Tue, 14 Feb 2012 05:14:19 -0500WeeblySun, 12 Feb 2012 10:06:22 -0500http://www.saturnianstudies.org/1/post/2012/02/postscript.htmlI sent an extended version of my mid-life assessment of Whitney to her in Atlanta, to encourage her, actually. I never received a response from her or her staff.
Not actually being her astrologer, I did not think to follow up and warn her that when Saturn transited her Mars in Libra she might have to pay the piper. I am sorry now I did not follow up on that more now, but as in any healing field, the person must seek the help they need. I brighter light, burned out too soon! ]]>Sun, 12 Feb 2012 10:05:56 -0500http://www.saturnianstudies.org/1/post/2012/02/my-2005-article-on-whitney-houston.htmlSometimes it helps to have a famous person or two to paint the
picture of mid life, and as of this writing we see a good example of a person
just beginning to deal with mid-life, prior to the Saturn opposition, Whitney
Houston.  The country has followed Whitney through some of her problems.
She has a Venus/ Sun conjunction in Leo, which is all the sweetness and light
that she is able to radiate on stage. Not just an act, but an obvious inner
glow; however she also has Saturn conjunct her part of fortune opposite in
Aquarius. That part of her chart is the demographic handling which she is
subject to as she is marketed and handled, not so differently than Elvis. Ask
Whitney Houston about being a superstar and having a mid life crisis. She has a
fascinating, power packed chart, with overwhelming superstar stuff, Jupiter in
Aries and the Leo, however also has a little old Mars in Libra, the nice
guy/gal, passive/aggressive Mars, allowing herself to be pushed around by agents
and allegedly her mate. She is just beginning to deal with all of these
problems, and again is right on target, time and insight wise; with the
substance abuse coming to a head in the past three years, (between age 38 and
41) Let’s look at one of the first indicators of MLC that I found publicly.
  “Singing sensation Whitney Houston infuriated Burt
Bacharach at
rehearsals for the 2000 Academy Awards - by singing the wrong song. The
singer is currently clean after spending March in rehabilitation for drug
addiction, but four years ago she was reportedly not so sober. In Steve Pond's forthcoming book, The Big Show: High Times And Dirty
Dealings Backstage At The Academy Awards, which exposes a host of Oscar
secrets, Pond reveals Houston's performance technique angered
Bacharach. In the tome, Pond writes, "Houston's voice was shaky, she seemed
  distracted and jittery, and her attitude was casual, almost defiant." Despite
Bacharach, the musical director of the 2000 Oscars, playing "Over the Rainbow"
on the piano, Houstonbegan singing "The Way We Were." Pond
continues, "Finally, Bacharach (at wit's end) slumped over the piano, (putting)
his head down on the keys." Producer Lili
Zanuck cancelled Houston's appearance at the ceremony, explaining, "We didn't want to work for six months for this to be a show about how f**ked-up Whitney Houston was." 8
 As I have been writing this, she actually just walked away from
treatment, and is supposedly doing it all at home. Now as of this
update, Whitney
is now on her Jupiter opposition, as well as a Mars return, and apparently is
getting worse, appearing as emaciated, as well as rumors of her death. The
Jupiter opposition has stretched her to the max undoubtedly, and hers being in
Aries still contains that dilemma of an extra amount of pride and autonomy,
parts of her that have served her well in other parts of her life, not, however
at this time. As of December
17, 2004 we see this: “Singer Whitney Houston has walked away unscathed after crashing her sports car into a bus near her home in Georgia. Houston clipped a bus
while pulling out of a shopping centre parking lot in Alpharetta at 5pm Wednesday after misjudging how much room she had. The bus was left with barely a scratch, but the right bumper of Houston's Porsche was damaged. Officers cited the 41-year-old singer for the minor offense of failure to yield while entering a roadway…” 9  
From astrology’s standpoint, it is doubtful that her transition is done. It doesn’t
appear in the story that she was under any influence of mind altering
substances, and let’s just hope it was a "bad brake day". Whitney is coming up
to her Saturn opposition, which does not take place until September 2006. Right
now she was claiming a comeback from all of her drug problems, and back in
treatment spring of 2005.  I for
one would not like to see her burned out, even on over performing, much less
mishandling and/or drugs.

]]>Sat, 05 Nov 2011 18:40:11 -0500http://www.saturnianstudies.org/1/post/2011/11/the-astrological-demographics-of-the-middle-east-players.htmlAs I
work on my new book on 
Astrological Demographics, I have written an assessment of the changes in
the Middle East. Below are some excerpts from the second chapter of the book. We
look a the planetary events (such as this time period with the Pluto- Saturn-
Uranus aspects mirroring the 1776 revolutions) and try to predict what types of
things will be happening when those aspects present again. This is the perfect
time period and example of using past events (1776 and on into the French
revolution), to try to predict the types of things that will happen now. 

We first might look at the Uranus into Aries and surmise that revolution is in the
air, and will continue to be, as the genie is let out of the bottle. Next we
might sumise that Pluto in Capricorn will try to repress these revolutions, as
was done by the aristocracy in Europe then, but we can also surmise that many
will not want to overthrow the current systems of government as they exist now
and as they existed at the time. The American Constitution is more a
fullfillment of English Common law than a radical departure, and the departures
that were radical were not fullfilled for the next 150 years, (or yet!) Equal
rights for all men and women was written into the constitution but slavery
continued for the next 100 years, the Native Americans where shoved off of their
land as we took the continent, and women could not vote until the 1920's, with
African Americans still not having equal rights until the
1960's.
 Like- wise France beheaded large parts of the aristocracy, then tolerated Napolean
turning himself into the Emperor, and began  re-doing those aristoctratic behaviors
again.
 How then do we expect the current revolutions to turn out? Probably with the same
mixture of results; balancing adherence to tradition with the Uranian need to
explode into new territories. In these situations, we would do well to tailor
our predictions to the countries and players at hand. In Egypt's case, Mubarik
had been in power for a Saturn Cycle. (29 years)  It
would be a good guess that he would go. It Gaddaffi's case Saturn plus a half
cycle. (44years).  Mid life crisis
for his regime , and we know how dangerous mid life can be, individually as well
as collectively. He had to go. 
Bashar al-Assad was born in Damascus on 11
September 1965. That makes his mid-life transition back in 2008-9, so it is
possible he has succesfully transitioned the crisis, and with reforms, may
survive Syria's revolution. His second term as president takes him to the 14
year mark, (Starting his first 7 year term in 2000, so he could very well
survive until that time perion (2014). The current incarnation of Syria was
finally incarnate  Jan
1st of 1944. ( Freed from the Vichy France occupation). That puts the
current Syria's Saturn in Gemini, and the Saturn return in 2001, almost
coinciding with Basher's rise to the presidency. The next Saturn opposition
would not be until 2017, so this could drag on until
then.
 So, although one can look at the demograpics of
the Middle East, and surmise that his regime should come down with the others,
the planets do indicate differently. Basher himself does have Mars in Scorpio @
13*, and his state backed brutality seems worse that some of the other
states.  Saturn does hit his Mars
in October of 2013, and it retrogrades back to 16* in July of 2014. These dates
certainly do come much closer to his 14 year half Saturn cycle in office and
come closer to the MLC of the current Syria, and he certainly could fall or be
assasinated at that time. We will see…
 Meanwhile , back in Tunisia where the Arab spring started, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali is a Virgo with Saturn in Pisces. He had his Saturn opposition at 19 of Virgo in November of 2008, and was re-elected in October of 2009, as Saturn was leaving Virgo, so at first look , one might think that he had escaped that transit and was on his way to the next 14 years. As
well Tunisia's current government dates from 1956, and he fell in 2011, so
making that regime 55 years old, with his reign at 24 years , from 1987. So all
of these transits defy my theories above; that either the native or the country
will show the probabilities of the outcomes in their charts.. It is certainly
possible there are other variables that are not know, such as accurate times and
dates of birth, but those are probably
unattainable
 In the case of Iran, (as I have noted elsewhere)
the initial outcome of the Green revolution showed distinctly in Mousavi's
chart, having a birthday of Sept 29th, 1941. or 5* Libra Sun. When
Saturn hit that degree in December of 20 
his nephew was assasinated. One can surely guess that he was too
important a figure to turn into a martyr, and, with moon in Capricorn, hurting
his family surely hurt him as well. Also with the moon in Capricorn, he was an
important part of the government of Iran, and must harbor ambivalent feelings
about what has happened to him.
 Ahmajinidad, on the other hand was heavily
criticized when Saturn transited his Mars in Virgo in June, of 2009, As
transparent as his loss should have been, sometimes trines (in this case to
Capricorn in general ) may have eased him through that, not for the good of the
country. I believe we will see more when Saturn hits his Sun sign in November of
2012. Since that is our election time, one cannot help but wonder if President
Obama would have something else up his sleeve to take him out at that time.
(They do both have Mars in Virgo, and Mars conjunct can
  clash…
 While I am at this forcasting, the teflon Don of Italy, Silvio
Berlesconi, might finally go down with the economy,but his sun is also 4-5 *
Libra, and the "Rubygate scandal" of December 2010 did not pull him down, so who
knows. Perhaps some people have so much power that they go on, even when it is
pointed out that the emporer has no clothes…
 We can also look at King Abdullah bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud, who was born Aug 1st  of 1924. His Saturn is at 26* Libra ,
so he will be on his third Saturn return this December of 2011. As I have said;
though I would expect his reign should end or be challenged at that point,
sometimes the very powerful just go on dispite everyone knowing it should
end.
 Nayef bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud is said to have
been born in 1933, with no available day. The Kindom of Saudi Arabia itself was
finally officially founded on September 23rd, 1932. So many 0* Libra
or early Libra players in this Middle East Drama. 
The Saturn return of the King this December does square the Saturn of
the Kingdom so accordingly, by my theories above, some breakthrough should
happen in the Kingdom by that point, with the athorities weighing in on the side
of repression, with that Saturn in Capricorn. Since Nayef is a wild card, we
will a gain, see…


 
 
]]>Sun, 30 Oct 2011 03:11:51 -0500http://www.saturnianstudies.org/1/post/2011/10/saturn-still-in-libra.htmlAs I mentioned I am now doing the research of Saturn in Libra and the concept of whether it is fair or not. I am at least the third generation of fathers with Saturn in Libra and there would have been a 4th (1981) and fifth, (2010) if not for miscarraiges with my partners. The personal side is another story..though it has been a very difficult year for me with percieved unfairnesses that may be beginning to right themselves through persistance in utilyzing the scales of justice... fairness does not come easily
In history, I  have gone back as far as October 23rd 1862.
There was a massacre/ hanging in Gainsville Texas, some hundreds of people judged as not supporting the confederacy. No jury, no trial, just hangings. This is again another example that  at least initially, Saturn in Libra is not fair... The question is, does it determinately travel toward fairness?...The middle east is discovering that right now!
 To be continued...

]]>Sun, 07 Aug 2011 23:38:28 -0500http://www.saturnianstudies.org/1/post/2011/08/saturn-in-libra-demographic-angst.htmlI have
had the time finally to start my large writing enterprise, Astrological
  Demography, while on assignment to Danville Virginia, as a traveling EEG
  consultant. It is a joy to actually have time to start at te beginning and feel
  like I could continue writing for weeks without hitch or
interuption.


That was not to be. In the middle of my first
rush, and blush of writing, I ran into an article of Michael Moore's on the
state of the economy now, and the date it started to go down hill. This of
course, intrigued me, then when I saw his date, almost paralyzed me. August
5th, 1981. The date that
Ronald Reagan fired the Patco air traffic
controllers!


I
  remember that summer all too well. I was on my Saturn return in Libra, I had
  married a beautiful but insecure and Martian 4 planets in Aries woman, and my
  reality was crumbling before me. But I did not project that my struggles might
  mirror social change at the time.


Yet it
was there, in the killing of John Lennon the previous fall, and the opposition
of Mars, Sun, Venus in Aries opposite the major conjunction in Libra, of
Jupiter, Saturn and Pluto by sign in Libra, on April 4th, around when Reagan was shot. By August
5th, the moon was in
Libra, signaling to any astrologer, a preponderance of absolute fairness in the
  process of change.


This
  is, on the surface, exactly not what happened. The AFL-CIO recommended that the
  rest of the unions cross the pickett lines, and some union members replaced the
  controllers, and Reagan won.


Out of
that victory, Moore surmises, (I am inclined to think correctly), that the right
wing was emboldened to push their boy toward more sucesses, including the
  deregulation of the S&Ls. (Even as he began to show the faintest beginning
  signs of dementia).


So is
Pluto Saturn Jupiter Moon in Libra a sign of ultimate fairness? Or unfairness,
as Pluto Saturn would soon pre-curse? Consumate unfairness, in fact, with
Pluto?


As I
have great faith in Libra, and Michaels insight has challengeged me greatly,
  early in a first rush of writing.


So I
have decided to make this date, and the previous and consequent Saturn returns
in Libra, my dialectical method to research and hopefully prove that Saturn in
Libra indeed: Not at first, but eventually, brings about a fair and balanced
growth in  society, and the
person's perception of that social
equity.


We do not see that now, and America's Saturn is
in Libra, as is mine, as it is at this writing, as we see the Middle East
struggle for that same equity, and Europeans struggle for that social financial
equity.


It did
in this country, but took 80 some years to manifest, as in the Emancipation
  Proclamation fulfilling the Declaration of Independence (Saturn in Libra in
  186)


I am
praying that, as I write this projection of the past , the present and hopefully
demographic trends in the future, tha the trends over the centuries do make
astrological sense.


If
  not, I take comfort in Joeseph Priestly's work, always based not on scientific
  proclamation(or in my case, Astrological proclaimation), but on the bedrock of
  previous social and astrological growth that, in his words, Indeed,pushes the
  mountain up with the thinkers, as opposed to climbing the mountain
  (paraphrased).


I do
promise to report accuratelyJ


Alan


  ]]>Fri, 27 May 2011 16:04:38 -0500http://www.saturnianstudies.org/1/post/2011/05/saturn-returns-and-harry-potter.htmlBelow is the speech given to the graduating class at Harvard by J.D.Rowling, the author of the Harry Potter series. She talks about failure motivating her to suceed, at around age 30. What she doesn't mention, and may not know, is that this happens around her 1st Saturn Return.
she is another walking layperson  poster child of the efficacy of astrology. We astrologers expect lives to fall apart if need be and reformulate on your own path and destiny at that age. I enjoy it when a lay person gives a testimony that matches what we would say! Since I am on my 2nd Saturn Return, I am experiencing some new failures and the fruits of some of my successes...


The first thing I would like to say is ‘thank you.’ Not
only has Harvard given me an extraordinary honour, but the weeks of fear and
nausea I have endured at the thought of giving this commencement address have
made me lose weight. A win-win situation! Now all I have to do is take deep
breaths, squint at the red banners and convince myself that I am at the world’s
largest Gryffindor reunion.
 Delivering a commencement address is a great
responsibility; or so I thought until I cast my mind back to my own graduation.
The commencement speaker that day was the distinguished British philosopher
Baroness Mary Warnock. Reflecting on her speech has helped me enormously in
writing this one, because it turns out that I can’t remember a single word she
said. This liberating discovery enables me to proceed without any fear that I
might inadvertently influence you to abandon promising careers in business, the
law or politics for the giddy delights of becoming a gay wizard. 
You see? If all you remember in years to come is the
‘gay wizard’ joke, I’ve come out ahead of Baroness Mary Warnock. Achievable
goals: the first step to self improvement.
 Actually, I have wracked my mind and heart for what I
ought to say to you today. I have asked myself what I wish I had known at my own
graduation, and what important lessons I have learned in the 21 years that have
expired between that day and this. 
I have come up with two answers. On this wonderful day
when we are gathered together to celebrate your academic success, I have decided
to talk to you about the benefits of failure. And as you stand on the threshold
of what is sometimes called ‘real life’, I want to extol the crucial importance
of imagination. 
These may seem quixotic or paradoxical choices, but
please bear with me. 
Looking back at the 21-year-old that I was at
graduation, is a slightly uncomfortable experience for the 42-year-old that she
has become. Half my lifetime ago, I was striking an uneasy balance between the
ambition I had for myself, and what those closest to me expected of me. 
I was convinced that the only thing I wanted to do,
ever, was to write novels. However, my parents, both of whom came from
impoverished backgrounds and neither of whom had been to college, took the view
that my overactive imagination was an amusing personal quirk that would never
pay a mortgage, or secure a pension. I know that the irony strikes with the
force of a cartoon anvil, now.
 So they hoped that I would take a vocational degree; I
wanted to study English Literature. A compromise was reached that in retrospect
satisfied nobody, and I went up to study Modern Languages. Hardly had my
parents’ car rounded the corner at the end of the road than I ditched German and
scuttled off down the Classics corridor
 I cannot remember telling my parents that I was
studying Classics; they might well have found out for the first time on
graduation day. Of all the subjects on this planet, I think they would have been
hard put to name one less useful than Greek mythology when it came to securing
the keys to an executive bathroom. I would like to make it clear, in
parenthesis, that I do not blame my parents for their point of
view.           
There is an expiry date on blaming your parents for steering you in the
wrong direction; the moment you are old enough to take the wheel, responsibility
lies with you. What is more, I cannot criticise my parents for hoping that I
would never experience poverty. They had been poor themselves, and I have since
been poor, and I quite agree with them that it is not an ennobling experience.
  Poverty entails fear, and stress, and sometimes depression; it means a thousand
  petty humiliations and hardships. Climbing out of poverty by your own efforts,
  that is indeed something on which to pride yourself, but poverty itself is
  romanticised only by fools. 
What I feared most for myself at your age was not
poverty, but failure. 
At your age, in spite of a distinct lack of motivation
at university, where I had spent far too long in the coffee bar writing stories,
and far too little time at lectures, I had a knack for passing examinations, and
that, for years, had been the measure of success in my life and that of my
peers.
 I am not dull enough to suppose that because you are
young, gifted and well-educated, you have never known hardship or heartbreak.
Talent and intelligence never yet inoculated anyone against the caprice of the
Fates, and I do not for a moment suppose that everyone here has enjoyed an
existence of unruffled privilege and contentment. 
However, the fact that you are graduating from Harvard
suggests that you are not very well-acquainted with failure. You might be driven
by a fear of failure quite as much as a desire for success. Indeed, your
conception of failure might not be too far from the average person’s idea of
success, so high have you already flown.
 Ultimately, we all have to decide for ourselves what
constitutes failure, but the world is quite eager to give you a set of criteria
if you let it. So I think it fair to say that by any conventional measure, a
mere seven years after my graduation day, I had failed on an epic scale. An
exceptionally short-lived marriage had imploded, and I was jobless, a lone
parent, and as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain, without being
homeless. The fears that my parents had had for me, and that I had had for
myself, had both come to pass, and by every usual standard, I was the biggest
failure I knew. 
Now, I am not going to stand here and tell you that
failure is fun. That period of my life was a dark one, and I had no idea that
there was going to be what the press has since represented as a kind of fairy
tale resolution. I had no idea then how far the tunnel extended, and for a long
time, any light at the end of it was a hope rather than a
reality.
 So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply
because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending
to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my
energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded
at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the
one arena I believed I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear
had been realised, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I
adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became
the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my
life.
 You might never fail on the scale I did, but some
failure in life is inevitable. It is impossible to live without failing at
something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived
at all – in which case, you fail by default. 
Failure gave me an inner security that I had never
attained by passing examinations. Failure taught me things about myself that I
could have learned no other way. I discovered that I had a strong will, and more
discipline than I had suspected; I also found out that I had friends whose value
was truly above the price of rubies. 
The knowledge that you have emerged wiser and stronger
from setbacks means that you are, ever after, secure in your ability to survive.
You will never truly know yourself, or the strength of your relationships, until
both have been tested by adversity. Such knowledge is a true gift, for all that
it is painfully won, and it has been worth more than any qualification I ever
earned.
 So given a Time Turner, I would tell my 21-year-old
self that personal happiness lies in knowing that life is not a check-list of
acquisition or achievement. Your qualifications, your CV, are not your life,
though you will meet many people of my age and older who confuse the two. Life
is difficult, and complicated, and beyond anyone’s total control, and the
humility to know that will enable you to survive its vicissitudes. 
Now you might think that I chose my second theme, the
importance of imagination, because of the part it played in rebuilding my life,
but that is not wholly so. Though I personally will defend the value of bedtime
stories to my last gasp, I have learned to value imagination in a much broader
sense. Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that
which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation. In its
arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power that
enables us to empathise with humans whose experiences we have never
shared.
 One of the greatest formative experiences of my life
preceded Harry Potter, though it informed much of what I subsequently wrote in
those books. This revelation came in the form of one of my earliest day jobs.
Though I was sloping off to write stories during my lunch hours, I paid the rent
in my early 20s by working at the African research department at Amnesty
International’s headquarters in London. 
There in my little office I read hastily scribbled
letters smuggled out of totalitarian regimes by men and women who were risking
imprisonment to inform the outside world of what was happening to them. I saw
photographs of those who had disappeared without trace, sent to Amnesty by their
desperate families and friends. I read the testimony of torture victims and saw
pictures of their injuries. I opened handwritten, eye-witness accounts of
summary trials and executions, of kidnappings and rapes. 
Many of my co-workers were ex-political prisoners,
people who had been displaced from their homes, or fled into exile, because they
had the temerity to speak against their governments. Visitors to our offices
included those who had come to give information, or to try and find out what had
happened to those they had left behind.
 I shall never forget the African torture victim, a
young man no older than I was at the time, who had become mentally ill after all
he had endured in his homeland. He trembled uncontrollably as he spoke into a
video camera about the brutality inflicted upon him. He was a foot taller than I
was, and seemed as fragile as a child. I was given the job of escorting him back
to the Underground Station afterwards, and this man whose life had been
shattered by cruelty took my hand with exquisite courtesy, and wished me future
happiness.
 And as long as I live I shall remember walking along an
empty corridor and suddenly hearing, from behind a closed door, a scream of pain
and horror such as I have never heard since. The door opened, and the researcher
poked out her head and told me to run and make a hot drink for the young man
sitting with her. She had just had to give him the news that in retaliation for
his own outspokenness against his country’s regime, his mother had been seized
and executed.
 Every day of my working week in my early 20s I was
reminded how incredibly fortunate I was, to live in a country with a
democratically elected government, where legal representation and a public trial
were the rights of everyone. 
Every day, I saw more evidence about the evils
humankind will inflict on their fellow humans, to gain or maintain power. I
began to have nightmares, literal nightmares, about some of the things I saw,
heard, and read.
 And yet I also learned more about human goodness at
Amnesty International than I had ever known
before.
 Amnesty mobilises thousands of people who have never
been tortured or imprisoned for their beliefs to act on behalf of those who
have. The power of human empathy, leading to collective action, saves lives, and
frees prisoners. Ordinary people, whose personal well-being and security are
assured, join together in huge numbers to save people they do not know, and will
never meet. My small participation in that process was one of the most humbling
and inspiring experiences of my life.
 Unlike any other creature on this planet, humans can
learn and understand, without having experienced. They can think themselves into
other people’s places.
 Of course, this is a power, like my brand of fictional
magic, that is morally neutral. One might use such an ability to manipulate, or
control, just as much as to understand or sympathise. 
And many prefer not to exercise their imaginations at
all. They choose to remain comfortably within the bounds of their own
experience, never troubling to wonder how it would feel to have been born other
than they are. They can refuse to hear screams or to peer inside cages; they can
close their minds and hearts to any suffering that does not touch them
personally; they can refuse to know.
 I might be tempted to envy people who can live that
way, except that I do not think they have any fewer nightmares than I do.
Choosing to live in narrow spaces leads to a form of mental agoraphobia, and
that brings its own terrors. I think the wilfully unimaginative see more
monsters. They are often more afraid. 
What is more, those who choose not to empathise enable
real monsters. For without ever committing an act of outright evil ourselves, we
collude with it, through our own apathy. 
One of the many things I learned at the end of that
Classics corridor down which I ventured at the age of 18, in search of something
I could not then define, was this, written by the Greek author Plutarch: What we
achieve inwardly will change outer reality. 
That is an astonishing statement and yet proven a
thousand times every day of our lives. It expresses, in part, our inescapable
connection with the outside world, the fact that we touch other people’s lives
simply by existing. 
But how much more are you, Harvard graduates of 2008,
likely to touch other people’s lives? Your intelligence, your capacity for hard
work, the education you have earned and received, give you unique status, and
unique responsibilities. Even your nationality sets you apart. The great
majority of you belong to the world’s only remaining superpower. The way you
vote, the way you live, the way you protest, the pressure you bring to bear on
your government, has an impact way beyond your borders. That is your privilege,
and your burden
 If you choose to use your status and influence to raise
your voice on behalf of those who have no voice; if you choose to identify not
only with the powerful, but with the powerless; if you retain the ability to
imagine yourself into the lives of those who do not have your advantages, then
it will not only be your proud families who celebrate your existence, but
thousands and millions of people whose reality you have helped change. We do not
need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves
already: we have the power to imagine better.
 I am nearly finished. I have one last hope for you,
which is something that I already had at 21. The friends with whom I sat on
graduation day have been my friends for life. They are my children’s godparents,
the people to whom I’ve been able to turn in times of trouble, people who have
been kind enough not to sue me when I took their names for Death Eaters. At our
graduation we were bound by enormous affection, by our shared experience of a
time that could never come again, and, of course, by the knowledge that we held
certain photographic evidence that would be exceptionally valuable if any of us
ran for Prime Minister. 
So today, I wish you nothing better than similar
friendships. And tomorrow, I hope that even if you remember not a single word of
mine, you remember those of Seneca, another of those old Romans I met when I
fled down the Classics corridor, in retreat from career ladders, in search of
ancient wisdom:
As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it
is, is what matters.
I wish you all very good lives. Thank you very
much.


 
]]>Sat, 12 Mar 2011 00:05:35 -0500http://www.saturnianstudies.org/1/post/2011/03/uranus-in-aries.htmlI have not yet commented on the revolutions going on through out the world, because all of us astrologers will want to be on that band wagon.
But I feel it needs comment. Uranus has introduced himself in Aries with possibly the worst earthquake in Japan's history. We are seeing the entire Middle East Islam based culture begin to question the basis of their civilization , in fact; (that is monarchical or religious oligarchies.) World economies are crashing, countries are being downgraded with their debt, and America is reeling from it's own stupidity in the housing bubble and the crash it effected.
This is a short blog, so I will mention only a few things. The planets are aligned very similarly to 1763-1776, The American Revolution. Then as well as now, the show stoppers were Pluto in Capricorn holding onto the power, and Saturn in Libra knowing the people were being treated unfairly, with Uranus in Aries urging breaks from the old.
Then as well as now, the powers that were established would not want to let go of power easily. With the T Square, many of  the revolutionaries could not go backwards; that had to go forward with the revolution, so as in any Cardinal Square; the egg shell had to be broken to make anything; including a cake.
Finally; the last two times Uranus went into Aries were also earthshaking. It ushered in the Great Depression (World Wide) in 1928-29, and the time before, the 1848 revolutions in Europe and the Gold Rush in America. The Gold Rush finished any idea that we, the European invaders of the Americas, would give any quarter to the natives that lived here before us, ending with Wounded Knee and the the Uranus opposition to itself in 1890.
]]>Wed, 09 Mar 2011 01:11:11 -0500http://www.saturnianstudies.org/1/post/2011/03/neptune-in-pisces.htmlI am worried about Neptune going into Pisces.
Will the Middle-Eastern revolutions fold; for the status quo, and go back to being followers; when Neptune goes into Pisces?
We may be in flux, but at the danger of re-entering a "dark age" of sorts; while at the same time, revolution is in the air everywhere!
Astrological conundrums, as usual... ]]>Mon, 07 Mar 2011 19:21:21 -0500http://www.saturnianstudies.org/1/post/2011/03/mid-life-for-charlie-sheen.htmlI just heard that Charlie Sheen was fired from his job in his TV show. That is a shame, but his mid life transition would have actually come to a head 2 years ago,somewhere around fall of 2008. (Saturn opposition). So in a sense, apparently people were afraid to get in front of his behavior and call him up on it. Now, Saturn is retrograde, quincunx his natal Saturn @ 14* Pisces. This is a going back over events and cutting loose time, so: time to pay the piper. This is not unusual for handlers to ignore or even promote such dysfunctional behavior with super stars. This happened to Elvis, as well as Whitney Housten. My book on Mid-Life Crisis goes into a few of those situations; see books I have written for the first chapter. ]]>Sun, 06 Mar 2011 12:06:45 -0500http://www.saturnianstudies.org/1/post/2011/03/saturn-in-libra.htmlI am now starting to see a number of clients who are Libra Rising and have Saturn going through the 12th house, about to come into their first house. This is a particularly convoluted picture, as Saturn in the first brings new emphasis on self growth. Libra rising however prefers to identify themselves through a partnership situation, and Saturn in Libra (anywhere in the chart) would bring the need to limit and redefine those boundaries with a partner, and the world in general. What will this mean on a practical level?
Erin Sullivan states that Saturn descending into the first house "can be one of the most devastating times in a person's life" 1 Pg 188, Saturn in Transit " One often feels that all pretence has been stripped away and one is left with the bare rudiments of an ego and a rough outline of what was once a valid and presentable persona"
Well put, but in Libra, can we not expect that a partner is there watching and depending on that person to remain the dependable "other" that they may have been, possibly for 14 years.
More likely the Saturn is in a generative part of your partner's chart and they are blithely going on expecting you, the Libra rising partner to be continuing their support of their endeavors, as usual.
If you have Saturn in Libra, or Libra Rising, and have had some tough experiences recently, please share them with us here. If yo udo not know if you have the above, folks born from Sept 1980-Aug 1983, are on their First Saturn Return. Folks born in Nov. 1950- Oct 1953, are on their 2nd Saturn return.
If you have stories to share , please do so here.
Thanks, Alan
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