A fun spin on serious cosmic stuff! Wendell C. Perry has 40 years experience studying astrology and how it impacts personalities & relationships. He's written two books & published articles in astrology magazines. He's happy to share this website so that you, too, can have fun with astrology to help you in everyday life!
During the middle ages one of the complaints raised by the Catholic Church against astrology was that it threatened free will. The Church needed free will. It just didn’t seem right that a just God would condemn a person to eternal damnation if what they did was determined by their horoscope. In response to this complaint, and to avoid being burned at the stake, astrologers began incorporating free will into their use of astrology.
Psychological astrologers in the 20th century revived this practice. They decided that astrological indicators only provide the psychological motivation for certain behaviors. It was up to the individual to choose how to direct that motivation. “The stars incline but do not compel” was their motto. This trend has persisted and it remains a central theme for most western astrologers, including myself.
With this in mind, you can imagine how shocked I was when I read that modern philosophers have ruled that free will doesn’t exist. The basic idea, as expressed by contemporay philosopher Galen Strawson, is that you do what you do because of the way you are. The way you are is the product of genetic and environmental factors over which you have no control. Therefore, you cannot be ultimately responsible for what you do. You cannot presume to have free will.
In my analysis of the Full Moon chart of Oct. 9 I had predicted that something significant would come out of the last hearing held by the committee investigating the Jan. 6 riots. (Click here to see the article and the chart.) That turned out to be their decision to issue a subpoena for Donald Trump. I also predicted that the actions of the committee would create less excitement than might be expected. It is generally believed that Trump will use legal maneuvers to delay the process until there is a Republican majority in the House of Representatives.
I had worried that the square between Mars and Neptune in that chart might lead to a nuclear standoff with Russia. That didn’t happen but we did get an uptick in gun violence, with a new school shooting happening today. There have been many other shooting but the one's that standout are the one in which five people were killed in North Carolina and four people were killed in Virginia. The fact that (at least according to the last reports) the motives for these crimes are still a mystery is strongly indicative of the craziness one expect from Mars square Neptune.
Overall, though, the Full Moon chart for Oct. 9 was relatively “friendly” and free of drama. At first glance, the New Moon chart (and partial eclipse) chart for Oct. 25 also seems to have a friendly glow. However, a closer look reveals some very worrisome issues. (Click on New Moon to see the horoscope.)
Sometimes you encounter an individual without a birthtime whose personality so emphatically exemplifies one sign that you have to rectify their horoscope in a way that puts that sign on the Ascendant. Such is the case with Roger Stone, the long-time political operative and lobbyist. Stone is known for his love of attention and when you see a Sun sign Virgo who craves attention, you’ve got to think that Leo is rising in that horoscope. (Click here to see a chart for Roger Stone roughly rectified to put Leo on the Ascendant.)
Along with his flamboyant mode of dress and attention seeking actions, Roger Stone is also known for his use of political subterfuge and dirty tricks. In 2020, some of these tricks led to Stone being convicted of lying the FBI. (Thanks to a last minute Presidential pardon, Stone served no time for this crime.). Stone is also known for his ardent admiration such shady political characters as Roy Cohn, Richard Nixon and Donald Trump.
This is the reason that we have to talk about Roger Stone Stone is unapologetic about his admiration for those who achieve power by any means necessary. He sees the world has divided between winners and losers. The losers are weak, fixated on the belief that they can make life better for the other losers in the world. The winners, on the other hand, are only concerned with winning. They may mouth platitudes about patriotism and helping the weak but their real aim is getting power.
“What kind of question is that?” you might ask. It’s the kind of question that contemporary philosopher Galen Strawson asks. In his book “Things That Bother Me” Strawson says that most people live in the “narrative” mode. They experience their life as something shaped by a narrative arc. Their life is a story with a beginning and, eventually, an end. However, there is a minority whose experience of life is “episodic.” They move from one experience to the next without putting any of these experiences in the context of a personal history.
I found this idea intriguing and, being an astrologer, I immediately tried to put that idea in astrological terms. What astrological factors would distinguish an episodic person from a narrative person? At first I thought of the qualities. Narrative people might be more Fixed, while the episodic ones would be Mutable. But what do you do with the Cardinal signs? What I needed was a dichotomy, a duo of astrological factors. And then it hit me: the Sun and the Moon.
