The Other Way

October 22nd

As Venus enters the second face of Libra on the 22nd the themes shift from justice, fairness and accord to bonds between people and unions of all kind. Two hands up-stretch into airy aether, maybe backed by a display of charming clouds, and are lashed with white satin ribbon, or smooth linen cord, wrapped, the hands are bound, and also the wills of those who clasp palms and intwine fingers. Regardless of the pairs familiarity, this is close proximity, and if perfumes dress the skin they are certainly in each other’s noses, as pheromone and flesh must also be. Not all such bindings are done in love, but in Libra they are romantic nonetheless, and on this occasion they take on such a character, as Mars enters Libra they become the bound oaths of warriors, even if they are dances to death made famous by Michael Jackson’s ‘Beat It’, they are in that vein elegant displays of ballet. As long as Venus is in Libra we’ll likely see this good Mars, the honorable warrior and battle-dancer who is well balanced on their feet even when the tempo’s hot. We know some mano-a-mano knife fights settle larger disputes and stand in for all out gang warfare. This is a compromise for egalitarian Venus in Libra, but one the hostess might make if the quite stabbing in the basement goes unnoticed to the elaborate ball upstairs that is remembered fondly by all in attendance. Mars might not reach such heights of severity until Venus’ ingress into Scorpio on November 7th, instead he might simply avoid conflict in a manner that sends obvious messages, including hard stares across the dinner table and wielding moods as weapons passing the punch bowl, dropping some read between the lines stabs during his inaugural speech, maybe intentionally popping the champagne cork in someones direction or deliberately over-pouring someones flute. Bad boy. Venus probably does well to hide these splashes in her bustle, or even better, make them over into charming spoofs that summon chuckling from the throng while still somehow stroking Mars’ ego: “Mars, you are simply too proficient with weaponry to handle a thing like that, it intimidates us, you don’t even know your own strength, it reminds us of your most recent victory against the so and so and son and so forth…”

This is still a situation, even if its one that is under control. It’s handy for Venus to dress the Lieutenant up in party clothes and have him under surveillance in a place where he can’t turn to side arms and bayonet's, although it does detract some from the pure Venusian nature of the affair. Mark Antony and Cesar’s visit to a soirée detracts from the sensual subtlety of the Bacchanal, it grows crude and rigid at the edges and loses some of its swan necked articulation, less running nimble hands over delicate ribs and more gorging on grapes. This is secondary tier concerns for the hostess, as Venus in rulership is still Venus in rulership, snags or no snags.

October 23rd

The day following Mars’ ingress into Libra the Sun ingresses Scorpio on October 23rd, with Mercury sliding into Scorpio’s second decan just after. Predator eyes set aglow, fierce and fixed, they cut the night with purpose and intent, sending invisible beams through the darkness, the cones of their own dilation; they see what they salivate for as if it were real, and use their knowledge of the world to draw these objects to them, whether they be craved out of hunger or lust, gluttony or hubris. Whenever the Sun enters a water sign a pool is lit luminescent and whatever its nature does glimmer. In Scorpio it is the eerie glow of subterranean ponds; cavern springs that steam and stir, the colloidal depths of our beings penetrated by our desires to transform ourselves in primordial immersions. For Scorpio there is no turning back; the waters melt you, you mingle with the primeval serum, your DNA in cavern chrysalis is corrupted, but only in context of the past, as you step from your bath and stretch your new legs on the other side you find that the environment that awaits you down the opposite end of the tunnel suits your nuanced mannerisms and strange appendages; you’ve mutated for the better, even if you will never be again who you once were. Part of the process is the dive; we descend into the tunnels of winter as darkness slowly swallows light during Scorpio, we descend into winter, and it is there that we are suspended in alembics, in distillation. The Sun is the viewer, the voyeur spying on the beings, or souls metamorphosis. Scorpio is a fixed sign; it desires to lock in and apply tectonic pressure that results in real change as well as ejaculations of magmic rock. There is a terrifying refinement that occurs at the center of Scorpio, but at its initial portal is the primal instincts of predator and prey, or animals in rut, pursuance and self-anointing instincts that end up in us covered in secretions and drugs, a cloak of poison that activates as our pores open to the bath, us and the allies in a mortal tangle, we become one with the wort. This is not unlike the protagonists descent in Altered States, and can certainly become trajectories outlined in Andrzej Żuławski’s Possession. Scorpio isn’t required to always end well, but it is a necessary process of life. Not all who place the coin fare in Charon’s bony hand succeed in what they seek.

These themes dawn on us to some degree when the Sun enter’s Scorpio; we are reminded of how our lusts define our actions and narrate who we are and what we might become; the fatality of our fixations. We are all willing to die for something, even if that is our own life, while some of us simply (or not so simply) might live for our own deaths.

Vision and virtue meets coherence and mind-expanding philosophy not far from the labyrinth gate, our messenger and translator already up ahead, describing the internal chambers he’s found. He becomes obsessed with the glyphs carved into the walls. They are recipes he suspects, ideographic grimoires and manual tablets that detail the process of metamorphosis. Absolutely enthralled, he is consumed, and all that comes through the walkie-talkie is the angular cadence of archaic tongues, parlance cyclic and argot rhythms bind ears and eyes to lexicon letters lit by torch end points so the phonemes sizzle out the flame wisps until its all you can see, or hear or say. If lucky enough another like you lurks within the ventricle vault, then you might volley to your hearts content; but in Scorpio hearts are never content, there is just more desire, more need to lock and change, so the infatuation eddies into a vortex, and it is from there that demons of mania are born; strange entities that surround ideas; ghosts in the machine; sentient information; haunted notions that go legion, fed on trajectories of thought in loops, modulating, vitriol in Klein bottles.

With Jupiter, the Sun and Mercury all in Scorpio it is likely that the obsessions bear fruit which as it grows broadens the perimeters of the mind. There is focus, vision, coherence, optimism, detail attention, patience and neutrality all turned toward the Scorpionic. This is an odd pairing to Venus’ M.O. in Libra, but it is the classic recipe that results in Hallows Eve celebrations and festivities throughout place and time. The throwing of ghoulish underworld themed parties that obsess on sex, death and debauchery.

October 24

Mercury probes onward and pushes toward decanic space linked to the fixed star Acrux, the smallest constellation in our sky, perhaps a representation of the Cross Of Matter, which Bernadette Brady points out is likened to the angles which set a native in their unique Zodiac. The star fire it will feed Mercury with causes him to focus on physical form and the art of concrete manifestation. Mercury falls deeper into love with Scorpionic methodologies, and perhaps his mercantile significations activate: “I think we’ve got something here!” Practical schemes to capitalize off tumultuous internal transformation. Maybe offering clients a traumatic experience that is guaranteed to cause permanent personal change, or at least the tools and tech to accomplish the task at home.

Hermes progresses into the orb of this stars feeding fire as it passes by trine circuitry to Neptune in Pisces. Neptune usually befouls Mercury’s prerogatives, and this might not be an exception, although it might not seem like one until later. Our fore-mentioned violent mutation outfit might seem sensible and sane, and even down right lucrative while we’re tossing the football around the office, but our square of space rented from the yellow pages might be clipped and posted on the bulletin board later merely for the sake of lampooning and roasting. Sorry for the archaic jargon, but remember, Mercury is infatuated here with archaic and obscure subject-matter, for better or for worse. This can certainly be and includes communication with others; where people’s combined trips equal delusions not capable on their own. This is interesting with Venus still in Libra, more than happy to draw up contracts cheerfully, and with artful flair, plumage fluttering with each swoop and scallop of the nib. Jupiter’s presence in the sign might pack enough expansive and enduring confidence that the adventure succeeds, somehow; so crazy it works.

October 26th

That would suit Jupiter’s conjunction with the Sun well on Jupiter’s day October 26th. Here vision and identity, authenticity and virtue centralize and align their aims with mind-broadening coherence of Scorpionic philosophies. This is like stepping into a celebration of George Bataille’s and Charles Baudelaire’s work. For the period of a day principles of decadence, transgression and degradation are upheld and observed with reverence and considered virtuous. We know that such events were held perennially, such as Saturnalia, throughout both ancient and recent history and fit the Halloween season quite well. This marks the center of Jupiter’s direct motion and even though he has already recently passed into a new sign, this is the official beginning of a new cycle of philosophical growth and expansion. On this day listen for insights into the depths, our shadow selves and interior terrains, be willing to integrate what is within and beneath with the character you play each day. Let your robe of pure white become black as soot or red as blood so that you may now what you could otherwise never without experiencing for yourself. This is the part of maps marked by dragons or those annealed in the Heart Of Darkness or Apocalypse Now and their ilk. The jewel eye of the Sphinx refracts the suns rays and enlarges the light revealing multitudes of tempered glass hidden in the potential of the sand, each grain an alembic in which entheogens can be isolated and distilled; their bulbous forms expanding with the blowers breath like the wind that lifts balloons, raising tartarus up so it fits in and fills the Smithsonian; the Earth and its cultures exhibited as they truly are, naked and pornographic, violent and impressively vicious, contorted and obsessed, but somehow sublime still, the program of Umberto Eco’s On Ugliness, as we walk its halls we suddenly find ourselves, as there are no glass barriers or velvet ropes or motion detector alarms or gallery guards; we engage and identify with what we find there.

October 27th

As the Moon reaches half-fullness we shift up a gear and oscillate with increased intensity at the pivot of our wobble, and like the business end of a pestle, we ruminate in Aquarius, in the days when the Moon trespasses the Dragon’s Tail, this entire year in a double sextile, to one side Saturn and to the other Uranus. As Kronos and Prometheus’ along with Caput Draconis’ loose Grand Trine has persisted throughout 2017, a subtle yet softly ringing bell, or sleeping circuit disconnected, no longer fully functional but something we can open up, peeling back the protective shell and looking in as an anthropologist from another time might look into the diode scramble of a hammond organ for ontological meaning centuries after our species has slipped into extinction. If circuits were to become loose enough to be free agents in the air, could systema akin to astrology take place in the space between two upraised hands, like the ball of qi coddled and molested by a MDMA rolling raver?

Mercury sextiles Pluto on the 27th, maybe looking down into the dark recesses of the Scorpionic glyphic chamber in a revery of mystery similar to our anthropologist who examines the left over apparati of ourselves long MIA, and connects the dots with dreams, much like the ancients did with our living sky and its loose circuitry of constellations. Venus also squares Pluto here, maybe suggesting that the themes are becoming too dark for her gala gathering to hold together, the guests growing introspective wander off, or in a state of obsession pair off to conspire and chew ears and maybe more. There is a hole in the domed ceiling of the ballroom and in filters stardust, entheogenic drugs from heavens reverse, the upswept downdraft of angels of the jungles, as well as snowflake insects that like UFOs spiral to the floor and mesmerize with cold circuits, rigid patterns that form at random and display creations proclivity for repeated numerological happenstance, the apopheniacal horror of Ernst Haeckel’s Artforms In Nature. Venus is in rulership, and though there is an alarming whole in the structure above their heads, it is far from the wine and banquet spreads and the music is quite distracting, as well as all the beautiful bodies twirling Busby Berkeley. Some can be distracted but not all. Some leave their bodies behind and project through the breech, leaving the society pages for whatever awaits beyond the back cover of the book.