PODCAST – UKRAINE – ERIS #2
ASTROLOGICAL VANTAGES AND VIEWPOINTS — TIM LYONS – September 5, 2023
THE ASTROLOGY OF DANCING DISCORD, THE PRONOUNCEMENTS OF PUNDITS, AND THE ENTROPY OF EMPIRE
In the previous podcast, we talked the US Mercury-Pluto opposition, the current square from TR Eris to the US Mercury, and the US’s ongoing Pluto return. We talked about how the Mercury-Pluto aspect appears throughout history and how the Eris transit has manifested now and recently. Walked about communication (often muddled, at best) and clear thinking (often absent); we spoke some confusion regarding categories. We spoke about Ukraine.
Now, because discord dances so lasciviously among us, consider some astrological data:
In the United States July 4, 1776 horoscope (for whatever time you cast it) has Mercury in retrograde motion at 24+ Cancer (24Cancer11 in the Rudhyar chart). According to the Eris ephemeris at Astro.com, Eris reached that degree of Aries back in 2018 and on October 13 2023 will be at 24Aries34 – from a geocentric view, Eris moves very slowly – closely square that US natal (N) Mercury, setting off the US Mercury-Pluto opposition discussed in the quote that begins the previous installment of this podcast-blog. In other words, TR Eris now squares the US natal (N) Mercury, as it has done for a while, and moves (slowly) toward a square with N Pluto.
The square to Mercury clearly has to do with the communication-chaos and discord evident in these parts over the past several years, some of which YPC (your present correspondent) mentioned previously and to which he adds the following items:
- The pandemic had gotten itself into full swing in the Empire’s Homeland (the Lower 48 and such) by early in 2020, by which time Eris had gotten herself fully engaged with the US N Mercury, a planet (and a deity) who, whether connected to empires or not, proves a not-always-completely-reliable representative steadfast truth, having more connection with liminality, tricksterish goings-on, and sometimes outright misrepresentation, perhaps reminding some intrepid explorers of the speculations of one George Steiner (a good fellow to explore!) about the possible connections between the our capacity to offer “counter-factuals,” on the one hand, and our full humanness, on the other and our full humanness – hardly surprising, considering Mercury’s love of the flexible and well-exercised use of mind, matters including making things up!
- Someone named Robert Kennedy apparently found himself busy gathering the data that eventually (in 2021) emerged as The Real Anthony Fauci, a book that present an extended argument that Mr. Fauci has hardly earned our trust – to put the matter mildly – and that some significantly-tested anti-viral medicines (often “repurposed drugs”) got shunted to the sides even as the death toll mounted in the country that possibly qualifies as the most medically advanced on the planet. Kennedy argues that Fauci had ensconced himself into the hip pockets of people (or, really, corporations, but the Supremes tell us that such entities qualify as people!) with deep pockets indeed.
My point, here, is not that Kennedy “was right” (though his book probably deserves more serious discussion than it has received), as, in general, if you use “to be” forms (as in “Kennedy is right”) with Pluto hanging about, you’ll misrepresent. Nor do I claim that Fauci is and was a shyster/corporate shill/dangerous man (etc.) My point has to do with discord in communication and thinking – which, I posit, has appeared, like Eris at a wedding to which no-one had invited her, in fields ranging from the political to the pandemical, from gender-orientation to Google’s AI, from the war in Ukraine to the ongoing “war at home.” As citizens of the Empire, Kennedy, Fauci, Biden, Trump, and even this poor, innocent astrologer – all find themselves, betimes, in Eris’ discord-driven domains.
However, the following astrological factors seem worth noting about the Empire’s (i.e. the United States’) Mercury: first, as noted, N Mercury opposes Pluto; second, it rules the 7th house (“open enemies”), which opposes the ascendant; third, it also rules Virgo, intercepted in the Empire’s 9th house of foreign policy, national ideology, and “long journeys over water” (as, for example, to Iraq, China, or Ukraine). In other words, the Empire’s Mercury finds itself, alternately, under the sway of plutocrats, projected onto purported enemies (i.e. taken as liars and such), and involved in deceptions (Neptune in Virgo) involving foreign places (9th house).
We might think that the enemies, imaginary or not, will all emerge overseas. The Empire’s 7th house Mars in Gemini squares the 9th house Neptune in Mercury-ruled Virgo, after all. But it seems that they can also emerge within. Admittedly, even those latter often get conceived of as having connections with foreigners. Many people who object to the current proxy war have found themselves accused of being Putin sympathizers, and when Ms. Clinton somehow lost the election to what’s his name, troops of Democrats made a big fuss about a Russian influence that didn’t amount to much. Many of those who express opinions contrary to those proposed by the plutocratic media have found themselves, how as so often in the past, labelled as enemies or enemy-sympathizers.
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Mercury likes to get a conceptual handle on things as a way to transform the vague into something humans can convince themselves that they understand by using labels (one of Mercury’s many trickster-related tactics). Eris’ square to both ends of the US Mercury-Pluto symbolizes the way confused labeling and conceptualization – not to mention outright deception – often driven by plutocratic media, has gotten us into messes like the one we’re in in Ukraine. The pandemical predicament serves as another example, for whether we conclude that those resisting the vaccination program had somehow gone off their nut, or whether we see Fauci as a well-spoken as much-lauded fascist – or as something in-between – we can probably agree that communication, pandemic-wise (to again ape the speech of those Wonderland twins who confused Alice) has continuously verged on the chaotic.
As for Ukraine, the involvement of Pluto (via its N opposition to Mercury and its present transit to its own position) suggests, along with Eris, the enormous danger of the war, not only in itself (as the world’s two major nuclear powers confront each other, with clear-thinking at a minimum, across some bomb-beset eastern European fields), but also in its effects on world food transport and on climate change, as, YPC suggests, if you wanted to prevent serious treatment of the climate problem, you can hardly do worse that to have ongoing wars.[1] Pluto suggests the enormous danger of that situation as the US continues to project Pluto onto the most convenient or useful hooks, in this case Putin, Russia and China.[2] The gathering square from TR Eris to the US N Pluto strikes me as particularly dangerous, as does the present conjunction of TR Pluto to N Pluto.
Back in 2014, when the US nourished the roots of the plant that later manifested as the present war, Eris had reached 22-23 Aries, well within orb of the square to N Mercury. The US interfered in Ukrainian affairs, getting rid of leaders the CIA disliked and ushering in those they saw as more favorable to “US interests,” though with Eris squaring its Mercury, the US had and has no clear idea of where its interests might lie – assuming anyone has a clear referent for “United States interests,” which seems doubtful. The N Mercury-Pluto opposition symbolizes the ongoing concern with purportedly-threatening others; the two transits (from Eris to Mercury and from Pluto to Pluto) set off the natal aspect in a particularly dangerous way.
And this: in 2014, transiting (TR) Pluto opposed the US 8th house Cancer Sun, while TR Mars, retrograding in Libra, squared the Mercury-Pluto axis under discussion here. SA Pluto remained within orb of a conjunction with N Neptune, while SA Mercury squared N Mars,[3] setting off the tendency of the U.S. to meddle as secretly (Pluto) as possible in the affairs of other nations (a matter related to the US 9th house Neptune). The Pluto movements (by transit and SA direction) suggests power plays with financial matters at-issue (2nd and 8th houses); the Mars transit at the top of the US horoscope suggests government-directed aggression that would seem to come from others (N Mars in 7th house). (TR Mars made his retrograde station at 27+ Libra, precisely square the US Pluto; his retrograde motion took him through a conjunction with N Saturn at 14+ Libra, plus a square to the US N Sun at 13+ Cancer, thus setting off the US N Sun-Saturn square that aptly symbolizes the US desire to play the role of world authoritarian (Saturn) in order to take the resources of others (Sun in 8th) and thus supposedly ensure its own security (Cancer). TR Mars’ direct station took place at 9 Libra, close to the US Saturn/MC midpoint. And, of course, N Mars and N Pluto co-rule the US 12th: secrets.
Thus the US interfered in Ukrainian business, metaphorically speaking; soon, Hunter Biden did so more literally. Then Hunter’s father somehow got himself to the presidency, from which eminence, not entirely surprisingly, he offered US proxies in Ukraine enough weapons to metaphorically hang themselves.
Throughout, as it has done throughout its history, the U.S. saw foreign nations as aggressors (N Mars in 7th house) and deceivers (N Neptune in 9th house, closely square Mars), entities in need of correction, with the PIPs (the People in Power) never questioning the Empire’s right, and perhaps even duty, to interfere in the affairs of other peoples and countries. The following comments from Benjamin Schwarz and Christopher Layne the June 2023 issue of Harper’s (page 26) seem relevant:
Those who determine U.S. foreign policy hold that, as President George W. Bush declared in his second inaugural address. “the survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands.” They maintain, as President Bill Clinton averred in 1993, that the security of the United States demands a “focus on the relations within other nations, on a nation’s form of governance, on its economic structure.”
The authors trace US interventionism in Ukraine not only back to 2013-2014, but all the way back to the early and mid-Nineties when the US promulgated a “project of political social and economic engineering that included funneling some $1.8 billion to political movements, organizations, and individuals deemed ideologically compatible with U.S. interests” that “culminated in American meddling in Russia’s 1996 presidential election.” Much of this remained hidden, hardly surprising for a country with Pluto ruling, and at that point transiting through, its 12th house (symbolizing secrets, among other things). Work went on behind the scenes, but that work may have also undermined so-called “national interest (12th house as “hidden enemies”).
None of this absolves Putin, BTW. We’ll get to him eventually.
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Next: What Pluto symbolizes in the charts of human beings.
[1] Perhaps worth noting here: in his long ago Language in Thought and Action, S.I. Hayakawa reminded us that creatures who constantly engage in intra-species conflict may often unfit themselves for extra-species conflict, such as with viruses or the impersonal forces of the natural world – and as for the latter, YPC finds it notable and troubling that so many consider natural forces as enemies, though much in our so-called Western Civilization encourages us to do so.
[2] Some previous hooks: the indigenous people of this continent; Africans, later American slaves; various Middle Eastern Groups; the USSR; Germans, Mexicans (both now and back in 1846).
[3] Because these two planets oppose each other in the US natal chart, their solar arc (SA) contacts will happen within a few years of each other.
Here’s a link to the podcast-version of this blog:
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