Terminal Flux

We are now in it. The Full Moon we just had was the South Node Lunar eclipse in Aquarius and the New Moon we are waning towards is the North Node Total Solar Eclipse in Leo. On Monday the light of receptivity glowing up forth from our overfilling chalices that spill through the cracks in the floor that serpents and portal-worms enwrap and writhe in rings around, the syrup coating their skin and scales, carried below and away from here as they dive. There is no way to retrieve the sloshing serum, and its unclear whether the snakes and serpents that rise from the opposite cracks are the ones that dive down in adjacent fractures, the wise say they are one end on end but the fact is that we cannot know what works turn and churn on the other side of the curtain. As soon as we get a close fix on the mechanisms they deflate, and are merely waxworks, pranks and buffooneries, or frightening torture gardens whose dungeons we turn and flee from, or if you are brave, submit to, but the pain is all too great, even when the polarities switch and the pulse is portaged to pleasure centers; irregardless, the ecstasy or agony becomes blind white hot and washes our visions away.

So, what was lost and what will be gained? This is also unclear, even though we might be able to set our laser sights with accuracy the instructions read only: its over there, or its in that bush, or its behind the house, or its upstairs. It being both a scavenger hunt and a guessing game suggests that we throw the safety on our rifles and resume the search with a magnifying glass instead, although, the hairs on the back of our necks, and perhaps a persistent turbulence in the atmosphere perturbs us, like waking up angry from a dream; we know the conflict was not real, but still the brows are locked in furrows and coffee and sunshine don’t dissipate the eye narrows. With Mars much involved in this eclipse sequence there is great potential to blurt out hateful words or be on the reactive attack, many hackle high dogs stalking in the strobe light.

Monday the seventh of August, from Moon Day to Venus Night saw a rather interesting display of camaraderies and familial extensions as the Moon cast copious light into the areas of abstract logic that schemes for collective freedoms, but the circles that corral people into various categories lost their electric current and like cattle we all trampled the disarmed ribbons and conglomerated into a greater group; as Venus got passed the cup filled with nurturing elixir, it got passed around and we all sang songs in fealty and solidarity to what we’ve all lost, and it is the sharing of those severances that creates a family not tied by blood but not divided by paradigm or program. What got nabbed from our collective nests might have been for many of us what got vacuumed up into Pluto’s void when he opened up a vortex conjunct the Full Moon on July eighth, and proceeded to throw blankets of shadow over the balance of alliances by August 5th when the Moon was conjunct Pluto again this time square Jupiter. Saturn is nearing the end of Sagittarius and preparing to enter his domicile of high architecture and deep tunnel on the solstice when he Ingress into rulership in Capricorn. Mars has recently gone through an intense two year synodic cycle of overburn and plasmic purification. Venus completed her eight year five pointed cycle and began a new one by passing back and forth through fire and landing on her throne confronted with Saturn. 2017 has been a huge year of change and transition, and now we are in the liminal period between trains of tomorrow and yesterday. In this bustling depot friends, lovers, family, jobs, routines, homes, projects, policies, parties, philosophies, spirits, ghosts, ghouls, fantasies, magic, medicines, machines, magnets, museums, alliances, alphabets, chains, chances, mirrors, music, and all other manner of manifestations hustle onto crowded cars that screech on the tracks as the whistles blow and they pull away; the conductors and voices repeating coordinate codes and time tablature mantras over the loudspeaker speak in tongues, their babble and chant summoning a train that arrives opposite the platform and all the activity traverses the threshold, ready or not here comes all that is going to replace that which has just recently departed into the past. Saturn ticks silently away in the heart of the cold clock above, Hades holding the harbor of his sign, where skeleton boatmen use shepherds canes in place of scythes to steal those fickle fated into hulls with no need of coins to presage passage.

There are of course places within the annexes of the station to review the details of the year that are logged into books and digital databases overseen by Mercury in Virgo, who knows best how to handle the harvest of passengers and wares that feed and flow into the interchanges of the tracks, that maybe even the Trickster sneaks out at night and pulls a lever, sending all the people destined for Cleveland out to Cheyenne wondering where the river burned and why there’s no rock n roll annal halls and gastropubs but blue wide opens and stories about how the west was won. With Mercury going retrograde for the upcoming eclipse, don’t expect the instructions they give you at the ticket booth to make any sense or for your train to be on the track its listed for, or anything you were promised before to be what it was supposed to be then now. You might be waiting for your girlfriend to arrive, but instead her brother steps off and tells you she couldn’t make it and you have to go with him to pick her up three hours away in a week from Thursday. The eclipses are like a flipping coin that hypnotizes as it turns and when it falls into Fate’s palm the results you can’t remember are told to you by a friend you’ve never met.

As Mars is involved, all of these train station frustrations are sure to make people incredibly irate, and take it out on their berth companions or some overworked and underpaid luggage porter. This of course can lead to embarrassment and a literal bad trip, so try to stay calm throughout this period, expect the unexpected, be observant and flexible, this is fresh flux in the flow of circumstance and existence happening, so best to be on our toes as much as heels; a willingness to dance with The Devil is our only option. Mercury stations direct turning out of retrograde on September 4th on the eclipse degree conjunct Mars. He goes behind Mars, takes a peek at the past, records everything that went down and made notes of everything that has been altered, consults with our General Director Of Energy And Actions, and then begins walking back to rulership in Virgo where he sends everybody on earth personal emails reporting on what it all meant. Don’t worry, it’ll all soon be clear, but for now, be ready to not have a clue.

Of course, despite confusion and frustration, this is certainly not a negative time. Yes, eclipses are literally times of the luminaries going out of balance, but a lot of their negative reputations comes from the feudal and imperial structures of societies in the days our texts were sourced. Peace policies were less discussed, and if an eclipse threw some shade into a particular kingdom it was sieged. Really this is a pivotal period in the ongoing change, when the tools arrive in the mail that we needed to make all the adjustments, or when the update temporarily had your device shut down and then it finalized and you were left to explore how your home-screen had new aesthetics and features that extended deeply into the functioning of your system. These changes had programers busy for months prior and involved plenty of reactions to incoming challenges, such as brainstorming defenses against malware, but all of that activity went on behind the scenes and only caught up with you when your computer rebooted. (I hate to make digital metaphor’s, but they might be most apt in some cases where the figures of allegory are still warlords and slaves, as both still certainly exist today but in a much more polarized sense than they did two thousand years ago.) Many of us will get exactly what we wanted, some of us will be ecstatic or at least pleasantly surprised, some might have to restrategize a bit for success and others will have to face the music, even though they’ve never heard the song.

Looking closer at this week specifically we see Venus in Cancer heading toward completing a sextile with Mercury in Virgo. That sounds perfect. The closest of old friends who share many memories and bonds getting together to have fun while getting knee deep into the nuts and bolts and nit and grit of a project. Although, this is a Mercury getting ready to station retrograde as well as being opposite Neptune and a Venus in the Moon’s sign who is currently involved in a rather dramatic eclipse period. Something you might need in this happy meeting is getting denied or lost by the addition of fun and family to production and process, and as you look through the notes in your alchemical notebook the pages spill out, become scrambled in the grass and before you can retrieve them all some blow away. Or at least you suspect some might have because you can’t seem to get the recipe in cipher back in order; either that or you start to doubt if you ever understood it in the first place, and maybe you now wonder if you had touched your mouth when you had been picking aminita’s and deadly nightshades earlier for the work and your mouth feels dry and you become distracted and your phone rings and you spill ink on your robe and the idea of continuing with the working just feels impossible but everyone is there and you had this planned for months so you decide to go on with the show even though all the effort you put into preparation got lost in the shuffle. Maybe you don’t do your best work here but at least your best friends are around and they’re laughing. The Moon conjuncts Neptune on the 9th, striking the Dionysian bell rather strongly, even though it is like your acid dealer calling you in the middle of an exam. Venus, moving faster than Mercury as he slows for retrograde, completes the sextile early on Thursday morning and keeps pace past him as she flits about the house decorating it with flowers from the garden and pouring tea (or wine) for guests. She becomes so absorbed in this activity she becomes less and less helpful to Mercury who now begins to dig a tunnel in the study thinking that he lost the cipher stone between a floorboard and turns page after page in an attempt to find it, frustrated that the psychedelic sitar blaring from the stereo is deceiving his concentration. By the 13th Mercury has decided to retrace his steps, moving backwards through all of the work, going back to the garden to look for dropped jewelry and codex pages that might have quit their bindings and fallen in with blades of grass and shifting shadows.

There’s nothing there. Venus sticks her head out the window and hollers “Where are you going!?!” to which Mercury replies “Back to the Library, I’ve got to copy these notes down all over again. My brother’s inside, he’ll help you while I’m gone.” Venus frowns, and bites her lip in frustration. She knows Mercury’s twin is no good at chatting with her guests or organizing the event’s proceedings. She wishes he would stay. Pluto’s inside. She can see him from the opposite wall, a darkened room guests keep getting lost in, bringing to their attention the decrepitness of their host’s home, the faults in the architecture, the rotten framing that can’t be hidden by the romantic warmth of the candlelight, they see sinking floors and failing trusses instead of the flowers she picked and the meal she labored over.

Meanwhile, Saturn in Sagittarius trines The Sun in Leo at 21 degrees, steadily fixing on the eclipse point. Looking around at all the virtues exemplified in the kingdom, the ones that ring most sonorously are those in accordance with the truths that weave like a subtle architecture throughout all the foreign and exotic philosophies of history. What makes a kingdom authentic, and imbues it with pride, and makes it worth fighting for are exemplified in the hard and fast laws of the universe realized by the great renaissance thinkers, the Vedic sages, the high priests and priestesses of Egypt, the noble scribes, the old civilizations of honor and sacrifice, whose moral was framed by a higher spirit than that within the mundane heart of men. A realization that only arrows with the straightest of shafts have the chance to fly into the golden core of the Sun and bullseye the monad. This is the cog of divine civilization, and even if the kingdom of god cannot be built on earth, at least its form can be the guide and target of the many disparate beings that fuse together into swift beasts to race for the goals of the olympic torch, along well set and meticulously marked racetracks. With Mercury retrograde escaping the illusions of Neptune, this juxtaposed situation may be the fiery day dream that distracts us from our work, as we hold onto our loved ones hands and watch the world give birth to tomorrow.