Lunarium Blog

The widely accepted by the academia history of Western Astrology goes approximately like this: Babylonians kept observing the sky and recording their observations for many centuries, this is how astrology was figured out: by comparing what happened in the sky to what corresponded to it on the Earth. THEN THE GREEKS, who adopted the knowledge of the Babylonians, INVENTED THE HOROSCOPE. For the academics, most of whom do not possess any understanding of astrology, this logical step seems quite plausible. Those few who do possess the understanding, who are aware of how complex horoscopic astrology and its rules of interpretation are, such a sudden invention looks quite puzzling. It’s like if an indigenous tribe in Amazonia suddenly invented a helicopter. That new astrology that emerged soon after the conquests of Alexander the Great was called Hellenistic. Technically, the main difference is in the fact that Hellenistic astrology was horoscopic, which means it made use of the Ascendan

It is interesting to observe how the discovery of new planets, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto, coincided with important changes in the life of humanity that symbolically resonated with the astrological image of these planets. For example, Uranus was discovered in 1781. This was right in the middle of the American War of Independence, and not long before the 1789 French Revolution. Neptune was discovered in 1846, which was the year when general anaesthesia was used in surgery for the first time. Also, the Communist Manifesto was published in 1848. The discovery of Pluto in 1930 is usually associated with an active development in nuclear physics and powerful totalitarian regimes that were established then in Europe and Russia. In the end of the 20th – beginning of the 21st century astronomers discovered that Pluto is actually one of a multitude of similar objects forming so-called Kuiper belt beyond the orbit of Neptune. In 2006, Pluto officially lost its status of a proper planet and

Yesterday's elections proved to be disastrous for the ruling Conservative party. That was a shock, that was against most people's expectations. When Theresa May announced her decision to have snap elections on the 8th of June, everyone was speaking of a landslide victory that was virtually guaranteed for the Tories. And yet the real events took a very different course. This shouldn't have been a surprise for even a moderately knowledgeable student of astrology though. On the day when the snap elections were announced, the 18th of April, Mercury was retrograde. Interestingly, the wording of the announcement carried the symbolism of retrograde motion: Mrs May mentioned that she was against the idea of such elections in the past, but now she changed her mind. Which is totally understandable, this is exactly what retrograde Mercury does to us: it causes us to change our minds. The problem was that she made a major, very important for the distant future decision when Mercury w

I was asked during my recent webinar whether I am going to teach some form of medical astrology. I keep thinking on how to better answer this question, and this post is a result of my thinking. I am interested in astrological healing for decades (I even worked at some point as an astrological researcher in a medical institution in Moscow), and I have a number of ideas that might prove to be useful for others. But I also have a number of very important questions, for which I have no answers. I can’t teach this subject until I find answers to those crucial questions. All I can offer at the moment is to share my ideas, and I will start right here and right now. First of all, astrology is a great approach to diagnostics. It can show you a problem, or multiple problems, in a person’s life. The basics are very simple but there are significantly more sophisticated methods available too. These are the basics: Find planets in detriment or fall. Retrograde planets are important too. These

I explained what the Lunar Nodes are and how I approach their interpretation in my article The Lunar Nodes as a Life Guide . To briefly summarise this article, the recipe is: go where the North Node is pointing, then the problems of the South Node will resolve by themselves . However, my main emphasis in that article was on the position of the Lunar Nodes in a natal chart. How do we then understand the message of the transiting Lunar Nodes? The usual direction of the Lunar Nodes is against the normal direction of the planets so we could say that they move “backwards”: from Pisces to Aquarius to Capricorn to Sagittarius and so on. To remind you, there are two of them: the North Node and the South Node, and they are always opposite each other in the sky. It takes 18.6 years for the nodes to make a complete circle around the zodiac, so they spend about a year and a half in each of the signs. Recently (on May 10th) the North Node has entered Leo, and so the South Node has entered Aq

In my newsletters, I often refer to parallels happening in the sky, and I usually point out that they are important. I was asked to explain what parallels are. I will try to write this explanation in such a way that it will be comprehensible for beginners in astrology but at the same time precise enough for more advanced students. I will start from the very basics and then gradually increase the complexity. If at some point you’ll feel that you don’t understand what I am writing, simply stop, as you will already have a decent idea about the subject by then. Let’s imagine several race cars running around a circular track. Those are planets moving along the ecliptic. Astrology studies this movement of planets, and the patterns they form at specific moments in time. An important part of those patterns are aspects, i.e. interactions between planets. How can race cars interact? Well, they can overtake each other when they pass the same point along the track. Planets have this kind of