Mercury and Sun conjunct Altair - Bold, independent and being decisive.

These aspects are starting to form running from now through until Monday/Tuesday 21st/22nd January

We have Mercury and the Sun moving together through the skies now and when one hits a star, the other follows straight afterwards. On entering Aquarius, these planets hit Altair, the star in Aquila the constellation of the Eagle. As I have mentioned before, Altair is a bold star of movement and bravery, one which is linked to strength, military matters and taking decisive action. Robson says of the Altair Sun connection that it brings honour, favours from superiors, many friends but losses and possible ill health. Mercury's link can bring difficulties, misfortune and problems on long journeys.

One immediately thinks of the Algerian hostage situation and the French air raids over Mali which continue to move on apace. This is a time for taking the lead in a situation, fast thinking and making bold decisions, but these can be rash and counter-productive if you haven't completely thought through your plans of action.

The moral of this story is use these conjunctions wisely and you can make strides forward. Use them recklessly and you might find yourself having to go back to the drawing board...

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Jupiter square Chiron - Learning about our inadequacies and offering a chance to correct them.

This aspect is now well under way and will be in close aspect into February as Jupiter turns and moves direct. I rather think there is very much a synastry between Chiron and Jupiter, because Chiron in mythology was a Centaur and Jupiter's sign Sagittarius also represents a Centaur. Chiron was also a teacher and a knowledgeable one too and of course Jupiter rules knowledge and wisdom. Chiron in the old stories suffered a potentially fatal wound by being hit by an arrow from Hercules, but was granted immortality by the Gods, so in effect he became a healer who could not heal himself. Chiron rules wounding and healing, and some people think because of his erratic orbit around the Sun that Chiron is also a bit of a maverick influence.

Now interpreting Jupiter square Chiron is tricky, because of the myriad of possibilities we have here. Will Chiron cause a wound because of Jupiter need to explore and experience new things. Jupiter tends to take chances and here you open yourself out to harming yourself. Jupiter also encourages expansion, and maybe any wound will come because you are over extending yourself. On the other side of the coin, Chiron can heal you by curbing your excesses. Go on a diet for example or give up smoking or drinking too much. Maybe Chiron will force you in to healing your financial situation by encouraging you to cut your cloth accordingly? It all depends where in your chart this mutable square is activating.

As this is a mutable influence, this change will slightly easier to achieve than if it were a fixed square for example; fixed ones often need a really painful break in your behaviour before you learn to change your ways. In a mutable square you can change your direction by simply adjusting your manner of doing things, not to say this is still going to easy to achieve.

With both these bodies promoting wisdom and knowledge, this could be an excellent time to do some studying so that you might learn something very valuable for the future. Maybe someone of knowledge and experience will come along now, enter your life and give you a helping hand?

In this aspect, we still may have to face painful truths about ourselves and about where we are going wrong in out lives. This aspect does give us a chance to do something about them before it is too late. Especially as this square is still active after Jupiter turns direct on 31st January, you can use Jupiter's forward motion to start to open out and to learn some of the lessons from the past. It's time for some redemption in our lives, a chance to correct some of the mistakes we have made, and to become wiser and stronger in preparation for the next stage of our development...

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Algeria – Gas plant hostage crisis raises the stakes in sub Saharan Africa

Now, who saw this one coming? At an Algerian gas compression plant in In Amanas, up to 41 Western hostages have been taken in apparent retaliation for the French using Algerian air space during air raids in neighbouring Mali, which have also been supported by Britain. The plant is jointly owned by Norway’s Statoil and British Petroleum and there are reports that a group allied to Al Qaida have been implicated. It seems from a story emanating from Algerian media that gunmen on 10 large trucks stormed the plant to take the hostages. If you look at the Algerian national chart, one can immediately see this situation developing.

A new royal baby in July – Astrologically, what do we definitely know?

Please note that the accuracy of this article is entirely dependent on the actual date of the royal birth and that it is in the main speculative, except for the positions of Mars through Pluto which are likely to be in these positions in the sky come what may…

Ok, so the confirmation is out and we do know that a Royal baby which will be a future King or Queen of the United Kingdom will be born in July this year. An announcement made from Buckingham Palace yesterday confirmed the fact. Now, we do not know which day the baby will be born but already there are a few pointers that lead to the fact that this baby will be born within a time span of a couple of weeks and the likelihood is that it will be a Cancerian, or maybe just a Leo. Lets have a peek into the future and look at the astrology which is occurring around this time.