Monday, Oct. 31, 2005 TODAY IS Halloween, or the approximate day of the Pagan festival Samhain. This is a holiday rich in both social and astrological tradition. This holiday, which recognizes the final harvest and acknowledges death and its rituals, is the 'opposite' of a festival called Beltane, which celebrates birth and sex. These are the two oldest festivals in the Pagan calendar and for some time before, and Halloween is one of the longest continuously celebrated holidays of our culture and many before it. Details are at this link: http://www.stariq.com/Main/Articles/P0001670.HTM Depending on where you live, Nov. 1 or 2 may be acknowledged as the Day of the Dead, covered in Jeanne Treadway's excellent article on the PlanetWaves.net homepage. This is time time of year when the veils between the worlds are said to be thinnest, and the "afterlife" and the current, physical life merge. The dead can visit us. This is the origin of the tradition of costumes at this time of year -- if you're dressed as someone else, maybe they won't recognize you. This is the Pagan New Year. Today is the last day of the year in the old calendar. Nov. 1 is the first day of the year. The night of Oct. 31 is the "night between the years" and is really part of neither year. And the current astrology is rather fitting of such an interesting and cosmic moment. ---- THIS WEEK we have a New Moon in Scorpio arriving with a grand cross in the fixed signs. The New Moon is exact Tuesday night or early Wednesday morning. The fixed signs (explained in more detail in a question on Jonathan Cainer's page last week) are Taurus, Leo, Scorpio and Aquarius. The following planets are involved in this aspect structure: -- Mars retrograde in Taurus (16+ degrees). -- Saturn in Leo (10+ degrees). -- Jupiter (1+ degrees of Scorpio), Moon and Sun (conjunct at 9+ degrees of Scorpio) and Pallas Athene (18+ degrees of Scorpio). -- Neptune in Aquarius (14+ degrees). Except for Jupiter, the Sun and Moon have the lowest degrees -- so they are applying to everything else, namely, Mars, Neptune and Saturn. This is a pretty good grand cross and it's, activated by a lunation that is in a close square to Saturn. So in addition to a variety of symbolic and/or distant forces at work, we also have a whole lot of gravity acting on the Earth and its critters. It is the closest replay to anything vaguely like it since the grand cross and total solar eclipse of Aug. 11, 1999 -- remembered in Europe simply as "the eclipse." Conventional wisdom says it's a safe week for astrologers to predict disasters. But they would not really be disasters, that word means "against the stars." But the job of astrology is to help us move through challenging times with as few problems as possible. The stars are challenging, and the best way to handle it is one step at a time. Each aspect tells a story, or a phase of a story, and by the end of the week, it pretty much has blown through like a storm. How this affects you in part depends on your chart -- but not entirely, because the transiting aspects around us are akin to the shape of the landscape we are standing in. The emphasis on this chart is in Scorpio, which is more emotional and somewhat less cognitive than all the Libra energy we've been accustomed to for some months. At least we have Pallas Athene in that sign to help us think under water. Sun square Saturn aspect (which appears twice a year), reminiscent of the first astrologer I ever knew (Flo Higgins, who used to use it as a whip in the newsroom), says to apply yourself to whatever mission you're on in a Saturnian way: carefully, thoroughly, persistently. But the necessity is for focus. Mars retrograde by itself is somewhat unpredictable; often the most potent effects come after Mars stations direct, which is not until Dec. 11. But it's very much part of this aspect structure, and it is retrograding into an exact square with Saturn (the second of three), which is exact Nov. 18 (then again on Dec. 28). There are two signposts that that Nov. 28 (which is a bit out of range of our discussion, being in more than two weeks) brings a fairly significant development on one or more levels, which include the Moon in Cancer sitting on the Aries Point, as well as an exact conjunction of the Sun and Pallas Athene. When the aspect repeats Dec. 28, it is conjunct Ceres. Both solar aspects to feminine asteroids suggest the prominent involvement of women in whatever is developing now. Though it's not part of the grand cross, there is great emphasis on Sagittarius. This manifests many ways. We are in the midst of a triple conjunction of Ceres, Quaoar and the Great Attractor in mid-Sagittarius. I suggested in Bridge to the Core that this has something to do with rearranging family structures (Quaoar), in the context of mother (Ceres) in a very big way. The Great Attractor is always a point of high polarization and many opinions. Pluto is at 22+ Sagittarius. It makes its first close pass to the Galactic Core by early Spring, coming within one-quarter of a degree of the GC. Venus is about to cross that point this week, reaching it exactly on Nov. 2 (Wednesday), exact in the New Moon chart. So -- we shall see what manifests.     e