Author: Jem Neal

Chirotic Journal

Through a Glass Darkly

The US Pluto Return of 2022 Sometimes I feel a little uncomfortable with the study of very fresh events, especially where there has been some profound unpleasantness. It can feel ghoulish to get involved. In the case of George Floyd, that poor man whose life was so brutally cut short, I feel especially unhappy at the prospect of dissecting the mechanics of his fatedness. I saw the video, most of us have I am sure, and it affected me very deeply. I was traumatised by it, as one might expect. I really feel that the poor man needs to be...
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The Long Shadow

Hello friends, “Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.” So said Carl Jung, and this is never more true than when dealing with Pluto, whether it be your own or the Pluto of others’. Pluto is a black barb hooked into our consciousness, and we, numb to his discomfort recoil at seeing the barb in those we confront. How can they have such small awareness of that ugly black hook in their soul, we wonder, and shudder. I have often argued that where Pluto is concerned, less is more. Occasionally this idea upsets...
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Ixion and the Good Life

Hello friends, There’s an old Chinese curse, which goes “may you live in interesting times!” The idea being that prosperity, ease and comfortable living mostly goes on when the general ambience of life is rather dull and uneventful. We are in the midst of interesting times, no doubt, and no sooner are we come to... Continue Reading →

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Chiron in Taurus through the Houses

The classic "wounded bull" manifests in the sense of being good enough, and generally impacts the sense of self-esteem and self-worth. Usually there is an uncomfortable class consciousness and sensitivity to poverty, with an accompanying feeling of inadequacy. Compensations can manifest as an excessive preoccupation with status symbols, hallmarks of affluence and high class items which confer prestige and elegance. Feeling unsophisticated, gauche, clumsy, dull, slow, inept or uncultured are other classic expressions. Chiron in Taurus harbours a secret sensitivity that they are just not as cultured, well-read, urbane and well-educated as others around them. Chiron in Taurus and the...
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Chiron in Taurus, the Wound of Insecurity

When the centaur Lord Chiron is in the sign of Taurus, the woundedness manifests in the realm of comfort, security and self-esteem. Indeed, the pain of Chiron here is likely to be felt as discomfort, insecurity and low self-esteem. As with all matters of Venus’ realm, there is a sharp dichotomy between material and spiritual manifestations of the placement. Venus rules both money (material) and love (spiritual), and to some extent, you will dictate which expression of Venus’ domain is expressed through the pain of Chiron here. This does not mean that you will be immune to one or the...
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Frida’s Forge

Frida Kahlo is well known as a trailblazing artist. She was, for example, the first Mexican artist to have a painting displayed in the Louvre. But her passion for painting was discovered almost by accident. Well, literally because of an accident, that nearly killed her. In 1922, a bus she was embarked upon collided with a car, and she was flung clear of the wreckage and impaled upon a metal handrail. She later claimed that the length of steel entered her flank and exited through her vagina, this was perhaps untrue. She also broke her collarbone, two ribs, her leg...
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Hephaistos through the Signs

Throughout these delineations I’ve been careful to not over-assign roles in the relationship dynamic that typifies Hephasitos in the chart. But generally speaking, in the context of Hephaistos as a kind of minor chord of Chiron, it’s entirely likely that you will take on what might be termed the “lacking” role. So, for example, if you have Hephaistos in Capricorn, then the chances are that you will project your lack of Capricorn quality onto your partner and feel inadequate in that archetypal metric. So, it’s most likely that they will seem serious and measured and you will feel that you...
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Hephaistos, the Misfit Archetype

According to Carl Jung, marriage is prone to archetypal dysfunction. The myths are but representations of experience learned ten thousand times over and more through all of history and humankind, and these patterns are accessible to each of us through humanity’s collective unconscious. They are like old comfortable clothes that just seem to “fit”. And after the first blush of love’s carmine rose is faded a little, the temptation is to try them on. Why is this? It is because the old clothes are comfortable and – at first – they do not constrict. Also, because creating new clothes is...
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The Great Gravy Train Robbery

Predicting the outcome of elections is hard. The British general election of two days ago has ushered in the most right-wing government Britain has ever seen. This bold conclusion is ably supported by the announcement today that Tommy Robinson, a far-right campaigner and member of various white supremacist organisations has become a paid-up member of the Conservative Party, but even without his ominous benediction, the worrying portents had long been evident. There are, for example, now only nominal policy differences between the current Conservative party and the once almost universally reviled National Front of the 1970s. In my view, the...
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Degrees of Separation

Today I want to teach a very simple astrological technique which I have developed over the years, which I hope will precipitate many fascinating insights. It is a technique that I use all the time because without fail it provides clarity to important life transitions and is so very easy to use. In truth it is a kind of rough and ready system of employing Solar Arc directions, which are invariably powerful and very little employed. The good news is that they are extremely accessible and straightforward, even for a fairly inexperienced student to perform. Now, the reason this method...
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Communion with Hades

I am checking in after a little absence because it's remarkable how quickly time flies and how much work you can get done without even the slightest disturbance on the surface of life and it might seem that there is nothing going on, in the depths of one's personal tarn. You will note that I have included a photograph of a tarn at the beginning of this post so that we can all get into the same way of thinking. My guess would be that some people have a personal tarn, and for some it is more of a...
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Making Sense of Makemake

When I was researching Orcus, I made a breakthrough after watching an interview with Stacey Keach where he talked about his "trilogy of wardens". What a great turn of phrase. As a Sun Gemini, closely conjunct Orcus, you would expect multiplicity or ‘many-ness’ to be a feature of his persona. A multiplicity of prison wardens for a man who played Mike Hammer, a kind of precursor to Marvel’s Punisher, and who had himself been to prison for a time, seemed to implicate him in a kind of archetypal dance, one where he was not the leading partner, but was following...
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The Shadow part I: the Conundrum of the Luminaries

The Shadow is the collection of unresolved, unrecognised and unreconciled facets of personality. It is accepted that integrating the Shadow into one's consciousness can have enormous creative and healing benefits, but this unexamined self is difficult to apprehend, for precisely the reason that it is hidden from consciousness, and when revealed, uncomfortable to gaze upon. Add to this the distortion of subjectivity, a liberal measure of childhood scripting, the occasional resurgence of the panicked inner child in times of distress, all these factors and many more, and you have a confusion which makes it supremely awkward to get any easy...
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Mensa Munda

We have thought about the idea of a solar persona a few weeks ago and followed the marvellous story of the Rising Sun/Son of the Montmartre, Maurice Utrillo. We learned in that fascinating history how he had grown up with uncertain paternity, and we posited the view that the solar principle in astrology correlates with the important psychoanalytic concept of the persona. We can examine the persona in many ways, but my fundamental appreciation of this concept is that, like so many other facets of self-expression, it makes a good servant and a poor master. The ideal in terms of...
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Pluto and the Riddle of Gold

One of the fundamental challenges of our lives is that we are habituated to living in existential dread. That is to say that we are all, to one extent or another, aware of the blissful consequence of living in the moment, and every one of us, at some time or another has experienced those happy glimpses of eternity wherein there is no future and no past, and we find ourselves bathed in contentment, without a care in the world. As children, assuming a certain quality of care and comfort, we retain few memories, because trauma aside, our sense impressions are...
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Seven Habits for the Saturn – Pluto Year

If you read my last piece then we will both agree, it had a bleak tone. That is natural astrology, or astrology unvarnished, which is different from new age astrology. Part of the conundrum of the evolutionary ideals of contemporary stellar mechanics is that it must, in some quarters at least, always have a positive... Continue Reading →

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Musings on Saturn-Pluto

The arc of Pluto, as I have discussed many times before now, is always toward unknowing. Like anything shut away from air and light for too long, it might turn, and become a blight that slowly poisons the host from deep within. For this reason, the darkness of Pluto’s domain must be broached to allow... Continue Reading →

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The Story of Vesta: pt. I

Fire is essential to human life. Water is too, and earth to build all things material, and air to breathe. Of all of these though, fire is the most ephemeral, because we might live without it. But we cannot live well without it. In earlier times, when fearsome beasts roamed the land, fire ensured, light and warmth and safety. Fire is embedded deep in our DNA, because it brought humankind out of the dark, and into the sheltering, protective penumbra of the tribe. It was symbolic of belonging. And in perhaps only the last 200 years has fire become relegated...
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Aspects in Balance

Here is another perspective too on the nature of Jupiter and Saturn, and the received wisdom about those planets. Specifically, it allows us to reframe the simplistic idea that Jupiter is good, and Saturn is bad. It is better to say that Jupiter is easy, and Saturn is hard. But as we all know, a smooth sea never made a skilled sailor, and it is commonly held by almost everyone, that while they did not choose the great hardships and challenges of their lives, they would invariably not choose after the fact, to have not lived through them. Often, the...
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