A Love Letter to Michfest

So I’m getting ready to go to Michigan, the fortieth and the last Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival.  I haven’t started packing yet, although I leave the day after tomorrow. 

I remember my first Michfest, twenty-seven years ago.  It was 1988, and Marisol and I had just gotten married that spring.  It took a long time to get in the gate, and the sun set before we found ourselves on the land.  We were tired and dispirited as we walked along, carrying all our gear, peering into the shadows, looking for a place to camp.  Marisol was the expert camper, I was a novice, so I was mostly holding the flashlight while she struggled with the various tent pieces. 

The next morning we thought it was raining, but when we poked our heads outside the tent, we found we’d camped right next to the showers.  There were a row of naked women laughing and squealing, since the water was icy cold.  It was endlessly entertaining.  We already felt better about being there. And later on, when we got in the water ourselves, we experienced something akin to being inside a Sno-Cone.

Sometime between now and then, they added heaters to the showers, and so women don’t necessarily sing out when they get into them.  Michfest has changed, grown up.  They used to have a special over-40s area, and at some point, it became over-50s.  Camping has gotten harder for me as I’ve entered my 60s, and Marisol has completely given it up. 

But I still go once in a while.  When I’m there, I still give astrology workshops, as I have since 1988.  I soak up the feeling of being in a woman’s village, a place where women are absolutely safe from predators (except mosquitos).  A place where women can get away from the male ego, and its tendency to demand all the space and all the attention.  A place where we support each other, listen to each other, and give each other room to create.  It’s not like all women are the same, but we do have a culture of our own, and it’s hard to see this in the ordinary world, where the harsher light of male culture drowns it out. 

This is not to say that Michfest has been a peaceful Eden all these years.  Women do differ, and there have been vehement disagreements over all aspects of feminism, sexuality, gender, race, and cultural appropriation. Fierce battles have been fought with words, with the ultimate goal a collective raised consciousness.  It’s an ongoing process, sometimes as shocking as those cold-water showers, but many of these conflicts have led to changes in the way the festival is organized.

In the last few years, Michfest has been embroiled in the most virulent conflict of its life, from a group of MTF transgender activists who say the festival discriminates against them.  They initiated a boycott against Michfest and the artists who performed there.   The conflict may have begun as a desire to be included, but ended up as a campaign to destroy. 

I remember when S/M women felt that there was no place for them at the festival, back in the day, and now there is an area where they can play all night long.  There were signs that this same process of assimilation was happening with trans women, but we’ll never know how it might have played out.  Michfest is ending. 

And from my point of view, there’s still a terrible need for it in the world.  Lesbians are more assimilated than they were in 1988, but feminism hasn’t progressed all that much since then.  There is no other place where several thousand women can live for a week without men. There is no other place where we can discover who we are, and what kind of world can be created without patriarchy. 

The aspects during the coming week show a time of great jubilation, and a time of mourning and sadness, all at once.  Venus, Jupiter and Mercury will be together in the bold, exuberant sign Leo, and this is perfect for getting up on there on the stage and giving everything you have to give.  It’s a wonderful planetary grouping for a week-long celebration, in which every woman dresses in whatever gives her most joy.  It’s great for group hugs and kisses, and campsites festooned in banners and ribbons. 

But all three planets are squaring Saturn, the planet of limitation.  Saturn is about knowing when it’s time to give up, to let go.  Saturn turns out the lights when the party is over. 

And so I expect to see a lot of laughter and a lot of tears, during the coming week.  I’ll be going through my own emotional roller-coaster too, because Michfest has given me so much.  It’s not heaven, but it’s a better world.  

Oregon Coast Perspectives

June was a runaway month, in more ways than one.  And I’ve run away to Oregon.  As the waiter at Zach’s Bistro said yesterday, I’ve swapped coasts.  And now the ocean is on the wrong side, and everything seems like the inverse of what it was before.

Yesterday I was sticking my toes in the well-chilled waters of the Pacific, thinking about how the US has undergone a sea-change in the last few weeks.

It began with the horror of the AME chuch killings in Charleston.  Like everyone else in the country, I lost something precious when those good people were murdered.  I was ready to bow out as a member of the human race.  Or maybe to pull a Rachel Dolezal and stop being white.  And to retire as an astrologer, too, because I was expecting good things from the Jupiter/Uranus trine.     

But it just brought home that there are really no good or bad aspects in astrology.  The Jupiter/Uranus trine was a release of held-back energy, and it manifested in a lot of ways.  The murderer in the church was a pent-up mass of old fear, guilt and prejudice, and he expressed all that.  He was trying to start a race war, but instead he shocked a lot of white people out of denial.  He represented a demonic undercurrent, a social shadow, and when he brought this shadow out into the light, he forced  people to recognize it.  And so with the energy he unleashed, he destroyed his own flag. 

President Obama, in his eloquent speech at Rev. Pinckney’s funeral, said that the murderer was being used by God -  to bring the flag down, to make a deeper reconciliation out of all that grief.  I can echo that, although I would say “fate” instead of “God”.   What the murderer set in motion was larger than him, larger than the hate he carried. 

Other kinds of held-back energy were released as June ended.   First, Obamacare was upheld by the Supreme Court, and the result was a mass exhalation of relief all across this land.  Worried people everywhere, people with low incomes and sick family members, could rest a little easier.

Then came the gay-marriage decision, followed by a cascade of joy in my community.  Social media exploded with celebrations, not just from my lesbian and gay friends, but from all our allies.   For me and my wife, this means we can live anywhere in the US, without forfeiting any rights.  We can fantasize about moving to Florida when we get old, just like millions of creaky old straight couples. 

And of course, the current doesn’t just stop with us, the gay and lesbian community.  Lots of anti-gay-marriage people have been caught in the same vortex of energy, and are expressing it in the opposite way:  talking about seceding, about getting divorces, about moving to other countries. 

I read a long, hilarious stream of comments from people complaining that the Supreme Court was not taking God’s law into account.  Of course, the first thought that always crosses my mind is how can these people presume to speak for God?  Isn’t that the definition of hubris?  And the second one:  don’t these people know that the Supreme Court is legally required to ignore God, as well as Buddha and Allah?  But as ignorant as these people are, they’re caught in the same whirlwind as me, and, like me, they feed it with their emotional responses.   

So the energy keeps moving, keeps circulating.  None of us can hold a line, in the face of such dramatic social forces.   As we look across the circle, at the people on the other side, we see that they are also rocked.  Those faces that seem so unfamiliar – and sometimes terrifying – are human beings, being summarily shaken out of their stasis. 

As July begins, Venus is slow-dancing with Jupiter, and you can see this lovely conjunction in the western sky after sunset.  We also have a full moon on July 1, further encouraging an outpouring of energy.  With this full moon close to the US’s natal solar position (exact on July 4), this is a chance for everyone to celebrate their own particular take on this country – what it means, what we care about, what we need from our communities, where we are going. 

July doesn’t have the fast pace of June.  Jupiter moves quickly away from the trine to Uranus, although Jupiter represents different things than she did before this aspect happened.  The social contract is a different one these days.  Gay men and lesbians have a little more dignity, a little more visibility -  and we are a little more ordinary than we were before.  (Of course, this takes some getting used to!)  There will still be lots of celebrating all through July, as Jupiter continues in Leo, but there’s also preparation for a more sedate and sensible approach in August, when Jupiter will enter Virgo.

Venus is moving slowly all through the month, because she will go retrograde on July 25, for about six weeks.  During her retrograde phase, Venus will bring back old friends and lovers, old hobbies and pleasures, and old creative inspirations.   This gives everybody plenty of time to chew over the changes that we’ve seen.  Options have opened for everyone in the gay and lesbian community, and that will mean a lot of personal decisions.  Rush to the altar?  Or wait?   As Venus slows down, there’s time to consider what it all means on the most intimate level. 

So in July, there will be a certain sense of arrested energy.   This also gives us all time to think about the earth, our home, as the globe heats up.  In mid-July, there are four planets in Cancer, all bringing up security issues.  Mercury and Mars in Cancer will be opposing Pluto in mid-month, so some deeper concerns will emerge.  What makes us safe as a world?  Trying to avoid everyone who’s different from us?  Or working together to ensure drinking water for our grandchildren?  Piling up riches?  Or helping each other stay healthy? 

The larger picture was drawn for us in June, and now it’s time to fill in the details.  How do we take care of ourselves, each other, and the earth, all at once?  We all have different answers to this question, and sometimes the answers are directly inverse to each other. 

Here, in Oregon,  as I watch the waves break on the shore, I wonder about the profound, subtle changes that cause this constant motion.  One thing is clear though.  We all feel it.  No matter where we stand, no matter which coastline we track, the deep water is common to all of us.  

Fragments and Splinters

Yay for Ireland!   Here in the US, there’s a tendency to sentimentalize and stereotype Ireland as the old country, the land of leprechauns.  Now it’s shown to be a vital, courageous, cutting-edge place, with a more inclusive social awareness than we have here in the U.S.

In the US, we are getting there.  I’m not going to complain about the progress we’ve made.  As a lesbian, I feel safer and more included every day.  I recently received an official document referring to Marisol as my spouse, and I read it over and over, and took a picture of it.  All the language in the document was purely formal, even robotic, yet it warmed my heart so much. 

Gay rights are good for everyone, but especially for women, since they allow us to exist outside rigidly defined gender roles.  We – both gay and straight women - have fought for centuries for the right to say who we are.  And for at least the last fifty years, lesbians have been the forefront of the feminist struggle, although not always welcomed in that position.

This spring and summer I’m going to three all-women events.  I’ve already been to the first, a lesbian writers’ conference in Georgia and in June, I’ll go to a womyn’s spirituality conference in Pennsylvania  In August, I’ll attend (very sadly) the final gathering of the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival. 

So I’m getting a good dose of women’s energy – also spelled womyn’s energy or womon energy in our community – and discovering some interesting things.  One of the things I’m finding is that, as mainstream society finds more ways to include and accept us, many women are bowing out of the traditional categories.  They’re breaking it down, smudging, dissecting, experimenting, testing, redefining, rewording. 

After the conference, I found myself sitting in a room with three women who I would’ve called lesbians, but only one of them actually defined herself that way.  The others had chosen alternate genders and more inclusive sexual definitions.  This doesn’t mean that if a man had walked into the room, he’d have had a chance in Hell with these two.  He probably would’ve seen all the piercings, turned pale, and left.  But who knows?  They weren’t actually ruling it out.  They weren’t ruling anything out. 

Maybe it’s a social law, that every border must break down, and every wall must fall.  Or maybe it’s happening more these days, with Neptune going through the amorphous, ambiguous sign Pisces, and the sun, Mercury and Mars all in the multi-faceted sign Gemini. 

And tomorrow there’s a full moon in mutable signs.  This is like a crystal breaking down the light and sending it in a thousand directions.  There is no certainty with this full moon, but there is lots of movement and much communication.  I feel sorry for people who make their living espousing absolute dogmas, especially during the next couple of weeks.  Only those with quicksilver minds will be heard. 

Feminist lesbians – now considered a venerable elder population by many younger and genderqueer women – do have some insecurities around all these shifting definitions.  We’ve worked hard to own the word “lesbian”, and to honor everything womanly.  Believe me, this has taken some work in this androcentric world we all still live in.  And it’s not like the work is done.  Women are still endangered, belittled, and condescended to, even here in the US.  And there are many countries in which our situation is much more critical. 

Transgender people have done some good work in getting the message out about male privilege, since they’ve experienced treatment as both genders.  But there’s also been a pitched battle between some transgender activists and the longstanding traditions of some lesbian communities.  There are many women who are not ready for the splintering of our self-definitions, especially imposed from the outside.    

There is a lot of grief in womyn’s community around the ending of the Michigan Womyn’s Festival.  For forty years, Michfest has been a week-long protected space for thousands of women, but it’s been attacked quite virulently by trans activists who feel that it does not honor their experience.  Still, that leaves a lot of women who’ve found a safer home there than anywhere else in the world.   I’ll be going to give a workshop on astrology this year, and I know I’ll be encountering a lot of tears, everywhere I go. 

But that’s in August.  In June, I’ll be going to a goddess festival, and most of the women around me will be lesbians, feminists and/or pagans, with a hunger for a womanly image of the divine.  And that’s what I’ll be looking for too.  I want to find my inner strength and wisdom right there alongside my femaleness.  I want to combine these things, fractured early on by the world in which I live.    

The shape-shifting properties of June will continue strong until the summer solstice.  At that point, a fiery Jupiter/Uranus trine gathers all the energy up and looks for some exciting ways to express it.  Whatever happens around the solstice has great potential for creative change.  We may see heroes, villains, clowns and avatars, all a little larger than life.  

As June comes to an end, there will be many large gestures – extravaganzas, festivals, performances, celebrations, fireworks -  as Venus and Jupiter come together in the exuberant sign Leo.  There’s also a lot of emotional energy, with the sun and Mars together in the family-oriented sign Cancer.  This lends itself to reunions, block parties, and other ways to give energy to the places and people who have nurtured us. 

So June ends on a high note, but the questions remain.  There are no pat answers, just fragments of old definitions, and jagged points of difference.  These need to be worn down with use, like chips exchanged in a poker game.  The play goes on, and it will happen over time.  And then the next set of definitions will be broken down in their turn, and then the next.   

    

 

Spelling Truth

As I write this, the justices are debating marriage equality.  And my people have a hero.  People are buying T-shirts that say, “Ruth Badass Ginsburg”, “You can’t handle the Ruth!”, and “You can’t spell truth without Ruth!”

It feels strange, though, that nine people I don’t know are debating the validity of my most intimate relationship.  Of course, in many ways it won’t affect us.  Marisol and I will wake up in the morning, tie our sneakers, post our facebook updates, make a few bad puns – not necessarily in that order – and begin our days.  After twenty-nine years, we are who we are, and together is one of the things we are.

What marriage does, though, is allow us to take care of each other a little better.  Each law that bends in our direction gives us a little more protection.  And the older we get, the more we appreciate that.   

So I’m sending some of my psychic energy towards the Supremes, thinking about the outcome.  Whatever happens, we’ll still be married here in Maryland.  But if they decide in our favor, my community as a whole becomes stronger, and all over this country, people wake up in the morning, tie their shoes, eat their granola, and find themselves a little more equal to the people who live next door. 

May looks slower than volatile April, partly because the sun, Mercury, Venus and Mars all make hard aspects to Saturn this month.  Saturn is in Sagittarius, a sign of justice and freedom, and so it will be the quest for these things that slows everything down. 

The Supremes’ decision about gay marriage is just part of that.  As I write, the city of Baltimore is reacting to the news that six police officers have been charged with manslaughter or assault, in the death of Freddie Gray.  This is not yet justice, but it is an honest quest for justice.  It’s more than most victims of police brutality have received.  And while the trial goes on, passions will flare, but everyone will wait.  The structure will hold.    

While we wait, however, everyone will be talking and writing.  There will be an ongoing war of words, with Mercury, then Mars, and finally the sun in Gemini.  Gemini is the most verbal sign in the zodiac, so people will be writing fiercely, talking constantly, spreading the information that seems most relevant to them.  With all these ideas and opinions circulating, we will all be exposed more often to other viewpoints, and that may open up a little more space between different communities.

We all know we’re right.  We all believe in certain things.  But the planets in Gemini will help us go beyond that, and deal with the actual information at hand.  On a smaller scale, that’s what will be happening in the courtrooms of May. 

But there will be some strain, no doubt about it.  We see this too from the inconjunct aspect from Jupiter in Leo and Pluto in Capricorn.  This is the conflict between the hero and the plutocrat.  Pluto in Capricorn represents bureaucracy, and the weight of old tradition, which masquerades as destiny.  It’s powerful, but not omnipotent, and is indeed always changing at a deep level.

However, Jupiter in Leo is not Everyone, not the ordinary human on the street.  Leo is the sign of royalty, of authority.  So we are looking at people who are superstars, who are confident enough to spit in the eye of the dragons of tradition.   Like Ruth Bader Ginsburg.  Or Marilyn Mosby, the Baltimore City State’s Attorney.

Are we happy to have heroes?  Just check out my mug that says, “The Ruth is out there.” Of course, our heroes are often there because we chose them, one way or another.  Bill Clinton wasn’t perfect, but he’s the one who put Ruth on the bench.  And the people of Baltimore voted for Marilyn Mosby.   

Of course, on the right too, there are plenty of people looking for superstar status, as they jockey for the ultimate coronation.  And so we might see some tension between Republicans and the plutocratic power structure, as well.  They will need to differentiate themselves, to become champions of actual people.  It will be interesting to see how that plays out, and whether a dramatic presentation – an assumption of kingship -  will fool enough of the people enough of the time. 

And then we also have a Mercury retrograde during the last third of May.  It begins on May 18, but even now, in the beginning of the month, Mercury is already slowing down.  Because it’s retrograding in busy, verbal Gemini, this won’t stem all the talk and writing.  But it could mean endless circling, byzantine complications, and it might delay results. 

And lots of information from the past could start surfacing, especially as May comes to an end.  Of course, the past has a million faces, a million stories, and everybody can find those that illustrate their own point of view. 

Michelle Bachman is calling for the Rapture, any day now, and if it happens, she’ll be the hero, leading her little band of Christians into the stars.  Nobody would object to this fantasy if she wasn’t mean about it.  She keeps saying the end-times are the fault of us gay people, plus Obama of course.  What I don’t understand is - why isn’t she thanking us for our part?   

But we do live in confusing times.  Saturn in Sagittarius is trying work out what freedom and justice mean, but it’s going to take some doing.  The words have been juggled and batted around so often that it won’t be easy to hold them still and really look at them.      

Electric April

I can hardly see the computer screen, because of the glare of the sun through the window.  But I don’t want to draw the curtain.  I need all this sunlight, to remind me that warmer weather lies ahead.  I need it, to set the crystals on my desk on fire and to cast rainbows on the wall behind me.  Sunlight is fuel, and for us here in the Northern Hemisphere, a little extra fuel can help a lot right now.   

One thing I’m grateful about, right at the moment, is that we’re coming to the end of the tense and combative Uranus/Pluto square.   This has been in orb – off and on, but mostly on – since June 2011.  It doesn’t officially end – given a 2° orb - until March of 2016, but the last exact aspect has just passed, and it will never be at peak strength again.  Now it just has to do some long, slow winding down.

But will it do it this month?  No, not really.  Even though it is generally becoming less powerful, it will be stimulated by the total lunar eclipse on April 4.  The sun will conjunct Uranus, and Pluto will square both the sun and moon, so many the issues of the Uranus/Pluto square will be revisited all month.  It’s as though we’re walking down a stormy road at night, and we have strokes of lightning to light our way.  We have to keep jumping out of the way, but we are also dazzled by sudden bolts of enlightenment.    

So what has this turbulent aspect brought us, through the last five years, and where are we now? 

Uranus, the planet of sudden new beginnings, is in the most hot-blooded and impulsive of signs, Aries, and so there’s been an increase in revolutionary acts, audacious rebellions, and military maneuvers.   Pluto in Capricorn holds an internal contradiction, since Pluto deals with deeper transformations and yet Capricorn is one of the most conservative signs in the zodiac.  So Pluto upholds Capricorn values, but at the same time, breaks them down in order to change them on a deeper level. 

How can you both uphold something and uproot it?  Actually, this is the way it always works.  Everything is changing – or you could say, evolving -  and when you give attention to something, you accelerate the process of change.  The deeper and more intrinsic the change, the longer it takes. 

Capricorn institutions are well-established, one might even say hoary.  Age gives respectability and authority.  There are structures in place which make those in power feel comfortable.  But everything breaks down in time, and all the Uranian threats to Capricorn institutions have accelerated that process. 

But as we can see, it hasn’t been just an either/or proposition, with the hot-heads on one side and the establishment on the other.  Sometimes it’s been that way. But we’ve also seen a hybrid spring up, with attributes both of Uranus in Aries and Pluto in Capricorn.  This is the conservative radical.   

Of course, this phenomenon is not new.  Ronald Reagan was one of the founding fathers of this approach.  But it’s really proliferated under the Uranus/Pluto square:  groups that claim a conservative mantel, an allegiance to tradition, and yet are intent on redrawing the contours of the world, with lots of blood and artillery. 

We see this in the Tea Party, which is rebelling against (mostly imagined) government oppression.  Since this is a democracy, albeit a very imperfect one, this rebellion has ended up in a number of Tea Party activists having positions in Congress.  That means if they do anything useful at all, they end up as the Government Oppressors, so they’ve been most forced to spend most of their time fuming, and trying to get rid of as many laws and regulations as possible. 

This has been pretty frustrating for them, and they could use more fresh air.  Hopefully they will be replaced soon, and they can spend their time practicing with their muskets, and telling tall tales of all the things they did in Congress.   

We also see this phenomenon in the Arab world.  Here we have people who have been fighting a battle over succession since the 7^th century, and are still very wedded to the authority conveyed then.  Here in the US, it’s hard to imagine traditions that old, or a sense of rightness that runs that deep.  Taking those centuries of religious commitment, and driving them out into the world with bombs and guns, is the focus of several groups of conservative radicals.

In the end, you do have to follow the money, and the power is not in the past, but very much alive in the present.  But these traditions are not just a pageant, but a real cry for some vanished authenticity.  At the same time, there’s a violent rejection of the modern world, and this negation of present-day realities is what makes these conservative radicals dangerous to other human beings, not to mention the planet.    

They can’t go back, but they can go backwards.  We’ve seen it happen before.  There’s always a Renaissance eventually, but it’s really a drag to have centuries of torture, plagues, and a lack of indoor plumbing before it comes around again.

But would all these shock troops exist, if established power wasn’t so deeply threatened, if it wasn’t breaking down?  I don’t think so.  Of course, many of these conservative radicals are well-funded by those firmly in power.  But I would say that the establishment has never really had control of them, and that’s why there’s so much fighting going on these days.  As I write this, the wars in the Arab world are shifting, growing, developing new branches, as oil-rich governments move to claim their authority over smaller militias.   

Coming back to the U.S., the Uranus/Pluto square has also brought some radical action on the progressive side.  There’s the Black Lives Matter movement, which carries the fifty-year-old mantel of the Civil Rights Movement, and so a claim to history.  At the same time, it’s all about the need to make sure that the Movement doesn’t get calcified into a powerless monument, but rather is recognized as an unfinished work.

And then there was Occupy, which raised a lot of important class issues on a global level.  The class structure underpins everything else, and so it will take a lot of work to have any progress at all in this area.  But the Occupy people began by raising consciousness, and this is always the first step. 

On the other hand, we in the gay and lesbian community have won enormous ground during this Uranus/Pluto square.  As a lesbian, one of my biggest challenges now is getting used to using the word “wife” instead of “partner” or “lover” to describe the woman who’s been at my side for almost thirty years.  I personally feel a much stronger sense of social support than I did five years ago.

Looking at the current situation in Indiana, I’m actually heartened.  There was a time when there would’ve been no response to a law pitting right-wing Christians against gay people.  And now there are a lot of people, all over the spectrum, in our corner.  For once, the homophobes are on the defensive. 

So a lot has changed during this period, and some momentum has been established in various areas.  But there are still quite a few live wires out there, and we’ll have to be careful not to step on them during April.  And there are some parts of the world which will see even more explosions. 

The upcoming total lunar eclipse, which sets a tone for the next six months, is in Aries/Libra, the zodiacal axis that has to do with relationships.  So although everyone’s needs are strong and immediate, we all need to learn more about negotiating.  This is our work:  to find a balance between our own urgent changes, and the rights and needs of others.  As we do this, we give our own lives more meaning, and we learn, step by step, what it is to be peaceful.   It may still be a while coming, but just like the buds of spring, it’s on the horizon.   

It's All About Me

Outside, people walk through the slush and the snow, but I am having visions of spring. I’m thinking about soft breezes, bare feet, and T-shirts.  I won’t have to spend hours chasing down my gloves, or putting on layer after layer just to go out and get the mail. 

Why did I ever let that beautiful warm earth go?  When it said goodbye, I should have grabbed it by the feet and held on like a crazy person!  But I look around, at the naked and icy trees, at the squirrels and birds who’ve survived or returned, and I realized I’m not the only one waiting out the winter.  And we could all get together, sign petitions, get an injunction from the Supreme Court, and it will still stay as long as it likes. 

Accepting the natural cycles of our world, and our human forms – that’s a tough lesson.   Humans can find lots of ingenious ways to react against the natural world, as well as ways to use everything it gives us.  But can we change it?   Even the moon, which seems so delicate as it flickers in the trees, is too much for us to move even an inch.   

This is a fiery month, and there’s going to be a lot of ego on display.  I’m experiencing that as I write this column.  My phone blips to tell me I’ve got a message, and I jump on it immediately and forget what I’m the middle of doing.  Because it’s about me.  Yay.  Somebody wants to talk to me!  I’m feeling all important, and then I have to go back to my work, which, today, is mainly writing this column.  Of course, now I’m writing about how I’m feeling important.     

So yeah, those lessons about our relative power in the universe, those are the ones we’ll keep returning to in March.  The month begins and ends with planets in all three of the fire signs.  Jupiter is in Leo, Saturn in Sagittarius, and there’s a changing array of planets in Aries throughout March.  Uranus and Mars stay there, while the sun and Venus spend part of the month in Aries. 

The fire signs are all about drama, excitement and heroism.  People are willing to stick their necks out, to shake things up, to take action.  Just looking at those with the sun in Aries, we see quite a few heroes.  Sometimes, moments of heroism are brief, and sometimes they’re the pattern of a lifetime. 

For example, we saw this at the Oscars last week, as Patricia Arquette gave an impassioned plea for women’s equality when she received her Best Actress award.  We find Aries sun leaders in many fields, past and present:  Nancy Pelosi in Congress, Dorothy Height in education, Gloria Steinem in journalism, Cesar Chavez in labor rights, Maya Angelou in cultural commentary and the arts.   Then there’s Aretha Franklin, who put her demand for respect out there in no uncertain terms in her signature song. 

And naturally, the hero and the villain are the same person, seen from different perspectives.  All those Aries sun people had enemies, because they dared to move into new ground.  I just picked up a derogatory post about Nancy Pelosi on my facebook feed a few days ago. 

And it’s also true that an Aries emphasis, or a lot of fiery signs, don’t guarantee that you’re going to be right, or make sense.  And in fact, in this fiery month, there can be plenty of wrong steps, since Uranus in Aries will be exactly squaring Pluto for the last time.  People can push against the limits because they’re angry, or because of hurt pride, or just because they’re bored on a Saturday night.  And this kind of impulsive action is most likely to go wrong, because it’s not grounded in deep thought or community support. 

Everyone has been horrified by the beheadings conducted by the Islamic state, but the head is ruled by Aries, and beheadings send a strong message about taking independent action.  Maximilien Robespierre, the main figure directing the guillotine during the Reign of Terror in France, had a fiery chart with the moon and Venus in Aries. 

This is not to say you’re going to be beheaded as soon as you express the fiery side of your nature, or as soon as you take a risk.  But when your ego is hurt, it can feel like a symbolic beheading.  You thought you were all that, and then you aren’t.  You can’t move the moon.   

So do think about what you’re doing.  Flash and fire are exciting, but long-range strategic planning requires some earthy influences.  For most of March, the only earthy influence is Pluto in Capricorn, and it represents the firm structure of established interests.  It doesn’t support the impetuous, rebellious urges of Aries, but rather suppresses and sometimes punishes them.  But then on March 17, Venus enters Taurus, and this has a grounding effect for all of us. 

More, it reminds us all of what we’re fighting for.  We’re fighting to live the delightful, sensual, satisfying lives we want, on this lush planet.  And about the same time, here in the Northern hemisphere, we’ll start to experience the abundance of the earth.  Suddenly, beautiful things will be bursting forth, everywhere we look.  Spring will return, like a lover we’ve craved and missed.

But we can’t always be patient, and wait for the natural cycle to come around, can we? Sometimes we have to walk out into that lonely spotlight, say who we are, and claim our birthright.  We may not be able to lay our hands on the moon, but we can etch a definite message into human consciousness.  Every human who hears us resonates to the bare bones of the message, the courage and dignity of a human proclaiming her truth. 

And yet it’s not really about who hears us.  It’s more about who we can become.  And this where the earth is on our side.  We can’t become a tree, or a bird, or a kangaroo.  We are locked into these bodies, and this physical world, into time and space.  But we are not static.  We grow, like the weeds and the flowers and the grasses.  We unfurl.  Self-aware, unique, we create new selves every moment.  For now, we burn.  

The Halfway Point

It’s halfway through the winter, a day that’s celebrated in many different ways.  It’s Groundhog Day,  Imbolc, and my mother-in-law’s birthday.  Back in the day, when I was a witch in a coven, we celebrated it as Candlemas, and it was the time that we initiated new members.  All these different celebrations are mixed in my memory, imparting a unique flavor to this windy afternoon.       

Mercury is retrograde, and that always brings on feelings of nostalgia.  We hear echoes from the past.  Old habits are resurrected, old patterns of thought resurface.  I recently read a blog about “political correctness” making a comeback, and it reminded me both of the radical movements of thirty years ago, and of the backlash to that radicalism. 

Mercury goes direct on February 11, but it spends the rest of the month in what’s known as the shadow period.  It moves slowly, reclaiming lost ground, until it reaches the point where it went retrograde, on March 3.  So February’s tone is generally thoughtful, a time to remember and to process. 

This Mercury retrograde gives us a chance to really look at the words and phrases we use, to check out the emotional charge that each one carries.  We are lucky to live at a historic moment in which communication is burgeoning.  In some ways, it’s an echo of the period when the printing press was first developed, and when cities were suddenly full of pamphlets and tracts.  

Mercury is in the reasonable, logical sign Aquarius all month, and this encourages dialogue, inquiry and education.  People talk about unconscious bias, economic principles, gender politics, the biosphere, and everything else.  And then there’s Black History month, always a great time to share lost stories, and to look at the sources of current tensions in past events. 

People weigh in on social issues, and respond to others who see things differently.  We’re still sharing all the experiences curated by influential people  – the movies, the TV, the political drama – but now we’re also connecting around more spontaneous and ordinary experiences.   

This can make people uncomfortable, given that we have been trained to passivity for many years, as audiences and consumers.  How does it feel when a fellow audience member stands up and starts singing an aria?  Our first impulse is to hush them.  After all, we’re not here for that.  Or are we?  Maybe, as Jane Wagner said, the play is the soup, and the audience is art. 

As we turn our heads to see what’s happening beside us, rather than staring ahead at the screen, we see so much more.  All the communication builds energy, and turns into organizing.  We see this in the Black Lives Matter protests in New York City and around the nation.  These protests interrupt the flow of ordinary life, just as routine racism disrupts the lives of Black people.  They get people involved, thinking about issues that may have seemed distant in the past.    

Mercury’s retrograde in Aquarius also lends itself to fixing things, and we see this in the budget that President Obama sent to Congress today, with its focus on shoring up the country’s infrastructure.  His budget also reverses the sequester, recognizing that it was a lousy idea to begin with.  This is how Mercury retrograde is supposed to be used.  It’s about repairing things that are broken, and making changes to things that never worked well. 

Underneath this month’s reasonable Mercury-in-Aquarius veneer, though, there are some storms.  Uranus and Pluto are still at odds, moving towards their last exact square in mid-March.  So there’s tension building, as different factions jockey more and more intensely for position. 

There are strong fiery and watery influences all through the month, and that puts the Aquarian sun and Mercury at a distinct disadvantage.  The watery planets are all in Pisces, the most sensitive and intuitive of signs, and these make for a more subjective and vulnerable approach.  Among the Pisces figures are the martyr, the saint, and the poet;  these are people who are generally not open to discussion.  And the sun itself leaves Aquarius and enters Pisces on February 18, just after the new moon.

On February 19, the first day of the new lunar cycle, there are five planets in Pisces, so emotion is at a high pitch.  It’s like the sound of the mermaids singing.  You may not understand what they’re saying, but you know how they make you feel.  And for the rest of the month, we’ll all be going from feeling to feeling, while Mercury in Aquarius tries to explain us to each other.   

During the last part of February, the urge to believe will be stronger than ever, and the connection with reality could become a lot more tenuous.  People will reach for their religious and spiritual shelters, but for some people there’s an ongoing need to defend these shelters against those who think or act differently. 

This, coupled with the stressful power issues associated with the Uranus/Pluto square, could mean violence.  And there are the fiery influences – Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and the south node all in fire signs.  So passions could flare, and old anger could be forged into new weapons, especially among people who believe strongly in the hero myth. 

And that means us here, in the US.  Uranus and Pluto will form a T-square with the sun in the US’s chart, so important questions about our national identity will come up.  It’s a turning point for us.  What do we believe in?  Can we pursue a reasoned approach?  What do we do about our most vulnerable citizens – and can we even agree on who they are?  Why are advocates for fetuses on one side, and advocates for small children on the other side?  And how do we really make change, as opposed to putting new actors in the same old roles?   

But yes, it is a time of change, irresistible change.  And along with the changes, there will be a powerful flow of emotion.  The poets, saints and martyrs will all give their particular spin on it, running across the pages of the history books yet to be written.