Astrodharma Transit Report: August 2023

THE WORLD was designed to drag us into existential self-inquiry. That’s Buddhism 101. In that sense, August is a gold mine.

During the “soft” centuries, mind becomes contemplatively lazy. Life is about color, style and “getting stuff” from the raging impermanence– not making meaning out of it.

Then the civilizational pendulum more>

August Transit Update: Whale Song Then Media Fast

 

 

THE PROBLEM WITH meditation is that it turns most conversation into subtitled whale song. Weird. Why not let The Incomprehensible speak for itself? Indeed, according to the latest computer data-mining, ego is preoccupied with only six thematic story lines:

1) Rise-fall-rise, 2) Fall-rise-fall, 3) Rise-fall, 4) Fall-rise, 5) Steady fall, 6) Steady more>

July 2016 Transit Update: Stepping out into the dream of doer-ship

THE FIRST HALF OF 2016 was, for many, a disorienting faith-tester. With the help of a paradigm-melting Pisces eclipse season followed by a slew of introspective, postponing retrogrades, the Saturn/Neptune square slowly, inexorably drained the lifeblood from our miserably secure roles and relationships. Remember: Neptune is a mercy killer. She prefers slow, imperceptible atrophy and more>

June Transit Update: Brainstorming the second half of 2016

JUNE IS A TRANSITION month from “two steps forward, one step back” into slow-building forward momentum. Now that Mercury retrograde has gone direct on May 22nd, the contours of the second half of the year (July through December) start to become clear. Giddy plans stop backfiring because they’ve fermented into something nonconceptual and heartfelt enough more>

May Transit Update 2016: The Soul Grows Through Subtraction

FOR THE FIRST TIME in a decade, we have 5 planets retrograde at the same time (Mercury, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn and Pluto). Don’t fall for the idle gossip. A pensive concern lurks behind the apparent frivolity. Instead, be nondual: applaud the pompous, pumping smokestacks of the great Oz, but speak directly to the faceless face more>

April 2016 Transit Update: The care and feeding of a worm hole

ADMIT IT: THE SOLAR and Lunar eclipses of March sent you free-falling through a psychedelic worm-hole. Seduced by the spoon-bending logic of Pisces, ego lost focus, loosened its grip, and released you into a current of karmic inevitability. Poor little flesh-puppet; he was miles downstream before it occurred to him to start clutching at his more>

Intuitive Recognition Skills for Aquarius    

AS YOU READ through this list of Aquarian characteristics, please remember that they do not so much point to a separate somebody, as to the One Being attempting to dream lucid in a particular kind of ego. In other words, don’t fall for the trait bait! What you are witnessing is the outer circumference of more>

February 2016 Transit Update: Progressive vision meets pragmatic action

USE THE FIRST WEEK of February to self-reckon. Pluto is conjunct Mercury trine Jupiter, a great time to sit in front of an uncommonly vast, empty pair of eyes – a beloved who is still enough to listen you into being as you slowly, meditatively untie the knot of last month’s Mercury Retro.

Now that more>

Intuitive Recognition Skills for Capricorn   

As you read through this list of Capricorn characteristics, please remember that they do not so much point to a separate somebody, as to the One Being attempting to dream lucid in a particular kind of ego. In other words, don’t fall for the trait bait! What you are witnessing is the outer circumference of more>

The Mystical Allure of Terrorism

WE ARE NOT AT WAR with “bad” personalities; we are at war with personality, itself. A confused and angry part of us wants to rain death down on whatever orphaned sacks of skin remind us of the soul-killing me-stories that lurk inside of us. Failing to locate our self as the tender witness of our more>

Could Astrology Save the World? 

YES, I KNOW. The question sounds naive. At best. But bear with me. Modern, meditative astrology is not a parlor game; it’s a paradigm.

Seen through the eyes of the average, orphaned ego, the head is a graveyard: every cynical (or soulful) thought about itself continually passing away; every moment tainted by the subliminal more>

November 2015 Transit Update: Playboy has come full circle. Have you?

JUST IN TIME for the first of three exact Saturn/Neptune squares on Nov 26th, Playboy Magazine just announced a return to veiled beauty. Effective March 2016, no more full nudes. It seems the divine feminine is reclaiming her archetypal teaching power: it takes persistent Neptunian longing for the Unseen to get Saturn (the gritty veil more>

When God Gets Pushy: How to work with lower octave Aries

IT IS THE PRIVILEGED vocation of the Aries archetype (in all of us) to cajole – and, if need be, implicitly push – other souls into showing up as embodied personalities and thereby to have a fighting chance of awakening as pure Piscean awareness enjoying the role play of an Aries ego. This is the more>

October 2015 Transit Update: Are you a crisis management mystic?

OCTOBER IS MUCH LIKE the third and final stage of a vision quest, which is called “Incorporation.” The quester hikes down from the seclusion of the mountain and, before speaking with anyone else, recounts the journey of his/her vision fast (as if it were a symbol-stuffed Neptunian dream) to a Saturnian mentor-guide who was busy more>

September 2015 Transit Update

KUDOS TO VENUS retrograde for masterminding the Ashley Madison hack. Next comes the Mercury retrograde lawsuits starting September 17. So much for those fickle flashes of union we’ve been so expertly conditioned to lust after. Attraction wants to overflow from Beingness, itself, says Venus retro, not from seductive force-ripening. I like how Mooji put it: more>

Three Cycles of Saturn

EVERY SEVEN YEARS, transiting Saturn conjuncts, squares or opposes the position of Saturn in our birth chart, providing crucial thematic guidance for our ever-evolving soul. Scroll down to your age and see which bread crumb your ego is currently pecking at. (All ages approximate).

FIRST SATURN CYCLE: Age 0/First Breath (Saturn conjunct Saturn): Knot more>

August 2015 Transit Update: Frayed Angels

AUGUST IS A GOOD month to substitute “people” with “frayed angels” and confess that we are, indeed, worn at the edges, but internally brand new. In fact, in Buddhist terms we are not just “new” we are “The Unborn.” That makes “nubile” look downright elderly, no? Yes, there are some ominous portends in the air, more>

Astro-Zombies: The 12 trances of ego and how to break free of them

WELCOME TO “Night of the Living Dead” — a.k.a. “your life.” Like the 1968 movie of the same title, it’s a corny, dated zombie flick with a sly political undercurrent that you and I paid good “money” (birth) to get into. Why, oh Why? Are we cultish nerds, or have we intelligently tapped into more>

Fingers of God: The bifurcating beauty of Gemini

AFTER SUPPLYING the ego with the courage to incarnate and move about with sovereign will (as symbolized by the Aries head), the soul works its way down to the Taurus neck, or “Taproot,” in order to ground itself into the body and, thereby, encounter and sculpt the material world through the five senses. In the more>

Veracity to Virus: The four astrological stages of truth-seeking

IN THE YOUTH OF MIND, the world brims with opportunities to orient and confirm the separate sense of self through an ever-widening range of experience-gathering and mental categorization (Gemini). Over time, however, our hard-earned patchwork of self-discovered truths are subsumed by larger themes, impersonal principles and archetypes (Sagittarius). Eventually, even these overarching, paradigmatic patterns are more>

Full Moon in Scorpio: May 3, 2015 at 8:42 pm, PST

ONCE A YEAR, the moon turns into a blazing, axe-to-the-forehead ray of truth. Exactly what truth does this ray wish to illumine? Read on.

Scorpio corresponds to the 8-10pm time period. Why? Because Scorpio wants to stay awake in the dark. Yes, a later time in the night would, perhaps, evoke a more forbidden more>

May 2015 Transit Update: Ritualize the Retro

YOU WOULD THINK a full moon in the intense sign of Scorpio on May 3rd (May 4th in Asia) would play out personally, with lots of psychosexual intrigue and/or disturbing emotional shadow revealing. Not so, in my experience. Instead, the round and ripened quality of the moon tends to amplify the transcendent – even shamanic more>

Astrological War Stories: 12 dramas on the screen of a deeper seer

AS FICTION WRITERS know, all deeply immersive, absorbing stories are war stories:

1) human vs. human 2) human vs. nature 3) human vs. self 4) human vs. God

and they all proceed from conflict to climax to fleeting resolution. Why do we get so drawn in by these edgy oppositions? Because they deliver greasy, fast more>

April 2015 Transit Update: The eclipse zone

WHAT A RAMBUNCTIOUS month! A time to release, recreate and revive. Overview: Initiate the first two weeks; ground during the second two. Will our relationships rebirth and our projects fully flower? Depends on how consciously we navigate “The eclipse zone.”

Eclipses usually take place in pairs. The March 20th Solar eclipse in Pisces was the more>

The Astrology of Prostration: Developing a practice of positive disintegration

THE PISCES FEET are the only part of the human body that is constantly pressed against — merged — with something else. In this sense they symbolize our unbroken connection to the divine ground of Being. The symbolic headquarters of egoic identity (the Aries head), on the other hand, is located as far away from more>