Category Archives: Columnist

Big Thanks: Sagittarius, Jupiter and the Gemini Full Moon

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By Amanda Painter

The Sun enters Sagittarius today at 4:01 am EST (9:01:23 UTC) to begin the last month of the current season. Less than 24 hours later, we get a Full Moon in Gemini (the Moon opposite the Sun, exact at 12:39 am EST / 5:39:06 UTC). On the one hand, the Full Moon could amplify any Thanksgiving tensions (or other social polarities, if that’s not your holiday); on the other hand, given the mutable signs involved, you may find that conflicts are easier to breeze over, chat your way through, or bend around.

The 2015 Gemini Full Moon; photo by Amanda Painter

The 2015 Gemini Full Moon; photo by Amanda Painter

Part of what will spell the difference is your own personal emotional history and the social circumstances (especially familial) that you find yourself in today and through the weekend. If you’re gathering with people who don’t tend to push your buttons, or if you’ve done a lot of therapy and healing work around those buttons, the sociability of the planets currently in Sagittarius (the Sun, Jupiter and retrograde Mercury) may be more dominant or easier to tap into.

If you know you’ll be in a situation between now and Sunday where it’s possible old wounds might be metaphorically uncovered or picked at, it could be helpful to make a self-care strategy before you get there. Identify early the spaces (indoors or outdoors) where you can escape briefly to collect yourself. It might be useful to get in touch beforehand with either someone who’ll be at the gathering who is an ‘ally’, or someone elsewhere who’ll be able to respond to texts, and let them know you might call on them for a little grounding or venting.

Of course, if you decide instead to do your own thing — or if you get to choose who’s invited to the gathering, with no sense of obligation to invite those who cause you difficulty — this shouldn’t be as much of an issue. (Though you might want to investigate sometime the relationship between your sense of obligation to your family and your sense of commitment to your own healing process and wellbeing.)

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No. 2 from Group IV of "the ten biggest ones"; tempera on paper over canvas by Hilma af Klint (1862-1944).

Catching What Shakes Out of the Ethers

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By Amanda Painter

Today and tomorrow are busy days astrologically. The combination of events involved suggests that tracking your inner emotional and mental landscape (or monologue) is equally important as keeping tabs on what is going on around you personally and culturally — perhaps even more so; though the moments when external and internal intersect could also be key. Here are the main events:

No. 2 from Group IV of "the ten biggest ones"; tempera on paper over canvas by Hilma af Klint (1862-1944).

No. 2 from Group IV of “the ten biggest ones”; tempera on paper over canvas by Hilma af Klint (1862-1944). Her “Paintings for the Temple” relate to inner processes as conveyed in meditation via spiritual entities.

Mars is leaving Aquarius after a long sojourn in that sign — about six months, thanks to its retrograde, not counting a few weeks in Capricorn this summer. It finally dives into Pisces at 5:21 pm EST (22:20:42 UTC) today. About eight hours before Mars makes its move, we get the first quarter Moon (Aquarius Moon to Scorpio Sun, late in their signs).

Tomorrow, Venus stations direct in Libra after its own month-and-a-half or so of retrograde motion, most of which was in Scorpio. Venus makes its apparent pivot at 5:51 am EST (10:50:58 UTC). About 15 hours later, Mercury stations retrograde in Sagittarius at 8:33 pm EST (1:33:06 UTC Saturday).

That’s a lot to have happening all at once with the so-called personal planets: the bodies that represent such attributes as our motivation, physical activity and sex drive (Mars); our emotions, receptivity and intimate relationships (Venus); and our thought processes, communication and communication technology (Mercury). And although the monthly cycles of the Moon (emotions and subconscious) are perhaps less striking, the sense of moving into gear that can accompany the first quarter is certainly coloring the background.

As a result of all this, it would seem that the first order of business for the next few days is simply to stay tuned in — to your experiences, to your responses to others, to any little insights or pieces of information that come your way, to any urges or tugs of intuition, to the sensation that you’re finally answering a question you’ve been grappling with a while, and to the arrival of new questions. Standard protocol for Mercury stationing is to notice when your attention to the task at hand has lapsed so you can refocus; but with all that’s going on, it could be just as enlightening to note what other thought your mind was occupied with at that moment.

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A blue wave? Jupiter’s south pole, as seen by NASA’s Juno spacecraft from an altitude of 32,000 miles (52,000 kilometres). Photo by NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Betsy Asher Hall/Gervasio Robles

After the Election: Which Jupiter Will You Feed?

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By Amanda Painter

As the dust settles on Tuesday’s midterm elections in the U.S., I wish I could say the political landscape looked even more different — but I am grateful for the movement that was achieved. Voters came out in increased numbers on both sides, and women were voted into office to an unprecedented degree. There is no longer a one-party lock on all three branches of government.

A blue wave? Jupiter’s south pole, as seen by NASA’s Juno spacecraft from an altitude of 32,000 miles (52,000 kilometres). Photo by NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Betsy Asher Hall/Gervasio Robles

A blue wave? Jupiter’s south pole, as seen by NASA’s Juno spacecraft from an altitude of 32,000 miles (52,000 kilometres). Photo by NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Betsy Asher Hall/Gervasio Robles

This opens the way for House Democrats to put things in motion, specifically subpoenas to investigate Trump’s taxes and his involvement with Russia in 2016. Of course, Trump is already saying he’ll be happy to work with House Dems — as long as they don’t go after those subpoenas; in which case he’ll “fight fire with fire.”

Even so, we now have the first two Native American women in the U.S. House (for context, more than 10,000 people have served in the House since the first Congress met in 1789). The first two Muslim women have been voted into the House. A Latina woman is the youngest representative ever elected to the House, and there are new African American women elected to this branch of government, with USA Today putting the total number of all women in the House at 118 as of midday Wednesday — breaking the previous record.

Colorado elected its first openly gay governor. And although Democrat Beto O’Rourke lost his Senate bid in historically red Texas to incumbent Ted Cruz, he did strikingly well in counties that border Mexico and have higher Latinx populations (as well in as the more diverse urban centers in the state).

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View of October leaves from below; photo by Amanda Painter.

In These Days, Do Not Play Dead

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By Amanda Painter

We’re in the midst of the Days of the Dead (a Catholic celebration of departed souls that has pagan roots, and echoes in many ancient indigenous cultures), and I have a question: How does one honor one’s ancestors when so much of what they helped to build is being dismantled, perverted, mocked and cut down?

View of October leaves from below; photo by Amanda Painter.

View of October leaves from below; photo by Amanda Painter.

I’m not referring to past institutions that we’ve come to realize are systematically racist, sexist or in some other way oppressive; the process to recognize and dismantle those strikes me as being one of the reasons we’re all here at this time.

I’m talking about cultural advances that were made to lift up and empower as many people as possible, and which now appear threatened. I’m referring to past cultural lessons about things like fascism, which many people seem to have forgotten or somehow never learned in the first place.

If you are someone who chooses this time of year to honor your deceased ancestors, how do you bring your meditation and ritual intention into action? How might you choose to connect the past and your place in your familial lineage with serving the highest good for all concerned?

I have a couple thoughts on that, especially this week, in view of the pointedly anti-Semitic murder of 11 worshippers in a Pittsburgh, PA, synagogue (including one survivor of the Holocaust), and Pres. Trump’s declaration that he intends to issue an executive order ending birthright citizenship (which is protected by the Constitution). Trump’s refusal to denounce outright the violent actions of ‘white nationalist’ extremists, and his repeated, toxic, inflammatory language whipping up that demographic, is having visible — and measurable — effects.

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Photo by Amanda Painter, taken at the 2016 Sacred and Profane Festival.

Expressing What’s Real: Scorpio Sun Conjunct Venus

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By Amanda Painter

As I write this on Wednesday morning, I’m hearing reports of explosive devices discovered at the homes of Barack Obama and Bill and Hillary Clinton, and also at the CNN offices in New York; this is following an explosive found at the home of billionaire philanthropist George Soros on Monday. By the time you read this, there will likely be more information available; but as I write, I’m most interested in the accompanying astrology. (Ed. note: as of Thursday morning, we’re up to ten suspicious/explosive packages sent to eight people.)

Photo by Amanda Painter, taken at the 2016 Sacred and Profane Festival.

Photo by Amanda Painter, taken at the 2016 annual Sacred and Profane Festival on Peaks Island, Maine.

As if the party or parties responsible for these actions had consulted an astrologer, this all unfolded in the lead-up to Wednesday’s Taurus Full Moon conjunct Uranus (the explosive planet), opposite the Scorpio Sun (secrets, death, other people’s money). Close to the Sun in Scorpio is retrograde Venus — ruler of the Taurus Full Moon.

Sometimes it’s just astonishing how well the aspects mirror the themes of events. By now I shouldn’t be surprised, yet it can still catch me off-guard.

I’m curious whether it’s possible that the connection of Venus to laid-back Taurus is a factor in the explosives being discovered before they could detonate. Is it something about the retrograde quality? What is the significance of the lunar nodes square the Full Moon configuration; is it some kind of balancing point between what we know and what we don’t know, or a choice between paths of action?

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Looks Like Libra, Smells Like Scorpio

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By Amanda Painter

Although the Sun is still in Libra, some of this week’s news events appear to have a distinct Scorpio scent. This would seem to relate to astrology involving Mercury in Scorpio that is bookending the current workweek.

Micro-landscape at Acadia National Park one year ago. Photo by Amanda Painter.

Mossy micro-landscape at Acadia National Park in Maine one year ago. Photo by Amanda Painter.

We began the week with news coverage intensifying about the disappearance of Washington Post journalist and Saudi national Jamal Khashoggi.

Turkish officials allegedly have audio and video evidence of Khashoggi being tortured and dismembered within the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, which he had visited to obtain legal documents pertaining to his upcoming marriage.

We might interpret this as representing a dark shadow side to Mercury conjunct Venus in Scorpio, which was exact on Monday and which was also sextile Vesta in Capricorn. Usually astrologers describe Mercury-Venus conjunctions as stimulating an appreciation for beauty or declarations of love. Yet Mercury-Venus can also help one to see the underlying patterns in a relationship. The alleged events surrounding Khashoggi’s disappearance and apparent murder do appear to be laying bare certain unsavory facets in the relationship between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia.

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Shining a Light on Pluto

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By Amanda Painter

I recently ran across a Planet Waves article from a few years ago that described Pluto in Capricorn as wanting us to address the deepest subject matter of where ‘systems’ — such as family, religion, government, the legal system, and so on — pack all of their values into us, and then we end up with all that as ‘baggage’ that we have to sort through. Ten years into Pluto’s journey through Capricorn, I think it’s safe to say that was a pretty accurate description. Pretty much daily at this point we’re confronting events and experiences that center on these issues, and which ask us to take the conversations ever deeper.

Trail to Vernal Falls, Yosemite; photo by Amanda Painter.

Trail to Vernal Falls, Yosemite; photo by Amanda Painter.

At the top of the list, of course, are the ways the systems mentioned reinforce values around race, sex and the misuse of power in regard to each.

Those topics, in turn, are closely related to our attitudes toward the natural environment (and our place in it), economic mobility, the use of emerging technologies, approaches to and accessibility of health care… I could go on and on. But I suspect few would disagree that, at least in the U.S., race and sex (or sexual violence) are the two hottest of the hot-button issues in our polarized cultural dialogue.

Pluto in Capricorn is insisting that we dig into these areas as deeply as we can, and sort out what in there is entirely personal, and what is really collective. Yet I have to wonder: given the very large number of people who have direct personal experiences and even trauma involving one or both of those topics, is it truly possible to differentiate personal from collective?

I’m not 100% sure. Though I suspect that tomorrow’s square to Pluto by the Libra Sun could hold some hints. The sign Libra speaks of one-to-one relationships (among other things); with the Sun there, we get an emphasis on how we express ourselves in relation to others directly. As in, how we are in relation to one other specific person at a time.

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Beneath the Waves and Back: Venus Stations Retrograde

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By Amanda Painter

On Friday, at 3:04 pm EDT (19:04:14 UTC), Venus stations retrograde in Scorpio. We’re in one of those odd years when we get a series of ‘personal planet’ retrogrades in a row, sometimes overlapping each other. I think these years tend to have a distinct feel to them; I don’t know about you, but a significant chunk of 2018 has felt a little bit like limbo, or like one long phase of inner processing, and it looks like that might continue almost through the end of the year.

Playa Brava, Culebra, Puerto Rico. Photo by Amanda Painter.

Playa Brava, Culebra, Puerto Rico. Photo by Amanda Painter.

Mercury’s three yearly retrogrades is a pretty familiar pattern. But this year, Mercury’s second retrograde overlapped with the summer’s Mars retrograde. And then later this fall, several hours after Venus stations direct on Nov. 16, Mercury will station retrograde the same day.

I mention this not to freak out or depress anybody, but rather so you can get oriented with an eye toward continued introspection. Yes, you will have to continue taking necessary action in your life; you might be in the process of making big changes and choices; exciting opportunities could come your way, as might frustrating challenges that you’ll need to address.

As I understand it, these retrogrades are not about treading water so much as they are about seeking new levels of self-understanding, or reviewing what got you where you are so you can plot an informed course forward. Yes, there are certain precautions and guidelines — such as avoiding unnecessary large purchases while Mercury is retrograde, or not assuming that the new lover you hook up with during a Venus retrograde is ‘The One’. But that’s not the same as being too afraid to do what needs to be done.

So what’s unique about the chart for Venus stationing retrograde tomorrow? For one thing, Venus will change apparent direction in close conjunction with a hypothetical point called Poseidon (the Greek version of Neptune; associated with enlightenment and illumination) and with the asteroid Persephone (the goddess brought to the underworld by Pluto to be his wife, resulting in the seasons as she makes her annual journey above ground and then back down again).

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