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AUTUMN EQUINOX includes two major aspect patterns involving Sun at 0°00 Libra

September 21, 2026

Amazing. The extended hot humid weather has suddenly changed, to rainy and cool. Last night, with thunderstorms; cool weather expected the rest of this week.

The timing could not be more precise. Fall Equinox occurs tomorrow,  September 22, at 6:15 PM. EDT.

Lots of interest here. First of all, and this sets the tone, the atmosphere of the Equinox: one planet on an angle: Saturn in Aries in 12th, approaching 15° Ascendant. Brand new beginnings, proceeding slowly, deliberately.

 

Note, on this very Equinox day, the Sun at 0°00 Libra is forms an opposition with Neptune at 3°05 Aries. The need for harmony in one to one relationships is both fraught with tension and yet tending to blend in with dreamy Neptune in Aries. In other words, our efforts at connecting with “the enemy” manifest when we empathize with what “the enemy” is going through, feeling.

Or even better: as this meme points out: healing in ourselves the projection that we unconsciously placed upon the other which attracted him or her to us in the first place!

 

But especially, I’d say, note the grand trine in air, and this incudes the Sun at 0°00 Libra (the degree and minute that always denotes the Fall Equinox): Uranus at 5° Gemini, with Pluto at 3° Aquarius. Both outer planets, moving extremely slowly, and now in harmony, signifying long-term, deeply unconscious, ultimately welcome shifts; and, in this case, since all three planets are in communicative, informative air, shifts of of PERSPECTIVE.

Add to this the “mystic rectangle,” also involving, once again, the 0°00 Libra Sun, with both Mars at nearly 27° Cancer, Neptune at 3° Aries, and, again, Pluto at 3° Aquarius. This aspect pattern includes two tense oppositions: Pluto with Mars, Sun with Neptune, those oppositions enveloped/protected by four harmonious aspects — two trines and two sextiles. Tensions dissolve when we recognize not just our human species as a whole (Pluto in Aquarius) but actually feel our common humanity. What is it like to be a human being, here, anywhere? For you, for me?

We are all in this together, whatever it is; all we know is we are sailing through infinite space, encouraged and protected at this Autumn Equinox by the grand trine in air while challenged by the mystic rectangle that includes and harmonizes two contentious oppositions.

And remember: both these larger patterns include the Sun, on this Autumn Equinox, at 0°00 Libra.

I RETURN TO “RECAPITULATION PROJECT” — and will feature essays to share, one by one.

September 20, 2026

After a nearly six months hiatus, I’ve returned to a project that has had me in its spell for nearly seven years, and that is to collect and eventually share all my written work in one place: tendrepress.com.

I originally called it my “Recapitulation Project.” And after a hiatus from that name too, I bring it back to life.

All along, in order to do this, I’ve had to pull essays out of old periodicals (some of which I was the publisher for, some not), or off shelves, or out of file drawers, etc. etc., make google docs of them, and then file as pdfs into categories for tendrepress. The list of categories is still incomplete . . . That’s what I’m working on now, as I go back through the essays.

Why am I doing this? Basically, because this work is actually a labor of love, in that it helps me complete my life cycle. I do it for myself, at least, and at best! Most of my written work is both philosophical and personal, so going back through these articles brings up memories, some of which I had “forgotten”? And more I remember, the richer my life process.

A note about “philosophical and personal” — this is a rare combination. But obviously guided for one such as myself, a triple Sagittarian (Sun, Ascendant, and Mars), who cannot help but speak from personal experience about abstract matters. The first two are in the first house of self-expression; the third, Mars, is in the 12th house — so I’m continuously delving into the unconscious to pull up and out more and more!

Mars itself opposes Uranus exactly, in my natal chart. Which is interesting in itself, since I am at present experiencing the mysterious expanse of the Uranus Return, when this planet curves back around its 84 year cycle for the first (and only) time. If you have not lived as long as I have, you have no way of understanding what I’m going through! So in a sense, this business of completing a cycle longer than most people’s lifetime is inherently lonely — if I choose to experience it that way. Another way to experience it is to see/feel/endure/celebrate the mysterious spaciousness that  explosively opens with the return of this planetary cycle.

 

Today I feature here a long-winded essay that I wrote back in 1981, at age 39, when I was undergoing the half-cycle of Uranus! This may have been the first essay I wrote since I completed and defended my PhD dissertation, at age 28 (first Saturn Return).

(If you are not one who tracks your life through astrological cycles, I highly recommend learning how to do this, as one deeply mysterious and meaningful way of “making sense” of the continuously swirling opening.)

So here’s the essay, and it is a doozy. A gushing forth of what I had been holding within. I can look back now and see that it contains most or all of themes and preoccupations that have driven me ever since.

LIGHT STRIKES THE PINEAL GLAND AT BIRTH