Dear Friend and Reader:
Astrology uses outer space to help map out inner space. Under digital conditions, when identity has been dissolved and we are all reduced to a new form of nobody, it may be an essential tool.
Mars, the planet of self-expression, desire and identity, is now in its first of three exact squares to Neptune, the planet of spiritual existence, imagination and denial. This is really one long event lasting through March 2023. This aspect is guidance to mind your personal integrity. It may feel like you can get away with anything. This is an illusion of the fog that we cannot see.
In most instances, doing the right thing is a private matter, as is telling the truth to yourself about how you feel. Under a Mars- Neptune influence this strong, the underlying reality of any situation will almost always slip out even if you don’t notice it.
We live in a time when you can pretend to be anyone, or to not be anyone. Yet pretending does not offer the satisfaction of understanding and of true existence. This aspect asks: who are you, in truth, and who do you want to become? These questions are not answerable in thought alone. One must figure them out in tangible, physical and lived reality.
We have lived with Saturn in Aquarius since March 2020 — a time we all remember. This has forced many people to address the problem of enforced conformity, which has reached a new level of intensity under digital conditions. In this new tribal reality, being an individual is considered intolerable, but it’s also an inevitable fact of your existence. How do you resolve this tension
Astrology provides a seemingly outer map that we can consider and then internalize in some way by asking, “What has this got to do with me?” From there, it’s a short hop to, “Who am I?” Once you’re asking that, you can count yourself as awake. The question, “Who am I?” answers many other seemingly unrelated issues.
In our current world, there is no remote place, no remote person, no remote idea. You can connect anywhere, to anywhere else, and then you’re back on the same old internet. Facebook is Facebook if you’re celebrating July 4th on Easter Island or Christmas in Tokyo. Your phone is your phone if you’re standing at the edge of a subway platform or the edge of the Grand Canyon. It has turned the world into one vast and boundless suburban mall.
The newly popular revival of the “Flat Earth” theory is the perfect metaphor for the world as described by the internet. It is a place without solid ground or measurable dimensions — and a world with an underside that nobody has ever seen. It’s also a concept of ourselves as being flat rather than well-rounded people.
We are now reaching the end of Pluto in Capricorn. This has demolished nearly all of the reference points we previously used as landmarks to navigate the world and our experience of it. There are no longer boundaries that mark the dimensions and categories of space. Everything has collapsed into occurring in one room, which is now your job, your school or university, your bank, your social life, your personal relationship and family life, the doctor’s office and everything else — all in one room; all in one little box in your pocket. We are physical beings — this is unbearable.
What we call astrology is happening within and without — inner space and outer. It is the external mirror of inner reality. We need this expansion because our interior reality is so compressed and distorted by living in the digital.
In the condensed and disembodied space of the internet, we are all extensions of one another’s nervous systems without clear borders between us. So we need a way to ask “who am I?” It is no longer an obvious question; no longer a burning desire when you always have the internet god to tell you who you are and what you should be thinking.
On the internet, nothing is true. Everything is a rumor. Yet you are not a rumor and you contain your own truth. Therefore, a mirror where nothing is credible is not an accurate reflection of who you are, or who you want to be, and that can slowly drive you insane. Much of the insanity of the world we live in has roots in this situation.
In the electronic realm, we converge on one another with stunning force and speed. There is no space to be yourself, and no division between yourself and others; or among other people. Your kid, your grandparents, your cat from the 1980s, a coffee ad and what you had for dinner all appear on the same feed. This creates a space where it is impossible for you to find yourself. All the ‘preferences’ in the world do not add up to yourself. You have to do that outside of digital space.
When real questions of identity happen in digital space, they can cause a shock and a revolt. Any meaningful question of personal identity is intolerable in digital space. That is why there are so many substitutes for asking. All of these chaotic and and unrelated bits and parts of of consciousness are thrown at us, and we have to make it cohesive. That’s a lot of work.
Astrology is the art of pattern recognition. The patterns appear “out there” but they can only perceived “in here,” meaning, within your awareness. You see the pattern, therefore, you contain it and can use it as guidance.
— By Eric Francis Coppolino
