Pluto square Eris

The astrology of Alec Baldwin’s shooting accident

Embed from Getty Images

The shocking shooting accident on the set of the film “Rust” last week coincided with a difficult week astrologically.  The Moon was just full in Aries, in a challenging alignment with both Mars, planet of violence and aggression, and Pluto, planet of death and rebirth. Any Mars/Pluto combination is fraught with potential for violence, and while I would never say that this alignment caused the accident, its coincidental timing must be noted.

As if that weren’t enough, the new planet Eris was opposed by Mars and squared by Pluto at the Full Moon. You can read more about that here, but with Eris representing discord and small events that unravel into major upheaval, such as the story of the goddess Eris whose rage at not being invited to a wedding led to the Trojan War, we can see how this is no small thing.

Mr. Baldwin was born with the Sun in Aries, and it opposes his Libra Moon.  We don’t have a time of birth which would give us the exact position of the Moon, but we do know that it is in an opposition to the Sun: a Full Moon.  In addition, the Sun and Moon were within fifteen degrees of the lunar nodes, a condition which creates an eclipse (in this case, it was a penumbral lunar eclipse).  Full Moon personalities tend to be larger than life, and when the Full Moon was also a lunar eclipse, those personalities tend to catalyze a fair amount of drama. (Another familiar personality born under an eclipse is Donald J. Trump.)

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Mr. Baldwin also has an opposition from Mars to Uranus, the planet of radical action and liberation, which is not […]

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By |2021-10-29T15:00:38-04:00October 29th, 2021|People|0 Comments
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Pluto square Eris update and a look into the future

art by Emily Balivet

Today (August 27, 2021) is the third exact 90 degree aspect (square) between Pluto, planet of creative destruction, and the new planet Eris, planet of discord.  In Rome Eris was called Discordia – she is the goddess who, when not invited to a wedding, began the Trojan War by throwing a golden apple marked “for the fairest” into a circle of goddesses, beginning a dispute that threw Greece into turmoil for ten years.  (Read more about the mythology of Eris here.)  In my research, the influence of the planet Eris appears to coincide with small, seemingly minor, events which create great chaos and disrupt the status quo.

This cycle of the Pluto/Eris square began in January of 2020, and is affecting the US chart rather intensely.  I don’t have to remind you how crazy the election process was in 2020, and how that craziness has continued into 2021.   The second phase of the exact alignment occurred in June 2020 along with all of the other intense planetary energies: a stellium in Capricorn that lasted for weeks, all planets retrograde, etc.   For much of the summer of 2020 the stellium in Capricorn (including Saturn, Pluto and Mars) formed a square to Eris as well.  Talk about discord!  The symbolism of Eris as the goddess who became angry when she didn’t receive a wedding invitation and retaliated by starting the Trojan War is eerily reflected in the events occurring in US politics over the past few years, as well as other events around the globe including the takeover of Afghanistan after 20 years of American efforts.

The Covid-19 virus itself seems to embody the discordant nature […]

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By |2021-08-27T18:22:21-04:00August 27th, 2021|Planetary cycles|5 Comments
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The astrology of 2021: A new way forward

Table of Contents

A quick look back to 2020

I believe that the only way we can understand the future is to understand how we arrived at the present, and for this we need to look back.  Pluto, the planet of destruction and regeneration, has been in the earthy sign of Capricorn since 2008 when it began compressing power structures around the world, concentrating wealth in the hands of the few, and building the top/down kind of societal construction for which Capricorn is famed.  Capricorn teaches mastery of the material world and has little patience with frivolity or illusions, and we have all had to come to terms with a more practical approach to the way we live, especially when Saturn entered Capricorn in December of 2018.  Saturn and Pluto came within a few degrees of a conjunction in the spring and summer of 2019 and the compression that would later become 2020 began.

Jupiter joined Saturn and Pluto in Capricorn in December of 2019, and Saturn and Pluto aligned in a conjunction on January 10, 2020. This coincided with a station of Uranus (shock and surprise) as well as a lunar eclipse in Cancer that triggered the Saturn/Pluto conjunction.  In December 2019 I cautioned about the period between January 8th to the 16th as being a potential danger point.  It was at this time that the spread of COVID-19 became evident.  […]

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By |2021-01-01T11:04:46-05:00December 29th, 2020|Planetary cycles|10 Comments
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Second New Moon in Cancer featuring the Comet Neowise

photo from Nunzio Micale, via David Crook

On July 20th we have a New Moon in Cancer, the second concurrent Cancerian New Moon.  This is fairly unusual and can only happen when the first New Moon is at the very early degrees of a sign, with the second coming 28 degrees later.  The New Moon is the beginning of a new lunar cycle, and typically the New Moon progresses through the signs each year along with the Sun so we tend to go from Aries at or after the Vernal Equinox through the zodiac, with each sign building on the sign before.  For example, at the Aries New Moon we learn the art of initiating an adventure, but then in Taurus we learn to find comfort in stability.

The New Moon in Cancer offers an opportunity to connect more deeply to our inner self – our physical home and the place within where we feel at home.  Cancer is ruled by the Moon – the emotional heart; the softness and vulnerability of the inner child. Cancer is associated with the family and our ancestral lineage as well as history in general.  Our histories define our early lives, especially in childhood, and then over time we learn to find a way to extend ourselves into the outer world under the auspices of Cancer’s opposite sign Capricorn.

The New Moon at the Summer Solstice marked a new significant beginning – it was a solar eclipse at the zero point of Cancer, conjunct the Solstice Sun.  This week’s New Moon (conjunction of the Sun and Moon) is at 28 degrees of Cancer, exactly opposite Saturn (tests and challenges) which is currently retrograde in Capricorn, and more widely opposite […]

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By |2020-07-18T08:33:26-04:00July 18th, 2020|Moon|0 Comments
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Thoughts on Pluto square Eris, January 2020 – October 2021

Eris is a small planet which was discovered in 2003.  Her Roman name was Discordia – she is the goddess who, when not invited to a wedding, began the Trojan War by throwing a golden apple marked “for the fairest” into a circle of goddesses, beginning a dispute that threw Greece into turmoil for ten years.  (Read more about the mythology of Eris here.)  Eris moves very slowly – its orbital cycle is 560 years which is more than twice as long as Pluto’s orbit – so its influence appears to coincide with small, seemingly minor, events which create great chaos and disrupt the status quo.

The symbolism of Eris as the goddess who became angry when she didn’t receive a wedding invitation and retaliated by starting the Trojan War was eerily reflected in the fact that the discovery of Eris correlated to the time when a hanging chad changed the fate of US history and ushered in 20 years of war.  You can see that she’s a wild character under which seemingly random incidents change the course of history.

Uranus in Aries conjoined Eris between 2015 and 2017, and I wrote about that here before Trump was elected.  Uranus and Eris are both disruptors, but where Uranus seeks to disrupt our lives where we have become stuck, Eris seems to disrupt just for the sake of shaking things up to see where everything will land afterwards.  At the time I wrote:

Under this influence (until early 2017), the very fabric of our lives is being shaken and stirred and it will be ever more necessary to find ways to adapt.  The world is changing – we are at […]

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