The Crossroads of April

Astrologers all over are flipping out over April 2014.  I’ve been mostly flipping out over the weather lately, since like all humans, most of my cranial alarm bells are set for whatever is going on in my back yard.  And my back yard has been through a lot. Ice, snow, floods, and any minute, I’m expecting the four horsemen of the apocalypse to trot on by.

Maybe, too, I’m focused on my back yard because the larger trends seem so daunting.  There’s a palpable sense that some dramatic historical drama is being set up,  that the forces are aligning for a major change.  The T-square is already in place, and edging closer all the time.  Uranus, Pluto and Jupiter are all in tense aspect to each other, with these aspects exact on April 20 and 21. 

Pluto is about slow, inexorable transformations, while Uranus is about sudden rebellions and abrupt turns.  Jupiter is about business, economics, law, principles, and community, and all these things can swing wildly back and forth.  Since it’s currently in Cancer, Jupiter is also about the homeland, the sense of belonging.

On April 22 and 23, Mars joins the fray, plugging into the empty space and turning the T-square into a cross.  Mars is the planet of action, the trigger planet.  So this is when people could reach a moment of resolution.  This could express itself in angry words, flying bullets, or tanks in the street.  

Of course, that’s already true in Venezuela, as the protests drag on.  My spouse’s aunt says that her neighborhood in San Cristóbal is desolate, a maze of ripped-up streets.  It used to be that if you saw a gun, you were being mugged, but now the gunshot in the streets comes from the military, or from the government gangs that patrol on motorbikes.    

Things are tense everywhere.  We’ve already seen Russia carve off a piece of the Ukraine, abruptly altering the world map.  The people in the Crimea have had to figure out where they belong, as they adjust to this shift in the boundaries of their world.  They are either celebrating a return to the Russian motherland, or packing everything and bustling the whole family out the door, or just staying put and feeling anxious and displaced.

And we’ve seen the earth itself move, in various places.  A mountain lost its grip in Washington state, swallowing most of a small town.  There’ve been a bunch of little quakes in California.  Will we see more of this as these aspects grow stronger in April?  

These almost simultaneous oppositions are very rare, and that’s why astrologers are getting so excited.  Especially from April 20 to 23, it’s best to be a little more cautious than usual, especially if you have any planets close to 13° of cardinal signs.  The U.S. sun is at 13° Cancer, so, as a nation, we will be affected:  our priorities, our sense of identity, our national ego.  Venezuela, with the sun at 12° Cancer, will also have to redefine itself.  And Russia has Uranus at 13° Cancer, indicating an even more radical shift. 

Vladimir Putin has the sun at 13° Libra, so he will be right in the middle of what’s going on.  Mars, the trigger planet, is right on his sun – his leadership, his sense of purpose, his ego.  He’s definitely ready for a showdown.  Barack Obama has nothing in the sensitive range of cardinal signs, and is clearly not that interested in mixing it up with a cowboy, but with Neptune currently opposing his Pluto, some old karmic power issues are up for him.

When I first looked at Putin’s chart, especially in terms of the karmic influences, it definitely gave me pause.  He has a Leo conjunction involving his midheaven, Pluto, the south node, and Black Moon Lilith.  And to me, this says that he has a deep hunger for conquest, left over from a past life in which he didn’t quite get his chance to run the world.  When I see this, and when I think of the official homophobia and covert anti-Semitism in Russia, I get nervous. 

Adding to the charged atmosphere this month, there are also two eclipses in April.  The first, the total lunar eclipse that goes along with the full moon on April 15, is the most volatile one, since Mercury is at 13° Aries, side by side with the fiery planet of change, Uranus.  This could mean sudden shifts in intention, communication, or process.  There could be fighting words, a challenge, an audacious plan.   

By the new moon of April 29 – which brings us an annular solar eclipse – the pattern is dissipating a bit, and a few Taurus influences help to ground things.   Still, the energies of the cardinal cross and the eclipses will have lasting repercussions.  Countries, allegiances, and ideas will be juggled this month, and this new state of things will comprise our reality for quite a while. 

The cardinal cross indicates a time when things are being broken down.  We can all agree that some things need to break down, and to be rebuilt in a better way.  But the process itself is turbulent, scary, and sometimes dangerous.  So it’s time to take a wider view, a historical view.  We may all have to look beyond our backyard, and notice what’s coming down the road.

 

The Streets of Venezuela

Venezuela is not my homeland, but it was my home for nine years, so I have a strong connection to the country.  I hold it in my heart:  the warm and energetic people, the parrots swinging through the sky, the powerful statue of María Lionza in the middle of the Caracas Autopista. 

And it’s my wife’s country.  She’s the one who’s been losing sleep these past weeks, anxious about the bloodshed in the streets, angry about the repression, passing along crucial and hidden information to others on facebook.  She’s the one who’s been writing long tracts, clarifying the situation for those who are still buying the government line.

We both run into this a lot:  leftists who feel it’s important to support any government that calls itself socialist.  But history has shown us that leftist leaders are just as likely to suppress protest, to lose sight of human dignity, and to become hungry for more and more power.  For example, you can say good things about literacy and health care in Cuba, but you’re also dealing with a country that has inadequate mechanisms for dissent, challenge and change, and so responds to these things by controlling people’s movements and choices.

And that’s pretty much what people in Venezuela are ticked off about.  They are also frustrated with living conditions – one of the highest murder rates in the world, corruption at all levels of government, silencing of the press, tight currency controls, rocketing inflation, and constant scarcity.  And the Venezuelans I’ve known are a vocal, confident people, who are not about to keep their mouths shut and go along with whatever line the government is feeding them. 

And no, this doesn’t mean that they’re stooges of the US, controlled by the CIA, or any of that.  Neither does it mean they’re fascists, as president Nicolás Maduro keeps claiming. It just means that they have voices, voices to sing and shout with, and they want more power over their own lives, and some positive changes in their society.   

Venezuelans are angry, not terrorized - even though a dozen so young protestors have been killed, and many more tear-gassed, peppered with buckshot, or arrested.  But Maduro’s responses have just made them angrier.  This rebellion is being shared on lots of little cameras, even though there have been blockages in Internet access and Twitter.  Still, the videos of National Guardsmen kicking and hitting unarmed protestors are getting around.  

As an astrologer, what do I think will happen next in Venezuela?  This is definitely a watershed time, with Pluto closely opposing the Venezuelan sun.  It’s a tense, pressurized struggle for power, with the health and well-being of the country at stake.  The basic question is one of identity, with the government basing its vision on the Cuban model, and the majority of the people struggling for something looser, freer, and more natural to them. 

And yes, I actually do think Maduro is an idealist, with his sun in Sagittarius squaring Jupiter in Pisces – although it’s true Pinochet had the same configuration.  Maduro is a true believer, someone who has found both temporal power and inspiration in the same philosophy.  He’s also an emotional person, with a preponderance of water signs, and his success has largely come from his ability to attach himself to the right people, to demonstrate that he’s caring and trustworthy. 

His Achilles heel is that he worries that he’s not big or important enough, and this is probably what’s caused him to react so fiercely to the protestors.  He’s acting from an old ego wound, so often a cause of dangerously defensive behavior.  In November 2013, weeks before the municipal elections, he invited Venezuelans to help themselves freely to all the merchandise in appliance stores, with the protection of the military.  He figured it would make him popular, and help his party win, and mostly it worked.  Now he’s extending the Carnival vacation by two extra days, again working hard to win the hearts (if not the minds) of the people.    

And I do think things will calm down fairly soon, perhaps from protestor fatigue combined with the temptations of Carnival, perhaps from a few government concessions. Mars retrogrades on March 1, and Saturn on March 2, giving a general need to go back and take care of untended obligations.   

The retrograde Mars in Libra could mean a reversal of course both for the protestors and the government.  This indicates a time to reassess one’s strategies, tools and methods, and figure out if they are actually having the desired effect.  And this is one of the problems of the Venezuelan protest movement, a diffusion of goals and solutions. On both sides, there may need to be a lot of processing about ethics and principles.

With Mars in Libra, both sides will claim the mantle of old revolutionary icons, carving Simón Bolivar neatly in half.  However, as independent, progressive and enlightened as Bolivar was, he was no socialist, and in fact, he could easily have been labeled an oligarch – one of Maduro’s favorite insults, inherited from Chávez.  Bolivar believed that the landed gentry should be the ones in charge.  But there’s not always a lot of connection between the real human being and the icon he or she becomes. 

In any event, there are some gentler influences during the next month. Jupiter is also just about to go direct and pass over Venezuela’s sun in Cancer, and tomorrow’s new moon makes a promising trine to Jupiter, as well.  These indicate more generosity, less defensiveness, and an expansion of opportunities.  And so people may make a little more room for each other, and work out some tentative agreements. 

March is more cerebral than February was, and it’s a chance for the movement to enter a new and more thoughtful phase.  But there’s still an emphasis on justice.  At the new moon on March 1, the square between Jupiter and Uranus is very strong, and this is an independent, visionary, forward-looking aspect, hungry for positive change, eager for self-expression, intolerant of repression.  This aspect has been predominant for weeks now, and was exact a few days ago, on February 26.  It will continue to affect us all until early May. 

And so all over the world, we see people in the streets, making it clear what they believe, what they want, what they’re willing to fight for.  And thousands of passionate, clamoring people do make a difference, sooner or later, one way or another.  To speak out is to indicate faith in a different future, and so this is a time of unrest but also a time of hope.  

Out of the Comfort Zone

My spouse and I went to California for a week in January, and got away from winter.  Walking into the brilliant sunlight of Los Angeles, I felt that I was on some gorgeous golden planet, far from reality.  After only a week, I forgot winter; it seemed like some odd, improbable concept.

When it was time to fly back to DC, we found out that National Airport had been closed all day because of the snow.  Our plane change was in Detroit, where everyone but us deplaned in parkas and overcoats.  When we were loaded onto our flight, the pilot told us that if we couldn’t land in DC, well, we’d land someplace else.

We did land, hearing that we were only the fourth flight to do so that day.  Outside, the air was thick with snow, and our cab ride home seemed interminable.  The Beltway was a long gray ribbon, with a few slow, half-blind cars bumbling along.  Then we were dragging our suitcases through the snow to the lighted front door, where my mother-in-law and grandmother-in-law welcomed us home.

Since then, the song “California Dreaming” hasn’t left my head (except for a very brief phase when it was replaced by “Da Doo Run Run”).  It’s snowed again, gotten really cold, iced, gotten slightly warmer, melted some, and then re-snowed.  Icicles have dripped from the roof onto the welcome mat, sending a mixed message.  There are treacherous slats of ice on the sidewalk, but it doesn’t much matter, because nobody wants to walk anywhere. 

Of course, it’s been dreary, but not really abnormal for this semi-Southern, semi-Northern city.  It’s my Southern friends who are really confused, seeing snow as a rare creature that doesn’t usually visit their neighborhoods.   Like polar bears searching for their missing ice floes, they’ve been flummoxed by the strange weather patterns.

And if I was in California, if I was back there in the land of my pervasive inner pop tune, I would be dealing with a historic level of drought.  Everywhere, the weather is pushing towards extremes beyond the human comfort level.  It’s ironic, in that it’s been our own pursuit of comfort that has triggered the extremes we are beginning to experience. 

Jupiter is in Cancer, the sign of comfort.  Cancer is a sweet, nurturing, childlike water sign that gives strong attachments to family, home, and neighborhood.  It’s kind, sentimental, empathic, and not particularly fond of the unfamiliar.  But Jupiter has been dealing with an opposition from Pluto, representing the forces of transformation, and so this has not been a restful time.  Everyone has been a bit tense lately. 

Earlier in January, the chemical spill affecting the water in West Virginia was an example of this aspect.  Pluto deals with toxins, pressure, stress, anxieties, and underlying cracks in the system.  My healer says that lots of people have been discovering boils, pimples and abscesses, examples of hidden poisons coming to the surface.  And of course, another random shooting incident – this one a few days ago at a mall in Columbia, Maryland – makes everyone feel more stressed, less comfortable, less safe.  While most of us just bite our nails, some people deal with intense anxiety by shooting strangers. 

This Jupiter/Pluto opposition continues through the first half of February, and it overlaps with the even more volatile Jupiter/Uranus square, which goes into orb the first week of February, and will hang around the rest of the winter.  Uranus deals with sudden shocks, disruptions and rebellions, and the Jupiter/Uranus square can signal an abundance of these.  So Jupiter in Cancer is not going to spend much time with its feet up, sipping hot cocoa before the fire this winter.  There are wolves at the door. We will all be shaken out of our comfort zones.

This may spell bad news for the more toxic leaders of the world, as they try to hold on to power in the face of the public will.  This is generally a losing battle, and even more so these days.  But those who are addicted to money and power are not going down without a fight.    

And what about the Olympics?  This is not the best time for them, especially in such a war-torn region.   But looking at the planetary patterns, I see a very different kind of problem. 

The day before the Olympics are due to start, Mercury goes retrograde in Pisces, right next to Neptune, and this is a particularly vague, confusing, disconnected influence.  This doesn’t look like bombs and mayhem, but rather like everybody wandering off in the wrong direction and never making it to the finish line.  There are quite a lot of things that could go wrong, many of them having to do with mixed signals and bad communication.

As we know, Sochi lies in the warmest region in Russian, and there has actually been no snow there this winter.   Snow is there, however, well-guarded, kept in snow vaults under thermal blankets, glued together with special snow salt.  This sounds like a pretty vulnerable situation when the eyes of the world are upon you, and when Mercury is retrograding in a water sign.  Is this alien snow really going to work out?  It sounds like the beginning of a remake of the Blob.

Bad communication can also be dangerous with the abundance of uniformed men and women who will be everywhere in Sochi.  They’ll be holding lethal pieces of hardware while listening to garbled messages through their ear-pieces.  And there’s another inhibiting influence a few days after the Olympics begin, the sun/Saturn square, which tends to delay everything.  With all this, I’m beginning to wonder if the Olympics will even happen.    

Whatever happens, Mercury will look on laughing, in its trickster aspect.  And so some of the excitement generated by the rebellious Jupiter/Uranus square will fizzle out, and some of the threats will fail without anyone ever knowing about them.   Some demonstrations will be derailed because of poor planning, and some bomb-makers will take the wrong bus and never make it to the target area.    

And some people will just have changes of heart.  There will be those who suddenly look at their guns and bombs, and don’t like what they see, and toss them in the nearest dumpster.  Some people, saddened by all the wrong around them, will join together and protest more peacefully.  Many will recognize the power and purity of non-violence.   

Pisces is a strong spiritual influence, and so some folks will start praying more, and some will have powerful and beautiful visions.  These may be visions of connection, of oneness with other people and with the earth.  And sometimes these visions will mean going backwards, making corrections, asking for forgiveness, and realigning with the best in oneself.

And that’s not necessarily comfortable either.  But in the end, it may be what saves us all.     

Hello 2014

Goodbye, 2013.  It was a good year for lesbians in the US, with marriage equality established in so many new states (starting with Maryland), and with DOMA being struck down by the Supreme Court.  And it was a good year for me and Marisol, as we got married for the third and probably the last  time. 

I know a lot of other lesbian couples who’ve experienced multiple marriages.  And there are still a lot of my friends who are experiencing the schizophrenia of being married federally but not locally.  These are the long-time couples who leave their Florida or Georgia homes and take a little vacation in New York City, announcing their marriages obliquely on facebook. 

 There are still other rights and protections that we gay people need, but marriage rights are a huge piece of the puzzle.  After all, what sets us apart is our choice of partner.  Of course, gender identity questions are connected to this as well, but hey, they’re connected to everything.  To me, gender stereotypes and misogyny are the most basic sources of social dysfunction, along with racism.   

 But what makes you gay is the romantic, emotional and sexual connection to someone matching your gender, regardless of who you each are as individuals.  And so when this attachment is seen as legitimate, we’ve won this particular battle. 

 And, yes, I know that the level of suffering has risen for gay people in Nigeria, Uganda and Russia.  I know that same-sex relationships must still be hidden in many parts of the world, as well as in parts of the U.S.  There are still people who don’t dare to love, for fear of losing their jobs, alienating their communities, or being turned out from their families.   But still I’m heartened by the progress we’ve made, enormously heartened.  And I say that 2013 has brought us further along, further towards winning this battle, than any year in U.S. history.

 Love is an enormous healing force.  When humans have the right to love – without being mistreated or harassed around it, without having to deny or hide it  – then there’s a rush of well-being that travels like a soft wind, and affects everyone, no matter their political stance.  Unhappy people are unhappy parents, children, siblings, neighbors, workers, drivers, shoppers, cops, teachers, lawyers, doctors, and salespeople -  and if you’re next in line, you may be the person who gets the brunt of that misery.   There is really no down side to providing safe passage for love. 

 And what about 2014?  How does the coming year look for gay people, and for all people?  

 Neptune continues in its own sign -  the gentle, spiritual sign Pisces, where it’s been since early in 2012 -  and this is about blurring boundaries and erasing divisions between people.  I think Neptune’s sign has had a lot to do with the burgeoning acceptance of the right to love freely.  Historically, gay relationships have required a great expertise in sleight of hand, and Neptune is the planet of magicians and shape-shifters. 

 So I think these trends will continue, and perhaps the most homophobic countries will experience a gentling of attitudes as 2014 goes on.  Neptune in Pisces also indicates a rise in spiritual awareness, and this has nothing to do with established religion.  Pisces has more to do with the barefoot saint, the holy ones who see beyond the sharp angles of the material world.  Look at our current Pope, who stresses the truly spiritual qualities of humility and acceptance, rather than the power, control and stern judgment associated with the office. 

However, there are definitely some hard edges to the coming year.  The changes begun in 2011 and 2012 will continue to manifest, sometimes in abrupt and controversial ways, as the Uranus/Pluto square is still strong in the coming year.  This gives a revolutionary urge to dismantle existing structures. This breaking-down process can doesn’t always lead to any kind of liberation, and sometimes the effects are tragic.  And sometimes it means that the existing powers find stronger defenses for their corporate and governmental institutions. 

Uranus is in Aries, the sign of individuality and direct action,  while Pluto's sign, Capricorn, stands for the power of government and corporations.  So there’s a David and Goliath feel to the situation, with the brave individual and the powerful giant. 

On the one hand, it’s the primeval struggle between father and son for power, a basic theme in patriarchy.  On a broader level, it’s the process of dismantling all tight, limiting structures for newer and freer systems.  The danger is that in a violent reach for power, only the strongest survive, and then the new systems they create tend to be more repressive than before. 

 In the world we live in, the US is seen by many as a behemoth, an arrogant and unconscious power.  This encourages young men to become the Hero of the story, to become David, even when the sacrifice is the ultimate one.   This is when it becomes obvious that both the brave individual hero and the giant institution are male entities, and so this is a father/son fight.  We all know that more women in the picture corresponds to less posturing, and moves us all closer to compromise and peace. 

 Is the US a behemoth, an ugly giant?  This country’s saving grace is the ebb and flow of democracy, which prevents it from becoming totally calcified.  With this, it becomes more responsive to the voices of women, people of color, gay people, and immigrants.  However, it incurs the wrath of those white men who call themselves the Tea Party, and who would rather drown democracy than share power with those who are unlike them.   Like the terrorists throwing themselves against the walls of this institution, they are also funded by men who maintain a strong but rigid structure.

 Where is the true individualism?  Where do we see it?  It doesn’t show up much in the newspapers, or in the shifting balance between the larger powers.  We will have to look closely to see it in 2014, but it will be there.  And of course, as always, the best place to look is within.

And for gay people, as we become freer to love, we are freer within ourselves.  What do we do with this freedom?  What do we do with this newfound strength?  It can be such a relief to blend in, to be like everyone else, to be accepted, and we may not feel the need to go out and get involved in any kind of social or political struggle.  And yet, as long as we live in a world of dueling patriarchies, none of us are safe. 

The challenge in 2014 will be to recognize how much our lives are woven into certain larger structures, while at the same time recognizing that constant spark of freedom within ourselves.  We have the right to think for ourselves, and to act for ourselves.  But in everything we do, interconnecting structures are formed, undermined, and formed again.  Let us do this consciously. 

And so happy new year!  May 2014 be a year of peace, of growing understanding between us all.  May we spread our love around.  May we love many.  

Lights and Action

Here in the northern hemisphere, the seasonal celebrations do make sense.  It’s scary when the sun begins to disappear, and so people need to compensate with brightness and glitter.   I can imagine the conversation going like this, as those early Europeans hung out in front of their caves, whittling goddess figures with bits of flint.

“Is it just my imagination, or is the sun leaving us a little earlier every day?”

“OMG, you’re right!  Have we offended it, do you think?”

“Maybe we should get out some shiny things that look like the sun.  If it sees pictures of itself, it will want to stay longer.” 

 “Great idea.  I’ll put some torches up in the trees, and you go get some iridescent rocks.”

 We still do this.  The effort gets more and more frenzied until we get to the winter solstice, and then, miracle of miracle, it works.  The sun takes note of our homage to its brilliance, and begins to stay longer. 

This is also the season dedicated to the two-thousand-year-old sun god, Jesus.  It seems that Jesus was a gentle, peaceful figure for the most part, with a message about forgiving everyone and not owning anything.  In its checkered history, Christianity hasn’t always promoted this approach.   What happens when a religion is embraced by the wealthy and powerful, when it’s used to judge and punish?  It’s corrupted – with less and less of the original poverty, humility and compassion.  

 However, some vestiges of the original Jesus story pop up now and then.  The Pope, for example, said, “Who am I to judge?”  This is not to say that the Pope and I agree on a lot of things, but it’s nice that we are both trying to be less judgmental.  We all know that Jesus was not into casting stones.   I also appreciate the ministers who have been quietly urging their congregations to support and sign up at the government health care website.  I’ve heard that Jesus was into taking care of the sick.

 In our society, there’s a pressure towards excess at this time of year, because we live in a world that equates commercial enterprises with success.  Spiritual practices – including Christianity – can offer a different set of values, ones that are older and more powerful. 

 It’s a contradictory time, partly loud and boisterous, partly quiet and meditative - and that makes sense since the sun is moving through one of the double signs, Sagittarius, and soon Mercury will be there too.  Sagittarius is the centaur - half human and half animal - and this sign is always trying to get away from itself, and concurrently trying to get itself together.  Inner peace and balance are not easy to achieve when the horsy part of yourself is always eager to run, to leap, to chase ecstatically through the fields.  Whenever anything is good, more is better.  Whenever anything is tough, there’s always the temptation to run away.     

 But during the next month, the impulsive fire of Sagittarius is tempered by more watery influences. Water is not as strong as it was in November, but  Saturn, Jupiter and Neptune are still in water signs, so there continue to be a lot of strong feelings.  Intuition is acute, delicate sensibilities more pronounced, and there are deep sympathies that can dissolve the usual divisions between people. 

 A balancing influence during the middle of December is the trine between Jupiter in Cancer and Saturn in Scorpio.   Jupiter expands and Saturn contracts, so these planets have opposite effects most of the time.  They are the two social planets, with Jupiter encouraging social connections, rewarding people for their gifts to the community, while Saturn demonstrates the social limits, and scolds people who flout traditional taboos. 

 This harmonious aspect shows more responsiveness between the two.  When they are in trine, Saturn is less cautious and fearful, and Jupiter less ambitious and extravagant.  They take turns, each allowing the opposite principle to operate.   Jupiter expands until it no longer makes sense to go further, and Saturn contracts until it no longer feels good to guard the limits.   Each rescues the other from extremism.  And so we may see everybody being more reasonable, especially around the time this aspect is exact on December 12. 

 However, this is followed by the full moon on December 17, in the fast-moving signs of Sagittarius and Gemini, on the same day that the rebellious planet Uranus goes direct.  A lot of energy is unleashed at this time.  It’s a time when things can run away, catch on fire, or get hit by lightning, so it’s not the best time to do anything wild and crazy.  If you can stop yourself.     

 And this begins a tumultuous few weeks.  The harmonizing Jupiter/Saturn trine recedes, like a couple of maiden aunts edging away from a murder scene.  And Mars engages with the Uranus/Pluto square.  Mars represents the urge to action, and it’s currently moving through the peace-loving and justice-seeking sign Libra.  Thinking of the pope, I’m moved to ask if we can seek justice without making judgments.  It has been done before.  Think Nelson Mandela.  It requires the ability to forgive, while not forgetting. 

 Even in the idealistic sign and generally moderate sign Libra, though, Mars is forceful.  And it will be leaping into a long-running  war – the Uranus/Pluto square, the conflict between new rebellious forces and old entrenched interests.  Old systems, ways of dividing people based on class, race and gender, are crumbling, and this is mostly a drawn-out process.  But this is one of those times when there’s more and faster movement, and when the resistance is also stronger.  Battle lines will be drawn.   

Mars is going to be in Libra till next spring, since it retrogrades here, and it will engage with the Uranus/Pluto square twice more.  And so the message will be writ large, and then underlined a couple of times.  Mars in Libra asks how we choose to treat each other, how we can cooperate, how we can live peacefully together in this world.  And because it’s Mars, it doesn’t always ask politely.   

These are the questions that come up, loud and clear,  as we move through another solstice, and towards the end of another calendar year.  It’s one of those times when several cycles come together, and these times are always unstable but highly creative.  Mars, as a catalyst, will point unerringly towards the next collective change – and it will be about balancing the scales.   

Silent Change

Everything changes so completely at this time of year.  One week, I stand on the walkway in front of our house and see green trees all around me, and the next week, the yard has become gold with dropped leaves.  When did it happen?  There was no particular moment of shift.   The change was both dramatic and imperceptible.

 This is not uncommon.  We are living through a time of extreme changes, but it’s hard to say when one phase ends and the next begins.  We just passed the fourth exact square of Uranus and Pluto, the middle of a four-year shift, but it won’t be till sometime in the future that we’ll be able to look back and see exactly what happened during this time.

 As November begins, Mercury is retrograde, so it’s a time of reflection, of taking stock, of checking to see what damage has been done.  For the Republican party, there’s been plenty, and so there’s a general shifting of allegiances as the more moderate politicians disassociate themselves from the lunatic fringe.   

For the government (and by extension, the Democrats) there are also embarrassments.  For one thing, the spying program is getting a lot of publicity, and it’s definitely not used to this.  All countries spy on each other’s citizens, and by tacit agreement, nobody says anything about it.  There are always groups of people who know what’s really going on, while the rest of us just sit around reading thrillers and watching spy films and feeling very little affected by the real thing.

 Many surveillance programs were put in place with the Patriot Act, a bill that garnered a great deal of liberal outrage when it was signed by George Bush.  Basically, it said that the government doesn’t need any excuse (or a warrant)  to read your emails or listen to your phone conversations, because, after all, you might be a terrorist.  And if you have nothing to hide, what are you so upset about?

 

Now it’s ironic that the Act is biting a Democratic administration on the butt.  But since it is, maybe all the conservatives who rallied for it in the first place will take steps to revise it. 

And these revelations about surveillance – and the answering outrage – fit in well with the astrological picture, since this is a time when the sun, Mercury, Saturn and the north node are all in Scorpio, the sign of secrecy.  Scorpio rules not only the process of hiding things, but also the inevitable point when they are revealed.  It’s the sign of death and rebirth, dedicated to shape-shifting.  Nothing ever really dies, although many things are buried.  Now is the time when some of these things return.  And if you had a lot of zombies stopping at your door last night and asking for candy, you saw this in action.

The drone program, too, has been largely undercover.  Sleek planes zoom out of a blue sky and kill people in a chillingly surgical way.  Better than bombing cities and slaughtering hundreds, right?  And also easier to ignore, until a couple of Pakistani children testify to Congress about watching their grandmother murdered before their eyes.

 Halloween always happens with the sun in Scorpio, the sign which takes everyone closer to that breath-catching portal between the worlds.  But this year, there are stronger Scorpio influences, with Saturn and the north node – both karmic pointers – in this sign.  And so we are all using this time of stasis, when Mercury is retrograde, to go deeper, to learn the things that we aren’t sure we want to know. 

 Scorpio is associated with deep, moist places – caves, cellars, deep wells, and the unconscious.  Often the things that emerge from these places are moldy, and they smell like anger, fear, paranoia, anxiety, and obsession.   With the intense concentration of Scorpio elements, a lot of very old stuff is being dug up right now, released to the healing influence of fresh air.   Often there’s good stuff underneath the crust   – courage, desire, self-preservation.  How to reclaim it? 

 This process is ongoing at this moment in our history.  There are still a lot of truths to uncover, and many of them will emerge during the second half of the Uranus/Pluto square – from now until 2015 – as the world slowly takes a different shape.   Later on, we’ll ask, “How did we not know that?  How is it possible that we couldn’t see it?”  But we can only see what we are ready to see.  And when we finally learn to see into the shadows, we’ll know how to live in the light. 

 

Meanwhile, change walks among us on silent feet.  The ones who are screaming loudest are not the ones who are directing it these days. 

 

So don't be afraid of what's been hidden.  When you brush off the dirt and mold, sometimes you find old lessons about surviving together on this planet.   Learn what you can.  And if you live in Winchester, Virginia, vote for my brilliant brother, Larry L. Yates, for delegate.  He's been a truth-teller and a change agent all his life. 

 

 

 

 

Law

Roving Lesbian Astrologer
October 2013

So they did it.  They shut down the federal government. 

 

I admit to being a bit of an anarchist.  I sometimes fantasize about a world in which people could live without laws, guided by a sense of justice, tempered by kindness.  However, I don’t think this is the way to get to that place.  Having a fully functional government on Friday and shutting it down on Tuesday – well, that’s a bit abrupt.  I don’t think we’re quite ready to do completely without it, guys.

But tell that to those Republicans. 

It’s funny how this party that was once so cautious, so straight-laced, so resistant to any kind of change, has become a bunch of flaming anarchists.  They’re definitely a different animal, and I don’t think anyone could call them conservative any more.   They’re the red flags, the wild-eyed ones, the revolutionaries. But wait, don’t revolutionaries have to have some kind of unifying principle?  What is it, for them, exactly? 

 

It’s pretty unclear.  Are all these contortions just their resistance to the first African-American president?  Pathetic but possible.  Is it all part of a well-funded master plan to eliminate the inconveniences of democracy entirely  - by weakening government and strengthening the power of corporations? Lots of evidence pointing that way. 

Astrologically, this is all about the Uranus/Pluto square, the revolutionary aspect I’ve been writing about since it first went into orb with Occupy Wall Street in 2011.  The Tea Party is the flip side of Occupy in some ways, perhaps a reaction to it.  But it succeeds, not just because it’s got some deep pockets to draw from, but also because it speaks to a collective sense that something is intrinsically wrong.  A lot of people, struggling to make their budgets, need a villain of some kind. 

Gay people had that spot for quite a while, but now we’ve been revealed to be fairly harmless.  Nobody could see that many people squealing with happiness because they’re getting married, and still think of us as a threat to the fabric of society.

 

So it’s the government, like a bad parent, that gets the blame.  And this fits perfectly with the symbolism of the Uranus/Pluto square.  Pluto is in the parental sign Capricorn, while Uranus is in the sign of young blood, Aries.  It indicates an epic battle:  fathers against sons, Zeus vs. Cronus,  established structures against sudden new impulses. 

 

And right now this ongoing aspect is being triggered by the sun in Libra, turning the square into a T-square, opposing Uranus and squaring Pluto.  Libra is the sign of law, and in the sharp angles of this figure, law is threatened.  The main law that’s under attack right now, of course, is the Affordable Care Act.  But we can see from this configuration that this is only one prong in an assault on our current approach to law-making, with its emphasis on compromise. 

 

Most  laws are hammered out over time, by people with fundamentally different belief systems, and the effect is to bring change along slowly.  Too slowly, often, and sometimes people die because of that.  They die because there’s not enough justice in the world, or because there are insufficient social safety nets, or because a useless war generates its own momentum.  But when enough people care enough about the problem, change happens.

 

And it’s codified in law.  Of course, not every law is good, and I could point to hundreds of U.S. laws that have been purely awful, through the centuries.  But given the flawed democracy that we have, there is still some accountability, and living by law is still better than the alternative. 

So how long will this shut-down last?  The sun/Pluto square is exact on October 1, while the sun/Uranus opposition is exact on October 3.  So there will probably be a lot of fussing, fuming and general unrest until the end of the week.  On Friday night, there’s a new moon in Libra, and I think that will move Congress towards facing its problem – mainly that it’s made itself redundant. I can see a scurrying in the corridors, and people asking each other whether this has gone on long enough.  Then the Tea Party will decide that it’s made its point, whatever the heck it was, and Ted Cruz will figure he’s famous enough, at least for the duration. 

In the early part of next week, Mercury conjuncts Saturn, and this could be called the “sadder but wiser”  aspect.  Everybody has to work extra hard to get it all put back together.  If by some chance the new moon doesn’t bring a compromise, then this could be called the “major depression” aspect.   It is always possible, because the Uranus/Pluto square is getting stronger all the time, and won’t be exact until November 1. 

So we are going to see a lot of agitation, and yes, raising the debt ceiling could be another knock-down drag-out fight.  There’s some creeping uncertainty associated with that, since there’s a Mars/Neptune opposition going into orb right around the October 17 deadline.  This is a Halloween aspect, the kind in which you feel someone breathing down the back of your neck, but you’re not sure if anyone is really there.  I assume this will be the general state of mind at that time, an ongoing anxiety.

But just when everybody is getting accustomed to living on stress medication, Mercury goes retrograde on October 21.  And it actually does this in a pretty benign spot, close to the trine of Jupiter.  So at that point, I think the feeling will be that we dodged a bullet, and hey, c’mon, let’s celebrate.  It will be short-lived, but it will help people relax and take Mercury retrograde in stride.  So you miss an appointment or two?  You’ve still got your health!    

Mercury will be retrograde for three weeks, giving everybody time to clean up from the messes we’ve made.  Government workers will put their equally stressed-out philodendrons back on their desks, and try to catch up on overdue work.  Sex scandals will be back in the news. Obamacare will chug along, with a few glitches which will make the House hyperventilate.  And Republicans, who will still feel the urge for blood, will have to make do with ripping apart their weakest members.

On Halloween, the moon will be in Libra, faintly echoing the current T-square, and so people will think about what law and government mean to them.  At root, government is agreement.  And yes, at root, we need it because we can’t always trust ourselves to do the right thing.  Will we ever be able to live without laws?  Even the birds have their ways of agreeing on territory. 

I think the only way to eliminate laws and government is to completely eliminate scarcity. Maybe that would do it.  And until then,  I’m happy with any laws that take us – however slowly -  in that direction.