By Len Wallick
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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
“Won’t you walk into my parlour said the spider to the fly?
It’s the prettiest little parlour you ever did espy.
And the way into my parlour is up a winding stair
and I have many pretty things to show you when we’re there.
Oh no, no said the little fly, to ask me is in vain.
Whoever goes up your winding stair does not. come. down. again!”
I used to sing this to preschoolers many moons ago. We loved it! I thought of it all day after reading this post after breakfast.
🙂
However, I don’t think we need fear the astrological web that Len informs us today, is being woven around us.Something tells me it’s being set up to catch some particularly troublesome bugs that need taking out! That’s why I’ve learned to love me the spiders. Might even start to leave out a wee crumb here and there, ala Be-style! Lurved that notion – ha!
Spider roomates – A few years ago we had a string of REALLY hot days, like near 100, which is unusual for Santa Fe, well, I came home from work and I had a cat that liked to be misted lightly with the spray bottle when it was so hot (he was a black and white tuxedo beast) and I was spraying him and all these different spiders, huntsman, wolf, daddy long legs, others I don’t know the names of, came walking out of the area where the walls and floor meet and sat while I misted! It made little puddles that everybody was drinking from. The cat didn’t eat any either, which was unusual for him, he liked to eat the big huntsman’s legs occasionally. So after that, on hot days, I’d mist the floor lightly and a few of them would come drink and get cooled off. Not enough to drown them, just enough to help them. And, cannibals that they are, they didn’t eat each other either.
Be, I DID laugh at your Crumbs for Spiders charity. I think it’s good omen all the way.
And LOL re: Len’s Spiders – having done my share of hiking (visual survey) around “the wilds of Washington” (and other places where arachne is royalty) I understand that there are indeed spiders who impart fear in the hearts of both meek and bold.
XO!
Oh this is fun! Like hide and sneek…haha! I typed “sneek” – I’ll leave it!
Natal Vertex, Arachne, Hybrus and Mars lined up like a football team in CAP…..but a little Angel at Cap 11 snuggles in there between Hybrus and Mars perhaps keeping a little humility in the mix?
Oh! and look at that – transiting Pluto’s hovering over natal Spider as we speak – NN dancing around Hybrus…..well, I don’t know what it “means” but I’m sure I’m experiencing the meaning loud and clear! 😉
I’m still not getting specific intent of the planets voices, but at least getting better visuals of the lineups.
Had a sudden urge to look again at Progressed and Solar Return charts last night, they have previously mistified, but now seem to be staring back at me with some meaning.
Ha, but if I can’t yet hear the Planets, I can hear the 8-leggers. Another beautiful day of Spider Rescue awaits (there’r always one or two that need assistance around here.)
Oh Len, how you do inspire – and Be, your add-ons bring more. Thanks!!
Love this Len, 1st time in a while I’ve had something to smile about. A sincere smile anyway. I’ve long thought that your natal Arachne was strategically placed (and/or along with Pallas) in your own chart. How else to account for your shared perceptions of the planets intent with such deftness? (My own Arachne is tucked between my Pluto-Mercury conjunction, so’s I knows one when I sees one!) But now I’m knowing relief, now that all this changing of signs and directions has or is happening, that “saving grace” that you speak of.
I must get more familiar with the nuances of Hybrus eventually, but for right now, it is Arachne trying to strike a balance with him . . . as in “if I include (fill in blank) in my design, will you come off your high horse and (fill in blank). Then maybe we can get past alll this Ophelia-pain and Mercury-thinking about the Virgo-work we must get done by the end of the month. And we got to do it today because at 12:34 AM tomorrow, Pluto is swinging back into action, and he will be making our decision for us.”
Sometimes, in the warm months, I get these teeny tiny spiders in the bathroom and they make teeny tiny webs, usually from near-bottom of the door jam to the floor. Just one spider at a time, and they usually don’t last longer than one day. . .2 at most. I don’t do what I do with other insects that get inside which is cover with clear plastic cup and slide thin cardboard under it and cart it outdoors free. I just let them spin and marvel at their tenacity and determination. I’ve even gone so far as to (please don’t laugh) leave a teeny tiny breadcrumb in case they want to nibble on something while waiting for prey. Untidy and unkempt are no longer issues that bother me so much, at least regarding teeny tinies, but if I lived in YOUR neck of the woods. . . . . . . well that’s a different story altogether, and good luck with that!
be
Thanks, Len. You have again explained something that was until this moment a mystery to me. The revelation of something hidden came this morning when my computer that had a new hard drive installed after last fall’s Merc Rx just crashed this morning and will not boot. The savings I had put back for our family will now have to be used to retrieve the info (all my files and favorites and such) and pay for the transfer and a new hard drive. ::::sigh:::: One step forward, two steps back. I was so hoping that this Merc Rx would not damage one of my old computers (last year three of them got damaged during Merc Rx’s) but alas, I have not escaped unscathed. Damn. At least I have an explanation of sorts; apparently there has been a hidden issue with this computer that only came to light this morning after truning the thing off and allowing Windows updates to be installed. I hate Merc Rx….it seems to cost me a lot of money every year that I just don’t have to spare (that’s the frugal Scots in me coming out but I really don’t have the money to spare so it is a good thing I am frugal).