The Lunar Nodes Have Crossed The Pisces/Virgo Axis

The lunar nodes shifting into a new pair of signs is always a big deal. It happens every year and a half or so, and it impacts everybody, both personally and in the world’s headlines. A few weeks back, on January 28, the Moon’s (Mean) north node crossed the line and entered Pisces, where it will remain until it transitions into Aquarius on August 18, 2026. (The south node entered the opposite sign, Virgo, at the same time.)  In this short essay, my intention is to put the personal meaning of the nodes shifting signs in the spotlight. Since we’ll all be experiencing some of this energy collectively, it will impact the positives and negatives of the wider world too. As always, we start by underscoring a point that is really the bedrock of evolutionary astrological theory: the south node of the Moon represents the gravity of old habits which are holding us back, while the north node symbolizes the remedy that can liberate us. In my own work, I view the soul cages represented by the south node as problems and challenges that originated in prior lifetimes, although other philosophies can be made to fit too. In any case, as the late, lamented astrologer and my dear friend, Michael Lutin, once put it, “the north node is the meeting and the south node is the bottle.” If you know anything about Alcoholics Anonymous, Michael really covered the essence of the point in those thirteen words.  Listen in....

Pluto, the “Lord of the Underworld,” was discovered on February 18, 1930 and announced publicly on March 13 of that year. While the exact dates are of limited importance in our work, Pluto’s discovery itself was momentous. From the astrological perspective, it marks nothing less than the collective human discovery of the unconscious mind. In essence, with the discovery of Pluto, we are talking about the birth of psychology as part of the human conversation. As ever, with massive astrological changes such as this one, it’s helpful to take a long-term perspective. Uranus was discovered in 1789 – and marked the (very Uranian) overthrow of the rule of kings along with the birth of scientific inquiry,  even when it violated religious dogma. That didn’t happen on a single day! Similarly, Neptune was discovered in 1848 and it  marked a massive change in the scope of human imagination and human spirituality – again, that’s something we can see clearly in retrospect, but not something that happened the very minute Neptune was found. In exactly the same fashion, the human discovery of the true extent of our inner world – our Plutonian unconscious mind – unfolded over a generation or two. Still, the astrological signature of the event itself dates to the physical discovery of Pluto back almost a hundred years ago.  Listen In...

I cringe whenever I hear an astrologer call Mars a “malefic” planet. Mars can bring us so many gifts, starting with the courage to stand up for ourselves. It's got a dark side though – so do all the planets. Where Mars lies in your chart, you’ll definitely need some of that courage. That’s because Mars usually marks a place in your life where you’ll face some serious stress. Nobody enjoys that, even though we might learn some useful lessons in facing it down. I suppose that astrologers who miss the evolutionary point of that extra dose of tension are the real reason poor Mars got saddled with the “malefic” label. In my own chart, Mars is in the spotlight in many ways, starting with the fact that I’ve got Scorpio rising which makes Mars the traditional ruler of my chart. It’s also sextile to my Mars-ruled Aries Moon, which deepens my reactivity to it. Mars itself lies in Aquarius, in my 3rd house (Placidus) and in a conjunction with my late-Capricorn Mercury.  Mercury and the 3rd house are both about communication, so those two features reinforce each other, and that’s the dimension of Mars that I want to explore in this newsletter.  Listen in....

How many books on your astrology shelf contain a phrase like this one: If your Mercury is in Gemini or the 3rd House . . .? With two cents’ worth of logic, the conclusion is inescapable: the author is telling you that the two configurations mean the same thing. If A equals both B and C, then B equals C and there’s not a single scrap of wiggle room about that anywhere. The trouble is that in this case, B does not equal C. Houses and signs are not the same. They do overlap in meaning, as we will see. They are far from unrelated. But if you treat them as if they were interchangeable, your astrological work loses focus. Still, this is a painfully common error among astrologers. Even though many of those books I mention contain useful perspectives in other areas, when it comes to this issue they are the culprit.  Learning to avoid this pitfall is not hard and it will take your work to the next level. Listen in....

The 2:14 PM time of birth I use here for mystery writer Agatha Christie is new information. When I wrote about her in Yesterday’s Sky in early 2008, I used her then-current birth time of 4:00 AM, which I found on seemingly good authority. Later, it emerged that "a midwife named Mrs. Shelton-Price who, according to her bill, had charged one crown and two shillings to deliver Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller at 2:14 pm on Monday afternoon, September 15." This new time of birth now gives Agatha Christie’s chart a Rodden Rating of AA—and a very different look. What follows is a rewrite of my previous analysis. Consider it a replacement for chapter fifteen for all editions and printings of Yesterday’s Sky starting from 2008 and running into the third quarter of 2024. In all new printings, this chapter will replace the previous incorrect one. As ever, astrology’s Achilles’ Heel is bad birth information. With someone you know, you can often sense that something is off in the chart. With strangers, you’re much more vulnerable. Four billion copies of her books are in print. She is often described as the best-selling author in history. Her play, The Mousetrap, is the longest running one in the world, having opened in London on November 25, 1952 and still going strong as of this writing.  But it is for her murder mysteries that Agatha Christie is best known. Her work practically defined the genre. Her vain Belgian detective, Hercule Poirot, with his waxed mustache and his brilliant deductions humanized the infallible “Sherlock Holmes” archetype. Poirot is the only fictional character ever to be given an obituary in The New York Times, after Christie killed him off in her 1975 novel, Curtain. That’s some indication of the popularity of her work. Her delightful Miss Marple, who was at least as brilliant as Hercule Poirot and a lot more charming, made it safe for older, middle-class ladies on both sides of the Atlantic to have a formidable gleam of mischief in their eyes, along with garnering some respect for their well-tempered intelligence and insight. Anyone can say “don’t underestimate me.” Miss Marple’s irrefutable wisdom made that honorable sentiment irrefutable. Listen In...

On October 11, Pluto makes a station, turns around, and heads for the Aquarian frontier for the last time. As you probably know, it’s been toggling between retrograde and direct motion while straddling the Aquarian cusp for quite a while. It was in Aquarius for ten weeks back in the middle of 2023 and returned to Aquarius a second time between January and September 1st of this year. That’s the day it re-entered Capricorn for a final time. After making its station this month, Pluto turns direct and arrives solidly in Aquarius five weeks later, entering it on November 19th where it will remain for the next nineteen years. As ever, when a planet makes a station – in other words, stands still, about to turn retrograde or direct – its energies become very focussed and intensified. For that reason alone, October promises to be a very Plutonian month. On top of that, when a planet is the final degree of a sign – often called the anaretic degree – there’s an underlying sense of urgency to it. When you were in school, remember the way you felt the night before final exams? When it comes to studying, that meant it was now or never. That’s the feeling of an anaretic degree. With Pluto making its station in 29 degrees 38 minutes of Capricorn, we’re all in exactly that position – here comes our final exam. This event isn’t just about “history” happening – it will have personal meaning for you too. Everything in the sky does. But everyone on Earth will be experiencing this radical intensification of Plutonian energy simultaneously. In other words, it’s not like a transit that hits one person very directly and misses someone else. This one is for everybody. As always, some of us will do well with it and some of us will do poorly. If “poorly” wins, it bodes ill for the whole planet.  Don’t despair – surrendering to despair is simply one of the soul-cages dark Pluto offers everyone.  Listen in ... 

In all my years of practicing our mysterious craft, I have never once met anyone who possessed these two qualities at the same time – they didn’t believe in astrology and they knew a damned thing about it. Seeing this pair of conditions operating in the same person would be like finding a blind Uber driver or an astronaut with a big fear of heights. They’re unicorns. They don’t exist.  Once we give astrology a chance to prove itself, its efficacy simply can’t be denied.  Just this week I did a reading for a woman who teaches breastfeeding. Her chart shows a Cancer Midheaven. Chance? I just got a sad message about an old friend who died before her time. Saturn had just touched her Ascendant. Chance? As any astrologer knows from experience, the list goes on and on. All you need is an open mind. Give astrology the opportunity and it proves itself to you – or to anyone. In the right hands, it never fails.  Many intelligent, thoughtful human beings disbelieve in astrology. I wouldn’t shame them for that. They come by their disbelief innocently. Some of it is just what they were trained to parrot from an early age, at least if they wanted to make A’s in 6th grade science class. Some of it is that strange shibboleth that we call “common sense.” After all, the premise that the planets “control us” does seem implausible – they’re millions of miles away, so how could they possibly affect anyone? Why would they? And so forth.  Listen in ... 

I never had kids. Other than my cats, the nearest thing to children in my life has been my books – and at last count, I’m the proud papa of sixteen of them. In one way, my books are even more like my kids than my cats are. That’s because they last a lot longer. You expect to outlive your cat, but you can at least hope for the opposite with your books (and of course, your children.) My firstborn book – my first published book to be precise – was The Inner Sky, which came out in August 1984. That’s forty years ago this month. Some of you older readers have seen your child turn forty. I suspect that’s a sobering moment – or at least one that really puts you on the map in terms of the aging process. It’s similar with books. When The Inner Sky was born, I was just thirty-five years old. Now I’m seventy-five. Knowing the book is now five years older than I was when I wrote it rings some deep bells in me. I’d signed the contract to write The Inner Sky – and collected half of my $10,000 advance – in summer 1981. My progressed Moon had just risen into the 7th house. Solar Arc Uranus was squaring my lunar nodes, while transiting Uranus was finishing up a conjunction with my Ascendant. My chart was locked and loaded for some big, empowering changes, in other words. I dived into the writing process which took a couple of years. I wrote the whole thing on a manual typewriter and eventually mailed a thick stack of paper to the publisher – that’s how long ago all of this was. Just to be clear with any of you younger folks, on the day I finished writing The Inner Sky I’m pretty sure there were no mastodons grazing outside my window. The saber-tooth tigers had finished them off.  Listen in ... 

Among conventional astrologers, trines are lucky aspects, period. The more of them you have, the luckier you’ll be. But to win the Gold Medal, what you really want is a Grand Trine – that’s three planets (or you can include the Angles) arranged in an equilateral triangle. You’re allowed a little slush – the triangle doesn’t have to be perfect, but it had better be close. What orbs to allow? There’s a lot of argument there – say, a few degrees, no more than seven or eight. As usual, if the Sun, Moon, or Ascendant are involved, you’re naturally a little more generous with the orbs. But even a wimpy Grand Trine will put you on the fast track to fame and fortune – that is, if we are to believe those kinds of astrologers. Rather than labeling trines – and the Grand Trine itself – “lucky,” I prefer the word “easy.” Those two words don’t mean quite the same thing. Grand Trines do open doors and they can definitely roll out red carpets for you. That’s easily demonstrated. Do those doors and red carpets lead to good places and copacetic outcomes? Yes, sometimes. We won’t be completely dismissing the idea of simple good fortune in connection with this aspect pattern – we’ll just be looking at it a bit more cautiously. We must always recognize that like everything else in astrology, your own choices, be they wise or foolish, are always part of the equation. Let me start with a true story. This is an edgy one about a client of mine from many years ago. I’ll call him Johnny. For the sake of confidentiality, I’m going to be vague about the specifics. I want to make sure that no one would recognize anyone involved unless they were part of my life “a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.”  Listen in ... 

When I was sixty-one years old, I met one of the two or three wisest human beings I have ever encountered. His name was Robert A. Johnson. Our relationship had an enormous impact on me, one whose effects and treasures I am still sorting out fourteen years down the road. Astrology helps! At age eleven, Robert lost a leg when he was hit by a car. He told me that his childhood ended that day.  The year I was born – 1949 – he was in Zurich, Switzerland, studying psychology with Carl Jung and in analysis with Jung’s wife, Emma.  He was the author of many books in a Jungian psychology vein, three million of which were sold. Most of them were on my bookshelf years before I met him. They never got dusty. Listen in ...