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Moon Magic – How To Use the Lunar High or Lunar Low

 AstroMagic (How to Use the Magical Moon and Lucky Jupiter to Manifest Your Dreams) is the title of my forthcoming book (due Autumn 2022), but  you can start right now with a very simple Moon Magic technique. This will determine your Lunar High or Lunar Low – just look for when the moon occupies your sun sign. It’s as simple as that. If you’re a sun Virgo, it’s your Lunar High when the moon is in Virgo. If you’re a sun Gemini, it is your Lunar High when the sun is in Gemini. However if you’re a Virgo, when the moon’s here it’s the Lunar Low for Pisceans – simply because it’s their opposite sign. (The Lunar Low for Virgos is obviously when the moon is in Pisces). And so:

Aries is opposite to Libra
Taurus is opposite to Scorpio
Gemini is opposite to Sagittarius
Cancer is opposite to Capricorn
Leo is opposite to Aquarius
Virgo is opposite to Pisces

Lunar Highs and Lows are the simplest ways of checking your rhythmic attunement to the moon when making personal astrological ‘predictions’ with Moon Magic. Think of it roughly as a kind of New Moon and Full Moon set up, but one which applies especially to your sun sign. The Lunar High is like being on the road when the sign ahead says either ‘go’ or ‘stop’ and it works like this: for the two and a half days when the moon moves into your sun sign, you’re having your ‘peak’ days of the month; overall you can expect beneficial results. When it moves into your opposite sign, these are troughs, or low points. Hence, the shorthand ‘Lunar High’ or ‘Lunar Low’.

If you have an ephemeris, they’re easy to obtain online for free. If not, download my brief Three Planet Tables PDF here, for 2022. Then you can check on your personal Lunar High/Low days in the days, weeks and months ahead. A fuller set of Three Planets Tables will appear in Astro-Magic (due out later this year) which will show you just where the moon, Mercury and Jupiter are in the sky between 2022 and 2026. (In Astro-Magic, aside from covering all types of Moon Magic – like using spells at appropriate times – we’ll be looking at when Mercury is retrograde, and when Jupiter will be making important life-changing links to your birth chart.)

MOON MAGIC – WHAT THE HIGHS DO

The Lunar High is when the sun and Moon come together and there is a union of yin and yang, Masculine and Feminine. You are in harmony with the Universe, energies tend to be more plentiful and you are in the ‘flow’ of things, as the Taoists might say. When we look at how the New or Full moon is affecting your actual birth chart later in the book, things get much more interesting and precise. We will look at how New Moons and Full Moons (part of what’s called the Lunation cycle) actually connect to planets on your birth chart (so long as you have an accurate birth time). Plus, when these Lunations ‘transit’ the houses of your natal chart we will perform powerful magical spells and rituals appropriate to that house.

For now though, remember that the two-and-a-half days on the Lunar High is a peak for you. What happens during this period obviously good for you, though not necessarily lucky in the conventional sense. Things can even send you off course, and it may feel as if you’re being thwarted. You could even have what appears to be appalling luck on these days. In time though, such things will be revealed for what they truly are – a blessing in disguise.

If you’re a fan of Eckhart Tolle and following his mindfulness teachings, it is easier to be in The Now and enjoying the underlying Presence on a Lunar High day. This naturally leads to improved performance at work, relationships are more harmonious and your focus is good. Vitality – depending on your overall state of physical health – should obviously be up and you can get more meaningful things done at these times. Magicians and spell-workers should be putting out their healing energies into the Universe on a lunar peak day.

Creative people will get more inspiration, as the muse is strong. And who knows what will happen when you buy that scratch card or lottery ticket? All in all, a Lunar High is an excellent time for getting what you want, whatever that means to you.

The Effects of the Lunar High:

On a High you can make new starts and important decisions that may affect the rest of your life

On a High you’ll feel more in tune with the Universe and tend to have days when, put simply, things simply go your way

On a High you’ll be able to make new investments and will know if it’s the best time to save money rather than spend

On a High you’ll know how and when to make the approach to important prospective employers .

MOON MAGIC – WHAT THE LOWS DO

During a lunar low period you are apt to find that what happens is not exactly in your best interest. Impediments arise in unexplainable ways and you’ll soon see that your powers are limited, somehow. Maybe it’s because of the depletion in energy, of being (potentially) out of sync with the cosmos and you’re likely to run out of steam much quicker than at other times. Any influence over others may be minimal, and there’s little else to do but ease up on trying to control life.

The advice to surrender, accept things and go with the flow when you’re not getting your own way is a major theme in ancient Chinese wisdom. And it should always be borne in mind at the time of the Lunar Low – the sun and moon are opposed to each other now, yin and yang are at odds, and your best move is to quietly occupy the mid-ground. This isn’t simply giving up or giving in, reigning yourself to fate, but positioning yourself in a state of non-attachment, non-desire. Letting go is another key theme in the old Oriental teachings, for here is wisdom (and it’s only for two and a half days)

Suspending certain plans is now a wise move – they may run into difficulty. This is the time in the month to get a complete rest from striving – take it easy, chill out, meditate, get spiritually recharged! Helping other people out with their dreams and schemes or problems is an excellent idea, too. It’s a time to be more charitable and show some genuine empathy.

The Effects of the Lunar High:

On a Low you should just take it easy as the time isn’t ripe yet for making advances – you shouldn’t be trying to manipulate things at any rate!

On a Low you’ll suspect that something out there is interfering with progress and, worse still, you may be unrealistic about what you can achieve

On a Low it may feel like something is taking the enjoyment out of life, but this is only because you’re trying too hard and don’t have the energy

On a Low it’s time pass on certain options, to take a raincheck and look to your spiritual life, instead

And all of this is because you will be working within the planet rhythms and influences that are at work already on your birth chart. One of the best ever cheerleaders for Lunar High/Low astrology – which she calls Red Lights, Green Lights – is the late, and brilliant, US astrologer Debbi Kempton Smith. In her book, Secrets From A Stargazer’s Notebook she writes:

‘So of course Charles and Vivia Jayne taught me this RED LIGHTS, GREEN LIGHTS stuff, as Carl Payne Tobey taught them many years ago. Carl Payne Tobey had a mail order business and discovered that he always got lots of orders during the “lunar high” and felt like he was swimming through oatmeal on the “lunar low.”’

She then continues with some good, solid advice about the lunar highs:

‘These are your “best” days of the month. Now, “best” doesn’t necessarily promise that these days will be fun or easy, but they are lucky. You’re more likely to get your way … you have more power, more influence than at any other time of the month. Think of what you can accomplish if you dust off your zoot suit and steam ahead on these days: Sign contracts. Begin important projects. Ask the boss for a raise. Start love affairs with hard-to-get humans. Go for job interviews. Apply for loans and credit cards. Approach “important people”.’

On the subject of good fortune, Balthasar Gracian once put it this way: ‘There are rules of luck: it is not all chance with the wise: it can be assisted by care. Some content themselves with placing themselves confidently at the gate of Fortune, waiting till she opens it. Others do better, and press forward and profit by their clever boldness, reaching the goddess and winning her favour on the wings of their virtue and valour.’

Remember that ‘winning the favour of the goddess’ is much easier on your Lunar High!

The post Moon Magic – How To Use the Lunar High or Lunar Low appeared first on astro.nu.

Strawberry Fields Forever – Is This The Best Song Ever?

Is ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ the best ever pop song? I remember once having a free pull-out poster with one of the rock newspapers in about 1976 (either the NME or Sounds) listing the best 100 singles of all time. The usual suspects were all there – ‘A Whiter Shade of Pale’, ‘Jumping Jack Flash’, ‘Good Vibrations’ etc., and I was happy to see ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ (a double A-side with ‘Penny Lane’) in the top ten (at #2). Nevertheless, I was taken aback to see Dylan’s ‘Like A Rolling Stone’ at number one (I’d expected another Beatles song); this reminded me of the time Englebert Humperdinck kept the Beatles from the top spot in the British charts in February 1967, with his execrable, oily ballad for the over 50’s, ‘Release Me’. Strawberry Fields Forever had, again in 1976, been prevented from its rightful place at no 1, this time in a journalist’s poll.

Here, to set the record straight, is why Strawberry Fields Forever is the best Beatles song ever. Firstly, the reason I like it so much is that, in a nutshell, it has everything – no other Beatle song had gone quite so far in its experimentation (a trend that had begun with ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ from Revolver) No other Beatle song had matched feeling to form like this, for its outer structure was, in a sense, unsuited to the sleepy, confused, inner dialogue of its lyrics. No other song had spliced two different versions together to make an eerie hybrid such as this. Mark Lewisohn, in the Complete Beatles Chronicle says that ‘it remains one of the greatest pop songs of all time,’ and yet he’s only half right – for it is the greatest pop song of all time.

The inspiration for the song is Strawberry Field (note, no ‘s’, this was added by John), a Salvation Army orphanage not far from where John was raised by his Aunt Mimi on the dual carriageway that is Menlove Avenue, Liverpool. John would play in its capacious grounds with childhood companions, that is, when he wasn’t there for the summer fêtes, dragging Mimi along to the annual garden party. ‘There was always something about the place that fascinated John,’ she recalled, Indeed, this is why Strawberry Fields Forever became one of his most cherished songs – it was a link to the real Lennon. (Plus, many years after its release, he wondered if he shouldn’t record it again ‘properly’!) As Albert Goldman opined in his controversial late eighties biography, The Lives of John Lennon: ‘Strawberry Field wasn’t just Lennon’s playground, it was his spiritual home. For the drifting, groping, marginally depressed mood in which he spent much of his life was the product of his early orphaning.’ The actual, tangible Strawberry Field thus turns into the mythical, Strawberry Fields, just out of reach, like the ancient paradise of the Elysian Fields.

The promo film for ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ was shot at Knole Park, Sevenoaks, Kent on Jan. 30, 1967 in the grounds of the eponymous historic house. Shot by avant-garde, Swedish TV director Peter Goldman, it appropriately captures the dream-filled, hallucinogenic landscape of its author’s mind. The resulting video even has the tree motif of the lyric, a point around which all of the action (such as it is) takes place. What matters is that ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ is the pinnacle of English psychedelia, during its golden years of 1966-68. These recordings abound in ethereal visions, surreal lyrics, cryptic utterances, backward tape effects, false endings, and ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ faithfully ticks all of the boxes.

What characterises Albion’s own version of American ‘acid rock’ (as performed by Jefferson Airplane or the Grateful Dead) was a return to the child’s perspective on the world, where things are larger than life, endlessly fascinating and in vivid colours. Hence songs like ‘See Emily Play’ (Pink Floyd), ‘Hole In My Shoe’ and ‘House For Everyone’ (Traffic), She Wandered Through the Garden Fence (Procol Harum), almost any Donovan track of the period, plus ‘Itchycoo Park’ and the second side of Ogden’s Nut Gone Flake (Small Faces). These were songs in which adult problems are wished away by magical potions or cartoon insects, where fantastical visions transport one to the next dream scene, as if one had entered a hippy version of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

That John was drifting back to childhood memories in ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ is also there in the ‘nothing to get hung about’ lyric, an allusion to when Mimi would scold him and threaten to ‘hang him’ if he misbehaved. In fact the interior landscape of the song, its whole mood of uncertainty, with sentences left to hang unfinished in mid air (like a sleepy conversation with oneself) are a product of the LSD he’d been ingesting at home in his Surrey stockbroker belt mansion. No wonder, then, we get the declaration that ‘nothing is real’, since so called 3D reality takes on a more hazy tone under the influence of hallucinogenic drugs.

Like the Shaman’s vision, one sees that reality is not solid, objective and monochrome, a matter of simple time and space. Instead, the world is malleable, protean. Subjective reality dominates and the perceptual border between ‘in here’ and ‘out there’ is blurred, whilst the emphasis is less on spatial awareness and clock time, than it is on meaning, mood, colour and the Eternal Now. Indeed, like a dream, time as normally perceived disappears in this heightened state. These were the perceptions at work in the lyrics of ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’

John Lennon’s Birth Chart

Albert Goldman also referenced Lennon’s ‘saturnine’ personality, which – though his book is loaded with distortions and contempt for his subject – is a perceptive insight into Lennon’s psyche. Witness the Jupiter-Saturn conjunction in the 1st house of the chart. The forward looking, growth oriented Jupiter was held in check and compressed by an earthy, narrow Saturnian perspective. It makes a person shift from one psychological extreme to another, from optimism to pessimism, from hope to despair and back again. Once the Beatles rose to fame he didn’t have to worry about success, or money, but as early as 1965 he was confessing to a journalist his boredom and general disenchantment with his lot, wondering when his ‘real’ life would begin. He felt he was really meant to be doing something else with his existence. This is a classic Jupiter-Saturn conflict – once he’d achieved his goal he found it didn’t satisfy, it wasn’t real enough for him. For Saturn will force us to discover what is truly authentic in ourselves, and the Beatles (amazingly) weren’t quite doing it for him. The next ‘big thing’ had yet to arrive – Yoko Ono.

The genesis of ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ came about at the time of a Saturn-Neptune opposition in Sept. 1966, during Lennon’s stay in Almeria Spain to film Richard Lester’s satire How I Won The War. Thoughts naturally turned to home, indeed, to his own past and Liverpool, in fact this was to be the theme for the next twelve months of his creative life. John Lennon’s birth chart is studied in detail here, but his solar return chart for 1966 (from Oct. 10) shows moon on the ascendant, square Neptune in the 4th house – a perfect signature of dreamy nostalgia, a hankering after the past and roots. It also underlies the lazily escapist verse opener for ‘Strawberry Fields Forever: ‘Living is easy with eyes closed’.

But it was the Saturn-Neptune opposition that provided the ‘nothing is real’ basis that arose in the song lyrics. With this transit, one often has that feeling of not being able to tell fantasy from reality. Psychologically, when Saturn makes a harsh angle to natal Neptune, one exists in a kind of limbo; a free floating anxiety, ridden with existential doubts about one’s identity, one’s place in the Universe. Hence all of the ‘sometimes I know I think it’s me, but you know I know when it’s a dream’ ruminations.

The recording of Strawberry Fields Forever

Strawberry Fields Forever’ (and its co- A side‘ Penny Lane’) were to be on the Sgt. Pepper album, one ostensibly about their childhoods. (Reflected in the fact that the single’s picture sleeve has shots of the Fab Four when they were children.) Famously, the finished result is an edit (audible at exactly 1.00) of two earlier versions. John wanted the slower version – its intro played on Paul’s mellotron – to begin the song, but joined with the other, faster version, laden with orchestral brass and cellos. Told by producer George Martin that this was impossible (since the two versions were not only in different keys but different tempi) John replied: ‘you can fix it George’. Luckily, he could – by speeding up the first version and slowing down the second, faster version he managed an almost perfect match of pitch and tempo. (Which changed the result from A major to B flat).

The result was majestic – it comprising not just an insight into Lennon’s psyche, but a musical potpourri that was the stock in trade of psychedelic rock. Its wonderfully crafted string arrangement came from George Martin; there is George Harrison’s Indian table-harp, the svarmandal (rendered as ‘swordmandel’ on the tape reel label) and an early use of the Mellotron with its bank of pre-recorded sounds. Strawberry Fields Forever’ even contained some mysterious morse code (audible straight after the initial ‘let me take you down cause I’m going to …’) that allegedly spells out the letters J and L. And as the false ending fades in and out again, we hear Lennon apparently uttering ‘I buried Paul’. This was one ingredient in the ludicrous Paul is Dead conspiracy theory, where the Beatles were supposedly leaving clues in their work as to his demise. (John is actually saying ‘cranberry sauce’.)

This won’t be a popular comment, but it’s my contention that the Beatles’ work went into slow decline after the peak of Pepper. Whilst they still made good singles, Magical Mystery Tour was pale in comparison, the ‘White album’ patchy, and only on Abbey Road did they up their game. The Let It Be sessions from early 1969 produced only average to good music, the best being the title track and ‘Get Back’. My point is that their psychedelic period represents the high point of their creativity; yes, it’s a subjective view and a matter of taste. So let’s hear it for ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’! Perhaps it’ll be re-released and finally make no 1!Now – enjoy:

 

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