Evolution to Revolution

By Len Wallick

The cardinal T-square grinds on, as transitional as other cycles — earthly, celestial, big and small. The idea that one cycle can inform others is at the heart of your faithful servant’s work here on Planet Waves. Please keep that in mind through the days of our mutual service.

Up until now, the cardinal T-square has been a gathering of sorts. Where it all really began is up for discussion, but in 2008 Pluto got the whole shebang really rolling with its double ingress to Capricorn, a cardinal sign. The irresistible force of the metamorphic transformer came to shake immovable pillars of the established order.

The last time this happened was during an age of revolution in our lives on earth and our consciousness of the heavens: the revolt that originated the United States of America and the discovery of Uranus. For two centuries afterward, the revolution precipitated emulation all over the world. Uranus’ discovery opened our consciousness to the skies, science and mathematics as a means to extend our reach — even as our grasp was left behind.

In many ways we are still absorbing, adjusting to and struggling with the consequences of what happened the last time Pluto moved through Capricorn. That leaves open the question of whether we are prepared for this time around, even as we are two years into the process, and makes us question what direction the unavoidable evolution will take. Will we choose to leave the dross of the past behind, moving forward with the rare and refined? Or will we elect to become one with the dregs as our fine spirit evaporates?

Late last year, shortly after its first entry to Libra, Saturn precisely achieved the first of three square aspects to Pluto. It was during a time when the Sun was in the middle of Scorpio. When Sol is in the middle of a fixed sign, it is at a cross-quarter. That is to say it’s at a mid-point between cardinal signs, halfway between the beginning of one season and the next. This is considered to be an auspicious time at a threshold — one both literal and figurative. It is a time when the membranes grow thin, allowing the past and the future to take a short cut to the present. It is also a time that allows the dead to visit the living, providing us with insight not available in common daily life.

So it was that the defining constrictions, limits and boundaries of Saturn came into tension with the unlimited, undefined, metamorphic imperative of Pluto. It was a tension we felt inside ourselves, knowing that the established order is not long for this world, and we found ourselves evaluating our attachment and investment in what we must release in order to survive.

All the while, Uranus was acting fast while moving slow. With the first of five oppositions to Saturn on the day the United States elected an unprecedented president in a contest that was not even close, we got a taste of how quickly things can leap forward. At the same time the gradual insinuation towards the Aries point took another year and a half to reach the finish line.

Once Uranus finally made its way to Aries, the big event we had been waiting for had already happened. It was unexpected and unpleasant — the unprecedented environmental disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. Jupiter’s entrance to Aries less than two weeks later served to magnify the scope of the event as well as the confusion and uncertainty concurrent with it.

The disaster in the Gulf of Mexico was eclipsed when atrocities of the war in Afghanistan were revealed by Wikileaks, occurring when Saturn completed its series of three squares with Pluto and five oppositions with Uranus. As the Ringed One moved on to a cocktail in Libra, Uranus moved back into Pisces one more time with a perfectly executed cannonball dive, making sure all of us would notice and most of us would get wet. It was the revelations of perfidy, magnified by Jupiter in a leading role that ushered in this new rendition of the cardinal T-square. It was also the beginning of Saturn’s sabbatical which made us aware just how smeared and corrupted some essential boundaries and limits have become.

This brings us up to the present, when we become aware of the “all of us together/all at the same time” expression of the cardinal T-square. During these cycles we are personally engaged, attempting to find connection with the cycles of culture, politics, civilization, humanity and the cosmos. This cycle made it entirely appropriate for this blog’s community to end last week with a lively and organically unresolved discussion of truth, lies and their discomforting interplay.

In turn it seemed timely for your itinerant reporter to incite you to the revolutionary act of looking to the stars.

Which brings us to a bit of guidance in that act that will connect with the current astrology which will in turn transition to the next blog.

For those of us in the Northern Hemisphere, at least, the Big Dipper is a good place to start. It is the first constellation many of us learned to identify. If you are in a position to see it and yet not familiar with its tableau, ask somebody to show you. After all, relationship is also a theme of the cardinal T-square. Why not initiate or further a relationship by joining another in a revolutionary act?

After you have found the Big Dipper you can use it to direct you to other, important points in the sky. We shall describe two.

In this case, it’s best to wait until after dark when glow of the Sun is entirely gone from the western sky. Locate the Big Dipper, in the shape of a ladle or pan with a curved handle. Begin with the two stars that constitute the “front” part of the saucepan, on the opposite side of the handle. Imagine a line going between these two stars up and away from the lip of the pot, follow that line for about two more lengths to find it intersecting a dim star to the true North. That’s the North Star. At least for now. Over the millennium, the slow wobble of the Earth’s axis will change the direction in which it points. But don’t hold your breath. For now, Polaris is the North Star and it could come in handy for you someday.

Now, proceed to the handle of the dipper. Follow its curvature out and away and slightly down towards the western horizon. There you will find your eyes directed to bright star which twinkles fiercely and shines visibly when many others are obscured by air or light pollution. That star is Arcturus. It is visible to virtually all human beings at one time or another. The indigenous people of Southern Australia knew it as Marpean-kurrk. Polynesians would navigate by Hokule’a in ages past. In Arabic it is either al-simak or haris al-sama. Chinese astronomers named it Da Jiao thousands of years ago. It is one of the Nakshatras of Hindu astronomy/astrology. The Inuit people refer it it simply as the Old Man.

This light in the sky is of pan-cultural significance. When you look at it you are connecting with the cardinal T-square theme that the “personal is political”. Standing on the earth that we all have in common. Looking at a star that we all have in common. And being aware of it. That’s the act of a true revolutionary. When viewing it, say to yourself “all of us together” and see how it feels inside your body. If you are inspired to raise your fist, go ahead, we won’t tell anybody.

In the blog for this coming Thursday, we will begin a little earlier in the evening and follow a line down towards the horizon from Arcturus to another star named Spica, which happens to be in the vicinity of Venus, Mars and Saturn right now. That’s where we will to start up with the current astrology again.

In the meantime, remember and tell your friends. The sky does not lie.

Offered in Service.