September 30th

You can’t go back home to your family, back home to your childhood, back home to romantic love, back home to a young man’s dreams of glory and of fame, back home to someone who can help you, save you, ease the burden for you, back home to the old forms and systems of things which once seemed everlasting but which are changing all the time–back home to the escapes of Time and Memory.” 
― Thomas Wolfe

Thomas Wolfe was Asheville, North Carolina’s most famous native. He was a contemporary of both Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald. All three men had one thing in common in their writing, the great editor, Max Perkins. In the film Genius, their relationship and the art of editing are examined, according to Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times, as a first.

I came across this film on Amazon as I was slogging through the edit of my own book The LifeQuake Phenomenon (a 10 year anniversary update to be released in the Spring of 2020). As we are in the time of Libra: the Sun, Mercury for a few more days, and Mars about to go into this chatter box sign, I thought it was fitting to write about a Libran writer, Thomas Wolfe. Like so often in life, what someone become known for depicts something particular in their personal life. What most people associate to Thomas Wolfe is the phrase, “you can never go home again.”

The irony here is that he literally couldn’t go back home to North Carolina after his book Look Homeward, Angel was published. He had so thinly disguised 200 prominent members of the Asheville community unfavorably that there was outrage in his home town. What I found hilarious in my research about Wolfe is that after the book’s success, when his next book, Of Time and the River came out four years later, the citizens of Asheville were said to have complained because he hadn’t written about them.

In astrology, Jupiter rules expansion, publishing and luck, but Saturn rules editing. Wolfe’s first book had been turned down numerous times because it was 1100 pages. Hemingway referred to Wolfe ( played by Jude Law) as “the over-bloated Li’l Abner of literature”.

Without his married lover (played by Nicole Kidman) using her influence to get to Scribner Publishing House, and then meeting the great yet humble Saturn like icon, Max, his book would never have been published. Max made it into a novel people would read at 544 pages.

Most writers who become successful have both Jupiter and Saturn well placed in their charts.

When I wear the vocational astrology hat in my career coaching and the client has an aspiration to become a writer, I look at their Saturn and Jupiter aspects. I also look at timing. Thomas Wolfe’s first book came out 9 days before the stock market crash of ’29. Did he have great timing or what? As an aside, J.P. Morgan, America’s first billionaire claimed that astrology saved him from the Wall Street disaster. I digress.People were looking for something to soothe them and a novel about small town life was a great salve for the gaping wound America was feeling. It will be interesting to observe what successful books get published next year, if we do have a recession.

The great writers of the even Greater Depression flourished. They were following their passion. Keeping a safe but unfulfilling job in a time when as a species we are changing our very matrix will not work.

Astrology Tips for the Week:

1. We have only one void moon day and it isn’t until Friday morning and ends at 11:30AM PDT, 2:30 PM EDT
2. The big challenge is that we are in a moon wobble and Mercury is void of its course until it goes into Scorpio on Thursday. Mercury void of course is like a mini retrograde. I had a massive computer, email and website virus this week but didn’t discover that Mercury was VOC until this morning. My first ever. Make sure your anti-virus programs are working well.
3. Mars is also void of its course now until Friday morning. Keep your emotions steady and don’t get into your car angry.
4. Mercury will begin slowing down in 3 weeks preparing for its cha cha backwards. We are in the new moon energy now which is great for initiating new projects. I would just wait until Thursday for anything new. I like to give you this information about Mercury retros now so you can plan ahead for these periods that are apt to be challenging in the communication and publishing arenas.

So yes, move ahead mindfully in a few days but remember that the energy around us and in us is not very stable as we build to this next solar eclipse in this last quarter of the last year of this decade. I will share more about that in the next newsletter.
Remember that you were born to realize your destiny at this time!
Blessings,

Dr Toni