Dear Friend and Reader:
On Thursday, I wrote about what is happening in Sagittarius, including the Sun’s ingress and the Jupiter-Venus-Ixion alignment with the Galactic Core. If you’re interested in that aspect, please refer back to my previous article.
The Sagittarius New Moon is at 10:05 am EST on Tuesday. The New Moon is trine Chiron, and opens a vent from the personal transformation and identity crisis of Chiron in Aries, into the more spacious ideas of Sagittarius. A theme of this New Moon is, it’s not all about you. Your life and what you witness are about something much larger.
Included in the Sagittarius New Moon chart is some activity in Capricorn, which is interesting, and about to become a lot more so. One thing it’s helpful to remember is that the true opposite signs (such as Sagittarius and Capricorn) are those adjoining one another. Opposite (such as Virgo and Pisces) signs are the same gender and on the same cross; all that differs is their element.
Adjoining signs are of different genders, different crosses, and different elements. They are as opposite as you can get, in terms of their astrological properties. In the case of Sagittarius and Capricorn, the ruling planets are interesting as well — Jupiter, usually felt to expand, and Saturn, usually felt to structure and limit.
Venus Enters Capricorn, Squares Chiron
At the moment of the New Moon, Venus enters Capricorn. The first thing it does is make a conjunction to Pholus and a square to Chiron. Pholus, also a centaur, will tend to raise the energy level of any aspect, sometimes pushing matters it represents out of control. A square to Chiron will tend to serve as a check. Let’s look at the square first.
Venus square Chiron is emblematic of the times we are living in, which are defined by a crisis in gender identity. In a natal chart, this aspect will have different manifestations for men and women, though always describing one’s relationship to anima, or inner feminine.
Remember that in our society, we tend to project sex and gender outward; and we tend to see them as political issues. In doing so, we miss the opportunity to understand the inner relationships we have to anima and animus (inner feminine and inner masculine facets of the psyche) and how this drives our experiences. If we see sex and gender as political issues that exist outside of us, we miss the opportunity for growth and that almost forgotten thing called personality integration.
On the theme of gender, it has become fashionable to exploit or dwell upon the allegedly partisan divide between men and women. This is about as healthy as politicians exploiting the partisan divide in the voters. And while many are busy trying to blow children out of the “blue” and “pink” boxes, this seems as healthy as forcing them into those boxes.
What I believe we need is to allow young people to explore without making any decisions for them, or loading them down with propaganda. Life is not about how one “identifies” but rather who one actually is.
The Theme of Receptivity
The most significant quality Venus represents in this pattern is receptivity. When Venus-Chiron is out of tune, it will tend to push outward, expressing itself as some form of macho, bossy, or authoritarian. You will get some version of the experience, “This person cannot feel me.”
It does not matter if they are male, female or some other concept of gender; or heterosexual, homosexual, or some blend of the two. The underlying theme of receptivity is what this aspect is about. Note that lack of receptivity can manifest many ways, from aggression to refusing to ask for help when you need it.
Most people struggle with issues about receiving love and affection, which themselves can be triggering. This is one reason most dogs and some cats are so therapeutic for people. They are all about being loved and cared for.
Politics Usually Equals Family
As part of our politicize/project drama, another tendency is to see everything as an identity related to some canned concept of gender rather than as an energetic state. The tendency to politicize will be amplified by both Capricorn and Pholus.
Pholus in the pattern is cautioning about the underlying family issues that are manifesting through any seemingly political situation. That is usually 99% of the energy behind the drama and the codependency. Humans tend to project their most dysfunctional attributes into the political arena, whether we are talking about congressional politics or protest culture.
Government and corporate environments are extensions of the “miniature authoritarian state” described by Wilhelm Reich. In Reich’s view, the disruption of natural sexual feelings (which include both expressing and receiving) is mostly about making young people seem manageable. Then this erupts into some horrid states of being in adult life, which in our era we are witnessing all over the place.
Then Comes Jupiter, an Eclipse, and Saturn-Pluto
We will be seeing plenty of this magnified not only by this week’s alignment in early Capricorn, but also by the ingress of Jupiter into Capricorn on Dec. 2. That is, of course, preparation for the big events in Capricorn — the solar eclipse on Dec. 26, and the Saturn-Pluto conjunction on Jan. 12.
Remember: that’s really an alignment of the Sun, Mercury, Ceres, Saturn and Jupiter — the whole family shows up.
As you watch the impeachment of Pres. Trump — our current manifestation of Big Daddy — think of it as a family drama magnified by 300 million. A lot of uncool, unresolved and unforgiven stuff happened in families; that accounts for many of our collective problems.
Thanks for tuning in. If all goes according to the plan, I will have the monthly horoscope on Wednesday.
With love,
The propaganda about gender is bursting out of nearly anywhere you look. Right wing, left wing, what the fuck ever. But there is still next to no sex education in the United States.
We still have many places doing abstinence indoctrination, denying young people crucial knowledge about their bodies.
Gender is essentially play acting. It is entirely variable and different for anyone.
Matters of sex and sexuality — biology and its connection to how we feel, what we want and what we do — are much more urgent, and necessary to discuss and explore — but they are also more real, and involve the discussion of physical sex, and are embarrassing and forbidden.