I woke up this morning just as the Verizon repair guy was pounding on my door, thinking: I really need someone to stand in for my daily astrology blog; every day is just too much. (This is an invitation; contact me if you’re up for an adventure. Bring a little talent and some training is included.)
Then I checked my email and coincidentally my old friend Tracy in Wales had written an entry about a minor planet setup today. Tracy is not convinced she’s an astrologer (I am convinced of it, however) and she’s also an astrology programmer who can do tricks that the big boys who program commercial ephemerides cannot come near. Tracy is especially skilled — the very best of anyone I’ve encountered — at picking out delineations of both centaurs and all these weird new things being discovered beyond Pluto. She’s a strong Pisces-Virgo and that’s basically the thing you need to put to work to go beyond a simply factual concept of a planet and add an intuitive level.
Her comments today center on Borasisi, Hylonome and Chaos. Hylonome is a centaur; a comet-like orbit crosser with an elliptical orbit. These planets are slow-movers and hold aspects for a long time. Mercury is a quick-mover, which is setting off an aspect pattern she describes below.
PS, we could not replicate the issue with my phone, so he couldn’t fix it. But I’ve known the Verizon guy for many years, and we had a great conversation about cameras. Plenty of nothing…
Take it away, Tracy…
Hylonome in Sagittarius is opposing Chaos in Gemini. This is a significant outer planet aspect which started this year and will continue until 2012. It last happened 1836-1840, but the other way round, Hylonome in Gemini to Chaos in Sagittarius.
Today, Mercury makes an exact conjunction to Borasisi in Pisces, exactly squaring this Hylonome-Chaos opposition. Borasisi is a recently-named slow-moving trans-Neptunian object (TNO) which crosses the orbit of Pluto and has a 292-year orbit. An idea that seems to work for Borasisi in charts is, “Nothing is Something.” A mundane example of that might be the placebo effect, but it’s the idea in general that Nothingness has real value; this resonates with philosophies like Buddhism and Advaita. The founder of homeopathy, Samuel Hahnemann, has Borasisi conjunct his Sun in Aries. Homeopathy is about diluting substances until there is nothing left. They still have a potent medicinal and psychic effect without being toxic.
Mercury conjoining Borasisi conjures up the idea of anything from writer’s block to (particularly in Pisces), meditation (no-thought). The trick with Borasisi is to find the value in the nothing. Mercury’s archetype in astrology can be the trickster, the child, communication, flight, speed. In Pisces conjunct Borasisi we might find that silence and stillness are golden for example, that keeping one’s mouth shut is the best policy in a certain situation, that doing nothing resolves everything etc. The art of miming (one of the oldest theatrical techniques) also springs to mind.
So this Mercury-Borasisi conjunction in Pisces is exactly squaring that big Hylonome-Chaos opposition today, the day that Hylonome stations retrograde. When planets station they appear to slow to a stop in the sky, as observed from Earth, and their effect is magnified; they are considered more powerful in their effects at that time.
Taking Chaos first, because it has some obvious common ground with Borasisi; Chaos is the primordial void, another concept of fertile nothingness. Chaos is an ancient energy that is easy to feel into, whereas Borasisi is taken from a modern story (Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut) and was the god of a fictional religion designed purely to make you feel better, no claims were made for its reality, only for its effects, it was nothing real in the ultimate sense but it had a desired result. So these two very different kinds of nothing are squaring each other.
But Hylonome ain’t nothing. She was the female centaur who threw herself onto the spear that killed her lover Cyllarus (hence her key phrase, self-inflicted). She can be about intense identification with others’ pain, self-attack, and the need to feel the pain in your heart in a very tangible way. She is impulsive and supremely sensitive, resulting in rushes of emotion that simply have to be expressed physically in some way. In Sagittarius (philosophy, religion, higher ideas), you can see Hylonome as an image of anything from the suicide bomber, martyr, appearance of stigmata (physical expression of identification with Christ’s pain), to the brilliant method actor, opera singer, artist, able to channel her enormous emotional energy more positively.
So what happens when you make a T-square out of that lot?
Mercury, the “leg” of the T-square, the one that gives the other two a shove, rules Gemini where Chaos is. So Chaos and Borasisi are both under a Mercurial influence, they are both in the position of being some kind of significant void combined with mind; no-mind. To have this type of energy opposing and squaring Hylonome makes a lot of sense. Most Hylonome-style problems are born in the mind, i.e., they can only exist when you think about them, they are made of thought; mental anguish.
To be overwhelmed by emotion you have to engage with your thoughts and feelings. In the so-called “state” of no-mind that is not possible, by definition. You can see why these two things are inherently in opposition, and I can feel the tension, the arguments about which is better, bubbling up as I write this. Most people are quite strongly attached to one or other side of that.
So, today, beware of nothing; make use of nothing; and maybe for good measure, don’t believe nothin’ either.
For an additional clue about Borasisi, check this Wiki page on Kurt Vonnegut‘s book Cat’s Cradle.
tracy, are you gonna bring it on home to pw or what?
eric, you been hanging out with seinfeld on the boat? Nothin goin on, oh oh nature abhors a vacuum. Last definition of chaos I got was “the accumulation of innumerable specific details eventually becomes logistically unmanageable. That which follows now leads.”
And it’s great that nuthin I write will be believed. How freeing. If you find me painful and are still reading this, you are experiencing self inflicting pain.
I’m crossing the tracks here, but these artists have got my juices going. That question to the tree by janetlo has been rolling around in nuthinness or whatever it is. And it rolled into be’s strawberry as mystes told me to “sit.” I thought about the fifth dimension and what I had read some time ago about layers, you know “the layers of the onion” and all that. With the onion theory we are instructed to hold the onion and close our eyes and think of everything we know about the onion (it’s like a question): the visual, the textures, the smells, the tastes,and the sounds(?).
Now be and I have strawberries in common, so I used the strawberry and didn’t I feel the energy running through and around my body in response to the sensations of the strawberry. My senses became alive in the strawberry.
What if I allowed myself to experience not just myself in this way, but another. If I closed my eyes and remembered the sensations of my lovers body. Or the sensations of that annoying teenager I have experienced all of her life, if I let myself experience the glow of her youthful skin, the texture of her hair, her smile, her gait, her laugh, her hands, her movement, her big old feet with the long toes, the sound of her voice, the power of her words, the sound of her feet on the floor, the expressions of her face.
Are we, am I, being sucked to my senses. Can we take time away from the surface patterns we run and the blanket judgements to experience each other and each thing on a deeper level. Can we listen to ourselves, our bodies, and how the body is responding. Those men, those lovers, and I was too wrapped up to even notice the orgasms they now report, at my asking.
Kurt Vonnegut’s family had a history of “mental problems”. His son Mark wrote a book about his experiences. He was chopping wood and he looked at his arm and he went into his arm and he became his arm chopping the wood. It was all right there all the time. He was with it. But the lines of “reality” said he was nuts, he was mad. And while Andy Warhols entourage was clinging to him in worship, killing themselves with drugs, he was repeating images on canvas, campbel soup they cried, isn’t it great. Sounds like modern advertising doesn’t it. I think he was making a statement.
Maybe we should give an ear, cultivate our senses, and experience our sensuality to the fullest.
The only other thing I remember about the book is that we are supposedly going to be manifesting ourselves much faster.
Maybe my healer was right, emotions come from thought forms, and thoughts are just energy forms. So maybe thoughtlessness, nuthinness, will indeed suck us into our senses and the gravity field surrounding the earth will regain its strength.
Remember, this is all nuthin. Fine line between absolutely nuthin and absolutely everything.
Thanks for this delineation Tracy, I’ve got one for you. My brother emailed me to tell me his daughter will be flying in to town to join us on the day that Venus squares Pluto and Mars is within a degree of opposing Saturn. That’s the main cause of my stomach’s convulsion. My brother & sister-in-law don’t believe in astrology and I would be a real party poop if I was even slightly negative about the reunion. (They are driving up from another part of the state and she’s coming from another state to meet here in my city where the airport is.) So I responded with a jubilant “great, whatever works for you”, but without the usual exclamation point, thinking I could always “be negative” later.
However, your words give me hope that it’s just old impulsive Hylonome In Sag (airplanes?) kicking up my anxiety and that I made the right choice to be silent. I will follow your advice and “beware of nothing”, “make use of nothing” (except for this thankyou email), “believe nothin” and do some meditation. (After all, we plan to go to the cemetary where my mom and dad are buried, which would explain some of the other dire [minor “planet”] aspects taking place that day.)
Tracy, welcome to Wales from Scotland! Synchronicity indeed…I could not sleep, and got up around 4am. I pootled around for a bit, and then sat down at the laptop and where did I spend a pleasant hour our two but your site, Serennu. And when I come online later in the day, who is writing the PW daily aspect but you! Wonderful.
Last few days have been strange, the past hoving into view in a big way memorywise. Hmnn.
Sun square Chaos and Mars square Borasisi in my natal chart – time to find out what that all means.
Warmest wishes, Hazel.
poetically perfect. i think i felt that sweetspot briefly once i hit send, then it got noisy. it’s a balmy day here en la frontera, so i’ma go outside and listen to my insight.
m, you rawk!
xOx ~ s
stormila… re: that “nothing, plenty”
::elected silence, sing to me
and beat upon my whorlГЁd ear
Pipe me to pastures still and be.
The music that I care to hear.::
(manley hopkins)
Silence comes in two beats: withholding speech and making space. There’s a sweetspot between them. Find it, claim it and all the rest will ravel into place.
(I rise with the Centaurs, see you there)
m
ahhh…synchronicity…thanks for this, it makes paradoxical sense. yesterday, this hylonome felt the need to “channel her enormous emotional energy more positively” by reaching out and writing an old deep love, only to be met once again with the silence and stillness of borasisi’s theateros. plenty of nothing, indeed!