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The Metaphysician’s Day Planner (MDP) is going to continue, at least for another year, though for 2026, as a “Lite” scaled back offering. It’s $17 for the personalized day planner customized with your natal chart and 2026 solar returns chart, e-delivered to your e-mail address as a digital file (PDF). We recommend using Lulu.com (not sponsored) a third-party print-on-demand site to print the physical spiral-bound copy of your MDP.
2025 is poised to bring rapid technological advancements with artificial intelligence, an increasing need for global response to climate change, continued escalation of geopolitical conflicts, and deepening societal faultlines, with much of that all but written in the stars.
Let’s talk about general global forecasts for the year to come. We’ll cover the following:
This is an independent study course that delves into reading a birth chart for past life and karmic insights, to explore soul patterns through natal astrology.
For more than a decade I have had on my back burner of book manuscripts a multi-volume encyclopedia on astrology, where I want to cover both Western and Eastern modalities of astrology, through the Ages.
One of those volumes was or would have been on past life astrology, but then after more thinking, that particular subject isn’t something I want traditionally published as a book. It’s not something I want to become “known” for. That meant I now had hundreds of pages of astrological reference material that I didn’t know what to do with.
So I created this handbook to be packaged into an online independent study course.
One recommended prerequisite: You have intermediate proficiency with Western astrology. The course material starts off with the assumption you can already read a birth chart through one of the established Western astrological systems (e.g., Placidus or Whole Signs), and understand house, sign, and aspects analysis.
What this course does is give you a new, additional lens for interpreting a birth chart, that additional lens being a past life reading for the native.
This is fun! A delightful soul and kindred spirit gifted me with the above book, which you can download a pdf of at the Internet Archive, since it’s in the public domain. The Oracle of Human Destiny (1825) is credited to someone going by the pen name “Madame Victorine Le Normand” and is written in first person, with references to doing divinatory readings for Napoleon.
You’ll need a standard deck of 52 playing cards. I opted for the pips, pages (knaves), queens, and kings from a Tarot de Marseilles deck. Works just as well.
From the below charts, decide which of these 12 questions (along the right side of the page spreads) best expresses what you want to ask the oracle. Then note the corresponding zodiac sign on the left side of the page spread.
Table of the Celestial Signs with Corresponding Questions, Part 1 of 2
For example, say I want to ask about financial stability to come, business opportunities, or employment. I might opt for Libra and the question I’ll be asking will be, “Inform me whether I shall ever be Promoted, Wealthy, or Fortunate?”
I confess that I got to tinkering with the divination system before even opening its companion guidebook, but don’t worry– I’ll be reviewing it with the guidebook and getting to Klein’s approach. First, my own. =)
As soon as I saw the board with the astrological houses and keywords, as an astrology enthusiast I felt I immediately knew how to operate this thing. I was so excited by the concept I didn’t even continue rummaging in the kit that Klein had sent me. Instead, I ran upstairs and started picking out gemstones all on my own, from my personal stash, for the seven sacred planets and two of the main Hermetic Lots.
Most Eastern esoteric paths espouse that a practitioner of any esoteric art should proactively cultivate and strengthen the personal Qi, or life force, because when you do any form of intense metaphysical work, you’re drawing from that pool of personal Qi. If you’re not mindful of replenishing that Qi, then the constant weakening of your life force from the occult work that you do (this includes divination) can cause physical and mental health concerns. So to maintain optimal wellbeing–and that’s physical, mental, and psychic-spiritual wellbeing–cultivation practices are necessary.
Image source: pxhere.com
The Metaphysician’s Qi
Divination, ceremonial ritual, mediumship, channeling, pathworking, spell-crafting, astral journeying—these practices are believed to exhaust a lot of your personal life force, and so as a metaphysician, you want to establish a routine practice of cultivating and strengthening your Qi, or life force, to maintain your wellbeing. Otherwise, you can become more susceptible to illness, both of the physical and mental variety.
Taking measures to cultivate and strengthen personal Qi is a practice everyone and anyone can benefit from, much like how everyone and anyone should be mindful of nutrition and physical exercise. However, the nutritional needs of your everyday office worker is very different from the nutritional needs of an Olympic swimmer. So we can make the comparison here of an occultist to the Olympic swimmer, because it’s considered an out-of-the-ordinary lifestyle, and so your nutritional needs– in this case psychic-spiritual nutritional needs– will be different from the average person.
Let’s cover six ways a metaphysician can cultivate Qi:
Queen of Swords from the Tarot in Wonderland (Barbara Moore); Game of Thrones Tarot (Liz Dean and Craig Coss); Bad Bitches Tarot (Ethony Dawn)
Even though I don’t personally buy in to generalizations about astrological sign compatibility, they sure are fun to read (and write). Instead of zodiac signs, I’m going even broader and exploring elemental compatibility between the tarot courts. Zodiac signs aren’t the only way to determine tarot court correspondences, but it’s the one I’m going to go with for the purposes of this blog post.
Since there are differing elemental correspondences for tarot out there, here’s the one I’m working with:
Those who are Fire signs are part of the Wands court, Water signs are Cups, Air signs are Swords, and Earth signs are the court of Pentacles. Psst… I’m the Queen of Swords by both sun sign and rising.
To determine your elemental court, you can use your sun sign (what is commonly referred to as your horoscope sign), but for some relationships, you may want to go with moon sign. Checking compatibility points for moon signs, rising, and Venus signs in addition to sun signs can bring a more well-rounded insight to a very specific romantic pairing. Closeness of friendships can also be determined through an account of the moon signs in addition to the sun.
The relationship compatibility I want to explore here is not limited to love. These considerations can be applied to friendships, acquaintances, or professional partners, or heck, even which public figures seem to resonate with you and which for some inexplicable reason just don’t.
Every few months I get the itch to dabble in sun sign horoscopes. To do so, we focus on what’s up with the Sun, Mars, Mercury, and Venus, with an eye on the Moon. I use the day-night rulership approach, running transits animations for January, 2015 and analyze those transits. There’s really no science to sun sign horoscopes and anyone who tries to convince you otherwise is just pulling your leg. Still, they’re fun and every once in a while, by some synchronous fluke, can even be useful. So here we go. January, 2015, and even some additional insights into the rest of the year for each sign.
I’m also going to throw in a tarot card draw for good measure, coming to you from the Voyager Tarot by James Wanless. (Click on any of the card images for a larger view.)
I like to open with the sun sign of the month, and that’s you, Capricorn.
Capricorn | December 22 – January 19
It could be a hectic start to the New Year and you’ll feel like you are at the center of everyone else’s personal predicaments. That’s only because people see you as always reliable and need you to be their rock. Be alert to curve balls that could get thrown your way. You’re going to feel a child-like fragility and vulnerability this month. Drama may ensue this month and it won’t be your fault. You just have to breathe, hold back, do not overreact, and try not to let the uncertainties of the future unnerve you. You’re contemplating a new course of action as part of your resolutions, but fear of the unknown holds you back. You need to regain confidence in yourself, and then blockages to your creativity can be eliminated.
Card Drawn. Nine of Crystals: Narrowness
Your hard, impenetrable character grounds you, gives you a sense of stability, but it is also isolating and lonely. There seem to be bars over your view, restricting your perceptions. And yet such narrowness is also what keeps you focused.
Retrograde Mars. Image Credit: Tunc Tezel. Source: NASA APOD.
So we, we being all the planets in the solar system, go round and round the sun in our orbits, right. Each one’s orbit is a little different, some are rounder and others more elliptical, and then there’s the tilt of the axis, each one tilted a bit differently from the others. Because of that, at certain times, earth will round a corner at a different pace than one of the other planets on its different-shaped orbit, i.e., maybe a little faster. At that point, from the earth’s perspective, because we’re rounding the corner a touch faster (and on a different-shaped orbit and a different tilt), that other planet appears to move backwards.
So the term “retrograde” kind of stuck.
At least that’s how I understand it. Hey, I’m no astronomer and barely even cut it as an astrologer.
Anyway, let’s just say that’s all about right. Well. Metaphysically, the change of pace is most definitely a change of energy flow and retrograde or not, astrologers are interested in how that change of energy affects life on earth. That’s basically what astrology is all about, whether you’re talking Eastern or Western astrology. It presumes the concept of a cosmic unity, that the whole universe is one being with a collective Spirit, and like our bodies, sometimes, something going on with the hands can affect what’s going on with the feet. So that’s the whole “As above, so below” and also the Dao and Qi concepts distilled into baby terms. And if you ask me, it’s entirely aligned with the concept of God.
We just survived an inordinately brutal Mercury in retrograde and now this. There’s Neptune in retrograde until the 15th of this month and Uranus in retrograde until December 22. It coincides with Jupiter going into retrograde on December 10.
That means right now you’ve got Neptune in Pisces and Uranus in Aries in retrograde (from the earth’s perspective) plus the Northern Node in Libra in retrograde plus Chiron in Pisces with Neptune in retrograde. November 13-14th-ish, the Northern Node goes stationary (but it won’t stay there or be prograde for long; more on that later). By noon Saturday November 15, 2014, Neptune will go stationary. November 16th onward, Uranus and Chiron continue in retrograde. On November 23, Chiron goes stationary; December 9, Jupiter goes stationary. Then December 10 onward, you’ve got both Jupiter and Uranus in retrograde. Oh, also on that same day, the Northern Node is in retrograde again. During that whole time, by the way, after my last statement about the Northern Node, it comes in and out of being stationary, in prograde, and in retrograde. I just stopped jotting down the dates as I cycled through the transit charts. December 22, Uranus in Aries finally goes stationary and is what we would call normal by the 23rd. Now Jupiter and the Northern Node continue in retrograde into 2015. Oh, and by the way, Jupiter is going to stay in retrograde until about April 7 when it goes stationary and then is back to normal after that.
And here’s what it kind of looks like animated:
Oct. 21 – Dec. 30, 2014 Transits
So what does all that mean? Depends on who you ask. Now let’s say you’re asking me, because– sad day for you– you have no one smarter to talk to about these things.
benebell wen 