until early 2024. Astrologically, 2024 is the beginning of the “post-COVID era.”
      The author then goes on to describe the future movements of Neptune and Uranus:
      Neptune will pay a brief visit to Aries from March 30, 2025 until October 22, 2025. However, it begins its uninterrupted twelve-year sojourn through Aries (considered the official start of the “Neptune in Aries era”) on January 26, 2026.

      Uranus will dip its toe in Gemini from July 7, 2025 until November 8, 2025. However, its uninterrupted six-and-a-half-year sojourn through Gemini (considered the official start of the “Uranus in Gemini era”) kicks off on April 26, 2026.
      For what it's worth, the author looks back at what happened last time Neptune and Uranus were in these same signs:
      Consider these events that happened the last time Neptune was in Aries (1861 to 1875):
      • Opioids (Neptune) are used to treat troops during the Civil War (Aries); many became addicted
      • Formation of the Prohibition Party — essentially a war (Aries) on alcohol (Neptune)
      • The Suez Canal opened, linking the Red and Mediterranean Seas
      • First use of submarines in warfare
      • Introduction of pasteurization — applying heat (Aries) to kill pathogens (Neptune).
      • The 13th Amendment is officially ratified in the United States — compassion toward other human beings (Neptune) is turned into something actionable (Aries).
      • Russia abolishes serfdom (same as above).
      • The American Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals is founded
      • Formation of the International Red Cross — a pioneering (Aries) organization that helps others (Neptune).
      • The HMS Challenger surveys the deepest point in the oceans
      • Impressionism begins. This art (Neptune) movement is characterized by bold (Aries) colors as well as the inclusion of movement (Aries).
      Events that occurred when Uranus transited Gemini from 1858 to 1866:
      • First aerial (Gemini is an air sign) photograph
      • Development and production of first traction engine
      • Production of first gas engine
      • First recording of a human voice
      • Invention (and patent) of attaching an eraser to the end of a pencil
      • Invention of escalator
      • Invention of postcards
      • Invention of quad skates
      • Invention of rotary printing machine
      • Invention of first practical typewriting machine
      Events that occurred when Uranus transited Gemini from 1941 to 1949:
      • The first test fights of many operational military jet aircraft
      • Development, and patenting, of first disposable aerosol cans
      • Invention of first “instant” (at that time, 60 seconds) camera: Polaroid. Gemini is ruled by Mercury, which is all about speed.
      • Invention of the microwave (very “Gemini,” as a microwave allows for very quick cooking)
      • Invention of the hand dryer (Gemini is an air sign and also rules the hands!)
      While this list may be a little facile, I like the idea of looking back at astrological history as a way of making mundane astrology predictions more reliable. 

      Looking at the chart in Figure 1, it can be seen that when Pluto enters Aquarius in March of 2023, Saturn has already entered Pisces. It will remain in Pisces until it enters Aries on May 25th 2025.  That two year period should mark a dissolution of many of the old systems and structures of the past as Pluto wipes the slate clean so that humanity can enter a technocratic utopia or dystopia, depending on your point of view.

      Figure 2 shows the entry of Saturn into Aries with Neptune and Ceres very near. New structures and systems will emerge, especially regarding food resources (the domain of Ceres).


      Figure 2

      Interesting times ahead, that's for sure.

      Sunday 6 March 2022

      Astrolog Returns

      Frustrated with the limitations of Chrome OS Flex on my Mac Book, I installed Ubuntu 20.04 instead. It was then a matter of installing WINE and downloading astrolog.exe. After some tinkering, I was able to get it working although the drop-down menu text is tiny and I can't figure out how to make it larger. Nonetheless it's working but my biggest problem is recovering the astrolog data. I thought I'd backed it up but it appears I hadn't. I'm hoping I can find a backup somewhere. Why didn't I back it up to Google Drive? 

      Figure 1 shows the transit picture for 3:29am in Jakarta on March 6th 1953. Venus and Mars are almost exactly conjunct being in 29d38m and 29d41m of Capricorn respectively. The tiny menu bar is visible at the top of the graphic.


      Figure 1

      If I can't recover my Astrolog data, then I will simply have to rebuild my database that was full of birth details of people that I had long forgotten. There are only a few people whose charts I am really interested in. When I've rebuilt the database, I'll make sure to back it up to Google Drive and also add the information to astrowin.org just to be sure. Figure 2 shows the results of the first entry into the Astrolog database along with the transits.


      Figure 2

      It's good to have Astrolog back up and running again, because I have total control of what I'm doing. This is not the case with online alternatives where there are more constraints.

      Sunday 27 February 2022

      An Absence of Astrolog

      After years of running Astrolog under WINE on my Mac laptop, I suddenly find myself without it. The reason is that I installed Chrome OS Flex on the laptop and removed the Macintosh operating system. This OS is still in beta and there are numerous glitches. One of them is an inability to install Linux, after which I could install WINE and then run Astrolog.

      On my granddaughter's laptop, I removed the Windows operating system that was capable of running astrolog.exe directly and replace it with Ubuntu. Again, I'm having trouble installing WINE, so the net result is that I can't run Astrolog on either laptop for the moment. I'll have to rely on online programs to keep track of my transits.

      However, the Astrolog website links to openastro.org that has an Ubuntu repository that I'm keen to test out. Figure 1 shows a screenshot.


      Figure 1

      Unfortunately, I get the following error message:

      The following packages have unmet dependencies:
      openastro.org : Depends :  imagemagick
      E: unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.

      Obviously this is something that I need to keep working on. Another promising link that the Astrolog website provides is to Morinus touted as a "Free Astrological Program Written in Python, Using The Swiss Ephemeris". Mind you, the site hasn't been modified since March 18th of 2017. Figure 2 shows a screenshot.


      Figure 2

      Again, this will take a little more research as I need to install Python from within Chrome OS Flex. Meanwhile, I always have Astrodienst to fall back on. Figure 3 shows a screenshot of my transits for today.


      Figure 3

      As can be seen, Venus and Mars are rapidly moving toward another conjunction. This upcoming conjunction of the two planets is the third that will occur within a space of about eight months. The dates of these conjunctions are:
      • Tuesday, July 13th 2021
      • Saturday, February 12th 2022
      • Saturday, March 12th 2022
      I wrote about the likely effects of these conjunctions in my previous post titled Mars-Venus Conjunction

      The site astrowin.org is quite comprehensive and will display transits to a natal chart in two different forms as well as supplying many other features. See Figures 4 and 5.

      Figure 4


      Figure 5

      Saturday 8 January 2022

      2022: What Does The Year Ahead Hold?

      I want to approach this question in terms of the chart I drew up for 8:10am in London on January 13th 2020. I feel this is the seed chart from which all the events of the past two years have sprung. See Figure 1.


      Figure 1

      This is a remarkable chart featuring as it does the conjunction of Sun, Ceres, Pluto, Saturn and Mercury. The interplay between Saturn and Pluto is key here because the former represents the force holding together existing structures and the latter is the force that is transforming their very foundations. When we look to the year ahead, we need to look at the current and upcoming angular relationship between these two planets. Yes, Pluto is a planet!


      Figure 2

      Figure 2 shows the transit picture as of today, December 30th 2021. At the moment it can be seen that Saturn is relatively inactive, not aspecting any natal planets significantly. However, there is a very active T-square involving transiting Ceres/North Node at the apex in square to natal Venus and natal Moon. Transiting Jupiter is passing over natal Venus which serves to amplify the energy of the T-square. With Ceres involved, it would seem that food shortages caused by supply chain disruptions will dominate the early part of the year.

      By June 3rd 2022 however, transiting Saturn moving rapidly through Aquarius will station in 25°15' in rough semisextile to the natal stellium in Capricorn and closely opposite the natal Moon in 26°24' of Leo. I'm not emphasising house positions here because I arbitrarily chose sunrise on January 13th as the time of the chart. Transiting Ceres will have reached the natal North Node by this time. There's an interesting line up of Mars in 7° Aries, Venus in 7° Taurus and Ceres in 7° Cancer. This is just transient of course but it synchronised with the Saturn station. The suffering of the public (represented by the Moon) will reach its apex around this time and maybe subside a little as Saturn retrogrades. 

      Saturn will retrograde to 18°35' Aquarius by October 22nd 2022 before moving on into Pisces in 2023. That's looking too far ahead. To my mind, the start of June should bring some interesting developments.