WOODRUFF

• Dark Aquarius: AI, MAGA, and the Threat to Democracy with astrologer Jessica Murray

• Robert Anderson’s Warriors and Goddesses: What the World Soul Is Dreaming Right Now

• The 12th House: Astrology’s House of the Rising Sun

Under the Influence for Wednesday, July 22, 2026

Frederick Woodruff — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 17:48:06 GMT

You’re reading WOODRUFF. I cover the convergence of pop culture, psychology, and astrology. Join my entourage of subscribers. My bio is here. Curious about a consultation? Head here.

I USUALLY IGNORE Mercury retrogrades, but this one was beyond madcap. The electric company, doing work on installing new power poles on my street, inadvertently severed my connection to the internet. They then lazily tried to repair the damage by just tying up the copper wires, replacing the connection, and hoping for the best. Which was for shit.

I’ve been inadvertently without internet (meaning it was going off and on and off and on) for about a week. This made working with my clients a nightmare and trying to pull content together for WOODRUFF a pain as well. There was also gone-missing snail mail, garbled connections with my dentist, and other garden-variety Mercurial mishegas. Anyway, I seem to be back after Xfinity was out here to do what the electric company should have done with the wiring after destroying it.

Jenn Zahrt Reveals the Bounds

I was able to record a fascinating conversation with the Bound Report’s high-octane astrologer Dr. , who directs the Celestial Arts Education Library (CAELi), in Olympia, Washington. CAELi is one of the only astrological libraries in the US—which is remarkable. Jenn shared the three books she would take with her to a desert island, as well as the one book she recommends to novice or student astrologers. She also taught me all the secrets of the Zodiacal Bounds, which, I’ve got to say, as a protestant astrologer (I only work with barebone elements in a horoscope), I was spellbound. You will be too! Look for that interview this weekend.

July Full Moon Zoom Invite

Our next Full Moon Zoom will be held on Saturday, August 1, at 1PM Pacific.

Remember, spontaneity is one of the joys of existence, especially if you prepare for it in advance. Join me for this lunar odyssey through the Sabian symbols, dreams (private and collective), and the country’s ongoing psychotic break. Maybe some Tarot, too.

To participate, the only requirement is that you’re a paid subscriber to WOODRUFF.

Space is limited.

• Paid subscribers to WOODRUFF! Join me on Saturday, AUGUST, @ 1 PM Pacific for another lunar hangout.

• Follow this link over to Luma to register for free:

• https://luma.com/klin18vk

Your Zoom invite will be emailed to you before the event starts.

See you in August (how the fuck is it August?)

Love,

Opening Mercury Retro graphic by FW, ©2026, Nightcharm, Inc. • Moon collage by FW, image via NASA, public domain. ©2026 by Nightcharm, Inc.

• Dark Aquarius: AI, MAGA, and the Threat to Democracy with astrologer Jessica Murray

• Robert Anderson’s Warriors and Goddesses: What the World Soul Is Dreaming Right Now

• The 12th House: Astrology’s House of the Rising Sun

Basket Case

Frederick Woodruff — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 00:36:49 GMT

Every Cinema is a Temple: How the Planets Show Up in Your Favorite Movies

Robert Anderson — Sun, 12 Jul 2026 18:59:26 GMT

You're reading WOODRUFF. I cover the convergence of pop culture, psychology, and astrology—now joined by archetypal astrologer Robert Anderson as a contributing writer.

AS A TEENAGER, I WOULDN’T have been able to tell you why, only that Stanley Kubrick’s enigmatic film was gesturing toward something deeper than any single interpretation could permit. It wasn’t merely about evolution, space travel, or artificial intelligence—although it had plenty to say about these things—it was about the timeless spark of ingenuity that drives humanity forward.

Later on, I would come to understand the film as an expression of the era-defining Uranus-Pluto conjunction of the 1960s. I now see this alignment as a symbolic ‘master key’ that unlocks the film’s more profound meaning.

The Promethean spirit of that conjunction is writ large in the film’s overarching themes: rebirth and power struggle, epochal shifts, and the revolutionary—but also destructive—potentials of scientific and technological advancement.

Its famous opening sequence, titled “The Dawn of Man,” distills these themes around a central visual motif: a black monolith that appears at critical junctures in the evolution of humanity.

In the distant past, the monolith suddenly appears amid a tribe of warring proto-humans and triggers an evolutionary leap—demarcated by the most iconic jump-cut in film history—propelling humanity from a state of prehistoric savagery (Pluto) into the burgeoning space age (Uranus) of the 21st century.

Following this dramatic transition, the film’s final act contains a warning about the perils of AI that reflects the shadow side of the Uranus archetype.

As Uranus and Pluto have now reached the opening trine phase of the cycle that began in the 1960s, this increasingly reads like a prophecy to users of Claude and ChatGPT—the archetypal descendants of HAL 9000.

Planetary Mise-En-Scène

Since the advent of filmmaking during the Neptune-Pluto conjunction of the 1890s, films have held a mirror to the ever-changing mise-en-scène of the night sky, reflecting its archetypal patterns in ways that are unique to the art form. As the dominant mode of storytelling in the 20th century, films nourished us with a sense of identity and meaning. They seeded the collective psyche with evocative images that were capable of inspiring action, instilling fear, and pulling on our heartstrings.

In these disenchanted times, this wellspring of sound and imagery is part of our cultural inheritance and one of the primary ways that we relate to the archetypal powers of the universe outside a religious context.

When we watch a film, the planets disguise themselves as movie “stars,” and the story they tell corresponds with the aspects that are present in the sky at the time of the film’s release. Through this ritual, we feel the movements of the world soul. We suspend our disbelief and allow ourselves to be enchanted once again.

Every cinema is a temple, every fandom is a cult—and the sky tells us which gods or goddesses are likely to be dominating the box office at any given moment.

Everybody Needs a Montage

Think of the legendary training montage from Rocky, which made a star of Sylvester Stallone. This is where many people go when they’re seeking motivation, when they need to summon the positive qualities of Mars, the archetypal athlete-warrior.

When the film was released in November 1976, Mars was exactly conjunct the Sun and opposite Jupiter. This alignment represents a convergence of masculine energies that clearly resonate with the ‘sports-drama’ genre of movies, for which Rocky provided the blueprint; it signifies a heightening of energy and stamina and a desire to press forward in pursuit of one’s goals, no matter the odds.

Moreover, Rocky’s onscreen opponent—the reigning heavyweight champ Apollo Creed (Carl Weathers)—takes his first name from the Greek god of the Sun, a symbolic nod to the solar activation that was taking place in the heavens when the film was released. In essence, Rocky is about getting into a brawl (Mars) with a Sun god; pretty on-the-nose symbolism for a Sun-Mars conjunction!

This alignment also resonates with the Sun-Mars sextile in Sylvester Stallone’s natal chart, the exact Sun-Mars sesquiquadrate in Weather’s chart, as well as the Sun-Mars square in Muhammed Ali’s chart—Ali provided the inspiration for Weather’s character.

The Retrograde Aesthetics of Barbie

More recently, Greta Gerwig’s film Barbie became a cultural phenomenon when Venus—the cosmic fashionista and dancing queen—stationed retrograde in Leo in a square alignment with Jupiter and Uranus during the summer of 2023.

In the world of the film, Barbie (Margot Robbie) inhabits a matriarchal utopia where life is an endless dance party and women occupy all the most prestigious roles in society. Men, meanwhile, are relegated to demeaning supporting roles, such as “beach,” in a playful inversion of patriarchal stereotypes.

The film opens with a send-up of 2001: A Space Odyssey, in which the monolith (Uranus) is swapped out for Barbie (Venus), her arrival heralding the liberation of young girls from the single track of motherhood and their awakening to new vocational and consumer identities—as well as impossible beauty standards.

The film was a runaway success at the box office; it turned “Barbiecore” into a mainstream fashion trend and went on to secure eight Oscar nominations and a win for Best Original Song. Barbie-mania persisted throughout the Venus retrograde, reflecting a continuous activation of the Venus archetype across the culture—excited and amplified via the sustained square with Uranus and Jupiter.

This prolonged alignment also coincided with the zenith of Taylor Swift’s cultural ascendancy during The Eras Tour, when enthusiastic Swifties generated measurable seismic activity—or “Swift-Quakes”—as she moved from city to city. When Venus and Uranus align, the goddess of music and dance likes to shake it up (and off), sometimes literally.

This liberation of the Venus archetype was crystallized in Barbie, which front-loaded its feminist message with a hot pink spectacle of technicolor kitsch and catchy musical numbers. The film’s neon color palette flaunted the Venusian impulse towards style and sensuality—and these qualities were expressed in a humorous and over-the-top way that is very typical of Jupiter-Uranus alignments.

The film was not without controversy, however. Gerwig walked a fine line between acknowledging the problematic side of Barbie while also delighting in the hyper-feminine aesthetic of Barbie-land. Many saw the film as a joyful reclamation of feminine qualities that have often been dismissed as superficial or ridiculous. Although many critics of the film found its pop-feminist meta-commentary to be muddled and unconvincing.

Astonishingly, the film’s director, Greta Gerwig, was born during a previous instance of Venus stationing retrograde in square aspect to both Uranus and Jupiter—alignments such as these are exceptionally rare. This happened mere days after Madonna first broke onto the music scene with her debut studio album in the summer of 1983.

From Madonna’s breakthrough to Taylor Swift’s ascendancy, and from the birth of Greta Gerwig to the release of Barbie. The cyclical alignments of Venus with Jupiter and Uranus demonstrate a striking correlation with the emergence of the archetypal feminine (Venus) into the culture. In exciting (Uranus) and widely celebrated (Jupiter) ways.

Moreover, Gerwig’s directorial debut, the exquisite coming-of-age drama Ladybird—which explores the classic Venus-Uranus theme of sexual and romantic awakening—was released during an exact Venus-Uranus opposition in November 2017. She followed this with an adaptation of Little Women that was released during a Venus-Uranus square in 2019.

This sort of astrological patterning is not uncommon.

It is frequently the case that filmmakers who were born during a particular planetary alignment will go on to release their definitive work during subsequent alignments of the same planets—as I have illustrated here with the correlation between the release of Greta Gerwig’s films and the cyclical alignments of Venus and Uranus.

Artists in every medium are often compelled to revisit the same themes over and over again, themes that are illuminated by their natal aspects and which find new expression as those planetary cycles continue to unfold.

I have so far been interpreting films about specific planetary configurations. But as we all know, at any given moment, the sky is host to numerous astrological alignments that all have their own unique qualities. Sometimes these alignments clash with each other, and sometimes they converge in strange, dramatic, or beautiful ways. We can never fully separate a particular aspect from the chart of which it is a part.

With this in mind, I would like to demonstrate how different astrological energies can cohere into a unified narrative—with a range of themes and motifs—that reflects the diverse array of aspects that were present at a particular moment.

Courage and Grand Adventure in Space

This is the chart for the Washington, DC premiere of The Empire Strikes Back, a monumental occasion in the history of popular culture.

Breathe that chart in. Considered as a whole, it tells us more about the spirit of Empire than any synopsis ever could. Each aspect speaks to a distinct element of the film.

For instance, the chart’s Mars-Jupiter conjunction resonates with the spirit of courage and grand adventure that pervades the film, as well as the militaristic majesty of John William’s “Imperial March” (which was performed publicly for the first time during the applying phase of the conjunction). Williams was born during an exact Mars-Jupiter opposition, and his legacy as a composer is defined by this aspect.

By contrast, the Sun-Uranus opposition aptly symbolizes the shocking twist of the film’s climax—the revelation that Luke’s father is none other than Darth Vader—and the sudden rupturing of solar-heroic identity that this entails.

On the other hand, the Mars-Venus sextile signifies the push-pull adversarial romance between Han Solo and Princess Leia; their bickering and name-calling is infused with an erotic charge that finally resolves in a passionate kiss. If you’re in any doubt about this, just know that Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher both have prominent Mars-Venus aspects in their charts, and the synastry between them is compelling.

Han: You like me because I’m a scoundrel. There aren’t enough scoundrels in your life.
Leia: I happen to like nice men.
Han: I’m a nice man.
Leia: No, you’re not...

Allow me to dive a little deeper into one particular aspect in the film’s chart: the exact square between Saturn and Neptune.

This square is what sets the film apart from the original. Tonally, Empire is a lot darker and more psychologically complex than A New Hope. The story comprises a ‘dark night of the soul’ experience for Luke Skywalker, who finds himself stranded on the foggy swamp world of Dagobah, where he trains under Jedi Master Yoda.

Saturn-Neptune aspects indicate spiritual trials, crises of faith, and experiences of cosmic alienation. Luke lives a sparse, monastic existence on Dagobah, where his spiritual fortitude is tested to its limits, and he is confronted by dark and disturbing visions.

His mentor Yoda embodies the positive Saturn-Neptune synthesis: he is at once the archetypal wise-oldman (Saturn) and the spiritual mystic (Neptune) who initiates Luke into the mysterious ways of the Force. Fittingly, Yoda was voiced and puppeteered by Frank Oz, who was born during a previous Saturn-Neptune square alignment (George Lucas was also born during this alignment); Oz’s work outside Star Wars also bears the hallmarks of this planetary pair.

The Saturn-Neptune square is where spirituality (Neptune) meets sacrifice (Saturn). This aspect can also represent the death (Saturn) of an illusion (Neptune) or an experience of profound disenchantment. This is precisely what happens when Vader is revealed to be Luke’s father: the idealized image that Luke held of his father as a noble Jedi is brutally shattered upon contact with reality. This revelation breaks Luke and marks the nadir of his journey.

In this way, the Saturn-Neptune square—with its tendency toward disenchantment—combines with the Sun-Uranus opposition, which indicates a spectacular surprise (Uranus), particularly one that pertains to the archetypal father figure or role model (Sun).

In Empire, these two aspects dovetail uniquely; taken together, they perfectly illustrate the epic gut-punch of shock (Sun-Uranus) and disillusionment (Saturn-Neptune) that makes Empire the high point of the Star Wars saga.

As a final point, the chart’s Moon-Pluto square vividly illustrates the intense emotional turmoil that overwhelms Luke during his confrontation with Vader.

Search your feelings; you know it to be true.

Now that I have shared my astrologically informed approach to film analysis with you, I hope that you feel inspired to revisit some of your favorites with this new perspective in mind. If you’re anything like me, you’ll be amazed by the rich tapestry of cosmic threads that are woven into every creative act.

Cheers,

Robert Anderson is the creator of Archetypal Outlook, where he explores news and culture through the lens of archetypal astrology. Drawing on the work of Richard Tarnas, his writing blends in-depth research with up-to-the-minute insights into current affairs.

All images via YouTube screen caps.

• The 12th House: Astrology’s House of the Rising Sun

AMERIKA 250: ASK THE ASTROLOGER with Dabney Lawless and Frederick Woodruff

Frederick Woodruff — Sun, 05 Jul 2026 20:42:34 GMT

You’re reading WOODRUFF. I cover the convergence of pop culture, psychology, and astrology. Join my entourage of subscribers. My bio is here. My colleague Dabney Lawless’ YouTube channel is here.

HAPPY JULY 5TH.

OMG, I was around for the nation’s bicentennial 50 years ago. Despite Ford occupying the WH, the event was fantastic and fun. Everyone in the apartment house I lived in in Westwood was stoned out of their minds, and then we went to Venice Beach to watch fireworks.

Yesterday’s extremely partisan (read: MAGA) celebration opened with a number of KKK-inspired imbeciles (wearing cowardly white gators over their faces) marching through DC bellowing, “Reclaim America! Reclaim America!” And, natch, there were Confederate flags intermixed with all the Old Glories.

Trump then, with his reverse Midas touch, unleashed over 850,000 fireworks into the night sky—which has challenged the respiratory health of Americans (and their pets) all along the east coast.

It occurred to me this morning that Trump is slowly working his way through all the astrological elements. He’s poisoned the reflecting pool. And cemented over the Rose Garden. Defaced the marble facade of the Kennedy Center. And, last night, polluted the air in DC. I can’t wait to see him wrangle with fire. (Remember, this is a pre-dementia, pre-Alzheimer’s creature with access to the nuclear codes).

Anyyyyyyyywwwwaaaaaaaay. Yesterday, astrologer Dabney Lawless and I recorded a special Amerika 250 episode of our ongoing series Ask the Astrologer.

Remember, for each episode, we’ll take on several of your questions and see where the inquiry takes us. With Dabney’s background in evolutionary astrology and my background in—something as yet uncataloged—we should be able to answer questions in ways that cover all the bases.

Please post your questions below for our next episode in August.

Love,

Opening graphic by FW, ©2026 by Nightcharm, Inc. Intro/outro music via MobyGratis.com

• Dark Aquarius: AI, MAGA, and the Threat to Democracy with astrologer Jessica Murray

• Warriors and Goddesses: What the World Soul Is Dreaming Right Now

• Astrologer and Tarot Maven TRAVIS BLACK on the WOODRUFF Cast.

• Pluto Enters Crazy Town

• Nonsense & Malaise: Astrological Insights for Maneuvering the Hive

• The 12th House: Astrology’s House of the Rising Sun

The Drowning King

Frederick Woodruff — Thu, 02 Jul 2026 19:46:53 GMT

The Sun Sign Reset: Jupiter Moves Into Leo

Frederick Woodruff — Mon, 29 Jun 2026 22:06:55 GMT

You’re reading WOODRUFF. I cover the convergence of pop culture, psychology, and astrology. Join my entourage of subscribers. My bio is here. Curious about a consultation? Head here.

QUESTIONS, COMMENTS, REVELATIONS? Please share in the comments.

Love,

Under the Influence for Saturday, June 27, 2026

Frederick Woodruff — Sat, 27 Jun 2026 20:14:01 GMT

You’re reading WOODRUFF. I cover the convergence of pop culture, psychology, and astrology. Join my entourage of subscribers. My bio is here. Curious about a consultation? Head here.

MICHAEL McCLURE (1932–2020) was one of the core Beat Generation poets—though he resisted being boxed in by that label, and his work ranged well beyond it. His poetry fused biology, ecology, and mysticism. He spent decades at the California College of the Arts as a professor and remained a vital, active poet well into his 80s.

My fascination with McClure has everything to do with how his musings strived to seal up the divisions generated by life’s polarities. And the body always played a significant role in his metaphysical philosophies. I came across the following last week while cleaning out a bunch of notebooks on my computer:

“Everything is natural. The light on your fingertips is starlight. Life begins with coiling—molecules and nebulae. Cruelty, selfishness, and vanity are boring. Each self is many selves. Reason is beauty. Light and darkness are arbitrary divisions. Cleanliness is as undefinable and as natural as filth. The physiological body is pure spirit. Monotony is madness. The frontier is both outside and inside. The universe is the messiah. The senses are gods and goddesses. Where the body is—there are all things.”

Ask The Astrologer

Dabney Lawless and I are set to record a new episode of our dual cast next week. If you have an astrological quandary you’d like us to address, please post your question in the comments section to this post. The new show will be posted in the first week of July. Not all questions will be featured. Our previous show is here.

Moon Zoom Invite

Due to my chaotic schedule this month as well as the universe’s (and the US’s birthday), the next Full Moon Zoom will be held on Friday, July 3, at 1PM Pacific.

To participate, the only requirement is that you’re a paid subscriber to WOODRUFF.

Space is limited.

• Paid subscribers to WOODRUFF! Join me on Friday, July 3, @ 1 PM Pacific for another lunar hangout.

• Follow this link over to Luma to register for free:

• https://luma.com/b4mvsmzv

Your Zoom invite will be emailed to you before the event starts.

See you next month.

Love,

Opening illustration by Ilonka Karasz from William Maxwell’s The Heavenly Tenants (Harpers) 1946 • Moon collage by FW, image via NASA, public domain. ©2026 by Nightcharm, Inc.

• Dark Aquarius: AI, MAGA, and the Threat to Democracy with astrologer Jessica Murray

• Robert Anderson’s Warriors and Goddesses: What the World Soul Is Dreaming Right Now

• The 12th House: Astrology’s House of the Rising Sun

Attack of the Fifty Foot-Crab

Frederick Woodruff — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 14:26:39 GMT

You’re reading WOODRUFF. I cover the convergence of pop culture, psychology, and astrology. Join my entourage of subscribers—you’ve been missed.

“Cancer has always had the reputation of being ambiguous and difficult to pin down, which, I feel, is a euphemism. It is in the nature of water and of the unconscious to slide fluidly from one shape to another, and it is in the nature of Cancer to live in a world where nothing is quite the same as it was five minutes ago.” —Liz Greene, The Astrology of Fate

WITHOUT INTENDING TO, the English mystical scientist Michael Faraday delivered a wonderfully succinct explanation of the secret workings of astrology. In his book Experimental Researches in Electricity, he wrote: “Matter is not merely mutually penetrable, but each atom extends, so to say, throughout the whole of the solar system, yet retaining its centre of force.”

So much packed into one sentence. How astrology might function, yes—but also how a particular—a single atom (or individual if you like) is part of the all-encompassing unfoldment of the whole. And then there is the word ‘matter,’ which is long considered part of the polarity that is spiritual/physical, heavenly/earthly, and paternal/maternal.

The word comes from the Latin mater—for mother. Matter is the ‘open sesame’ into the terrain of the Mother. And once evoked, Mother summons the secrets of the physical body. And it is our body that we usually leave behind in pursuit of transcendent states of higher consciousness. There is always this splitting away from our corporeality.

We take our bodies for granted because our physicality feels prearranged and is a given. We consider ourselves to be genies stuck in bottles. We also forget our origin and the astonishing fact that from one body emerged another body.

And you thought this article was about the Zodiac sign Cancer.

But back to origin. Our primordial origin—that of your mother’s mother’s mother’s mother’s mother’s mother. An eternal reflection into the maternal hall of mirrors. The place from which, apparently, according to scientists, all humans have a theoretical common ancestor: A mitochondrial Eve. Our original mom lived between 100,000 and 200,000 years ago in southern Africa.

Humans love discoveries like this because, at their root, they satisfy our drive to determine origin—the beginning, the first. We persist despite there always being an ‘x’ factor related to the quest. We continue to dream and imagine The Origin—the Original Mother.

Consider the predominant creation myth of our collective reality. Scientists have no compunction in declaring the Big Bang as our universal alpha. Hmm, Convenient.

Terence McKenna once remarked how scientists cheat regarding the Big Bang:

“This is the notion that the universe, for no reason, sprang from nothing in a single instant…notice that this is the litmus test for credulity…It is, in fact, no different from saying, “and then God said, Let there be light!” What the philosophers of science are saying is ‘give us one free miracle, and we will roll from that point forward, from the birth of time to the crack of doom.’”

So, we keep circling back to the beginning. To start questioning again. The Tarot depicts this wonderfully with the figure of The Empress sitting amidst her teeming garden, all of nature visibly on display—no secrets. But walk behind her, back toward the High Priestess sitting on her throne. Behind the Moon priestess is a curtain that no one can rent. What’s behind her lunar canopy?

From Eve. To pre-mother. To origin. To the mysteries of the Zodiacal sign Cancer. And like the crab zig-zagging her way forward, I’ve arrived at the start.

The Wanting Text

As a teenager and aspiring astrologer, I’d visit the crab last. I mean, I would skip to other sections of whatever astrological cookbook I might be reading to read about where my Mars or Jupiter was placed because reading about the Sun in Cancer was always a miserable experience. Men, who at the time had written almost all the astrology text available, never quite knew what to do with Cancer’s Moon-lit mysteries—and so developed a long tradition of marginalization. Best to minimize the uncontrollable, to jump over what wasn’t in one’s purview.

Aside from being an occupant of the worst-named sign of the Zodiac, Cancers suffer from Western culture’s composite forms of misogyny, a poisoned well that taints the waters that Cancer rules. Resentment and fear of the procreative powers of women, fears that occupy many strata in history, run deep. And so ambiguity and ambivalence continue to color what are supposed to be modern interpretations of the Zodiac’s fourth sign. And this is what I encountered in those books in the early 70s before psychological astrology had a foothold in the discussion.

If you spend time with, say, William Lilly‘s Christian Astrology (1647), you don’t encounter startling descriptions of the signs, ala Linda Goodmen’s Sun Signs (1968). Everything astrological in Lilly’s time was based on shapes and sizes and tangible qualities like dry or moist, places on a geographic map, or the ailments associated with each sign. Where all the other signs had maladies related to a specific limb or organ, for the sign Cancer, Lilly wrote: “It signifies Imperfections all over…”

Before modern astrology, there was, well, not much awareness of the interiority of the psyche, the notion of individuality, or the reality of the unconscious. This is why when you study ancient astrological texts, they read so extreme—riddled as they are with the polarities between good and evil, dignified and cursed, male and female. Some signs—usually those considered ‘positive’ and masculine, i.e., Aries, Libra, Saggitarius, etc.—benefited from the simplicity of describing extroverted and admirable (to men) traits—courageous, industrious, philosophical. Whereas the ‘negative’ or feminine signs were tainted by attempting to define characteristics that men considered vexing about women.

For a student astrologer, despite what he or she is told about the importance of the totality of a horoscope, it is always the twelve signs that lay much of the foundation for their studies. And so, as a teen, I was stuck with a decidedly male-oriented idealogy when it came to astrology. And it would be many years until a coterie of female astrologers (my teachers and the authors I was drawn to) opened a window on my Sun sign’s essential nature. And in so doing, turned all of my notions about astrology inside out.

The Dull Thud of Containment

“Let’s have some new cliches.” —Samuel Goldwin

Cancers are emotional. Well, other than a zombie, who isn’t? So that’s not worth much. Let’s go in for specifics. Here are some: Cancers are sensitive but high-strung, clannish, and protective—extravagant with their ability to nurture but parsimonious with cash. Fearful and retrospective but also defensive and moody. Oh, but we’re also good homemakers and cooks, but we have a tendency towards hoarding, which is sort of true. I have a sparsely decorated home, though goddess forbid you rummaged through my drawers and closets.

The 1930s astrologer Vivian Robson adds insult to injury with his physical description of the sign: “Pale complexion, often deformed face.” As a child, I was considered exotic-looking, with an inordinately large head and tiny eyes and ears, so maybe she was onto something.

I’m surprised the word ‘hysterical’ wasn’t included in the psychological descriptors for Cancer. Although hysterectomies are alluded to in the following. Here’s one of my astrological heroes, UK astrologer Charles E.O. Carter, describing the sign:

“…one sees Cancer well illustrated by a women’s tea-meeting, whereat the principal items of conversation are disease and operations, intimately described, and interminable family gossip.”

After the exhilarating rush of human potential that moves from a spark of consciousness in Aries to the bull’s lush enjoyment of corporeal pleasures to the Mercurial brilliance of Gemini, Cancer is a high-octane buzzkill.

Carter writes:

“After attaining the keen mentality of Gemini, what a fall it seems to pass back to a sign that is largely instinctive and has the reputation of wallowing in emotion, especially of the gloomier kind.”

Yes, now I’m really despairing. Carter continues: “Why does all this primitivity succeed the clear light of Gemini, wherein men are beginning to be truly human, real thinkers?”

Men on the move—being brilliant. Women busy coffee-klatsch-ing. Primitivity harkens back to origin—and so maybe Carter was on to something too. At least I read it that way now.

I’m doing some blatant cherry-picking from older books to establish my point and make you laugh. And yet, I’d venture that you’ll agree that whenever you read about the crab, the author stumbles through a maze of uncertainties—as if he or she doesn’t know what to do with the sign’s powerful alignment with the procreative elements of life. Qualities that most cultures and mythologies associate with the feminine.

And you can include, too, Cancer’s discursive intuition that can turn quickly into a dark tempest or prescient reverie. Behavior that didn’t find agency in, say, Plato’s analytical, male-centric symposiums. I remember explaining to my spiritual teacher (a male) once that periods of madcap chaos often precipitated my creative processes, and he replied that something must be ‘off’ in my relationship with True Nature’s metered flow. Yes, Truth, capital T, another purview of the rational male philosophers and gurus of the world. Dudes just don’t know what to do with the cray of the crayfish.

Considering the Sun’s astronomical position while traversing Cancer, much is revealed for such a seemingly shuttered house-bound sign. The heightened precognition (no other sign can track the public’s moods and fads with such sharp acuity as a Cancer) and pointed sensitivity associated with the sign are directly related to the summer solstice, which announces the sign regardless of the hemisphere.

Why? Because when the Sun has reached maximum influence. It doesn’t matter what its angle is to the Earth. The Sun is either higher, with more sunlight reaching the surface of the Earth, or it is lower, and its light is spread out over a larger surface of the planet.

In other words, northern or southern—there’s a lot of light. And that’s a lot of force. A lot of life. A lot of seeing and sentience. Heightened receptivity and reaction, as noted above—a kind of porous psychic sense—were considered unclassifiable by Victorian psychologists; thus, the ‘hysterical’ diagnosis was created to categorize the female temperament.

The most difficult part of my childhood (for my father) was my unapologetic fascination with the 1950s world of women and the accouterments that enhanced it. Cosmetics, fashion, jewelry, colognes and scents, gardening, flower arrangements, and pastry making. I also loved ironing. But also gossip and the dramas that roiled beneath the surface of our feigned family okay-ness. By the time I was seven, I was already psychoanalyzing my mom and her many mishaps in the romance department (she was married six times). Her interest in witchy subjects like astrology and Ouija boards also became a way to translate her unpredictable whims. And thus began my entry into the astrological matrix.

Women dominate modern educational astrology—the instructors and the students—especially in the United States. One would assume that reclamation of the art has taken place—and yet astrology has been mansplained for most of astrology’s history in the West. Traditional astrologer Alan White once explained in his biased introduction to Hellenistic astrology:

“Remember [Western astrology] is predicated on a philosophy that was put together by a man or group of men over about a 150-year period.”

OK, dear. But: Full stop. Really? White was one of my favorite characters in contemporary astrology’s pantheon of ‘splainers, but his certitude borders on the absurd. No one recorded how women thought about or interacted within the symposia of astrology (I mean that figuratively) to make such a claim.

This, of course, is the case with all forms of recorded history. Where men write books and manipulate or censor the book’s content and shape the narrative. Who knows how many more women like Hypatia, the Hellenistic Neoplatonist philosopher, astronomer, and mathematician, were engaged with astrology at that formative stage in Western astrology’s history.

As cultural historian William Irwin Thompson explains in his dazzling book Time Falling Bodies Take to Light: Mythology, Sexuality and the Origins of Culture, women invented astrology. However, because male archeologists tend to focus on archeological finds like tools and weapons, those items, they say, must be what everyone valued in the olden times. An example:

When a renowned specialist in paleolithic cave art discovered an engraved bone carved with markings that corresponded with lunar cycles, the notations were ignored, and the long stick was reclassified as a baton carried by military officers.

Thompson suggests that a lunar calendrical tally stick could have quite other uses than as a phallic expression of military power. He notes:

“The implications of the association of women and the moon would suggest women were the first observers of the basic periodicity of nature, the periodicity upon which all later scientific observations were made. Woman was the first to note a correspondence between an internal process she was going through and an external process in nature.”

This, of course, is what astrology is about in a crab shell.

And this is a critical juncture to consider when considering Cancer. The fork in the road, where the magical element of the imagination (which Cancer, as the first of the water signs, is the central symbol), gave way to reductionist materialism, which eventually developed into what we call science. There is a schism between realism and the imagination (although, as James Hilman noted, realism is just another expression of the imagination, although it’s rarely viewed that way by the rationalists).

This is my central argument regarding traditional or Hellenistic astrology. Disconnected from the psychological, traditional astrologers haul out their lexicon of rules, laws, and formulas as if the universe (and psyche) can be mapped and trapped so effortlessly. A Cancer will tell you differently because they are too familiar with the kind of trapdoors that spring when they assume they’re standing on firm ground. The most uninspired astrological ‘readings’ I’ve ever experienced were from two of the most acclaimed traditional astrologers working today. Being a Cancer and not wanting to hurt anyone’s feelings, I remained silent while listening to jibberish about Zodiacal ‘releasing’ and checking the clock to see how many minutes remained in the exchange. I’d cry about the high fee for the consultation later.

Cancers excel at two things: Making art and making children. Both are tied to their inherent maternal skills—which is really another way of describing their affinity with origin. Not caring for children, I took the artistic path, and my career has been, well, wildly Cancerian. I’ve been through more ‘eras’ than a Taylor Swift tour, from painting abstract art to launching my own church to appearing as the host of a children’s daytime television show to running one of the largest gay erotic websites during the webporn explosion in the 2000s, to art directing for two major TV networks and then managing my own ad agency, to writing teleplays, to writing about astrology and most recently about serial killers.

Cancers function optimally while practicing crop rotation to keep the creative waters circulating. As a cardinal sign, Cancer—like Aries, Libra, and Capricorn—is an innovator. This makes them assertive when it comes to exploring new facets of the imagination. And courage is required when broaching the boundless world of the immaterial. As Tarot scholar notes:

“Precisely because the imagination is so vast and powerful, its domain so different from the solid, sensible world of the material, it is both very seductive and very frightening. Human beings have a great yearning to adventure in imaginary realms—but at the same time, they recognize the fact that explorers occasionally get lost there and can’t find their way back to ‘reality.’”

I’ve learned to succumb to the odd cycles and rhythms of my unconscious, which, as any Cancer can tell you, sometimes feel hypomanic, as if a tempest has suddenly conjured up from what seemed to be calm ocean currents. This is often referred to as Cancer’s ‘many moods,’ but that’s not accurate—again, it’s another minimalization. Although the Zodiacal symbol of the crab is apt.

Crabs live in the water. They live on the land. They emerge from their shell and scuttle about. And then they don’t—suddenly, they resemble an inert rock or a discarded bit of skeleton. Lights off. Nobody home. And it feels that way when the circuitry that powers the imagination has blown a fuse. The crab has miniature hibernation cycles throughout the year. I can always tell when I’m about to enter one because some idea that, prior, had simply floated past my liminal radar will grip me, and I’m compelled to retreat and devote unmonitored amounts of time to understand it. A framed slogan in my office from filmmaker John Waters reads: “Life is nothing without obsession.”

These are hallmarks of someone who has not given birth to or is raising children or working as an overseer of children. This is the type of excessive attention a mother needs to administer to their child. As Gurdjieff remarked to a student who had just given birth, once an individual has mothered (or fathered) a child, the parent’s life—within the economy of nature—is essentially over. They’ve completed their assignment. It’s the child’s oyster now. Their offspring is the shining apex atop the species’ continuous evolutionary motion.

For this reason, aside from being gay, I never wanted kids. I sensed this biological fact somewhere in my bones. I’d have been a great parent but an awful artist.

To outsiders, the Cancerian social mode seems highly neurotic. And it confuses the people drawn to Cancer’s inner circle of hyper-attuned attention and loopy humor. But this pull towards intimacy becomes problematic when the waters dry up. As astrologer Stephen Arroyo noted, all the water signs in the Zodiac are cold-blooded creatures and can turn impersonal in a heartbeat when they feel their defenses violated.

Of course, this is a double-edged sword. There’s nothing more cringe than when a Cancer goes to work invading someone else’s boundaries. A classic clash at play when crabs become entangled with fire or air sign folks who the crab feels the compulsion to mother or ‘guide.’ God help you when a Cancer starts to tell you what they think you need.

This article is symptomatic of Cancer’s combined gift and curse. The crab’s creativity is always haunted by the dark side of one’s alignment with Mother—origin—the realm of prototypes that are considered Platonic. Often, Cancers will squelch their creative offerings or give up entirely because they don’t measure up to their irrational standards of perfection. As my friend, the author John Calendo, always reminds me: “It doesn’t have to be perfect; it just has to be good.”

If this post seemed like it was dashed off in a moment of inspiration, it wasn’t. I think I’ve been working on pulling the ideas together here for over six months. This is why I charge people to read my work. The process of nailing the syntax down nearly kills me.

Happy Birthday to Crabs Worldwide! 🦀🎉 Let this rambly paean be a celebration of our zig-zaggy alignment with the source. As celebrated by Lao Tzu, who declared, “The Tao is called the Great Mother: empty yet inexhaustible, it gives birth to infinite worlds.”

Love,

⭐️ My new book, I Love You Jeffrey Dahmer arrives in July 2026! ⭐️

• Can Science Prove or Disprove Astrology?

• Mark Zuckerberg: Trouble Child

• Joni Mitchell’s Black Keys

• Nonsense & Malaise: Astrological Insights for Maneuvering the Hive

• The 12th House: Astrology’s House of the Rising Sun

Dark Aquarius: AI, MAGA, and the Threat to Democracy — Part 2

Frederick Woodruff — Sat, 20 Jun 2026 20:03:02 GMT

You’re reading WOODRUFF. I cover the convergence of pop culture, psychology, and astrology. Join my entourage of subscribers. My bio is here. Curious about a consultation? Head here.

PART ONE of our discussion is here.

An outline of some of this episode’s themes:

Pluto’s transit through the US 2nd house (through 2033)
Tech oligarchy as “techno-fascistic plutocracy”
Death/rebirth as the operative metaphysic
Symbolic destruction of American institutions
Demographic shift and the “browning” of the West
Critique of Trump/Musk as case studies
Economic instability as inevitable correction
Hope embedded in Aquarius’s positive expression

Jessica Murray’s presence online:

Her website MotherSky. And her books on Amazon. You can also find her super-sharp lectures and teachings at Tony Howard’s Astrology University that include the aforementioned webinar Pluto in Aquarius: The Crisis of Being Human.

Love,

When a New Chapter Marks an End

Frederick Woodruff — Sat, 20 Jun 2026 01:18:27 GMT

You’re reading WOODRUFF. I cover the convergence of pop culture, psychology, and astrology. Join my entourage of subscribers. My bio is here. Curious about a consultation? Head here.

I THINK THE ENTIRE COUNTRY is aware of the death beats now. And they are spellbound, even the MAGA-ites have to face facts and can’t turn away. And so we’re united in our voyeurism.

His classic run of luck (Sun conjunct the North Node natally) is beginning to run out. He now has IV puncture wounds on both of his hands and his ankles are the size of dough rising in a too-small bread pan.

The Iran war is back with the Strait closed—again. The leader of Italy told the whole world that Trump was lying when he claimed she was clamoring for him to take a photo with her during the recent G7 shindig.

And The Kennedy Center name invasion has finally been removed, but the tarp of shame remains.

But the cherry has got to be the fucking reflecting pond debacle. And it’s doing exactly what reflecting things do—mirroring and showing back. It’s all so literal you want to scream.

So the country is now united, even if only unconsciously, in a way it hasn’t been united in a long, long time.

Love,

Intro/outro music via MobyGratis.com

• The 12th House: Astrology’s House of the Rising Sun

Dark Aquarius: AI, MAGA, and the Threat to Democracy

Frederick Woodruff — Tue, 16 Jun 2026 14:56:12 GMT

You’re reading WOODRUFF. I cover the convergence of pop culture, psychology, and astrology. Join my entourage of subscribers. My bio is here. Curious about a consultation? Head here.

ASTROLOGER JESSICA MURRAY is back for a fascinating redux on the ongoing Pluto in Aquarius transit. Some of the topics we covered in part one of this cast:

• Aquarius as a sign—its nature and paradoxes.

• Pluto in Aquarius as a 20-year era—and the tech oligarchy as its symbolic incarnation.

• The 1993 Uranus-Neptune conjunction and the rise of the internet.

• The legacy of Pluto in Capricorn: wealth inequality and institutional collapse.

Part 2 of the cast will debut at the end of this week for my paid subscribers. You don’t want to miss it. Subscribe now!

Jessica Murray’s presence online:

Love,

Intro/outro music via MobyGratis.com

• The 12th House: Astrology’s House of the Rising Sun

Arnold Mindell: Life is but a Dream

Frederick Woodruff — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 16:57:48 GMT

You’re reading WOODRUFF. I cover the convergence of pop culture, psychology, and astrology. Join my entourage of subscribers. My bio is here. Curious about a consultation? Head here.

“When you talk about the unconscious manufacturing itself through dreams, I think to myself that the unconscious itself is a dreaming process; it’s a flow or a river. Dreams are only snapshots of the river. What really began to fascinate me was the dreaming process behind those dreams.” —Arnold Mindell

Yesterday marked the second anniversary of psychologist and dream weaver Arnold Mindell’s passing. Birthdays and deathdays are the solar bookends of a life. A deathday has around it the same awe and wonder that accompanied our ‘miracle’ of birth. Forever people have questioned the notion of life after death, without stopping to consider if anyone is truly living while alive. If Gurdjieff is correct, automatization is the default mode on the planet. This repost is from two years ago, when I first got the news that Arnie had lifted off.

YESTERDAY, I LEARNED THAT DREAM MAVEN Arnold Mindell died on June 11th.

He was 84 years old.

If you don’t know about Arnie’s lifelong work, I will tell you a little bit about him, not that we met in person, but that didn’t matter because his molten mind and enormous heart moved freely through the ether that comprises the dream world we all partake of. Just thinking about him, for me, conjures his wild spirit.

84 is often a liftoff year for individuals earmarked at birth by the Promethean planet, Uranus. It takes Uranus 84 years to circle the Sun, and once that cycle is completed and the fire-bringing odyssey has been accomplished, it’s fitting that the chapter is closed. At least, that’s the dream narrative I tell myself about ‘the return home.’

If you’re a client of mine, you have been touched by Arnie’s life work and vision. His radical insights and methodology—what I call “saying yes to everything”—contain and inform my work ethic and approach.

Specifically, Arnold viewed ‘problems’ and pathologies as doorways to be walked through instead of boarded up and avoided. He was wildly curious about disharmony and saw it as the dream’s way of communicating critical elements to the narrative’s next step. Something was always in process, and we could either assist it or avoid it.

I remember about fifteen years ago (maybe more) when, for whatever reason (I think I was researching archetypal astrology at the time), I bumped into an interview online with Mindell. Good goddess!

Excuse the overstatement, but honestly, by the time I’d finished reading the interview, a significant network of brain cells had rearranged in my head. I think brisk, shocking moments like that are catalytic because something in our lives that was primed for release blooms within that moment and goes free. With joy!

When I was a junior in high school, I tagged along one summer with a local Christian youth group that was making a weeklong excursion to the High Sierra mountains in California. This was the first time in my life I’d ever experienced natural beauty of that magnitude. The entire panorama of the mountains and where we camped beneath them (and the trillions of stars overhead) cracked me open like an egg.

When I returned home from that trip, I went straight into my bedroom, packed a suitcase, and moved out of my family home—an extremely dysfunctional environment. My encounter with the natural world inspired my courage. In my teen brain, there was nothing to equivocate—I had equated beauty with freedom—and that was a profound association. A high school friend’s family was generous enough to take me in so I could finish my senior year with my peers, and my gratitude towards them still exists. In a way, they saved my life.

Encountering Arnold’s Taoist mindset combined with his Capricornian pragmatism was like rediscovering the High Sierras. And it moved me to recognize something I’d long intuited but hadn’t forged a connection with: namely, that there is no difference between nocturnal and diurnal dreaming. We all live within, share, and partake of the same dream field. This sounds simplistic, almost idiotic—but when you start to feel it and then experiment and notice the actuality, you can’t view quotidian life in the same thick, impervious way.

Rather than spin ‘round and ‘round on this notion, I’ll share the link to that interview with Arnie so you can explore his mentation for yourself. I’d also recommend any of the scores of books he’s written; they are each equally remarkable. Dreaming While Awake is one of my favorites.

Thank you, Arnold. I’m not sure how I feel about ‘life after death.’ But I do have a strong sense, as you told your wife before liftoff, that the dream keeps going. Announcing his passing the other day on Facebook, Amy wrote:

“Some time ago, he told me that when he was no longer here in his bodily form, we could connect and talk with him by looking at and communicating with the sea, his beloved sea. And he said that when anyone dies, they are not just dead. We are not just bodies, we are a spirit and dreaming behind them, so he and all of us are always there.”

Godspeed, brother! I’m feeling you in the harbor this morning:

Love,

Opening photograph from Amy Mindell on Facebook.

• The 12th House: Astrology’s House of the Rising Sun

Warriors and Goddesses: What the World Soul Is Dreaming Right Now

Robert Anderson — Sun, 07 Jun 2026 13:00:21 GMT

You're reading WOODRUFF. I cover the convergence of pop culture, psychology, and astrology—now joined by archetypal astrologer Robert Anderson as a contributing writer.

ASTROLOGY TEACHES US to think symbolically. Whenever a particular image bubbles to the surface of the zeitgeist, it always does so for a reason; it points to something beyond its face value appearance. It alerts us to a particular condition of the world soul. When we learn to interpret symbols, we become fluent in the language of archetypes.

Let me illustrate this with a few recent examples:

Last week, the Cerne Abbas Giant featured prominently in UK news coverage due to restoration efforts by the National Trust. This chalk giant—which was sculpted into the hillside above the village of Cerne Abbas over 1000 years ago—is a totemic figure in the British cultural landscape.

Stretching over 180 feet, he is depicted with an erect penis and brandishing a club, a potent symbol of libidinal energy, sexual prowess, and pagan fierceness. The giant’s fresh burst of publicity coincided with a square between Mars and Pluto, the former having recently ingressed into the earth sign Taurus.

The Mars-Pluto energy is primal, aggressive, and darkly erotic. Its emergence in the zeitgeist is often accompanied by phallic imagery and symbolism. Who could forget when, during an exact Mars-Pluto opposition in 2021, Jeff Bezos announced to the world that he was heading into space aboard a penis-shaped rocket?

What are you trying to compensate for, Jeffrey?

Dick jokes aside, it’s no accident that the Cerne Abbas Giant has become the focus of renewed attention at this moment. Through the conjuring of such a symbol in global media, the archetypal psyche is cluing us into the deeper currents that are at work in the collective unconscious. The larger pattern of life is being disclosed to us in symbolic form.

A snapshot of what's making news right now provides ample evidence that the Mars-Pluto dynamic is powerfully present at this time:

In France, football celebrations turned violent, resulting in hundreds of injuries and one death; Mars-Pluto transits tend to accentuate the shadow of the Mars archetype—exposing the darker side of the archetypal athlete-warrior.
In the UK, feelings of intense anger and revulsion have been triggered by the release of police body-cam footage that showed a murder victim being handcuffed in his dying moments. The far right have, in turn, exploited this incident to inflame racial tensions and incite rioting.
Russia is hammering Ukraine in one of the most brutal assaults since the war began (during a Mars-Pluto conjunction, incidentally).
The animal kingdom is not exempt from this influence either: The Guardian reports that a new front has opened in the battle between swimming snakes and Balearic lizards, a cause of great concern to wildlife experts. Mars-Pluto transits have a way of showcasing Mother Nature at her gnarliest; bloody claws and fangs galore!

Beyond the dramatic headlines, we have likely felt these energies at work in more subtle ways in our lives. Mars-Pluto transits correlate with a greater incidence of cuts, bruises, and minor injuries. We may also find ourselves needing to manage intense aggression and erotic impulses, either in ourselves or those around us.

He-Man

On a cultural level, this transit coincides with the release of Masters of the Universe. I haven’t seen the film, but the poster conveys the Mars-Pluto energy in an unmistakable way.

Clearly designed to project an impression of red-blooded hyper-masculinity, this image features He-Man gripping a sword too large to fit inside the frame, looking poised to vigorously master... the universe.

This is the Cerne Abbas Giant reimagined for modern audiences: a primal warrior rising to the occasion, ready to vanquish his enemies. And there’s another echo—Nicholas Galitzine, the film’s lead actor, has an exact Mars-Pluto trine in his chart that is being activated by transiting Uranus.

Do you sense the archetypal resonance between these symbolically charged images?

That they are both prominent in the zeitgeist is no coincidence; it’s a synchronicity that reveals an archetypal truth. The primal-warrior archetype of Mars-Pluto is running riot in the collective unconscious, compelling us to act in ways that are more instinctive and assertive than usual.

The Goddess Victoria

Scanning the news, we find other images impacting our awareness. For instance, the image of a rare golden ring that was recently acquired by the South West Heritage Trust following its discovery by an amateur metal detectorist. The ring dates to ancient Rome and contains a gemstone depicting Victoria, the Roman goddess of victory, driving a two-horse chariot.

The news of this incredible find broke on June 2, just as Venus began a conjunction with Jupiter that will extend into the second half of June. Victoria is, in many ways, the feminine counterpart to Jupiter, as they are both associated with victory and good fortune.

Victoria is the perfect symbol of a Venus-Jupiter conjunction, as she combines these Jupiterian attributes with the feminine nature of Venus. Her present-day reemergence reflects the convergence of the Venus and Jupiter archetypes into a singular deity that will preside over mid-June.

This discovery is Victoria’s way of announcing her return to the world; a wink from the cosmos telling us that the Venus-Jupiter conjunction is now in effect.

Enjoy this transit while it unfolds and pay attention to all the ways that love and beauty are celebrated over the coming weeks. This confluence has the potential to enhance your social life and presents opportunities for cultural, taste-related, and artistic indulgences!

Whenever a striking image appears in your life or succeeds in capturing public attention, ask yourself: what does this image evoke, and why has it appeared at this moment?

The spirit of the times is always converging around symbols in much the same way that our nightly dreams do: the Cerne Abbas Giant, He-Man, the goddess Victoria. They appear and disappear in accordance with the fluctuating moods of the world soul, which are in turn reflected by the movements of the planets in the night sky.

Cheers,

Image credits: Cerne Abas Giant via Wiki Commons, Blue Origin rocket via Spacecraft Wiki, Masters of the Universe poster via Wikipedia, Ilminster ring via CBS News.

• The 12th House: Astrology’s House of the Rising Sun

Graham Platner: When Mars Finds Your Scorpio Cluster

Frederick Woodruff — Sat, 06 Jun 2026 22:36:57 GMT

You’re reading WOODRUFF. I cover the convergence of pop culture, psychology, and astrology. Join my entourage of subscribers. My bio is here. Curious about a consultation? Head here.

I LIKE GRAHAM PLATNER. I group him together with Zohran Mamdani, James Talarico, Jasmine Crockett, and Chicago’s Governor J.B. Pritzker. These individuals are the antidote to the political maelstrom the US finds itself in now. All of them are branded as communists and advocates of young children being forced into sex change operations. So you know there’s substance to their platforms.

Whenever despair sets in, I think of people like these and remember that the political world, for all its fuckery, still produces the occasional genuine article. Though I can never quite shake Lao Tzu’s observation that the only people fit to hold power are the ones who never wanted it. 😬

What’s more alarming than Trump’s second reign in the White House are the individuals who reelected him. Apparently they are still out there, milling about a la George Romero’s classic horror film Dawn of the Dead. When I see Trump’s approval rating at 34%, I’m like: why is there even 34%? Who are these people? Why isn’t it like 8%—or zero? Or as Elton John once sang: Less than zero.

The ‘another John Fetterman’ worry foisted on Platner is precisely the kind of reflexive, bumper-sticker thinking that passes for political analysis these days. Platner is a T-shirt-wearing, gruff dude, so, of course, he’ll have a brain aneurysm and turn into a quisling.

The US population has never been stupider. This fact must be acknowledged if we are to come to terms with the whys and the wherefores of Trump and the MAGA-ites. You can’t blame Obama’s Blackness. You can’t blame the Democratic Party (although I do). Furthermore, you can’t blame planetary transits. We must acknowledge our collective ignorance. As they say in 12-Step: “You can’t solve a problem you won’t admit you have.”

Anyway, check out Platner’s horoscope. There is no birth time, so ignore the angles. Though the Moon is positioned just so to guarantee its Scorpio placement.

Before I sign off, I want to introduce you to Robert Anderson, a new contributor to WOODRUFF. Robert is the creator of Archetypal Outlook, a Substack that explores news and culture through the lens of archetypal astrology. Drawing on the work of Richard Tarnas, Robert’s writing blends in-depth research with up-to-the-minute insights into current affairs. His first post appears tomorrow.

Love,

Opening photograph of Platner via Wikipedia Commons. Public Domain.

• Nonsense & Malaise: Astrological Insights for Maneuvering the Hive

• The 12th House: Astrology’s House of the Rising Sun

Under the Influence for Saturday, May 30, 2026

Frederick Woodruff — Sat, 30 May 2026 22:08:25 GMT

You’re reading WOODRUFF. I cover the convergence of pop culture, psychology, and astrology. Join my entourage of subscribers. My bio is here. Curious about a consultation? Head here.

NOW AND UPCOMING on WOODRUFF.

I’m fascinated by the former Attorney General in Texas, Ken Paxton, who Trump endorsed (more like assigned) to go up against Dem darling James Talarico in November. Paxton is a litmus test for Trump. By endorsing someone so transparently corrupt, Trump is determining how far he can push the incredulity envelope. He’s also gauging the durability of the nastiest, most fuckery-ridden MAGA-ites in the country. Next week for paid subscribers, I’m posting my video delineation of Paxton’s chart and a small bit of Talarico’s. Theirs is a full Moon synastry and will be the most riveting race of the midterms, with Talarico’s solar Taurian tenacity spotlighting Paxton’s creepy-murky sex offender plea deal (Moon-Neptune conjunct in Scorpio) that he brokered in 2025. With Paxton’s lunar Neptune confluence in the crosshairs, be prepared for nonstop luridity.

WATCHING

AMC+ had this great deal running last month for 30 bucks for a year and without commercials. The latter is unheard of nowadays, where the greed from the big streamers is off the chain. Surfing around in the AMC app, I discovered The Newsreader, a three-season drama that has me barreling through a couple of episodes a night. The show is set in 1986 and tracks a successful female newscaster (Mindhunter’s Anna Torv) and a young male wannabe reporter (Sam Reid). She’s volatile and tightly wound, and he’s gay and closeted. Love blooms. The Guardian said of the show, “If this powerful Aussie drama were a US show, it’d be a smash hit.” This is true.

I’m fascinated by Reid, the Aquarian actor. Not just because he is gorgeous, but because he does this thing that many masterful Aquarian actors (Christian Bale and Evan Peters come to mind) can do, namely, convey complex, convoluted emotions within what seems to be a sterile, stereotypical character. It’s the kind of transformation that’s thrilling to watch.

LISTENING

The new Boards of Canada LP, Inferno. This is the first new project from the Scottish electronic duo since 2013. The ominous undertone to several tracks makes for a perfect soundtrack for the rest of 2026. (And that can still be a beautiful thing). Their landmark album, Music Has the Right to Children (1998) is one of the greatest album titles in history.

Tomorrow’s MOON ZOOM. Are you attending?

Space is limited. And there are still a few spots available.

• Paid subscribers to WOODRUFF! Join me on Sunday, May 31 @ 1 PM Pacific for another lunar hangout.

• Follow this link over to Luma to register for free:

• https://luma.com/uwjtxi4m

Your Zoom invite will be sent over to you before the event starts.

See you tomorrow!

Love,

Opening photograph by Alen MacWeeney, c. 1963

• Astrologer and Tarot Maven TRAVIS BLACK on the WOODRUFF Cast.

• Nonsense & Malaise: Astrological Insights for Maneuvering the Hive

• The 12th House: Astrology’s House of the Rising Sun

ASK THE ASTROLOGER with Dabney Lawless and Frederick Woodruff

Frederick Woodruff — Wed, 27 May 2026 18:28:26 GMT

WE’RE TRYING SOMETHING different between our casts today.

If the response is what we're hoping for, astrologer Dabney Lawless and I will launch a recurring crossover feature—connecting both of our shows in a way we think you'll find intriguing and fun.

For each episode, we’ll take on two or three of your questions and see where the inquiry takes us. With Dabney’s background in evolutionary astrology and my background in—something as yet uncataloged—we should be able to answer questions in ways that cover all the bases.

Let us know what you think. And post your questions below for our next episode.

Love,

• Astrologer and Tarot Maven TRAVIS BLACK on the WOODRUFF Cast.

• Nonsense & Malaise: Astrological Insights for Maneuvering the Hive

• The 12th House: Astrology’s House of the Rising Sun

NEW May 2026 Full Moon Zoom v2.0 on WOODRUFF

Frederick Woodruff — Sun, 24 May 2026 16:54:40 GMT

You’re reading WOODRUFF. I cover the convergence of pop culture, psychology, and astrology. Join my entourage of subscribers—you’ve been missed. My bio is here.

HEY CHILDREN OF THE CORN, on Sunday, May 31, at 1PM Pacific, we’re holding another Full Moon Zoom hangout for paid subscribers to WOODRUFF.

Spontaneity is one of the joys of existence, especially if you prepare for it in advance.

To participate, the only requirement is that you’re a paid subscriber to WOODRUFF.

Space is limited.

• Paid subscribers to WOODRUFF! Join me on Saturday, May 31, @ 1 PM Pacific for another lunar hangout.

• Follow this link over to Luma to register for free:

• https://luma.com/0vhe931r

Your Zoom invite will be emailed to you before the event starts.

Love,

• Astrologer and Tarot Maven TRAVIS BLACK on the WOODRUFF Cast.

• Nonsense & Malaise: Astrological Insights for Maneuvering the Hive

• The 12th House: Astrology’s House of the Rising Sun

Astrologer Wade Caves Reads the 2026 Midterms

Frederick Woodruff — Fri, 22 May 2026 22:19:48 GMT

Under the Influence for Sunday, May 16, 2026

Frederick Woodruff — Sun, 17 May 2026 18:56:11 GMT

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HERE’S THE ALL AND EVERYTHING for the week ahead.

Celebrity culture death.

Pluto’s transit in Aquarius—the sign of the ‘people’—is wreaking havoc with Leo, the sign of the celebrity and ‘star.’ Pluto does away with waste and rot. And as the planet is opposing Leo, we’re witnessing old notions of individual worship (Leo) challenged within the court of public opinion (Aquarius). In other words, people are burned out on this sort of hero lauding. Especially as the gap between the 1% and all the rest of us becomes more screeching.

This occurred to me last night while watching the new Netflix documentary on comedian Martin Short. It’s titled Marty, Life is Short. And by the end of the feature, you’ll have wished the documentary was too.

Due to Short’s large coterie of A-list actors and directors, throughout the doc we are made privy to party after party of rooms crammed with competing narcissists and their squirming spawn. Having lived in Los Angeles for five years and worked in the heart of the pop music business, I learned early that many of the creative folks we worship are insufferable when encountered in person.

Celebrity culture is incestuous, as everyone in the star community depends on everyone else in the clan to practice the dictates of a publicist. That means when you listen to one celebrity talk to the camera about another celebrity, you will only hear a slew of superlatives. The discussed person is always described as talented, joyful, generous, kind, brilliant, hilarious, loyal, loving, and tolerant. And they are someone who is an example of ‘living their dream.’ 😩

After an hour and a half of this, your pancreas is aching, and you’re longing for what I call ‘criminal culture’ to strike a balance. This split between artifice and shadow is why Americans (especially) are obsessed with underworld crime and serial killers, two genres that make way for and honor humanity’s persistent dark side. We need it to counter the hyperglycemia.

But for every death, Pluto offers regeneration and rebirth, and as concerns the Aquarius transits, it’s now the ‘everyday’ commoners (Aquarius) that are replacing Hollywood royalty (Leo). I’m talking, unfortunately, about the burgeoning influencer market that has exploded since Pluto’s ingress into Aquarius. Better get your TikTok shop set up today if you hope to survive the AI apocalypse.

Wade Caves and the US midterms.

Next week I’m posting my lengthy interview with horary maven Wade Caves, with a good portion of our discussion devoted to the astrology of the upcoming midterm elections. Wade’s research into this critical moment for the country is astounding. And I’m not blowing smoke. Paid subscribers can join us for this comprehensive overview later this week.

Reading this weekend:

Jessica Murray’s latest post, Beware the Dead Zone over on MotherSky.com. A MAGA-sphere forensic that pulls no punches.

“The transpersonal approach to larger-than-life historical figures doesn’t consider their personal pathologies merely on their own terms. We see them as features that make the person typecast for the role they’ve been destined to play. If you’re an American meaning seeker trying to work out how current political abominations relate to you, this perspective can be useful.

As the USA-led world order breaks down (US Pluto Return), the least savory features of the American psyche are rising to the surface like noxious gases rising from a carcass.”

Fine-tune your best performance.

Saturday’s lunation took place in Taurus. Old-fashioned astrology considers this new Moon particularly fecund (I can’t stand the onomatopoeia of that word, but it’s such an apt description). And we’re still within the three-day window that frames a new Moon.

What makes any new Moon lunation so potent is the tripartite ‘dark of the Moon’ that precedes the conjunction. This is considered the best span of time to work with whatever ceremonies, spells, or sigils you employ to shift you from a burnout into ignition. There’s one gal I follow on TikTok who, every Dark of the Moon, is performing rituals for Hekate. A real hoot.

The Sabian symbol for this Moon, which occurred at 26 degrees of Taurus, is: A Spanish gallant serenades his beloved. Dane Rudhyar writes: “This is role-playing in its most enjoyable form.” I detailed this playacting theme recently here:

In Hamlet, Shakespeare wrote for his protagonist, “Assume a virtue, if you have it not.” We need to take on, adopt—despite feeling ill-equipped—the courage that eludes us. This means acting our way forward for the sake of momentum. Fake it until we make it.

See you all soon in the new WOODRUFF cast later this week.

Love,

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