ARTICLES
Carter Memorial Lecture given
at the Astrological Association annual conference in York
29th August, 2003
Heaven Obscured; Confusion in the People; Navigating
the Tides of Change
Astrologers everywhere are living in a heightened state
of awareness this year because Uranus is changing signs. Even more interesting,
it is entering into mutual reception with Neptune. We are all looking for
clues in history, watching the news, and observing each other and ourselves
for signs of the new conditions we might expect. For an astrologer the pleasure
of this leads to the work of translating what we discover into every chart
we do; bringing the patterns of the outer planets with their sweeping, collective
stories right into the heart of personal lives. We are the navigators, reading
the winds and tides for those who call on our skill and art...
more...
Desire
and the Stars
In the 1970s I was living in Southern Africa and practising astrology in Johannesburg.
The people who called to consult me came with their desires and questions,
which I attempted to answer through the medium of their astrological charts,
as every astrologer has done since the beginning of time. However, again and
again I felt another longing beneath the desires they were voicing when they
came to consult me. I found myself listening, as if with an inner ear, while
I tried to divine exactly what these deeper longings and desires might be...
more...
(To preserve
formatting, this article opens/downloads in Word)
Remembering
Eros
A Ficinian Response to Love in the Nineties: a Dialogue between an Astrologer
and a Student in a cafe in the rain.
[extract] ...So, what [Diotima] is saying is that when I fall in love, it
is eternal beauty that I am seeking, even if I don't know it. And then, because
I don't know it, I become disillusioned when the person turns out not to behave
beautifully at all - and to be honest, when I see myself behave in a most
unbeautiful fashion, the disillusionment gets worse. I had not seen that the
person I fell in love with was carrying the spark of something divine. In
order to remain in the state I've achieved through falling in love, I must
maintain "right conduct" and must nurture the good in myself and in the other...
more...
Born
in the Sixties
During the late 1980s students who had been born in the mid-sixties began
arriving at the CPA. I had been looking forward to meeting this group with
their potent Uranus-Pluto conjunction with Neptune in Scorpio. This configuration
had begun to intrigue me since I was now beginning to come across it in the
charts of people who came to consult me. They were either in the middle of
their Saturn return or approaching it and although over the years I had seen
thousands of people through their Saturn returns and remembered my own with
its tensions and crystalisations, this generation was expressing a very different
order of tensions and developments. There was another reason this group intrigued
me; they were born in the sixties, and those were the years when my generation
was young, and having a most extraordinary time... more...
Recovering
the Garden of Venus
In
the early sixth century a bishop from Padua wrote a poem for a bride and groom.
In this poem, Cupid went to see his beautiful mother, Venus, in her lush garden,
complaining that their 'old empire' had been lost, and now 'cold virginity'
possessed the world. 'Arise! Shake off your sleep!' he tells her. But she
replies that she will not leave her garden yet; 'We shall be all the stronger
for our rest. Let the nations learn that a goddess grows in power when no
one thinks of her. In our world today it is not 'cold virginity' that has
driven Venus into her hidden garden, but our ongoing anxiety and our terrible
over-stretched busy-ness....
more...
