Today is the Venus-Uranus conjunction in Pisces. This happens about once a year; Venus follows the path of the Sun, more or less. Notably, this is the last Venus-Uranus conjunction in Pisces for about 75 years. When next the two planets meet, on April 22, 2011, Uranus will be solidly into Aries. So today’s conjunction marks the transition into another era of the astrological terrain: that being the cardinal t-square that we think of as 2012.
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Misconceptions about 2012 are still running wild. A local newspaper editor buttonholed me in the neighborhood deli yesterday to tell me about the great alignment of planets (all in a row, that is, a big stellium) that supposedly marks the transition of the Mayan calendar at the winter solstice.
No such thing exists. The 2012 alignment — which would have been unknown to the Mayans, who were not following Uranus or Pluto — involves a T-square from the cardinal signs Aries, Libra and Capricorn — not a stelllium. The aspect pattern is more reminiscent of the 1960s than any time in recent history.
Once again 2012 is a dramatization of the United States’ love affair with the ‘End Times’. I learned at NCGR that the US obsession with the End Times goes back to the earliest days of religious-types giving up their well-established lives in Europe and flocking to the New World, assuming it was the New Jerusalem.
In modern terms, the End Times are a psychological cop out. Our culture gets itself into all kinds of trouble, most of it from activities related to warfare (an issue with many sources and results, such as the inability to take care of our basic needs as a nation) and then we ‘solve’ the problem by pretending the world is going to end.
This, in turn, allows many people to continue to act as if their actions will have no consequences. It would be interesting to know — we may never know, so this is speculation — how much of our economic crisis is fueled by End Timers in high office, who think that there is no big deal about what they are doing, because the end is nigh. This was clearly the case under the Bush administration, but actually I don’t think that the people we think of as Democrats are that different; and Washington, DC is a culture wherein certain ideas propagate and take root, regardless of what religion one actually is.
Personally I’ll be looking to the Venus-Uranus conjunction to see what issues or language emerge today and tomorrow that point toward something different; or alternately that sum up the seven-year era of Uranus in Pisces. Plus, on a personal level, it’s a sexy aspect and looks like a lot more fun than reading the Book of Revelation.
Just because someone is having a lot of sex doesn’t mean they’re having deep, full body orgasms.
Venus/Uranus for me is that billboard with the girl on her knees in front of the boy with the fly obviously quite open. I love her expression – like the joke is on everyone.
It brings back fond memories. teehee. And in the meantime, groovy times are just ahead (to be continued?) More on this ok Len?
Sorry. . .previous entry should have said Neptune/Chiron not Uranus/Venus that conjunct the U.S. Moon (next to last paragraph,last sentence)
But you already knew that (didn’t you?)
be
I read pw this morning as usual, Venus/Uranus in my thoughts, birds chirping, sun shining, car starting, radio playing:Love Me Like The World Was Ending by Ben Lee.
“in the meantime, which is a groovy time…” – Hendrix
I’m feeling pretty good about the conjunction of Uranus and Venus in Pisces in that it addresses “the inability to take care of our basic needs as a nation”. Also, “issues or language emerge(d) today. . . that point to something different” and came in the form of an announcement by Pres. Obama (1:50 PM, Washington DC) about what he expects from the Senate and House regarding healthcare reform.
As the Pisces conjunction is trine the U.S. (Sibly) chart’s Mercury in Cancer and is sextile the U.S. Pluto in Capricorn, there is encouragement provided by the union of Uranus and Venus for positive change. Ceres conjunct the Galactic Core stimulates this Pisces conjunction with conscious awareness through the square aspect, while she also trines Vesta at 26+ Leo.
At the time of the President’s remarks, made before a group of healthcare professionals, the Moon in Libra was trining the U.S. Moon-Pallas Athene conjunction in Aquarius, and also sextiling Vesta in Leo. This sextile of dedication and feeling combined with the Venus-Uranus conjunction in Pisces created a yod, or Finger of God, with the focus on the Pisces planets. That’s a lot of attention on Uranus.
With Uranus, we expect jolting, startling events as well as exciting results. With Venus conjunct him, and the Moon and Vesta putting on the pressure, perhaps his energy will not be quite as shocking as it usually is. Perhaps Ceres on the GC will also provide a cushioning effect as she squares Uranus. She is providing the seed for future harvests to be reaped for the U.S. citizens, and Uranus will provide the jump-start in healthcare (Pisces). If we’re lucky.
Neptune and Chiron conjuncting the U.S. Moon and Pallas have been promising this healing for the U.S. people and it is time to begin the process. The Moon in Pres. Obama’s announcement chart today was in the 4th house, suggesting a balance of feelings can be reached with the U.S. population regarding this new plan for health care coverage. That transiting Moon is in the U.S. (Sibly) 10th house, and could mean that harmony might be found between the government (10th) and the people (trine U.S. Moon that is conj. trans. Uranus/Venus)
Of course, there is still Pluto and Saturn to deal with, not to mention Mars retro, so nothing will be easily accomplished. Growth can be painful.
be
I guess we would need to do a survey – and include the women…but point taken. Now, the parish is another story.
Eric, “. . . only a lot of fear, guilt and suppressed orgasm.”
Umm, lotsa the former, not so much the latter. High-dollar evangelicals are among the randiest of the randy. I’ve heard stories from the Hunting&Whoring crowd in Houston that involve some pretty pricey orgiastic weekends, complete with Prayer Breakfasts.
Those folks have very active sex lives – so you can’t say that a build-up of seminal fluid in the brain is the cause of their madness.
M
Half,
No deep conviction is necessary — only a lot of fear, guilt and suppressed orgasm.
Then the mirage rises to meet them, and the Rapture calls. It is, seemingly, the only way out of the shadows.
e
I have some friends who have sat in rooms with Jerry Falwell back in the late 80’s/early 90’s, and from what they have shared with me, Falwell et al. behaved VERY much like Half DeWitte describes. I’ve also heard this perspective from people like Frank Schaeffer who has written for HuffPo about his experience growing up in the inner circle of the new American Fundamentalism. This also well describes the perspective of groups like “The Fellowship”. HDW nailed it.
On the other hand, the Palin machine is a different mechanism, much cruder and more likely to malfunction.
And the essential difference (as I see it) between Americans and Brits is that there’s a whole lot more of us and we’re mouthier.
HDW’s last comment in her first post is amazing, and I think neatly summarizes the panic some religious people feel right now: God has left us; God hates us; God is punishing us. That’s not the peaceful assurance of Christ’s return, that’s self loathing. And I don’t doubt that their churches and their pastors have fed them spoonful upon spoonful of self-loathing for years. What I actually see is a kind of political resurrection of medieval indulgences, (20th century style) whereby if you endorse the right candidate/social concern, you’ll get even closer to God. We all want gold stars on our charts, and this is how they get them.
Yeah, about that 2012 wilderness. Well, honeys, you know it’s gonna be a little different than our current idea of End. It’s more like “Open Sesame.” On New Year’s night 2000, I dreamed that we had 12 more years to endure this exquisite stupidity, then it was pretty much “Step-ball-change and a pirouette…”
Two years before that, the Daughterest expired in room 2012. I wasn’t exposed to Arguelles and his 2012 epiphanies until 2002.
I look at that Grand Cross, and see everything stream through the Opening, that is, Cardinal Cancer. Here’s my intergalactic anthem for the moment the beautiful wheel pirouettes: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_R9fId_Rqo
(The end image: “Don’t follow me” means, lead yourself!.)
All love…
M
Eric: thank you for maintaining this beacon of sanity on the web. I visited my biological family last night and the Disneyland feel of their whole suburban trip really hit me. I’ve been studying African history 1800-present this term and learning all about the philosophical spin White Man put on his worldview so that murdering natives was only evolution in action and nothing to feel bad about. Out with my suburban bio-fam+stepdad they defended corporations as only doing what’s necessary to make profit for their shareholders, it’s no big deal cause profit is a good motivator, corporations are just people I pointed out that there’s a mass extinction going on that hasn’t been equaled since the dinosaurs and it’s because of humans seeking profit Stepdad says we just have to agree to disagree. It felt like being in a Disney creation where America can do no wrong and if anyone talks about anything real like environmental degradation and the exploitation of brown people we have to agree to disagree and go back to the regularly scheduled programming of Disneyvision.
I feel my calling to be teaching others how to perceive the intelligence of Cosmos, especially our homeworld (Uranus Venus are trine my Cancer midheaven right now) through my art practices but talking to them last night in the house where I grew up, surrounded by minds who want to keep living the American Dream™ no matter who suffers, as long as we don’t have to hear about it on Fox news I turned into the teenager I was (almost) and felt bound and gagged, unable to make a coherent argument. What can you say when someone keeps shooting down your facts with things they got from Rush or Beck? When they just barf up the Republican talking points…
And that alienated feeling I learned from being the only misfit in a cookie cutter family in Disney America sticks with me and becomes how I feel alienated in the world. This is how the authoritarian trip works. Is this what it means to have two outer planets in the first house and a retrograde Saturn? Ah, and it doesn’t help that asteroid Cassandra is conjunct my moon. I feel like Cassandra when I talk about anything real with my bio-fam, like stepdad disses my oracles just because I won’t fuck his American Dream™. Is there any hope for Cassandra to repair her reputation now that we have the internet to out abusive bastards like Apollo?
Anyway, thanks for keeping it real on Planetwaves.
From the point of view of the Sociology of Religion I would assert that zeal is the glue of mass mentalities and embodies a power struggle by the relatively powerless – who seek to control the means of interpretation in terms of ‘correct’ and pristine theologies.
Zeal from this perspective is not something that the powerful ruling types require to be a part of their religious ideology (arguably it actually gets in the way – because it crashes clear thinking). In my experience the upper echelons of ‘believers’ don’t believe with the zeal that underlings do. They believe only enough to activate the zeal of those to be manipulated.
Basically, although I completely agree about the cross-cultural differences between UK and USA religious phenomena and the relationship to core polity, my feeling is that hierarchies, with their access to privilege, operate more with the ‘utility of beliefs’ than the zeal that may be evinced.
I simply do not see a coterie at the ‘very top’ honestly believing in their own weird views as gospel and being delusional in this respect. I see individuals who consider that while God is obviously on their side (the core delusion) the people who believe zealously (the public they ‘serve’ under God) can be marshalled through manipulation that upholds the ‘divinely appointed’ social order. They justify this precisely as a matter of conscience: manipulation to a greater end (and their own advantage as mere bonus) – teleological rather than deontological ethics.
They also justify this as part of the privilege of power – they know things we don’t and are held to higher standards than we mortals who are not privy to such ‘intelligence’ can imagine. In other words, they justify their manipulations through perspectival ethics rather than dodgy but heartfelt theocratic beliefs about the world order and end times.
Yes, I wouldn’t put any belief system to be beyond anyone – one only needs to look at the grip of scientology for that. But strange or not, the most powerful tend to be those of lower raw conviction (apart from when public speaking) while the masses seek power/assent by having the greatest depth of conviction in practice.
Just my thoughts but the whole arena is very strange and certainly more so to a Brit!
Half, you’re in England, yes?
I know you read…but you may not be tune into the definitely crude morph of religion and politics that we experience here; a kind of open-secret theocracy that would make the popes and god-emperors at least feel that their efforts weren’t for nothing.
At the core of the issue as I see it is a nexus of denial of individual mortality coupled with sexual repression that is projected out as megadeath; the big, satisfying wargasm at the end of it all. I don’t believe or observe that there is a long or convoluted mental loop. I think it’s short, direct and convenient.
Anyone in this state of mind, openly or not, is going to make strange decisions based on strange values; and the notion of The End affects a person’s view of the future. A lot and I do mean a LOT of the people in power in DC are hardcore Christians, particularly those in elected office.
I learned at NCGR that the End Times go back to the earliest days of religious-types giving up their well-established lives in Europe and flocking to the New World, assuming it was the New Jerusalem.
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The antecedents go way further back and can be seen prominently in the history of Israel and its occupations from several centuries before the Christian Era. The whole phenomenon of apocalyptic was born at that time.
In terms of the psychology, I am not convinced that end time psychology serves the crude primitive device of aiding the powerful in negating any sense of social responsibility – there are too many factors in our culture that would prevent a person being self-deceiving of their conscience in such a crude and transparent fashion.
In the foundations of apocalypticism, moreover, there was a grass roots apologetic movement that sought to make sense of powerlessness in the face of divine sovereignty/promise within a ‘special’ covenantal relationship (a people movement essentially) – rather than some well-established method of the ruling classes justifying corporate greed and global psychopathy because somehow the end is nigh.
Historically and quintessentially the whole bag was an equation that the people feel powerless SO they conceive of just and imminent divine intervention to carry the day. To my mind what is happening now is a reversal/exploitation of causality in that construct. So now it’s not “we are sorely oppressed/powerless/derelict the end is nigh” but “the end is nigh we must be derelict/powerless”
So…. if the end of the world is nigh it can be used to make people experience a sense of being powerless. Drip feed this in through Hollywood and it is an excellent way of making the people pliant, passive and receptive of cosmic and fateful forces that mere mortals can do NOTHING about.
Hot on the heels of ‘flu pandemics’, climate change, terror wars, economic meltdown (all man made) and now ably supported by natural disasters ‘the powers’ know that trotting out apocalyptic scenarios such as that dramatised in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, will subtly instate the psychology of powerlessness and victimhood in the people – who will develop survivalist tendencies – every man, woman, child for themselves a.k.a. divide and conquer.
Most people apart from hardcore Christians don’t really believe the end is nigh – it is the feeling tone, more than the cognitive system, that is assaulted by this mind laundering tide.
One final observation: The God of justice left the building a long time ago! There is no hope for the hopeless.. They did not all live happily ever after.
Anything weird would qualify as Venus conjunct Uranus….here you go.
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/federal-eye/2010/03/faa_blasts_kid_in_the_jfk_airp.html?hpid=artslot