Archive for August, 2019

New Moon in Virgo — August 30, 2019, 10:37 UT

Saturday, August 31st, 2019

The New Moon at 6+ degrees of Virgo fell in the middle of a stellium, which along with the Sun and Moon consists of Venus, Mercury, Mars, asteroid Juno, centaur Aphidas and plutino Orcus. A stellium occurs when four or more bodies conjunct each other, each one within few degrees of the next. In this case the planets are all within ten degrees, so they are all conjunct each other. It is a strong concentration of energy.

The closest ones to the New Moon, on both sides of the luminaries, were Aphidas at 5+ degrees Virgo, and Mars at 7+ degrees Virgo. An old saying comes into my mind: “One can’t sit on two chairs at the same time,” which means that one must make some either-or choices.

Mars represents courage, initiative and action; it is the archetype of a warrior.

The myth behind Aphidas tells another kind of story. According to the official naming citation, “During the battle between the Centaurs and Lapiths, the centaur Aphidas remained in a drunken sleep. The Lapith Phorbas killed Aphidas with a thrown spear while he slept.”

When 121725 Aphidas two years ago was named, my first impression for the keywords was “withdrawal”. I noticed there were a lot of celebrities with a prominent Aphidas, who either had withdrawn from publicity at the peak of their fame or otherwise had a difficult relationship to publicity.

Greta Garbo (September 18, 1905 — April 15, 1990), ”The Divine Garbo” retired from the screen at the age of 35, and from then on shunned publicity and led a very private life. She has explained that she was tired of Hollywood and really wanted to “live another life.” She has also told that already when she was a child she wanted to be alone. Garbo’s 12th house Moon is in conjunction with Aphidas. Her Sun is trine to Aphidas, Venus squares Aphidas and also Pluto is aspecting it with a semisextile.

Scott Walker (January 9, 1943 – March 22, 2019), “The 30 Century Man”, was the worshipped teen-idol of the 60s. Later he became reclusive and was rarely seen in public, even withdrawn from it for several years. He used to wear dark glasses and a baseball cap shadowing his face. His Pisces Moon is opposite Aphidas in Virgo.

Cat Stevens / Yusuf (born July 21, 1948) is a British singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist. In 1977 he converted to Islam and abandoned the stardom at the height of his career, devoting himself to educational and philanthropic causes in the Muslim community. Around 2006 he returned to pop music and is now using the stage name Yusuf.

Yusuf’s Cancer Sun is semisquare to Aphidas in Virgo. Pluto is semisextile to Aphidas. On December 23, 1977, when he converted to Islam, the transiting Aphidas in Aries was right at his descendant. His last performance was a charity concert at Wembley Stadium on November 22, 1979, when the transiting Aphidas in early Taurus was squaring his natal Sun in Cancer.

Anu Hälvä (born June 30, 1964) is an award-winning Finnish actress, who shunned publicity in the 90s at the peak of her fame. She appeared in a television series “Blondi tuli taloon”, which gained about million watchers every week. She has explained that she couldn’t handle the publicity and was not able to recognize herself anymore in the tabloids. Anu Hälvä’s Cancer Sun is trine to Aphidas in Scorpio. Her time of birth is not known, so I don’t know the exact position of her Moon, but in the noon chart the Moon in Pisces forms a grand water trine with the Sun and Aphidas.

Jeff Buckley (November 17, 1966 — May 29, 1997) was an American singer, songwriter and guitarist, who accidentally drowned during a spontaneous evening swim. His first album Grace, released in 1994, won appreciation from many revered musicians and artists, for instance Bob Dylan, who named Buckley “one of the great songwriters of this decade.” Buckley went on a “phantom solo tour” of cafés in 1996, appearing under a series of aliases. He said that he missed the anonymity of playing in cafes and local bars. Jeff Buckley has a stellium in Scorpio consisting of the Sun, Mercury, Venus, Neptune and Aphidas.

Robbie Williams (born February 13, 1974), the great entertainer, disappeared from view at the end of 2006 and had a couple of year’s sabbatical. He grew a beard and went to Nevada to take part in a UFO convention and meet UFO abductees. In an interview he admitted that he knew that there was a chance it’s all nonsense. “But even if it is all made up,” he said, “it’s better made-up stuff than what the tabloids are writing. It’s more interesting. To me, anyway.” He meant that the stuff wasn’t written about him. Robbie has an exact triple-conjunction of the Sun, Jupiter and Aphidas in Aquarius.

Mr Lordi / Tomi Putaansuu (born 15 February 1974) is a multi-talented Finnish musician and special effect make-up artist, whose band Lordi won the Eurovision song contest in 2006. All publicity photographs of Mr Lordi have his face concealed with his mask and stage makeup. The band wanted to keep their anonymity. Mr Lordi was born only two days later than Robbie Williams, so he has the triple-conjunction of the Sun, Jupiter and Aphidas in Aquarius, too.

Cheek / Jare Tiihonen (born December 22, 1981) is a Finnish award-winning rapper, who was having it all, and then suddenly ended his career in 2018. His success is unparalleled in Finland. He has sold gold records, published a biography, and performed at Helsinki’s Olympic Stadium. His farewell concert in Lahti was sold out in less than one minute. Cheek’s Scorpio Moon is opposite the conjunction of Chiron and Aphidas in Taurus.

Zaira Wasim (born October 23, 2000) is a former Indian actress, who earned critical acclaim and several awards. In June 2019, she announced that she would be leaving the Bollywood industry, as it conflicted with her religious identity and beliefs. Her Scorpio Sun is squaring Aphidas in the last degree of Cancer.

Now it is time to make conscious choices, so that you would not end up sitting between the chairs. Virgo’s ability for analyze and prioritizing should help in decision making.

Full Moon in Aquarius — August 15, 2019, 12:29 UT

Thursday, August 15th, 2019

79360 Sila-Nunam is a cubewano, a classical Kuiper belt object with an orbital period of 293 years. It was discovered in 1997. It is a binary system with components of almost equal size. Both bodies, Sila and Nunam, are elongated with their long axes pointing to each other. They are named after old Inuit deities. Sila is the god of the sky, weather, and life force. Nunam is the Earth goddess, who created the land animals and the Inuit people. Sila breathed life into the Inuit.

The Full Moon is at 22+ degrees Aquarius. The Sun in Leo is in exact conjunction with Venus and Sila-Nunam.

I saw recently a documentary The Jam: About The Young Idea on the legendary new wave / mod revival band The Jam (active 1972 – 1982). The front man of the band, Paul Weller (born 25 May 1958), has natally his Sun conjunct Sila-Nunam. His successful and varied career is still continuing.

The mod revival of the 1970s and 1980s in England was a youth subculture which was set in motion by Paul Weller and his band. Weller is often referred to as “the Modfather”. The original mod subculture began in London in the late 1950s. The term mod derives from modernist, a term used in the 1950s to describe modern jazz musicians and their style-conscious fans.

The mods wore tailor-made suits and military parkas, they had neat haircuts, they drove Vespa motor scooters and spent time in coffee bars listening jazz and rock music. Scooters were a practical and moderately cheap choice of transportation for teenagers. Besides, the body panels of Vespa shielded the expensive suits of the mods from oil and dust. Parka jackets were worn for the same reason.

Paul Weller has described how the audience of The Jam used to look like a sea of green parkas. Everyone looked the same. He says it is not the ethos of the mods. He himself is a mod because he doesn’t want to be like everyone else. To him a mod means a person who embraces continuous reinvention, someone who looks forward and picks the best features of other cultures, filters and merges them into something new and different.

Perhaps the spirit of Sila-Nunam resembles that kind of fusion. Ideas, even good and practical ones, need “Sila’s breath” in order to fly and become something magnificent. It has much in common with the enthusiastic and fearless energy of youth. So, fuse bits of things that you appreciate into something original, blow your idea boldly on its way, and see what happens!

New Moon in Leo — August 01, 2019, 03:12 UT

Thursday, August 1st, 2019

Before the discovery of Albion in August 1992, the only objects that were found beyond Neptune were Pluto (1930) and its binary companion Charon (1978). The space beyond Pluto seemed empty. The existence of the Kuiper belt was not proved yet. Of those distant minor planets of which I am usually writing about, only two centaurs were discovered, Chiron (1977) and Pholus (1992). The discovery of Eris in 2005 resulted eventually in Pluto’s demotion from planet status. Today, after 27 years since the discovery of Albion, thousands of centaurs and Kuiper belt objects have been found.

Albion remained unnamed 25 years, and we learned to call it by its provisional designation 1992 QB1, sometimes shortened as QB1. Even without having a name itself, it gave its name to a whole class of minor bodies, the cubewanos (“QB1-os”), the classical Kuiper belt objects. Then in January 2018, out of the blue, it was named Albion, the name proposed by the discoverers, American astronomers David C. Jewitt and Jane X. Luu. After so many years, I am still not quite adjusted to use the name Albion.

The orbital period of Albion is about 289 years. It was discovered at the Aries Point, in the first degree of the astrological sign Aries, which is the first sign of the zodiac. It was a remarkable discovery and the body was in a significant position, just starting a new phase.

1992 QB1 was named after Albion from the creation mythology of English poet and painter William Blake (1757–1827). Albion is the island-dwelling primeval man who divided himself into the four Zoas (Urthona, Urizen, Luvah and Tharmas), each representing important aspects of human character. Blake has used the name also in its traditional meaning as the ancient and mythological name of Britain.

William Blake has said: “In the universe, there are things that are known, and things that are unknown, and in between, there are doors.” His words certainly fit with the astrological delineations that have taken shape already before the naming of Albion, suggesting it is representing the edge, the bridge leading to the unknown, or the archetype of the thresholder. In astronomy it opened the door to unknown regions and a new understanding of our solar system.

William Blake was an eccentric who saw visions and was considered mad by many of his contemporaries. He did not gain recognition for his work during his lifetime. Not many of his poems are translated in Finnish, because his texts are not easily expressed in our language. However, I read from a Finnish article that Sylvi Kekkonen (1900 – 1974), a writer and the wife of our former president Urho Kekkonen (in office 1956 – 1982), was reading her own Blake translations in the Finnish radio. In the same article the writer says that the purpose of Blake’s works is to wrench one’s perception from the customary route. This kind of approach is just what was needed from the discoverers of 1992 QB1, David C. Jewitt and Jane X. Luu. In an interview by astrologer Eric Francis, Jane X. Luu told about her thoughts at the time they started their research: “Why study something that lots of other people study? We were going to do things that nobody else wanted to do.” She also said: “These things were always out there, but people didn’t look for them. People are not good at finding things they don’t expect to see.” You can read the whole interview here: Cue: Be One (or The Kuiper Belt Turns 20)

The New Moon in creative Leo is forming energizing square aspects to Albion and Uranus in Taurus. Uranus is famous for its ability to produce flashes of insight. Every New Moon is a beginning of a new phase. Mercury, the planet of intelligence, is now turning direct. This seems to be a good time to step through a door and start researching uncharted areas.