Check out the interview with astrologer and author of the new book, SunShines: The Astrology of Being Happy Michael Lutin on John and Susan Townley’s, AstroCocktail, where he gives advice to writers and he talks about his background and how astrology found him.

The Sunshine Astrologer: An Interview With Michael Lutin

A few weeks ago when I was thinking about the shadow side of women and how they hunt each other (even on my blog), I discussed this with a friend who is very into politics. The election had just ended and he watches all the political shows.

He told me he felt the whole culture treated women poorly all the way around and he thought it was heinous. He said the talking heads on the political shows, Chris Matthews and the like, did nothing but mock the women… all the men on the panel did.

“It’s disgusting,” he said. “And the women on the panel are no better.”

“They don’t defend them?”

“No, they mock them too.”

“Yeah, well I imagine they are in this man’s world. They finally got a seat on one of those shows and if they act like a woman, they’re going to be next!”

So anyway, on that last blog I told you my friend was “sweet”. I told you she was sweet twice! And I told you she was under attack. And I told you that she finally decided to fight back. And she managed to be effective, thank God. And based on the comments, this is not okay with of a number of you. So just think about that.

A woman is getting attacked. Repeatedly! She finally manages to get up off her back and get her own knife out to defend herself, and as soon as she does people (other women) want to characterize her as some kind of misguided psycho witch who is wasting her time. Excuse me????

::shakes head::

How come no one championed her? Where are the “go, baby!” sentiments for a woman who fights back? If she stayed on her back to continue to be stabbed, would that be acceptable? I don’t think it would.

The same women who would attack a woman for fighting back would attack her for not fighting back. Sucks to be a girl, eh? But it’s fine to be a perpetrator and there is something horribly wrong with this. I guess she should defend herself with a feather or a dust mop or something. Would that be okay?

Dear Scorpio,

You are asking how do to deal with fact you are not a God and this is easier than you think. You only need come to understand that being a God is not desirable, considering you live here on Earth.

On Earth, real human beings relate to each other. The share their love, their pain, their successes and failures. And if you are a God, then what can you do? All you can do it look down on the rest of us and be superior! And which sounds better? Being a person who can love and share with others? Or being a super being who can only look down on the sea of the rest of us mortals unable to connect?

Being “brilliant” is not something you decide. It’s something others decide about you and you will be a lot happier if you can learn to just live. And this should be a fairly easy adjustment to make once you see that being a STAR is a figment of your imagination.

Because if you ever get there, guess what? You fall, or your fade is utterly inevitable! So the fact is the only way to be “great” is to be exactly as you are.

Good luck.
~~
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I have a friend. She is very sweet. She is too sweet actually, but she has a nemesis and she has a Scorpio Mars. And she has been slayed by this person more than once but apparently she’s decided to fight back and it’s been a real education to watch.

Because my Mars is broken in Libra! If you want to fight me, I will probably make you a cake or something. I will try to placate you with some sugar, but she has a different method.

First she researched. She was exhaustive with this, too. She educated herself around this person’s psychology and long story short…she has become able to predict his/her moves weeks in advance. She actually has the timing down, nearly to the hour after studying past patterns of behavior. Can you believe this?

So today as I was listening to her explain what had happened and what would be happening next, I was thinking, please, please shoot me if I ever become this predictable.

Are you predictable?

Pluto is back transiting in aspect to my natal Moon. The Moon rules women, and your past, etc. and the last time Pluto was at this degree, I went back home to visit Scott.

You can imagine my surprise when he popped a cd in his laptop and his grandmother (who has been dead for years) started talking. Yep. He had recorded a conversation they had, 25 years prior, so all the sudden the room was filled with her voice and his.

His voice from his young twenties, I mean, which is when I met him. And even more incredible, they actually talk about me on the tape! So just imagine that. And now something similar has occurred.

Another woman has surfaced from the same time frame, except this one is alive and she has pictures. She has pictures of me from when I was a teenager, tending bar underage. And it shocked me because I prior to this, I have had no photo evidence this ever happened.

And it turns out she’s kept these photos in a box for almost 30 years, hiding the fact they exist from parties who might be interested and although she will say why, she won’t say where she got them and I am thrilled and impressed with her methods.

So the fallout of these pictures being released after all these years is deep and powerful and Pluto-unfathomable. It’s as healing as it is terrifying and at the same time it calms me to a degree that is supernatural, because of the connection. A connection that has been there for 3 decades, whether I was conscious of it or not.

Have you ever had someone or something surface like this? Tell us.

Dear Worried,

Yes, I have an opinion and will offer my advice on this but I am not sure you should take it. Because you are not me, and I’ll explain:

I don’t think you should tell this guy about your indiscretion unless he asks you directly and I have a lot of reasons for this.

Number one, this was an aberrant act on your part. It does not represent your character. It is something you greatly regret that happened in a moment of weakness and I think you’re suffered enough over it. I think you should just forgive yourself and put thing to bed for good.

And from his perspective… well if I was him, I would not want to hear about this. Seriously! I don’t need to know every little detail about my partner and I think you should consider this very carefully. Who will you be liberating when you spill this secret? Will it benefit him? Personally, I don’t think so. But this is my perspective! And I am not you with your four planets in Sagittarius.

Now Sagittarians are pretty obsessed with the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. But there is such a thing as inflicting the truth on a person and I have a grand example.

Once I was on a date with a guy with a ring in his pocket. He was to propose to me that evening, but he was a Sagittarius rising big mouth and he wound up telling me all about this blow job he had once… (you can read the story here) instead. And did I want to hear about this? No! I begged him to shut up! I was seeing pictures of the act in my head as he was talking, sure to negatively affect our sex life which I coveted, but he would not shut up and in fact chased me outside the restaurant continuing to pummel me with his truth as I tried in vain to escape.

So here’s the thing. You are you and you may just need to come clean to be you! But I am me and I am telling you that most people don’t need or want to see every freckle on your butt. So I say, spare him. If this story needed air, it’s got it. You told my blog, right? You have broadcast this now so perhaps this will allow you to let it go and move on to your happy future.

Good luck.

~~
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Dear Ottawa,

Congratulations on finding such a good match. It’s fortunate. You sound very happy but you are having a Saturn transit and you won’t be able to resolve these fears by flipping some kind of switch. That does not mean you’re going to lose the guy. On the contrary, I think he is an instrument of the universe and I will explain.

When Saturn transits a person’s chart, they get hit with reality, for good and ill. And you can see how this younger guy forces you to consider your age. You are taking stock. And Saturn transits always bring a ton of fear. What if the sky falls? What if this, this, this or this happens and it happens on top of this? But there is always some kind of carrot out there that forces you to set aside your fear and persevere. And in this case, it’s this guy. You’re not going to toss him back just because you’re afraid, right? Of course not. You’re going to cope!

And by sticking with this you are going to learn some things that you would never learn any other way. Eventually it will dawn on you that this guy is interested in you because you are you.

See, youth is beauty and all that; however young people are very undefined. And on one level, this is their appeal. But some people aren’t interested in that at all. I’m not! I like my people to be defined. I like my people to know who they are and what they want.

And this is the kind of thing that will dawn on you. At your age, you are what you are. And you should take great comfort in this. It should actually give you security. Because whatever it is you are, no one else can be you. It took 50 years to become you! So think about your guy…

If he loves you, he’s going to have a very difficult time trying to replace you. Because he can’t just substitute a different spokesmodel, you know? At this point in your life, you are very distinctive and love is the strangest thing.

When you actually love someone then that’s who you love. Warts, wrinkles, farts, bad moods, quirks… that is your person. This is the person you want and all the other superficial stuff is for the birds! It’s for the people who don’t have LOVE, see? Because real love is blind. Think about it:

I love who I love and I don’t care what on them sags. What am I going to do? Go get a tighter version I don’t love? Come on! That makes no sense. Why would I want to be eating dinner with some smooth skin boy that bores me when I could be with a craggy man who doesn’t? One that makes me feel something. Seriously, now. There is no contest.

Hang in there, okay? You’re learning what you are really worth and a year from now, you’ll know. And you will be a better man than you have ever been before, because of it. Worth going through the current hell you’re in?

Yes.

Good luck.

~~
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Regarding alchemy and how a person learns, Lupa asked, “Why is it painful for you?”

I think it’s because I lack detachment. At least this is my best guess in the moment, but her question made me think of Dustin Hoffman.

I saw him interviewed once. He explained that he stayed up for three days and three nights to prepare for his most intense scenes in the movie, “Marathon Man”. He wanted to be ragged. His co-star, Laurence Olivier apparently came in to film the scenes and Hoffman was all crazed.

“Or you could just act,” he said.

::smiles::

But you know what? Dustin Hoffman has a Grand Trine in Earth. He’s in his body! He has a Capricorn rising (body) so bring on the hardship! He also has a packed 8th house and a Scorpio Mars so no wonder I have had a crush on him since “The Graduate” when I was a kid. But you get the idea.

I want to know things in my bones. I like things seared into my soul. I call it tattooed! I like to have a permanent mark of my experience so obviously I’m akin to Dustin Hoffman. And even if it is possible to learn something in my head, I don’t think I would like it much. What do I have this whole body for, if not to feel?

Are you a Hoffman, or an Olivier?

Now when I came across that tribute to Grant Lewi, I was thinking still thinking about the alchemy blog and CK’s comment. For some reason that comment deeply penetrated my psyche, which I really appreciate by the way. Nothing I like better than being pregnant!

So struck by the comment my mind flipped into gear and I started thinking about learning astrology and more specifically, how for me it was an alchemical process. And I have always thought it was this way for everyone. I’ve thought that this is how everyone learns anything.

Take astrology. You want to learn astrology so you read a book. If you’re lucky it’s a good one. It’s not too boring so you figure you’ll read another. Next thing you know, if you get the bug, you’ve read four or five or eight books and right about here you consider really cracking down.

And if you do that… well pretty soon you’ve read ten or twenty or thirty books and things are starting to gel. And at some point you want to try out your new knowledge, so you start to talk to people. You look at their charts or your talk about your own. And if you keep it up, eventually you start “reading” charts.

And at first you’ve got to have your books there so you can look things up and offer up pieces. There is no synergy. You can’t really read a chart, you can just look it up quickly! You fumble along but if you keep this up things improve.

Eventually you become familiar with certain things. Certain aspects you understand. Or maybe you get the 2nd house, or Jupiter really well. But you still have no ideas of your own. And by now you can recite what other people have said or written… you need your books less, but still none of it originates inside of you.

But if you keep it up… if you try and try, eventually there a tipping point and things start to open up for you. It’s like this: Eureka!

And then some more time passes… more time, more time, more time and more time. More time passes, more books, more watching, more reading, more studying and then one day… one glorious day, you have something of your own to say about something you see. You have something original to say about a house or a planet, or an aspect or an entire chart, or whatever it is in your hand when it happens for you.

And at that point you’re becoming an astrologer. Astrology is no longer something you have memorized but something you have absorbed and assimilated… and this to me, is an alchemical process. Everything goes into the pot. Soup, nuts, snails and puppy dog tails and it boils, boils, boils, boils. And you boil, boil, boil, boil. And if you get out of the pot you lose!! If you quit, you lose!

But if you stay in there… if you stay with it, alchemy takes place. And all the sudden you can look at those symbols and know exactly what they mean. And how this occurs is completely mysterious.

So this is how I learn. It’s a completely visceral experience and it’s fairly painful. It hurts me. And I wonder if this is universal. So is it? I have always thought so but now I wonder. Is there a more detached, intellectual way to learn?

How do you learn?

Dear Material,

This is a great question but very hard to answer because you are asking me to make a judgment for another person - which I can’t do. For example, I wouldn’t marry you, but so? I bet you wouldn’t marry me either!

You sound like a total pain and your chart reflects this. You’re cold, critical, argumentative, bleating, arrogant, and probably blunt to the point of rude. But so what? This doesn’t mean she doesn’t love you. This doesn’t mean you aren’t her dream guy, and the man she wants. Some people like spice!

So I think this is a very good question, but the person you need to ask is your fiance. You’re aware of your limitations, but is she similarly aware? Does she realize this is your personality? Because this is your personality.

Are you going to all the sudden become tactful? Not with Mars in Aries (fight) square Mercury (your mouth). Are you going to become un-critical or unwilling to say what you think? Not with Venus in Virgo square a Sagittarius Moon! And I could go on, but you get the point.

I think you’re fine to marry, as long as she knows she is marrying a man who is not going to change all that much. And believe me, people can be very happy with a disagreeable spouse. I have seen it many times. Perhaps they know how to transcend or generate their own happiness. Or the cranky spouse may stick in their craw just right. So this is totally her call and as for your happiness…

Well, like I said. You will be you, married or otherwise. So if you’re not happy now, marriage is not going to fix that even one little shred. Not getting married won’t fix it either because you embody the chaos and strife. So this is a better question to be asking:

Do you want to be someone who functions well in relationship, i.e. “marriage material”? If so, you have some work to do. If not, then carry on.

Good luck.

~~
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