An Albatross, Eating from the Hand of a Sailor

A tale of the Capricorn New Moon.

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The mighty albatross. Photo via British Antarctic Society.

Dear Friend and Reader:

We have arrived at the last weekly edition of Planet Waves in this, our 26th year of publication. The Awakening, the annual edition, will officially be published Monday, the day of the Capricorn New Moon.

The New Moon is conjunct a centaur planet, Pholus (discovered in 1992; coincidentally its orbit is just under 92 years). It crosses the orbits of three planets — Saturn, Uranus and Neptune — which is what makes it a centaur. They are all orbit-crossers. Chiron is the most familiar in this group of minor planets. They all point the way to where we may retrieve what feel like elements of lost soul; they are keys to seeing in the dark.

Each has a specific emphasis or theme. Pholus describes the small cause with the big effect. This can be a “one thing leading to another” kind of situation; it can represent an action taken with the consequences unforeseen. Were they predictable? Maybe not — but there are usually warning signs that things are not going to end well.

Pholus encompasses unheeded cautions, betrayals of commitments made in the past, the release of ancestral karma, and — from its mythology — being starstruck by celebrities who often get us to do whatever they want.

For Monday’s lunation, Moon, Sun and Pholus occupy the same degree, and the luminaries align with Pholus to about 14 arc minutes. There is a lot of emphasis behind this lunation, which commences the lunar month wherein Donald Trump will be inaugurated the 47th president.

Photo by MIT

The Albatross Enters the Scenario

Seeing this cluster together in one degree of Capricorn, I went to the Sabian Symbols, one of the original degree-by-degree interpretation systems. The degree has as its symbol: “An Albatross, Eating from the Hand of a Sailor.”

The albatross is an incredible bird. It looks a little like a giant seagull. It can fly 500 miles a day with the occasional flap of its wings, which can measure 11 feet across. It rides the wind like few other birds. They do not make good pets.

I was not familiar with the albatross as a totem, so I went to my critter-meaning go-to, Ted Andrews — but surprisingly, albatross is not in his lengthy section on birds.