Astrology of the DNC, plus week ahead aspects

Dear Friend and Reader:

This is the week of the Democratic National Convention. Being familiar with the astrology of many news events after they happen, I am scanning this week’s aspects for some indication of the size and scope of the events from a historical perspective. This campaign has already been amazing from a historical perspective; imagine how Martin Luther King would feel watching.

I am not a big fan of the political process. Politics itself, I enjoy, primarily when I get to be a campaign writer or an editor in the middle of a campaign, actually influencing the public, conducting endorsements and so on. I’ve known some politicians who I’ve truly loved and who it’s been an honor to serve. That’s the part of the process I like; I don’t like it down here it as a plebe, listening to peoples’ non-thought process.

At this stage in my life, I see the political drama as primarily psychological. I think that most people’s reasons for choosing a candidate are basically psychological and emotional and have nothing to do with the issues or the quality of the person who is running. Psychological to me breaks down to two major components: parental issues and sexual issues. Of course, this is not spoken about; imagine it getting onto CNN. It’s precisely what CNN is there to conceal.

Who reminds you of the guy you want for a daddy? Remember we live in a mainly fatherless society. So many of us are looking for daddy. And the kind of daddy we want is the guy we support or vote for.

Then there is sex. Ladies and Queer men, who would you like to fuck? Straight guys — which candidate is less sexually intimidating to you? Who would you want your wife or girlfriend voting for on this basis? Wouldn’t you love to see THAT as a panel on CNN? This would be getting closer to the heart of the matter.

So I think that it’s interesting, verging on funny, that the night Barack Obama is scheduled to make his acceptance speech, Mercury makes an exact square to Pluto. This aspect would make Sigmund Freud drool, if he believed in astrology (his colleague Jung did, and he would probably just laugh). I’ll try to make it simple without oversimplifying it out of existence. Squares represent internal tension, and this particular tension involves where the mind (Mercury) meets all things Plutonic in nature (I’m capitalizing it so you don’t think I mean “platonic,” which would be the opposite in this context).

Mercury square Pluto is this tension that one carries internally and it involves how one’s mind processes the deep deep, you know, deep stuff of Pluto. The taboo stuff. The stuff you don’t normally say, and you don’t normally think, but you do feel it. And most of all, you experience the tension and you project into the form of something you think you see. We all carry around sexual darkness and some of us carry around a whole boatload of unprocessed sexual darkness, as well as stuff around death and abandonment. What the Course in Miracles calls “the fear to look within” is translated into what we see outside ourselves, and in the process deny ownership of.

A man named Wilhelm Reich was observant of the role that being darker plays for those who are lighter in color. In a book called The Function of the Orgasm, he explains that lighter colored people tend to project the idea of sexual potency onto darker colored people. This can stir up a lot of fear, i.e., you’re an Italian woman and you fall for a black guy and you fear that your father is going to “kill” you or “kill” him. Reich believed and indeed demonstrated that this is the basis of racism, including antisemitism; right up to and including the Holocaust.

I’ll leave you with one Wilhelm quote to start your day. Here ya go…

The character structure of modern man, who reproduces a six-thousand-year-old patriarchal authoritarian culture is typified by characterological armoring against his inner nature and against the social misery which surrounds him. This characterological armoring of the character is the basis of isolation, indigence, craving for authority, fear of responsibility, mystic longing, sexual misery and neurotically impotent rebelliousness.

Planet Waves coverage of the Democratic National Convention will continue through the day and through the week.

Yours & truly,

==

Here are the aspects, written mostly by Genevieve Salerno, with some editing/additions by me.

25 Monday: The Moon in Gemini opposes Pluto in Sagittarius just as tonight’s Democratic National Convention begins. Then she enters Cancer at 8:18 pm EDT, about two hours after the Democratic National Convention opens. Uranus sextile Sedna. Sun opposes Teharonhiawako in Pisces. Leo Ceres trine Hylonome in Sagittarius.

26 Tuesday: Ixion stations direct in Sagittarius. This reminds me of the curiously 1990s and forward issue of what we are willing to do or support in the name of our religious beliefs.

27 Wednesday: Moon enters Leo, 10:51 pm EDT, as the convention comes to its peak (where it will remain for Obama’s scheduled speech).

28 Thursday: Mercury in Virgo square Pluto in Sagittarius.

Eros in Virgo square Chaos in Gemini. Genevieve Salerno writes:

Love is the power that created the Universe. It is Love that first began to define the difference between lovers, noting each feature that made them different, making the different creatures, and realms, and skies, and seas. Why do we Love one person one way, but not the other the same way? Because of the differences inherent in each person. And it is also Love that defines the Sameness of everything. This, to me, defines the Chaos aspect for today.

In mythology, Chaos was the primordial force of creation. I envision the freedom that is born of desperation (which occured eariler this month), and the liberation that is born from the shattered taboo of coming out of the closet, loving beyond race, ilk, age, interest. This aspect extends to other things as well.

There is something that every person on this Earth craves that is idiosyncratic to the demeanor they project. Perhaps to seek out this craving is the escape hatch from a persona that has become too rigid. To Love is the first act of expressive desire, and the first proclamation of the power of self. Today’s aspect says: “Love, and you’ll know yourself.”

29 Friday: Mercury enters Libra. Venus square Pluto. Moon enters Virgo at 2:18 am EDT. Mars in Libra sextile Pholus.

30 Saturday: New Moon in Virgo! (Already? It’s been a month since the total solar eclipse in Leo?) Quaoar stations direct in Sagittarius. Venus enters Libra.

31 Sunday: Mars sesquiquadrate Neptune. Eros square Great Attractor. Ceres in Leo square Deucalion in Scorpio. Genevieve sums up her take on Deucalion (which is a planet orbiting our sun slightly beyond Pluto, in the class of bodies called Cubewanos — these are named for creation or resurrection deities).

According to Greek mythology, Deucalion was the son of Prometheus. He can be equated with Noah in that he was chosen, by premonition, to be spared from the Great Flood that Zeus sent allegedly to destroy mankind. He and his wife sailed for nine days and nights, until they reached Mt. Parnassus.

Upon setting foot on dry land, Deucalion made an orison to Zeus, who sent word back that he could have any wish granted that he desired. Deucalion wished for the world to become repopulated. The means to this request came to him in the form of a riddle: “Throw your mother’s bones over your shoulder.”

He and his wife took stones that they found and tossed them behind. These stones became the new race. This myth is crucial in demonstrating the belief ancient people held in the Earth as Mother. It is a Universal theme; many examples are found in primitive mythology. The themes of this aspect with Ceres, the mother of all grains (a human staple for millenia), are heavy.

With Mars sesquisquare Neptune we have our urgent Mars desires making an attempt to call out the delusions spun by Neptune, the master of illusion or faith. Mars is a personal planet. Neptune is a generational, group-consciousness entity, but no less personal.

We know when we are not getting what we want, and it only takes a minute of thought to pinpoint what we need. But it is very hard to swim against the current when we know something is amiss and we feel like we are the only ones. But Ceres, Goddess of grain (a staple of the human diet since (wo)man walked upright in the grass) and version of Mother Earth, is in Leo. The idea that when we walk in tune with the Divine, the Divine provides for us, is a very old idea. For some reason, our current situation is bombarded with hope blackening processes, but this golden idea remains.

When we begin to take little steps, each step becomes easier, until we have to imagine the time when taking the steps was difficult. This is the relationship between Leonine Ceres, and Deucalion in Scorpio. It is very easy to become fixated on the negative aspects of our lives and the life of the environment, but hope is our most important ally. And hope is like a fire. When you feed it, it grows. Today feed yourself some spirit food, seek out a healing pleasure; you will begin to feel the difference. It’s your strength taking root.