Here is the chart for this New Moon. The Sun-Moon conjunct occurred at 7:28 PM on May 16th Greenwich Mean Time.

While there's a lot going on in the chart, with two grand crosses and multiple trines, there seems to be more happening in the span between the Part of Fortune and Mars. That span includes Jupiter, Pluto, Neptune, North Node, Uranus, and maybe Chiron (Chiron is an asteroid and fairly recent addition to the study of astrology).

To see if the Part of Fortune placement is valid for any chart anywhere, I put together a small collection of charts for the New Moon at roughly the same latitude in New York city, Chicago and Redding, CA. The Part of Fortune is a synthetic point derived from a calculation based on Sun-Moon-Ascendant positions (according to the Wikipedia, Day chart: Ascendant + Moon - Sun; Night chart: Ascendant - Moon + Sun ). The Part of Fortune is considered the point at which you are most fortunate. (Personally, I think of it as representing Earth.) As you can see from the collection of charts, no matter how far West you go, the Part of Fortune stays in basically the same position. Even when you go as far north as Anchorage, Alaska the Part of Fortune still sits on the Ascendant. After looking at all the charts I have, it appears that at the New Moon the Part of Fortune is on the Ascendant always, and at the Full Moon the Part of Fortune is on the Descendant (or cusp of the 7th house) always.

Going back to the span where there seems to be more happening, three things seem noteworthy:

• Neptune and Jupiter are in aspect (sextile) and they are a dyad representing reorientation. Their midpoint falls roughly at 19° Capricorn; Venus is positioned at 19° Cancer, the opposing point which represents the "release of the internal or spiritual meaning of the process" (Michael R. Meyer, A Handbook for the Humanistic Astrologer, Anchor Books, 1974). This suggests that what you like or prefer will be a trigger for changing the way you approach your career, your standing in the community, or authority.
• Neptune with his trident is keeping company with Chiron, the teacher. In opposition to their midpoint is Saturn in Leo, attempting to maintain control.
• Uranus in Pisces is square Jupiter in Sagittarius. Since Jupiter is in its own sign and in the first house, more conventional ways will win the day this 30-day period, but there may be grumbling and throwing of things among the iconoclasts, rebels and rabble-rousers.

In closing, let's remember: the New Moon sets the tone for the next 28- to 30-day period. What begins at the New Moon is completed at the Full. If you want to learn about astrology or study how it operates, observing how these two occurrences relate is an good place to start.

Journal entry dated 16 May 2007
Category: Whatis Aquarian

Well, my machine crashed, yet again, on May 5th and it took the data on my storage drive with it.

For a few days I thought I had a virus in the bios, but after swapping drives and seeing the slave drive recognized by the bios as a slave, I knew that C-drive was toast (by the time I stopped trying to recover from the crash, it was screeching). The data on the storage drive was toast, too. Efforts to recover files on it have been completely unsuccessful.

Running Windows I expect to have to restore C-drive at least once a year. But the storage drive has been stable forever. The last time I backed it up was in December. Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.

My problems with this machine started when I installed Ubuntu and I'd like to blame the GRUB loader (an autoexecute file that lets me choose whether to boot Linux or Windows). But I think when I partitioned the drives I did a poor job.

So I'm trying Linux, Ubuntu flavor, and Windows again. But this time I think the partitions are set up right and for good measure I'm setting up the machine to mirror the drives to CD periodically.

Then comes reinstalling all the files, setting the desktop up the way I like it, and pulling what I can off this website. Recovery can be slow and losing the data drive threw me for a loop.

Should be back to blogging as usual by late Saturday. The new Moon chart for yesterday is done; it'll be published then.

Please, stay tuned.

--Marge

Here is the chart for this Full Moon.

In keeping with my practice, here are links to articles discussing this full Moon by

• Lisa Dale Miller at astrowisdom.com, who says:

  This is an especially good night with Venus (heart) in Gemini (diversity and open-mindedness) to gather with your community to lovingly and openly discuss polarizing issues that have been hard to tackle: the idea being to get beyond scripted points of view to find the real issues that divide and separate. Sun (ego) and Mercury (speech) in Taurus could make openness seem harder than it should be, but commonality can be gained from truthfully admitting where both side's arguments lack focus and power. The Scorpio Moon will counteract Taurus' bullheadedness and help to turn divisive issues into deeper more honest solutions.

• Jeffrey Kishner at LunarTunes, who waxes philosophical about possessions and learning to share:

  In fact, do you really "own" anything? It all turns to dust. Your money, your house, it just gets transferred to someone else when you die, or it decays over time. Your possessions only provide an illusion of security. Don't get me wrong, creature comforts are important, and you need to pay your rent, but what do you really need? The intimacy you share with another human being, the trust you develop by having integrity ... are these intangibles not more valuable than your car?

• Robert Wilkinson at Aquarius Papers, who tells us why the full Moon of Taurus-Scorpio is known as the Wesak [or Vesak] Festival, a.k.a. A Happy Buddha Birthday:

  The Full Moon represents a potentially enlightened state, where the Moon (form) is in the perfect position to reflect the greater light of the Sun. It begins a time of fulfilling the seed state of the New Moon. The Full Moon of Taurus Sun and Scorpio Moon is special in a major way, since for centuries it has been celebrated as the birth and enlightenment Moon of the Buddha, said to be the first human to fully transcend suffering and live to teach us the truths he found. It is the 2nd of the "Three High Moons" of Spring, and anchors the outpouring of life into a form that can help us transcend suffering as well.

In this chart are

• A grand cross in fixed signs formed by a opposition between Saturn in Leo and Neptune in Aquarius in one arm and an opposition between the Moon in Scorpio and the Sun with Mercury in Taurus in the other arm. The aspects between Neptune and the Sun/Mercury combo and Saturn and the Sun/Mercury combo are a bit wide (over 10° for the first trio, over about 7° for the second trio).
• A T-cross in mutable signs formed by Pluto and Jupiter, both retrograde, in Sagittarius in opposition to Venus in Gemini and Mars conjunct Uranus in Pisces. Venus, Jupiter, Mars and Uranus are square one another; Pluto only opposes Venus.
• The crosses are joined by Moon trine Uranus, Neptune trine Venus, Saturn trine Jupiter, Jupiter sextile Neptune, and the Sun sextile Uranus.
• In a birth chart this would be considered a well-integrated chart.

Journal entry dated 02 May 2007
Category: Whatis Aquarian