Small World - January 2000 (Millennium; Harold Shipman)

PART ONE!

May I wish all of you, receiving Small World all around the globe,  a blessed New Year as we start on our collective journey through the 21st century... and also, from today's Suneclipsing New Moon, an epochal and enlightening Year of the Dragon! (which by happy coincidence has brought onto the shelves my new book "The Draconic Chart", available from Flare Publications in London  see below) Should we anticipate Interesting Times?...

The season is already extraordinary; so many accounts are being settled privately and publicly bringing closure to one phase of growth so that a fresh start may be made. In Ireland for a while we appeared to have a miracle  though as I write, on the day of the Aquarius eclipse, the peace process teeters on the edge of extinction. Prophecies are being fulfilled  the warnings of catastrophic floods and the deaths of thousands, received by many of us recruited as useful channels, have proved to be serious and accurate. Natural disasters have frequently hit our world, but at the end of the 1990s they were repeatedly targeting large centres of population, even entire countries such as Honduras and now Venezuela.

These warnings have in so many instances been reported to come directly from Jesus, and from Mary his mother, that it would be wise of the cynic, the sceptic, the agnostic and especially the atheist to reconsider their indifference to these extraordinary beings, who are indeed our friends, and desperate now to help us get out of the appalling mess we are making of our lives and of this beautiful world.

Why has Venezuela succumbed to such terror and misery over this winter? There are two possible charts for the country, according to Nick Campion's database; the first on July 5th 1811, the second on September 22nd 1830, both set for local noon at Caracas. The first was its declaration of independence, the second Venezuela's final separation from Colombia. There is no doubt now which is the active map, as only the second for 1830 gives us a descriptive Solar Return for 1999. This chart has Chiron rising on the country's Sagittarius Moon, close to a Scorpio Asc. The Return Moon/IC is almost opposite the country's Saturn. By daily converse progression, the Midheaven spent the critical week successively joining Jupiter (e. square Sun), radix Neptune, converse Neptune and converse Mars. There is a terrible inevitability about many of these converse progressions; this human tragedy may be the appointed outworking of a great deal of accumulated karma  or it may have taken home the souls of those whose tasks here are over, leaving the rest of the population to deal with the aftermath of both the physical chaos and the unfamiliarity of a new Constitution  agreed the very day the mudslides struck. The disaster will put this to an immediate and gruelling test; it has been a firm plank of Sr. Chavez' presidency that he intends to give help to the disadvantaged mass of Venezuela's people. If he is to pull them through this, it will demand far greater sacrifices than he may have imagined.

And what is going on in Northern Ireland? The first session of the new Stormont government began when its members arrived in the chamber at 3h00 pm UT (Belfast). At first glance the chart looks quite promising, with its setting Mercury, Mars with neptune in the S.Node potentially abandoning hostilities, and a happy configuration of Moon with Uranus and the 7thhouse trio of Chiron/Sun/Pluto. BUT she is quincunx a lurking 12thhouse Saturn, the Mercury is without major planetary aspects, and the Sun could soon be in trouble when it closes by progression on that Pluto. At the same time, Chiron would move to it by Solar Arc.

That process is inexorably taking place. The 5th February Solar Eclipse has hit the Uranus/ASC/Desc/Mercury Tsquare; Neptune has transited onto the Aquarius Mars. Suddenly the structure is fracturing at its weakest spot, and a treacherous obsession with the Arms issue is pulling the whole enterprise backwards into the destructive Dragon's Tail.

If you look at the Helio chart for the Stormont Parliament its changed  and uncomfortably truthful  perspective shows the EarthPluto opposition squared cruelly by a Pisces Mars. Debilitating Saturn is much closer to the Ascendant. A fragile peace is shown by the opposition of VenusUranus square the Asc/Desc. Only Mercury in Virgo in 5th, trining Jupiter, holds out hope that creative and detailed negotiation can persuade this unpromising political seed to grow.

Peter Mandelson, born October 21st 1953, can play "good cop  bad cop" with consummate skill, with that Libra Saturn/Sun/Neptune trine Gemini Jupiter of his; and it is mightily enhanced in power and fluency by the conjunction of Draconic Pluto and Sidereal Mercury with the Sun, also honeyed Venus warmed by the early Libra Sidereal Sun. What a persuader! But Transiting Jupiter has stepped away from Mandelson's powerline as it gets ready to enter Taurus, Neptune has left the trine to his Venus, and the best opportunity for a lasting resolution of Ulster's problems may have gone.

Closer to home, the Ospringe Saga continues!

I was posting some letters last month when a neighbour down our narrow, busy main road drew me into a small group agonising about the incessant, traumatising roadworks we are enduring thanks to the proliferation of international telecommunications. She looked so ill. A town Councillor was present. I said to her, "if you ring our MP, I'll phone Meridian Television. We've got to stop this. It's unbearable." So we did: and at 8h30 am on Friday January 28th the MP, the TV, the local paper, half the Council, the Fire Chief, and a crowd of residents crammed into our front room to pour out Ospringe's woes and search for a solution. The MP waxed empathetic and supportive, vowing to do his utmost, and all present declared the meeting a success.

The Daily Progressed Angles should surely reflect such an energetic day, and ratify the Ospringe chart to boot. They are indeed Great Stuff! The DPMC in late Leo has conjoined p.Mars and p.Mercury opp. p.Uranus  yes it was a highlevel, very civilised discussion about noise, shaking, stress, new technology, and the democratic need for a change. The Daily Converse ASC lay with the Converse S.Node  classically a group encounter, and also an appointment carrying karmic/spiritual implications. The p.Moon, interestingly, had arrived in the radix S.Node close to Mars in 4th (of course) and on my own Draco Mars opp. Trop.Sun. There lay the pattern of the initiative. Interesting!

 ... and in the Scorpio Garden there has been more drama: Gerard and I decided we'd had enough of the sad triangle of dying lawn under our Pussy Willow (or Goat Willow  more suitable for this Capricorn!) which has met and engaged itself to the dazzling Robinia Frisia. So we asked an extremely nice man to lay crazy paving there, and while he was about it to level off the concrete switchback that had once been our path. Came January 10th, Y2K, all was going smoothly as I busied myself with charts and making tea  till a yell from my favourite Sagittarius brought me tumbling down the stairs. Where I found myself staring in disbelief at a second large hole in the garden! Our new and conscientious friend had shifted a cracked stone paving slab (the one where the frost had always melted ...!) and uncovered a clean, intact and capacious well. 18 years we've been here, and despite Brian at Poulders pumping his own well during the last drought, and June next door nearly doing an Alice in Wonderland down something much larger than a rabbit hole that shockingly opened up under her feet in the middle of her lawn, we never suspected we were similarly blessed (having already had a number of perilous encounters with the large cavern down by the Elder tree, as already recounted.) Pipes run into it from 3 or 4 directions, obviously from the known soakaways, but one of these is, on reflection, working as an overflow, as it points significantly in the direction of said crumbling and perilous cavern!

It's the finetuned astrology of this that is especially interesting: the utter surprise is vividly signalled twice, once by an exact conjunction of Contrascion Asc with radix Uranus (and of course vice versa), and again by the exact conjunction of draconic dwad Uranus with tropical dwad IC  all these being in midAquarius. And there's lots of water!... in the draconic dwad a quintet of Pluto/Desc (what else?)/Mars/Venus/Chiron cluster round the radix tropical Desc all in Scorpio, and the draconic dwad Sun/MC conjunction in Pisces aligns deliciously with the tropical dwad's conjunction in Pisces of Moon and Neptune.Well, well ...

'Mr. Hyde'

You may recall that in one of last year's issues I had a stab (unintentional choice of verb!...) at guessing the birthdate for Britain's most alarming serial killer, Dr. Harold Frederick Shipman. It turned out that in principle I had been on the right lines (watching the change of reported age in the press) but in practice the media are sloppy, and he had already had his 53rd birthday while they were still referring to him as 52. But not long before! In fact he was born in Nottingham on January 14th 1946, time unknown to us and open to speculation.

For the benefit of my overseas readers who may not have caught up with this extraordinary and painful story, this man may have been responsible for the deaths of as many as 150 elderly patients (some speculate even over 1000), mainly women  between the years 1984 (when on September 21st his first suspected victim died) and June 24th 1998 when he killed former Hyde Mayoress Kathleen Grundy.

His method was to stockpile overprescriptions of dimorphine and typically to inject the patient on the pretext of taking a blood sample. He would then dispassionately watch her die in her own chair, on her own bed, on his consulting couch, before calling relatives and ambulance to say that they had suddenly and unexpectedly died. He would go on to doctor his computer records to show a false medical history of heart disease etc (unsuccessfully, of course! He was unaware of software history trails!) and find a cosignatory to expedite the necessary cremation that would destroy the chemical evidence. His motive was not pecuniary. What do you make of this disturbed mind?

As you would anticipate, he has a very difficult pattern. His own history includes the death of his own mother, Vera, from cancer in June 1963 in her midforties. The attending doctor managed her pain with morphine injections.

He married Primrose Oxtoby on November 5th 1966. Her date of birth is 19th April 1949 to parents George and Edna who farmed near York. They have four children  Sarah, born in Harrogate in February 1967, Christopher in 1971, David (March 20th 1979 in Mottram), and Samuel (b. in Mottram, 4th April 1982.)

He qualified in 1971, and was hired by a group practice in Todmorden, Yorkshire on March 1st 1974. Here he won the trust of his women patients, and became involved with water in at least two ways  restoring local canals, and dinghy sailing.

Shipman started overprescribing and hoarding drugs early in his medical career (initially Pethidine, for his own use) and was convicted of forging prescriptions and stealing drugs, on February 13th 1976...but not struck off the medical register!

Shipman was eventually charged with the first of the 15 murders on 7th September 1998, appearing in court the next day; the major interview took place in AshtonunderLyne police station on October 5th, ending at 5h12 pm when he cracked, wept in his cell, and refused to utter another word except flat denials. The trial at Preston Crown Court began on October 5th 1999. He was convicted on January 31st 2000 when the jury stood to give their verdict at 4h37pm. Shipman was led to the cells at 5h07pm that day, for Life several times over  and at least 23 further police investigations planned.

Let me know what you think lay behind his compulsion to murder.

People are not yet beating swords into ploughshares. Far from it  a number have been running riot with a variety of long, lethal knives in recent months, including one Robert Ashman, 49, who entered the Liberal Democrat HQ in Cheltenham at about 4h30 pm and attacked the MP Nigel Jones. His aide and best friend Andrew Pennington threw himself between Jones and the attacker and tragically was killed by the sword. The extraordinary fact is that the asteroid 'Damocles' was setting with the Sun and Mercury/Uranus ... "the Sword of Damocles" you recall ... in 11AQ25. The killing took place 4 days before Pennington turned 40  which meant that t. Damocles  squared by Taurus Saturn  was right on his Sun. Then I looked at his birthdate of 1st February 1960 ... and there was Damocles again at 11AQ30 right on Pennington's Sun!!! The Sword of Damocles had been hanging over him ever since he was born.My goodness, we'll have to look sharp and check our key asteroid returns!

Still in the eventful world of British politics, have you checked out Frank Dobson, he lately in charge of health and hospitals, and now solely concerned with ambitions to be London's Mayor? And if you have, would you want this man anywhere near your Capital City, its transport, finances, policing, practical daily affairs? To his credit, he has Draconic principles of service, attention to detail, care of the underdog  but nothing can alter the overwhelming impression of ultimate unreliability in that fantastic Sun/Neptune/combust Mercury opposite Neptune from Pisces both Tropical and Sidereal  private and public  lined up pompously for good measure with Draco Jupiter, and the unguessable tight Mars/Uranus of March 15th 1940. Assuming he is  as unlikely as any politician to achieve sainthood, but rather settle into the usual rut of human frailty, Dobson is a ripe candidate for Inflation followed by the usual burst balloon. BUT! not only is asteroid 'Franke' nicely snuggled up to his Sun, but a conjunction of 'Jack London' and 'Mayrhofer' awaits him in the N.Node ... so maybe this is a challenge which will after all bring out the best in Frank Dobson. But it won't bring our hospital back.

Another piece of event data for you before returning to lighter things  the dreadful train crash at Bruhl, just South of Koln in Germany, when the night sleeper from Amsterdam smashed into the station, killing several passengers and injuring over 100. This happened "Just after Midnight" CET on February 6th 2000. Coordinates for Bruhl:  50N48, 6E54. On the face of it, Libra rising and an Aries Jupiter setting seems too happy, although the nodes and Neptune (See below!) are on the meridian, and the Sun is with Uranus. No, you need to look deeper. First, the draconic solar stellium swings into the radix 12th house, removing consciousness from the waking world; then draconic Mercury falls on the radix Asc opposite the Jupiter. Maybe this signals a slow reaction time to events that were suddenly moving too fast as the train was forced to switch tracks. But the real impact comes from the helio chart, where Saturn is in place to form a very tight, nasty Tsquare with Earth and Uranus. Tropical only ever tells a part of the story.

Now let's cheer up!

I always enjoy the way new TV shows are described in the Sky  on Friday 4th February at 20h30 London time "My Hero!" took off, with its Superhero 'Thermoman' alias health shop owner George alternately rescuing plummeting maidens, saving Belgium, and failing to grasp the intricacies of mundane existence. Delightfully, a triple conjunction of "George", "Galahad" and "Siegena" (victory!) hugs the Sun, with an opposition of "Heracles" and "Belgium" at work on Mercury. As befits pure offthewall entertainment, the Aquarian 5th house is stuffed with the next day's New Moon energies, and of course My Hero is romantically badged with a setting Pisces Mars!  He immediately gets The Girl, so we have this Aquarian New Moon, which Draconically is all sweetness in Libra. The superheroic Mars/Desc swings into sidereal Aquarius, lines up with tropical Mercury, and sends the modern Heracles at lightspeed through the air! And his lady is happy  sidereal Moon holds hands with tropical Venus. Draconic Jupiter is at the Sag. IC  it is funny and charming and brings chuckles into our homes.

 A few months ago I succumbed and bought Beanie Babies. For my episcopal bestbeloved there was "Hope" the Prayer Bear, and for yours truly (understandably) "Scorch" the Dragon! And the Seahorse, "Neon", as it is another creature that means a lot to me. Now, you probably already know that each dear little squashy creature comes with a heart tagged around its neck, in which is written its name  and its date of birth!!! Have you done your BBs' charts yet? After the usual trial and error,  Sunrise charts yield the most eloquent patterns, and I've set them for Gosport in Hampshire, UK, as this is the location of the UK supplier, 'TY Europe.'

Scorch was 'born' on July 31st 1998, a brown, furry, friendly little Dragon with wonderfully iridescent red wings  and lo and behold, here is an opposition of asteroid "Iris" to asteroid "Drakonia" in 13 Cancer, right on his Venus/firebreathing Mars conjunction and famous Sidereal Sun/Ascendant! "Wurm" is at the IC  and anciently a dragon was often referred to as a Worm! The Tropical chart pattern itself is archetypally Fierce, with its Scorpio Moon/Chiron in a fixed Grand Cross with Saturn and the SunUranus/Neptune opposition. What better description of a sweet and soft little baby firebreathing dragon can you get?

Neon the rainbowcoloured Seahorse is tropical Aries  but Sidereal Pisces!... April 1st 1999. And it's that Sidereal midPisces Sun/Asc that collects most of the ID badges, as, first of all, it's full Moon (closer in England than Illinois) aligned with Draconic Neptune, then the Sun is with asteroids 'Iris' and 'Prisma' (as close as the heavens can get to 'Neon'!). Helio positions of 'Maritima' and 'Poseidon' (God of the Seahorses) join the Pisces conjunction, and interestingly also Draconic 'Drakonia' ...after all, a seahorse looks very like a very small watery limbless spiny dragon, and the dragon you will find in my chapterheadings looks for all the world like a seahorse with feet! To complete the picture, 'Epona' (goddess of horses) is at the IC, and Sidereal 'Seaborg' sits on the Tropical Desc lined up with the AriesLibra Full Moon.

Hope the Prayer Bear   is also AriescumPisces, 'born' March 23rd 1998. Wouldn't you know, it's the Sidereal Pisces Sun/Asc that is busy again? Pisces is the natural sign of prayer  and here the religious intent is enhanced by a conjunction with Tropical Pisces Jupiter with the S.Node in the 12th. Clearly 'Hope' is offering selfless supplication for the sins of the world!...  In the Virgo N.Node opposite is Draconic Venus  it is an act of loving service.

Apart from an exploration of my huge 'Holy' file, there are only five asteroids I can think of at the moment that really fit this little bear: 'Ursa', 'Ursina','La Spezia' (a very recent acquisition actually meaning spice  and we know where to try this one!  but whose root is very close to 'Spes', the Latin Hope), 'Pia'  obviously pious  and, legitimately if more eccentrically, 'BobHope'! Aha  I have just discovered another, 'Hoppe', which is maybe stretching the spelling, but just you watch what they do .... 'Ursa'  bear  is on the MC. Draconic Ursina  little bear!  is on the tropical IC. On the Draconic IC is (with sidereal Venus) Tropical Pia. Helio Pia is on the Tropical MC. So twice you find the 'phrase', "Pia Ursa', pious bear! Then right on the Tropical Asc is sidereal 'La Spezia' with 'Hoppe' close by in the last degree of Pisces, while Tropical 'Hoppe' and Helio 'BobHope' lie oopposite the Draconic Libran Sun and Ascendant... and sidereal Chiron, offering an intercessory healing prayer. Now, having also checked the 'Holy' list, what do we find but, delightfully, 'Beate' conjunct the rising Sun! With it are 'Maria', 'Tempel', 'Eucharis', 'Paradise' ... and 'YiXing!' ... while on the Meridian axis lie 'Angelina', 'Gabriella', 'Roma', 'Canterbury', 'Luthera', 'Peter' and 'Sophia'. Clearly this is an Ecumenical Bear, a messenger for the New Age!

The Millennium Dome is in trouble  far too few folks are willing to shell out the sponduliks to be hustled unceremoniously through plastic bowels and sustained by even faster 'food'. It is uninspiring. It is neither fish nor fowl, neither fun nor food for thought. Are we surprised? Did we not observe as it took shape beside the historic river that it was twelvefold, and should be a fitting reflection not just of the millennial earth but of the heavens? So they fill it with fourteen zones, none of which is even erogenous, and succeed in making a thorough dog's breakfast of something that could have been sublime. Serves them right.

The Millennium Wheel, however  properly known as the London Eye  after taking off a full month late, is another story! Again, few asteroids to describe this, and only one that I could think of that referred to eyes, namely 'Stereoskopia'  so this, together with 'Gondola', 'Riverside', 'Jack London ' and the long shot 'Szmytowna' (why not?) had to do. Bingo! at the 11am kickoff (term not mine but employed by one enthused journalist) on the south bank of the Thames on February 1st 2000, where was Stereoskopia but conjunct the Aquarius Sun  the big Eye in the sky!  and opposite draco Chiron, as Gondola in Capricorn rode the Midheaven! This in turn was joined to the Sidereal Sun and Stereo', while the draconic Sun/Stereo' in Libra was with sidereal Szmytowna opposite sidereal Riverside. 'JackLondon' enjoyed a square to the horizon from a conjunction with Mercury, opposite that other Eye, the draconic Moon. The ride is proclaimed a wonderful view, a crowdpuller, a feast for the eyes; and unlike the earthbound rotunda of the Dome, truly an education.

Suppose it had opened after all on Millennium night, unhampered by safety concerns? Well it couldn't, could it, with Stereoskopia sacrificed to the S. Node and Neptune!

In five years by solar arc in the helio frame, Earth will come to the squares of Saturn and Uranus. 5 years is the period of the Eye's official licence. Maybe it won't arch over the London skyline for another 50, after all.

Neptune is in Aquarius, and still with the Moon's South Node. People are vanishing from the world in groups of 7, or 30, or 170, even several thousand at a time. Two people are working, walking, sleeping side by side; one is taken, the other remains. Sound familiar? This is the scenario preached by enthusiasts of The Rapture, the End Times when the 144,000 elect will be swept into the heavens leaving the rest of the sinning world to stew in its selfinflicted hell. Well. We are, as earlier discussed, experiencing apocalyptic floods (South Africa now  worst for 50 years) and earthquakes; there has been a spate of plane and train crashes. The serial murders committed by Dr.Shipman and others have made away with tens, scores, hundreds of innocent people. Purely for argument's sake, if God wants to get people Home in a hurry, isn't He going to use the tools at hand? It is far more likely that any of us is going to be propelled out of the mortal body by ageing, illness, or one of a catalogue of sudden lethal impacts, than by a Paradisal hand extending from the clouds to whisk us into invisibility. These poor, dear, drowned, crushed, suffocated souls may be the lucky ones; we may be the transgressors left behind to suffer! Or maybe there are no Elect, just a worldful of ordinary fallible but wellintentioned human beings making a lot of mistakes and having, as usual, to cope with the consequences  and grow a little wiser in the process. And some have Gone Home early; and will no doubt be back again for another bite at the cherry. Could do better. Eventually we all get to resit the exam.

Which leads me to another tantalising speculation  As Above, So Below. We all know that. Ok  so, what about mankind's recent success in manufacturing almost perfect diamonds? So perfect, that De Beers have had to place a llilliputian logo on their lovely natural gems to distinguish them from  the fasttrack beauties coming onto the market. There is a structural difference, observable by those with the technology  the manufactured diamond contains cubic as well as octahedral lattices, a structure also found in salt. But even inclusions and off colours are being eliminated, so skilled are the makers now.

So, if the Diamond  at the heart of the Lotus  is the symbol of spiritual perfectedness attained after aeons of trial and error under the pressures of earthly incarnation, what does this rapid creation of the diamond mean? Does humanity now have an accessible Fast Track to sainthood? Does it mean that among us now are more and more who are nearly ready to go  and never return? Or does it simply mirror the growing global addiction to the Instant Spiritual Fix that in reality is a sham, and though sparklingly attractive, ultimately worthless?

Think on.

THE ASTEROID AGE

Another phenomenon of which we need to be mindful is the headlong rush of the sciences  and our global culture  into the Small. Consider the advance of forensics into routine DNA screening and its rapid acceptance into criminal evidence. In medicine an explosion of knowledge has resulted from the Human Genome Project, enabling the biochemists to target designer drugs  'magic bullets'  at specifically offending cells or cell receptors, aborting disease and even correcting defects (the ethics of a lot of this are of course an increasingly hot and urgent debate; we all know or can all think of physically disadvantaged people who bring great gifts into the world... and we risk abolishing one more route to the clearing of karma. Unless this is the whole idea, and we really are on the Diamond Fast Track.)

The Hubble Space Telescope, and the terrestrial arrays too, are now so finetuned that the faintest objects in unbelievavly remote reaches of space are revealing themselves in their compexity, beauty and majesty. Precision is everything; the lesson was painfully learned when initially Hubble failed to focus. This huge scientific, financial and political embarrassment was eventually traced to a minute fleck of black paint that had flaked off a 1 cm diameter rod in the telescope testing equipment, exposing barely a pinprick of shiny steel that threw the lightpath and its exacting computations disastrously out of alignment. If ever there was a graphic illustratiion of the developing Chaos mathematics, this is it! For 'The Butterfly Effect' read 'The Hubble PaintFlake Effect.' Sensitivity to Initial Conditions.... also the fundamental principle of astrology. Furthermore, SETI has recruited thousands of ordinary folk into a worldwide computer array that is becoming a uniquely sensitive ear on the universe to catch the briefest of fleeting messages in the dearch for ET. Atomic physics has long refined into particle physics, and now at CERN in Geneva the accelerator has with apparent success detectably separated quarks and gluons in an atomic burst. There are plans next to replicate this in the USA.

The acceleration of computers' speed and global usefulness has demanded tinier and tinier CPUs and therefore incredibly minute printed circuits on the barest flake (again!) of silicon. Even working machinery is heading toward the subatomic. It is destined to be woven into our very clothing as well as the structures and furnishings of our houses, and is already implanted in living tissue, deep body or under the skin. Communications are rapidly going digital, transforming the phone call, onscreen entertainments, music, photography, publishing, broadcasting, banking, trading, even everyday reading. The explosion of the Internet and WWWeb has brought the Individual back with a vengeance into the postPlutonic world of mergers, financial and political gigantism and the corruption of corporate power. These are now challenged by the uniting voices of spontaneous, organic global communities that (with obvious exceptions) largely transcend the ethnic and cultural barriers of millennia. It is harder for the wouldbe dictator or plutocrat to resist the tide of digital democracy, which given time will eventually embrace even remote, currently unsophisticated communities. Consequently language itself is back in the frame, its history, its structures, and its refurbishment to deal with a world in which increasing numbers of disparate nations and individuals need to be able to communicate instantaneously and with absolute clarity.

After Saturn, Uranus  the awakening in politics, science and technology. After Uranus, Neptune  social meltdown, aesthetic and spiritual experiment, and the reexamination of cultural and personal relating. After Neptune, Pluto  Big is beautiful, humanity's powers become godlike, organisations gigantic,  Mammon allpowerful, and wars apocalyptic. But meanwhile, and increasingly after Pluto, the crowds and crowds of the asteroids  multum in parvo, the celebration of the role and identity of the individual within the collective; the whole that is more than the sum of its parts. They don't make diamonds as big as bricks, and we can each have our 15 minutes of fame!...

We are in the Asteroid Age. So, astrologers, relish what they offer, refine your knowledge, examine the tiny, explore the harmonics, dare to be specific, target the need. A whole, huge, precise astrological language is opening up; we now have a lexicon of  nearly 8000 words!

So I am happy to include the following message in this issue, from reader Marianne Alexander at Pandora Publishing:

"I would appreciate it if you would announce my new address.  It is This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .

The 1999 Asteroid Ephemerides are now available from Pandora Publishing: they come in two volumes, one in alphabetical and one in zodiacal order, comprising zodiacal positions once a month for over 5,500 asteroids.  They are priced at $25.00 apiece, but if you order both volumes they are $40.00 for the two. Additionally your own natal asteroids are included as a free gift  alternatively a list of asteroid positions for any one date you choose  in both alphabetical order and zodiacal order.

These books are very handy even if you have Mark Pottenger's program, because you can see at a glance the approximate positions of any asteroids. The zodiacal positions are ideal for checking asteroids on the angles of solar and lunar returns. 

To mail them airmail to the UK it would cost an extra $32.40, or at airmail book rate $24.00.

Also available is a variety of small books, such as Asteroid Midas (Were you born to be rich?) ($5.00); Asteroids of Fate ($10.00) and others.  Also, The Centaur Pholus (a large book that sells for $25.00)."

If anyone has the facilities, and is interested in helping Marianne distribute these excellent books in the UK, Europe or elsewhere, do contact her  the above address.

As promised, here is the address from which you can order copies of "The Draconic Chart" at £16.99 (plus £2 P&P in the UK):

Flare Publications, 29, Dolben Street, London SE1 0UQ, England.

Telephone: 0207 922 1123. Email: flareUK.com.

So  what's next? The rejuvenated Hubble continues to send back data illuminating earlier and earlier states of the observable universe, and confirming the presence of planets orbiting distant stars. As Above, So Below. After the Asteroids ... ET? or God?

Watch That Space!

Blessings to all,

Pam