Steel in your Spine

February 8, 2019February 7, 2019Leave a comment

If any of you are true crime nerds, you probably know about the show “I Survived,” which features first-person accounts of the most harrowing experiences one could ever imagine.

Survivors regale us with their unbelievable stories of having fended off a serial killer with their bare hands, or survived a plane crash, or escaped a sinking car while saving everyone in it.

And they often do so with composure and grit right on the surface for all to see. They survived.

The will to survive fills us with a rare strength that sometimes comes out in the most muddied of circumstances: someone losing oxygen or bleeding out, unable to think rationally but operating on pure animal instinct for survival.

It’s that raw power that enables mothers to lift cars off trapped toddlers.

When we survive the throes of chaos, when we come out on the other side of the valley of Death’s shadow, we wind up with steel in our spine that no other experience can give us.

This week’s story presents us with an opportunity to engage with the counter, original, spare, and strange power that emerges out of desperation.

Mars finds himself this week in the sign of his dignity but at the Moon’s southern bending. The southern bending, halfway between the south and north nodes, is the point at which the Moon is at her furthest southerly latitude, 90° from either node.

Planets near the bendings carry out the Moon’s story in their own experience, as they do when they are conjoined the nodes themselves; the Moon’s story at the southernmost point of her orbit is the story of rock bottom, the worst it can get.

Yet when you’ve hit rock bottom, the only direction you can go is upward.

As Mars prepares to square the nodes and bear out this story in his body, Mercury enters the sign of her detriment and her fall, Pisces, where all rational thinking is clouded over in luminous vapor.

Mercury in Pisces has no access to the light of reason, the mountains of data he’s gathered in Gemini or analyzed in Virgo. He must learn to act on faith and instinct, something completely contrary to his toolkit.

He can do so just as powerfully as he can in either of his home bases, but the problem is that he doesn’t believe he can. It doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t work on paper.

Remember the stories of survival: we are at a point where reason fails, and instinct takes over—and those stories don’t make sense a lot of times, either.

This week’s story culminates with Mars’ conjunction to Uranus en route to his Taurus ingress, where an adaptive crisis asks Mars to draw on the strange and wild strength that he carries in his arsenal while in Aries.

Mars will be given an opportunity to recall the steel in his spine because of the way that he has borne witness to the Moon’s story of survival amid impossible circumstances, walking by faith and not by sight.

Uranus is the trigger of triggers, and Mars’ response will call out the best in you as you engage with the impossible odds that the chaos of life’s ebb and flow throws at you. And remember, the best steel is as supple as it is strong.

Be ready to adapt at a moment’s notice and without any time to think it over; instead, open your heart and allow yourself to feel your way forward. You’ve got Jupiter in Sagittarius to help you do this all year, regardless of Mercury’s long slog through Pisces.

Remember: the following horoscopes will probably land more closely if you read them from your rising sign.

aries

The adaptive crisis bears out in your body, requiring you to feel your way into new circumstances as the echoes of challenges past cause the fire of survival to rise in your bones.

taurus

Uranus’ bolt passes unseen, but that does not mean it hasn’t struck its mark. Listen to the soft and subtle voice of silence bringing memories of past sorrows and rejoice that you have survived them.

gemini

Who are you among those with whom you keep company? Uranus’ challenge asks you to take the helm in unprecedented ways, setting the steel in your spine at work to create better fortunes for all those around you.

cancer

The challenge from your professional endeavors asks you to give voice to something that has remained close to your heart, but the time is now—sooner than anyone expected—to release that gift into the wild and allow it to take flight.

Leo

Resist the urge to escape into parts unknown when circumstance raises the specters of old legacies and family stories, who come knocking, unbidden and unwelcome; they no longer have a hold on you anymore.

virgo

Of all the signs this may hit you the hardest, for Mars for you holds sway over all that you fear. But you have conquered fear before and you will do so again as you bear witness to the rich vein of story that your life has given you as a gift-in-kind.

libra

Those closest to your heart will fear for lack, perhaps to the point of despair. Use your vision of beauty to speak of the fertile abundance that you have at your beck and call as you invoke peace beyond understanding.

Scorpio

You, like your Aries siblings, will experience the upset taking place in your body as matters of health hit home, but you’ll find that your constitution has everything it needs to ward off disease and establish itself in strength.

Sagittarius

Uranus wrangles and jangles your children, whether literal or figurative. Remember that they have everything they need to make it and ride the updraft of faith to select in your heart the best outcomes for them.

Capricorn

Social crises threaten to quench the fires of your hearth, but the flames prove all the stronger as your diligent preparation enables you to switch your systems over to autopilot. You’ve been getting ready for this for a while.

Aquarius

Raw and rugged rhetoric on your part has placed you in the position of reevaluating the role of your vocation within your professional communities, but you must remain loyal to your message even when it runs bitter, for you know it to be true.

Pisces

A sudden expenditure calls to mind former, leaner days, but you have earned the requisite monies before through trusting in the abundance that grounds all things and so shall you do again.

Good for the Gander

January 18, 2019January 18, 2019Leave a comment

Sunday’s lunar eclipse marks the final punctuation in the story that has been playing out since this time of year in 2016, when we had the first lunar eclipse in Leo as the nodes began their slow journey through the opposing realms of the ego and the collective.

Like a celestial metronome, the eclipse cycle structures time in a way that allows us to see the unfolding of various musical phrases, calls, responses, and developments playing out in the realms of our life where those eclipses fall.

We have seen how the themes of tension between the fixity of the individual will and the fixity of collective responsibility have played out both for good and for ill, indeed. Each time the Moon’s dark body blocked out the radiant Sun, each time the Moon passed unseen through the Earth’s ruddy shadow, we were given a window into the deep magic where will and responsibility hold one another in tension.

This has played out on the stage of our national life, within our cultural discourse, as well as within the silent and secret chapters of our lives. So, what have we learned?

Those of us who have been able to work constructively within the measures tapped out by the Sun and the Moon in these last two years have seen that the individual and the collective will are connected to one another. “What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.”

For those of us who have found our wills drawn to that which we desire most in life over the last two years, and who, under Jupiter’s beneficent patronage in Sagittarius have discovered again what it means to aim high, I offer this line from the writer Wallace Wattles:

“The very best thing you can do for the whole world is to make the most of yourself.” And one of the best ways to do so is to employ the creative, effusive powers of Leo, where identity and expression reign, so that they may be united to Aquarius’ social ethic.

If we have not yet learned this lesson, we will be given another opportunity to do so when, in nine and a half years, the eclipses return to Aquarius and Leo, but the shoe will be on the other foot this time.

If you’ve not learned this lesson, do it now. Do it today. Do not put if off to tomorrow. We have a fantastic opportunity to do so this week, not only as a result of this final eclipse in Aquarius, but also because of the story being told by the trio of Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn.

The day after the eclipse, January 21st, Mars on a warpath in Aries strikes a stoic and staid Saturn in Capricorn, who refuses to yield to Mars’ assault—for Mars in Aries reminds Saturn of times in which Saturn has had to engineer clever Saturnian solutions out of the most unlikely materials available, as though he had to build a house out of fire.

Saturn is on the defensive and can withstand Mars’ siege as long as he needs, for he lacks for nothing in his frigid earthen fortress.

We will encounter stopping points and dead ends in our campaign towards our desires as a result of Saturn retaliating against Mars’ excitement with a deadening glare, but that’s not the end of the story for this week.

Mars’ blade throws sparks and a scintillating shower illuminates what it is that we desire. We’ll see that what Mars wants is not war, but simply to cut a new path to move forward, to blaze new trails in whatever area of our lives fall under his fiery demesne.

What better power to help him do that than Jupiter?

As Mars continues his journey forward, he carries with him the structuring power of Saturn as a result of this spat, and on the 25th, he brings this power to Jupiter in Sagittarius by a munificent trine, asking the All-father to help him find a new way.

It helps quite a bit that Jupiter’s daughter Venus has seen what’s been going on between Mars and Saturn and is bringing advance notice to her father as she visits him at home, carrying news of her brother Mars’ plight. Jupiter’s primed and ready to help.

Defeated but determined, Mars pleads his case, and Jupiter straightaway grants Mars the ability to accomplish what it is that he has set about to do, for Jupiter sees both Mars’ intensity and sincerity in his approach.

Since Jupiter sees Mars approaching from allied territory (for Jupiter is a stakeholder in every fire sign), Jupiter’s aid to Mars is in his own best interests, too. Goose and gander, once again, and Mars will be given what he needs to make the most of himself.

Wherever it is that we are striving and investing in our energy, signified by the place that Aries holds in our natal charts, we will encounter a barrier at first and then a breakthrough this week as the lesson of the Leo-Aquarius eclipse cycle sets more deeply into our bones.

Learn this lesson: the very best thing we can do for ourselves is to make the most of the whole world, and that the very best thing we can do for the whole world is to make the most of ourselves. In spite of barriers. Without delay. Today.

ARIES RISING

As you strive to manifest the most positive possible outcomes for your health and your personal circumstances, look for your spirit-attuned teachers to show you a new way to rise above the present challenges through fixing your eyes on that which is noble, true, and just in all things.

TAURUS RISING

Mars is on his warpath in places unseen to you, striking down those who would seek to undo you with a smile on their faces, and you will find secret and silent aid coming to you from the energies of people who you may have counted as enemies otherwise. “Love your enemies.”

GEMINI RISING

As you are striving to expand your social circles, be ready for challenge to come from people to whom you owe a debt of responsibility. New and gracious partners to assist you in connecting with communities where your insights can be validated and put to utmost use in motivating collective action.

CANCER RISING

Even though your workload seems like it has been growing beyond your ken as of late and you meet with resistance from your associates, the beneficent aid you’ll receive from far-sighted allies will help you manifest a tremendous payoff in your professional status. Remember to give credit where credit is due.

LEO RISING

As you strive for deeper understanding and a higher perspective, do not let the drudgery of your search have the final word but rather seek after new and creative ways of seeing as peers and superiors enrich your capacity to open the doors of perception.

VIRGO RISING

Striving for a way forward in your obligations to other people finds itself against creative blocks; you can’t keep doing the same thing. A return to ancient and nobler ways of advancing will give you the insight that you need in order to find this new way. Try going back to go forward.

LIBRA RISING

Willingness to engage in new ways of conversing—and perhaps putting some financial skin in the game—will allow you to find a new way forward in partnership with your beloved as they come up against the carefully constructed boundaries and restrictions defining your home life these days.

SCORPIO RISING

The tremendous effort you’ve been putting out to construct the best circumstances for yourself has met with utter resistance in your day-to-day environment (how are those resolutions going)? A new way comes when effort joins itself to viewing your financial powers from a higher perspective.

SAGITTARIUS RISING

Expect the energy you’ve been investing in your creative output as of late to trigger a notable breakthrough for your circumstances despite throttled resources. Knowing how to say “no” to the wrong materials will help you say “yes” to the right ones, even though “no” isn’t in your vocabulary. Think less Michelangelo, more Mondrian.

CAPRICORN RISING

All the recent motion at home isn’t unsettling you in the least—if anything, it’s creating new advantages by which to steel yourself against the enemies wearing friendly faces. Don’t accept more help or advice than you need—not that you’ve ever had a problem saying “no” to officious advice, anyway.

AQUARIUS RISING

Getting the word out to new audiences is continuing to prove a challenge due to resistance from the dark and deadening walls that contain you, but you’ve got friends in high places who stand at the ready to help amplify your messaging and thereby get you out of the box. Since when was cardboard so strong?

PISCES RISING

Against the sensible urging of your friends you’ll probably make a tremendous investment in furthering your view of the world this week, using your cash or your cache of energy. The return on investment looks promising, as does the view from up there.

The Sun in the Crucible

January 11, 2019Leave a comment

It’s for no small reason that gold remains one of the most desirable of our mother Earth’s treasures. Whether as an enriching adornment, a measure of economic power, or as a critical component within any number of the gadgets and technologies that facilitate modern life, this noble elemental metal has been the stuff of lust and legend since time immemorial. Indeed, it was forged deep in the heart of an ancestral star, and so its radiance reminds us that we are but star-dust, and to star-dust we will return.

The issue with gold, however, is that it rarely (if ever) comes out of the earth in usable form. While part of its desirability comes from its malleability, gold is so malleable that it often absorbs the influences and detritus of the minerals surrounding it in its earthen cradle. It flakes and flows down streams to be found by desperate panners, who sift through the muck to find the evidence of richer veins upstream. It is, if left untreated, little more than a chunk of dirty metal.

That’s where the exultant work of the refiner’s fire comes in. We often think of fire as something that can only destroy, that can only erase, that can only consume, but we often don’t consider the ways in which fire can be used to rarefy and purify metals and alloys to states where they can be used in ways only dreamed of by the sleeping metals in their earthen womb.

The raw mineral finds its way to the crucible; the refiner’s fire melts the gold and its purest factors run together, settling at the bottom, closest to the heat source. Meanwhile the undesired matter, which limits the radiance and utility of the gold, floats to the top to be removed and burned off by the unyielding heat.

The celestial gold in our charts, the energy which causes the engines of our souls to turn over, is signified by the Sun, the heavenly king. Whichever part of our natal chart the Sun presides over through rulership (that is, wherever Leo is in our charts), we find our life’s purpose oriented to the pursuit of that house’s priorities; likewise, wherever the Sun stands in our chart by house signifies the resources we have to make that desire a reality. When we uncover that rich vein of purpose for the first time we gain insight into the economics of our soul; we learn where we must invest our energies in order to reap the reward of satisfaction and a purposeful life.

But simply knowing the vein of gold is there does not, by itself, make that wisdom accessible to us. Just as gold must be refined to return to the state it was created to be, so must our natal Suns be assayed by fire and heat and pressure to become truly radiant. There are any number of ways in which this might happen—for me, it occurred in a special way at my Saturn return, for the Dark Lady is in a partile square with my natal Sun. But for all of us, as the Sun makes his yearly course through the zodiac, once a year he will encounter the unseen crucible and secret fire signified by Pluto, the bringer of change.

Pluto, one of whose glyphs represents a crucible, is most potent among the planets for his ability to generate the level of unseen heat required to purify the heaviest of elements. If the symbolic fires which Mars kindles are bright red and radiant, Pluto’s fire is even hotter—so hot that it is invisible to the human eye, its radiation more akin to gamma ray bursts than the fires of war.

The power of Pluto is a power that exists on the level of the edge of the cosmos; just as intensely hot and stupendously powerful quasars form the outer limit of the observable universe, so the astrological Pluto’s stupendous intensity forms the outer limit of our Solar System. No one passes him unchanged, even if that change is not visible to the naked eye at first.

So as the Sun conjoins Pluto on this January morning (for those in the United States), expect the subtler matter of your natal Sun to be melted into a purer form and the baser materials to be vaporized. This is the second act in the Sun’s three-stage purification happening over the first part of the month, too; the first was the solar eclipse last weekend, wherein the Sun’s pretenses were shed, and we experienced the shedding of the comfortable lies that we tell ourselves to contain our brightness.

The second is this conjunction to Pluto, which will render the Sun more malleable than ever and prepare it to be shaped into tools, adornments, and currencies beyond our wildest imagination.

The third will be the Sun’s meeting with the Dragon’s Tail, whose abyssal vortex will humble and rectify the Sun and give it the gift of perspective. This three-fold purification precedes the Sun’s journey into Aquarius, where he will work out the gifts of his re-creation through hard labors, accomplishing Saturn’s priorities with the new Solar tools he has been given (more on that next week).

On the other side of this gauntlet, the Sun will have been refined in the invisible fire, its dross burned away, and the newly-forged ingot quenched in the vortex, that he may offer his radiance in all righteousness and free of the comfortable lies that he tells himself to assuage his fears and the noxious cloud of public opinion that his radiance attracts. Fear not for the Sun’s passage through Saturn’s home of Aquarius, for he shall pass through as a prophet.

Leo Rising

The Sun’s journey of purification is impacting your self-concept, your health, and your appearance, employing hard work and discipline to effect their purposes. Accept the crucible’s lessons with all humility and you shall shine all the brighter for it.

Virgo Rising

The Moon, the Refiner, and the Dragon’s Tail have set their sights on the limiting beliefs that you hold for yourself, using your very creations as a means of transfiguration. Welcome the new work which you will unexpectedly render.

Libra Rising

The refining process for you regards the company you keep and your fidelity thereto. Things hidden will be revealed as a result of this process and new foundations will be laid for you to create peace anew among those who hold your trust, and whose trust you hold.

Scorpio Rising

Ready yourself to embrace the clarity of vision for your profession that the crucible will create for you and be willing to endure the sometimes-painful process of disregarding what other people have to say about your growth.

Sagittarius Rising

Though you are blessed with uncanny radiance for the better part of this year and may not feel like you have anything to worry about, remember that this radiance will come to an end—a little preparation goes a long way. You can’t serve God and Mammon, but you can make Mammon serve God. The refiner will show you how.

Capricorn Rising

Be ready to die to the old ways of containing yourself that you may put on the life that having clarity of purpose bring. And you’ll want to make sure that your credit cards aren’t crushing you, either.

Aquarius Rising

The boon of partnership is allowing you to explore unforeseen depths from your castle of isolation, and as the shackles of respectability come off, you will be able to join your voice to those of prophets and sages past in unexpected and supremely powerful ways.

Pisces Rising

Duty to your friends is demonstrating how much the people in your company rely upon you in concrete ways, so don’t neglect these earthly connections even as you strive after transcendence and success for the remainder of this year.

Aries Rising

Though your creations are being put through the ringer right now, there’s little need to despair, as that very work will be able to set a table in the wilderness for all those wild souls who gather around you once the refiner is through with it.

Taurus Rising

The old is passing away, and behold, the new is bursting onto the scene, drawing your attention to parts and pathways unknown and readying to bring a renewed sense of vision to the work to which your soul has set its hand.

Gemini Rising

Though you pride yourself on your golden tongue, remember all that’s been said of gold here. When the words fail to come, it is at that precise moment that the refiner’s heat has struck you. Do not fail to learn the lesson of speechlessness.

Cancer Rising

Those in partnership with you have much to say about the resources you so jealously guard, and while it may feel now that you are losing control, remember that holding gifts with open palms (or open pincers in your case) allows you to accept the lavish abundance that has yet to come to you.

The Twelfth Night Eclipse

January 5, 2019Leave a comment

It’s enough to reflect on the fact that the Epiphany story, as it’s told in the Xian tradition, involves astrologers being given the gift of seeing things as they really are.

In the story, God is revealed to them, not in the halls of power and privilege but rather among the destitute and the working poor in a town that we would describe today as “flyover country.” Likewise, just as the divine is revealed for who the divine really is, Herod is likewise revealed for who he really is: a vindictive tyrant and a puppet of empire, not really king material at all.

Still with me? Okay. This eclipse in Capricorn, which falls on Twelfth Night and therefore the eve of the Epiphany, is so delicious because it speaks to the shedding of all pretense. We speak today of having “epiphanies” when we come to a realization about something that had been hidden to us—things hidden to us either because of ignorance (simply not knowing the truth) or because of arrogance (our refusal to see things the way they are presenting themselves).

Dr. Maya Angelou said, “when someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.” And so this eclipse, critical juncture though it may be, might engender an epiphany for you in whichever house it falls in your chart, as, in a moment of revelatory crisis, someone shows you who they actually are. When that happens, believe them. If you are a Magus searching for the divine and the divine shows you that all divinity has sided with the poor, believe them. If a tyrant shows you that he is a tyrant, believe him. If a partner shows you that they are truly committed, believe them. If an enemy shows you that they are truly a friend, believe them. If a friend shows you that they are truly an enemy, believe them! It can go both ways, you know.

The epiphanies which this eclipse will bear as a strange gift to you will be related in particular to matters of material security and the containers we build for ourselves to establish that security, whether those containers are patterns and practices, career trajectories, or relationships. You can tell what that will be simply by looking closely at the house in which this eclipse falls.

As the night approaches, set the intention for yourself to believe what this eclipse will reveal to you. As pretense is shed, you may discover that the containers you have constructed for your survival are not necessarily contributing to your thriving, and it may be time to move on to new structures.

An example from therapy: sometimes our coping skills and defensive behaviors work really well for helping us survive traumatic experiences, but as we grow and heal, they no longer serve us, and so we can bless and dismiss them as they are shown no longer to be helpful.

The same might be true with people, honestly. No need to cancel anyone. In another story from the New Testament, an old man named Simeon, upon meeting the infant Jesus at the temple, was recorded as saying, “Let me depart in peace, for I’ve seen what I needed to see.” This revelation to him was the culmination of a long-awaited promise, and upon its fulfillment, he was ready to depart. This eclipse might ask you to let some structures, behaviors, and people (associated with the house in which it falls in your natal chart) depart in peace, for their role in your story has drawn to a close at this time, and their promise has been fulfilled to this point. The shedding of all pretense will show you.

On this night, pretense will be shed, and Ketu will give us the gift of being able to see something clearly. Do not let it pass by unregarded or unexamined, or you may be in for a rude awakening from Rahu in six months’ time.

One more point: when the Magi departed from Bethlehem, they were warned in a dream not to return to Herod but rather to go back to their own country by another road. Perhaps the angel will suggest to you that you need to proceed by a different path instead of retreading old ground, back into the arms of the pretense that has kept you in its grip to this point. This is the gift of having had an epiphany: it often comes with the desire & ability to proceed in new ways, now that you can see clearly. Return by way of another road.

The Astrology of Spirituality: Part 3

October 15, 2018Leave a comment

Insofar as the astrology of spirituality is concerned, I’ve already demonstrated that by examining the significators of spirituality in a nativity, we can determine a spiritual style that enables us better to engage with the native in terms of describing matters of ultimate concern. To remind those keeping score at home, the primary significators we should take into account to determine this are the house and sign placement of Jupiter, the Moon, and the 9th house cusp and its ruler—from there, we simply apply the basic rules of delineation, that is, looking at the position, condition, motion, and relationships of those three significators. Easy-peasy, right?

As always though, nativities are quite the animal, and I realized that a person’s religiosity or spirituality may either shift over time or they, like St Paul, might find themselves knocked off their high horse. With that in mind I began to wonder whether we might be able to determine some kind of signification of spiritual “transformations” in the chart, whether in the nativity or via progressions or profections. By “transformation” I mean sudden moments in the native’s life where they have some kind of experience of the transcendent that will not leave them after the experience is over. We might call this a mystical experience, or perhaps a conversion.

Even then, a distinction must be made between a mystical experience, a conversion that happens as a result of enthusiastic fervor, or a conversion that happens as a result of someone being logicked into their present religious tradition (which is a curious feature of Western modalities of protestant Christianity, and one which I have a certain amount of animus towards). We might also include near death experiences (NDEs) or other mind-bending psychic or psionic phenomena in this large umbrella category, since such things fall in the demesne of things ruled by the ninth house.

NB: I have a suspicion that many modern astrologers prefer to put ~spiritual transformation~ in the twelfth house. I will do no such thing, because the twelfth house is that which is not visible to the native, and furthermore it’s the joy of Saturn, which is one of the significators of rationalism. I think there’s more to be said here but let’s just leave it at that for now.

Example Eight

This chart belongs to a native who reported that, in the summer of 2018 while traveling abroad, they had a near death experience that resulted in something of a spiritual transformation, by which the native meant that they had a newfound sense of identity and purpose as a result of undergoing this trial. The native’s narrative reminded me of the phenomenon of “shaman sickness,” wherein those who are undergoing some form of shamanic initiation go through a debilitating physiological and spiritual illness en route to their awakening as someone who has a foot in either world.

We see first the prominently placed Sun/Mercury cazimi. It’s just over five degrees above the ascendant, but I am going to lean on Lilly and call this a first-house Sun/Mercury cazimi. This is the inferior cazimi as well, as Mercury is retrograde, and therefore is at the very beginning of his cycle and is being symbolically reborn in the heart of the Sun. I imagine there’s something of Mercury cazimi in Capricorn that is richly iconographic of Mercury’s role as psychopomp, since here he is, being reborn in the house of the dead (Capricorn) and closely connected to the focal point of the native’s chart. We also need to note that the Moon’s very next aspect, beyond crossing the Part of Fortune, is her application to the trine of Mercury, having separated from the trine of Venus prior to entering Taurus. Yet there’s quite a bit of distance between the Moon and her perfection of Mercury—when she closes that gap, she’ll be just a few degrees shy of the 4th house cusp.

Mercury also rules the fifth and eighth houses in this chart, and Jupiter is placed in the eighth. Jupiter himself is in Libra, not terrifically dignified but strengthened mightily by his mutual sign reception with Venus, who rules the fourth (the ancestors and the grave) as well as our main house under consideration, the 9th. Jupiter and Venus support each other in accomplishing what it is they desire to make happen. Likewise, Jupiter applies to Saturn by sextile, which is also received (in this instance by exaltation), so this eighth house Jupiter has quite a bit of support both from his exchange with Venus and the willingness Saturn has to listen to him—and as a planet placed in the eighth house, Jupiter needs all the help he can get.

Yet we must consider that Venus, our 9th ruler here, is placed at the cusp of the 12th house. It’s likely that the native will experience their spirituality as needing to go beyond the everyday and will find that particular path as isolating as it is beautifully fulfilling. Added on to Jupiter’s placement in the house associated with death and debt, it’s a fair guess that death will be something significant in this native’s experience of spirituality. I’m not saying that the native necessarily needs to be a funeral director or get used to being around death, but their relationship with mortality is certainly going to be a direct route into spiritual growth for them.

With all that in view, let’s look at the fact that the native had a near death experience in the summer of 2018 that resulted in a newfound spiritual awakening. I’m interested in seeing whether we might have been able to predict that from the nativity, or whether it was a result of ever-present chaos. So! Let’s look at the solar return, the profection year, the transits, and the secondary progressions to determine if there’s any signification that might have clued us into what manifested for this individual.

Example 8.a: Solar Return & Profection

The native turned 61 years old on 10 January 2018. The near-death experience occurred around Sunday, June 24th, 2018 while the native was on a trip in the Mediterranean. This means that the native was in a 2nd house profection year, which in the native’s case means that it is a Jupiter year. In the Solar return, Jupiter is in Scorpio near the 11th house cusp, with the Moon applying to the conjunction to Jupiter (by way of the trine of Neptune). Of course, one of the major transits in 2018 was Jupiter’s retrogression and trine to Neptune prior to stationing direct and applying to the sextile of Pluto. Right off the bat, we’ve got a lot of Jupiter-type things happening, and Jupiter’s natal position in the eighth house is going to draw eighth house significations into the native’s subjective experience of the unfolding year, inclusive of the transits to Neptune and Pluto.

Example 8.b: Transits at time of NDE

At the time of the native’s near-death experience, a number of things were happening: first, we see that Neptune had, at this point, crossed over the natal 2nd cusp, which, because it’s a 2nd house profection year, is functioning symbolically as the native’s ascendant. Let’s begin by considering that Venus in Leo as the natal 9th ruler is applying to the square of time lord Jupiter in the 9th by transit. Again: Venus is the natal 4th ruler. Because this aspect is between benefics, we wouldn’t expect it to be as deathly as we might otherwise surmise. But is a square between Venus and Jupiter enough to presage a brush with death? I’m not convinced.

Those of us who practice traditional astrology tend to treat all three outer planets as functional malefics if we use them at all, and Neptune is no different. Likewise, we have Pluto, who has been floating back and forth over the natal Sun and Mercury cazimi for several years now, applying to the conjunction of that same cazimi.

We also have Jupiter separating from the trine of Neptune by transit, himself also retrograde and in the 9th. With Neptune dissolving the symbolic ascendant for the year and the time lord engaging with that outer malefic by trine while Pluto is throwing gasoline on the fire of the natal Sun/Mercury cazimi, this looks like a pileup that will signify some kind of spiritual engagement with dissolution of the body and energetic intensity (which, frankly, describes what we might expect a classic NDE to look like). But I’m still not sure if the stack of testimonies we have now would lead us to be able to predict something like what the native endured. So, let’s look at the secondary progressions as well, just for kicks.

Example 8.c: Secondary Progressions at time of NDE

The main thing that draws my attention in the secondary progression chart is the secondary progression of the natal eighth ruler Mercury to the cusp of the 2nd house, which, of course, is functioning symbolically as the ascendant during this year of the native’s life. Mercury in Pisces is… not so great. (“O Death, be not proud!”) A brush with death seems symbolically apt here, but to be frank I’m not actually sure if there’s a precedent for using profections and secondary progressions simultaneously in delineating a single testimony to an event that’s happening in the native’s life. Big if true, in other words.

We also see that the Midheaven degree is coming up quickly on the natal Mercury/Sun cazimi, and since the MC is in a sign of short ascension at the time of this event by secondary progression, this will conjoin and complete within the year, I imagine. The native’s public persona is being significantly colored by importing the significations of the Mercury/Sun cazimi by secondary progression—that is, what I spoke to before, viz. Mercury’s moment of rebirth, becomes part of how this individual’s life story impacts the world around them and how they are seen by others. I would also note that the Moon’s relationship to Saturn in the secondary progressed chart is significant insofar as Saturn is the ruler of the native’s 12th and 1st houses; there’s something here that we might want to put a pin in for further exploration, but I don’t think it’s as significant in terms of the present conversation.

So what?

What this exploration has shown is that deeply transformative spiritual or transpersonal experiences can be demonstrated through predictive techniques applied to the natal chart, and the astute practitioner will be able to look at such factors and say, “oh, hey, keep an eye out in June.” I’m not confident that a practioner would be able to say that the form of such an experience would necessarily be a near-death experience, and frankly, I would like to have seen more support for such an event through transits involving the fourth and eighth rulers more clearly, but the secondary progression remains significant.

I’m honestly interested, too, if the practice of looking at progressions to the profected ascendant is a defensible practice—there remains work yet to be done, as ever. I’ll be back soon with another judgment of a similar experience to continue to build out the factors we might consider in order to arrive at predictions of Damascus Road experiences such as the one this native underwent. That said, I’m content leaving a certain amount of agency to the wiles of chaos—and, I suppose, to the Divine itself. The bigger purpose here, I think, is to be able to see something like this coming down the pipe and grease the cogs so that the native doesn’t get completely blown away by it. Some of us are better equipped to handle these kinds of events than others, and I suppose that we’d employ a judgment on similar astrological factors to determine how well a person might be able to adapt to the wisdom such crises render.

Featured image by Viviana Rishe via Unsplash