The Astrology of February 2020: Well, Technically...

Edward Ruscha, 1962

Skies empty but still buzzing. Still scintillating from the thermodynamic wave over yesterdays fuselage , and grinder wheeled in like a chainlink barricade, melted shopping carts rolling down the sidewalk slope like a gentle calf grazing in a meadow and a calm evening sunset, the soft blues impregnated with gentle orange becoming pink in the womb of the world remembered as ripping red poking into the picture and fingering a place to pick and sit and cellophane oneself. Big Ben, toppled and a Casio clock with scarlet sideways slash announcing the time and marching orders printing out with the receipt roll comes directly into the console of your car. Music? No music, only static chopped up into various length sections and stacked. Theatre? Where? For fuck sake what the fuck are you thinking? Opera? Look at the Casio Clock, don't you remember what year it is? Telstar by the Ventures plays directly to wax and like rumbling fields split with verdant green lava and lapping milk tongues, the air buzzing with mechanical mosquitos, the earth seething and lurching out of unison, the read on the next hour innacurate, the test tubes smashed and used anyway irregardless. The grocery gutted, burned then filled with soil, poisoned and left for the centuries to remind us of a story, all only done for the recording, some sinister backmasked sub track, mixed into the steam engine whistle, or the bird chirp, or the dog bark, and told to us it had always been there, when we could still go listen for our selves, and not be on the blunt beating end of hear say and second hand chatter. The Earth is electrified, an unknown activity from within the grains of sand, the splitting geodes, the liquified dirt. It sobs, but does so with violent claps of terrain, growing restlessly barbed and mutating in rolling cascades: bull, beetle...crab-- The sky a razor dirty in the street cleaned only by wrenched silence, and shut from eyelids back to smoldering mattress, the cleansing is never complete. We bathe to enter heaven but only by fire may we cross the thresholds of hell, and in our sterile state, our false clean, we wick ourselves up into an inverse cocoon, for who knows what and who knows why.

Sun square Mars

Venus ingress Aqu

Venus conjunct Saturn

Inferior Conjunction in Aqu 3

Saturn sextile Chiron

Moon ingress Aqu

Mercury RX square Mars

Venus conjunct Jupiter

New Moon in Aqu

Mercury RX conjunct Venus

Mars sextile Neptune

Mercury RX conjunct Jupiter

Saturn square Uranus

Moon conjunct Uranus

Sun ingress Pisces

Venus square Mars

Mercury station direct

Mars trine Pluto

Venus ingress Pisces

Sun sextile Uranus

Full Moon in Virgo

1962

Aquarius Party: Fresh Blast

For the Month of February we experience a phenomenon, 6 of the 7 visible planets will be in the sign of Aquarius, the sign of innovation, pioneering, the hypothetical, conceptual, avant garde, decentralization woth a mind to make updates and upgrades to systems and structures ushering in new ideas out of no where or concepts that might have been previously too marginalized to be considered viable. We might be both thankful and more than a bit concerned that Aquarius’ traditional ruler, Saturn is very much in the house, as we will see all of the above significations geared on the macro scale to structures of authority, control, restriction, laws, rules and regulations. A common theme since Saturn conjoined Pluto in his other rulership Capricorn last January: the answer to all of the worlds problems, no matter how hypothetical, we are being informed absolutely must be increased security and control everywhere. This historical episode of Kronos Gone Wild comes packed with a headspinning plot twist, Saturn’s movement back and forth over the zodiacal boundary of Capricorn and Aquarius, presenting us with two very different faces of control domination happy Saturnian archetypes in a see saw. Saturn from late March to June 2020 in Aquarius Bill Gates and friends back to Trump-Cops-ICE racism from June to mid December and since then what are we looking at? A win for democracy? I’d keep my eyes peeled for what new and improved policing is being invented and installed everywhere all at once as the pile up in Saturn choreographed Aquarius is quite extensive.

Antoine Wiertz, Thoughts And Visions Of A Severed Head

On the personal level this may be bringing into your life restrictions certainly, as that is Saturn’s tempering technique, but also innovative new structures and systems and mental disciplines to wherever Aquarius lands into your natal house system. As 2021 gets underway it would be very wise to inform yourself which life layer is due for a dramatic reboot. As far as February is concerned this is not merely Father Time or the Grim Reaper at the door, but also Jupiter expanding intellectual territory and bringing coherence of what’s beyond mental frontiers, Venus lighting up what new concepts we might resonate with and find aesthetically desirable, the Sun orienting in outsider territory exploring idiosyncratic and decentralized perspectives, and Mercury rethinking, organizing and analyzing the details of hypothetical blueprints, scrutinizing the variables as well as, for few days, the Moon bringing all these abstractions into the felt field where subjectivity and intuition can hold and mold them.

In a thoroughly digitalized, bifurcated, politicized, divided, and techno-corporately categorized reality it is impossible to not feel alienated and exiled by this wild abundance of Aquarius expression, but perhaps a historical anecdote is in order. The last time we had such an abundance of planets in Aquarius was 1962: think the debuts of Bob Dylan, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the first pessimistic public statements of the Vietnam War, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Berlin Wall, the first telecommunications satellite, Kennedy in the White House, and what ensues after with those as seed forms. I.E. the entire 60s. After the post World War period in the West culminating in the advent of industrialized economies, suburbs, television, mass college drop out numbers, a draft and a growing discontent of the youth with how society is structured and what kind of options they were being handed for being in the world, namely a homogenous corporate consumerist existence or soldiering to slaughter, draft cards were burned, rock bands exploded, civil rights got on the move and an acid fueled counter-cultural high saturation paradigm shift spread through the world. This was an entourage parading across Aquarius opposing Uranus in Leo, where as in 2021 we have a slightly lesser stream of planets (sans Mars and the Node) moving through Aquarius squaring Uranus in Taurus. The hippie generation (alias Me Generation, Alias Baby Boomers) who had Pluto in Leo flared up as revolutionary psychedelic peacocks when this antithetical signature transited their nativities. We see the Millennials now getting a system-signal jam from the Aquarius activity square their natal Pluto in Scorpio, but the real showdown might land more on what Uranus shit starts and electrifies in Taurus, more on that in the following section— but all this to say that this progressive, innovative, pioneering upgrades to systemization breeds both authoritarian, fascistic, dispassionate, scientific, technological monoculture as much as it does the alienation necessary to encourage avant gaurde art, counter-cultural enclaves, and the networkings of outsider thinkers building new subcultures. Society will offer you the standardized version this year so prepare to have a new technocratic identity, where as the latter is envisioned and created by ourselves, with no help from political paradigms or medical experts. Do you want AMAZON or ABC NO RIO?

Casper David Friedrich, The Sea Of Ice

Venus enters Aquarius on the 1st of February which brings our values into accordance with finding new patterns and trying out aesthetics we just found outside the normal channels or just made up. Expect to being attracted to the abstract and looking for collective content to be more appealing as well as what perplexing concepts holds your interest and bonds you with other like minds. With all the Air signs there is a social quality— Aquarius may be the no man’s lands of outcasts, but these fringe personae tend to collect together into scenes and webs of associations and affiliates. She creeps toward Saturn over the next five days which can put a damper on the fun, or at least add lead to the gravity of the ideas which get are getting her off. Lighter progressive periodicals might blow away with the wind where the stark aesthetics of real radical manifestoes draws our attention further in with a radiance whispering always further over the horizon in extreme constructs yet to be considered. We can learn to appreciate the feel of the new boundaries we’re setting and what kind of satisfactions they protect and preserve.

1962 edition Domenica del Corriere

With any air sign there’s information moving around and two days after Venus gets acquainted with what exactly Saturn is strategizing for you in Aquarius Mercury moving retrograde conjoins the Sun in the same sign, bringing our objectives in line with our rethinking the same set of blueprints with an inclination to correct the initial mistakes. You might want to pay close attention at 8:45am Eastern if you want to notice some pertinent detail, remember something critical, find something you lost, or suddenly see something normally too small to notice. The Moon comes along shortly after between the 9th and the 12th and brings some hands on deck, but its more or less fumbling in the dark as she is conjoins the Sun for a New Moon on the 11th a few hours after Venus conjoins Jupiter. With our values, desires and sense of connection drawn towards new innovative concepts and designs and Jupiter opening up space to glimpse profound new possibilities in the same improvements and upgrades the Moon sets a dark and contemplative moment to sew seeds of such potential systema to manifest over time, as is Saturn’s plan and the Sun’s agenda. February is all over concerned with designing tomorrow and going out on a limb, and we might say that this is one of the more quietely eventful and significant moments o the calendar month, but as the saying goes “…but wait, there’s more!”

Gulnar Hajo, Dream of City through the Eye of Women

Retrograde Mercury conjoins Venus then Jupiter by mid month then stations direct on the 20th. We enter the Month moving backwards in our thought patterns wondering what’s wrong with what we authored in our lives since January 15th that we need to reorganize and correct. His conferences with Venus and Jupiter will have to do with what we want and what is possible, how to open things up for ourselves, but also how to restore pleasure and joy in our lives. For this to occur, we need to make a plan, come up with some ideas, look in some unlikely places. Whatever gets built now, by us individually, all of us collectively, or by society, states, tech or the larger culture, we’ve better look over the plans multiple times and make sure fun, art, sex, food, education, philosophy, spirituality, mobility and celebration are included in the designs, as Saturn seriously doesn’t care if they are there, so we’ll have to source from elsewhere than the establishment, and in Air Period Aquarius that means not from the collective, politick, or digital climate but further out on a limb at the edge lands of our experiences and life ways.

'Judge' cartoon, 1889

Aquarius VS. Taurus

It might be helpful to just play zodiacal archetype madlibs filling in the blanks here with fitting signifiers for these 90 degree signs on either side of the versus: Science vs. Nature, Artificial vs. Natural, Conceptual vs. Real, Abstract vs. Material, Regimented vs. Cyclical, Hypothetical vs. Sensory, Ideas vs. Experiences; and if we throw in Aquarius’ in house Ruler, Saturn, and Taurus’ special guest visitor, Uranus, we get: Thought Control vs. Radical Ecology, Progressive Authoritarianism vs. Weaponized Laborers, Technocracy vs. Disrupted Markets, New Regulations vs. Independent Makers, Modern Science vs. Green Alchemy, Collective Limitations vs. Experimental Art, Exponential Arresting Statistics vs. Grounded Methodology of Action, Kronos of the Sky vs. Prometheus of the Earth, Surveillance Grid Drones vs. HotRodded Tractors and Raised Pitch Forks.

Murray Favro, 1962

Even astrologers spent a little too much time paying attention to the January 6th so called “storming of the Capitol”— as, when you scan the basic significations of the malefic Saturn squaring the outer planet Uranus you can come up with a lot more hiding behind the smoke screen of performative media that also fit the bill: Progressive politics vs. an alienated populist working class. As alluded to previously, the significance of what stirs members of this populism is beneath the surface, not the vomit on top. Take Trump out of the equation and you have a working class never before so attacked— small businesses forced shut as if they are completely insignificant— and befitting to Taurus, along with labor we also see the complete stomp down of art as well. If we weren’t so politicized there might be some continuity between Taurus’ people: artists, makers, laborers, farmers, tradespersons, craftspersons, sexworkers, gardeners, ecologists, etc.— alliances, cooperatives and coalitions that would be utterly destabilizing to the system, especially the new plans for control being concocted and readied to roll out. NY Produce packers have recently gone on strike. Expect more of that in 2021. Way more. Looking back up at what ended on either side of the Vs., you might want to consider which end of the struggle you expect to be on.

Nancy Morrow, Edifice, 2013

Of course I’m reading the extreme end of the literal here to highlight a point about 2021 and about February. There’s a fight between Aquarian significations and Taurus’ significations with Saturn and Uranus as the players, but some of it is tensions and clashes which cause cascade effects that are just embedded in the plot line. New system installs disrupt the rhythm of our lives and effect commodities and the foods and materials we rely on and force us to change our patterns and experiment until we find new methods of being productive and satisfied with our existence.

Imad Habbab, Totems

The Sun opens February’s episode of 2021’s ongoing staged drama right away with an alarm set off by a square to Mars on the 1st calendar day. This is largely about our energy and agency as there is a not so calm conversation going on all month between our Objectives, long term Strategies and in the moment Tactics and critical response. We have our eyes set on establishing new patterns, we are exploring designs to realize these for the long haul, but a bunch of all to real challenges have cropped up in the short term that slow down our progress as there is adverse ground which needs to be dealt with for any productivity to hold in our conceptual future. This can be a negotiation between the present and the ongoing tomorrow which has us practicing disciplines and routines to stay calm and be productive in a combination of familiar and all together new ways.

Caspar David Friedrich - The Stages of LIfe - 1835

Mercury also squares Mars in his rethinking of how tomorrow should be structured, which references pretty much exactly the same issues the Sun identified, but there might be a little over a week until you could gather your thoughts enough or make the communications necessary to begin to correct any related issues. You can’t order the materials until you get the measurements, even though you know which room needs the renovation.

Rafael Soriano

The Saturn square discussed above completes on the 17th, which is the first of two more high tension points between the two which pin down the story of 2021, the following being on June 14th and December 24th, so imagine this as more of the story of this year rather than a day in February. Although, we will be certainly feeling the configuration pretty personally on the 17th of February as the Moon is right on top of Uranus when the aspect goes direct. We might need to adjust our sense of steering through the world as the terrains shift and the laws assemble themselves arbitrarily from elsewhere out of sight.

Starr Hardridge

Venus Makes the last square from Aquarius to Taurus in February, aspecting Mars on the 19th. New, innovative, abstract desires clashing with challenges to prepare materials to be productive, cerebral aesthetics in tension with the acts of craft— what we fantasize about mentally versus what tasks we have to do right now— whichever version of this transpires for you and the world its worth noting that I find often a latent sexual tension in Venus-Mars aspects, when the Yin is communicating with the Yang, although saying whether or not this is going to be a turn on or turn off to any specific individual is impossible. We all got our things.

Kinke Kooi, I will Always Be Around, 2018

Yin and Yang

Speaking of Yin and Yang it is also worth considering how after an insanely mental month we will be needing some cool, flowing balm to immerse into a more relaxed state. Air signs are considered active, and even though engaging with a world of new plans and designs and exploring new ideas and concepts sounds exciting, especially compared to brutally motionless and arrested 2020, we will need some amorphous, psychic, romantic, languid, compassionate, empathic, escapist, fantastical, psychic, intuitive perspectives and experiences after all of Mars’ drudgery getting the ball going while a thousand new protocols are drafted and announced and everyone is discussing how alienated they all are to each other. The Sun ingresses Pisces on the 18th and brings us some of these very healing and congealing waters. Where as Aquarius often deals with the collective (and who is or is not allowed to participate in the collective, which with Saturn present can be more than a bit more of a Borg mind) Pisces instead deals with the All. It is the holistic awareness of how all flows to and from shared source and we are ultimately inseparable no matter how many constructs we attempt to create, in the end we are all the Universe. This could be refreshing to look at after weeks of thinking about who is in and who is out and who is way too far out. As a special treat Venus enters Aquarius on the 25th, which dignifies her by exaltation, where she is free and unhindered to experience pleasure and be romantic to her hearts content without any parameters or presets. This will bring greater fertility to the embattled Taurus end of the spectrum as well as bring some cheer to our outlooks by being copresent the Sun. Again, Pisces is known for escapism, although, at the right dosage we all know the value of droping out, tuning in and turning on, especially as we will literally be connecting back to 1962 here by transit. We might want to think of the subcultural, countercultural and revolutionary value of saying fuck off to the entire political sphere and interfacing only with spirituality and the Universe directly, sorry society. I encourage it, see what happens. Don’t lose your footing but check out with the numinous is doing for a few, and express it creatively.

This is also Venus entering combustion, which Che completes in cazimi later down the line in the first degrees of Aries, but for now we can get used to a feeling free to be as creative as we want and free to experience all the pleasure we desire being purified and tempered by centering it self on our objectives. Yeah we can create anything but what do we want to create will be the ongoing limitation. The Sun also sextiles Uranus on the 25th, which supports the connection between radical and revolutionary art and the idea of the dissolve of all boundaries and limitations centered in both radical ecology and holistic world views. I’d also suggest trying that out as well and actually believing in it this time.

Caspar David Friedrich’s Two Men Contemplating The Moon

To add another dose of Yin to the final days of February we get the Full Moon in Virgo on the early morning of the 27th, rendering us receptive to detailed processes, the material small parts, listening to what something needs to run smoother and be more efficient with cool, calm attention. This will benefit from Mercury’s recent direct station, and will culminate in light as Mercury is applying to Jupiter. Here we take some time to seriously get into the mechanics of our new designs and tweak them into precision functioning.

Antoine Wiertz

Malefic Collaborations

It’s worth noting that this month there is a bit of a pattern of malefics aspecting outer planets in a harmonious and collaborative fashion. Though perhaps soft aspects are preferable, when Saturn, authority and control sextiles Chiron in Aries, critical healing of the individual and a wounded sense of agency, it’s not necessarily the kind of collaborative facilitation we might choose. Later on when Mars in Taurus sextile’s Neptune in Pisces on the 13th we see a less empowered malefic collaborating with deception and illusion— but again, what you are trying to accomplish at this point though aligning with mysterious synchronicity and dreamlike permeability might very well dissolve before your eyes, all your efforts a wash. We should shoot for a concert of the hallucinatory and the actively fecund, but considering the players involved here, and Mercury in his retrograde throws at the time trying to remember how to still have fun in a sci fi nightmare, there’s a lot of curved blades to crosswalk. Mars goes on to trine Pluto on the 24th of February from the degree of the fixed star Algol, the head of the Ghoul, or Gorgon, Medusa’s severed head, the origin of the Evil Eye, who’s apotropaic power derives from the primordial serpent, the raw ferocity of nature, the strangulating and poisonous jungle appeased to by prehistoric rites and made literal when you come upon a mountain lion while going about your morning jog and have to keep eye contact with them as you back yourself to safety as breaking the gaze will result in getting pounced upon. Gorgon’s Heads can be found above the city gates and doorways of antiquity as well as on the aegis of Zeus and Athena, the idea being repelling destructive forces by the pure, potent visage of raging nature herself. That Mars, the planet of violence, severance, action, energy is upon this degree in harmony with Hades himself in Late Capricorn, a placement which we saw all 2020 makes for plutocratic despots, deep state designs and killer cops, then there is quite a black hole to detour around as well as some predator infested wilds to steer wide of. Though brief, and in harmonious aspect, and occurring between Mercury’s direct station and Venus’ ingress into exaltation, and likely not the most important aspect of 2021, February or even the week, thematically it is worth looking at. Especially as it is followed up by the Sun sextiling Uranus also in Taurus. Late February we might be much more receptive to how heavy and worth our reverence nature really is, and how she is not to be ignored or impressed upon with the designs of empire, no matter how progressive they are packaged. Earth and Death are ultimately in charge, Gaia and Hades being indeed here to outlive whatever political vogue this current moment insists upon. Keep your eyes peeled and enjoy the deep motifs. Also decapitation is a common event when Algol gets involved, and in a time typified by banners bearing guillotines on them, I’m just sayin.

Art Kane, Fashion 1962