As of early 2021, I have shifted my writing endeavors from my website AstroInquiry to the WOODRUFF newsletter on Substack. Please join me in my ‘new’ space, or submit your email below for further information.

Love,

“FREDERICK IS A LUCID THINKER and a bad-ass wit, qualities one doesn’t see often in astrological writing. He’s a gimlet-eyed observer of contemporary culture, with an intelligence that is grounded in erudition and spiritual sophistication. His writing never fails to surprise, to delight and to teach.”  — Jessica Murray, author of Soul-Sick Nation and At the Crossroads.

“FREDERICK WOODRUFF is like a four-dimensional eyeball capable of not just understanding and interpreting bodies in space, but translating their movements into the entire socio-political, psychological zeitgeist.” —Cintra Wilson, author of Fear and Clothing, Unbuckling American Style

“FREDERICK IS A SAGE with a wise and awake worldview who demystifies the abstract and opens doors of new astrological perception. His Substack columns are the only thing I read as soon as they’re published.” —Ronnie Grishman, Editor Emeritus Dell Horoscope

“ALWAYS FULL OF SURPRISES, Frederick Woodruff knows how to deliver a rip-roaring read. His depth, integrity, and kindness mark him as a keen astrologer and wonderfully gifted guide.” — Debbi Kempton-Smith author of Secrets From a Stargazer’s Notebook

Here are ten facts, figures, and thoughtful suggestions to get you through the next twenty year Jupiter Saturn cycle. The Jupiter Saturn conjunction in Aquarius occurred on December 21, 2020. This conjunction was a big deal, one of astrology’s biggest players.

1. You will find new ways to reconcile two opposing parts of your nature. The king/queen and the grim reaper are forced into a meet-up to hash shit out. These two psychic components are made significant by their alignment with the forces that govern growth and decay in nature.

2. As relates to our experience of time: Jupiter leads us towards the future (filled with unlimited potentials and big dreams). Saturn says, “Do it now because everything ends.” For all of us, our biggest ‘problem’ in life is that we think we have time. Again, some sort of reality check is required from you.

3. Kings, rulers, presidents die–if not metaphorically then literally—during the Jupiter Saturn conjunction (hereon out the JSC). This has been going down since the beginning of time. During the 19th and 20th centuries, any US president elected during the JSC died of natural causes or was assassinated in office, but this track sorta broke apart in 1980 when the conjunction occurred in Libra (although Reagan was almost taken out by an assassination attempt). In 2000, the rightful winner of the presidency, Al Gore (who won the popular vote), was ‘taken out’ by the Supreme Court in Florida’s infamous ‘hanging chad’ fiasco. The 2020 conjunction finds Joe Biden in the JSC hot seat and I’ve speculated that he might mark a return to the pattern, making Kamala Harris the first female president in the US’s history. Read more

“Every act of creation is first an act of destruction. ” –Pablo Picasso

Today I’m going to write about a term borrowed from literature.

The picaresque.

I will attempt to suggest why—in our electronic age—the picaresque narrative is turning everyone and everything upside down. And why this is most likely a good thing.

Aside from Trump’s general hideousness, what made his time as president so maddening was the constant clash Americans experienced as the picaresque narrative overcame and replaced their old tragicomic narrative.

Why?

Because the tragicomic narrative is the one most Westerners were raised on (and have lived their entire lives through.)

Jumping In

The founder of social dreaming, W. Gordon Lawrence wrote in his mind-bending book Tongued with Fire: Groups in Experience that the salient experience of life at this moment in time is, “…discontinuous, a series of near-chaotic events for which people can find no shape.”

Lawrence lays much of our mania on electronic technology and what he calls ‘electronic events.’ And yes, we’ve all heard this before. But wait:

He asserts that because we figuratively exist everywhere and nowhere, we are falling deeper and deeper into a picaresque approach to life.

He borrows this term from the Jungian psychologist James Hillman.

Lawrence writes:

“[Hillman] understands some analysands to be living in what he calls the ‘picaresque mode’. This metaphor comes from the ‘picaresque novel’ in which the protagonist lurches in a discontinuous fashion from happening to happening, event to event, but never experiences his experiences. The principal character, the ‘picaro’, is a bit of a rogue, or knave, likable but feckless. He does not develop, improve, or indeed deteriorate.”

Hillman hypothesized that people have different fictional styles and noted how the picaresque individual’s narrative: “…ends abruptly without achievement for there is no goal so the denouement can neither be the resolution of comedy nor the fatal flaw of tragedy.”

As I mentioned above, individuals living through this modality are living amidst a falling away of the traditional Western arcs of ‘tragedy’ and ‘comedy’.

Their pressing question then becomes: Can I continue to live like this? My suggestion is YES YOU CAN.

The Reappearance of Flow (Which was Never Gone)
I sense the picaresque perspective has more to do with a cultural mutation than any sort of failing on the part of the individual.

Our enmeshment with technology was made doubly alarming amidst COVID, and with that forced investment of time came more of the picaresque.

During the passing decade, we’ve read only negative assessments regarding our exponential technological growth. But what about considering other possibilities or ways to consider this moment in history?

In my understanding, the old ascend/descend oscillation of the tragicomic (that defines Western culture’s manner of assigning meaning) is falling away.

What’s establishing is more akin to the experience of flow. Or at least the opportunity (or mental requirement) to embrace the flow.

Undulations have given way to the ever-present ‘just this.’ The mechanics of flow are underscored in Taoist teachings. And the bare-bones simplicity of the Tao feels like a much-needed moderator to manage our manic moment.

Rascal: A Mischievous Person

If we shed the derogatory associations of the picaresque (the knavery and fecklessness, etc.) we are left with G.I. Gurdjieff’s description of ‘The Rascal.’

In essence, the rascal responds to life from her wits and more importantly, as Gurdjieff saw her, through her conscience.

Traditional rules or laws don’t apply and are readily manipulated to assist one’s wits—but never to the point of ending up in jail or harming another. Those were big distinctions for Gurdjieff.

Gurdjieff claimed conscience was an innate quality of being human and had nothing to do with cultural conditioning. And so conscience could be depended upon, in the way one depends on her stomach to digest her food. Gurdjieff saw conscience as part of our biology, not our psychology.

Aquarian Intimations

This shift to flow and the arising of The Rascal has been earmarked by the recent Jupiter Saturn conjunction in Aquarius.

This conjunction marks the first time in 200 years (except for a one-off conjunction in Libra—back in 2000) that the Jupiter/Saturn cycle will play out through the air sign triad.

Air signs are picaresque by nature. The fire, water, and earth signs play the game of life along traditional Western arcs. You rise, you fall; you gain, you lose, you merge, you disappear, etc.

The air element is everywhere simultaneously. The air signs’ narrative is expressed through airy attributes like diplomacy and fairness, trickery, and humor. Air signs are never pinned to any one path.

Even a Saturn-ruled sign like Aquarius can be as maddeningly discursive as Gemini (the most picaresque of the air signs.) Read more

Paul Horwich, in a long NY Times essay wrote:

Wittgenstein isn’t a walk in the park, but he’s worth your effort because the more you study his philosophy — which was actually, in spots, more akin to mysticism — the more freedom you might gain as an astrologer.

Like the closet mystic Carl Jung, Wittgenstein knew how to couch his propositions to pass the scrutiny of his peers (well, except for his mentor Bertrand Russell who he drove to fury by disregarding traditional formulations of logic.)

And because of this sketchy dance, between chilly logic and the nimbus of mysticism, I find Wittgenstein to be the most satisfying of linguistic rebels. His mix of the effable with the ineffable mirrors in a direct way how human beings toil with making sense (or a muddle) of astrology. Read more

In India there is an astrological term that corresponds to our current pandemic-related claustrophobia.

This cosmic configuration is called the Kala Sarpa Yoga.

I’m not a Vedic astrologer but I’d asked my colleague Kate Petty about our current exaggerated sky pattern last month and she mentioned how, within Indian astrology, the pattern is considered extreme and perhaps inauspicious  — and that got my head whirling. And so I did some research.

Kala Sarpa Yoga is generally studied in natal astrology and relates to a condition where the seven planets that are worked with in Vedic astrology (Sun, Moon, Mars, Venus, Jupiter, Saturn, Mercury) are trapped between Rahu (the Moon’s North Node) and Ketu (the Moon’s South Node).

Of course, modern Western astrology also includes Uranus, Neptune and Pluto in the pantheon. And this is why when I first started to consider our current sky pattern — where the Nodes have locked all of the solar system into one half of the zodiac, I was struck by the pattern’s literal correlation to the COVID pandemic and the feeling that — well, people feel trapped — frozen in time.

Think of it metaphorically: Picture a pie where all ten pieces of the pie are crammed into just one-half of the pie plate— instead of being evenly dispersed in the circle.

Just about anyone you talk to nowadays would acknowledge this feeling of restricted disproportion. It’s like we are forced into viewing the world through a pair of glasses where one of the lenses is blacked out or a blinder is in place on one side of the frames. Our ability to remain objective is severely compromised.

Kala means time, Sarpa means Serpent and Yoga means combination. So we could read Kala Sarpa Yoga, when considered within mundane (world-focused) astrology, as global consciousness trapped into one segment of time.

In Vedic astrology the Moon’s Nodes are based on a snake metaphor, whereas in Western astrology they are aligned with the image of a dragon. The Nodes in both systems are highly charged points that mark the eclipse cycles, and if you think of time as an actual entity — not just a conceptual creation — the Nodes would mark the entrance and exit points of force, within time’s body.

This is a topic for another article, but I’ll just say quickly that it was Rudolph Steiner‘s explanation of solar and lunar eclipses that made me reconsider the Moon’s Nodes in a different light.

What’s interesting is that the Kala Sarpa Yoga began to move into exactitude about a month before the Covid-19 pandemic was acknowledged as an encroaching and unavoidable health crisis. Read more

On the weekend I got together — virtually — with Rachel and Andrei from the Aeolian Heart website to record two episodes for their Stargazer podcast.

The cast is debuting today May 25. And you can listen to the first episode here.

And you can listen to the second episode here. 

Rachel, Andrei and I took on a free-for-all approach to the conversation and let imagination lead the way.

I was reminded, once again, that when you’re an astrologer you’re a lifelong student. Both of these artist/scholar/astrologers offered a wellspring of cogent astro-facets to consider.

• We covered everything from our fandom for art and culture critic Camille Paglia.

• To the conundrums of traditional astrology and the gnarly topic of prediction and dignities — and how potentially harmful those can be for a novice client. “Oh your Venus is in Virgo? I’m sorry!”

• We also consider the invasion of the Jungian world (synchronicity and archetypes) into modern astrology.

• Qualia (and wine tasting 🍷) and a language for describing the present moment.

• How has the astrologer’s ability to communicate astrology developed over time.

• Humanist philosopher Marsilio Ficino as a proto-psychological astrologer.

• Modern astrology’s indefatigable connoisseur Liz Greene.

• Morrisey‘s song Hairdresser on Fire — (you just have to listen to the episode).

• Please be advised that there is some salty language in the cast.

Enjoy the episode and you can leave us comments on my Facebook post here. 

Be sure to visit Aeloion Heart and subscribe to Rachel’s newsletter — she’ll surprise you over and over with her scholarly astro-musings.

Happy listening and holiday!

Cheers,