Yesterday’s Mercury square Neptune conjunct the Burka

Dear Friend and Reader:

I’d like to offer a few comments about yesterday’s Mercury square Neptune. This is a challenging aspect, as many people experienced. Yesterday, it was connected to the North Node of the Moon (Neptune on the North Node like a big, foggy headlamp) and Mercury exactly square the Nodes. Anything exactly square the nodes can act like a tipping point or factor.

Then the Moon itself swept through the arrangement, making an exact occultation to Neptune (like an eclipse), listing the ship and sending the feeling through our collective emotional bodies with a surge. A number of other planets and asteroids were in the dance — Mars, for instance, in Cancer (hence connected to the Moon). So if you thought yesterday was a strange day, there you have it. I am not one who gets up every morning and studies Raphael’s Ephemeris, which is where I would have seen the Moon-Neptune occultation, but this is good incentive to. However, if you live by the ephemeris like that, you risk going insane, and I do mean it.

On its own, Mercury square Neptune is often about self-deception. Think of a square as a structure that contains energy. Mercury and Neptune in this position, together in a natal chart, have been described as signifying the consummate liar. I don’t think any aspect automatically predisposes us to having or lacking integrity, but this one seems to create a world within one’s own awareness that functions with little regard for what exists outside one’s inner sense of reality. Notably, it may not be experienced as inner — it may be peered through like a pair of binoculars that selectively magnify certain aspects of life. This can flush things out of the pipes; usually, it keeps them in, or creates a sufficient distortion to miss the big picture.

A closed psychic ecosystem such as this is the perfect setup for dishonesty, because self-deception is almost always the root of any lie. This, in turn, is an interesting model of how we process information in a competitive market environment; there is so much competition for our mental capacity that we have to be selective. So much of what we might discover is unpleasant that we have incentive to be so. If we allow in outside evidence, that pierces the inner veil and compels a reality check: not always so popular. Or it creates an unusually potent obsession with seeking and finding the truth, even the Truth. I know someone with this aspect natally who does such things as (in her own words) take a God Squad down to Mexico to do multiple lifetime healing work. She certainly believes it and that makes it believable.

Joseph Campbell had Mercury square Neptune and was able to decode humanity’s complex relationship with myth. Bob Dylan has this aspect; he has been viewed as a prophet, a modern Shakespeare and the master of the poison pen letter. Interestingly, Jim Morrison also had this aspect. Sean Penn does as well, and he is an example of someone regarded with extremely high integrity; when I think of him I think of Dead Man Walking, the film that blew the whistle on the death penalty.

The thing to be cautious of in the charts of famous people is that they always put their resources to work in ways that get unusual results. That is why they are famous; why we can recite their ideas, lyrics and hum their music. I have no idea what it’s like to talk to or live with any of the guys I mentioned. One thing is for sure, they moved a lot of energy and they got results.

In my personal dealings I can tell you this aspect is a bit more challenging than putting Light My Fire on iTunes. Whether we noticed it or not, we all lived through it (and it’s still pretty close). There can be a disregard for truth, or lack of concern for the truth, that would be stunning, except usually you were already anesthetized when the stun hit. Sometimes it seems absolutely sincere to you or to others. Watch this aspect carefully. Pay attention to what you sign and check the claims of others carefully for factual veracity, significance and what they might be cloaking, inadvertently or not.

Yesterday in the news, we saw two uproars that fit this description: the exciting sequel in the Obama’s pastor furor, and one that (naturally) I think is far more interesting — the absurd fuss over Annie Leibovitz’s photo of Hannah Montana star Miley Cyrus.

Mercury is about vectors of thought in any form, from language to a radio tower. Neptune is about images, film, illusion, dreams, fantasies and drug-induced experiences. It has a lot to do with photography, which functions with a touch of all of these themes. Mercury coming in for a square felt like an airplane landing on the water with its gear down. The New York Post and I gather plenty of other news outlets went wild with this non-story about a 15-year-old star photographed by portrait master Leibovitz with her shoulder and part of her back exposed.

It is being characterized as veritable kiddie porn; her family is ‘mortified’; though you can hear the laughter as the Magic Kingdom, home of her billion dollar entertainment empire, goes through its appearances of moral spasms of shock and outrage. Miley, for those unhip as myself who needed to Wiki her, plays a normal girl who moonlights as a rock star. Leave it to Disney to create a virgin rocker. Then she has her portrait done and the war in Iraq evaporates.

The Miley scandal is not a relevant version of the truth: the episode, in addition to sending up a smoke screen, is one vast public relations boon for Disney, who rather than attempting to purify its magnificent gleam is decorating its enterprises with a few tons of free ink. And do we think the Vanity Fair production manager called the print plant yesterday ordering up a few hundred thousand more copies for good measure?

One huge lie being propagated, regardless of who profits, is that a teenage young adults are asexual, or that it’s somehow inappropriate to represent them as sexual even though it’s done all the time. This is like freebasing denial, particularly if we care enough to help them stay healthy and unpregnant. Go ahead, teach them abstinence, then watch what happens in the onslaught of hormones. It seems like we have projected so much sexuality onto young people, and fetishized the appearances of youth, that we now feel a need as a culture to strip it off with a sandblaster.

Furthermore, the world seems to have a need for Miley not to grow up. To me this is the psychic, media-driven version of that Austrian guy who locked his daughter in the basement, taking total possession of her. Here, the world seems to need to lock Miley in the basement and never allow her to become Destiny Hope Cyrus, the mature woman.

Scandals are scams. They are never what they are about. Deeper down they are always about repression. If there is a grain of truth to them, it’s usually employed to seed the greater lie. If you look closely enough, or look in the opposite direction (perhaps within), sometimes you can see a little gleam of light.

PS. I just went down for coffee and the Sally Brompton horoscope and encountered an explanation of just what is going on with Miley, courtesy of the profound social criticism of the New York Post, my third favorite newspaper. To wit, Todd Venezia writes, “The young Cyrus and photo diva Leibovitz have created an international firestorm with Vanity Fair pics showing the all-American Tennessee girl with a bare back, turgid lips and suggestively tussled hair — all while being wrapped in nothing more than a piece of cloth.”

Have I got a piece of cloth for you, guys: it’s called a burka.

Today’s Aspects: Wednesday 30 April 2008

Venus (29+ Aries) trine Juno (29+ Sagittarius Rx)
Amor (0+ Taurus) trine Pluto (0+ Capricorn Rx)
Ceres (12+ Gemini) quincunx Hidalgo (12+ Scorpio Rx)
Neptune (24+ Aquarius) square Admetos (24+ Taurus) – Near Miss Only
Amor (1+ Taurus) quincunx M87 (1+ Libra)
Atlantis (16+ Libra Rx) semisquare Saturn (1+ Virgo Rx)
Venus enters Taurus (direct)
Mercury (26+ Taurus) septile Varuna (17+ Cancer)
Sisyphus (14+ Libra Rx) trine Nessus (14+ Aquarius)
Venus (0+ Taurus) quincunx Arachne (0+ Libra Rx)
Sun (10+ Taurus) quintile Apollo (22+ Cancer)
Psyche (20+ Scorpio Rx) opposite Sedna (20+ Taurus)

Oracle takes us back to Dec. 12, 2005 – Gemini – monthly

I don’t know if people have been accusing you of being stubborn lately, but these days persistence is good for you. A series of recent personal developments finally seems to have got you sorted out in terms of keeping both twins focused on one goal. You now have a kind of miraculous moment of diplomacy coming, where you can basically convince anyone of anything. The only thing that could stop you is if you persuade yourself that certain people who are friends are really something else. They are not; it’s just a little touch of mild paranoia bugging you.