We’re all looking forward to August’s eclipses, so I posted an article I wrote on Eclipse Weddings. 
Prince Charles and Paul McCartney both had two marriages near eclipses! I also consider J.K. Rowling, Jennifer Aniston and Brad Pitt, Maria Shriver and Arnold Schwarzenegger and some regular folks’ weddings near eclipses.
This piece was originally published in the Spring 2016 NY NCGR’s Ingress newsletter. Thanks to Tracy Allen and the NY NCGR for including it.
Rescued from a Greek shipwreck in 1901, the Antikythera Mechanism is not an astrolabe or armillary sphere. Was it a teaching tool? A demo for a World’s Fair? Is it the planetarium of Archimedes that Cicero wrote about? Alexander Jones’ fascinating book helps us learn more. 
This extraordinary astronomical clock has baffled scholars as it’s unlike anything ever seen before. Some even thought it had fallen off a different boat many years later to combine with the earlier wreckage. Jones does an excellent job of researching the history of the Mechanism and evaluates the conclusions reached by various scholars. It wasn’t until 1971 that the piece had an X-ray analysis, and a CT scan in the 80s provided more information.
The author concludes that the Mechanism may have been made in Rhodes in the first half of the 1st century BCE. Made of bronze and pewter-like alloys, it was about the size of a shoebox with various dials and instructions on the front and back. It included Egyptian and zodiac calendar rings, rising and setting stars, Olympic years, an eclipse predictor, a revolving Moon phase ball and pointers for the Sun and visible planets’ positions. Composed of about 30 gears, it operated with a single turn of the handle.
The Mechanism was probably not accurate enough for an astrological reading, but Jones states that is was a good representation of the Greeks’ understanding at the time and would be relatively accurate for several centuries (it corrected for planetary epicycles). It probably required two people to complete – a designer knowledgeable of astronomy and math along with a craftsman with the mechanical skill to create the interlocking gear actions.
Alexander Jones does a thorough and painstaking job of presenting numerous related topics and filling in the background. He’s a professor at New York University’s Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, and the book is academic-style, exactingly annotated, with a bibliography. I was completely captivated by Jones’ discussion of the gear functions which includes many illustrations. I’ve studied the history of astronomy and astrology, calendrics and the mechanics of eclipses, but many sections were simply too detailed for my taste. It was also difficult to imagine the Mechanism parts at times. Perhaps the book is meant to be a classroom textbook and leaves the reader without the professor at hand.
Some of my basic questions were unanswered. How much would the piece weigh? How difficult was it to turn? Could you lose your place?
The study and analysis of the Antikythera Mechanism has filled in gaps in scholars’ understanding of the Greeks and their technology. And the incredible complexity of the device should remind us that we’re no smarter than those over two millennia ago – we just have different tools. As astrologers we’re extraordinarily lucky to have salvaged our practices; the Mechanism reminds us how easily the past can be forgotten.
Buy at Amazon.com: A Portable Cosmos: Revealing the Antikythera Mechanism, Scientific Wonder of the Ancient World
Capricorn Donald Trump, Jr. is busy with his father’s business, but has admitted he met with a Russian lawyer during the campaign to scope out dirt on Hillary Clinton. The New York Times says he’s already changed his story. With Mercury conjoining Neptune in his birth chart, are we getting the truth? 
Trump, Jr.’s Mercury-Neptune mirrors his father’s Mercury square Neptune. Donald Jr.’s Mercury is further emphasized by being at its station – moving from retrograde to direct, and also falls right on his father’s Sun-Node-Moon opposition (Sr.’s natal eclipse).
Transiting Saturn will station right on Donald Jr.’s Mercury in August as it also conjoins his father’s Moon at the same time. They share any transits to this point and some of the experiences that Saturn is bringing up. There may be substance to this story and we should hear more over the next few months.
Transiting Jupiter in Libra conjoins Jr.’s Pluto this month, suggesting that the truth will come out. But Jupiter will also sextile Mercury by the end of August, and go on to trine his Jupiter and sextile his Saturn and Venus in the fall. These are favorable aspects that should facilitate things for him.
We have no birth time for Donald, Jr. Transiting Neptune may be opposing his Moon, further confusing the situation. Transiting Pluto might also be trining his Moon, which could help him, through powerful family members, avoid any culpability. Pluto, when it trines his Moon, should dredge up his family’s past in many ways. Without a birth time, though, it’s difficult to tell which influence will predominate this year.
At the time of the Uranus-Neptune conjunction in the early 90s, I was thrilled to read some of Professor Anthony Aveni’s books. Conversing with the Planets looked at people’s relationships with the cosmos through history and across cultures, and Empires of Time covered how people consider time, which derives from the cycles of the Sun and Moon. These books both touched on astrology, as the author is both an astronomer and anthropologist. Aveni became one of the first prominent voices on what would now be called cultural astronomy or, at the time, archaeo-astronomy.
Anthony Aveni’s work is refreshing since he accepts people’s beliefs (including astrology) as part of what makes them interesting. His latest book, In the Shadow of the Moon, covers solar eclipse viewing and arrives in time for total solar eclipse to cross the U.S. on 8/21/17.
In the Shadow of the Moon looks at not only eclipses but also the people who study them. The author eloquently shares his own eclipse viewing experiences and presents others who’ve captured the spectacle in words. We learn about predicting eclipses through the centuries, from Stonehenge to Babylon, the ancient Greeks, Chinese and Maya, with detailed accounts of eclipse expeditions in the U.S. and abroad in more recent times.
Full of insight and wit, Anthony Aveni’s eclipse book is part science history, part human interest, and captures the challenges of navigating capricious weather as well as the joys of encountering this rare natural phenomenon.
While this book doesn’t address the astrology of eclipses, it provides an excellent background to studying them and communicates why they’re so compelling, regardless of time and space.
Buy from Amazon.com: In the Shadow of the Moon: The Science, Magic, and Mystery of Solar Eclipses
Empires of Time: Calendars, Clocks, and Cultures
Conversing with the Planets: How Science and Myth Invented the Cosmos (Kodansha Globe) by Aveni, Anthony published by Kodansha Globe Paperback
