Weekend Entertainment Guide 9/13/24 + Full Moon 9/17/24
A bold prediction for the future of DEI
Going forward, I plan to cover Full Moons and New Moons in the Weekend Entertainment Guide the Friday before rather than in their own posts. I’ve already said some about the coming Full Moon, which is also a Lunar Eclipse, in Weekend Entertainment Guide 8/30/24.
Full Moon (Lunar Eclipse) 9/17/24
This Lunar Eclipse has the Moon in Pisces closely conjunct Neptune. It’ll likely be difficult to tell the difference between fantasy and reality, even though Mercury in Virgo is opposing Saturn. It sounds like a good day to just step away from all your electronic devices and do something relaxing instead of trying to figure out for sure whether or not anybody really ate a cat in Ohio.
The other ridiculous rumor going around these days has to do with “10 days of darkness.” I was disappointed to see on Rumble that someone identifying himself as an astrologer had gotten involved with that and had provided November 5 through 15 as the date range. To anyone who may be Googling, any claims involving the 10 days of darkness do not reflect mainstream astrological opinion. I don’t think all astrologers are required to belong to the same political party or vote for the same candidates, but I do think we all have a duty to avoid making the sort of predictions that are likely to cause unwarranted alarm.
Remember: anything that sounds too stupid to be true probably is. Still, tech turmoil is a thing, even if it doesn’t escalate to a totally sensational extreme, so here is how to export a backup of your Substack posts.
Hot on Substack
and , The Wounded Healer's Return: A Time for Collective HealingThough many outer planets are about to move from Water and Earth signs to Fire and Air signs, Chiron will soon conclude its time in Fire sign Aries and enter Earth sign Taurus. On June 8, 2027, Chiron will return to 3°08’ Taurus, where it was at its discovery in 1977.
, Nearly InvisiblePeter Doughty explores the 2022 Nord Stream pipeline sabotage. See also
, Reflections on the Jupiter-Neptune Conjunction (Part II)., The Pisces Lunar EclipseSimons brings up the Bible story of Jonah and the whale, which also appears in the Quran with Jonah’s name translated there as Yunus:
, Love Letters from Mars in CancerThink of the magical time between eclipses as a time between worlds, in the belly of the beast, from which you can emerge re-dedicated to your truth and ready to get on with life, no more running away.
Mars will be in Cancer, off and on, for longer than usual due to Mars going retrograde. The charming horoscopes for each rising sign cover Mars’s activities in both Cancer and Leo.
Denise Hancock, PhD, RN, via
, Virgo III - Winter always comesHancock provides a case study of her friend and travel companion, “a respected leader in global disaster philanthropy and nonprofit management,” who has the Sun, Pluto, and Uranus in the third decan of Virgo.
Free online event
will provide a Libra Equinox Update at 1:00 am PDT/9:00 am BST on September 18, 2024. Speakers will be Liz Hathway, Rod Chang, Kenan Yasin Yokubasi, and Julija Simas. Register here.Changing times, changing trends
When I posted my last Weekend Entertainment Guide, I was bummed that I’d forgotten to take photos of the late 1990s-esque cargo pants and wide-leg pants on display at the Target store in Eugene, Oregon. I had visual evidence for my astrologically grounded claim that the vibes of the late 1990s are coming back, and I failed to capture it! Fortunately, I had cause to return to Target since then, so I got some photos.
I don’t know if cargo pants ever went totally out of style for men, but it had been a while since I saw them dominating the women’s section like that. The remaining skinny jeans are now almost all the way to the clearance rack.
Beyond clothing, I’m finally ready to go public with a big prediction: I think that, by April 7, 2027, diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts will be more focused on issues related to neurodiversity than on issues related to race.
I don’t see this potential shift as a morally bad thing or a morally good thing. I see it as no more morally loaded than skinny jeans cycling out and cargo pants cycling back in. It’s a normal part of life for the collective’s interest to fluctuate from one subject to another over time. Sometimes the topic or style of the day happens to match your individual needs well, and sometimes it doesn’t.
This idea first dawned on me on April 7, 2024, when I saw prominent displays regarding neurodiversity at Powell’s Books in downtown Portland, Oregon. I don’t know if whoever decided that April should be Autism and Neurodiversity Acceptance Month was working with an astrologer, but they perhaps unwittingly scored a big hit — the Sun is in Aries for the first part of April, and Aries is associated with the head and brain in medical astrology.
Chiron, representing the archetype of the wounded healer, has been in Aries since 2018, and Chiron conjoined the North Node in Aries in February 2024. Those influences probably got the ball rolling on this issue. Between now and April 2027, Neptune and Saturn will both enter Aries. Neptune represents the type of suffering that we feel compassion for, and Saturn wants to codify our sentiments into rules and laws.
I think that, over the course of the Neptune in Aries era, the neurodiversity movement will go through a lot of the same basic struggles that issues of race, gender, and sexual orientation did during the now-concluding Neptune in Pisces era. There will be some people who successfully accomplish positive change. As is part of the human condition, there will also be people who run off the rails even if they are motivated by good intentions. There will be guilt and moments of reckoning for things that were done wrong in the past. There will be a need for people who acknowledge they did things wrong in the past to have a realistic way to expiate their guilt.
However, some things will be different this time around. For example, you can often look at someone and have a relatively accurate idea of whether or not they are at risk of getting harassed for Driving While Black. Conversely, there often aren’t visual indicators to tell you who needs accommodations for neurodiversity — or what those accommodations should be. The necessary solutions are sometimes more individual than the conflicts we are used to where all Black people or all gay people are getting discriminated against in the same specific way that just needs to be stopped.
The people described in the recent Reddit screenshot above may not be representative of all people who use the label autistic, but their situation sounds painful! I don’t know whether these two are self-diagnosed or formally diagnosed with autism — the current wave of interest in neurodiversity includes some of both. (Isn’t self-diagnosis the most stereotypically Aries approach to a medical issue ever?)
I generally favor people having the freedom to make their own medical decisions, so I will not stop anyone from self-diagnosing with autism, ADHD, or the like. I have zero interest in becoming the police of how others run their personal lives. Still, I acknowledge that it can sometimes be hard to figure out the best path forward when everyone involved in the conversation isn’t necessarily defining terms in the same way. I also want to point out that there is a big difference between self-diagnosis and (when you are not a medical professional) other-diagnosis.
Anyway, my heart goes out to the people described in the Reddit screenshot. To some extent, everyone living in this time of Chiron and more moving through Aries must contend with the question of where my right to do things my way ends and your right to do things your way begins. The question falls harder on some than it does on others, though, and I wish I knew what the answer was.
Informative
The Weekend Entertainment Guide is a great resource! Thanks for linking to my piece.