Overture — Venus enters Gemini

Venus enters Gemini at 11:18 am EDT tomorrow. Immediately upon entering mutable Gemini, Venus will complete a T-square aspect as the midpoint of two objects in mutable opposition. Those two objects will be a newly Virgo Moon and asteroid Panacea, fresh to Pisces. Mutable signs follow fixed signs, representing an overture to change. Three objects, moving at radically different speeds, occupying the first degree of three mutable signs at the same time, is a symbolic overture for you. Working with this astrology will prepare you to be in harmony, and even in participation with, emerging themes. 

In music, an overture is a brief composition that introduces themes that will be expanded upon in the longer composition to follow. It is a prelude that prepares you for what is to come. In order for an overture to serve its purpose, you must participate, listening actively. The same is true for the astrology.

Our current astrology is preparing to enter a new phase composed of new themes. The Moon is nearly full. Mercury and Mars are nearing the end of their apparent retrograde movement. Venus is ending an eventful tenure in Taurus, where it rules. All those transitional events will take place in the next 10 days, and are not only nearly concurrent in fact but personal by implication.

Mercury, Venus and Mars are referred to as personal planets because their orbits repeat many times in a typical human life span. As such, the personal planets correspond to cycles that repeat many times in your life, each according to its archetype. Mercury, with its archetype of mind and its means, is rapid like your thoughts and retraces its steps frequently, as is often the case when reiteration plays a role in learning and communication. Mars, with its correspondence to energy, strives to sustain effort until exhausted, consequentially requiring a proportionally long period of recovery. Venus and the Moon are perhaps the most personal of all.

Among the archetypes of Venus is the phenomenon of attraction. It is that which accrues easily, like talent. It is what you take for granted, like gravity. Venus is the shady side of a mountain, the sheltered side of a river, a place of fecund comfort which you may distinguish as your own by the effort of your cultivation. The Moon most plainly corresponds to night, when you most likely sleep, alone inside yourself, recovering from, processing and integrating your waking life with others. When Venus and the Moon are in aspect, the general implication is attraction unconsciously but deeply felt. The specific aspect known as a mutable T-square introduces the tension that is an imperative towards awareness.

To gain awareness of a T-square aspect through your body, go outside, and stand side-on to east and west, lifting both arms so that they are parallel to the ground. Your two hands, one pointing east and the other pointing west are the objects in opposition, 180 degrees apart. Your head and torso, at the mid point between your hands are the third object, at right angles (or square) to those opposed. Assuming you are not in a place where authorities (uniformed or pretended) might harass you, stand there for a while like that and feel where the tension is in your body. That exercise will give you an idea of how to identify with T-squares in the sky and on the zodiac circle. While the tension in tomorrow’s mutable T-square will not be prolonged enough to cause discomfort, it will be an auspicious overture. The auspiciousness will come out of how the three constituents are synchronized.

The Moon is moving around the zodiac wheel at a clip of about 14 degrees a day right now, and speeding up. Venus is moving a little less than one degree a day and slowing down. The asteroid Panacea is slowest of the T-square trio, moving one degree every three days. To have them all align to the degree in any aspect at any moment is unlikely and thus auspicious. To have them align to the degree just as Venus is entering a new sign is downright unique, indicating a unique moment. As the slowest among the three, it is as though Panacea is the object the Moon and Venus are coming to meet, as if to remedy the mutual tension of their square. Such a remedy is a task for which this particular asteroid seems uniquely suited.

In mythology, Panacea was one of six daughters sired by Asclepius, the ancient Greek god of medicine and healing. Like all five of her sisters, her name had a meaning associated with her father’s vocation. Hence, from its origin, the moniker Panacea has been associated with a universal remedy. In its discovery chart (for September 7, 1980 in Flagstaff, Arizona) Panacea was located in Pisces, as part of a T-square of its own. It would follow then, that a homecoming to Pisces, concurrent with tomorrow’s unique alignment to the Moon and Venus, are part and parcel to Panacea’s native identity and archetype as the universal remedy of awareness. What Panacea brings to tomorrow’s T-square is what you can bring to tomorrow’s symbolic overture.

Whether as a prelude to be elaborated upon by what is to follow, or an independent piece that contains a greater whole, or even as the gateway to improvisation, the wealth of an overture is realized by the awareness you bring to it. It is easy to get stuck in the pattern of thought that Mercury retrograde represents, continuing on with that pattern long after it is no longer reflected in the underlying, or even symbolic, reality. It’s tempting to persist with the narrow scope and precise focus that Mars retrograde in Virgo has held us to so strictly for most of this year.

Your life, however, has its cycles, synchronized with those of the cosmos from which you are inseparable, and the cycles of the cosmos will be playing a prelude for you tomorrow. The extent to which you are conscious of that prelude will be the extent to which you will be able to anticipate, participate with, and help to create that which to is to follow. That consciousness can begin with something as simple as standing outside and holding your arms out to the opposing horizons as though you were preparing to conduct an orchestra.

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Len is available for astrology readings. You can contact him at lenwallick [at] gmail [dot] com.