Horoscope for the Week of December 2, 2019

The world may seem more cautiously optimistic as we wend into December with a rush of Capricorn energy. Let the holiday season festivities begin! Who knows who we can meet, greet and sweep off their feet? Whoo hoo.

(Elvis Presley had Sun in Capricorn)

Never miss your horoscope again -- free sign up here. Here is my favorite book on astrology and a "must" for anyone interested in learning more: Secrets from a Stargazer's Notebook: Making Astrology Work for You and here's a guide to the best books available this month. This column is (c) 2019 MADAM LICHTENSTEIN, LLC., All Rights Reserved. For Entertainment Purposes Only. Madam Lichtenstein is the author of the best selling astrology book “HerScopes ” now in its 10th printing and available as an eBook

ARIES (MARCH 21 - APRIL 20)
Even bold Aries will be surprised at how much acumen and ability they have. You easily maneuver in powerful circles and find ways of pushing your agenda into the forefront of any discussion. Keep you eye on the big prize. Work carefully and slowly for long term advantage and success. Then you can rest on your laurels or, even better, a cushy lounge chair.

TAURUS (APRIL 21 - MAY 21)
There is something spectacular going on out there and you are the one to find it, Taurus. So get off your couch and start exploring your world. It might be a good time to take a class or two in something useful and fun. Think of new ways you can maximize your experiences and get others to join you. It will become a holiday season to savor.

GEMINI (MAY 22 - JUNE 21)
Your love has no bounds now, Gemini. So express yourself in ways that attract those who will give your life new meaning and joy. These are deeply serious times and we can all use deep connections to give us stability and confidence. Today you may feel a little adrift. But tomorrow you will be able to conquer the world with your stability.

CANCER (JUNE 22 - JULY 23)
Connect with someone or something important, Cancer. The way to your success now is through the help of other people. They can give you a clearer perspective and direction as well as help you fulfill your personal goals. Face to face is much better than virtually. So put aside the devices and devise ways to forge more personal one to one interactions.

LEO (JULY 24 - AUGUST 23)
Health will be much more of a focus for you now. Leos may be feeling a little more tired than usual or may feel that they are not accomplishing as much as they would like to. Find ways to take some time off, reduce the stress and totally relax. Only then will you have all the oomph you need to party hearty during the holiday festivities, Yoga anyone?

VIRGO (AUGUST 24 - SEPTEMBER 23)
Virgos feel totally inspired and creative now and why not? You have a bunch of great ideas that need to express themselves. So find ways of fully expressing yourself artistically, even if that leads to something totally practical and mundane. Everything that exists should be more beautiful. You add a bit of sugar to every moment. Swirl it around and take a sip.

LIBRA (SEPTEMBER 24 - OCTOBER 23)
Even open and friendly Libras may yearn for a moment or two of privacy now. It will be a good time to reflect and recharge in time for the holidays. Think more about what will make you feel more connected and contented. Then implement these changes or simple modifications into your daily life. You will feel more grounded and in control.

SCORPIO (OCTOBER 24 - NOVEMBER 22)
There is no one more persuasive than a Scorpio with a great idea. And you are full of great ideas now. See which one captures the imagination of the public and run with it. You will be surprised at how far you can go on a mere thought. But ideas alone won’t get the job done. Get strategic and set goals. Today a thought, tomorrow a policy.

SAGITTARIUS (NOVEMBER 23 - DECEMBER 22)
There will be times when money will seem like the all-important thing in your life. But remember, Sagittarius, money is just a conduit to what you really want in life. It is a means to an end and not the destination itself. So master your finances and make the money work for you in anything you think is vitally important in your life. No, not buying a red Ferrari...

CAPRICORN (DECEMBER 23 - JANUARY 20)
When life gives out lemons, Capricorns can make lemon chiffon pie with extra froth. So do it now while magic is in the air and you can do no wrong. It is a great time to flex your muscle and see where your great talent can take you. Connect with power brokers, get into influential circles and make your best moves. Who knows what 2020 can bring?

AQUARIUS (JANUARY 21 - FEBRUARY 19)
There is something divine about you now, Aquarius. You seem to know what will happen before it happens. That means that you can gain an advantage over those still wandering around in the dark. So spread you enlightenment and see what the path reveals. Also consider exploring the occult with a class in tarot or astrology. Or maybe you know that already...

PISCES (FEBRUARY 20 - MARCH 20)
If there is something brewing on the social scene, look for Pisces who is probably perking it up. There will be many opportunities to expand your social circle and meet interesting new folks. You are in the center of the action and can get the group to do whatever you want. How will you harness all of that power? I am sure that you will think of something.

(c) 2019 MADAM LICHTENSTEIN, LLC., All Rights Reserved. For Entertainment Purposes Only.
Lichtenstein’s blog www.thestarryeye.typepad.com covers everything new age. Her astrology book HerScopes is the best in sun sign astrology.

Lucky Numbers for the Week of November 29, 2019

Lottery ads tell us you only need a dollar and a dream. But it is also helpful to have a list of lucky numbers to help spur the good fortune ... or fortunes. So with that in mind, here are some lucky numbers that can be used in any helpful way. I gazed into a pool of water, Nostradamus-like, and contemplated the cosmos. Then I mixed the tarot cards and allowed the spirits to guide me to the cards that represent the lucky numbers for this week. Nothing is guaranteed but who knows ....?

I choose eight numbers because 8 is the number of of wealth.

Here are the lucky numbers for the week of November 29-December 5, 2019:

4, 15, 16, 34, 51, 61, 75, 77

There are many ways to delve into your own consciousness to find luck and intuition. Try reading Dream Power/Improve Your Luck (Super Strength Series) and see if your dreams give you any clues and premonitions. Here's a guide to the best books available this month

Witch Hunts - More than Just Salem. Scotland Had Many Many More

As recently reported, there has been an under reporting of the degree and length of witch hunting in Scotland. Over the span of 200 years, thousands of people, mainly women, stood accused of witchcraft and were often tortured and executed.

I have found many articles recently and here is a map (with a clickable link) to see who and exactly where:

Mapping Scotland’s Grim History of Witch-Hunting

A new interactive map project from Edinburgh University charts the bloody wave of persecution directed at women accused of witchcraft in Scotland.

In 1662 a woman named Janet McNicol, who lived on the Isle of Bute in Scotland, went on trial for witchcraft. She confessed—possibly under torture—of having met the Devil three times, in the form of a leper, a “gross copperfaced man” and a good-looking fellow who saved her from drowning on the quayside. For reasons undetailed, McNicol managed to escape sentencing for 13 years.  When she was captured in 1673, she was strangled and her body was burnt—the usual punishment for witches in Scotland.

Thanks to a newly published interactive map, a dark passage in the history of Scotland is being brought into the light: the country’s fierce, centuries-long persecution of people accused of being witches. From the mid-16th to the early 18th century, close to 4,000 people in Scotland—overwhelmingly women—were tried for witchcraft. Up to two thirds of this number may have been executed.

This during a period when brutal witch persecution was relatively common in Europe. But in Scotland, the number of accused witches reached four to five times the European average. The new map of Scottish witch trials, created by students at Edinburgh University with data provided by its school of history, doesn’t just highlight the breadth of this persecution. It tells us exactly who the victims were, where they lived or were tried and, in some cases, even what they said.

The map’s geolocations were collated by University of Edinburgh Data and Visualisation intern Emma Carroll and the university’s Wikimedian in Residence, Ewan McAndrew. Embedded above, it’s perhaps most easy to navigate on its own website, and it makes for fascinating, if grim, browsing.

Take the fate of another woman featured on the map, Agnes Sampsoune. Employed by locals in the lowland town of North Berwick as a healer and midwife—sometimes to people of high status—Sampsoune got caught up in the North Berwick Witch Trials. More than 70 people were investigated in these notorious trials, on suspicion of raising storms intended to drown Scotland’s King James VI and his new wife, Anne of Denmark, on wedding journeys they made across the North Sea to and from Scandinavia. After being made to suffer a “pain most grievous” Sampsoune ended up implicating 59 other people for witchcraft; she admitted, among other things, to traveling in a chimney-shaped boat to meet the devil at sea, and baptizing a cat.

Such details, likely forced under torture, pose as many questions as they answer. Why did Europe witness this unprecedented spike in witch persecution—and why did Scotland in particular experience it more intensely? The possible answers are various and complex.

Edinburgh University’s Julian Goodare is one of the researchers and compilers of the database upon which the map is based. In his book The European Witch Hunt, he sees parallels between the witch craze and modern anxieties: “Nowadays we have a wider range of cultural fears, such as fears of aliens, paedophiles or terrorists. Some of these fears are encouraged by politicians, or by commercial popular culture… [for example] belief in abduction by aliens is the modern cultural form of a sleep disorder that shaped some accusations of witchcraft and witches’ own confessions.”

The trials happened during a period when Northern Europe’s institutions of both spiritual and temporal power were shifting seismically.

There were nonetheless some preconditions to the persecution that were specific to Early Modern Europe. Fears of being attacked by neighbors through magical means are not unique to the time, and nor are beliefs that visions of the type reported by some witch suspects have supernatural inspiration. What is specific to this period, however, is a vision of demonic witchcraft—the idea of a person, usually a woman, who channels the Devil’s power (but doesn’t possess any of their own) after entering into a covenant with the Evil One.

This specifically religious crime was a concept propagated not so much by a superstitious general populace as by an educated, empowered elite. It’s possible to trace this clash of wordviews even in the excerpts included on the map, where magical beliefs, such as those expressed in 1616 by Elspeth Reoch of Orkney, are repeatedly interpreted as diabolical. While trial records reference the Devil, admissions from the accused often talk instead of folkloric beliefs, such as fairies and the Queen of Elphame.

The trials happened during a period when, due to the Protestant reformation, Northern Europe’s institutions of both spiritual and temporal power were shifting seismically—perhaps more so in Scotland than elsewhere. The country’s witchcraft act of 1563, which kick-started its witch craze, came just three years after Scotland officially adopted Protestantism. As the state was urging people to accept the new faith, persecution of witches was encouraged by the King himself: James VI (who later became James I of England) not only believed himself to have been the subject of witchcraft during his wedding voyage, he published a defense of witch-hunting in 1597 called Daemonologie.

Add to this an ingrained cultural misogyny that deemed women more open to corruption and periods of want that followed poor harvests, and you have the makings of an ongoing social panic in which women bore the brunt of widespread fear and religious upheaval.

Official belief in witchcraft drained away in Scotland in the early 18th century, until the witchcraft acts were repealed in 1735. In recent years, there has been a rediscovery of this bloody history—and a determination to commemorate more fully its victims. The skeleton of Lillias Adie, one of the few accused whose body was not burned after her death in prison in 1704, is due to be returned to a burial site reimagined as a memorial.

There are also plans to reconstruct a historic lighthouse as a national monument to victims of witch persecutions. In the meantime, Scots have use this new map as a way to reckon with this wave of cruelty that happened not just in a vaguely misty faraway time, but in places they know, in some cases just around the corner.

About the Author

Feargus O'Sullivan is a contributing writer to CityLab, covering Europe. His writing focuses on housing, gentrification and social change, infrastructure, urban policy, and national cultures. He has previously contributed to The Guardian, The Times, The Financial Times, and Next City, among other publications.

Horoscope for the Week of November 25, 2019

The Sun moves into Sagittarius this week and casts an expansive and sunny mood on everyone and everywhere. Let's dip into our sense of adventure and see where the cosmos can take us. How high is up? Wow!

(Miley Cyrus has Sun in Sagittarius)

Never miss your horoscope again -- free sign up here. Here is my favorite book on astrology and a "must" for anyone interested in learning more: Secrets from a Stargazer's Notebook: Making Astrology Work for You and here's a guide to the best books available this month. This column is (c) 2019 MADAM LICHTENSTEIN, LLC., All Rights Reserved. For Entertainment Purposes Only. Madam Lichtenstein is the author of the best selling astrology book “HerScopes ” now in its 10th printing and available as an eBook

ARIES (MARCH 21 - APRIL 20)
If you suddenly have a hankering to travel, now is the best time to do so, Aries. You have a heightened sense of adventure and are willing to take a few lucky risks to enhance any new experience. If time and money are tight, you will still find some fun ways to expand your horizons and see life from a new angle. Let’s hope that it isn’t all upside down!

TAURUS (APRIL 21 - MAY 21)
Randy Taureans will be ready for anything sexy, intimate and passionate now. Your engines are revved and you can’t be reined in (unless that is your “thing”). There will be a choice of all sorts of lusty endeavors but take things one at a time. Too much choice may undervalue every encounter. Seek quality, not quantity. Oh, look who I am talking to!

GEMINI (MAY 22 - JUNE 21)
Are there certain relationships that need a bit of a boost? If so, concentrate on them, Gemini. You will find that a little extra attention here and there will have great and positive impact not only immediately but also in the future. Prepare for a happy holiday season now by making partners or would-be partners a greater part of your life. And that is the easy part.

CANCER (JUNE 22 - JULY 23)
Cancers with a few things to do will now have the energy and the positive attitude to get them all done. You can see how just a little more effort in certain areas of your life will clean up the cosmic debris and fast forward you into a happier mindset and healthy outlook. Finish all work and then totally relax. Meditate, take a long walk or just chill at home.

LEO (JULY 24 - AUGUST 23)
Leos just want to have fun. And you are full of great creative ideas that will have people amazed and talking about it for weeks. So don’t sit around and wait for the party to find you. Get a few festive events planned and on the calendar, Holiday season is upon us and there will be much more on your calendar than you expect. So get your imagination going.

VIRGO (AUGUST 24 - SEPTEMBER 23)
Allow yourself some time to curl up and cocoon around the house, Virgo. You will not only enjoy your surroundings, you may even decide to make some small improvements. Did I say small? Just wait until you get started and your entire home could be revamped! Whatever you do, make it work for you in the long term. Don’t scrimp on the decor.

LIBRA (SEPTEMBER 24 - OCTOBER 23)
Libras are naturally diplomatic and now you are not only very charming (as usual) but also eloquent. Gather your ideas and start to make them into opinions. Say what you have to say, no matter how critical, and you will find a nice way of saying it that will get others to support you. Of course compliments often work better than criticisms.

SCORPIO (OCTOBER 24 - NOVEMBER 22)
Money figures prominently in your thoughts and actions now, Scorpio. That means that if you are interested in expanding your savings, now is a good time to do so. Not only do you have a bit more fiscal acumen, you are also finding lucky investments that are based on solid research and good advice. Save it all for a rainy day. Oh, do I feel a drop...?

SAGITTARIUS (NOVEMBER 23 - DECEMBER 22)
What is it about you, Sagittarius, that has everyone wanting to be around you. Is it your great sense of humor? Could it be your generous disposition? Whatever flies your kite, soar to the height of the social scene now and take advantage of your added charisma. Too, too soon life will go on and you’ll be back to earth ... but with some great memories.

CAPRICORN (DECEMBER 23 - JANUARY 20)
Your ESP is especially good now, Capricorn. What do you see for yourself going forward? Maybe you are ready for some big moves that change your life in significant ways. Or maybe you are ready to solidify your past gains and create a sturdy platform for future success. The path to enlightenment is paved with your past efforts. Wear sneakers and break into a run.

AQUARIUS (JANUARY 21 - FEBRUARY 19)
Surround yourself with friends and jolly company now, Aquarius. Not only will all of this extra social activity boost your spirits, it could also lead you to even more new friends and an expansive network of important and influential acquaintances. The next few weeks can lead you to new avenues of success or, if not, at least a lot of happy times. Your choice.

PISCES (FEBRUARY 20 - MARCH 20)
Although it may seem that no one is watching your professional progress, you will be surprised at how many are. Powerful folks are seeing what you are accomplishing and will soon make themselves available to you for help or advice. So keep on keeping on, Pisces. Stick to your path and full speed ahead. Today the cubicle. Tomorrow the corner office.

(c) 2019 MADAM LICHTENSTEIN, LLC., All Rights Reserved. For Entertainment Purposes Only.
Lichtenstein’s highly acclaimed astrology book “HerScopes” has the Stonewall horoscope.

Lucky Numbers for the Week of November 22, 2019

Lottery ads tell us you only need a dollar and a dream. But it is also helpful to have a list of lucky numbers to help spur the good fortune ... or fortunes. So with that in mind, here are some lucky numbers that can be used in any helpful way. I gazed into a pool of water, Nostradamus-like, and contemplated the cosmos. Then I mixed the tarot cards and allowed the spirits to guide me to the cards that represent the lucky numbers for this week. Nothing is guaranteed but who knows ....?

I choose eight numbers because 8 is the number of of wealth.

Here are the lucky numbers for the week of November 22-28, 2019:

2, 17, 23, 28, 37, 40, 46, 51

There are many ways to delve into your own consciousness to find luck and intuition. Try reading Dream Power/Improve Your Luck (Super Strength Series) and see if your dreams give you any clues and premonitions. Here's a guide to the best books available this month