Wednesday a friend of mine recounted a story on Facebook about her morning that seems to perfectly illustrate some of today’s significant astrology. The standout planetary event is that Mercury makes its ‘interior’ (traditionally called ‘inferior’) conjunction to the Sun today in Capricorn. This is the Sun-Mercury conjunction that happens at the midpoint of a Mercury retrograde, so take heart: the retrograde is half over.
Photo by Amanda Painter.
Mercury and the Sun make some interesting aspects with other planets, which flesh out the interpretation. Also, Venus and Chiron are active. But first, my friend’s experience.
We just received a few inches of snowfall where I live. Not a huge amount, but enough to make the morning commute messy as sunlight hit the snow-salt-sand mixture and the cars mixed it up. As my friend walked to work, she saw three cars near each other stuck on a particular hill downtown; everyone just drove around them without stopping to offer assistance.
My friend approached a woman who was spinning her wheels, used the shovel that was in the trunk and pushed, but no luck. Spotting the YMCA nearby, she ducked in, grabbed their bucket of rock salt, told the employee she’d be right back with it after helping three stuck cars, and set about sprinkling it beneath the tires of each. My friend writes:
“As I pass the YMCA to get back to [the first car] at the top, the front desk guy comes out in his crisp blue polo and khakis and hollers at me: ‘You know, when you said you were going to borrow it that usually means you’re supposed to bring it back.’ I. Am. Outraged. I drop the bucket at his feet and shout: ‘I saw three people stuck in the snow, I was borrowing it to get them OUT! But hey man, if you want your ice melt back so badly, here you go.’”
Editor’s note: PW friend and researcher Carol Van Strum sent this piece to us today. She writes, “This was written by a prisoner who was Jordan’s cellmate for some years early on; a black man from rural Alabama. At the time he was in his early 50s and didn’t know how to read. Jordan started reading to him from the books and articles we sent daily, and taught him to read; a few years ago Paul sent a picture of himself proudly holding the GED certificate he’d earned. Since then I’ve continued sending him books and articles, and recently he sent this essay, which he asked me to type for him to give his son. The whole piece amazed me, as the only changes I made were to fix some spelling and break it into paragraphs. I hope others might appreciate it, too.”
Jordan wrote several pieces for PW under the name Enceno Macy while he was incarcerated. — Amanda P.
By Paul Grice
There comes a time in your life when you finally get it. You realize that it’s time to stop hoping and waiting for something to change or for happiness, safety and security to come galloping over the next horizon. You come to realize that any guarantee of happily ever after must begin with you.
Paul Grice, holding the GED he earned in 2011.
In the process a sense of serenity is born. You have awakened to the fact that you are not perfect, and that not everyone will always love you, appreciate you, or approve of who you are. You have learned that not everyone will always be there for you, and that it’s not always about you. So now you are standing on your own.
In the process a sense of safety, security, and a new-found confidence is born. You stop judging and pointing fingers, and you begin to accept people as they are and to overlook their shortcomings.
A sense of peace, forgiveness and contentment have been awakened within. You realize that much of the way you view yourself and the world around you is the result of all the messages and opinions that have been engrained in your mind. Now you have to redefine who you are and what you really stand for. You have learned the difference between wanting and needing. You find yourself discarding the doctrines and values you have outgrown. You have learned to distinguish between guilt and responsibility, and the importance of setting boundaries. You have learned that the only cross to bear is the one you choose to carry.
You have learned that God isn’t punishing you or failing to answer your prayers. You have learned to deal with evil in its most primal state, “the ego.” You have learned that negative feelings such as anger, envy and resentment must be understood and redirected, or they will suffocate the life out of you and poison the universe that surrounds you.
You have learned to admit when you are wrong and to build bridges instead of walls. You have learned to be thankful and to take comfort in many of the simple things that we take for granted. Slowly you begin to take responsibility for yourself. You make a promise to try never to betray yourself and to never ever settle for less than your heart’s desire. You make a point to keep smiling, to keep trusting, and to stay open to every wonderful possibility that comes your way.
With God by your side and courage in your heart, you have learned that what is most valuable is not what we have in our life, but who we have in our life. You have learned that a rich person is not one who has the most, but one who needs the least. You have learned that anything worth achieving is worth working for, and that wishing for something to happen is different from working toward making it happen. More importantly, you learn that in order to achieve success, you need direction, discipline, and perseverance. You learn that no one can do it all alone, and it’s okay to risk asking for help.
You have learned about romance and familial love, how much to give, and when to stop giving, when to walk away. You have learned to look at relationships as they really are and not as you would have them be. You have stopped trying to control people and situations and others’ outcomes. You have learned that just as people grow and change, so does love.
You have learned that fear has no more hold on you. You have learned to step right into it, because you know that whatever happens, you can handle it, and to give in to fear is to give away your right to live.
You have learned that true happiness is not just achieving our goals, but learning who we are through striving towards them. And the greatest feeling is the feeling of triumph and knowing that though you have fallen into the biggest and deepest hole, with God’s help you dug yourself out and flipped it to make you a better person.
We are often judged by what we go through and encounter in situations. People often look down their noses on how we fell, rather than look at how we got up. Now that I have been awakened, they can’t hurt me any more. Everything is there to help me to become a better person — not just for myself, but for you, too.
The written readings for Vision Quest, Planet Waves’ 2016 annual edition, have now been published. Order all 12 signs at a great value or choose your individual signs.
Paris-based photographer Danielle Voirin travels the world and documents her experiences in photographs. She takes street photography and photojournalism a shade beyond even art, to the level of mysticism. You may see more of her work on her website DanielleVoirin.com, or her alt website, DaniVoirin.com.
A woman ordering at food at the Wild Chasse traiteur in Bern, Switzerland. Chasse being the word for hunting, the menu includes elk and wild boar.
Simple solutions are appealing. Unfortunately, they are frequently wrong. Similarly, the allure of stability somehow retains credibility in a world where the only constant is change. Thus, the deceitful are exalted and the pernicious prosper precisely because they offer simple answers that promise to preserve equilibrium.
It doesn’t have to be that way. Astrologers especially should know better. The sky is constantly in motion. Neither can any single sign, planet or aspect can be considered out of holistic context.
As it is above, so it usually is below. That’s a good thing. It’s good that the world is complex and nuanced, because that is the only sort of world where new possibilities can continue to emerge.
Hence, an alternative (but intrinsically realistic) way to make sense of the earth trine from the Capricorn Sun to retrograde Jupiter in Virgo, which is exact just before 5:49 pm EST (22:48:51 UTC) tomorrow. Better not to call the 120 degree separation from the Sun to Jupiter an ‘easy’, ‘stable’ or even ‘flowing’ aspect. Such a cookbook interpretation would only leave a lot of disappointed people regretting any money spent on lottery tickets, and further astrology’s undeserved reputation as deceitful and pernicious hocus-pocus.
Better instead to see the big picture. More useful to discern how this particular trine from the Sun to Jupiter is different from other occurrences of that aspect, than to offer a sound bite about what it ‘means’.
Mercury, for example, is about to pass between Earth and the Sun. That passage makes Mercury appear to be going backwards (retrograde) through Capricorn on its way to conjoin with the Sun, even as it is also unseen in the solar glare up in the sky. In short, there is implicitly more going on than meets the eye, whether in regards to the tangible Sun in the sky or its emblem of consciousness on the zodiac, which is moving to trine Jupiter at this time.
By the same token, any interpretation of Jupiter for the time being must necessarily dispense with its usual beneficent character as represented by many astrologers. First off, Earth is passing between the Sun and Jupiter right now. That passage results in Jupiter rising a bit later every night, and accounts for its own current retrograde motion back through Virgo. As result, the usual idea of Jupiter as a bringer of good things should currently be shaded to imply something more along the lines of a promise of good things.
Going a bit deeper, Jupiter in mutable Virgo is part of a larger picture. That picture includes Neptune (with its strong correspondence to inscrutability) and Chiron (which correlates to complexity and nuance, among other things) on the other side of the zodiac — roughly 180 degrees away in Pisces.
Since Pisces is ruled by both Jupiter and Neptune, their current opposition (however approximate) must be seen as a sort of contest right now. It is a lot like the political contests currently going on in the U.S., with most of the candidates competing to offer the simplest and most comforting promises of good things regardless of how impractical to implement their proposals would be. That’s how any interpretation of the trine aspect Jupiter will be taking from the Sun tomorrow must necessarily include a broader perspective, and would need to include some skepticism.
All this is not to say you should approach the middle of this week without optimism. Nearly anything is better than falling into the confining space of being cynical. While there remains some possibility that the meek might inherit the Earth, it is almost certain that the bitter and jaded will never fare as well. Which is where you come in.
Astrology does not happen to you. Yes, your inaction can allow things to happen — especially things brought on by actions of the deceitful and pernicious, but you can’t blame astrology for that. What you can do is embrace the astrology and work with it. With tomorrow’s trine from the Sun to Jupiter, that would almost certainly not mean that you should stake your material and psychological wellbeing on winning a billion dollars. Nor should you swallow any political promises whole.
Rather, you should be realistic. You should accept that answers to your problems will involve some complexity and require some work on your part. All the better to attain solutions that will actually work for you. You should also anticipate change and prepare for it. All the better to recognize new possibilities and make them your own.
Finally, as a participant in the world with others, your recognition of how the sky will keep moving after tomorrow will make you among the few who are indeed qualified to lead at least some of us forward, rather than hold all of us back.
The written readings for Vision Quest, Planet Waves’ 2016 annual edition, have now been published. Order all 12 signs at a great value or choose your individual signs.
Paris-based photographer Danielle Voirin travels the world and documents her experiences in photographs. She takes street photography and photojournalism a shade beyond even art, to the level of mysticism. You may see more of her work on her website DanielleVoirin.com, or her alt website, DaniVoirin.com.
David Bowie. His public life threw out the rule books; he was a voyager into the unknown, creating movements rather than following them.
As an artist and performer to whom it seemed art and life were one and the same thing, he exemplified the archetype of The Fool.
He never stayed the same.
“Just gonna have to be a different man / Time may change me / But I can’t trace time.”
It feels significant that Uranus, the planet that corresponds with The Fool, was squaring the New Moon on the day he died – reactivating the Uranus-Pluto square, which is all about revolution.
And maybe the revolution, as he sings here, is love.
Go well, Cosmic Traveller.
“There was a boy
A very strange enchanted boy
They say he wandered very far, very far
Over land and sea
A little shy
And sad of eye
But very wise
Was he
And then one day
A magic day he passed my way
And while we spoke of many things, fools and kings
This he said to me
“The greatest thing
You’ll ever learn
Is just to love
And be loved
In return””
~ Nature Boy, David Bowie and Massive Attack (orig. Nat King Cole)
* * * * * * * *
This Week’s Tarot Reading
This week, two Minor Arcana cards and one Ace mark a shift away from the broader, Soul-story told by the Majors over the past few weeks — from what you are being and the world within — and into your interactions with the world around you, and what you’re doing. Think of the Majors over the two prior readings as being the backdrop to your experience, and this week a tangible moment in time painted in finer detail onto that backdrop.
Three of Wands, Ace of Cups, Five of Swords from the Haindl Tarot, created by Hermann Haindl. Click on the image for a larger version.
The three cards in front of you do not mark a Past, Present, Future reading. Instead, they are happening simultaneously, with the Ace as the cauldron into which the card on the right — the Five of Swords — can be alchemized into the card on the left — the Three of Wands.
You can salvage what seems to be slipping from your grasp — or maybe what was torn from it — and transmute it. In other words, you can take a situation that’s riddled with conflict, and transform it into one that holds creative potential. You get to sift through a war of words and find the key to disarm it. You get to distill lightning from a shit-storm. You rediscover fire. You find a way through.
How?
By asking for, and reaching towards, what is held there in potential: the Ace of Cups.
Remember last week you were The Magician as the central card, with all four Aces in front of you with which to start creating your world? Somewhere along the way, maybe just for a moment — perhaps for longer — you slipped out of alignment and integrity with your highest ideals and your calling. Now, here is your first opportunity to use your abilities to harness the gift of the Ace of Cups and get to work on dismantling a snafu that you’ve gotten yourself into.
You don’t do this by thinking, analyzing, or perpetuating a war of words (even if only with yourself). You do it through love. But this is not a love you can force into existence; it’s not something you sprinkle like sugar (“Hey! The more the better!”) in the hope that the bitterness disappears. You can’t foist love on people and things that can’t relate to it, won’t accept it, don’t need to accept it.
No. The Ace of Cups is simply there. Enough.
We do love to feel in control. We do love to feel in control of love. With love, we tend to sit like a kid in the passenger seat of a car, who’s holding a plastic steering wheel, believing that the hard work they’re putting into turning that wheel one way and the other is having an effect on the direction of travel.
When, in truth, love makes its own course. It always has. It is a current that flows through life, and beyond it. You are either flowing with or against it. And, paradoxically, sometimes the stronger you feel the stinging barbs of ‘not-love’, the harder you’ll try to get back to it — when what might serve you better is to let go and fall into it. To fall back into love.
There is nothing you have to do to it or with it apart from acknowledging the possibility of its presence and inviting it in.
It is that simple. So simple, that you frequently forget to try it. I mean, it can’t be that simple, can it? Something that simple can’t work.
Or can it?
Astrology/Elemental correspondences: Three of Wands (Sun in Aries), Ace of Cups in the North (the pure, limitless potential of water), Five of Swords (Venus in Aquarius)
If you want to experiment with tarot cards and don’t have any, we provide a free tarot spread generator using the Celtic Wings spread, which is based on the traditional Celtic Cross spread. This article explains how to use the spread.
The written readings for Vision Quest, Planet Waves’ 2016 annual edition, have now been published. Order all 12 signs at a great value or choose your individual signs.
Paris-based photographer Danielle Voirin travels the world and documents her experiences in photographs. She takes street photography and photojournalism a shade beyond even art, to the level of mysticism. You may see more of her work on her website DanielleVoirin.com, or her alt website, DaniVoirin.com.
Mystic shadow, bending near me, Who art thou? – Stephen Crane.
Amanda Moreno suggested this archive selection by Eric to stand in for her column, and I think it’s a perfect refresher for (or introduction to) thinking about sexuality and identity as we begin a new year. Ms. Moreno is in the process of shifting her column to Wednesdays, so watch for updates about that. Also: the link after this first section takes you to the article’s permanent archive home; please click back here to leave comments. — Amanda P.
By Eric Francis Coppolino
Dear Friend and Reader:
RECENTLY, I visited the Grandmother Land with Hannah, one of the Book of Blue models I photograph. It was sunny and warm for a winter day, but still chilly. I wasn’t expecting her to work nude, but she has a Capricorn Sun and Moon — she’s winter’s child, confident and present in the world.
Hannah from the Book of Blue. Photo by Eric Francis.
Determined to make good pictures, she peeled off her layers and stripped down to a thin pair of sweats. In the photographs, I blended details of her body into the magnificent winter landscape till the goose bumps took over. Noticing them vividly through my lens, I suggested she get dressed. In those 15 minutes, we got some earthy photos of an earthy girl.
Then we wandered around the woods for a bit. I spontaneously started collecting bits of kindling from tree branches, and suggested we make a fire. This we did, and sat in the cold January sunlight for hours next to the flames and slow-rising smoke, eating Five Fruits Lifesavers and talking about everything that came up.
This of course included sex. After we had gone far enough into the discussion to appreciate the complexity of our subject, she said some words that fairly well stunned me and would have been cheered at any human potential workshop in the 1970s, long before she was born — “It’s not about sex. It’s about self.”
What she had observed, mainly through observing herself, is that when you follow sexual awareness into yourself, you’re taken to the core of self-awareness. The psyche on its deepest layers is so closely intertwined with sexual consciousness as to be one and the same with it. Because it accounts for how we come into the world, which is the only world we know, sex is cosmic. Yet discussion of sex is a kind of ruse for the real discussion, below the surface, and that is about one’s sense of identity and existence.
This makes sense. Assuming they are not cloning people yet, we all come into existence through sex or at least sex cells. Half of us start as a sperm cell that experiences an orgasm and then takes a big ride on an ejaculation, carried along in an ocean of whatever feelings are present. The sperm cell who became us personally went up to that enormous egg (our other half) and kissed it, surrendering its prior form and identity into a new entity. That is how our existence begins, and that memory is, I would imagine, directly in our DNA, along with the instructions for how to do it again.
Sex is what creates us, so it’s sensible that eroticism (that is, all the feelings we have about sex) will have the potential to carry our creative impulse into life, and throughout our lives.
It also works the other way. When someone is conditioned to either not think or experience sexuality with full awareness (or any awareness), or if they are programmed to respond with guilt and fear, self-awareness becomes blocked. If there is a sexual injury or the perception of one, it can block much of our creative energy, potential and happiness.
Our relationship to sex and sexuality is our relationship to existence. If we feel good about our erotic experiences, needs and feelings, we tend to feel good about life. If we are bitter, if we don’t get what we need, if we feel guilty or ashamed of our sexual feelings and experiences, that is most likely how we’re going to feel about life. This can manifest some strange ways, such as violence and manipulation, just like feeling good about sex can manifest as a passionate, creative person who creates their existence consciously every day.
