I typically stay away from topical subjects on this blog. So much of blogging, or so it seems to me, is involved in dreadful and sensationalistic exercises in ambulance chasing and hysteria in which I’d rather not be a participant. Hopefully, I’ll avoid that in what follows.
As a biodynamic farmer, I am probably more aware than most about what’s going on in the heavens at any particular moment. We plant by the moon and the planets, so the connection of the earth to the rest of the cosmos is an awareness I’ve cultivated over the decades. And it’s a real connection.
I’ve never been interested in astrological prognostications concerning world events—elections, natural disasters, and so forth—though I did happen to take this world pandemic into consideration and wonder about its reflection in the heavens. It’s happening all over the world, so it wasn’t a matter of figuring out when a country was conceived or born (founded). The earth is one being.
The way people have learned astrology throughout history has not been to start from a set of principles or formulae, but to see what happens on earth (or with a person) and compare it to astronomical phenomena. That is, the principles and formulae arose from observation. This is what used to be called science.
Anyway, when I checked the almanac, I noticed Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and Pluto in Capricorn, the sign traditionally associated with business and commerce. Mars and Saturn according to Ptolemaic astrology are the lesser and greater malefics respectively. They’re essentially the bad hombres of the cosmos. Pluto, unknown to Ptolemy, is kind of a metaphysical disruptor, and maybe the baddest of bad hombres. All three of those dudes in the same place is comparable to what Peewee Herman found walking into the biker bar in Peewee’s Big Adventure. Jupiter is the Peewee Herman in this configuration: generous, hopeful, and just trying find his bike and make the world happy once again.
In January, when the combined conoraviral and economic breakdown began, Saturn and Jupiter were in a hard (in several senses) conjunction. In mid-March, Mars, which moves more quickly than the other planets here, conjoined Jupiter and right after that Pluto. Jupiter is expansive; it makes things bigger. Mars is a volatile little bugger, bringing energy to whatever situation it comes to. Its energy blew this stellium to smithereens, kind of like throwing a full can of gas into a fire.
Mars, thankfully, moved out of Capricorn a couple days ago and Saturn will leave next week. This should calm things down a little, especially after Jupiter passes Pluto just before Easter, though Jupiter and Pluto won’t be leaving Capricorn anytime soon. Jupiter will again conjoin Pluto in late June—which probably won’t be bad, and might actually be good for the market—while Saturn moves back into Capricorn in early July. But it won’t be anything like what we’ve already seen.
However, there’s no accounting for the behavior of politicians and opportunists. The stars incline, brothers and sisters, they do not compel.
Interestingly, a 14-year-old Indian boy, Abighya Anand, predicted what we’re going through eight months ago using Vedic astrology.
I think everything we’re going through at the moment points to our very serious case of Cosmological Estrangement Syndrome (CES). The good news is that recent events may be making at least some people reconsider their place in cosmos—or at least reconsider where their food comes from, which is a step in that direction. If Covid-19 has taught us anything, it’s that everything is connected to everything else. The internet and social media, as useful as they can be, are but subnature’s mimesis of the holistic and sophiological reality of our mutual enfoldment—and they’re not a substitute for it. In fact, as I have written in Transfiguration, they further estrange us from the Real.
Michael’s latest books are an edition of The Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutzand Transfiguration: Notes toward a Radical Catholic Reimagination of Everything. He can be reached at director@thecenterforsophiologicalstudies.com See also The Center for Sophiological Studies' available courses.