Sample Newsletter

1st December 2009 - 31st December 2009

Hello!

And welcome to the first issue of Astrolutely's newsletter. Now that you've joined my subscription service, you will receive one each month, and you'll have your weekly forecast days before it appears on site.

One of the reasons I decided to start this service was that I wanted to reach out to each of you more. From Astrolutely's beginnings in January 2000, my aim was to make it a very personal astrology site and the emails I receive from so many of you show that you do indeed feel I am a very real person behind the horoscopes. And now you get a little bit more of me.

What you may not know is that I write the weekly forecasts seven weeks before they appear on site - same with the weekly hello - so it is impossible for me to refer to current events each week. However, this will change with the advent of the newsletter. Right now, as I pen my first epistle to you, the airwaves are vibrating with the news that the five terrorists allegedly behind 9-11 will stand trial in New York at some future date. What is fascinating here is that this news broke within hours of the Saturn-Pluto square (15 November). Why is that so significant? Well, 9-11 occurred under the umbrella of the last Saturn-Pluto aspect so there is a direct astrological link between the two events. (I have written about the all-important Saturn-Pluto cycle in my article: Saturn in Libra and the coming cardinal crisis so if you'd like to know more, click on the link on site.)

In the same Saturn-Pluto-crime and punishment vein, the trial has just begun (1 December) in Munich, Germany, of the alleged war criminal, Jan Demjanjuk. Mr Demjanjuk was previously sentenced to death by an Israeli court in 1988 for the murder of 27,900 Jews at the Treblinka and Sobidor extermination camps (1942-1943). That conviction was ultimately overturned by the Israeli Supreme Court (1993) based on evidence that he was not the infamous Ivan The Terrible. That an eighty-nine year old man with leukaemia should be stripped of his American citizenship, deported to Germany and made to stand trial may seem to be the epitome of inhumanity but in my opinion you are never too old to answer for crimes of such magnitude. Jan Demjanjuk was born on 3 April 1920 (some sources put the year as 1921) in Ukraine. What is of great significance about his chart is not that he is an Aries but that his Pluto is to be found at 5 degrees of Cancer. And where is Pluto currently? 2 degrees of Capricorn and closely opposed to his radical Pluto. Plus Saturn is squaring his natal Pluto reinforcing the already powerful theme of crime and retribution.

Another Aries hitting the headlines at the moment is Susan Boyle (1st April, 1961, 09 50 am, Bathgate, Scotland). This unassuming woman, deprived of oxygen at birth and thus somewhat intellectually-challenged, experienced a meteoric rise to fame in 2008 when she appeared on the TV show, Britain's Got Talent. This week her album went straight to number one in the charts. Once again of interest here is Pluto, which had reached her Ascendant at the time of her entry into the talent competition. It remains to be seen how well she will manage life in celebrity land, however: Saturn will tee off her Cardinal T-square in October/November of 2010, which may trigger health problems and an extended period out of the spotlight.

Also in the news is golfer, Tiger Woods. It seems almost inconceivable that this supremely talented sportsman who has never been the cause of a raised eyebrow should fall from grace so spectacularly. At first the notion was vaguely humorous that this mild-mannered man could climb into his car in the early hours of a Friday morning (wearing no shoes and socks) and crash into a fire hydrant on his own property and a neighbour's tree but as the days went by and news emerged of his alleged affair with a cocktail waitress amusement turned to amazement.

Not surprisingly Mr Woods' chart is an essay on recent events. Born on 30 December 1975 at 10 50 pm, Long Beach, California, Virgo (24 degrees) rises and Mars at 17 degrees of Gemini has just culminated placing it in one of the favoured Gauquelin positions for famous sportsmen. (Michel Gauquelin, the late French psychologist and statistician conducted several studies in the 1950's and '60's based on the charts of famous athletes, out of which came 'The Mars Effect'.) Why I say his chart is an essay on current events is that Uranus - the planet of sudden change and somewhat akin to the Tower tarot card - is conjunct the cusp of the relationship house and squaring the Mid-heaven (his role in life). I believe it will be difficult for him to get both his marriage and his reputation back on track - his sponsorships may not suffer nor his career per se but his marriage is another matter.

Roughly a week ago I had a letter from an Astrolutely fan in Poland. Iwona asked me if I would please write about Michael Jackson. This I may do in the future but briefly when my thoughts do turn to MJ they almost always revolve around the idea that he died as he lived - in a bizarre and unpredictable fashion. He died some forty-eight hours after a Sun-Pluto opposition, which connected precisely with his own Pluto. Premature as his death might seem, there was a certain poetry to it. His music and his legend will, of course, never die.

So, it seems my first newsletter has been all about Pluto - that poor little celestial dwarf... I will be sending out subsequent newsletters on the 1^st / 2^nd of each month so please feel free to write to me with your ideas and comments. I may not be able to answer each and everyone personally but I will read them.

On Christmas Day I will be posting the year ahead on site so if you need a break from the turkey and the present-opening, why not pay Astrolutely a visit.

With best wishes,

Penny