DID HADES REALLY ABDUCT PERSEPHONE?

Easter is not long gone, when Christians celebrate the great myth of the Resurrection. I call it 'great' because it is central to what used to be the defining myth of our culture. Since then, as Yeats put it in The Second Coming, "Things fall apart/The Centre cannot hold/Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world." Maybe so, but we are free openly to practise astrology as a result. No more proscription for summoning up demons, merely the puny derision of science to tolerate.

The Christian myth speaks to us whether we like it or not. With our rational minds we may sincerely claim it has nothing to do with us. But that is not how your unconscious sees it. The old myths are very much alive. It is a powerful story: this guy is tortured to death, he descends to hell, where he opens its gates, so that salvation is now possible for all. Then he returns to his Father in Heaven. The Spirit of God is now present in the world, and it is enough to have faith in that to be saved.

Something like that. I think it is better as an astrologer to acknowledge the power of that story, and keep it over there in some compartment of your psyche, than pretend to yourself it has no power for you. Otherwise you will be screaming for a priest on your deathbed! As astrologers, we are very open to myths, because what is our calling, but the telling of sky stories? The Christian myth is a strange one, but are our beliefs any less strange?

What I want to do here is to relativise the Christian myth of the Resurrection by simply pointing out that it is a repeating story, and we astrologers have our own one in the abduction by Hades of Persephone, who goes to the Underworld a girl, and emerges a woman, but afterwards always with one foot in that world. That story is older than the Christian myth. Earlier than that, from Mesopotamian times, is the story of the descent of the goddess Inanna into the Underworld. She is killed by her sister, and left as a lump of meat on a hook. Eventually she emerges, renewed.

Persephone's abduction, descent and renewal is a story we regularly invoke as astrologers to describe the difficult process - the difficult initiation - of a Pluto transit. What we have over the Christians is that we do not see it as a unique event in history. The Christian faith, as far as I understand it, is dependent on their Resurrection being THE Resurrection, a unique and literal event in history. That of course leads to fundamentalism. With 10 different gods calling us, it is hard for astrologers to be fundamentalist, fundamentalism being when you consider there to be only one reality. Reality is neither single nor multiple: it is the Great Mystery. Fundamentalism is a human tendency, and you see it in astrologers when they lean too heavily on tradition.

You could argue that what the Christians have over the astrologers is their literalism, because at least they consider their Resurrection to have been real. We moderns slip too easily into it being 'just' a story, unlike the 'facts' that science comes up with, which is what 'really' happens.

Reality is a complex thing. What is most real for the psyche is not mere historical event, but myth. Did Hades really abduct Persephone? Yes, it is a truth to die for, for it is a truth about how life renews that we live by. Did Christ really have a resurrection? Yes, for the same reason. Was it a historical event? That seems doubtful to me, but that doesn't matter, for as an event it was more real than that, and as myth it is outside of time. It happens every Easter. And every time someone emerges from a Pluto transit.

Maybe my other main point here is that we need to re-learn to see myths as facts. And to treat our modern 'facts' as myths, as stories. We can never know where the universe came from. But the Big Bang is quite a good story for our times.

We live in an extraverted world, in which something either happened or it didn't. You need to experience the psyche, the inner world, as an objective reality - and not the mere 'subjective' to which it is nowadays relegated - to appreciate that the enduring stories are more real, more true, than 'fact'. Such a position is hard-won in a culture where the negative Saturn, which denies inward realities, holds so much sway.

Astrology itself works when we feel the power of the planets. That is when we will say things that resonate, that the other person feels to be true. This, you could say is proof of the truth of that inner, inspirited world. It is more true, more real, than the world of the senses. It is more true to say that Hades abducted Persephone, than it is to say that the universe began with the Big Bang. Or that we are the product of Evolution.

 

 

ISRAEL and the ECLIPSE

The 8th April Total Eclipse will be within 4 degrees of opposing the Israeli Ascendant. Expect significant developments at this time. The rising tensions with Iran are one pointer. Mars had just passed over Israel's Asc, and the Node was about to oppose it, at the time of the October attacks. So it is a sensitive point.

 

NORTHERN IRELAND and the TOTAL ECLIPSE

This is a formative time for Northern Ireland, as Pluto crosses its MC this year and last year. The leader of the DUP, a party key to the fragile stability of NI, has resigned on a rape charge, throwing the province's political future into doubt. This is in the run-up to the total solar eclipse of 8th April, opposite natal Saturn in Libra, the MC ruler. This timing suggests that the event will have significant consequences for the political future of NI.

 

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TRANSGENDER: A SHAMANIC PERSPECTIVE

Shamanism begins with a remembering that we belong to the natural world. We are part of her, and she takes care of us. We learn to trust her. And for the same reason, we trust the body we are born into, whether it is male or female. It is not the wrong body! This is very basic.

But what happens if you experience the other gender within yourself? Again, TRUST IT! You have an interesting journey to undergo. You are both genders, you are gifted, you bring a perspective to life that others do not have. If your people are civilised, they will look to you. If they are uncivilised, they will taunt you for being different.

You may look just the same as everyone else. Or you may be a man living as a woman, or vice-versa. Many people do not like difference. They want to know what is what, and they fear the unknown. You will need to let their arrows bounce off you, and not take it personally. This is a warrior training that forges character, for few people have the strength to live outside herd approval.

Your dual nature is a gift from Spirit. When you present as the other gender, there is a ceremonial element to it, an archetypal power that passes through you. You may want to do it all the time, or just when the call to do so is there.

Gender is real and distinct for the great majority of people, and it tells them who they are. It is a partial identity, but it is the identity they need to live. To say that gender is just a social construct is to deny a very basic and ancient fact of existence. It is harmful to push this at people. If you grew up on a farm like I did, you will know that a lot of our gender-associated behaviour is biologically, not socially, determined.

Basic as the distinction is between male and female, it is also fluid. In achieving a deeper balance during the course of our lifetimes, we may feel we have become both genders, or neither. This is what Jan Morris, one of the earliest men to have transgender surgery, said in his eighties.

We live in a literalising culture that does not understand Ceremony and Spirit. When people opt for surgery and start to insist they are the other gender and that others must recognise them as such, they are literalising a god or goddess that is working through them; they are trying to become it, and in doing so they turn a gift into a curse. It is a tragedy.

What is also a tragedy is young people joining a bandwagon, thinking that changing gender will solve their problems, and adults colluding in this and offering irreversible chemical and surgical mutilation. The stories of castrated or breastless young people who are now 'detransitioning' are heartbreaking. Their accounts are difficult to listen to. For most of them, the research shows that the real issue is that they are gay, and they need time to realise this.

Identity is not such a big deal. It is ultimately illusory, even though ordinary humanity needs it for psychological well-being. Humans are relational as much as they are autonomous, and who we are is a product of a negotiation with the outside world. This is something we learn in the school playground. You can't insist on how people see you. It is natural and part of their development for a 2 year-old to insist that really they are a princess or a superhero, and adults play along with it. But for an adult male to insist they are 'really' a woman is delusional and infantile. It is fuelled by a medical lie that we can physically change gender. We cannot. There is only ersatz and mutilation. There is money to be made from this lie, doctors know it is a lie, and hopefully there will eventually be an accounting and a reckoning for this malpractice.

If you are at ease with who you are, you do not need to insist on how others see you. Nor do you need to go on marches about it, displaying it in public. You quietly get on with who you are. The sacred is degraded when it is turned into a political campaign.

Many people such as artists will have both genders working through them. Both are needed, to some degree, in order to be creative. They may not feel the need to present as other than the gender they were born into.

There is a natural process whereby we encounter the other gender within during the second half of life: this is Jung's Anima and Animus. Men become better able to listen to themselves and to others, listen with their feelings; and women become better able to know what they want, and not feel so obliged to please others and to take care of them. It's a fruitful area in astrology readings. Women and Mars, men and Venus. It's a later life soul journey for both sexes.

So here's to masculine women and feminine men, and the riches they bring. My perspective is indebted to the Native American Two-Spirit tradition, which is worth looking up on Youtube.

THE MADNESSES OF NEPTUNE and THE SATURN-NEPTUNE CONJUNCTION

THE MADNESSES OF NEPTUNE: NET-ZERO and TRANSGENDER

I am bringing my own views in here quite strongly, so you could say I am declaring an interest :)

The astrologer Liz Greene has suggested Dionysus as a more appropriate figure than Neptune as the ruler of Pisces. Dionysus was driven mad by Zeus's jealous wife Hera. If you reject him, as did King Pentheus, you are liable to be torn to pieces by the train of Maenads who follow him.

Pluto abducts you, and Neptune possesses you. As Neptune comes to the end of his own sign of Pisces, so is the western world possessed by collective madnesses: net-zero carbon and transgender ideology. As well, more broadly, by 'wokeness': the authoritarian, sentimentalised over-protectiveness and over-prioritisation of minorities.

Instead of saying yes, we will need eventually to replace oil with nuclear, and we can adapt to, and probably even benefit from (which we have a genius for) climate change, we are cutting our own throats by attempting in short order to get rid of what has become our lifeblood, fossil fuels, and calling anyone who questions this narrative a 'climate-denier'.

It could be enormously damaging, particularly for the poor and the developing world: indeed, mythologically one could read net-zero as the sacrifice (another Neptunian theme) of the poor and the 3rd world to assuage the guilt of white liberals for their sins against pristine mother nature. There is a hatred of human impact behind net-zero that feels like a leftover from Christianity. It is also, you could argue, the Far Left's version of the Far Right's Gotterdammerung. No politician currently dares stand up to this narrative, though one can discern their private doubts.

As for 'transgender', instead of saying yes, we need to allow men to be more feminine and vice-versa, to even live as the opposite gender if they wish, we are collectively in the grip of a corrupt medical fantasy that says that men can BECOME women and vice versa. Again, no politician dare stand up to to this fantasy, nor directly oppose the resulting mutilation of teenagers, which does not bear thinking about. Even wanting to protect women from predatory 'transwomen' will get you labelled a 'transphobe'.

Transgender surgery, particularly on teenagers, is a Pluto in Aquarius theme. In attempting to help humanity through science, Aquarius can become inhuman: this is the shadow/Pluto side. It is something I find dreadful.

The pushback from questioning either of these madnesses is currently vicious. You can lose your job, your reputation and your friends. I hope it doesn't cost me my Facebook account!

The Chinese and Russians must be scratching their heads and wondering what has happened to the West.

 

(We are, of course, still experiencing the economic consequences of the madness that was Covid, when most of the world shut down over a relatively minor disease. It was like a herd of horses bolting, that could not stop once they had started.)

My hope is that as Neptune enters a new sign - Aries - in a couple of years, and is joined by Saturn, we will start to wake up from these nightmares.

 

 

THE UPCOMING SATURN-NEPTUNE CONJUNCTION

The further a planet is away from the Sun, the greater its transformational power. Pluto holds pride of place in the transformation stakes. On average. But because his orbit is elliptical, he is sometimes the same distance from the Sun as Neptune. As he has been for some decades now. So they have arguably been packing the same punch during that period.

If we look back to the last Saturn-Neptune conjunction, in 1989, we see that it took place 4 days after the Berlin Wall came down, precipitating the end of the Cold War. That event was every bit as powerful as a Saturn-Pluto conjunction – the last of which, in 2020, occurred at the start of the Covid panic. This idea could be tested historically, if someone fancies some mundane research.

Saturn gives the outer planets the ability to manifest. He acts as a bridge, and we see their pure power. The terror of the Saturn-Pluto opposition at the time of 9/11. The bursting of the communist dream (Neptune) in 1989 and the awakening to economic realities (Saturn). The Berlin Wall was built in 1961, and it came down on its Saturn Return. Saturn is walls, you couldn’t make it up.

So we need to be talking about the upcoming conjunction of Saturn and Neptune at the beginning of Aries in 25/26, just as much as if it was Saturn-Pluto. 

 

Politically, you could say we have been living in the post-Cold War World since the last conjunction, and its outcome has been a new polarisation with Russia.

The last time Neptune entered Aries was in 1861, as the US Civil war began. Just as we have a ‘culture war’, so too did the US have one over slavery, that precipitated that war, an Aries showdown, which the North eventually won.

Just as Saturn-Pluto ushered in a new world 3 years ago, so too are we likely to see another new world in 2026, and possibly the year before, when the conjunction will be almost exact. What astrology teaches you is how just unpredictable the future is. Who could have guessed Covid, or the prolonged conflict over Ukraine?

But what we do know as astrologers is that something big is on the way. And probably a new start in some way, because it will be the start of Aries. There are tensions starting to boil: nuclear-armed Russia’s ongoing humiliation over Ukraine; the culture wars over transgender, historical slavery etc and left-wing authoritarianism generally (as in ‘woke’); and perhaps the biggest one of all, net-zero carbon, which I don’t think the average voter is going to stand for once what it entails starts to impact on their lives: that may leave room for a new and pragmatic political vision, based on the material abundance that we actually have. Saturn-Neptune at the start of Aries speaks strongly of a new dream. But that may require wreckage as well.

On a personal level, if you have anything in your chart at the beginning of the cardinal signs, then that aspect of your life will be affected in a big way. You will be possessed, maddened and ultimately re-ensouled :) You will begin to seriously notice it towards the end of 2024, as Neptune and Saturn go Direct and start to move towards their almost-conjunction of 2025.

GENDER and THE SACRED

I've got a new handle on X: @theXastrologer. Quite pleased to have got that one before anyone else took it. 😀 You can find me on threads and instagram as the_x_astrologer.

GENDER and THE SACRED

 

If something occurs that is unusual, then for indigenous people it is sacred, because it takes us out of the ordinary and the everyday. So lightning is sacred, dangerous animals and poisonous plants are sacred. And so are the Two Spirits, those unusual people who feel themselves to be both genders, though being of one biological sex. For Native Americans, it has always been accepted that some men want to live as women, and vice-versa. These people are looked to as leaders and healers, because they have both gender perspectives, each to a high degree.

 

It seems to me like such a mess. We have taken a gift from Spirit and turned it into a curse, and an epidemic amongst teenagers who do not yet know who they are. And we have also reduced it to sexual orientation, when it is about something much broader: 'gay' is a wholly inadequate term for what I am talking about.

 

There is maybe a lesson here in what happens if you try to make the sacred ordinary. There is a difference between a man living as a woman, and a man claiming he has become a woman. The former has an element of the sacred, the latter is a violation of nature, of what is possible, and people are not necessarily prejudiced to feel repelled by it.

 

The quest for the other gender is natural in both men and women in the second half of life, if not earlier. I deal with it regularly in the astrology readings I do. Men are seeking Venus: learning to listen, to themselves and to others. And women are seeking Mars: no more people-pleasing. It is a sterotype because it is so commonly the case. And it is not just about adding on new pieces to the personality. It is a soul journey to the divine feminine or masculine. Mars in a woman does not look the same as in a man, it is not about becoming like a man, it is about something different and bigger: there is an archetypal, sacred dimension to it. And the same for Venus in a man. It is a compelling journey of the Spirit. We find these opposites on the East-West of the Medicine Wheel, the Blue Road, the road of Spirit, that is not under our control. It is about gifts of Spirit that become our inner path.

 

People for the most part need simple categories with which to understand the world. The sacred moves us out of this black-and-whiteness, but it needs to be approached with caution, or you'll frighten the horses. With our transgenderism, we are trying to make the sacred normal, and it has resulted in dogmatism on one side, and revulsion on the other.

 

I am thinking out loud here, because I don't think there are any easy answers. But I think there is a case for doing away with surgical transitioning, which I think is the literalising of a spirit gift. And for people who want to live as the opposite gender to be seen as part of a sacred calling, as monks and nuns are. We have, by and large, done away with the sacred, and that is perhaps a big part of the problem.

 

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ON SATURN NOT BEING THE BOSS PLANET

Saturn is still getting used to not being the boss planet, since the advent of Uranus, Neptune and Pluto. He keeps his job of providing form and boundaries and making stuff happen, while the outer planets get on with deeper alchemies. But Saturn frequently messes up by not yielding, creating madness, addiction and terror respectively, or variants thereof.

I am thinking of the current transit of Saturn through Pisces. This sign is ruled by Neptune, and the transit involves giving form to the formless. That is not easy, because Pisces is not tangible. If you can open yourself to channelling the whole universe - not my Will but Thine - then you are in with a chance. More than a chance: this is as powerful as it gets. But it probably takes many years to be an adequate vehicle for this kind of energy, and not attempt to appropriate it as one's own. It is great for divinatory astrology, and it is interesting that I changed the name of this group under this transit.

Boris Johnson is a good example of natal Saturn in Pisces. He could win elections, because he could communicate a collective vision, whether or not you agreed with it. But on a personal level, he had little in the way of discipline, and that was his downfall. With his second Saturn return underway, he is experiencing the consequences of his actions, via censure from Parliament. I think this illustrates quite well the 2 ways this placement can go.

 

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Men need to yield to Venus; women need to claim Mars. This can be catalysed through relationship. It is the anima/animus journey that Jung writes about.

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Ad break: I offer astrology (and tarot) readings on zoom, by donation. For a free reading, purchase my astrology book 'Surfing the Galactic Highways' and leave a genuine rating on Amazon. It has some great reviews, and is also suitable for relative beginners.

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As astrologers, we are essentially helping people find their genius. And to see Fate as a living, guiding thing, that enchants the universe by showing us that it knows us: through the chart, all those gods with their callings on us. And the difficult process of incarnating them: Saturn.

 

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There is nowhere that can give you a certificate in your own genius: etymology - spirit attendant from birth. What you were born to do. It gradually reveals itself, as long as you keep doing the next thing. Don't worry about the long-term plan, that is taken care of: Fate, a living principle for the ancient Greeks. And Nordic peoples. 

 

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Astrology shows us that we belong to the universe, not to ourselves. As such it is a remedy for modern individualism. Politically, it would tend to lean us towards responsibilities (transpersonal) over rights (personal).

JUPITER STORY

My brother Philip, who died a month ago after a long illness, had a strong Jupiter: conjunct his Sun, and ruling his Moon in Sag and Venus in Pisces. Jupiter is the king of the gods and is said to bring good fortune. Philip commented last year that if he wanted something, he had always been able to find a way of getting it. He lived life with a following wind, which he ran with. He seized and savoured his life. Jupiter's involvement with the 2 feminine planets - the Moon and Venus - resulted in a long and happy marriage.

His Sun-Jupiter was also conjunct Saturn (13 Jan 1961) in Capricorn. He built solid foundations to his life. I had seen the Saturn-Pluto conjunction of 2020 heading towards him some years down the line, and I said to him that something big and life-changing was on the way, but I didn't know what it would be. Shortly before the conjunction, he said to me he had fulfilled his dream of running and building a business and generating wealth, and didn't know what to do next. In Sept 2020, he was diagnosed with cancer. It was as if he had done what he had come here to do, and it was time to go.

When he died, Jupiter, the brightest of the planets, had just risen in the East: the king of the gods welcoming him home.

I gave a eulogy at Philip's wake at the weekend, and at the end I included what I called his sky story about Jupiter. I felt I was taking a bit of a risk in doing so, because astrology or anything religious do not seem to be most people's thing. When I talked about Jupiter rising at his death, the prickles went all over me and the emotion in me rose visibly.

Afterwards, so many people commented on the sky story I had told. It had touched them in a way that surprised both themselves and me. It was as if beneath the beliefs people have, there is something archaic that responds to stories that connect to the universe and give a wider meaning to earthly events.

It says to me that there is a deep, non-rational truth in astrology, particularly when we can connect it to what is visible in the sky.

 

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And here are some of my recent FB astroposts and what we now call Xes:  

 

The Sun has just been in Cancer, and now it is in Leo, in both cases opposite Pluto. There has been an imperative to nurture that hard-to fathom thing within that is our primary reason for being here, and now to give expression to its divine uniqueness. Play like your life depends on it   

 

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Venus is now retrograde. Look within and remember that the whole universe loves you in your uniqueness (Leo). And you love her back. This is where the medicine of loneliness points.

 

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At the Big Bang (of which I have a sepia photo somewhere in the attic, taken by my intrepid grandfather), Uranus was the genius who had the brilliant idea of creating something out of nothing; Pluto was the immense power unleashed to exist and to keep unfolding; and Neptune was the primordial imagination that dreamed into being a universe. Just imagine what those three can do when they get their hands on you. Transit, anyone?

 

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As astrologers, we inevitably get consulted about relationships. Maybe not being in one ourselves provides a point of perspective and insight. Maybe it is not that we are inadequate, but that something in us refuses to be compromised, cannot do that dark deal anymore.

 

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I've known a Buddhist teacher and an Astrology teacher who both had a pronounced Virgo/Scorpio mix. They each had a gift for grasping the essence of a matter (Scorpio) and expressing it concisely and accurately (Virgo). My father had the same mix and the same ability, but on a more practical level.

 

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If you want AI to stay onside, thank it every time you use it. Ingratitude for the technologies we have is a shadow side of the modern world. Instead we rail against our technologies and their promise for the future. This shadow is a Pluto in Aquarius issue. If you want to find that thankfulness, go visit a country that does not have what we have, and see which you prefer.

 

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SINEAD O'CONNOR

 

Click to Enlarge

I wondered what brutal Pluto-Moon transit has Sinead O'Connor been going through, such that her 17 year-old son killed himself last year? It turns out that Pluto recently completed squaring her Libra Moon. What does that mean? I don't know. But the event was woven into the fabric of the universe. As she passes - and we don't yet know the cause - so is Jupiter within a degree of her North Node. A timely death, whatever the reason. It leaves me thinking about Free Will and Fate.

 

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Men's soul journey in the second half of life is Venus: listening and serving.

For women, it is Mars: no more people-pleasing.

 

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 I've spent a lot of my life doing nothing. It's been an important part of it. But it's been nothing in the sense that a casserole in an oven is doing nothing: surrendering my Mars to the outer planets and their designs.

 

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The trouble with being a bloody Aquarian is that I think independently, and that causes trouble socially unless I keep my trap shut. And I'd die rather than do that. So I stay at home and say what I think on social media instead 😎