No need to apologise Steve. Could you say a little more about the eclipse in Cancer and how this might be affecting the disfunctional family situation that appears to be on the increase, please? Do you think there will be an effect?

Bring it on. Its time for change. Time to understand what really counts. Perhaps as a nation we can understand the value of the family, and reduce government interference.

Incisiveness is a good one. That's exactly what's been going on with me lately. Not making weapons is more difficult. Although I totally agree, what is a weapon and what isn't? There's a walking stick next to our door and it can be very useful. However, it could also be a weapon, although I've never viewed it as such. Guns are perhaps a different case. But explosives have peaceful uses. Maybe this is another case for more incisiveness? Ron (M19)

Steve: Dogs are the best animal in the world and usually a victim of their owner/environment, as we all are. Therefore, a better description would be "rabid animal." Also, how did FOX News come into your blog? Why not CNN or BBC or Sky? I believe they all reported on this same tragedy. I am with you on the gun issue and the steroid issue and the father/mother/dysfunctional issue. Can't we but the "fun" back in dys-fun-ctional? Have a lovely eclipse. Bobbe

Two uplifting websites that people might find interesting (1000awesomethings) which was started by a guy as his marriage was ending & his friend committed suicide. Instead of letting a raft of personal disasters sink him, he started blogging about one small good thing every day. It's now had 17million hits, which is spreading a massive amount of healing around the world. A brilliant example of something simple reaching out & helping to lift alot of people out of a dark place. Also next Sunday there is a thing called The Big Lunch, which is trying to get friends, neighbours & anyone else, all together to eat lunch in the hope of encouraging more sharing, sense of community, skill swaps, more caring for each other etc etc. Great idea. (thebiglunch.com) Love & light to everyone.

As a mental health nurse and a human being I am deeply distressed by what has happened to Mr Moat and his family. Mr Moat has been failed by society and the response is nothing short of disgraceful. Where is you compassion? Or is that only reserved for the 'deserving'? Look into your soul and tell me what you see? There are many questions to be answered by the press and the police but once again I suspect that the establishment will protect itself rather than the people. And you Mr Judd ought to be ashamed.

So true, when will we learn to move away from this fear-based reality, that keeps us all firmly in our 'place', & move into a realm where our primary response to our fellow beings is one of love? Enough people are keeping the fear based model alive, but I'm never going to buy into it or give up hope of a loving society, where we arrive at a deep understanding that we are all one. And that's what I'm teaching my kids.We need to stop squeezing all the magic out of our children! Obviously love & food are a good place to start with kids, but what about teaching them of the power within their own minds, their ability to make a difference? Kids need to be inspired, encouraged to believe in their dreams. Probably turning off the 'news' we are served up daily, would be a great start. Then they could envisage their version of what it is to be human, instead of feeling they are part of a greedy, short-sighted,war-mongering race.

My first thought is how sad that this man should feel this way, my second is why should families be so disfunctional? in some ways we haven't evolved very much at all have we? We are still violent beings and yet I feel very strongly that our purpose on being on this planet is to live the life of a human 'being' and yet only some of us appear to be moving forward. I hope this man gets a chance to come back and get it right next time.

'what else do you call someone who beats their partner and child, shoots people for fun and takes so many steroids that he's out of control?' You could try victim. Probably someone who was himself beaten senseless by people who were supposed to take care of him. I doubt he shot anyone for fun. If I had to guess, I'd say he shot them out of hate, or desire for revenge. Powerful emotions that build up over years. And steriods. Since when did steriods send people out of control? Are we all at risk of being shot by out of control cyclists and body builders? I thought they were used by people who felt small and weak to help make themselves feel big and strong. I don't buy the if-there-were-no-guns people wouldn't get shot argument either. They wouldn't get shot, they'd get stabbed. They'd still die. Do we stop manufacturing kitchen knives? You're looking at the effect, not the cause.

Steve: I believe that the issue of wanting one's father is universal. I've heard it called "father hunger." Apart from fathers who are literally absent, I suspect that many fathers are suffering from overwork and stress disorders. If the father represents leadership, safety and guidance, there are many of us who "want our dads" if our fathers are not emotionally available.

my sun sign is virgo,venus mars and three other planets are in virgo...will this eclipse finally bring closure??

Thank you for the insight into the line-up at he end of the month. Amongst the many different decisions and processes on my agenda, I made one definite decision today. With great clarity I just thought I must not eat fish. I'm a veggie apart from the odd bit of fish, but the decision was final today. The sea needs to replenish its own eco-system and support more front-line dependants, like seabirds and sea animals. We have many alternatives, they don't. If we as humans need to eat animals then maybe it would be a better idea to support terrestrial free-range and good animal husbandry, because we can farm animals. We cannot farm fish - the salmon farmimg industry has shown us that already. Fish need access to the waters that they choose, but livestock is used to boundaries following millenia of domestication. If as a species we were less greedy and encouraged regeneneration, rather than completely destroying the sea bed and bringing various species (including magnificent and enigmatic albatrosses via the fishing industry) to extinction or close to it, then things would be different, obviously. But we are greedy and selfish as a species and I guess that's what the decision/fence-sitting thing is about? Eclipsed new moon in cancer in one manifestation for me has definitely been about a cancerian subject. Blessings x Ella

Solar eclipse over. Watches it on the web from French Polynesia and Easter Island. So now..... Is it all change? Ron (M19)

Further to my comment about evolution and personal responsibilty: I forgot to mention the fact that behind the responsibility dynamic lies the taskmaster Saturn. And what does Saturn invariably do to us if we wimp out and blame our actions on someone else - 'He made me do it', etc? Answer: he gives us such a corrective whack around the head that it knocks us into the middle of next week.

Okay, about guns – I own several and they are sitting in the safe minding their own business. They are dangerous if in the hands of an irresponsible or drugged idiot. I grant you, there can be accidents, but rare if people follow safety rules. I live in the Wild West and it used to be the norm to pack a six gun. Back then, it was more common for people to die of snake bite than gun shot wounds. People generally think twice about attacking someone who might be armed. There is a town in Texas where the new Mayor made is a law that you had to carry a gun. The crime rate dropped to zero. (In the words of Zane Gray, never insult seven men if you’re packing a six shooter.) Back in medieval times, people did not have access to guns; however, they used the most horrible means of doing people in that I have ever heard of. In our country, the people who are murdering people with guns are criminals to begin with. By the way, I thought guns weren’t legal in your neck of the woods. How did this guy manage to kill people with a gun? Guess people break the law no matter where you live. My point is this, if someone wants to kill you, they don’t need a gun to do it. Kind of like locks, they only keep the honest people out. We need a clean, drug free society. We need to learn parenting skills so we can do better than our parents. There are far too many wounded souls among us who’s first wounding came from a parent. Unfortunately, at an early age, we lack the discernment to figure out what is our fault and what is not. Our subconscious minds then put the garbage on replay for the rest of our lives. It gets pretty ugly. I work with a physician who thinks the answer is to give everyone free access to drugs who wants it. Let them kill themselves with the stuff and in ten years they’ll all be dead. No more robbery or murder because of drugs. Pretty extreme, but might have some merit. Our world has gone insane. We have bankers, stock brokers and governments robbing people everyday, without a gun, and still we sit and take it. We have lost the ability to think for ourselves and apathy is going to run up our bums. What a mess!!! Whew! That's my rant for the day.

As a species, we have completed our physical evolution; now we have to evolve psychologically and psychically to reach the next stage of existence. One of the keys to this evolution is learning to take responsibility for our own actions. An insistence on blaming everything on the fact that we are 'victims of society' is an excellent way to block the development of that personal responsibility. It's all about growing up, in fact. I feel sorry for Moat, but we can't blame it all on social services.

Quote: "And one final comment on this particular story - bottom line is that if we as a society didn't make guns, then people wouldn't get shot. As long as we manufacture weapons, there will always be fear and war." Endquote. Steve, I am with you only if this wish means (and emphatically means) that 'the State' is also left without such lethal weaponry. The past is prologue. If you deny ownership of weapons to the common man (at least to those proven to be of good character) while the State is allowed to keep its weapons, or acquires weapons of ever increasing ferocity, then this will (eventually) guarantee the imposition of totalitarian and brutal political control of the majority, by a minority. History teaches us much. The official banning of weapons was what brought about Karate and Kung-Fu. The respective masters of Okinawa and China banned the ownership of weapons. To prevent their being subjugated and abused, the common people (under the guidance of masters) then responded by gradually developing techniques that allowed the almost instant conversion of common farming tools into lethal weapons. It was either do this, or meekly submit to abuse and murder by the state. To a trained practitioner, the bare hand becomes a lethal weapon. Therefore, to opine that banning guns will make this world a safer place is rather missing the point, while denying many harsh realities. As the American Republic's Constitution emphatically states: private gun ownership and local militias are the best defence against totalitarian state control ... of the kind now being slowly implemented in the United States, and already in place (de jure) in Britain. Surely as one of Britain's best Astrologers, you cannot deny the expression of Mars in the charts of humans? Inevitably, some are born with sharp Mars angles to Uranus and Saturn. It is these that provide the ingredients for violence that are activated (emphasized) if the growing child is then psychologically abused by a Mother, or denied a Father.

To the 9:23: You are a mental health person and telling Mr. Judd he should "be ashamed? What kind of mental health person says that sort of stuff? No! I think we globally and individually need to move beyond such judgmental thinking and talking.

I could never support the right to carry guns in the uk. The context for for the usa is different and as I am not there but here, wouldn't like to say, except that I believe that violence begets violence. Most of us use potentially lethal weapons with great ease in the shape of motor vehicles all the time. They often represent status or compensate for emotional insecurity. I heard it said somewhere (maybe Top Gear) that if someone came up with the idea now of the internal combustion engine it wouldn't get off the ground with regard to health and safety, and that's just the engine, never mind the subsequent competitive and aggressive behaviour on the roads, and the pollution. Cars are just another expression of the shallow values we have become accustomed to, related again largely to statements about wealth and power. Yes, I own and drive a car, there's no workable alternative at present. I did see some exciting new developments with regard to alternative / eco friendly vehicles including fuelling up for only £4. Like that's going to happen. There will be some heavy taxes to replace those taken on petrol and diesel. It must be a quandary for the powers that be to encourage giving up smoking and forego that revenue, or to encourage us to use less petrol/diesel when the same is true. What will get taxed to compensate, I wonder? I do believe that things are changing, and probably faster than we are aware, since we only really get to know about the 'bad' stuff. Blessings x Ella

I am shocked at the intensity of the response to your remarks about the 'mad dog', Steve. It shows how readily we can jump into opposing camps. I guess that's what media manipulation is about. If we get at each other's throats then we're not getting together to work out a different way forward. Rather than hold onto the ends of the stick or bone of contention, we need to work our way towards the middle and communicate with each other. I would not underestimate your, or any one else's distress at the events that unfolded, but blame and accusations solve nothing. As I wrote earlier, I would never support freedom to bear arms in the UK. I then went on to mention the lethal aspects of motoring. I felt I should get some statistics to back up my comments. Apparently there is a gradual downward trend in deaths on the road, but there were 2,222 in 2009 and 23,874 serious injuries. That is about 6 deaths a day and 65 serious injuries. That's a lot of people dying and a lot of lives totally devastated as a result of bereavements and serious injury. We don't get those statistics on the news every day. (Statistics from DoT website) Things happen, 'good' things and 'bad', sometimes very bad, things happen. It is our challenge and responsibility to consider whether or not there is anything we can, as individuals, do to remedy or improve the situation. Sometimes we can, and sometimes we cannot, because it's well beyond our sphere of influence, unless we can take a different approach. That's the nature and potential of the times we live in, surely? Blessings x Ella