The Moon is struggling with disappointment. He lost face at the last Sun opposition, and his attempt to show how creativity and humility can wed was a flop. Heavy cloud obliterated his hunched progress through the foothills of Virgo and Libra, the treacherous ridges and cavernous gullies of Ophiuchus, and the dizzy crags of Sagittarius. He feels forgotten, and right now, with the bog of Aquarius before him, it seems pointless to assert himself.

Sweep this

into the crags of a new week’s peak hour!

I am trying to find an astrological system which encourages both an exploration and use of the potential of a moment, and an awareness of the illusory nature of form and perspective.

You are young, and experiencing the awesome possibility that your loving might be destined to be returned by the one who embodies your highest ideals? I deplore the fashionable diagnosis of limerence, and any advice which is intended to stop you making a mistake.

You are getting older, and life doesn’t seem to throw you as many options as it used to, or you have been crushed once too often, and now it seems that loneliness is easier to master than relationship? Come with me under the stars, try to feel the throb of the solar system in your guts, cherish your way, even as it bobs like a match in the spume.

The Vertex seems vital to this mission. Its mystique emerges from the regularity of its behaviour on my horizon, kin to the seasonal markers of astrology in my hemisphere.

When it conjuncts the winter solstice it has gone as far as it can towards realization and still be conscious.

When it conjuncts the summer solstice, it has gone as far as it can towards publicity and still retain personal power.

When either of the solstices are at midheaven the Vertex sweeps past the Descendant in instant disequilibrium, and the song of the hormones hears its echo.

These moments are as regular as clockwork. They punctuate our waking and sleeping hours in precisely the same configuration of stars exactly 3mins 56secs earlier every day.

What is a life measured in this way?

Virgo at transit:

and descending.

And now the sotereological narrative of the Easter Passion again reaches its denouement. Millions are experiencing the cleansing of their sin by the awful suffering of the Divine made flesh, but billions are not, who think they have known suffering or are suffering now, without admission of the power of nameless love into the shrine of their wound.

We stand at the Fifteenth Station, or the First.

Do not believe what you’re told by the high priests of astrology, or any other rule. Feel it!

And the moment by Stellarium to make two things clear:

what the Vertex actually ‘is’, and that astrological positions are geocentric, whereas Moonrise and Moonset times depend on the local conditions of observer angle to the Moon, its distance, and the refraction of light at the horizon, or in other words, topocentric position as shown here (in answer to the question, how can Moon position in the chart above be east of the Descendant, when it sets west of it?).

Daylight Saving ends next weekend!

Your Sunday night:

and Monday morning

Looks like heavy nights this week. Meditate!

Yes, there is a timeless harmony between tropical and sidereal astrology when the ecliptic pole aligns with the celestial pole, and I promised to give you a weekly chart of both daily moments, but I’ve changed my mind.

My prime concern is that too many armchair experts never go out and have a look, and I’m only encouraging that by creating charts of daylight hours.

Sidereal Time 270° it is then, until September–remember sidereal time for angular relationships gets earlier every day by 3mins 56secs, and by September the Summer Solstice Point will be at the Meridian before sunset–but we need an additional moment to follow if we can be coaxed out under the sky in the evenings.

Here it is:

The South Pole of the Ecliptic revolves around the South Celestial Pole, which is your latitude above your horizon, in a clockwise direction, at an angular distance equal to the tilt of Earth’s axis of rotation.

The Ecliptic arcs across the northern sky in ever-changing orientation to the horizon, but when its pole crosses the Prime Meridian due south, the points on the Ecliptic at its intersection with the Celestial Equator, the so-called Aries and Libra Points, align due east and west with the horizon.

This occurs at sunrise and sunset at the Equinoxes, and 3mins 56secs earlier each day. I will post a weekly chart of each as the year progresses. Only the Vertices will stay the same, because their manifestations are according to house, but they too will vary across the horizon, because the moment I’m going to freeze is a nanosecond.

Facing the Zodiac, East is to your RIGHT, and as a result of the CLOCKWISE rotation of the Earth towards the East, the Constellations move ANTICLOCKWISE across the sky, and the Sun, Moon and Planets move CLOCKWISE through the Zodiac.

The “Reflections” of the Constellations are an attempt to use confirmation bias against the silly habit of analysing Southern Hemisphere psyches against the backdrop of Northern Hemisphere seasons. Houses I-III give Northern Tropical interpretations, Houses IV-VI the opposite Tropical interpretations; Houses VII-IX identify the Constellations with their Signs, and Houses X-XII the opposite Signs.

This arrangement is entirely arbitrary, although it has an aesthetic value for me in incorporating CHANGE.