Dear Friend and Reader:
Watching CNN this morning, in particular it’s coverage of MLK Day and the pre-coverage of the inauguration tomorrow, I felt like I woke up in Cuba. After an endless decade of hearing little other than how urgent it is that we bomb yet another country and suspect our neighbors of treason, the conversation was suddenly about economic parity and how a black man becoming president helps sets us all free. After a decade or so of stealing from one another and credit checks to join a church and contests for how mean people can be while drinking the most expensive cup of coffee ever made, suddenly it’s a day of national service. Admittedly I am not watching Fox, where I am sure they’re predicting nuclear winter.
Watching the news today reminds me of a conversation I had with a young woman one afternoon in the former East Germany. It was soon enough after the Berlin Wall came down and Germany was reunited that everyone remembered what it was like before. This was in 1998, on my first extended trip to Europe. It was still an exciting time in that part of Germany because you could get stuff like socks and blue jeans.
She said that in her experience, one morning everyone woke up and was living in a capitalists society, after having spent most of their lives in a communist country.
How strange this was did not escape her perception. She added that reminded her that Germany could turn back to a communist or socialist or fascist country just as quickly, and that this revealed something about human nature. We’re really not as attached to our reality as we may seem; we’re more open to change or, as she was suggesting, more open to being persuaded than we admit. We do what we’re told, and we follow the trends that are going on around us.
The conversation did not include astrology. What she didn’t know was that when the Berlin Wall (the symbol of communist supremacy and the supposed Iron Curtain separating the East from the West — what an image!) came down, Uranus was conjunct Saturn. That’s the astrological picture of a structure exploding or being broken apart, as if from within. It’s a fairly rare conjunction, happening just twice per century.
Now Saturn and Uranus are at opposition. This is like a New Moon becoming a Full Moon: planets that were conjunct in 1989 are now opposing one another today, and we are seeing this like the fulfillment of something, or something has come 180 degrees (as you prefer, because both are true). We are waking up to this fact; we are noticing that we’ve arrived someplace we’ve been heading for a long time.