Category: astrology

Ancient Festivals

and the Four Seasons

Since it’s solstice, here’s an extract from a book of mine, Power Points in Time, about the cycle of the solar year, for your interest. More about the book below.

We tend to take the cycle of the year for granted, viewing it in a rather reductionist, calendrical and mechanical manner. This is partially because the Western calendar has no natural basis, so we tend to think of a calendar as a matter of dating with no further significance. For a solar-based calendar it would make better sense to anchor it in the solstices and equinoxes, allowing us to move more in harmony with the seasonal undertow of life and nature and with overall energy-conditions.

The seasons are brought about by Earth’s orbital relationship with the Sun, in which she exposes each of her poles to the Sun for half of the year as she orbits around it. Each pole is maximally exposed to the Sun around the time of summer solstice, experiencing the midnight sun, while the other pole is in perpetual darkness during its winter solstice.

Outwardly, the Sun gives Earth light and heat, and inwardly there is a deeper energy-weather cycle activating and modulating life-force on Earth, connected with the solstices. Life-force courses through the subtle meridians of the Earth and the energy-systems and patternings of all living things. In terms of our daily lives, a year takes a while, but for the Earth it is just a short inbreath and outbreath in the long course of geological time.

The ancients took it upon themselves to invoke favourable seasonal change, in the knowledge that change is the essence of earthly life and rhythm is the breathing of life-force. They knew also that subtle energy patternings are the energy-framework upon which physically manifest things are draped.

Psycho-spiritually, the Sun within us resides at the centre of our being, around which all of the constituent parts of our psyche orbit. The Sun represents our fundamental raison d’etre, our will-to-live and our source of aliveness. It gets us up in the morning to meet a new day. You could say it channels the soul through into our personalities and earthly natures. It’s a vibrant, shining place within us which seeks to make something good out of life and to evolve through life’s experiences.

Through the Sun in our birth charts, we seek to become something more than we now are, to evolve and serve our purpose, to be part of the life-process and to contribute to it.

This inner Sun goes through its own cycle of the year. We each relate differently to it, depending on the position of the Sun in our birth charts, but we have a common cycle too – the Earth’s cycle. It’s about the fluxings of energy in life and nature and the thrumming of the resonant sphere of the Earth – we’re bathed in it, even when we live in big cities, even on the 25th floor. The Sun moves around the zodiac in the course of a year, exposing us to different shades and tonalities of life-experience as it moves through the signs. An Aquarian day can feel quite different from a similar Piscean day, and what we make of each is up to us.

There are twelve signs of the zodiac, and the zodiac is anchored in the four quarter-points of the year – the two solstices and two equinoxes. The solstices represent turning points and the equinoxes represent tipping points in the four seasons.

There’s a three-sign sequence in each season. The zodiac has little to do with the stars and everything to do with the solstices, equinoxes and seasonal alternation, outlining the qualitative and archetypal undertow of the four seasons.

An archetype is an image or root-model of fundamental patterning behind and within all happenings and situations. If I say ‘oak tree’ then you will immediately form an image of an idealised oak tree, even though oak trees vary in shape, size and detail. So an archetype represents a basic patterning or template by which living beings and things shape themselves, even though the precise manner of their shaping varies enormously in real life. And yes, trees have thoughts and feelings.

There’s something interesting here. In Britain, NW Europe and other temperate climes (between about 40° and 60° from the Earth’s equator), nature manifests its actual physical changes in an eightfold, not really a twelvefold pattern. This eightfold pattern is marked out by the four quarter points and also by the mid-points (or cross-quarters) between these. These are important in temperate higher latitudes because the alternation of light and dark, day-length and temperature are more emphasised there. This also happens on a subtle-energy level, and it is these changes which pull us around and squeeze us through certain kinds of experiences at certain times of year.

In latitudes closer to the equator, other factors are emphasised by local circumstances or traditions, such as prevailing winds, rainy seasons, river floods, the rising points of stars such as Sirius or the orbital cycles of Venus. Localised cultures saw things in the light of what was visibly important in their own localities. In Europe, the great ocean is westwards, yet in China it is eastwards, and in Brazil the rainy season determined the way indigenous peoples structured their beliefs, while in Europe or Canada spring and autumn do so.

An eightfold calendar is more natural in NW Europe than a twelvefold one, which originated in Mesopotamia – though they interlock. The Sami (Lappish) people of far-northern Europe have an eightfold year, five seasons being different kinds of what most of us would call winter. The ancient megalith builders of Atlantic Europe 4-5,000 years ago, stretched between Portugal and the Baltic, embodied eightfold mathematics into the alignments and placing of the standing stones and stone circles they built. But both eightfold and twelvefold calendars are anchored similarly in the solstices and equinoxes. So they are related.

The energy principles behind each year are represented by the twelve zodiac signs, and manifest seasonal changes are represented by an eightfold subdivision of the year. This interlocking of principles and practicalities has meaning to it. Here we’ll look at the eight annual subdivisions, and in the next chapter we’ll examine the twelve, the zodiac. The eight, the quarters and cross-quarters, were marked in ancient times by festivals when fires, beacons and lights were lit, representing and re-invoking the life-force.

Power Points in Time. This isn’t a normal astrology book – it has little to do with birth charts or specific events. It’s all about cycles of time – cycles big and small, as astrologers see them. But when the original version of this book, Living in Time, came out in 1987, we found that it wasn’t so much astrologers who got excited about it, but it was pagans, druids and lovers of nature, ancient sites and shamanic practices. So, 28 years later, I updated and reworked the book, which came out in 2015.

It’s still available in print, published by Penwith Press and, while it’s a bit late for Christmas, here’s a thought…

If you are a seeker on a quest to understand a bit more about what lies behind and underneath the events of your life, it pays to have a modicum of understanding of astrology as part of your general knowledge – really, the basics should be taught in schools to teenagers.

It takes a while to get your head and heart around the details, but it pays off, since it’s really interesting, and your understanding of it and of life will evolve over time, as the years progress – whether or not you become an actual astrologer. And wintertime is a great time to get focused on it.

If you’re into ancient sites and working with the inner magic of nature and of time, then here’s a secret. The ancients built their sacred sites at power points in the landscape, but they carried out their ceremonies, rites, healings and workings at power points in time. I wrote this book to help my friends identify and understand power points in time.

Time is what stops everything happening all at once.

With love, Palden

This is where to get the book:
https://penwithpress.co.uk/product/power-points-in-time/

This is about the book:
http://www.palden.co.uk/time/

And this is the original 1987 book, Living in Time:
https://www.palden.co.uk/living/

Tipping into the Future

A new podcast

Here are some thoughts on the current vexatious world situation and some of the threads that lie behind it. It’s all about the incremental North-to-South shift of world power, about people against the Megamachine, and Gaza and Israel, the decline of the West, and a few things like that.

Are we entering the future facing forwards or facing backwards? This is a key question in our time.

Listen on Spotify (it’s also on Apple and Google Podcasts):

or go to my podcast page: https://palden.co.uk/podcasts.html

Should it interest you, here are two relevant articles I’ve written in former times:
+ An astrological article I wrote about the 2020s, written back in 2020:
⁠https://penwithbeyond.blog/2020s/
+ And here’s something I wrote in 2011 when in Bethlehem during the Arab Revolutions, about Hamas and its relationship with Fateh (the Palestine Authority in the West Bank). It’s pertinent now, for those of you who are into more in-depth thinking around Palestine.
⁠www.palden.co.uk/pop/hamas-and-fatah.html⁠

With love, Palden

Equinoctial Newmoon

You don’t have to be an astrologer to understand this. Just take a close look at the chart here. It’s an example of a planetary configuration with a strong coherence to it. This sets up a thrum in the energy-fields of the Earth, and it has a quantum effect on what is happening and developing worldwide, both above and below the surface. That is, it has an effect that is more and bigger than it looks like at the time.

If I had to sum it up in a few words, it would be… the turning of a page. Not just short-term, but long-term, and changing the nature and rules of the game – to some extent, without many people being fully aware of it, because we tend to walk backwards into the future. But it is indeed a turning of a page. Or many different pages.

This was the chart for the newmoon yesterday, 21st September 2025. Quite a configuration, with Uranus-Saturn/Neptune-Pluto involved and lots of planets cuspal (changing signs).

Amongst other things, a good time for recognising Palestine – turning the page on the past, and a turning of a tide. But this configuration means far more than that. Look also at things that news media and public discourse are not talking about. Or at what lies behind the events of the day and the next few weeks.

Listen more closely to THINGS than to people.

I think it could be a tide-turning in many ways. But actually, when the tide is turning, nothing much actually happens right then. Or the events that do happen can be symbolic of what is to come. It’s what happened before and what happens afterwards that is what matters when a tide is turning.

History changes because of changes of ideas and sentiments. It sometimes takes time for these to surface and emerge as visible, newsworthy events, but they start at times like this.

We will be seeing more configurations like this over the next 2-3 years, because of the Uranus-Neptune-Pluto configuration that’s hovering around at present (I wrote about this a coupla weeks ago).

When faster-moving planets swing into this configuration, big thrums, bongs and rumbles start up, affecting all of us, globally and personally. At present, a conjunction of Saturn and Neptune is amplifying this – forcing the issue.

We cannot stand still. This period is what I have earlier called an avalanche of events. We’re heading toward a point, or a series of them, where cards are coming down on the table and things just have to move forward. Because, if we don’t move them forward, systems will be overwhelmed, the fuses will get hot and the trip-switches will trip. Then there’s trouble – avoidable trouble.

This configuration is quite balanced. This is a chord with harmony and resonance to it – and a few dischords thrown in to give it a sharper edge.

The big problem today is that things are stuck yet they are also loosening up. It’s like a thaw – and thaws create avalanches.

It’s time to look at our own stucknesses. One big stuckness we all must face is that it is no longer good enough to blame others for our problems. Our problems start with us.

Also, within every problem lies a solution. But, to see it, we must get our stucknesses out of the way and face forward into the future.

One thing that changed around 2012, when there was another significant historic configuration (Uranus square Pluto), was that the future has started exerting a bigger causative influence on the present, overwhelming the stucknesses of the past. That’s why there’s a big conservative backlash happening right now – people are scared. But the past is going and gone. Things will be alright, as long as we respond well to what life is throwing at us – that’s the harmonic chord in operation.

With love, Palden

For more overview stuff (I wrote it in 2020):

The 2020s

and if you want some serious historical astrology, try this:
https://www.palden.co.uk/ephem/6configurations.html

It’s a Mega-Twang

Here’s a little astrology lesson, pertinent to what’s happening at present. Take a look at the chart here, for this morning, Thursday 7th August. Even non-astrologers will notice a pattern, a configuration, that is quite orderly and structured.

When this happens, the energy-fields of the planets of our solar system start syncing with each other and creating a mega-twang, a super-thrum, a chord, and in these energy-circumstances things start happening. They start shaking up and rattling loose.

What’s interesting here is that, astrologically, this is not exactly a crisis situation. This configuration is dominated by sextiles (30 degrees) and trines (120 degs), which are aspects (angles) of flow, movement, progression, slip-sliding, letting go and accelerating evolution. It’s not exactly about crunches, shocks, crises and disasters.

It’s about things simply progressing fast. It’s an avalanche of events that push things forward – with an element of overload that itself forces issues out, up and forward. There’s an element of inevitability to it too – that is, things happening now relate to things that happened or failed to happen before, and also (get this) things that are yet to become visible and come into being. This is a case of the future having a formative influence on the present.

If you look at the green lines in the chart, the core issue here is a triangle that is being formed by the slow-moving outer planets, Uranus (in Gemini), Neptune (in Aries) and Pluto (in Aquarius). This is rare, slow, and happening now and over the next few years. It has been building up since Covid-time and it is historic in effect.

A lot is going to change during the late 2020s, and the key issue here is overload. An overload that makes everyone think differently, choose their priorities, urgently seek fundamental solutions and juggle hard to keep everything going.

There’s a useful analogy in geology. The erosive power of a river increases as the square of its volume. In other words, if the volume of flow increases three times, the erosive power increases nine times. We’ve seen this in recent floods worldwide, though a flood is simply a dramatic increase of flow, a releasing of energy. Yes, it destroys a lot and is difficult or deadly for the poor people at the receiving end of it, but the river is constructing a new path by which things can flow better. It is preparing the future.

These three planets will shimmy in and out of exact aspect over the next few years, and they ard pretty exact right now. Since they move slowly, they influence slow-moving, historic processes and mega-trends. Often we don’t notice these except at critical junctures.

An example is Gaza: this is a longstanding issue spanning many decades, even centuries, but the recent famine and starvation event and the war before it made it into a global issue in the forefront of the world agenda. And it concerns bigger and wider global-scale issues than Gaza itself.

When faster-moving planets move into configuration with these three, we start getting a mega-twang. In this chart, Saturn, Mars and Mercury are involved. A day later (8th Aug), the Moon will swing into it too, just for half a day, cranking it up even more. In other words, events happen that precipitate the bigger issues that lie underneath.

This concerns not just world events, ‘out there’, but individuals too – depending on how your own astrological chart works. If you have planets in the first degrees of certain signs, then you might have quite a few planets aspecting one or more planets in your chart. Stuff happening. Make the best of it – seize the time.

How much this is a crisis depends a lot on you. Yes, it’s difficult when stuff is rattling and banging and it’s all too much, but this is also a mechanism by which things change, and you can make that change easier or more difficult.

And here’s something: the advantage of a crisis is that a lot of issues can get resolved at once, and pragmatically in response to real-life circumstances – instead of dragging out over a long period of time, or being avoided or sidelined. We are being given a future instead of simply trudging along through life living with the effects of the past.

This is a time of accelerating solutions hiding behind apparent problems. It depends how we see things, and how much we are willing to let go of old ways of seeing things. This is about the future, not the past.

There will be more of these configurations in the coming few years and it’s worth keeping an eye out for them. This isn’t the end of the world, or the beginning of the new age, but it is definitely a time of white-water canoeing through a fast and rough stretch on the river of life and of history. By 2030 more will have happened and progressed than we thought possible.

With love, Palden

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And if this kind of thing interests you, then my book Power Points in Time is all about it: https://penwithpress.co.uk/product/power-points-in-time/
and a free online archive version, the now rather dated 1987 Living in Time. is here: https://www.palden.co.uk/living/