Saturn Return Can Bite Me

April Planet Waves

Here.

Taurus (April 19-May 20)
The concepts ‘Taurus’ and ‘change’ sometimes seem to have nothing in common, but this is the season when you may shock yourself with how much stuck energy you can move in a short time. This month, Venus ingresses Gemini, where it will be until August — a long time for Venus to be in one sign. This is an extended special occasion, which includes Venus retrograde and the Venus transit of the Sun — a rare event that will be visible during daylight hours. One theme is a sudden, liberating release from the past. This includes moorings into history deeper than you remember, which will allow you to do something else — make contact with a point of origin or what you can think of as your original instructions for this lifetime. Don’t worry if today you don’t have any notion of what that means; live your life as normally as you can, but being responsive to opportunity, to chance encounters and to anything that has an odd sense of familiarity. In essence, the theme of this season is staying open to the experience of existence. Notice what seem to be random encounters, desires that come out of nowhere and people who you find unusually moving. Experiment with new activities, or going deeper into the ones that you love but have not had time for. What influences your life in these very days has the power to do so deeply, and in ways that can truly shift your reality.

Scorpio (Oct. 23-Nov. 22)
As you know, we live in a culture obsessed with image, too often lacking any expression of what is real or meaningful. Any time you try to make an impression on someone, or lead them to believe something about you, stop and ask yourself why. Image is powerful, even dangerous, and for you this power must be applied to honest and worthy causes. Given that you stand at a major signpost of your life, it’s time to inquire: who or what do your actions serve? Mars stationing direct (after a long retrograde which began in January) in an angle of your chart that includes the themes of service and your vision for your life is a reminder that (in the words of Dylan) you’re gonna serve someone (or something). That fact you cannot alter, though you get to decide what that something is, based on your true values. I don’t just mean what might be external to you — I mean searching your depths for what you want to offer to the world. Mars retrograde in Virgo has infused your traditional ruling planet with all of the properties of that sign: attention to detail, devotion to healing, tempering aggressive impulses (particularly toward yourself), and the integration of your masculine and feminine sides. And then there is the famous Virgo theme of devotion to something beyond yourself. Yet what this really suggests is that you’re expanding your concept of yourself, and can now bring together many elements of life you might have thought were separate.

And more Michael Lutin

Wonder why...

you can be so fired up one day about a person, place or thing
and feel so blah and uncertaiin and anxious and worried the next?
Not even one DAY to the next.
One minute to hte next.

You can be all inspired and jazzed and enthusiastic and optimistic
about a project or a relationship.
And then you think it's all a bunch of baloney.
It erodes your self-confidence as well.
You can be all hopped up and energetic, in a hurry to put it out there, but then..but then..
you just don't give a flying crap about it.
Well, you do, but the obstacles are too great.
The effort is impossible to maintain. One second you want it NOW the next second you think its not worth the wait then you tell yourself be calm be cool everything takes time
then agian you say its not worth it and back and forth ten times.
It's cosmic.
That is exactly the vibration going on: a contest between microwaving a slice of pizza
and slow roasting a potato.
This conflict that will NOT go away immediately.
Uranus in Aries is hot because Aries is hot.
It needs immediate attention.
It craves action NOW, not tomorrow or even five mintues from now.
It wants what it wants when it wants it. It's tired of waiting around for results.
God helps those who help themselves type thing.
It's NOW goddammit, Now!
it's Lady Ga-ga at her most outrageous.
Its Russell Crowe throwing a phone at a wall.
It's a molotov cockatil party.
it's everything you do when you are y fed up with being manipulate and pushed around.

PLUTO IN CAPRICORN, however, is cold because Capricorn is cold.
It waits
It watches.
It reacts slowly and deliberately.
It doens't fly off the handle or come in its pants.
It is the calculation of the possibility of results before moving forward.
It understands the consequences of every act and therefore it protects its king with its pawns..
Not the swiftest player on the team but the one with the endurance.
It grows slowly like a Sequoia tree,
like moss,
like mold in your bathroom, and just as hard to cut down and get rid of.
It can always be counted on for its wisdom,
because it has the benefit of allowing experience to teach it before jumpiing into anything.
Or anyone.
The two forces are operating in the heavens. In world politics. And in your head.
That's why you're hot one day and cold the next.
It's cosmic menopause.

This week's AstroBarry

Oh lord, this is totally how my last few days have gone. Eerily so. Long story short: on the good side, successfully drove to, around, and back from the nearest big city to me by myself for the first time without getting hopelessly lost or crying like I did in December. Only took me 4 months of weekly practice to get to that point. HUZZAH! On the bad side, had an extremely nasty hours-long blowout with my mother after her crazy erupted all over me. The insults got particularly memorable this time, including wishing I was a boy so I'd be more obedient. (I promptly thought of  how the few dudes in my gene pool have not been known for keeping their tempers, and was mentally laughing my head off.)

So here's the 'scopes:

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): A reappearance of certain ethical concerns is beckoning you back from the frontiers of consciousness, where I essentially encouraged you to wander about in last week's horoscope… but whether the content of this call is one which ought to be considered as seriously as it would have you believe, or whether it's a zombie-like apparition of some former guiding-principle that no longer serves your growing interests, remains to be seen. You are presently caught, Taurus, between (1) taking magnificent, life-expanding advantage of this still-fledgling freedom you've recently claimed for yourself and (2) bowing to firm strictures that were instilled in you long ago, clearly stipulating specific behaviors are allowed and disallowed, which are threatened by the encroachment of these new desires of yours that fall either in the grey area or decidedly within the long-standing 'disallowed' category. In other words, what you have been taught and/or strongly believed in the past may, or may not, be getting in the way of your evolution. And pretending this moral dilemma doesn't exist will not make it go away. Instead, you must approach the familiar belief as a debater might: testing its soundness, listening for cracks and internal contradictions, posing tricky questions that reveal its shakier links in logic, and arguing with whichever of its facets seems to prohibit your growth in that frontiersy direction. Only after participating in this debate to its rational conclusion can you know for sure whether this certain tenet of your philosophical worldview need be overthrown, in order for your evolutionary freedom to triumph.

SCORPIO (October 23-November 21): The words are dense, with power. They are not merely about what their dictionary definitions denote, but hold a surprising amount of unfinished psychological business that even their speaker may be largely unaware of. Therefore, do not take them merely at face value—though that is not to imply anybody is necessarily being deceptive or insincere, if they aren't wholly conscious their longings or discontentments or fears are saturating their supposedly simple statements or requests. Do not neglect to pause, in your rush to get something moving quickly ahead, to consider why this person said it quite the way they did… and what else they may be conveying, something you'll miss if you don't stay in tune. And do not neglect to acknowledge the dense power of your own words, Scorpio, to inadvertently wound or devalue, should your temper be set off by not immediately finding what you'd expected to find… or, on the contrary, to lift somebody up, by investing them with the earnest esteem all our human interactions deserve, no matter how perfunctory the topic or busy our schedule.

See what I mean?

Saturn in Scorpio: this one worries me

As well it should, I suppose.

• Be prepared to lose something, even if it’s just your sense of control. Saturn will confront you with fears of loss, abandonment, powerlessness and betrayal. Note that the anticipation may be greater than the actual loss.
• Focus on what’s left. What can you do to heal yourself? How can you make the situation work for you? Hint: it will not involve obsessing over what you no longer have.
• Confront what scares you. This could involve deep intimacy, sharing and merging your resources (financial and emotional).
• Identify energy that you’ve directed towards stalking, controlling, manipulating or holding grudges.  Take all that energy and point it in a direction that is brand new and does not involve control over someone else.

Aspects to avoid when dating men

Elsa's got a good point here.

"I have concern when I see both the Moon and Venus beat up in a man’s chart. My number one rule is to run with men who like women and when I see this stuff in a man’s chart, I am very, very careful."

Good point. Never date a heterosexual who hates women. I have a cousin like this (if I remembered his birthday I'd be checking this now) and I feel very sorry for the women he's dated/been engaged to/married.

Then again, I have those beat up in my chart and I don't hate women...I just don't fit with traditional women's behaviors.

Saturn in Libra: the silence continues

Continued from here and here.

Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water...well, apparently not.

I was pleased to see that John Mayer finally got to release his album (really nice steampunk cover on it too, that's like the prettiest steampunk-y thing I've ever seen) and was going back on tour. And interestingly enough, the time on the clock on the album cover, plus the album title, makes me wonder if he snuck his birth time in there. Would make him a double Sadge in addition to the tons of Libra if it's in the morning, which seems more likely because then he'd have a 10th house Libra stellium and whopping career power.

But it seemed a little tentative somehow, what with the short tour booking...and yeah. Bummer. And oh look, retrograde Saturn going back over the end of the sign again and kicking his sun once again, and then starting all over again in June..ouch.

I was hoping he'd get all fixed up sooner than by the time Saturn leaves Libra in October, but...I guess not? Maybe the poor dude has to go through the whole period of time quiet before he can finally resurface for good. I hope he can finally effing do that sometime.

In other folks-with-Libra news, my aforementioned double Libra friend got in a whopping bus accident while on vacation in December and has been on medical leave for the winter duration. She seems mostly okay, all things considered, but then there's the joys of PTSD and finding a new therapist. So she's having not the best time either. Poor Libras. I want to start a "Save the Libras!" campaign...The other Libra people I know continue to be out of touch, distant, or in the same crap as ever. 

Though the double Libra saw an astrologer recently and got whopping good predictions for her life having massive good change a year and a half from now. As in "right now you're in a dead period of time, but in 3 years you won't recognize your life." Lucky girl. I'd like to get some kind of prediction like that for myself, but I suspect if I ever got a full reading from a pro, mine would not be cheerful and rosy. Which is pretty much why I try to DIY it here.

 

Onscreen chemistry and synastry

Why some stars (together) are hot or not.