At The Crossroads – Venus and Mars in Conjunction

By Len Wallick

Standin’ at the crossroad / risin’ Sun goin’ down…

– Robert Johnson “Cross Road Blues”

Our week starts off with a Taurus conjunction of Venus and Mars. On the surface, this aspect would appear to be exclusively earthy and sensual. This interpretation is part of the picture, since the energies of the divine feminine and masculine are clearly merging in the fertile fields of self-possession. As with all things aesthetic, however, that perspective will do for the day but it does not satisfy for the long term. In the big picture, there is something more going on.

In the longer and wider view, this conjunction of Venus and Mars is a tipping point. In our public and private lives, it finds us at a crossroads. This intersection has to do with the issues of power and gender in relationship, as current events verify.

The former chief of the International Monetary Fund and the previous governor of California are finding themselves being called accountable. In their respective legal and public arenas, both of these male humans (one hesitates call them men) are facing consequences for sexual behavior taken with impunity and out of a sense of entitlement. Having been so invested in their power, both Mr. Strauss-Kahn and Mr. Schwarzenegger are undoubtedly surprised that things would have come to such an awkward pass.

By the same token, no one of us can foretell with certainty the outcome for these two representatives of the patriarchy. It is meaningful but still largely symbolic that both are being called onto the carpet they thought they owned. While many are clear in their opinions, there is no clarity on the eventual resolution. Whether or not Strauss-Kahn is subject to just process and how the Governator’s prolonged indiscretion will affect his status and earning power will go a long way towards helping us to evaluate where we all are in our collective social evolution.

In the last full year of his life, the great astrologer Robert P. Blaschke, offered some profound foresight on where we are today. In an August 9, 2010 blog to The Mountain Astrologer, Mr. Blaschke observed that we are in the midst of a century-long aberration in the cyclical relationship between Venus and Mars. He hypothesized that this period represents an opportunity to re-boot a corresponding ingrained social pattern that “…has become stagnant and thus needs to transmute into a different form.” Given what Venus and Mars represent in our minds, and judging from what is going on now, that pattern evidently includes issues of gender and power in relationship.

It seems the astrology and corresponding real-world events are both up in the air at this tipping point. That does not mean, however, that we are without a clue as to the probable outcome. Evidence can be found in the respective apparent motions of Venus and Mars at this conjunction. Even more important is the larger context in which their meeting is taking place.

Mars appears to be rising in the pre-dawn sky. In fact, the faster moving Sun is leaving it behind. It is a paradox just as Robert Johnson described it — the rising Sun is going down. The representative of divine masculine is being compelled to individuate and grow up. Enforced to explore in search of a newly viable identity, it promises to be a laborious and lonely voyage.

In contrast, Venus is both accelerating and approaching the Sun from our perspective. It is finished with exploring and is in the process of taking its morning discoveries back to Sol. It is on the way towards a disappearance behind our local star in order to be transmuted to a different form when it becomes visible again in the western sky. The divine feminine is thus symbolically further along in its evolution than its counterpart at this junction. The question is, will that, and its powerful company in the form of the Sun, make the feminine more compassionate or less so?

While the separate motions of each object tell us about their status, that information does not give us any idea how high the stakes of our current predicament really are. Above all, it is the context of both placement and timing that is most important. This singular conjunction of Venus and Mars places us on an expanding threshold. As we enter the last lunar quarter before a month and a half of eclipses, we face some sense of urgency to change in order to survive. Fortunately, the astrology indicates that it is not the material world that needs to be re-made in an instant. Rather it is the inner work that needs to be done and done soon.

It begins with you, and every other human being, on the inside. We are being called upon to consciously continue the work we somehow started about 50 years ago. That continued work would have each one of us loudly and proudly claiming our selves at every opportunity. We would then proceed to stand in the power of that claim without interfering with our neighbor’s expression of the same. We have made a decent start on those things, but the hardest part must be attended to before the inner work is complete. We must reach out.

We are approaching a threshold. On this side is what we are, and we must accept that. On the other side is what we can be, and it is that which we must embrace. None of us can cross over alone. Nor can we afford to leave anyone behind. Every human being is a living purpose. Reach out and take that purpose by the hand. Let that clasping be a living crossroads made of flesh, bones and blood. It might just be exactly what you need to make it across yourself.

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