Photographer Gregory Crewdson, who was one year ahead of me at John Dewey High School, working on one of his elaborate images on a sound stage in Massachusetts.

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Dear Friend and Reader:

Saturday’s Full Moon — the Pisces Moon opposite the Virgo Sun — is overlaid on another aspect — Jupiter opposite Neptune.

Though the Sun and Moon pass through the territory quickly, the Full Moon raises the energy like a tidal surge, offering a unique event in space and time. This event, the Full Moon, calls attention to the slower-moving astrology in the background — Jupiter opposite Neptune. So while the Jupiter-Neptune opposition is not exact until Sept. 17, this weekend’s full Moon is one of its peak moments.

Laurie Anderson performs “Delusions” at EMPAC in Oct. 2010.

The Jupiter-Neptune opposition happens about every 13 years (the last one began on Sept. 11, 2002 and ended on June 2, 2003; and the next one will be on Sept. 28, 2028). The current event is a one-pass opposition, meaning that the alignment happens just once and Jupiter keeps going. (Due to Jupiter’s retrograde, it’s possible for such an alignment to happen up to three times within a few months, under some circumstances.)

In this cycle, we get our exact one-time opposition close to the Libra equinox, on Sept. 23, though an event like this has a wide influence; we’ve already been feeling it for a while, and it will remain an influence for much of the year. Notably, it will be part of the Jupiter-Saturn-Neptune T-square that I’ll be writing about soon and basing the 2016 annual readings on.

If you look up the Jupiter-Neptune opposition in an astrology book, you’ll likely get interpretations like the bubble bursts, unrealistic hopes and dreams, lack of clarity, getting lost in illusions and so on. It could manifest as the dreamer who doesn’t bother to manifest his or her dreams. There would be some questioning over what is real and what is not, though real is, of course, a relative term.

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Jupiter transited by Io and Europa, as seen from Voyager 1 spacecraft, February 1979.

“I’ve got good news. That gum you like is going to come back in style.”
— The Man from Another Place, from Twin Peaks, Season 1, Episode 3, 1990

Dear Friend and Reader:

In astrology, Jupiter represents style trends, among many other things. The largest of the planets (1,200 times the size of Earth) orbits our Sun in about 12 years, exerting so much gravity on our central star that the Sun oscillates as Jupiter tugs on it. By the way, you can tell that to anyone who claims that the obstetrician exerts more gravity on the newborn baby than does Jupiter (by which logic astrology cannot possibly be true). I’ve never seen a doctor cause a star to wobble.

I don’t think astrology is based on gravity, though. Reading the charts is the art of reading symbols, whether they have any mass or not. That factors with no mass, weight or size can have an influence is plainly obvious. For example, what is a ‘sign’? It’s a direction in space. Is there really a young woman up in Virgo?

Virgo, the sign of the virgin or the young woman, in classical astrology is ruled by the planet Mercury. Mercury is neither male nor female, but androgynous. There is a tantric hint here about the synthesis of the sexual polarities being in service of the Goddess. Graphic courtesy of the Royal Society of Chemistry.

In our minds, there is. Virgo is the astrological home of the Goddess. It’s true that other signs are ruled by Venus and that Virgo is ruled by Mercury, who is androgynous. But you might think of Mercury in this capacity as a servant of the Goddess, capable of doing something that’s nothing less than tantric: bridging the gap and opening common space between maleness and femaleness.

Last week, Jupiter arrived in Virgo. It was last in that sign between August 2003 and September 2004. Those were difficult times, at the peak of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, during the first term of the Cheney-Bush presidency.

Despite the rawness of emotions and the still-open and infected wound of the Sept. 11, 2001 incident, there was a feeling in the air: we must do something about this.

I don’t miss the Cheney-Bush presidency, but I do miss the spirit of devotion that was infused into the peace movement, especially in the form of documentary journalism.

That is to say, actual thought, analysis and reasoning, mainly emerging on what was then a much smaller, simpler and decidedly less commercialized Internet.

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A Brief History of Civilization by Charlie Lemay

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Dear Friend and Reader:

Tonight and for the next few days, we experience the Leo New Moon and the peak of Venus retrograde — Venus conjunct the Sun. Within a short time, the Moon forms a conjunction with the Sun (Friday at 10:53 am EDT or 14:53 UTC) , followed soon after by Venus doing so (Saturday at 3:21 pm EDT or 19:21 UTC). The two events happen so close to one another that they are in essence the same thing.

The Sun represents outwardly expressed being, light, presence, awareness and glory. It’s typically considered a male presence in mythology and astrology. Both Venus and the Moon are considered feminine presences, named for goddesses (the Moon can refer to Selene, or to Diana, the goddess of the hunt and the protector of young girls).

Photo by Eric Francis from the Three Scorpios series, Book of Blue. These photos were taken in Kingston, NY, last August, above where the old Indian restaurant used to be.

Friday’s New Moon and Saturday’s Venus-Sun conjunction are both inward-facing events. Retrograde Venus has an interior quality, and it’s now passing between the Earth and the Sun. New Moons also point one within, often indicating a natural time of lull, retreat or introspection.

So, here we have the hot Leo Sun taking conjunctions from the two female presences of classical astrology. The metaphor seems to be about finding the feminine aspect of consciousness within the most masculine. Personally I think this would be a productive inquiry. Our world continues to be a place where anger and violence are directed at women as a class of people, which affects many individuals.

My take is that this is a projection of rage against, and rejection of, the inner feminine of those who are involved. If you want to understand why someone feels a certain way about someone else, find out how they feel about themselves. We rarely get there; there are astonishingly few forums where we can open up to this angle of reality.

It’s easy to decry misogyny and homophobia, but rarely do we ever approach the heart of what these feelings are about. I mention them together because I think they’re the same thing: they are the rejection of the inner feminine, projected outward as a form of hatred of the other. Those who rage at their inner female are likely to rage at women and those they perceive as feminine.

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Dear Friend and Reader:

You’re familiar with the idea of hubris, yes? It’s that amplified blend of blind, stubborn ego and overreaching that spelled the tragic downfall of many a character in the myths and dramas of Greek antiquity.

Art supplies out for their morning constitutional along the Eastern Prom in Portland, Maine. Photo by Amanda Painter.

In our society, lack of self-esteem seems to be a much more common and debilitating condition than hubris.

Yet when it comes to living creatively and trusting that our gifts are worth trying out, expanding upon and even — gasp! — sharing with others, so many people live as though Zeus himself might strike them down with a lightning bolt should they dare.

You may or may not see yourself in that. At the very least, you likely know someone who shows creative promise but shies away at any suggestion of ‘doing something’ with it.

The astrology of these current weeks has focused on variations of the theme of creativity. This has included acknowledging and understanding ‘the inner critic’, and putting that voice in its place; expanding into career and creative opportunities that present themselves, yet also seeing where some restraint (possibly financial) is warranted.

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Dear Friend and Reader:

Imagine you are focused intently on making your car fit into a tight parallel-parking space. You get it partway in, but maybe your approach wasn’t quite right. At a certain point, you realize that going back and forth at the same angle isn’t getting you where you want to go.

A Goat’s-Beard seed puff in front of the setting Leo Sun in Portland, Maine. Photo by Amanda Painter.

You need more wiggle room. But the other cars are not going to give it to you. The curb is not going to give it to you. Even your own car is not going to give it to you.

You are the only one who can give yourself more wiggle room — and you do that by pulling out and realigning, giving yourself space and perspective.

You have to try something new — even if just subtly. Your pride at typically being a great parallel parker will not help you, nor will letting your ego flare up at the nerve of these other people not giving you more space. You might need to try an approach that is different in its speed, angle, head start, and so on.

You might even experience the epiphany that you don’t have to keep trying that same parking spot, let alone keep trying it in the same way. Far from abandoning the process, you have given yourself the space to see the process for what it is, and negotiate it differently.

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