Cunning Man

I hate the part of the year when my mint plants get all leggy and need clipping and I have to wander out with a big pair of scissors to commit a mint massacre. There are about three apologies for every snip. #herbalism.

Someone in an online #pagan space tried to argue that because many pantheons have gods of war, war must inherently be 'good' and 'necessary'.

I cannot fathom how ignorant and lacking in empathy a person has to be to look at Gaza or any warzone and claim that there is good in that.

You all know I hate astrological generalisation, but it's #MercuryRetrograde and I'm having a fight with a smart TV that is changing channels all on its own.

People told me fiddle leaf figs were super easy to kill. Mine got to the point of being tall and spindly and tried to fall over.

I thought 'hey, chop it and maybe one bit will survive'.

I now have THREE FIDDLE LEAF FIGS.

In a complete departure from my usual posts, I just found out how to add geotagged photos to #QGIS and it's going to make part of my river surveying much more streamlined.

It's a thankfully small dataset, but every time I've broken my toes my 12th house ruler has been combust. That it happens to be #Jupiter, which rules Pisces - the sign of the feet, only seems to add to this.

We are in the midst of the most unnervingly silent #thunderstorm. The lighting is constant and there's nearly no sound.

Why the summer solstice is a ‘celestial starting gun’ for trees | Trees and forests | The Guardian Research shows longest day is a cue for beeches to launch their growth strategies

Excuse me while my #Druidry and #ecology interests collide at 90mph

www.theguardian.com/environment/...

One of the folks with ludicrous ideas about what should be basics of #horary told me they have a YouTube channel as if that's a qualification.

Do they know anyone can start one of those?

Bloody hell, I've spoken to two people today who believe that #divination is real in spite of 'fate being entirely in your own hands'. They live in a wooly space where they do divination but don't predict anything. What's the point of that?

I'm not normally one for crass oversimplification in astrology, but let's hope #Jupiter moving into his exaltation in Cancer brings about some extreme shifts towards actual justice.

Sometimes #magick means sculpting clay testicles at 4:45pm on a Monday. Weird times.

I get it, even in #horary we have to be open to new ideas and learn to see things differently.

But lots of people new to the art are just making things up and calling themselves horary astrologers, and failing their clients.

People starting with their own #astrology charts is really hindering progress for new learners.

Most of us have an unclear impression of ourselves, and are prone trying to reinforce those views in charts. Get someone else to give you details of people you don't know well, but they do.

Today I read that not only is AI consuming so much AI-generated content it is becoming rapidly worse at returning information, but the American government is citing fake references in policy that are likely from an LLM chatbot.

Delicious, but also - what a stupid time to be alive.

There are few things more rollercoaster-y for me than finding out an #ecology research project is cancelled due to access being restricted and then having to do a wild pivot to find a new route to the same info. Maddening.

In other #Saturn news, he is my Ascendant Lord and I'm taking his shift to Aries as license to become even more insufferable. It's not causative - it's just a good excuse.

Someone could be saying the most profound or logical things, but the second I see that naff AI art attached, I'm turned off. I have to work a lot harder to value the sort of information peddled by people who steal from artists and trust LLMs to do anything at all.

Most #horary questions come when people are having a hard time, so many predictions are negative in nature.

Sometimes, I get to hear back that yes, the querent got the job, or their partner proposed when I said they would, or someone seriously ill recovered against all odds, as predicted. Magic.

That's it, I've fully nerded. I had a bunch of #horary event charts to do with timing involved, and I did them in a spreadsheet.

I have become everything I purport to despise. Kill me now.

I'm a traditional astrologer, but appeals to tradition do not cut it without demonstration. 'They didn't used to do it that way' is the start of an argument, not the end of it in the same way '#astrology has to evolve' is the start, not the end of an argument.

The number of times I follow someone talking about #astrology then immediately have to unfollow when they say 'anyone with X planet in Y house will be Z' with no qualifiers whatsoever.

In my lesser guise as herbalist, I see people freaking out about some symptom they developed having taken a herbal remedy. Usually, they took massive doses, didn't check against other medicine, and failed to prepare properly. #Herbalism is medicine - you wouldn't take 40 paracetamol.

I'm off to see #beaver habitat this morning, and I'm hugely excited. They're nocturnal so the likelihood of seeing one in person (in beaver?) is low, but I've been mapping their dams in GIS so it'll be ace to see where they actually live.

Chopping down word counts is the bane of my existence. Let me talk at length about modelling beaver dams, damn it!

Chamomile is sprouting, some calendula seedlings are just popping up, a great big pot has just been seeded with burdock and tomorrow I'm planting peppermint, valerian and some vetch just because it is pretty. Spring #herbalism is a go!

When you're a few (or more!) years into reading #horary charts, you start to learn their seasons - both in clients and in watching learners read for themselves. At the moment it's spring, when we get a lot of wishful thinking! Refreshing after gloomy winter reads, but no fun giving a 'no'.

There's something particularly satisfying about hearing back on long-term #horary #astrologypredictions, because while they are as accurate as short-term ones I usually forget about them in the meantime. I've had feedback that a prediction from a year ago, timed to this month has just come to pass.

I love how a #horary client's mental state is almost always reflected in the chart, and not just by their significator planets. The more hectic things are, the wilder the context and the crazier the chart.

The #NeptuneInAries takes are interesting. Many favour the 'spiritual' and positive version of 'mysterious' that relies on distinct sanitisation and misinterpretation of Pisces.

Just check the mythology - Neptune is violent, unpredictable, and deceptive, and SAed Medusa. How spiritual!