Part two of a report on the 2007 Midwest Astrology Conference.

Read part one here.

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Loxx writes:

At 9:00 Saturday morning the talks kicked off with

Robert Blaschke: Soul Groups / Pre-natal Synodic Cycles
Renie Brooksieker: The Medicine Wheel in Your Chart
Gloria Star: Right Time, Right Place [topic was relocation charts]

I went to Robert’s talk. He discussed synodic cycles and what he calls “holographic aspects”. What this means is you look at, say, the (exact) angle between Sun and Mercury in your natal chart and whether Sun is ahead of Mercury or vice versa. So let’s say that’s 10 deg, 37 min, 19 sec., with Sun ahead of Mercury. Well, then, once a year Sun and Mercury will repeat that configuration; at the moment that they do, you can erect a chart for where you are, and that chart functions like a return chart. Its influence is good until the next time Sun is 10 deg, 37 min, 19 sec ahead of Mercury (which would be about a year).

Now, if you have a large natal separation between Sun and Mercury, as I do (over 27 degrees), then that phase angle may not repeat every year; Mercury is odd in that respect. So you have to watch for that, and apply the technique (of the “holographic return chart”) accordingly.

You can do this with any two planets, considering their synodic cycle (time between successive conjunctions) and understanding that with, say, Jupiter and Saturn, there will be about 20 years between repetitions of “holographic aspects”.

Here’s an example he used: As many of you may know, he was found to have some cancer in November or so, and he underwent chemotherapy. He was considering surgery; the surgery was scheduled, and he was trying to decide whether he should have the operation. So he considered Mars, ruler of surgery, and cast a chart for the moment Sun and Mars would repeat their natal phase angle (which happens every year, since Sun is involved). He found the Sun in that chart to be conjunct his partner’s Descendant, while Mars was conjunct the natal Sun of his Earthwalk School of Astrology. He took that to indicate that he should keep working, and let his partner advise him on his health issues; she recommended some nutritional therapy, and apparently his cancer went away and he didn’t have to have surgery. So that was a nice example.

And btw, I’ll pass along his stated thanks for the prayers and support and positive energy that many of you who know him sent his way during that ordeal.

There were about 25 people at that talk.

Next were these choices:
Barbara Junceau: Overcoming Illusion of Opposites
Donna van Toen: Progressions as Timers
Sandra-Leigh Serio: Exploring Your Wealth Potential

I decided on the third, in which Sandra-Leigh shared a scoring method due to Beverly Flynn for determining the “wealth quotient” in a chart. This is time-consuming to apply; it takes about a half hour. The handout she gave listed 58 factors to check, things like “Saturn in the 10th” and “Ruler of 4th in the 6th or 10th” and “Ruler of 2nd in 2, 8, or 12″, “Jupiter aspects the ruler of ___”, etc. A certain number of points is contributed for each item on the checklist. The total tally is the “wealth quotient”. So then we looked at examples of some wealthy people:

Martha Stewart, 3 Aug 1941, 1:33 PM, Jersey City NJ; wealth quotient 530
Ted Turner, 19 Nov 1938, 8:50 AM, Cincinnati OH; wealth quotient 710
John F. Kennedy (Sr.), 29 May 1917, 3:00 PM, Brookline MA; wealth quotient 690
Bill Gates, 28 Oct 1955, 9:15 PM, Seattle WA; wealth quotient “only” 405

Now Gates’s birth time is rated B; it’s from the biography *Hard Drive* by Wallace & Erickson (1992). There is another time of 10:00 PM floating around, so Sandra-Leigh put up that chart for us to eyeball, to see if it might yield a higher wealth quotient than the 9:15 chart. She hadn’t already worked out the wealth quotient for that one, but who can blame her — it’s quite tedious — but wondered if it might yield a higher score.

Then she showed us charts from her files of a couple of lottery winners:

$100K winner (female), 23 Oct 1924, 7:05 AM, Cleveland OH; wealth quotient not computed
$1M winner (female), 25 Sep 1961, 1:03 AM EST (<--warning: not EDT, 0 Leo rising), Youngstown OH; wealth quotient 475

Finally, she discussed someone called "High wage earner", male, 24 Jan 1951, 11:49 AM, Mineola NY; wealth quotient 505

After lunch, we had these choices:

Misty Kuceris: Ceres - Understanding Personal Growth
Rick Levine: 10 Steps to Better Chart Readings
Arlan Wise: When Mercury Rode the Mail Train - Communicating before the Internet

I told people I was going to Arlan’s talk since I don’t want to grow personally or read charts better. (Little joke there … not a very good one.) No, really I chose Arlan’s talk because her objective was to discuss how astrologers communicated and networked before the internet … being a young pup myself, but having a Sun-Saturn conjunction and therefore seeing the value of what my elders did and taught, I was interested.

There were about 8 of us at this one; she showcased the careers of four late astrologers who made great contributions to the astro community at the time and passed the torch on to us. The birth data is from The Astrologers Memorial, which is a web resource created by Donna Cunningham:

http://www.solsticepoint.com/astrologersmemorial

Arlan said she wasn’t sure how reliable all the data is. Anyway, she gave a biographical sketch of each of these astrologers and then we all discussed each chart for observations:

Sybil Leek, 22 Feb 1917, 11:52 PM, Staffordshire, England
Eleanor Bach, 11 Jan 1922, 12:17 AM, Kulpmont PA
Edie Custer, 5 Jan 1923, 12:53 PM, Queens NY
Patric Walker, 25 Sep 1931, Hackensack NJ, birth time unknown

Our late afternoon choices were

Gary Saus: As Above, So Below
Pat Geisler: What about My Sister’s Dog?
Bryan Trussler: Mundane Uranus - Rebel or Agent Provocateur?

I chose the third; about 15 of us were there, and Bryan discussed the role of Uranus in the charts of nations. The main idea was that Uranus, from his observations, does not seem to indicate rebellion and revolution necessarily … and as a key example we note the partile Sun-Uranus conjunction right on the IC of the Canadian Confederation chart — a chart whose time is not in dispute. We don’t see domestic instability and unrest from that … so what does Uranus do, then, in national charts? His theory is that Uranus speaks to the special challenges the country faces, and how failure to adequately address those challenges will manifest in a crisis and possibly revolution at the first Uranus return. In the case of the USA, the first Uranus return precipitated the Civil War, because the US Uranus speaks to the challenge of race relations — specifically black and white folk. In the Sibly chart Uranus is near the Descendant but on the 6th house side, in Gemini, the sign of the twins … the sign of *two*. Since the founding of the US, the people (represented by the Moon, whose dispositor is Uranus in Gemini) have consisted of two major races, working (6th house) alongside one another. Therein lies the special (domestic) challenge for the US, historically.

He also discussed Canada, Liberia, South Africa, France, and Germany. Another fascinating offering from Mr. Trussler. Bravo.

After this I zipped over to the Motel 6 for a nap. I was beat. Then I had trouble getting up, so I was a little late for the 7:30 banquet. But the food was excellent: Salad, bread, and I had mahi mahi with green beans and potatoes, dessert, coffee. Alphee Lavoie was the keynote speaker; basically he told stories about his life, his family, his clients, rewarding experiences from his life and career. He was very entertaining and funny; he’s a great storyteller. One of my favorites was the story of how he started his career of a professional private-practice client-serving astrologer: He was working in engineering (I think he said) and he went in and told his boss that Friday was his last day and he was quitting.

“Well, how come?”

“Well, I’m gonna do astrology.”

“Come again?”

“Yeah. I’ve been studying up on astrology, and I think I’m ready to try my hand at it full time.”

About 10 minutes later, his boss came to him and said, “Alphee … you know, if you need to see a psychiatrist, we’ll pay for it.”

So then his boss called him a few weeks later, and said, “Alphee, how’s your astrology business going?”

“Well … not too good.” So he hired Alphee to write technical manuals (I think it was) for the company, which he could do from home at his own pace. So, whenever Alphee wasn’t seeing clients he could work on that, and that gave him the additional income he needed; he did both for about three years until he could build up his practice to where he could live on it.

So … that was Saturday. I was pooped and went right to bed.

Skip to Day Three

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