Poem: Bob Dylan in a Rear View Mirror, or My Progressed Uranus Finally Goes Retrograde

I saw Bob Dylan on VH1 last night,
Gemini hands
fluttering about his mouth.

A long time ago,
in what seemed my last year of youth
I lingered at a party,
listening to “Like a Rolling Stone”
and then sailed for Southampton,
6000 miles from home,
seeking the shelter of Mars and Neptune:
the muffled clang
within a forge in the fog—
a misty nimbus around each spark.

(How did he see
what we could barely
glimpse, a future
with no prophet,
least of all himself,
merely a skilled
and borderless Mercury)?

Once, when Uranus floated like a beach ball
past my Neptune,
I painted a sun on my wall—
it was always rising, just above
the level of the window sill;

staring into its yellow acrylic corona,
listening through headphones to “Love Minus Zero,”
I was only 20 and thought the future
would never get here.

It seemed to be always receding,
a highway 61 shimmering
in my rear view mirror,

and out of the far backwards gaze:
heat waves from a poet
who once wrote songs
with Gemini fingers
trembling above the keys.

Mitt Romney's Horoscope--With a New Birth Time

Mitt Romney’s birth data has been posted on AstroDataBank.com. According to astrologer Frances McEvoy, quoting Romney, he was born at 9:51 AM. It’s rated A, meaning it is fairly reliable. I’ll post the horoscope soon on my website, but in the meantime, I've posted it with this blog (or you can click here to see it on AstroDataBank). If you’d asked me before I got into astrology (after which I obtained my birth certificate), I’d have told you a birth time I got from my mother which turned out to be wrong by 40 minutes—a big difference in a horoscope. But Mormons are very particular about birth records, so presumably Romney knows very well his own birth time. Up until now, we did not know Romney's Ascendant, Moon sign, Midheaven, or which houses his planets were in.

His rising sign is Gemini, which means that a retrograde Mercury in the 11th house is his chart ruler. The 11th house is about the larger world, society, and politics. With Mars and the Sun also in the 11th house (and Mercury at their midpoint), 11th house matters have figured prominently in Romney’s life, and he is the sun (oops, I mean the son) of a politician--former Michigan Governor George Romney, who also briefly ran for president in 1968.

Romney’s Scorpio Moon exactly conjoins his Jupiter, the closest aspect in his horoscope, near the cusp of the 7th house. That’s how he sees the waiting world as he looks out from his Ascendant: It’s a lucky world, expansive, his oyster. At least that’s how he sees it, and he’s got about 250 million dollars to make it come true.

More on the Election and the Feb. 6 Eclipse

I mentioned in a recent blog that the Feb. 6 eclipse at 17 degrees Aquarius could cause “party splits and defections” (thanks to Celeste Teal’s Eclipses for that quote about eclipses in air signs). So we might see the beginning of serious party splits and defections after super-primary day on February 5.

Two candidates who have been underdogs—GOP candidate Ron Paul and Democratic candidate Dennis Kucinich—are getting lots of notice, thanks to grass roots support and strong debate performances. Will either candidate manage to influence the November election? Paul or Kucinich--or both--could be a strong force as a third party candidate. The Feb. 6, 2008 eclipse will be hitting within half a degree of the midpoint of Kucinich’s Sun-Uranus trine (i.e. the eclipse will be sextiling both his Sun and Uranus at the same time), possibly energizing his iconoclastic (Sun-Uranus) candidacy.

Hillary Clinton will be strongly affected by the Feb. 6 solar eclipse. It will be hitting opposite the midpoint of her Mars-Pluto-Saturn conjunction. Will this help power her to the nomination? For a dead-on analysis of Hillary, see Maureen Dowd’s recent piece in the NY Times. It should have been titled, “What Can Happen when Someone with a Mercury-Saturn Square and a Mars-Pluto-Saturn Conjunction Seriously—Very Seriously—Runs for President?” Read the op-ed piece, then look at Hillary's horoscope. Then smile knowingly.

Rudy Giuliani’s Jupiter will be magnified by the Feb. 6 eclipse. His Saturn, by the way, sits right on his Midheaven, a perfect symbol of Giuliani’s global law and order political appeal—“America’s Mayor,” indeed.

As we are about to head into Pluto in Capricorn, I think it's interesting that the two leading candidates--Clinton and Giuliani--both have powerful Saturns.

Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, a Republican candidate who has been raising his profile while positioning himself as the real GOP conservative, will also have his Jupiter activated by the Feb. 6 solar eclipse.

The immigration issue, a proxy for cross-border terrorism and a myriad of other collective fears, has become powerful. Borders and boundaries (as well as fears) are ruled by Saturn, so the issue is very Pluto in Capricorn. It'll loom big in the general election--and beyond.

Tolstoy and the Saturn-Uranus-Opposition

Leo Tolstoy’s Saturn-Uranus opposition (an out-of-sign, or dissociate, aspect) was one of the closest major aspects in his horoscope. I thought this was interesting because we are about to experience a Saturn-Uranus opposition starting next year.

In Tolstoy's War and Peace, the old regime (Saturn in Leo) was breaking apart (Uranus moving from Capricorn into Aquarius): The Russian aristocracy was dancing on its own grave. Although the main historical event of the novel--Napoleon's invasion of Russia--took place well before the Saturn-Uranus opposition, Tolstoy was reflecting his own Saturn-Uranus opposition in the mirror of history.

The shattering (Uranus) of the old social order (Saturn) was a major theme in Tolstoy’s writing, echoing his own life and personal beliefs. Throughout his life, he broke society’s rules. In his youth, he flaunted social conventions, and— although he was born into the Russian aristocracy—Tolstoy sided with the Russian peasants, eventually opening several schools for them on his own land. As he grew older, he adopted the dress and simple living conditions of poor peasants, rebelling against the social order into which he was born.

In the U.S. in 1828, Andrew Jackson, a reform president—the “People’s President”—was elected during the same Saturn-Uranus opposition that was ongoing during Tolstoy’s birth. “Jacksonian democracy” is a phrase which has come to mean government of the common man (an Aquarian ideal).

Saturn also opposed Uranus in 1919-1920, when the old (pre-WWI) world was shattered, and the “new” 1920’s came into being. The mid-1960’s Saturn-Uranus opposition (which also included a Uranus-Pluto conjunction) was marked by the breaking apart of old cultural structures.

We are already experiencing another major change that will gather momentum with next year’s Saturn-Uranus opposition. It's palpable: I step outside my front door and the old world is breaking apart, the ground shifting beneath my feet. In 2010, the Saturn-Uranus opposition will move from mutable signs to 0 degrees of cardinal signs. When the dust settles (and I hope it's only figurative dust), our world will not be the same.

Notes on birth data: Tolstoy was born on September 9, 1828, in Tula, Russia, at 10:52 PM, a time and date considered DD—dirty data—in Lois Rodden’s book Astro-Data II. Astro-Data II also notes an August 28, 1828 birth date. The disparity in birth dates is probably due to different calendars being used. With either date, however, the Saturn-Uranus opposition was very tight. Of course, he had a number of other strong planetary influences in his horoscope, too.

Amazing Astrology Movie--in HD!

Astrologer Kelly Lee Phipps (who writes the Cosmic Weather blog) has made an astrology movie, Return of the Magi: A Documentary of Astrology, which will premiere at the UAC conference in Denver next year. The trailer is amazing. You can see it here.

Kelly Phipps has written that he had "a vision to create a documentary about authentic astrology on the order of What the Bleep and The Secret." After seeing the movie trailer, I can't wait to see the entire film!

Neil Young: A Scorpio Reborn

1974: I sat on a bean bag pillow in my small studio apartment in Redwood City, near San Francisco, listening to Neil Young’s album, On The Beach, a coda for the late 60’s, Vietnam, and Nixon. It foretold our own collective craziness. I played it again and again, over and over.

2006: A few months after our daughter left home for a college dorm, my wife and I rented the Neil Young concert documentary Heart of Gold. On the DVD, he introduced one of his new songs (from his Prairie Wind CD) by saying he’d written it for his daughter who’d just left for college, adding that maybe there should be a radio station for empty nesters. The song is called “Here for You”:

Just close your eyes and I'll be there
Listen to the sound
Of this old heart beating for you
Yes I'd miss you
But I never want to hold you down

You might say I'm here for you.

My wife and I sat there on the couch with tears streaming down our cheeks.

November 2, 2007: We attended Neil Young’s concert at the new Nokia Theater in downtown Los Angeles. He’s a 62-year old Scorpio who recently survived a life-threatening brain aneurysm, and several songs off his new CD (“Spirit Road,” “The Way”) reflect a new-found spirituality. He played several songs from this new CD, Chrome Dreams II, which is being hailed as one of his finest recordings in decades. The first half of his show was a solo acoustic set, followed by a second half with his band.

Early in his opening acoustic set, he played “Ambulance Blues,” one of my favorite songs from 1974's On the Beach:

An ambulance can only go so fast
It's easy to get buried in the past
When you try to make a good thing last.

Neil Young may have resurrected some old songs for this concert, but he is anything but buried in the past, trying to make a good thing last. With an exact trine of Pluto and an out-of-bounds Mercury, he has constantly transformed his musical expression.

His out-of-bounds Mercury has been apparent throughout his entire career, as he has constantly sought ways to communicate through different, highly original, and sometimes perversely non-conformist songs. He has played outside of the normal musical box. Uranus also opposes his Mercury, giving him added originality.

This concert of compositions by an out-of-bounds Mercury musician featured an amazing set of songs, only a handful of which were the Neil Young classics ("Heart of Gold," "Tonight's the Night") recognizable to most in the audience. In an indication of the deep respect this musical artist has inspired, the audience was quiet and raptly attentive during his acoustic set as he played a number of little-known, obscure musical gems. People were actually shushing each other (the acoustics in the Nokia Theater were so sensitive that a soft "Shhh" could be heard throughout the theater).

Neil Young has no planets in Earth signs, and his singing has always had an untethered, spacy quality.

His show was perversely old school. Maybe that has something to do with his lack of the Earth element as he pointedly reaches to ground himself in low-tech. I've seen so many music acts which, although excellent, are also a bit soulless due to their heavy reliance on computerized lighting and wireless technology. During Neil Young's concert, I actually saw a human being up in the lights above the stage, changing gels in a spotlight. A cord stretched from Young’s guitar back to a speaker—no cordless instruments on his stage. His opening act was his wife, Pegi (who did a very nice job in her own right). The stage set, intended to reflect a workshop or artist’s studio--a space where creativity happens--had a very funky, down-home quality. It was another original touch from a rock original.

The show highlight was a new song, “No Hidden Path,” which Neil Young spun out for a good 20 minutes of guitar thrusts, parries, jams, and blistering strokes. As the song concluded, the crowd rose to its feet and cheered.

He played for close to three hours. My wife commented, after the concert, on how much passion and energy he displayed. His Mars in Leo and Venus in Scorpio are exactly square and this emotional tension contributes to a release of high energy on stage through his music. He's also got a great deal of stamina: Neil Young has four planets in fixed signs, and his Scorpio Sun trines Saturn.

The photo is from Wikimedia Commons. It is in the public domain and was taken last year at a Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young concert in Canada.

Pluto in Capricorn at a Concert Theater

I attended a Neil Young concert at the brand new, gleaming, post-modern, purple neon-accented Nokia Theater, which opened last month in downtown Los Angeles. I’ll post an astrological concert review very soon, but was struck with a couple of Pluto in Capricorn observations about the venue:

It’s named after a cell phone company. One huge wall inside the theater lobby displayed different models of Nokia phones. It was like walking into a very large mobile phone store. Corporations are taking over the world. I know this is not exactly breaking news, but I was struck with how in-your-face it’s become.

The security was very tight. I’ve been to plenty of concerts, but nothing ever approached the security we experienced at this theater. To enter, everyone had to walk through brand new airport-style metal detectors, then submit to a pat-down, purse search (and did they ever search, emptying out all the contents), jacket search, backpack search…It was like the theater was being run by the government TSA. The employees working at the security entrances even had on TSA-style uniforms (although I am sure they must have been Nokia Theater uniforms). Mind you, we were all going inside to see the fanatical zealot who wrote “Harvest Moon” and “Sugar Mountain” (and, incidentally, recorded a recent song titled “Let’s Impeach the President”…hmmmm). You can call it security PR, political manipulation that still has everyone freaked out, or a necessary reality of our 21st Century world, but one thing’s for sure:

The times they have changed. The world of Pluto in Capricorn is going to be different.