Binge & Purge

Electric snakes wriggle in the air pockets and cracks of degradation, the firm lead skeleton and the cold concrete like shale beneath the fingernails of a mammoth statue, seemingly inert, but not inanimate; it merely exists in much more yawning tides of time, and moves so slowly to us it seems solid and still. The serpentine undulations growing frenetic, mounting in charge until plasmic pressure shakes the sculpture, vibrates the architecture, the crystal lattice fractalizes in turbulence, and more than a thing it is an emanation of the subsonic, a solid infrasound citadel. The snakes are similar to the fire ring resting at the base of our spines, the molten moat around the bone stang base, the pillar of vertebrae, the world tree; ringlets of magma ascend ladder spines and spiral to the top where they feather into wingspans of white light that course with purity and flash back to black in the receptacle pupils that can accept nothing so opposite or so much the same.

Time is the skeleton upon which manifestation is the flesh. And so time births reality, it receives it and provides hooks from which to hang. Saturn is the structure in nothing; the something so that anything is not everything. And so what happens when Saturn and Uranus are trine?— as they are now having culminated to partile on November 10th. Uranus is innovation, rebellion, experimentation and explosive freedom, where as Saturn is structure, hierarchy, bondage, boundary, chronology and mortality. Uranus brims with stolen immortal fire and Saturn looms with a sickle. To be trine one another puts the two in harmony. Saturn in Sagittarius, driving toward ultimate endgames and Uranus in Aries, performing expressions of indivisible freedom. To one side there is the struggling through mandatory internments to reach eventual freedoms; where one must make minuscule progress each day to achieve liberation. Then there is the the blowing up of the dungeons entirely; but Saturn is total and final; there may be another larger jail which contains the one you destroyed. There is also permanent rebellion, a state of perpetual mutation that cannot be altered, like John Carpenter’s The Thing. Uranus shakes a paradigm until its foundation cracks— an experiment that yields astounding results, the realizations spurring forth cannot be reversed; there is no going back to the way reality was once conceptualized; the 60s could not contract back into the 50s. Saturn does share an intimate connection with the permanence inherent in Uranus’ function; when humans received fire it could not be undone; we were no longer clay things but flesh and blood with the spark of life, like it or not.

In a most straight forward interpretation Uranus in Aries says this is my true identity and I’ll destroy anything in my way to express it entirely. Since it is a trine, and harmonization with bondage and parameters is implied, it is perhaps an experimental and innovative use of Saturn’s laws that allows Uranus’ torch to be born. Saturn is in late Sagittarius; by sign this is fire trine fire; spirit trine spirit. The spirit of relentless dedication in the face of all adversity is what is necessary for personal revolution to come to pass. If your life is to be permanently revolutionized by this trine, you must be unyielding in your drive, while being respectful yet inventive with the hard facts of life.

This over arches this week and that to come as well as our entire year past in series, as Saturn and Uranus completed trines on December 24th of 2016 and May 19th of 2017; this harmonization of the rules and revolutionary freedom has been a pivotal component of this fiery year we are closing down on. Many people went through dramatic transitions, blasting out an area of their life, the lifestyle demo work essentially, to expand a part of themselves into, or build something entirely new. Perhaps Saturn entering Capricorn on the Solstice will initialize the process of serious and long lasting construction within this space.

November 12th

Mercury enters the second decan of Sagittarius at 4pm (EST) on November 12th. Sagittarius has a very motivational disposition, the man on the soap box talking big that gathers a crowd, and maybe even a following; the inception of a movement; looking back to that dusty afternoon where it all began; the stuff of epic documentary. Sagittarius wants to get on the move, there are goals and resources need to be consolidated, people must be assembled and causes to rally around, questing requires an initial rousing. Mercury spent the first decan of Sagittarius being the motivational speaker at best and the propagandist at worst. In the second face he gains further command over the communication skills necessary to keep a burgeoning movement snowballing but can no longer discern what is real and what is merely an assumption; it ceases to matter, in the heat of things, whether he read this or that or if it just seems to fit, the propulsion of events supersedes the brass tacks, and Mercury throws all the scraps of facts and intuitive blank-fillers into the manuscript, which he is more than happy to read live on the air, at which point word becomes law. “You heard it, I said it on TV, its real now. Its true. Lets do this thing!” The information gathering and compiling suits Mercury well enough in a sign that thinks more about the big picture than the details and Sag’s penitent for synthesizing disparate parts ain’t so bad either, although it causes major problems for normally neutral Mercury’s powers of accuracy and discernment. The Messenger arrives bearing election cards and manifestos; Vote Yes on 666, 777, 93 and 108.

The Sun transitions to Scorpio’s third face earlier that day, in the wee hours dreams might shift to the transgressive, and upon waking we might find ourselves with a worldview of one desire fulfilled after another. Moving from satiation to satiation, never truly or completely satisfied as a framework for reality. Passerby might try to engage us about the weather but we move toward our fixation as if beckoned on by phantom fumes. An outlook of shamelessness when negative, tantric, or at least mindfully transgressive when positive. Reread Bataille’s ‘Story Of The Eye’, Gombrowicz’s ‘Cosmos’, Robbe-Grillet’s ‘The Voyeur', Huysmans’ ‘A Rebours', Balzac’s ‘The Girl With The Golden Eyes’, Gautier’s ‘Militona', (and while you’re at it why not also ‘Hidden Faces’ for the fuck of it since you’re on a tear by then anyway.)

November 13th

Might as well bone up since Monday November 13th hosts Jupiter and Venus’ conjunction at 7 degrees Scorpio (at 3 am). This could easily be an abundance of debauchery, too much of a good thing, focus on the philosophies of seduction and indulgence, transgression with a higher coherence. High minded lusts that expound upon the pleasure and knowledge of poison, more prickly ambrosials quaffed during death/rebirth ordeals. For some this could be feasting or splurging, but for the actively Scorpionic it could read as is. And reading itself also applies. Mercury has ceased to be our Underworld detective, but Jupiter still intends on expanding our minds to what the occult annals offer; if you are of literate inclination to take great pleasure in bibliophilism, then please indulge, even if there is wine poured until you can only decipher the text with one eye closed; a persistence which I personally find a noble quality. The books will undoubtedly be cast aside, as Mercury squares Neptune in the early evening. This is maybe a signal that the possible inebriations a Scorpio benefic pile up imply are more than imagined, as our primary communicator will be debilitated by watery fantasy, the after splash chromatic of lustral floods, this being the sea spray of nereid folly, like a Frans van Mieris’ drunken scene’s aftermath; speaking with a mouth full of sausage and dice after nights within drapes of wine.

November 14th

Despite Jupiter beginning to pull up the covers from his head and emerge from beneath the beams, hangovers of some-sort are likely, as the Moon conjoins Mars in Libra square to Pluto in Capricorn on the 14th: the classic hangover paranoia, colloquially referred to as “the fear”. Passive aggressive panic and alarming emotions brought on by horror or holes in the structure, fright at shadows instilling irritated sentiments which lead to divisive fraudulence and pretensive behavior, or physical accidents that summersault into liaisons with scary or dangerous people. Sound confusing? “How’d you get in this mess!?!?— “I don’t know! It just kind of happened! But you got to help me!” The roulette results of a moral bender, or maybe just a sudden clarity of just how debase things actually are. The philosophical and spiritual high ground of all this is sought as the current Scorpionic activity comes to light with coherence, rendering these themes more beneficial in general. Jupiter has been purified by the Sun.

November 15th

Shortly after Venus enters the second decan of Scorpio. As Mars in the second face of of Libra can get locked in close combat, Venus in Scorpio’s mids attempt to sustain states of pleasure and intense intimacy, like deep shacking up, hedonistic partnerships like pleasure clenched and passed fist to fist, clasped in lust, feeding into one another. Venus ruling the arts, expect especially the beauty and aesthetic of mutual transformation intemperately expressed. This is people fixated on one another, of passionate embrace, think Briar P Orridge and Lady Jaye’s plastic surgery project.

November 16th

The Sun from Scorpio’s third face trines Chiron in Pisces while simultaneously Venus trines Neptune from the same pair of signs. Visions identify us with how poison can both hurt as well as heal, and if it is for a lifetime or more or merely the space of a tryst we step upon the poison path, where allies await with entheogens, such as the expanding and enlivening traditions of ayahuasca, which may dilate into a world story, a primary figure of our human narrative. The ability and opportunity to be healed by Hekate’s garden, where medicine and poison are not just substance but also personae. The rending of the veil can sub-cede materialist doom, and it is the reality glimpsed, in which we might collaborate with all that we feel and touch and even say or think as living just like us, that a greater collaboration is possible, one in which sickness is obliterated, or unrecognizably re-contextualized. Venus in fantastical form, from corybantic clamor rises pleasure and beauty, a hallucinatory vision of the wrathful feminine divine. Sun and Venus; Helios and Hekate, an archaic duality that articulates a varied version from the one Classical culture took and ran with, and it might be time a non-anachronistic stance free of luddite trappings be seriously considered, en mass. If we could say the entire globe drinks ayahuasca on this night, we might be on to something, even if we are a century off, but maybe its sooner than we imagine. Feel free to brew your own concoctions on the 16th. The Moon also comes to conjoin Jupiter and then Venus throughout the day. The themes of this experience allow a letting go of old philosophical paradigms and fixations. Cleansing by deeply felt purgation and ecstatic vision. Pharmako catharsis.

November 17th

The New Moon will occur at 7 am (EST), so for many the evening of the 17th will be when their petitions are made and their ritual schedule begins. That being a Friday, so a Mars’-night, highlights a curious aspect by planetary condition in sign. Mercury sextiles Mars while both planets are in detriment. Could enthusiasm surrounding misconstrued facts lead to negative alliances between people? Could locked conflicts become assisted by drives toward half truths? This confusing aspect might also be full of insights from the previous day’s mystical healing experiences lending us the clever power to manage unlikely circumstances in such a way that they accommodate and oblige each other. Alchemy that transforms half baked ideas and problematic allegiances into positive opportunities and bolsterings. Simply the supportive hand of Fortune, the divine intervention of a heavenly, celestial or infernal guardian, whatever is your cup of tea. This basic schema is displayed in plenty of gangster type, or general high stakes narratives. Rag tag collaborations that succeed from 30% cleverness and 70% sheer luck. Keep things clean and simple, avoid laying additional tripwires or involving too many people, say your prayers and light your votives, make sure there are offerings on the altar. This is general practice, but this would be a good period to not skimp and also to gravitate toward the conservative. Put the christian prayers back into the invocation for the week, so to speak. Things are taking a dive either way from here on, and you don’t want everything pulled down because its heavy with ill virtue and foolishness.

November 18

As stated, the conjunction of Sun and Moon in Scorpio occurs at 7am on Saturday Morning. This is Saturn’s Hour in Saturn’s day in Mars’ sign with Mars in detriment and applying to square Pluto. Normally the New Moon’s are times of beginnings, but some think, (as the English Qaballa school particularly) that anything begun with the Moon in Scorpio will not last. What is this lunation for then? Scorpio is fixed, as in it is at the zenith of its arc fixed in flux; a state of permanent impermanence, a concept also present in the Saturn-Uranus trine. As with any thing occurring in Scorpio’s third face, this Moon cycle could incept errant desires and aimless striving toward fulfillment and satiation. The classic hedonistic and destructively indulgent behavior persists, but if properly prepared for with prior purgations and perspectives there is fodder of the positively tantric type; an earthing of primal desires. There is then a presence as well as a distance at once; allowing the world to be wholly felt while remaining ultimately detached. This is not the most bright and blossomy lunation seed, but an opportunity to work on mastering the tantric disposition is in itself a gift, a free admission to a strict training course. Our first obstacle appears right away with the Mars-Pluto square: holes in the structure that no one can help you repair, lessons and conflicts of underworld hierarchies, clashes in the shadows, shady business in the dark, darkest deals with the Devil. Remember that the Devil, like the Dragon’s Head, draws you into deeper and deeper identification with the material nature of reality, and like balancing ourselves between the nodes, we must learn to pivot perfectly between the experience of earthly pleasure and ascetic abstinence to best benefit from what the Devil has to offer. This is thus stratagem, and that exemplifies Mars’ condition in Capricorn, the sign Pluto squares him from. Mars tries to use more people put in action to get the job done in Libra, putting strain on his relationships with others, like the work party that goes horribly sour or the friend you always asked for rides and loans; alternately tapping into the strategic nature of Capricorn might be what is required to maneuver through the dark, as you must be ready to adjust course and flex with chaos as you navigate the oncoming unknown.