Page 6 Archives - Page 20 of 34 - Alex's Asteroid Astrology

January 23rd, 2021 at 10:41am by Alex Miller

RIP Charcoal

On Tuesday 19 January 2021, I lost my dear fur buddy Charcoal to cancer. What I thought was a respiratory infection, which Charkey got every winter, turned out to be a mass in his mouth. While waiting for the biopsy appointment, the faint swelling I had observed on his left side blew up dramatically over the weekend, becoming so large it looked like he had a tennis ball in his cheek. I dropped him off for his appointment that morning, the vet confirmed the diagnosis a few hours later, and shortly after that, I held him as he passed.

January 4th, 2021 at 09:01am by Alex Miller

COVID-19 Comes Home

[Cover Photo: the author with his Aunt Betty, 2011]

I had made it all the way through 2020 without personally knowing anyone infected during the coronavirus pandemic. Until New Year’s Eve, the last day of the year, when my cousin called to tell me that her 90-year-old mother had been hospitalized with COVID pneumonia. Aunt Betty was my mother’s sister, and had been a fixture of my childhood and an integral part of my family festivities for decades, until a hip fracture resulted in her moving in with her daughter nine years ago. This disrupted our seasonal celebratory cycle, and I have only seen her sporadically since then.

December 17th, 2020 at 10:03am by Alex Miller

House Diary: Yule

[Cover Photo: An early winter sunrise bathes the landscape in pinks and purples]

Yule is the Norse term for the Winter Solstice, the shortest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere, a time of hope as we draw the old year to a close and begin anew. Although most pagans have adopted this name for the holiday, humanity has celebrated this return of the light for millennia, under different appellations in cultures across the globe. The Romans brought in live oak and other evergreen plants, gave gifts, lit candles and celebrated the festivals of Mithras, God of Light, or Sol Invictus, the Unconquered Sun. In Celtic lands where winters were colder, huge bonfires were the order of the day, sympathetic magic to encourage the sun’s return. The Yule log tradition stems from the bringing indoors of a large section of tree trunk, estimated to be enough to burn for a full twelve days, a period of annual feasting as the old year died and was reborn into the new. Stone markers, from monoliths to the extravagant display of Stonehenge, were created to mark the exact moment of the light’s return.

December 6th, 2020 at 02:06pm by Alex Miller

2020 Holiday Asteroids: A Gift-Giving Guide

2020’s holiday season promises to be one of the weirdest on record, with coronavirus pandemic concerns dimming the lights and dampening spirits across the globe. A Zoom Christmas isn’t what most of us anticipated as we cleared the wrapping debris from the last Yule debauch, but perhaps COVID isolation is the universe’s way of telling us we’ve overextended ourselves, socially, fiscally and commercially. Time to focus on those nearest and dearest, and what’s right in front of our noses.

Santa may be masked this year, but he’s still expected to make his annual rounds. He could use some help, however, so AAA is stepping into the breach with holiday gift-giving suggestions, employing asteroid Santa as our guide for the best options for each Sign. (And check out the links at the end of this article for prior articles on Christmas-themed asteroids and how they show in the charts of classic Yuletide shows, songs and entertainers.)

November 12th, 2020 at 09:18am by Alex Miller

Aster-Obit: Alex Trebek

On Sunday, 8 November 2020, gameshow fans the world over were saddened to hear of the death of Alex Trebek, host of “Jeopardy!”, after an 18-month battle with pancreatic cancer. Described as “the thinking man’s game show”, “Jeopardy!” inverted the traditional format by providing the answers to trivia questions, requiring contestants to phrase their replies in the form of a question.

The third longest-running gameshow on TV (after “The Price Is Right” and “Wheel of Fortune”), “Jeopardy!” has had several daytime and evening incarnations, but Alex Trebek has helmed the show for 37 years, since its latest version premiered in 1984. Its iconic final round theme is one of the most-recognized musical selections in the world, and the series has spawned several foreign-language versions in 32 countries including Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, Sweden, Russia, Denmark, Japan, Spain, Australia, Turkey and Israel. Trebek continued working throughout his cancer treatment, until the bitter end, appearing in the studio to film episodes just 11 days before his passing.

October 29th, 2020 at 07:40am by Alex Miller

House Diary: Samhain

Samhain (pronounced “SOW-en”) is the ancient Celtic name for the Scorpio Cross-Quarter day, a Fire Festival forming one of the four Major Sabbats of paganism. Samhain means “summer’s end”, and marked the end of the old year for the pastoral Celts, the date upon which flocks and herds were driven back to winter quarters. It was a night of power and prophecy, when the veil between the worlds of the living and the dead was thinnest, the future could be divined, and those who had departed in the previous twelvemonth briefly returned to their loved ones before final departure from this plane.