Monthly Archives: December 2013

Santa is a Capricorn

For years it’s been suggested that Santa Claus is Sagittarius.  His plump physique, his worldwide travels, his beloved reindeer and his generosity have led many to this erroneous conclusion.

However, Father Christmas is always depicted with a staff – just like old man Saturn.  Santa’s old.  How old, you ask?  As Kris Kringle in the classic movie tale, Miracle on 34th Street, he says he’s “as old as my tongue and a little bit older than my teeth.”  He’s OLD!  Take that white hair and that long beard, for instance – we’re talking ancient.  Santa was already old when we were all kids, even for the most senior of us.  And he’s still got his teeth, God love him.  Who but a Capricorn would still have all his teeth at that age?Capricorn

Remember that Santa visits us right at the beginning of Capricorn.  Kids write to him, they visit him, they sit on his KNEE.  He plans ahead all year for the big night.  Santa organizes an incredible enterprise – hundreds, maybe thousands of elves work under his supervision.  Any other CEO would let the peons do all the work – not Santa!  It’s the shortest day of the year and he’s out there making personal deliveries all night long.  Carrying that heavy sack when he could easily get someone else to do it for him.  The dedication!  The commitment!  The consummate control of the reindeer sleigh and priceless cargo!  Still wearing that same classic suit after all these years.

And let’s not forget that Santa is not all sweetness and light, as some advocates for a Sagittarian Santa would have you believe.  He can be harsh.  Some kids do get coal, you know.

Jupiter in Cancer – the Politics of Emotion

NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg uncharacteristically choked up when he addressed the Association for a Better NY on December 5, 2013 for the last time. Is this astro-logical for a man who has the Sun, Moon, Mercury and Venus all in Aquarius and very little water in his horoscope?

Many of our political leaders allow themselves displays of emotion these days. President Obama almost cried when he talked about his daughters and the Newtown CT shootings, and in thanking his election campaign staff. But he’s an open Leo with Venus in sensitive Cancer. Joe Biden choked up during the Vice Presidential debates when speaking of his first wife and daughter who died in a car crash, though he has Jupiter in Cancer (bigger emotion than the president!). John Boehner frequently gets teary-eyed: when saying a prayer for the victims of the Moore, OK tornado, in considering the awesomeness of the Capitol rotunda on 60 Minutes and upon receiving the Speaker’s gavel. With Venus and Jupiter in Capricorn, this may be more of a political move than a real need to share his feelings with the public; he can’t enjoy doing it. But lest I judge him too quickly I’ll add that he does have Uranus in emotional Cancer (though everyone born within 7 years of him does as well).

As men get older, of course, their hormones change and they’re no longer as macho as they were in their youth. But it seems not only allowable or hip but almost obligatory today for men in politics to display tender feelings.

Bloomberg has been more reserved during his 12 years in office, in keeping with his air and earth planets and private Pluto rising. But transiting Jupiter in Cancer is beginning to conjoin his Ascendant, bringing Jupiter issues and his emotions to the forefront of his consciousness. On Thursday he spoke about what he considers NYC’s values, including religious freedom and immigrant rights, both Jupiter–related issues. He also twice mentioned his unborn grandson. (We almost didn’t know he had a family!) This is a Cancerian concern and the only water in his chart is Cancer rising.

With Jupiter conjoining his Ascendant, it should be something of a release for Bloomberg to leave office and become a private citizen once again.

Michael Bloomberg was born on February 14, 1942 at 3:40 PM according to his birth record on Astrodatabank.

The Astrology of a Derailment

Whenever a horoscope in longitude doesn’t reveal the obvious, I turn to declination, our alternate measurement in astrology. Declination can help us better understand the tragic train derailment in the Bronx on Sunday, December 1, 2013 at 7:20 AM.

The regular horoscope for the crash has the Moon, Mercury and Saturn in Scorpio conjunct the 12th house (an intense experience), Sun rising in Sagittarius trine Uranus (unexpected events in travel) and Mars opposite Neptune (engineer dozing at the controls?). But it doesn’t really have the most obvious things we expect from an accident of this magnitude. Four were killed and over 60 injured, many critically.

Turn on the declination grid and everything stands out more clearly. The Sun in Sagittarius is parallel Pluto and closely parallel the Ascendant. Then powerful Jupiter in Cancer contraparallels Pluto and tightly contraparallels both the Ascendant and the Sun. This pattern more clearly presents a situation where destruction (Pluto) from excessive speed (Jupiter) is possible. In addition, there’s an exact Mars parallel Uranus as well, the two planets most often associated with accidents and sudden crises.

Venus in Capricorn had been Out of Bounds in declination (beyond the planets’ usual path on the ecliptic) for a number of weeks at the time of the accident. The odd coincidence is that the train’s engineer has this placement in his birth chart as well! Venus OOB generally represents one with an artistic temperament or the tendency to “love not wisely but too well,” as Kt Boehrer put it. Extraordinary relationships are possible. Certainly the engineer is now unfortunately in the midst of unusually challenging relationship issues involving the passengers, his employers and government authorities (transiting Venus OOB in Capricorn). Venus goes Out of Bounds only once every 8 years or so for a few months.

Perhaps the prominence of the benefics Venus and Jupiter in this disaster accounts for the fact that not many lives were lost. At the end of the Thanksgiving weekend, there were fewer passengers to the City than usual at such an early hour.

Declination measures planets north and south of the equator and their aspects in parallel and contraparallel. This may at first appear a bit simplistic, but as we can see, declination can provide information that we may not find in longitude. It truly adds another dimension to astrology.