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Day and Night at the Equinox

Day and night are not really equal on the equinox, which occurred here on the east coast of USA on Saturday 21:54. Daytime starts when sun’s orb begins to come over horizon and ends when it disappears. Also, sunlight is refracted over horizon. That means on fall equinox, day is still longer than night. A few days after fall equinox, and a few days before spring equinox, day/night is actually pretty equal. Today, daylight will be ~2 minutes longer than dark and tomorrow, ~1 less.

By chris, ago

Current Eclipses Affecting Natal Charts

I had a private question about how a Lunar Eclipse can affect one when it falls on the birthday. Here was my response:Well, it’s happened to me (solar eclipse). It all depends on a number of things. But a few guidelines: Eclipses are like shining a big spotlight onto an area of your life. They usually bring turmoil in that area. Lunar eclipses less so than Solar ones. Eclipse effects are usually not felt on any given day, so don’t expect big things on your birthday. The effects often start a bit before the eclipse and last for about 6 Read more…

By chris, ago

Mercury Retro Series (a.k.a. the Mercury Retrograde Survival Kit)

Since I find myself often writing to correct lots of misperceptions about retrograde planets in general, and Mercury retrogrades in particular, I’ve decided to assemble all of the links to previous posts on the topic in one blog post, so that I can easily refer to them in the future. So here they are in (almost) chronological order, and are probably best read in this order. 1. Retrograde Schmetrograde  2. Retrograde Planets 3. Retrograde Planets: What to do? 4. Not Again With This Retrograde Thing! (Not Really, Read On…) 5. Mercury Retrograde – Again 6. Here We Go Again 7. Retrogrades and the supposed “Shadow” 8. Harping on Read more…

By chris, ago

Harping on Mercury

Yes, that’s me harping. It seems that every time Mercury goes retrograde, I write a flurry of blog posts on the matter. You’d think that it was a big deal with me (Mercury retrograde); in fact, it’s quite the opposite. Whenever Mercury goes retrograde, the internet is flooded with Stupid Astrology. And so here I am, harping on the matter once again.Let me be clear about what I mean by “Stupid Astrology.” I am first of all, not blaming non-astrologers for posting or re-posting spurious information about astrology (unless of course, they are non-astrologers claiming to be actual astrologers). But Read more…

By chris, ago

Astrology and Mythology

I was reading a blog recently by a non-astrologer, who made some musings about the current Mars retrograde. One of the things that struck me (amongst some otherwise good ideas) was the idea that Mars is the active, aggressive part of sexuality. This is, indeed, the understanding of many modern astrologers, and it is certainly from these modern, pop-astrologers that the blog writer, along with many others, gets his information about astrology.  Traditionally, Venus is all things having to do with love and sex. This runs the gamut from love to lust; from passive to not only active, but even Read more…

By chris, ago

That’s Not Astrology

One of my complaints about many modern astrologers is that what they are doing simply isn’t astrology. They employ astrology to give what they are saying a veneer of respectability. One might question whether astrology can really lend anything a sense of respectability, given how it is perceived by the mainstream media. But the public is generally more accepting of it than we might at first think. But the public is also misinformed about astrology. Folks generally don’t know much more about it than their Sun sign, and maybe a bit of what that supposedly means. But my complaint isn’t Read more…

By chris, ago

Comments and Comments…

I received a comment a few weeks ago about my post on how the traditional meanings of the planets have been corrupted by modern astrological free association (Venus Rules What???!!!). As so often happens when someone criticizes a post, the critic posted the comment anonymously, and the critique is full of inaccuracies, both historical and astrological (vis-a-vis Traditional Western or Medieval Astrology, as indicated by the title of my blog). First of all, the person is coming from a Vedic (Indian/Hindu/Jyotish) astrological perspective, not a Western one. Now while the East and the West use the same basic set of symbols, Read more…

By chris, ago

Everything = Nothing

One of the complaints I have with modern astrology is the idea that if something is out there, then it MUST be astrologically significant. In the last two centuries, the discovery of the unseen planets Uranus, Neptune and (now “dwarf planet”) Pluto haphazardly into the system of astrology has given modern astrologers tacit permission to include anything floating around the Sun in their astrology charts. In the early part of the twentieth century, especially between the two world wars, systems of astrology were developed that even included hypothetical planets. These were added to the asteroids — which began with the Read more…

By chris, ago

Venus Rules What???!!!

It’s been too long since my last rant about the utter lack of philosophical underpinnings of modern astrology. So here goes.I was reading an astrology blog today that points out that Venus is moving into the sign of Leo on Thursday of this coming week. It mentions parenthetically that Venus is the “ruler of love, art, beauty & finances.” This is, of course, only partially accurate. Venus is the ruler of love, art, and beauty (along with music, dance, and many other things), but finance? Not so. So then why the reference?First of all, let’s talk for a moment about Read more…

By chris, ago

Science and Scientism

Can Scientists Overreach? Yes, says theoretical physicist Marcelo Gleiser in an article of the same name on NPR.org. He summarizes (in an extremely brief manner) the work of Marilynne Robinson, Pulitzer Prize winning author of Gilead, in her book-length essay Absence of Mind. I bring this up because in a blog post I wrote in January titled When Modern Scientists Get Hold of Astrology, I concluded by asking Why would modern astrologers care much about what scientists say about astrology? My point was that most modern scientists are hostile to astrology, and any comments they make on the subject are uninformed (meaning that they haven’t Read more…

By chris, ago