Archive for November, 2016

New Moon in Sagittarius — November 29, 2016, 12:18 UT

Tuesday, November 29th, 2016

The New Moon at 7+ degrees Sagittarius takes place on Nov. 29 in exact square to the lunar nodes, the invisible points in the sky, which form an axis in the astrological chart. “The nodes tell us about what we get to do here on the Earth, and they help us do it,” has Eric Francis expressed their meaning. The south node is associated with the past and the north node with the future. The point square to the nodes in halfway between them is a balancing point, and the Sun and the Moon are there now.

Jupiter is the ruling planet of Sagittarius. Jupiter at the mid-degrees of Libra squared Pluto in Capricorn less than a week ago, on Nov. 24. This was the first square in the series of three. The other two will occur next year. The Uranus-Eris conjunction is retrograding in Aries, opposite Jupiter. The opposition is tightening.

The day after the Jupiter-Pluto square, on Nov. 25, the iconic revolutionary leader and former long-term prime minister and president of Cuba, Fidel Castro died. Castro represents the generation which was born during the previous Uranus-Eris conjunction in the 1920s.

The time for Fidel Castro’s birth is controversial, but the data I am using is August 13, 1926, 2:00 AM, Biran, Cuba (classified by the Astro-Databank as Dirty Data). Castro’s Uranus is in the late degrees of Pisces, but Eris is right at the Aries Point. There could not be more fitting place than this for the goddess of strife and discord in the chart of a revolutionary, who became the leader of his country. According to astrologer Robert Hand, the Aries Point “indicates one’s relationships with the larger world around one and is associated with fame and greater social significance.”

Eris is a polarizing force, and Fidel Castro was a controversial person. Many Cubans think about him as a beloved father figure, while others consider him as a dictator. Exclusion is one of the themes that can be associated with Eris, so the long-lasted economic and diplomatic isolation of Cuba can be linked with her symbolism.

Castro’s ascendant is in conjunction with asteroid Bacchus in the late degrees of Gemini. The ascendant signifies the impression we make on others. In Greco-Roman mythology the Roman Bacchus is equivalent to the Greek Dionysus, the god of winemaking and wine, of ritual madness and fertility. Bacchus traveled around and was followed by singing and dancing women. Castro was a womanizer who had many mistresses and several illegitimate children.

Bacchus was also known as Liber Pater, “the liberator”. A quote from Wikipedia: “In Roman culture, Liber, Bacchus and Dionysus became virtually interchangeable equivalents. Bacchus was euhemerised as a wandering hero, conqueror and founder of cities.” In my opinion, the image below, taken in 1957 when Castro was celebrating his victory in Havana, expresses perfectly Castro’s Bacchus at his ascendant.

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Fidel Castro survived more than 600 assassination attempts. Perhaps centaur planet 346889 Rhiphonos has something to do with his extraordinary survival ability. In his natal chart, Castro’s Saturn is in conjunction to his Rhiphonos, to the degree. His Sun is in exact square to the conjunction. In mythology, Dionysus’s mother was a mortal woman, and his father was Zeus. When Dionysus was an infant, Zeus set twelve centaurs to guard him against Hera’s anger. These centaurs drew the chariot of baby Dionysus. One of the Dionysian Centaurs was Rhiphonos.

Fidel Castro’s last public appearance was on April 19, 2016. He delivered a farewell speech. “Soon I will be 90 years old,” he said. “Soon I will be like all the rest. Everybody’s turn comes.” We don’t know if anything specific concerning his health had occurred then, because his health was a national security matter and kept secret. From the astrological point of view something notable had happened recently.

On March 9, 2016 there was a Total Solar Eclipse at 18+ degrees of Pisces in conjunction with Chiron. The eclipse fell on Fidel Castro’s Midheaven in Pisces. Midheaven, or the cusp of the tenth house represents not only our career, but in larger sense also our life purpose.

The eclipse was of Saros series 18 South. Each eclipse is a member of a particular eclipse series, and each series has a distinct characteristics. Astrologer Bernadette Brady has delineated the Saros series 18 South like this: “This family of eclipses is concerned with endings or separations. Thus when it affects a chart, individuals will find themselves dealing with a parting. This parting can be anything from a friend traveling overseas and the saying of goodbyes to the ending of a relationship with a loved one, which could bring much anguish or grief. However, the pain of the separation is lessened by encountering new situations which lead to very positive outcomes.”

At the time Fidel Castro died (Nov. 25, 2016), he was experiencing a transit of Pluto. The transiting Pluto at 15+ degrees of Capricorn was tightly opposing his natal first house Pluto in Cancer. Castro’s Pluto is conjunct his north lunar node. In fact the current transiting Jupiter-Pluto square was affecting not just his natal Pluto (power), but also his nodal axis (the past and the future). A powerful transformation was inevitable.

Full Moon in Taurus — November 14, 2016, 13:52 UT

Monday, November 14th, 2016

The Full Moon in Taurus today is the brightest supermoon in nearly 70 years. The Moon is closer to Earth than it has been since January 1948. In the astrological chart, the Moon was in conjunction with one of the most distant objects in our solar system, Sedna.

Sedna was discovered on 14 November 2003, exactly thirteen years ago. It is a trans-Neptunian object which astrologically has a strong association with the climate change and other environmental issues. It reminds us that we should not be exploiting the resources of Earth.

Sedna has an exceptionally long and elongated orbit. The orbital period is around 11,400 years. At the moment it is about three times as far as Neptune, approaching the Sun, and coming to its perihelion in 2076. The last time Sedna was this close to the Sun, Earth was just coming out of the last ice age. The next time Sedna comes back, the world will be a completely different place again.

Sedna is named in honor of the Inuit goddess of sea and marine animals. She is thought to live at the bottom of the frigid Arctic Ocean. There are several variants of the myth, but all of them agree that Sedna was a beautiful young girl, who became the goddess of the icy waters. According to Grey Eagle, a Native American ceremonial storyteller, “…all the broken taboos and sins against the nature of the people fall through the water, to collect on Sedna’s body. When the accumulation is too great, Sedna sobs in pain.” The sea creatures gather by her door to comfort her and in the above world there is hunger and sickness. Then a shaman must visit her in the deep waters and clean her body and comb her hair. When Sedna is happy again, she releases her mammals and allows the humans to eat from the bounty of the sea.

Sedna wants to be known. She gives us subtle warnings, and if we don’t pay attention to her, we may have to deal with her strength.

Another distant object named after Inuit deities, Sila-Nunam, is squaring the luminaries from Leo. Sila-Nunam is a binary system, a double cubewano, consisting of two bodies tightly bound and with nearly equal sizes. The orbital period is almost 300 years.

Classical trans-Neptunian objects are given mythological names associated with creation. Sila or Silla is one of the oldest Inuit deities, even older than Sedna. Sila is the Inuit god of the sky, weather, and life force. The Inuit believed that Silla was the primary component of everything that exists. He had control over everything in one’s life. Nunam is the Earth goddess, Sila’s wife. Nunam created the land animals and, in some traditions, the Inuit people. Sila breathed life into the Inuit.

In 1997, the same year when Sila-Nunam was discovered, an international treaty known as the Kyoto Protocol was adopted. The agreement set targets for industrialized countries to cut their greenhouse gas emissions.

Year 2016 has been the hottest year on record. This has been especially pronounced in the Arctic, affecting the melting of the ice sheet and sea ice, and the thickness of the snow cover. The survival of the polar bear is seriously threatened. The warming is endangering the Svalbard seed vault, which was thought to be safely surrounded by arctic permafrost. Global biodiversity is declining at an alarming rate. Almost two-thirds of the vertebrate species have disappeared in about 50 years because of human actions.

The Paris agreement on climate change went into effect on 4 November 2016, marking the first time that governments have agreed legally binding limits to global temperature rises. Now the world is worried about USA’s withdrawal from the Paris agreement. Is Donald Trump’s presidency going to be a disaster for our planet?