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Not Again With This Retrograde Thing! (Not Really, Read On…)

A Facebook friend posted earlier today about how people are being jerks all around and you would think that Mercury is still retrograde. Excuse me for harping on this issue, but there is a lot going on astrologically, all the time, that has nothing to do with Mercury. Or retrogrades. Now, I don’t blame this person at all for attributing it to Mercury retro, since that is the only thing that modern astrologers seem to teach these days about what might be going “wrong” in a chart or in transits. Until better quality info gets out there, or at least Read more…

By chris, ago

Retrograde Schmetrograde

I was recently catching up on one of my favorite blogs, Christopher Warnock’s Renaissance Astrology Blog (we pre-Enlightenment types have to stick together, you know). Reading the post on retrogrades, I had to agree with him wholeheartedly. If you haven’t read my own posts on retrogrades, go here to find them. Christopher points out a few things, and though I encourage you to read his post, here are the ones that jumped out at me, restated in my own words, and with some of my own thoughts thrown in. Modern astrologers eschew any talk of “malefics”. They often refuse to Read more…

By chris, ago

Retrogrades 2010

Retrogrades 2010 All events are given for Midnight at Greenwich Mean Time If you’re not sure what the “Stationary” refers to, please see the prior post. StationaryRetrograde        Retro StationaryDirect Direct       Mercury        24 Dec (’09) 27 Dec (’09) 27º Cap 14 Jan  16 Jan 5º Cap 15 Apr 19 Apr  12º Tau 10 May 12 May 2º Tau 20 Aug  21 Aug19º Vir       11 Sep 13 Sep5º Vir 08 Dec 11 Dec5º Cap 29 Dec  31 Dec19º Sag Venus 05 Oct 09 Oct13º Sco 15 Nov 19 Nov27º Lib Mars 09 Dec (’09) 21 Read more…

By chris, ago

Retrogrades and the supposed “Shadow”

Modern astrology posits that when a planet that goes retrograde and then direct, it also passes through a “shadow” connected to that cycle. The idea is that, for example, if Mercury goes retrograde at, say, 12º Taurus, and then travels back to 2º Taurus, then the “pre-shadow” period is from the time that Mercury originally reaches 2º to the time it gets to 12º, then the “post-shadow” period is when it goes direct at 2º to the time it reaches 12º again.This is a purely modern invention, and has no basis in Classical or Medieval astrology.If this were true, then Mercury, Read more…

By chris, ago

Retrograde Planets: What to do?

In the previous post, I outlined a few ways in which a retrograde planet might affect someone personally: the person is heavily ruled by the planet that is retrograde the person is in a planetary period ruled by the retrograde planet the retrograde planet is aspecting a person’s chart directly So what happens when there’s a retrograde and life must go on? The washing machine breaks, and you have 4 kids at home and no laundromat nearby. The lawn mower blows up and your yard is turning into a field of wild flowers. Your boss has scheduled that important conference, Read more…

By chris, ago

Retrograde Planets

Before listing the actual dates (in a later post), let me make a few comments about retrograde cycles in general and what to do with them. Retrograde Cycles Outer planets (Uranus, Neptune, Pluto) spend almost half the year retrograde, and they don’t rule zodiacal signs, so for most purposes, one can ignore the retrograde cycles. The one exception to this is if the planet changes direction within a degree or so of one of your personal points in a chart (Ascendant, Midheaven, Sun, Moon, for example). Jupiter and Saturn each spend about 4 months retrograde in a given year. So Read more…

By chris, ago

Why I do Medieval Astrology, Part 3: Dignity and Rulership

Click here for Part 1. Picking up where Part 2 left off… Dignity So then what exactly is “dignity”? The simplest explanation is that a planet that is essentially dignified (that is, which has dignity based primarily on what sign it is in), gets to work the way it wants to work. There is a basic harmony between the nature of that planet and the nature of the sign it’s in. This allows the planet to operate in a dignified, or graceful way. (Note that this does NOT mean that the planet and the sign are the same, as some Read more…

By chris, ago

Why I do Medieval Astrology, Part 2: Dignities and Debilities

Click here for Part 1. When I first learned astrology, I learned from the astrologer who first read my chart. She and her business partner taught some introductory courses, and I was fascinated. I started to read everything I could on the subject. I learned, for example, that Venus “rules” Taurus and Libra, and that she is “exalted” in Pisces. But nothing I read really explained much of what that meant, except to say that if Venus were in one of these signs, it was a good thing. The books go on to say that more recently discovered planets like Read more…

By chris, ago

Why I do Medieval Astrology, Part 1: Houses

This is the first of what will undoubtedly be many posts on this subject. I’ll try to keep each one on the short side. I don’t really like reading long blog posts myself, but occasionally they are necessary to elucidate a point. Astrology from the Classical through the Medieval period was not primarily psychological. As with life, there were pieces of it that one would today certainly label “psychological.” That particular term, however, is fairly new, so our astrological forebears would not have used it. There are techniques that identify a person’s Primary Motivation, Quality of Soul, etc. Some of Read more…

By chris, ago

Saturn, Cosmic Gardener by Christopher LaFond

Note: I composed this entry for the blog at EarthSpirit Community, and it was published there simultaneously as here. The EarthSpirit Community is currently finishing its first Saturn Return. At the same time, a number of the founders and members at the heart of the community are in the midst of, or heading toward, their second Saturn Return. This provides all of us, as a community, the opportunity to reflect on where we’ve been and where we’re going together. Hey, come back here! Let’s start with: What is a “return?â€� If you hang around with anyone who knows even a Read more…

By chris, ago