The new edition of Planet Waves looks at the Venus-Mars conjunction and its relationship to the gay emergence of recent years. To read this edition as a single-issue purchase, click here.
Alan Oken responds to today’s edition:
Nice Mr. Eric, very nice…lovely interchange between astrology and your spot on sociological views.
My take is that the evolution of consciousness requires a state of non-polarization leading to fusion of the opposites in the heart center.
This awakens true intuition, a state of being in which the Middle Path (love-consciousness-soul) becomes the dominant place of self-identification. The Age of Pisces as dual is polarizing (good/evil, God/devil, electric/magnetic etc.) and leads to suffering as it favors exclusivity and separation over inclusivity and union. The Age of Aquarius is an era of energetic fusion, and we are told in the Ancient Wisdom teachings that the Christ of our Age is called “The Lord of Synthesis.”
In terms of the results of this urge for synthesis we also find the urge for androgyny. This union of the male and female (which is the mark of every conscious man or woman) is very frightening to polarized men and woman (who populate the Republican Party — no joke!) Now androgyny and sexual orientation are not one in the same thing. There are quite a few androgynous heterosexual people–more each day, and many, many homosexuals who are not androgynous in their consciousness at all! That said, on the level of pure sexuality, the approach to the collective state of androgyny (which I believe and hope is our evolutionary destiny) is expressed in large measure by this huge out-of-the-closet gay emergence. Anyway, I will stop here as I could go on and on.
Kudos to you Eric for a great newsletter this week.
In response to Alan, what we are seeing now is a toxic version of the Pisces age. What we’ve ended up with is the low end of the potential range. Imagine if the Pisces age were a little more…Piscean. There is nothing inherently Piscean about mass murder, which we have seen basically nonstop since the Christian movement began, starting with the Christians themselves and their propensity toward mass suicide early in their history, leading through the numerous crusades and world wars and nuclear militarism of the 2nd millennium CE.
Pisces is the sign of resolving dualism as much as it is one of the signs of dualism; and if you study the zodiac you will see that nearly every sign addresses dualism in some way. Aries gives us the horns of the ram. Taurus, the horns of the bull and also the cycles of the Moon. Gemini, the brothers/lovers; the crab has two claws. Leo is not really about dualism so much, though at the end of the cycle it fuses with the human woman to form the Sphinx, so you have an illustration of the human/animal morph in one expression. Sagittarius addresses the same theme. Aquarius gives us the two wavy lines and Pisces the two fishes.
Then, every sign is in relationship to its opposite sign and each of the signs includes and strives to embrace its opposite. Every sign is in an “opposite” relationship to its two adjacent signs; consider those relationships of opposition, for example, between Gemini and Cancer; between Pisces and Aries; between Cancer and Leo; and so on. Consider how those are opposite energies and you get a look at how the zodiac is a study in oppositions and polarities.
The “Age of Aquarius” is another issue entirely. Some of the most disturbing traits are manifesting first, such as lock-step thinking and the establishment of patterns that we cannot seem to dissolve. There is nothing inherently about love and peace in the Age of Aquarius. If we get there that will be one of the great human achievements. The Nazis were one of the first notable expressions of the early Aquarian age, because of the way in which they used thought patterns as a means of control, and their prevailing ethos of beauty ceasing to be relevant — only the “perfection” of their own race.
The single most important thing we can do here in the very very early Aquariuan age is to individuate, which is to think and feel for yourself. That is the path from tyranny, including inner tyranny. And as Alan points out, part of that individuation process is making peace with and entering into conscious relationship with the polarities we contain — in part so we don’t project them.
Sam, fascinating! I used to have a concern about how we do not convey the notion of personhood or sentience in the non-gendered terms in the English language. I am not multi-lingual, but know enough to know many languages do have gender specificity for most nouns. This makes it easier to express the personhood in which I find myself immersed. In English because there are many places where, to be accurate, I have to say “it”, I would feel I was thereby denying the living spirit of the manifest form I was referring to.
Personhood also is maybe the quality that stimulates sexual exchange…… as I feel similarly to what you express so well. Somehow….. neuter energy offers little to engage with at any level!
Gender truly has many depths of mystery to plumb.
And I agree with you about the editing…..
E2, thank you for that reference. I always appreciate the view into that level of detail as it is most often revelatory in the way you relate. And so, ultimately, liberating.
High Five Brother!!!
But, um,… i just want to know… when are you gonna do the Virgo birthday audio?
edition not addition. I wish I could go back and edit these things. Last time it was bowl instead of bowel.
I always thought that the word androgyny meant having very little of either sex’s characteristics, suggesting a lack of sexual maturity to me, rather than some ideal balanced state. Maybe this is just the word people use because we don’t have a better one. I’m not sure, and the truth is I haven’t read the weekly addition yet so this is a little off the cuff.
I personally am attracted to the presence of MORE of BOTH sex characteristics or energy (it doesn’t really have to be physical per se, though energy has a way of penetrating and shaping matter). It would be nice to have a word for this besides androgynous or hermaphroditic. If I talk about this with Chinese friends, we’d probably just say oh yeah that guy has that sort of Buddha double sex. It would be hard to say the Buddha is androgynous. Or is the problem that the word androgynous has just recently become associated excessively with pubescent looking waifs?
Girly-boyish metrosexual men and boyishly chic girlish women stopped being attractive to me more or less when I came out of puberty. I know this may just be a personal preference which I’m justifying through this line of reason, and I guess a lot of people like that kind of androgyny and there are also lots of people who probably naturally just are that way. Not saying we should all only like a brawny man with a coy way of looking at us from underneath his eyelids. Not saying we should all be like him either. I wouldn’t kick him out of bed for eating crackers though…
Hey fontanelle33:
I thought of you today and those tears stuck in your abdomen. Seems to me you are already aware of where they are stored so you’re well on your way to going in and saying hello and giving them room for expression. Before long they will seek that channel where out they will come. Yeah, out they will come and come and come in waves of healing release! Like Eric alluded to today; why not invite the current placement of Venus in Scorpio provide the stage for hidden secrets to see the light of day.
I will continue to hold you in my thoughts 😉
In comment to the mind and gender bending stew of endocrine disrupting chemicals we now swim in, here’s a nice quote from the 3rd edition of Reproductive Toxicology, Kapp et al.:
Although beyond the scope of this chapter owing mainly to its complexity, one cannot divorce development of the brain from reproductive function, as sexually dimorphic development of certain brain regions is necessary for regulation of mating as well as other male-specific traits (e.g., refusing to ask for directions when lost).
Chapter Two, “Normal Development of the Male Reproductive System” p 14.
It’s a scholarly, fascinating, and ultimately terrifying look at what we are doing to ourselves.
Eric,
Alan Oken – dude! You got a written complement from Alan Oken! Heck i would surrender a small, duplicated part of my anatomy just to carry his Antikythera mechanism.
By the way, i have long admired the “Mars and Venus,…” painting you featured. The New Years Eve party joke is accepted in good humor but for me the painting is deeply touching. Long, long, long ago i was there. i can still smell the sheets and feel the warmth of the morning light and the gratitude for another day.
I forget where I found this, maybe here:
http://groundspark.org/our-films-and-campaigns/straightlaced
Shebear 13, thanks also for you comment on the earlier link re: personal pleasure. I yearn for those tears, sometimes feeling stuck in my abdomen and I agree, today’s edition is stellar.
I appreciate today’s weekly horoscope for Virgo more than words can say. After my busy but very satisfying week, I find that today IS all about reflection, observing and comforting myself after the stretching and the tweaking of the limits of my potential .
Nice one Eric and many thanks.
I’d also like to include an interesting statistic from my meditation class last night. There were only four of us who showed up; the teacher and three students and turns out we are all Virgos! It couldn’t help but be a grounding experience, right?!
Great. Sums it up nicely and why I always feel guilty for being secure in my “masculinity” — empathy at it’s worst.