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Now is a time of beginning. Here is one place for it. As much as internet may imitate to supplant newspapers, a few things newspapers have learned during their existence, in a 91- and a 182-year cycle, can be respected and carried on. Three of the most sacrosanct elements of 'newspapers' are the comics, the crossword puzzle, and the astrology column. No change a newspaper publisher can make brings as much strong imprecation drowning their desk, as when they change one of the three sacred cows. There are other elements, too, (the sports section?), of course, in which change causes similar riots. But those other elements tend to be local format phenomena, and for the most part not something a publisher considers changing. Whereas, every publisher who ever breathed newsprint fumes, has planned and plotted and prayed to change, (eradicate), the comics, the crossword, and the hokie astrology column -- because publishers 'don't believe in' those things. They discover that readers and subscribers 'don't believe in' the publisher who dares change those things in the newspaper.So as the internet is the new newspaper, which is to say OpEdNews, let us have in it its astrology column. That is the talisman.
Expecting to write an entry each day, the plan in mind is presenting pieces along the way of astrology's vast knowledge base. Today's bit is just, simply, that astrology is the oldest subject. In several independent places and times, as a culture attained rudimentary astrology it began keeping a calendar. The oldest calendar (in common use) is the Hebrew calendar, and New Year's day is Rosh Hashana, two days from now, when the year 5768 begins. Next oldest is the Chinese calendar, and this year is 4705, which started seven months ago. (Four months ago, 5108 years had elapsed in the Hindu calendar, however its years are not numbered in order, as it is thought of.) The current time is in the year 1428 of the Islamic calendar, although there were precursor calendar counts in earlier cultures related to the Islamic. And, in terms familiar to many, this year is 2007.
Today is September 11, 2007. A solar eclipse occurs as the Moon passes in front of the Sun. The Moon orbits Earth every month, and in one of the days, passes the Sun, at the so-called New Moon. Usually the Moon's passing is above or below the Sun, but every sixth month it passes directly in line in front of, and blocks part or all of the light of, the Sun. The Moon eclipses the Sun today.
Aries, Taurus, Cancer, Leo, Libra, Scorpio, Capricorn, and Aquarius are 'influenced' little. Gemini and Sagittarius have a largely difficult day, plans going awry, old structures coming undone. Virgo and Pisces have great beginning days, ominous and yet propitious. No person is simply one of the Signs. Every person has every Sign in their 'wheel of destiny,' every person is a mixture of all the Signs, the differences are all a matter of proportions.
I have a lot of Virgo in my mix. This is a good time to begin keeping this diary of days in astrology.
