With the passing of James Brown I thought I would look up his chart. I wanted to see how the planets of his birthchart connected wtih the stars of the constellations. Here is a copied-and-pasted summary sheet, no editing has been done on this except to highlight particularly relevant parts in bold, so you can see how astrology picks up unique and major parts of his life (ignore the strange squiggles.... the astrological font doesn't paste over into this format):

HELIACAL RISING STAR
Al Rescha - Rising 05 mins 58 secs before Sunrise -
A person able to bring ideas and/or people together

HELIACAL SETTING STAR
Diadem - Setting 02 mins 33 secs before Sunrise -
To believe that sacrifice is a necessary component of growth

PARANS - BY ANGLE

CULMINATING - Stars of Your Prime
Castor as § Mercury is Setting orb 00 mins 04 secs -
A skill with words and language
Sadalsuud as ¦ Moon is On Nadir orb 00 mins 09 secs -
Being able to hold onto the good feelings or things of life
Scheat as ª Jupiter is On Nadir orb 00 mins 19 secs -
The theologian or sports person, both teaching a moral code
Markab as ª Jupiter is On Nadir orb 00 mins 35 secs -
The teacher/philosopher, in sport, or in a spiritual life
Alphard as ¥ Sun is Setting orb 00 mins 50 secs -
A person of strong passions who can become angry, violent or aggressive
Dubhe as ª Jupiter is Culminating orb 01 mins 08 secs -
The historian or philosopher, success through quiet focused work - Circumpolar
Algol as ¦ Moon is Rising orb 01 mins 14 secs -
Plagued by personal tragedies, one's own, or other people's

SETTING - Stars of Your Latter Years
Vega as ¥ Sun is Culminating orb 00 mins 04 secs -
Seeing the magic in life, touching another world
Alhena as § Mercury is On Nadir orb 00 mins 25 secs -
To have a voice, to demand the right to be heard
Rukbat as ª Jupiter is On Nadir orb 00 mins 56 secs -
Success through a steady and thorough preparation
Phact as ¦ Moon is Culminating orb 01 mins 00 secs -
The romantic adventurer, of places or ideas
Alpheratz as § Mercury is Setting orb 01 mins 09 secs -
Outspoken, and thinking in different ways

ON NADIR - Stars of Your Foundation
Bellatrix as ª Jupiter is Setting orb 00 mins 05 secs -
The historian or priest, a person who is more interested in people than money
Scheat as ª Jupiter is Culminating orb 00 mins 16 secs -
The theologian or sports person, both teaching a moral code
El Nath as ª Jupiter is Setting orb 00 mins 36 secs -
Breaking new ground artistically, or as a humanitarian

If you're interested in the privacy and human rights of you, your children, your grandchildren, and so on, please take 10 minutes to read these websites:

The government is already setting up interrogation centres for its ID cards+database scheme. Find out more information and what you can do about it, visit this site

http://www.no2id.net/getInvolved/idCentres.php

Leave the Kids Alone - against fingerprinting of children at school - Junior Librarian and Eclipse, Micro Librarian Systems (worth £8 million) says "The size of the UK market means there remains significant opportunity for growth.". That's your children they're talking about. Are you going to let them?

http://www.leavethemkidsalone.com/

Protect your medical confidentiality and privacy

http://www.nhsconfidentiality.org/

This is the UK's most important transit at the moment and has been for quite some time now. That significance will continue for a bit longer too, so it's important that the national psyche gets to grips with it ASAP. So far, we are perhaps not doing as well as we could.

This transit is mainly about two things: (1) equality, and (2) balancing style and substance. Equality means between men and women, old and young, black and white, able and unable, overprivileged and underprivileged, and so on. Style and substance doesn't need elaboration.

There are occasional glimpses of these themes being reviewed in cultural life as well as media stories: television programmes like The Mint - full of showy gloss but not a lot of substance and which marked the start of an entirely new channel devoted to this type of programming (ITV Play), The Secret Millionaire - glossing over how and why things are as they are and instead donating a drop in the ocean (better than nothing, but nowhere near substantial) to help the poor, ASBO Teen to Beauty Queen - where an attempt was made to encourage a badly behaved teenager fall in love with the illusions of too much make-up (her words, not mine!) and fairytale dresses, websites for online gambling which the government needs to be seen to not encourage but which it actually wants more of to stimulate 'UK Plc's profits at the expense of addicted people losing all their money, court cases like those of the two women who got married in Canada but are unable to have their marriage recognised in the UK, and so on.

The issues are staring us in the face, writ large so that we can review them more easily, but are we managing to alter our ways? There appears to be some progress but is it enough? Is it sufficiently widespread? Is it rapid enough?

We have X-Factor and tons of other programmes showing how superficial gloss makes so much money that the pursuit of fame -even without fortune - triumphs over real happiness, real satisfaction, having a vocation, a calling, a purpose. The appearance of having a calling is on the rise, but the contestants are mainly clones of each other - they say the same things, use the same vocabularly, sing someone else's songs (where's the substance of an artist?), wear similar clothes, and seek to please judges rather than answer to their calling or hear the voice of their inner muse.

The superficial gloss of hoping to win money and/or fame has temporarily papered over the cracks in our capitalistic system which is based on greed for gain and fear of loss. It's not healthy on any level, it doesn't make people happy, it doesn't satisfy anything other than the most superficial of needs and interests, and it can't continue.

It's important to look for signs of constructive change and the reinvigoration of healthy human values, but the picture at the moment is not really cause for celebration. It's not over yet though, and there are still plenty of opportunities in our public life as well as our personal lives to re-establish these values at the core of our daily routine. All it takes is for us to make different choices in those little decisions we encounter every day - choices about what to eat, what to wear, what to say, what to do, who to do it with, how to act, how to react, what not to eat, what not to wear, what not to say, what not to do, who not to do it with, how not to act, how not to react.

Let's not waste this transit any longer. Let's not sit back and wait for things to change. Let's use it.

More on the UK's Neptune transit of Venus can be found at: http://www.astrology21.co.uk/c1ukneptunevenus.html

The British Astronomical Assocation (BAA) and the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) have joined together to run a festive star counting campaign as part of the ongoing Campaign for Dark Skies (CfDS).

If you're in the UK between 20th and 24th December you can help the campaign by counting the stars you can see within the rectangular area of the constellation of Orion.

For full details of how to do this and why this campaign is important, please visit the following external sites:

BAA
http://www.britastro.org/starcount

CPRE
http://www.cpre.org.uk/campaigns/landscape/light-pollution

CfDS
http://www.britastro.org/dark-skies/index.html

As a free gift we are making available an astrological/astronomical calendar, exclusive to the Astrology for the 21st Century website.
This calendar has space for you to use it as a normal calendar, and also keeps you up-to-date with what's going on in the skies each month.
The calendar tells you:

* Planets' sign changes: dates when the Sun and planets move from one sign of the Zodiac to another.
* Aspects: the dates and times of the outer planets' aspects, (all the major and minor aspects plus quintiles, septiles and noviles).
* Aspect patterns: dates when the planets (excluding the Moon) form major aspect patterns (Grand Trine, Grand Cross, T-Square, etc).
* Lunar phases: dates and times of New Moons, Full Moons, Quarter Moons.
* Lunar declination: dates of the Moon's maximum northern and southern declination.
* Lunar distance: dates of the Moon's perigees and apogees.
* Eclipses: dates for Solar and Lunar eclipses.
* Retrogrades: dates when the planets change direction.

The calendar is suitable for use worldwide. Its file format is .pdf (Adobe Acrobat format - if you do not have a copy of Adobe Acrobat 5 or above - or an equivalent .pdf file reader - on your computer, you can download it from this site: www.adobe.com).

To download it please visit www.astrology21.co.uk

1st Neptune septile Pluto

2nd Moon's perigee

5th Full Moon (i.e. Sun opposition Moon)

6th Saturn is stationary retrograde

6th Mars enters Sagittarius

6th Pluto novile Chiron

6th Moon reaches its maximum northern declination

8th Mercury enters Sagittarius

11th Venus enters Capricorn

12th Sun squares Moon (i.e. Moon's last quarter)

13th Moon's apogee

20th Jupiter quintile Neptune

20th New Moon (i.e. Sun conjunct Moon)

20th Moon's maximum southern declination

22nd Sun enters Capricorn (summer solstice in southern hemisphere, winter solstice in northern hemisphere)

26th Pluto conjunct Galactic Centre

27th Sun square Moon (i.e. Moon's first quarter)

27th Mercury enters Capricorn

28th Moon's perigee

28th Jupiter septile Saturn

28th Jupiter sextile Chiron