Note — here is the Wednesday edition of Planet Waves FM, covering the charts in the Trayvon Martin case. The charts themselves are linked from this edition’s homepage.
One of the planetary influences we have not yet considered this week is retrograde Mars in Virgo opposite Neptune in Pisces. It’s easy for astrologers to get a little fixated on when an aspect is ‘exact’, but most aspects can be effective long before that moment – especially those involving the slower moving planets like Neptune. So even though Mars does not quite oppose Neptune when it goes retrograde, this is a situation where exact aspects don’t matter — Neptune has a wide field of influence (15 ot 20 degrees, at least), so this entire Mars retrograde in Virgo is happening opposite Neptune in Pisces.
Mars-Neptune in a tense aspect can have a self-destructive quality, and often this brings out the worst of Neptune — deception, denial, drink, drugs, delusion. This is not predictive astrology — all you need to do is observe.
Even those with Mars and Neptune in an easier angle (sextile, trine) must be careful and conscious of their integrity, and direct their creative energy consciously in positive directions. That’s not easy when so many factors in the world encourage us to be negative and to emphasize the negative properties of Neptune. This comes at the expense of the creative and transcendent qualities of Neptune — empathy, transparency, the love of beauty and the expression of beauty.
Said another way, it’s considered cool to drive ‘buzzed’ and tell ‘white’ lies and bend the truth and exaggerate and gossip — and then it’s normal to ponder why there’s so much drama around us. One of the biggest disconnects of our world is the way we divorce words from what they’re supposed to mean. Then we wonder how it’s possible that people who claim to be our leaders open their mouths and say anything they can to persuade us, evoke an emotional reaction or manipulate whomever they can. But this would not work, were it not considered ‘normal’.
Since Mars is opposite Chiron in Pisces as well, there is an opportunity here, what you might call a teaching moment. Chiron demands integrity, plain and simple. When Chiron is present and there is not integrity, attention to detail, and a focus on what is necessary, there will be a breakdown of some kind. Yet as soon as the message is received, the healing and reparative properties of Chiron come to the forefront. Yes, this can have the feeling of ‘the truth hurts’, but if it does, it’s the sting of disinfectant.
The current sky is blazing with caution to focus on correct speech and correct action. Know what’s yours and take responsibility for it. Know what belongs to others and let them take responsibility for it, without letting yourself get sucked into the drama. Remember that the Sun is approaching a square to Pluto right now, and that aspect — which we’ll describe more tonight — can be the essence of power-driven misjudgment, egotism and authority trips. You don’t need any of that to be happy, which will work fine as long as happiness is what you’re into.
That’s nice Pam.
mean’t to add..Mars Rx has really driven this message home: the need to be impeccable with words and followed through with the right action.
and dancing round you, laughing, inviting, til you dance too
for me the light of hope is not a ‘woman’, tho life shines with it and you can live these words but the light is also beyond, going on. All at the same time!
kelly, I feel the same. i read recently ‘…defend to the death’ and thought then everything dies: let’s defend life to the life, give our lives, bring life, breathe life, live through…
This is the garden that I know
Ten thousand summers wait me here
You lead and I will follow
Your heart is mine tomorrow
Into your womb I fade away
And while she laughs
Your pride is turning into snow
And melting on the face of this light of hope
Shine on, light of hope
Light of hope
And while she laughs
Your pride is turning into snow
And dancing on the graves of what you thought you used to know
And in this garden I will burn my callous robes
And forever love my darling
Light of hope
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWVk5pl68tc
I always just loved the lines –
And while she laughs
Your pride is turning into snow
And melting on the face of this light of hope
…dancing on the graves of what you thought you used to know
I am so glad this subject has come up. Ever since Chiron entered Pisces (my own natal 3rd house placement) I have instantaneously divorced myself from people misusing words. And, I am even referring to close friends mostly. The resonance of negative words as it touches my field of energy feels as threatening as a physical attack. In the past, I would soak the drama into my psyche and slowly but surely sabotage myself (planets in 12th inc. Mercury)
Chiron has been clearly defining my inner boundaries
Actually, that vent below was useful. To me, anyway.
I just realized that I am actually mightily enraged with myself for falling asleep at the wheel. All the portends were there, in my earlier life. Childhood to teens mostly. But I ignored them, or was taught to ignore them. (Doesn’t matter, at this point, how that happened, I suppose.) And got caught up… Getting an education, having kids etc.
Here’s a Merc rx dancing with natal H8 Chiron moment. Two boxes of letters I wrote when I was 14-16, and dislocated in more ways than one, are being mailed to me. She saved them all these years. I can’t imagine why… Maybe it will be a bringing the past into the present into the future moment… A 20-year old legacy.
” i’m only just now starting to understand the fear involved, and just how ooooooooooold it is — i mean, as in lifetimes. it’s a little unnerving; ”
Oh, Amanda Painter – yes! That’s definitely what I’ve been dealing with the past several months… I’m consistently shocked at the difference between consciously acknowledging my fears (getting to that point takes such work as it is!),and then realizing the depths of how much they’re ingrained in my psyche and physical body, based on so many lifetimes of being the victim/perpetrator of betrayal. This Mars-Virgo retrograde has been so profoundly insightful into the nature of my control issues (I didn’t think I had any – but it turns out I very much use my totally substantiated 7th house Mercury need for communication to feel like I have some control over a given relationship – as in thinking I can know what’s in the other person’s mind – it becomes compulsive!)…
but finding balance and figuring out where to go with all of this insight is overwhelming – if only integration and implementation could happen nearly as fast as the awareness…
That said, re: Mars opp Neptune – before I came to read this, I was bantering with myself about whether to go home and work with a dream from last night or swing by my favorite bar on my walk home to have “just one” whiskey and some conversation with the bartender. The first needs to happen, and the second…can be justified in SO many ways…
“Remember that the Sun is approaching a square to Pluto right now, and that aspect — which we’ll describe more tonight — can be the essence of power-driven misjudgment, egotism and authority trips. You don’t need any of that to be happy, which will work fine as long as happiness is what you’re into.”
Tell that to my Saturn!! Or my Cap Moon!! Grrr. I’m tired of slapping my Jupiter to life. Mars rx is doing some serious damage to my up.
OK. Done with the histrionics.
There’s all that. But, I have to admit, I am habituated to zippy energy. A fair measure of recklessness. Things slowed down. So slow. Then last June everything sped up. And that was spectacular. I’ve always danced with deadlines. That’s my addiction. Crisis. Out there, in your face crisis. I am highly suspecting (and this is not drama) that I have a deap-seated (past life stuff??) war nature. I have a highly strategic mind that is bored with where I am applying strategy. I figured it out, told the right people, they are (purportedly) on their way… Bored again. Do it again in another venue. Done. I fail to see how a gym membership and working out for hours on end is going to solve the problem.
I know I need to sit with this.
Maybe I need to sit with this AND get a gym membership. Yoga, which was lovely last year, pisses me off now. Lounging about feeling my chakras isn’t doing it for me.
I do think Ill figure it out. And I do actually have faith that WE will all figure it out. I think I am just mightily disapointed (and maybe a bit angry) that the stuff of my childhood, all the “new age” stuff I was born into, has failed so far so miserably. And that we have come to this… Hello, Pluto/Uranus. Welcome back. You feel familiar.
Vent over.
Oh yes! For our nation, it is a teaching moment, and truth should reveil itself:
Hungary’ situation about it’s minister’s PHD and plagiarism.
http://www.economist.com/comment/1333548
“One of the biggest disconnects of our world is the way we divorce words from what they’re supposed to mean. Then we wonder how it’s possible that people who claim to be our leaders open their mouths and say anything they can to persuade us, evoke an emotional reaction or manipulate whomever they can.”
This reminds me of a quote from Orwell’s WHY I WRITE. “Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind”
“If the need to control others emerges, that is fear based. Can you think of an instance when you want to apply control over a behavior, be it your’s or another’s that isn’t based upon fear?”
you know, i think that kind of describes my general mode of being in many of my past and present intimate relationships (all of them??). i’m only just now starting to understand the fear involved, and just how ooooooooooold it is — i mean, as in lifetimes. it’s a little unnerving; there are moments when the potential for healing those old wounds and growing and moving on is exciting, and moments when the changes that potential may entail is just about as scary as the prospect of not understanding and healing all (or some) of this stuff.
i keep vacillating between tastes of liberation and relief and the impulse to cling to the familiarity of what i’ve thought i “wanted”.
these are strange days, indeed…
Isn’t there an Annie Lennox song about being the first one to admit it and but the last one to know?
That bully is insidious, residing in some dark crevices because its basis is fear. If the need to control others emerges, that is fear based. Can you think of an instance when you want to apply control over a behavior, be it your’s or another’s that it isn’t based upon fear? If I am walking down the road and someone asks me what am I doing there, I think it triggers a very old wound of my right to exist.
I couldn’t sleep the other night over this Trayvon story so I looked at what was triggering me and wrote it down. I was hoping others would write about Trayvon because it was like a hot poker in my side, so I shared what I had written.
Like Carrie, I have bullies in my family and I have had a trip planned for next week where I may be encountering two of them. I realized that this terrifies me because of how painful it is to revisit these circumstances; reflecting upon the past and projecting into the future. Living in the moment is a challenge, but that is what I need to do. Over and over again until it is gone. If anything can unravel my progress it is when I am suddenly “little” again facing my family. They cannot understand why I do not like to be around them. I cannot understand that although I am different, I can still slip up and seemingly lose my power.
When I heard Trayvon may have been the one that struck out first physically, that cinched it for me as far as understanding the pure frustration of being pushed until there is an explosive reaction. Whether this is true or not in his situation, that is the gift in if for me. Handling my own energy is all I can do and I have not done it well in my life. This is not new to me. I have spent a life time growing boundaries, understanding triggers, dismissing erroneous projections. It is a lifetime project with Chiron in my second house.
I appreciate when people speak about healing what it does bring up to us as individuals. Isn’t that all we can really do? Everything is not all right and yet it is. We just walk around and pretend it is something different.
My last comment is this. I lived in central FL, not far from where this story unfolds. I have never seen racism more blatant than in this area. I have lived in many diverse areas up and down the u.s. east coast and it was a shock for me. We fled after four years, losing an incredible amount of money in selling our home. Time and time again we witnessed an unbelievable lack of empathy; the fear and hatred was heart breaking. When it came down to making the choice to leave, no amount of money mattered. Once the decision was made our lives improved in so many ways I cannot describe.
Thank you, once again <3