Annual Birthday Retreat starts today

December 18, 2025

I take off this morning for my annual three day birthday retreat, to stay in an Indiana State Forest Inn. This year, it’s Turkey Run!

77 miles northwest of here. Lots of fabulous trails through tiny, differentiated ecosystems. I decided NOT to bring puppy Scampi with me.

For electronics, I’m bringing with me only the phone (in case I get in trouble on the trail, but to be left in the car otherwise).

Yep, a screen fast!

Besides yoga mat for that part of my daily two- hour-long physical culture (including also Chikung and Taichi) various types of books to accompany me, plus journal, and my “magic” stuff — Tarot, Runes, I Ching, etc.

Birthday ceremony this evening.

Happy birthday to me! 83rd birthday, to kick off my 84th year, in the midst of my first and only 84-year Uranus return!

 

Today, on my walk, finally, BALANCE!

December 17, 2025

See Yesterday’s post.

Not sure why I’m still absorbed in my own personal mutating dark/light interiority; maybe it’s just because we are in the holy season when the dark, four days from now, on December 21, reaches its maximum at 10:03 AM EST and begins to wane.

Here’s a chart that that almost gets it right. (Sun should be at 0°00 Capricorn, not at 29°59 Sagittarius). In any case, it shows the extraordinary energy configuration operating during this time, with especially the fiery upthrust of Sagittarius at odds with the watery confusion of Pisces.

Also interesting: the Ascendant, at 0°06 Aquarius, with Pluto very closely conjunct at 2°25: each of us a singular individual, learning how to cooperate.

But the big one, the set of squares between late Sagittarius Venus and Sun (along with Mars just over the edge in early Capricorn), both of which square the every-36-year conjunction between Saturn and Neptune in late Pisces, ongoing for quite a while now, and on its way to the big one, Saturn/Neptune conjunct at 0° Aries: major extraordinary brand new beginning for humanity. The last time these two were conjunct at the degree that signifies the very beginning of the zodiac was in 593 BC! So this coming February 20, 2026, when they will finally move into exact conjunction at 0° Aries (after flirting with it several times in 2025), and and not back up into Pisces is definitive. From then on, all systems go.

And of course, this ongoing Saturn/Neptune phenomenon, this difficult Piscean union between structure and mystery, between walls and infinity, between holding on desperately and letting go utterly has captured my attention this year, with at least six posts on that subject. Here’s a quote from one of them:

“Saturn, however, will turn to go direct on November 28 and Neptune on December 10th. So things should ease up a bit after that.  Even so,  for months now, it’s as if the entire human race has stopped all forward movement in order to return to the twilight zone where we must re-member all that we would prefer to forget, in order to heal ourselves of  individual and collective PTSD which drags us down into the muck and holds us there, too often without our even realizing it.”

So yeah, deep dark, and I DO realize it.

What’s interesting to me now, is that today, on my walk, unlike yesterday, the interior of my psyche did not switch back and forth; I was neither grinch or angel; instead, my interior felt dynamically balanced, the two, dark and light occupying their own spaces while allowing each other room to breathe. Grinch Saturn was not forbidding Neptune; nor was angelic Neptune dissipating Saturn. The yin yang symbol feels particularly appropriate here.