small world 2004-2008Tuesday April 6th 2004, 16h45 BST:
Small World arrives on the world-wide web! For several years I have been jotting down my thoughts and ideas on the exhilarating subject of astrology and emailing them to my friends and colleagues all over the globe as the "Small World" bulletin. Then we moved diagonally from Swale to its anagram and all work went firmly on the back burner. I am quite certain that over the past couple of years most of the addresses I had will have evaporated - so here I am with another venture and hoping that someone, somewhere will find it! Watch this space... A little later ... We moved to an anagram! Strange things can happen when you move ... our diagonal took us from Swale on the north Kent coast (UK) to the north Wales coast (hence the anagram). Just a little rearrangement there, then. We are still on the crease in the map and the page overlap. We are still on the estuary of a substantial river ending in the same syllable ( Medway to Conwy which used to be Conway). I still go to choir practice on Tuesday evenings at 7h30, and the diary still says 'choir @ C/B' (Canterbury to Colwyn Bay, which both entail a 20-minute journey from home.) My other half still goes over to the island ending in '-ey' for meetings - but Anglesey instead of Sheppey. Our house is still a Victorian hostelry - an ex-pub in Kent, an ex-B&B in Conwy. Both homes were bought from the rapidly fracturing family of an artist fleeing to pastures new. No change there, then! ... but oh, the difference in the view and the air! You tend not to get mountains in Kent. And we had about 2'6" of filthy pavement between us and the 24-hour HGVs, spewing particulates and carbon monoxide, and promising premature burial. From here I can watch paradisaic sunsets over the peaks of Snowdonia and breathe air as clean and heady as champagne straight off the Irish Sea. Wouldn't you move? Now then. Astrology. I have been involved in Astrology since 1968 (well, 1961 if you count buying a tiny, square and indecipherable book in Paris on holiday! But the Marabout-Flash "L'Astrologie" lay dormant for a quarter of a progressed lunation). In that momentous year my friend Joan discovered an astrologer living a mile across the fields from my semi and drove us both over there to make friends. This was because our other friend Jackie had sweet-talked the local librarian into lending us her entire stock of coffee-table astrology books indefinitely - so we drank a lot of coffee, learned quite a bit of astrology, and developed an insatiable curiosity! The astrologer turned out to be a generous, delightful woman named Olivia Tomalin - later to be known to us all as Olivia Barclay. She gave us free access to her library and pointed me firmly in the direction of the Astrological Association of Great Britain, as it now presents itself, and the Faculty of Astrological Studies, whose Diploma is still the most recognised and respected in the astrological world. To this lady I shall always be grateful, and to my friends, as this is the path I have trodden ever since, for going on 36 years! ... with joy and perpetual fascination. Tuesday, May 27, 2008 Well! Here I am about four years later. I thought I would put up a website, but my skills are limited and funds for professional help non-existent. So after a few attempts I have for now abandoned that idea (it would have been very pretty!) and will use my Blog here on Blogspot to set out some of my ideas. Wednesday, May 28, 2008 Of Sadness and Statins... Moon unhappy in Pisces 1... Today is a sad day for Llandudno. Conwy Council met to discuss the fate of Penmorfa, the magical old house where Alice Liddell and her family spent their summers ( indeed as much time as possible ) and Lewis Carroll may have visited, gaining much of his inspiration for Alice In Wonderland and Through The Looking Glass. Need I say that the developers won, the Liddell home will be bulldozed, and flats will take its place at the foot of the Great Orme on Llandudno's stunning West Shore. At 9 am the BBC had phoned me to ask if I would do a short piece to camera about Penmorfa, for Wales Today; I told them how we all felt, what a unique attraction would be lost to this holiday town, how the developers had torn down the extensions two years ago and left the historic heart of the building open to the weather, ensuring that by 2008 it would no longer be viable, and they could demolish it unopposed. I told them how Gerard and I chose to celebrate there 6 years ago when it was a thriving, welcoming hotel; the owner made our evening so special, and even presented me with a gorgeous red rose. I still have the petals. But all the press and TV coverage, all the demonstrations, all the celebrity support have been in vain. All we have left are our memories, and poignant photographs. Moon unhappy in Pisces 2... ... And it's official - every healthy adult between the ages of 40 and 70 will be encouraged to take Statins daily to prevent heart attacks. The drug will be Simvastatin because it is now extremely cheap and will make a minimal hole in the NHS budget. I was put on Simvastatin by my GP nearly two years ago because my blood pressure was deemed too high. The fact that when you are a migraineur (-se?) it goes up and down like a yo-yo was not taken into account. By last autumn I thought my life was pretty well over - I struggled to get up and down stairs; everything hurt; I was profoundly depressed; I had horrible shooting pains all over my body but especially in my limbs. I felt old. Then I had another look at the prescription leaflet, at side-effects. The light dawned. This was not me having yet another horrible variant of the migraines that have messed up my life since 1983 - this was the downside of Statins! Radio 4 ran a couple of very helpful programmes on these drugs over the following few weeks, where I learned that I was far from alone in suffering such a debilitating reaction. This was confirmed over and over again online, on a number of medical/journalistic websites. So, my friends, if you decide to take the doctor's advice and embark on a life of daily Simvastatin, please read the leaflet and take the side-effects section seriously, because if you have pain or weakness in your legs and leave it too long to tell the GP and either change or come off the drug, the damage to your entire muscular system may be long-lasting, even permanent. I think I have just got away with it, ditching the damn things at last in late 2007, but it has affected my swallowing so that I have to be especially careful - ironically - with pills. I have my life back, God be thanked, and will let Him and nature decide when it is time to shed this body and go home. ............................................................................................................... June 2008 The Maths of Infinity A couple of days ago I was watching, fascinated, the film 'Dangerous Knowledge', re-screened on BBC2. It concerned the obsessions of mathematicians and the consequences for their sanity. Georg Cantor spent his life trying to get a mathematical handle on (of all things) infinity. He got to the point where he was even adding 'infinities' together and making them jump through conceptual hoops. It drove him mad. With a south node in Aquarius I must be careful where I send my thoughts!... but it did get me pondering. A number of questions arose in my mind which may or may not make much sense, but here they are for what they are worth. Cantor was tantalised by the number of possible points on the circumference of a circle (and we astrologers deal with circles Great and small all the time.) Take a circle, draw radii from its centre to the edge until there is no room left on that edge - and the area will be black with lines - and you have a finite construction. But as soon as you widen that circumference, the original radii will of course fan out, leaving spaces on the new perimeter! So the number of radii in a circle is infinite, assuming the potential circumference is infinitely far away. My question is - why start from the centre? Wherever the outer limit of any Great Circle is (and if it is Infinity, so be it, because it is beyond the conception of a finite mind) it can be completed with as many nano-nano points as it has room for, and then they can form the origin of radii to the circle's centre. Maybe a silly thought, but let's play with ideas! This whole conundrum arises because mankind insists on dividing things. So another question is, why assume division is appropriate? Why not try the other assumption that some phenomena function as unified Wholes? As Astrologers we work with wholes in the form of Ideas that are grouped in twelve sections of a circular heaven. The Great Circle is the Ecliptic, and the 12 sections are what we call the Zodiac. These can be subdivided (yes!) into 144 subsets known as the Dwads; and there are a number of differing great-circular frameworks that place these Ideas in different contexts of human life and earthly existence. We also deal in Degrees - 360 of them in each circle - and in minutes - 60 to each degree; and degrees themselves carry individual meanings. But small as these are, detailed as they become, they are still Wholes, and we don't need to mess with them too much! We also work with the geometry of the circle to assess the harmony or lack of it between zodiacal Ideas that are focussed by the presence of a planet, or the Moon, or a key spatial node such as the Ascendant, the Midheaven, or the Nodes of the Moon (there are others.) But there is little to be gained in understanding by straying beyond the kind of geometries that would produce recognisable music on a taut string. So beyond 12ths or 24ths not many 'aspects' are used; 11ths are, but odd geometry is tricky to understand and work with. So why not work with Wholes elsewhere instead of constantly dividing? Maybe lines spread out into membranes? surfaces into mobius loops and toroids? Waves, particles, strings and superstrings all fall into this category, I daresay. And as astrology is more wave-like and rhythmic and musical than particulate, my feeling is that it is in this category of cosmic phenomena that the astrologer and the physicist/chemist/cosmologist will eventually meet. And then there's Pi. Following on from that last argument, why are folks not content with the elegant fraction, 22/7, and forever going on about Pi not resolving to a neat decimal place? 1/3 doesn't either - it's 1.3333333333333 on into good old infinity again, and yet we recognise a third of something when we see it. It doesn't have a fuzzy edge that wafts us away into hyperspace (unless you insist on examining the quantum conditions around your slice of shortbread - in which case there may be no hope for you.) I say, let's get back to fractions. Decimals are all very handy but they do throw up this infinity problem again, as does any BaseN arithmetic. Yes it's very entertaining, and people spend their lives pushing Primes and ratios and divisions to their impossible limits - but where is understanding in all of this? (Except to recognise, forcefully, our own limitations as an incarnate family!) Look at Phi. Beautiful. Not because it's 1:1.61803...(etc) but because of the proportion itself that is built organically into so many living and wonderfully architectural things. Somewhere in all this maths and cosmology there has to be the place where Mind Is. When you have knocked around the world for 65 years as I and many of you have, and spent 40 or so of them as an astrologer, healer, and and general mixer with friends unseen, you know the spiritual dimensions are a reality, that they interpenetrate the apparent world, and Science will always fail until it allows for that reality in testing its own propositions. It tends on the whole not to. I've met quite a few scientists in various fields and even if they profess a belief in spirituality, or in God, I don't really see this in their work. It gets parked just outside while they go in the lab for the day to study multi-dimensional theory. One day the penny will drop, and some bright young person will get the most deserved Nobel Prize in history. This ubiquitous Mind - consciousness - meaning - purpose - is ultimately the basis for our Astrology. The Universe is permeated with it. It is our Matrix. We are the Cinderella of Science. Look - astrologers recognised millennia ago the 'sensitive dependence on initial conditions' that is integral to modern Chaos Theory. Astrology is likewise fractal in its nature (numbers 12 and 60 being key to our work with the intelligent cosmos.) We are manifest Thought. I have a paper that I wrote a few years back, on the properties of the Circle and multiple dimensions, that I may put up here later on if I can get the diagrams to go on the blog with it. Watch this space. (See “Prime Movers” in ‘Articles’.) Tuesday, June 17, 2008 Wonderland PS! After pondering along these lines (instead of sleeping, of course) I thought - "and here I am, living in the town that celebrates Lewis Carroll, in a house with Alice characters on the bedroom doors (carefully painted round by me, as they are delightful) and Carroll was of course a mathematician, Charles Dodgson!" When he came here to stay with Alice Liddell and her family, and later (probably in Oxford) told her the tales we love - the mathematician/cosmologist was working overtime. He created a rabbit obsessed with time, a tea-party that went on for ever, a hatter and a hare who each lived in their own universe, a dormouse who spent its time going in and out of the sleep-state, a cat that kept shifting dimensions and a heroine who was alternately normal, transported, extremely tiny, unmanageably huge ... and retained her identity valiantly through every vicissitude! There are so many big concepts in this 'child's' tale. I'm going to have to read it again! TIME - A Senryu ...And here is a tiny poem (I think not a Haiku but a Senryu, as it breaks the rules of season and place) that emerged out of all that mathematical pondering: Time in reflection Mirrors that face each other Scales fall from our eyes Rev. Pam Crane June 2008 ............................................................................................................... Wednesday, July 09, 2008 CERES AT SILVERSTONE What an exciting Grand Prix at Silverstone last Sunday! The track was running like the Thames, visibility in the spray encompassing 18 insanely fast F1 racing cars almost zero. And what ballet! Lap after lap such wild pirouettes, such synchronised spinning! They roared away to the first corner at 1h00 pm, just as planet (-yes!) Ceres had crowned the Midheaven opposite England's and the UK's Sun; 24 minutes later the IC connected with Jupiter. (And just look at the turn of speed in that dwad Mars on the radix Asc, with the dwad Uranus/MC squaring Moon/Mars radix!) Now I had been pondering the significance of Ceres since her elevation to Planethood; reviewing the myths, remembering her role as goddess of the harvest, bereaved mother of Proserpine, epitome of grief and despair, unwilling mother-in-law to (literally) the son-in-law from Hell; wreaker of vengeance on an innocent world. She withdrew her labour. She banished the joys and fruitfulness of summer, forcing the whole of humanity to share her misery and deprivation for six months of every year - after negotiating visiting rights with her abducted daughter! She has a lot to do with bargaining, a lot to do with industry, food, and resources in general, focusses us on women's issues, connects to depression in every sense, and turned herself into the mother-in-law from hell. She is the exemplar of how one person's actions (whatever the motive) can have global impact, reminding us that as inter-dependent members of the hive our very survival is threatened by each small act of selfishness. This week our Brown/would-be Green Prime Minister at last exhorted the UK to stop wasting food; we have been hit by (surprise, surprise) the Credit Crunch after more than 7 fat years (would that our Pharaoh had listened earlier to his Josephs!). The G8 is (are?) meeting to discuss the global financial and energy crisis. This greedy, complacent society is losing its children and its living to all the seductions of Hades, and is about to pay dearly before some sort of Spring restores us all to our senses and regenerates the precious environment we have over-exploited to the point of near-collapse. You can see how two planetary themes are inter-weaving now in our history: newly-empowered Ceres is in 10 Cancer right now, July 2008, opposing the Sun of every nation or institution born at the start of the year, while her son-in-law Pluto, demoted but dangerous, enters Capricorn after 12 years in profligate Sagittarius to teach us en masse the harsh lessons of discipline and thrift. We are told that this current recession will last for two years. Interestingly almost exactly two years from now Ceres and Pluto will meet (at 5 Capricorn); what will that summit bring forth, I wonder? It won't be until 2013 that Pluto reaches 10 Capricorn and insists on our response. He finally leaves Saturn's sign in the autumn of 2024. It's going to be a long winter! Meanwhile the Great Tempter is having his last fling in the sign of travel, law and religion and in cahoots with Ceres has arranged for this week's approval of Anglican women Bishops to fracture an already embattled Church. Our collective hedonism has climaxed in squandered resources and soaring prices; suddenly our mass freedom to hop in a car or a plane and go wherever we want has been curtailed. No amount of wilful litigation will now guarantee us getting our own way. 'Human Rights' are about to confront human responsibilities. Now, the point is also that Ceres was discovered on January 1st 1801, the very day that the United Kingdom - the union of Great Britain and Ireland - came into being. (Please note that when she culminates her arch-adversary Pluto is on the 7th ! And the ruling Sun is in the 5th house of her offspring. Asteroids Proserpina and Persephone are exactly square, and the latter is on that agonised 5th house dwad Chiron/Descendant. Ceres’ emotional reign over the riches and dearth of the seasons stands out in the cluster of Leo Asc/Saturn and dwad Jupiter/IC. ) So everything in the two 'natal' charts, apart from the angles, is shared. This conjunction of events happened in the heat of the industrial revolution, which centred on Britain and whose flames fanned into the building of an empire unparalleled in human history. The UK - as long as it can hold its integrity - will always be Ceres' own realm; all her affairs come to a head in this group of islands. So when Pluto conjoins Ceres in 2010, and when he comes to 10/11 Capricorn in 2013, the UK and the Earth Mother will live in Interesting Times ... So - back to Silverstone on a soaking Sunday in July 2008, and at 1pm with 18 huge engines roaring, Ceres presides over the British Grand Prix. So of course the triumph went to the British driver in a British car! Young Lewis Hamilton stormed from 4th on the starting grid to 2nd in Lap 1 ... and as Jupiter came within range of the lower meridian, the retrograde Jupiter that was conjunct Lewis' 17 Capricorn Sun for the second time, he made a brilliant pass on his team-mate Heikki Kovalainen to lead the race to the finish and win his dream trophy. On November 2nd 2008 Jupiter is back at 17 Capricorn; and if the last F1 battle of the 2008 season begins at 2pm as usual, Ceres will again be on an angle, this time setting. We might end this year with a UK champion. (We did! and in 2009! Pafc, June 2010) Saturday, August 16, 2008 Straight from the horse's mouth!- - as we arrived in the Lakes for our annual hols, my p. Moon finally hauled itself out of Scorpio and started its liberating trek through Sag. The change is extraordinary. For two plus years all I've really wanted to wear is black and various shades of khaki, very strange arrivals in my normally vibrant wardrobe! And now, to coin a phrase, 'when I am an old woman I shall wear purple' - can't get enough of it, also red, since Mars occupies Sagittarius in my sky (in fact the mauves were beginning to leak in at the tail-end of the last degree of the old sign.) And most oddly I've begun to find my beloved mountains really quite oppressive; they are looming at me now, taking my space, which I want to extend, and stretch out in, and (as a typical Capricorn!) have all to myself ... or do I? Even my solitariness is shifting; my charity-shop stint last week meant sharing a cluttered space with another volunteer for 4 hours, which would normally give me the heeby-jeebies; but I found myself able for the first time to work in close proximity with abundant good cheer, far more relaxed than I've been all year! There is not a shadow of a doubt, if you want to learn what a Sign is all about, study the progress of your own Moon through all of them, remembering how you were, who you briefly became. It fascinates me, including the colour thing - I could never wear blue till the Moon went into Libra, and through Leo - well! How yellow and orange can one girl get?! Moon in Cancer was a very green phase, Virgo demure and in love with tiny patterns. You can have a lot of fun with this. Talking of imagery, and getting back to Formula 1, Jenson Button is driving a Honda with 'Earth Dreams' written all over it ... just as Sidereal Neptune is drifting and dreaming over his tropical Capricorn Sun! And, interestingly, after my earlier post, on July 19th at Hockenheim the German Grand Prix started with the same pattern as Silverstone - Ceres on the MC (with Mercury) opposite Jupiter and Lewis Hamilton's Sun.'Looks like Lewis is going to win again!' I remarked to Gerard ... and he did, in great style! 2007 at Budapest also brought him home in front - and Ceres was setting at the start. He also won in Japan last year when his Sun degree rose on the starting grid. But his last race was pretty disastrous; it ended up with his partner Heikki Kovalainen sharing the podium with Timo Glock and the other flying Finn Kimi Raikkonen. Ceres had abandoned the angles of the starting grid, and the UK was nowhere. I haven't looked at Valencia yet, next weekend, but the last race of the season looks good for Lewis again - I wonder if it will also mean the championship, after this exciting, closely-fought F1 season? 19/8/08: JUPITER RETROGRADE... ... has been on my Quotidian MC today. Yes, I re-ordered our monthly box of the finest chocolates money can buy (from our friend Roy Nesling, Chocolatier, established in East Looe) and put up cheery new curtains in my study, and made an excellent stew ... but the day was really about Channel 5's gory hour on the Romans & Druids during the 1st-century invasion of Britain. At 20 past 8 we were told that the Roman legions trampled across the South-East, mowing down anyone who was unlucky enough to be in their way. At last I had confirmation of one of my earliest flashbacks. This had taken me totally by surprise over 20 years ago in my own kitchen at Ospringe (whose fields have since been much visited by diggers, including my old drama school acquaintance Tony Robinson). I was standing by the sink, holding in my hand a bone-handled knife which hitherto I had never brought myself to use. Suddenly my skin felt covered with very different clothes; against my cheeks was soft but firm leather - the lining, I assume, of a helmet's cheek-pieces. I had sandals on, and a short tunic; and I knew in that moment that I was a Roman legionary. But I was frozen in a dilemma - at the edge of the rough path on which I stood (just like the beaten tracks shown on Channel 5) cowered an old man, a local, who was in my way, and I was supposed to stick my bone-handled knife into his skinny body and be rid of him. The problem was that at some point I had encountered the teachings of Christianity, and I couldn't do it. For about ten minutes the vivid flash-back and the agonising dilemma held me motionless and fascinated beside the open cutlery drawer, before normality returned and I could put the knife back again. Ever since that episode my life-long nervousness of knives ebbed away. Twice more in the 1980s that Roman life came back to me - once at Reculver where I remembered spending months of boredom staring out to sea, 'keeping watch' (about as enthusiastically as the Yorkshire cops in 'Last of the Summer Wine'!) and once at Broadstairs where the oppressive aura of old and bloody battles sent me home miserable with migraine. This August evening that sick revulsion at the violence we met and meted out returned in full force - and this time the story had moved to North Wales, our home for the past six years. I now understood that Quotidian Jupiter, moving backwards; in my nativity (also retrograde and so inviting a return to the past) it rules the IC, therefore both the home and the past itself. In east Kent I was living on the southern end of my local space Jupiter line; coming to north-west Wales we had moved along its diagonal to pitch camp near its northern extremity. In 1981 our honeymoon on the Nile had taken me sailing and exploring where Jupiter had culminated at my birth - and here again memories had come flooding back, amid some joys bringing the lessons of much private pain. Yes, it turned out to be quite a day! ............................................................................................................... Wednesday, August 20, 2008 DEAR RICHARD DAWKINS ... ... what would I say to you if we came face to face? You seem desperate to present yourself as a nice man, yet everywhere you go, a hundred hackles rise. First, on the current scientific understanding of evolution I am 100% with you. I have strolled home from Great Orme's Head with my pockets full of fossils, and who could doubt their antiquity? Secondly, I share your admiration and respect for Charles Darwin, and all the pioneers of practical science. But thirdly - how do I not accept and integrate my own experience and that of thousands of other sane men and women who have found their souls to be more than 'a collection of neurons'? I take my hat off to the science teachers who 'stuck to their last' and refused to attack the faiths of their sensitive pupils; these may indeed be indoctrinated by their priests and parents, but however odd, however skewed, their beliefs - like mine - are founded on authentic and disconcerting experience. Now, I cannot personally vouch for that authenticity in most cases, so where I would share your ambivalence toward a particular faith, all I can do is give its adherents the benefit of the doubt - and my respect. But there remain certain incontrovertible facts. 1. The mobility of consciousness. My husband-to-be, in straitened circumstances, was soaking in one of the men's public baths in Sittingbourne when he found himself floating near the ceiling; from this unexpected vantage-point above the partitions he could watch the local vagrants splashing and drinking in the adjoining cubicles. After a few minutes he was looking through his physical eyes again and could only hear the sounds of the men. A close friend was listening to a concert at the Royal Albert Hall; he was so shocked to find himself looking down on orchestra and audience from the ceiling of the dome that he shot straight back into his seat. Another friend was out walking when she saw herself several yards ahead. She followed herself, alarmed and fascinated, for several minutes until she rejoined her body. This kind of experience cannot be dismissed as a dream state - generally in dreams we do not inhabit and navigate the immediate space and time. The above experiences and hundreds of others documented in OOBE research over several decades point to individual consciousness - at least in humans - inhabiting and exploiting rather than arising from the evolved structures of body and brain. 2. Cosmic integration. This is a difficult one for someone like you. Let me begin by stating that for 25 years, since I was 40, I have had to endure frequent and crippling migraines. Trying to coax one's life into some kind of acceptable shape around these bouts of miserable illness is a real challenge (which, for all I know, you may share.) At least I knew when I was at risk; the migraine always came around ovulation and menses, so I steered clear of commitments at these times. But a total hysterectomy at 46 put paid to all that. Neither did it rid me of the illness; instead its timing became chaotic and my life, personal and social, was in ruins. Here's the bit you won't find easy to accept: since my teens I’d had an interest in astrology, and in my twenties began studying it seriously. By my forties I had become a counsellor, teacher, researcher, lecturer, writer and occasional broadcaster on this unorthodox subject, respected by my peers, and still full of delight in its endless intellectual and philosophical adventure. I had always been a bright child; I could turn my hands and my mind to most things with noticeable success - and I had been brought up to value criticism and analysis, so anything that failed to 'do what it said on the tin' would be dismissed as a total waste of time and effectively binned. Astrology, unlikely as it will seem to you, consistently rose to my challenges, decade after decade. As you are probably as unfamiliar with its language as I am with Urdu or Mandarin Chinese, there is little point trying to explain much of its technique; but the fact is that it gave me my life back. It was the only tool I had in 1989 (in the absence of effective treatment, which didn't turn up till 1992) to get a handle on the apparent chaos of the attacks. I will now inflict upon you a little of the terminology ... knowing that the planetary energy of Mars connected with pain, heat and blood-flow, with acute symptoms, strong stimuli, and traditionally with the head, I started watching its interactions with my own birth pattern, both natally and as the sky diagram turned slowly through the days and years in what we call 'progression'. In brief, whenever Mars approached the meridian or horizon, Moon, Sun or inner planets of any of my astrological charts within 2 degrees of arc, even if my circumstances were relatively stress-free the migraine would hit. Several concurrent hits on different charts, a cluster of impacts, would coincide with intensified symptoms. As soon as Mars separated from the vulnerable degrees, the migraine disappeared. I could go through quite a busy and potentially stressful period which in theory should invoke an attack - yet if Mars was not impacting on any of my patterns I would not become ill. A common reaction to such findings is that they are merely self-fulfilling prophecy. I can assure you this is not the case; the studies I made were retrospective, based on my diaries. Soon I had the confidence to plan my engagements around the movements of Mars, and was at last able to keep my promises and stop letting people down at the last minute. I have lived this way for 20 years now - quite a decent long-term test of migraine management, don't you think? Notable amongst the planets, Pluto ('demoted' or not!) has an energy which is potentially devastating. When its slow progress against the ecliptic brings it (for between one and three years) onto a sensitive natal degree, life gets pretty heavy. These are the times when the greatest moral dilemmas have to be faced, or the greatest physical challenges. Power - its use and abuse - is often involved. Temptation to take the destructive, selfish path comes at you from every direction. Empathy, compassion, loving-kindness, altruism, are the strongest armour in this spiritual battle. Pluto's purpose is to wake one up to the core values of one's very existence, and sometimes it takes trauma to do this. One can come close to death, as I did, giving birth to my first son by a nearly fatal emergency Caesarian, having to learn to walk again, and then coping with an autistic child. Pluto was in my rising degree. One can become the object of collective hatred for sticking to a principle, as my husband (a Bishop) did in honouring his calling and ministering to a friend who had done something very stupid that landed him in prison for two years. This test of conscience was extremely hard; but he achieved the moral victory. Pluto was on the degree of his Sun. When it made a right-angle (we call this a 'square') to my own Sun-degree, circumstances drew me into the Christian Church - a major step for this free-thinking woman! - and since then I have applied myself to the astrological study of its history. The implications are that human lives (and probably life in general) are inextricably linked to the movements of the Solar System - and ultimately the observable universe - through meanings locked into relative position and orbital geometry. Poetically, we are phrases in a mighty and stirring music; or tiny, vital cells in an immeasurable body. Each human consciousness is a living and possibly eternal fragment of the consciousness of eternity itself, a huge mind comprised of or generating billions of fractal minds, whose totality we might call God. Each mind is itself an evolving thing, and shifts dimension into the material to learn how to grow and improve, using a body that evolution has declared fit for purpose. And because Mind is the over-arching reality, communication between embodied and discarnate minds can take place under favourable conditions to offer guidance to those who are floundering, and aid to people in danger or in pain. You are currently in a very good position to test some of this for yourself, if you have a mind to. Your own natal tropical Sun is in 5 degrees of Aries close to the descending node of the Moon at Aries 1, in a friendly relationship with Pluto at 2 degrees of Leo, and in a tight square to recently 'promoted' Ceres at 4 degrees of tropical Capricorn. Venus is not far back, at 29 degrees Pisces. All these positions are being challenged by the transit of Pluto over the next three years, ( it has already been affecting your relationships and resources through Venus ) with its maximum impact in February-June 2010 ( including very hard work, even struggle ), September 2010-February 2011 ( big opportunity/success here if all goes well ), and August-October 2011, when the personal significance of the previous years' experience should give you pause for thought. It is meant to be a period of conscientious soul-searching - but for you of course this would mean acknowledging that you do not just have but are a soul! On this point let me round off my comments with a brief look at your pattern. To use another image, each one of us is, astrologically, a minute shard of the macrocosmic hologram, specific to our birth-point in space and time. The sky patterns at birth are charged with complex meaning, which reflect both who we are and what we are endeavouring to become. I have seen few patterns as polarised as yours, torn as you are between the passionate science pioneer who wants to be the first and the best and to win every argument by verbal force if need be, and the diametrically opposed soul within who believes on principle in fairness, justice, kindness and balanced dialogue. Driven by a compulsive sense of mission, you can over-heat to the point of arrogance, betraying that gentler, fairer self - and this Aries combativeness is what will inevitably undo all the good that you have achieved, if you insist too often on picking a fight and fail to listen to - and honour - your neighbour's point of view. The focus of this inner contest will always be the relationship between nature and time - nothing but the structures of evolution (Ceres in Capricorn) could ever hold such fascination for you. By embracing in your work and in your life the competitive principle, don't forget that ultimately it is only through peaceable collaboration that you will attain real success. All people born with the Sun close to the Moon's descending node have to make sacrifices, and in your case it is that provocative stance and the very drive to win, that can turn friends into enemies and careful argument into incoherent bluster. I respect your passion and your work, and I like the other man I see beneath the determined atheist. I hope he will take to heart a little of what has been said. Rev. Pam Crane PS - (June 2010) for the sidereally inclined, this chart is interesting: again, we have the SunMC achievement chart, but now of a Piscean with Moon and Mercury in analytical, fixed Aquarius. The setting Ceres of the natural world is fittingly in Sagittarius. What immediately grabs you is that the Moon is lined up with this from a conjunction with the dwad N.Node, constantly seeking publicity. And this Moon rules a great quartet in dwad Cancer, of Mercury, Chiron, Sun and of course the MC. What does this man do all the time? What is his day job? He is an evangelical evolutionist! And Cancer is all about the past, and about growth, and genetic inheritance. Chiron is both the perpetual student and the dedicated teacher. Whether you agree with Richard Dawkins or not, you cannot fault him in these respects. Across the dwad horizon are stretched all three outer planets and once again Ceres; at the dwad IC is a steadily driving Capricorn Mars. The man knows he has charisma and influence; whether he is as aware that it can degenerate into arrogance and self-delusion I cannot say. What he needs to know is that the spiritual dimensions of Life are curled into the great scheme of things like creatures hiding in a child’s picture puzzle, and if he keeps on refusing to acknowledge them he will have wasted a wonderful opportunity. He could be using his God-given intelligence to reconcile material fact with eternal reality, and to teach this with the same fervour that has instead sent millions of us, unwary pilgrim souls, spinning away from the very knowledge we now so desperately need to understand and salvage our place in the cosmos. © Rev. Pam Crane 2008-2010 ............................................................................................................... Sunday, August 31, 2008 VISIONS I am looking at the most beautiful face. I could look into these eyes for an eternity and it would be rest to my soul. The first time I saw him, he was waiting for me in a caravan, and I was astonished at the meeting; his hair was short, darkish and quite curly, and the eyes were all love, laughter and joy. Desperate to remember, I woke up. No effort with a pencil on my part could do justice to the face of this re-embodied Jesus. But here he is, as if my computer screen were a window and his gaze would melt the glass. He has been brought to life in a painting called 'The Prince of Peace' made in 2003 by a then eight-year-old girl from Illinois, who in visions from the age of four has been painting at the request of God. She has painted Mary, too, and captured the ineffable sweetness that invaded my soul in Lourdes. Her name is Akiane Kramarik, and on her website www.artakiane.com we are told that she was born (to non-religious parents) on July 9th 1994 in Mount Morris, Illinois. My first chart for her is a Q-chart (not having any birth time) set for 4 am, which is the time she habitually starts work on the day's painting. At this time, Venus is at the IC and her Mercury rises! The Moon is just past New, in Cancer; her Sun is in the exaltation of joyous Jupiter, and these happy Lights are most powerfully configured with all three outer, spiritual planets - opposite the conjunction of Uranus/Neptune, and trine Pluto with the Moon's Ascending Node. Her extraordinary creative gift is clear from an immensely strong 5th harmonic - Mercury biquintile Pluto and tredecile Saturn, Leo Venus biquintile the Uranus/Neptune conjunction and decile the Sun. Not only is her output prodigious - she is very, very shiny! How did I find her? After a restless night, once the seagulls woke up this morning I gave up trying to sleep and settled down to watch a video taped 11 days ago. It was a programme screened by ITV at 9 pm on August 18th, its title 'Superhuman: Genius', and it began with Akiane. By 7h30 I was down in the study and online to her website to find out as much as I could about the blonde little girl who was born in the year I went to Jerusalem and took my first small booklet on the Birth of Jesus to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. From that website, this wonderful face will meet you. It is when you enter the dwad chart, leaving the material for the conscious self, that the real magic happens. At work time, 4 am, Pluto and the IC meet with radix Chiron; a transformation is taking place.... and this is through Christ, the highest expression of Chiron symbolism. The steady flow of her inspired and guided work is guaranteed by the 'kite' formed by the trines of Mercury and Neptune to Sun and Saturn opposed across the Moon's Nodal axis and the powerful radix Cancer Moon alignment with Neptune and Uranus. Dwad Mars drives the radix Cancer Sun. What else is this girl to do but pour her emotion and spirituality into luminous works of art? The second chart for Akiane is her Q chart with Jesus (born 7th May, 5BC), set for his time of 18h43m55s and zone -2:20:48, but at her birth location. First of all, it gives her a 10th-house stellium, and his work has become her vocation. But look what happens when the dwad is added! Neptune/IC comes to her radix Ascendant, religious Jupiter ‘sets’, and Ceres - one of the planets of Our Lady, the World Mother, ‘rises’. The Ascendant meets her radix Mercury, and of course that Capricorn/ Cancer Sun/Saturn opposition straddles the nodes from South to North in the dwad chart as we have already seen, collecting her Uranus/Neptune and the late Cancer Moon into a spiritually, karmically intense 'full moon'. Dwad Moon/Mercury is conjunct her radix South Node. This whole picture is of a sacrificial soul on a lonely and focussed path, bound to Christ and her destiny, and totally tuned to the Voice which guides her all the way. A third chart was necessary, too; the Q-chart of Akiane with Mary (born 4th August 24 BC), thus in her zone -2:21:12, at her time, 12h33. Again it is stunning. Her Cancer New Moon rises with dwad Mars to energise her and dwad Venus close by; again Neptune is angular - dwad Neptune on radix IC. Also radix Pluto and the North Node are on the dwad Chiron/Ascendant as dwad Mercury 'sets'; a tight conjunction of dwad Uranus/MC comes close to radix Jupiter; and her dwad Sun/South Node conjunction meets radix Uranus/Neptune again on that same 'full moon' axis as before. Across those two powerful horizons Akiane relates directly to all the sweetness and motherliness of Our Lady, taking from her encouragement and strength, as well as powerful inspiration to communicate spiritual reality through her paints and brushes. As for the Composites, they left me momentarily speechless. Akiane/Jesus has Pluto on Asc (again!), a trio of Chiron/Sun/Mercury in Gemini opposite Neptune, and the MC conjunct Venus and the South Moon's node on her painter’s axis of Moon- Uranus/Neptune. This is an old, old love bearing fruit in the present, a powerfully spiritual relationship centred on inspired teaching. The past becomes present with Mary, too; the Sun and Venus go to the South Node (so close to Akiane's Moon!); Saturn (and maybe Ceres? - I have no idea if it is accurate for births BC) conjoins the MC to discipline and guide, and the trio of Mercury/Moon/Mars in Leo on Our Lady's Sun/Pluto burns with creative dialogue. In both these Composites there are hardly any stresses; the aspects are sweet. And of course the chart for the TV programme is no less expressive. Here I put the dwad at the centre of the biwheel - to show that the Prince of Peace is indeed present. Because the dwad has the conjunction of Sun and Jupiter setting, just as Jesus does at his Nativity ... and they are still together, and still on the horizon, in his dwad. Akiane herself is shown in the sensitive, painterly trio of dwad Moon/MC/Neptune, as well as the radix pattern where the Pisces Moon has just risen conjunct Uranus and still opposite the 6th-house Mercury/Venus. Pluto is radically on the MC: Akiane and the other four people in this study are all exceptional people. But she has chosen the most exceptional life of all. © Rev. Pam Crane 2008 To read this article together with the charts, a pdf can be accessed at: http://www.theholytwelve.co.uk/small-world/84-small-world-august-2008-akiane-and-jesus ............................................................................................................... Sunday, October 19, 2008 PLUTO, CAPRICORN, AND THE CRUNCH I’m sure it hasn’t escaped your notice that Ingresses are major aspects to the Aries Point, arguably the most dramatic being outer-planetary squares from the Solstices. Accordingly, they impact on the entire human race and especially those bosom children of the Tropical zodiac, the citizens of the Western world. The last time Pluto strode over a solstice point was in 1914, and the 1st World War, the Great War, the War to end all Wars, broke out. The King of Darkness was entering Cancer, since when any protective shell can be shelled and nowhere can be called a safe haven. Next he invaded Leo, making a fiery trine to the Spring Equinox; it was 1939 and the 2nd World War broke all the promises made at the end of the 1st, dramatically re-drawing the map of power. Now on the cusp of Capricorn it is the turn of global business empires to be shocked to their socks, time for new rules to be written in all areas of competition, worldly aspiration and control. Two weeks ago (October 6 2008), Pluto, still finishing its business at the end of tropical Sag but heliocentrically well into the first degree of Capricorn, was rejoined around the Sun by Venus after an absence of eight months and all hell broke loose in the world money markets. Back in 2007, things seemed very different - Pluto, visiting and revisiting 28 Sagittarius and helped by Jupiter, utterly seduced the English through their sidereal Sun into thinking the property boom years would never end. So we were all behaving as if they wouldn't. Property prices had been mushrooming since 2003/4 when Pluto hit on the UK’s sid. Sun at 18 Sagittarius: one house wasn't enough - we had to have two; one source of income wasn't enough - we all had to be property developers and buy to let. We had to have the perfectly finished designer home plus the luxury holiday pad, and we could do all this on dirt-cheap debt which banks and building societies were able to sell to each other and eventually bury somewhere overseas like the rest of the UK's rubbish. Many years ago I read a great story by Kurt Vonnegut where science had found a way to shovel all humanity's unwanted detritus through wormholes in space and leave our world lovely and clean; unfortunately while people were enjoying their hedonistic lives, hyperspace filled up and a disgusting torrent of filth burst back through a zillion gaps in reality to overwhelm the globe. We are getting our come-uppance, big time. It's our fault. Each time Pluto enters a sign he creates upheaval in pretty well any area of life associated with that twelfth of the sky - often through the way he seems to empower a fresh section of the human population. Unfortunately the folk who are spiritually asleep - and there are many - fail to recognise that charge of power as a shot of divine energy to purify and transform their lives, and instead turn into swaggering narcissists who throw their weight around and spark off a whole new slew of cultural problems. Pluto in Sagittarius enticed the whole developed world onto a quest for endless growth, wealth, mobility, knowledge and perfect bodies, and of course millions, manipulated shamelessly by rampant media, tumbled onto the bandwagon. We were all tested by the Tempter and found lamentably wanting. We were offered faith, but chose intolerance. Materially rich, we created poverty. The world was our oyster - we left it dying. In pursuit of fitness, we filled with vanity. Liberty became licentiousness, exams became quizzes, the law all letter and no spirit in a minefield of litigation and political correctness. A compensation culture where everyone knew their rights created the monster ‘Health and Safety’. The exhilarating, dangerous, Sagittarian adventure was to understand our place in the living universe, so of course we chose cheap flights, chatrooms, 'Big Brother,' and scoffed at God. By the time he reached 29 Sag, Pluto had finished downloading WiFi, texting and YouTube to the UK sidereal Moon at Gemini 27 and was pointing squarely at England's tropical Moon in the end of Pisces, at long last provoking a country blighted by slobs and yobs to start cleaning up its act. The booze culture is still England's shame, but at last her streets are cleaner, her lungs healthier, and recycling bins busier. In the 1066 sidereal chart that undisciplined Moon was still in Pisces; so with the culminating Sun in sidereal Sag, the English nation has always been known for profligacy and adventure, high culture, great learning, immense greed, exhibitionism, bursts of surprising altruism, and a delight in comedy. If this country were a client we would be urging her to work hard now with Pluto's new Capricorn energy to capitalise on her strengths and drive out her demons. The Moon’s Nodes as usual tell the story - the South in disorderly Pisces, the North in Virgo with Saturn; she needs to accept Saturn's demand for a return to self-discipline, that a culture of growing selfishness and irresponsibility needs to be replaced by one of thrift and attentive service to the needs of ordinary people, particularly the old, the lonely, the sick and the deprived. The hand-over of power is nearly complete: at 02h37 UT on January 26th this year Pluto made his first brief but crucial entrance into the 10th sign, and on November 27th 2008 Pluto will finally exit Sagittarius at 01h03 UT to start its 16-year journey with us up Mt. Capricorn. In the English Lake District there is a little tour bus called The Mountain Goat ... this will be some tour! In London it is marked by the Saturn-Uranus opposition across the Asc/Desc **, so expect the unexpected and a long-term reality-check. When he gets to 5 Capricorn the IMF’s Sun ** * will be in the firing line after all the alarming activity of the past two years (Venus, Ceres, South Node...) so it may be staring at emptied coffers by then, Heaven help us all, and going through ‘death and rebirth’! Crunch time will be when Pluto hits the English/UK/EEC Sun in 2012/13, also impacting Australia (which, like the IMF, has been having an eventful time lately and may be ready to say Cheerio to the Queen), the British Diplomatic Service, and The Times. Will we have got our collective act together to celebrate a memorable Olympics? Or will it be another failure of planning and imagination, a damp squib to match the River of Fire and the Millennium Dome? Will we give the cold shoulder to Europe? Or will our benighted islands reluctantly embrace the Euro? Will we realise we no longer have ‘human rights’, only debts? Will we bring back the real spirit of competition in which we re-learn the art of losing gracefully? Limits will have to be set - flights grounded ****, populations controlled, behaviour schooled, promiscuity checked, standards raised, purse-strings tightened, freedoms curtailed. Will we see the end of the throw-away society, and a return to older, more lasting values? Or will it be the end of Freedom Food and the hope we still had for the planet? It could be the new age of the entrepreneur - or a field day for the ruthless. Maybe we should all emigrate! At the first ingress ***** Saturn, Uranus and Moon close to the meridian in the UK promise a lonely and rocky ride, while Jupiter rising at Baghdad (!) culminates over burgeoning China, and the third, final ingress chart sees Jupiter rising in Tokyo, setting in New York. But he is debilitated in Capricorn, so joy may not be unconfined. As in all aspects of life a sound structure is the prerequisite for true freedom. Only through determined self-discipline, moderation and careful planning are any of us going to survive what the globe could throw at us if climate continues to change. Sagittarius wants to magic it all away; Capricorn hunches his shoulders, gets his goal in focus, and plods on. It would be nice to think that power might yet rest with the hitherto powerless, that the poor and the ill and the old and the lonely and the cold and the homeless and the hungry will be heard, honoured and rescued from unhappiness ... but I fear that as ever the controllers may strengthen their grip on our lives and our pockets, the heartless may walk over us, and the ambitious will toss us off their mountain. Grey power risks penalising the young; grey men may drain colour from the world. Yet perhaps in chillier, darker, frugal times there will be a return to commonsense, humility and a love of quietness - perhaps we will find an ordered simplicity in which we can take stock of who we are, learn to be self-sufficient, know our limits and use our time more wisely; perhaps when we are hardest-pressed and there is nothing left but prayer we will bend our knee on the highest summit of all, take God’s hand, and even come to realise the blessing of death. ** Reviewing this for TheHolyTwelve in June 2010 I have included the dwad, and notice that it has its nodes and horizon conjunct - and the South Node is in Sagittarius, square that radix Saturn-Uranus! If there were ever a sign that we were to get our self-indulgent knuckles rapped, this is it! *** Pluto is now of course to-ing and fro-ing in 5 Capricorn as we go through 2010, and the IMF is probably going to have to help bail out Greece, Spain, Portugal, Hungary and goodness knows who else as the members of the Euro threaten to topple like a row of dominoes. The amount of collective debt is staggering. There may soon be no Euro for the UK to embrace! Come to that, there may be no UK the way devolution is going. **** ... and we now have our first coalition government since WW2, busy undoing all the mischief perpetrated by the last lot and probably planning a fair bit of their own, governments tending to run true to form whatever their colour. So a cap is being put on non-EEC immigration, and we are all going to have to tighten our belts to get the UK’s deficit sorted and its debts reduced. As for flights being grounded, we have a helpful Icelandic volcano to take care of that! ***** Again I’ve put the dwad with the radix; again the message is reinforced by the dwads of Saturn and Uranus positioning themselves close to the radix Angles - and in this dwad Chiron is right on the IC. That could mean quite a bit of pain, and certainly a few hard learning curves for the complacent. Tuesday, October 28, 2008 DEATH AND THE Q-CHART Once again a tragic loss of life has come painfully close; last week in the Talking Newspaper studio I was having to read a report of that terrible accident on the M6 motorway that killed a family of six, when their car went under a lorry in a five-vehicle collision and burst into flames. They were from Llandudno, and they were on their way home. Michelle should have been back in Clifton Road with her new baby daughter and thinking about getting back to work at the estate agent's round the corner, the other three children should have been back at junior and nursery school; the boys should have been at Karate club next evening at’The Dojo’ just up the road from my house, and serving at the altar with my friend Father Jones on Sunday. And on that following Sunday, October 26th 2008, David would have been 39 and opening cards from his mates at the local college where he worked as a chef. He, with the rest of his family, came from Birmingham; I thought I would take a look at his chart set for the time of the crash near Sandbach that took his life, the ‘Q’ chart. A police notice appealing for witnesses to the accident gives the time as 10h30pm on the night of October 20th. The Moon was rising just as the Uranus/Saturn opposition, on David’s Nodes, explosively hit the meridian with dwad Mars; draconic Uranus was at 3 Taurus opposite David’s Sun at the draconic crash IC; transit Mars had run into his draconic Sun. On the day David Statham was born, October 26th 1969, at the crash time of 22h30 BST Pluto was at the IC conjunct David’s sidereal Mercury in 26 Virgo, and Mars (square Mercury) was setting - its sidereal position at 29 Sagittarius, on transiting Pluto! Draconic energy drives the story of the soul, sidereal strength in a pattern always implies a public or historic impact; and here, written into David’s script, is his sudden, shocking, violent, fiery end on a fated journey that made national headlines and left our town in tears. Poignantly the dwad Moon is with that setting Mars, his wife and children perishing with him on a journey which was otherwise a happy one - as witness the exact Mercury/Jupiter conjunction with the dwad Descendant. The dwad IC is with Saturn. Already waiting for him in the drama of life was his ‘Q’ for exit. It was time to go home. ............................................................................................................... Thursday, October 30, 2008 OBAMA VS. McCAIN Less than a week to go until the USA decides who is to clear up after G.W.Bush! Who has the makings of a President? To whom is that great gold finger pointing from the heavens, scrawling 'It's for YOU!' ...? Birthcharts first. According to a newly-discovered Birth Certificate (thanks to AstroDataBank and all involved) John McCain was a sunset birth at 18h25 EST in Colon, Panama, with Jupiter close to the MC in the 10th, so a high profile and expectations of success there, then. (May I say at this point, that any remarks I make about John McCain are entirely contingent on the accuracy of this newly presented birth time. If astrologers and public have been led up the garden path - as politicians and their enemies so often love to do - then half of all that follows will be nonsense! But let's go for it... and please note - these triwheels are centred on each man's Draconic chart.) Like most Virgos, McCain is a sidereal Leo on the public stage, and it shows. That Leo Sun/Desc joins his tropical Mars, so this guy is as aggressive as they come when he's up against it or his ego is on the line. Another provocative Republican. Yes, he has what it takes to be a 21st century President, but whether we need it or the USA wants it is another matter. Obama, now, is a tropical Leo, and again born at sunset! His Sun, helpful in the 6th, is a little below the horizon, not as strong as McCain's; but he has a nice communicative Gemini Moon right on the IC. Both Lights on angles = famous! OK, but will he make President? Both men have a lot of contacts from their draconic charts to sidereal and tropical, so each is a man of strong purpose and principle. McCain's draco Sun is in fun-loving Sagittarius ('No-one will interrupt a World Series game with an infomercial when I'm President!') so he is driven by the power of positive thinking; 'everything is for the best in the best of all possible worlds'. But Sag also believes in Money ... and we have a Credit Crunch. Obama is a draconic Piscean, hence an idealist - maybe a dreamer - and will be carried strongly by his faith. On his draco MC is tropical Venus in Cancer, but opposite is sidereal Saturn; sidereal Jupiter joins a Capricorn draco Moon, and on his draconic Virgo Ascendant tropical Mars rises! This orator will give less away than he lets on, wants to stay in control, and is a pussy-cat with sharp claws. Pursuing conscience politics will certainly make him very attractive. Between tropical and sidereal there are also conjunctions of Sun/Pluto and Saturn/Ascendant. Someone on the radio today said Obama had plenty of power under the bonnet; I second that! This man is serious, and determined to make a difference. McCain the Virgo is a small man with big ambitions; Obama is a big man with imagination and a love of his country. Which will be chosen? Annual progressions are the next stop - indeed the converses, because these, as usual, are showing stronger patterns at this tipping-point in each man's destiny. McCain's shows a nice feisty Moon/Venus/Mars conjunction on the Gemini Descendant - lots of publicity then, attracting the ladies, drawing the crowds ... but this is all moving back to the square with Saturn, and already his choice of running mate, his Moon/Venus/Mars/Desc Sarah Palin, has come in for a lot of negative attention and may have compromised his campaign. Barack Obama just has his annual sunset ... but it is stronger now; and the annual converse Ascendant is at 29 Sagittarius, right on transiting Pluto. Which has finished with McCain. Advantage Obama. I have set the Solar Returns for Washington DC, as I have no idea where each candidate spent his August birthday, and there is nowhere else more likely to throw up a useful pattern. Obama has Moon/Mars-Uranus straddling the horizon with Pluto at the IC, * * suggesting a very public and somewhat bumpy ride to the ballot box and beyond, with much power to his elbow. But will it be Presidential power? The Sun close to the approaching S.Node reminds us that the eclipse of August 1st fell conjunct his Sun, and this always presages significant steps along the path of the soul. McCain's Return has that S.Node rising, however, a position not to be envied as Self always has to come last, and planets nearby can signal the cause of one's undoing. Here, it's the Moon. This could be Sarah. Neptune sets with Chiron and the Dragon's Head, so he pursues his dream, but it could come to nothing if he has fibbed about his citizenship and skewed his birth details! (You need to follow the link from the bottom of his page at AstroDataBank to appreciate what I'm suggesting here.) * * * OK. To me, Obama is looking the stronger candidate for the White House. If he wins, it will mean he has a really special day coming up in January - the Inauguration. Since 1937 this has taken place by custom on January 20th around noon - although there have been occasional necessary deviations. How does that date look for our hopefuls? Well, John McCain's converse daily progression is the only one of his patterns to throw up an angular planet, which is Uranus on the DCMC. A change or surprise of some sort for him on the 20th - otherwise the Inauguration chart itself, depending on the time the ceremony climaxes, may pick up his progressed Sun and Pluto on the Desc and IC. Obama, now, has his daily progressed Ascendant still close to the Sun, while the converse daily Descendant is right on Jupiter. That nice Venus of his is a whisker away from the DPMC - and transiting Pluto is opposite on the DPIC. What is more, the Sun/Mercury conjunction of Inauguration day is conjunct his Jupiter and the noonday Moon is shining on his natal MC. Most striking of all, when you put the two draconic charts together - Obama and the Inauguration - it is his Sun on the noon Midheaven, his Ascendant opposite the Sun/Mercury, his angular Moon on the 7th cusp. McCain is nowhere. L Lastly, as for every day of his life, each man has a 'Q' chart for Inauguration day, which should show what it has in store. It is Barack Obama who has the Sun/Jupiter conjunction on the meridian from the IC in Washington at his birthtime of 19h24 AHST, and picking up his natal Mercury/Jupiter opposition. To me, that strongly suggests a victory speech. * * (June 2010) Why on earth didn’t I do the dwad of this Solar Return at the time? I suppose it hadn’t occurred to me then. Crackpot. So I completely missed that dwad Jupiter on the radix MC, the dwad ‘sunset’ on the angular Pluto echoing his own nativity, and the dwad IC also picking up the angular radix Moon! I would have been even more confident that Obama would end up in the White House - which of course he did. * * * Ditto ditto ... McCain’s Return dwad might have thrown me somewhat, as it also strengthens the chart. However, this was the year when he was at least the other Presidential candidate, so he’s entitled to the power trio of dwad Sun/Uranus/Pluto at the Return’s radix IC! The dwad’s Desc/MC/Mercury with radix Mercury/Mars certainly made for a lot of fighting talk. But it puts people’s backs up. No, on balance I would still have gone for Obama as he has the Sun and Jupiter firmly onside, and McCain has that unpromising Dragon’s Tail-on-Ascendant to contend with. Sunday, November 02, 2008 HAMILTON VS. MASSA - To the wire! Halfway round the 71st and last lap of the Brazilian Grand Prix I was gripping my chair-arms exclaiming 'But he CAN'T lose the Championship! Jupiter's on his Sun! It rules the starting MC of the race! His natal Venus is about to culminate at Interlagos!' Yet here was Lewis Hamilton, having driven a faultless race under very trying circumstances from P4 on the grid, trailing in to the flag in 6th position and losing not only the race but the Championship by one point to Felipe Massa. The Brazilian home crowd were ecstatic. Then Timo Glock - who hadn't changed to wet tyres when the Moon swam onto the Midheaven and started to rain all over the track for the second time since a chaotic and delayed start - skittered about on the track, lost grip, slowed down ... and Hamilton passed him. So he was now in 5th place. And that's where he was at the finishing line. And so he claimed that crucial one point that inched him ahead of Massa at the climax of the 2008 F1 series - and the UK has another World Champion racing driver! He's the youngest ever, and our first black driver, and I for one am absolutely thrilled. Well done, Lewis! And Well Done, friend Jupiter, who delivered astounding good luck at the eleventh hour and 59th minute, right on cue. And well done Ceres for championing the UK again - conjunct the Ascendant and Jupiter in the dwad! Felipe Massa who won the race for his home country was hampered by the current transit of Saturn/Uranus - its draconic position is across 3-4 Taurus-Scorpio and hitting on Massa's Taurus Sun. So a tricky year ahead for the gifted young Brazilian; I hope he gets his turn at the top spot later on. He drove like a champion, conducted himself with great dignity, and only because it wasn't his lucky year he missed out by a whisker. Roll on 2009! (June 2010 - sadly in Hungary in 2009 Felipe Massa suffered a serious head injury during qualifying when a piece of Rubens Barichello’s race car broke free and hurtled back down the track into Massa’s visor. Only the superb safety features of his helmet saved his life. And now in 2010, thanks be to God, he is back, racing for Ferrari again! The draconic pattern I mentioned didn’t last long, of course. But I haven’t yet pinned down whatever it was that put him in the way of that nasty accident when he was doing so well. I have so few birth times for the GP drivers, so no time for Massa to work with.) © Rev. Pam Crane 2008-2010 |