“The grey-ey’d morn smiles on the frowning night,
Check’ring the Eastern clouds with streaks of light,
And fleckled darkness like a drunkard reels
From forth day’s path and Titan’s fiery wheels.”

Friar Lawrence in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet (II.iii.1-4)

Horoscopes for 5-7-2024

New Moon 5/7 10:19 PM 18°01’ Taurus

Comes a time, and question, and then? How this looks. Have to ask, though, just because it seems like a seriously stupid idea, is it worth the effort? I know it looks dumb, but it might work, and we’ve seen a similar arrangement work for others, right? Knowing that it has worked in the past, that might help. What it devolves to is a simple series of questions, and think the answers speak for themselves, and the Taurus slice of the heavens, but “If it’s stupid and it works?”

Is it really stupid?

The term, “Confirmation Bias”¹ got a lot of airplay, and the term was bantered about, ad nauseum until it was almost done to death. Still the idea persists, and with the line-up of planets in Aries, then Taurus, and the weird Taurus conjunctions, knocking stuff around? Does that terminology, “Confirmation Bias,” still hold up? It’s about seeing something and wanting it to be true, and therefore, picking only data that supports what one wants to believe, rather than what the facts themselves suggest.

There’s the usually razor-sharp Gemini intuition where a few scant data points leads inexorably in one particular direction, and that is usually the correct way. Notice my choice of the word, “usually.” Notice, too, that I kept repeating the term, “confirmation bias,” over and over, to make sure that’s not the situation, or possibly to drive gentle Gemini to dig deeper than usual. “I could agree with you. But then we’d both be wrong.”

Jupiter rumbles. Jupiter is a gas giant, technically, and might have its own heat source, rather than just be a planet, like Earth, or a solid chunk of rock, like our satellite, the Moon (and the astrological body associated with the Crab.) Jupiter is rumbling along, and making waves, only, I don’t think of these as waves in water, more like sound waves, hence the idea of the rumbling noise, one that is more likely to be felt than heard. Sensed? The images that accompany WiFi or BlueTooth technology, RSS feeds, the little wave-like figures? That works, as well for the imagery I’d associate with the effects of Jupiter on Gentle Cancer, the Moon Children. It’s a sense, less than an actual, visual thing, and it means there is something, and you hear it? Feel it? Sense it with some otherworldly set of perception unique to yourself? In one science journal, the hypothesis was the crab’s shells served as a way for reverberations to be interpreted as fight or flight (no link). Not sure how you sense this rumble, dear Cancer, but you do get it. The question is, run, fight, or just stand your ground? Jupiter suggests a symbolic stance.

Originally, I was supposed to, “See a guy about a dog.” That’s a coded phrase, it doesn’t really involve a dog, as I won’t have one, and while the transaction was nothing remotely illegal, I prefer to keep some of my own, private business private. So I was supposed to “See a feller about a dog,” and we agreed, over messages, to meet at a certain place, at a specified time. Because I did readings like this, so often, for so long, I’m quite used to meeting in public places at strange hours to encounter people I’ve never seen before. The problem with this one? Guy didn’t show. No call, we exchanged numbers, and he never answered, no e-mail, how we first set this up, and no instant messages. There was never an exchange of cash, or goods, or even services, and I wasn’t out anything except my own time. I spent a certain amount of time stalking the inter-webs, trying to locate the guy. No luck. I waited in the parking lot for about 20 minutes, no joy. I answered business correspondence, looked at the current astrological milieux, and I realized that there will be upsets, missteps, and sometimes? Just a straight-up no-show. On my own site, and in my own business, I tend to charge for a no-show. In this setting, I was just out, bit of bad luck. Never knew what happened, either, but some of the greatest gifts are failures. Like a simple no-show that might’ve saved me from some heartache. Or a dog. Only dog I would want would be a rescue cat.

I’ve watched as a family member (Gemini sister) can take an abrupt turn. This can be a political reversal, a philosophical spin, or accepted scientific change. Doesn’t much matter. Directions, can change directions within those changes, too. I’ve seen the car wheel around and go off down some perceived better route for no reason that is apparent to me.

But I’m not Gemini.

There’s that suggestion that there is just such a change, a weird, off-kilter, for no apparent reason, shift in direction. Shift in directions. Can sit in one place and just spin, too. Seen that version. Too many choices leaves us without resolution. Here’s the trick — the very Virgo trick: go with the flow. Some intuitive hit suggests a different direction? Explore! Pretend you’re like my Gemini Sisters and there’s a need for shifts in directions for no apparent reasons. With certain, more staid influences in the Virgo chart, there’s a suggestion that the new directions are good possibilities.

By now, few people know what a chalkboard really is. It was black slate and the chalk was usually compressed white calcium of various forms. There was always a variation with colored chalks, but mostly, just white on blackboard. Erased and used over and over. Then, in the more modern iterations, these are whiteboards, and that’s what I’ve used to teach astrology over the years, the now-ubiquitous whiteboard. The beauty of either a classic blackboard or a more current whiteboard? It erases. New ideas, new concepts, fresh material, additional resources, added information, and better methodology — all of this plays into the Libra week ahead, new better, fresh, and additional. There is a flood of new material, some of it is useless data, but some of it germane to the Libra discussion, and as such? Part of this grouping. I was going to say, “Part of the equation,” but that sounds too math-like. Who likes math? But that does suggest that there is a sense of logic, and use that blackboard, whiteboard, or whatever is erasable so we can get to where we’re going, as the new data keeps appearing.

“And fleckled darkness like a drunkard reels/From forth day’s path and Titan’s fiery wheels.” That portion of the passage from Friar Lawrence? More just the bit about the night receding into the day, as the Sun (in Taurus) wheels through the heavens. What it means for poetic Scorpio? There’s a hot chariot cutting swath across the day’s sky, and that makes some this informative for Scorpio because the daylight reveals what was previously hidden. This can be unsettling for the good, secretive Scorpio, but then, sometimes — look: if you know this bound to come out? The secrets will be revealed? As Titan’s fiery wheel arcs across the heavens? Some information escapes its secretive confines. Yeah, didn’t work out well in that play, though. (I always thought Romeo was hampered by Mercury in Retrograde).

When I looked around, at the start of my career, the greatest portion of various readers, seers, and fakirs were at least ten years my senior. Not all, but most. Over time, I noticed that the older they all got, it started with reading glasses, progressing to prescription lens of one sort or another. The harder it was for them to see, the easier was for them to “see.” Maybe my second decade into trailer park in Austin, I found a pair or “cheaters,” rather, a whole package of them, and I discovered that I needed the reading glasses after spending all day looking at a computer’s screen. Eventually, I got to where I needed prescription reading glasses and various eye drops for whatever conditions. It was gradual, and then a two-dozen years later, I look like the old people I started with, at the first. It’s a gradual, gentle shift, at least, over time, and this is more than two-dozen years, so this doesn’t happen all at once. For our Sagittarius selves? This is about gradual changes, and slowly making accommodations for what is going on, no sudden changes, for sure, but a few incremental changes, a little bit at a time.

The swaggering, macho players, I like watching. I’ve tried to engage with that energy, but I’m too old, and I don’t care — I have nothing left to prove. But the strutting, like a little bantam rooster, a whole group of them, I recall that energy. Another gentle reader like me, he observed that those guys all operated out of their root chakra, sort of like always carrying themselves with gait of an Old West Gunslinger. A certain bravado lacking in basic compassion. In a different setting, I’d just suggest they all go behind the bushes and compare sizes. What I discovered is I can no longer engage with that kind of energy, not on its own terms. I’m not macho enough, I’m not strong enough, and I lack the requisite braggadocio. When I remember that I was once like that? It helps. When I recall what I’ve done over the course of this career? It helps. When I understand where I’ve been, and how I got here, that helps, too. The swaggering, macho, bragging young people with their attitudes, and arrogances of youth? Do not engage, as this is a fruitless task for gentle Capricorn. We’ve already been there, and done that, no need to repeat the mistakes a third or fourth time.

There is — now — an etched line in front of the Alamo, where the myth suggests, Col. Travis drew a line and asked for the ones who wanted to run to go ahead and leave. It has never been corroborated with fact, or secondary sources, but as a persistent piece of historical apocrypha, it has withstood the test of the years. The story did so well, with no supporting evidence, there’s now an actual line in the pavement in front of the old mission, where the story gets retold. Fact or fiction, the power of myth lives on. It’s a simple example of myth and story-telling where the power of the narrative, what we want to believe is true, what we want to understand, grasp, and hold onto? What we want is so pervasive, that the unsubstantiated tale gets rewarded, and then, it becomes part of the story, factual or not. I got fascinated with the historic records, a few years back, and dug into some of the better and more recent scholarship about the Alamo, and the Texas War of Independence. Fact and myth intersect, and much of this is merely movie-magic from a more modern time. TV tales, too. The question, then as Taurus unfolds and that plays against the Essence of Aquarius, the question, and only the Aquarius can answer, is what is myth and what is fact.

Deep into an astrology chart analysis, I found myself using the expression “Hybrid.” In context, it made perfect sense, and then, I realized, over time, that this is the way that the world is waking up and moving forward, it all requires a hybrid approach. In the setting, I was referring to a form of art that was neither recognized as fine arts nor a commercial works, sort of borrowing from both, and yet, representing neither. In my limited mind? That made it a hybrid form, a unique combination of both, with its own strengths obviously visible. Never can tell what hits with the clients, but the term resonated with me, and I’ve used it since. When I find myself repeating certain expressions more than three times, it deserves an exploration, and this week’s perfectly Pisces presents just an opportunity. It helps not think in a straight line, and it helps not to think along just one set of rules. Moving forward, this week, this month, this next year, for Pisces? It’s going to require what looks like to rest of us, as a hybrid approach, a little from both sides.

Organic memory is a fickle wench, at best. I recall certain locations, items, books, stacks of paper, and other old data, then I recall exactly where I think that material is stashed. Secreted away for safety’s sake. I’ve never claimed that I don’t have that porous memory like that, and I don’t claim that I can recall the exact details of where that particular information might be hidden. I know that about me, and I’ve long since learned to accept that about myself. However, a more precise and more precision-oriented Aries is liable to be upset this week when (something) isn’t where you think it should be, or where you’re sure you left it, or some combination of both. Worse, it could be a someone who isn’t responding in manner consistent with what you remember, and again, the responsible part seems to be the human memories, colored, faded, and rewritten in a style that is more to Aries desires rather than what we see these next few days. Me? I’d blame the Taurus stuff, but I’m an astrologer, and I can get away with that.

1. As noted here, about confirmation bias. ↩

• Aperture: ƒ/1.8
• Camera: iPad Pro (11-inch)
• Taken: 29 November, 2022
• Flash fired: no
• Focal length: 3mm
• ISO: 64
• Shutter speed: 1/60s