I am continuing to update my e-mail list. If I have you listed twice, or if you wish to discontinue receiving this, do tell me. Of course you're welcome to forward this to anybody who you think would benefit from this material.

In this newsletter yes, I am trying to send out one a month I'll discuss new office hours for consultation, Dorian's English adventure, an article on Intelligent Design and Astrology, some notes on Ariel Sharon and the dynamics of the current Venus retrograde.

The good news is that I am returning to the Boston area for private astrology consultations. During the early summer I saw many people at 106 Winthrop St. in Harvard Square and I will be returning there to see people on Wednesday afternoons.
I have several people scheduled to begin seeing me, and if you?d like an appointment do contact me.
Of course you're always welcome to see me in my sunny office in Warren, Rhode Island.

However, I still need to find some classroom space to do the 2006 courses on Progressions & Directions, the Neoplatonic Tradition and Astrology, and Astronoesis.

Debra Martelli has updated our web page, astrologyinstitute.com
This contains many past articles and newsletters as well as current information.

My book continues.on and on and on.


Dorian's Excellent Adventure

As many of you know, I moved to London in October to do a PhD at the Warburg Institute. I've now finished my first trimester, and am back in London for the second. It's been an intense three months! I arrived at the Warburg on October 3rd, and by October 7th had one of the most miserable colds I've had in a long time. Of course I couldn't stay home and rest (my own pressure, not anyone else's) -- no, I had to go in and embarrass myself at the Director's Seminar with an uncontrollable coughing fit. I guess they knew I was really sick.... Fortunately I've been healthy since then.

? The second day I was there, I went to talk to Charles Burnett, my advisor (translator of Abu Mashar and other Arabic era astrologers), and on the spot changed the topic for my PhD -- from 'Belief in and Attitudes Towards Astrology in the Greco-Roman World from the 1st Century BCE to the 6th Century CE' to 'The Daimon in Hellenistic Astrology: Origins and Influence.' It was fate (or the daimon) that made me say, 'You know, I'd really like to investigate the daimon in Hellenistic Astrology' and to have Charles reply, 'I'm reading Philip Pullman with my son right now.'? (For any of you who haven't read His Dark Materials trilogy, I highly recommend it.? It's about an alternate universe where the people each have their own daemon in the form of an animal.)? Anyway, I had to rewrite my proposal for the school, and it was approved without any discussion!? So I am busy translating all the references to daimon in the astrological literature, as well as giving myself a crash course in the daimon in the rest of Greek culture.

Life at the Warburg is high-powered. There are two other 1st year PhDs, and a few more in later stages of their work. There are 6 MA students. As a PhD student, I don't have to attend any classes, but I can if I want to. So I am taking Latin paleography, and also a German class which I hope will improve my German from its present wretched state. Most people work all day and don't tend to leave the library until closing time, 6pm on Mon and Fri and 8pm Tues-Thurs, Sat til 4pm. But since I am also shelving books (silly me, I thought it would be a nice break from studying and help me learn the library -- but it is more of a pain), I get a key, so I can come in and leave whenever I want to. I usually get in in the early afternoon and stay til 8:30 or 9 at night. I have my own carrel on the 4th floor (the astrology floor). Iusually spend my days translating, looking up articles and books and taking notes. If I'm lucky the articles are in English or French. But I just translated one from Italian; and am slowly working my way through some German ones, including a PhD dissertation, 600 pages on doryphoria (spear-bearers).

I usually take Sundays "off" so I can do food shopping, laundry and cleaning -- and I have become a devotee of Mr Marks and Mr Spencer (Marks and Spencer does pre-cooked meals). I eat lunch at the Warburg every day; their salads are great, the soups are usually OK, and I have learned to avoid the chicken cutlets and the Cornish pasties. At lunch and tea I get to talk with the other students, and so far the atmosphere doesn't seem competitive at all, but very collegial.

I've also been getting used to English and Irish accents -- one of the security guards is from "Cark" -- that's Cork to you and me. He was very happy to find out I was from Boston, home of the Kennedys.

Maybe this trimester I'll get to do more tourist things on the weekends.... I did get to the British Museum once!

Better go...translations await.

Comments on Intelligent Design and Astrology
Joseph Crane
January 4, 2006

I wrote this two weeks ago for the ISAR mailing list, which comes out from that organization on Sunday mornings. Here I weigh in on a current public concern and attempt to give an astrologer's perspective, although it may make "strange bedfellows" for me. It also gives a sense of what kinds of things I've been reading lately.

Having read posts from Ray Merriman, John Dawson, and others regarding intelligent design, I would like to weigh in on a few issues that have come up for me.
Not being a mundane astrologer, I do not feel qualified to discuss the upcoming Saturn opposition Neptune in a meaningful way. Looking around at the state of the world today, I do find it difficult to become excited about Pluto and the Galactic Center. This may be from my pre-modern bias, but rhapsodizing about Pluto and the Galactic Center seems like our fantasies have gotten ahead of us.
As an astrologer, the current issue of intelligent design intrigues me. In the United States, the vast majority of todays astrologers are far from the leanings of those who advocate that a theory of intelligent design be taught alongside or even instead of -- Darwin in school systems. However, there is nothing inherently at odds between intelligent design approach and being an astrologer. In fact it is quite the opposite.
(I am not speaking of intelligent design as a scientific theory based on observations and methods, but simply as a metaphysical assumption.)
I would raise the question this way: is the universe intelligent and purposive Most astrologers feel that it is.? Is our world and we being here a random accident, a coming together of events that just happened to occur Against this latter possibility we instinctively recoil, for this can lead to a sort of materialistic nihilism. Indeed, an approach of nature as random would render the spirit and letter of astrology untenable. Yet this approach is at the bottom of an unqualified Darwinism and many of the assumptions behind todays conventional science.
This past summer some others and I were studying the connections between Plato and astrology, as part of a multi-year project.? During one class I focused on some interesting features in the dialogue Phaedo. In this important dialogue, Socrates is a very short time from drinking hemlock and becoming dead. He told of a time, in his youth, when he became quite interested in the various theories of the universe and its constituents, that this might help him answer some fundamental questions. He discovered that this was not so, that the scientific theories of his day could not help him explain why we are here and how to live the best life or why we should. When Plato talked about the material cosmos, at the end of Phaedo, the last book of The Republic, and especially in Timaeus, it was an intelligent and intelligible cosmos that reflected order, justice, and ultimate victory for the virtuous life. Timaeus gives a story of creation that fit in nicely with Genesis and posits a universe created at a specific time by a creator. An ordered and just cosmos was foundational for Aristotle and, importantly for astrologers, Ptolemy. In fact, astrology has gotten much traction over the centuries with a view of the cosmos and its patterns that are very different from Darwin and the modern age.
Clearly astrologers today are not beholden to any specific view of creationism; we could easily discuss the cosmos as a self-organizing ongoing process that need or need not have had a specific beginning. . (One can even talk about the cosmos as an ongoing non-originating creation of mind that cannot be found to exist.) There are many ways of talking about the cosmos being intelligent without buying into Christian fundamentalism. As astrologers, we should not buy into taking scientific viewpoints and making them metaphysical. If we do that, we are taking a point of view that is antagonistic to our astrological craft.
I appreciate Ray Merriman?s fear that todays adherents to intelligent design are the kinds of people who would love to make things difficult for astrologers. This has nothing to do with the idea of intelligent design; it has more to do with which groups of people ally themselves with which doctrines. Looking at the program of the religious right and the current brazenness of the Bush administration, it is clear that, if these people get their way even a little, the status of astrology will be the least of Americas problems.

Ariel Sharon as a Twelfth House Person
As we all know, Ariel Sharon suffered a major stroke a few weeks ago. Although he is out of immediate danger, there's a good chance he won't recover cognitive capacities. As an astrologer, I am always interested in people in the news and the vicissitudes of their lives. In a future article I will comment on what has happened to him and previous major events in this important life. Here I will say a few things about his natal chart.
Modern astrologers often place too great an emphasis on the Sun's position, especially its zodiacal sign, in a natal chart. If one adds to this tendency another one, to correlate the natal houses with their "natural" signs so that the twelfth house becomes like Pisces, Ariel Sharon, with Sun and Mercury in Pisces in the twelfth, comes across as quite the mystic. Ariel Sharon is not a mystic -- he is (or was) a man who wages war. I will leave it to others to decide if he has been a "spiritual warrior." Like George Patton, Sharon seems a person most comfortable with a defined enemy who must be defeated.
Here is his chart below.

Where can one find "who one is" in the natal chart Traditionally it is not the sign or status of the Sun but one would begin with the Ascendant, planets in the first, the lord of the sign of the Ascendant and its status, and, last and least, planets who aspect the Ascendant closely.
Ariel Sharon's natal chart gives us a clear example of how this would work. One notices both the traditional planet Jupiter and the modern planet Uranus in the first. Lilly considers that planets in the first testify to the " manners" -- the outward behavior -- of the native. Jupiter, the great benefic, gives a grand style and broad reach; Uranus given an innovative or unpredictable tone to these matters.
The zodiacal sign of the first is Aries so that the Ascendant and first is governed by Mars. Mars, of course, is the planet of the fighter, the wager of war. No astrologer would miss the status of Mars as in the house of career, the tenth, and in its sign of exaltation, Capricorn. I would add three further considerations: that Mars is oriental to the Sun and has a stronger expression, is out of sect -- as Mars prefers to be in a nocturnal chart -- and can thus miss the mark by overshooting it, and is in the same sign or zoidion as his Lot of Spirit, which is concerned with matters of ones own initiative and creativity.

I wish to comment on another important feature of Sharon's chart that would suggest his allegiance to his homeland, Israel. The house or place that is covers such matters is the fourth. One does find Pluto there, although Pluto in the fourth shows up on one-twelfth of all natal charts. What planet is in charge of Cancer, the sign of the fourth Moon. Moon is exalted in Taurus, suggesting that homeland and heritage are fortunate and strong in his chart. There are two lots that are also in Taurus nearby Moon -- Exaltation and Accusation! Throughout his long career, Sharon has been idolized and castigated for his fierce loyalty backed up with intransigent armed might. That Mars and Moon are related is clear as the Moon applies to Mars in a trine!

In an effort to keep this simple, I will leave this analysis here and we will look at his life within the context of astrological prediction later.

Venus Retrograde

Venus goes retrograde about every 585 days and stays retrograde for about six weeks.? Venus is retrograde less time than any other planet that goes retrograde (Sun and Moon never go retrograde).
On December 24, 2005, Venus reached its retrograde station.
I wish to comment mostly about the visibility conditions for Venus during this time, as this might help you correlate what you see in an astrological chart with what you see in the sky.
The top chart shows Venus at its moment of retrogradation, and Venus is behind the Sun during this time.? In other words, Venus would be visible in the sky only after the Sun had set. Previously Venus was as much as forty-eight degrees behind the Sun; here it is but thirty. When Venus goes retrograde it is at the end of the period in which Venus has been an evening star, often the most prominent non-luminary in the sky.
Previously Venus has been seen to slow down while the Sun remains at the same speed, so the distance between the two planets becomes less each night and Venus appears lower on the horizon and is visible for less time during sunset. Now that Venus has gone retrograde, the distance between them closes much more quickly and soon Venus is seen on the evening horizon no more, as she has become too close to the Sun.
On January 13, last Friday, Venus and the Sun were conjunct, meaning that Venus in her retrograde movement and Sun in his direct movement brought the two planets together. This is called the inferior conjunction. Astronomically, Venus is between the Earth and the Sun -- in this context, that's what "inferior" means.
Venus continues to move retrograde through this month and now is ahead of the Sun in the zoidiac. When Venus is about twelve degrees ahead of the Sun, about a week afterwards on Saturday, January 21, she can be seen again in the sky, but now as a morning star, rising ahead of the Sun as an "oriental" planet.
Venus continues to rise ahead of the Sun and can be seen earlier and earlier in the morning and is above the horizon longer before the Sun's upcoming rays obliterate its appearance. On February 3, when Venus is about thirty degrees ahead of the Sun, she goes direct.
However, Venus' movement is slower than the Sun for quite a while, and Venus' distance from the Sun increases to its maximum at about forty-eight degrees, then she begins to move closer to the Sun prior to its superior conjunction. This will take quite a while and we will come back to this topic several months from now