Astro Update - Issue #17

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Sharon Leah

Welcome to Llewellyn's Astro E-newsletter. Optimism seems be in short supply today. Except for smiling Katie Couric, who's too new in her job to know she shouldn't be happy bringing us the CBS evening news, we're a glum bunch. But she'll lose her chipper attitude soon enough if she pays any attention to the naysayers among us. After all, our president, with the cooperation of various government branches, has deployed our country's military resources into foreign territories. We don't have enough people signing up to fight to keep the supply line full, so military personnel are being redeployed on shorter and shorter rotations (the length of time between deployments is down to 14 months from 24 months). The housing market is stagnating, home foreclosures are on the rise, Ford Motor Company is closing plants, college graduates are "swimming in debt," our food sources are contaminated (E-coli in spinach has caused deaths and sent nearly 200 people to hospitals), and I won't even mention the stories about pregnant women and children that make daily headlines.

On what or who can we blame our darkened mood? The president? The evening news? The forecasters? A planet?

Maybe it's Jupiter's fault; he is supposed to be the planet of jovial optimism after all. Well, he is in some tough territory. Not only is he visiting Scorpio, he's also challenging two of the big guys--Saturn and Neptune. Maybe if jovial Jupiter had taken one challenge at a time, we'd have a better outlook on life. As it is, we're feeling pessimistic and apparently not sure of the way out of the mist.

Are you buying that last comment? I hope not.

Sure, we can cast blame--it's easy, and a good release valve. But we might be doing ourselves more harm than good. I have no scientific proof for the next comment, but I'm saying it anyway: blaming creates negative vibes that collect in our environment like spider webs, and the webs are just hanging there waiting to snare us.

If we paid attention to forecasts, could we be better prepared? Sure we could, but remember Y2K? A lot of time, money, and energy went toward preventing that catastrophe, which didn't happen. Don't get me wrong. Forecasts can be very useful (I even write them occasionally). Astrologer Dorothy Kovach has written economic forecasts for the Moon Sign Book since 2003, and she agrees with my comments regarding forecasts. "Negative thinking," she said, "gets us nowhere. After all, every bottom is but an opportunity to buy. Contrarily, like we have today, every top is a time to consider taking profits." So, did Kovach forecast the problems we're experiencing today?

In the 2003 Moon Sign Book, she wrote: "Jupiter in Leo is at odds with Neptune in Aquarius. Not all Jupiter contacts are good for the consumer...Neptune is linked to oil and gasoline. A sad result of Jupiter's ability to enlarge everything is that the cost at the pump increases."

Well, she was right. We've certainly seen higher prices at the pumps this past year, thanks in large part to the ongoing turmoil in the Mideast.

In the 2004 Moon Sign Book, Kovach wrote: "...demand drives prices, and housing prices have gone through the roof. When any sector goes up quickly, there is a chance of a bubble occurring...the sector is said to be 'on fire.' Eventually, the price gets so high that it is out of reach, and like a bubble, it bursts. There is only one way to go: down."

She was right again. Just a few weeks ago I read in the St. Paul Pioneer Press newspaper that only a few homes in the "affordable housing" home tour, sponsored by Wells Fargo Bank, were truly in the affordable category--$250,000 or under. And, on September 25, Couric's team reported that home prices have fallen as much as 30 percent in areas across the country; and in Florida, one developer raffled a home just to get people to come in and look around his development.

In her forecasts, Kovach offers advice for coping with economic twists and turns. When Saturn moved into Cancer in June 2003, she said: "streamline...now we learn the lessons of thrift and savings our parents tried to teach us." In 2004, she wrote: "The wise investor will take a critical inventory of his or her assets. If your portfolio possesses even a few non-performing network or technology-driven issues, get rid of them." That sounds like commonsense advice. She told us to pay attention, take action, and be smart.

So, if blaming builds "webs" of negativity, how can we be optimistic when things aren't going so well? Martin Seligman, the founder of Positive Psychology, points out that in the last three decades of the twentieth century journals published 46,000 psychological papers on depression and only 400 on joy. But Seligman's research demonstrated that it is possible to be happier--to feel more satisfied, to be more engaged with life, find more meaning, have higher hopes, and probably even laugh and smile more, regardless of one's circumstances.

"Learned helplessness" is offered as a model to explain human depression, apathy, and submission. Environments in which people feel they have no control over what happens to them--repeated failure, prison, war, disability, famine and drought--tend to foster learned helplessness. But not all people become depressed as a result of being in a situation where they appear not to have control. Why do some of us submit to depression and apathy, while others fare better?

The difference is in our attitude toward things. Now, before you go getting all testy with me, think about it. If we can learn to be depressed and feel like failures (and I agree, there are a lot of circumstances that contribute to tough breaks in life), we can also learn to be more optimistic. We can see the glass as half full, we can appreciate our wealthier neighbors for improving the quality and beauty of our neighborhoods, we can be grateful that ridership is up on our city's mass transits systems (less cars on the roads equal less pollution and fewer accidents), we can be grateful for tenacious coworkers (and show them our appreciation by offering to help when they become too overloaded).

Bottom line: We can learn to be more optimistic about life. The payoffs are well worth the effort.

1. http://www.authentichappiness.sas.upen.edu/
2. Note: Clinical causes of depression, etc., are well beyond the scope and intent of this article.

You probably already know a lot about your zodiac sign by reading your favorite horoscope column. But there's more astrology can tell you than you're a workaholic, a great lover or a dedicated family man. The cosmos can also give help you discover something about personal fulfillment, inner peace and happiness.

Aries - The Ram finds personal satisfaction by chasing after a goal, even more so than achieving it. For Aries, they need to constantly have something to strive for; to work toward. If you're doing nothing "new" or have no challenges, no mountains to scale, then you could get very bored with life. You crave excitement and find inner happiness with the "chase"; the thrill of the hunt....of course you want to win too. You thrive on competition; proving to yourself and everyone else that you're number one! But it's the "getting there" that matters the most.

Happiness Key: Pushing yourself farther than you've ever gone before