Author Archives: Amanda Painter

Passion and Discipline: Venus Trine Saturn

By Amanda Painter

Working with any kind of passion or talent, whether artistic, sexual, ideological or other, requires a healthy dose of discipline to be of any use. You can have a knack for stringing phrases together with elegance and impact, but if you can’t be bothered to sit down at the computer on a regular basis, you’ll never ‘be a writer’.

Photo by Amanda Painter

To come at it another way, all of the hottest, most explosive romantic trysts in the world do not add up to a solid relationship without some kind of foundation, container or counterweight. Or — at the very least — some form of auxiliary fuel that burns way slower.

This weekend’s astrology is all about this balance and blending of passion (or talent) and discipline. It appears in the form of Venus, which ingresses Leo at 11:33 am EDT (15:33 UTC) Friday, making a trine to Saturn, which is retrograde in the first degree of Sagittarius. The Venus-Saturn trine is exact Saturday at 2:23 am EDT (6:23 UTC).

Leo and Sagittarius are both fire signs; they bring the passion and the heat. Fire is also associated with the spirit. Both fire and spirit need to be consciously directed and fed to be constructive and life giving. Left unattended, fire can either fizzle out or blaze into a destructive inferno; so, too, can spirit (think ‘life without purpose’ and ‘religious zealotry’ for the equivalents).

What we have with Venus in Leo is that fire/spirit taking shape through the heart, and given an outwardly directed expression. Loyalty, affection, desire and compassion are out in front where you can see them and feel them — sometimes in more dramatic or dramatized format than is strictly necessary. But then, some people really respond well to that; at the very least, it’s not an ambiguous message.

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You’re in the Right Place at the Right Time

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Dear Friend and Reader:

The Moon is in Sagittarius, moving into opposition with the Gemini Sun. That’s the Sagittarius Full Moon at 12:19 pm EDT (16:19 UTC) today, and chances are you’ve been feeling some form of energy peaking in the last day or so — possibly with the sensation of being in the right place, but at the wrong time.

Photo by Amanda Painter.

Eric explored the curious situation of this Full Moon in greater detail in his Monday Astrology Diary, with a hat-tip to Bob Dylan. The piece also updates the developing Mercury-Mars-Neptune pattern, and describes the asteroid Photographica conjunct the Full Moon.

In tonight’s Planet Waves FM, Eric’s topic is The Gemini Soul and the Sagittarius Full Moon. Eric will consider ideas from days of old that lead to the concept of Gemini, and consider where this idea fits the pattern of human experience.

He’ll also do a reading of the Sagittarius Full Moon, which is exact this afternoon. This week’s musical guest will be Bob Dylan, whose birthday was a few days ago.

Later in the week, Eric will post to Planet Waves FM his interview with Eric McLuhan, media theorist and the son of Marshall McLuhan. The topic is the renaissance that the world is experiencing now, and how the Internet is influencing consciousness. That will be posted to the Planet Waves FM site on Thursday or Friday.

Elsewhere on the Planet Waves website, check out this week’s sex-and-relationships guest-post by Charlie Glickman. He’s written about how trying to avoid disappointment (either your own or a partner’s) undermines relationships. Given the ‘right place, wrong time’ sensation you might be experiencing with the Full Moon — and since Full Moons often express themselves in our relationships — you might find some useful insights there.

Finally, in case you missed it Sunday, Eric put together a fantastic listing of the various unique-to-the-Internet (and incredibly relevant) audio readings currently offered by Planet Waves. You can read an updated version of that letter here.

It includes an audio preview of the Gemini birthday reading (which has been published!); a link to sign up for Eric’s upcoming live astrology class, called Retrogrades, Reincarnation, Re-Membering; and much more As always, we’d love to hear your thoughts about any of our readings.

Yours & truly,

Amanda Painter

P.S. In case you missed it last Tuesday, you can read your Moonshine horoscopes here. Len Wallick interpreted today’s Sagittarius Full Moon for all 12 Moon signs.

How Do You Like the Truth?

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By Amanda Painter

Mercury is still retrograde in Gemini, but take heart: Saturday’s Sun-Mercury conjunction signals the official halfway mark. You’re almost there. Now as you head into the weekend, try asking yourself what you do when you find out the truth.

Back-lit tulip; photo by Amanda Painter.

You might have some very recent experience in this, thanks to the Mercury-Mars conjunction in Gemini, which has been square Neptune in Pisces this week.

If you’re not sure that the themes of truth, deception or misunderstanding have been terribly present for you, keep your antennae up through the weekend. As the Sun moves into the aspect pattern, your conscious awareness may pick up a few more signals than before.

As you read this, Mercury is making its square to Neptune, exact Friday at 3:00 am EDT / 7:00 UTC (as Mars drifts out of the pattern). This is the second of three Mercury-Neptune squares related to this retrograde phase.

The Sun joins the act Saturday into Sunday. Sun conjunct Mercury is exact at 12:56 pm EDT May 30 (16:56 UTC); Sun square Neptune is exact at 9:08 am EDT May 31 (13:08 UTC).

These aspects might only be exact briefly, but their effect extends out on either side by a few days. And since all the moving parts are coming into contact with each other fairly close together, it’s all basically one event. The themes involved may shift in emphasis, tone or expression for you, but you can think of the story being woven as a unified whole.

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Your Moonshine Horoscopes, and Mercury-Mars-Neptune

Rethinking Life on the Baggage Carousel

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Much of life comes down to taking responsibility for ourselves and for our ‘stuff’, and doing so before we’ve let it undermine us in our dealings with others. Yet there’s the rub: we learn a lot from our mistakes.

Four women (sisters? I mean, look at that hair and synchronized sipping…) waiting for their flight to be called. Photo by Amanda Painter.

We see the truth of our baggage not when it’s all tightly packed and stowed in the overhead compartment, but rather when the zipper fails as it’s been tossed onto the conveyer belt. Suddenly everything’s all out in the open.

And if we’re honest with ourselves, we can admit that maybe we did over-pack that bag, and maybe it is time to sort things out and travel lighter. If displaced anger and shame take over, suddenly the mess is everyone’s fault but ours — and the next time we fly, we repeat the whole uncomfortable scene.

It’s that anger element I want to touch on for a moment. On Tuesday, Eric wrote to Planet Waves subscribers about Monday’s square between Mars in Gemini and Neptune in Pisces, exact May 25 at 7:38 pm EDT / 23:38 UTC. (This aspect also involves retrograde Mercury in Gemini as it develops next week).

He said, “There’s rather significant potential for self-destructive behaviors to resurface. The coolest heads must prevail in all sensitive matters of communication, and even in the most ordinary.”

I’m reiterating his message here because Mars aspects tend to be most palpable as they approach, rather than the day they are exact. Aspects to Neptune also have a very wide orb of influence (that is, they can be felt for days on either side of being exact).

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Spinsters and Crones…or the Re-emergence of the Healing Wise Women of the 21st Century

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Note: Amanda Moreno expects to be back with her column next weekend. In the meantime, Here’s the first part of another of our Featured Articles from Cosmophilia: You Belong Here. You may read the piece in its entirety here; comments are welcome below and on the Cosmophilia website. — Amanda P.

by Elizabeth Routledge

I turned fifty in 2012, some months before the prophecies for ‘The End of The World’ (as we knew it), were due to kick in. Being the hopeful type I felt excited at the prospect of a paradigm shift and my part in it. The world and mainstream media, however, painted a different picture: as a woman of ‘a certain age’ I was approaching invisibility and impending retirement.

Betty Dodson and younger friend; Photo by Eric Francis

The endless rampant consumerism, ecological suicide and perpetual war seemed to go on its not-so-merry way.

In a world that worships youth and the next new thing I could succumb to feeling irrelevant. Yet I keep coming across vital older and elderly women who are wise, inspiring and contributing positively to the story of our world.

One, numerologist Gail Minogue, claims that:

…offstage, waiting for the spotlight, are the middle-aged women…Everything is cyclical. We have not visited the importance of middle-aged women for about 200 years so we have little reference to this phenomena. This phase of power for this group will last until 2044 (starting 2024) so it is a long run and will have women in their 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s running the financial systems, the political systems, the social and cultural systems and the general well-being of our society.

If she is right, then women need to get ready to (re)claim power and authority, not as monstrous ‘Maggie Thatchers’ (i.e., taking on ‘masculine’ attributes) but as leaders, curators, storytellers, filmmakers, CEOs, mentors, elders and paradigm-bridgers who can inspire and nurture future generations.

The Good Book says that without vision the people perish, but the current vision of parasitic corporations, sociopathic puppeteer politicians, mindless military/police, and a populace without privacy or freedom is not one that serves humanity, but a disparate elite who fail to realize that we are all connected. These visionaries may well be the Women of Chiron, the wounded healers who have lived forgiveness and been transformed by pain.

There are too many women who lose their vision and sense of purpose as they age. I know many who would have once been called ‘spinsters’, some desiring to be in a relationship, others glad not to be, but all questioning their place in the world. We need to be reminded of how much we have to offer, and not be seduced by marketing that would have us compare and compete and compel us to carve up our faces into the neotenous masks of plastic surgery. It is a futile resistance. The media constantly exacerbates our fears of being discarded because we are no longer childbearing, no longer desirable, and therefore of very little value.

But we have much to offer. We do belong here. We must begin to recognize the beauty of the lines and scars that tell our stories. We must begin again to value life experience, wisdom and character. We must champion the elders and their wisdom — before it is too late.

The older woman particularly needs to think bigger and bolder, to dream again, and place a new value on who she is and why she is here. “… The future belongs to a very different kind of person with a very different kind of mind — creators and empathizers, pattern recognizers … These people — artists, inventors, designers, storytellers, caregivers, consolers, big-picture thinkers … The Conceptual Age,” writes Daniel Pink, in A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule The Future.

Surely that includes the experienced female, humbled by life, yet full of empathy and understanding?

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Death sentence for Boston Marathon bomber Tsarnaev; Mercury and the Moon say it’s not over yet

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At 3:30 pm today, May 15, the federal grand jury for the trial of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev — the younger brother involved in the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing — handed down its verdict: Tsarnaev has been given the death penalty, The New York Times reported. Looking at the chart for the decision, however, Mercury and the Moon make it clear this story is not over.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev; photo: Federal Bureau of Investigations. See the bottom of this post for the full chart of the jury’s announcement.

The jury of seven women and five men convicted Tsarnaev, 21, of all 30 charges against him last month. Seventeen of those charges carry the death penalty — despite the fact that Massachusetts, where the trial has taken place and where the jurors live, has no death penalty for state crimes.

Federal law supersedes state law in a federal case; that said, the Times and others have made the point that, in this sense, the state was therefore not represented.

Polls also show Massachusetts residents overwhelmingly prefer life in prison for Tsarnaev, though generally not on humanitarian grounds: some see life in prison as much worse than death for the 21-year-old; others fear execution would make him a martyr.

Regardless of state law and public opinion, jurors had to be willing to impose the death penalty (be “death qualified”) in order to be chosen for the jury — an ironic twist on the concept of ‘justice’ represented by the early Libra ascendant for the verdict.

Yet as mentioned, what really stands out in the chart are two things: one, Mercury is about to station retrograde in Gemini, a sign known for ‘two sides of the story’; two, the Moon in late Aries is officially Void of Course (VOC), using traditional methods. That is, it is not going to make any major angles to major or traditional planets before it leaves the sign it is in.

Mercury about to station is as about as close as astrology gets to a guarantee that the story (in this case, Tsarnaev’s sentence) will change directions, probably at least twice. Supporting that image of Mercury traveling back and forth is that federal death penalty cases have a long history of being appealed for years, even decades.

Adding to the likelihood of a long appeals process, Tsarnaev’s defense lawyer is Judy Clarke, who rarely loses. Clarke’s famous (or infamous) former clients include Theodore J. Kaczynski, the Unabomber; Eric Rudolph, the Olympic Park bomber; and Jared L. Loughner, who killed six people in an assassination attempt on Representative Gabrielle Giffords.

Defendants sentenced to death in federal cases also have a history of rarely actually being executed. According to the same Times article:

“Of the 80 federal defendants sentenced to death since 1988, only three, including Timothy J. McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber, have been executed. Most cases are still tied up in appeal. In the rest, the sentences were vacated or the defendants died or committed suicide.”

It could be this is what the VOC Moon is indicating: the sentence might never come to pass — at least, not as it has been declared. Time will tell.

Chart for the sentencing of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the surviving brother accused and convicted of the 2013 Boston Marathon Bombing. View glyph key here.

Room to be Wrong: Mars-Saturn, Mercury Retrograde

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By Amanda Painter

In just four days, on May 18, Mercury stations retrograde in Gemini. This means we’re in the ‘storm’ phase: consider this your heads up to back up files and hard drives, and to stop to think more often than you don’t, as the days surrounding a Mercury station can be especially glitch-y. But Mercury is not the only planet in Gemini making itself known.

Photo by Amanda Painter.

Mars arrived there Monday. It’s in an opposition to Saturn in Sagittarius that’s exact at 2:03 am EDT Friday, but you’ve likely already noticed its effects.

A good friend of mine recently described how much more flexible she has become in recent years. For most of her life, being ‘right’ was incredibly important to her; it was the thing that mattered most in any interpersonal conflict. She realized, however, that stubbornly insisting others see things her way causes deadlock; sometimes moving forward means allowing someone to be wrong, and working from there. Sometimes being happy means letting go of being ‘right’ in a disagreement.

Keep these dynamics in mind as you interact with others over the next couple days. Mars-Saturn oppositions can be challenging, because the planets involved represent opposite impulses. Mars represents compelling desire and the drive to take action (among other things); Saturn, in part, represents limits and containers. We need both to get anything done in life.

Think of Mars as your body’s muscles and Saturn as its bones, and you get a sense of how the interplay can work: your muscles need something to push and pull against to move your body; your bones not only provide the scaffolding for the muscles, but in turn need the muscles to expend their energy so that you don’t just lie rigidly on the floor.

Placement in the signs Gemini and Sagittarius flavors this relationship into a less physical, more mental/verbal expression. Mars in Gemini can have a quick, sharp tongue. It wants to make a point — and may even have a very good point to make. Saturn in Sagittarius makes for a big-picture, belief-oriented type of authority, though it can be proud and is unlikely to suffer affronts.

However, Saturn is currently retrograde. Whoever in your life is currently setting boundaries and making the rules is focused inward on themselves. As Eric described to me, Saturn retrograde in Sagittarius is saying, “I believe what I believe and you can’t change that.”

This feels maddening when you know you’re right about something and have all the details you need to argue your point and prove the other person wrong. But in the long run, can you really change what they believe? Ultimately, does it matter?

There can be times when it is critical to your survival or the wellbeing of others to speak your mind and convince another person to see things your way. But how often is that the case? This week, you can leave people room to be wrong — including yourself. As Mars continues through Gemini aspecting other planets and Mercury stirs up the mental plane over the next few weeks, knowing your own mind and what brings it peace — and some grace and flexibility — may come in handy.