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!
We all have bad days, or weeks, or even months and years. One astrological explanation for these “bad” periods is the alignment of transiting planets (planets in the sky right now) with sensitive places in your natal horoscope (the horoscope charted for your day, time and place of birth.) We call these transits and they describe periods of trouble and stress that come and then, thankfully, go.
Now, let’s say that because of a mental, emotional or physical malady you are more vulnerable to these difficult periods than most people. Instead of being a little grumpier than usual or feeling glum, you may react to this transit by acting out in unacceptable, destructive and perhaps even violent ways.
At the same time transiting planets are making aspects to points in your natal chart, they are also forming aspects with each other. Sometimes those aspects are stressful, such as the current square between Uranus and Pluto (which has been nearly exact for several weeks now.) And sometimes more than one planet is involved in one of these stressful arrangements, like last week when Mars was opposite Uranus and square to Pluto.
A while back I did a series of articles that speculated on the Sun signs of Captain America, Iron Man and the rest of The Avengers. At the time I considered including the villain of that movie, Loki, but didn’t. The reason I left Loki out is because he represents something that goes beyond a human personality. Loki is an archetype.
The trickster god is a feature in many different mythologies. Loki in the Norse myths is probably the most familiar to us but Native American folk tales are loaded with the doings of the trickster. Trickster gods are the rebels of their pantheon. They use their cleverness to fool humans, sure, but they are also fond of playing tricks on their fellow gods. This often makes the trickster an outcast.
In Norse mythology, Loki was the ultimate outcast. He was always looking for ways to thwart the will and the hubris of the other gods. For this reason he was eventually chained to a rock and constantly drizzled with snake venom that burned away his skin. Ah, but Loki got the last laugh at the end of the story. His monstrous children, one a giant wolf and the other a sea serpent, destroy Asgard and kill all the other gods.
It is a common notion among astrologers that hard, difficult aspects make for strong, resilient people. When we see a horoscope with a goodly dose of close squares and oppositions we know we’re dealing with a person who has experienced hardship and defeat. Aspects like these, the traditional “bad” aspects, symbolize deficiency that have to be overcome and troubles that have to be faced. Not everyone wins the battles indicated by their squares and opposition but even the losers come out of the experience a little wiser and a little tougher.
In my last article I wrote about the demise of the marriage of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes. But this marital disaster was preceded by another famous split: the breakup of Johnny Depp and his long time companion, Vanessa Paradis. In Cruise’s horoscope (charted for noon) I focused on the role that Jupiter and Neptune played in his divorce. With Depp, the culprits seem to be Saturn and Uranus.
Depp has Mars in Virgo with Venus in Taurus. (Click here to see Depp's chart.) In our Mars/Venus Playbook we call this combination The Basically Beautiful Lover. It provides for an earthy, fulsome erotic nature. It is a very sexy combination but also a practical one. Physical pleasure is paramount but lust is always tempered by a realistic concern for what it may cost, both materially and emotionally.
A Saturn—Uranus Showdown