The Blogathon Lives On

Astroair Astrology celebrates its 10^th birthday this month and with Mercury currently retrograde, it’s a perfect time to recall past highlights. Today I remember a most exciting and memorable high point!

In 2010 I was thrilled to be invited by the late, great Donna Cunningham (author of many books, but most notably Healing Pluto Problems) to participate in an amazing Blogathon to celebrate International Astrology Day.

It was themed around the Saturn, Uranus, Pluto cardinal T-Square and comprised more than 70 articles from professional astrologers around the world. These articles provided helpful resources and advice to help readers deal with Saturn, Uranus and Pluto issues.

Donna, naturally, edited the Pluto section. Uranus was compiled by CJ Wright, better known as the wonderful Auntie Moon and Astroair Astrology compiled a series of articles about Saturn.

While some of the articles were of their time and others are sadly no longer available, many of them are still live and remain relevant today.

Here’s a selection of the best timeless articles:

Pluto problems have you perplexed? Here's what helps...

From Lawrence Grecco: Dealing with Pluto on the Angles

Pluto and Bullying – How to Recognise and Stop It and What to Tell Astrology Clients about Pluto in Capricorn both by Donna Cunningham and full of helpful resources and advice.

And from The Radical Virgo blog: Sleepless in America, What’s Pluto got to do with it?

Browse the full Pluto section, edited by Donna Cunningham, here

Uranus - claiming a self-reliant future

From the inimitable Steven Forrest: Transiting Uranus through the 12 houses

From the Void, Of Course blog: A Guide for Teens Studying Astrology

CosmiTec discusses break up transits in: When Love is Over - Divorce Horoscopes

From the technology section, Neeti Ray’s advice for astrologers on using social media: Astro Tribes and Connecting in the Age of Aquarius

Browse the full Uranus section, edited by Auntie Moon, here

Look after Saturn and Saturn looks after you...

From Donna Cunningham’s Skywriter blog - Saturn Transits – What do they mean for your Career?

In Tightening Your Belt with Saturn Mandi Lockley looks at Saturn transits to the money houses

Kathy Loveless on using the Emotional Freedom Technique to help with Saturn issues: Tapping for Saturn – Astrology & EFT

Using insightful client case studies, Jessica Shepherd Takes up the Long Conversation with Astrology

Browse the full Saturn section, coordinated by Mandi Lockley here

Planetary Tests

Donna devised a series of very clever tests to assess the strength of the outer planets in your birth chart!  Take the Saturn test here (and scroll down to test the strength of your Uranus, Neptune and Pluto)

Dedication 

Dedicated to Donna Cunningham, one the great astrologers of our time. Although we never met in person, she remained a friend and mentor after the Blogathon was completed. Her work lives on through her books and magazine articles as well as in all the incredible free articles and resources on her Skywriter blog.

And also a huge shout out to CJ Wright (Auntie Moon) from whom I also learnt a lot and who was a fun and supportive colleague on this project. Her website has gone from strength to strength over the years since and is also really beautiful – check it out here

With love,

Mandi xxx

The Downfall of Bill Cosby

The super famous seem to exist in an entirely different universe, like those distant twinkly constellations glimpsed on a dark night. As we watch them on the screen, spinning dream-like illusions, it’s hard to imagine that their lives are subject to the same laws as us mere mortals.

These are the beings, like the Gods on Olympus, who are allowed to behave badly and get away with it. And yet, under a Pluto in Capricorn world, that seems to be changing. Bill Cosby is the first high profile star of the #MeToo era to be criminally convicted (on three counts) of aggravated indecent assault, after drugging and assaulting a woman at his home in 2004. He was first tried for these offences in June 2017, but the case ended in a mistrial. A retrial was held in April 2018 and according to the District Attorney Kevin Steele, “he seemingly thinks that he hasn't done anything wrong. The jury thinks otherwise," and a guilty verdict was returned. On September 25, the 81 year old was sentenced to a three to 10 year custodial sentence.

Cosby - with his Sun at 20 degrees Cancer, Conjunct Mercury and Opposite Jupiter in Capricorn - secured his name in the stars with the lead role in the eponymous The Cosby Show, a joyful and extremely popular sitcom. It ran for eight seasons with Cosby as Dr. Cliff Huxtable, a clever, funny and wholesome family man and dedicated father, the beating heart of a tight knit family. Living up to the promise of his Cancer Sun Opposite Jupiter in Capricorn, he became a household name and earned the moniker of America’s Dad.

Sun and Mercury are also Conjunct Pluto in Cancer. Pluto has often been cited as the ruler of the black race and the show received praise for portraying a black family as stable, prosperous and successful, breaking with prevailing racial stereotypes.

The only fixed sign planet in his chart, Mars in Scorpio (wilful and sexually intense), Trines his Cancer planets and Sextiles his Jupiter. The Moon at 19 Virgo Conjunct Neptune, Sextile his Sun complex, perhaps signifies how much he fell into the illusion of the role he played, the safe and perfect family guy, and how much his audience also bought into it.

His conviction occurred under Pluto’s Opposition transit to his Sun in Cancer in particular and his other Cancer planets by association – transmuting his identity from homely family man to, as the Pennsylvania Sexual Offenders Assessment Board has recommended, classification as a “sexually violent predator”. 

Transiting Pluto cuts through illusions to reveal the naked truth, however ugly and for Cosby, it has marked the symbolic death of his old identity and a rebirth into something entirely different. That Cosby seems to have failed to surrender to the process and take responsibility for his crimes, surely increases the suffering for all involved. 

Note that during the original trial, transiting Uranus in Aries was exactly Square his Mercury-Pluto Conjunction (disruption to the status quo, challenges to a deeply held mind-set, shocking revelations, breaking down the details to shine a laser beam on the truth). However, transiting Pluto was still shy of its first Opposition to his Sun.

The crimes for which he was convicted first surfaced in 2005, when Andrea Constand, a member of staff at Cosby's former university, alleged she had been drugged and then molested by the star at his home in 2004.  A number of other women made similar allegations against him, but this was the only case that made it to court. In 2004, transiting Saturn in Cancer crossed Cosby’s Cancer stellium and Trined his Mars and transiting Pluto in Sagittarius Quincunxed his Cancer Sun. Built into these transits is the Sagittarian ideal of justness and the Saturnian idea of not getting away with it, however long it takes for justice to prevail.

Constand, taking about her assault, said the drugs he gave her had left her "frozen" and unable to move when the sexual assault took place. This is interesting in the context of Mars in Scorpio. It’s said that Cancer is contained water, Pisces is free-flowing water and Scorpio is water in its frozen form. With Mars signifying sexual desire and Scorpio about control, a naturally fiery planet in a cold sign, the imagery fits. Which is not to say, of course, that all Mars in Scorpio natives are sexual predators, nor that all sexual predators have Mars in Scorpio!  It’s notable however, that Cosby’s custodial sentence comes at the time of transiting Jupiter in Scorpio exactly Conjunct his Mars. This reminds us that Jupiter transits are not just about growth, optimism and good luck, they’re also about justice and integrity.

Birth details from Astrodatabank: 12 July 1937, 3pm, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (Rodden rating DD – an alternative birth time of 12.30am is also cited)

References

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-30194819

©Mandi Lockley, 2018

Pluto and the Language of Astrology

I’ve read a few comments lately from people anticipating their Pluto transit or discussing transits they’ve had. Some speak positively of the growth and change opportunities that come with the transit and others speak of the transit more fearfully. What most of them have in common, though, is that they speak about what Pluto has caused, what Pluto is bringing.

I have to say that I don’t think Pluto actually does anything to us. After all, it’s just a small, cold, dwarf planet with a scary name, in the far reaches of our solar system. Right? How can its incredibly slow movements possibly cause psychological stress or momentous change in our personal lives? That just doesn’t make any logical sense. Frankly it’s a ridiculous notion.

But still, Pluto transits tend to bring Plutonic themes into our lives, themes which carry their own signature, a certain vibration. As we experience and share what occurs during these transits, our collective astrological knowledge builds up. This takes us away from the physical rock in the sky and into the realms of the symbolic. On this level, astrology works. So, while that might seem a contradiction of my statement above that Pluto (along with all the other planets) doesn’t actually make anything happen to us, it’s actually not. I believe that people commenting about what Pluto is doing to them are not imagining things. Their Pluto transit is undoubtedly affecting them, it’s just that it’s not physical Pluto, it’s symbolic Pluto, ‘astrological’ Pluto. Of course, astrological Pluto is energetically linked to the movements of physical Pluto, but it’s not the same thing.

So instead of saying Pluto is doing this or that (which implies physical Pluto), it might be better so say that Pluto transits reflect times in our lives when our experiences resonate with the symbolic and mythic meanings that astrology has ascribed to Pluto. This is a longwinded way of expressing it of course. It’s hard to find the words to put it more simply. In the end, it’s usually easier to simply say that Pluto is doing this to me, even though, if we understand astrology, we don’t really mean it that literally.

As for why astrological Pluto affects us, I don’t know.  Astrology is not, and shouldn’t, be logical. We can accurately predict where the planets will be located on any given date, but we can’t predict exactly how the astrological, symbolic themes of the planets will be reflected here on earth in our lives. Astrology is still such a mystery to us, but I believe that symbols have power and that that power becomes more tangible, more alive and more meaningful as we interact with it.

Hades picture from http://taekwondonj.deviantart.com/art/Hades-55351038?offset=10

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Transits of 'Imprisonment' and 'Liberation'

The reversal of Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito’s conviction for the murder of Meredith Kercher was a story which gripped and polarised the public and the media. Whether the pair really had anything to do with the murder we may perhaps never know and that’s not a subject I’m going to speculate about here. When fascinated me about their story is how the timing for the original conviction, the appeal and their eventual release key in to the timing of major outer planet alignments, namely Saturn Square Pluto, Saturn opposite Uranus and the incoming Uranus Square Pluto.  Both Sollecito and Knox have had these alignments touching their charts by transit, with Knox in particular experiencing them very strongly.

What intrigued me even more were the parallels between what happened to them while Saturn, Pluto and Uranus transited their charts and what happened to me while the same transiting planets were touching my own chart. No, I haven’t been convicted, imprisoned, retried and then acquitted of any crime, nor have I had my personal life and character hauled over the coals for all the world to see, but what I did experience with these transits was similar on the psychological and emotional level. Feeling trapped (imprisoned) by external circumstances apparently beyond my control, a sense of ‘fighting back’ and eventually, release and freedom.

By making this analogy, I hope to demonstrate how the themes we associate with outer planet transits to our natal planets can manifest in our lives on so many different levels... From the most literal, external, public events to processes and feelings that occur at the most private and inner level. Often of course, they manifest on many different levels at once and fortunately for most of us, they are not nearly as dramatic or public as the Knox and Sollecito case.

On 4^th December 2009, Knox and Sollecito were convicted of the murder of British student Meredith Kercher. This conviction occurred very close to Saturn’s first exact square to Pluto at 2 degrees Libra and Capricorn in November 2009. Saturn and Pluto’s next exact alignment was at the end of January 2010 at 4 degrees of Libra and Capricorn. For both of them, Saturn and Pluto were transiting personal planets in their charts.

Saturn-Pluto transits can seem, at least on the psychological level, to take away our freedom and our free will. In the case of Knox and Sollecito, the loss of freedom was literal. In fact, losses on any level can occur under this transit. It tends to be a time of forced change, fear, pressure, negativity, crisis, restriction and a psychological journey to the underworld.  We may feel that invisible forces are working against us, that we are fighting for survival on some level. Even as our personal power is taken away, we need to find the strength to carry on, to work hard and then even harder to face and banish our demons. For this we need courage, strength and staying power. We need to tap into inner and outer resources to help us through. Readers with planets or angles at 1-5 degrees of Aries, Cancer, Libra and/or Capricorn are likely to identify with some of these themes if they look back over the last couple of years or so (get your chart for free at www.alabe.com).

The charts below show how the Saturn and Pluto square picked up on personal planets in Knox and Sollecito's birth charts. Knox has Venus at 4 degrees of Cancer, so just after the conviction transiting Pluto was exactly opposing her Venus, with Saturn squaring her Venus. She also has Mercury conjunct Venus, with Neptune in early Capricorn opposing from the public seventh house. The Moon’s Nodes, in early Aries and Libra, complete a dynamic, but no doubt stressful cardinal grand cross.  With Pluto and Saturn transiting this grand cross it’s not surprising that she has been called a liar, a manipulator, a seductress, violent, perverted and a she-devil, but imagine having to face your demons when the world is naming you as the demon!

Click to enlarge

Sollecito has his Sun at 5 degrees Aries squaring Neptune at 1 Capricorn, within orb of the Saturn-Pluto squares of late 2009 and spring/summer 2010.  While he has attracted less attention than Knox, the Saturn-Pluto transit to his Sun and Neptune is telling. Was he a victim in all this or was he deceiving everyone when he proclaimed his innocence? It’s hard to tell with that Sun-Neptune square, except to mention that it is reasonable to expect martyrdom on some level, or at least the sacrifice of the ego, with this aspect, especially so because both the Sun and Neptune are angular in his chart.

Click to enlarge

For myself, I have Sun in the eighth house at 4 degrees Capricorn, which meant that for most of 2009, transiting Pluto was in orb of conjunction with my Sun, with its first exact hit in January 2010. Transiting Saturn was in orb of a square to my Sun from late 2009 through autumn 2010, with the first hit in December 2009. What happened to me? Well, a change in personal circumstances beyond my control meant that I felt trapped in an unhappy situation both literally and emotionally. Any attempt to get myself out of the situation seemed blocked at every turn and I felt like a rat in a maze. I won’t go into great detail, except to say that it was all very eighth house on every level!  Friends will testify that during this time I would often say that my situation felt like a prison sentence, but that I wasn’t sure what my crime had been!

We all know that in life nothing is forever and like life, transits are temporal. With Saturn-Pluto transits, there is, thankfully, a light at the end of the tunnel, with the eventual promise of empowerment and emancipation, but not before a lot of hard work and a lot of seemingly endless patience.

Sollecito and Knox‘s legal teams filed appeals against their convictions in April 2010 and the appeal process began in December 2010. It was during the time between the filing of the appeal and the actual appeal that the Saturn-Pluto squares and the ongoing, status-quo upsetting Saturn-Uranus oppositions formed what has been widely dubbed by astrologers as the cardinal climax – a t-square in the early cardinal planets that had been building since 2008 and has come to symbolise shocks, changes, intense challenges, restriction, losses and hard, hard work. Its most obvious manifestation has been in dramatic change of fortune in the world’s economies, the effects of which have filtered down into the lives of individuals everywhere, but overall, these aspects have been reflected in individuals’ lives in many different ways and on many different levels.

Whatever the manifestation, I’m proposing that it was accompanied by these feelings of entrapment and imprisonment that I have described, along with the feeling of being part of something bigger than yourself and in many ways out of your control. Despite this, many of us have emerged much stronger and more resourceful, even as we find our material circumstances reduced.

So, for those of you still feeling trapped and repressed, where and when is the release? Let’s look again at the charts of Knox and Sollecito. 

They won their appeal against their murder conviction and were freed on October 3^rd 2011. By now, Saturn has moved out of the picture, with the much anticipated Uranus-Pluto square forming. On the day of their release, Uranus was at 2 Aries and Pluto at 5 Capricorn, connecting with the cardinal planets in their charts very closely. Under Uranus-Pluto moving aspects we demand freedom, we question authority, we don’t accept the letter of the law and we won’t tolerate being controlled. We want to feel free to do what we want to do and we want to make a difference.

Knox’s father summed up Saturn-Pluto followed by Uranus-Pluto perfectly, "she's almost kind of reborn in a way. I mean, living for four years inside a concrete and steel, you know, prison, and now being able to kind of just look around, smell the air and - and just do what she wants to do, hopefully when she wants to do it, it makes a huge difference." (quote from cbsnews.com)

For myself, after a year or more of Saturn and Pluto transiting my Sun, I had the first squares from Uranus to my Sun in May this year. Around the time of the second hit, a surprising event happened that changed everything for me. As I sit here writing, I am looking forward to the next few months leading up the third and final square of transiting Uranus to my Sun, with Uranus is also making a series of sextiles to my MC and 10^th house Aquarius planets.  I am now in a position where I feel free do whatever I want with my life. Yes, there has been much upheaval and masses of change, but finally my appeal has been heard and I have been released from my psychological prison. I still don’t know what my crime was, but that doesn’t matter, because what I do now know is that I have the inner resources to cope with an uncertain future and it doesn’t matter that I can’t control everything. All that matters is that I use my time and energy wisely from now on and follow my heart.

Readers, have you experienced similar feelings and events over the last couple of years or so? How are things now?

With love,
Mandi
www.mandilockley.com

Chart data from Astrodatabank.

A note to subscribers: an apology that at the end of Astrology for October there was an error in the text for Venus and Mercury opposing Jupiter. This has now been corrected:

http://mandilockley.blogspot.com/2011/10/astrology-for-october-golden.html

Notes From A Pluto Transit

Note: I wrote the following a couple of months ago, but hesitated to publish it for a couple of reasons. Firstly, it's all about me and I usually steer away from indulgent personal writing on this blog. Secondly, the couple of people who did read it said they found it upsetting and Astroair is supposed to be an uplifting blog. However, the piece kept nagging at me, so here it is at last... I have not shared details of what happened under this transit (it's different for everybody), but have described how it felt. We shouldn't pretend that Pluto transits are fun or easy, because they're not and if I could sum mine up in three words they would be 'hard, hard work', but on reading this again from a slightly more distant perspective, it's beginning (a little) to feel like at least some of the hard work could have been worth it.

It’s the time of year when the central heating is cranked up and extra duvets are piled on the bed. It’s unwise to leave the house without coat, hat, scarf and gloves. The days are short and darkness reigns. Strange that only a few months ago I slept with the fan on all night, just to keep cool. Odd that the days were so long and the nights so short. I know that the heat of the summer was real, I remember it, but from this viewpoint it feels like an imagined fantasy, like something that happened to another person in another place. It’s also difficult to imagine that in another few months, the scarves and gloves will be relegated to the back of the cupboard and I’ll be dusting off the fan again.

I know as fact that spring will come again and that summer will follow, but simply accepting this fact from my current point of view takes more than merely knowing, it takes a leap of faith.

As the year long conjunction of transiting Pluto to my 8th House Sun begins to wane I am keenly reminded of this turning of the seasons. From my current perspective I find myself in a dark, wintry place. It’s cold and scary here and the night feels endless. It’s almost impossible to imagine the inevitability of summer, the Sun shining high in the sky. It’s almost impossible to believe that I will ever feel joy again.

However, like Persephone in the myth, one day soon I will emerge from Hades’ (Plato’s) underworld, feel the Sun's warmth again and feel joy again. I will look back from ‘high summer’ and no doubt part of me will find it hard to accept that I ever felt so cold and dark and scared. The larger part of me though will, I hope, accept that life is like the seasons and the planetary cycles - constantly turning and always changing and no matter where in life the cycle finds itself, it's always meant to be in the place where it is.

In the place where I am right now, my job, home, relationship and financial security are all unsure. 2011 is an unknown quantity. Dreams have been crushed, plans abandoned. In losing so much power and control over the external circumstances of my life, I am coming to understand that power comes from within. It is a neutral energy which can be used in any way I choose or not used at all. It can be as reactive and explosive as nuclear energy or it can be calm and contained and constructive. I am learning that for me personally, it’s about holding my centre and learning to recognise when to simply let go. It’s been about feeling anger and grief and bitterness and about ‘owning’ these potentially destructive emotions in order to see beyond and beneath them, to seek out their source.

Anger for me (and yes, I do get very angry very regularly these days) is a sign that a line has been crossed and is a cue to reset and reassert my personal boundaries. Usually I’m angry at myself, even when that anger is directed outwards. It is part of my Pluto lesson about ceasing to be a pushover and overcoming a lifelong belief that everyone else is superior/better/stronger than me. I am learning that setting healthy boundaries in my relationships is essential to my mental and emotional health (Saturn in Libra squared my Sun for much of the time that Pluto was conjunct it) and I am constantly readjusting those boundaries, trying to find the right balance.

Bitterness is a new emotion for me, ugly and unwelcome. Put simply, I’m grieving and the twinges of bitterness are, I think, a part of that grieving process. I am grieving for lost hope, for idealism crushed by reality. If I’m not careful, these feelings sneak into my waking thoughts and into the stoop of my posture. I’ve faced tangible losses under this Pluto transit, but the grief seems to be coming not from tangible loss, but from the loss of ‘what might have been’, the dreams I never fulfilled (where are the published novels, the beautiful babies?). These things feel as real, on a psychic level, as the tangible things I have created and lost in my life. As such, they need to be honoured and grieved for and laid to rest every bit as much as the ‘real’ lost friendship, the ‘real’ lost job etc. Under a Pluto transit a fresh perspective on these lost dreams can and must be found. While I might never publish a novel (writing one in the first place would have helped), I do have a wonderful forum to write and share and express myself though my astrology articles. While it’s now too late for me to have children, I realise that I have always been a caring, nurturing, loving person, it’s just that those qualities have been directed elsewhere (into my friendships, my work, my love for my pets). I’m learning to face reality as it is, rather than focusing on my idealised (Sun semi-square Neptune) version of how I would have liked things to be. Most of all, through experiencing and questioning the bitterness and grief I’ve been feeling, I’m learning to have faith in myself and where I am in my life. I’m also learning that while hope and ideals can be lost, faith is a constant.

This Pluto transit has also been a lesson in knowing when and how to surrender (sometimes disengaging from the ‘fight’ is the wisest choice and the best way to win the ‘war’ and also realising that when you’re at war with others, you are really only at war with an aspect of yourself); learning to forgive (myself and others); knowing when to ask for help (overcoming a fierce independence born from negative self beliefs about not deserving help and/or fears that those who help me will have power or control over me) and knowing how to spot when I’m being manipulating / manipulated (a lot of stuff to do with old family relationships, which for years played itself out unattractively in my own adult relationships).

I’m not saying I’ve finished learning these lessons or will ever master them completely, but I will keep on trying, will keep on searching for a healthy transforming, perspective on the dark path that life sometimes takes me down. Most of all, I will do my very best to hold onto the faith and the truth that nothing is forever, that the Sun will shine again and that joy will return.

And to all those Plutonic people who have accompanied me on this journey - those who have taught me harsh lessons and those who have loved and supported and believed in me (you know you are) - I would like to say a huge thank you.

Postscript: A Happy Ending? All the way through this transit I kept joking with some of my astrology colleagues that I was going to win the lottery (tr. Pluto in the 8th House conjunct Sun, ruler of the 5th House). Most told me it was wishful thinking! Well, they were wrong, because on December 25th, my birthday, I won nearly £2k on the lottery! A great gift for my Solar Return...Roll on Jupiter and Uranus squaring my Sun in 2011.


Resource: this book spent almost the entirety of my Pluto transit on my nightstand. Highly recommended: Healing Pluto Problems by Donna Cunningham


See also: Pluto Problems Got You Perplexed? Here's What Helps! an online collection of helpful, insightful articles to help you through your Pluto transit. Joyce Mason's A Cup of Courage in Times of Tough Transits particularly resonates with what I've written here.


10 Tips for Surviving a Pluto Transit from Moonkissd by Jessica


Survival Tips for the Pluto Transit by Lynn Koiner

With love,
Mandi
http://www.mandilockley.com/


Image details: In 2005, this image from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope was used to identify two new moons orbiting Pluto. Pluto is in the center. The moon Charon is just below it. The newly discovered moons, Nix and Hydra, are to the right of Pluto and Charon. Image Credit: NASA, ESA, H. Weaver (JHU/APL), A. Stern (SwRI), and the HST Pluto Companion Search Team http://www.nasa.gov/audience/forstudents/k-4/stories/what-is-pluto-k4.html