As mentioned in Monday’s Daily Astrology, the asteroid Juno is currently interacting with the Uranus-Pluto square. This set-up is keeping the themes of relationships, jealousy (especially in sexually intimate partnerships), the inner relationship to self, and social justice very active in our personal lives and in the collective sphere.
In honor of Juno’s prominence in the Uranus-Pluto square (the defining aspect of our era, ongoing into 2015) as we begin this new year, I wanted to invite you to revisit the archived Blue Studio conversations Eric recorded for Planet Waves FM this past fall.
Let’s get 2013 started by actually talking about all this sex and self-relationship stuff as candidly as we can.
With Mercury in Capricorn set to conjoin Juno on Friday Jan. 4, you may find your mind is already tuning itself to this station. With any luck, the words will be right on the tip of your tongue (or at your fingertips, if you’re typing), ready to lay a solid foundation of curiosity-fueled discussion — with your partner(s), and yourself.
Juno’s themes really came into consciousness on the solstice, when the asteroid was joined by the Sun in the first degree of Capricorn. Juno is now at 6 Capricorn, almost midway between the degrees occupied by Uranus (5 Aries) and Pluto (10 Capricorn).
In other words, the tune for theses early days of 2013 is being called by Juno on the Aries Point (the first few degrees of all four cardinal signs, Aries, Cancer, Libra and Capricorn, count as the Aries Point). That’s the hot spot where personal and political intersect, making us aware of how we engage with the world around us — and how ‘the world’ impacts our most personal, inner lives.
The Blue Studio broadcasts are collected on this official Blue Studio page. The last interview recorded, “Liza is Her Lover,” begins automatically when you land on the page, but you can stop it and click the word “archives” to see the full listing of interviews.
Eric has put the Blue Studio series on hold while he works on LISTEN, the 2013 annual edition from Planet Waves, but plans to resume once he wraps up that gorgeous, in-depth investigation of the astrology of 2013. In the meantime, I welcome any and all comments about these interviews, as well as any insights that have percolated up from your own inner depths that seem Juno-related.
Archetypes – making/stumbling on the live connection.
Lennie
Be has a very good comment over on Jude’s thread – women befriending and nurturing.
Putting yourself completely into a situation doesn’t have to be aggressive even if it gets intense.
I grew up in Zimbabwe in the bush, and the Uk was a shock. I read Brave New World for O Level and hated it. It sat for years like undigested food and I never found any response to it, until I saw the Matrix which delat with the same material and without ending in catastrophe.
It takes time too, to see what you are seeing, to map it, to effectively transform it. Can be instantaneous, but often there is alot of chipping away behind that. I had one job which felt like moving a mountain with a tsp – you just do it tsp by tsp and arrive. if you start counting or looking at the mountain it tends to be counter productive until after the half way point!
I have begun the piano again and see very clearly how you learn one way of playing a piece and that becomes ‘it’ for you until someone else shows you a diiferent way and opens up the possibilities again. Or how you tend to stay with combinations of notes that you know or like.
Karin Blixen wrote about the (old) women who can read the story of the blank page – even if information is hard to find you can ‘divine’ it with experience.
Alex on reflection, it might well have been the luminous light of Palestine (particularly in the evening), and South Africa and India – how real nature and life are – that helped Jesus and Mandela and Gandhi. Something like being on solid ground?
xxxp
partemaudite, you seem to be hinting at a distinction here between archetype as referential or actual. You seem to espouse by your quote choice a preference for being over word. So it is the experience of the archetype *living* within the unconscious that is more important than the referential aspect of it “pointing” to something transcendental. This would be a bit like saying that the essence is the point, not the idea. Would that be fair?
It seems that there is a parallel here to canonical texts which have traditionally been closed.. so you can’t add to them once the canon is closed etc We need open canons not closed ones. So yes, the grey keeps us uncertain and open to change. We are related to archetypes and if that is a living relationship then stories are keeping us vital. If there is no flow back and forth, no hermeneutic, then we have the oppressive sterility of dogmatism and either obliteration of unique experience by tradition or hijack of the archetype by our own experiential frame of reference. This is why stories must evolve; so that we can too. Much obliged for your responses and heartened by your input, aword.. 🙂
Speaking of ‘archetypes’ and the death thereof (premature or not):
“Someone like St. Thomas has no trouble in forging the physical theory of love [. . .] which is that the first of which we are aware our own being, and everything which is for our own good will be *jouissance* [intense pleasure] of the supreme Being, that is, of God. In short, in loving God it is ourselves we love, and by first loving ourselves –a convenient charity, as they say — we render to God the appropriate homage.”
J. Lacan _Feminine Sexuality_
Read carefully. He flips a few things around, tickling the back of the image. You don’t even have to ‘believe’ for this to work.
Alexander,
Thank you for your thoughts and feedback on this subject. I agree and appreciate your ability to put into stronger form my soft-form ideas. We are indeed ‘coming alive’ (no, this is not death to archetypes; it is transformation, yes? 🙂
It seems to me that the “50 shades of grey” that the mulititude of similiar sky objects/cultural stories are bringing to us is an overt calling to integrate the subleties of them and help us find new focus via personal growth on the expanded/larger relationships that become available to us in this way.
Highentened awareness of our similarities with various interpretations and limitless relationships.
Thank you, I appreciate your conversation on this subject!
Linda
aword, a courageous suggestion “the death of the archetype”! This is a huge topic in its own right before we even get to its significance for astrology. For me, archetypes will always be with us. But, as you suggest, the way we appropriate them may become more sophisticated. The Jungian sense may also be distinguished from a more generic view of archetypes. We could look at an archetype in terms of the diachronic or the synchronic. Consider the wounded healer archetype diachronically (across history). We could cite Chiron or Asclepius in Greek tradition, or maybe the suffering servant in Hebraic tradition in Isaiah 53, or Jesus in Christian tradition or Parsifal in a Wagnerian bent and the whole Fisher King arena.. Did each of these spring up uniquely within a distinct cultural setting, or are they related? And if so, how? Is there some unconscious archetype at play (akin to Plato’s Forms) or possibly a causal connection of transmission? We could speculate forever about the “status” of an archetype and its nature, in order to establish a theory of archetypal durability.
For me, the point of source is interesting but, in terms of human stories the point is whether or not archetypes can facilitate growth. In their very essence generic, there is something irreducibly black and white about an archetype. It is interesting that Hollywood Superhero movies often portray ethical dilemmas of the individual mortal hero in the kinds of grey we all wrestle with, at the same time as painting the broader and bigger issues as black/white, with the implicit honour code of said mortal heroically divesting himself (apologies ladies but superheroes are invariably fashioned male) of his personal wants to serve good over evil. Such stories, based upon archetypes shaped by vested interests, offer us material for reflection but are already steering us toward the conclusions the interested parties favour.. and that is the KEY, the entry point is everything!
aword, I believe you are correct in terms of breaking archetypal black/white down.. and that is not the archetype dying, but rather us coming alive. In all enriching stories, the imagination is stimulated and possibilities open up. When stories are becoming enslaving it is because they are shutting posssibilities down. We should be in continual imaginal relationship to our greatest archetypes; shaping them, just as much as we allow them to shape us.
Alexander De Witte, you have given me pause. Rather than being in a time when archetypes are being rewritten, perhaps we are in a time when archetypes are becoming no-longer-needed. When we can see the larger picture and the smaller picture all at once and at the same time, we no longer need the symbols that are archetypes with which to single out singular facets/linear moments and instead can take in – and comprehend – a complete view of the whole.
I’ve typed before I’ve chewed on this one. I think my horrorscope today said to beware of doing that or the dog on the porch might come after my Juno. Well, here it is then. xo
Thanks all, good conversation.
“Difficult dog to keep on the porch…” now there’s a quality line! 😀
very true, difficult with spin to know what you are seeing if at all! (Altho you get a nose for it after awhile?)
I once read that Hillary Clinton said that Bill was a difficult dog to keep on the porch, but that is hearsay too!
Pam, I was referring to Jesus as a contrast to Hillary Clinton. This is because of a desire to illustrate the workings of propaganda. The holiness brigade prefer him placed in a stained glass window, as far removed from activism as possible. Similarly we can elevate Hillary to saintly status by reading the Juno scenarios into her life – a distorting move. Wherever we see Juno motifs we simply read them into a public figure and say “this is that” or “Hillary is Juno”.
This is like when you buy a car and then seemingly start seeing those cars everywhere on the road. It is just a case of what you are currently looking at or experiencing being projected writ large. That is quite a perilous way of viewing credible interpretations. When we simply read what we want to see, e.g. our ideals INTO situations then we are seeing nought but our own reflection. We palm off wishful thinking as some kind of definitive knowledge. In this case, buttressed by a Juno archetype. If this is plausible I vote we ditch Juno and replace her with Hillary.. the mythological Hillary at that!
Alex – Jesus and co were born as colonised peoples – plenty of time to hone your Juno stuff in those settings. And later in South Africa. Or jail. Or Jesus’ ‘lost years’…
Lennie I agree it is about self presentation and communication, but the bottom line is the bottom line and it is also stating that. Holding it as a goal, even having lost your footing, even wrong footed, even unable to speak.
Other people may still take offence however well you present yourself – it has to do with power/privilege/comfort/unawareness and preference to hold on to it. And then offence is their reaction, as your reactions are yours. This is quite separate from what is fair or hidden or a secret agenda or taken as read or slid over or taken as le droit du seigneur. Or even what is real.
Perhaps the technique is pursuing the matter through all the diversions andhaving to let it go, presenting it and representing it as you can until everyone sees the truth of the matter. Of course if your own position needs modifying that too is part of the process.
xxxp
welcome, lennie! thanks for chiming in.
🙂
Hi everyone,
It’s been almost a year that I’ve been aware of PW and thought this was a good time to share my voice. Thanks to all the writers…I have learned huge amounts and expanded my thinking on so many subjects. This is precious.
The whole Juno piece resonates personally with me, as a Taurus rising with Juno in opposition, I’m coming up to Juno transit trine my ascendant.
Where I’m at now is finding out how to be true and authentic with myself (which implies self knowledge and striving to self love) while in relationship with others. It has a lot to do with respect of self and the other, and includes diplomacy. How can I be myself without offending the other? How can I express all that I am and enjoy the beauty of those I am in connection with?
This is a work in process.
jealousy and rage as symptoms of excruciating pain.
May not justify but it explains and gives a starting pointto see everything in the scenario
ie symptoms of excruciating pain.
Add intelligent and witty to a beauty…
Alex, Sam said before – something like – the discussion of Juno implied tho didn’t say that she was justified in her reaction.
My feeling is that had Zeus approached her differently or accepted no as a possible position or stopped to listen, you would have a different story ie not necessarily one of jealousy and rage. I agree absolutely that Jesus or Gandhi or Mandela or lots of other people handled their situations with more objectivity. They were also men ie higher in the pecking order sociologically speaking: so people listen more easily or hear them etc.
Take a look at The Duchess (film) if you will. The implication that I find difficult in these conversations about Juno is that she was ‘bad’, ‘not good enough’, ‘meant badly’, was a jealous b****. There are real situations.
(Am I missing the point?):
If something is important (vital) for you to get across and people are abusive and aren’t listening/hearing – the Duke of Devonshire and his I’m the most powerful person in the country – I don’t have to do anything unless I want to, with regard to anyone (and I don’t want to) – is classic. What do you do. Isn’t that the Juno dilemma. That of prisoners and slaves. And women (from time to time).
vital: G married a man who wanted an heir. She wasn’t more than a brood mare and a pretty aquisition. She was loving, a virgin, much younger than him, a beauty. He f***ed the servants and whoever he wanted, brought one resulting offspring whose mother had died for her to bring up as her own, hated her because she then had 3(?2) girls, installed her only (best) friend in the house as his mistress knowing G couldn’t leave her children, raped her and luckily she had a son from that. Wouldn’t allow her to install Lord Grey as her lover because it would reflect badly on him (Lord Grey was single and without ‘money’ which didn’t help), made her give up her child with Lord Grey (a girl, and remember she brought up Devonshire’s illegitimate child as her own and with her own), forced her to give up Grey on threat of closing all political doors to him (while living with his mistress in the family home). They lived as a threesome until G died and he then married the mistress/her best friend – who became his mistress as the only way of getting her own children back.
Jealous rage? it is a mess/nightmare!
The problems with *Jesus*, within his historic appropriation with respect to causes/crusades, have come about once he was banished to the stained glass window. All ideological distortions begin with the process of idealization of any person, with respect to any particular frame of moralist psychological reference.. say ‘purity’ in the case of Christ.. can you SEE his halo?
My feeling is that perhaps Jesus is a loftier candidate for the stained glass window treatment than that implicit in the canonisation of Saint Hillary (notwithstanding some of his more petulant outbursts of pique against the establishment). Just because Ms Clinton is a prominent woman in public office, is that sufficient reason, per se, to raise her up as champion of virtue, or women’s issues or social justice, or as a blessed expression of the archetype of Juno? I think not!
I would much rather take a close look at the humanity manifesting every day in a person’s life than swallow a bunch of propaganda. Fortunately, it will never be my lot to make such an assessment of Hillary, or indeed most any other public figure. The *mystery* of their private self is likely forever inaccessible to us.. and gladly so, if you ask me!
It seems to me that human stories cannot exist solely within archetypes. They need to be unpacked; and such is the mass media in our particular world, at this juncture in history, that we are unlikely ever to get anything other than the propaganda (the whitewashed [WhiteHoused?] version).. underpinned by romanticized archetypes that we merely conveniently *project* onto our public figures.
ie not a doormat.
Tho I take Eric’s ways and ways of reacting
…Tho I was thinking of the child as manifesting a ‘mature’ Juno?
And then there is Princess Di? ‘The Prince of Wales brought home a Dresden shepherdess only to find he had awoken a Dresden bomber’ (Julie Birchill)
Hey there Eric, thanks for your perspective which has brilliantly tied it up with a bow. I am still tring to grasp the Aries Point significance, and now in relation to Juno. My AC, DC, MC and MC are at 4 Libra, 4 Aries, 4 Capricorn and 4 Cancer respectively. Also noticed my North node sits on MC at 1:53 Cancer. Can you explain do these #s touch and pick up influence from the Aries point?
The Juno aspect you have been spelling out to us relates clearly to what’s coming in for me, thank you making us aware of this important theme. Regarding it all #9, I received in a Dream on 31st. And now after reading Sarah’s article of today, realized Hermit is the corresponding card…all very Juno. Of the #9 and Hermit:
“In order to be able to truly join another, you must first be truly alone yourself. Otherwise the union is born out of fear of solitude.”
As ever, very much appreciate and look forward to your insight and reply. Also to listening to the blue broadcasts, I missed the first time out.
xo P.S. To be fair, isn’t it time to change the picture on your broadcast desk from Female, to ‘Male in Lust’!!
Juno 29 cp 49’21” for this pisces sun
I agree with Amanda, and I agree with Green Star-gazer; Hillary has given us a great role model for Juno. I hope and pray she will soon return to public life fully regenerated. With Juno as with any astral symbol, the manifestation will be blended with all the other expressing energies we have given names to. Sometimes she will be hidden from consciousness to the point of not recognizing her at all. In others, like Hillary, very pronounced. Juno’s aspects in the personal chart will tell how (and who) she is supported (by) and who (what) will bring out her worst tendencies. The more (and the sooner) we are conscious of her, the greater the liklihood she will be a positive influence in our own nature. The transits to her (or by her in transit) give us the opportunity to express as well as sense the role she plays in our life.
In DivaCarla’s chart she’s on the ascendant and almost jumps out with very little coaxing. Fortunately, DivaCarla is aware of her presence and is working to integrate the Juno qualities (negative and positive) with the rest of her planets’ expression. Like all these gods and goddesses representing human nature, they are tools for learning about ourselves and how to interface with society.
Pam sounds like she is using Juno’s talent for representing those who can’t speak for themselves, along with other goddess qualities in her chart that Juno connects with. Perhaps her natal Juno is in the 5th house or maybe aspects her natal Sun. I do believe that Juno is more than willing to play a supporting role as long as she is recognized and treated as an equal. However, she’s at her best when she is in a powerful position and treated with respect. We are all in the process of awakening, or making conscious these inhibited or suppressed parts of ourselves that have, in our lifetimes, been given a name and a story to help us understand them. It is up to us how they manifest. Will they make the world a better place for all, or will they create conflict and fear among those around us. We need to see these figures as whole and multi-dimensional rather than just good or bad, smart or foolish, powerful or gentle. We are all works in progress!
be
green-star-gazer: what a fascinating and spot-on analogy! thank you for bringing the Juno archetype into an easily-recognized contemporary life.
If one could invite a public figure in to sit down in the *Juno chair* for an interview, I would invite Hillary Rodham Clinton. If anyone has had to sit spotlighted in the intersection of the personal and the political while having one’s partner’s follies exposed and one’s sex life questioned, it is Hillary.
When the whole blue dress incident blew up in the news, I can remember feeling such awe for how she handled herself and the situation. As a fellow Scorpio, I could easily imagine how deep this betrayal drama must have cut into her heart and soul, yet, being a public figure she could let very little of that show outwardly. Her husband did indeed have many Jupiterian-like qualities especially when he was president, and there we had the whole classical Juno-like drama played out for us in full detail. I think everyone expected her to split form him…at least for a time….but she did not. She endured and modeled not the jealous shrew, but something more dignified. (Of course her life in private may have been a different matter) I saw that as a cultural raising of the archetype in some ways….it was as if the collective was ready and able to imagine another way for Juno to comport herself; with dignity and grace despite public humiliation and shame.
Outside of her marriage, in her public work she focused on social issues which she tried valiantly to promote and change…and she was reviled for it. I understood more clearly why Juno is not well-loved in our patriarchal culture when Hillary was vilified for being “too strong” and “too involved” for how some people thought a First Lady *should* behave.
Yet, despite the obvious humiliation her partner brought to her personally, she stayed with him. How many of us could have done the same were we in her shoes? For me, she is such a positive model of the Juno archetype. Even now as she has continued her career she is still in some ways fulfilling that role though she is not married to the current President she has been his Ambassador-in-chief in the world at large. Still working for social issues but on the biggest scale of all and like Be said, her power of persuasion has accomplished much.
be I’ve been chewing over what Amanda said, and for me the problems of communication Juno has may at the beginning be needing to hone these skills but latterly it is the problem of oil meeting water, and then what? A very good example is the film The Duchess with Keira Knightly and Ralph Fiennes. What do you do in a situation like that. Communicate all G liked.
A personal example would be a child who came to visit this summer. Parents separated, the home life with his father very difficult. He stayed two weeks, I got to know him a bit and like him. Bit by bit I stood with him a bit. Sometimes literally with the other children, shoulder to shoulder (‘look!’ or ‘it will be alright’). And then one day I talked with him about his situation. A bright kid. I said with my children if I didn’t like the situation I stood between them and what I didn’t like as best I could – his mother can’t do that because she isn’t there. As a child you are not necessarily able to make your voice heard, so I said that to him and that he could try to speak up but if no one took any notice of him he needn’t be surprised, and in that case he was in it for the long haul – he could try to learn a martial art to centre himself and later stand off others without harm. or at some point he would be old enough to make his voice heard and his presence respected or be free to leave. He looked at me as tho this end in sight was a revelation. he relaxed completely. Is that a good description of Juno? Both the situation where you don’t have purchase, and equally the ‘landing’ of it.
Then his circumstances altered as if by a miracle (not straight away) and I wonder to what extent his release in himself influenced the blocked stuff at home. Perhaps not at all. And in that case a miracle!
Love that picture of Juno, Be. I am just getting to know her. She came to my attention in a reading with Len last summer. He pointed out that she is sitting on my ascendant, just over the threshold into my first house, with her feet resting on Saturn, or is she leaning her head on his chest? As her shadow realm is where I am working on personal healing in jealousy and relationship, she and I will be in dialogue all year. Let me get to know more about her queenly qualities of diplomacy and bringing the fractious parts of myself together!
Reminded of the power of Pholus in diplomacy. 1 degree of shift can open up a whole new territory of possibility and results.
Diplomacy is becoming my new key word for Juno. I’ve kicked this symbol up a couple of notches after seeing her in operation these past few days of gnawing over the Fiscal Cliff negotiations. Her discovery chart has diplomatic charm with a conjunction of Mercury and Saturn in Libra that is sextile her Venus in Leo (and the south node). Although out-of-sign in Cancer, her Moon in the last degree of the Crab claw is also conjunct her Venus, and that Moon trines her Scorpio Neptune conjunct Lilith. There is good reason for Juno’s conjunction to the Sun in the Capricorn Solstice this year, at least for the U.S., because first and foremost, Juno is a Queen. She excels in bringing people together.
She will be at her most formidable near the end of February when Washington will be consummed with the debt ceiling fight, as transiting Neptune will become the focal point of a yod he forms with Juno’s sextile between Venus (& Co.) and Mercury+Saturn. The Full Moon will conjunct her Sun in Virgo as the transiting Sun in Pisces will conjunct her Pluto. Do not underestmate her power of persuasion.
be