Written on
May 12, 2008
by
Faye
Hi Darrelyn - everyone
The last VAN has made me think again about visual astro which I do from time to time in my own quiet way even though I have been keeping a low profile here.
It is more of a question or food for thought really…
I have Moon/MC under the gaze of that miraculous sea monster. It was Poseidon who ordered her to come up from the deep so I was curious how Neptune might fit into the mythology here. Perhaps he can trigger her into life as well somehow, maybe at important transits or progressions where he is involved. Certainly a recent transit from Neptune to my Moon woke up the odd sea monster. Now that he is sitting on my Sun it appears I am researching Cetus!
However another question - as I was born at the other end of this planet, Cetus is eyeing my Moon-MC not from the depths, but floating along on her back looking down at them. Maybe in the southern hemisphere she likes having her tummy tickled! Does anyone know what southern hemisphere starlore thinks about Cetus? I can’t seem to find anything but did come across the wonderful Aotearoa stonehenge site - made me quite homesick! http://www.astronomynz.org.nz/stonehenge/.
Anyway any suggestions welcome so I can get a grip on what she might be trying to say to us.
Faye
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Written on
May 7, 2008
by
Cornelia
Born with the Sun and Mercury right “in the Stare of Cetus”, the Swiss occultist, artist, musician and astrologer “Akron” (Charles Frey) makes Cetus come alive on his website. His birth date, according to Wikipedia, is April 30, 1948 in Munsteringen (TG), Switzerland, other sources give May 01, 1948.
On his website, http://www.peregrinus.ch/, he has a lot of paintings and texts that let one get a deeper feeling for what Cetus is about. He has the talent to make the “collective unconcious” visible by his actions and presentations there.
On entering his website, one finds a picture in the middle, “Lilith’s Zaubergarten” (Lilith’s magic garden). If one clicks on this picture, it will show a larger and coloured version. Just let yourself get enchanted by all the details for a while, and then click on the snakelike feet of the woman.
You will see an even more detailed part of the picture then. Just click on the snake-feet again…
Translation of Akron’s text that goes with the monster: “My being is the immortality, and it is impossible to conceive me, because I am more than you will ever see, and I am more than you can comprehend, but nevertheless I am only a part of yourself. I am everything, I was and I will be everything, even though yesterday I was less than I am today, and tomorrow I might be more than I am now. I am the only one who can save you from the shadowy mirrorings of your soul, if you accept me within yourself, and if you recognize how relentlessly you are entangled with me. As long as you do not recognize, there wil be no escape, your shadow will catch up with you wherever you try to hide. But if you immerse with me into the ultimate source of beeing, you will be able to remember experiences which souls cannot see, because they repress them on their journey towards the light.“
If you take the time, you will find many places where to click on the picture, and it will lead you to various pictures and impressions about the theme of the garden. Also other parts of the website give more impressions about him, his way of living and thinking.
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Written on
April 21, 2008
by
Nicky
Hello Everyone, Darrelyn
I feel compelled to lift my head from my unbelievably busy timetable to support Darrelyn’s thinking about Mars in the eye of Cetus, and to share a visual of an electional chart with Mars in such a position.
Here is the chart of the day on which a client of mine went for an embryo transplant as part of the process of an IVF treatment to get pregnant. She had tried three times before with no luck, and apparently there was no medical reason for her not being able to conceive. She was desperate this time, as it was her last attempt due to financial constraints and she was really down to the wire. She produced only two eggs in spite of taking drugs to stimulate ovulation, and her embryos were dead dodge - she had one embryo of 4-cells and one of 1-cell, when usually they should have been at least 8-cell embryos. The doctors wanted her to call off the treatment, but she decided to stay on the programme, she gritted her teeth, stood her ground and willed this baby into being.
Against all odds, she did achieve pregnancy and a live birth of a healthy son, and it was due to sheer determination and not giving up the fight. Intense focus on fighting off demons of past failures and disappointments was the key to her success.
In terms of her astrology, Mars was the almuten of Pregnancy, the ruler of her profected year, and aspected her natal 5th house Venus by transit that day.
Are there any more Cetus stories out there?
best wishes
Nicky
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Written on
April 13, 2008
by
Darrelyn
Following on from my research work presented in the April Visual Astrology Newsletter and the question I asked as to how other people had experienced the ‘Stare of Cetus’ with planets travelling between Aries the Ram and Cetus (approximately 5-20 degrees of Taurus tropically), I have had this response from Marcia Butchart and her permission to reprint it here
Wooooo…there’s my Moon and MC. Harry Patch’s description of a single sensory signal bringing a whole experience rushing back is very familiar. Do you recall my early abandonment experience tale, and how profoundly I felt it had affected me? On a massage table, where I had been promised relief from some deep physical pain and a recent grief, I was jerked into full consciousness when the timer softly rang in the dimly lit room. The bodyworker simply stopped and turned away; time to prepare for her next client. For a second I was stunned: “That’s it? It’s over?? I’m not done!” But I said nothing aloud; I knew the rules, knew how useless it was to ask for what I actually needed. And I actually “saw” the bars of a crib rise around me as she left the room; the wave of sudden desolation and hopelessness that swept over me was monstrous. I wept continuously for three days. I may also have been subjected to the original abandonment exercise because my parents were afraid I had become an all-devouring monster? My father said as much when he told me the original story.
Other people’s experiences are more than welcome so we can start to see how this is working more clearly in people’s/clients’ charts.
Cheers!
Darrelyn
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Written on
April 1, 2008
by
Bernadette
Hullo All,
This is an ad… but it is subject related 
I just want to let everyone know that I am running a summer school, online in Visual Astrology which starts in May. If you want more information then follow this link :
http://www.astrologos.co.uk/courses_summerschoolVisual.htm
Thank you
Bernadette
Posted in General | Comment Now!
Written on
March 17, 2008
by
Cornelia
In October 2007 we had a discussion about “Zosma and the Winter Solstice“, where in the horoscope of the Sun’s Capricorn Ingress in December 2007 for Lhasa in Tibet/China, there were Pluto, Sun and Jupiter right on the MC, and Mars was on the IC. In this area, and as well as in Nepal, several of the following - Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn and Pluto - were in Paran with Zosma, which is ”about the victim or a victimizing situation, in which people can be brought by the system or the establishment“. Also near Lhasa, Zosma was setting at the moment of the Winter Solstice.
Mars has been retrograde for a while, and now, on Friday March 14th, Mars has returned exactly to its former position of the Winter-Solstice, being accompanied by the Moon as well. On this day the protests in Tibet began to turn violent, and people got killed by Chinese police.
(Photos: http://cryptome.cn/tibet080315/tibet080315.htm)
Since the beginning of March 2008, Zosma again is in Paran with Pluto (now setting, while in December Zosma was on the Nadir), and has curtailed passage. Mars is in Paran with Zosma again today and tomorrow. And Zosma will be in Paran with Sun, Moon, Venus and Pluto of March 20, the day of the Spring Equinox or Aries Ingress.
On Friday, the Sun was in Paran with Facies, and Mars with Bellatrix, Scheat and Formalhaut, so people might feel the cruel stare of the government, and hope to make their dream come true by fighting. Darrelyn Gunzburg writes about “Facies, the pain of arrows“ in Visual Astrology Newsletter of February 2007: ”… Facies became known as being cruel and ruthless and its darkest shadow was the evil of war…”
Mars will be in Paran with Facies for about a week (while Facies first is setting, then on the Nadir) starting from March 24th, 2008 . There are more stars in Paran with Mars, so these have to be considered as well, but some of them add quite well to the theme of fighting, endurance and ruthlessness.
So one can only hope this will not be some cruel action taken by the Chienese (as some people now already fear), but that it can be a fight that leads to more freedom for all people who have been victimized by any establishment.
Posted in Event and Horary, General | Comment Now!
Written on
February 18, 2008
by
Dharmaruci
In practice, Pluto tends to be the planet that is most used to define the times we live in. This is because until recently it was the outermost planet, and therefore had the strongest effect on a collective level. Pluto has of course been downgraded to a dwarf planet, but that hasn’t stopped astrologers treating him as a full planet. Which suggests we can do the same for Eris, another ‘dwarf planet’, larger than Pluto and with an orbital period of about 500 years, double that of Pluto.
So the Pluto period we are living in (which is just changing from Sagittarius to Capricorn) needs to be seen in the wider context of the Eris era that we are living in. Eris is the planet that has the most powerful effect on our times, and Pluto and Neptune and Uranus are subsets of this.
So far, so logical. But I’ve found it hard until now to get much of a handle on Eris in Aries, and I suspect others have as well. But if you bring in visual astrology, in which Eris is passing through the constellation Cetus, it becomes easier to unpack.
I’m covering ground I wrote about the other day in my last post on Eris (please read this first). But it occurred to me that this point about Eris being the most defining planet of our times needs emphasising, particularly as, through Cetus, it is possible to get more of a sense of her influence.
Eris averages about 40 years per sign. Her orbit is highly elliptical, so that she spends far longer in some signs than others. She is spending over 100 years in her present sign of Aries, so for our generation Eris is not really a personal planet. She moves much faster through some other signs, so Eris could be considered a personal planet for the people who live through those times. For us she is pretty much a planet belonging to mundane astrology (though as an element in the natal chart she can be interesting, particularly for people who represent a collective in some way. Just forget the transits.)
In the same way that Eris mischievously threw an apple into the wedding feast, an event that resulted in the Trojan War, so we can see Eris as a catalyst, as small events leading to large results. But it is not just any old large result. With Eris being in Cetus, the monster of the deep, the results of Eris’s actions are to transform the collective, for better or for worse.
So 9/11, which occurred at 8.46am on 11 Sept 2001 in New York (with Mars appropriately on the bow of the Archer of Sagittarius: they aimed well), has Eris at 20 Aries square to the MC at 17 Cancer and opposite to the ASC at 14 Libra. (Hmm…New York is the Big Apple (Eris), just as it was the Twin Towers (Saturn in Gemini) that got hit.)
9/11 was a small event relative to what followed, if you look e.g. at the carnage in Iraq. And it deeply transformed the times we live in, collective consciousness went through a huge shift. Pluto in Sagittarius describes part of the nature of that shift: the bursting onto the world stage of religious fundamentalism, whether it was the nationalist Islamism of the Middle East, or the God-driven American desire to impose democracy on the rest of the world.
(Incidentally I tend to doubt conspiracy theories, but here was a real one: the American government’s successful conspiracy to persuade Americans that Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11. It shows how unintelligent, and how easily manipulated, the Collective can become in times of crisis.)
The same was true of World War I. It completely changed the world, and was catalysed by the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand, with Eris opposite the ASC and square to the MC, just as with 9/11.
I think that Eris is very empowered being in both Aries and Cetus. Aries is a good sign for initiating ‘trouble’, and Cetus is the perfect constellation for a collective planet wishing to have an effect on a collective level.
Regardless of the specific nature of Eris, her current placement in Cetus (1930-2036) suggests that we are living through an era in which the Collective is all-important: there can be great and positive transformations on a collective level, and the worst excesses of the mob-mind (as we saw with both Japan and Germany soon after Eris entered Cetus).
So this is the wider, 100 year period we are living through: a time when the collective is very powerful, and humanity is going through some sort of journey in this respect. Add in Eris in Aries, and we have a period in which that collective journey is being continually stimulated by catalytic events which open everything up, bring about the best and worst of humanity, and through that enable us to understand ourselves.
Globalisation, which has intensified since the Uranus-Neptune conjunction of the early 1990s, and of course Pluto in Sag, is a key word here. On all sorts of levels, humanity is becoming like one big nation in the context of which we see our own local reality. This is very new, it has never happened before, and it is the journey that Eris in Cetus is taking us through. It is an unprecedented collective transformation, brought about by Eris at her most catalytic in Aries, and in possibly her most natural constellation (as the most collective planet) of Cetus.
So this is what Eris in Cetus is telling us. We’re now all in it together, whether we like it or not. Eris has been showing us since the 1930s how awful we can be together, but also what we can achieve. Look, for example, at the American Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, which was also described by the Pluto (empowerment) Uranus (radical ideas, progress) conjunction of the time. So again we can see the Uranus-Pluto conjunction taking place within the wider context of Eris and the long transformational collective journey she is taking us on.
Eris has taken us a long way since 1930. We have become increasingly aware of our collective nature in its heights and depths, and there are still 28 years to go till she leaves Cetus. So you can see why so many people have been talking for years about a coming collective shift in consciousness, about 2012, and so on.
I’ve always been a bit sceptical, I tend to think that transformation happens primarily on an individual level, and that you can’t place much faith in people behaving intelligently in large numbers. But I think Eris is showing us, over a long period, that it doesn’t have to be like this; she is showing us a new vision (Aries) for our collective depths (Cetus), she is showing us how to work together. Which is timely, because without global co-operation in the coming decades, we will cease to flourish, our survival will be threatened. So it needs to be possible, it has to be possible, and Eris is showing us how.
Who knows, maybe Barack Obama is part of this new collective possibility? Because if it doesn’t happen in America, and soon, then it’s not going to. Being English, I back off with distaste from the religious zeal surrounding him. I don’t like it at all when he begins with “Good afternoon believers”. If he was English, I’d take it as irony. But Americans don’t do irony. And he is raising huge expectations in people. But his South Node conjoins the US Sibly Moon (the people) in Aquarius, and Neptune will soon pass over them. His North Node is only just over a degree off the Royal Star Regulus. So something very strong is happening, and it would be strange if he didn’t end up as President one way or another. He is too inexperienced for anyone to be able to know whether he can deliver, whether he can work with Congress, people are having to hope here, which isn’t really what you want when electing a President. But a collective shift is urgently needed, and none of the other candidates seem to be offering it.
Posted in General | Comment Now!
Written on
February 15, 2008
by
Dharmaruci
I was interested by Catherine’s post of 11 Feb on Eris’ journey through the constellations, and particularly by Eris’ passage through Cetus since 1930. I commented on what I thought this might mean, but then the comment turned into a posting in my head, and I put it on my personal blog (www.astrotabletalk.blogspot.com). This is what I said (geared towards people who know little about Eris or Visual Astrology).
Eris is larger and considerably further out than Pluto and was only discovered in 2003. She was classified as a dwarf planet about 18 months ago, along with Pluto and Ceres. Because her passage is so slow – moving just under a sign during the whole of the 20th century – it is hard to relate her to the life of an individual person. Astrology sees life as an interlocking series of planetary cycles or part cycles, but Eris’ movement during any one of our lives is so negligible that it is hard to see her as part of this.
This doesn’t make her any less powerful, but she needs to be seen in the context of the much longer cycles of human history. In theory, being the outermost planet of all by a long chalk, she should be the most powerful of all – yet only visible in her effects if you take a sufficiently long view. She properly belongs to mundane astrology. And you could argue that her position is the most defining of them all, more than Pluto or Neptune, when it comes to describing the times we live in.
Eris was a goddess who mischievously threw an apple into a wedding feast, sparking a row that eventually resulted in the Trojan War. So small causes leading to large effects. She is a catalyst. For example, the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand in 1914 occurred with Eris opposite the ASC and square the MC: this event was the trigger for World War I.
[NB the above views of Eris are my own, they are not ‘canonical’]
In 1930, Eris moved into the constellation Cetus, the sea monster, just a few years (not long for Eris) after moving into the sign of Aries. She will be in Cetus until about 2030, and in Aries until 2044. Cetus is the whale, which in ancient times was viewed as a monster of the deep. Cetus is therefore a symbol for the collective unconscious. Put the Eris Ingress into Cetus alongside the Eris Ingress into Aries in the late 20s/early 30s, and you have a very potent and warlike combination.
The 1930s saw the rise of collective consciousness in its most destructive form, which this Eris/Cetus/Aries Ingress aptly describes.
Pluto was discovered in 1930, a planet that like Eris can be about small causes leading to large effects; and that like Cetus symbolises the power of the collective.
Nuclear energy was first experimentally achieved by Enrico Fermi in 1934, when his team bombarded uranium with neutrons. Nuclear energy, like Eris, has the quality of small causes (the nucleus, a tiny part of the atom) leading to huge effects. It’s first use was destructive (Eris in Aries) and its impact on the collective has been massive (Cetus), it really has been like a monster emerging from the deep, for better or for worse.
More broadly, this combination of Eris, Aries and Cetus suggests that we are in a long period where the collective can easily be stirred up, often to destructive effect. And we could see the 20th century as the triumph of the collective mind. Democracy became more widespread, for better or for worse. Communism in Russia and
China saw society much more in terms of the collective than the individual. Globalisation has its strengths, but the world is also increasingly becoming one westernised mass culture.
In 1937, America changed the date of the inauguration of their Presidents to 20 Jan, at 12pm, a time that since 1949 (and for a long time yet) has had Menkar, the brightest star in Cetus, conjunct the Ascendant. This suggests that the President has become less of an independent force, and more of an expression of the collective will; more hemmed in, perhaps, by events and by the media. Under this aspect, the best sort of President will be very tuned in to the collective, and able to creatively direct it; while the worst will be not much more than a reflex of the mob-mind.
[A question: According to solar fire, Menkar is conjunct the ASC, but not according to Starlight. They are certainly very close in (projected) longitude. Is Menkar not conjunct the ASC in Starlight because he is not visible at that moment? And where does that leave my analysis?]
With Pluto entering Capricorn, a sign of society rather than the individual, we are not likely to see any let up in the near future of the forces attempting to subsume the individual into the collective. On an ordinary level, we can see this in terms of the various crises - environmental, economic, nuclear - that we are facing collectively, and the resultant insecurity that creates. Individuality is seen as a luxury by an insecure society.
But perhaps from 2024 onwards, as Pluto enters freedom-loving Aquarius, and Eris starts to near the end of her long sojourn in Cetus and Aries, there may be more room for the individual.
Posted in General | Comment Now!
Written on
February 11, 2008
by
Catherine
Thanks Bernadette for your recent article in the Visual Astrology newsletter regarding Pluto’s pathway through the constellations. It motivated me to look at Eris’ pathway through its own zodiac which I did through using Riyal 3.1, the JPL Small-Body Database Browser and a list of constellations.
As you can see from the diagram, Eris’ inclination (the blue line) across the ecliptic (the horizontal yellow line) is quite steep: 44 degrees compared to Pluto which is 17. As a result, its pathway goes through some very different constellations. I’ve made a list of those constellations plus a rough estimate of the year it entered them (from Riyal). I havent done the correlation to historical events so I don’t know if there is anything significant here. Maybe you can tell at a glance.
Aries - 1507
Perseus (the Hero) - 1568
Camelopardalis (the Giraffe) - 1616
Ursa Major (the Greater Bear) - 1650
Canes Venatici (the Hunting Dogs) - 1679
Coma Berenices (Berenice’s Hair) - 1686
Virgo - 1697
Libra - 1717
Hydra (the Water Serpent) - 1723
Centaurus (the Centaur) - 1727
Lupus (the Wolf) - 1730
Norma (the Carpenter’s Square) - 1742
Ara (the Altar) - 1751
Pavo (the Peacock) - 1763
Indus (the American Indian) - 1800
Tucana (the Toucan) - 1810
Grus (the Crane) - 1820
Phoenix (the Phoenix) - 1840
Sculptor (the Sculptor’s Workshop) - 1877
Cetus (the Sea Monster) - 1930
Pisces - 2036
Aries - 2065
Eris will spend nearly 100 years in the constellation Cetus, the most of any of its signs. Whether it makes any alignments with stars, I do not know. And this is why I’m urging that Starlight software gives the option to include bodies like Eris for us to study. If Pluto, which is not visible, nor technically a planet any more in astronomers’ eyes, can be included, then why not Eris, Sedna and others? I think it will only enlighten our understanding of astrology more.
Catherine
Posted in Starlight | Comment Now!
Written on
January 29, 2008
by
Dharmaruci
Mars in the sky has been stationing between the tips of the horns of the Bull for the last week or so, and will continue to do so until early next week. What a place for Mars to station! Astrology is the art of banging symbols together until something comes out of your mouth. And in this case, you don’t need to bang very hard. Things can really happen. Bold steps can be taken. Mars can give accuracy to the blind charge of the bull: he has control of the bull’s weapon, the tips of his horns, the bullet in the gun.
So think Bull. Last week Hamas took the bold step of knocking down the part of the wall around Gaza that borders with Egypt, and their people flooded through, desperate for provisions. It was a political coup. And what did they use? BULLdozers!
Last week the Federal Reserve took the bold step of knocking ¾% of interest rates, the biggest cut for 26 years. It helped stabilise the markets. When Mars was last there in mid Sept, they lopped ½% off interest rates. And what figure do we find in Wall St? A BULL!
It’s risky playing with Bull energy, for it can go wrong. Be careful of cows until the middle of next week! Yesterday a friend was doing some TB testing on her cows, and an aggressive one knocked her over and almost managed to trample her head.
The ex-President of Indonesia, Suharto, who was brutal (and economically successful) in his rule, died last week. I had a funny feeling that his death had to do with Mars. So I looked up his birthdate: June 8 1921. And there was Mars between the tips of the horns of the bull!He also had Mars conjunct Sun and square Saturn, so there was a violent (Mars) signature to his life and leadership (Sun and Saturn). He died at the completion of a Mars cycle, which is fitting for such a person. His natal Saturn was underneath the belly of the lion, an appropriate place for a ruler, and it is back there in the sky now at his death, another cycle completing.
Politically, this week sees the grand showdown between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, each fighting the other for the Democratic nomination. Feb 5 is Super Tuesday, when 20 states vote, and this can determine the outcome of the race. So what better symbol for this fight than Mars between the tips of the horns of the bull. The symbolism is saying that this fight could get deadly. 
We also have Jupiter in the face of the Archer at present. So it is a battle of ideologies, it is going to be exceptionally fierce, and it could get really dirty. Just watch them over the next week! And also keep a look out for bulls!
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