April Elliott Kent is a professional astrologer living in San Diego, California. She is the author of Astrological Transits (Fair Winds Press, 2015), The Essential Guide to Practical Astrology (Alpha/Penguin 2011), and Star Guide to Weddings (Llewellyn 2008). Her astrological writing has also appeared in The Mountain Astrologer and Dell Horoscope magazines and in Llewellyn’s Sun Sign, Moon Sign, and Sabbats annuals. A popular lecturer, April has served on the faculty of UAC 2012 and 2018, ISAR 2016, and as a featured presenter at the 2016 State of the Art Conference. She is a member of ISAR and AFAN and President of the San Diego Astrological Society, one of the largest and oldest independent astrological organizations in the United States.
Astrologers are tempted to parse the sky, and people, into techniques and measurements; but people aren’t made that way. We are both complex and of a piece, each of us “one thing” made of planets and stars, mothers and fathers, and lovers reaching back to antiquity. After nearly three decades practicing astrology, basic tools speak to me best. Take the Moon: nothing is more fundamental than astrology that is easily viewed from your back stoop each evening. I like to think that’s how astrology started – with sky lovers watching the Moon dancing with the Sun, the wayward planets drifting across the stars, observing rhythms and cycles that are so like our own - So I offer two lectures on the Moon.
Curious Case of the Void-of-Course Moon: Dead Zones, or Moments of Truth?
This lecture grew out of my disagreement with modern astrological wisdom about the void-of-course Moon, which is meant to indicate astrological “dead zones” - unhappy times to start new projects, meet new people, or make important decisions. But I kept running across puzzling examples in which it just didn't seem to work the way it was supposed to. What began as a study in prediction eventually became, for me, a new way to think of the VOC Moon.
How I Met My Mother: The Natal Lunar Phase and Relationships
Relationship astrology is preoccupied with the passionate eroticism of Venus and Mars. But when the hormonal tidal wave recedes, the Sun and Moon are the relationship that’s left on the shore. Your first relationships -particularly with your parents - are symbolized by the relationship between the Sun and Moon at your birth. Your natal lunar phase suggests how you are wired for the give and take of human relationship, and your relationship expectations and needs. In a compatibility tour of the four lunar quadrants, we examine the eight major lunar phases: what do what they offer, what do they need, and what can they can learn in relationships?
www.bigskyastrology.com.