Lucifer or Lady Christ?

Many readers, even in Southern New England have been gazing at Crocuses for nearly a month now, and others further south have been harvesting vegetables, or blessed be, swimming, throughout much of the winter, but up here by the 45th parallel and above, the Vernal Equinox was marked by the passage of heavy snows, biting cold snaps and swirling winds, as if the hag chatter persisted past the pinch points, her hair long drawn over armpit folds, cheek crests and open napes where woolen swathes seemed to want to slip from and shed into the neither reaches of closets, but couldn’t seem to stay trapped in trunks just yet. In Maine there is still much snow around. Other than direct hinterlands sweeps bees have not yet emerged from their hiatus. The land that is not exposed to the sky waits to be tilled. So, even though the Astrological New year has come, with the advent of Annunciation, the Virgin Mary’s belly has yet to swell, the Christ child has yet to deliver a kick. In the North it is not until Walpurgis that we begin to feel the warmth of spring viscerally, and in emphatic gesture, passing our selves and our livestock betwixt bonfire flames, readying for all in embrace of the Maypole by morn. Walpurgisnacht is still three weeks away, with much transpiring between now and then. So much in fact that it is hard to keep eyes between our heads and the horizon, even though our minds and and our hands are now bound to the earth.

The Sun enters Taurus on the 19th, Mercury backs into Aries on the 20th, Mars ingresses Gemini on the 21st, a new Moon comes on the 26th, a direct Venus returns to Aries on the 28th, all leading up to the 30th cross-quarter that parallels halloween in the spring. A new era is surely dawning, but before it comes a few important things transpire.

Often it feels awkward referring to important events as things, but in fact that is the words original meaning: from Old English þing, a meeting or a council, how it is still in use today in Iceland, whose parliament is called the Althing, and holds the distinction of being the longest running active legislature, having been established in 930 ad.; þing is allied to Gothic theihs, ‘season time’, hence, time for a meeting. This could be defined currently as the meeting of Chiron, Saturn, Mars and Venus, the other planets either not having RSVP’d the invitation, or mentally absent in their seats, overtaken by situations that distract their attention. This occurs on the 15th, but the most of the aspects that define it are already setting up, like gory tiers/tears of aspic formed into fractal molds like psychologically dramatic holograms; imagine watching Robert Altman’s 3 Women in modern 3D, or a claustrophobic/agoraphobic IMAX viewing. And perhaps, revisiting that film is not a bad idea; many of the 15th’s themes be found within.

The heart of the matter is Venus turning around to stand direct and begin marching forward. this is not the reluctant about face of defeat, this is not the long walk home after a loss, this is a Venus poised with the resolve of Jennifer in the revenge portion of I Spit On Your Grave. She is not fucking around. The remaining 0 in 2017 will have turned a 1 by the time Venus turns direct in exact degree of greatest exaltation again. Not only does she do so as debut move in her next 8 year cycle which draws her enigmatic pentagram, not only as Inanna visible emerging from the cave-gate of the underworld, and as Lucifer Morning Star in her most assertive attitude rising before the Sun, but her whole retrograde cycle this year superimposes over the entirety of Lent, placing the Goddess in her most masculine role rising from the tomb the day prior to Easter, stepping nearly in sink with Christ, preceding him as Lucifer does Sol.

Surely, the hard square to Saturn that awaits her at the door should be noted, and I am not going to neglect to warn everyone to watch your love life, frustrations with your art, sudden malfunctions in your music equipment (as Mercury will already be in retrograde then as well, spinning around on the 9th) and the like, but, considering the extremely exalted seat of power she seizes at the crucial moment, I might consider what dictates she pronounces to Kronos that melt his withered flesh like so much fondue chocolate. Of course his eternal skeleton remains, being the backbone of our material universe, but cleaned of time’s cobwebs and clinging rags of muffling mummy, Musical Venus is able to strike the xylophonic spinal column which rings in tiered harmonics that resonate long through the void. Indeed, if you animate the ecliptic throughout the month you see successive Trines and Grand Trines to Saturn that slowly fade betwixt slow moving bodies and points. First mars and the moon, then mercury and the sun, all along vibrating the Caput Draconis throughout (imbuing excess of 20/20 near sight that scans the details in review of the true infrastructural elements of our karmic debts and life path coordinates) and then Mercury again when he later sidles up to Uranus for some Trickster twists in his backwards motion dance. This can be considered a long meditation of Saturn ringing with the music of love, art, and beauty; time's very boundaries singing from the cold steel, the hard realities, the hooks themselves that we must hang our garments of love and lust upon for the next century (which makes me think this century will belong to Santa Muerte). Listen all to Christ crucified, singing in staggering, astonishing and chthonic beauty, for this time she shows her female side, and yes, there are snakes climbing the Caduceus. Love is medicine, art is medicine, beauty is medicine, sex is medicine: but don’t be fooled, these things must be pure to heal. We must all pause in our acts of creation to ask ourselves if our intentions are divine before we proceed, that our expression is very clever commentary on our world's current socio-political conventions is simply not enough, and is in fact dissonance that squelches the signal. Saturn’s influence proves that all excess and accessory of dinge and dross must be removed for the healing sound bath to occur. Chiron’s placement conjunct Venus on her thrown shows that it is indeed a wounded Goddess, having suffered under Pontius Pilate, she now calls the Wounded Healer and mystic arrow stung Centaurian martyr to her side, to apply vegetal balm over her wounds, to seal them with pine and cedar resin, to suffumigate them with frankincense and myrrh, to kneel and pray to her, recite orisons of Justina, as the primordial waters softly steam at her feet, the healing springs of the Zodiacal end pass beginning to boil, and in orgasm, drool venom from the serpents mouth that bites its tail in the opposite cavern passage passed only underwater. Venusians take heed, this is a night to harvest, dip them in wine of fine vintage and point your hazel switches into the future. The period between 6pm Friday the 14th (just before Venus night) and 6pm Saturday 6pm the 15th encapsulate this drama well, and those two times mentioned put benefics on the ascendant if you know what I mean.

It might do well to read or reread passages of Robert Svoboda’s The Greatness Of Saturn leading up to next weekend, intermingled on whatever you can find on the Black Madonna. Slip your Pope card from your decks, and fancy the Hierophant a Thaumaturge, for in Iberian traditions, as in many across the world, any man that practices witchcraft is not a full man in the strict sense, and might actually be on closer inspection a woman in masculine aspect, the hare’s breath between Lucifer and Astaroth.

We experience a full moon on the 11th before Christ emerges from the tomb a woman, or Lucifer leads Christ out into the sunlight and up to Heaven, whichever way you prefer to see it, and maybe you see it as I do, that the end of the Piscean age hands the role of Christ to Santa Muerte, in a climax that returns the Universe to folk Catholicism as it began with pre-christian Gnostics, beginning the cycle male (Aries) and ending it female (Pisces), ushering in the age of Aquarius (ruled by Saturn) with a female skeleton (Saturn), just as our next Jupiter (ruler of Pisces) Saturn (embodied in Santa Muerte, and there is some evidence to ancient conceptions of Saturn as Female) conjunction cycle concurs in air signs for the next two centuries. A lot to take in there, but the re-emergence and expanding cults of the Old Gods and Spirits we’re experiencing has to be evident in astrology somewhere, and the Age Of Pisces, emblematic of the Christian Martyr cannot end by merely petering out into atheism, but in the re-establishing of synthesis with the spirits of a living Earth.

I digress. The moon is full at 2:08 a.m. EST on April 11th, early Tuesday morning, quickly approaching midheaven. Luna will be still caressing but pulling away from a Jupiter conjunction, during his night, and stepping from Mercury’s hour to her own hour. The thoughts streaming through our minds, fully illuminating how the conceptions birthed on the New Moon, the phase succeeding the Vernal Equinox, when the Sun and Mercury had our thoughts exploding with new ideas and frames of mind, are shaping up to assist higher knowledge, and possibly and facilitate our careers. Fine opportunities for Solar and Mercurial magic span Aries, and wether or not you embraced them intentionally or accidentally will become apparent by the Full Moon. There will be the normal draw to tilt our heads back and howl, especially in the North as spring becomes more than a fantasy, but the lift of head skyward won’t lift us up into the firmament, because our cloven hooves, those of Mercury and Mars in Taurus, are still planted firmly in the soil, and Mars’ sextile to Venus in Pisces could direct our body oriented Lunatics to sensual healing baths of both water and moonlight, whether they be rewards for our work of the past couple weeks, or the balms to banish them; alternately this could manifest as overtly therapeutic sex, or both, its your call, but just so you know, you might get a lot out of mixing it up in the tub this round, the waters deepened by herbal oils, infusions and potions.; just throwing that out there. Some of you might, indeed, be feeling pretty sexy if the fruit of Solar and Mercurial transits have served you well, and though themes of upper echelon knowledge and career faces glint off these moon beams, we find an opportunity to sink our teeth into and taste the early fruit being born of our newest, and freshest conceptions, and if you desireth, bite it in the nude and let the juice run down and off your jaw.