Venus, Mercury, Pholus and company square Ceres

Today is Tuesday, Nov. 15, 2011. The Moon continues is trek through Cancer all day. It is a comfortable placement for the Moon – its home sign – and on its way through, it makes a trine to Ceres in mid-Pisces. This angle is all about flow. And in this case, what’s flowing is our emotions about food: how we find comfort in food; food as a stand-in for home; creativity through cooking; sharing ourselves by sharing a meal in our home; how our relationships to food were shaped by our mothers.

This week, however, the Moon-Ceres relationship is a bit edgier than it generally is. That’s because Ceres is taking a square from the big conjunction in mid-Sagittarius: Mercury-Venus-Great Attractor-Pholus-Ixion. It’s an intense configuration carrying baggage, and the Moon is amplifying it into our emotional bodies.

The good thing about that is that the more aware we are of the material surfacing for us, the better we can deal with it. Consider yesterday’s suggestions for the week: move gently, making small moves with clarity. It’s the opposite of reacting, though not always as ‘natural’ a way of walking through the world for some of us. The Moon is emotional; Venus is emotional; Mercury is more associated with thoughts, but remember, ‘mercurial’ refers to a rapid and unpredictable changeableness of mood. So we have emotional planets joining up with Ceres and Pholus: the reminder is to cultivate awareness around food this week.

The fact that the angle from Sagittarius to Pisces is a square (in this case, mutable sign to mutable sign) means the tension is internal, and that’s where we’ll work through it as we make decisions and small moves. The pressure may feel large, but it may not take dramatic steps to relieve it – just one that’s carefully considered. Changes in perspective count as making a move. How are you feeling about food these days? Is it a palliative or a creative act for you? Something to share or something to horde? Are you reveling in the last of your garden’s bounty, or beating yourself up for eating too much Halloween candy — and already anticipating how disappointed you’ll be in your food choices over the winter holidays?

Let yourself feel around for what’s a little deeper. The centaur planets tend to speak of familial, ancestral or past-life karma; Pholus in particular can link to alcohol abuse, but more generally, can indicate some seemingly small incident having a disproportionately large effect. Certainly having something ripple through generations qualifies as a large effect; often attitudes around food and nourishing are passed down the line. In the Ceres myth, a mother mourns her daughter’s absence by withholding food (in creating winter), indicating another familial theme in the mix. What cherished food traditions or toxic food relationships have been passed down in your family?

There are numerous variations on these themes, so keep an eye out for the subtle ones. Pholus concerns itself with naked impulses and desires, so if you find yourself half-consciously heading through a fast food drive-through, keep driving. More seriously, these impulses can clash with ‘conventional’ morality, often leading to experiences that we cannot control. Pholus forces us to look at our own imbalances, testing us to the breaking point, good or bad. And, because it’s a centaur, Pholus can shift us to another level of consciousness. The Great Attractor only amplifies the situation. We can feel powerfully drawn to something new but, in order to have it, we must give up something old. Does that conflict sound familiar?

The square to Ceres brings up one more facet in all of this. Although she is most often connected with fertility and the archetype of the great mother, Ceres was also the patron goddess of Rome’s written laws. In fact, the official decrees of the Senate were placed in her temple, under her guardianship, in order to prevent government officials from seeking advantage by tampering with Roman law. After 2,000 years, nothing has changed. Silvio Berlusconi, Italy’s recent prime minister, tailored many laws to his own advantage, including various immunity laws that kept him from criminal prosecution.

While Berlusconi’s sex and corruption scandals weren’t all that shocking to the Italian public, they will have to learn to live without the distraction they provided now that he has stepped down. Bill Emmott, formerly of The Economist, writes “… those Italians who liked him as a kind of pleasure drug to help them avoid facing reality will now have withdrawal symptoms. Reality has finally intervened.” What pleasure drugs – in the form of food or otherwise – have you been depending on? What new reality is intervening, and are you drawn enough by the new to let go of the old?

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