Astrology is a language, a very special language. Each symbol, like a hieroglyph, has a very broad meaning, which is clarified in the context. Therefore, it is very important not to restrict symbols by narrow specific meanings, but to try to catch their essence.

Take Mercury, which everyone is familiar with. Everyone knows that Mercury means rational mind, logic, mental modeling, speech, commerce, communication, information. But Mercury, like any other planet, can manifest in all subtle bodies, including the physical one. Therefore, Mercury is also motor skills, movement and coordination.

A person with strong Mercury will not necessarily be intelligent or rational. Imagine a child with a strong Mercury in his chart growing up in the woods. Such cases really existed and didn’t tell as pretty a tale as Mowgli’s. Such a child would be wild and unable to speak (maybe mooing at most). And you can’t teach it to think like a human. But its strong Mercury in the chart will not go away, and will manifest itself in amazing dexterity of movement and tenacity of hands. Such a Mowgli will be capable of very deftly climbing trees, throwing rocks, and picking over small objects like acorns. If you have ever watched monkeys in real life, you know how agile and quick they are (and how much they love to steal). This, too, is an action of Mercury.

Mercury can also manifest in emotions, i.e. on the astral plane. There is no need to think that if we are talking about emotions, it is necessarily the Moon. Imagine a person shouting outrageously, “I don’t understand, how could you? I can’t understand!”. That person has Mercury activated (and probably Mars if they are shouting loudly and waving their arms violently): they cannot understand or rationalize something and are filled with rage because of it. Or maybe they are filled with sadness. And the person is crying, maybe sobbing profusely because they cannot comprehend, for example, the behaviour of a loved one.

Or take a subject like mathematics. Mathematics is always Mercury: all those equations, mental modeling. But have you ever seen a mathematician in love with their profession? They see the harmony of numbers, for them the equations are aesthetically beautiful, they truly admire them. And here, already by the key words “in love”, “harmony”, “aesthetics”, “beautiful”, we can see Venus. Of course, the mathematician’s work is conjured up by Mercury. But also by Venus in situations of admiring the beauty of numbers and formulae. This is an example of the manifestation of Venus in the mental field. So it is wrong to think that if there is strong Venus in the chart, it is necessarily an artist. It can also be a mathematician, especially if Mercury and Venus are in conjunction (which is pretty common).

Astrology is a symbolic representation of the world. Flat-earth folk might not agree with me, but after all, our world is volumetric, it is not flat. So we should understand astrological symbolism in a volumetric way too, not limiting it to flat interpretations.

I think many have noticed the development of Spiritualism, Esotericism, Astrology, Psychology, Healing, Divination, etc. over the last decade.

It’s all due to the movement of Neptune in its abode, Pisces.

As archetypes, the Zodiac signs are as immense as life itself. We could discuss the sign of Pisces for a long time and not even come close to describing it fully.

But there is one point that seems very important to me that sheds light on the essential qualities of Pisces and the mass fascination with psychology and esoterics that is going on now.

Pisces is Water, i.e. everything subtle and internal, in the dissolution phase. The key word in Pisces is desacralization.

The Subtle, having passed the way from conception (Cancer archetype) and serious elaboration and development within certain frameworks (Scorpio archetype), refines and dissolves, becoming available to the grassroots. What used to be protected behind a high fence and accessible only to a select few, who had to possess the necessary knowledge and symbolic language, is now spreading around the world. There is an inevitable loss of energy: subtle knowledge is profaned, becoming public domain. And knowledge, once sacred, turns into symbols of mass culture.

Thus, ordinary people without any special knowledge or training perform rituals at the New Moon, follow Mercury retrograde, call mindful sex Tantra, sing Buddhist mantras without understanding their meaning (and afterwards sing Hail Mary and Hare Krishna), talk about personal boundaries, unclosed gestalts and ego-state, read the Tarot, linking the arcana and zodiac signs, and of course wear a lot of stones and crystals, not forgetting to fume the rooms with sage and palo santo.

All of these things are parts of very different spiritual, esoteric, occult and scientific traditions, once very sacred and available to few. Now, however, they are cultural codes and distinctive markers of subcultures. These are grains of once deep and integral systems that enrich mass culture at the their own cost.

Pisces enriches the world by dissolving the once inaccessible Subtle and sharing its remnants with the surrounding space. Pisces destroy sacredness by making everything sacred. Or nothing.

We live in the age of information, but not knowledge. The development of communication technology has led to many changes in the world, but not to more knowledge. There is a possibility that there will be even less knowledge in the future and we will find ourselves in a digital dark age (let’s see what Pluto will bring us when have moved to Aquarius in few years).

Real knowledge is always transmitted only in person. No books, blogs, video lectures give a complete knowledge, people do. The mechanics here are simple: a person will never write or say more than they know themselves. Any formulated thought is only a part of the knowledge a person has. Add to this the coefficient on loss of information due to misunderstanding of what is written and you get only a small part of the original knowledge.

Human being is the only carrier of real knowledge. And in order to adopt this knowledge, it is necessary to be in full contact with this person. It is necessary to listen to them, to feel them, to look at them, to talk to them, to ask them. Real knowledge is formed in bits and pieces. There are times when a phrase said at lunch can be the missing piece of the puzzle, which helps to form a whole knowledge.

Knowledge is energy and in order to adopt this energy you must build certain channels that serve as a bridge to knowledge. Without a real teacher, this is almost impossible to do.

The only way to preserve knowledge is to adopt it yourself and pass it on to others.

When I feel bad, when things aren’t going well and I feel lousy, I wonder how hard and painful it would be to die. After all, it only seems so to us – boom! – and you’re gone. Tibetan lamas describe in detail the process of dying, the agony of death, describing the stage-by-stage collapse of the psyche.

And after death there still comes bardo, where you are dragged like a hungry ghost, not understanding where you are and what you are. But there’s still a residual memory. And so you want to get back to your world, to your family and friends, to your favourite kitty. But it is impossible. And after a few days, the memory is gone with all the husk that you called your personality. And you are no longer you, but you are still you. This moment is the most difficult for me to understand.

Of course, I don’t know if this is really the case. I don’t remember dying. But I don’t think death is something pleasant and easy, like a walk through an evening city.

No, death is definitely not easy. My whole transpersonal and psychedelic experience says so, although it wasn’t even close to death.

Before I used to think that death was the end, that the possibility of killing myself was liberating. The thought of death was my greatest salvation, because I knew I could end the game at any moment.

What a horror it was to have a spiritual crisis, under transiting Uranus in Square aspect to my natal one, when my awareness suddenly expanded, and I realized: no, death is never the end. Death is just another continuation.

This realization was so shrill that I involuntarily considered suicide. But then I immediately remembered that it was the realization of the futility of death that caused me to have these thoughts – so suicide couldn’t help, it was a trap. It was quite funny to be honest.

Years have passed since then, and the thought of death still scares me. Death not as an end to life, but like a torturous process that on the contrary doesn’t stop a damn thing!

I wish I could just die and never be born again. Then it would be okey to suffer a bit in the last moments.

But that’s not going to happen.

I will die suffering. And then I’ll forget everything and be born again. And then I’ll live with suffering. And then I’ll die again. And so it will be infinite in the endless wheel of Sansara.

But there is a way out. And therein lies the greatest irony: actually dying is not difficult, being born again is not difficult, living a life is not difficult; stopping all this masquerade is what is truly difficult! There is a reason why “nirvana” means “blown out” (as in an oil lamp).

I know and understand this. And it makes me afraid.

Trungpa Rinpoche said about the spiritual path: “It is better not to start, but if you have already started, it is better to finish.”

I would love to say to myself: “I will finish, but later. In the meantime, I will stay in my unhappiness, in my bad mood and bad feeling, with my affairs and problems – because it is so cozy and peaceful here, because here I am, I exist! Let me procrastinate some more, and then, later, I will definitely practice Dharma”.

But my Saturn return looks through my window and says: no, darling – you don’t have enough time. (36)

Jupiter in Pisces

Until May, Jupiter goes through its home, Pisces, and conjuncts with Neptune there. It is a very intimate, internal, psychological, if not say spiritual time. There may be some softening and optimism in the world. But this feeling is deceptive, many political and economic processes will fade into shadows, and they will shoot out come spring when Jupiter moves into Aries.

Jupiter will intensify and expand interest in all things inner and subtle. Psychology, self-development, spiritual practices, symbolic systems, esotericism are likely to get a new round of interest and recognition (and even those you wouldn’t expect would look up to Mercury retrograde). Religion is also among the topics. Religious conflicts are likely to escalate, and religious fundamentalists are yet to make a name for themselves.

Inflation will continue to accelerate and the financial bubble will burst. We may hear about more Dow Jones index being broken and a general euphoria in the stock markets (and cryptocurrencies). But I’m afraid the euphoria won’t last, and by the autumn a severe sobering up will come. We should expect successes and breakthroughs in medicine, especially in drugs (for Big Pharma the year will be even more successful than the last one). And culture (especially movies and music).

I speak with great caution this time, but travelling should get easier.

Overall, the time until May is very internal, deep and sensual. Very good to engage in self-deepening, self-knowledge and therapy, as well as creativity and philanthropy. A subtle inner sense of intimacy and closeness will be supported by a fairly long conjunction of Mars and Venus. Together they will pass through Capricorn and Aquarius from early February to late March, but I will write about that later.

The second major event of the year is the Moon’s Nodes moving into Taurus and Scorpio.

Whereas racial and social issues (remember BLM) and learning and education (there has been an explosion of online education in the last 1.5 years) has been the main themes, now the focus will shift to resource – material, energy, natural, financial, property, corporeal, ethical, and value-based. Generally speaking, questions of ethics and moral values this year will move from the abstract level to the material level.

We are likely to remember that we are not yet in a meta-universe, and that no one has cancelled the pressing issues of material life. And so there will be a rethinking of the existing socio-economic structure and a search for new solutions, both personally and globally.

And, of course, the theme of money and finance.
I’ll be careful with words this time: let’s just say that the foundations of the global financial system will be put to the test. Whether they will pass is up to you to decide. My answer is no, they won’t. The world is in for a full-blown financial crisis, compared to which the 2008 crisis is nothing. At the same time there will be a radical rethinking of financial systems and economic administration. The very phenomenon of money as an equivalent of material things and services will be rethought. It will not happen in one year, of course, but this is the year we will begin to think and talk about it in all seriousness.

Closer to August, we can expect a black swan to set this process in motion.

Dirty energy will also remind us of itself (it’s already started). I think that the idea of Green Energy will be tested (including electric cars) and oil will rise in price. In general, the topic of the environment and the Greens will more than once hit the news.

Individually, I think health, physical exercises, healthy eating, the environment and sex will also be relevant topics.

Money, property, financial security, environment (ecology), material things, values, finances, investments, bank accounts, insurance, debt will all become very hot topics for the next year and a half.

By the end of April, the situation changes dramatically.

Jupiter, along with Mars, moves very powerfully into Aries in the eclipse corridor. A very hot period is coming. Processes, hidden while Jupiter was in Pisces, will strike out. Expect serious tensions in the world on the verge of an armed conflict. As well as interesting news from the financial markets.

Individually, it is a time of action and realization of all the energy accumulated up to this point. I will write more details closer to the date.

Tension will build in the fall

We are in for a very hard eclipse gateway and a very intense time overall. If a financial crisis breaks out this year, this is the best time for it. Generally speaking, the period late October through the first half of November will resemble an Ayahuasca ceremony: a lot of tension, a lot of hard work, a lot of suffering, a lot of energy coming out.
After the eclipses there will be a release and it will feel subjectively easier for a while. But by the end of the year it will be tense again – the preparation for the next year will start, but about that later.

The Internet and IT

The subject of the Internet as a new reality and IT will not go away. Saturn will still be bringing order to the Aquarius areas, being in a heavy square aspect to Uranus and Lunar Nodes.
Therefore I expect continued pressure on the Internet, controls, and scandals related to Big Tech.

Important dates

Jupiter in Pisces: 29 Dec 2021 — 11 May 2022
Nodes move into Taurus and Scorpio: 18 Jan
Mars and Venus conjunction: 06 Feb — 30 Mar
Astrological New Year: 20 March
Jupiter and Neptune conjunction in Pisces: 12 Apr
Eclipses gateway: 30 Apr — Solar, 16 May — Lunar
Jupiter moves into Aries: 11 May
Uranus in conjunction with the North Node: 01 Aug
Eclipse gateway: 25 Oct — Solar, 8 Nov — Lunar
Mars retrograde: 30 Oct 2022 — 12 Jan 2023
Mercury retrograde: 14 Jan — 4 Feb 10 May — 3 Jun
10 Sept — 2 Oct
29 Dec 2022 — 18 Jan 2023
(34)

I am not a Mundane Astrologer and unfortunately cannot yet give accurate interpretations in the context of world processes. I am identifying themes that will be most relevant and important along the year. But I am aware that these themes are very broad and general. In this post, I want to summarize what happened in 2021 and document some of the most important events in my opinion.

👁Social movements, riots, revolutions won’t disappear in 2021. We’ll probably witness even more of the social and political instability. Now a new shape of global order is being constructed.

The year began with an attempted takeover of the Capitol, something that seems to have never happened in the U.S. history. In Russia there were the arrest of Navalny, a video about Putin’s palace, and mass protests in winter. In Myanmar, a coup and a bloody crackdown on protests. Very bloody. Across Europe – anti-covid protests.
But most importantly, there were tensions on the border with Ukraine, threatening the first war in Europe in many years. And what’s even worse, the possibility of a direct confrontation between Russia and NATO. Russia’s ultimatum to NATO on security guarantees inaugurates a re-division of the world order.

Add to this the disaster of the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan and Taliban coming to power. This event will directly influence the entire geo-political layout of the world in the future.

The creation of AUKUS and a new phase of strained U.S.-China relations.

👁Either a deep global financial crisis will begin in 2021 or some events leading to it will happen. Anyway, markets will be very unstable and finances will be one of the main topics this year.

It started with a flash mob of amateur traders on Reddit, who outplayed the big hedge funds. Of course, the latter have all bounced back, but a precedent has been set. In addition, this is a clear demonstration of how popular trading has become among amateurs, and this is a bad sign.

Cryptocurrencies, which are perceived by many as backup in the impending financial crisis, started to gain mass acceptance. However, I don’t think these hopes will come true and cryptocurrencies will collapse along with everything else.

Inflation is rising, and real inflation is rising even more. Along with inflation, stock markets are rising with unprecedented infusions (very often through amateurs, which is a very bad sign again).
To this we can add the crazy rise in gas prices and the ongoing Container Crisis.

The financial system is in extreme tumult, but has been holding up so far. There is no visible crisis in 2021, but that’s only for now.

👁Online reality. You might be tired to hear from me that the Internet is a new reality and therefore we should be very careful. Which in 2021 leaders will understand and start taking actions. We can expect the discussion on the fundamental basis of the Internet, attempts to cast onto it some legal form, deanonymization, processes against Internet monopolists. The system starts to conquer the Online.

Defi and Blockchain technology came out of the twilight into the mass consciousness together with discussions of how to regulate them.

The number of vulnerabilities and cyber threats reached unprecedented proportions, and several major threats occurred during the year – the last one affected the entire Internet (Log4j).

Facebook, Whatsapp, and Instagram also experienced the biggest multi-hour outages, dragging everyone else down with them.

Facebook renamed itself into Meta and entered the race to create the first Meta universe (I think we can expect Meta universe when Uranus moves into Gemini).

The champion of Internet regulation is Russia. Russia has prepared all necessary technical equipment for blocking any resources and creating an analogue of the Chinese Firewall. They have already blocked Tor and many VPN-services, obliged all major Internet companies who work with Russian-speaking audience to have a representative office in Russia, and hit Google and others with huge fines.

But the most important event, in my opinion, happened in the U.S. at the beginning of the year. We are talking, of course, about the banning of Trump and the blocking of Parler. First of all, it is hard to believe that any social network would dare to ban the President of the United States, for whom 74 million Americans voted. Second, the consolidated destruction of Parler, an alternative social network to Twitter, where Trump’s supporters may have gone, by Big Tech is very interesting. This is an unprecedented event that is yet to show its full significance

👁Coronavirus will stop being the main subject in our life from the middle of the year. So we can expect re-opening borders and canceling restrictions.

It didn’t quite happen. The coronavirus remained an important part of the information space. Borders did open, and restrictions were generally lifted, but mostly for the vaccinated only. (33)

Respect is a universal and fundamental principle. It can be applied to all life situations and purposes.

Respect is the recognition of the world as it is. This recognition, in turn, provides the foundation, the solid ground for all the further good actions. It is a kind of starting point. If we respect something, we acknowledge its right to exist. This is the beginning of a dialogue, a state of openness.

If we respect our interlocutor, we acknowledge their existence, their point of view and their vision of the world. We may disagree with them, but we acknowledge their existence as our own. Therefore, we are open and have space for dialogue, discussion and non-violent exchange, as well as the adjustment of our own opinions.

If we respect our body, we acknowledge its existence and its needs. We do not try to run away, ignore or tamper with them.
We work with those needs.

Respect is the cure for anger, aggression, jealousy and greed. We will not attack, steal, destroy or deceive what we respect. Instead, we will help or at least not hinder development.

Even when faced with the need to change or destroy something, respect allows us to do so without aggression, minimising pain and suffering.

Respect requires awareness and presence. But respect itself leads us to awareness and presence because it requires not only a high degree of concentration and seeing reality as it is, but also appropriate behaviour. You can’t respect only in words without confirming it with actions.

Whether we are following a spiritual path or just want to improve our lives, developing a quality of respect for everything we deal with is one of the most effective and efficient tools in life.(28)

In Astrology personality is understood as a filter between our inner world and outer reality. It’s some kind of glasses or a lens which color everything we see in specific individual colors. At the same time our personality affects the way we share our inner world: how we express ourselves, how we look, how we speak, how other people perceive us at the first moment of meeting.

In Astrology personality is symbolized by the First House. The beginning of the First House is the well-known Ascendant. Depending on the Sign of the Ascendant, the position of the planets inside the first house, their aspects and position of the First House rulers, our personality manifests in one way or another.

👁People with many planets inside their first house have a strongly pronounced personality: they attract attention, have bright appearance and usually are very notable in every collective.

👁Disharmonious first house leads to self-dissatisfaction and craving for self-affirmation, when the others have to always confirm your personal dignities and personal role in every activity.

A Sign shows a general style in which our personality manifests, while every planet tints personality in its specific way: Venus adds to personality softness and gentleness and makes it depend on social perception, while Mercury makes personality more rational, mental and cold.

What’s essential to understand is that personality is just a border between our inner world, with all its different programs of subconscious, experience and beliefs, and outer reality.

Personality is not Self, it’s an instrument of perception of the world and our own self-expression. Same as any other instrument personality can be adjusted and learnt for better use. (26)

Last week we celebrated Equinox – the day and night equality, the entering of dark half of the year, when night is longer than day.
And on Monday Mercury got retrograde.

It’s a good time to make a cup of tea and sum up everything that happened during the last half of the year and prepare ourselves for the second part of an astronomical year.

Professional crisis

At the beginning of the year I met my first serious profession crisis which clearly showed me the lack of foundation. My astrological practice was built on what I learnt from books and my personal intuition and discoveries.

The thing is that knowledge and skills, especially so complicated and deep as Astrology, are much more than just a mental information – they are rather a stream we need to connect to. The information, especially in written form, serves as a map. But human beings are the bridges.

The real knowledge is transferred only personally.

The challenges I faced in my work left me no choice: I hit the wall, books didn’t help anymore – I had to find a teacher.

The teacher

Most of my knowledge is based on Avessalom Podvodny’s books, a Russian writer, poet, philosopher, esotericist, psychologist, healer and astrologer, the founder of the humanological school “The man among people” and the creator of the psycho-therapeutic system of Higher archetypes.

Avessalom Podvodny died in 2018, leaving 60 highly concentrated books and hundreds of students.

One of his best students and closest followers is Olga Rovnaya, who, together with his widow Mariana, takes care of AP’s heritage, does private consultations and her own astrological and humanological researches.

That was my best possible teacher. If not Avessalom himself, then his closest disciple.

A trip to begin

So at the beginning of February, in the middle of retrograde Mercury time, I went to Russia to see my family and to find Olga: to learn Astrology and other AP’ systems first-hands. During this time I took a break from almost all social media activity and disappeared.

Olga and I met exactly on March Equinox, a day when Sun transfers from Pisces to Aries to begin a new Astrological year. Those days my transit Neptune after 11 years of wandering in my 8th house moved to the 9th one – a house of personal ideals, spiritual teaching and discipleship, expansion of consciousness.

The discipleship has begun. (24)