Venus, Saturn and — Cthulhu?!?! / Astrology & Magic Realism

Today Venus completes an opposition to Saturn. In many instances that means encountering an incompatibility between personal wants and the dictates or burdens of the needs of others (through a relationship, an agreement, social conventions, etc.). Perhaps you’ll hear “no.” Perhaps you’ll run to the end of your chain and have your choke collar yanked back. Or perhaps you’ll make like me and watch the astrological symbolism take physical shape before your eyes.

I woke up to the sight of an enormous, tentacled mass of driftwood that had somehow made it out of the lake and into my back yard. That looks like Cthulhu, the evil being from H.P. Lovecraft’s writings. So heavy that a shove does not make it wobble. In the relationship sector of my yard.

Oh goodie. Look what's come for a visit.

Once I poured enough coffee into the situation to accept that this was real, the astrological symbolism began unspooling. This visitation is the work of neighbors who are both my landlords as well as getting up in years (Saturn in Libra). My landlady was the driving force. She saw the gnarly blob at the shoreline, decided she had to have it (because, and I quote, “it’s art”) and instructed her husband to get it out for her (Venus in Aries on all counts). He had to negotiate assistance to pull it off (more Saturn in Libra).

I’m Venus in Aries in this equation, too. For once, “not in my backyard!” was not a metaphoric statement. My reaction was impulsive, fiery and not immediately conducive to a peaceful resolution of the situation. There’s been a history of having to hash out basic ground rules of who can do what on and with the property (Saturn in Libra), and my first instinct was that this was yet another piece of debris I’d have to deal with. Only this one defies independent action (sorry, Aries) but requires teamwork (yeah, I see you, Libra).

I ran down and touched it. Immovable. Utterly. How was I going to mow around this thing? And, a question that grew as the coffee kicked in, what did it mean that this immovable, uninvited impediment materialized in my relationship sector? (More Saturn in Libra.) Deposited by a husband and wife couple with a parental bent toward me? (Ditto.) Who enlisted a man with my sun sign and closer to my age to dredge this behemoth out of the muck and water, not-at-all veiled symbolism for emotional depths? (Ummm…could Neptune and Chiron in Pisces be joining in the fun?)

When I was calm enough to talk to my benefactors, my landlady explained and apologized for the deposit and assured me that they will be having it moved onto their property after the wood dries a bit. It was a cordial give-and-take worthy of the approval of Saturn in Libra.

In the meantime, I’m grappling with the questions of this event’s symbolic implications for me. How is this a good thing? Parental figures brought out into the open a representation of something they value that lurked in emotional depths and that I find terrifying. They dumped it without warning, permission or invitation into my relationship turf. Now they’ve agreed the dumping is temporary and soon they will be moving it away. Seems pretty obvious. I’m taking it as sympathetic magic.

One person's art is another person's vision of the ultimate terror.

Hurry Up and Wait: Forecast for Week of April 25 – May 1

That sigh you’re hearing all around is relief that Mercury has finally gone direct. What a frustrating and confounding retrograde that last one has been! So many people are so ready to move on already. And yet….while certain discussions will now go back on track, don’t jump the gun. Alas, patience is still a virtue. (Sorry!) It’s not quite time for marching forward with no looking back.

Instead, this week seesaws back and forth between floating in the moment to accelerated growth and movement. It’s as if we’re gaining strength in the Gulf like a hurricane, roaring onto land and then pulling back to build up for another assault.

Some of the gear shifts could be sudden enough to produce whiplash if you aren’t limber. So don’t fight those floating times. That’s one of their silver linings: allowing us to relax and stretch all our muscles and rest up for each big push.

Read more in my written forecast (including day-by-day insight, with flashing red lights for all the moon voids.) Listen to more in my short and not-so-sweet podcast for the week.

Live for Today: Forecast for the Week of April 18-24

Do you feel the relief? The sky’s influences are changing only slightly this week, yet the difference in the pressure is enough for easier breathing all around.

The fog advisory is still in effect, but that’s easing up. For one thing, we’re starting to move more adeptly through it. For another, the near-violent communication snarls will soon be abating, as Mercury goes direct on Saturday (as millions cheer).

The further we get from the weekend’s Libra full moon, the more the tension lets up that pushed so many dramatic developments out of the depths and into the open recently. For some of us, the past couple of weeks have taken a phenomenal toll physically. Others of us have been watching real-life Humpty-Dumpties tumble to the ground (or feeling like himself ourselves). His fate, by the way, is in store for everything that broke up, down or apart last week. None of it will be put back together again.

Put on The Grass Roots’ “Live for Today” and read more in my full forecast. And listen to more in my five-minute podcast.

Fire Bombs and Commitments: The Push-Me, Pull-You of the Libra Full Moon

April 17-18, 2011
10:45 PM EDT / 2:45 AM GMT
27 Aries 44 / 27 Libra 44

The Aries Full Moon is a call for balance: between our inner male and female, between the individuals in any relationship, between the patriarchy and women. Perhaps you’ve noticed something out of whack lately in at least one of those pairs?

Willful, ego-driven bursts of masculine force may make a lot of noise, may scare and threaten, may cause events to happen, up to a point, and may push against nature itself. Yet might is not always going to make right. Especially not now.

Over the past three years a countervailing force has been coming to the fore — feminine, magnetic, receptive, allowing, heart-based. She’s stepped up and claimed a place alongside the masculine drive. And she is neither retreating quietly and submissively to the shadows, nor backing down, at all.

That’s the big message in the current astrological soup, as well as the make-up of this month’s Full Moon. As much as we might wish, as much as we might try, humans can not, either individually or collectively, bend reality to our will. The heart and the feminine must have a say.

Read more. Lots more.

Fog Lights On? Forecast for Week of April 11-17, 2001

No new influences are entering the picture this week. Once again, the skies are giving us a chance to process and assimilate the major shifts that happened last week.

Granted, what we’re doing may not feel like processing. In fact, it’s hard to put a label to it, isn’t it? What’s going on is so unlike anything we’ve experienced before.

Sure, we’ve been through some of the surface events before: Going to work. Meeting friends for lunch. Networking. Moving. Dealing with this or that health emergency. Reading threats of a government shut-down. Still, there’s none of the usual sense of “been there, done that.” Something feels fuzzy, unfocused, vaguely unfamiliar, vaguely unsettling, vaguely…otherworldly.

Thank the Neptunian fog that is overtaking our experience of reality. We’re in the very earliest unfolding of what Neptune’s entry into Pisces will bring. This week and the next few months are just a foretaste of what’s to come.

More in my weekly forecast and 5.5 minute podcast

Hot Dates for the Week of April 11, 2011

April 11: Mars square Pluto. David headbutts Goliath. Tora, Tora, Tora. You get the picture. The question is, do you want to be in it? Really? Mercury conjunct Jupiter. Yakitty yak.

April 17: Full moon in Libra. Who’s on first? More importantly, who’s on top?

More hot date advisories for April 2011 are posted at my site EmpowermentUnlimited.net.

Fire and Fog: Forecast for Week of April 4, 2011

Just as we are finally seeing signs of movement — personal energy, drive and motivation meeting cooperation at last from external circumstances — an influence is rolling in that clouds everything. Where we’re heading. What’s in the path ahead. Even the lines on the map.

The fog is a by-product of Neptune entering his home sign of Pisces, which he last visited in the mid-19th century. Add to that the current Mercury retrograde and the super-sized life span of void-of-course moons these days, and the usual sign posts of surface reality are no longer sufficient. A different navigational system is necessary to navigate life these days: fog lights.

Read more in my forecast for the week of April 4. Listen to my in my podcast for the week.

Aries New Moon: Ka-BOOM Go the Strings of My Heart

New Moon April 3, 2011
13 Aries 30
10:23 AM EDT / 2:23 PM GMT

No more dawdling; no more foot dragging; no more waiting for other people to get their acts together. The Aries new moon blasts us forcefully ahead into the new landscape of our lives.

Wherever we land, we’re not likely to stay for long. The makeup of this moon promises that our rockets will fire again and again and again, shooting us further and further into new territory, pursuits and ambitions.

This will be going on for longer than this one moon phase. As the first new moon of the spring, it’s setting the tone for the next three months. That means how you navigate and experience this weekend has long-term repercussions.

So take note of which way you’re facing. When your fire gets lit, it’s going to happen suddenly and unpredictably, and you (and everyone around you) will leap without looking. Since so much behavior will be instinctual and reactive, you’ll make better use of this catapulting effect if you’re consciously oriented to goals, ambitions and destinations you want.

Many of those relate to foundational life issues — where you feel at home in yourself and in the world, who you want to share your home and your life with — that the Cancer/Capricorn eclipses have been stirring up for nearly two years. This month’s new moon makes a powerful, action-demanding contact to the event that launched that cycle, the Capricorn full moon/ lunar eclipse of July 2009. Which means that the time is ripe for bold, dramatic action on all manner of major decisions that have been swirling around in your intentions.

You’ve been building up to this phase, and it is critical for setting up the platform that will be in place by the final Cancer/Capricorn eclipse in July and carry you forward some 18-19 years. So no back-pedaling. This is no time for making nice, or holding back, or being anything less than rigorously honest with yourself.

Don’t expect anything other than that from people around you, either. Everyone will be in his or her personal rocket ship (at last! the autogyre that was predicted at the 1939 World’s Fair!) and too focused on the ride to pay attention to usual social niceties. Behavior is going to be brusk, abrupt, daring, ambitious, pushy, independent, maybe a little rude, coarse and confrontational. What do you have to gain from taking any of this personally? Aggravation and distraction, primarily — though if there’s an issue you’ve been needing to address, the combustibility of this new moon could trigger the knock-down, drag-out that does the trick.

More than half of the major bodies of the sky are in the sign of this new moon — Aries, which contains the most primal impulse to live, explore, conquer and survive. The Sun and the Moon are near the center of the sign; heart and mind are motivated to leap forward boldly and independently. Jupiter the expander and Mercury, planet of communication and travel, are on the far side, mushrooming fiery, passionate, even frustrated or angry words and running around.

Most importantly, the new moon’s ruler Mars, the god of war, is so close to cosmic wild card Uranus that they’re in combustion, at the doorway to the sign. They’ll complete their fusion by some six hours later, but the tension of their build-up will remain.

This meeting is a powder keg, a match hitting gasoline, a Molotov cocktail, a volcano eruption, a super-sized can of spinach, an ounce of courage — hell, a whole fifth of it. You want action? It’s coming, at times and in ways you don’t and could never expect.

Holding all this down is taskmaster-cum-teacher Saturn, directly opposite the Sun and the Moon. He’s single-handedly counterbalancing all these independent impulses with the weight of obligations, agreements, laws and the impact of our actions on others.

So this new moon presents us with a complicated mix: exciting, energizing, volatile, dangerous, exhilarating, violent, domineering and rebellious, with a ball and chain of personal obligations and commitments hanging off our ankles as we bound about. The opportunity for (or inclination toward) forethought is going to be in short supply. As for patience — well, a nanosecond is about the longest to bank on.

Whatever erupts now isn’t going to disappear conveniently, but reignite for weeks. Mercury has just gone retrograde and will be backtrack over the degree of this new moon just before and after he turns direct on the 23rd. Uranus will move on and off the point of his current meeting place with Mars for the rest of this year and the beginning of next.

My ongoing admonition still holds: Pick your battles, now more than ever.

More pointers in my April horoscopes / Mercury retrograde guide / list of April’s hot dates to beware; take care.

Forecast for April 2011

Most of us have never lived through a month remotely like this one. Remember the drama of the cardinal cross last summer? That was just prepping the ground.

The time is here to get moving, moving, moving on all the foundational restructuring that’s been rumbling around for nearly two years. The ego, the will and the heart are making no-nonsense contacts with agents of chaos, transformation and structure. Remember that sequence: Every process this month ends in further testing social commitments, obligations and rules that have somehow survived the earlier lightning bolts, fireballs and tectonic plate shifts.

Mars, god of war and planet of push, is in his hottest head, while love goddess Venus is moving late month into huntress mode. Things will be fiery indeed, but take care: They will not not always as they seem, with Mercury retrograde until April 23 and Neptune taking his cosmic fog machine home to Pisces (for the first time since 1848).

Read more in my April horoscopes and a list of dates to beware; take care!