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Dear Friend and Reader:

In the astrology readings below, you have my interpretations for November, a month with two turning-point events in our mini-era of personal history. These are the main events on which I’ve based your readings.

Here is a bit of life as art: Pres. Obama ordered the White House illuminated as a rainbow the night that the Supreme Court ruled that same-sex marriage is a fundamental right. Photo: SF Chronicle.

The first is a conjunction of Venus and Mars in Virgo; this is the third conjunction between these two planets this year. As I described in many signs of Cosmophilia, the 2015 annual reading, this series of Venus-Mars conjunctions tells a story about relationships and one’s orientation on relationships.

It was only this past June that the Supreme Court ruled (in a decision that was surprising for many reasons) that it’s a fundamental constitutional right for same-sex people to marry. Yes, this had been in the works for many years — millennia, if you count the intolerance (spanning from shunning to execution) with which same-sex companions have been treated through history.

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Long distance runner, what you standing there for?
— The Grateful Dead [play mp3]

Dear Friend and Reader:

Though the Sun is still in Libra, along with Mercury, the North Node and Juno, there is some unusual activity going on one sign away in Virgo. I’ve kept the focus on Libra themes during the Sun’s transit and recent Mercury retrograde there, though I’ve got some information from Virgo for you today.

Four years ago this month, and one of my favorite news photos I’ve ever taken — Occupy Wall Street mass protest in Times Square takes place as the news ticker reads, “Occupy Wall Street Movement Goes Worldwide.”

Before I go there, I have one other bit to add, about the lunar nodes in Aries/Libra. These mysterious things in the chart, which seem like the last thing an astrology student understands, are making a rare visit to the Aries Point.

For a few more days for this 18-year cycle, the South Node is in the first degree of Aries, and the North Node is in the first degree of Libra.

This aligns the personal-as-political or individual-as-cultural property that both the nodes and the Aries Point often display. You might say that it puts our whole mini-era of history into a kind of resonator, which makes it easier to hear what we’re saying to ourselves and to one another. In other words, to hear the message that we are sending to ourselves and to one another, all that’s necessary is to listen — and this is especially easy now, since the message is so clear.

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Dear Friend and Reader:

Mercury stations direct Friday, concluding a long succession of inner-planet retrogrades — first Mercury, then Venus, then Mercury again. This is an unusual station direct, characterized by Mercury in the resonant first degree of Libra, opposite the Aries Point and conjunct the lunar North Node.

Photo by Charlie Lemay.

These factors all describe a bold and meaningful moment; granted, one set amidst the usual chaos and turmoil of the world. There are subtle points to the chart as well, though first I would like to cover a few basics. And before I go there, I want to remind you that tonight will be a live, call-in edition of Planet Waves FM (the third and last in this particular series).

That will be at 9 pm EDT (other time zones listed below). You’re invited to share your Mercury retrograde stories, your thoughts about relationships, your vision for yourself and the world and just about anything else. Call details are at this link, or below this letter.

Mercury stationing direct can be stressful. You might feel overwhelmed and like you just need to get by. Take things slowly and do your best to prioritize. The tide will turn fairly rapidly Friday as the station-direct happens (at about 10:57 am EDT, 7:57 am PDT or 14:57 UTC), and much that you were concerned about will seem to evaporate.

If there are things that you didn’t accomplish or had to put off, I suggest using some discipline to make sure that you can do them well rather than just getting stuff done.

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Dear Friend and Reader:

Mercury is retrograde in Libra, and at least as far as I’m experiencing it, this has opened the way to a useful discussion of relationships and sexuality. If it has not for you, this might be a time to bring up the topic where you feel it’s necessary or appropriate. Now may very well be the time to have a long-delayed conversation.

Astraea, the goddess who holds the scales of justice in the sign Libra. The asteroid (5) Astraea was discovered in 1845, a year before Neptune.

We recently experienced a total eclipse of the Moon in Aries, and there are planets gathered along both sides of the Aries-Libra axis. You can think of this as a series of engagements or confrontations about the place where self meets other, and where self-interest must integrate itself with shared interest.

The nodes of the Moon are now placed in the first degrees of Aries and Libra — the Aries Point — which suggests that individual circumstances and conversations have a resonance with what many other people are experiencing.

You may be aware that at 9 pm EDT Thursday, I’ll be hosting a forum for men to talk about the subject matter, themes and issues that they experience in relationships.

I’ll be joined on tonight’s call by Shell Goldman, a senior facilitator at an organization called Gender Reconciliation International. Details for how to participate in that call are in the first item below this letter. Women are invited to listen and participate.

Goldman and his colleagues at GRI, a nonprofit organization, work throughout the world in processes that are designed to help men and women make peace, even in communities in Africa that are ravaged by both rape and AIDS. What prompted me to have Goldman on the program was the discussion of recent events in Asheville, North Carolina, where two coffee-shop owners were found to be publishing a misogynistic blog and podcast. The two were guests this past Saturday on a special edition of Planet Waves FM.

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Beach at Montauk looking west, equinox 2015. Photo by Eric

Here is tonight’s live edition of Planet Waves FM

Use this link if you’re listening on an iOS or mobile device. Download MP3.

Dear Friend and Reader:

Sunday night (early Monday in some time zones), the Moon will form an opposition to the early Libra Sun. This is the Aries Full Moon, though it’s also a total lunar eclipse. This promises to be a memorable event, if only for its spectacular beauty if you get a look at it where skies are clear, and also for the ripple effect that it’s likely to have when read as an astrological factor.

Montauk facing southeast. Photo by Eric.

There’s something in astrology known as the Aries Point. It’s the first degree of the zodiac, also the location of the Sun on the vernal equinox. Its technical name is the sidereal vernal point, or SVP. It’s the point of reckoning between the sidereal zodiac used in Vedic astrology and the tropical zodiac used in our astrology.

Though it’s not a thing, the Aries Point acts with the strength of a planet and, for astrologers who do predictive work, it’s a dependable tool. Young astrologers learning to feel and decipher the energies of different points are in for a jolt the first time they experience this non-thing express itself with the influence of Uranus, Chiron or Pluto.

My own key phrases for the Aries Point include “the personal is political” (borrowed from Carol Hanisch of the feminist collective Redstockings) and “the intersection of the individual with the collective.” It reminds me of the David Byrne lines, “When the world crashes into my living room / Television made me what I am.”

Events that affect millions of people in a personal way are often associated with the Aries Point. One way to think of this critter is as a repeating station or distribution node for ideas. Often people with a strong Aries Point placement in their charts like to get the word out, or they’re good at it even if they didn’t intend to be that way. The things they say and do can have unusual resonance with the culture around them. Some are just extremely sensitive to outer influences.

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Dear Friend and Reader:

Thursday, Sept. 17 is one of those days when everything happens, though in my view Saturn’s ingress into Sagittarius is the main event. All the surrounding fanfare feels like an initiation ceremony for what will be an interesting phase of collective and personal history.

Artist’s concept of the Milky Way, our home. Its center is located in the sign Sagittarius. Astronomy Picture of the Day writes, “A recent survey of stars conducted with the Spitzer Space Telescope is convincing astronomers that our Milky Way Galaxy is not just your ordinary spiral galaxy anymore. Looking out from within the Galaxy’s disk, the true structure of the Milky Way is difficult to discern. However, the penetrating infrared census of about 30 million stars indicates that the Galaxy is distinguished by a very large central bar some 27,000 light-years long.”

Saturn’s two-year journey through Sagittarius involves squares to Nessus, Neptune and Chiron in Pisces, and conjunctions to the Great Attractor and the Galactic Core — as well as other slow-moving points still holding space in those late degrees of Sagittarius, close to the Galactic Core.

In case that last paragraph blew through like a breeze, I’ll break it down. There are currently a number of meaningful elements in Pisces — Nessus, one of the earliest-discovered centaurs; Neptune, a slow-mover that will be around well into the next decade; and Chiron, which will transition out of Pisces in 2018-2019.

Saturn in Sagittarius will make a series of 90-degree aspects to each of those points, and that means a combination of tension and working out of certain issues, the kind that tend to be invisible and evade easy description. The kind of issues you might keep coming back to over and over, wondering when you’re going to ‘get it right’.

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Dear Friend and Reader:

On Sunday, the Moon and Sun form a conjunction in Virgo, which is the New Moon and also a partial solar eclipse. This leads into what may be the most interesting day of the year, Thursday, Sept. 17, when Mercury stations retrograde in Libra, Saturn enters Sagittarius for the next two years, and we get the one-and-only Jupiter opposite Neptune aspect for this 13-year cycle.

Family photo — this is your distant cousin. Artist’s concept of Homo naledi, a newly discovered precursor of humanity. He lived in South Africa.

Events that concentrate around eclipses are always interesting. This week anthropologists revealed the discovery of a new species of probable human ancestor, Homo naledi.

Researchers learned about a cave scattered with old bones from spelunkers who discovered the spot in South Africa, about 30 miles from Johannesburg. It turned out to be a burial area for pre-humans.

News reports quote researchers as saying the newly discovered species is believed possibly to date to at least 2.5 million to 2.8 million years ago. Parts of at least 15 individuals have been recovered and are on display at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

“Besides introducing a new member of the prehuman family,” The New York Times reported, “the discovery suggests that some early hominins intentionally deposited bodies of their dead in a remote and largely inaccessible cave chamber, a behavior previously considered limited to modern humans. Some of the scientists referred to the practice as a ritualized treatment of their dead, but by ‘ritual’ they said they meant a deliberate and repeated practice, not necessarily a kind of religious rite.”

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Dear Friend and Reader:

Venus stations direct Sunday after a six-week retrograde. This is one of the rare Venus retrogrades I’ve experienced when it felt like, and where many people described it feeling like, Mercury retrograde.

Official promotional photo Neil deGrasse Tyson by Karl Kaul.

Venus and Mercury are both closer to the Sun than is the Earth, so there are similarities there. They rush past us during the retrograde phase. I think that Venus has more influence in the mental realm than people give it credit for.

I’ve noticed that the deeper levels of intelligence are connected to a strong Venus placement; this takes the mind to the body level, what you might think of as innate or somatic knowledge that’s connected to the senses and also to memory. In recent years the concept of emotional intelligence has gained some acceptance in society — rather than being all about smartness, emotional intelligence is a wider-spectrum sensibility that can feel like intuition. I’ve seen in astrology that this can be described by Venus, among other factors.

I’ve heard descriptions of mixups and a scattered feeling with this Venus retrograde, which to me feels like it’s churning things around on a deeper level than Mercury. It has some of that tricksterish quality, though, which is uncharacteristic of Venus. The retrograde started in a Mercury-ruled sign (Virgo), so that may be a connection.

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