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2017 OF 201 is my new Blorbo!

2017 OF201 is a newly discovered Sedna like dwarf planet and optimistic guesses say they’re just smaller than Sedna. While pessimists think they may be half that - at just twice as big as Chiron. This puts “017 OF201” within the range of what I consider to be the fringe of astrological usefulness.

We don’t have a name for this object yet, or even an ephemeris. So right now here’s what we know

Location

As of 30 May 2025, it is at R.A 1.9576750 - Dec 27.9965833, or Right Ascension 01:57:27.63 - Declension 27:59:47.70 in old money.

This is basically the middle of this picture

So 2017 OF201 is near the constellation of Triangulum, roughly between El Nath and Mothallah. My ability to judge the astrological coordinates of something by its astronomical coordinates is spotty but by my reckoning this means that it’s at about 7 degrees of Taurus. I can’t get an ephemeris for you but to give you some idea when I was born in 1986 it was around 1 degree of Aries. 

2017 OF201 takes about 24300 years to orbit the Sun

That means that the last time 2017 OF201 was where it is now in the zodiac was 22000 BC. 

This object is a sednoid, that means it zooms toward the inner solar system (by my definition of that - any planet up to and including Pluto) and moves really quickly while it’s close before going slower again. 

Its closest approach to the Sun was November 1930. 

Because of how these objects work that means with retrogrades it was at the exact point of its closest approach between 1927 and 1933. If there’s any indication of what it could foretell, maybe start looking there. This goes from Italy abolishing elections to the Nazis taking power in Germany. There’s an interesting parallel between November 1930 and the time period where 2017 OF201 was discovered - in both periods a far right figure was making sweeping cuts to the civil service. This was a cost saving measure but I have to wonder if that was all it was. We understand better today what a far right government gets out of making sweeping cuts to civil service apparatus. It forces people to be loyal, it makes work unstable.

We could look, with this object, at the consolidation of power. Sednoids in my view tend to have an element of exile about them. A populist who was formerly an outsider being able to exercise control over and alienate others fits with that theme.  

The Discovery Charts

The exact time that a trans neptunian object is discovered is hard to judge because sky surveys take place over a long time and then the photos need to be analysed by computers to find things that seem to be moving. Then these candidates have to be checked to see if there’s a mistake. So when is a planet discovered? When was it first photoed? When it’s declared? Is it when a human sees it, or does the human have to recognise it as a planet? And with how much certainty? I can give you two natal charts - the time of the first photo of it that Sihao Cheng, Jiaxuan Li, and Eritas Yang had in their dataset, and the date the paper announced it to the world. 

There’s a few things the two charts have in common:

Strong Venuses - in the 2011 chart Venus formers a grand trine with the sun and Jupiter, in the second Venus is strongly trine Mars

Strong Mars - Mars opposes the ascendent in the 2011 chart and forms a T-square with Saturn and Lillith. In the second there’s the Mars Venus trine with Venus ruled by Mars

Strong Dwarf planet, particularly ones typically described as Mars, Venus and Moon octave - In the first Chart Eris (Mars octave) opposes the Moon, and the Moon is quincunx Salacia (Venus Octave) and Sedna (moon Octave). In the second, the Sun sits directly on Sedna - appropriately illuminating the topic of Sednoids while the world learnt about a new one. 

So

I don’t know. My initial thought is look at the politics of exile and the consolidation of power. So, based on our lessons from Pluto, look at fear of survival, as it relates to power. What do people who fear or have trauma about exclusion have to say about making sure it doesn’t happen again? How do we protect our place at the cost of other people? What happens when we feel slighted? What does thousands of years of exile feel like and what could people do when it ends? 

But maybe some other stuff will come up when we have an ephemeris and name. When we know how big it is, even.

It’s early days for all this. But I wanted to get the ball rolling a bit on the discussion.

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"However, the issue with cultural appropriation is not that a culture owned by one party is stolen by another party. The issue is that, when white people treat cultures of people whom they have enacted violence against as peopleless fashions or mannerisms, they are entertaining the possibility that those cultures can exist without the people behind them. When people see simulations of our own identities and cultures on white bodies, we see people who have tried to kill us wear our clothes as if simulations of us could live while we die.”

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A strange thing happened the other night. I was stargazing, enjoying identifying what was up there, and I saw a moving light that was really bright. I figured it was a plane but I was in a silly mood and checked my star app, pretending it was a star that would show up on there.

It turned out to be the International Space Station! I watched it conjunct the Moon and go down at the ascendent. Which means I saw the ISS at roughly the midpoint between the midheaven and Moon.

So, what could the International Space Station mean in astrology? It's a bit of a daft question but also the ISS is brighter than most planets. If nothing else, the ISS could be taken to mean itself.

I caught sight of the ISS when it was on the midheaven, and ISS conjunct midheaven seems a good indicator for "likely to see the ISS". It was also opposing my natal Eris when I spotted it.

I've been doing some deep dives into Eris astrology and one thing I've noticed is that where Pluto is below and beneath, Eris is beyond. It's an external factor or an extreme. It's a complete nonsequitur shaking things up.

Opposition to the sun is the brightest spot in an orbit. It makes sense that ISS opposing a planet would be visible. It makes sense that Eris opposing the ISS involves it showing up unexpectedly.

It made me think of UFO experiences. I've heard that often people spot a UFO when they feel a strange desire to look up and pay attention. But of course they do. You can't see anything if you're not looking up and paying attention. Step one of really seeing things is to look, and to be curious even when there's no good reason to be

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Libra and Venus are quincunx! They can't see one another!

Wait a minute

Relationships between rulerships are either hard aspects or can't see each other

Libra = ideas of romance, Taurus = physical romance

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scientists are in labs right now creating the thinnest and worst material known to mankind so they can make women’s clothing

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Just thought it was worth drawing astrologers' attention to something:

All around the world Muslims are watching out for the waxing crescent moon which, when sighted, means the start of Ramadan. Some go with local time for this, while others time it based on Mecca.

This isn't related to eclipse season though they happen to overlap at the end of Ramadan this year.

I don't want to get astrological with this as it's not my tradition. But the study of astrology is the study of people's relationship with the planets, and I think it's worth noting that people are doing this all around the world. Relating to the Moon in their own traditions in a way that makes this lunar cycle particularly significant for them

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I'm enjoying Grimes reassessing her life choices a bit under the Mars retrograde while it's triggered a lot in her chart. Suddenly her kid is being used as a human shield and media tool by a Nazi techbro she somehow threw away her career and respect for.

Hang on let me check this out.

Okay so Grimes' first date with Musk was very likely at her Saturn return in Saturn with Mars in Capricorn on a year when Mars would be in retrograde in Capricorn so kinda makes sense this Mars retrograde is a sensitive one for her.

Hopefully she stops being a weird white supremacist who's disconnected from reality

Strikes me with her bust Pisces The Venus retrograde could also be interesting

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Lilith Opposite Eris - Everything is fine. STOP SAYING EVERYTHING ISN'T FINE!

So I’ve been thinking a lot about Lilith - the point in the Moon's orbit that’s furthest from the Earth. Long story short for those who don’t know - Lilith is calculated in two ways which astrologers generally call Mean, and True. Despite these names there’s no true way to calculate it - both are valid. I tend to use Mean for Personal Reasons.

No, I can’t just leave it at that. I use Mean because I did some digging on the chart of the first person to use Lilith and looked at correlations between where he calculated it was, and where it actually was and the mean calculation was really intensely apt, and it just generally seems to work better for me. Your mileage may vary but sometimes in astrology you have to make a call on something or become obsessed with how vast and confusing the universe is.

Mean or True, Lilith is in Libra. One way to think about Lilith in Libra that I quite like is to think about obsessive peacekeeping. Being on your last nerve and still trying to be friendly when maybe you shouldn’t be. It’s in the nature of Lilith that emotions related to it are imbalanced and aggressive. It can lead to absolutely obsessive behaviour, or an outright rejection of that energy at all. Sometimes both. Someone who obsessively tries to keep the peace and keep things nice can flip and suddenly not be able to handle this at all.

Right now, Eris is pretty much exactly opposite Lilith, and this makes sense to me. The opposition reached 3 degrees on 8 January and will remain so until 5 March. Eris is a Dwarf planet that's almost exactly the size of Pluto. The difference is, Pluto has a big moon to go with it. So, Eris is, to my mind, the best candidate for something with Astrological meaning that's smaller than Pluto. This includes Chiron. It's just a shame we're still learning about it.

One important key phrase I use with it is that Eris is the immovable object. What happens when someone with immovable views negotiates with people who are obsessively keeping the peace? What happens when someone is obsessed with keeping the peace to the extent that they are immovably commited to believing that things are fine?

Eris is pretty damn near conjunct my sun and I noticed this aspect in my personal life first. But I think it maps well to world affairs. We have Democrats dancing in their meetings, we have Keir Starmer negotiating with Trump to keep Britain out of a trade war as though Trump is doing normal politics. Innuendo Studios video on at what point America has crossed the Rubicon into tyranny captures some of the mood I'm seeing. Things look grim but there's a strong motivation to see things as somewhat normal, or to try to make peace with the new world - for instance here in the UK we have politicians like the Health Minister talking about the dangers of anti-whiteness and society not doing enough to cater to white men. Trying to meet MAGA halfway.

The last Conjunction of Lilith and Eris was in Aries in August to September 2020, when Trump was formulating the ideas that would lead to him taking the pretty unprecedented act of trying to overturn an election result in the way he did. He announced his reelection in November 2022 during the square. The next square is April to June 2027 with Lilith in Capricorn so note your diaries.

On a personal level, this is a tough aspect. I'm looking at Venus because it rules Libra. My Venus is in Taurus so I'm resting and trying to find calm in comfort and pleasure. The Aspect will continue within 3 degrees till 5 March. All that time, Venus is in Aries. Ultimately this is making me think that action is a great form of self care for now. Activism can be a necessary part of self care. It allows you to focus on trying to make changes in a sea of news, it connects you with friends, it builds support networks, also, doing stuff can frankly feel good. I mean, take care of yourself and others but if you're feeling this aspect, consider it

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Books of 2024

So turns out, most of the books I read last year were astrology related. Not all, but honestly enough. It was such a relief to be reading again. I feel like time constraints and mobile Internet has really buggered me for reading books in the past year. Here's my reading list for the past year, from best to worst.

Astrological Aspects by Dane Rudhyar and Leyla Rael

This is maybe the single most exciting astrology book I've ever read. It is a delightfully modernist reframing of astrology from placements to processes, using the lunar cycle as a metaphor for all cycles between any two planets. It basically makes astrology dynamic in this way that was completely new to me while explaining how orbits and retrogrades actually work and giving a theory for understanding the less common aspects. This book has honestly changed how I read any astrological chart or read an ephemeris. After I read it, I had to stop doing astrology for months and go back to complete basics and I'm better off for having done that.

Pluto, The Astrological Lodge of London

Okay I love this book both as an astrologer and a historian. Basically it's a collection of articles from the journal of the Astrological Lodge discussing what Pluto means, starting from its discovery and working till the 80s.

It's an interesting look at how Astrological meaning gets created, but also folk memory - there's a story of a boy getting buried on the beach that gets told and retold every few years for decades as it slowly moves away from what actually happened and becomes a story about a boy who was saved from drowning in a hole he had dug, and as he was getting out an astrologer rushed to the scene and asked his mother for the boy’s birth time. Which, I mean, imagine if astrologers did that.

As a historian what I love about this book is that Astrology is one of those fields where people from radically different political persuasions can discuss politics via a proxy subject. This book has really early queer rights campaigners, feminists, Tories, even an article from an open pre war nazi sympathiser, discussing politics and the future and what they see in the astrology of famous figures. It's a little snapshot into the kind of conversations people had and how they changed with time and it's quite interesting to see. I didn't love the pro Nazi article but I did love imagining the author having to watch her ideology be so thoroughly and humiliatingly destroyed in the few years after she wrote it down.

The Epic of Gilgamesh

I loved reading a properly old myth that's also this really fascinating love story between two guys. I especially like the bit where Enkidu is scared to go on a quest but goes along, then Gilgamesh keeps having nightmares and every time Enkidu wakes him up and comforts him, and tells him it's a good sign. I love how it ends with a description of Uruk, the city is very much the third character in this story for me. Like New York with Sex and the City. There's a lot to this book that I think will stick with me.

The True History of Sun Sign Astrology, Kim Farnell

Not really an astrology book, more a history for astrologers. The only astrology book I've ever read that claims Taylor Swift changed the face of astrology forever. It isn't about the history of astrology we generally discuss as astrologers. Instead it focuses on a string of usually middle or working class people who did popular astrology, and the kind of people who consumed astrology content. This is really interesting because it means the book talks a lot about the books people with low education levels read; how popular publishing worked in the 17th century; how people became autodidacts and built a following; how British laws up into the mid twentieth century meaningfully restricted people in the new age woo fields I exist in; and how people fought back. I think it could reasonably be interesting to non astrologers just as a slice of life history.

The Science of Foreknowledge, Sepharial

A fascinating book for astrologers or students of Edwardian occultism. Sepharial made the bold claim, in 1918, that a new planet would be discovered to fill a gap he saw in astrology and whatever name it was given, it would be most appropriate to call it Pluto. And here we are. The astrologers of the 1930s when Pluto was discovered and named were understandably impressed.

The other big thing in this book is a discussion of second moon sightings. This was a popular form of unexplained aerial phenomenon at the time, and I miss it I think we should bring it back. He uses the timing of second moon sightings to create an ephemeris for the moon he called Lilith. But not all sightings fit the pattern. You know, because this is made up. So he created a third moon to explain it. It was a wild moment for me when a second imaginary moon hit the ephemerides. I love that we still use Lilith today and just ignore the original meaning.

There's so much sheer nonsense in this book. Like, made up events, a poor understanding of economics, and the whole moon thing. It's cute. I love it.

Who's Afraid of Gender, Judith Butler

Judith Butler creates an argument about the nature of gender in right wing thought, which is basically that they've folded all their fears into the one thing, and built an international movement to do so. They have really interesting things to say about the international nature of the anti-gender movement. How money and concepts flow between regions and get tied into things like colonialism and religion.

They're far less interesting when they talk about the British anti trans movement because they act like it's a feminist movement and feed their critique of it onto that without really acknowledging the role of American money or the British home grown hard right. And the critique of gender critical feminism as theory seems weird in that it doesn't really dwell on transmisogyny. So there's some real let downs there. But also, you know, Judith Butler is a core thinker in the field and where they're good they're super insightful.

Healing Pluto Problems, Donna Cunningham

There's a few really core books on Pluto and this one was probably my favourite. It was also the first of many books I read in Pluto in 2024, so I don't remember it so well, but it talks about guilt, death, sexual assault, fear, all the big Pluto things. It gives good guidance for consulting when hard things come up for clients. It's a classic and it deserves to be a classic.

The Twelve Houses, Howard Sasportas

This is a really good grounding on thinking about the Houses. Though that means it runs into the core problem I have with astrology books in general. Lots of repetition as it goes through all the planets in all the signs. It is a useful book, but very dated in places. For instance it contains an example of a Catholic guy that I don't think you'd treat so charitably these days, because there's a zero percent chance that this is a story that ended well, maybe skip the next paragraph if you're sensitive to such things. :

“I did a chart for a very religious man with Chiron in the 5th who was tortured by sexual desires for pubescent girls and boys. Through psychotherapy and prayer, he has successfully transmuted these urges into constructive channels and expresses his love of children by working as a tutor and counsellor for ‘problem’ adolescents.”

Saturn, a New Look at an Old Devil, Liz Greene

This is a really sophisticated and good look at Saturn, and a real classic for giving a psychologically astute view of the planet in astrology and you can really feel her influence in modern astrology. Which sadly makes her work… kinda boring in places? It felt like a slog. It rarely challenged me though I ended up with a better understanding of Saturn from it. I don't think the book was as boring as I thought, but it was that old problem - a list of attributes by house and therefore structurally a lot of repetition in the narrative.

The Planetary and Lunar Nodes, Dane Rudhyar

I like Dane Rudhyar, and this book didn’t bore me. The model he gives for applying Planetary Nodes, treating them as the taking on and releasing of the planets energies, is cool. He also starts to create a theory of using the Earth's solar cycle as a basis for understanding the planetary nodes.

It's this low on the list primarily because we have the data to know more than him. We know that at present the Mars North Node for everyone alive is between Aries, Taurus, Gemini, and Cancer. Dane Rudhyar gives just one point and says they don't change much. He also says the south node is always opposite the north node, which is trye for the Moon but not for the planets. Maybe it's because he's using mean and my ephemeris uses interpolated calculations. But you get the sense that he maybe lacked the data we have, or at least didn't think he'd need to explain what he was doing to someone with different data to hand easily. So I don't know. He was infinitely smarter than me and more educated, but if I'm missing something here I'm not sure how to account for that and he doesn't tell us. So it just looks like misinformation to me.

New Stars For A New Era, Alan Clay

I like Alan Clay. His research into the possible meanings of trans neptunian objects is in my view some of the most exciting work going on in astrology right now. I love how he drew out practical lessons from the planets and gives lots of examples. He references a lot of astrologers and is both widely read and deeply knowledgeable about this specific field.

But, I can't help but feel he's doing more harm than good in some ways. The meaning of Uranus in astrology is so different from Uranus in myth. We've developed meaning over centuries. It took decades for the meaning of Pluto to come together fully. For us to come up with an agreed on rulership and all that. I feel Alan Clay is very blasé about declaring the meaning of objects and usually attributing extreme importance to these Dwarf Planets in charts where I don't necessarily see them as very prominent in the charts.

I will admit, sometimes I've checked his working and found him to be dead on - his description of Ixion was so apt to Charlie XCX's chart and transits despite her not being one of his examples. But I dislike the certain and didactic tone he takes in an emerging field where I think we have more to learn than we actually know. I worry it'll lead to his ideas being accepted early and without reservations. But, like, basically in my ideal life I'd be like him and writing the books he's writing, but he's him and I'm jealous and therefore this book is towards the bottom of my list.

Pluto, Jeff Green

“Within the Soul there exist two coexisting desires. One desire is for separate existence — to separate from that which created the Soul. The other desire is to return to the Source of creation. The interaction of these two apparently opposing desires instigates the drama of personal and collective evolution. [...] Pluto’s moon, Charon, is actually a planet in its own right. Charon is half the size of Pluto itself, and one twentieth the distance from Pluto as compared to the distance of the Moon to Earth. The principle of dual coexisting desires seems to be reflected in this planetary symbolism.”

This book is a weird one. 500 pages long, never easy to read, lots of repetition. But it gives this unique view of Pluto as a core part of the evolutionary process of the soul and the purpose of life. And because we're dealing with evolutionary astrology, the other key source of purpose is the moon's Nodes. And suddenly you've got a very weird, unique take on the role of Pluto in astrology and an Astrological method like nothing I've read before.

It's an important book and I understand it will change someone's whole astrological practice but it didn't do that for me. I find the lunar nodes tricky and found it a little prescriptive about fate and how we should view ourselves and also (probably most importantly) I probably read too many books about Pluto this year and by the time I came to this one I was so tired.

Stopping on my least favourite book was maybe not smart in retrospect. I've started this year reading trashy trans femme romance and now I'm trying once again to tackle Cosmos and Psyche. I'm so aware how slow I read and just the sheer number of books that exist, it's maddening if you think about it.

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Life cycle of our Sun, from beginning to end~

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The Astrology of 2025

As we come towards another cycle round the Sun, I thought it would be good to talk about the biggest things coming up in astrology next year, because it’s kind of a big one. So big in fact that a lot of the core events will also be central to understanding the astrology of 2026.

The first thing to cover are those inner planet retrogrades - while they’re not exactly rare, they are close together. And that means we’ll be in the Mars and Venus retrogrades from December 2024 all the way to April 2025. Taking the shadow periods into account, this makes the retrogrades the big event of the first half of the year.

Mars Retrograde 

Mars entered its pre-retrograde shadow on 5 October 2024 at 17° Cancer and will go retrograde on 6 December at 6° Leo. It will station direct on 24 February and will get back to 6° Leo on 2 May.

What this means practically is that while Mars usually storms through its aspects with no time to get super into things, this time its impacts will be sustained in one area for way longer.

For an example, the Mars Pluto opposition was within 3° from 26 October to 13 November 2024, covering the election of far-right extremist culture warrior Kemi Badenoch in the UK as well as Donald Trump in the USA. It's an incredibly positive energy for anyone trading in hate and fear. 

The Mars Pluto opposition will come back within 3° between 25 December 2024 and 10 January 2025. Enough time to ensure that a lot of us have to spend Christmas relitigating the results of the US presidential election with people who either like Trump or dislike the groups he targets. Then, the opposition is present for him taking office to give his first days in power a little push towards unpleasantness. Then it's back for a final pass 20 April to 3 May. To cover the UK Local elections and the first test of Kemi Badenoch.

On a more personal level, I don’t think anyone expects Pluto opposite Mars to feel good. Pluto energy and Mars energy can be a lot of fun but it also tends to trigger survival issues, the desire to force people into things, and trauma. 

Venus Retrograde

Venus enters its pre-retrograde shadow on 28 January. Then the Venus retrograde starts 2 March at 10° Aries and ends 12 April at 24° Pisces. Venus retrograde enforces ideas of gender, sexism, values and on a more mundane level exes, fashion and dysphoria. The start of a Trump presidency may not be a bad time for this kind of astrological weather if we can channel it into feminist resistance. But it's the same factors that will inspire attacks on women and women's rights, as well as of course attacks on trans people.

The last Venus retrograde saw competition emerging to Twitter, and it rebranding to X. Given this retrograde is happening opposing Musk's Pluto I have to wonder if this retrograde will be a big one for social media.

The Saturn Neptune Conjunction

From 27 March Saturn and Neptune will be within 6° of each other. At 13 July they'll be within 1°04 of a conjunction. It will actually reach exactitude in 2026. This means that all year if something happens to Saturn it will happen to Neptune, and their meanings will kind of merge together.

Saturn and Neptune conjoined three times in the last century or so : 1917, 1953, and 1989. Among the events on those dates are the October Revolution, the death of Stalin, and the fall of the Berlin Wall. So periods when revolution made ideals real (and therefore, fallible and messy) and times when people lost faith in ideals. I guess an ideal about how the world is has to die for a new one to emerge. There's a darkness to this process but it's not necessarily bad for bad ideas to die.

I think a lot of people are talking about Al and people losing sense of reality but... is that *new*? Maybe we need some disillusionment and loss of faith. People have some genuinely stupid ideologies right now.

Saturn, Neptune, Mars and Venus

The entire first half of the year is defined by a complex set of interactions between these four planets. That's kind of interesting in itself. Mars and Saturn are the two traditional malefics. While Venus and Neptune both handle the emotional side of things. Be it in radically different ways. This is the whole list for the first half of the year :

5 January to 20 January - Mars trine Neptune

15 January to 22 January - Venus conjunct Saturn

19 January to 3 February - Mars trine the Saturn-Neptune Mid-Point

22 January to 29 January - Venus conjunct Saturn-Neptune Mid-Point 

23 January to 28 January - Mars trine Venus

28 January to 5 February - Venus conjunct Neptune

1 February to 23 February - Mars trine Saturn

18 March to 17 April Mars trine Saturn 

22 March to 2 April - Venus conjunct Neptune

23 March to 9 April - Venus conjunct Saturn-Neptune Mid-Point 

1 April to 2 May - Venus conjunct Saturn

2 April to 12 April - Mars trine Venus

3 April to 22 April Mars trine Saturn-Neptune Mid-Point.

11 April to 27 April Mars trine Neptune

20 April to 5 May - Venus conjunct Saturn-Neptune Mid-Point 

26 April to 7 May - Venus conjunct Neptune

13 May to 29 May - Mars trine Venus

There's a lot here. Attempts to realise a value, an ideal forming and hitting rocky shores, energy, reevaluation, resistance. 

Can I be honest though? With Saturn influencing Venus and Neptune with extra energy from Mars, it all feels kinda kinky to me. Restriction + Love and Imagination + Sex = a real possibility for bondage or whatever. If you’re into that honestly it could be fun. I could see these aspects (and hell, if you want something really chaotic, the Mars Pluto opposition) appearing in the birth charts of the big names in kink in the 2040s and beyond.

Hopefully we can make use of this time to forment the ideas and ideals of a feminist resistance. And also idk hopefully we'll see some wild stuff. I think we need both.

Saturn and Neptune in Aries

Saturn enters Aries 25 May and will stay there till 1 September when it will return to Pisces for one last brief period until 13 February 2026. 

Neptune enters Aries on 30 March and will stay there until 22 October it will re-enter Aries on 26 January and will be there until 2038.

The big event people bring up connected to Neptune in Aries is the American Civil War. But there are a lot of ways ideologies and visions can be born. World War 2 didn't start in Saturn in Aries from a British perspective but if you're Austrian or Czech you'd probably say it did. The last time Saturn and Neptune were co-present in Aries was around 1703, during the War of Spanish Succession. One of the first global wars.

Uranus in Gemini

0n 9 June, Jupiter leaves Gemini for Cancer, but just 2 days before on 7 June, Uranus will enter Gemini. So one planet in, one planet out (although Uranus will briefly retrograde back to Taurus in 8 November. Jupiter in Gemini was associated with data and the growth of AI as an economically viable technology. Uranus can be electric and inventive. I think it could also be chaotic. But chaos can be good.

During the previous Uranus in Gemini periods, the USA saw the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, and World War 2. All significant events. But Uranus will be in Gemini until 2033. 

2025 and 2026 are years of major change astrologically, and they'll set us up for the 2030s. The precedent isn't good. And looking at the world right now, I think we can see ways that things can get worse. But I think and hope that things are different. We can use this time to reassess our values and create something new.

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Lilith Everywhere

I've been feeling like I couldn't write for a while. Do you ever have those times when you read something so mind blowing that it immobilises you for weeks? I had that with Dany Rudhyar's Astrological Aspects. It kinda completely changed how I think about astrology and I'm still working through it. But this week is pretty exciting and I wanted to say somethings.

So this week has been a lot, politically. In France, Britain, and the US and other places too. It made me wonder what's happening in astrology that's a lot. And I think it's this.

Lilith Opposed Neptune in the most aneretic part of the aneretic degrees of Pisces and Virgo. This means a point of emotional over-focus and obsession opposed the Solar System's most diffuse planet in the most diffuse sign. High emotions, high frustration, high confusion. Just, generally, a lot to deal with.

Then, Neptune began to go retrograde while Lilith entered Libra - and immediately, Lilith formed a close trine with Pluto and Sedna. Pluto has a way of making things bigger and making things about power, while Sedna brings in outside context problems and shocks to the system.

There's a lot of energy around right now for shocks, and the first Pluto in Aquarius opposition of the new era is already in effect with Mercury opposing Pluto and driving us towards questioning and a bit of paranoia.

So, yeah, it's a lot. Stay safe out there.

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Many people won't like this because it will tore their rose coloured glasses apart but I have to say it:

Lilith is no fun.

Lilith is not for everyone to deal with.

Lilith is not just the "empowered feminist" people make her.

Lilith is not just the romanticised "baddie" or "femme fatale" that everyone likes to describe online.

Having prominent Lilith is dark, is unpleasant, it often relates to people being ostracized, frustrated, bullied for their physical appearance, self-obsessed personalities, at worst even criminal and aggressive behaviour.

At best she can give exceptional talents, exceptional charisma, great personalities who leave a strong imprint on humankind, but reaching this is very difficult because the whole chart must support Lilith, otherwise she'll take it all and destroy mercilessly. Lilith isn't easy to handle.

Lilith is the "Dark Side of the Moon", it relates to very unpleasant themes, our shadows, what we hide, what's "evil" inside of us, how our trauma shaped us for better and worse. She shows self sabotage, aggression, manipulation, the "Dark Triad" of Psychology...

She can teach a lot as well as destroy and hurt. But no, stop romanticising.

[sun-in-retrograde]

Pluto Eris Square

I woke up from an awful dream in June of two thousand sixteen In a far right fake news fucked up universe And though we sang the Mountain Goats loud enough to bruise our throats Every year that followed still got worse and worse

-Grace Petrie “Fixer Upper”

So 2016 was a weird year, wasn’t it? Brexit, Harambe, Trump, clown attacks, The Orlando Shooting, Syria. Things got weird, and then, in 2017 they got weirder. I think it’s fair to say 2020 was the weirdest of years and things are still pretty weird now, to the extent that normality starts to feel, in itself, weird.

I would never want to blame everything on one astrological aspect, but it has to be noted, the 2016-2025 Pluto-Eris square maps really well onto this period.

Within 1 degree

16 February 2019 - 28 June 2018

27 December 2019 - 13 March 2020

24 April 2020 - 23 July 2020

8 November 2020 - 9 Jan 2021

9 July 2021 - 24 November 2021

Within 3 degrees

31 Jan 2018 - 2 June 2018

2018 15 december - 2019 August 9

22 October 2019 - 24 January 2022

23 June 2022 - 10 December 2022

Within 7 degrees

8 Jan 2016 - 15 May 2016

23 November 2016 - 10 March 2024

10 May 2024 - 11 January 2025

19 July 2025 - 26 July 2025

This year, for the first time in years, the Eris Pluto Square let up a little bit. We’re heading back into it now as Pluto retrogrades back towards Capricorn. But for the first time in a while this particular energy has cleared, leaving us to see what normality looks like without this square active.

What is Pluto-Eris Energy?

People often talk about Pluto and Eris as the Higher Octaves of Mars, but this is inaccurate. It’s useful to say because our society is obsessed with the idea of higher, transcendental truths and astrologers who study new astrological objects are going to want to associate their findings with higher truths because that’s good capitalism. But it would be more accurate to say that Pluto is a lower octave of Mars and Eris is a lower octave still. 

Mars covers all the planets in the zodiac in just 2.1 years. Its time in any one sign is measured in months. Pluto takes 244 years and its time in any one sign is measured in about a generation. Eris has a 557 year cycle and because its orbit is extremely elliptical it’s in Aries from 1922 to 2044 - 122 years, or 21.9% of this entire cycle. 

What this means is that in terms of octaves Pluto and Eris are much lower and slower than Mars. This seems to give them an element of depth. If Mars is attraction, Pluto is obsession. If Mars is violence, Pluto is trauma. If Mars is energised, Pluto triggers the survival drive. I’d argue Eris goes deeper still. It is cutting so deep that what you get to are the things that can’t be removed. 

When Eris and Pluto meet you have irreconcilable differences, major conflicts, things that are foundational to society coming into conflict. This is especially true this cycle. 

This Eris - Pluto cycle began with the conjunction on 17 December 1756 at 18°36 of Sagittarius. Despite this they had their waxing square, waxing trine, opposition, waning trine and waning square while Pluto was in Aries and that’s where Eris will be for their waning sextile. Eris is in 6 signs during this Eris-Pluto cycle but all but two of the key aspects happened with Eris in Aries so has an active, martial energy to it.

If you’re following this, and agree with me that Eris is fundamental planet alongside Pluto, you will be unsurprised to hear the last Pluto-Eris square was 1936-1949 and was at its strongest during World War Two.

What this means for us now

2024 is the last hurrah for the current Eris-Pluto Square. It’s not as strong as it’s been in the past but it’s still an underlying important energy of our time. In 2024 over half the world’s population is having an election and in the UK, USA and India the far-right are leading the conversation. We have ideological conflicts, a moral imperative to engage in anti-fascist work and deep fears for how this period will impact the survival of all of us, but especially the most vulnerable people. 

We know this energy. If you’ve been fighting in this time, you probably have the methods to fight ready to go when the next inevitable crisis comes up. But there’s a bigger problem coming up and that’s normality. What happens when the current square ends and the fight for marginalised people stops being such a fiery spectacle? For years the fight against global fascism has been massive, dramatic, and very visible. What happens when there is no crisis and we’re stuck with the new normal that’s emerged from all this? 

Sadly, it seems unlikely that the end of the Eris-Pluto square will be the end of extreme violence, fascism, and war. What I would expect is these conflicts becoming more a matter of attrition and normalisation - the banality of evil. The genocides continue, but they no longer shock us. 

The promise offered by the astrology of Eris and Pluto is that we come out of the Eris-Pluto Square into a quintile, where the skills and experience we’ve gained harden into a playbook of methods to keep fighting. We have experience and we have knowledge and we keep going.

In natal astrology

The oldest people with an Eris-Pluto square in their birth charts are now eight. That’s still young but this is a generation that’s going to come up and start looking into astrology before you know it. Mars-Pluto squares in a birth chart are often indication of pretty bad trauma. Eris-Pluto Squares in charts will mean an early childhood defined by traumatic experiences. Just the nature of being raised by parents experiencing the pandemic ensures that. The astrology indicates that this generation could replicate some of that trauma throughout their life and astrologers will be seeing that for years to come. 

As most astrologers don’t use Eris, I would argue they’ll be cutting themselves off from a key diagnostic criteria that would really help explain the lives of the 2016-2025 generation. But whatever. There are usually more than one tell for a traumatic experience in a chart. The underlying, fundamental, Eris-level truth of this square that all of us have to face is a generation who will need care and time and understanding beyond what we might expect looking at their lives now. We can do that, that’s what we need to offer younger generations. 

[sun-in-retrograde]

random things I associate with the houses

1st House: conversations with yourself when you are alone, journaling, making yourself laugh, your perspective on reality, how you look at yourself in the mirror, how you see yourself in your head

2nd House: stability, your mental/emotional/financial/literal garden, material excitement, objects that have sentimental value, physical gifts given by your spirit guides, offerings, appreciating beauty

3rd House: the clubs you were in growing up, the life lessons you learned at a very early age, sibling bond, the type of person you feel used to and grew up around, make believe, adding lies to a true story, group chats

4th House: the literal homes you grew up in, ancestral roots and work, the lens placed on you by your parents, uncomfortable vulnerability met with reassurance, what your inner child wanted you to be, the start of your journey, climbing into bed after a long day, sighing

5th House: fairs, carnivals, warm weather, having a crush, finding a hobby that sparks pure joy, having no fear, impulsive decision, being present in your body, feeling hot asf, bucket lists, music, laughing so hard you can’t breathe

6th House: the everyday emotions that come with your life, motivation or lack there of, patterns and habits, body clock, self encouragement, showing love through acts of service, monotony, to-do lists, parenting self

7th House: karmic cycles through other people, boundaries, connection, soul contracts with others, the type of person who is attracted to you, the type of people you seek out, coming to terms with expectation vs reality within other people, being lead to the same person time and time again

8th House: things that made you shudder, darkest secrets, hidden power, things that are hard to come to terms with, huge revelations and transformation, mistrust vs learning how to trust, continuous changing, instability, becoming exhausted with the world, putting your all on the line, healing humanity through healing self, not fully understanding yet

9th House: running away from home, cutting people off, eloping, going on an adventure, experiencing things you’ve never experienced before, learning/teaching/mentorship, split second decisions that save your life, trying to put things you can’t explain into words

10th House: your life as a timeline, the imprint you leave on others, pivotal moments in your life, turning your identity into a brand, what you will leave the world with, earthly success, reminiscing, dying wish

11th House: breakdown or breakthrough, the collective mind, conversations through glances and facial expressions with your friends, pure intentioned support, soul family, transcending ego, realizing you can’t do everything by yourself

12th House: where we were before we were born, where we go when we sleep, subconscious, the feeling that something is watching you, spell work, blind faith, both our fears and ultimate hopes, reoccurring karmic cycles throughout numerous past lives, stuff you can’t just figure out in one lifetime, overwhelming nothingness

[sun-in-retrograde]