Archive for June, 2019

Summer Solstice — June 21, 2019, 15:54 UT

Friday, June 21st, 2019

Today is the summer solstice, when the Sun reaches its highest position in the sky and the day is longest. The Sun enters Cancer at 15:54 UT. Earth’s small companion in the last degree of Virgo is in square to the Sun, like it has been at several solstices before. I am not talking about the Moon, but Kamo`oalewa, the quasi-satellite of Earth.

469219 Kamo`oalewa was discovered in April 2016. It was brought into our consciousness as 2016 HO3 just about three years ago, in mid-June 2016. The naming took place last April. Kamo`oalewa is too small and too distant for us to be seen like the Moon, but nevertheless, it is our constant companion, looping around our planet.

Kamo`oalewa is actually a tiny Apollo asteroid, orbiting around the Sun, but viewed from the Earth it looks like it would be circling us. The orbits of quasi-satellites are unstable. Over time they tend to evolve to other types of resonant motion and no longer remain in the vicinity of the planet. Later they can move back to a quasi-satellite orbit again. Kamo`oalewa is not the only known quasi-satellite of Earth, but it is currently the closest and most stable, predicted to stay in this orbital state for several hundred years.

The orbit of Kamo`oalewa is intriguing. On its yearly round around the Sun, it spends half of the time inside the Earth’s orbit and half of the time outside. The orbit is also tilted a little, so it bobs up and down once a year through Earth’s orbital plane. See Kamo`oalewa’s fascinating dance here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMJc7gmychk .

Astrologically the orbit of Kamo`oalewa is really weird. Sometimes it rushes through several astrological signs in a month. Then there are periods of time when it moves back and forth only two or three signs for decades. This means that there can be a few generations who have Kamo`oalewa appearing only in a handful of signs. We are now in a phase where Kamo`oalewa seems to be covering only degrees in Virgo, Libra and Scorpio. Thanks for astrologer Zane Stein for helping me to understand the strange orbit.

The name Kamoʻoalewa is derived from a Hawaiian word referring to an oscillating celestial object, which refers to the oscillating motion of Kamoʻoalewa in the sky as view from Earth. It is a name found in the Hawaiian chant Kumulipo. Kumulipo is an 18th-century chant in the Hawaiian language telling a creation story and including a genealogy of the members of Hawaiian royalty. It is a cosmogonic genealogy, which means that it relates to the stars and the moon. In the Kumulipo the world was created over a cosmic night, which was not just one night, but many nights over time.

You may think, why bother to pay any attention to Kamo`oalewa, because it is not a true moon, and at some point it is going to leave us anyway. It is worthwhile because it is with us now! A new planet emerges when we are ready to welcome its energy, or when we need it. If Kamo`oalewa has a special message, we are the ones to whom it is addressed to.

Full Moon in Sagittarius — June 17, 2019, 08:31 UT

Sunday, June 16th, 2019

We are approaching the summer solstice. Now we are in the midst of an important astrology pattern, Mars in Cancer opposing the Saturn-Pluto conjunction in Capricorn. Mars is also in contact with the Moon’s nodal axis. The Saturn-Pluto conjunction will be exact in January 2020. This aspect pattern is defining our moment of history, as astrologer Eric Francis has put it. “It’s a before and after moment,” he wrote recently. Please read Eric’s detailed article about the astrology preceding the Cancer solstice, “Mars in Focus: Individual and Society”.

Minor planets can give additional information to the chart interpretation. The Full Moon in Sagittarius makes several tension and friction producing aspects to distant minor planets.

In Sagittarius conjunct the Moon is the plutino Ixion, discovered in 2001. It is about the fifth-largest plutino. It was named from Greek mythology after the Lapith king Ixion, who had no sense of right or wrong. He murdered his father-in-law, and after that he lived as an outlaw and was shunned. The sky god Zeus took pity on him and invited him to Mount Olympus, the home of the gods. Instead of being grateful, Ixion grew lustful for Hera, Zeus’s wife. Zeus found out about his intentions and created the cloud Nephele in the shape of Hera, and tricked Ixion into coupling with it. For his crimes Ixion was bound to a burning solar wheel that turns forever in the underworld.

In Pisces, squared by the Moon in Sagittarius and the Sun in Gemini, are two binary trans-Neptunian objects, Borasisi and Manwë. Borasisi is a cubewano discovered in 1999 and Manwë is a Kuiper belt object in a 4:7 resonance with Neptune, discovered in 2003.

Borasisi is named after a fictional creation deity taken from the novel Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut. In Vonnegut’s novel, the foundation of the fictional religion of Bokononism is based on living by the untruths that make one feel better; people tend to see what they want to.

Manwë was the fictional king of the Valar, “angelic powers” or “gods”, in J. R. R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth legendarium. He was foremost among the great spirits who rule the world. Manwë was lord of air, wind, and clouds. Birds, especially eagles, flew back and forth and brought to his knowledge everything that was going on in the world. The controversial British occultist and magician Aleister Crowley had his Sun in conjunction with Manwë.

Then in Virgo there is Kamo`oalewa, a quasi-satellite of Earth. It is one of the most recently named asteroids, discovered in 2016 and named last April. The name is derived from a Hawaiian word referring to an oscillating celestial object. I will write more about Kamo`oalewa at the summer solstice.

As Eric wrote in his article, “Mars in Cancer on the North Node wants something new…” In Sagittarius, in its own sign and not very far from the Moon, there is also Jupiter, the planet of growth. An urge for the search of deeper meaning can be strong. Saturn can represent authority figures. The aforementioned minor planets are currently advising: “Don’t fall for false gods.” These “false gods” could be political or religious leaders, opinion leaders, bloggers, causes, etc.

The Sun in Gemini is in conjunction with Chaos, a cubewano discovered in 1998. It is named after the primeval state of existence in Greek mythology. It was a dark, formless void preceding the creation of the universe, from which the first gods appeared. Today we are usually referring to a state of confusion when we speak of chaos. The meaning of the cubewano Chaos can sometimes appear as such, but it can also act as a great creative force. Chaos conjunct the Sun and Mars in trine to Neptune will help us to find the new path that we long for.

New Moon in Gemini — June 03, 2019, 10:02 UT

Sunday, June 2nd, 2019

2019 is the International Year of Indigenous Languages, a United Nations observance that aims to raise awareness of the consequences of the endangerment of Indigenous languages across the world, with an aim to establish a link between language, development, peace, and reconciliation. Possibly this observance has contributed to the naming of (229762) 2007 UK126 as Gǃkúnǁʼhòmdímà from mythology of Jul’hoan people of Namibia. The naming took place in April 2019.

The New Moon at 12+ degrees of Gemini is in exact conjunction with 229762 Gǃkúnǁʼhòmdímà, a trans-Neptunian object from the extended scattered disc. It was discovered on 19 October 2007 by American astronomers Megan Schwamb, Michael Brown, and David Rabinowitz. The diameter is approximately 600 kilometers, but the body is not spherical. The orbital period is little over 620 years. Gǃkúnǁʼhòmdímà will come to perihelion in July 2046 (the point in the orbit where it is nearest to the Sun).

Gǃkúnǁʼhòmdímà has one known satellite, Gǃòʼé ǃHú, which is one of the reddest known objects beyond Neptune.

The Jul’hoan language, commonly called Ju, is one of the click languages. It is spoken in northeastern Namibia and the Northwest District of Botswana. The Jul’hoan people, or the ǃKung, are a part of the San people, also known as the Bushmen.

From what I read in Wikipedia, equality between the sexes prevails in the Jul’hoan society. Men and women live together in a non-exploitative manner. The Jul’hoan people long to keep peace between people. They believe in the creator, but they also believe that objects, places and creatures all possess a distinct spiritual essence. They practice shamanism to communicate with the spirit world, and to cure what they call “Star Sickness”. The community has trust in the healers and the teachers to guide them psychologically and spiritually through life.

In Jul’hoan mythology, Gǃkúnǁʼhòmdímà is a beautiful aardvark girl, who sometimes appears in the stories of other San peoples as a python girl or elephant girl. She defends her people and punishes wrongdoers using gǁámígǁàmì spines, a raincloud full of hail, and her magical oryx horn G!ò’é !Hú. The moon of 229762 Gǃkúnǁʼhòmdímà was named after this horn.

At this point I am not able to say much about the astrological meaning of this body. However, Francesco Schiavinotto, an Italian geologist and professor of paleontology, whose hobby is astrological research, has suggested the following keywords for 2007 UK126, long before its naming: “practical / pragmatic genius, empathy for common people, non-teleological thinking, class conflict, intense loneliness and anger engendered by hopelessness, peaceworker, peacemaker, peacekeeper”.

My own, so far somewhat narrow research brought forth these celebrities, who were born with their Sun in conjunction with Gǃkúnǁʼhòmdímà: Chaka Khan, Tracy Chapman, Brian McFadden and Amber Heard.