What’s that sound?

The astrology we’re living through right now makes a lot more sense if you’re following world events. There must be something happening in France or Japan, but what we’re hearing about is mainly a political explosion in Wisconsin and yet another revolution in North Africa, this time in Libya. Both are examples of people standing up to power. There was an earthquake in a large New Zealand city yesterday, a reminder that the planet is bigger than we are, and that it’s changing every moment.

We here in Cush Nation may intellectually understand what it’s like to overthrow a dictator who wielded power for 30 or 40 years, but I don’t think most of us can really, actually understand. I mean, would you step into the way of a gun or 20 men with guns for the liberation of your people? Would you go to a protest at all? Or do you get nervous when you’re pulled over by a cop for speeding? What is going on in North Africa (this is a region, not a country) is so enormous and so alien to our experience as Westerners that we can barely begin to understand it.

Consider Wisconsin. Most of us have only heard of the place for cheese and Fonzie. We know these are union protests, but this is where the American union movement started. At least in the United States, kids don’t work 60 hours a week and a great many people make a living wage because of unions — and where people are treated badly and work in filth and danger, it’s largely because unions were busted. People — thousands of people — have been camped out in the state capitol building in Madison for days on end protesting a government attempt to bust unions there. This is, in turn, an attempt to bust unions everywhere in the United States — part of an agenda so vast we don’t even see it. Yes, there are some people who will not be satisfied until the best jobs are stocking shelves at Wal Mart.

Now let’s see how this reflects in the astrology of our moment — rare astrology in a rare time. The first thing you can see even if you’re not an astrologer is how many planets are concentrated in just a quarter of the sky — nearly all of them. Concentrated planets drive potent historical events, and they often drive people into a frenzy. To be perfectly calm right now you have to be totally yogafied or be sitting in a quiet room puffing an opium pipe — and even then (in such an open state) I imagine you would pick up on the sense of imminent change, the tensions, the passions. I’ve been reminding you that in the deep background of everything happening today is a slow-moving aspect between Uranus and Pluto, part of a long, long cycle of revolutions. While that is not exact till 2012, we are under its increasingly potent influence now.

There are two aspects that stand out today, both involving Pisces. One is a slowly developing square between Jupiter in Aries and Pluto in Capricorn that’s nearly come to fruition (this involves one of the Pisces planets, Jupiter). This is inspiring both true belief and paranoia. The other is a faster moving conjunction that’s exact today. Let’s start with that — Mercury conjunct Chiron in Pisces.

Where Mercury goes the mind follows. Both Mercury and Chiron are in the very first degree of Pisces; Mercury is going to fly through and Chiron will be there for eight years. They are conjunct right now, which is focusing our mental awareness on whatever Chiron in Pisces represents — though the experience is like a passing surge of consciousness. In truth it may feel like a little too much, like there is no way to understand what’s happening in the world through any rational means. Mercury-Chiron can impart a sense of a broken mind, a touch of madness, or having to understand things in a nonlinear way.

This is a new kind of event for us. There hasn’t been a Mercury-Chiron conjunction in Pisces since the 1960s. In fact, the most recent one in Pisces was on April 12, 1967. That week there were massive anti-Vietnam War protests in San Francisco and New York City. The Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a case called Loving v Virginia, which ultimately lifted the ban on interracial marriage. Back in the day, marriage was a sacred pact between one man and one woman of the same race. This fell apart in another era when events moved so fast and were so overwhelming nobody really understood what was going on.

Mercury in Pisces is about thinking some way other than the usual way. It requires us to work for clarity — or be extremely intuitive. You may have to think something through five times before you get it, and it will be worth the effort.

Earlier that year, a song we’ve all heard came out called “For What it’s Worth,” which you probably know from the lyrics “stop, children, what’s that sound.” The band was Buffalo Springfield (which morphed into Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young). The reference to sound is interesting, because Pisces is associated with music — and this particular song has that Pisces kind of feeling that just soaks right into your consciousness forever. Pisces is also associated with visual sensory experience (such as photography and cinema), so the lines, “what’s that sound? / everybody look what’s goin’ down” pick up both aspects of Pisces. There’s a reminder to both look and listen, and a reminder that the senses can cross over (that’s called synesthesia, famously induced by LSD).

Borrowing from Fritz Perls, a pioneer of gestalt therapy who helped a lot of people get through the wild changes of the last Chiron in Pisces era, we’re in a moment where we have to lose our mind and come to our senses. If you look and listen, and then feel, things make more sense than if you merely analyze them. Plenty in the world that’s happening is scary. Busting unions is scary. Many national and local politicians working relentlessly to take away the reproductive rights of women is scary. Leaders shooting and bombing their own citizens is scary.

So too is climate change and earthquakes that come out of nowhere. Everything that happens somewhere else, to someone else, is a reminder of what can happen to you and the people you love. We are reminded that we’re camped out on the surface of a planet in the deeps of space.

Yet we cannot live our lives in fear. Neither can we just stuff awareness all the time. Mercury-Chiron is blazing out a message to pay attention. It’s saying: remember how good it feels to be alive. Use your imagination and your creativity.

The Pisces energy that’s everywhere in this chart is suggesting we tune into the much wider scene, the one we thought was out of reach or too overwhelming to understand, and the one we rarely look at. Notice how whatever you observe makes you feel. Notice what you want to share. Feel what you’ve been missing. There’s something there for you, some piece of your soul that you’ve been looking for.