(Photo is of the live feed between the AAGB conference in London and the Blast in Sedona.)  This is a continuation of the post I started yesterday, reporting on the conferences from the Blast Astrology Conference.  I’m not a big conference person but I chose this one because (a) it’s in Sedona, and (b) the small size (200 people) appealed to me, as did the concentration of talks by the new generation of astrologers that are coming up with some mindblowing new techniques.  

The second talk I attended was with Moses Siregar, a young astrologer who put the Blast together.  Moses uses both Vedic and Western astrological techniques, and specializes in locational astrology.  He spoke yesterday on degrees of exaltation and fall which is a concept too complex for the scope of this column so I’ll skip over it for now.

Next there was a live feed (using Skype conferencing) from the Astrological Association of Great Britain which was meeting in London as we were meeting in Sedona.  We heard a few speakers from their conference, and then Rob Hand, one of the international elders of the current astrological world, spoke from our meeting hall in Sedona.  Rob was an early pioneer of modern astrologer who then in the early 1990s started Project Hindsight, an organization dedicated to translating ancient and medieval astrological texts.  Rob said, “Why do we need to go back and recapture the past?  Not so that we can go back to it.”  He then went on to recount the history of astrology and how it fell out of favor after so many centuries of respect from the establishment.  Rob’s point is that after astrology was expelled from the universities in the 17th century astrologers lost a great deal of the academic learning that was important to the earlier astrology, and as a result modern astrology is a bit fuzzy, with no real underlying philosophy.  Rob’s conclusion is that we need to be moving towards a grand synthesis of ancient techniques with the impulse of modern astrology towards self-realization.  It was a surprise to him when the AAGB awarded him the 2008 Charles Harvey Award for astrological achievement.

Next Deb Houlding, owner of the fabulous Skyscript site, spoke on horary techniques of finding lost objects that originated with William Lilly back in Elizabethan times.  

Jonathan Pearl of the Starpearls site is a financial astrologer who spoke of the upcoming shift of the fixed star Regulus from Leo into Virgo in December 2011 or January 2012.  Regulus is the star of leadership and nobility, and it has been in the sign of Leo since 150 bc, presiding over the rise of the Roman Empire.  Jonathan offered hopeful speculation about what might occur with Regulus (leadership) in the thrifty sign of Virgo that values preserving resources.

The day ended with a fascinating talk by Ray Merriman, noted financial astrologer who is often quoted in this column.  Ray revealed that his natal chart has the Sun conjunct Mars in Capricorn – a great sign for building a business, and that Venus and Jupiter (the two benefics) fall in Scorpio (the sign of speculating in stocks) in the second house (accumulating wealth).  Today I’m taking an afternoon workshop with Ray and I can’t wait to share some of the secrets he reveals there.