Astrological Essays, page 2

Astrological Essays:

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Here are more essays on astrological themes.

	THE IMAGINAL COSMOS: Astrology, divination & the sacred - Edited by Angela Voss & Jean Hinson Lall, $37.99 Contents: Preface & acknowledgements Introduction by Geoffrey Cornelius 1. The cosmic sense - Joseph Milne 2. Rising to the occasion: Appearance, emergence, light & divination in Hellenistic astrology - Dorian Geisler Greenbaum 3. The talisman: Magic & true philosophers - Gregory Shaw 4. Divination, enchantment & Platonism - Patrick Curry 5. The cock & the chameleon - Divination, Platonism & postmodernism - Maggie Hyde 6. Astrology, astronomy & magic as the motivation for the scientific Renaissance of the 12th century - Charles Burnett 7. The weave of fate: Sixteenth century prognostications & twentieth-century prediction in the context of western esotericism - Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke 8. C.G. Jung's visionary mysticism - Leon Schlamm 9. Does prophecy have a future? - Frank McGillion 10. Watering the roots of astrological theory & practice: Gaston Bachelard's contribution to a philosophy of divination - Jean Hinson Lall 11. Love, alchemy & planetary attraction - Liz Greene 12. Father Time & Orpheus - Angela Voss About the contributors Comment: These were the papers presented at the international conference held at the University of Kent in October, 2004. From the back: In this volume new theories & methods for the study of divination are suggested: most significantly, a phenomenological approach, which considers divinatory knowledge & practice on its own terms. As many of the authors are practitioners of astrology & divination, the divide between 'etic' and 'emic' perspectives begins to close, pointing towards a new methodology not only for divination, but for religious studies in general. Many of the papers give prominence to the role of imagination as the organ of symbolic insight, locating divination in the mundus imaginalis of theopany & revelation. The relationship of creative imagination with the sacred is deeply rooted in Western esoteric traditions & practices which unite religion, philosophy & psychology. From this perspective, divinatory vision may be explored by looking both inwards and outwards: from the alchemical symbolism at work in human relationships to history, cosmology & science. I think I will let this stand as an indication of what you will find in the book, which, as one would expect, is academic. University of Kent, 158 pages.

	ASTROLOGY & THE AUTHENTIC SELF: Integrating traditional & modern astrology to uncover the essence of the birth chart - Demetra George, $24.95 Contents: Acknowledgements Prologue: Essence of heartdrops Introduction: A blueprint for the essential meaning of the chart Part 1: Laying the foundation 1. The grammar of astrology 2. Determining planetary condition Part 2: Establishing the framework 3. An overview of the chart 4. The ascendant, its ruler, and the life direction 5. The Sun, the Moon, and the life purpose 6. Timing by transits & progressions Part 3: Building the structure 7. The lunation phases 8. Fortune, lunar nodes & eclipses 9. Mythic asteroid archetypes 10. Aspect patterns 11. Analyzing relationship & vocation 12. Timing by solar returns & annual profections 13. The finished structure Part 4: The person who lives in the chart 14. Encountering your clients 15. The healing power of myth to address suffering Epilogue: The astrologer as counselor Appendices: A. How to determine your natal & progressed lunation phases B. Resources for the study of asteroids Endnotes Bibliography Glossary Comment: This book is intended to make you a better counseling astrologer. You have a client. You have one hour. What can you do? My intention is to suggest an utterly simple, clear, logical method for discerning the purpose of a life as indicated in the astrological birth chart. My model employs the methods & criteria of traditional astrology to provide a solid structural foundation for the insights of modern psychological approaches, which aim at healing the psyche. (pg. 10) There are many words in this book, but let's cut to the chase. George develops her thesis, step by step, with the aid of the chart of Bill, born November 17, 1939, 8:30 am Mountain time, Seneca, Nebraska: 42N03, 100W50. Here is what I think is the final distillation of his chart: Bill was born during a crescent moon phase, and his life is characterized by a struggle to establish his own identity apart from familiar, social & cultural expectations. By accessing the resources available in his immediate environment, he can develop new talents, skills & abilities that give him the means by which to move beyond the old and familiar into new uncharted territory that stimulates his curiosity. Cultivating focus and perseverance can help keep him progressing in a forward direction, and his final challenge is to take advantage of the many opportunities that present themselves by taking action upon them. By progression, Bill is almost halfway through a thirty year cycle that began in October 1992, when the progressed New Moon heralding the beginning of a new cycle and the release of a new vision occurred in his second house of livelihood. He ceased working for others and began working for himself, putting his video and computer skills into creative endeavors. Currently near the end of the progressed Gibbous phase (October 2004 to March 2008), he has been refining and perfecting his techniques of operation, and becoming as skillful as he can in his chosen field of expression. He has been called to do the "finishing work" on the structure he has been building since 1992. He has assembled all of his early films and made new prints of them, using the latest state-of-the-art technology. He has also completed the renovation of the building that houses the international household. In March 2008, he enters the progressed Full Moon phase, halfway around the thirty year cycle. Over the next four years, the content of his vision becomes infused in the form he has built. It will be through his conscious relationships with other people that he will illuminate his larger meaning in his life. (pgs. 233-4) I heard that George, famous for her work with asteroids, had embraced Hellenistic astrology, but despite that, she writes dreck. When this book was published in 2008, the subject, Bill, was 68 years old. (As I write these notes on November 30, 2008, he has just turned 69.) Tell a 68 year old man he is halfway through a 30 year "new vision" process & if the guy has any brains and/or self-respect, he will leave the room in disgust. And why, exactly, would someone at the peak of his career consult an astrologer about that career? We consult astrologers with problems. Bill doesn't seem to have a problem with his career. George is an advocate of what she calls "whole sign" houses. In practice, that means that Bill's chart, given on pg. 22, has 0 degrees of each sign for the house cusps, starting with the ascendant at 0 Sagittarius. It's actually 16 Sag, presuming that 8:30 am is more-or-less correct. (Hello Demetra! Whole signs can still have cusps - your choice of house system.) Jupiter, which she repeatedly places in 4, is actually in 3. Angles matter, and precise time matters. (Greeks drew charts for Alexandria. That's 11 degrees further south than Seneca. Hellenistic advocates need to learn geography & what that means in a chart.) George correctly observes that rectification by accidents is worthless, but can it be that in Hellenistic astrology there are no techniques for rectification by trait? (Anybody know? - I despair!) Which I myself have been doing for years? In Bill's chart, the ruler of the 7th, Mercury, is in Sag just off the first house cusp. That's a bright, chirpy, brainless wife who is eternally underfoot, but, dead conjunct Venus, Bill loves her anyway. Did Pluto's transit over both of them, October/November 2001 (over the ascendant two months later), result in the death of a beloved spouse, which, years later, propelled him to seek astrological counsel? Given George's own sketch, Bill didn't come to her for employment advice. Ibis/Weiser/RedWheel, 319 pages.

	NOT A SIGN IN THE SKY BUT A LIVING PERSON - Marc Robertson, $9.00 Comment: From the back cover: "This book is not about "signs" or "planets" or "houses," except as SYMBOLS of human functions to be found in LIVING PEOPLE....the material here will show you how to find a LIVING PERSON in those mysterious symbols we call astrology." All of Marc Robertson's books are exceptionally sharp in writing, but all of them were exceptionally bad in organization & page layouts. I'd like to give you a table of contents as a guide, but there is none, nor is there any point in copying out the big words you find on the pages, as they are things like: The eye in the "I" Eight human personality types Impulse the new moon Incarnation project Possession struggle crescent struggle Activation action first quarter act Evaluation growth gibbous analyze Culmination full mooon illumination From which you get the idea Marc's talking about the Moon in some fashion. This takes up the first third of the book & then the author moves on to something else. Lunation cycle & planetary pairings & such. 31 pages. AFA, oversize paper.

	SIMPLIFIED ASTRONOMY FOR ASTROLOGERS - Lcdr David Williams, $16.95 Contents: 1. Introduction 2. Coordinating time & space 3. The Age of Aries the warrior 4. The Age of Pisces the mystic 5. The Aquarian Age 6. The solar system 7. Time 8. The calendar & ancient chronology 9. Eclipses 10. Evolution of the planisphere & house division Bibliography Comment: The opening chapters of this book on "astronomy" have to do with how the sky looks from the earth. Not the expected, "how long does it take the various planets to orbit the Sun," et al, which Williams ignores. The view of the skies takes the author in two very interesting directions. One is precession, ie, where the first degree of Aries can be found in the sky, and when it was last there. (This is the Sidereal/Tropical argument, pre-Fagan). The other direction is how the Great Pyramid can be used as a sundial, which by extension takes us to the Planisphere, described as a representation of the celestial sphere on a flat surface, and then into a brief sketch of house division. Along the way, eclipses are explained. The meat of the book are the extensive descriptions of various astrological ages: Taurus, Aries, Pisces & Aquarius. Williams' interpretation of these ages are traditional, in other words, the discovery of Uranus & Neptune, the American & French revolutions, were turning points in world affairs, and, for lack of other explanation, we are justified in presuming these events marked the changing of the Age, from Pisces to Aquarius. Williams specifically states that Aquarius arrived in 1842, with the emergence of the Spiritualist Movement. The Spiritualist Movement was essentially the start of seances, where individuals sat around a large table in a darkened room with a medium who channeled deceased relatives. The modern psychic, John Edward, who works in a well-lit room, channeling the deceased relatives of a studio audience, is a direct descendant of the early Spiritualists. These people have always had their critics, among them Harry Houdini, the famous magician, who desperately wanted to believe, but could find no convincing evidence. But I digress. As I have written on the Ages in various newsletters, Williams' ideas were of interest. My entry into this field was a class in the Year 1913, given jointly by the Departments of French & Fine Arts at the University of Kansas in 1975. In that class I learned that some time in Paris, in or around 1913, art shifted from the purely expressive, to the analytical. As it did so, art added something completely new: An explanation of the analysis, in other words, an ideological manifesto. The very first of these new styles, Cubism, was, in fact, incomprehensible unless you knew the "secret". Many years later I suddenly realized that Ages had the same planetary rulers as ordinary zodiacal signs, and that when the Ages changed, the rulers changed. In Pisces, Jupiter rules, Venus is exalted, Mercury is in detriment. In Aquarius, Saturn rules, Mercury is exalted, the Sun is in detriment; and Jupiter & Venus, suddenly subordinate to Saturn, are nothing special. In particular, note that Jupiter/Venus is abundant beauty for its own sake. Saturn/Mercury is dour, analytical & wordy. Saturn, as is well-known, has no interest in "beauty" whatever. The abrupt change, from Jupiter/Venus/Pisces, to Saturn/Mercury/Aquarius, explained the sudden arrival of Cubism, Futurism, Dadaism, Mondrian, Jackson Pollack & much, much more. Even the whimsical Surrealists. (Ceci n'est pas une pipe!) With this simple observation, I was able to confirm that my professors had been right. Something really did happen in 1913, that had not occurred before, nor since. In 1913, Venus abruptly lost its stature. It was replaced by Mercury. Which could only happen if the Ages had changed. But that still left me with the same facts that Williams, and Howell, and many others, have noted. How can I claim the Aquarian Age arrived in Paris, in 1913, and then ignore the French revolution, the Rights of Man, E Pluribus Unum, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, All Men are Brothers, the Ode to Joy, the Shot Heard 'Round the World, the discovery of Uranus & Neptune, etc., etc., etc.? Were these not precursors to Aquarius? Its harbingers? I once knew a woman born on February 18, 1957, in California. I was originally told she was born at 5 am, and for many years accepted her chart as such, but many years later she discovered her original birth certificate, which had the time as 5 pm. In that twelve hours, her ascendant changed from Aquarius to Leo, as expected. Her moon changed, from Libra to Scorpio, which happens from time to time. And, to my utter astonishment, her Sun changed. From Aquarius, to Pisces. New ascendant, new Moon, new Sun. The three fundamentals. I went home to bed. I slept. I woke up. She had changed completely. To what she always was, but what I had never before let myself see. From that day, to now, I regard "on the cusp" as in need of a precise time. That there are no such things as "cusps". Which is to say, signs do not magically "blend" from one into another. Aquarius is Aquarius right up to the very last second, whereupon it changes to Pisces. Which is wholly & absolutely Pisces, right from the start. I applied this to my study of the Ages, and concluded that not one trace of the Aquarian Age could have appeared prior to 1913. But now I was more stuck than ever. From horary, I learned that early degrees on the ascendant meant the matter was premature. Late degrees, that the moment to act has already passed. What if the same were true of the Ages as well? After all, applying planetary rulers to the Ages seemed to work brilliantly. How much more "natal astrology" could I import? So I looked at the changeover from Aries to Pisces. I presumed the Greeks to have been Arian. I presumed the Romans to have been Piscean. I had art as a baseline, so I looked at the Acropolis, and then at the Forum, where funny things have happened. In Aries, Venus was debilitated. In Pisces, Venus was exalted. My theory, that planetary rulers also ruled Ages, said that art, represented by Venus, should have shifted abruptly, and radically, from Aries to Pisces. And, in fact, it did. Grecian architecture & sculpture were stiff & formal, albeit subtle. Roman architecture & sculpture were fluid & magically expressive. Even Roman copies of Grecian sculptures took on enhanced life, as if they were incapable of an accurate copy. But that wasn't the whole story. Roman three-dimensional forms may have arrived at an artistic pinnacle, but Roman painting, Roman music, both lagged far behind. As an age Pisces continued - into the Darkness, where there was nothing whatever, before rising up in the Renaissance, and then carrying on in an almost unbroken path, straight into the Romanticism of the 19th century. And there, waiting for me, were the symphonies of Anton Bruckner. To this day, the greatest music ever written. So it seemed reasonable to conclude that Ages, like men, are born as infants, suffer the pangs of adolescence, become young adults, transition into mature individuals, and then valued seniors, before finally sinking into senility & passing away. If that progression were true of Ages, and if Pisces held on to 1913, then the 19th century should have been the very pinnacle of Piscean civilization. So I checked. In the 19th century, so far as "art for art's sake" went, visual art was at a peak. Music was at a peak. Opera peaked. Architecture peaked. Poetry was at a peak. Literature peaked. And so I thought, why not politics? Democracy is said to be Aquarian, but didn't Athens have a form of "democracy"? But the great Athenian civilization was clearly Arian! And what about Strasbourg in the 1400's, with an elected, albeit rotating, oligarchy? Or the early Swiss Confederation? What if, instead of being uniquely Aquarian, democracy was universal, with variations unique to every Age? That would make Athens, where every man had equal say, an example of Arian democracy. Would democracy be different in Pisces? It would have to be! Is it not true that when Ages change, everything changes with them? So I looked again at the great 18th & 19th century slogans, and tried to see if there could be a Piscean interpretation, which my theory now demanded. "We hold these truths to be self-evident." What does "self-evident" mean? What is a "truth"? Are these products of analysis? No. They are self-referential. They are "universal". They are "ultimates". Ultimate refers to Pisces. They are "God given". As in "God-given rights," a phrase we still hear. Okay. So what about, "E Pluribus Unum." From the Many, One. Aquarius is about individuals. Do they become one? If the American "melting pot" was to be the practical expression, then, no. The US government has long tracked its citizens by race, and decade by decade there are more possibilities. On the other hand, take an ordinary spray bottle. Set it to light mist. Spray a vertical panel lightly. You should see thousands of individual droplets. Now spray the droplets. Suddenly the thousands of droplets become one big puddle. From the many, one, and brought about by means of water, the Piscean element. Once brought together, they cannot be separated. Contrast to the fasces, the bundle of sticks shown on the back of the US 10 cent piece (dime), from 1916 to 1945. No matter how tightly bound, the individual sticks remain individuals. And so, what about Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite - ? Like the Self-Evident Truths, these terms are undefined. Undefined means that Mercury, ie, thought & analysis, have not been applied to them, that Mercury cannot be applied to them. Such was true of Pisces, where Mercury was debilitated & so not available. By means of such analysis, I arrived at the conclusion that the "precursors" to Aquarius were, in reality, the ultimate expressions of Piscean ideals. Not Aquarian at all. Which, if Ages really do mature over time, would be exactly what would be expected in the very last decades of the Piscean Age. How did Uranus & Neptune come to be discovered? By use of perfected Piscean tools. All Piscean tools were mechanical. The greatest of them, the steam-driven technology of the late 19th century, was the ultimate expression of Piscean water. Look how rapidly the Aquarian technology of electricity replaced it, once Aquarius was unleashed, starting around 1913. That there was electricity, of a form, in the late 19th century is not in dispute, but then, there was electricity in the last years of the Age of Aries, just as there was steam, also. Every Age achieves its ultimate, and, briefly, every Age is universal in its own right. Steam was proper to Pisces, electricity is proper to Aquarius. The Piscean Karl Marx (by which I mean he was born in the Piscean Age), in his role as an ultimate arbiter of Pisces, expounded one of the great truths of Aquarius: From each according to ability; To each according to need. Communism is an Aquarian form of government, as has long been known. Aquarius, still in its infancy, has so far been unable to adequately express it, hence its universal failure. Which, at this time, is the expected outcome. Aquarius is still too immature. All other authors have seen the Ages through a Piscean lens. Stripped of that, we can see clearly that Aquarius will bring about a form of group consciousness, of which the many forms of networking (Twittering) are merely the precursors. Given that Aquarius is a fixed Age/sign, we may expect this ultimate consciousness, to arrive around the year 4000 AD, to be of crystalline form. But without Piscean ideals, Aquarius is an enormously dangerous Age. In Aquarius, we may KNOW. With our new-fangled Aquarian analytical abilities, we may even know the other ten Ages. We need only apply ourselves. Regrettably, wisdom, ie, the ability to properly use what we know, is not an Aquarian trait. Hence the enormous effort, known as the New Age, to fuse these two. Efforts which failed, unfortunately. I am the greatest expert on the Ages. This is merely a corner of my work. Get this book & read Williams for a contrast. He was once President of the American Federation of Astrologers, which has reprinted his book. AFA, 116 pages. Read the book? Want to tell the world? How many stars (1-5) would you give this book? Tell us!

	THE GREAT AGES and other astrological cycles - Paul Wright, $21.95 Contents: Introduction The Age of Gemini The Age of Taurus: The astrological Taurus, Minoans, Mesopotamia, Egypt, Peace of Venus, The harmony of Venus, Taurean religion The Age of Aries: Transition from Taurus to Aries, The meaning of Mars & Aries, Egypt, Greece, Religions in the Aries Age. The Age of Pisces: Beginnings, Hellenism, Rome, Piscean religions, The enduring religions, Kings through the ages, The Pisces-Aquarius transition Age of Aquarius: The essence of Aquarius/Uranus, Technology & social amelioration, Aquarius in person, Some potted biographies, Uranus transits, a subjective view, Aquarius takes off Part 2 The Uranus cycle: The first cycle, First return, second cycle, Second return, third cycle The Neptune cycle: The meaning of Neptune, Neptune in real lives, The subjective perspective, Neptune & illusion, Collectivism, The Neptune cycle, The first quarter, The opposition phase, The last quarter. Comment: December, 2009: I was looking for something on the AFA site, I forget what, and chanced across this book, which I had not previously seen. Wasn't this the same Paul Wright who wrote The Literary Zodiac? Yeah. I went to his website and read some extracts from this book. (I can't link to the extracts directly as there's a font that won't load. You must scroll down Parlando's page & hit the link directly.) And while what I read looked like a rehash of what I've read elsewhere, I was gratified to see that Wright has figured out the planetary ruler of the sign is also the planetary ruler of the Age as well. How much more had he figured out? I was curious. In the first chapter, on Gemini, Wright states that while humans & human civilizations may go back many tens of thousands of years, he was going to limit himself to recorded history. In other words, no further back than 5000-7000 BC. This was the first of a number of wasted opportunities. If there's any real use for mythology, it's as an oral history that's otherwise been lost. And as such, mythologies should resonate strongly to past astrological ages, presuming those ages really existed & are not the results of feverish imagination. This dual test of mythology & the Ages seems to have escaped Wright. It is otherwise interesting to speculate in which Age Atlantis fell, or in which Age was Sodom & Gomorrah, or, appropriate to the Age of Gemini, the Tower of Babel. This Wright does not do. The Age of Taurus is described as being a time of peace, since the ruler, Venus, is that way. Since "archaeological evidence" suggests the "Garden of Eden" existed about this time, Man's explusion from it made the Age of Taurus the Age of the Fall, or, in other words, of regret & a longing for an earlier, better, simpler time. Wright makes reference to the opposite sign, Scorpio, suggesting that the Taurus Age was a time when luxury competed with power. Which is not a bad observation. Taurus was the age of the Pyramids, because modern Egyptologists say so, which is all that Wright needs. Religion in Taurus was female / goddess based. All the evidence points to it: The female goddess, the crescent moon, horned animals & more. It somehow escapes Wright that every last bit of this was later employed by the Church in its veneration of Mary. A Church which is decidedly masculine. And though Wright deals extensively with the Minoans, he entirely misses the Religion of the Bull which they practiced, and which continues, to this day, in the bullring in Spain. Already we can see that Wright's use of his materials is limited. He has covered an air age, and an earth age, a mutable age & a fixed age, but has developed little of what was available to him. It's when we get to Aries, an age reasonably well-documented, that we see the weakness of Wright's grasp of his materials. Wright notes that Aries is a fire age, and as such is filled with dynamic people & events & a general warlike character. I can't fault him by saying that he has no overall concept of how an Age begins, how it develops, how it peaks, how & why it ends, since I am the only living person who has such a concept. But he does note that Aries seemed to go out on a high note around 500 BC. My own date for the transition from Aries to Pisces is only about 200 years later. All Ages go out on a high note, it's how they're structured. He notes that by the end of the Aries Age there were republics in India (page 29), but, as his grasp of Ages is weak, fails to understand what it means. He does make the useful observation that Pisces brought about the merging of individual city-states (Aries) into larger empires (Pisces), a detail I had overlooked. Wright makes a good, strong start with Pisces, goes into detail about the Greek & Roman civilizations, tells us about Mithras & Christianity, how Piscean universalism was backed up by Virgoan detail that made the Roman Legions so successful & more, but is curiously silent about the great yawning pit of the Dark Ages and Medieval society, silent about how, in actual fact, Pisces could have fallen so very far, in Europe, at least, and how it managed to crawl its way back. This epoch in human history is not only well-documented, when properly understood it is easily described in Astro-Age terms. Which is that Pisces, once it came unstuck, reverted to being formless & shapless & every effort it made to coalesce into something definite came to nothing, until, by some miracle, it suddenly rose up, complete & entire, straight in front of us, and became, for two or three increasingly intense centuries, that shining Universal Age, the ultimate essence of Pisces. But this is me & my work, not that of Paul Wright. Of Aquarius, of the transition from Pisces to Aquarius, Mr. Wright understands nothing at all. Aquarius, he says, has been leaning in on us for the last two centuries but is still, somehow, not quite here. Why is this? While Jupiter is said to have ruled Pisces, Wright gives rulership of Aquarius unhesitatingly to Uranus. This mistake essentially ruins his work, as he sets off looking for Uranian people, places & events to hang his theories on. Uranus, of course, is the New, the Revolutionary, the Technological, the Humanitarian, etc. Thus, he writes off Communism as a bizarre form of religion (pg. 41). In the process, a book that started out promising, ends up as a fantasy. The following is taken from a section entitled, Technology and social amelioration, from page 43: Perhaps what is the most important aspect of Aquarius/Uranus in the context of the current work is the connection with social amelioration, technology and evolution. In essence what Uranus & Aquarius stand for is the urge to improve life conditions so that the spiritual potential of each individual human being can flower. This misunderstands Aquarius. It is not interested in individuals (Leo is, Aries is), and it is not spirtualistic. Pisces is spiritualistic. At this point Wright goes into a series of what he calls "potted biographies" of various people, all of whom had Aquarius prominent in their charts. Myself, I can't see any reason why individual Aquarians (I are one myself) are in any way representative of the age in which we live, or, in Wright's accounting, the age into which we are leaning. The biographies include: Lord Baden-Powell Lord Byron Havelock Ellis Colette James Dean Wolfgang Mozart Gustav Holst Sir Alexander Gibb Lewis Grassic Gibbons Somerset Maugham James Michener Franklin Roosevent Henry Frederick Thynne Jules Verne Roger Nash Baldwin William Henry Baldwin Angela Bambace Mary Barker Bessie Beattie Anthony Benezet Alice Bennett Jack Benny Edgar Bergen Joanna Graham Bethune George Biddle Barry Bingham James Birney Abraham Bishop Elizabeth Blackwell This is a list dominated by the obscure (Elizabeth Blackwell was the first woman to receive a medical degree) and those in the arts. There is only one world-dominant name on the list, that of Roosevelt. If this is the best that Aquarius can do, it's been a dud. So far, at any rate. No wonder Wright is uncertain when it will arrive. Published in 2007, the author could still write, apparently with a straight face, We can speculate that the process of democratization will continue as the new age progresses & the old one wanes. And a positive future scenario is that the freedom from material want enjoyed by the peoples of the West will spread to the Third World, where technology can be used positively to help ameliorate the appalling poverty & privation endemic in many places. In the Aquarian Age, this must be done in a spirit of disinterested humanitarianism, free of economic motive, and not contingent upon embracing a particular philosophy or way of life. (pg. 57) The essays on Uranus & Neptune that round off the book I will leave aside. This is a book of hopeful speculation. Parlando Press, 92 pages, oversize (A4). Read the book? Want to tell the world? How many stars (1-5) would you give this book? Tell us!

	INTERCEPTIONS HERALDS OF A NEW AGE - Rev. Alice Miller, $15.95 Contents: Acknowledgments Foreword 1. Introduction 2. Interceptions 3. Aries-Libra intercepted 4. Taurus-Scorpio intercepted 5. Gemini-Sagittarius intercepted 6. Cancer-Capricorn intercepted 7. Leo-Aquarius intercepted 8. Virgo-Pisces intercepted 9. The doubled house cusps 10. Example delineations 11. Regressed charts 12. Interceptions in return charts Comment: Another book best left to speak for itself. From the back cover: We are at the end of the Piscean Age, standing on the brink of the Age of Aquarius. Today, many advanced beings have reincarnated to assist with the transition. Exceptions to the general consciousness, their birth charts are also exceptional. Instead of having a different sign on each of the twelve houses, many have pairs of signs enclosed within houses, while other pairs fall on two successive cusps. These interceptions are markers for those individuals once called Starseed or Starborn. Seeming to have stepped back in time, they are designed to be living examples of greater possibilities within the human species. In spiritual terms, they are Older Children of the Creator of this Universe. Their differences create problems early in life which continue until they realize that they truly are different from the general population, and that their differences are assets, not deficiencies. This requires a transformative process. Entering the second phase of life, each discovers who she or he is & why she or he came. Finally, that feeling of coming to do something special humanity is validated! I fear those of you who know astrology have already made up your minds, and the book has not even been opened. Shame on you!!! Here is part of the Foreword: Physically, I am different from the norm. My metabolism is atypical, I am dyslexic, and I have an extremely rare blood type. My health, while never life threatening, was never good until my Uranus opposition. Since then, I am amazingly healthy. Relationships have been a testing ground. I married three times with increasing disastrous results. Ten years later, my dream man came along. . . and turned out to be a con man. It took a long time to realize that a non-traditional human cannot make a traditional marriage work because we are designed to create new social structures for the approaching new age. What I have described is a capsule reading of my Aries-Libra Interception placed in the sixth-twelfth axis. Eventually I realised that some of us are born to lead the way into the future possibilities of humanity. Leaders never fit in. They were not meant to. (pgs. vii-viii) You know the rules! Never judge a book by its cover, even if that cover was written by the author herself. Never judge a book by its Foreword. Never judge a book by its - oh heck. Let's just get on with it. Let's plunge a bit further: Interceptions have been described as a phenomenon created by thinking of our spherical world as flat. On a globe, the lines marking divisions of latitude become increasingly closer together as we move towards the poles. Interceptions have long been regarded as more common in northern latitudes. The only two-interception charts we have seen had north latitudes of forty-eight and forty-nine degrees. Realistically, the phenomenenon would be more prevalent outside a band surrounding the equator. If the scientific theory regarding them is correct, they should be equally common in southern latitudes. We suspect that these interceptions would symbolize the results of shamanistic activities. It is recommended that readers not get caught up in physical theories of explanation. Natal charts are blueprints of the interactive physical, psychological & spiritual capacities & the development of the individual. A strong attraction for the scientific description of the physical phenomenon may be a means of avoiding the real message. When we become too fascinated with the physical characteristics of a symbolic presentation, we lose its meaning. Traditional religions frequently show this. What the interception symbolizes will always be more important than any explanation for how it got there. (pgs. 5-6) Is the book becoming clear? Let's have a bit more of it: Aries-Libra Intercepted The Type The misfit. The dislocated. Unlike parents or siblings, we seem disconnected from them, as though we had somehow gotten into the wrong family. Very often this continues into the school years, where we still do not fit in because we have so little experience with people outside the family before we started school. We are loners. . . (pg. 21) Time to look quickly at the example charts in Chapter 10. AR, born in Vancouver. AM, born in Dwight, KS (printed upside down, a neat trick). JS, born in Denver. HS, born in San Angelo, TX with 1 degree Libra rising. CG, born in Denver, another chart printed upside down. MN, born in Pueblo, CO, printed upside down. KC, born in Gardnerville, NV. Upside down charts show left dominance, whatever that is. I was curious where the example charts were set, because, as everyone knows, interceptions, in fact, have to do with latitude north or south of the equator. The closer to the poles you are, the more your chart is skewed. It's a fact of life. Virtually everyone in the UK, which is located between 50 (Land's End) and 59 degrees north latitude (John O'Groats), has at least one pair of interceptions. Many have two, especially the Scots. This is why the Scottish people are the the New Age leaders they are. India, by contrast, is barely north of the equator. Interceptions in that part of the world are extremely rare. This is why India, along with all its many holy men, sages, gurus and pandits, will be left behind when Pisces finally gives way to Aquarius. Any day now. Checking the author's website, Life Print Astrology, I learn that it is her chart printed upside down on page 89. The Reverend Miller was born on April 2, 1937, at 7:06 am LMT in Dwight, Kansas. She has, perversely I think, translated her chart out of Central Standard Time to Local Mean Time, which she also does with about half the other charts she presents - not all of them upside down. Despite what she claims on her website, changing the time from Standard (civil time) to LMT makes not one single change in the chart. None whatever. You could set all your charts in GMT if it pleased you. So let's give Alice a quick scan for intelligence. Saturn, in Pisces, Sun & Mercury in Aries, Uranus & Venus in Taurus, are all in the 12th (Placidus cusps), with 12 degrees of Taurus rising. The node, not shown, is at 17 Sag in the 8th. Third house, of everyday intelligence & thinking, is Cancer, and empty. Cancer on the cusp says that Rev. Miller feels more than she thinks, when she thinks at all, as empty houses are areas we don't often concern ourselves with. The Moon, ruler of the third at 24 Sag, tends to jump enthusiastically from idea to idea. Which, as it's domiciled in the 8th, she gets from she knows not where (ie, psychic). Jupiter in Capricorn disposes it, barely one degree in back of the 10th, late late late in the 9th. Jupiter wants to make public the psychic impressions the Moon has, but in Capricorn tends to be rather clumsy about it. Jupiter is in mutual disposition & sextile with Saturn, in Pisces, in the 12th. Saturn rules the 9th (Capricorn), of higher mind. A 9th house Capricorn can be taught many things (myself, for example, with Capricorn there), but with Saturn ruling from the 12th in Pisces, I get the impression of pouring knowledge down a drain, nevermore to be seen. In the Reverend's chart, Jupiter is not helped by being in opposition to Pluto. So why were Rev. Miller's marriages bad? It could be Scorpio on the 7th, with Mars ruling in Sag late in the 7th. Mars in Sag ties it into the Jupiter/Saturn mutual reception, it gives it an affinity to the Sag Moon & tends to put it functionally in the 8th (as bad a placement for a Martian 7th house ruler as you can get), the result is not very pleasant so far as marriage is concerned. With Leo on the 5th, the Sun ruling from Aries in the 12th, Alice is better advised to have secret boyfriends - and probably did. Why did her health improve at age 40 - the Uranian opposition? It could be that it landed in her 7th & booted out all the dumb men who were (8th house Moon) sucking her dry. Yes, Alice. There is such a thing as astrology. (Aspect-astrology is a lot better than run-of-the-mill psychology, but hardly what astrology is capable of. Learn to read like this: Everything in the world, everything in life, is covered by one or another of the twelve houses. The way a given house deals with its area of expertise is determined by the sign on its cusp. The way in which the sign works is, in its turn, determined by the planetary ruler & its location by sign & house. That planet is further conditioned by the planet which disposes the the sign it is in. If the two planets are in aspect, so much the better, but the fact that one disposes of the other gives them a de facto relationship. Learn this system and you will find that seven planets, twelve signs & twelve houses provides such a riot of detail that you will never again lust after asteroids or Transneps. I don't, at any rate.) By my watch, it is now October 2009. This is not the first book the AFA has published this year which has been of dubious quality. AFA, 112 pages. Read the book? Want to tell the world? How many stars (1-5) would you give this book? Tell us!

	INTERCEPTED PLANETS POSSIBILITIES FOR A NEW AGE - The Rev. Alice Miller, $22.95 Contents: Dedication About this book About the author Foreword Background: The rise in human consciousness What are intercepted planets? The intercepted Sun Intercepted Uranus Intercepted Moon Intercepted Saturn Intercepted Mercury Intercepted Jupiter Intercepted Mars Intercepted Venus Intercepted Pluto Intercepted Chiron Intercepted Neptune Intercepted Nodes Intercepted Fortuna Finis Comment: So it's now a litte more than a year since the Rev. Miller's first book on interceptions was published. We may presume that everything in the first book is carried over into the second. The Rev. Miller is still telling us about her unhappy childhood, multiple bad marriages & ill health, etc. The best astrology books are the ones in which the author weeps for herself. Here is how Miller defines interceptions: My research shows that those with intercepted areas in their natal horoscopes are those beings who were born outside the general consciousness. The inclusion of planets within interceptions increases the distance beyond the recognized norm or average. In essence, it may be said that such individuals are born with a consciousness level characteristic of the approaching age - or sometimes the previous one - rather than the current one. (pg. 3) I was going to pull some more quotes & let Alice blather on, but it struck me my own ideas about interceptions have nearly the same starting point. I wouldn't say that interceptions makes one born outside. I would say, makes you born with a certain personality quirk. And while this may be true of those with empty intercepted signs (which I think doubtful), it is certainly true of those who have planets intercepted in them. However, the consciousness, or personality quirks, that arise are based on situations forced upon them in their immediate past life. To some extent, this makes those with intercepted planets victims, but I haven't yet worked out all the various interactions between "victims" and "evildoers". But even so, people are not heralds of anything. Not this age, not that age. People incarnate to deal with their own private lives, their own private fates. This is a rule. But all of this only applies for those born between, say, 30 degrees north latitude, and 50 degrees north latitude (same with south latitudes, of course). Below 30 degrees, interceptions are rare. Above 50, interceptions are the norm. Different rules would apply to each. I regret I do not know what those would be. So let's look at one of Alice's delineations, or two. Alice views interceptions as polarities, which, of course, they are. Here she is on the 1st / 7th house pairing: Example: this interception (first-seventh) will represent an image problem & include a partner problem. Because the self-image is not well-established, or not accurate - because it excludes the intercepted area from consciousness - it is impossible to know who our equals are. Consequently, we may marry those not our equals and the marriage (or other partnership) will not work well, largely because only one partner tries to make it work. (pg. 7) Most of that is wrong. I thought Miller was talking about herself, but not so. As it happens, I have a sister in law with two planets intercepted in the first, and two intercepted in the seventh. Because she has been a continual nuisance for the past 40 years, I will give you her precise data: Born February 19, 1953, at 7:51 am PST, Montebello, CA. You should get a chart with 28 Pisces rising. Delineation of Gail's chart is simple and direct: With Mars & Venus intercepted in Aries in the first house, she is not who she pretends to be. With Saturn and Neptune intercepted in the seventh, her husband is not who he pretends to be. Who happens to be one of my brothers. You would think I would know, but over the years I have been as surprised as everyone else. (Astrology trumps personal experience. Yes, it does.) Ken and Gail were married in June, 1971. They have three grown children. Over the course of their marriage they have had good times and bad times, but they have never been apart, they have never been separated. Are Ken'n'Gail "good" people? Are they "bad" people? Are they equals? Is one the "master" and the other a "slave"? So far as interceptions are concerned, we don't know that. A good synastry analysis might tell us, but that's beyond the scope of Miller's book. As I have an intercepted Jupiter, and as I have a fairly good idea how it came to be that way, I looked at Miller's delineation. She defines Jupiter in terms of Sagittarius, the only sign she permits it to rule. As Jupiter rules mathematics (so says the Reverend), those with intercepted Jupiters, like myself, are believed to lack mathematical skills. An intercepted Jupiter means that I learned, long ago, that there are places I could not go, things I could not become, things I cannot do (pg. 59). This is because an intercepted Jupiter withholds money, travel & education, so we end up stupid & broke, right where we started. Intercepted Jupiter "withholds our future". Eventually transits force the intercepted Jupiter to explode outwards, like Uranus, or perhaps Pluto. Which resembles a religious conversion. (pg. 61). The reality, according to the Reverend, is that intercepted Jupiters, such as Yours Truly, are "Living Messengers", the unseen angels in the lives of others. Usually good, but on occasion, fallen angels and therefore exponents of evil (pg. 64). - All of which are the author's own fancies. There are no delineations by sign, no delineations by house, no aspects considered. All of which are essential. There are, by the way, no charts in the book. My intercepted Jupiter, like all intercepted planets, is ruled by the houses containing the signs which Jupiter rules. In other words, Jupiter, ruling my 7th of wife, while intercepted in the 11th of friends, means that my wife (or partner) has ownership of my friends. Not me. If Jupiter were not intercepted, then my friends would be her friends, her friends would be my friends. (Ruler of the 7th in the 11th, my wife is my friend. That much did not change.) The interception takes friends away from me. Note that well, as that is one of the traits of interceptions, to take away the affairs of the house it is domiciled in, giving it to the house(s) the planet rules. If one of those houses is angular, then that's where most of the influence will be found. You could say interceptions invert rulership, makes it run backwards. This is one of several quirks about intercepted planets that I have noted. This is presumably due to the fact that intercepted signs lack "moorings", in other words, a house cusp the sign can call home. Planets contained in intercepted signs are then overwhelmed by the houses they rule. Which has the net result of inverting rulership. In other words, rather than planets ruling the houses containing the signs they rule, the houses with those signs rule intercepted planets. Interceptions are a puzzle to many. I regret that Miller's books will not give enlightenment. AFA, 139 pages. Read the book? Want to tell the world? How many stars (1-5) would you give this book? Tell us!

	ASTROLOGY, ALCHEMY & THE TAROT - John Sandbach, $5.95 From the back cover: "Like a dreamweaver, Sandbach takes the reader along a soft, jeweled journey through the celestial archives of universal understanding. Using the ancient symbolism of the tarot as a point of focus, and its correlation to the signs and planets of astrology, the author skillfully shows how each carries within in an ultimate seed for personal transformation." 87 pages. Seek-It, paper.

	DEAR MAE R., A TREASURY OF ASTROLOGICAL LETTERS - Mae R. Wilson-Ludlam, $22.00 Contents: Life as an astrologer; Academic astrology; Astrology and religion; Using astrology to solve problems; Relationships; Marriage; Vocation and career; Finances; Transits changing lives; Astrology and healing; Astrologers seeking advice; Spiritual matters; Reply to a telephone question; Confidential replies; Keywords; Eclipses; Transiting retrograde cycles. 264 pages. AFA, paper.

	YOU'RE NOT A PERSON, JUST A BIRTH CHART (cartoons) - Paul Newman, $11.00 Many of these originally appeared in The Mountain Astrologer. Wessex Astrologer, paper.

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