By Len Wallick
Appropriately, the Moon spends Thanksgiving Day in the sign of Cancer, encouraging the fortunate among us to enjoy the blessings of home, hearth, family and dining table. But if we remember this year’s American holiday for anything, it will probably not have to do with any lunar aspect. For the auspicious details, we should look at some relationships between the planets.
 |
Mercury squares Jupiter today to bring what we know of the world to the dinner table, possibly cooking a goose or two in the process. Hopefully just warming a few buns. Geometrically, a square is 90 degrees of separation between one point and another on the circumference of the zodiac circle. In terms of the ancient elements of western natural science, a square is a relationship between either fire and water or air and earth. In terms of the qualities, squares are most often associated with the cardinal signs. Psychologically, the aspect is expressed as synchronizing with tension internally felt, requiring individual action to resolve.
In order to put this particular aspect into perspective, we need to go back about a month.
Ever since Mars took up with Eros and skipped into Sagittarius late last month, things have shifted. By leaving Scorpio, one of the signs it rules, the red planet subjected its expression to Jupiter which traditionally rules two signs — Sagittarius and Pisces. Mercury followed Mars into Sagittarius, the final fire sign, also disposing itself to Big Jove. Thus as a combination of position, direction and influence, Jupiter assumed hegemony in the sky. Venus returned to Libra on the same day Mercury departed Scorpio through the other door and served to keep the scales from tipping overly much. On the whole however, the shift we felt was from the personal to the trans-personal as expressed through conscious experience. Somewhere along the line, November has born witness to a little more of ‘we’ and a little less of ‘me’.
Underneath that trend there was a complementary current that invoked an ‘us’ carrying with it the polarity of ‘them’. It has to do with a series of aspects and the prototypical example of same. Remember the gauntlet of successive Gemini-Sagittarius oppositions that Luna had to run earlier in the week? That line-up has been there for a while. Mercury and Mars have also been part of it and subject to it as well, emerging into the latter third of Sagittarius as if into a new chapter. Lagging further and further behind the red planet it is Eros’ turn, but the quality of the experience has changed. Not because the opposing asteroids have changed, but because of what identity Eros itself is bringing to the table. Now it’s not so much a gauntlet as a hall of mirrors.