Happy Chinese New Year of the Rabbit!!

February 3 is the second new moon since the winter solstice and is the beginning of the Chinese New Year.
Rabbit is a lucky sign of the Zodiac and a softly ruthless business sign, one that will switch rather than fight, and comes to guide us through a year with Saturn in Libra. We are all struggling in our relationships, especially political and international ones. Year of the Rabbit is a peace loving year, but we have planets lining up in the sign of war... however will the clever Hare zigzag his way through this brier patch?
Rabbit is the animal of good taste, good manners, and self effacing behavior that wines and dines its quarry, and makes gracious moves, but self-serving ones.Always.
The year has a cunning deception to it, both sides are right, and yet we are called to make individual choices; judgments; and heavy declarations that are for our own individuality. What a split in our worlds, and in our souls this year of the eleven... a number indivisible by anything but itself. A master number... We will feel great changes in the drastic nature of the planets of this spring, but guided by Rabbit, we will find a way. Rabbit is a shapeshifter, one of the night creatures that is deeply connected to the Moon and all its phases.
Use the refining talents of the Rabbit to profit this year, groom yourself, find luxuries that are sustaining and pure. Buy real metals, and fine quality, don't mind about masses of possessions, just important ones. And ones that make you look your best.
In global politics, everyone is lying, everyone is maneuvering, and everyone is wary.
2011 is a balancing year, a pivotal one in the friends we choose, the mates we soothe, and the company we keep. Be a diplomat, expect that no one is quite the master of their fate that they are trying to be. If someone betrays you, it may not have been possible to do otherwise. Look large and wide for reasons for things, nothing will ever be the same, and a new village is being born.
There are five elements in the Chinese signs, wood, water, fire, wind and metal. This is the Year of the Metal Rabbit. Machines, metals, structure, and infrastructure are being made, bought and bargained for. Keep to the core of your wealth, and your values. Substance counts. And you might get lucky...

The 5,000 years of the Western Zodiac.

We talk about the Age of Aquarius, and everyone seems to know what that is--we are in the age of technology, total global communication, electronics to amaze us proliferating daily and a world full of more humans than ever before in history. Each of these are defining items of the Astrological Sign of Aquarius.
In our time, which is the Age of Aquarius, the first day of Spring, March 21st, when day and night hours are exactly equal, lines up with the late degrees of the Aquarius Constellation.
Two such Ages have passed since the equinoctial moment of spring lined up with the first degrees of the Constellation, Aries.We call the month holding the beginning of the Zodiac March, afrter the planet Mars, ruler of Aries. The Age of Aries was the age known by its most prominent people, the Greeks and Romans. It was from roughly 2,000 B.C. to the Birth of Christ which ushered in the Age of Pisces, (the Fishes) called the Age of Faith.
What we have found in these five thousand years is that people and life on earth do correspond to the Greek Model of the Seasons. Those born after the first day of spring, do behave in the up rushing fiery behavior of that season. We are molded by our seasons, just as the animal and human icons of each following sign describe the behavior and character of that season. It is more profound though, when we begin to look into the layers of symbolism in each sign. As Aries pushes in the first life of the year, Taurus stabilizes it in the planting and flowering of mid spring. Each sign of the solar year is a representation of the orientation of earth and sun, sun and galaxy, with moving planets stirring up extra correlations as they also occupy places around the Zodiac circle.
This Zodiac used by Western Astrologers, that is, European and American, is called the Tropical Zodiac. It uses the constellation names that the early Greeks, Egyptians, and Persians named in their time 5,000 years ago. The Zodiac that uses the actual constellations is called the Sideral (a word meaning solar). Hindu Astrologers use this measurement and they call their method Vedic Astrology. All computer programs can cast your birth data in either the Tropical or the Sidereal Zodiac. There is no question or mistake. For five thousand years this observation of people, births, deaths, events and histories have shown us this cosmic order, and it has proven its truth in every consideration.
When Astrology is discredited, as this recent press has suggested, be aware of why this kind of information is being planted. It has happened many times before, like in the Inquisition of the Catholic Church, the Reformation, and the rise of Fascism in the 20th century. Literally Astrology is the study of the stars-- and their effect on us. Astronomy, the child of astrology is the measurement of the stars. Doesn't care about meaning, just data. Empty study, no personal connections.
The wisdom of knowing the timing of the moon, earth, seasons, and planets is a guide to the rhythm of life in its most expansive. To suppress this information is to take away nature from humankind, and to supplant instinct with robotic control.
Astrology never gets media attention, why bring up a question that is five thousand years out of date?
Those of us who have studied,the Zodiac through deliberate observation, and have also studied history, art, archaeology, anthropology, literature, linguistics, and earth sciences find that the unifying backdrop of all of it, is the solar system and its measurable, eternal timing. There are precious few of us who have delved this thoroughly into the earth's story. Why didn't they ask me? Because I know the real story. And that one was a planted lie. Why now? What are we not supposed to know?

Full Cold Moon First Full Moon of 2011 January 18-19, 2011

The concentration of human emotion follows the monthly full moon cycles which span a time of 29-30 days. The Full Moon in January is the "Cold" moon, and intensifies the dynamic between Cancer, where the moon will be, as a sign of summer, abundance, warmth, beauty and ease, and Capricorn, where the sun is, as a sign of winter, barrenness,frost, starkness, and hardship. These two signs are the north and south, the father and the mother. The qualities we attribute to fathers are synonymous with Capricorn: authority, protection and status, as well as the qualities of winter. Then we assume that mothers are like Cancer, nurturing, sheltering, and receptive, added to the qualities of summer. In these two archetypal signs of the Zodiac and of the seasons are the hopes and expectations of every child. If the qualities of either one are missing or skewed in any sense we are lost, or hurt. If they are extreme and over-done we are spoiled or ruined. Whether we are born to parents who survive our beginning and thrive, or not, is said to rule our destiny, and our personalities.
In times like our own, with a swelling population greater than our planet has ever spawned, and having the powers to observe our effect, we feel deeply the mother/father relationship to life itself. Have we killed our mother? or wounded our father? In the full moon of mid-January emotions of a primary intensity arrive. The opposition of the sun and moon in Cancer/Capricorn are squared by the Saturn/Jupiter opposition in Aries/Libra. This is the grand Cardinal square. It captures all of the big four worries, house, job, marriage, and self. oh my. Or the four great achievements, home-making, career, harmony, and fulfillment.
Since the moon is our emotional barometer, feelings of the negative sort are likely to be acute. The sprees of spending that full moons normally bring about won't be in the hands of the mass of people. But the deep money, the kind that is the father of the world, the authority that runs at the fundamental level will be making important moves. Libra is where history is being made, and that will be alliances, partnerships and deals. Pluto in Capricorn indicates what resources are now at the most desired level. These are the core substances, metal, minerals, rock, and the nurturing earth itself. See if we can find out who really owns what. We would be amazed.
In your Full Cold Moon meditations, ask what you would care about at the ultimate trial. What would nurture you from depths of your needs? This full moon is the archetype of God, especially the one we have invented, who looks back at us. In awe and wonder. Pray for your water sources to be sacred forever.

About Starwoman in 2011

Dear Stargazers,
Followers of my blog may be victims of a virus that hacked my msn hotmail email. I can no longer access this email, and the dramatic lie that was sent to everyone (ten years of addresses..) has, for some reason been very widely believed. Contact me through my gmail account and change your passwords, and run your security scans if you got that email with my name unfortunately linked to it. In the hundreds of calls and discussions I have had as a result of this incident, many others have gotten the same device with other countries listed. I repeat, change your passwords.

2011 Jupiter in Aries, opposite Saturn, A year of action and conflict

What a year is in front of us, with Jupiter moving into Aries on January 23rd where it will oppose Saturn's orbit through Libra. The most intense focus of these two great lights, and bringers of destiny, will be in March with the exact opposition at the end of the month. Then Jupiter will streak out of Aries into Taurus, oh the banks, the money, the gold....
and finish the year retrograding in the early degrees of Taurus. This is your money. Real estate will begin its climb again. Investments in early 2011, will pay off big and quickly, and land, gold, and real, that is, real things will become more valuable. This Jupiter cycle in real estate and money always peaks when the planet reaches mid-zodiac, in Cancer and Leo. This will take five years. By that time, the value is topped and it will be a poor time to buy as prices will be maxed.
The disturbing month for 2011 is April, when the Sun, Mercury, Mars, Venus, Jupiter AND Uranus will be in Aries. We are only dealing with nine planets, and so all but three of them will occupy the sign of beginnings. Aries also rules war, aggression, creation, fire and initiative. Everyone will be feeling change this year, wanting something new, different, and more alive.
The Mercury retrogrades for 2011 are all in fire signs, signaling that our emotions are high, and our feelings are whipping into a lust for action, and awareness that pioneering into the world's needs is our only way through. This is not a safe year, or a stable one, but it is a year of immense motion. Every person will feel this drive to create and start something, and all projects that are new are favored. In the most staid situations, try the unexpected, and say the thing that makes it all new again, and interesting.
Year of the Rabbit will start in February, and is a most interesting sign to combine with the violence of the Aries group. Notice the opportunism everywhere, and who gets lucky. Many will get lucky in year of the Rabbit, but not by holding still. Throw me in that briar patch, brother fox, and see what the Rabbit can do.

Winter Solstice Full Moon is a total Eclipse of the Moon

Among omens in the celestial world, eclipses are the most profound. They are the moment when the light that we regard as eternal leaves us, and unless you are an almanac reader, the departure is sudden and strange. Remember the daring rescue described by Mark Twain in the Prince and the Pauper?, In this story the modern time traveler dupes the illiterate populace of an earlier era by predicting the total eclipse of the sun, in the middle of the day. This ruse has been repeated in many fables, and capitalizes on the necessity of knowing your cycles and keeping up with the cycles of the sun and moon.
Already this year, a full moon has coincided with the cardinal point of the Autumn Equinox, a coordinate of remarkable rarity. Now with the next quarter point of the year, the Winter Solstice, the most important one in the human archive, we have another perfectly placed full moon, and this time the full moon will be eclipsed by the earth's shadow passing between the sun and the moon.
Eclipses are the reminder that the dimensions of our earth, moon, and sun are more perfectly aligned than we can comprehend. In one of the coincidences of staggering proportions, our proportions are aligned so that at these moments the yearly orbits of earth and moon, all three bodies are the same size.
The Winter solstice will be December 21st at 6:38pm EST. This event is the most celebrated in human culture, being the time of the return of light. Christianity has deposited its whole iconic history on this date, making puns of the sun and the son, and the birth of light, as the return of the solar cycle.
Lunar energy is emotional and the Moon is the indicator of the soul. An eclipse of the Moon is always the astrologer's judgment of emotional change, or elimination of a level of feeling that won't be returning in the same way. On the winter solstice of 2010, our very souls will be touched, and we are going to be welcoming the return of the sun's light from a place that lies too deep for ordinary understanding.
Refer to the article on the Autumn equinox full moon Jupiter conjunction of September, 22nd, 2010.

Mercury retrogrades as the Meteor Shower pops

In the grand cosmic design, there is included a rest period. All nature appreciates this, but humans who are trying to evolve out of the design find these a nuisance, and manage to get it wrong, most of the time. Seriously, it is good for us to crash the hard drive, stall the battery, and get summonses that we had hoped were all forgotten. It is dearly, the time to slow down and catch up. But when we can't, of our free will do that, well, as we say, cosmic design is greater than us.
This winter retrograde of Mercury began to roll backwards on December 9th, but us observers always notice that the whole week before the retro date is full of stops, blunders and signs of niggling might. In Capricorn, on the same degree as Pluto, Mercury slowed to a virtual stop, and all kinds of things also crashed, viraled, and hacked where no hackers have gone before.
The exciting thing about these three week episodes that happen three times a year and cross a place in space three times,is that the unexpected always happens.
Capricorn rules the rules, and since Pluto was so close, the bigger impact under all our foundations, is that the rules are changing. As if you hadn't noticed. Deep in the disturbances that are the fairly minor ones of Mercury (communication & trade) just met the thunderous ones of the mighty god itself, Pluto smasher of atoms, bringer of the nuclear age. hmm. No itchy trigger fingers (hands are ruled by Mercury)on the uranium have bothered us yet, but watch for what is not being said.
And lest we forget, the most exciting Meteor shower of the winter, starting the week of December 13th is of Mercury's sign, Gemini. The Geminid Meteor shower this year will last all week, peaking on Monday night. Look at great Orion in the east and notice the two equally bright twin stars to the left and down: there is Gemini, and that is the direction of the brightest part of the meteors. Make your wishes on these falling stars be a Mercury retrograde kind of wish, that all our mistakes become enlightenment, and all our crashes be healed in better ways than we knew.

How to experience this joyfully? Well. Act natural. Be Cool.
Watch your traveling, expect all the usual discomforts, prepare for them, like take your food that would sustain you on a desert island, or O'Hare, and relax. The best you can do, is go with the disasters, enjoy them, have a real hot toddy, learn from them and above all, don't buy technology until after the direct dates. Like is natural, they are, of course, after Christmas.
True dates: December 8-9th until December 29-30th. Mercury started its retrograde motion in the early degrees of Capricorn, and will finish in the late degrees of Sagittarius, oh dear, the sign of travel... say your aves, our fathers, and all the other appeals to nature that you know, and then the only way through, is to enjoy yourself. Long lost communication in people and in devices will appear, some to thrill you and others to amaze. Be hearty, and look for the humor in all things. Mercury is the trickster, the joker, and the thief.