Not in Daily Astrology for Monday — but worth mentioning

And that is not the name of a new feature. Monday’s daily astrology piece is a suggestion to be open minded about 2012, given all the ideas and speculation that have been buzzing around since 1975 — now that we’re here, and all.

We’ll resume to more specific astrology in Tuesday’s post. But I’m looking at a chart, and it seems to offer some hints. Right as I’m sitting here writing this, the Moon is conjunct Eris in Aries, and Mercury is trine Eris — so it’s a fire sign pattern of Moon-Mercury-Eris. When Eris is involved in complex aspects, it’s good to listen up and hear possible themes emerge; remember, Eris is new. We’re not clueless but we’re in that ‘bring on the clues’ phase of delineation.

Now, This is part of a bigger pattern of planets hanging out at about 21-22 degrees of the signs. This includes Mercury and Eris, as well as our old friend Nessus — in other words, Mercury and the Moon are now aspecting two slow-moving points that are both associated with alienation, Nessus and Eris. Given how meaningful our quest for meaning around the theme of alienation is, we may be getting some information about that right now / today — body-level (Moon passing through) and mental level (Mercury buzzing around, newly out of shadow phase).

Looking at the more complex chart to the left, there are other points in the background. Look at them all, hanging out in the low 20s degree range. Now, what is super interesting is that in a few weeks, Mars is about to station retrograde at 23+ Virgo. It will be making a long series of aspects to these points hanging out in that degree range, and this can help us call the tune of the long Mars retrograde (Jan. 23-April 13) and see what we could learn.

I have a hunch that what comes out Monday and Tuesday will give us come clues, since Mercury likes to deliver messages to those who like to listen. (If you don’t like to listen, he will bomb your hard drive, so keep your ears on.) What are we listening for? The first Republican primary is Tuesday — the Iowa caucus. This will comprise a bunch of Christians deciding whether they want to vote for a Rick Perry or Rick Santorum or Michele Bachmann — or who knows, maybe Ron Paul or Mitt Romney. I think the news that comes out of this caucus will help us spot some themes.

It is more than interesting that as this happens, Venus is making a conjunction to Pallas — the goddess of law and politics. In fact, the Venus-Pallas conjunction happens splat in the middle of the caucus, just after noon Central Time. That’s almost funny enough for Jon Stewart (not funny enough for Colbert, however). Venus-Pallas is the image of the mental woman, the intellect, the avatar — she’s not womanly in the curvy sense of the word; she used to be a rare critter, but there are more and more women emerging in that Venus-Pallas in Aquarius pattern here in the post-feminist world.

The thing about these Republican candidates that gets me is their obsession with the uterus. We shall have small, non-intrusive government, except for the Department of Uterus Security. We are so concerned about fetuses that even corporations will not be allowed to have abortions. I will have to incorporate every company I think of starting, because it has a right to life.

Anyway — the events of this week, I think, predict something of what we will learn during the Mars retrograde that starts in a few weeks and I invite your comments — especially from the astrologers helping us out on Daily Astrology.