Of course, you know by now that an asteroid "the size of a football field" (are we talking American football or European? Soccer pitches are way larger, I believe) will graze by the Earth today. But we were surprised when another bit of celestial debris crashed through the atmosphere earlier today - a meteorite exploded over Russia, injuring more than 500 people.

Like most contemporary astrologers, I don't really know what to say about comets, crashing meteorites, and such. I take it that back in the day they were considered omens, and it seems like they were not especially good omens, at that.

I checked the chart for the 1908 Tunguska Meteor Event, and found no real correspondence with today's charts. Tunguska is an interesting chart, though, with an incredible stellium in Cancer, just past of solar eclipse.

Perhaps we can relate today's small hit and near-miss in the context of the upcoming Saturn station to retrograde, this Monday, the 18th. Saturn has been rocking through Scorpio, making it all the way up to 11 and half degrees of the sign since October. Among his activities has been a constructive sextile to Pluto in Capricorn, helping to transform (and consolidate) power. Capricorn is the sign of structure and institutions, and Scorpio is associated with transformation and -eventually - healing.

It could be that we should indeed see today's celestial events as warnings: to do so resonates nicely with the Saturn/Scorpio theme. We're being reminded of the fragility of our planet, and the tenuousness of life on our own small rock. We have yet to really accept the massive environmental problems we face, and have done very little to address them seriously. No doubt Saturn in Scorpio will remind us that we need to see life with the awareness of death, and to recognize the cost of what we create in our limited environment.