just got back, wet and bedraggled but exuberant at having spent a week with over 100 or my real community and freinds, and the new decisions we've collectively made about how to shape the future...  more later when I'm dry and have looked at the emails and phone calls... but - tomorrow, Friday 1st October - midday UK time - the return of the Caustic Astrologer - here.  I'll publish repeat times shortly.

I'm sat in a field in the middle of nowhere, trees on three sides of me, and the reason I've not blogged is that I've been too busy siting cafes, the solar and wind powered stage, toilets and disabled toilets, sauna, showers, event control (my tent, until this afternoon), marquees and gate management.  And it's different to my normal routine, that's for sure.  Both last night and the night before I saw a spectacular full Moon, right next to Jupiter, and I know that if I had a good enough telescope I would have been able to see Uranus as well.  And seeing as it's Equinox as well, I feel that collectively we're on the crest of a wave thats's beginning to roll nicely now - it should, theoretically, lighten up now until Solstice.  Here's hoping.

My feelings of anger over recent days (see recent blogs) have surprised me, I didn't expect these issues to have such a passionate and powerful effect on me.  It's brought a lot of personal stuff up from forty years ago that I really thought I'd dealt with.  I hear what many of the blog contributors say about love and light and forgiveness, and part of me aspires to that.  But another part of me is angry and passionate, and rationalise it away as much as I like, it's always been there and probably always will be.  Enter Chiron.  When I discovered Chiron, the half man half horse Centuar, Astrology suddenly made a lot more sense.  The integration of the human and the animal, the intuitive and the instinctual, the academic and the passionate is something more powerful than either brute force or pure love and light.  I will not relinquish my more primal nature that my anger fuels, but I seek to hone and focus it constantly.  I'm part of the Saturn in Scorpio generation, whose motto seems to be 'to forgive, but never forget'.  And - mad as it seems, just as the Autumn rains come lashing in, I'm ...

I really can't leave it alone, much as I want to.  This old man in the white and red dress - he's seriously off planet and dangerous.  According to him, women with life challenging illnesses or who have been raped should be denied abortions.  Women who have children out of wedlock are shameful and pariahs.  There is no space for women priests in this man's church.  Contraception is evil, gay relationships even more so.  This is the man who protects the Bishop of Bruges, despite his admission of child rape.  His doctrine for his priests is that of enforced celibacy, which warps and twists one's natural biological urges.  He talks of the fear of Nazism when he was a member of the Nazi youth.  This is at best a man detached from the real world, at neutral quite worryingly misguided and advised, and at the worst really sick.  And whilst I am obviously biased, the astrology of his chart does suggest that the next few months, particularly the early new year, are critical for him.  He goes back to Rome tonight to the arms of Silvio - they deserve each other.  And seeing as I'm in the space of 'horoscopic ...

When I find difficult combinations of Venus and/or Mars with Neptune in one's chart, then often I find individuals who are incredibly sensitive to gender issues, who are artistic, sensual, genteel, subtle and refined in their tastes and who often find that their feelings and sensitivities are understood by their own gender, regardless of sexual orientation.  But when I find things like the Moon for example in difficult aspect to Pluto, (such as in Ratzo's chart) then I find individuals who have trouble expressing their true feelings openly, often leading to represssion of the emotions which opens up a whole can of worms.  Whilst Moon/Saturn talks of emotional limitation and restriction, Moon/Pluto talks of repression, emotional anger and violence towards oneself, suppression and  - of  course - the potential to transform these lower base feelings into something truly regenerative that really helps others - i.e. family psychology, community care etc. Every so often the comments on the blog make me question myself and my attitudes, yesterday being a case in question.  My apologies if my ignorance upset people, my intent is as clean as I can make it and always getting better.

I don't have a problem with gays, nor with priests (at the street level).  But enforced celibacy in the current Catholic church breeds paedophilia, IMO.  Old men with cravings for power come what may become distorted and perverted whilst thinking they're doing God's work.  I would become a regular church attendee (well, maybe...) if all the priests were women, especially the cardinals and the pope.  Then we'd have an inclusive church, one that is open to all.  There are direct parallels here with the burgeoning growth in the 99% white Tea Party in the USA, where racism is beginning to grow stronger again, and in Islamic countries where women and girls are subjugated and dehumanised.  There is seemingly an urge to dominate, control and disempower that is instilled in our collective hard drive that only by intelligent discourse can be eliminated.  Indeed, Pluto in Capricorn will bring elimination of old constructs and political and religious dogma, but the journey may be bumpy.  And not so much now or tomorrow, but next week onwards I suspect that something unique and significant will occur that will clarify the nature of extremism further, that will bring clearer definition of what 'side' we are ...

Firstly - I'm doing readings in central London this weekend, still a few places left - details in the diary.  Secondly - here's my analysis of Ratzo's chart (16.4.27, 04.15, Marktl, Germany).  Mercury conjunct Uranus at end Pisces and start Aries (getting clobbered now by transiting Uranus and Jupiter) square Mars, giving either a radical or uber-conventional mindset.  The challenge here is the strong square from his Moon to Pluto, suggesting emotional disorder and borderline emotional abuse during childhood, and his somewhat disturbing attitude towards paedophilia.  Similar chart in style to that of Norman Tebbitt and Fred West, the Gloucester killer.  I cannot be detached - personally, I think that this man is a nasty bit of work; I'm pleased that none of his UK tour gigs have sold out.  I'm not anti Catholic (I'm anti ALL religion), but the Catholic church has burnt and killed more astrologers than all other churches put together.  I live in Bath, one of the old English protestant towns where the first Catholic church was only established in the 1860's, and I'm sure the Pope would have a warm welcome here.   Psychic custard pies at the ready!

Now do come on people...  you all know that I'm a gentle subtle soul who likes nothing more than tea, biscuits, slippers and a bit of yoghurt weaving to send me to sleep.  But sometimes I have to let the bulldozer out.  I hear the diatribe of complaint about current times and those to come, but come on....   What do you think you are really doing down here?  Do you remember why you volunteered to come here in the first place?  You are all specialists in your own field who through the necessity and trauma of birth have forgotten why you're here, and astrology is just one of the triggers designed to remind you of true purpose.  And if it gets easy then we become complacent, or fat.  If you want an easy life, watch daytime TV, take prozac and read Russell Grant or Septic Peg.  This is the most compressed time of human history, we are on the point of a consciousness breakthrough never seen before but imagined, and we have the privilege of seeing the revelation of genesis at the end of 'time'.  And compared to the gargantuan developments of recent months, the coming few months are a ...

Writing forecasts for the next three months, seeing lots and lots of trigger points ahead in the temporal patterns.  Not major global crisis, nor the intensity and extremes of the last four months, but isolated and specific points of time that will strongly affect specific individuals in specific ways - ah, the joys of personal astrology after all this global stuff!  The first of these is imminent, about another eight - ten days time with the first of two Aries full Moons, followed by Venus retrograde in Scorpio for ten weeks - that should be fascinating in terms of its influences on personal relationships.  There's the next Mercury retrograde conjunct Pluto in December, and the whole of the second week of December is critical, with Mars, Mercury and Pluto all together.  I know we're just out of the Mercury retrograde, and you're all probably a bit shell shocked and meandering, but seriously - this has been a rest compared to May-August, and the next ten days are for gathering, integrating and assimilating before jumping back into seventh gear for a time around the full Moon.  Decisions can be safely made now - actions should wait for another week.

A big thank you to the wonderful people I saw in Cambridge over the weekend...  Charts and mp3's will be with you later today.  On Saturday night I was blessed to catch the faintest glimmer of the banana Moon just above Venus, for all of five seconds through the twilight clouds over the fields.  Every so often it's necessary to go out there and link with the stars, in whatever way feels right to you.  And - just had a chat with my mum, she's learnt a bit of astrology over the decades, and she started by telling me that Mercury had just stopped going retrograde!  And then she had this idea with I immediately concurred with - how about this:  that every major government post be filled by women over the age of 60, on the grounds that they can budget, economise, and bring common sense and wisdom.  Increasingly God/Goddess stuff will get stronger over the coming two weeks, and the veneration, acknowledgement and respect for older women is way past overdue.  Imagine if the whole world were run by women over 60?

OK, Mercury retrograde in Virgo drawing to a close...  it's like there's an electric blue fog of static not so much obscuring but warping the ways that people are seeing things, there's not so much physical or emotional difficulty as mental and mobile, people are cracking under the strain of not knowing what's going on (me included), it's as though we're collectively under some type of numbing anaesthetic that's stopping us feeling the worst of the ongoing transition from Saturn/Pluto to Jupiter/Uranus.  I'm really surprised to see how much this Mercury retrograde is like a cul de sac, a kind of electrical nebulousness that defies logical explanation and eludes sensory description as well, but that leaves a sense of unease and disquiet common where understanding is absent.  It concludes in three days time, but I don't expect clarity to even begin dawning until Wednesday.  Thing I always ask myself is 'would I be feeling this way if I didn't know about astrology'?, something I'll never know the answer to.

Snapshot.  The Saturn/Pluto square is fading, Chiron and Neptune are having their own merry innocuous (except for those born end Aquarius and end Leo) dance, Venus and Mars are continuing their tryst at the end of Libra, and Jupiter is about to join Uranus again, retrograde at the end of Pisces.  The Jupiter/Uranus conjunction at the start of Aries, in virtuo since the start of June, has promised and threatened much but delivered little in terms of substance.  Probably because at that time Saturn/Pluto was at its strongest.  I don't expect the J/U conjunction to really begin to bite again until the end of November, and then it's going to be mega for a few months in terms of transcending old cultural expectation and evolving new templates of both nano and cellular acceleration in the outside world and the taking of more personal responsibility for the inside world internally.  J/U is in a state of having initially brewed and is now fermenting, prior to distill point at the end of this year and exploding on us between mid January and end March 2011.  And then - then both Jupiter and Saturn have moved on, Chiron and Neptune will be in ...

I've been in a foul mood for a couple of days, still am, digging into the emergency supply of things that make me laugh to shift mood, thought i'd share a few of them with you.  Some old favourites here, and some new ones.  Doodling and bimbling only, for when you're p'eed off and need to laugh and smile.  Here and here for the world dance, here for some classic stage art, this is just hilarious, and if you need proof that the heavens are smiling on you, go here, and if you want to buy influence in British politics go here.  Then here for a great social experiment thats danceable and fun, and if you're still with after all this then it's an hour later and if you're not smiling then you don't have a pulse.  Send me what you think I'll like, i'll post it in good time when the world neds a laugh.

Extrapolating from yesterday whilst Mercury retrograde is ongoing (although today, with the Moon opposing Pluto and squaring Saturn, Uranus and Jupiter, is likely to be quite explosive in a watery and sultry way), a combination of time and cats.  There's got to be a book there somewhere.  There's a case for suggesting that cats manipulate time, as well as everything and everyone else - after all, dogs have owners but cats have staff.  Cats have been revered as temporal travellers since at least Egypt and the days of Bubastis, or Bast, originally the demon woman (Lilith) slaying innocent men who became associated with the lioness and then given a feline head and body.  Sure, it's a worldly thing with cats, they're everywhere.  But here in the UK, it's even more extreme.  We hear stories daily of child abuse, violence against women, war, corruption at the highest of levels and it's like water off a duck's back.  But put a cat in a rubbish bin, and the death mobs gather outside your front door.  I've heard about the dolphins and whales, and even the white mice, but for me it's cats that run this place.

Time.  Time for this, time for that, the right or wrong time, the flow of it, but what actually is it?  Far as I can make out, time is a combination of a human imposed system of order combined with a natural system of planetary and stellar pattern.  The latter is demonstrated by the 168, 84, 29 and 12 year cycles of Neptune, Uranus, Saturn and Jupiter respectively.  We have natural annual time with the yearly orbit around the Sun and the corresponding seasons.  Monthly (or near as damn it) patterns are indicated by the new and full Moons.  Even the seven day week can be put down to the Moon with a tinge of Saturn.  But hours, minutes, 12 months as opposed to 13 - this is a human construct, something i suspect goes back a long, long way.  And of course, time is only relative to one's experience of it whether individually or at a group level, but that's another thing altogether.  Unless you've got weird aspects to Uranus, in which case the temporal dimensions don't flow around you the same as others.  Rambling again...  tell it's Mercury retrograde.

Meanwhile, back in the real world... people are walking round as if they've got their heads encased in a cube of fog.  The emotional and physical are working fine, but when it comes to focus, concentration and finding enough time in the day to do things, forget it.  It's Mercury retrograde in Virgo, affecting us individually through communication clarity and accurate memory issues, and nothing will make sense until the 13th at the earliest.  Better to lower the expectancy levels and get the filing done.  Sun signs are now up, better late than never, and I'm back in the office tomorrow properly for the first time in weeks - will catch up with emails and readings from then, honest.