Definition: The taking of opportunities as and when they arise, regardless of planning or principle.[Click to enlarge. Ignore the intriguing symmetry between houses and geographical zones above. They are the subject of my thesis under the supervision of Dr Donna Tromb, submitted long since to the University of Reactionary Northern Hemisphere Astrology (URNHA), publication pending.]

You’ll say, what a fool, I know. How could the Moon be ignorant of the existence of the planets? He passes every one of them once a month. He lurches through their turbulence. I understand how, very well. They are a long way off, after all, and always behind him, or in the Sun’s glare, or mingled with the stars. He focusses on orbit, and I doubt you are more knowledgeable yourself, if it comes to that.

I always knew that I would one day have to push the Moon to become acquainted with the planets, because convention demands it, and conjunctions can be (not often) quite spectacular from our point of view. However, my reluctance was understandable.

The ground rumbles day and night with heavy vehicles passing by, but should I station myself in their path, flag down the drivers, engage them in conversation, listen to their stories? Furthermore, two thousand years of intuitive research has gone into the astrologer’s understanding of the planets. What temerity to turn that map upside down!

Consider as I do, that the southern hemisphere astrologer may be no more than a narcissistic charlatan, a virus in orthodoxy synthesizing his own, who enjoys a benign obscurity which enables him to speak without being lethal to his host.

Nonsense! His arbitrary method fulfils its purpose. It does present a new way of gaming emptiness, playing with conventional astrology without breaking it. It blatantly abandons the ancient four- and eight-fold division of the solar year by observing five indigenous seasons, and willfully reverses the genders of Moon and Sun. And now the largely automatic mechanism chooses to abandon the conventional practice of mapping ecliptic longitudes, in favour of representing everything in its daily rotational cycle with equatorial coordinates because they are unambiguous regardless of declination at the meridian.

And then there’s you. Don’t you read your daily horoscope and those of your loved ones to focus individually interpretations of meaning? The meaning of what? The aspects of the planets and angles which purportedly affect everyone. Don’t you seek the integration of any issues preventing your attainment of oneness with all beings? Isn’t this why you invented the ‘higher self’?

So there seems nothing for it but to turn the planets upside down too, and to alert the Moon to their presence as more than coincidence. It’s not all about him. When he finds a planet in one of his mansions he must interrogate, entertain the possibility that something other than orbit might be going on.[Click to enlarge]

How do you expect others to locate themselves on your map? This is the question, Moon. Opportunity is your location in another’s map. Have another think about oneness, please! It’s becoming a constriction.

What seems to be occurring is a paralysis of will, a universalizing communication of praxis which militates against any real effort which is not coherent with its semantics. From the outside, and under its yoke, this praxis must be evaluated by the terror its paranoia inspires. The language of emancipation is oppressive. Inclusion is totalitarian. You cannot teach anyone to love, or start a business, or control ‘itself’. You can only present opportunity. Gender, for example, must find its own way in the forest of rules. What is achieved by stigmatizing heterosexuality? Hate speech.

True presence is not attained in the lotus position: it locates itself modestly in the infinite overlays of every personal map on a universal territory, and only in that way does it ‘get’ the emptiness of territory.

[If you’re up at 00:39 in Melbourne (15:18 sidereal time for others) on Saturday morning, you’ll see Zubeneschamali transiting, and Mars 43° to the east. Mars is inching backwards, to regale Zubeneschamali behind the Moon’s back on June 30, then regain his balance and determination to go direct, transiting around 9pm by that time. An emphatic opportunist, whom the Moon upon his return spies scuttling away with shoes in hand a full fortnight later!]
[Click to enlarge]

All illusion? Yet isn’t Mars doing what we all should be doing: railing against the machine? Getting lost if necessary, but following the contours, without a GPS? Visibility of the Moon’s conjunctions in right ascension with his wives shown above is limited to Houses I-VI between nightfall and first light. Thanks to selfrealisation.net for interpretations of the Nakshatras.

Gazing and sharing, rather than blazing and glaring, Buddha say: “If stroll in moonlight, be heedful of shadow.” Rules are there to bend.