Tag Archive for: coping with alzheimers

Monday 2/19/2018: Happy Birthday, Pisces; Sneak Peek at Lovely Week & Other Good News

(written on Sunday; posted just before midnight on Monday)

Happy long weekend — for many of us in the U.S. Buy a mattress on sale, won’t you?

Happy Sun in Pisces (as of today at 12:18 PM ET) — and happy Mercury in Pisces (as of 11:28 PM ET yesterday), too.  Therefore,  happy birthday to your favorite fishies!

Pisces is a sensitive, intuitive energy that at its best expresses compassion and loving kindness for everyone and everything, in its understanding that we are all One.  Being such a sensitive soul is not always easy. Pisces has been known to wallow in suffering. It can go to extremes of surrender in order to escape life’s hard knocks, drowning its sorrows in the nearest rose-colored glass. Pisces is ruled by Neptune, a dreamy energy that can be challenging to integrate, but oh what sublime creative visions it can bring to life, when effectively channeled. Pisces appreciates that the individual and the collective are one and the same; that the illusion that we are separated from one another is just that: an illusion.

This Pisces truth is expressed in a book I stumbled across years ago. It’s called Happier Than God by Neale Donald Walsch. At the end of Chapter 15, Walsch talks about his quest to find the answer to these questions: 1) What does it take to make life work? and 2) Why does my life have to be such a continuing struggle? Walsch credits a conversation with God with this answer:

“Your life does not have to be such a continuing struggle. The problem is simple. You think your life is about you. Your life is not about you.”

“It isn’t?” I asked.

“No,” God answered.

“Well, then, who in the world is it about?”

Everyone in the world.”

The book then expounds on a simple, yet profound concept that “All Things are One Thing. There is only One Thing, and All Things are part of the One Thing That Is.”  Walsch makes the case that when you can apply this concept in day-to-day living, you will have mastered the key to success. Sounds pretty Piscean to me.

Pisces folk born 11-16 days into the sign should chat with Fish born a few days earlier about how spacey life seemed in the past two years. Lots of potential for creativity and soulful questing, though.  I’d say the same is true for  Geminis, Sagittarians and Virgos born in that range.  May be time to check in with your local astrologer…

Famous Pisces include Kurt Cobain, Drew Barrymore, George Harrison, Dr. Seuss and Albert Einstein. All sensitive, soulful and sublime, in their own magical way.

Mercury will be in Pisces until March 5th. It suggests a need for thinking that is intuitive, rather than rational.  On the upside, we might need a more compassionate take. On the downside, thinking that is based on empathy and compassion may not be the most practical in terms of execution.

Regardless of the Sun or Mercury in Pisces, the energy of today (Sunday) is driven by the Moon in me-me-me Aries. It seeks a way to fulfill its crusading agenda while getting ego recognition for its collective consciousness. An ambitious reach or buckets of rain on someone’s parade may weigh in around 7:15 PM ET, when the Moon is squared by stern Saturn. If the latter, Aries Moon doesn’t care. The best way to motivate an Aries is to tell them it can’t be done. Tomorrow is another day…and the Moon will still be in Aries, so there!

Note the potential for a power play on MONDAY, when the Aries Moon makes its weekly clash with Pluto around 8:47 PM ET. A meet-up with disruptive Uranus at 6:11 AM ET on TUESDAY gets the post-holiday work week off to an exciting start…even though it immediately goes void until 2:12 PM ET. There’s your excuse for sleeping in, flaking on a scheduled meeting or any other disruptive twist to your morning. Go with the flow; stick to routine and don’t turn a molehill into a mountain. Chill!

Tuesday and WEDNESDAY are driven by a Taurus Moon, seeking stability and comfort in the material world. A vision-inspired initiative for a more perfect and beautiful world may emerge, courtesy of the only two exact planetary patterns this week (other than to the Moon). First at 1:42 PM ET on WEDNESDAY, Venus (women, beauty, money, social expression) and Neptune meet up in Pisces. Idealism, empathy, peace and love — all in harmony with high-functioning energy to take that vision and make it real. At 3:23 PM ET. Mercury will harmonize with Saturn. Make your pitch and alert the media.

On THURSDAY, the Moon will be void between 6:46 AM ET and 7:07 PM ET. The work week ends with a buzz, courtesy of a pixie-chatterbox Gemini Moon. Oh what tangled webs we weave (we may wonder), as the Friday afternoon news dump approaches.

And now, the news…

…in which we’ll list stories reflecting the potential of Saturday’s square (tension) between Mars in boundary-pushing Sagittarius and dreamy Neptune. Mars = guns, machismo, anger, action. Neptune = scandal, fog, illusion, forgiveness, oil, drugs and more.

First up — and about darn time — 13 Russians were indicted on charges of tampering with the 2016 election. How? A troll farm planted fake news on social media, drumming up support for P45, Jill Stein and Bernie Sanders, i.e., whatever it would take to pull votes away from Hillary Clinton. Mars-Neptune suggests conspiracy. “A former Russian troll speaks: ‘It was like being in Orwell’s world,’” reports WaPo“Defiant and error-laden,” was P45’s typical noxious response.

One more story — and then enough about P45. Sharing this because it’s right on schedule, as Avid Readers will recall from last Monday’s forecast:

As he is the current occupant of White House, it is useful to look at P45’s horoscope for additional insight on how this eclipse may affect the nation. We see that it falls right on his Descendant, opposite his Mars. Immediately we think: relationship, aggression/assertion — brought to a close or otherwise interrupted, to make way for something new. Mars rules P45’s 9th House — which refers to messages to the masses, international  and legal affairs. Stormy weather during this cycle, perhaps?

In October 2016 it was reported that the National Enquirer paid Playboy model Karen McDougal $150K for the rights to her story about her 2006 affair with P45.  It was never published (don’t you wonder why?),  but someone else spilled the beans to reporter Ronan Farrow. On Friday the New Yorker published excerpts of Ms. McDougal’s handwritten account.

Way to go, Ronan Farrow! And what a hot horoscope Mr. Farrow has. Sun, Moon, Mercury, Saturn and Uranus all in righteously opinionated Sagittarius.  Uranus together with the Sun and Mercury suggests they broke the mold when they made him. Did you know he graduated college at 15 and then went to law school at Yale? Genius!  With  Scorpio Mars and Pluto together in the 8th House, we can appreciate a talent for ruthless dirt digging. It is fascinating to see that his 12 Sag Moon and Midheaven have been under the influence of transiting Neptune’s fog for the past couple of years. And yet — all last year transiting Saturn hit the rest of his planets in Sag. What has he produced in that time? Ruthless “get real” exposes on a Neptune keyword:  scandal. First,  Harvey Weinstein — and now P45. Did I mention that Mr. Farrow’s Ascendant is 28 Aquarius — thus impacted by the Aug 21st and last week’s eclipses? It is fascinating to also note that transiting Uranus is about to square his natal Venus at 26 Capricorn for the third and final time in just over a year. This suggests social expression that may shock or otherwise disrupt.  Regardless, I foresee continued empowerment for him through 2018, as transiting Pluto squares his natal Jupiter.

Meanwhile…

I wish we had a birth date for Emma Gonzalez. This inspiring young woman survived last week’s mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. Did you catch her impassioned, charismatic call to action on Saturday? It too, reflected the potential of a Mars-Neptune square, combined with the fierce humanitarian idealism of another pattern exact that day: the Sun conjunct Mercury at the very end of Aquarius. The voice of the future — yet we’ve been here before. When was that, you might ask. In the aftermath of the Uranus-Pluto conjunction of 1966. Students rebelled against the draft and the Vietnam war. It should not be surprising that now — in the aftermath of the Uranus-Pluto square — we are seeing students rallying against another cause. A walk-out is being planned for March 14th, with more to come I’m sure.

It’s worth taking a few minutes to read the Wikipedia entry on Marjory Stoneman Douglas. A pioneering Aries with Moon in depth-seeking Scorpio, Ms. Douglas was also a journalist and fierce environmentalist who recognized that a call to “drain the swamp” of the Florida Everglades was total b.s. — and this was back in the mid-40s. We can see her potential revolutionary spirit in an opposition between rebel Uranus and her Aries Venus and Sun. Her Mars is at 11 Sagittarius, needing to push boundaries with righteous action. It is interesting to note that on February 14th, the day of the shooting, transiting Mars was exactly on her natal Mars. Translation: a new two-year cycle of action begins. I bet she’d be proud of Emma Gonzalez and her fellow students who are now speaking out. Heck, I bet she’d be marching with them. Birth data: April 7, 1890 in Minneapolis, MN. Died  on May 14, 1998 in Coconut Grove, FL. RIP.

In other news…

  • Before I had my first cup of coffee this morning, I confess I was puzzled over this item that WaPo included in its daily First Reads email: “How the Full-Beat Face Took Over the Internet.”   Turns out it’s about the latest craze in make-up. In other words, glamour, illusion, women — happy Mars and Venus with Neptune. Duh!
  • “Black Panther” lived up to the hype and has smashed box-office records.
  • The New York Times is well-aware that most of the news these days is bewildering and depressing. Thus it’s put together a fairly new weekly feature, “The Week in Good News.”  This week you can feel better reading about Chloe Kim, Mr. Rogers and a bison frise named Flynn.

I’m doing my part to bring you some positive, feel-good stories of real people making the best of these challenging times, too. Back in December a college chum starting blogging about her brand new life.  She is a college professor, like her mother. Recently her mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, and about this time last year, a decision was made for my chum to take a sabbatical, help her mother sell the family home — and move to Rome. I encouraged her to write about her experiences. Her blog was launched on the Winter Solstice — with the  Sagittarius Sun conjunct Saturn in Capricorn at the Aries Point. A serious work about aging (Saturn) that is destined for prominence? I hope you will enjoy the warmth and wisdom of Alexandra Miletta’s writing. Here is the blog — it’s called Roads to Rome — you can sign up to receive new posts by email.

Grazie mille for reading this forecast. Here’s the 411 on personal consultations.


Pisces – the fishes, detail from the Horoscope from ‘The book of birth of Iskandar”