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Blogs for the week (with Mercury retrograde in Sagittarius)

I haven’t visited discussion boards (an early web phenomenon) in a long time, but they are definitely still happening. The mega-site Astrodienst, widely used for calculating charts, also offers a very active Forum for discussions.

You need to register as a Forum member to comment, or just browse and read. Threads include Horary, Mundane and Political, In-depth chart discussion, Other branches of astrology (e.g., Hamburg School, Asteroids, Fixed Stars, Asteroids, etc.), and, along with English, discussions occur in French, Greek, Italian, Spanish, and other non-European languages.

Astrodienst also has a huge archive of timeless articles, including a section of Advanced Astrology Articles, further divided into categories; these include Astrology and Medicine, where you can read Carla Pretto’s Born Prematurely – An Astrological Perspective.

And in the Fixed Star Astrology category, you will find Fixed Stars, why bother? by Bernadette Brady.

(There are many more categories in the Advanced section — Sensitive Points; Predictions and Analysis; Astrology of Locality; Art, History, and Play in Astrology; etc. — it is easy to dwell here for hours on end.)

Astrodienst also posts articles from The Astrological Journal. “Astrodienst is proud to team up with the Astrological Association of Great Britain to bring you a selection of articles from its international bi-monthly Journal. This is the AA’s flagship publication, a feast of articles covering all branches and aspects of astrology and featuring the very best in astrological writing. Regular contributors include Nicholas Campion, Darby Costello, Erin Sullivan, Melanie Reinhart, John Frawley and AA President Roy Gillett.”

As a recent example, remember Saturn’s ingress into Capricorn in December 2017? It took place a few days before the winter solstice; I wrote a personal story about it that begins: “On December 21, the winter solstice, when the Sun entered Capricorn, Saturn was waiting, having arrived there on the evening of the 19th. We all knew this was coming, the co-presence of Saturn in his own sign at the potent moment of the Sun’s standstill.”

João Medeiros offers a far more objective (and longer) view of this ingress in his article, The Combustion of Saturn, originally published in The Astrological Journal in October 2018. His inquiry: “What does a combust Saturn fresh in a new sign tell us of the times to come? War, fire and pestilence? The author discusses this overlooked ingress chart, in a journey through past centuries up to the current 2018–2020 phase.” He reports his findings on “all eight combustions of Saturn within the cycle from 1900 to 2017 and the main events they could be related to.”

Readers, take heart. He writes: “After a more careful examination of past combustions of Saturn, I am no longer so pessimistic about the current transit (from late 2017 to late 2020). The proximity of Venus and the dignity of Saturn (ruling Capricorn) symbolise the strong possibility of institutional agreements that can foster peace, even against the background of nuclear threats and climate change.”

Another active discussion board is at Noel Tyl’s website. Also arranged by topic — Medical Astrology, Asteroid Studies, General Astrology Discussion, etc. — these threads are busy. The Mundane section has the birth incorporation date for Paradise. California, scene of this month’s terrible and deadly wildfire; the Famous and Well Known thread has info on Robert Mueller, Nancy Pelosi, celebrities (with known birth times) who lost their homes in the California fires, and countless other categories. I did not spend a lot of time here, but enough to see that a sophisticated level and variety of astrological techniques are shared herein, as well as an up-to-date resource for data.

Glorija Lawrence is a Cosmobiologist, the form of astrology popularized by Reinhold Ebertin (1901–1988), Doris Greaves (1919–2007), and others. This approach employs a 90-degree dial and no house systems, but uses midpoints, solar arcs, and other methods of prediction.

You can be introduced to the methods at Lawrence’s website, CosmoAstrology where there is also an extensive archive of posts arranged by topic — e.g., Tragedy, Survival, Celebrities, Actors, Activists, Places in the World. Glorija Lawrence is a very good teacher; she was mentored by Doris Greaves and was her assistant on a tour of the United States in the 1990s. One of the innovations in Greaves’s approach is to consider the synastry of ingress charts (most often used for mundane work) with personal charts.

Lawrence’s most recent post is Murder on the Dock – An Insight into Murder through Astrological Profiling. This is a good place to start if you are new to the subject, as she very clearly takes the reader through the method.

Here is another quote from her work. About the death of actor Paul Walker, Lawrence writes: “Paul Walker had just turned 40, and his solar arc for that year did not reveal a great deal of information for his impending death, other than Mercury to Mars which sometimes indicate rash or premature action which was certainly the case when he took that fateful trip. However, if we look at the September Ingress cast for 22nd September, 2013 it casts a very different picture with a lot of volatility in the chart. Ingress Saturn/Node was to natal Mars and Ingress Mars was across to the natal Saturn/Pluto indicating bereavement and the loss of one’s fortune or possessions.”

Starlight News, the long-running political blog by Nancy Sommers, also has a very active discussion thread. From her newest post, Sound and Fury (dated November 22): “Of interest to our discussion is the transit of Neptune conjunct the US progressed Sun (12 to 14 Pisces), which spans the 2016 campaign through January 9, 2019. We are currently in the final and protracted period of the intensified potency of this transit, from mid-September 2018 to January 9, 2019. This transit points to a just under three-year period of US leadership (the Sun) being dishonest, emotionally susceptible to hyperbole, and projecting an illusory narrative that tends to enthrall a segment of the populace until ultimate disillusionment sets in. Reality is hidden under a fog of lies, deceptions, and unrealistic expectations.”

At Verena Heinrich’s site, Shifting Realities – Astro Talk, she writes about the New Moon for each month and includes the Sabian symbol and the Tarot card for the degree of the lunation. Her assessments are warm-hearted and encouraging.

Regarding the recent sign change of the nodal axis (from Leo/Aquarius to Cancer/Capricorn), she writes: “This has taken us to a cross-roads destiny-wise, challenging us to make the necessary changes in order to instigate progress. Now that the North Node will be traveling through Cancer for a year and a half, matters of home, family, property, belonging, tradition, support, care, dependence and nurturance will become the prevalent themes in our life, while we’ll be seeking to remove limitations, boundaries, burdens, restrictive or outdated rules and structures as well as obstacles and other blocks from our path and with Uranus traversing through Aries for the next 4 months, the independence (or freedoms and rights) we’ve been fighting for and the individualization we’ve been striving for the last 7 years, will be up again for review in this regard.”

Nicholas de Vore’s book, Encyclopedia of Astrology (1947) is available here — the complete text, in a simple layout, for quick access.

On another subject, here’s Liz Greene’s essay, Air, Water, Earth, Fire: The Psychological Types.

And to get to the bigger picture, I’ve linked to this interactive Solar System and Night Sky model before, but it continually adds new features.

Enjoy yourselves … these few days mark the once-every-12-years conjunction of Jupiter with the Sun in Sagittarius — exact late on November 25 in U.S. Pacific time. Onwards!

5 Comments

  1. Wonderful work, as always Mary. Thank you!

    It would be helpful to have a toolbox of resources like this for researching the upcoming 2019 and 2020 aspects that will rearrange the fortunes of the USA and the entire globe. The most recent TMA issue offered Jessica Murray’s and Bill Herbst’s perspectives, which provide a great beginning. Given the impact of these cycles, the more information available, the better!

    • good idea Valerie….do you mean compiling web sites that are specifically looking at 2019 – 2020 transits?

      Mary

  2. I got a lot out of your brief synopsis of each website Mary. Thank you for doing so much research for our benefit ????

    • Hey Kate…thank you…(thought you’d like the article from AA Journal about Saturn combustions)

      xx00

  3. I also appreciate very much your condensed guides, Mary, and use every one of them. My grandson, b. 12.21.2001, Berkeley, at 2:19 pm, has Sun at 0.17* Capricorn. The Saturn ingress has been very eventful for him and he’s really come into his own, albeit with many obstacles and adjustments. Since my n. Sun/Sa at 26/28 Cancer receives all the hoopla in 2019/2020 (& his mom, my daughter-in-luv, has Su/Sa at 20/22 Cancer), I’m monitoring all three of our lives with care and caution


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