TIM LYONS – 11.03.23

1.   First, and as I’ve said in previous blogs or podcasts, the recognized State of Israel (SOI) has the same birth-chart as the political entity we can call the Palestinian Refugee People (PRP). In other words, when Israel entered the largely-dysfunctional so-called family of nations, the Palestinians entered de-facto refugee status. Up until that point, though the Palestinians had not joined that family, they did not yet officially qualify as refugees. I should add that my designation of Israel as a state and Palestine as something other than a state does not mean I value Israel more highly. The notion of statehood – of, in particular, the nation state – has rather recently arrived on the international scene, and its advent has not proved altogether, or even on the balance, beneficial.  Nevertheless, we have to take official designations into consideration, as those designations have weight in international negotiations, as the Palestinians have found out rather painfully over the past several decades. Astrologers use them, as they can give us official birthdays and birthtimes in ways that such notions as “the Palestinian people” cannot.

2. The horoscope offered here, one generally in use, recently received some unfortunate evidence related to rectification (i.e. having the correct time). Hamas’ attack on Israeli citizens took place with Mars at 26 Libra, having moved just within orb of the chart’s ascendant at 0 Scorpio. On the 9^th, with Mars at 28 Libra, Israel announced . its complete blockade (as distinguished from the blockade ongoing for fifteen years). By the 11^th, Israel’s retaliatory bombing of Gaza, billed as “self-defense,” had begun; on the 12^th, as TR Mars entered Scorpio, Israel announced that Gaza would get no food, water, or electricity. In sum, as TR Mars moved towards and over the horoscope’s ascendant, open hostilities began (as distinguished from the hidden hostility suggested by TR Mars in the 12^th). TR Mars served as a trigger for more enduring transits and directions: TR Pluto’s square to the ASC; TR Saturn’s now-separating square to N Mars. TR Pluto will repeat its square to the ASC and move toward its 2025 conjunction to the nadir (IC), transits suggesting that the conflict will probably get worse before it gets resolved and may bring a death-and-rebirth process to the home-ground (IC), however considered. Solar Arc (SA) Mars gathering square to N Pluto reiterates the threat long-standing danger, as does TR Pluto’s 2026 opposition to the Moon and SA Saturn’s conjunction to the ASC in about two years.

3. The natal chart, with its fixed square from the Sun in Taurus to Mars in Leo certainly suggests the conflict and bitterness that has characterized the Israel-Palestine relationship. However, because the horoscope belongs to both entities, we shouldn’t automatically blame that aggression on one side or the other – or, perhaps, we should blame both sides equally. It may not always take two to tango, but in this case it has taken both sides to continue the conflict.

4. Though the horoscope belongs to both entities, we shouldn’t feel surprised if one side acts out some horoscope factors more than does the other. We shouldn’t make hard-and-fast divisions here, but it certainly seems that the Leo Moon in the 10^th, plus the Saturn-Pluto conjunction, also in Leo and in the 10^th, appear in Israel’s near-autocratic power in the situation, as the 10^th generally represents the group in power.  Neptune in the 12^th suggests an often-hidden or repressed victimization by people calling out for justice and fairness (Libra), the Palestinian role. If we accept this analysis, it seems reasonable to hold the Israeli government responsible for failures to take decent steps toward peace, as Israel has for quite some time had the power to do that.

5. What of the relationship between the Taurus Sun to the four planets in Leo? Clearly it has led to conflict, but the sextile from the 12^th house Neptune to the 10^th house Libra planets suggests the possibility, as yet unrealized, of effective communication. Some years ago, a study funded by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) suggested that the ongoing conflict springs not merely from land-issues, reflecting Taurus, but from issues involving respect, suggested by Leo. An investigator interviewed many hundreds of Palestinians and asked whether, if Israel would publicly acknowledge that it had wronged the Palestinians, they would make land concessions. A majority – I think a considerable majority — said that they would. The interviewer also asked many hundreds of Israelis whether, if the Palestinians would grant that Israel had a right to exist, they would make territorial concessions. Again a majority said that they would. These results suggest that the conflict (the square) has much to do with respect: with one side respecting the other, granting it human dignity (Leo), and not merely with land (Taurus). [1]

6. Projection, though, runs rampant here, and in many ways. One example: various Israeli spokespeople and leaders, Netanyahu among them, have recently compared the Palestinians to the Nazis in Germany, though Israel, not Palestine, has maintained Warsaw-Ghetto-like conditions in Gaza for years, increasing the pressure recently. In general, Israel has surely acted far more like Nazi Germany than has Palestine. Perhaps this has occurred because Israel has more power, as just discussed. The N. Saturn-Pluto conjunction, perhaps projected by Palestine and acted out by Israel, reminds us of Richard Tarnas’ observations regarding Saturn-Pluto conjunctions’ connections with right-wing turns in government. It seems that each side periodically projects the Taurus Sun onto the other, seeing that “other” as intransigently trying to secure land for itself or seeing itself as more securely connected to the earth (Palestinians because they had their homes there, many Israelis apparently at least partly for Biblical reasons); Mars then aggresses against that entrenchment. It seems, too, that the Jupiter-Uranus opposition appears, often enough, via projection. Though that aspect has the potential for a somewhat erratic and restless, though not-always-problematic, progressivism, in this case we see a rather more depressing scenario (and not all that surprisingly, as collectivities generally manifest the most problematic potentials of any planetary aspect): the Palestinians seem to play the role of Uranus, rebelling against the values or evaluations of Israel, while Israel plays the expansive and good-fortuned role of Jupiter in Sagittarius. TR Neptune’s current square to both ends of that opposition has brought confusion to the ongoing and dangerous splitting resulting from the projection.

7. The long-term situation looks fraught, to say the least. As I said above, TR Pluto has not yet reached either the IC or its opposition to the N Moon; nor has it completed its square to the Ascendant. SA Saturn will reach the ASC in a bit over two years, entering Scorpio in about 16 months. SA Mars will square Pluto in about two years. In the shorter run, TR Mars has begun its square of the Saturn-Pluto conjunction in Leo and will soon square N Mars and oppose the N Sun, suggesting open hostility.

8. Hamas’ secret preparations (TR Mars in 12^th, among other factors) for the recent attack certainly suggests that they acted out the Mars role against Israel’s security-oriented Sun in Taurus. At the same time, Israel’s ongoing tendency to try to sweep the situation under the collective rug, apparently thinking or hoping it would go away, provided the fuel for Palestinian anger. For what certainly look like good reasons, the Palestinians felt undervalued – though we can probably say the same for Israel.

THE END.

NEXT: THE ROLE OF THE UNITED STATES AND JOE BIDEN

Notes:

1.  This material comes from memory. I knew someone in the AFOSR who had a hand in funding this research. He sent me a newspaper clipping describing it, but I can no longer locate the clipping.

UKRAINE PODCAST-SERIES — #2 — FROM MARS AND NEPTUNE TO PLUTO AND MERCURY

Tim Lyons (AKA: Your Present Correspondent (YPC).

                YPC concluded his previous installment with a discussion of the United States’ various deceptions before or as it engages in conflicts that it blames on others – on the “open enemies” (7^th house) that serve as hooks for the US projection of Mars. A pervasive and deceptive national ideology (Neptune in the 9^th) clearly plays a role here. For the record, some of those deceptions: the deceptions leading up to the 1991 bombing of Iraq; the lies about Iraq’s WMDs leading up to the full-scale invasion; the obfuscations regarding the US invasion of Afghanistan (e.g. telling whoever would listen that the US wanted to hunt down Osama bin Laden, when any thinking person would have realized that if you wanted to hunt down bin Laden, former US friend and ally, you wouldn’t send in a slow-moving army but a fast moving special-ops type group that could move quickly through the mountains in which bin Laden had secreted himself); the lies about the Gulf of Tonkin; the lies leading up to the Mexican War; plus the ongoing misdirection and propaganda related to Ukraine – and now, it seems, China. Add to those the run-ups to both world-wars.

Mars rules the 12^th house of secrets, after all, and Neptune rules Pisces, intercepted in the 3^rd house of communication and the press, the interception suggesting that deceptions and over-idealizations don’t appear clearly though they remain potent. Having said all of that, let’s move on to the US Mercury-Pluto opposition, an aspect YPC has spoken about before in other contexts. For example, in the chapter on projections and US foreign policy in his Your Hidden Face: Projection in the Horoscope, he wrote:

…a person with an opposition generally plays the role of the planet closest to the Sun and projects onto others the planet farthest from the Sun. (Though gender-related factors will often give a different message, those don’t into play in the activities of nations.) We would therefore expect the United States to play the role of Mercury in Cancer and to project Pluto in Capricorn onto other nations or groups. The historical record certainly suggests that this occurs…

The pattern appeared even before the United States declared itself as a nation, as the invading Europeans saw the native people as dark, savage, primitive, and cruel, despite the sophistication of many native civilizations and the marked primitive savagery – characterized by historical Michael Rogin as a drive for “primitive accumulation” – of the Europeans. Later, with the institution of the slave trade, African slaves served nicely as a hook for the United States’ projection. Later still, the Soviet Union did yeoman service in that role, and once the Soviet Union fell apart, various Middle Eastern groups and leaders served equally well…

Meanwhile, the people of the United States by and large have seen themselves as merely seeking security. Mercury in a nation’s horoscope symbolizes not only the popular press, but also the way the people think about themselves. Mercury in Cancer suggests that millions of people in this country tend to see themselves as home-oriented folk seeking security and safety, tendencies reiterated by the Cancer Sun.[1]

I have emphasized this pattern in various publications and podcasts over the years. Mercury in Cancer in the 8^th suggests the ways this country’s security depends on the resources of others (originally, the indigenous people of this continent; later, the various countries that the US brought under its military or economic hegemony. The 8^th house Cancer Sun again reiterates, as does the Venus-Jupiter conjunction, also in Cancer, rulers of the midheaven and ascendant respectively, at the cusp of the 8th.  The Mercury-Pluto opposition again suggests projection: seeing other countries or groups and dark, primitive, problematic, and in need of punishment or chastisement. In the modern era, the US accuses other countries or groups of harboring dark or hidden power, yet the US Pluto rules the US 12^th, suggesting the often-left-unmentioned piles of plutonium under US control. Clearly, the US controls more plutonic power than the rest of the world combined. With Pluto in the 2^nd, this has held true for economic (plutocratic) power as well, though this may change with the rise of China. (China’s increased economic power and worldwide influence may reflect the ongoing US Pluto Return: a demand for a transformation of values, appearing now at least partly as a projection onto China, seen by Biden and his cronies as a threat, with its different approach to economic influence and power.) But the dark and primitive qualities have appeared in the US public mind – always promulgated by the MSM, owned and operated by plutocrats – another reflection of the Mercury-Pluto opposition, with the projection laid at the feet of people who invariably become victims of US power.

If you run a solar-arc scan,[2] you will find that when SA Pluto reached the US descendant, WWI started, with Pluto appearing, via projection, in the purportedly savage and aggressive Germans, the “open enemies” associated with the 7^th house[3]; by 2003, SA Pluto had moved into a square with the ASC, now from the 9^th house, and the US invaded Iraq, its actions aptly suggested by the “long journeys over water” designation traditionally associated with the 9^th. The first square of SA Pluto to the N. Asc took place in February 1824, just two months after the Monroe Doctrine (December 2, 1823) from the 3^rd house (neighbors, among other meanings); thus a power play regarding neighbors, banning other nations from North and South America, the US self-designated sphere of influence.[4]

TR Pluto, the USA, and Ukraine Background

The recent movements of TR Pluto show the propaganda machine kicking into full gear – and they show the vigorous projection of Pluto onto (among others) Russia. During the runup to the 2016 election, Pluto stationed at 14Cap55, closely square the US 10^th house Saturn at 14Libra48 and more loosely opposed the US Cancer Sun at 13Cancer19. The projection of Pluto appeared in the largely-groundless paranoia about Russian influence on US elections coinciding with the precise opposition of Pluto to the US Sun.[5] That opposition also coincided with the more-obvious US interference in Ukrainian affairs, particularly the overthrow of Yanukovych, who, though probably qualifying as an SOB (to put the matter mildly) aroused the US ire by aligning himself with Russia. (The US had, after all, aligned itself with many vicious leaders in the past, so YPC doesn’t see Yanukovych’s viciousness and the US reason for opposing him – propaganda aside, of course.) Thus the US took aggressive actions against Russia, clearly seeking control of Ukraine via NATO, a highly aggressive international consortium. We might also ask whether, considering these developments, we should see Ukraine as an independent nation.

And, of course, Vladimir Putin, with his Pluto elevated at the midheaven, serves as a perfect hook for the projection of the US Pluto in Capricorn.

NEXT: THE U.S. PLUTO RETURN VISITED AND REVISITED, PLUS A GLANCE OR TWO AT ERIS

[1] Tim Lyons, Your Hidden Face: Projection in the Horoscope.

[2] Solar arc directions: each year, move each planet forward by the “solar arc,” approximately one degree.

[3]  Some might say, regarding WWI, that the projection of Pluto onto Germany made perfect sense, assuming Germany as the primary aggressor instigating WWI. But not all historians agree. In general, the histories get written by the victors. Harry Elmer Barnes’ Who Started World War One? presents a rather different picture of the run-up to that conflict.

[4] One might think that the US did this to promote freedom, but Monroe specifically said that the US would support no revolutionary movements until those movements morphed into the accepted authority – a approach hardly resonant with the claim that the US promotes freedom and democracy. This historical record suggests what the horoscope symbolizes: that the US experiences Uranus, symbol of freedom and rebellion and opposed the US ascendant, as a projection: other nations carry that energy, and the US constantly stands against revolutionary groups and movements unless CIA instigates them in the service of US control, and then the shift goes to the right, not the left. Examples abound.

[5] Pluto stationed at 13+ Capricorn in April 2014, closely opposed the US Cancer Sun and squaring its Saturn, the US Sun-Saturn square symbolizing the US desire to control all manner of worldly goings-on. The US, disliking the direction things were going in Ukraine, had the CIA help foment a civil war.  

PROJECTION, PUNISHMENT, AND PROPAGANDA

Some Pre-Ambling

In this short blog, the first in a series, YPC (Your Present Correspondent) will try to sort out some of the dangerous confusion related to the current situation in Ukraine. In particular, he will focus, in this installment, on projection, with a touch of propaganda for spice. He will look into goings-on related to Mars in the United States horoscope: its effects (so to speak), both presently and throughout US history. In subsequent podcasts, he will deal with Pluto , Eris, and other matters, including but not limited to the astrological factors related to Putin, Biden, Zelenskyy, Russia, and Ukraine. He will  place a heavy emphasis on psychological projection, which nations engage in (so to speak) at least as often as do individual humans (including but limited to so-called “world leaders”).

The US finds itself (but doesn’t really see itself) in the midst of a national psychosis revealing long-ignored psychological complexes surging to the surface in problematic and highly dangerous ways. He will put aside, for now, the interesting discussion of how nations can have such complexes. It seems, that they can, even though, strictly speaking, nations do not have minds and so cannot, some will say, have such psychological complexes. The evidence suggests otherwise.

YPC uses the Rudhyar horoscope for the US. He has tested it horoscope extensively and it always seems to ring true, particularly as regards the US’s relations with other nations or groups. Also this: nations generally manifest the most problematic facets of any astrological situation, particularly those involving projection. This occurs because unlike individuals, nations do not have a central seat of conscious awareness that through which they can work to withdraw projections or effect positive change.

Projection: Mars in the US horoscope

The US has Mars in Gemini in the 7^th house in a close square to Neptune. On the most obvious level, that position suggests assertiveness or aggression in one-to-one relationships or with “open enemies” (a traditional designation of the 7^th house). Anyone with that position, or even a Mars-influenced 7^th house (e.g. Aries on the cusp), will have a tendency to project Mars onto others. Individuals can work with this tendency and transform it into a strength, asserting themselves cleanly in relationships and developing a keen eye for projection, as the Mars-influence generally appears in the open. Nations, on other hand, generally remain blind to such potentials.

Even a cursory examination of US history will reveal that this country habitually projects Mars onto other nations or groups and either ignores its own aggression or casts that aggression in a favorable light, that favorable light often manifesting as delusory statements about defending freedom (e.g. militaristic boilerplate). An obvious example: the centuries-long mistreatment of the indigenous people of this continent (and elsewhere), who have so often found themselves treated as either savage aggressors or aggressive obstacles to the expansion of the American Empire. (The treatment came not only from the military (Mars), but also from the media, now corporate-dominated, a matter explored in upcoming podcasts, symbolized by the Mercury-Pluto opposition in the US horoscope and Mercury ruling Gemini. Thus the “propaganda” in the title of this podcast. But the initial aggression clearly came from the Empire, with military and media arms playing their roles. After all, the invaders wanted the land on which the indigenous people lived.

Other examples of the Mars-projection abound: Saddam Hussein and Iraq were seen as a threat to the US, as is Iran these days; similarly with Putin and Russia, as with the USSR some years earlier. In 1846, Mexico was portrayed similarly. The Vietnamese and Ho Chi Minh purportedly constituting a threat to democracy despite Ho’s professed admiration for the Declaration of Independence. . 

BTW: saying that the US natal (N) Mars often appears via projection does not mean that YPC absolves the projected-upon country (in this case Russia) of responsibility. As Jung said decades ago, we hang projections on hooks just as we do coats, and the projected-upon party must have some of the projected energy or the projection won’t hold up. Thus Marie Louise von Franz:
Seldom, if ever, is nothing of what is projected present in the object. Jung speaks therefore of a “hook” in the object on which one hangs a projection as one hangs a coat on a coat hook.[1]

In this case, Putin decided (along with other Russian oligarchs, one assumes) to invade Ukraine, violating international law – all very Mars-like. But the projection exaggerates the energy and ignores the participation of the projecting party (in this case the USA), often blinding that party (in this case the US) to its own participation and habitual tendencies. Many people in the US (millions, it seems) seem to see Putin only as an aggressor – and as the only aggressor – though many in Russia apparently see his actions as self-defense – and not unreasonably, considering US/NATO actions and broken promises over the past several years and more, not to mention previous destructive invasions of Russia from the west. From a strictly geo-political perspective, Putin, had and has good reason to fear a US invasion or attack, certainly better reason than the US had for invading Iraq. The missiles at the Russia/Ukraine border have constituted a clear and present danger for some time.

In general, when dealing with projections, it seems  wise to move beyond two-valued thinking. In this case, we shouldn’t think that “either Russia or the US must be to blame,” but that both have participated. Certainly one must take responsibility for one’s actions.

From the US Empire’s perspective, other nations always seem to threaten US security (US Cancer Sun). Yet polls taken outside this country reveal that a significant majority of people living outside the US see the US as the major threat to world peace. Certainly no other country has involved itself in more international aggression, with the wars in Vietnam, Korea, Afghanistan, and Iraq as primary examples. Add to those the ongoing US aggression in Central and South America (a central factor, surely, in the number of refugees gathered at our southern border, people often portrayed as dangerous).

The US generally enters international conflicts – conflicts with “open enemies” (7^th house) – after ongoing campaigns designed to obfuscate and deceive. This pattern reflects the US Mars-Neptune square, with N Neptune in Virgo and the 9^th of national ideology. (The Virgo placement tells us that, like N Mars, N Neptune is ruled by Mercury.) Neptune’s discovery ushered in the so-called Mexican War, more accurately called the Invasion of Mexico, which garnered for the US what became the states of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California. I won’t go into the details here, as I’ve done so elsewhere, but we might remember how Mexico found itself portrayed as the aggressor even though President Polk, surely one of the greatest scoundrels ever to occupy the White House — a favorite hangout for such people, it seems – clearly instigated the conflict.

Why would Polk do such a thing? His remarks tell us a lot about the pattern of obfuscation and deception described here: he said, apparently with a straight face, that he wanted to ‘expand the area of freedom,’ by which he meant expand the number of slave states in the US, an important matter to him when it came to winning congressional votes involving slavery.

The pattern has continued: the USA cited as a defense of freedom its involvement in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan. Just the other day, Biden, another of the above-mentioned scoundrels, cited ‘the defense of democracy’ to justify US support of Ukraine (i.e. supplying billions of dollars of lethal military aid), remarks that only the myopic can take seriously, considering the way a US-inspired-and-supported coup overthrew a democratically-elected leader in that country just a few years ago. Does Biden mean that he wants to support situations in which the US has interfered with democracy? Apparently. Time and again, the US has intervened in other countries’ domestic affairs, often leaving behind piles of corpses (Chile in 1973; Iraq for a number of years, culminating in the full-scale invasion; Vietnam for decades; Venezuela more recently; and even, in Russia, the “support,” euphemistically so-called, of both Yeltsin and Putin not so long ago).[2]

The Past Invades the Present

                TR Mars’ March 6, 2023 conjunction with N Mars in early March ups the ante, making increased US aggression more likely. The March transit completes the triple transit that began with the October 3 2022 conjunction with TR Mars in direct motion and continued with the conjunction, with Mars retrograde, in late November. The third transit of a triple-transit series often brings the final denouement of a process in which one receives the lesson plan (phase one), internalizes one’s understanding of it (second phase), and manifests one’s conclusion via action.[3] Receiving a triple transit often indicates that the natal factor in question needs more-than-usual work, which certainly seems true of the US N Mars. The astrological symbolism seems to suggest what the historical record confirms: that this country remains prone to aggression, generally (as now) preferring military solutions to diplomatic ones. Certainly the US has attacked and invaded more nations – more “open enemies” – than any other nation on the planet, usually while blaming that “enemy” and repeating that the US seeks peace while promoting war. Thus the extreme danger of the current situation. Quite possibly, we will see some aggression from Russia, but any inquiry into the causes of Russia’s actions will surely reveal the tragic importance of US actions both recent and not so.

NEXT: MOVING FROM MARS TO MARS-NEPTUNE TO PLUTO TO MERCURY-PLUTO.

[1] Marie Louise von Franz: Projection and Recollection in Jungian Psychology, p.3.

[2] One can discern another pattern here: the US often allies itself with leaders and countries it will later abandon and attack: Hussein in Iraq; Noriega in Panama; bin Laden in Afghanistan.

[3] Sometimes, though, the transit-energy appears largely in one of the three phases, with the other two remaining largely uneventful.

HOROSCOPES FOR TIM LYONS’ ASTROLOGICAL VANTAGES AND VIEWPOINTS PODCAST

INSTALLMENT #3: THE ASTROLOGY OF CLLIMATE CHANGE, PART 2 OF 3.

THE MAYAN LONG COUNT

TWO CHARTS: 1. MAYAN LONG COUNT NATAL HOROSCOPE. 2. TWO WHEELER: MAYAN LONG COUNT NATAL + LONG COUNT PROGRESSED TO 1891 (THE MASSACRE AT WOUNDED KNEE)

TIM LYONS ASTROLOGICAL VANTAGES AND VIEWPOINTS

INSTALLMENT TWO: THE ASTROLOGY OF CLIMATE CHANGE

SATURN-PLUTO CONJUNCTION

DONALD TRUMP + TRANSITS SEPTEMBER 2021

ABOVE: USA + SATURN-PLUTO CONJUNCTION

BELOW: USA + TRANSITS SEPT. 24, 2021

Another Photography-Assisted

Given the rapaciousness of the forest-fires here in Colorado, with today’s air thick with soot, these may be the last photos of the Moon taken for quite some time.

You can see these planets in the sky these days. If youdon’t live in smoke-infested Colorado (or, I assume, vast tracts of California), you can see Mars in the eastern sky around midnight, with Jupiter and Saturn farther to the west– along with the far-more-distant Pluto that you can’t see with the naked eye – all quite bright. As I write, Jupiter and Saturn remain in retrograde motion; Mars will turn retrograde in a few days. Thus you can see them. Why? During their retrograde periods, the planets from Mars on out go through opposition to the Sun – as seen from Earth, of course. Thus those planets get, as seen from Earth, increased light from the Sun. Thus you can see ‘em.

These facts seem to me astrologically suggestive. Consider these reasons:

1. We can see the planets as part of the cosmos that seems separate from us (i.e. up in the night sky). This seems to suggest that though many astrologers describe retrograde planets as “unconscious,” they appear, as do many (maybe most, maybe even all) projections, in the world around us. We can see them clearly there; the planets in the night sky shine more brightly then than at any other point in their orbit.
2. Yet we see ‘em in the night sky: we see them visibly as projections precisely because they remain unconscious (symbolized by the night sky). I find this delightfully paradoxical, like many other  things I encounter in life.
3. People often experience more conflict with others during Mars’ retrograde period. Why? Probably at such times because we project Mars into the world more consistently — or more brightly. The Sun-Mars opposition (during the retrograde period) suggests projection, as do most oppositions in astrology. We generally play the role of the planet closest to the Sun – in this case, the Sun itself! We project out the planet further from the Sun: Mars, obviously. Thus we run into conflict with a Mars that seems external to ourselves.
4. But #2 suggests that we can have greater awareness of the factors involved – the delightful paradox.
5. Oppositions symbolize objective awareness – interesting phrase! It suggests, among other things, that we can develop greater awareness by dealing with the objects of the world. We can get feedback from the objects (with people, here, considered as objects) of the world. Thus the world arises as a teacher.
6. But we have to delve into the unconscious to find the roots of the problem – if we want to call it a “problem.”
7. Then there’s this matter of the enjoyment we can get by seeing planets in the night sky. Air pollution – or fire smoke – may make this difficult. In my grandiose moments, I announce, to anyone who’ll listen, “See, when we get too civilized, we lose sight of unconscious forces!”
   7a. We apparently enjoy engaging with the world. This often — maybe always? — means working with our projections.
   7a. Yours truly considers Pluto — out there and invisible to the naked eye — as closely connected to what Jung called “the projection-making factor per se.” We can discuss that at another time — though I discuss it in my book on projection (Your Hidden Face: Projection in the Horoscope).
8. Finally, as I said in an earlier installment, the upcoming retrogradation of Mars will take it through squares to the US Mercury-Pluto opposition, the aspect I’ve talked about in several previous installments and that has a clear connection to the effect of the pandemic on the United States.
   8a. Remember that the Saturn-Pluto conjunction of last January tells us about the world-wide pandemic per se, while the transits of Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and Pluto to planets in the US horoscope tell us about how that pandemic will play itself out in the United States.
   8b. The omens do not seem propitious, to put the matter mildly. But more on this later.

That will do for now.

September 6, 2020. Boulder, CO