Zeitgeist Trends: January 31, 2022

Read a horoscope in five minutes. And how the Covid clusterfuck lends itself to fantasies of war in Ukraine.

Jan 31, 2022

ASTROLOGY IS MADE TOO COMPLEX.

One of the most memorable takeaways I learned from my friend, the late astrologer David Roell, is that you should practice reading a horoscope in five minutes.

Dave, an Aquarian, knew a trick that many Aquarians know. Namely, if you set your mind on a task, like: read this horoscope in five minutes, the task’s structure (giving the mind something to do) allows your intuition to move freely and do its thing.

Many astrologers do not understand this. Especially if the astrologer is hung up on rules and decans and rulerships and midpoints and dignities and falls.

Muddy water

From complexity comes confusion. And confusion and complexity combined create obscuration. Nietzsche had a saying that goes something like: “They muddy the waters to make them appear deep.”

Obscurity often flips into idiocy. And astro-idiocy devolves into the astrology of memes, Tweets, quizzes, Instagram placards, and other online foolishness:

“Which Zodiac sign is most likely to vote for Trump in 2024?” (I saw this poll the other day on Twitter).

If not dumbed-down to become a bromide for the brain dead, the astrology of obscuration goes in the opposite direction and morphs into content like this chart below.

Someone posted this on Facebook the other day to talk about today’s New Moon in, uhm, I think it’s in Aquarius, but who the fuck knows amidst the glut of asteroids and other goo.

I’m pretty sure it was Robert Hand who said that when you throw everything into a horoscope you end up with nothing to read. If he didn’t say that, then, well, maybe it was Mark Twain. If not Twain then, I’ll say that I said it.

Astrology is a concise art

Astrology will never be proven scientifically. To try and empirically ‘prove’ astrology is like trying to scientifically prove a painting by Monet.

The thing about a Monet is that you look at it.

You might also be able to smell it. And chances are you won’t hear anything emanating from it. Tasting it would be a bad idea. But like an astrological chart, you can look at the painting and instantly come away with vital impressions.

For me, this is how astrology works best.

“Reading” a horoscope is first kinesthetic and then visual. When I look at a horoscope of any sort I feel or sense the chart in my body.

This is how I teach my beginning students. Usually, they are intimated by their birth chart, hung up on the Greek of the whole thing.

But when I tell them that the first step is to simply look at the mandala and respond somatically, they relax and the complexity begins to fall away.

This then creates an opening for the reception of the astrological logos.

Why?

We are Earthlings.

It is the Earth—and its relationship to the other bodies in the cosmos—that receives and gives back impressions within the biosphere. A horoscope is a photograph of the biosphere at any given moment (like, say, your birth).

So it makes sense, as an Earthling, that this is where the astrological logos will register with anyone first. In his or her body.

Then after the chart registers in the body, they can shift their attention to the chart’s visual field.

From the visuals of the chart, with the eye assigned the task of looking, the psyche can slip in and out of the chart’s liminality.

Suddenly the placement and arrangement of planets impart impressions to the meaning-making section of consciousness. This can communicate particulars about the particular Earthling.

Space does this too. Space is a living entity and has its own message or meaning for anyone open to ‘hearing it’. Space in the horoscope is as important as the objects that occupy the space.

Oh, right, this is about today’s New Moon

So all of the above is a more integral way of understanding today’s New Moon in Aquarius.

Whatever sort of impression or feeling or sensation you registered while reading the content above is part and parcel of the lunation today.

Which looks like this:

My declaration was fitting the Aquarius New Moon that is bookended between Pluto and Saturn. The Pluto part dismantled whatever sort of notions you have about learning or understanding a horoscope.

And the Saturn part supplied some literal instructions while considering the take-apart.

We are lodged between deconstruction (Pluto) and construction (Saturn) right now. This seeming contradiction can fuck with our sense of well-being. And this is made doubly emphatic as Mercury is conjunct Pluto today as well.

Our thoughts might orbit around suspicion like an obsessive moon.

And given Mercury’s retrograde, we sense that we’ll need to revisit this skeptical state of mind several more times in the month ahead.

See if you can turn suspicion into satire. Black humor is a great way to work with Mercury-Pluto.

Also, gallows humor, if you dare. Color your Mercury black and you’ll be surprised what you’re able to see through a lens darkly.

Crammed and cranky

We’re agitated and still feel ensnared by the ongoing implications of Covid (see my last close read on the Kala Sarpa formation) and its cavalcade of variants.

Ugh, in keeping with Mercury-Pluto, the CDC just announced a new iteration, this one called ‘stealth omicron’. Fuck me.

We’re also exhausted from the way 2020 echoed through 2021 and is now reverberating through 2022. Burn out, baby. You’re not alone.

You can ‘see’ the feeling right there in the chart: Seven planets and both lights are crammed into three signs.

The screams you hear are situated in your inner sanctum. Remember that old horror film When A Stranger Calls? The gruff cop bellowing over the phone to the terrified babysitter locked indoors: “We traced the call and it’s coming from inside the house.”

The outlier

Look at Uranus all by his lonesome in the upper section of the lunation chart. Distanced from the three-sign pile-up.

Squaring the Aquarian lunation you can feel the compulsion to blow off (Uranus) the too-tight grip of decorum or diplomacy (Aquarius).

The illogic born of this might read like: “So what if Russia invades Ukraine? Won’t it feel good to let some pressure off by vicariously experiencing destruction and mayhem?”

Uhm, actually no.

Way better is to find a way to blend the Taurus Aquarian paradox into something akin to altruistically inclined pragmatism.

Flip frustration into activism that might begin to remedy grotesque news like this—a very Uranus-Taurus (obscene wealth) at odds with humanity’s diminishing slice of the pie (Saturn-Aquarius) dilemma.

Anyway, that’s enough for right now.