My wife is very friendly to him and chats and talks and is interested in what he is doing and what he thinks. My wife wants me to show more interest in the person who might be a son-in-law one day.

My wife has Aries on the 5th, and that puts Libra on the 11th – the house of her first child’s partner. She sees him as an equal, and her Venus is in Gemini in the 7th. She comminicates with him.

I, on the other hand, have Cancer on the 5th and that puts good-old very serious Capricorn on the 11th.

Do people complain to you about your treatment of other people? Now you know how to figure out why.

I like to read a blog by Alan Lian – http://atouchofancientszhouyi.blogspot.com/.

A post a few days ago mentioned something by a student of Confucius, the philosopher Yu, who said about trust and respect:

‘If trust (xin) is based on what is right or just (yi), speech becomes less complex.

Alan Lian goes on to talk about economic conditions and loss of wealth, but I couldn’t help making a connection and wishing the astrology could have been plainer and simpler.

I was suggeseting that readers see where the New Moon falls in their natal chart, and what activity it produces from the other planets. The last New Moon was at 6 Pisces, and it falls in the 12th House of my natal chart. This is the House of imprisonment, among other things, though I haven’t felt like I’ve been in jail since the 24th of February.

However, I normally watch tv when I eat lunch and about two weeks ago, having got bored with re-runs of Build A New Life In The Country, I flipped around to see what else was on. I came across Brat Camp UK - a show about troubled teens who are sent to the wilderness of Colorado to straighten out. Not bad for the Sun and Moon in the 12th, I thought. I wouldn’t normally watch this show, but sat through some of it as I ate.

In the last couple of days, though, I have been watching whole, one-hour shows of Banged Up Abroad. This one is about people who are caught smuggling, usually drugs but sometimes gold. They end up in jail in Columbia, or Thailand, or some country where the conditions are dangerous and primitive. This is even better for the Sun and Moon in the 12th at the time of the New Moon.

I wonder what I’ll be motivated to watch next month.

Astrology and the Tarot should be kept apart, however, even though people do like to combine them and translate one type of symbolism into another. This is asking for trouble.

In the middle of January, I picked a card to see what would win the Oscar for Best Picture. The answer was the Page of Coins. The picture on the card shows a young person gazing wistfully at a coin. Pages are young people, or anyone who is undecided and new at whatever he or she is doing. Coins represent money, as well as values.

The following movies – none of which I had seen, though I was vaguely familiar with their contents – had been nominated:

• Milk - maybe yes because it’s in part about new values in California.
• Benjamin Button – maybe yes, because it’s about getting younger.
• The Reader – doesn’t seem to relate.
• Frost-Nixon – doesn’t seem to relate.
• Slumdog Millionaire – young people; cash; new values. This had to be the winner.

And so it proved.

Listen to a five-minute analysis here:

http://www.thetarot.ca/listen/3-oscar goes to/index.html

One of those interviewed was Erik Spiekermann who spoke about words and how he loves fonts. I had to look for clips on YouTube immediately afterwards, and found the short interview with Erik.

There was also a Google reference to a blog and I read that he was now Sir Erik, having been knighted by the Queen for his work.

Professor Spiekermann when interviewed by The Times said the Queen was very relaxed and even joked, saying “I’m not sure this is justified”.

ps Sir Erik was born (according to wikipedia) on 30 May 1947, so he is a Gemini. Why are we not surprised?

It was referring to Toronto’s Hospital For Sick Children, which is fair enough. Was it also reinforcing the idea of sickness or establishing its validity? People say things like: I believe in justice, or: I believe in miracles; and so on.  If I believe there is no way I can avoid a particular problem, how much am I contributing to it actually happening to me?

We ought to monitor our thoughts, and keep the good ones.

If we think of the thoughts that inhabit our mind as people, we can ask ourselves if we really want them there. If this thought of misery and sickness were a person visiting me at home, would I want to make him comfortable, or ask him to leave, immediately.

It’s your mind; think your own thoughts. You can if you want to; and that’s perhaps where we have free will.

He talks about bottlenecks in production, and how you organize to make the most of this weakest link. He says that if something is going wrong, it’s because of either unreliability or ineffectiveness.

Unreliability is when you don’t do things that need to be done.

Ineffectiveness is when you do what does not need to be done, but you do it anyway.

Your homework: be reliable and effective.

Barak Obama is President number 44, or 4 + 4 = 8, or Uranus + Uranus = Saturn. It’s all leading to or all about discipline; and we might do something with the fact that these two planets – Uranus and Saturn – were in a close opposition when he took office.

Even a beginner can say all sorts of things about Uranus and Saturn, but it would be useful to know first what we expect the numbers to be telling us, or rather what the numbers show.

Are they telling us what Obama will do or will have to do, even if he doesn’t want to?

• He has to be inventive and original; he has to undo what is in place and get rid of what is old and out-dated. All of this, and more, for the sake of disciplined and responsible government.

Or are they the kinds of situations he will have to deal with?

• The unexpected is going to happen; there will be shocks to the system that cannot be foreseen and in areas people never thought about – because the Uranus factor is doubled. It’s like we know how to deal with a broken leg; but you didn’t think you’d have to deal with cracks in the plaster too. The difficulty is compounded. It demands more hard work; it’s like a chronic illness that goes on and on, rather than an acute one that is painful, but at least is of short duration.

Or do they describe the nature or character of his administration?

• When we look back on the Presidency, will we see a sense of invention, an unexpected originality in solving problems, and perseverance in the face of problems? Or will it be upset after upset, accompanied by a slow but steady decline into a sense of life controlled fear, like The Pink Floyd’s: Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way, only it become the American way?

Obama is number 44, so he is part of the 4 series that began with Ronald Reagan. More on this next time.

There had been a discussion of so-called Master Numbers because Barak Obama is the 44th President, and this number, like 33, and 22, is more important that others.

What does it mean? I’m not a great fan of numerology, though I do like Cheiro’s Book of Numbers that uses the Chaldean system. With his method, we get Adam = 10 = 1 = the Sun, and this male energy is good for the first man. Eve, on the other hand, is 16 = 7 = the full Moon – the feminine – and this is good for the first woman. You don’t get such a nice correlation with the Pythagorean system.

So, George Bush was the 43rd President. His story is 4 + 3 = 7. Or, Uranus + Jupiter = Neptune. We have accidents and upsets and revolution from Uranus, and A LOT of it from Jupiter. It results in confusion and illusions (from Neptune), though we could have had spiritual understanding (also from Neptune), but there wasn’t much looking under the surface or trying to understand the meaning behind the words rather than the words themselves under George W.

You might want to ponder on this symbolism and see how it describes the Bush administration.

Obama is the 44th President. 4 + 4 = 8. Or, Uranus + Uranus = Saturn.

I’ll let you think about this for yourselves for a few hours and post some more in a couple of days. What is the nature of Uranus; what should we expect? Double it, or ask what happens when Uranus is Uranianized or whatever the word would be. It ends up with, or leads to Saturn. Is this a good thing or a bad one?

Happy New Year.

Thanks to those who voted in the poll. Since the numbers were basically 50 – 50, I have decided to give away both books – The Radix System and Precepts in Mundane Astrology.

I have been concentrating in the last few days on actually putting together and uploading a new site that was supposed to go live about a year ago. Most of it is up and running now, and I just have to add some audio files and I’m done for the moment.

Then I’ll finish the scans and the .pdf work and give a download address near the beginning of the coming week.

Sorry to have kept you in the dark.