Cosmic art in NYC’s Grand Central Station

As Above, So Below - Ellen Driscoll

There’s more to look at in Grand Central Station than your train timetable. Mosaic artist Ellen Driscoll created cosmically-inspired art for the passageways of Grand Central Terminal North, featuring stories of the heavens and the underworld from five continents. I love these great horoscope wheels – the larger one features the 12 zodiac glyphs around the edge, the smaller one shows the planetary spheres in their proper traditional order, from Luna to Saturnus. Driscoll’s art is publicly accessible and free to view.

Don’t forget, when in the main terminal hall, to look straight up: the robin’s-egg-blue ceiling is painted with the zodiac constellations of the autumn sky.

Update: See Robbie Rosenfeld’s photos of the Grand Central murals.

Question for all astrologers and astrology students

Wherever you are, whenever you read this, at whatever level you practice or study, whenever you have time, I would love to know:

Why do you practice astrology? What’s your goal? How do you know when a reading has been successful?

People say the nicest things

I’ve just created a page of testimonials and kind words clients and others have said about me. Go ye and do likewise. It’s good for the heart.

All cat astrology, all the time

Just kidding. But a couple of people asked to see a picture of our new rescue cat. I am happy to oblige.

Kobe kitty

I don’t have the data for the exact moment we found him and brought him in. It was Sunday night, March 29th, in Arlington, Massachusetts USA, sometime between 8:40 and 9:00 at night.

I do have the data for the question my husband asked that night: Is it somebody’s cat, are they looking for him, and how long until he and they are reunited? March 29, 2009, 11:39pm EDT, Arlington. Note Lord 6 in its detriment retrograding away from Lord 7, also in Lord 6’s detriment, and both planets combust. (Note also our co-significator, the Moon, ruled by Lord 6 – we’re very interested in the kitty – and conjunct Caput Algol – we’re out of our minds. )

Are his owners looking for him?

On the first anniversary of askchristine.wordpress.com

I started this horary and traditional astrology blog a year ago, just before Sun slipped into Aries. (I’m contrary like that.) I just wanted to thank everyone who’s visited since then, or left a comment, or added askchristine.wordpress.com to your astrology blogrolls. Special thanks to Elsa P. for adding the blog to AstroDispatch.com and its previous incarnation, to Paul Wade at AstrologyWizard.com who kindly called the blog his Site of the Week, and especially to Jeffrey Kishner of Sasstrology.com (the former Seduction Central), AstrologyBloggers.com, and jeffreykishner.com (and I’m sure I’ve left a few of his projects out, like Twistrology) who encouraged me to start blogging in the first place and added me to his original AstrologyBlogger blogroll.

Now… any questions? What would you like me to write about? If there’s anything I can clarify about traditional astrology as I understand it, let me know. Otherwise I’ll just keep to my whimsical schedule and blog as I please, as inspiration strikes.

Thanks so much for coming by.

Sockington: the astrological chart of the most popular cat on Twitter

Look. If a cat can acquire 100,000 followers on Twitter, then I can find his birth data and cast his astrological chart.

sometimes he goes by Socks

Some definitions, first: Twitter’s that 140-characters-per-post microblogging social media thingy that people either love or don’t get. (I’m there, twittering as @astrologer.)

Sockington is, well, he’s a cat, with a kind of ace-of-spades face and a curious viewpoint on the world and a snarky girl cat roommate and, well, you just have to read for yourself and draw your own conclusions.

Sometime tonight, the 100,000th person will discover Socks, or read about him, or have a friend say, “you’ve got to follow this crazy cat” and then Socks will be, like, the 25th most popular Twitter user on the PLANET. And he doesn’t even have thumbs. (Socks, when you hear “thumb drive,” what does that even mean to you?)

Anyway. I did some poking and prying and came up with this data for Sockington’s first tweet. Does anything about this chart say “will one day have more followers than John McCain, John Cleese, and Stephen Colbert”? Well, actually, it just might. Here are some of the more remarkable things about Sockington’s “birth chart.”

1. Sockington – or at least his Twittering career – was born at the New Moon. Look: Sun at 28 Pisces, Moon at 28 Pisces, just separating. A New Moon automatically puts the Part of Fortune right on the Ascendant. That Sun/Moon combo beholds the Ascendant by trine, and the Sun rules the 10th house cusp of fame. Start of something big? I’d say so.

in the beginning there was socks

2. That’s not just any New Moon. See how close Sun/Moon are to the North Node? Socks was “born” just three minutes after a partial Solar Eclipse. An eclipse shows the energy of the times. Compare your chart to the eclipse (solar or lunar) immediately preceding it and you’ll get some insight into how plugged in you are to your times. Sockington the little cat? With every one of his planets virtually identical to the eclipse placements, he IS the symbol of his time. (This is going to make @pennycat shred her fur in fury.)

3. So what’s this chart like? The ruler of that Sun/Moon in Pisces is Jupiter, using traditional rulership. Where’s Jupiter? The Greater Benefic is crazy powerful in its own sign, Sagittarius. Sockington may look like a meek rescued stray, but this cat is getting BIG.

4. The exaltation ruler of that Sun/Moon in Pisces is Venus. And where’s Venus? Crazy powerful in ITS own sign, Taurus, in the 6th house of small animals. Moon and Venus are in a gorgeous mutual reception (Moon exalts Venus, Venus exalts moon).

5. Venus in this chart is also the ruler of the 7th house cusp: another indicator of public response to Sockington. Love at first tweet? (No, it took some time, actually, but since New Year’s it’s been astronomical, if you’ll excuse the expression.)

That’s just what a first look reveals. What do you see that makes this cat  – or at least this chart – so remarkable?

Firebreathing

As elements go, I’m earthbound. Even a modern astrologer can see that – too much dirt, not enough heat. Right now, though, it’s an excess of phlegm that’s slowing me down… the common cold, I mean, and its overproduction of cold and wet. What a nice opportunity to experiment with the principles of sympathy and antipathy.

I decided to try the principle of sympathy first, hoping that applying a little more cold and wet to my excess coldness and wetness would help my body along in its phlegmatic process. Mango sorbet seemed like a good solution, and indeed it was a soothing balm while it lasted. But the hoped-for acceleration and resolution of my phlegmatic woes did not occur.

So then I attempted the principle of antipathy, applying something hot and dry to attempt to balance out the phlegm. Out comes the bottle of tabasco peppers in vinegar, starring 30,000 to 50,000 Scoville units (compare to the jalapeno at 2,500 to 5,000 Scoville units). Chomp, chomp… WHOOMP. Panting and blowing like a dragon, chugging water, disturbing the cat. But oh, did my sinuses open then!

However, I am back to my sniffly self. As the fire subsided, so has its clarifying effects. There is just too much water here, an imbalance I can’t rectify with a snack. That mango sorbet, though, felt amazing on my inflamed throat. Maybe a second dose is in order…?

New horary article in The Mountain Astrologer

The December/January issue of The Mountain Astrologer includes my latest article, “The Horary 5th House: Of Pregnancy Past, Present, and Future.” I’ve used three horary charts to illustrate how to answer 5th house questions such as, “What sex is my baby?”, “Will we start a family soon?”, and “Am I the father?”

I’m very grateful to the querents and others who permitted me to use their stories in this article. And it’s a treat to appear alongside some very luminous astrological writers.

Please support The Mountain Astrologer – it’s really the only print publication of its kind. Subscribers can expect the magazine in their mailboxes in the next couple of weeks; then I believe it hits newsstands in December. Let me know how you like the article!

A little advice… on a Shoestring

If you haven’t seen Shoestring Magazine yet, come have a look. This just-launched online mag offers tips & tricks for living the good life for less (perfect timing in this economy). I’ve contributed a little old-school astrology in my advice column, “Moonlighting.” Let me know what you think!

Practicing astrology: Saying what’s difficult to say

Some horary questions you receive, you read, and you just know they won’t come with happy answers. In my in-box yesterday, I found a complex situation from a woman hoping her love will be requited one day. I’m working on the answer to her – but first I baked some sugar cookies, made a long-overdue doctor’s appointment, and called four gutter cleaning services to request estimates. (Amazing what I can get done when I’m avoiding doing something else.)

Somewhere in either The Real Astrology or The Horary Textbook, John Frawley says something to the effect that horary astrology is about the universe dumping an icy bucket of water over your hopes and dreams. Not that that’s its entire point, of course. The entire point is more about connecting us with the wonder of this marvelously intricate and endlessly beautiful cosmic system. But in its day-to-day expression, and to a client who just needs an answer so she can either sleep better or kick the bum out or both, horary astrology’s knack for showing the truth and nothing but the truth can seriously disappoint the querent hoping the universe might somehow shift in her favor and bring her prince to his knees before her. It can be harder to admire the glory of the cosmos through that icy waterfall of reality.

So I’m working on that answer, but I’m trying to see it her way. I’m second-guessing my plain words and wondering if I should tone them down, leave more room for hope. Do I break it to her gently? Do I simply “answer the question and then stop”? I’ll go back to it soon.

***

Meanwhile, an interesting quotation from The Discarded Image by C.S. Lewis, in which he is discussing astronomy as explained by a 4th century writer/translator called Chalcidius:

[Chalcidius] also holds that ‘the diverse and multiple motion of the planets is the real source (auctoritatem dedit) of all the effects that now come to pass.’ All that is suffered (cunctae passiones) in this mutable world below the Moon has its origin from them. But he is careful to add that such influence upon us is not in any sense the purpose for which they exist. It is a mere by-product. They run the course appropriate to their beatitude, and our contingent affairs imitate that felicity in such halting fashion as they can.