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[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]

[sun-in-retrograde]

On 27 April 2024 at 00:56 UK time, Sedna enters Gemini. It was there before - 15 June 2023 to 22 November 2023. Fun fact - Pluto left Aquarius on 11 June, retrograding back into Capricorn. So Sedna pretty much immediately took up its watch as a planet of transformation sitting in an Air sign. It stayed there till retrograding back into Taurus on 22 November. This time when Sedna goes in it’s there full time till 2065. 2023 - a transformative year for AI - took place with Pluto and Sedna in Air signs. With both of them in air signs and regularly trining each other through to 2025, we have some technological and innovative energy in the astrological weather.  

Sedna has an 11,400 year cycle - it is the furthest object from the Sun that we know of that has any real significance in terms of size. This makes it the slowest dwarf planet we have to work with. But right now, it’s like Pluto - the warm, nearby, fast Kuiper Belt Dwarf Planet. It can go through a zodiac sign in decades, not centuries. 

How can that be? Sedna has an incredibly irregular orbit. It skirts the Oort clous and interstellar space then comes into the Kuiper belt. Here’s the dates when Sedna entered various signs:

Scorpio: pre-3000 BC 

Sagittarius: 1441 BC 

Capricorn: 24 BC

Aquarius: 1047 

Pisces: 1633 

Aries: 1864 

Taurus: 1966 

Gemini: 2023 

Cancer: 2065 

Sedna will reach its closest point to the Sun on 16 July 2076 at 7°54 of Cancer. Since December 1980 Sedna has been so close to us that it’s relegated Eris to being the most distant of the dwarf planets. This is a rare situation caused by Sedna being as close as it comes to us while Eris is as distant as it ever gets. This rare, very specific occurrence will last for the entire 21st century.  

What does it mean to live in a strange time when the Erisian energy - which is martian and plutonian and associated with core truths and transformations, is slower and more distant than the evolutionary energies of Sedna? It feels appropriate for a time when we are learning to accept people’s core, immutable truths (queerness, neurodiversity, formative experiences, etc) but concepts like transhumanism and AI and climate change make our position in evolutionary history feel pretty shaky and mutable. 

So, Sedna’s time in Gemini is astrologically unprecedented, at least in terms of how it impacts humans. But unprecedented does not mean significant. Sedna may be the farthest astrologically significant object that we know of - but we don’t know what else is out there. But there’s a few things that intrigue me about Sedna in Gemini

The Pluto Trines

The Pluto-Sedna trine will be exact in July 2024, December 2024, August 2025 and November 2025 but it has been within 3 degrees from 2020-2028. This current Pluto-Sedna cycle started with a conjunction in April 1814 as Napoleon was getting exiled. The last trine was active in 1951-1958. One interpretation of this is a spiritual crisis. I’m wondering about facing the concept of extinction in some form or other. When Pluto and Sedna were in fire signs we had a Cold War and nuclear weapons coming in. In Earth signs we had “nature is healing, we are the virus” and now we have people worrying about AI under air signs. But there’s an underlying fear from way back in 1814 - global war. It’ll be interesting to see how this one feels.

The Jupiter Conjunctions

On 27 May 2024, Jupiter conjuncts Sedna for the first time in Gemini just 31 days after Sedna enters the sign and brings its luck, confidence and over-exaggerations into the area of communications and innovation. It’s hard to get away from this being a good sign for techno-optimists. Sedna is in Gemini for 44 years and manages to fit in 4 conjunctions with Jupiter. This is the maximum number of Sedna-Jupiter Conjunctions you can fit into this time. 

Of course this is good for tech at first, but it has another side. Each conjunction is the start of a cycle where Jupiter raises the question of the evolutionary issues Sedna raises. This is a long time for us to fail, try again, and fail better. 

The Saturn Conjunctions

In 2030 and 2061. 2030 is too far away to predict what this will mean but I think it’s worth noting that once again, Sedna in Gemini fits in the maximum number of cycles - two Sedna-Saturn cycles maybe raising questions on the limits of communication, innovation, sociability, development, and all those airy cyberpunk things that seem to be likely in our future.

The Uranus Conjunction

On 24 May 2026 Uranus will complete a conjunction with Sedna at 1°37 of Gemini. That’s pretty early in the Sedna-Gemini era. Uranus has an orbital period of 84 years so there’s no necessity we were going to get a Sedna-Uranus conjunction in Gemini at all. You’re hopefully getting a picture here. The Solar System has four gas giants and four gas giants conjunct Sedna in Gemini. All of them have the maximum number of conjunctions possible in Gemini. Not only that, but we have Jupiter, Pluto, and Uranus making important aspects to Sedna early on in the Sedna in Gemini era. Sedna is really punching above its weight this week.

The Neptune Conjunction

Neptune’s conjunction with Sedna will come on 2064-2065 in the last degree of Gemini. I find this fascinating. Sedna starts off in Gemini with a series of important conjunctions with slow moving major planets. Then, as it’s about to leave, it has another important conjunction. Sedna is Gemini has a lot to do.

If we accept that Sedna is raising our awareness of evolutionary issues and increasing our ability to see into deep time and beyond usual concerns, this makes Sedna an important factor in the coming decades. In Gemini, we could expect these questions to be to do with how we think, communicate, generate information and network. These aren’t small issues at the moment so I feel this makes perfect sense.

[sun-in-retrograde]

Understanding Pluto: 101

Pluto: is this an authentic part of yourself?

me: no.

Pluto: ✂️ ✂️ ✂️ ✂️ ✂️ 

━━━━━━♠━━━━━━

Pluto: is this serving you or your path to growth?

me: no.

Pluto: ✂️ ✂️ ✂️ ✂️ ✂️ 

━━━━━━♠━━━━━━

Pluto: is this behavior stemming from a psychological issue?

me: yes.

Pluto: ✂️ ✂️ ✂️ ✂️ ✂️ 

━━━━━━♠━━━━━━

Pluto: are you acting out to distract yourself from a greater underlying issue?

me: yes

Pluto: ✂️ ✂️ ✂️ ✂️ ✂️ 

━━━━━━♠━━━━━━

Pluto: are you participating in this specific act/behavior because you fear losing control?

me: yes.

Pluto: ✂️ ✂️ ✂️ ✂️ ✂️ 

━━━━━━♠━━━━━━

Afterall, it's called the sacred destruction, snip snip!!✂️ 

[sun-in-retrograde]

Uranus Conjunct Jupiter - Hope Just Spat Out a Tooth

The Jupiter-Uranus Conjunction is a lot of things, but one way to think of it is basically the new moon of the way the two planets relate - the end of a cycle that started at the last Jupiter Uranus conjunction and the start of something new. I wanted to give a little time to thinking about what we’re putting down, and what we might be able to do with the new energy.

An Aries Cycle

Uranus entered Aries 27 May and stayed there till mid August before retrograde. The conjunction completed 8 June. 

Here’s the astro-seek data:

For the first half of the cycle, the energy of the relationship was pretty intense - Jupiter aspected Uranus, then went retrograde and aspected in again, then moved on. It was a slow build up, reaching a pinnacle in 2016/7 before winding down. 

Think of this in terms of a lunar cycle. While Jupiter is waxing, building upon the Uranus energy it picked up in its conjunction, Uranus was in Aries. The process was laborious, intense. 

Uranus in Aries came with promises - it started with the Arab Spring. Uranus in Aries was a freedom fighter establishing itself. It had rebel without a cause vibes. It came in with riots in the UK over the London Metropolitan Police shooting a black man, the Occupy Movement, the student fees protests and anti-austerity. It came in, fundamentally, with the first Conservative government since 1997.

The last one is important. 1997 was the last election in the UK where power changed hands. Power didn’t change hands in 1983, but the structure of the system changed fundamentally. Uranus and Jupiter can oversee revolutions. 

What house is your Aries in? Where was the energy of Uranus active in your life while it was there? Was there anything that took time to develop? Any lessons that had to be learned again and again?

It feels to me almost like Uranus in Aries built up power and worked and grew, then the waning end of the cycle was a release of pressure. For example, in 2010 Britain elected a Conservative government under a Jupiter-Uranus conjunction. The Conservatives got in under a plan to unify the right and temper it’s weirdest and worst aspects. Or at least make it palatable. In 2014, under the square, a right of conservative party group called UKIP became a major party. In 2016 as the opposition completed itself, Britain voted to leave the EU. 

In 2018, Uranus entered Taurus - traditional, slow moving and comfortable Taurus is a weird place for Uranus. What happens when Conservatives encounter the nervous energy of Uranus with its connections to queerness and difference? They react with fear. Since the Uranus-Jupiter cycle reached its waning phase, mainstream conservative movements in Britain have been ideologically captured by increasingly deranged conspiracy theorists. This process has felt relatively easy, and fast.

Another example: in 2010 the Lib Dems confirmed they wanted to bring in gay marriage and they had the power to push for it. In 2014, the square gave us gay marriage, but also Time Magazine’s “Transgender tipping point” - the key issues and demands of queer activism started to change. In 2017, at the opposition point of this cycle, the government announced that it would hold a consultation on gender recognition act reform. Then in 2018 Uranus entered Taurus and Gender Critical reactionary anti-trans rhetoric really stepped up. The tenor of the conversation has changed. In 2017 the Tories wanted to be pro-LGBT to be on “the right side of history”. These days the prime minister jokes about murdered trans children in front of their parents. 

Cycles and cycles

Of course, we haven’t lost every cultural battle since Uranus entered Taurus, and the Uranus Jupiter Cycle isn’t the only cycle that’s going on. But it has been a tough old cycle. Maybe it was tough for you personally, or maybe the area Uranus has been active in has been blessed with luck from Jupiter. Maybe for you it feels like on a personal level the hard work of Uranus in Aries paid off in an easeful period of Uranus in Taurus. Maybe you’ve even won your political struggles. 

It’s worth considering the public and personal issues you’ve been through in this period, and whether they may be coming towards the possibility for something new. 

The future

In the next cycle, while it starts in Taurus it’s not there for long - just the conjunction. Then for 14 years Uranus will be active in Gemini, then Cancer. 

Taking the last phase as a pattern, the first part of this stage feels relatively easeful - there are no repetitions. In Gemini I wonder if we may find Uranus active in how we respond to, incorporate, and resist technology. This seems reasonable. We appear to have entered one of those periods where technology is shifting.

What interests me is the 2030s. Uranus enters Cancer and we do the work of coming home, nurturing, integrating something. Looking at the cycle we’re about to start - it starts with Uranus in a sign where it’s deeply reactive, and uncomfortable (arguably, Uranus has its fall in Taurus). But, I hope, it’s heading to a kind of integration and better wholeness. There’s the potential in this cycle to learn cool shit and, ultimately, to learn to live with it. To maybe even heal a bit, if we’re lucky. 

But, more importantly, it’s a new revolution. Revolutions go around. We didn’t win every fight in the last Jupiter-Uranus cycle, but we won some, and we can win some this time, too.

[sun-in-retrograde]

Eris Conjunct Sun - The Grotesque Chaos of an Immovable Object

Eris reaches its exact conjunction with the Sun at 6:24 AM UK time on 14 April. It will be exact at 24°48 of Aries. This is happening with Venus, the North Node and Mercury also in Aries. Along with Chiron, and Salacia. It’s a busy time for astrology and especially astrology in Aries. But Eris will still be in Aries after all those other planets have left. Even Salacia will only be in Aries until 2041. Eris is there until 2044 and has been there far longer. 

When you think about Eris in myth - she’s fast, tricky, quick to anger, unpredictable. Eris in the sky is very much not that. Eris the planet is slow, practically stationary. It’s predictable. But these two things aren’t contradictions. 

Actually - a good illustration of this is current UK news. The government has commissioned a report into what they see as a social problem - trans children grow up to be trans adults. The government would like transness in childhood to be something that people grow out of. The vast amount of evidence says this doesn’t happen and even if you can force people to detransition it doesn’t actually help them. The government has opted to ignore 98% of all research on this matter. They’ve also decided to ignore all testimonies on the matter from young trans people because they give a biased view - that trans children grow up to be trans adults. 

The stage is set for chaos, confusion, and conflict. Having carefully crafted an idea of how trans children should act by ignoring all contradictory evidence, the government is setting itself up to be shocked at how people act in reality. Eris is stationary and certain and predictable. Humans are used to being able to shift anything. When humans find something that can’t easily be changed it feels unpredictable, sudden, chaotic, shocking. Humans are very good at resistance, when they need to be.

The Eris - Sun Conjunction feels very real, to me, this year. It’s going to be exact on my birthday. To be honest, I generally don’t see Eris as a chaotic force. I’d prepared to talk about the Eris Sun conjunction with the language of “the Sun shining a light on our true selves”. But maybe because we’ve just come out of the Mars-Saturn conjunction things feel especially frustrated this time. The situation I’m seeing a lot of is people fighting to stand their ground in situations that are frustrating, difficult, and hostile.

Eris conjunct the Sun puts who we are into a stark light. It can be a call to fight for self-determination and our own very core self. But that’s not an easy thing. Standing your ground and holding your truth can be the most difficult thing. Eris conjunct Sun is the wall a car crashes into. However chaotic and unpredictable it may seem it’s probable that the wall didn’t swerve into the car. 

May you stand your ground and stand on the right ground. That’s all you can really ever do.

[sun-in-retrograde]

Solar Eclipse 8 April 2024 – A very Transneptunian Eclipse

There’s a lot of dwarf planet energy in the coming eclipse and I wanted to point out some of it to you - all the planets are contained in three signs - Taurus, Aries and Pisces and of the planets you can guarantee an astrologer will cover, only Pluto is outside of that. But then, Pluto is a dwarf planet too, just the one people know about. Given this, anything but conjunctions will be with dwarf planets and they could have an impact on what’s at work in your cart out of the three signs that are most active. Here’s what to look out for.

Eris Conjunct Mercury

This is the second of three Sun Mercury conjunctions in Aries and will be at 24 degrees. Look out for fixed ideas. Fixed, unchangeable ideas are a risk of this aspect but given the repetition of this aspect and the very long time it’s active, with a lot else going on in Aries, now could be a good time to reconsider your ideas in the light of deeper, more fundamental ideas. For example, say you refuse to vaccinate your children. That’s a fixed belief. But the deeper belief behind that is that you can’t trust authority figures and want to keep your children healthy. This conjunction could help you realise that the thought leaders of the antivaxx movement are untrustworthy authority figures and modern medical science will help you keep your kids healthy.

Be curious about your beliefs but be mindful of the fake moment of doubt. Radicalised people do this theatre in their minds where they doubt the reality of what they’re doing but only to prove they are capable of doubt. It only ever leads to diving more deeply into their beliefs. A dark night of the soul wracked with doubt is not transformative if you come out more certain of what you started out believing. If it’s not transformative, a dark night of the soul is just a way to kill time while you have insomnia. 

Chiron Conjunct Sun and Moon

The Sun is shining light on Chiron, which contains your pain associated with Aries. So, for me, Aries is in the second house and I’m being confronted with my core wounding in the area of how my ADHD makes it really hard for me to sensibly handle money and finances. I’ve made some rash moves (Aries) relating to buying things (2nd House) that brings up memories of times I’ve made really bad mistakes in this area (Chiron) and it’s getting hard to ignore (Sun and Moon).

All this means this eclipse is likely going to be a painful time for a lot of people. Even if there’s nothing aspecting this in your chart, we live in a community so be mindful of others. 

Lilith Quincunx Sun, Moon, and Chiron

Lilith in Virgo demands perfection. The Sun, Moon, and Chiron are coming together to really shine a light on flaws. How wonderful for all of us. With this going on, it’s natural to want to stop it. The common reactions to trauma are fight, flight, freeze or fawn. This is fine, if you need to. There’s a lot of reasons to hide right now. But if you can face things, the potential here is to begin a process of healing.

Makemake Opposing Salacia - Squared by Quaoar

Makemake has been opposing Salacia within one degree on and off since 2012 and this will continue till 2038. Both these planets have a lot to do with using resources. Makemake is good at taking an overview, knowing how things work and how to manipulate them. It’s often seen as mercurial, intellectual. Salacia is more venusian or neptunian, it hides inside things, it knows how to be in them. 

You can see this opposition most at work in things like Julian Assange hiding in the embassy and the founding and some major events connected to ISIS. So think cult activity, the underworld, catfishing, radicalised hidden groups, malware, entryism, espionage. Anything where manipulation and hidden dealings are key. 

The Quaoar Salacia square has been active since 1981 but the square with Makemake only began in 2012. The square with Makemake will end in the 2030s and the Salacia square will remain until the 2040s. Currently Quaoar is in Capricorn. It adds the element of sudden revelations (especially to do with the nature of capital and the world) to the opposition. It just adds to the general risk of radicalisation in this aspect. 

I would say, though, radicalisation itself isn’t the only risk in this aspect. Radicalisation is difficult. One way that this aspect seems to be showing up is in pessimism and “doomerism” - the fear that there’s nothing that can be done. One answer to these feelings is radicalisation - if the current system doesn’t have solutions, what solutions exist beyond the current system? This could be good or bad depending on what radical ideas you consider. 

A connected thing to watch out for is decision paralysis. Especially with the other things going on, there’s a risk of doing nothing because every option has problems and every idea has cringe or problematic elements to it. The core thing of this aspect is manipulation. Are there people who may prefer you to do nothing about the problems we collectively face? A common strategy I’ve seen starts with “what we really need to do” and then suggests something that won’t happen. The goal is to make sure that reasonable, possible actions aren’t seen as worth doing and radical actions aren’t attempted at all. 

Mars and Saturn Opposing Orcus

An interesting thing with Pluto is the number of twins it seems to have. Its moon is closer to it in size than any other making it the closest thing we have to a twin planet. Eris is remarkably similar to it in size, and Orcus, another dwarf planet with a big moon, has a remarkably similar orbit that’s essentially a mirror image of Pluto. What is so important about Pluto that we need three of them?

In any case, Mars conjunct Saturn is already a worrying aspect. You could connect it to slamming on the brakes, frustration, an inability to move on from worrying situations. The close opposition to a Pluto like planet brings in extra feelings of being trapped, buried, at risk. It’s a feeling to watch out for.

Things to watch out for

The key thing to know for this eclipse is what house is Aries in? A lot of what’s happening will be determined by that because it will determine what area of your life you’ll feel pressure. Because there’s Lilith and Orcus in Virgo it may be useful to know what house that sign is in as well. Any planets in your natal chart that are connected to these aspects will colour your experience.

The houses in the chart above is set to a city near me. Ignore them unless you live in Devon, or get your own chart at astro.com

The general mood for this eclipse is strongly not great. It might not impact you a lot, it depends on your chart. But be mindful that it may impact others.

[sun-in-retrograde]

How I Use Dwarf Planets

I thought it would be useful to write a brief summary of where my astrological practice is at, at the moment - especially with the outer planets, which are the majority of what I write about. I’m not saying this is the only way to do things, or even that I’ll stick with it, but, for now, I’m hoping it’ll help.

Selecting Objects

Astronomers are aware of 1.3 million asteroids, 3900 comets, 8 planets and an indeterminate amount of dwarf planets in this solar system. astro.com allows you to track a really limited number of them at any one time. It would be fascinating to do astrology with all of them at once but if we did that indiscriminately it would fill every single space on everyone’s natal chart. We have to make some judgements on what to include. So, what should we include?

The sun is an obvious one. 99.85% of everything in the solar system is the Sun. Size is a pretty obvious thing to base astrology on. But from this basis, we may as well just look at sun signs. We can rule out the idea that light is the factor, because basically all the light in the solar system is from the Sun. 

Visibility and impact on Earth, though, might count for something. The Moon isn’t particularly big, objectively, but it’s close and therefore matters. It doesn’t emit its own light but we see it because the light of the Sun reflects off it. It’s hard to argue that the Moon doesn’t impact things on Earth. It clearly does. Other planets are less clear but, for example, we know that the 2.4 million year cycle of Mars and Earth’s orbital resonance has an impact on the Earth’s oceans. 

There’s a certain logic in choosing objects in astrology that are big and/or visible. Going purely on visibility - Vesta, Pallas, Ceres, Iris, Juno, Hebe, Eunomia, Melpomene, Flora and Bamberga are all brighter than Neptune. There’d be a logic in ditching Pluto and using them. But I don’t think we want to do that. 

If we include size. I’m sorry but Eris and Pluto are pretty much identical in size and neither feature at all in terms of visibility - use one and objectively you should use the other. But if we’re using them because they’re around 2300 km in diameter why not include Haumea with its 1560 km diameter? Eris and Pluto are substantially smaller than the other planets. We can include only those two as dwarf planets but if we do, we have to at least side eye the 7 other significantly sized dwarf planets in their region plus Ceres.

Another way to select objects to use is uniqueness. This is how some people justify using Chiron despite it not being significant at all in terms of size or brightness. It is weird in that it’s half comet half asteroid, has rings, and has this weird unstable orbit. But Chariklo is a bigger centaur type asteroid with better rings. If you wanted a unique exemplar of this type of object, it would be Chariklo, not Chiron. Pholus is bigger that Chiron too. Chiron isn’t even second place.  

So why do we use Chiron? Because it was discovered first and due to its relatively large size and being unique, it was considered a possible tenth planet. It stayed relevant because Zane Stein pioneered its use, got its ephemeris, and his ideas were adopted widely. Is there a logic to say that Chiron matters because we’re aware of it? 

Some astrologers think so. There’s a book that argues Pluto will lose astrological importance as it loses its planet status. But most astrologers will talk about the Pluto return of the United States and other historic events. If you’re rejecting the astrological method when it sees correspondences before the arbitrary date of a planet’s discovery, why not reject astrology out of hand? 

I’m coming to think that maybe we tune in, more or less, to objects. If you follow and work with Chiron, I have space in my heart for that being significant for you. A series of cycles you’re aware of and follow and use. I think it probably helps that with Chiron a lot of the signifiers are quite inward looking - core wounding, trauma, healing. Things you can tune into and investigate on a personal level.

So. Look, astrology is not a science, I have a few factors here but no clarity on how they mesh together or what’s more important. These are:

Size

Brightness

Cultural Awareness

Personal Awareness

Uniqueness

I’d like to add one more. Call it staying power. I personally believe this is the key to Pluto’s success. It may be distant but it’s also slow. If it forms an aspect to one of your natal planets, it’ll stay there a long time. At time of writing, Pluto is at 1°50 of Aquarius. A year ago it was at 0°06. The sun has covered the whole chart in the time it took for Pluto to move a single degree. If your natal Venus is conjunct a transiting Pluto, you’ll feel that for years. Pluto is twice as fast as Eris and about 46 times faster than Sedna. The outer dwarf planets interest me because even if their influence is slight it lasts for years, decades even. 

Why I use the planets I do

Taking a look at the lists above I hope you can see that the eight planets acknowledged by astronomy are always the top contenders if you combine discovery date, brightness and size. Eris and Pluto aren’t far behind on size - not counting moons they’re the 11th and 12th biggest objects. They’re much dimmer but they make up for it - in my opinion - by moving slowly and applying their influence over a long period of time. 

I also use Sedna, which is an odd one out here. It’s the 19th biggest object and the only known dwarf planet with an orbit that goes beyond the Kuiper Belt. The class of Sednoid objects are named after it. Right now, it’s the exemplar of its type. It’s the object that took over from Pluto as the most distant planet we can meaningfully use in astrology. That’s not insignificant. It’s the guardian of the border between what we know and what is still unknown.

I keep my eye on the other outer Dwarf planets - Haumea, Makemake, Gonggong, Orcus, Quaoar, and Salacia. If I was going purely on size, I’d also use Ceres. If I wanted to think about brightness, I’d be looking at other objects entirely. But I enjoy the slowness of the outer dwarves - how their energy is generational and their influence is long lasting. Because their aspects last a long time I think it’s very possible to find their signature in history. But as day-to-day tools of astrology I believe that as with Chiron, a certain level of attunement to them is necessary to get stuff out of them. This is why I’m currently mostly focusing mostly on Sedna. I believe it’s better to give time to planets individually and a person has only so much bandwidth for that.

What I look for

The level of inexactness that’s allowable for an aspect in astrology is called an orb - this comes from the area around a star in the sky that the light expands out into. One way to think of this is to imagine the classic star shape. We know stars are round. The pointy bits coming out of it are its orb.

I use different orbs depending on what I’m doing. Basically, transits to a person’s natal chart, or in the night sky, often pass and are gone. Mercury has about three days when it’s close to Eris so any Mercury-Eris energy has only a limited time to play out in your life. If it’s felt consciously it’s more likely to be a bolt of very clear Mercury-Erisness when the energy is most powerful. 

However, on a natal chart the planets don’t move because it’s a snapshot of a particular time. For this reason I use a wider orb. If Mercury and Eris are conjunct within ten degrees the energy you’ll feel from that will be subtle but over an entire lifetime, you might notice something. I also use wider orbs with mundane astrology (world events). Basically because when you’re looking at the whole world it’s more likely that some people will feel an aspect in play and respond to it.

My general basic rule is to look for 3 degree aspects between planets, 1 degree aspects between dwarf planets, and 1 degree aspects between asteroids but only conjunctions or oppositions. If I’m doing a deep dive on a natal chart I may look at 10 degree aspects between planets and 5 degree aspects between dwarf planets. I use the aspects that are based on splitting the zodiac wheel into 12 - so Conjunctions, Semisextiles, Sextiles, Squares, Trines, Quincunxes and Oppositions. But I pay more attention to Conjunctions, Squares and Oppositions. If I look at other aspects based on other ways to split up the zodiac (quintiles, etc) I am only really interested in very exact aspects. 

Generally, if a dwarf planet is making itself felt in astrology I’d only pay attention if it will have a significance on my personal chart.

So, for instance, the Salacia-Gonggong conjunction that coincided with the birth of the internet was pretty significant in mundane astrology. It’s not necessary that everyone with it in their charts will be technologically literate to a high level (though obviously those born with it in their charts are part of the first generation of digital natives). However, the aspect is significant when it plays off something else in the chart. For instance Grimes has it square her AC and DC and her techno-optimist beliefs were core to her sense of self and how she met her husband Elon Musk. This means they’re also why she ended up as insane as she is now. 

I think if we keep the rule in mind that dwarf planets have limited orbs and are most significant if they’re at work on other things in a chart, we can use them without overwhelming astrology by including more points than we can meaningfully hold space for in our lives. That’s the goal, anyway.

[sun-in-retrograde]

NASA releases the clearest images of Neptune’s rings in over 30 years

[sun-in-retrograde]

Eris Conjunct Mercury - In your heart you know what's true

On Tuesday 26 March at 9:12 AM British time, Eris and Mercury will come in a conjunction at 24°35 Aries. Mercury is very fast moving. Usually this conjunction passes and is gone in just three days. The last one, in March last year, lasted just 81 hours. This time we’re living with this energy until the 18th May.

The basic timeline is this:

26 March: 1st Conjunction

8 April: Mercury retrogrades back and has another conjunction

11 April Sun conjunct Mercury

12 April Mercury goes back beyond 3 degrees of its conjunction 

14 April: Sun Conjunct Eris

15 April: Mercury conjunct Chiron

19 April: Mercury conjunct Venus

25 April: Venus conjunct Eris

7 May: Mercury conjunct Chiron

8 May: Mercury and Eris are within a 3 degree conjunction again

11 May: Mercury conjunct Eris

14 May: The conjunction comes beyond the 3 degree conjunction

So basically, this time around Mercury and Eris are going to be in conjunction for an exceptionally long time, with an exceptionally large amount of other planets coming into conjunction with them. There’s a lot to do, and a long time where it’s happening. 

Eris is often associated with chaos and discord and transformation. But I think a good general rule of thumb is that Eris is a defensive planet. Eris travels slow and defends the ground that’s under it. Eris generally rewards fixed ideas and fixed thinking. In this transit, on a basic level, it’s possible that fixed ideas will be strengthened and getting people to see outside of their usual ideas will be a bit harder. 

But there’s another form of fixed thinking and that’s what you know in your heart. When people reluctantly acknowledge what they know to be true - Eris becomes chaotic and destabilising. Humans are very good at doublethink. Have you ever watched someone do it? It’s fascinating to observe. People have this way of acting when they encounter something that they realise will invalidate something they need to believe. They immediately disengage, process, and when they come back they refuse to acknowledge some of the things that happened or some of the information they received. There’s no point pushing from there. When you hit that point, it’s done.

I’d like to put it to you that Eris conjunct Mercury is a pretty good time to face up to this because Mercurial thoughts and feelings under Eris’ influence won’t simply go away. Mercury, Venus, and Chiron will all be under Eris’ influence at once. 

The risk here is that it will be easy to go on the defensive, reject new information, stick to your fixed ideas, feel attacked, feel triggered, and resist. The challenge, though, is to feel your feelings and allow yourself to explore thoughts. This is not an easy thing to do. It’s painful. It’s dangerous. You might not like the conclusions you reach. Some things you just have to allow yourself to work through. Some ideas need to be thought through and dismissed. One of the things about Eris, in my opinion, is that it brings to the surface things that are core for you. An Erisian thought won’t go away because you simply refuse to think it. If you can face it you have the chance to finally move forward. And as Mercury moves back, we have a few opportunities to work on that.

[sun-in-retrograde]

Sedna Square Mars - You have a right to feel uncomfortable

On 11:57 UK time on Friday 22 March Mars will square Sedna. This square will be within 1 degree between the 21st and 23rd March. This will happen with Mars at 29°37 of Aquarius and Sedna at Taurus 29°37. The outermost point in the solar system of any significance squared by the planet of energy and rage and cutting and impulse comes with some fairly strong imagery. You may feel rage that you didn’t know you have. You may feel rage you don’t know you’re feeling.

Sedna was last where it is now in about 9400 BC. Given that Sedna reacts to big evolutionary problems, here’s the kind of things people with strong Sedna placements might have been worrying about then 

We’re living in permanent settlements now, around lots more people than we had around in the past. This feels weird, maybe suffocating. 

What does having more people around mean for your relationships with others? Are they watching you? Are you watching them? Do they have more than you?

Other people living in the same kind of area as you are living lives that might be radically different. What does that mean?

It’s cool that we’ve started growing plants and domesticating animals like dogs. Are we being domesticated?

Any evolutionary, deep seated, question strikes me as a good source of Sedna-Mars tension. I don’t think that feelings of unease about urban life, social control, our relationships with nature, etc, are alien to us today.

But also, pure lizard brain instinctive reactions are also pretty appropriate as Sedna Mars energy. Anger and fear and agitation that’s basic and instinctive and not rational. Honestly, I’m not against lizard-brain instinctive reactions. I used to have a big problem that if people spoke to me politely while smiling I thought they were being nice. This left me in situations where I’d come out of talking to people feeling angry and miserable and worse because it seemed to be the wrong reaction. 

I’ve learnt to listen to how I’m feeling. I live in Britain, global capital of politely destroying people. If you come out of a situation that society says was handled correctly and feel worse than you went in, then obviously something there went wrong. You get further if you acknowledge that feeling and are curious about it than you do if you try to pretend it doesn’t exist. You have the right to feel uncomfortable - you have the right to seek out and fight for situations where you don’t feel, like, a deep seated nameless sense of dread. This may mean taking your meds but it also might mean changing your circumstances. 

I think another thing to consider with this particular transit is that it’s the last time Sedna in Taurus will square Mars in Aquarius until 13,400 AD. Sedna has been in Taurus since 1966 getting squares from Leo and Aquarius. One of the things Sedna square Mars in Aquarius makes me think of is the outside context problem - how do we respond to things that are unknown, that maybe we’ve never encountered before. The next time Mars squares Sedna, Sedna will be in Gemini. This will be the first time Sedna in Gemini has squared Mars since before writing was invented. That’s new. If you’re feeling anxious or angry about new things in your future then you’re right on time.

[sun-in-retrograde]

A star is about to explode

The Blaze Star is about to go nova in the Northern Crown. For a day, this faint star will become as bright as the North Star. In the past, a new star appearing in the sky was a major omen and people would pay close attention to it, but people rarely understood that it could be a recurrent phenomenon.

Recurrent nova explosions basically happen when a star experiences a large explosion that is nonetheless not big enough to destroy it. In the case of the Blaze Star what happens is that a small white dwarf is orbiting close to a much bigger red giant star. The red dwarf has an “accretion disk” of chemicals around it and as the Blaze Star travels through it it takes in more and more glasses until this reaches critical mass and explodes. Then, for a day, the star becomes 1500 times brighter than it usually is. We know of ten recurrent novae but the Blazing Star has one of the longest known periods between recurrences - about 80 years.

The Blaze Star, also known as T Coronae Borealis (or T Crb) is currently at 18°22 Scorpio and it’s moving slowly through the Scorpio. The last time it lit up was 9 February 1946 when it was at 17°16, then before that it was at 16°10 on 12 May 1866. There’s also two documents that discuss the nova before it was properly discovered. It was observed in around 1787/8 and a medieval manuscript mentions the nova in mid Autumn of 1217 when it was at around 7°04. The Ursperger Chronicle reports it like this:

"In the autumn season of the same year, in the early evening, a wonderful sign was seen in a certain star in the west. This star was located a little west of south, in what astrologers call Ariadne's Crown. As we ourselves observed, it was originally a faint star that for a time shone with great light, and then returned to its original faintness. There was also a very bright ray reaching up the sky, like a large tall beam. This was seen for many days that autumn. The preachers also in these times asserted that many other signs had taken place in heaven and on Earth, which it would be too long to enumerate and to add to this brief account."

I share the full text here because I think as astrologers what it shows us is that ancient astrologers took events like novae seriously and if we are seriously making a case for following in their footsteps we need to do the same. But also, they didn’t understand what they were looking at. We are aware of ten recurrent novae in this galaxy and we didn’t have evidence of this phenomenon at all until the 1900s. Most people who saw a recurrent nova before that thought it was a possibly miraculous one off event. I am 100% expecting to find ancient mesopotamian, Chinese, or Indian records that show that someone somewhere noted a recurrence in ancient times. The ancients were so often able to see more and connect more than we give them credit for. But I’ve not yet seen any evidence of this. For now, we have to assume that the recurrence of nova explosions is something nobody understood until modern times.

The Northern Crown

The Coronae Borealis constellation is named after the garland Venus gave to Ariadne when she married Dionysus. It therefore traditionally has some Venus-Mercury themes. In some cases this seems to play out with a connection between the nova event and children. For instance Spiro Agnew had his Sun conjunct the Blazing Star and his wife’s pregnancy at the time of the novae encouraged him to go back to law school. 

In some cases it can also relate to adult experiences of children and succession - for instance the month of the nova architect Frank Lloyd Wright’s son sent him a copy of his book about their relationship. It had the very Saturnian title: My Father Who Is On Earth. Frank was not happy and wrote notes throughout the book, his son responded to his comments. The book was published with the full disagreement available for everyone to read. This is all very Saturn-Venus to me - succession, children, creation, difficulty, and legacy all wrapped up in one story.

Passing the Torch from Conflict to Conflict

The most notable event at the last nova was the Soviet prosecutor giving his opening statement at the Nuremberg trials. A couple of Nazis had key signs on those strongly conjunct the Blazing Star - Wilhelm Frick (the architect of Germany’s anti-Jewish laws) and Alfred Rosenberg (the administrator in charge of occupied Russia). Oddly Frick was one of only two Nazis to refuse to testify in his own defense, and Rosenberg was the only Nazi executed following his trial who refused to give a last statement before being hanged. I don’t know what this is about but Hess, the other Nazi who refused to testify had the Blazing Star strongly trine is ascendent. Maybe the influence of the Blazing Star encouraged them to let their lives end with the mercy that we didn’t have to hear them whine about it. Because honestly, nothing of value was lost when the leaders of the WW2 Nazi Party were executed. 

Passing the torch from one conflict to another seems kind of key to this nova. On the day of the nova Stalin gave his first major post war speech and said that another war was inevitable because of the "capitalist development of the world economy", and that the USSR would need to concentrate on national defense in advance of a war with the Western nations. This is considered by some to be the start of the Cold War. Meanwhile in Britain, Jewish ex-servicemen beat up a group of fascists who were trying to rebuild their movement - this was both a reflection on the war that had just gone and inspired the formation of the 43 group of anti-fascists which was an essential part of the post war anti-fascist movement. One conflict ends, but immediately, another one starts.

What I’m looking out for

We can expect the nova in the next six months so I’m keeping my eye out for conflicts that are ending and sparking an immediate new conflict. The change over from Israel invading Gaza to a more sustained occupation as part of their ongoing genocide against the Palestinians strikes me as a key one to watch for. The Blazing Star is loosely conjunct Ukraine’s MC and Pluto and its at a sensitive part of various Russian natal charts so this is a conflict to watch when the Blazing Star goes up.

Prince Harry is a key celebrity in this - he has the Blazing Star conjunct his MC and it’s interesting that we’re currently in a period where for the first time ever the British press has more complaints about Prince William’s wife than Meghan Markle. The monarchy is less of a joke than we make it out to be sometimes - the ongoing conflict between the Windsor siblings and their wives demonstrates major faultlines in British society on issues like how tolerant we are of secrecy within the executive arm of government, and how a lot of people understand race and racism. A shift in this conversation could be important. 

Of course, with the conception connection some of the most important events of the transit might not become apparent right away. It could be conception, or women finding out they’re pregnant, or starting to tell people. The key thing seems to be how the arrival of a child impacts the parent and this is a really personal thing we might not be aware of unless this hits your personal chart at the right time in the right way.

In general, I’ll simply be watching out for a new star in the sky. Astrology isn’t just about fortune telling, it’s about forming a personal connection to the universe and watching an event like this is one way to do that. I also think astrology is about forming a link to the past. We do this by following the cycles of planets, or in this case, stellar explosions. We also do this by understanding our ancestors who also tried to understand the stars. We have an opportunity to understand the cyclical nature of an event that most past astrologers could only understand as miraculous. I think that’s really beautiful.

Underneath, for the nerds, I have the charts for the three known nova explosions so far:

[sun-in-retrograde]

Salacia Opposing Makemake

On 15 March Makemake and Salacia will oppose one another with Salacia at 9 degrees of Aries and Makemake at 10 degrees of Libra. They’ll remain within 1 degree of each other until 30 April as Makemake retrogrades back into Salacia. Then, for a few months Salacia will be ahead until it retrogrades back into Makemake and enters a close conjunction again 4 September to 21 October. 

This is something that happens every year right now. Salacia has been opposing Makemake at a wide orb since 1998 when it was in Pisces and it will continue to do so until 2045 when Salacia will be in Taurus. Close oppositions (under one degree) between the two planets will pop up in the Summer of 2012-2019; in the Spring and Autumn of 2020-2030; then the opposition will ebb away with the last few in the winter of 2031-2038. What this means is that this opposition is currently at its strongest - we’ve had 12 years of it and we have 14 years to go. 

The Planets

Makemake is relatively large for a dwarf planet - it takes 306.2 years to cross the zodiac. Salacia is the smallest of the dwarf planets to be named. It’s smaller and a little bit faster - it makes it across the zodiac in 274 years. Because of their relatively similar speeds, aspects last a long time. As far as I can see they were last conjunct in the 11th century. 

This means for most people alive now, if Makemake and Salacia have anything to do with one another, it’ll be oppositional. And this is a real shame because I genuinely don’t think they’re naturally hostile to one another. Makemake and Salacia seem to work in the same area - how you use resources and systems. 

My view is, Makemake takes a bit of a birds eye view of something while Salacia is about being very much in it. Makemake is interested in how things fit together and how to use that. Salacia is more about vibes. If Makemake wanted to sell you something it could talk you into it. Salacia would have a shop you’re naturally interested in going into. When I think of Makemake I think of nationalism, patriotism, and manipulating resources. When I think of Salacia I think of forms of media, ways of networking, and things that are hidden or hard to see. 

The Opposition

When Makemake and Salacia oppose, look for systems that are hiding, or things hidden in systems. Particularly, look for things hidden in how systems made up of people.

Manipulative nationalism or cult behaviour strikes me as very appropriate for the Makemake-Salacia opposition. Basically you have the manipulative abilities of Makemake working alongside the hiddenness of Salacia. Malware, gaslighting, parasocial relationships and scams are all very relevant for this, but particularly situations where the core of the scam is how you identify and what you identify with. 

The core lie to watch out for is “You can trust me because we’re the same”. The core lie to watch out for in yourself is the belief that someone is going to treat you well because they’re in your church, or political movement, or share your interest in astrology, or share your queer identity. We often think of scams, cults, abuse and grooming as things that happen to other people. In the UK “Muslim grooming gangs” have been a huge issue even though there’s no evidence that you’re more likely to be abused by a Muslim than a white person. It’s comforting to believe that evil is somehow different to your own community because it’s far easier to believe that than to recognise that the risk is always from people who look like you, talk like you, think like you, live with you.

So, yeah, keep your hand on your wallet. Be safe. Don’t put your passwords or bank details into anything surprising without thinking about it first. Explore new ideas all you like but remain genuinely curious, and that means not just staying open minded but also being critical of the person telling you about UFOs, or how to vote, or how to lose weight, or dwarf planet astrology. They might be just bullshitting you.

The Positives

You know what, it’s good to be part of a group, it’s good to be seduced, and we do have elections coming up and a genocide in Gaza to fight. In Salacia and Makemake we have two somewhat cerebral and manipulative energies in close aspect for a long period of time. Now could be a good time to sweep someone off their feet, or be swept. It might not be as meaningful as you think at the time but that doesn’t mean it’s not potentially fun. Propaganda and group identification might be kicked into overdrive for the next few weeks but that also means there’s possibilities to get a message out and solidify your groups. Maybe don’t expect truth to get as far as lies or genuine community to win out over cultish devotion - but we have the cosmic energy we have and all we can do is work with it ethically. 

Also, sometimes it might be good to be a part of a crowd. Makemake is direct and Salacia is retrograde so now would be a good time for collective actions - the Eurovision fandom is doing this at the moment. People have formed relationships through a shared interest, got angry about the war in Gaza, and now they’re working out how to act on that. A movement emerges where there wasn’t one visible before. It emerges in conflict and sadness, but that’s powerful. More of that please.

I’ve got notes underneath about examples of this aspect in the past and a schedule of when it happened and will happen.  

Oppositions started 1998 Salacia in Pisces (within 5 degrees)

Oppositions Within 1 

9 June 2012-27 June 2012

22 May 2013-18 July 2013

12 May 2014-31 July 2014

5 May 2015-10 August 2015

27 April 2016-19 August 2016

22 April 2017-27 August 2017

16 April 2018-5 September 2018

11 April 2019-13 September 2019

5 April 2020-3 June 2020; 23 July-20 September

2021: 31 March-22 May; 6 August 2021-28 September

2022: 26 March-14 May; 17 August-6 Obctober

2023: 22 March-7 May; 27 August- 14 October

2024: 15 March-30 April; 4 September-21 October

2025: 10 March-24 April; 13 September-29 October

2026: 4 March-19 April; 21 September-7 November

2027: 26 February-14 April; 29 September-17 November

2028: 20 February-8 April; 5 October-26 November

2029: 11 February-3 April; 13 October-9 December

2030: 1 February-29 March; 21 October-5 January 2031

2031: 7 January-24 March; 

2031/2032: 29 October 2031-18 March 2032

2032/2033: 5 November 2032-13 March 2033

2033/4: 14 November 2033-7 March 2034

2034/5: 23 November 2034-28 February 2035

2035/6: 3 December 2035-21 February 2036

2036/7: 15 December 2036-10 February 2037

2038: 5 January 2038-23 January 2038

Ends (at 5 degrees 2045) Salacia in Taurus

Julian Assange when he hid in the embassy - Makemake was conjunct his natal Pluto and Salacia was Conjunct Chariklo - so survival and hidden knowledge were issues related to hiding by attaching himself to a nation. Makemake opposes Gonggong along his MC. Gongong is associated with major upsets and upheavals and Makemake is associated with national identity. Pretty appropriate for someone who shocked the world by revealing national secrets

Brexit happened with an opposition between the 8th house Makemake (what the country is owed) and 2nd house Salacia (our place in a global economy)

Zelenskyy had a Makemake - Gonggong opposition along his MC, again, appropriate for someone whose election has led to such an upheaval and a change in Ukraine's self-image and image in the world. When he was elected president the Makemake-Salacia opposition had a positive aspect with him Sun and Venus which really shines a light on his charm and charisma.

[sun-in-retrograde]

My Personal Practice as an Astrologer Looks Like

Keeping track of major transits, particularly hard aspects to Venus/Pluto/Neptune which could mean significant shifts in political issues I care about. This helps me to be more mindful of potential dangers and when I'll need to be resilient to bad news.

Checking how transits are likely to impact my chart and using this to help me understand what I'm feeling and why.

Trying to stay aware of what planets I can see in the night sky and therefore connecting to the beauty I see every day.

Understanding and mythologising astronomy news so the beauty of the universe connects with me personally and forms a story that helps me grow as a person.

Writing journal style texts about where planets fall in my chart and what aspects they create so I can understand myself better and work out remediation.

Remembering that hard times are not forever and being able to have dates in mind where my mental health is likely to improve.

Being able to talk to people about emotion and spirituality using a shared language of myth. Being able to connect my own feelings with something bigger than myself

My personal practice as an astrologer looks like...

Keeping track of my lunar returns and corresponding life events in a spread sheet.

Thinking about my life in terms of 6mo lunar cycles. (New to Full Moon in the same sign.)

Giving myself an annual solar return reading (And cross referencing the lunar returns!)

Planning my work schedule around retrogrades, eclipses and other major transits.

Checking where the moon is at before I say yes to any plans (Sorry, not sorry!)

Pulling up my friends transits chart every time they tell me their life is crazy at the moment.

Using my astrological knowledge to help my friends and family with their careers and passion projects.

Constantly checking myself for biases when it comes to certain signs and houses I find difficult (Every chart has signs and houses it struggles with!)

Connecting with random strangers over their charts no matter where I go and surprising people when I guess their signs correctly.

Viewing my life and the world around me through astrological symbolism (It’s in everything and once you see it, you can’t unsee it.)

What's something unique or special about your personal astrology practice? Let me know in the comments!

[sun-in-retrograde]

[sun-in-retrograde]

Sedna Square Sun - You just lost The Game

At 18 February at 3:00 pm UK time the Sun (29°27 Aquarius) Squares Sedna (29°27 Taurus). Every personal planet trined Sedna as they went into Aquarius and had their conjunction with Pluto. And every planet will square Sedna on the way out. This is the last time we'll have a sun square Sedna in Taurus.

Things I might be looking out for:

The conflict between the big picture and your own place in it

Which will win? Maybe now is a time to let go of your ow selfish needs in favour of the greater whole, or to reprioritize yourself over what you see as universally good.

If you're super religious, you might see being gay as universally bad and against God. You might see your own desires as sinful and wrong. Only by giving into temptation can you learn a greater truth - that God doesn't actually hate you for being yourself.

Organising the universe into schemes and systems

Sedna is a very oceanic, deep, evolutionary energy. But the sun brings structure and awareness to it, now might be a good time to try and understand big truths. Just understand that any theory and model you bring to big truths are just approximations and you can never perfectly understand things that are too big to grasp.

Traumatic incidents, core memories

There's a big trauma element to Sedna and this may be a time for formative experiences of trauma. I don't think we realise how core traumatic experiences aren't just childhood experiences. We keep growing, so we are always vulnerable to trauma. Just like we're always able to heal trauma.

Uncovering truths about the self

Philosophising, introspection, meditation. Now is a good time to get into deep truths a bit. It may not be easy - it may mean awareness of past trauma.Or even historic ancestral trauma.

Being conscious of consciousness

Have you ever thought too hard about breathing and stopped doing it automatically? Consciousness is something that, in thinking about, you kind of miss. See "The Game" - the only rule is you can't think about it, so if you're aware you're playing you've lost. Awareness of the nature of consciousness is not some meditative enlightened high point. It happens regularly. It's actually kind of annoying sometimes.