A Little Astrology for the Start of 2009

The year looks set for a fascinating start, if you take a look at the planets right now, close to midnight on New Year's Eve. Since most of the planets don't move all that fast, the relationships should be pretty much the same when the year turns in other locations as well. (Note: I only use the seven classical planets in astrological interpretation, so I'm ignoring the others.)

All the planets except for Saturn are packed inside two neighbouring zodiac signs, Capricorn and Aquarius. With the planets this close together, you can expect some interesting conjunctions, and those we sure have. Moon and Venus, the most feminine of the planets, are in pretty close conjunction in Aquarius. Jupiter and Mercury, both masculine, intellectual types, are in very close conjunction in Capricorn, while Mars and Sun, the planets most associated with strength, are about seven degrees apart, also in Capricorn.

There are some sextile and semi-sextile aspects between these groups, which are generally positive, supportive aspects. Interestingly, there is also a trine from Saturn, in Virgo, to the Jupiter-Mercury conjunction, which is also a supportive aspect.

So what does this all mean? There seem to be three powerful forces at play simultaneously. There's a strong, even aggressive, controlling force. There is also a more benign, intellectual force, albeit perhaps a little restrained and aloof (although this may not necessarily be a bad thing).

[Pause here to go watch the midnight fireworks. Which, frankly, were a little lame this year, and the weather was awful.]

Finally, there is a third force at play, which is quite different, a creative, feeling force. Which of these forces will be the most powerful remains to be seen.

Looking at what's going on right now, it wouldn't be a far stretch to see the more forceful influence in the ongoing aggressive actions taken by Israel. If the Jupiter-Mercury conjunction is related to that, it could be telling us that the international community is present, but restrained, merely watching. But it could, and perhaps more likely does, signify a totally different influence in world affairs, such as the financial crisis. In this case it might be telling us that those in power should be very careful and thoughtful in the steps they make. (Which, I guess, is rather obvious.) What the Moon-Venus conjunction could signify, I don't know. It is probably more at play on a personal level than in global affairs. It is not likely that the world would be blossoming into some intellectual, creative Aquarian age overnight.

Well, I think that's more than enough blogging for one day. So I wish everyone a happy 2009, and may it be a good one, despite all that's going on.

Astrology, Just Once More

Ok, I hope this'll be the last post about astrology for a while, but I need to reach some kind of conclusion on this topic.

The more I consider the selection of planets to use, the more I'm starting to feel that the simple set of seven classical planets is all I need. I think this is partly because I'd been studying traditional occult philosophy for a good while before I really started looking into astrology, and the concept of the seven planets is such a crucial part of traditional occultism that forcing additional planets into the scheme seems both difficult and unnecessary. The qabalistic Tree of Life has been a very useful tool for me in understanding various symbol structures, and I'm sure it'll be a great help in understanding the astrological implications of the planets as well. While one could try to reconcile the new planets with this scheme, there's really very little new that they could bring to it, and the usual interpretations of the newer planets often seem to overlap with those of the traditional planets (or at least the way that I've come to see the traditional planets).

To add a little spice into the mix I might use the north and south nodes of the moon. These are fairly traditional, and were used at least in medieval and renaissance astrology, so they fit in fairly well with the traditional occult scheme. (And I think they would fit in nicely with the qabalistic scheme as representatives of Daath, although I don't know if others have made that association.) The Arabian parts and other additional points I don't think I'll need (apart from the ascendant and midheaven, of course).

If I use fewer bodies, there will be fewer aspects as well. Because of this, I think I might use fairly large orbs, say 10° for most of the main aspects. I might also include semi-sextile and quincunx aspects I hadn't earlier considered using.

I don't think I discussed the choice of zodiac yet. As you might now, the traditional zodiac of astrology is based on the orbit of the Earth, not on actual constellations, which have moved since the times when astrology was created. This has led to the creation of the so-called sidereal zodiac which matches better with the actual constellations. For a while I was a little torn between the two systems, but then I thought, what's the most important cycle in the life of most creatures? The year of course, the cycle of the four seasons, of mating and harvest etc. So it seems right to me that astrology is linked to the rhythm of the sun, the rhythm of life, and not some endlessly distant stars. The Zodiac signs are symbols created by Man. Perhaps they were originally inspired by constellations that existed when they were created, but they are not really linked to them.

Ok, I think this'll wrap up this discussion for now. What's needed now is just, well, experience. Whether I'll stick to this scheme or add something to it remains to be seen.

While We're on the Topic of Astrology...

While I'm on the topic of astrology, I'll take a moment to write a little about some of the difficult questions that a wannabe astrologer must resolve. This is one of those posts that is more about me getting things straight in my head than anything else... I'm not really keen on following any particular school of thought. In issues like this I'm more inclined to go with my gut, since I don't really believe that there is any ultimate truth for spiritual issues, but that they rather connect to a deeper, personal side of us. Spirituality is subjective. What is true for one person may not be for another, yet that does not make it less true for the first person.

While the principles of (western) astrology are pretty much the same for all astrologers, there's a myriad of details that they differ on. The most obvious question is, what objects should actually be included in a chart? In olden days there were only seven known planets (moving objects in the sky, which include the sun and moon), but today we know of several more planets and other orbiting bodies, like asteroids. In addition to these there are many mathematically derived points often used in horoscopes, which can be treated like planets even though they don't actually represent any real heavenly body.

As I said above, I like to follow my gut and go for a more personal, subjective interpretation of these issues. A multitude of abstract, mathematical elements doesn't really appeal to me. I'd prefer to focus on actual heavenly bodies. But this is not necessarily because the objects are really "there", but rather because planets and asteroids are commonly names after mythological characters, and the nature of the mythological archetypes they represent is very useful when approaching astrology in a subjective, psychological way. Of the more abstract entities, the ones I might consider using are the lunar nodes (because they are widely used and traditional) and possibly Lilith, mostly because she's named after a mythological character (even if not from classical myth).

Of the actual heavenly bodies I'd like to emphasize the seven classical planets. But that doesn't necessarily mean discarding later discoveries. These would obviously include the outer planets (Uranus, Neptune and Pluto). Pluto of course is now classified as a dwarf planet, but in astrological terms that makes no difference. If, however, I include three minor objects, I might as well include others. Ceres is also a dwarf planet, so it's a likely candidate. Eris, another dwarf planet, might also be, but it's even farther than Pluto and has a very long orbit, plus it's not supported by Astrolog, my current choice of astrology software (same goes for the fourth currently known dwarf planet, Makemake). The asteroids Pallas, Vesta, Juno and Chiron are also used by many astrologers. Apart from Chiron, all these additional objects are named after goddesses, which would add much needed female energy to the mix, as the traditional planets, apart from Venus, are all named after male characters.

Of course one cannot use every possible object, so one has to have some criteria to make choices by. Of the asteroids, Pallas and Vesta are the largest, and thus strong candidates. There are, however, several asteroids larger than Juno. I surmise that Juno is often used alongside these others because, with them, it was one of the first to be found. But is tradition the most important criteria? We're only speaking of a difference of about 40 years here. Chiron is also often used, even though it was discovered much later and is smaller than Juno. Chiron, however, represents a very different group of bodies with many eccentricities, which may make its inclusion justified. Also, I must say that Chiron in my chart is in a very interesting position, which makes me reluctant to scrap it just based on its size. But I might just scrap Juno...

Another important question is which house system to use. Placidus is the most widely used, but it is problematic. Apart from being overly complicated, in my opinion, it doesn't work above the arctic circle, and any system that doesn't work for the entire planet seems fundamentally flawed to me. The Porphyry system, in all its simplicity, seems like the strongest candidate for me at the moment.

Well, this has grown into a really long post. I think that'll do for now. I'm not aware of any of my friends having a passion for astrology, but naturally feedback is always welcome.

This Is What Comes Out of Being a Hippie Nerd

It's funny how very different, but equally geeky, interests sometimes come together. I spent a lot of time last weekend setting up an environment for producing PDF natal charts (i.e. horoscopes) with LaTeX.

The first step was to get Astrolog working on my Mac. Astrolog is an old, but powerful command line astrology tool. Because of its age, it doesn't work on Mac OS X out of the box. I had to manually compile it after making a few changes to the makefile and sources. Google was a big help in getting it to work. I had to leave out X support, but I can live without it.

Next I discovered a LaTeX package for typesetting nice looking wheel charts, called horoscop. I think I actually first run into it while googling for info on how to get Astrolog to work on a Mac. What's more, the package is made by Matt Skala, the author of Bonobo Conspiracy! It uses Astrolog (or alternately Swiss Ephemeris) to calculate data for the charts.

Of course there were more obstacles to overcome. To get the most out of horoscop, I needed to install a font for astrological symbols. Installing fonts for TeX, if you've never done it before, is not entirely unlike trying to reach Mt Doom through a maze of orc-infested mountains. It involves copying certain files into the right places, editing certain configs and running certain commands. The problem was finding the right places for the files and the right config to edit, but in the end I had a working font.

Now I could proceed to work on a LaTeX template to draw a good looking chart with all the information I want. This took a lot of tweaking and learning about the features of the package. I'm pretty happy with the version I have now.

Astrology is a fairly recent interest for me, I've only been looking into it since last spring, more or less. Honestly, I've barely gotten started, and I've got a long way to go before I'd try to interpret anyone's birth chart.

I find astrology fascinating. No, I don't really literally believe that arbitrary positions of distant rocks or balls of gas affect peoples' lives. Like with Tarot, the symbols communicate with one's subconscious. It's the process of interpretation that really counts, not what is interpreted. And of course it also gives me an excuse to satisfy the nerd in me by playing around with LaTeX and other cool software.