I suck at astrology. How do we get better? We get better by doing it. I don’t anticipate making this a regular thing since I view prognostication as secondary to spiritual work but I woke up realizing I can use each of these as supplemental examples to the class I plan on teaching this weekend.
There is a really important distinction I think to make – a ritual is usually timed at a favorable time for the particular petition someone wants to make, but prognostication is essentially saying “something is changing in the Heavens, will it have any power on Earth?” Well of course, we wouldn’t do ritual without checking the Heavens and we wouldn’t say that the Heavens do not influence the Earth outside of ritual. Two sides of the same coin. But that also means there are going to be days when the Heavens are just sort of meandering around on their course and nothing particularly interesting is happening. In engineering, this is called the edge condition, and it causes two effects: there is ambiguity between states and we usually are only interested in the edge condition. If someone puts on headphones and just listens to a pure tone for some time, they won’t remember what happened three minutes in, they only remember what happened when the tone started and when the tone ended. The time in the middle is essentially lost to them. However the time in the middle, if they can adjust themselves, is also the best time to meditate and see what presents itself. Discussions to meditation aside, the edge condition is why I usually try to start rituals a few minutes after the planetary hour and when I am making my own charts and such I usually add 10 minutes to the beginning of the hour. From a calculation perspective, this is because I can’t set my precise location in a lot of the software since I live at the edge of the sticks. From a practical perspective, I know the trees in my neighborhood at the top of my hill are about 10 minutes tall before I can see the planet over the horizon. I wish I owned a wizard tower but I’m told they’re not up to building code.
Lets look at today. Aside of the normal planetary hour stuff, today is wholly unremarkable. The largest, brightest object in the sky (aside of the sun) is really not doing anything. In addition to that, the moon is void of course. If I were to make some sort of prognostication for today, I would say that today is going to be utterly boring and it would be a good day to go to the park, let the kids run around, have a cigar and read. It is a very good day to simply be lazy, read, and blog. Tomorrow however, looks busy! In addition to a waning moon, the moon is entering the last quarter. The moon enters Capricorn. There’s a void of course start and end, and lunar days to observe. All of those except for the day and mansion are edge conditions which make me think something interesting (or at least observable) might happen. Lets break them out.
Lunar Day 23 – Vronsky says, “The day is very good for completion of any activity, any enterprise. Not only they will be resultful, they can bring honour and glory, popularity and wellbeing. However, one should not start any new activity as it will be senseless and useless.” He continues, “A child born on this day won’t be especially beautiful, so a lot in his life will depend on his ability to gain knowledge and be kind. The illnesses of this day are long, and the dreams are false.”
Goba is steeped in mysticism: “Symbol – the crocodile. One of the days of seduction, of vampires’ bacchanalia. The period of fasting, abstention, carefulness, repentance, forgiveness and self-sacrifice. This day is connected to hounding, manhunt, exile, encounter with a mad crowd. One should guard one’s house: clean it, sprinkle it with holy water, cleanse thresholds with fire, fumigate with Labrador tea and cumin. It is good to make cheese pies and to bake a nut into them. It is recommended to eat dairy products. It is dangerous to give way to anger, to overeat. One should not cut hair or nail, have a surgery, have a sedentary life.”
Oh boy, I write off the top of my head so people can understand the reasoning process that goes on here, but tomorrow seems to directly caution against today. Furthermore there seems to be a theme here of seduction, and sexuality. Right off the top of my head looking at these predictions, I think about Pussy Riot, I think about Yulia Tymoshenko, who also recently made headlines, for both Ukraine and the post release activities, I see krokodil, there’s a lot of things which personally point me towards a region. Had there not been any current political turmoil (can you even entertain the thought?) for a day, I would say clean the house and go outside.
Well, that doesn’t look very nice, maybe the next observation will be more pleasant.
Moon in Capricorn – “There is an increase in formality, strictness and exactitude, with a tendency to reserve and distance. Rules and regulations are dominant. It is a suitable time for all activities which require extra responsibility and discipline, but you shouldn’t rely on someone’s receptivity or emotional pliability.”
Capricorn is ruled by Saturn, and is of the element Earth. While I don’t normally pick on other bloggers, this is one of the places I disagree with Alex Sumner. Russia is watery (the Rus), Ukraine is Earthy (Wild Field, Borderland). I’m not sure an Earth Banishing Pentagram is the best thing here for keeping the Watery out of the Earthy. It also is worth mentioning that Goba’s notes above mention vampires and wine (blood) and every warlord of that particular part of the world was named Vlad. Vlad is a popular name in the region, however, so lets not read too far into that one.
Lunar Mansion 24 – From John Sandbach, the ruler would be Venus/Libra/Pisces/Virgo. Which means instead of the nice stuff, we can pretty much skip to the unbalanced stuff: “When not in tune with his true self he can become self-righteous and demanding, as well as destructively critical of what other people are trying to do. This can then drive people away from him and cause him to eventually become isolated and misanthropic. At best he is an upholder of what is most worthwhile in society, a fine teacher, an example setter, and a leader. At worst he allows his egotism and feelings of superiority to negate what he could give to the world, and to isolate him.”
Earlier on there is a notion of this eye towards history. If we look at the modern history of Ukraine, that doesn’t bode well. After fighting a war of independence from Poland, the region struck a treaty with Russia. Good portions of the region were in Russian control until the decline of Russia let them slip. Putin of course would want to see them returned to Russia given the pipelines in the region, because if the Nabucco pipeline went north of the Black Sea, it cuts through Ukraine. It’s an obvious political move, but the timing is really what I am exploring here.
Now, we’re done with the daily stuff, it doesn’t really matter where I am on the globe because the Earth rotates, so all of this holds true if I am in North America or if I am in Australia. The scope of the above is limited by day, so a day of wiggle room is entirely appropriate. Also for the hour, I don’t think that the news would report accurately down to the minute if anything happens in the world. The news is a giant rumor mill. Making hourly predictions is sort of moot. That being said, 21h46m is when the moon enters the last quarter so I am going to look at charts for that.
This brings us to a problem. We’ve looked at all that stuff up above, and the chart isn’t terribly interesting. Since we’re doing a chart for the entire day, I’m mostly just paying attention to the positions of specific planets. In this case, Saturn, Luna, and Venus. We already worked out all the moon material, Venus otherwise unaffected (neither in detriment or exaltation), and Saturn is in retrograde which would imply negative associations on top of an already negative reading for the rest of it.
Is any of this going to come true? I don’t know; I suck at astrology. Other predictions such as the Apollo Theatre collapse led to nothing I could point to either as intentional or ominous. Would be I be surprised to hear news from the region today, tomorrow, or Monday? Nope.
Update – While I can’t say I am happy to be correct, it would seem that early today/yesterday the war transitioned into a hot-war where people have started shooting.