Astrological Blue Moons; the July 2010 t-square

Tonight, New Year’s Eve, is a Blue Moon. That means it is the second Full Moon within the same calendar month. Blue Moons occur about every 2½ years, which is why they are used to describe a rare event.

A Blue Moon, however, is not an astrological phenomenon, because calendar months are not astrological divisions of time.

The astrological equivalent of a month is the zodiac sign, of which there are 12 in a year. So from an astrological point of view, the equivalent of a Blue Moon would be having 2 Full Moons in the space of one sign, one at the beginning and one at the end. These also occur about once every 2½ years, and I’ll call them ABMs for short (astrological blue moons).

ABMs are not traditional, they are just Dharmaruci thinking out loud. But you could say that with an ABM, the axis under which it occurs is emphasised for that month. It is an axis because under a Full Moon, you have the Moon in one sign and the Sun in the opposite sign.

So in June/July 2005, there was an ABM on the Cancer/Capricorn axis. In the middle of that period, we had the July bombings in London, and the UK is a Capricorn nation. Cancer/Capricorn is also known as the political axis, and this was an intensely political event, not just in terms of the bombers motives, but because Tony Blair was under siege over the Iraq War, and these bombings were seen (rightly, I think) as a consequence of the War. As if to emphasise this axis, the bombings took place under a New Moon in Cancer.

The previous ABM was in July/August 2002 under the Leo/Aquarius Axis. The drums of war were beating in the US, and in October that year the US Congress authorized the President to use the United States Armed Forces against Iraq. This war was intensely ideological, which is a characteristic of Aquarius and of the American people (the US chart has Moon in Aquarius).

The most recent ABM took place in Scorpio between 20 April and 20 May 2008. Scorpio is a sign that at its simplest level (which is often the level of mundane events) stands for physical death. In this period 133,000 people were killed in a cyclone in Burma, the largest number to die in a natural event since the 2004 tsunami. And 69,000 people were killed in an earthquake in China.

The next ABM is in Aries in Sept/Oct 2010. This may well emphasise issues of peace/diplomacy (Libra) and war (Aries). This ABM comes hot on the heels of the famous cardinal t-square at the end of July 2010, involving Moon, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Pluto. With Mars and Saturn in Libra, this configuration also emphasises diplomacy as well as war. It would seem that events will be coming to a head next year in the war of West versus East, in particular of the US versus much of the middle and near East.


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A crucial moment in this t-square is when the Moon enters Aries, activating it. The chart for this moment, set for Washington DC, has 5 of these planets lined up along the MC/IC. So the run-up to this moment, i.e. most of July, I expect to be a time of intense political activity and development both at home and abroad for the US.

On the 6th August 2010, the Moon will have moved round to Cancer, creating a Grand Cross, while Venus will have moved into Libra, adding a 7th planet to the line-up. A t-square is by its nature unbalanced, and it seeks balance in the point opposite the corner, in this case Cancer.


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So the powerful events that the t-square will be kicking off may reach some sort of initial resolution quite quickly. But this could easily mean, for example, a response to an attack. Again, with the US being a Cancerian nation, we may be talking about a threat to the US homeland - or perceived threat - and a response to that. And with Venus now also in the sign of Libra, the response may be less belligerent and/or unilateral than one might assume. The US will just be emerging from a Node opposite Sun transit, so whatever happens, the events will be significant in shaping the future of the US.

The Copenhagen Climate Conference (Part II); Polygamy

The Copenhagen Climate Conference looks like it has failed. The Chinese, as a large fast-growing economy intent on world domination, were never likely to compromise about their emissions. And the Americans turned up at the last minute with honeyed words.


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In my piece of 11th Dec, I said that with Pluto Rising square to Saturn, the conference could achieve a lot, as this is a dynamic combination. I think I was probably being over-influenced by the hype around the start of the conference. On a personal level, Saturn square Pluto can be dynamic, if you are a bit aware. On a collective level, it is very hard to get a creative outcome with these challenging aspects. This is basic to mundane astrology as far as I am concerned, which is why it can be relatively easy to make astrological predictions about countries.

The chart ruler was Saturn in 9th House Libra. This expressed the aims of the conference: a treaty involving all countries that was fair and verifiable. But it was square to Angular Pluto in Capricorn, which is about as difficult and nasty as it gets. In this case, the aims were disempowered (square to Pluto) by the powerful countries (Pluto) protecting their own interests (Capricorn).

On a completely different note, in Indonesia they have a club to promote polygamy, which is legal but tightly controlled. Here is what the woman director, who found it hard when her husband took a second wife, has to say: "It was difficult for me in the beginning, but I knew it was because of my emotions, my desires. But polygamy is a way for us to find happiness and love in this world. There are a lot of advantages for women in polygamous marriages - we learn how to control our desires and jealousies, and this brings us closer to Allah."


And this is what her husband had to say: "I think polygamy is better than monogamy. There are so many advantages - for men, it teaches us leadership. If it difficult to manage one wife in a marriage - but four? It is much more difficult and it is a good educational practice."

Of course, I am just a westerner from a secularised culture and it would be arrogant of me to judge their value system. Or would it? I wouldn't outlaw it, though, it's a 'right to choose' issue. I wonder what Tiger Woods would have to say?

The Run-Up to Christmas

Have you noticed that there is no point trying to arrange anything between now and Christmas that hasn’t already been arranged? It just won’t happen. There is a good astrological reason for this: the Sun is in the final degrees of a mutable sign, Sagittarius. A sign of excess and office parties, yes. But being mutable, and at the end of the sign, it is particularly good for just going with the flow and letting things end, not beginning them.

You have to wait for the cardinal signs for that, in this case Capricorn, the sign under which Santa Claus comes down chimneys. Capricorn sets the boundaries – the chimney walls – through which Santa must squeeze. With Pluto now in Capricorn, it may be the death of him, or at the least he may have to be dismembered to get down.

The War on Democracy

I watched John Pilger’s The War on Democracy last night. Highly recommended. It’s a detailed account of many of the dirty tricks the US has got up to in Central and South America over the last 60 years, particularly its covert contribution to regime change when it suited the US: by and large, this meant replacing democracies with dictatorships.

It was quite clear that the US government has never cared about what conditions were like for people in its ‘back yard’, that in fact it would happily contribute to torture etc. All the US government cares about is economic and political control of these countries, by whatever means. One American who was tortured by another American in one of these countries said people often seem to think of Abu Ghraib as a one-off instance, whereas if you look at US history, it is the norm.

What I liked was the attention to evidence through interviews and CIA documents. This isn’t much to ask, in a way, but often you don’t get it. This is why I generally don’t go with conspiracy theories, because they are nearly always complacent if not shoddy in this respect when you look into them. I think the reason for this is that the proponents are more interested in seeing what they want to see, rather than what is actually there, which is usually a lot more interesting!

Anyway, it was hilarious repeatedly seeing footage of US government denials of involvement in regime change, alongside the documents (often CIA) and interviews which proved the opposite. As it said on the cover, you should never believe anything until it’s officially denied!

I also liked his take that the US is simply behaving like empires do. This is why I don’t go with the demonization of the US that you get. And at least the US has a mechanism for getting rid of corrupt leaders i.e. elections. I’m glad I don’t live in China’s back yard, because I think they would be a lot less equivocal about getting rid of what doesn’t suit them, like Tibetan society, for example. The modern US could never have got away with that.

A point that was emphasised was human dignity, and that this is precisely what fascism takes away. There was a long interview with Hugo Chavez of Venezuela at the start. (In my opinion, with his recent backing of Mugabe, Ahmadinejad et al, he is starting to lose the plot.) And this was his point, that what he wanted for his people was not the wealth that Americans felt to be so important, but dignity.

I think that when a society is essentially competitive, as the whole world is increasingly becoming, then it tends to divide people into better and worse, winners and losers. This makes it hard for those who do not ‘get on’ in the conventional sense to respect themselves, i.e. to have dignity. Fascism is an extreme of this, where you have an authoritarian ruling elite, and everyone else is considered like rubbish, ‘poor white trash’.

The film ended on a hopeful note, describing the new wave of democracy that is happening in South America. It is pre-Obama, however, and I think it remains to be seen how the US will behave in South America under its new President. It is worth remembering what the BBC's US political correspondent Matt Frei said a while back: Obama is not Bush, but America is still America.

The Copenhagen Climate Conference

The Copenhagen Climate Conference began last Monday, 7th December. In the run-up to it, emails were published that showed dissent by scientists from the view that global warming is largely man-made. It is an issue whose truth has become self-evident – rather like the existence of God to the medieval mind – so that anyone who questions it is clearly of doubtful character.

Global warming as an issue has become completely politicised – rather like the MMR vaccine in the UK – and any hope of objective truth went out the window a long time ago. As a scientist, your career and reputation would not last long if you questioned this ‘truth’. No doubt there will be inquiries some years down the line into whether governments suppressed the truth, in the same way that we are inquiring in the UK at present into how the government decided to go to war in Iraq. I don’t expect much in the way of truth to be revealed.

The Copenhagen Conference was starting around 9am GMT on Monday, and as you can see Mercury and Pluto were exactly conjunct and Rising, in square to Saturn. A perfect configuration for words (Mercury) that suppress the truth (Pluto) due to institutional demands (Saturn/Capricorn). It is also a very dynamic and ambitious configuration, suggesting the conference will achieve a lot, despite the suppression of truth.


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The Conference is also about a new vision (Jupiter-Neptune) about how we manage our resources (2nd House) that will heal the damage done by technology (conjunct Chiron in Aquarius). This conjunction was being activated through its opposition to the Moon and Mars, but being in the 8th, also hints again at the suppression of truth.

Trends for 2010

Here are a couple of articles from Adrian Duncan on how next year's outer planet configurations affect each sign individually:

Trends for 2010 - part 1
As we head in to 2010, a series of extremely dynamic planetary constellations start shaping up, setting the scene for five or six years of dramatic change for the world. These patterns are reminiscent of the 1930’s when the world was struggling with economic depression on the one hand and political extremism on the others. The years of ideological battle, religious extremism and uncertainty connected with Uranus, Saturn and Pluto in mutable signs will soon be definitively over, and a new philosophy of decision-making and action will become dominant. (more…)


Trends for 2010 - part 2
Last month we looked at how the major planetary cycles will affect the first six signs of the zodiac using solar house astrology. These signs will be affected indirectly by the movement of the outer planets, but for the signs from Libra to Pisces, there will be greater personal change. Saturn moving in to Libra and constellating in a square aspect to Pluto will profoundly affect Saturn-ruled Capricorn and Aquarius, whilst Jupiter moving into Pisces, and further into Aries in conjunction with Uranus, is bound to make 2010 an exciting and unpredictable year for Pisces and Sagittarius. (more…)

Tiger Woods gets caught with his trousers down

The Sun newspaper led today with a picture of Tiger Woods and the quote: “I’ve let my wife down, I’ve let my family down (and I’ve let my trousers down).” The Sun can be appalling as well as having a kind of genius, and it’s certainly not going to put up with hypocritical sentiment of the “I’ve let my wife down” variety. Americans are very good at that sort of hypocrisy, the English not quite so, partly because it is not so bad to have an affair over here, although it’s getting that way: the new Puritanism that has come in the wake of the so-called ‘sexual revolution’, for which I think American feminism is largely to blame.

Anyway, Tiger Woods has been enjoying himself, and he is now claiming to be ashamed of that. He evidently has a taste in models: his wife and 3 mistresses (so far) all look like models, and the trouble is that he is married to one of them. It would be OK if we didn’t happen to live in a monogamous culture (and let’s not absolutise our system), rather than a polygamous or polyandrous one (like Tibet).

The American philosopher William James once had a dream in which the central problem of existence was revealed to him. Waking up, he feverishly wrote it down lest he forget it by the morning. On reading it later, he found he had written:

‘Higamus hogamus, women are monogamous
Hogamus higamus, men are polygamous.’

There you have it!

The first place to look when considering someone’s romantic life is the planet Venus, and Woods has it in Scorpio. Scorpio is, in a way, the most primitive of the signs, or at least the sign that is least ashamed to be ‘primitive’. Scorpio is a sign of desire, of raw desire, and in Woods’ case this does not sit well with his respectable Sun in Capricorn. Hence the hypocrisy. This is also expressed by his Virgo ascendant. Virgo is a sign that is discerning about practical things, and this makes it a sign of ethics. But in their humility and control of their behaviour, a lot can get damned up.


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So here we have this controlled, respectable Capricorn with Virgo Rising. And Mars and Venus let him down, which is classic. Wood’s Mars is in two-faced, tricksy Gemini, conjunct the US Mars, so it is a very American sex-story.

And Woods also has Mars conjunct MC opposite Moon conjunct IC. So there is a tension between his public pursuit of sex, and his strong need for a family life. At the same time, his Moon is in expansive Sagittarius, so it is possible that in his heart of hearts he would like to have several wives and families!

Back to Venus in Scorpio. What the women look like is clearly the main factor for Woods, or they wouldn’t all be models. This is the raw, physical desire of Scorpio, and there is nothing ‘wrong’ with that. His Mars, which also describes his desire nature, is in Gemini, and here we see Gemini at its most superficial and glittering.

Both Scorpio and Gemini have a strong relationship with the ‘shadow-side’, that which we would rather not acknowledge about ourselves, that which we are, rightly or wrongly, ashamed of. If you claim to be at ease with your shadow, then that is not your shadow. Scorpio cannot help but be that ‘shadow’, and Scorpio’s path, in a way, is about bringing air and objectivity to it. Gemini, on the other hand, needs to encounter the shadow, to be honest about the murky motives behind the glittering persuasiveness.

Woods’ sexuality seems in a way to be functioning at quite a primitive level. It is a sort of Achilles heel for him. Here is a man at the pinnacle of his society, clean-cut and respectable and respected, but actually it is like Animal Farm where at the end you see the boars in human clothes. He is grabbing the prettiest women (as society sees them) and fucking them, as his high-status allows him to do. I don’t see a moral problem with that in itself, and nor does Scorpio, though not telling the model he happens to have married is, I think, ethically more problematic.

Scorpio, however, is able to function at a deeper level than this. Scorpio is all about depth and intimacy, where the physical looks are increasingly less the issue. Woods’ Venus is at 28.32 Scorpio, and Neptune will be exactly squaring it all of next year. The transit has already begun, and the trouble has begun. Woods will have a different Venus in a year or two. Scorpio is a sign of power, and Woods is using the power that society gives him to pull lots of women. His Venus is (widely) conjunct North Node in Scorpio, so the issue of how he uses power in relationships is very important.

Scorpio is a sign of secrets, and up till now Woods has kept this side of himself out of the public gaze. Neptune has dissolved that secrecy, which means that he won’t be able just to carry on as before. He’ll have to work out what is important to him, for it will destroy his family life, his sense of home and intimacy. At the same time, with his wife seeming to be out of the same stable, so to speak, as his mistresses, that relationship may end also as Neptune does his work.

All this came out when Woods crashed his car into a fire hydrant the other day after an argument with his wife. Uranus was stationing, conjunct his Descendant in Pisces. His Moon (wife) is in fiery Sagittarius, which Uranus has been squaring. So there you have it: the accident (Uranus) involving a fire (Sag Moon) hydrant (Uranus in Pisces)!