Posts Tagged Sagittarius

Astro4Business Week – December 14

Phases of the Moon, as seen from the Northern Hemisphere. The Southern hemisphere will see a mirror image of this phase. (Source:Wikipedia)

Phases of the Moon, as seen from the Northern Hemisphere. The Southern hemisphere will see a mirror image of this phase. (Source:Wikipedia)

Hello, everyone.

A very full week with a major transit or holy day each day, Mars stationary before turning retrograde, and the Sun heading to its Solstice next Monday, December 21.

Monday and Tuesday

On Monday and Tuesday, the Sun is featured in a sequence of aspects.  First, the Sun squares Uranus.  This transit brings ideas and information that challenge your authority, but with both planets in mutable signs, you’re willing to change your stance.  Expect surprises, reversals, and unconventional behavior to reveal something new!

Later on Monday the Sun sextiles Jupiter.  This aspect turns your thoughts to growth and expansion.  Technology, social networking, and digital publishing all bring good fortune.  Think big, but don’t initiate any new plans until after the New Moon on Wednesday.

On Tuesday, the Sun sextiles Neptune.  The Sun represents your leadership style and authority and Neptune in Aquarius brings inspiration from the global community.  Look for opportunities to reach your goals by supporting the needs of others.

Wednesday

Wednesday brings the New Moon in Sagittarius.  On the New Moon, the Moon and Sun are in perfect alignment, representing your alignment with your employees and customers.  In Sagittarius, growth and expansion will be on your mind and plans you hatch today will grow into opportunities over the next month. 

Thursday

On Thursday, Venus in Sagittarius trines Mars in Leo.  The trine aspect is the most fortunate aspect in astrology, with the caveat that you’ve got to reach out and take the luck that comes.  Look for opportunities today through negotiation and alliances and when you see one, seize it with dignity and courage.  It’s yours.

Friday

Friday is Al Hijra, the Islamic New Year.  Al Hijra commemorates the day when Mohammed began his migration from Mecca to Medina.  This day became the first day in the first Islamic Year, in 622 CE.

Saturday

This is an intense, unconventional day with Venus in Sagittarius squaring Uranus in Pisces.  New input may upset your marketing plans or there may be sudden reversals in a contract matter you thought was sewn up.  You are also prone to take more financial risk than you may be comfortable with later.  Today is a good day for singing and dancing, not business matters.

Sunday

Mars reaches its station today, where it seems to be absolutely still before turning retrograde for the next 2 ½ months.  When a planet makes its station, its energy is powerfully focused and perceptible.  The warrior should be obvious all around us and within us.  Desire, ambition, passion, and creativity are all keywords of Mars, so make it happen now.  Tomorrow will be too late.

Sunday also hosts a Venus/Jupiter sextile.  Social networks, generosity, big productions, and big gatherings:  sounds like a Christmas/Solstice party to me.

 

Have a great week!

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Boundaries and Frontiers

My son, Erin Jones, and I were talking about boundaries this morning, except he calls them frontiers.  Interesting distinction, isn’t it?  One person’s boundary is another person’s frontier.

Starship Enterprise (Source:Wikipedia Commons)

Starship Enterprise (Source:Wikipedia Commons)

We had listened to an interview on Science Friday on NPR.   Dr. Lawrence Krauss, from Arizona State University, was speaking about colonization of Mars.  In one part of the interview, he compared sending humans to Mars to other times when people pushed past the known into the unknown.  I was thinking that this urge to migrate to new territory had been happening since the beginning of human culture caused by overpopulation threatening the available food resources.  In astrological terms this would be represented by the planet Mars.

My son, who is strongly ruled by Uranus, only partially agreed.  He thinks that in addition to the biological urge to find and develop new food sources, there is a natural human tendency toward exploration.  He cited how in every field of endeavor there is the urge to break boundaries, and then to continue, to break the next, and then the next.  Each new discovery becomes a new threshold. 

Breaking Boundaries

Erin pointed out that modern art broke through the boundaries of tradition, not to meet a biological need, but to allow for an expression that hadn’t been voiced until then.  This opened the door for the unprecedented techniques that were coming in the next century.  It reminded me of studying Art History and seeing how the human form was represented by the Egyptians, beautiful, upright, but with rigid, unbending, non-undulating musculature.  And then how the Greeks built on that form to develop a much more natural, fluid style. 

Writing continues to be transformed too.  When Jane Austen wrote Pride and Prejudice in 1813, it opened a whole new format for human expression, the modern novel.  Blogging and twittering continue to upend traditional communication styles.

Einstein’s theories are obvious examples, where an insight, a “thought experiment”, led to his theories of relativity.  These theories began a technical revolution that forever changed the course of human life.  But were scientists content with this breakthrough?  No.  Even the massive shift in consciousness and technology enabled by Einstein has become a threshold for other scientists to take knowledge forward to string theories, the big bang, and onward. 

Migration

In thinking about migration to Mars, I wondered about human migration in general.  What was the impetus that caused early man to migrate from Africa?  The migration occurred during a period of Ice Age warming when the African and Middle Eastern continents were lush with food.  So why did they go?  While this mystery is still in the process of being resolved, it’s interesting to look at early human’s relationship with fire.  Excavations at the Gesher Benot Ya’aqov archaeological site in Israel show that the occupants of the site — identified as a branch of the Acheulian culture that arose in Africa about 1.6 million years ago — had mastered fire-making ability as long as 790,000 years ago.   Researcher Alperson-Afil said, “The powerful tool of fire-making provided ancient humans with confidence, enabling them to leave their early circumscribed surroundings and eventually populate new, unfamiliar environments.”  So this tool, fire, essentially pulled humankind into and through the frontier.

Dr. Krauss, from Science Friday, made another interesting point.  There is a moral argument that we can’t send humans to a place they may never return from, as the journey to Mars would almost certainly be.  It is prohibitively expensive to carry enough fuel for the return trip, and some people find the idea of sending humans into this situation reprehensible.  He reminds us that Columbus and company weren’t certain that they weren’t going to fall off the edge of the world.  (Actually Columbus understood the world was spherical.  What he didn’t understand was how large it is.)  I’m sure the early Africans were bucking the conventional wisdom of their tribe when they set off into the Middle East.  Interestingly Dr. Krauss’ piece in The New York Times has inspired an unprecedented response from people willing to go on a one-way trip to Mars.  No doubt the Uranus in Sagittarius (adventure, travel) set.

Extending Frontiers

Columbus was sailing for profit.  King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella didn’t bankroll him just for the adventure.   But it occurs to me that profit motive is just another boundary, or frontier.  If we’ve reached a certain level of revenue in our business, there may be an urge to break that boundary.  Any other metric that we’ve reached extends our frontier and can become the impetus to go further.  I feel it in my blogging:  each goal I reach in terms of readers makes me want to break through and reach more. 

These urges to break through boundaries are the stirrings of Uranus.  While not an Einstein or a Columbus, our individual sparks of insight pull all of society forward in some small way.  So as business people it’s worth thinking about.  What boundary are you up against?  And are we feeling the boundary because breaking through it is our next frontier?

More on this in the next post…

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The Zodiac and the Business Life Cycle – Expansion

Business Life Cycle

Business Life Cycle

We’ve been reviewing the business life cycle and correlating its phases to the signs of the zodiac.  We’ve examined the start-up phase and its correlation to the qualities of Aries, Taurus, and Gemini, and the growth phase, with its correlation to the signs Cancer, Leo, and Virgo.  Now the business is ready for the expansion phase.

Libra

Libra marks the beginning of a phase when the business will either continue to expand through entering new markets, enlarging the company through mergers and acquisitions, or taking the company public, or it will maintain the status quo, rest on its laurels, and coast toward its ultimate termination.  A business that does not move forward with the times and respond to social forces with innovation will eventually reach its termination.

At the Libra point the business begins to establish partnerships to aid in its expansion and deals with responsibilities to investors.  There will be a focus on networking to expand the customer/client base as well as a further shift in management to a more broad-based model.  As the employee base expands as well, effort goes into recruiting the right people and dealing with human resources complexities.

Leadership in this phase will bring in outside consultants and new board members to engage the skills necessary for expansion.  Legal issues may become more serious now, with outside threats to product brands and legal challenges as the company becomes more known in the market.

This phase is characterized by a period of growth into new markets and distribution channels.  This effort makes this phase similar to the Aries time, with an emphasis on entrepreneurial pioneering spirit and research and development of ideas that complement the existing business and capabilities.  The Libra qualities of diplomacy, equilibrium, and objectivity shepherd the business through this phase.

Scorpio

The Scorpio phase brings a dramatic point of crisis.  The power of the original owner has been usurped by the structure of the business they have created.  Banking relationships and investor dynamics have made the company reliant on outside resources, with corresponding requirements for compliance and control.  Advisors, lawyers, and tax agencies seem to conspire to wrest the business from the owner. The original entrepreneur must decide whether to leave the company altogether or transform him/herself into a cog in a machine much bigger than he/she is.  A seasoned, possibly international, management team must function in order to take the business forward into new markets.  

There is no way even a very great leader can handle the business single-handedly at this stage.  The business will be transformed during this stage, whether that means regression to a prior state, expansion, or failure.  The business that survives will have its operating structures in place, its financing secured, and a strong management team ready for expansion.  The Scorpio traits of discernment, integrity, and willingness to dig deeply to find the truth are important during this difficult phase.

Sagittarius

At this stage the business has weathered the Scorpio crisis and is preparing to be an institution.  The hard-won lessons have turned into capability to operate, communicate, and lead. 

In this phase there is expansion into new territories and products or services.  There is a natural rise in risk tolerance because of the stable financing established in the prior phase.  The new leadership team has weathered the storm and acts with confidence; this is the top of their game.  The focus is the forward thrust, the move into the future to gain a larger market share and find new revenue and profit channels. 

This is also when the business participates in philanthropic causes, whether born of a sincere desire to support the public or as a ploy to gain customers.  The risk at this stage is that lack of organizational discipline, born of a company moving into too many new ventures at one time, will take its toll on planning and profits.  The Sagittarian traits of optimism, risk-taking, judgment, and looking for opportunities near and far are characteristic of this phase.

In the next post, we’ll look at the mature phase of a business, and the transition into the next cycle.

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