Kiss of the Spider

By Len Wallick

Every once in a while, a minor planet or asteroid is in the right place at the right time so as to serve the purpose of connecting diverse astrological events thematically. Today is one of those times. But first, a look at the bigger picture.

In a little over a week we will experience a Full Moon reminiscent of and complimentary to the lunar eclipse of June 26, 2010. It will closely follow the Sun’s ingress to a cardinal sign, in this case by hours rather than days. As such the axis of the Sun-Moon opposition will trace a line from the first degree of one cardinal sign to another. In this case, from Libra to Aries. Last June it was the Cancer-Capricorn axis.

Of course, this will serve to revive and further enrich the story of the ongoing cardinal T-square in the midst of its new rendition and eventual transition. It will also represent the literal and figurative end of one season with the beginning of another. Even though the actual event is yet to come, it is in development as the Moon waxes. As such, it is not a discreet event but a continuum of which today is a part.

Last week two major planets moved from one sign to another. Venus left Libra behind to enter Scorpio where it will station retrograde next month, shortly after another encounter with Mars. Less than a day later, Jupiter’s retrograde motion carried it back into Pisces. There it will have two more conjunctions with Uranus before crossing the Aries point a third time next January.

Today we find ourselves between two direct stations. Yesterday evening shortly after 7 pm EDT, the apparent motion of Mercury in Virgo abruptly switched from backward to forward. Tomorrow morning in the same time zone, Pluto will resume direct motion as well.

During the course of today, after the Mercury station and before Pluto’s, an asteroid of the main belt (between Mars and Jupiter) will experience a sign change of its own: Arachne will enter Gemini. The name Arachne is derived from the Greco-Roman myth of a woman who was changed into a spider because she offended the goddess Pallas Athena (also known as Minerva). Synchonistically, this asteroid seems well positioned to help us pull together the web of interconnected and transitional events in our current astrology.

It seems fitting to start with what is, for some of us, current experience with real spiders. Your faithful servant currently resides in the extreme northwest corner of the continental United States. Revisiting an annual cycle, the spiders in this area seem to have come out of nowhere in recent weeks. Of course, their appearance is not spontaneous. They have been there all along, ever since they hatched, quietly making a living while mostly out of sight. But now they are larger and they need bigger webs to capture the greater amounts of food needed to seed the next generation. That brings them into contact with humans. Or rather, that is bringing humans into contact with their webs.

An unexpected encounter with a web tells us more about ourselves than its maker. There could be fear of being bitten, though that rarely happens. There is also the association with the untidy, unkempt and unwashed although members of the order Araneae are known to be fastidious about personal hygiene. It might occur to some that spiders have a lot more reason to fear and avoid us than the other way around.

The main thing taken from this is that humans in my neck of the woods have recently become aware of something that has previously been present. This awareness has stimulated reactions like fear, repulsion and attraction. The stimulus, awareness and the reaction correspond in time but are associated in other ways.

So it is when a planet changes signs or directions. Symbolically we walk into a web of interconnection. That experience brings our attention to things that have been concealed, not noticed or ignored. We encounter the world in a different way, with an enhanced awareness. How we respond tells us something about ourselves. Most immediately associated with Arachne is last night’s Mercury station. We will conclude today’s blog with an examination of that web of relations and return to Pluto, Venus and Jupiter tomorrow.

The first thing to note is that Gemini and Virgo are both ruled by Mercury. Arachne’s ingress to Gemini corresponding in time to Mercury’s direct station in Virgo is like a switch being flipped to complete an electrical connection of association in other ways.

One of the phenomena that characterizes a Mercury station is revelation. The truth comes out as regards to something not noticed, hidden or ignored. Sort of like the current experience with spiders in my part of the world. Specific to this particular station direct in Virgo is the accumulated series of Mercury’s tense aspects to a collection of points in Sagittarius. The planet most closely associated with our intellect is about to repeat those aspects a third time, so some interconnections are coming to awareness. In the meantime, Arachne is making some concurrent contacts of its own, furthering our perspective of these interconnections.

Gemini is on the opposite side of the zodiac circle from Sagittarius and Virgo is the mid-point between the two of them. All three are mutable signs and their relationship, like the relationship between the cardinal signs, is one of squares and oppositions.

Today, Arachne is part of a T-square of its own. It is opposed to an asteroid in Sagittarius named Hybrus. That name is a variation of the word hubris. Hubris is what happens when arrogance, pride or ambition overcome our humility and ethics. This leads to inappropriate behavior and its consequences.

Both Arachne and Hybrus are precisely square to another asteroid in the first degree of Virgo. That asteroid is Ophelia, named after the character ostensibly betrothed to Hamlet. Her predicament was never being sure of anything but the pain, everything else being poorly defined, confusing and unresolved.

Arachne, Hybrus and Ophelia all moved into their current signs in the last day or so; just as Mercury was stationing direct close enough to Ophelia to be functionally conjunct and thus part of the mutable T-square formed by these three asteroids.

So the web is encountered. There are interconnections between rulers of the signs involved. There are interconnections between the qualities of the signs and thus their geometric relationship. Most exquisitely, there are very close concurrences in the timing of the asteroid sign changes and Mercury’s change of direction. The themes associated with these synchronous and layered events are as discomforting as those that come up when we have to share our personal space with spiders. Issues come up of safety and fear, arrogance and ambition, pain and uncertainty.

The saving grace is that directions are changing and the tensions have gone as far as they can. We are also growing in our awareness through repetition and revelation. This will ultimately empower us to move beyond the certainty of pain and give us a foothold on the path to re-defining ourselves, our relationships and getting our individual and collective lives back into alignment with our values. And just in time.

To be continued tomorrow.

Offered In Service