About April Elliott Kent

April Elliott Kent is the author of The Essential Guide to Practical Astrology (Alpha/Penguin) and Star Guide to Weddings (Llewellyn). She has contributed articles to The Mountain Astrologer and Dell Horoscope magazines and Llewellyn's Moon Sign and Sun Sign annuals. April is a graduate of San Diego State University with honors in Communication, and is a member of ISAR and the Authors Guild. Read more of April's articles at BigSkyAstrology.com

Jun192013

Capricorn Full Moon: The Business of Taking Care

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Astrologers are in a strange business — and so are therapists, doctors, and nannies. By nature, we’re caretakers, healers, and helpers, not moguls. In another age, we’d have been retained by the king or by wealthy patrons and wouldn’t have needed to charge for our services. But the modern day astrologer has got overhead to meet and no benefactor to write hefty monthly checks for electric bills and for (scarily high, ever more Everest-ian) health insurance premiums.

So, I charge for my astrology services. It took a long time for me to make peace with the business side – the Capricorn side – of my gig as a freelance spiritual caretaker. Wasn’t it somehow immoral to take money from people who were suffering, or in need? Was I cruel and uncaring for demanding payment in advance, or for becoming annoyed when people didn’t pay what they owed me, or when they expected me to answer questions for free?

Paying Homage to Capricorn

When I began practicing astrology professionally, I had no experience being in business for myself. Aside from the occasional paid singing, housecleaning, or typing gig that passed crisp cash across my palm, my working years had been spent in sterile office jobs where my paychecks were deposited directly into my bank account. I went into business with almost no experience negotiating prices, payment schedules, or terms of service.

Between my inexperience with business and my existential guilt about being paid for helping people, my first few years in professional practice were a disaster. I felt like a little girl, playing store; uncomfortable taking people’s money and too insecure to charge enough for my work or to draft reasonable terms.

Eventually, through trial and error, I figured out how to handle the financial side of my work with clear boundaries and expectations. With my heart in my throat each time, I gradually raised my consultation rates until they were in keeping with what my colleagues were charging and my experience merited. The Internet age simplified the process even more; thanks to Pay Pal, I’m even back to receiving payments by discreet automatic deposits directly into my bank account!

Looking back, I see this process as a Capricorn rite of passage. In learning to charge a decent wage for my work, I learned to value my training and efforts. In setting boundaries around payment and scheduling matters, I eliminated those considerations as a potential barrier between my clients and me. Now, I never feel anxious or resentful about payments that haven’t been received, or clients who don’t show up. Having paid homage to the Capricorn side of my business, I’m able to relax and be completely available to my clients on a nurturing, Cancer level.

In a perfect world, money wouldn’t be necessary, and neither would limits or boundaries. The whole village would look after the children, and nannies would be joyfully unnecessary. We’d all be one big, loving Cancerian family. But it ain’t a perfect world. Our doors have locks, our ATMs have secret codes, and parents have to make a living, even if some would be happier at home with the kids. Luckily, Capricorn stands off to one side in dignified pinstripes, poised and at the ready to install locks, reset passwords, and interview nannies to find the most qualified candidate.

Capricorn fences make Cancerian Neighbors

Like neighbors whose picket fence strikes a happy compromise between privacy and sociability, we all feel safer and more relaxed when we know where the boundaries are. Capricorn is a master surveyor, with a keen eye for fairness and a strong back for building a good fence. At this Full Moon in his sign, consider where you might benefit from enlisting his services. Are unchecked emotions and flimsy boundaries interfering with your ability to form good relationships with others? Are you giving too much energy to caretaking, leaving you feeling exhausted and resentful? And remember, good fences benefit both sets of neighbors: Are you disrespecting other people’s boundaries by smothering them with more nurturing than they need or want?

To function as truly caring and nurturing people, we need to respect limits – both our own, and those of the people we hope to care for. So at this Full Moon, hand over the business of setting boundaries and building fences to the Capricorn side of your nature. And within his wise and sturdy limits you’ll find yourself energized, free to devote yourself fully to the Cancer business of taking care.

May222013

Sagittarius Lunar Eclipse: I’m a Stranger Here Myself

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You can’t go back home to your family, back home to your childhood … back home to a young man’s dreams of glory and of fame … back home to places in the country, back home to the old forms and systems of things which once seemed everlasting but which are changing all the time – back home to the escapes of Time and Memory. – Thomas Wolfe

This week’s Full Moon/Lunar Eclipse is in Sagittarius, the sign of the traveler, the wandering stranger, and appropriately enough I’m writing this from a motel room far from my home. Or rather, far from my present home; the place where I’m staying is, in fact, just a few miles from the hospital where I was born.

I think of this place a lot, but I haven’t visited here since 1988. So it’s one of those places, you know? – it feels familiar, except it doesn’t. It’s gotten to the point where I feel more nostalgic visiting Los Angeles, the place we moved to, than I do here in the place that we left. The feeling of visiting here has been less sentimental than odd – like being transplanted into, say, the setting of your favorite fictional television series. You recognize some landmark or other and you stop and exclaim, “Oh, it’s that place!” But it seems out of context somehow. You remembered it a bit differently, that this was farther from something else or the scale of it was different or … well, you get the idea.

It’s odd.

I’m a stranger here, now. Our rental car has license plates from a different state, far enough away to elicit curious stares. I left here before I knew how to drive, and I have to use a GPS to find my way around. I meet cousins, people I spent a lot of time with as a kid, and I have to be introduced to them.

It’s been the same story, more or less, since we left home more than a week ago. We spent nearly a week in New Orleans, a city that seems vaguely familiar, even if you’ve never been there, because you’ve seen it in countless movies and television shows. And yet you get there and it has a slightly different shape than you’d expected. Some things are brighter, and some are much darker. The food, the people, the colors… it’s all as wonderful as you’d hoped, but not at all as you’d imagined it. It’s like walking into your house to find that someone has come in and moved all the furniture around by about three inches; everything’s a little bit off.

I was in New Orleans to attend an astrology conference. (Note: I wrote this in 2012, just after the UAC conference.) It’s a big deal, this conference, and it happens only once every four years. I imagine for a place like Denver or Orlando, previous hosting cities, having hundreds of astrologers descend on you at once might be kind of disconcerting. But New Orleans, being New Orleans, didn’t bat an eyelash. Many of us were strangers to New Orleans, but familiar strangers, the weird meeting the weird.

I met a few of my colleagues there, people I’ve known from my rich little online world, but not as many as I might have. I’m adrift in groups, I’m afraid, and usually hide from them as much as possible. I presented a lecture, and while it was stressful preparing for it the experience itself was the easiest part of the whole conference, one of the few moments when I felt comfortable, like I knew who I was and what I was there for.

Some of us are meant to be outsiders, I think. An eclipse in Sagittarius evokes the Stranger, the wanderer within you, who was fated to leave the people to whom she belonged in order to have strange new experiences far from home. Sagittarius is usually presented as such a happy, positive sign, but being a stranger is not always a great feeling. To make the whole world your home, you might have to let loose of the specific places and situations that give you a sense of belonging.

My Sagittarius eclipse experience has let me be a stranger in the strange land of New Orleans, but also led me to the more disorienting experience of being a stranger in situations that should feel familiar. Oh, there have been moments of connection all along the way. It’s just that for most of the trip, I’ve felt the way I feel here in my home town: like a stranger, like I should feel a sense of belonging that in all honesty I don’t feel.

Today, I took a drive with my sister, my brother, and our spouses down into the deep heart of the country farmland where we lived as children. It’s the first time we were all together there in probably forty years. Lots of things have changed. Houses we’d known had burned or been torn down. Roads were diverted, and we had to find detours. The old general store has been boarded up for decades and is in a state of picturesque decay. Many of our relatives are in the old cemetery just outside of town. Downtown is decrepit, and the three of us don’t look so hot anymore, either.

Standing outside the house where we grew up, we contemplated the changes… the missing barn and outhouses, some trees that were gone. It felt as unfamiliar as New Orleans had felt. I looked down and my eyes rested on a piece of pavement, an old, old piece of the path that leads from the safety of our old porch to the road that winds up through the ridge and out of town. I could remember walking that path in bare, calloused feet, as clearly as though I’d done it just the day before. The wind rustled a familiar song through the trees that my grandfather planted decades before I was born. My brother and sister and husband stood just a few feet away, next to a car with out-of-state plates, waiting for me. And for a moment, I wasn’t a stranger there. I knew who I was. I knew what I was there for.

I was there to say goodbye.

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May72013

Solar Eclipses and Lunar Intuition

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During a solar eclipse, the Moon passes between the Sun and the Earth and temporarily blocks our view of the Sun. The Sun is furiously pumping away, emanating warmth and symbolizing spiritual and creative power to beat the band. Then along comes the Moon, who instead of reflecting the Sun’s light back to Earth, jealously hoards it all for herself. At the solar eclipse, intuition (the Moon), wordless and irrational, overpowers your creative center and power (the Sun). The result is a bit like a short-circuit of your internal wiring.

Here in Southern California, we have a weather phenomenon called the Santa Ana winds, hot, prickly, dry winds that blow down off of the desert. The Santa Anas are especially prevalent during the autumn months, but happen at other times throughout the year, suddenly turning cold winter weather into false summer overnight – static, tense, surreal. When I lived in LA there was a similar feeling in the air before and after any good-sized earthquake, and as kids we often made a connection between the two, calling the Santa Anas “earthquake weather.” Both made us feel a little queasy, off-center, and itchy.

A solar eclipse affects our emotional weather in a similar way. During an eclipse, the fundamental laws of the universe no longer apply. The Sun browns out, like a faulty wire that dims your kitchen light when you turn on the garbage disposal. Birds grow quiet. The world is shrouded in an apprehensive silence that you can almost hear.

In my observation, a week either side of a solar eclipse has us tiptoeing nervously through the graveyard, whistling a tune to keep the bogey man away. Solar eclipses seem much more physically affecting than lunar ones, more unnerving, and the past themes they evoke – themes from nine, eighteen years ago – are anything but subtle. The terrible accident. The death in the family. The ill-fated journey. The terrifying illness. Or more joyfully, the wedding, the birth of the first grandchild. They are big events, and evoke the feeling that something big is changing in the landscape of your life.

At the solar eclipse, something is trying to get your attention – like the Moon, rising up in front of the Sun as if to say, “Just hold it a second – you’re missing something!” People from the past or the present appear on the scene to behave in inexplicable ways. The person you used to be, the one you thought you’d outgrown, is trotted out in front of you as a reminder that you really haven’t changed all that much; you’re still the same old mess you were, back when you had the bad relationship, when you flunked out of school, when you best friend told you to get lost.

At this Solar Eclipse in Taurus, the earthy part of you may feel a little cold, compacted. Take a time-out; sit at the knee of the wise Moon and let her reflect the Sun in you. Is there a wildish ego that’s running around unchecked? What is the part of you that you’re trying to disown? Let the Moon guide you, like a wise mother, toward self-acceptance and humility.

Where will this Solar Eclipse impact your chart? Order my Followed by a Moonshadow eclipse report!

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Apr222013

Scorpio Full Moon/Lunar Eclipse: Snake in the Grass, Dragon in the Heart

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My mom, a robustly optimistic Sun in Taurus person, was fond of saying that it’s the bad times in life that make us appreciate the good ones. That’s a fine theory; but a certain amount of Moon/Pluto, Neptune in Scorpio skepticism persuaded me early on that bad times can, in fact, taint the good ones – by making us distrustful, jaded, and regretful.

Consider Adam and Eve.

They are naked and happy in the Garden of Eden. All is beautiful and serene. Laissez les bon temps roulez!

Enter a serpent – a nasty snake in the grass – that tempts them with forbidden fruit. Adam and Eve succumb to temptation, leading to their expulsion from the Garden, awareness of their nakedness, and introducing humanity to the concepts of sin and death (and inevitably, “Project Runway”).

Relatively speaking, the rest of their lives were probably something of a let-down.

Who is your serpent?

We’re born Adam or Eve, naked and usually pretty happy, I imagine, though my memory of the event is sketchy. There is that unpleasant business of getting through the birth canal, but quickly enough you’re snuggled up to some soft, friendly person and given something to drink. You’re in Eden.

And, being Eden, life will introduce you at some point to a snake in the grass. Something that tempts you with a luscious and forbidden treasure. Something that leads you to realize you’re naked, possibly sinful, and that the garden of beauty and love and innocence that you’ve called home is lost to you forever.

For young women, this serpent often takes the form of a young man who is charming, crafty, and clever. He knows just how to lead you into temptation and engineer your downfall.

For instance, according to evolutionary biologist and Harvard professor Steven Pinker,

“The most desirable man of all, in many woman’s eyes, is ‘tough-tender’ – nice to her, aggressive with everyone else.”

It’s a pretty irresistible apple when a good-looking, venomous serpent shows you his sweet side. You feel incredibly special. You will do anything to ensure a steady supply of these apples!

Before you know what hit you, your family is threatening to disinherit you, your friends won’t return your calls, and there are fang marks all over your body.

That’s a nasty serpent. Some of us are still pretty young when he arrives on the scene and leaves with our innocence.

There are nastier serpents, though, and sometimes they arrive when we’re even younger. Serpents who tempt us, boys and girls alike, with toys or candy or games, and then handle us in a way that makes us feel dirty. Serpents who rustle through the grass, hardly detectable until they suddenly leap from a bush and bite you.

And the next thing you know, you’ve been expelled from the Garden. The world isn’t so pretty or benign anymore, not so safe or secure. Your eyes have been opened to your nakedness and vulnerability. You’ve been tricked and made to feel foolish. You’ve been told your natural state is an abomination, and told it in such a convincing way that you kind of believe it.

Lunar Eclipse in Scorpio: A serpent in your garden

This Full Moon is a lunar eclipse in Scorpio. And while there is nothing intrinsically evil or unreliable about the Scorpion, it is the sign of secrets, temptations, and mysteries – and those are the things that our serpents like to use to ensnare us.

So this is an eclipse that tends to present you with either a choice to eat forbidden fruit, or the consequences of having already eaten it. Sleeping with the married lover, or realizing the lover you’ve slept with is married. Lying to a friend about something that really matters, or perhaps discovering such a lie.

There is an opportunity in this eclipse, though, that’s characteristic of eclipses in general and Scorpio eclipses in particular. It’s the opportunity to transform yourself into something even more formidable than a crafty serpent: a fire-breathing dragon. Dragons are wise, magical, and supernaturally adept. And here’s the good part: legend has it that they taught humans how to speak.

Scorpio’s greatest gifts are the ability to perceive what others can’t see, and the bravery to speak out about it. Scorpio energy in its lowest expression is a cunning snake in the grass, but Scorpio energy in its highest expression is a dragon.

Lunar eclipses fell near this degree in April 1986 and April 2005. You met the serpent then; possibly, it helped engineer a fall from grace, your expulsion from the Garden.

Did you show that serpent how a dragon behaves when threatened? Did you shout and hiss and drive it out? Did you breathe fire and call the National Enquirer to blow the whistle on that serpent’s ass? (Note to self for further research: Do serpents have asses?)

Well, here’s your chance. Because there is a snake rustling through the grasses of your garden. Something that wishes you ill, that wants you to fail, or just some free-floating spirit of malevolence that takes an impersonal delight in seeing a good person brought low.

The work of this lunar eclipse is to stare that serpent down. To summon every unshakable, sensible, life-affirming impulse you possess. To call on that dragon you carry around, just behind your breastbone – the one that breathes fire, straight from your heart.

How will the upcoming eclipses affect you? Order my exclusive eclipse report, Followed by a Moonshadow!

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Mar242013

Libra Full Moon: Befriending the Enemy

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Astrologers are fond of observing that a Libra is nothing more than an Aries who’s been to charm school. Libra is every bit as determined as his fellow cardinal signs (Aries, Cancer, and Capricorn) to get what he wants. But unlike those signs, Libra has the ability to make it look as though serving his own needs is the furthest thing from his mind.

That isn’t meant as a criticism, by the way. I admire the strategy. My mother was born with Libra rising, and she had the iron fist in the velvet glove routine down pat. For years, I watched her put this skill to use securing contributions for fundraising events on behalf of her favorite charity. She overcame any resistance with sunny charm, pretending not to notice reluctance or impatience coming from the other end of the telephone, and refusing to be intimidated. By pretending that others wanted to be helpful, she persuaded them to be so. In the end, she always got what she was after – and nearly always, earned another fan in the process.

With this Libra Full Moon facing off against a Mongol horde of planets (the Sun, Venus, Mars, and Uranus) in ferocious Aries – and all of them square unyielding Pluto in Capricorn – conflict resolution is the order of the day. I’ve been thinking about the best way to deal with people who make me angry, as well as those whose interests are diametrically opposed to my own. One hesitates to call them “enemies;” it sounds so dramatic. But let’s face it, that’s what an enemy is: one whose interests conflict with yours.

As mom was fond of saying, “You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.” And as every Libran knows, there’s more than one way to defeat an opponent. The 15th century Roman Emperor Sigismund was admonished by his Prime Minister when instead of destroying his captured enemies, he brought them into his court. It’s said that he replied, “Do I not most effectually destroy my enemies, in making them my friends?” It’s a quotation often attributed to Abraham Lincoln, and though I couldn’t find a source for it, it does sound like the kind of thing he would have said, famous as he was for forging unlikely political alliances.

But when I think about befriending people whose opinions, lifestyles, or politics are abhorrent to me, some flinty part of me digs in its heels and refuses to give in, loathe to give the impression of surrender. Why do most of us find it so difficult to befriend our enemies – and why is that those with Libra prominent in their birth charts often succeed where we fail?

In traditional astrology, Libra is said to be the sign of the Sun’s “fall” – meaning, it’s one of the signs in which the Sun’s innate qualities of pride and ego are least able to express themselves. Unlike prideful Leo (the sign of the Sun’s rulership) and headstrong, impulsive Aries (sign of the Sun’s exaltation), Libra has the ability to strategically suppress his ego in order to get what he wants.

With lots of impatient Aries planets on a collision course with Pluto, the potential for animosity and frustration over the next couple of weeks is enormous. It’s the kind of celestial atmosphere that suggests full-scale emotional meltdown. Picture four planets in Aries, like frustrated toddlers, falling down on their fannies, kicking their feet in the air, and screaming until they turn purple.

How to soothe four irate toddlers at once – or even one screaming customer, road-rageous fellow motorist, or internet flamethrower? By first making a friend of the enemy inside you – the stubborn, prideful, impulsive, and ego-driven part of you that stands in opposition to your best interests. Befriend that part of yourself, and you’ll have transformed your worst enemy into a strong, passionate ally. Once you’re fully at peace with yourself, you can respond to the rage, frustration, and stubbornness of others with kindness, even charm—fully expecting them to behave better, to be better. Not everyone will rise to meet your expectations —but at least you’ll have the satisfaction of knowing that you did.

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Feb202013

Virgo Full Moon: Practical Magic

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For awhile several years ago, we were visited twice each month by a marvelous woman who cleaned our house. The place felt terrific after Angela had been here – not just clean, but calm. Centered. It was as though the place had been Rolfed, instead of merely mopped and dusted.

Angela came to us through our elderly neighbor, Mildred. One day, after she had been coming to our house for about a month, I thanked Mildred again for the referral and remarked how wonderful and peaceful our place felt when Angela was finished with her work. Mildred nodded, sagely. “Oh, she’s a very spiritual person,” she said.

Yes, I thought, that’s exactly right. Angela was devoutly religious, but she never spoke of it. Rather, her spirituality was something that came through in the way she approached her work with a spirit of care and gentleness, and something else I can only call magic. Hers was the practical, everyday magic of smoothing the wrinkles from the linens, making the woodwork gleam, and leaving the floors shiny – but with an extra dash of cheerful calm that transformed this simple work into something more.

This ability to settle and soothe the discord of daily life is the practical magic of Virgo. Ordinarily when I think of magic, it’s the heady style of Scorpio that springs to mind, a fragrant and thrilling pastiche of pentacles, black velvet, and patchouli. As for spirituality, that adjective has always belonged, in my mind, to my Pisces friends, warm and sweet-natured, unfailingly compassionate, and full of concern and good works for a wide range of social causes.

But most of us are not full-time priestesses or everyday saints. We’re just people with jobs, carpools, and colicky pets. We may wish for more time – and tranquility – to spend in meditation, but as Dana once pointed out, it’s Virgo and the sixth house that represent the everyday world where we spend most of our time. Do we feel well? Do we have work to do? Is there bread for tomorrow’s breakfast? Traffic snarls, paying the bills, balancing the checkbook, washing the dishes: this is the Virgo stuff our days tend to be made of.

Going to worship services and participating in other formalized rituals can be beautiful, meaningful. These are moments when we get to step outside of our routines and examine our spiritual progress with an objective eye, unencumbered by the distractions of regular life. But for most of us, formal ritual has to be carved out of days that are already bulging at the seams. When we leave our formalized ritual spaces, we need a method of pursuing our lofty spiritual goals in the real world, ideally one that capitalizes on the fifteen waking hours each day that most of us spend just taking care of business. Enter Virgo, who asks, what if each part of your day, tasks great and small, could be a catalyst for your spiritual growth?

At this Virgo Full Moon, pledge yourself to a renewed spirit of practical magic - of reorganizing your daily routine so that it is supports your spiritual objectives, and resetting your mental routine so that it instinctively seeks spiritual opportunity in chores and details. Clean out your drawers, your filing cabinet, your heart; sew buttons, darn socks, mend relationships; donate, volunteer, and pledge yourself to causes that are important to you. Candles, herbs, incense, and gemstones are fine tools for accessing our higher selves, but so are brooms, mops, and dustpans.

I’ll share a funny story that, although it happened at the Leo Full Moon, describes the spirit of the Virgo Full Moon much better. Determined to rid our home of stagnancy and tension, I threw myself into performing a ritual from the wonderful book The Magical Household, by Scott Cunningham and David Harrington. “Peel nine lemons,” it read, “then soak the peels in a bowl of water.” Then my eyes skipped ahead to a passage about using the water to clean the floors, the windows, and the doorknobs of the house.

Determined, I set to work. I picked nine juicy lemons off the tree in our back yard, carefully peeled them, and made my lemon water. Three hours later, I had cleaned the house pillar to post, even rubbing the wood floors with a rag misted with the lemon water. Exhausted, I slumped into an easy chair to admire my work. I picked up The Magical Household, still laid open to the page with the ritual, and read it again. Halfway through I stopped, did a double-take, and laughed out loud. It seems I had overlooked one crucial passage: “Next, still visualizing, scrub the floors, doorknobs, and windows with the lemon water.”

Oh, well. The house needed a good cleaning anyway. And after my labors, it gleamed, bright and clean – the cleanest it had been, probably, since Angela’s last visit. I sat for awhile and enjoyed the peaceful, mind-emptying contentment that follows happy physical labor, watching as the light slowly changed and a peaceful dusk settled on shiny floors and glinted through sparkling windows. Thanks to a little practical magic and a lot of elbow grease, the house felt peaceful and relaxed for the first time in a long time. And for a moment, at least, I felt like a very spiritual person.

Painting by Claudia Fernety. See more of Claudia’s work at her website.

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Jan242013

Leo Full Moon: I’ll Follow the Sun

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The Full Moon in warm, open-hearted, playful Leo stands in kittenish contrast to the Sun in Aquarius’ more impersonal brand of friendliness. Ruled by the Sun, Leo seems custom-made to shine brightly and joyfully.

But while I was born with the Sun in this extravagant sign, I’m something of a failed Leo. My mother used to tell me that I started out as the sunniest, happiest child she’d ever seen. Perhaps it’s true. Certainly I’ve seen pictures of myself as a little girl, looking incandescently cheerful.

The thing is, I don’t remember ever feeling as happy as I looked. In every one of my earliest memories, I am shy, irritable, and moody. Throughout school, my musical and secretarial careers, and even becoming an astrologer, I can remember moments of satisfaction – but full-on, unbridled happiness?

Not much. Mostly, it’s been a matter of gauging where things stood in relation to my life’s “to do” list, and feeling either self-flagellating disgust or the satisfaction of checking another goal off the list.

But I’ve reached the age now when a woman begins to long for change, and to wish to some extent that she could live her life over, or at least do things a bit differently going forward. And so, having exhausted all that moodiness and dissatisfaction have to offer, it’s time for me to give happiness a try. And to seek happiness, I’ve decided – like any good Leo – to follow the Sun.

FOLLOWING THE SUN

Once we’ve made it past Saturn’s first return at age 28 or 29, we’ve usually learned that happiness is something more than simply being in a good mood. It’s about living in integrity, keeping perspective, and making an effort to be our best selves. And while astrologically you could make the argument that it’s all pieces of the birth chart working together in harmony and balance that results in happiness, there is a lot to be said for focusing on a single symbol: the Sun. The Sun symbolizes the unchanging core of who you are, the nucleus around which all of your other qualities revolve.

It’s easy to trivialize the Sun’s transiting cycle because it moves so quickly. Whereas guys like Neptune or Pluto take a house of your chart hostage for decades, the Sun moves along at a fast clip, covering an entire zodiac sign and probably about one house of your birth chart in a single month. Nevertheless, he makes his presence felt.

The Sun moving through the houses of your chart is like The Man Who Came to Dinner. In the George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart play, an overbearing radio celebrity comes to dinner at the home of a prominent businessman, slips on the ice outside their house, and moves in for the duration. In very short order he comes to dominate the entire household.

The Sun can be sort of an overbearing celebrity himself, and when he enters a new house of your chart he has a way of making all your furniture seem a little shabby and your conversation a bit dull. At worst, he dominates part of your life with his ego, his demands, his tantrums, and his theatrics. But at best, he motivates you to bring your “A” game – to want a little more from life, to get a better haircut, to mind your posture. In short, to make your life a bit better – and potentially, a whole lot happier.

MY ASTROLOGICAL HAPPINESS PROJECT

I was thinking about this recently when I read Gretchen Rubin’s bestseller, The Happiness Project. Each month, Rubin picked a different area of life, read what great thinkers and philosophers and self-help gurus had to say on these topics, and tried to follow their advice to see if she could become happier.

Intrigued, I wondered whether such a project could be transformed into something astrological, with the transiting Sun as its organizing principle. So over the past year, I’ve taken Rubin’s topics and rearranged them a bit to fit with the Sun moving through the houses of the birthchart, to create an astrological happiness project that builds month by month through the entire year.

There is a lot more to be said about each of these, and I’ll be working on a new project over the next couple of months that will do just that. But briefly, my astrological happiness project is laid out like this: When the Sun is in your…

1st house (self, body, personality) – Gather Strength
2nd House (money, possessions) – Enjoy What You Have
3rd House (perception, thinking, communication) – Be Mindful
4th House (family, home) – Lighten Your Heart
5th House (play, creativity, fun) – Take Fun Seriously
6th House (work, routines, health) – Perform Practical Magic
7th House (relationships) – Love the One You’re With
8th House (intimacy, shared resources) – Lose Yourself
9th House (adventure, religion, learning) – Gaze at Unfamiliar Skies
10th House (ambition, career) – Reach for the Stars
11th House (future, friendships) – Build a Legacy
12th House (spirituality, hidden matters) – Be Here Now

It’s been more than a year since I began this project, long enough to watch the Sun move through each of the houses of my chart. Some months have been better than others, but this simple mandala has given me focus and a way to think about getting more happiness out of my year. When the Sun enters a new house of my chart, I know I’ll begin by feeling a little embarrassed at how the place looks. Like a lovable relative, the Sun will boss me around and ask why I’m standing in the way of my own happiness. And I’ll be forced to come up with some solutions instead of endless excuses.

At this Full Moon in Leo, think about what your own astrological happiness project would look like. How can your light shine a bit brighter, and your heart beat a little stronger? And how can you finish 2013 happier than you began? Astrologically, it might be as simple as following the Sun.

When will the Sun be in each house of your birth chart this year? Here’s a video to help you find out.

Painting by Claudia Fernety. See more of Claudia’s work at her website, www.ClaudiaFernety.com.

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Dec252012

Cancer Full Moon: The Bottom Line

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Capricorn, the sign that rules business and worldly achievement, is sometimes uncharitably described as cold and pragmatic. Not that all Capricorn people are that way, of course; far from it. At its best, Capricorn is the kindly, sensible patriarch that guides us to achievement and to being our best selves. But each sign has its shadow side, and bottom-line pragmatism is certainly the archetypal province of Capricorn. Think of Scrooge, and of Mr. Potter from “It’s a Wonderful Life.” Or the CEO who engineered an acquisition of the company where you work, and promptly discontinued the pension plan, slashed benefits, and fired ten percent of the work force. If a business practice doesn’t improve his bottom line, such a person can’t comprehend how it could possibly contribute to his success.

But the Full Moon in the domestic, nurturing sign of Cancer reminds us that there are all kinds of ways to be successful, and not all of them can be measured with a calculator. Consider my favorite eatery, a small, family-owned restaurant that has been a mainstay of our neighborhood for nearly four decades.

When we moved into our first home together, my husband and I soon joined the legions of enchilada addicts who regularly flocked to the tiny, dingy restaurant down the street. Aside from the extraordinary food, which would keep us coming back no matter what, this is the only restaurant where I’ve ever really felt at home. As long-time regulars, my husband and I are accorded the respect and affection of that status. We walk in the door and are greeted warmly and led to our favorite table; within minutes, our favorite drinks are on the table and our order has been placed for us. When we go there, we feel like family; and based on the number of familiar patrons we recognize each time we visit, we’re part of a fairly large clan.

It is, in short, an institution. In an industry that sees many more failures than successes, it’s no small feat to keep a restaurant open, let alone thriving, into the next generation. I don’t pretend to know how they do it; I only know how I feel when I go there: I feel like a person, not a figure on someone’s balance sheet.

Apparently, so do the staff, who tend to stay for a good long time. Part of what keeps them there, I imagine, are person-friendly business practices. For instance, the restaurant is closed every Sunday. I can’t tell you how many times we’ve found ourselves geared up for a tasty lunch, gotten all the way to their front door, and remembered too late that it was Sunday – el restaurante estaba cerrado. Their doors are also shut each year for the entire week between Christmas and New Year’s. I’m sure there were times, especially early on, when the owner’s bottom line suffered as a result of these decisions. But to him, Sunday and Christmastime are for spending time with family, not for working.

Family, community, and tradition are the soul-nourishing province of Cancer, the essential counterpart to Capricorn’s desire for worldly achievement. Our favorite eatery has succeeded for largely Cancerian reasons: great food, a nurturing atmosphere, great location, and a younger generation that has taken an interest in the family business. We’ve watched the owner’s children grow up, and it was a bit of a shock when, a couple of years ago, they took over the business. We watched warily as they undertook a major remodel, expanding the restaurant and opening an outdoor seating area. We wondered if our favorite waitresses would disappear, or whether the marvelous uncle who cooks our favorite enchiladas would retire along with his brother. Perhaps – horrors! – the kids would even decide to keep the place open on Sundays! Would our beloved haunt still feel like home?

Well, things are a little different there now. The remodeled interior is beautiful, but unbelievably noisy, thanks to stylish concrete floors and high ceilings. Many of the older waitresses have moved on. But the new patio seating area is a dream, our favorite place in the world to sit and have a meal. One of the New Guard has become our all-time favorite waitress, and we still get the same warm attention when we walk through the door. The food is exactly the same – delicious – and you still can’t get it on Sunday, or during the week after Christmas.

A few days ago, drafting my resolutions for the new year, I found myself thinking about this restaurant and about the other businesses I enjoy patronizing. They all have a couple of things in common. First, they shared a warm, welcoming spirit that makes me feel appreciated. And second, every one of them is wildly successful by standards that would impress even the flintiest Capricorn. They include a hairdresser who is booked a month in advance; a mechanic who is so busy he had to rent a new building last year, an astrologer so brilliant and empathetic that he has a two-year waiting list for readings. They – and the Full Moon in Cancer – remind us that whatever we hope to achieve in the New Year, we will find our best and fullest success by treating the people around us with tenderness and nurturing. That’s the real bottom line – and if we protect that, then the balance sheet will take care of itself.

Painting by Claudia Fernety. See more of Claudia’s work at her website.

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Nov252012

Gemini Full Moon/Lunar Eclipse: A Gift for Fiction

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Back in my Jurassic, pre-Internet teenage days, I answered an ad in the back of a book and sent away for a copy of my birth chart. When it arrived in the mail, scribbled in an actual astrologer’s cryptic hand, I was disappointed to find that the Moon was in Gemini at my birth. I’d never read anything good about Gemini. Any planets in Gemini, I was led to understand, doomed your character to deceit and unreliability.

I don’t remember reading anything about Gemini’s delirious love of words. If I had, I’d have recognized myself immediately and claimed my moon sign with pride. I learned to read and write before starting elementary school and became a voracious consumer of the written word. Almost simultaneously, I found that I loved to write and had what my teachers always called “a way with words.” All of this I grew to appreciate through the symbolism of the Moon at my birth, traipsing through a Mercurial sign.

But if I have to be honest (and my Sagittarius ascendant insists that, yes – yes, I do)… I’m not always honest. I’ve been known to bend the truth in the service of telling a better story, for instance – or, usually, because it makes for a better joke. As Walt Price, the slick film director character in David Mamet’s State and Main put it, “[The truth] is just so narrow.” This is the same character who, when caught in a glib prevarication, declared, “It’s not a lie – it’s a gift for fiction.”

Like all signs, Gemini is multi-faceted. One face of Gemini is the relentless reporter who pursues and reports facts, sometimes in the face of dire personal consequences. There is also the Gemini who delights in picking holes in your argument, even if he has no particular dog in the fight. He simply enjoys the intellectual exercise, and it tickles him to see you discomfited.

And there is the Walt Price facet of Gemini as well. This trickster Gemini is not necessarily a liar, but he finds the truth just a little too narrow. Let others – those allied with his opposite sign, Sagittarius, for instance – tell the unvarnished truth: this Gemini is interested in making the message itself more appealing and interesting. If given the choice between being the most virtuous person in the room or the most clever, this Gemini will cheerfully throw sincerity to the wind.

In a person – in most people – trickster Gemini/Mercury is hardly a terminal disease. They are simply in love with, and delighted by, language, as a child clapping excitedly at soap bubbles. If you understand this and accept that their words are not necessarily to be taken literally, and that you must learn to pay attention to their actions instead, I assure you that you are as likely to find human kindness and affection as in any sign.

But in a broader, societal sense, this “gift for fiction” can have dangerous consequences. Gemini is the sign of the messenger, and if the King can’t trust his messenger to give him the facts, his decision-making will suffer. If you live in a bubble where you are allowed only comforting, validating interpretations of your own truth, you are likely to be stunned when the world doesn’t behave the way you’ve been told it will.

You will believe misinformation from those in authority that leads to costly and tragic mistakes. You will assure yourself that your strategies are working and miss opportunities to correct course when it becomes obvious to everyone else that they are failing. You will assume that all decent people think like you do and be baffled and enraged when confronted at Thanksgiving dinner with irrefutable evidence to the contrary. All because the people who are supposed to tell you what’s really going on in the world have “a gift for fiction.”

For two and a half years, eclipses in Gemini have provided numerous opportunities to see what happens when we believe too many fictions, when we are fed only the juiciest and most entertaining stories and very little in the way of facts and critical analysis. When more Americans tuned in to the adventures of “Honey Boo Boo” than the televised debates between the two men who were most likely to become our next president, trickster Gemini is ruling the day.

At least we’ve seen the occasional triumph of reason and objectivity as well. When New York Times statistician Nate Silver correctly predicted President Obama’s reelection and continued Democratic control of the Senate, he was savaged by conservative media outlets and pundits. In the end, Silver’s analysis (based on the same model that correctly predicted the Republican sweep of the House of Representatives in 2010) was vindicated. Meanwhile, conservative pundit Karl Rove was left sputtering with disbelief in front of a nation of Fox News viewers, vigorously denying reality as Ohio was called for Mr. Obama.

I’m no fan of Karl Rove. But to be fair, we all have blind spots, and since late 2010 a series of eclipses in Gemini and Sagittarius have lobbed a series of truth grenades into our carefully curated, agreeable little information bubbles. If you haven’t had some of your beliefs shattered in the past few years, then you’ve built one tough bubble for yourself.

This Full Moon is our last Gemini eclipse until November 2020. Here is one last opportunity to reach for objectivity over self-serving beliefs – or to let the trickster fool you one last time, and live in happy but doomed ignorance. After all, it shows poor character to present an intentionally skewed version of reality, but an even poorer one to believe in it yourself.

Painting by Claudia Fernety. See more of Claudia’s work at her website.

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Sep272012

Aries Full Moon: The Sweet Spot

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You know that movie, ‘An Unmarried Woman’? Well – I didn’t get it. I mean, I would’ve been Mrs. Alan Bates so fast that guy wouldn’t have known what hit him!”
~ Judy Benjamin, Private Benjamin

Great balls of fire. Don’t bother me anymore, and don’t call me sugar.”
~ Scarlett O’Hara, Gone with the Wind

In the 1980 film Private Benjamin, Goldie Hawn stars as Judy, a young woman who has been in a continuous string of relationships ever since she became old enough to distinguish boys from girls. On the night of her wedding to a high-powered divorce attorney, Judy unexpectedly becomes a widow. When she calls a late-night radio talk show for advice, her rambling monologue reveals that her life so far has trained her for nothing except being a daughter or a wife.

In search of direction, Judy is bamboozled, by an unscrupulous recruiter, into joining the army. What follows is the story of a pampered young woman – an exaggerated but recognizable characterization of Libra – who, in testing her physical and emotional limits, embraces her Aries warrior and finds out who she really is. When the commanding officer who promotes her to an elite team of paratroopers later makes a pass at her, she not only rebuffs him but even parlays his indiscretion into a plum assignment in Paris.

By the time she catches the eye of a dashing French gynecologist, Judy has become confident and self-possessed. But in short order, the seemingly perfect relationship proves to be yet another demeaning experience with a dominating male. Fortunately, this time Judy recognizes what she’s doing before it’s too late, calls off her wedding, and triumphantly marches away.

As Judy finally realized, attempting to purchase a (Libran) harmonious relationship at the expense of your (Aries) individuality is doomed to failure. It doesn’t have to be a romantic relationship, either; all kinds of important relationships can tempt us to become too accommodating. As this Full Moon in independent Aries stands in uneasy opposition to the Sun and Saturn in relationship-oriented Libra, ask yourself: Are you hiding your true self from your spouse, lover, best friend, or business partner – in an attempt to keep the peace? (more…)

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About April Elliott Kent

Paying Homage to Capricorn

Capricorn fences make Cancerian Neighbors

Who is your serpent?

Lunar Eclipse in Scorpio: A serpent in your garden

FOLLOWING THE SUN

MY ASTROLOGICAL HAPPINESS PROJECT

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