STAR*TALK Excerpts: October 7, 2005

Arielle and Heather present STAR*TALK October 7, 2005

ARIELLE: Last Monday 4:30 am Santa Fe time there was a Solar Eclipse. The eclipses that occur two times a year in spring and fall are nature’s way of marking territory…marking certain boundaries. This solar eclipse rose in the Caribbean off the coast of Florida, where hurricanes’ energies are being generated. The position of Pluto during the eclipse hit right over the central part of the Gulf Coast. This current set of eclipses, as well as the next set next March, occur right in the Gulf area. The pairs of solar and lunar eclipses are six months apart. Eclipses are shadows passing over the luminaries, the Sun and the Moon. Important information gets lost during eclipses. Eclipses have been appearing as shadows over Washington DC for the April 05 and Oct 05 eclipses. Of course, there doesn’t always have to be a disaster, although there can be disastrous type events. “Dis-aster” means things are operating against the principle of harmony in the cosmos (“against the stars” literally). Eclipses and nodes (by-products of eclipses) are often found at the scene of the crime, when big things are happening, such as airline crashes or tsunamis and hurricanes, with large numbers of fatalities. Other times they are more subtle, where you may not see what is going on, but things are going on nevertheless.

Closer to home, the solar eclipse of Monday showed Uranus setting over Santa Fe. Uranus is rising over Santa Fe in the Geodetic chart. We are having a late monsoon. Summer was dry in Santa Fe, and there was hardly any rain when Uranus had moved into Eastern NM and Texas. But now Uranus has retrograded back this way, bringing an unexpected heavy fall monsoon season. Divination by headline: I thought the funniest headline this week was about the high-school lock-down due to a frito-pie food fight, where almost 200 students became involved. Can you just see the late-night comedians having a field day with this: “Dateline Santa Fe New Mexico – Serious injuries result from a Frito-Pie food fight.” Uranus also rules rebellious youth. In Mexico, where the Uranus line goes straight down to Mexico City, the Church is under fire for accepting money from drug dealers. Ceres the earth goddess figures prominently over Santa Fe right now, so the water, Uranus in Pisces, and the earth goddess are blending together, making for a very much needed wet fall season.

HEATHER ROAN-ROBBINS: Aspects around the Hurricane Katrina. There was an interesting conjunction of Venus and Jupiter at the time of the hurricane, such a lovely aspect… but it means lots of. We also had that attitude that everything will be all right…” No I don’t think I’ll vacate my house.” “I don’t think we need to move the FEMA trucks in” …a foggy, surreal ness as people saw this train coming to the coast, despite many previous warnings of what would happen with a category 4 or 5 hurricane. There was a process of surreal ness with Jupiter/Venus. Jupiter can be a great gift, it enlarges whatever it touches. It is a very generous being. Wherever it shows up we have a sense of offering “lots of”. But it is not just lots of luck. One has to work with it to make that lots of something constructive.

Russians first started noticing cycles of the Sun and history…solar minimum and solar maximum. During solar minimum, the solar static is quieter and astronomers can see farther into space. Many artists, philosophers and astrologers are born during solar minimums. More people who are politically active are born during solar maximum. Now we are in a solar trough. There was a solar maximum right before Clinton came into office, when there was great political change in the world, Tieneman Square, the Berlin Wall, etc. Clinton came in then and worked through the trough. When more solar storms start up people start looking for new answers to problems. It was a solar Maximum during the French Revolution, the American Revolution and the mid sixties. Clinton came in at the last one. It is very hard to get a revolution going during a solar minimum. It will start to maximize again around 2008-2011. One large solar spike occurred mid August to mid September 2005. Everyone was stirred up for a short spell (from Katrina’s aftermath), but as soon as the sun quieted down, people began to back off. Political unrest has already quieted down in most parts of the world. Nevertheless the fights that are ongoing stay ongoing.

Right now there is a yod between Mars in Taurus, opposite Venus, inconjunct Pluto and Jupiter. When Venus hit the opposition point as it retrograded we had the first female suicide bomber, and now a female who is very suspicious is nominated for the Supreme Court. Venus and Mars in fixed signs opposite each other people tend to stalemate once an argument erupts.

HEATHER: The lunar eclipse on the 17th of October asks “Is my life fair,” Are the politics around me fair?” “ What in my life is feeling out of whack” and how do I bring it into fairness without having a fight or a war? That includes individuals as well as governments. We have to bring it from the big picture to our personal lives. Permaculture is a wonderful example which is the opposition of dysfunction. How can we look at our life as a sustainable ecology versus a dysfunction, where you give out more than you get. Planting and nurturing the land so that the land keeps enriching and is as rich and able to give back in a short period of time as it was when you started. It sustains itself versus having to dump chemicals on it to make it grow. How can our lives and our families feel more like a sustainable ecology than a dysfunction? Anyplace that feels unfair, we need to speak up and create fairness rather than go into the Aries opposite point that pulls out the guns rather than speak out directly. In this Full Moon opposition and Venus-Mars opposition most people want fairness. How do the two of us, that midpoint, want fairness together? What would it look like, rather than me against you? Working together toward fairness and sustainable ecology.

ARIELLE: Aries in its very childish form is “Me me me me.” Children disguised as adults. We all know one of these that crops into our lives, or the guy on the road causing accidents. This Full Moon, the eclipse is the reaction/reflection point. The lunar energy has built up to this point and that is the release. On the Aries moon look for impatience and quick reactions… explosions. Watch how you react if you have the Aries propensity, or if you have it but you are victim to having other people do it for you because you are too kind and diplomatic, peaceful and Libran to do it yourself. In those cases, it can easily be exported to the “other one” over there.

HEATHER: Libra is the balance of two equals, but if we do not know ourselves we cannot know what we need. The Full Moon in Aries will highlight what we need. Then we have to become more adult about how we negotiate for it. We have to hear what we cannot put up with anymore. Learn to hear yourselves and how to create fairness for the other. Aries is a cure for codependency. Don’t be surprised if something suddenly comes up and you have had it… in politics as well.

ARIELLE: Aries’ gift on the Full Moon eclipse is the ability to get up and move and move quickly when something needs to happen. The visionary pioneering side of Aries says, I am not taking this one step further. Aries will not stick around and settle for a situation that is not right for them. They will stand up and do something. The more highly evolved Aries sees that in their quest for self-awareness they cannot stay in stagnant situations. It is the ability to think quickly and do what they need to do. Not just for themselves, the more highly evolved Aries are role models for others who do not know how to self-actualize as well.

The sky has been expressing itself through Libran focus this season, starting with that beautiful Venus Jupiter conjunction we had through August and September. I felt, looking at the whole year that this would be the best chance for peace. We are seeing more and more of the world becoming more and more disgusted by war. There is a momentum going. October 21-22, Jupiter and the Sun are conjunct at the end of Libra.

Back to the Gulf Coast and the geodetic positions. Pluto has been slowly moving across the western half of the country and is now at the border of Texas and Louisiana and will take five years to pass across Louisiana to the eastern border. Pluto is always death, rebirth and resurrection and this region, the heart of the country, is up for a great deal of transformation now and will look a lot different in five years. What is known as Tornado Alley is in this region along the Mississippi River, as well.

HEATHER: Pluto over the Houston-Galveston area. The Gulf Coast is the canary in the ecological picture because of the slight degree of global warming that causes hurricanes which come across the warm waters of the Gulf to speed up in intensity. A subtle difference of a few degrees will give us an intensification of the storms that hit the area. Thousands of oil platforms cover those waters, at least hundreds are shut down when hurricanes come across. Neptune was opposed Jupiter all summer and we had a very wet summer in the east. Now we have a Jupiter-Neptune trine. So much is being discussed about the sacredness of water and the chemistry of water, issues around water health and water rights have been way up in the news. Uranus in Pisces is in mutual reception with Neptune in Pisces and Saturn is moving into an opposition with Neptune. So water damage, water rights and water pollution are going to be key political issues coming up. Also illusion, the oil industry, the effect of spirituality on politics will be highlights. All this has been trined by Jupiter but now will be opposed by Saturn in the fall. Now we will have to cope with the issues which we were perhaps able to postpone over the summer. Tom Delay being caught lying, the FEMA director exposed…areas where we need to face the facts will be highlighted. This fall Jupiter also goes into Scorpio and here is the water element again.

ARIELLE: We have three retrogrades this fall. On Oct. 7 Venus went into Sag. And Mercury went into Scorpio. On the 23rd the Sun goes into Scorpio and on the 25th Jupiter goes into Scorpio. Jupiter will be in Scorpio for a year. Initially it will trine Uranus in Pisces. A Jupiter Uranus trine brings out charity and generosity, people feel it in their hearts. At the end of November this trine is exact and you will see a lot of acts of charity, as people are more in their hearts around the holiday period. Also, importantly, around the end of the year and into 2006 we will have a grand fixed cross consisting of Neptune in Aquarius, Saturn in Leo, Jupiter in Scorpio and Mars in Taurus. The Grand Fixed Cross is about resources and their scarcity, and people being secure and unable to budge, with the price of things and worth of things. Unbelievably no one seems to be batting an eye at the current price of gas. But gas for heating will go sky high too. At the Fixed Cross people will really notice it, due to supply and demand and because the basic privileges of life will come into question.

The geodetic position of Pluto stirring things up is exemplified by it’s passing over Colorado a few years ago when the Columbine shootings took place and while it was crossing over Santa Fe, this region lost three quarters of its pinon tree cover due to three heavy seasons of drought. Pluto can affect the natural environment as much as humans.

HEATHER: Venus crossed from Scorpio into Sag at the time of this Star Talk tonight, lightening up Venus in Scorpio’s sharp and heavy edge. We might have been brooding over things from the past or relationship issues, finding it hard to let go, but now that Venus is in Sag it might be much easier to let go of problems that have been holding onto our hearts. Our hearts, our sense of aesthetics start to relax. But Mercury is going into Scorpio, so the edge that comes up there is that people want privacy and serious questions.

Questions and Answers:

Question about Guatemala and hurricane and volcano activity there and dispersals of the population. Heather answers that the same Pluto line in the Gulf runs down through Guatemala. One of the Plutonian benefits of Katrina is that it has exposed the underbelly of America, exposed the racism and financial inequality in the South and the attitudes of many politicians. It is stirring it up as well. The people from New Orleans are being taken in by all kinds of towns in America where a mixing is taking place. It is a horrible experience to the Guatemalans but the dispersal, although not something you would ever ask for, becomes a cultural dispersal as a by product. All along the west coast there were minor earthquakes from the bottom of Chile all the way up to Alaska this past week. The whole faultline is shifting and we’ll keep our eyes on that since LA was the third city on FEMA’s list. A Saturn Uranus inconjunct after Katrina, symbolizes breakdown of walls. Now it is about to be opposed by Neptune. There was a Saturn Neptune conjunction when the Berlin Wall came down. Boundaries get softened. Walls can be our guarded security gates so that we do not have to see what the rest of the world looks like, walls in our own lives that stop us from evolving, barriers, all these get dissolved or crack and fall whenever Saturn and Neptune come together. There is often an increase in earthquakes, a shaking up when Saturn is being aspected. We may not be done with the leavies and there may continue to be an unsettledness of the earth beneath us.

ARIELLE: Regarding the oil refineries, oil and gas being a commodity…somebody has to come up with an alternative very very quickly, because things will be shifting there.

Question about the significance of the current eclipse on October 17 being in the exact degree as the eclipse in 1986. Arielle explains that eclipses, which correspond to the nodal cycles, repeat themselves every 19 years. In our natal charts we get the return of the nodes every 18 and a half years and the return of an eclipse in about 18 and a half to 19 years. Those are karmic completion cycles. How many things in your life have run a course of 18-19 years and then end abruptly? This is an eclipse/node completion cycle.

HEATHER: When something hits an original point, you get a reprise, a chapter review that asks “What did I learn.” Why do I need to keep doing that?” It will bring it forward. You do not have to go through that whole experience again if you are a fast learner. Sometimes there is a completion. Where a mistake was made you may get a chance to fix or repair the other end of it…an echo of the past experience. It’s very good to go over it again and ask what was learned and what is still owed. How do I complete that now at the other end of the cycle?

What chart are you using for the eclipse? Arielle explains the geodetic system that begins with 0 degrees Aries over Greenwich, England. West of Greenwich becomes Pisces for 30 degrees and Aries to the east for 30 degrees. In the United States we have Capricorn over the eastern half and Sagittarius over the western half. Think about the west, where the image of Cowboys and Indians makes an indelible imprint of American mythology. Sag is horses, and wide open spaces – these are the basic archetype of Sagittarius. This is horse country. The arch built in St. Louis by the Mississippi River is like a gateway to this other half of the country. It was built to symbolize the “Gateway to the West” across the Mississippi River, but it’s funny also, that it is the exact point that marks 90 west longitude and is the separation between Capricorn/Sagittarius on the global wheel. This is how we chart Pluto transiting across the United States. From the Mississippi River to the San Andreas Fault Line is the Sagittarius sector of the world and then Scorpio begins where you hit the fog in the Northwest. This is our way of laying the zodiac around the globe. Astrologers have used this system for a long time. I began using it twenty years ago when I was reminded to use this in a dream. I had been questioning how to chart the earth and remembered reading about this in my early years of studying astrology, but in the dream the originator of the system came to me and pointed to a map. The geodetic system explained why so much was happening in the area where Pluto for example was crossing.

You can actually feel the difference between areas on the east coast that have a different geodetic rising sign. If you are going west from New England across the bridges into New York, you hit the first degree of Aries after leaving the pastoral Taurus rising countryside of New England, and you can feel life picking up the pace. In California, Sag and Scorpio also split the state in half, from about Santa Barbara on down is the Sagittarius midheaven and northern California just above that is in the Scorpio midheaven region. When I’m driving up the 101 I can just about see where the fog line starts…and we can tell that we’ve just crossed the Geodetic line. I’d love to put a sign there!

Question about schools going to a four day week and whether this will influence the business week so that we will all soon have a four day week. Heather says not in the Capricorn side of the country.

Question about the bird flu threat. Heather answers that this truly worries her. She feels not this year, but next year when Saturn opposes Neptune we will have boundary problems. With Neptune we have immune system issues and things tend to cross boundaries from species. It is a good time to build up the immune system this year. During the time that Pluto has been in Sagittarius, it has been exposing the ecological crisis. It is also a sign of a half man, half animal…and our image of the disease crossing species feels like a possibility. I kind of expected that when Pluto first went into Sagittarius that possibly before it leaves the sign there would be ecological crisis and a disease crossing species. I do not see that being a problem this year. There are a series of aspects that worry me as Pluto leaves Sagittarius because you often see an intensity of aspects as Pluto leaves a sign. As it goes into Capricorn, it squares Uranus who is leaving Pisces and going into Aries at the same time that the solar flares go up, I am worried about bird flu then…2008-2012, as one of many complications then. Uranus and Pluto squaring as they change into cardinal signs as the sun’s energy picks up. Keep an eye on that or any other species crossovers as part of the complications that help us do a major ecological readjustment.

ARIELLE: Even next year as the Saturn Neptune opposition goes on, look for new bacterial viruses as they reach epidemic proportions. Whenever you have these two planets together you have masses of people in certain areas coming down with things as a result of infected water, air, soil or whatever.

Question about the predictions of end times, as in the Bible Code, for instance.

HEATHER: Beyond the Bible codes or predictions, how can we imagine it? Every tradition has some version of adjustments or revelation coming up. And we have to focus on what would healthy look like beyond that. After Pluto transits comes a rebirth and something beautiful can come out of it. Some of the most successful times in a person’s life are right after Pluto transits.