Mercury conjunct Pholus and Hylonome: The power of an idea

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Today is Wednesday, November 30, 2011. The Moon continues through Aquarius all day, working into a conjunction with Neptune early Friday morning.

An Aquarius Moon offers some potential perspective on what could otherwise be overwhelming events in our lives these days. The same sky that may be lending one person an exhilarating sense of potential and adventure may be suffusing another person’s experience with a sense of chaos and pressure to exceed their capabilities. What we have going on is Mercury retrograding back into another conjunction with the centaur planets Pholus and Hylonome in mid-Sagittarius. The first similar conjunction occurred a couple weeks ago, while everything was more closely aligned with the Great Attractor. Planet Waves covered this in an article called The Chaos Generator [premium content, offered today to all readers].

One of the ways we are seeing this setup manifest is in the perhaps-surprising power of ideas — specifically, we can see it in action with the official responses to the Occupy movement. Pundits, celebrities and political leaders are lining up on one side or the other (most celebrities are polarized in support of the 99%, political leaders seem not to want to alienate it, pundits line up by network leaning). Given the influence of the planets involved, particularly Mercury picking up everything like a satellite dish connected directly to your mind, this will be palpable astrology. It could manifest as a passing thought finding a foothold and growing. Whether it becomes an inspiration or an albatross, a doorway to action or a blockade to understanding, is another question.

We sometimes overlook the fact that everything starts with an idea; in this hyperactive cyber-life, ideas come and go with astonishing speed. But they are like the proverbial mustard seed in their potential, and with Pholus in the mix, that potential can have wildly unanticipated consequences. You may be familiar with one of Pholus’ key phrases: ‘small cause, big effect’. Melanie Reinhart has described how this is derived:

“Pholus was discovered in 1992 , and its process seems to be one where a small event sets off a chain reaction, either inwardly or externally, in terms of consequences. In the Greek mythology, Pholus was the keeper of the sacred jar of wine of Dionysus. Dionysus was the god of ecstasy; whose rites were often characterised by drunkenness and chaos, and sometimes they culminated in violence. Similarly Pholus events often involve things getting out of control. The way to deal with Pholus is to take only essential actions until the floods subside and things settle down.”

The centaur Hylonome – one of three centaur planets with a female name – is often associated with overwhelming or unresolved grief, but Costa Rican astrologer Juan Revilla has delineated a second theme which resonates here: ‘the cry of the poor’. This is what we are seeing in the Occupy movement. A broad cross-section of the poor is waking up and finding their voice and purpose with this movement – everyone from those we’ve traditionally stereotyped as ‘poor’ to what we might call the ‘new poor’, i.e., unionized workers whose jobs are being shipped overseas, college graduates with huge debt, teachers, soldiers and so on.

What is striking about this collective cry – despite the attempts of the mainstream media and right wing to discredit it as ‘disorganized’ – is just how salient the core complaints and demands are. The point of the movement is to call attention to the criminality of the financial and corporate sectors, their undue influence on our government, and to push for a restructuring of these sectors for the greatest good.

Naomi Wolf, in a recent article for The Guardian (UK) that we posted to the blog, points to two demands in particular that have been articulated by Occupiers. One is the replacement of the Glass-Steagall Act. This was the act, repealed by congress under Clinton, kept some separation between commercial and investment banks. Were in place, the very economic catastrophe we’ve witnessed could not have occured. The second demand involves the repeal of a law allowing congressional representatives to legislate over their own shady, massive and profitable investments in Delaware corporations (most American corporations are housed in Delaware).

And here’s where Pholus connects the plug to the socket. What began as a random bunch of people drumming in Zucotti Park has led to a show of police brutality across the country, the likes of which we have not seen since the 1960s. The police are not anti-tenting. As we saw the day after Thanksgiving, tenting in front of a Best Buy or Walmart is just fine. The police are revealing themselves as a tool of those not just in government, but you could say a tool of the big boys — the investors. Those in government have seen the power of these two simple ideas. Finally articulated by a populace that had been slumbering for decades, the ideas have started to ‘run out of control’. The movement is gaining momentum, international solidarity, articulation and passion. There is some genuine understanding going on, and actual creativity and community building. Such simple things, yet we likely have seen only the tip of the iceberg in terms of the effects.

As Melanie Reinhart has noted, we may not be as Kool or detached as we think we are. Is there anything we would die for? A person? A belief? The ‘Centaur Mirror’ is focused on this: There is no right or wrong answer to the question, but it may be time to look into the Centaur Mirror and ask. This is something that The Powers that Be are picking up on. That’s the danger of Occupy — to them: the unstoppable power of an idea.

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