Category Archives: astrology

Street Photography…and my damn Aries Moon

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As much as I love taking Sagittarian-type road trips to look for images to photograph, it’s still pretty much a variation on the Mercurial theme of street photography…
Stopping the car, getting out, and pointing a lens at someone or something is a busy, but compelling sort of enterprise that I want to explore here by sharing some of my more successful images…
One of the things road trips can share with street photography is the sense of danger, since it can, and occasionally does, cause unpleasant confrontations…
landscapes only rarely get you into trouble, but leave it to me and my Aries Moon to change THAT…
I suppose I don’t get flustered when a state trooper pulls up behind me on a country road and checks out my ID and plates on his computer because I’m photographing some wheat field…but I DO find it ironic that taking photographs is considered a more suspicious activity than hunting…

Of course walking around town…any town…with a camera around your neck eliminates the business of stopping the car and attracting state troopers, but I find myself getting more and more gun shy as time goes by… And that’s something I want to change…
This image is from 1993, I think… I was pretty cheeky back then, and not so afraid of confrontation, but the people I pissed off never got in my face…even if they glared…
But THAT sure as hell changed!
I don’t consider this a great image, but as far as photographs go, it certainly captures an archetypal moment we’re all familiar with… something to do with Mars in Capricorn or Saturn in Aries, I’d say…

street photography

Chicago: an innocent street photograph c.1993

Despite my Aries Moon, I tend to dislike confrontations, but I know from experience that getting the kinds of images I really want will often provoke them.
This post on Eric Kim’s excellent blog speaks to the heart of the matter as it addresses the fear of confrontation in street photography.
He offers some useful advice and encouragement, but there’s really no avoiding the fear.
Street photography just requires a hell of a lot of courage…even if the only bad thing that can happen is that you can piss somebody off, or get arrested, or have your equipment stolen, or get beat up…or even knifed…or maybe worst of all: lose your film.

I guess going digital changes that all important last part…
but it doesn’t eliminate the fear.

It also doesn’t change the risk and danger of the absolute worst thing, which is to never take the damn photo at all.
Even if it sucks, it’s still your vision…and you’ve got to keep working on getting that vision in the / a frame so that it doesn’t just not suck…but completely takes your breath away.
Because if you don’t keep trying, you’re just not being yourself.
I only wish I could be myself without all of that Aries business…

kristo

Horoscope for Muammar Qaddafi…

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Qaddafi horoscope

I’ve just published my horoscope for Muammar Qaddafi on kristo.com
Not knowing his exact time of birth, I’ve done it in the form of a lunarscope, i.e. using the course of the Moon during the 24 hour period of his birth date.
June 7th, 1942 puts him right in the middle of a huge Gemini influence (there are 5 planets in Gemini on that day)…and his Pluto in Leo just naturally makes him a Baby Boomer.
That’s not the only reason I call him the “Baby Boomer Extraordinaire” though…

read my horoscope for Qaddifi here…

horoscope for Michael Hart, inventor of the eBook

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I only learned about Michael S. Hart through a recent, random stop at Project Gutenberg…
and then subsequently read about him in Wired…

I don’t know that he could be called a genius…but he had the same thing going for him that most inventors and visionaries have: the Archetype of Recognition…

so, having just completed my horoscope of Steve Jobs, and recognizing something crucial that Michael was quoted as saying in that Wired article, it seemed only natural to take a look at his horoscope…

You can read my horoscope for Michael Hart here…

kristo

horoscope for Stieg Larsson

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Stieg Larsson’s birthday was on August 15th…
and I decided to do a lunarscope reading based on his place and date of birth…

you’ll notice that I didn’t say time of birth because this reading emphasizes the perinatal period…
i.e. a combination of immediately pre and post-natal influences…

I'm getting the sense that this sort of reading applied to anyone really gets to a facet of character that can’t be accessed by more conventional birthchart readings…

It was interesting for me to see how the 7th and first houses can be so enormous for many people born in Sweden…
makes sense that they’ve had their share of artists and vikings…

You can read Stieg Larsson’s lunarscope on my website, kristo.com…

horoscope for President Obama

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Happy 50th Birthday, Mr. President!

In honor of the occasion…and to shamelessly promote my talents…I’ve done a birthchart reading of Barack Obama over on kristo.com…

Normally, I do birthcharts as more extensive readings on mp3, but this horoscope makes for awfully interesting reading…

You be the judge of whether it’s politically correct or not.
I think it’s fascinating astrology…

Click here to read it…

horoscope for Johnny Hoogerland

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Watching the entire Tour de France this year was both a blessing and a curse…

on the one hand, it was a pleasure to watch elite athletes competing in such an over-the-top event…
the race went on for hours nearly every day for 3 weeks, and tuning in each day was a hugely comforting routine…

on the other hand, with plenty of my own serious work to do, tuning in each day was an excuse to avoid the demons of the proverbial blank sheet of paper…
I don’t do multi-tasking very well, and keeping an eye on the race while trying to write wasn't too smart…

but then again, there was Johnny Hoogerland…
one hell of a competitor…
and somebody I couldn't help but admire…

here’s my take on his horoscope…

horoscope for Amy Winehouse

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There are plenty of horoscope readings for Amy Winehouse out there, and they all seem to be using 12 Noon as her birth time, since her official time of birth is not publicly known.

It's certainly a valid approach…
but I've created a unique form of birthchart that reads the influence of the Moon over the planets for the entire day…not just 12 noon…
it's how I do readings when a birth time is unknown…
it's also valid for providing another, and deeper, intuitive insight when the time IS known…

although I had never had the occasion to hear her sing, the pathos of her death intrigued me…
and through this reading alone, I'm sincerely impressed by her huge and generous spirit.
Her enormous talent is there, too…
it's amazing…

you can read my take her horoscope here…

That 13th Zodiac Sign Silliness

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Hooray!

It’s the first day of Spring!
The Vernal Equinox.
The day on which the amount of daylight equals the amount of darkness.

So what does the Vernal Equinox have to do with that wild astrology controversy over Ophiuchus some midwestern newspaper brought up back in January?

Well, actually…just about everything.

First, let me (briefly) be master of the obvious…

From now until the first day of Summer, the days will continue to get longer.
On that day, otherwise known as the Summer Solstice, the length of the day reaches its peak and thereafter begins to decline, until the Autumnal Equinox.
You know…
the first day of Fall…

And so we have these pivotal days in the year…
and between them, we have the seasons…

This is something we need neither an astronomer nor an astrologer…and not even a journalist to inform us of.

So…getting back to that Vernal Equinox business…

Well, for simple, theoretical, astrologic purposes, that day was once and for all fixed as the day that the Sun entered Aries.
Kinda like the way we chose December 25th to mark the birth of Christ…
except that we really meant to celebrate his birthday on the Winter Solstice…
but hey…isn't that supposed to be the shortest day of the year???
And doesn't that day kinda hover and move around December 21st a little bit?

Well…just tuck that bit of Savior reference away for awhile and we'll get back to THAT later.
It's important!

This mixture of seasonal reality and shared calendar appointments (like the birth of Aries and the birth of Christ) is all fine and dandy, except for the fact that the Sun doesn't enter Aries on the Vernal Equinox any longer…
and hasn't done so for about 2 millenia…
(don't worry though, it will again in about 23 more millenia.)

Not only THAT…but the Sun really DOES travel through 13 constellations…not 12.

So now what?

The simple fact is that the common Sun signs of western astrology…
those conceptual avatars of shared personality traits we're all so familiar (and so used to identifying) with…actually depend upon the astrologic system of Ptolemy…
a system that was close to an aristotelian, scientific accuracy 2 millenia ago…
even if it DID involve a belief that the Sun revolved around the Earth.
And that system is known as Tropical astrology.

The not-so-simple fact is that the Tropical / Ptolemaic Sun Sign you were born under is NOT accurate according to a very busy kind of astrology which seeks be closer to the current scientific facts.

And that's called Sidereal astrology.
Although even THAT'S nowhere near to the kind of accuracy that would be involved by adding the 13th constellation to the zodiac.

This whole thing isn't a question of comparing Outlook to Google Calendars…
Hell…it's not even a question of apples and oranges.

The good news is that you don't have to subscribe to any sidereal theory or astronomical fact…
or even worry about Ophiuchus…
and you can still be considered rational!!!
(well, sorta…)

The bad news is that you're already considered irrational for even being curious about astrology in any way, shape or form.

Still sounds problematic and confusing, no?

Maybe you're even feeling a little ignorant or annoyed right about now.

Well…that's pretty much what the no-news-news (and so much of what passes for journalism these days) seems to be about.


What it really amounts to is an effort to create sensation by quietly taking a few facts out of one context, and noisily dropping them into another.

The biggest noise being the sound of a hammer, as they take the square facts of astronomy and pretend innocence while trying to fit them into the oddly shaped holes of tropical astrology.

The implication being that the problem lies in the fact that there's something wrong with the hole.
Except that they've slyly (er, I mean editorially) removed the relevant facts of tropical astrology from those very same holes without telling you.
(Hey…no holes, no story, right?)

Modern astronomy successfully debunked Ptolemaic / Geocentric astronomy back in the 17th century…in the person of Galileo.
And he made quite a name for himself…through the power of the press, in fact.
The printing press, that is.
And what we have here is the case of another astronomer essentially trying to do the same thing…
except that he doesn't seem to have any astronomy to debunk…
so he's trying to debunk astrology…
And that's the context that I want to clarify…

So you can just stop reading here if you agree with the astronomers…
I'm not looking to convince you of anything.
Hell…you might not even like my explanation.

I'm just gonna fill in a few holes most astrologers don't even know are there…
and I swear I wasn't the one who created them…
All I'm gonna do is create a little clarity by knocking together some very interesting facts…
and I'm not even gonna use a hammer…