The Astrology Of September 2020: The Jaws Of Life

Walton Ford

This month is highly characterized by the persistent Square between Mars and Saturn, so we will explore the dynamics of the month as a rundown from one perspective then the other. Mars squared Saturn on August 24th initially, and since Mars is stationing to retrograde and Saturn is stationing to turn direct they remain in close configuration for an extended period of time. You might imagine that they are two forces in different corners of a fighting ring squaring off to one another in a fight that goes into several overtime rounds. Saturn is delivering the overcoming square and Mars gets spun into retrograde, so in many ways Saturn has the advantage naturally, but there are many dynamics at play considering the other planets involved so despite this being a prime consideration everything is not so straight forward.

Venus opposite Saturn

Sun trine Uranus

Full Moon in Pisces

Mercury trine Saturn

Venus square Mars

Mercury sextile Venus

Mercury ingress Libra

Venus ingress Leo

Sun trine Jupiter

Mars station RX

Mercury opposite Chiron

Sun opposite Neptune

Jupiter stations direct

Venus trine Chiron

Sun trine Pluto

Venus square Uranus

Mercury square Jupiter

New Moon in Virgo

Sun trine Saturn

Mercury square Pluto

Sun ingress Libra

Mercury square Saturn

Mercury opposite Mars

Mercury ingress Scorpio

Venus trine Mars

Saturn stations direct

Sun opposite Chiron

Mars square Saturn

Max Ernst

Saturn’s Corner

The Month opens with Saturn being opposed by Venus in Cancer, highlighting the balance we need to strike between our thirsts for basic pleasures and our desire to indulge in the resources of the world straight out of the spigot. After a lengthy mind and matter re-arrangement via Mercury and Venus over the spring and summer we have a clearer idea of what would make life safe, supportive and delicious simultaneously, and with some irony many urbanites are fleeing cities for more rural existences, but Saturn says, not so fast. The process of upending one property and acquiring more attractive territory is not so simple and certainly not a quick procedure. We might need to find the sweet spot between living amongst the spring fed licks and making sure we hold onto reality and attend to structural integrity. Saturn here is still beside Pluto, so when you come face to face with the next blockade of restrictions and society in crisis management protocols assume there is manipulation and shadow plots at play in every structural expression, because there are. There’s death hidden in every box and what there might be to read between the lines is much, much more than a snake in the grass. Be reminded that Jupiter isn’t much further back trying to help out the situation by upending the monument and scraping out the toxic pollution beneath the foundations of the entire structure from the inception of its history. This is far from an over night fix. This is the heavy pressure pressing down into Capricorn which should be considered every time a planet gazes upon it.

While Venus is negotiating how much pleasure we are safe to naturally get while the world is imprisoned by the fear of shadows the Sun trines Uranus in her sign, both parties trine by sign to the Capricorn crew, and our intent attention tuned to acute details and ready to make adjustments to improve our processes are happy with a wildly altered set of methods and rhythms of life as long as they lead us to sensual productivity of something consistent and substantial. Literally, we desperately need to ground, and we can’t do it within systems in collapse and upheaval. Those wealthy enough to do so are ready to leave the cities in flames and come up and bother the rural communities and flood their forests and fields with as much irresponsibility and abuse as they inflicted so recently upon urban neighborhoods— for the most part coming out of college or suburban holding patterns directly into gentrification crusades in the early 2000s, last time we got some Air epoch wind filling the sails. The same people are currently emptying from city side walk cafes and establishing end of the world compounds in working class counties with threadbare economies. Hmmmm…

Nychos

Just like that a Full Moon in Pisces fills up plump and full of lunar liquid still on only the second day of September, itself sextile to Jupiter-Saturn-Pluto while the Sun which feeds it brightness is trine the Capricornian collection from Virgo. This lunation is not configured to Mars at all but quite friendly to Saturn and the others playing the Goat. The kind of romantic fantasies and psychic premonitions and upwellings of emotional imagination and overflowing empathic splash and surge we might be subject to is entirely sympathetic to the major systemic, structural problems that define 2020 in end brackets. We might expect here an utter and absolute hallucination of contagion and permeability of all our faculties laced with dreams of more ideal territories for us to inhabit than the dirty machine we once were so fond of. We need to improve our reality in actuality to dive into the depths of this perfect and peaceful world. I guarantee pandemic paranoia propaganda will be absolutely prepared to return to full tilt at this time. Get your hysterical reactions ready.

Within this darker materia we have become accustomed to in 2020 current events is surely still the microcosmic availability of deep, visionary, intuitive imagination swellings ready to work with your most obsessive projects and spring in hallucinatory fountains from each profound tweak you make to the particular parameters. Certainly, indulge, and probably a way better place to put yourself than within the meta-narrative anyway. Let’s return the macrocosmic to the universal schema and yank it away from the worlds newsreel once and for all. Mercury trines Saturn on the 3rd from the bends of the Nodal axis so as far as a nimble pluck of the Universal Lyre, you’ll have great opportunity to do so. Chime the perfect note in the symphonic 2020 score. Mercury is sextile Venus in Cancer, Mistress of Music, so soulful and meaningful glissando might even saturate your meticulously precise execution. Mercury ingresses Libra soon after where he’ll have his mind on musical harmony much more often anyway, although this places our logical and communication faculties in square relationship to Saturn, so in culturally graceful and justice oriented Libra we might have a hard time speaking our peace from the perspective of the system jam and its various deep dilemmas.

Karl Von Piloty, "Beneath the Arena”

The Sun trining Jupiter wants to help with these unsoundable pits of structural disrepair by placing attention on the stripped bolts and slipped links themselves, and we might get a few key components identified along the way, but with an opposition to Neptune following shortly after by the 11th the good intentions are probably swept away in the paranoia and propaganda anyway. Let’s hope not, and try to keep our heads clear and connect with intuition and psychic inspiration to enact some magical mechanics to sort our facts from our fiction even when they are forced to follow one single synaptic fiber through the ocean of information. We might just barely be successful as Jupiter stations direct and intends here to dash directly from mid Capricorn to early Pisces directly through Aquarius before turning around once he picks up speed. Meaning: religion, philosophy, coherence, wisdom, wide scope, celebration, opportunity, optimism, education, and knowledge is preparing the process of not being shut down and crushed beneath the weight of a completely corrupt and collapsing system and plans to get extremely innovative from Jan to May and then have everything really quite fucking juicy and nice for mid spring to mid summer. We only have so much more shit to survive. The Caveat: let’s for god’s sake not have this narrative describe us all going on mind control drugs delivered in vaccination form or otherwise and just “feeling good” about the new restrictions being authored in our dispassionate and inhuman world as the paradigm shifts to prefer flattening curves over living our lives physically and being a part of our own families while we are severed completely from our personal and cultural histories intentionally. Let this be a story of waking up and seeing what the fuck is going on rather than getting further deluded. Either way, better days ahead after this next installment of fire and brimstone.

Walton Ford

The Sun trines Pluto on the 14th so working with the forces of darkness is possible, but so is deciding to look for the details missing in the holes in the plot, so maybe this speaks to agency. Do you want to succumb eternally to the “uncertain times” catch phrase dragnet or would you like to know what kind of sketchy shit is motorizing the mechanisms? You can do this without becoming entirely right wing, believe it or not, you just have to be willing to be critical of the NPR drone, and luckily Virgo is geared for critique. Venus squares Uranus from the Sun’s sign to her own the following day, so the disruptions of markets and rhythms of life that jive so well with Saturn in a state of system collapse control consolidation get possibly uncovered around here and jolt some electric shocks into our heart centered value systems and Operation-like sound some alarms. Makes sense as next Mercury squares Jupiter, who’s doing the diligent dirty work digging for Saturn— Mercury’s justice oriented and culturally concerned logic in Venus’ other sign clashes with Jupiter’s stunted view of structural integrity as it doesn’t pan out to incorporate community, art, culture, social services and human equity one bit. Something is suspiciously uneven within “we’re all in it together”.

Miraculously, we get a New Moon in Virgo trine Saturn himself and on the very Bends of the Nodal Axis on the 17th of September, and in this dark moment of procedural and systematic amiss we begin ever new processes of how to improve the problems in our societies management and functioning at the particular pivot point of narrative manifestation moving forward into the next year and a half. This is significantly days before the Autumnal Equinox, more collections of loudly resounding aspects situated around the stations of light in 2020, highlighting it as a heavy year of transition. This may be loudly resounding on the map, but due to the utter lack of light within this lunation, it is probably something small that slips under the radar but proves to be as pivotal as the pea to the Princess a couple weeks down the line, and speaks to the narrowing down of enthusiasm or belief and the increase of investigation and information aggregation, i.e. “I don’t want to see your art, food, fun, music I want only to see information associated with the movement”, as this piece of the shadow puzzle will trigger the Nodes now in the Sagittarius—Gemini axis. What in particularity might you want to highlight and tweak on in under this passing shadow into the future and out of the past? What interests you the most beyond every other detail? What thread might you select, pull and run with in your own existence?

José Clemente Orozco

The Sun does ingress Libra on the 22nd betwixt Mercury squaring Pluto and Squaring Saturn, so as our attention further turns to social affairs, equality, harmony, justice, cultural discourse and mediation our analytical trains of thought are running into walls. I might wonder from here looking at the map how we are going to protest amidst an impending lockdown. It’s almost as if someone planned it this way. But just after that jarring mental jangle Mercury ingresses Scorpio and orients to Capricorn by sextile, now much more willing to collaborate with the system, at least in stealth. Secret tactics replacing open voices. We might be speaking by late September with a more animalistic tone to our tongues. Saturn stations direct here and the management of empires, theirs and our owns are ready to continue out of a defensive halt. The Phalanx has regrouped. The Sun opposes Chiron from Libra to Aries, both parties square to Saturn, and our orientation to social bonds and cultural connections suffers some sore spots as the mechanisms over take all. This occurs just as the second square between Mars and Saturn perfects, and pinch-points are at their ultimate intensity.

Mars' Corner

From the Mars side things look a little different. When Venus opposes Saturn in the beginning of the Month both planets are square to conflict oriented and fueled up and fired up to go and act and do and attack Mars. Venus’ inclinations toward a pleasant night in the country with friends and family and extra supplies just in case just slow things down for Mars who wants to hit the road right now and slash down obstacles and opponents along the way. Saturn is still repeating “stay home save lives” from a rather obviously shady seat situated beside Pluto and a beat up, drugged and gagged Jupiter advising the public from behind bars. Mars would rather burn the whole system down than continue to cooperate in conventional or traditional formats. The only input he has into the balancing act between system dysfunction and pleasant experience is to add a sense of critical alarm.

It is worth noting that Aries is in antiscia to Virgo, meaning they are in aversion, but can see each other through the kind of reflective surface created by the solstitial mirror. In a felt sense, this part of September is reminiscent to April, there is similar temperatures and a parallel in length of day and night. Across the zodiac, we may be able to relate in a kind of parallel sense our procedural and highly detailed processes, the particular improvements and acute adjustments we are making in Virgo with the implementation of tactical action occurring in Aries.

Hieronymus Bosch

When Mercury ingresses Libra on the 5th Mars reminds him that we are all a little too pissed off to be friends and won’t let it go all month. We can try to talk nice but there’s no way we can drop the conflict and holster our side arms, sorry, but actually not really. When Venus ingresses Leo on the 6th she starts making sense to Mars and the two hold in common a sense of spirit. She’s attracted to self expression and desires being herself and he wants to do 100% without collaboration immediately what he wants no matter what. He’ll fight you on it. Unfortunately he quickly after turns retrograde on the 9th and its not so easy anymore to effect this directly. Sometimes the energy is there sometimes its not, sometime time will allow it sometimes it won’t, sometimes the restrictions prevent it sometimes they leave a window to do everything that has been piling up for weeks and you have to do it all in very quick succession. Everything just takes way more energy and needs to be pulled off in short, volatile bursts rather than in an even distribution of effort, and its all randomized so you have no idea when you’re going to be called into conflict and when you are just going to be snoozing in the foxhole with nothing doing.

Mercury’s opposition to Chiron might speak to what is harshing Mars’ mojo, as say the wrong thing to the wrong person and you might ignite a fuse unintentionally and start a war, but with Venus trine Mars you are quite frankly have less ability to really keep your mouth shut, your personal values will just be firing off, and suddenly speaking from the heart stirs up more heat than expected; possibly even wearing the wrong clothing can get you caught in a crossfire, presenting yourself a certain way— people are going to be battling with aesthetics in more ways than one and if you don’t know the code of colors you might just get caught in the wrong camp. We might guess wearing or not wearing a mask is going to continue to place you on one side of insanity or the other whether or not you want to ride the line, you will no longer have that convenience, its a dance along the razor wire. There is classic divide and conquer maneuvers in the air, sniff sniff, and it’s absolutely no mistake that prison style politics emerges in a society under lesser or greater degrees of house arrest. Venus’ square to Uranus volatizes Mars from their trine perspective even though Mars can’t see Uranus. He’s mad and pacing like a wounded animal without even understanding the basis of the disruption.

Walton Ford

Community and cultural voices clashing against lack of real perspective in the square between Mercury and Jupiter is configured to Mars in a square from one side and an opposition from the other: both Mercury and Mars are square to Jupiter. We just can’t see the whole picture, we can’t see the whole system plot and problem architecture from any one cultural vantage point or another so we can’t do anything about it, we can’t attack what we can’t target from paradigmatic blindspots that divide us culturally. Convenient for the system. When the Sun ingresses Libra and gets even more civic minded over all this renders our actions even more hindered rather than less. While we consider democratic approaches our effectiveness spins its wheels and wastes precious fuel.

The jaws continue to crunch and pulverize our diplomatic efforts as Mercury squares Pluto and Saturn in succession while opposing Mars moving backwards. Right after Mercury ingresses Scorpio, which though sextile Saturn is under Mars’ rulership. After getting told resoundingly to shut the fuck up with all our ideas about how everyone can be equal and we could have a functional culture if it weren’t for all these plutocratic problems people might take the advice and go underground for some more behind the scenes direct action by the cover of night and find ways to better channel their rage than negotiating. The problem is, Mars is retrograde and in aversion to Scorpio and in no position to effectively conduct, and being sextile to Saturn, this fixated and furious mental mode also plays right into the systems hands. We might do better to head off over the hedge for some lycanthropy than hooded insurrection in many cases, just be aware. Especially as Mercury is going to go retrograde across these degrees next month. With Mars trine Venus perfecting here people might definitely speaking some “we are no longer cooperating, this is war” versions of having to express themselves which might get recorded and reviewed later in a court of law come October so be forewarned about what you say even if you believe it to be true. Mercury going back on his word in a secretive sign ruled by a retrograde Mars does not bode well for trustworthy communication. Te Sun and Venus will be in mutual reception so many people might be speaking the truth about their social connections and their fight to express themselves and be brave in the battle for what is right and virtuous, but its exactly this community truth speaking which also ends up being the problem. Mums the word, more or less.

Again, by the end of the Month the Sun opposes Chiron, we get in an uncomfortable position concerning direct action within an orientation toward cultural equality and find a balancing act on our hands while the jaws of the systematic trash compactor of corrupt machinations tightens back to its ultimate psi and has options for attack and defense thoroughly pinned.

This is not a cheery forecast, but its intended to be quite transparent and not vague so we can navigate our ay through certainly the most difficult portion of the year. As noted, major shifts and definite upswings are on their way initiating around Winter Solstice. The time between then and now is about navigation down the bumpy road. We knew it would get bad, be let’s be clear about how bad so we can still manage to make it through to the other side.

I’m going to go more granular into these themes week by week and cover what this might all mean for any of us on a more personal level. There is still much we can use for our own projects and developments despite the flying sparks, stalling machines, abounding villains and grinding plot schemes. I’ve seen charts that by their configurations and distributions of planets will probably mostly benefit from this Sturm und Drang season. So it is certainly not hopeless, despite being set to distorted guitars and crashing drums rather than whimsical flute.