The Venusian Train of Kindness Taking off from the Station

I was up late last night finishing a wonderful biography of Alan Lomax by John Szwed, “The Man who Recorded the World.” 

As I finish this Lomax bio I am struck by how hard he worked to keep modern media from being a ruling Sun of culture broadcasting from a centrist middle.  He fought tirelessly to bring the dances and songs from the rims of humanity all the way to the center and then back out spokes radiating in all directions.  He was fighting desperately for radio and television to be more like the developing zygote of the internet.  Now whenever I hear interesting music and stories from far flung corners of the world on public radio, I will think of Alan Lomax and the other workers of the Cultural Revolution which began peaking in 1965.  And of course since I am an astrologer, it is ever in my mind that during that revolution Uranus was meeting Pluto in the Virgo sign of technology and apprenticeship- balanced by Saturn in dissolute Pisces on the opposite side of the solar system.  

Now to my late night appreciation of Venus- 

Yesterday I kept looking for friendly distractions to give me a break from my studies.  My restless little mind can only fix so much in its mysteriously vast filing system before it begs for relief and entertainment.  Facebook is a great playground, full of witty posts my friends have either made up on their own, or harvested from the net, so I spent a good bit of time there.  I thought about two friends who cannot drive and wondered if I should call the one that was due for a visit.  I kept looking for some sign on Face Book of his activity and saw none.  Still, even though I wanted distraction I felt compelled to leave things as they were.  To wait and see.  It was a big relief last night to see a post appear with a photo of him enjoying an outing with an old friend and his two children. 

 

A warm Venusian feeling of love took over from the uncertainty that ruled throughout the day and I felt grateful to be part of a community of friends.  It was nice to have knowledge of Venus reaching the point in its new cycle when we can see it moving forward.  My distracted picking at nucleophiles and carbonyl reductions shifted to a meditation on Venus renewing its cycle with the Earth and Sun.  They met (Aug 15) while Venus was invisible (as usual when anyone meets the big Kahuna) in the Taurus section of Leo, and now Venus can be seen in the hours just before dawn in the Capricorn part of the Lion’s sign.  I thought of how a mutual friend, during this renewal of the Venusian cycle of human gestation, had quietly established a tradition of taking a housebound buddy on fun outings with his kids.  The happiness radiated throughout my whole body.  All the worry fell away and was replaced by a sense of well being in this community of humans exercising their ability to love in difficult situations.

 

I looked on Stellarium to see how visible Venus would be before the dawn and was reminded by the faint red dot just above the ecliptic that Venus is still very near Mars. 

 

It has only been a week since the planet which ‘moves through the darkness on the far side of Earth from the centering Sun’ overtook Venus.  I recall that on that night I had a visit with a different friend in Wendell who not only cannot drive but also lost the use of his legs many years ago.  He was able to get himself out of my car and back into the wheel chair for the first time without help from the over worked staff where he lives.  Will finally overcame where kindness was too weak to meet life’s challenges.  He called me the next day eager for another visit.  Will had also overtaken his ability to accept with good humor his body’s failure.

It was the following evening, (Sept 1) as Mars was leaving Venus behind in the Capricorn foot of Leo, that I received a text from my other friend, the one who posted about his outing this weekend.  He was sitting outside enjoying the autumn night after finishing a nice dinner.  It was the first time he had reached out to me since I had visited him over a month ago.  So many times I have thought of him and his family and waited to see if he wanted another visit.  I missed him and worried about him but felt it best to wait and not push my friendship on him.  His text came like a voice over a personal radio receiver.  “Hi!  How are you?”  It was such a jolt of joy to get the message that he too thought of me.  Reciprocation is such a beautiful part of friendship.  There are so many ways that life interrupts in this process, but when it resumes we seem thrilled by it, like children facing favorite playmates on a see saw when we feel that lift because someone else has carefully brought their weight to bear on the far side of the fulcrum from ours.  What a wonderful feeling!

Venus has barely moved since I came home Sept 1 and found that “Hello!” from my friend across town, but Mars has marched through the Capricorn foot, the Aquarian, and now this weekend the Piscean little section of the Roaring Lion.  The Capricorn, Aquarian and Pisces sections are just an assortment of slivers from the giant pie slice of Leo Fun.  My dad, who preferred a Schaeffer Beer to sweets, would say,  “Just a sliver for me,” when we were slicing up the rare desert.  By Thursday (Sept 10) when Venus is growing in light like a little green pumpkin in the patch, Mars will be marching through the Aries section of the Lion’s pie slice! 

The old Moon will be right there, like a retiring grandparent providing a bottomless spring of hidden inspiration.  Friends lifting each other, cats licking their young and wrestling with them, entertaining moments of kindness.  We don’t have to decide if it is because of this renewal of the Venusian cycle occurring in the sign of pleasure, but it is sweet to know what is really happening down here.  That as we turn toward Venus in the morning, and see the light of the Virgo Sun just beginning to disperse the darkness of our long fall through the late summer night, that as we see Venus shining anew below little red Mars, we know that we are about to climb through another revolution on our wobbly old planet.  Turn, turn, turn and shazzam!  Look at us!  Look what the planets have made! 

Mercury enters Libra

Astrologers are nothing more than poets of real time.  They take organic time and space and turn it into story and verse that make these alien phenomena which we understand less since the invention of clocks, even though we continue to be created and shaped by these limits as in the days when we studied the changing heaven to see how our lives evolved under the lights in the darkness turning around and around us; they make these intimate realities, so strangely alien and frightening to us, a delight at least as often as a horror to ponder.  They talk about the comings and goings of heavenly bodies as though we really are all one.  They elevate us to the whirling variations, syncopations, reversed ambulations, little dropping or hopping perturbations, among and over all the determined directional constants.  Plato called them the circle of the same and the other.  He talked about how they cross each other and make an X which they referred to in his time and place as Chi.  Kai?   

He talked a lot about psyche.  No kidding.  I was surprised to see someone so associated with early scientific thinking so thoroughly expostulate on psyche like it was some kind of cradling breath of the universe or something;  psyche is actually one of the main concepts discussed from many perspectives in Timeaus.  I’ve always wondered what exactly that word means.  I was in psychotherapy for a couple of years all together with two very cool, professional therapists.  I learned more about love from them than anywhere else except among loving friends and family.  I learned a lot in church.  But there were a lot of things that baffled me, and it was these two very sober minded therapists with a glimmer in their eyes, who helped me learn to reconcile the welter of thoughts swirling around in my restless mind.  Since they were called psychotherapists and what we were doing when we got together every two weeks was called psychotherapy, I had some idea that psyche had something to do with the mind.

Then there is the word psychic used nowadays I guess to refer to someone who tells you what is in your mind.  Plato refers to something along that line when he discusses the oracular priests at Delphi.  He explains that someone else is trained to interpret what the oracles say.  The interpreters sound a bit like government trained psychoanalysts.  Reading someone else’s mind or predicting which ship will sink sounds like aggressive advertising.  Most actual stories that I’ve read from those times make it sound like the Delphic pronouncements appeared unrelated to the upcoming events that seekers were anxious about.   It was only after the events unfolded that a definite meaningful connection was made between the words of the oracle and the outcome of events.  This sounds like hindsight being more accurate than foresight. 

Geez, now I am thinking about the difference between Aquarius and Scorpio.  Aquarius is far seeing into the eastern heaven, with little view of the western heaven, while Scorpio is the opposite.  In Scorpio the future’s field of view is short compared to the view of what’s disappearing under the horizon.

The Aquarian scientist and the Scorpio sleuth of the past, especially a past that is sinking lower and lower under the horizon. 

I know I will be horrified if I live to see my dream come true, still I wake every morning thinking of how to make this language as thrilling to people as learning to do a set of sun salutations from a yoga manual.  I don’t know how I will be horrified but a few Edgar Allen Poe stories flit regularly through my mind.  I know the whole experience will be far more complicated than anything I can imagine, that there will be at least as many parameters that I did not consider in my hopes and fears as the ones whose direction and speed I tried to control.  I know the ones I failed to think of will surprise me and make me rethink my best laid plans.  This is learning to live as a limited individual with a certain amount of time to experience existence in a certain way, under the unique perspective of a certain set of chronic limitations, different in some ways, in others similar, to those of my peers.  Others like me, but not exactly like me.

That’s my meditation today for Mercury entering Libra.

Sun meets Jupiter during Sober Period of Lunar Cycle

Whenever I feel good during the Moon’s line-up with Saturn and Pluto I study the charts to find the culprit.  The period when Moon is lined up with Saturn is serious business for the soul.  No fooling around.  These years, as Saturn draws closer and closer to Pluto the meetings get heavier as we go.  One day we’re faced with sobering realities that take a back seat for the rest of the month, and then a few days later we’re faced with an awareness of what it’s like to live on the edge of a bustling community of planets, humans or other life forms.  I’m talking about when the Moon is lined up with Pluto; every time that happens, every month, we are made aware of a tiny distant body tracing out an exceedingly long and eccentric cycle.

So when I felt hopeful, recognized, and engaged this weekend during the monthly sobering passage I wondered….

A Tangent about Jupiter in the last Quarter of its Cycle with Saturn

Well this morning it came to me.  I was fiddling with the cycle of Jupiter and Saturn.  Jupiter is just entering Saturn’s 10^th house this month.  We’re talking about the 10^th step in a 20 year cycle between the planet of limits (slow Saturn) and the planet of opportunity (fast Jupiter).  So even though Jupiter is now passing from Leo to Virgo, two fairly inexperienced signs, it is in a position of authority with the planet of limits.  Every day Jupiter is already high in the sky when Saturn is coming up in the East.  While Saturn is taking action to set or impose a limit, Jupiter is already up and waving its inspiring flag of  “if at first you don’t succeed try, try again.”   Try another door, push a different button, ask a different person for help.  Ask the same person, maybe they are in a better mood.  Try, try again.  Jupiter.  Since  Ms. Try Try again is now  in Virgo maybe the appeal is for information or help fixing some piece of techno gadgetry.   Take a Shot, What Have You Got to Lose!  is on the midheaven when Wait a Minute, Let’s See what Kind of Pitfalls Could be Hidden that Might Cause Trouble if we Rush into Action is just making its appearance from around the ‘far side’ of the Earth. 

Every day, Jupiter (faith) is on the midheaven when Saturn (limits) is rising.  They will continue in this stage of their relationship for many months.  Remember, the cycle between these two planets is 20 years.  Jupiter will not begin succumbing to the limits of Saturn until 2019, when it is in the last house while Saturn is rising.  We’ll talk more about that as their 20 year reunion approaches.

Why these 4 Days of Moon Lined up with Saturn and Pluto Don’t Suck 

Ok, that’s some background stuff about Jupiter and Saturn, now I can get to why this 4 day period when the Moon is near Saturn and Pluto does not feel as sobering as usual.  This week the Sun is in its yearly meeting with Jupiter.  The Sun is right near the planet of faith.  Sun is spirit.  It is the flame.  The Sun lined up with Jupiter is translated as the spirit lined up with the risk taker. 

Figure 1

So, this past weekend, today and tomorrow, while the Moon goes through the sobering part of its monthly cycle, the Sun is in the hopeful part of its yearly cycle.  

I was going to stop here, but let me elaborate just a wee bit.  The spirit can take a lot.  It just goes and goes, no matter how good or bad the going gets.  Sometimes the spirit gets so used to trudging through existence that it forgets how much faith it takes to keep on going.  Well, in the case of humans in bodies pinned to revolving Earth, there are a few days when Jupiter, invisible mind you, is lined up like a biggg fuzzy friend on the other side of a see saw from the creatures crawling around and flying through Earth’s atmosphere.  The Sun, also known as spirit, is the fulcrum in the middle, and Earth is directly across from Giant Jupiter. 

Figure 2  Check out Luna lined up with Pluto!

 

In the astrology chart (fig 1) we see the Sun right beside Jupiter.  We're supposed to know Earth is in the middle in astrology charts.  In the sky Jupiter is invisible because the Sun’s light is so bright.  Although it is invisible this is the period of fulfillment between Earth and Jupiter, the few days when faith perfectly balances our position in our journey around the Sun.  

One last little note.  Saturn looks like it is in the beginning of Scorpio in theplanetstoday.com screenshot (fig 2) but it is actually almost in Sagittarius.  In order to make it appear more accurately among the other planets you have to zoom way out and then they won't all fit on the screen at the same time.  You have to zoom way out and then wander around looking for it like a solar system scout traveling from planet to planet in the vast void of inky darkness.

That’s all folks!  I’m off for more playtime with Stellarium.