There’s been a wonderful alignment of planets in 2008 that I want to tell you about because it’s almost over, and this way you can take advantage of it before it ends.

The alignment is a trine between Jupiter and Saturn.  Jupiter has been moving through the sign of Capricorn, generating a sense of joy in hard work and discipline.  Simultaneously, Saturn has been moving through Virgo, pushing us to get better organized and to handle details more efficiently.

This trine is a harmonious relationship between planets in practical, grounded earth signs, causing Jupiter and Saturn to easily agree and to enjoy working together.  Ordinarily, Jupiter scorns details, but while traveling through Capricorn, Jupiter is casting a fond eye upon Saturn’s meticulousness.  Saturn rewards those who take advantage of this time with a cornucopia of work-related goodies—such as promotions, new job titles, more clients, and a profound feeling of accomplishment.  Aligned this way, they are a formidable team, causing a tremendous feeling of reward in a job well done and bringing luck, self-confidence and opportunity to those willing to do that work.

How Does This Affect Me?
If you are building a business or working on a major project this year, this trine has probably been helping you to get organized.  If you’ve found yourself adopting new work practices and learning to work in ways that feed your ambition and if you’ve been feeling particularly inspired about long-term goals this year, this trine has probably had something to do with it.  If this alignment feels pertinent to your life, it’s because it affects your chart in some way, probably because some planet in your chart is being triggered by the movements of Jupiter or Saturn or both.

How The Conversation Goes:
Jupiter:  Hey Saturn, I’ve been discovering that work is an adventure.
Saturn:  You don’t say!
Jupiter:  Yeah, I do say.  This year I’ve been working hard and really enjoying it.  It’s amazing how good it feels to work hard, accomplish things of substance and enjoy the fruits of self-discipline.
Saturn:  I knew that already.  What I’ve been developing this year is a better relationship to details.  I’m finding that when I’m really well-organized I get a lot more done and it furthers my long-term goals in a wonderful way.  It’s been going so well that I’ve gained a tremendous sense of ease and flow, where everything is handled and moving along smoothly and I can actually relax.
Jupiter:  That’s really cool.  Relaxing is not something you do a lot of.
Saturn:  That’s true, but when you support me by taking pleasure in work, I feel a huge load off my shoulders.
Jupiter:  I’m finding so much meaning in work lately that I’m incredibly inspired.
Saturn:  That’s great.  You be the inspiration and I’ll be the perspiration.  Working together, we can accomplish absolutely anything.

Use This Transit by:
•    Growing into new ways of working.
•    Getting organized so that you can accomplish more with less effort.
•    Putting structures in place that will help you to continue being more and more effective.
•    Asking yourself:  how can I be of service?
•    Setting long-term goals that inspire you.

Timing Of This Transit:
The trine has been exact twice this year and is just now having its third and final peak.  The first peak was in January, the second was in September.  This transit peaks for the final time during November 15-25, 2008.

If you have been feeling the drives I’ve described here, then be aware that this period is almost over.  Take advantage of it through the end of November, because after Jupiter moves on into late Capricorn and ultimately into Aquarius, this will no longer be a major theme.  Other things will grab your attention.

So work hard and enjoy!  The structures you put in place now could support your business for years to come.  And remember that work can be fun and that enjoyable work is often work done well.

There’s a new James Bond movie coming out next week (Quantum of Solace), which reminds me how very much James Bond exemplifies the nature of the sign Scorpio, which happens to be the sign we’re in right now (kudos to the movie studio for their timing).

In what ways does Scorpio resemble James Bond?  To begin with, Scorpio, like Bond, has a reputation for being sexy.  Bond is a seducer, a womanizer who can control others—or be controlled by others—via sexual passion.  Bond radiates masculine magnetism.  An emphasis on Scorpio in a person’s chart can cause them to radiate sexuality in a similar way.  Hopefully most individuals are more intimate in their sexual expression than Bond is.

Scorpio is also highly intuitive, sometimes in ways that are startling.  Scorpio’s brand of intuition is sharp, incisive and not easily tracked.  Bond, like Scorpio, has a particular talent for reading the motivations and desires of the people around him.  Scorpio has the instincts of a spy, a person who must always be hyper-aware of his surroundings and the possible presence or actions of the enemy.  If this sounds like paranoia, that’s because it sometimes is—to the detriment of Scorpio individuals who become overly preoccupied with the responses of other people, even to the point of obsession.

Scorpio, like Bond, has passions that run very hot and very cold, with not a lot in between.  I’m reminded of Billy Joel’s lyrics: “darling, I don’t know why I go to extremes.  Too high and too low, there ain’t no in between.”  Joel is an honorary Scorpio, having Pluto (Scorpio’s ruler) squared his Taurus Sun.  And if he doesn’t know why he goes to extremes, it’s probably because no astrologer ever told him to read the Scorpio section in addition to the Taurus one.

But back to James Bond.  Scorpio, like Bond, can be sneaky, secretive and private.  That also goes along with being a spy.  In fact, the Scorpio in us sometimes likes being sneaky for its own sake, purely because it’s fun.  And sometimes just because we feel we have something to hide or protect.

And finally Scorpio, like Bond, we suspect is soft on the inside, but hard on the outside.  This is part of the fascination.  When we see hints of vulnerability or emotion behind that armored exterior, we are intrigued.  We want to know more.  This is why Scorpio is so seductive.

But what is actually going on behind these rumored traits?  What is behind the spy’s mask?  What is it like to be Scorpio?  More on this in my next post.

I just discovered that for some reason I had posted October’s forecast dates through only the 14th, as if that was all there was to October.  I have now added the “Fortune Cookies” for the second half of the month.  It seems both ironic and appropriate that the last day on my forecast page was also the day Mercury turned direct, as if life ended there.  Now it’s been corrected–enjoy!

Venus, archetype of love, beauty and relationship, has a dual nature:  one side of her is the sultry sensualist (hedonistic and self-indulgent at the worst) and the other side is the cool, unapproachable beauty (or ice princess at the worst).  How can one archetype have two such different sides?

Every sign of the zodiac has a planet that rules it.  But there are twelve signs and only ten planets,* so that two of those planets have rulership over two signs each.  Venus is one that has two signs, those being Libra and Taurus.

These two signs aptly illustrate the two sides of Venus’ personality.  Libra is more intellectual and distant, the cool, remote beauty, the lovely statue on the pedestal, the unattainable ideal.  Libra is also highly sensitive to beauty, but as an air sign, Libra is more interested in the abstract than the actual; to the Libran mind, a pure, beautiful, balanced idea is a perfect idea.  It doesn’t matter whether the idea can ever manifest in a real, physical form—Libra treasures the idea itself.

Taurus on the other hand, represents the earthier and more sensual side of Venus’ nature.  Taurus is the part of us that lives in the realm of the senses that takes pleasure in hedonistic desire that magnetizes our desire to us.  Taurus is drawn toward objects of beauty, toward fine, well-made objects, and wishes to possess them.  Taurus luxuriates in all things beautiful and delicious.

Libra is also the sign associated with agreements, promises and contracts.  Libra appreciates the rules of a relationship, whereas Taurus appreciates the sensations of being in contact with another person.  Taurus loves physical affection and comfort.

Both signs have their negative side:  Taurus overindulges, becoming a hedonist or gourmand, while Libra becomes a temptress:  cold and unapproachable, standoffish and teasing.  At Libra’s worst, there is the promise of love with no satisfaction; at Taurus’ worst, there is consumption with no satisfaction.  Libra can be the siren, luring sailors to their deaths, while Taurus can be like Tantalus, with the grapes forever dangling above his mouth, perpetually unable to reach them.

A Venusian “type” (someone whose chart shows a strong, centrally placed Venus) may identify with both sides of Venus over time.  This is so whether the native is a woman or a man.  Such a person will struggle with overindulgence as they embrace embodied experience and may at times fall in love with the idea of love.  But the Venusians among us also live lives rich in relationship, both to others, and to themselves.

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* Holding all arguments about Pluto’s status as a planet aside, that is.  Astrologers have not abandoned Pluto just because it’s been demoted by astronomy.  Pluto may be small, but its effects are potent.

On my Mercury Retrograde page, I’ve said that trying to complete projects with normal efficiency during Mercury retrograde is like having a picnic in a rainstorm.  You may want to go through with the picnic, because it’s what you planned, but if you’d realized it was going to storm that day, you would have planned the picnic for another time.

Knowing Mercury retrograde is coming is like being apprised of a Details Storm, an occasion where the wind picks up and swirls office details, communications and electronics equipment functionality into eddies of confusion and mess.  Sometimes it’s best to simply batten down the hatches.  There is no way to know in advance exactly what form it will take (a fax breakdown just when you needed to get those papers to your loan officer?  A heart-stopping letter from an ex?  A life-altering, unexpected wipe of your hard-drive?)  Your best strategy is to be prepared for anything.  Clear your mind.  Clean your desk.  Take a break.  And when the emergency strikes (as you know it will!), approach it calmly, with a clear head and an open heart.

Mercury has now been retrograde for 20 days.  You may even have known that.  Are you still trying to picnic in a rainstorm?

Mercury’s retrograde stint finishes tomorrow (Oct 15), but don’t expect things to get smoother until later in the week.  In the meantime, continue the practice of taking yourself off the hook, relaxing and cultivating mental stillness.  Have that picnic next week.

Libra is one of the Cardinal signs.  Cardinal means active, motivated, driven.  Cardinality is the quality of beginnings.  This means that Libra is a motion-oriented leader, a sign that starts things.  But how can that be?  Everyone who knows something about Libra knows that Librans are famous for their inability to make decisions.  It’s hard to move forward on something when you feel the need to carefully think through every possible argument for and against it before you take action.  Why on earth is such an inherently indecisive sign also a Cardinal sign?

Libra is all about what’s fair.  This sign, above all others, is motivated to create balance and to give in measure equal to what is received.  Libra is highly sensitive to imbalance.  But it is not really possible for one human being to see into every level of both their soul and the soul of another person and to see what really, truly is fair.  Thus the dilemma:  Libra cannot truly judge what is fair and must deliberate for a long time, asking herself what is the right thing, the fair thing?

So Librans get paralyzed in indecision, unable to make a choice because they are longing for that still point of perfect balance to be struck.  But perfect balance, even if it is reached, cannot be maintained for long.  And here we find the answer to our question, because what Libra excels at is not static balance (the noun), but the act of balancing (the verb).  Balance is not a static state to be achieved, but an action, continually in progress.  If you think balancing is not active, just try the yoga “tree” pose right now and notice how active and busy your muscles are.

Since Libra is both a Cardinal and an Air sign, the (cardinal) action takes place in the (airy) mental realm.  Libra loves debate, a favorite phrase being “but on the other hand . . .”  The continual search for ideas, arguments and perspectives that will bring a discussion into balance is consummately Libran, very active and very Cardinal.

There stands Saturn, one of the old, established ones.  Perhaps he’s a corporate type, perhaps he’s a banker, perhaps he represents government.  In any case, he is the ultimate authority figure.  He steps into the ring and puts on his boxing gloves.

Opposite him is Uranus, the Rebel, the Revolutionary.  Uranus has come to make changes, very big changes.  Uranus won’t be happy until all of Saturn’s rules and regulations have been broken down.  Uranus will enjoy the reconstruction process.

Both are grinning at the thought of this fight.  They’ve been waiting a decade for it.  The last time they met in the ring like this was in 1999, when Uranus threw Saturn into an uproar by suggesting that Y2K was going to cause all the computers to break down and plunge the modern world into chaos.  Saturn had the last laugh in that battle:  we made it through to New Year’s Day 2000 just fine and now the episode seems silly, even though it was a serious concern at the time.

What tricks will Uranus have up his sleeve for Saturn this time?  It’s an election year and banks are failing.  Saturn’s traditional edifices (banking and government) are due for some changes.  If you favor a cause, agitate for it, donate to it and vote.  This year, because Uranus is awake and in fine fettle, anything could happen—anything at all.

When Venus, goddess of love and beauty, claimed Librans for her own, did she curse them to give too much and perpetually be taken advantage of in relationship?

It’s true that Librans are relaters.  It’s true that someone with strong Libran influence would rather be in a relationship than not.  It’s true that a Venus-kissed individual can lose themselves in love.  But why?

Libra loves the sensation of being in love.  For Libra, falling in love and being in love is never having to worry about what’s fair.  People in love are inherently generous and thoughtful when those happy chemicals are swimming around in their brains.  Fairness is not an issue when you’re in love.  This solves a lot of problems for the Libran individual, who can be over-generous and too thoughtful all the time, whether they are in love or not.

Libra has a strong sense of fairness and balance to begin with.  A Libran type will often give too much in order to correct a perceived imbalance.  In doing so, the Libran can violate their own boundaries and drain away their energy, all in the name of doing the “right” thing, or being kind or being nice.  If Librans are continually drawn to relationship, but then lose themselves in it, what to do?  Librans are at their best when in relationship (whether romance or friendship) with people who give and take in fairly equal measure.  They also do well with people who are inherently generous because the Libran themselves will balance the situation by giving back.

The best thing for Librans to do is to be selective about who they relate with and to keep an eye on their own boundaries.  If that best friend keeps taking advantage or that boyfriend keeps crossing your boundaries, think again.  It may not be love or friendship operating there and you may need to hold a stronger line.  And knowing that you go into the situation with a tendency toward giving and a fascination for romance can equip you to keep taking care of yourself even when the hormones are raging.  And when you give to others, don’t forget to give to yourself too.

Be Afraid—Be Very Afraid!
In astrology’s infancy, about four to five thousand years ago, eclipses were a terrifying phenomenon. The experience of day suddenly becoming night, of the moon covering and temporarily hiding the sun and the sun inexplicably disappearing brought terror to human beings. Early astrologers sought to understand and ultimately predict this phenomenon. They did become able to predict it, and ultimately became able to manipulate kings and peoples with this knowledge. Their ability to predict an upcoming eclipse and to predict also the rise and fall of crops and nations gave them unprecedented power, power which was rooted in their understanding of the natural world, but which ultimately became political. If there is a reason why astrology is hated and feared today, eclipses may well be wrapped up in it.

Interpretations of ancient astrologers were highly fatalistic, focusing on physical events to come and predicting human behavior, even death, with surprisingly consistent accuracy. But that’s not how astrology is used today. Modern western-world astrology is much less fatalistic and much more psychological. Today it is about human motivation and a person’s inner experience. We have all but lost some of the most ancient predictive techniques because of their extreme fatalism. Modern people do not want to know the date of their death, even if an astrologer today could predict it, which is not likely. It’s possible that a Vedic (Indian) or a Chinese astrologer could, but not a Western one.

The interpretation and use of eclipses has changed with the times. Although astrologers who focus on politics do continue to use them to predict the fates of rulers and nations, eclipses are more commonly used to interpret personal, individual experiences in psychological ways. And eclipses today generate more fascination and less fear.

What Is An Eclipse?
The Sun and Moon are by far the brightest objects in our sky; thus they are called the luminaries or “lights.” An eclipse is an occasion when the Sun, Moon and Earth line up so precisely that one of the luminaries becomes shadowed, and therefore goes dark.

A solar eclipse is only possible during a new moon. During a new moon, the Moon and Sun are on the same side of the Earth, so close to each other that the Moon fades from sight. This is a familiar phenomenon—it happens every month, and gradually. A solar eclipse is a special type of new Moon, one where the Moon and Sun are not only in the same general area of the sky, but also in exactly the same plane. From our view on Earth, the Moon covers the Sun and hides it from us, darkening the sky. Compared to the new Moon, this is a sudden and rare phenomenon.

It is not, however, as rare as you think. A set of eclipses, usually including a solar and a lunar, happens every six months. Not every eclipse is visible in every area of the world. This is one reason why the ancients found eclipses so fearsome—they seemed to occur at such irregular intervals. Astrologers today interpret an eclipse as having more effect in the areas where the eclipse can be seen.

A lunar eclipse is only possible during a full moon. During a Full Moon, the Moon and Sun are on opposite sides of the Earth, and the Moon is at its brightest. A lunar eclipse is a special full moon where the Earth is in the same plane with both luminaries and the Moon is therefore shadowed by the Earth. This too, is a relatively sudden and rare phenomenon and not visible to everyone on Earth.

What Is The Shadow Agent?
Sometimes during an eclipse, another planet will be close by (within 5 degrees of arc), close enough to be drawn into the themes of that eclipse. I call that planet accompanying the eclipse the “Shadow Agent.” It assists the eclipse by pointing out your shadow in its area of life. For example, Mercury points out your shadow by means of communication while Neptune points out your shadow by means of dreams and spirituality.

According to Wikipedia, the shadow side in Jungian psychology is a part of the unconscious mind consisting of repressed weaknesses, shortcomings, and instincts. Jung developed the idea of the shadow to represent that side of a human being which is held back and not consciously expressed. Some aspects of a shadow can be positive as well as negative, as some human beings repress positive traits. Jung said that the shadow, if ignored, is often projected onto other people. He also said that it can be brought up into consciousness and integrated with the rest of one’s personality.

One way to describe an eclipse is “a luminary is occluded such that we see a shadow.” Psychologically, eclipses represent the appearance of the shadow and the occasion of an eclipse contacting something in your natal chart is the perfect opportunity to get a good look at your own shadow. The shadow is, by definition hard for you to see, because it is behind you. An eclipse can bring it out and make it easier to see, thus giving you a chance to stop projecting it, own it, accept it as part of yourself and integrate it with the rest of your personality. This is uncomfortable, but it is also a gift. Much human energy is wrapped up in avoiding, projecting and hiding our shadows. When you integrate your shadow, you reclaim that energy.

The Shadow Agent is a planet (or planets) which is an agent of the eclipse and is therefore asking you to look at your shadow. It will do so according to its planetary nature. Sometimes a person in your life may take the role of the Shadow Agent for you, acting out the agenda of this planet and forcing you to look at things or areas you don’t ordinarily look at.

How Do You Know If An Eclipse Will Affect You?
You’ll feel an eclipse if it falls within 5 degrees of one of your natal planets. A good astrologer can tell you that. An eclipse’s effects are also likely to be stronger if you live in the part of the world where it can be seen directly. And an eclipse will be stronger if it is total, rather than partial. These things taken together and with a few other factors added in, will tell you the generic nature of the eclipse, the area of your life where it’s likely to affect you, and the strength of the effect. A strong eclipse is likely to be felt, at least in a background way, for six months until it is replaced by the next same-type of eclipse (solar or lunar). According to Georgia Stathis, a San Francisco Bay Area expert on eclipses, there is also likely to be a resurgence of the eclipse’s themes during the same-type lunation (New or Full Moon) three lunar cycles after the eclipse and a foreshadowing of the themes of the eclipse will happen during the same-type lunation three lunar cycles before. More on that another time.

Does the Shadow Agent make life uncomfortable? Yes. Will human beings ever enjoy looking at their shadows? Probably not. But the gift of energy returned to us when we embrace our shadow and the gift of conscious self-knowledge and acceptance are great, when we are courageous enough to accept them.

Newspaper horoscopes: Everyone has seen them. Everyone knows how ridiculous they are. You pick up the newspaper and read a short paragraph under your sun sign. You go there for a laugh or maybe you go there secretly hoping for guidance, but the result is the same. You’ve been shafted.

It is the astrologer’s perennial frustration: the impossibility of distilling astrological archetypes into anything specific that will actually mean something to everyone every time. Newspaper horoscopes don’t seem any more prophetic or synchronistic than a fortune cookie. As with a fortune cookie, I read them for entertainment only. Yes, even I, myself an astrologer, do that. Most newspaper forecasts by other astrologers are oblique to me. It is not at all obvious why they are saying what they are saying. Where did the writer get their ideas? I can’t always tell, which makes me suspicious.

Astrologers face a dilemma—to be taken seriously, they have to be noticed. To be noticed, they have to spend some of their valuable time doing “pop” astrology, in an attempt to appeal to the masses. Newspaper astrology forecasts are the ultimate dumbing-down of an otherwise useful medium of human understanding. They are popular but stupid.

Astrology is capable of generating very detailed information about human existence and human experience. Imagine that all of existence, absolutely every aspect of it, could be organized into 12 and only 12 categories. Each category would have to hold a lot of stuff, gathered under a central theme, but each theme would be so general that it would be hard to even put that central theme into words. Visualize each category, or zodiacal archetype, as a vast tree. The trunk of the tree represents a single theme, which is so grand as to be virtually incomprehensible. As the tree branches extend outward from the trunk, bits of experience get individualized and expressible, but as they continue branching out into twigs, it becomes harder to see their connections to the trunk of the tree, or to each other. They seem unrelated and it begins to seem like a stretch to group them together at all. Why would this twig, off this branch emanating from the north side of the tree have any relation to that twig over on the south side? Thus, if today is a Jupiter day, I could end up describing one side of Jupiter’s nature and you could be experiencing a totally different side, which is still Jupiter but which you didn’t know was Jupiter and therefore could not identify as such. So my focus on Jupiter might be relevant for you, but my choice of what to say about it might not.

This leaves astrologers to generalize, hoping to hit something that will be useful for most of the people, most of the time, when what people really respond to is zingers—interpretations that hit on something very specific. When you get zinged by an astrological forecast, you know it. You feel like the page you are reading is speaking to you personally.

For every interpretation an astrologer makes there are many others he could have written instead. And yet to be exhaustive would be. . . exhausting, both to write and read. Who knows how to choose which one is the best? There is no way to know. An astrologer has to simply choose. In newspaper horoscopes, the results often look random, as if they were pulled out of a hat.

Here is another thing to consider: there are other cycles we are subject to, besides astrological ones. Women are subject to menstrual cycles which can affect mood, energy level and physical ability to do things. An interpretation suggesting a strong workout that lands on a day a reader is experiencing PMS is not going to seem very pertinent! Another cycle we live by is the cycle of the work-week. An interpretation suggesting that romance is in the air on a Monday morning is not going to be of much use to a reader who has to go in to work with a sharp focus and put their social life on the back-burner for an eight-hour day, whereas such an interpretation falling on a Friday would be easier to make use of. But the planets don’t care what day of the week it is and sometimes they align in ways impossible for humans to take advantage of in real life.

I avoided the problem of forecasts for years, for over two decades of my astrological study. At this point I’ve finally succumbed and am writing a blog forecast page. I do this because people have repeatedly asked for it, but it still fills me with ambivalence. My solution to the dilemma has been to avoid writing forecasts for the sun signs. This evades the problem of arousing expectation in the reader that what I’m saying should apply to her life, personally. Instead I write a short interpretation for each day that has planetary activity, just a brief sentence or two about the astrological weather of the day itself. This enables the reader to notice the days when planetary activity triggers something in his own chart—such interpretations will stand out and feel synchronistic. The reader can then skip over the interpretations that do not call to him. This will usually be most of them.

Ultimately I’ve decided to regard my forecast “blurbs” as fortune cookies and to embrace that fact. When you read one, imagine yourself opening the cookie and reading the fortune inside. That’s how seriously you should take it (i.e. not very seriously at all). Naturally I do my best to get to the heart of the matter in each one, but I acknowledge that the medium is and forever will be imperfect. Therefore, my disclaimer: each blurb is a brief, light look at the sky at that moment. It may or may not apply to you, out there in your real life. On the rare occasions when it does, I hope it zings you a good one and adds a little synchronicity to your day.