King Charles III – On the Verge

I started work on the lifetime progressions of King Charles last night. But at the pace I am going, it will take a while to write a post that detailed especially because I am also looking at his current transits. But as I looked at his current progressed chart, I saw there was enough to create a short post on a few remarkable points.

He was still the Prince of Wales when he started his Balsamic Phase: a phase of endings which began on 21 March 2020 and ended on 5 Feb 2024. During this phase, he lost his father in April 2019 followed by the loss of his mother in September 2022. The second loss elevated him from prince to king and on 6 May 2023 he was coronated as King Charles III. On 31 October 2023, the King referred to Britain’s colonial actions as “abhorrent and unjustifiable acts of violence” and as a “cause of the greatest sorrow and the deepest regret.”

The balsamic phase is about letting go, so that there is space for something new to enter. Which is why the next phase is the progressed new moon. A death and a rebirth all rolled into one. What is striking in this example is that King Charles announced his cancer just a day before his progressed new moon which occurred on 6 February 2024. So what does this phase hold for him? Change certainly because this is a beginning and this is also underlined by the fact that all his angles are currently at 29 degrees and about to change signs.

I don’t always use Sabian symbols but I looked at King’s Charles Sabians for the angles which will more from 29 degrees to 0 on 1 May 2024:

MIDHEAVEN

29 Gemini – A Parade Of Bathing Beauties Before Large Beach Crowds

0 Cancer – On A Ship The Sailors Lower An Old Flag And Raise A New One

ASCENDANT

29 Virgo – Totally Intent Upon Completing An Immediate Task, A Man Is Deaf To Any Allurement

0 Libra – In A Collection Of Perfect Specimens Of Many Biological Forms, A Butterfly Displays The Beauty Of Its Wings, Its Body Impaled By A Fine Dart

IMUM COELI

29 Sagittarius – The Pope Blessing The Faithful

0 Capricorn – An Indian Chief Claims Power From The Assembled Tribe

DESCENDANT

29 Pisces – A Majestic Rock Formation Resembling A Face Is Idealized By A Boy Who Takes It As His Ideal Of Greatness, And As He Grows Up, Begins To Look Like It.

0 Aries – 0-1 deg Aries A Woman Just Risen From The Sea; A Seal Is Embracing Her

So what do these Sabians mean? Your guess is as good as mine. I see them as a sort of Rorschach test. Although sometimes they can be strikingly literal. My Juno, the asteroid of marriage is 27 Cancer and the Sabian for that is – An Indian Girl Introduces Her White Lover To Her Assembled Tribe. I am an Indian and a few years ago I got married to a Swede. So this could have been a literal photo from our wedding when my partner met most of my family for the first time.

King Charles’ progressed MC will moved over his natal Uranus before it moves into Cancer. Uranus stands for the sudden and unexpected. And the transiting Pluto has been squaring his 0 degree Taurus Moon. The Moon symbolises the body itself and Pluto is associated with cancer and this transit can symbolise the pressure his body is under. There is change in the air.

Text for Sabains take from the excellent Cafe Astrology site – https://cafeastrology.com/sabiansymbols_degreemeanings.html

Simply Kate

If you want to learn astrology, just look at the moon. Sometimes, we don’t see the moon because it is starting a new cycle. It’s dark, invisible. We call it the new moon. Then it waxes into the beauty of a crescent and keeps increasing in light till it attains full brightness at the full moon. After the glory of its fullness, it begins to wane in light till it goes totally dark and is ready to start this poetic dance in the sky again.

The same dance occurs in our charts. The moon transits your chart in 29.5 days. When it opposes your natal sun, it is full, receiving all the brightness of the sun. As it approaches your sun it begins to lose light. You can track this cycle and see how your monthly mood and energy wax and wane. You don’t even need to correlate it to your chart. You can see how energy and mood and events arise and peak and then calm down matching their rhythm to the moon’s monthly dance in the sky.

But you can get deeply personal and track the progressed moon cycle as it creates huge brush strokes on the canvas of your life. If you live to be 90, you’ll get three progressed Moon cycles. The dance is the same but this one is performed in your progressed chart and takes 29.5 years.  Each time the progressed moon becomes new, we start a new life story. Each phase of the moon marks dramatic points in the story. There are eight such phases but, in this post, I’m sticking with just two – the full moon and the new moon.

When the story broke about Kate’s health, I looked at her progressions. The current cycle she is in started in 1997 when she was 15 years old. As the moon gained in light, she went on to go to college, become a woman, meet her future mate, and then marry him. She got married at the midway point and the climax of this cycle at her progressed full moon. At that time not only did she become a wife but also Her Royal Highness The Duchess of Cambridge. Now in 2024, she is one year into her 3.5 years long balsamic phase. The cycle she began 27 years ago is now ending.

In 2027 she will enter a new phase, the progressed new moon. But before the moon becomes new, it must die. This last phase, when the moon is just a crescent before it disappears is called balsamic. This is the last chapter of the story, the end of the road she started walking 27 years ago. At this stage the old life, the old self begins to disintegrate. Metaphorically, we’re being obliterated so the process of rebirth can begin.

I think the progressed new moon feels like dying and then being reborn. Because the old life and self is no more and the future life and self is a seed buried under the soil. In the dark, soon to sprout.  Sometimes the death is literal. My astrology teacher died at her progressed new moon. Sometimes it is a new beginning. I met my late husband at my progressed new moon.

So what can we predict for Kate? I don’t know. I was looking at what I wrote in 2018 about Johnny Depp’s progressed full moon in 2020. Although it was easy to see this was going to be an important time for him, I did not foresee the lawsuits. I was worried about his health because that’s what the press was focused on in 2018. So I have learnt the hard way to stay metaphorical with forecasting.

So we can see that Kate has reached a stage in her life when she needs to lie low, rest, let go and prepare for some kind of death. Pluto is within orb of her sixth house planets and that can indicate severe health issues and major transformations in her daily routine. She was born on the day of an eclipse and she announced she possibly has cancer a few days before another eclipse. And as she traverses the balsamic phase, there are two more eclipses that are very relevant to her health and vitality – A total solar eclipse at 20 Leo, the degree of her ascendant, on 12 Aug 2026. And a partial lunar eclipse at 4 Pisces, the degree of her progressed sun, on 28 Aug 2026. These eclipses occur six months before her progressed new moon marking them as red letter days in her story.

A brief look now at her husband’s progressed moon cycle. William, at the time of their marriage was on the threshold of a new 29.5-year long cycle. In 2011, the year they married, he was experiencing a progressed new moon. He became a husband and started his own family. Now in 2024, William is two years away from his progressed full moon. Full moons are dramatic times and coincide with events that have the quality of a climax. I lost my first husband to cancer at my progressed full moon and William lost his mother during his last progressed full moon.

And if you look at their composite chart, the chart of their relationship, Pluto is approaching the 3 Aquarius IC. The IC is correlated with death and endings. And Pluto, the lord of the underworld, is also associated with death. Are we looking at real death? Again, I don’t know. But what I can see is that their relationship will go through a major transformation. A transformation that will change its very foundations. This aspect will become exact in early 2025.

If you look at Kate’s natal chart, you can see the grace and elegance with which she has handled the harsh T-square that affects both her sun and moon.  The silent endurance she has shown through the years while dealing with intense pressure. The princess has Chiron in her 10th house and as we follow her journey onwards, I think she will become symbolic of the wounded healer that Chiron represents.

The Moon: How are you feeling?

Steven Forrest says the Sun is the key to sanity and the Moon to happiness. Broadly speaking, the Sun is what you are becoming and the ongoing work of a lifetime. The moon is your inherited instincts and needs. The solar principal is rational and you can deal with it sensibly. But the moon is your emotional needs and I believe that to feel a sense of well-being, it is important to manage the moon. To tend to and take care of your needs. If you do not, then you face unhappiness, illness, cravings, obsessions, fluctuating moods or what I call the “Moon blues.”

I have a particularly challenging Moon by sign and aspects and it is as I approach my fifth decade that I have some sort of handle on it. As the second brightest light in the sky, I feel the moon deserves special attention. That is why I have planned special Moon sessions where the focus is on everything lunar: childhood, mother, home, food, cravings, addictions, recurrent dreams, obsessions, emotional stability, and your special basic lunar needs. 

It is easy to access the Sun, especially in the modern world, where there is so much focus on doing and becoming. But the moon is more elusive for us because the moon is just about being. If you would like to water your moon garden in sessions with me, the core of it will be communication, to help you discover your needs and how to optimally meet them in the context of your life.

I will also look at:

• Moon by sign and house
• Aspects to the Moon
• The Natal Lunar Phase
• Special considerations: speed, out of bounds
• Current Moon position by sign using secondary progressions

These sessions will be done via email and voice calls over a periods of days or weeks. The total cost is USD 75 payable via Paypal. You can contact me on neetig@hotmail.com

The Astrology of the Bezos Affair

Body language says it all

A writer at Mashable says: Perhaps the worst line in these alleged sexts is Bezos referring to Sanchez as “alive girl.” “I love you, alive girl,” he reportedly wrote. There are loads of questions to be asked here, but it’s hard to focus on anything but the word “alive.” Why did Jeff B need to specify Sanchez was alive? 

Because of her fire. Mr. Bezos has only Jupiter in Aries as fire in his chart and Ms. Sanchez with Sun conjunct Venus in the fiery sign of Sagittarius is anything but dull. Her Sun and Venus get a lot of oomph because of the square to Pluto. In fact, her Sun is exactly square Pluto which shows up in the career she has built for herself as well as her predilection for dating, marrying and dallying with very powerful men.

The mature beauty described as the “biggest flirt” in high school may not be every one’s cup of tea especially with her current collagen enhanced perpetual half-grin, but she sure lights up Mr. Bezos. Her Juno conjuncts his Mars and her Lilith opposes it: he finds her bewitching.

The Daily Mail writes: 2016 – Sanchez gets her pilot license and launches Black Ops Aviation, her own film aerial production company. The National Enquirer claims this is also when she began her affair with Bezos. With her progressed Mercury at 19 Capricorn approaching his Sun at 21 Capricorn during 2016 that certainly makes sense. The leaked messages reveal that he loves her ideas and talking to her and this conjunction, which was exact in 2018, certainly confirms that. Additionally, her progressed Venus and Juno at 20 Aquarius are moving towards an exact conjunction with his Saturn at 21 degrees of the same sign. I believe him when he says he loves her.

 

Dawn Bodrogi: A Tribute

I’ve been studying astrology for about 27 years now. A lot of people have been instrumental in my learning but the single most important person was my teacher Dawn Bodrogi. I’m currently engaged in an astrology reading and as I switch from the natal to the secondary progressed to the solar arc with some asteroids and the eclipses thrown in and navigate with an ease I have never known before, it’s Dawn I think of.

We lost her in November 2017, but she was and always will be a luminary in my inner sky. She taught me chart synthesis, secondary progressions and about the asteroids. I was one of her lame ducks, I found it hard to learn the secondaries, I couldn’t do chart synthesis, I didn’t know where to begin while looking at a chart, I would goof up on calls with her, planets on my screen would become invisible and I was unable to answer even simple questions like, “Do you see Mercury?” She was never condescending because she was born to be a teacher and I was born to learn from her. Even now when I look at the secondaries and if I feel like I don’t know where to begin, I hear her say, “Look at the lights. Look at what the lights are doing, Neets.”

Stay well, Mr. Depp!

I don’t think I’ve seen any of Johnny Depp’s movies, but even I know who he is. When reports surfaced on 2-June-2018 about Mr. Depp looking gaunt and perhaps being ill, I was intrigued. On that day, transiting Pluto, Moon, Mars and the South Node were in his sixth house, the house associated with illness. The sixth is an important house in this chart because it contains both the Moon and the South node.

Now, a week after those reports, there are new reports from “inside sources” claiming Mr. Depp is well and purposely losing weight. His fans are not buying it and if one looks at his chart, his fans are right to be concerned. Progressed Moon entered his sixth house in January 2018 and indicates health concerns for the next 2.5 years.

There are many techniques to look at the past, present and future conditions in a chart. And there are many concurrent cycles we go through in a lifetime. Some of these cycles take decades to complete one circle around the chart and these are the ones that provide the bigger picture of what is happening to a person. Mr. Depp is reaching a climax with two such cycles and both of them have heavy implications regarding his health.

The Astrological Community of Love

I just got back from an astrology workshop in Bali. It was one the most gratifying and transformative experiences of my life. The astrological community is like that: you go in and meet friends. You connect with the people there and feel a sense of homecoming.

I was thinking of the experience and since she created it, it is Evelyn Roberts I want to mention first. The workshop was residential. The environment in which we were housed had a lot to do with the transformative aspect of doing a Heaven and Earth workshop. You are plunged into the heart of nature: its beauty, its creatures and its rhythms.

I’m terrified of spiders; I saw spiders and learnt to co-exist. I discovered that the sound of a frog jumping into a pond is my favorite sound. I got to hold baby chicks. I discovered it’s true: mother hens are very protective. I ate local food, at fixed times and in fixed quantities and came back free from my addiction to junk food. I also came back feeling like I could take anything on. I came back stronger.

I reconnected with old friends and made new ones. I refined the delicate line of togetherness versus necessary solitariness. I learnt a very important skill: I’m a better listener now than before I went. And I learnt (thanks, Brian!) how to say goodbye.

Are you familiar with Carole Taylor and Brian Clark? Carole is associated with FAS, UK and Brian with Astro*Synthesis, Australia. I don’t know what to say. That’s striking because there isn’t much that I can’t capture in words. But with Carole and Brian I cannot. They are superb astrologers, very articulate and fundamentally just brilliant people. Listen to them for just a minute and you know you are in the presence of greatness. And you cannot be touched by greatness without being transformed.

 

 

The Progressed Lunation Cycle: The Story of Your Life

Inherent in each ending is a new beginning. We don’t see that when we go through loss and goodbyes, but it is always true. Just as it’s true that a new beginning implies an inevitable ending. Perhaps we sense that, because when we are happy, we are afraid that it won’t last. It doesn’t: we begin, reach fruition, give of the fruit and then there is decay and death. And in the womb of that death there is another rebirth waiting to happen.

The progressed lunation cycle (PLC) is 29.5 years long and has eight distinct phases:

1. The Progressed New Moon: Start of a new beginning
2. The Progressed Crescent Moon
3. The Progressed First Quarter Moon
4. The Progressed Gibbous Moon
5. The Progressed Full Moon
6. The Progressed Disseminating Moon
7. The Progressed Last Quarter
8. The Progressed Balsamic Moon

Astrological time is cyclical. It is the ongoing story of beginnings and endings. One can capture this cycle broadly using the PLC. I recently did a table of my PLC, and those time periods captured my life and its biggest turning points: Leaving the country as a child, coming back, another relocation, the years when I thought I was lost, going to university, meeting my future husband, doing well at work, losing my husband to cancer, retiring from the corporate world, it was all right there.

I met my husband at a progressed new moon in my chart and lost him to cancer when the progressed moon was full. I started the disseminating phase August 2016 and I see this as a time when I work with clients and share what I have learnt.

If you’d like to work on a life review or a life preview in terms of the lunation phases for your entire life (80+ years), I’d be very happy to do this with you on a call. We will explore in depth the current phase of the cycle you’re in along with the start of the current cycle and then see where you are headed next. The cost is USD 45.

If you want just the data, via email, with notes on what each phase means, that’s an option, too.  The cost is USD 15. If you’re opting for just the data, here are links that can help with self-study:

http://www.astro.com/astrology/in_progmoon_e.htm

http://sasstrology.com/2013/01/your-personal-lunar-phases-the-cycle-of-your-relationships.html

Honoring the Gods

I’m trying to focus on developing my Venus function and getting more control over Mars. I should say I am trying overtly to be a little bit more Venusian. Very necessary for me right now since my progressed Sun moved into Libra recently and my progressed Venus has been in a steady direct-after-a-lifetime of retrograde movement.

Synchronistically, the goddess showed up in my life through a friend who spontaneously guided me about color and makeup. It doesn’t sound like a biggie but it is for me. Because if there is one god I have downplayed in her overt expression in my person, it is Venus. I’m guilty of not honoring her enough. So now I’m making amends in little things I do.

I’ve been meaning to write about honoring the gods for years now. Because I understand that to have the kind of peaceful life I want, I must honor and appease all gods that live within me. I think it’s true of all of us. There are some functions that flow wonderfully for us and we invest in them and develop them to a high extent. Others we have an uncomfortable relationship with and we may express them erratically or with some unease. Hence we end up with a lopsided personality and thus a lopsided life. Not ideal. Unless, that’s what you want and, sometimes, that is what we want. Perhaps it’s my progressed sun in Libra but the word “balance” has become so important for me: in all aspects of my life.

Astrology: How Predictions Work

“Do you believe in fate or free will?”
The answer that works for me: “Yes. I believe in both fate and free will.”

This post is a result of a conversation I had with a friend about her astrology reading. She mentioned that her reading had indicated a positive event but it turned out that something very different happened. I don’t know the astrological details but I know the astrologer who did the reading. I highly respect his work: it’s astrologically sound, very precise and he operates with great integrity.

Astrology is Symbolic

Astrologers often mention that death charts have very good transits: especially that of Jupiter, the planet that bestows good fortune, indicates long journeys and expands our horizons. In the months leading upto his death, all through the radiation and the chemo, my husband had Jupiter transiting his twelfth house: the house of prisons and hospitals stays. The doctors were amazed, Titu felt no pain at all; and death took him very gently. Jupiter not “saving” him but protecting him and taking him onwards to the greatest trip of all.

Another Personal Story

About 13 years ago, I moved to my current location and got a job I stayed in for 12.5 years. It was a job I loved and I got it when Jupiter went over my Sun which is in the sixth house (house of work) trining my Jupiter-ruled MC (indicator of career path). Jupiter cycles are 12 years long: it takes that much time to go around the chart once. So recently, it was back on my Sun having finishes an entire cycle.