Beltane: Venus/Amor trine Saturn trine Pluto

Dear Friend and Reader:

Beltane arrives with a very fine Earthy grand trine of Venus, Pluto and Saturn. We arrive at the holiday of sex with a purpose — ensuring enough food to eat, which in current times we consider to be prosperity. Most of us are pretty far removed from the production of food, except after it’s been frozen and wrapped in plastic and we toss it into the microwave (that is not production, it’s preparation). We involve ourselves with the gathering of money. That is a reasonable fit for Taurus, which is the sign associated with one’s personal resources.

The triangle is interesting because May is traditionally the time to break the monogamy taboo and experiment with someone besides your lover; we get so frisky, the legend goes, we cannot resist. However, this is generally considered the purview of freaky heathen pagan communists such as myself, rather than proper Christians.

Venus is also conjunct an asteroid today, Amor. This one is a little trickier than your average talking rock. Amor is about the conditions on “unconditional love.” Amor could be the catch; it could be the exception. Both have the potential to be enormous, dominating the whole story. Giacomo Cassanova had Amor conjunct the Sun and his name remains a household word more than two centuries after his death.

Martha Lang Wescott once made a brutal commentary on trines. She said they are the aspect with the theme, “you lie and I’ll swear to it.” (In the same class, she also said they are rewards for past life struggles, which to me says that they grant some extraordinary power that can be used with more or less integrity.) In the image presented by the planets today, we have Venus conjunct Amor supposedly experiencing unconditional love, trine Saturn (the planet of boundaries, including the healthy ego) and Pluto (the planet of change, depth, transformation and surrender).

Ok, so what is the catch, that is, the condition on unconditional love? Well, we are guided by a lot more than love on this Earth, and unless one is a dog, one always puts conditions on it. We could be guided by just love, but it’s cold here: there is competition. There seems to be a lack of everything, most particularly truth, self-esteem, and the loving attention of others. It is fair to say that for most people, the whole concept of a relationship is in some chaos, and failing to provide what we need. Most of us are not quite able to articulate what we need, and if we do, it may seem untenable. If we do, that in itself may arrive with conflict or the sense of conflicting needs.

We are between paradigms now — that of the notion of romantic marriage, and whatever is going to come next. We may have thought the 1950s style of marriage went up in smoke along with the bra burning (and draft card burning) of the 1960s and 1970s. Yet there has been so much pressure on young people to do things like sign the Virginity Until Marriage Pledge (and to go to war), and so much economic pressure and religious pressure, that many people find themselves in an era of what you might call neotraditionalism, whether they like it or not.

Some people are happy; many would say that a lot of them are in a sugar trance. Many people are really struggling with a need for greater independence and the deep desire to define themselves outside their relationships but not sacrificing having a relationship.

Many strive to achieve some independence not knowing what they are up against, and not knowing how to handle their need for greater sexual independence because there are no models to follow. We pretty much have two legal options: one orgasm and we’re married; and the disposable one night stand. Safe to say that neither of these is working well for most people. I would propose that we are still too embarrassed about sex and our sexuality, and too stuck in the barbs of guilt, to even speak the words we need to say to redefine our relationships. We are too scared of the world collapsing around us; we depend on barely-functional models of a relationship to support us economically and psychologically.

So, here we have an image of Venus conjunct Amor. The two are trying to make an agreement with Saturn and Pluto, so that we can have some useful structures and boundaries, and also some hot sex, deep relating and relationships that give us (instead of deny us) what we need profoundly, personal transformation. One condition is that many people feel this is intelligent in principle, but are too terrified emotionally to dare or speak up.

Then there is the judgment factor. I have heard way too many stories of people [i.e., women] who declare themselves a little more free and then meet the wrath of coworkers, neighbors, friends and family. It is NOT your imagination: whether you live in the United States, the UK, Europe or Oz, you’re in a society that has very little clue how to handle sex, nor how to allow anyone to be more free than they are personally. Jealousy is a particularly vicious form of judgment, and it often exists between peers, not just within sexual relationships.

Any revolution begins with words, and to do this one we’re going to need to speak up about our needs. To do that, we’re going to need to have a long talk with ourselves and get a handle on those needs, remembering that they are likely to change as we grow. Some of those needs might be extremely frightening to discuss in church — the need for multiple partners; the need for same-sex erotic and emotional experiences or relationships; the need to do other things that threaten our partners (like get an education or do something that feeds our creativity).

We might need to admit that we’re in love with someone else; that we’ve outgrown a relationship; that we don’t know what we want (a good first step). We might decide we don’t want to have sex or relationships. If you believe the LA Weekly reporter who has been interviewing me lately, some women perceive that men there are turning down sex (the article discusses why this might be happening).

Processing the events of the past few days, I woke up this morning thinking about some wisdom imparted by Simeone de Beauvoir, who provided me with most of my map of gender relations. Simone pointed out that relationships, in particular, marriage and its analogues, provide two entirely different functions for men and women. She noted that there are no men whose entire goal in life is to get married. But you have many women who state this as a goal, and though this may seem to have changed in the past 50 or 60 years, very little changes that fast.

Men, she says, view or are conditioned to view a relationship as part of their life: they have a career, they go to the Elks, they build ships in bottles in their spare time. And they have a wife. Women traditionally view the relationship as the centerpiece of life; the defining factor. Note that this can be the determining factor on the spiritual meaning of sex: that is, why sex as a symbol takes on an entirely different meaning for women as for men in, if we remember this context.

We seem to be attempting to embark on a cultural trend for women to see a relationship as part of their life, not the whole thing; as one “goal” among many. But it’s not so easy.

For this to happen, everyone has to adjust, but the change is far greater for women, who must recontextualize everything about their existence. In other words, if their tattooed on, clobbered in identity was previously based on a relationship, many now face the formidable, at times seemingly impossible task of finding core self (perhaps for the first time) in another context. It may seem like grasping at the air. Many may feel their partner will be so threatened, nothing could ever happen; they would never dare the threat. (Usually this involves a threat to an economic structure of some kind, and less so, also an emotional threat.)

Most men have the built-in advantage of their relationships being part of their life, not the centerpiece (though some men are still extremely dependent on their partners for goods and services, as well as a sense of identity). Regardless, I suggest that the switch is far more difficult for women, when they must attempt to face the world on equal terms, having never done so before.

The kind of change we are talking about is not superficial; it is foundational, and that may at first feel like pulling the bottom cards out of the card house. In the end, it comes down to a struggle between what we need more: the structures of our lives, or the ability to express our vital force. One way or another, the vital force wins, or entropy wins, and we die (whether you take that spiritually, physically or both).

It really should not shock us that our pre-Christian predecessors associated vitality and prosperity with the opportunity to share sex outside of the marriage box. I would say that before we share sex, the freedom to prosper and thrive involves giving ourselves the freedom to feel what we are feeling, and to see a way out that does not involve death, but rather allows for change.

Thursday, 01 May 2008

Mercury (26+ Taurus) septile Vesta (5+ Aries)
Vesta (5+ Aries) sesquiquadrate Psyche (20+ Scorpio Rx)
Mercury (26+ Taurus) quincunx Galactic Center (26+ Sagittarius)
Pallas (22+ Aries) square Jupiter (22+ Capricorn)
Sun (11+ Taurus) semisquare Hades (26+ Gemini)
Jupiter (22+ Capricorn) square 1992 QB1 (22+ Aries) – Near Miss Only
Venus (0+ Taurus) trine Pluto (0+ Capricorn Rx)
Venus (1+ Taurus) quincunx M87 (1+ Libra)
Eros (24+ Taurus) square Neptune (24+ Aquarius)
Ceres (12+ Gemini) septile Eris (21+ Aries)
Sisyphus (14+ Libra Rx) sextile Ixion (14+ Sagittarius Rx)
Mercury (27+ Taurus) square Orcus (27+ Leo Rx)
Sun (11+ Taurus) septile Kronos (3+ Cancer)
Eros (24+ Taurus) conjunct Admetos (24+ Taurus)
Venus (1+ Taurus) conjunct Amor (1+ Taurus)
Venus (1+ Taurus) trine Saturn (1+ Virgo Rx)

The Oracle takes us back to Sep 01, 2006, Aries – Monthly

You may be feeling like it’s time for a new job. Wider horizons are calling, perhaps painfully, but most definitely. Often we need to reach a limit to go beyond whatever familiar territory becomes enmeshed in our patterns of living. Even if rearranging your day-to-day affairs seems impossible right now, you have an opportunity to make an adjustment in the way you express or exert yourself in the place you call work. I suggest you look at how you use your energy; study the patterns; account for where your time goes, and what you actually accomplish. Notice how you feel about it. Because this promises to be such an incredibly busy and productive month, it’s an interesting phase for a study. While you’re at it, notice what you like to do the most, and what you set out to do first when you have several choices. Getting a new job is precisely the time to choose, so practice now.