This article was first posted on the website of the Cosmic Intelligence Agency in July 2020. Due to some technical problems with their site – the original post is currently not online  – since I still had the text, I am reposting it here.

Mars in Aries

It takes Mars two years to orbit the Sun. During this time it spends around six weeks in each zodiac sign and has a retrograde phase which lasts approximately 28 weeks. When Mars is retrograde, it will often re-enter the previous sign but it can also spend the entire retrograde period in the same sign, the astrologer Dane Rudhyar coined the term ‘long stay’ for these particular transits. The red planet is particularly highlighted this year because he is making a long stay in his sign of rulership Aries. The last long stay in Aries was way back in 1941 and in this article, I want to speculate on what that this close encounter with the red planet might mean for us from an individual perspective, in a later post I will focus on the possible mundane influence of this transit. Continue reading

A Planetary Triptych: Jupiter, Saturn and Pluto in Capricorn

Triptych is derived from the Greek, trip (three) tych (layered) and usually applies to paintings, such as the weirdly wonderful ‘Garden of Earthly Delights‘ by Hieronymus Bosch.  In this blog….some of my thoughts on the weird and wonderful planetary triptych, Jupiter, Saturn and Pluto in Capricorn.

Committed to Capricorn since 2008, Pluto  is the slowest moving planet in this triptych and Jupiter in sign of fall, the fastest. Even when in Capricorn, the sign of seasonal purgatory,  the role of Jupiter is to ‘big things up’. In Capricorn, Jupiter has come down from the mountain top and is singularly focused on the affairs of this world, here he busies himself with money, power, ambition and even with the occasional “dodgy deal”.
(Note: At the time of the first Watergate break-in on 28 May 1972, Jupiter was in this notoriously ambitious sign. This event set off a chain reaction which eventually resulted in the resignation (pending impeachment) of President Richard Nixon, a Jupiter in Capricorn native himself.) Continue reading

Focus USA: The Long Stay of Mars in Aries

(first posted on Liz Hathway Astrologer Facebook Page on May 30th 2020)

Mars is particularly highlighted this year because he will make a so called ‘long-stay’ in his home sign Aries. I first read about the ‘long stay ‘of Mars in an article written by Dane Rudhyar, published in An Astrological Anthology. It concerns a specific pattern whereby Mars completes his retrograde period within the same zodiac sign. Normally Mars will spend around six weeks in a sign, however during a long stay, he will be in the same sign for approximately six months. When retrograde, a planet outside of the earth’s orbit Rudhyar wrote, will be closer to earth and therefore able to impress itself more forcibly on our consciousness. Mars in Rudhyar’s view, represented the element of action, and of exteriorisation, ‘it brings things out’. Rudhyar advised astrologers to look at Mars in relation to the prevailing planetary picture, but I think it is also useful to consider the history of past cycles. The United States seems to resonate strongly with the long stay of Mars in Aries and so I will take the US as an example.  Continue reading

In terms of faith and religion, the solstitial sign Capricorn is associated with ancient traditions, pagan faiths, and earth worship. With Jupiter approaching its first conjunction with Pluto since the conjunction on the galactic center in 2007 and its first conjunction in Capricorn since 1771, the  spectacle yesterday of Pope Francis delivering a special Urbi et Orbi blessing from Rome, one of the centers of classical antiquity, seemed to me most timely. Unlike Saturn and Jupiter, there were no temples to worship the god Pluto in Ancient Rome. If a person wanted to invoke Pluto, they would go to some wild place and find an opening into the earth, and there beat the ground with the palms of their hands, and quite literally invoke him, call him up from his realm deep within the earth. Pluto really is an ancient chthonic force which entices us to exit the temple and to venerate nature instead. Continue reading

Equinox News…

I was interested to compare the 2008 Aries ingress, with Jupiter and Pluto in Capricorn, with the 2020 Aries ingress. The 2008 chart has Sun square Mars in fall in Cancer and square Pluto in early Capricorn (in fact it is on the axis of the world). In the current ingress chart, the Moon’s Nodes are close to the position of the 2008 Mars/Pluto opposition. I am sure we all remember that 2008 signaled the beginning of an economic melt down, followed by austerity (massive cutbacks of course in social care, hospital beds, frontline services, etc. ). There is of course nothing buoyant about Jupiter in Capricorn, though Jupiter being Jupiter, it will bring great benefits to some (debt collectors, pawn shops, undertakers, to name just a few). Continue reading