Tag Archives: Mars

Approaching the Capricorn New Moon and Eclipse

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By Amanda Painter

Happy New Year! Even though most people try to set their New Year’s resolutions and intentions by Jan. 1, the astrology this year is clearly indicating a wider window for this process — and for beginning to take active steps in accordance. The major event with this theme is Saturday’s New Moon in Capricorn, which also happens to be a partial solar eclipse.

intel

As we go deeper into this most unusual and challenging phase of history, intelligence is the thing we need the most. That is the theme of the 2019-2020 annual edition of Planet Waves — audio now available for instant access. See more information here. If you’re looking for individual signs, order here.

This New Moon — a conjunction of the Sun and Moon — is exact at 8:28 pm EST on Jan. 5 (1:28:05 UTC Jan. 6). The peak of the partial solar eclipse is about 13 minutes later.

One notable feature of this event is that it occurs right at the midpoint of Capricorn; and, incidentally, very close to the midpoint of the current positions of Saturn and Pluto in Capricorn (those planets are about three-and-a-half to five-and-a-half degrees on either side). This looks like some real “engine of change” astrology based on that proximity alone; I’m also wondering if it carries some foreshadowing or early echoes of the 2020 Saturn-Pluto conjunction.

From what I’ve read about Saturn-Pluto conjunctions, I suspect one message of this New Moon and eclipse is to begin really focusing your energies: on your highest priorities, or perhaps on anything that seems to be restricted. As in, if something in your life feels narrowed or limited, what is your attention being trained on? What does it mean to be very thorough within certain parameters, as opposed to trying to ‘do it all’ in a more dispersed fashion?

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Getting Ready to Get Going

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By Amanda Painter

Even though the calendar page will turn to a new year in a few days, the astrological year still has most of a season left to it. Yet the sense of one thing ending and something new beginning is still strong — and there is some major astrology on its way to support that sensation, even if the timing is not exact.

Photo by Amanda Painter

Photo by Amanda Painter

For one thing, Uranus will station direct on Jan. 6. This means that ALL the sign-ruling planets will be in direct motion for a spell — Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto (the Sun and Moon are never retrograde).

If that doesn’t sound like a cosmic green light to finally move important projects forward, I’m not sure what does. I don’t know about you, but after the continual feeling of limbo I experienced with this year’s inner-planet retrogrades, I’m really looking forward to a phase of momentum and traction, even if it’s brief.

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Things to Do When It’s 3:00 pm All Day

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By Amanda Painter

We’re one week and one day away from the Capricorn solstice. Here in my corner of the Northern Hemisphere, the urge to hunker down and cozy up is strong, despite all the holiday insistence. As my college photography teacher said recently, “This time of year, it’s 3:00 pm all day” — referring to the quality of the light, as the Sun never gets very high in the sky here, and only shines for a short time. It makes the day feel late, not long after it begins.

Mill Pond, Casco, Maine; photo by Amanda Painter.

Mill Pond, Casco, Maine; photo by Amanda Painter.

This year, the fact of finally being on the other side of a year of inner-planet retrogrades seems to be adding to the paradoxical urgency brought by the holidays in this time of slowing down and moving inward. As in, suddenly there are opportunities for forward movement and outward development that seemed to be in hiding much of the year (speaking for myself personally, at least).

Yet, true to the season, many of those opportunities are still in potential. Looking ahead to the months when they might actually culminate — aiming toward the vision, the goal, the horizon — resonates with the tone of Sagittarius, where the Sun is. But so much of that is mental: the Gemini side of that zodiac axis. And there’s only so much one can do in one’s mind before setting events into physical motion must follow, before intention and action must be integrated.

Reflecting a fairly quiet week astrologically, the central aspect heading into the weekend is the first quarter Moon. This is the Sun in late Sagittarius receiving a square from the Moon in late Pisces, exact at 6:49 am EST (11:49:08 UTC) on Saturday.

Squares tend to reflect tension and a need to integrate two sides of something by taking action of some kind. Perhaps fittingly, this particular first quarter Moon involves two of the signs most related to formulating a broad vision of something, and related to the concept of ‘spirituality’.

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A Mercury Station, a New Moon, and You Are Enough

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By Amanda Painter

Often misworded, the quotation “Do what you can, with what you’ve got, where you are” is also overwhelmingly misattributed to Theodore Roosevelt (Teddy did not come up with it; he quotes it in his autobiography, and attributes it to one Squire Bill Widener of Widener’s Valley, Virginia). Be that as it may, it struck me as perhaps a useful mantra for the current astrology as we head into the weekend. With Mercury stationing direct today, a New Moon in Sagittarius tomorrow, and various other planets interacting with those two events, you might be feeling a mix of push-pull on the one hand, and a lull in energy on the other hand.

Rocking chairs at the Portland International Jetport, Portland, Maine. Photo by Amanda Painter.

Rocking chairs at the Portland International Jetport, Portland, Maine. Photo by Amanda Painter.

If that’s the case, I suspect it would be useful to stay in touch with your actual circumstances, resources and honest desires. I’m not only referring to the seeming ‘limitations’ of What Is, but also to something that you may sometimes push aside or not believe: your inherent enough-ness; that is, the fact that you are enough, as you are right now.

But, I get ahead of myself. Let’s go over the astrology in a little more detail.

As mentioned, Mercury stations direct in late Scorpio today at 4:22 pm EST (21:21:59 UTC). I don’t know about you, but the last few weeks (most of which Mercury spent in Sagittarius) seem to have been marked by a number of interesting things coming to light — both in the public/political realm, and also in my personal life.

Given that Scorpio is the sign of secrets (among other things), I’m very curious to witness what shakes out as it stations direct today. See if you can keep your awareness tuned to that sense of something being revealed, and make a note of what you discover.

Tomorrow, at 2:20 am EST (7:20:15 UTC), the Sagittarius Moon and Sun form their conjunction for the month, for the New Moon. They do so conjunct a deep-space phenomenon called the Great Attractor (you can read more about that here) and square Mars and Neptune in Pisces.

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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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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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