Dear Friend and Reader:
Woodstock in the Sky is happening right now, as we are living under the most impressive Aquarian alignment in decades. The late Sagittarius Moon is waning, sailing toward an eclipse of the Sun on Monday. We will have more to say about this through the weekend and in tomorrow’s edition of Astrology News.
The Woodstock lineup features the Sun in a mighty conjunction with Jupiter (exact today and tomorrow), plus Chiron, Nessus, Neptune and the North Node. Venus has moved onto Pisces and Mercury has retrograded back to Capricorn, but it will soon return to Aquarius.
In the midst of this, Venus and Mars stand out of today’s charts because they are talking to one another, and making several aspects to slow-moving planets.В
In today’s alignment, Venus and Mars seem to be searching for their identity. Sex depends on gender identity, and gender identity is often the foundation of what we think of when we imagine “who we are.” We also tend to think of both sex and gender as fixed, that is, predictable and stable. Most of us feel we know exactly who we are sexually, and how we express our gender roles, but living things change constantly and even our natal planets are under constant changing influences (transits, progressions, new discoveries and others). I think of gender and sexual orientation as entirely mutable; that is, flexible.
No two people have the same Venus and Mars in their natal charts (even in nearly identical charts there will be slight variations). Since both planets are in constant motion, there is a constant dance of “who am I and who are you?”, “how do we relate?” and “what’s our chemistry?”
We often forget that these aspects of our psyche do not stand alone, but rather connect to large forces both of nature and of culture. There are those moments of cosmic contact, where eroticism exalts itself to the level of mystical practice. And then…there is this issue of choice. This crisis of choice. Here’s one theory I have.
We like to think of ourselves as making up our own minds all the time. But more often we feel like marionettes, or we discover little strings connected to our hands, feet and mouths, doing what we’re “supposed to do” and saying what we’re “supposed to say” (or having a habit of messing up despite our best intentions).
Today Venus in Pisces is making a conjunction to Uranus, which feels like an erotic revolution of some kind; a bright flare of feminine individuality. She and Uranus are square Quaoar in Sagittarius. Quaoar in part speaks to the theme of family patterns, and the dance of creation that was going on long before we got to the planet. It is the cultural pattern into which we are born, which we ‘pick up’ unconsciously.
Venus is conjunct Uranus, the god of revolutions, in Pisces. This is a passionate, expressive manifestation of Venus. We can see what she is revolting against if we look at that square to Quaoar. She’s rebelling against who she was told she was, or became without choosing. She no longer wants to dance to the music of her family pattern — it’s her own tune she wants.
Quaoar represents internalized family patterns more than it does the external ones. They are the same thing, but Quaoar is about what we take on from the family’s choreography. The combined conjunction with Uranus and the square to Quaoar suggests that the moment we want to be sexually free, or free in our values, the first thing we are likely to come up against is conditioning. Keep going — that’s the fence at the end of your yard. The world is beyond it.
Mars is sextile Uranus, which takes two of the most dynamic energies and places them where they can work together, in balance. Mars is also sextile Venus. Mars, while not exactly passive in today’s aspects, is taking its lead from Venus. Let women work out their changes; they need to be the ones who lead the way in their own growth, and today, anyway, men need to witness the process and come along when invited.
Today Mars is also trine Typhon, a distant object named for the monster of storms from Greek mythology. To me this represents the perception of male sexuality as a wild, dangerous and uncontrollable force of nature, more inclined to destroy than to create. But we exaggerate. We all depend on male drive to change the world, and welcoming a little more of that would be nice, actually. So would the world acknowledging and appreciating the storm of desire that, in truth, both men and women are capable of stirring up. Yet today if you ask me, it’s Venus who sparks the Renaissance.
For Planet Waves, this is,
PS, Chiron is involved in this, by semisextile to Venus — a 30-degree aspect that is about intimate harmony between deeply contrasting elements. I was just sitting here at my desk considering how Chiron was the first and perhaps only carefully-developed planet available in the natal chart; that is, the first chart element that we’ve delineated based on careful, conscious research rather than haphazardly. Though still widely misunderstood, many cases have been documented and books have been written. No other planet has had this kind of sociological review from the time of its discovery, available to the public. Chiron’s involvement, coming through Aquarius and with Neptune nearby, suggests that there is a public dimension to all of this. A lot of people choose not to be real with their partners less for their partner’s sake and more for the sake of conforming to their friends; to not be seen as a threat; to avoid being outcast.
Chiron’s first role is going to be about raising awareness of the themes involved; the issues, as we like to call them. And as I see it, the first of those is the right to be an individual, and to maintain that individual awareness in an intimate relationship; and among those we call friends who often serve to decide who we are not going to be. Your friends are the people who affirm who you are, and who help you become that. To get there you often need to stand alone: Chiron in Aquarius. The cool part is that the people who do have something in common with you can finally see you.