The most pertinent astrological event of our time is the once-every-two-centuries procession of the elements in the Jupiter-Saturn synodic cycle. In December 2020, we are moving from an earth age to an air age. I will be cataloguing reflections and predictions, as well as amplifications of the elements and their zodiacal signs.
Food is the Reward
We say that Venus, ruler of taurus and libra, governs ethics and aesthetics. Ethics is the more immaterial, and best represented by libra, the air sign. Aesthetics is concrete, and best represented by taurus, the earth sign. Taurus is the sign of food, values, and art. We talk about tasting food and having taste in art. Taste in art is essentially a measure of appropriateness, and so are our values. “[Something], in what measure?” A tone of voice, a texture, a shape or color. Recall, taurus also rules money. Wealth in what measure? What results in pleasure.
What is this association between the material and value? Why does something hold more value if it is objective and physical?
Tina Fey once said something very wise: that the only real reward is food. When you are celebrating a success, the feeling is cemented by food. Regardless of scale. Finished fixing a pipe at home? Have a nice lunch. Successfully stage the opening night of your epic opera? Go out to dinner. The act of consumption is tied to the success of the deed, this is especially obvious on the occasion of a toast. Not only does the food tether the success around it, but it binds together the people who are sharing in it. We see that food is not only a consolidated symbol of value, but that it also concentrates the group into a set of values. Thus food is a bedrock of tribal life and tribalism. How offended is the tribe when you refuse to eat with them, or in their manner?
The word “binding” means three things: attaching, reinforcing and restricting. Tribal life is restricted by convention, but the affixing of concrete images and values to the symbolic order of the tribe fortifies its strength by providing it new organs, new capacities. In alchemical psychology, the stage of “coagulation” is all about the affixing of images, and closely relates to the process of personification. When a psychological complex is given an image—or better yet, personified—it is far easier to deal with. But the carrying around of an image that has been outgrown is, of course, restrictive. So images must not be permanent. Our bodies too are images, and they are beautiful and valuable because they die.
The attachment to our bodies is very important for life. If we did not care about our bodies and find them beautiful we would die much faster. “Let your wicked desires keep you pinned to this earth so your work could go on,” wrote Jung to his suicidal friend. Desire keeps us in life, and the desire of all the beings within us keep the body together. The countless microorganisms within do not have minds, but they have wants.
Dissolution Under Analysis
Supposing that there is a mesh of matter underlying the various objects of the world. After all, bodies die and buildings fall to rubble and then to dust. So if we think about matter as a whole, without its temporary approximate forms, it certainly is a diffuse mesh, a matrix. Then the cohering of that mesh into one of these forms is a desire.
Consider also the process of logic, which must operate upon abstractions that have been crystallized into units. Set theory, for instance, deals with the abstraction of set, drawn into coherence by its categorization as a set. Each member of a set is also itself a set. It is sets all the way up and down. So it is the bundling of axioms, the coagulation of the set, that makes it all operable.
An Amp for Christ
When Christ came to earth, he vitiated the magical projections of animism. The spirits of nature withdrew from the rocks and trees. This is the root of the opposition between Christianity and paganism. The keynote here is that Christ did this by taking these projections upon himself—he sheathed himself in the symbols of the world. This was an axial moment in the development of consciousness, where people realized they could find all the spirits of the world inside themselves. Here psyche could make an integral step in its pivot to self-reflection. We don’t know what the world appeared like preceding or directly after this event, but we might imagine that the world of matter suddenly appeared much more real and substantial.
And he said something about how he was the living bread, and from then on people have been eating his body in the form of the Eucharist. Is this part of his great deed, to make explicit the bundling of values that goes into a physical object? And that the consumption of the physical object brings with it an isomorphic psychological change?
We Want Stuff
The Industrial Age, the age of earth, came after the Enlightenment, the age of fire. And it is clear how science and reason set the stage for all the marvelous technology of industry. The achievements of the Enlightenment were very exciting, but somewhat abstract, and so did not look like much. It is the movement from age to age, from principle to machine, that gave us something to look at.
Then with this new industrial speed, we had so much to look at. We have now a lot of stuff. Without effort, I can get a mug with anything I want on it and in it. So many, many objects.
As stated, matter is energy drawn into form by desire and objects are therefore crystalizations of desire. So we desire objects. And we want them because they radiate their energy, their love upon us. A statue painstakingly carved from marble can sit in one’s home for a very long time and continue to radiate, to unfold new dimensions. It took a lot of desire for it to get here. A mass-produced object, not so much.
Lacan’s objet petit a is the object of desire that is never attained, because once it is attained, the desire fades. But the more something is wanted, the longer it can radiate its magic upon us once we have it. Things that take longer or are harder to find are obviously going to stoke more desire, and radiate for longer once they are in our apartments.
Because goods are produced so fast, we have to compensate for this through artificial anticipation: a culture of drops. The new sneaker is about to come out, better cop at launch. A Funko Pop based on a guy I like will be released shortly—I had better be the first to click. The Funkos are terrific examples because of their monstrously dead eyes and immobile bodies, and their interchangeability implying disposability, though the character they represent is always predicated on some attachment. We loved him, once, didn’t we? When we saw him in the show, and he surprised and delighted us? If only I could have a reminder of that in my home. Yet once the package arrives we just set him onto the shelf and expect him to do all the work. We do not vivify these collectibles; the sneakers are too nice to wear out, so we put them on display. The Funkos often do not even escape their sad little boxes.
When a child plays with toys, they nurture the object so it can continue radiating itself upon them. The beloved toy is another being, an animate partner, and they continue to want it even though they have it, because the breath of life comes into it, and it continually creates new experiences. It is born anew through play. This resembles certain rituals of old, where the cosmic origin is recreated, and the human participants are born anew with the world. The creation of the world is constant, it is only whether we care to be involved again. Spirit is breathing its love into matter always, always.
The most pertinent astrological event of these years is the once-every-two-centuries transition in the elements of the Jupiter-Saturn synodic cycle. In December 2020, we are moving from an earth age to an air age. I will be cataloguing reflections and predictions, as well as amplifications of the elements and their zodiacal signs. What follows is a short essay on how the bias of the material age might compromise the utility of astrology.
Who do I speak to about astrology, and what is the purpose of public speech about astrology?
At its best, the astrological community comprises spiritually fluent, intellectual, open-minded, zeitgeist-informed individuals who are interested in cultural progression and restoration in appropriate measure. However, the common use of astrology appears more and more predicated on the determination of a natal chart in the governance of an individual—but this is typically contradicted through practices of individuation. The more a person is in touch with themselves, the less a birth chart is “lived out,” and the more that it is “felt out.” As archetypal currents flow through an individual, it seems that these forces only becomes externalized if the native is not consciously engaging with the material in their inner life. If someone is continuously meditating on Pluto-conjunct-Venus, for instance, and is unfolding the archetypal material through contemplation, art, and attention, it is less likely to manifest as a concrete objective event in their life.
This is something seen easily during every mercury retrograde. For those who are following mercury-as-psychopomp into continual modes of reflection, the life becomes slower and not as many trains are missed.
When you’re reading the chart of an individual, or checking their transits, you are essentially painting the attitudinal environment of that person or that period. But you cannot account for the actions that result from these moods—the client is governor of their own responses going forward. Skilled astrologers can sometimes predict specific events, but that is a testimony to the homogeneity of the culture as manifest in the client as much as anything. It is probably harmless to see Uranus transiting a person’s 4th house and say, “Oh, you might move soon,” but to frame transits as only literal denies the complexity of the psychological backdrop upon which the transits are operating.
What is far more harmful, and ideologically related, is using astrological tools to shame people and create scapegoats. “Geminis are liars,” or “Any Leo placement produces narcissism,” etc. In this case you are fixing the conception of the archetypes involved, limiting their expression in the life. It accrues over time, just as any other constructed cultural narrative—internalized gender or class prejudices, for instance. But if you were to actually unpack “gemini” and its significations, you would arrive at no limit. Any depth psychologist knows that archetypes are literally inexhaustible, and that is what makes them archetypes. And when you have any planet in any sign, that is already two inexhaustibilities in conversation with each other—boundless permeability.
That we think we can pin an archetype down, objectify it, is a result of our materialist era bias, by the way. A material conception of the world, predicated on atomic sciences and all that, benefits from categories and objects. That’s how we fit them into the scientific method. We also like it for business purposes. When something can be boxed it can be sold. Whether we are building a formula or an economic system, an incredible amount of our mental effort goes into navigating these assemblies. This is the Minecraft world we’re in, and it does not seem unrealistic to us.
Taking Marie-Louis von Franz’ view that matter is psyche’s extension into time, if we are to turn around and look at psyche in its pre-instantiated state, of course we are going to bring the bias of materiality with us as observers. Inevitable as it is, the narrower we settle in our conceptualization of psychic content, the more we become trapped in our own lives. The operational shorthands of logic are great for designing a machine, but hopelessly impoverished for assessing character: “Virgos keep clean roooms because they like organization!” As if it will happen each time. “It depends,” is the continual cry of the feeling function. Feeling is only the measure of appropriateness, the evaluation of meaning which is never twice the same. Imagination is the sole tool we have for creation, it is the force that coheres form, and in order for it to design an effective world it needs both discernments: reason and feeling.
It is not only in astrology that people want to take psychic subjects and put a pin in them. There is always going to be a fascination with the uncanniness of fringe phenomena, objects of mysticism, occultism, parapsychology. Of course it is a very thin margin between the uncanny and the fearsome, for the uncanny marks the edge of the known.
Thinking now of some memes and things that were recently trending as punchlines: the moon, hexes, fairies. “Astral projection” has long been a twitter punchline, as has “the name of God.” Psychedelic depictions of angels were having a moment not long ago, but these renditions were really only monstrous eyes upon flaming wheels. There is no supernal fire in any of them. Psychedelic means “manifesting the mind,” and all art is thus inherently psychedelic, but the copy-of-copy-of-copy of what was once a mystic encounter produces not any more exuding of mana than the average spongebob fan art. What mind is manifest here? Only some pale mimicry.
All of this is a commodification and a profanity of the unknowable. Weirdly, the history of lovecraftian motifs in net culture has long been associated with the STEM set of people. “Imagine something outside of reason! What the heck?!” On the other hand, Ezekielian angels and the “astral project to ur job” memes seemed to be more endemic to arty types. Just an observation.
We are flirting a little with these edges of the unknown because we can never shake the drive to expand our awareness, a little inner flame licks at our hearts telling us that some concept is unresolved. We draw to ourselves the low-res, more palatable images of archetypes so that we can position them in our lives or let them simmer on the back burner. Even hella long ago Plato recognized that false images can act like crutches leading you closer to the numinous, ineffable subject. Really the only risk is keeping them around inordinately as they leak more and more of their prejudice into your worldview, or worse yet that you cling to them so long you mistake them for yourself.
Astrology in its excellence functions as an alphabet of myth, living and dynamic, responding to the zeitgeist as much as the subjects of its study are coloring that zeitgeist. So when we cheapen the practice, by reducing it to operating instructions and standardizing its prejudices, we deprive ourselves of what could be the most accessible and practical psychological tool of our time. It’s a little awkward, since interest in astrology was relatively dormant for a while, and is now trending hard... We are coming back to it with a fervor that attests to our thirst for myth! Let’s hope that we give the archetypes enough time and space to speak for themselves.
The most pertinent astrological event of these years is the once-every-two-centuries transition in the elements of the Jupiter-Saturn synodic cycle. In December 2020, we are moving from an earth age to an air age. I will be cataloguing reflections and predictions, as well as amplifications of the elements and their zodiacal signs. Here are the first four.
Small Things and Small Views
We are seeing deeper specialization, we are seeing narrower reality tunnels. The final act of the epoch of earth was kickstarted by the narrative of fake news, and relative truth. There were no longer supposedly objective news sources. Ideologies became more specific as milieus were reduced to echo chambers.
What I realize as I observe this is the movement from earth to air. Virgo is the airy part of earth, and rules sand, particles, and details. The microscope—and the tiny worlds emergent from observation through that tool—are ruled by Virgo. The finale of the atomic understanding of the universe is the overbearing strain of the intellect toward the asymptote of infinite detail. Ultra high resolution. Next, we shall not find bits, but qubits. We shall not find things, but processes. Not nouns, but verbs.
The Undead Dragon
It doesn’t always go down like this, but in 2020 when Jupiter and Saturn conjoin for the final time in an earth sign, they will then be moving together, still close, into Aquarius, officially inaugurating the synodic air epoch.
That this earth-based synodic cycle should conclude with Capricorn is fitting, and even more fitting the continuity into Aquarius. These two signs are both ruled by Saturn, and are indeed the only adjacent signs ruled by the same planet. Thus even the proximity of these two signs testifies to Saturn’s constriction, endurance, and authority; the sun will always take twice as long to cross Saturn’s domain, as it is the only “double-space” on the board.
The entire tension of the last 30 years can be summed up between Capricorn and Aquarius, despite all the spectacular aspects in other signs during this time. But basically the cultural backdrop across much of the planet has been about the tightening of regulations and infrastructure amid struggles for independence. The capitalist narrative in the final act became less fascinated by the amount of goods it was possible to produce; nor was the focus anymore on the acquisition of land and deriving its highest yield. These stories were still around, but the new focus was on the abstraction of capital itself: people began to ask “how do we keep this going? How do we keep the system alive?” Like an increasingly desperate necromancer. And more and more bare was the inherent symbolic magic of the system, as banks were bailed out with conjured funds, and new companies with no profit were monstrously inflated with venture capital, their entire worth a fabrication of promise.
This is both Capricorn in decline, feebly attempting to carry on the work of prolonging the life of its institutions; and it is the anticipation of Aquarius, the wish, the hope, and that a company’s acumen is prized above the goods themselves.
Virtual Black Squares
In the black square too I see one of the final proclamations of the age of earth. The square (and cube) is a classical symbol of earthiness and materiality. Blackness too is associated with earth: the deepest, heaviest, earthiest hue. But it is no object that we are seeing in the black square: it is a digital image, a projection of light with no weight. It is not in one place, as a physical object is. It is diffuse across platforms. In this sense it anticipates the air epoch.
Earth is also the element of value. It is desire that coheres matter into form, and those forms inspire evaluation. Do I value the green cube or the blue cube? “Where I come from, we sit on blue cubes! We eat green food! These are my values!”
The black square phenomenon speaks to our collective experiments with value over the last 200 years. It reminds us that we are individuating away from objective materiality into deeper recognition of our personal reality tunnels. To some, they are posting the black square in informed solidarity; others post it as accidental sabotage; still others post it deliberately for counterrevolutionary purpose. When people look upon it, some see a dramatic collective statement; some see a tacky thing; some see a distraction. For certain casual witnesses, this cyberspace abstraction is their main statement on the historical moment.
During the revolutionary protests, the first widespread issue to cleave the gap in values was the “looting” of Target, a temple of goods. For some, the seizing of commodities was irrelevant to the issues of the protest; others sensed the close relationship between the capitalist temple and the racial and social inequality it engenders.
The multiplicity of values ignited and bared by the proliferation of the black square—this flat image that invokes the form of earth, but does not present it—is one fitting summary for what our preoccupation with material goods has born. America forgot that black lives have value, and now it believes black squares matter.
Devil and Clown
As it has stood til now, “the devil is in the details.” Virgo is the sign of detail, and the scientific paradigm of collecting an infinite amount of samples, rules, and categories has crept into the corporate and legal systems that rule the social order. In the US we find it is rather difficult to bring charges to a police officer, due to the meticulous legal attention it requires. The law finds a way to break down an incident into particles of appropriate size so that it can reconstruct it into a version that preserves itself.
There is an earth devil and an air devil, and the earth devil is the one who instrumentalizes the masses to its own purposes. This is the devil of fascism. By comparison, the air devil fills people with radical individual self-interest. That devil does not grow its arms into the polis, it turns people into violent free agents. If we are using Virgo, mercury-ruled, as one example of an Earth devil, then its analogue in air is Gemini, mercury-ruled. Gemini is the clown, the unpredictable, volatile, independent actor driven mad by apparently irreconcilable cultural forces. We have spent the last few years with this little boogeyman, in the joker movies and the IRL clowns who were scaring people a few years ago. Were these a symptom of the school-shootings, the random and senseless outbursts?
Virgo, and the other Earth signs, convince us that things are ultimately reducible to discrete parts. We wanted to isolate the killer clown, wherever we found him, separating him off from the rest of us. We were focused on the independent actors, and relatively unconcerned with the systemic oppression which produces the social and psychological circumstances that birth such nihilism. Only now, in the final years of the earth age, has the police state and capitalism become flagged as the central issue among the masses. Systemic relations are the concern of air. The clown, master of affective mutability, is frightening because it contradicts atomic positivism. This is something else that is anticipated the age of air: the interdependency of things, the leaking of identity into the individual from the environment. There are no independent actors anymore. No fixed objects of any kind, only becomings.
Hello friends. What follows is a short introduction to the incredibly rare and historical astrological conditions of the year 2020. This was written with the intention of accessibility first and foremost; I believe it’s important that people have some idea of this moment in a historical context, and the tools to evaluate the themes and stories that are emerging currently and in the near future. To my eyes astrology is at its most useful when it is neither prescriptive nor prophetic. It is foremost a tool of psychological midwifery; reading the meaning of the world and its events.
So it’s in my interest to be painting in broad strokes. If you want concrete predictions or exact dates for orbs of conjunction now and in history, then there is a vast field of mundane astrology for you to Google. The myths I’m unfolding here are only for context and consideration—I hope you find them helpful.
Also, there will be a major western bias in my evaluation of history, which sucks, but that’s the milieu I grew up in and can speak to, and it remains the information most easily available. But of course astrological conditions are affecting the entire world. We can still trace the vibe through western examples.
Our Axial Moment
There are two incredibly rare astrological events happening this year. One event is the conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn in the sign of Aquarius. These two planets come together routinely, mechanically, every 20 years. But the rhythm of their waltz is such that each meeting takes place in signs of the same element for 200 years at a time. So when they conjoin in Aquarius, in the last weeks of 2020, that will be their first time together in an air sign since the 14th century.
Since 1802, all of their conjunctions have been in earth signs. (Much more on the significance of this later, but some may already notice this 200 period’s coincidence with the industrial revolution and the age of capital). In the 200-odd years before 1802, they would join every time in fire signs—and for the 200 years before that, water. One waltz more brings us back to the 1300s and 1200s, the previous epoch of air signs. Returning to the present day, we should realize that since an age like this persists for two centuries at a time, it is essentially impossible for someone who witnesses such a transition, to have ever even known anyone who witnessed the previous transition. That is, the 100 year old person in December 2020—even if they had, as a newborn, shared a breath with a 100 year old person—would not reach far back enough in history to have even a dim, second-hand knowledge of the epoch of fire (1603-1801). These periods are effectively the frame edges; the curtains around the drama of the world stage.
Rare as it is, the other historical aspect of the year is much rarer: the fact that Saturn and Jupiter will also conjoin Pluto in Capricorn before they dance their first step together in Aquarius. Though these 3 will never occupy the exact same degree together, they will come very close, on and off throughout 2020. Of course a triple conjunction of planets will always occur in more unpredictable intervals than any pair of planets because of the 3 separate orbits. Famously—well, famous among astrologers—it last happened in the sign of Capricorn during the founding year of the city of Babylon, 1894 BCE.
History of the Elemental Epochs
Because the Jupiter-Saturn synodic cycle is so regular, and because we didn’t know about outer planets til the 18th century, the dance of these two planets through the elemental stations is by far the oldest astrological tool for determining epochal periods. It has long been assumed to be the basic attitudinal/affective backdrop of the zeitgeist. (Now that we know about Pluto, we have a new vibecheck every 12 years! But isn’t it funny that generations didn’t have names until we noticed Pluto in 1930?)
I would be remiss not to mention that there are overlaps between these periods. For instance, Jupiter and Saturn were briefly conjunct in an air sign (Libra) for a few months in 1981. So toward the end of each epoch, humanity gets a little multi-month preview of the coming age. 1981 and the transitional period is a whole other topic in itself, but that’s all I’ll say here.
Even though these elemental ages have been observed for so long, we don’t have a ton of historical examples to draw upon to get a sense of the nature of a particular epoch. As for the air age that we’re entering into, we can refer to the high medieval period as the last instantiation, but to get a third example we have to go into history 6 centuries before that! Soon the world starts to look so different from the current day, that we have to stretch the imagination that much farther. So let’s just a get a brief summary of the previous cycle through the elements.
Earth
1802-2020
This is the epoch we are still in as I write this. It began during the industrial revolution, and the earth themes are undeniable. Human begins have had a resolutely atomic understanding of the universe; materialism is rampant; and it feels that capital and capitalism are catalysts of most human drama. We take things literally and concretely: instead of speculating about other realms, we want to drive our spaceships to big slabs of land like the moon and Mars. We have discovered how to build and make so much STUFF!
Fire
1603-1801
This period is famous for the enlightenment and the French and American revolutions. The time of great sparks! Reason, brilliance, luminance ... self-validation and self-determination. This is really when human beings began to appreciate the value of the idiosyncrasy of a particular thinker. “THIS dude’s contribution” etc. Rights, laws, freedom, were all in vogue. “Here I am!” say the fire signs.
Water
1425-1602
Just as materialist scientism was born out of the liberating thought of the enlightenment, so were the insights of the enlightenment enabled by the world-broadening discoveries of the renaissance. During the water epoch, everyone was sailing everywhere, being introduced to new cultures, and the “new world” was reached by the Europeans. At home, classics of antiquity were being rediscovered and the world was broadened in that sense. Shakespeare was poppin off in a big way. The concept of the stage is essentially water; water is the idea that there is an affective component to reality at all.
Air
1226-1424
Is it a coincidence that the least widely known stage of the cycle is the one we are now entering? Or is that just the nature of history, as it fades further into the past? This period was called, in the West, the “high medieval” era. It was marked by civic demarcations that more or less persist to this day—the previous few hundred years saw constantly changing borders, but now people grouped more firmly into ethnic or national identities drawn to territories. This is also where we got chivalry and the first real rights for women in a long time. And there was the discovery of an actual social life and leisure. “Hanging out” was invented, thank God.
Reality itself received a major patch update: we invented mechanical clocks, which caused people to relate to the passage of time in a totally new way. We used to just slice up the sunrise-to-sundown period into 12 equal parts; now hours were a constant length throughout the year. Common folk had glass windows in their homes for the first time, and the elite even wore glass in front of their eyes to correct their vision. Music became much more complex, as people had more time to take it seriously and form theories. People could go to libraries; for the first time ever there were more books in cities than in monasteries. Cities were finally the place to be. We invented the compass, the game of chess, and the printing press. The astrolabe, like the compass, allowed us to orient ourselves to something that was formerly hopelessly abstract (the stars). Most of this cool shit came from the Arab world, which was flourishing.
Air Epoch 2.0
That’s the historical overview. Obviously there is much, much more there for any anthropologist or history of philosophy ass person. But we are beginning to see some idea of the relation between the qualities symbolized by the elements and the respective periods. Now we can begin a more informed speculation.
The movement from the previous earth age to the previous air age seems to be one of dramatically more complex social relations. Less emphasis on the riches of a kingdom, and more emphasis on its culture, civility, and sophistication. Abstract things became the treasures. As we look to our own incoming air epoch, it is easy to envision a world that places more emphasis on networks instead of objects. Social media, gig economy, and blockchain all appear to be prefigurations of this. In terms of philosophy, it no longer seems very radical to conceptualize oneself as part of a universe whose essential composition is not defined by particles (nouns) but relations and processes (verbs).
What Was Babylon?
I ain’t no student of ancient culture. Until a few months ago, I didn’t even know Babylon was where Iraq is. Of course I think it would behoove all of us to research as much as possible the previous instantiation of this astrological aspect, but I also think it’s valid to speak about its cultural impact through a layman’s osmosis. As far as I can tell: what is Babylon best remembered for? The miraculous hanging gardens, the Tower of Babel, and the law code of Hammurabi. Hammurabi’s code, inscribed onto a stele about a century after the founding of Babylon is celebrated as the first known written laws, some 190 edicts long—and by the estimation of modern scholars, supremely humanitarian for its time. What is the modern equivalent of the ancient innovation of codified laws? Hard to fathom, but something for us to consider as the new age dawns.
More famously, there is the story of the Tower of Babel. A persistent image of human hubris, even today people respond to the tower motif as a symbol of defiance of God or of nature, and it is routinely invoked when artists and pundits comment on the ecological folly of industrial enterprise. Human beings tried to use their intellectual capacities to reach the position of God. Without reading the Bible, I can tell you that the punishment for this was the diversification of languages. All of a sudden people couldn’t speak to each other, because there were so many ways to speak.
Today we take for granted the many languages of human beings, so what is the modern equivalent of this event? Taken as a metaphor, the variation of languages could represent a variation of worldview. Styles of interfacing with reality. Because the element of air is so closely associated with concepts like perception, the structuring of thought, communication, and virtual realities, we might imagine that in the new age we will begin to understand just how deeply diversified our mechanisms of interpreting reality are. Phenomenology seems like a pretty fringe field in our current world, but AI is certainly not; and content creators have increasingly brought phenomenological themes to the center of their work over the last couple decades. Just as the previous air epoch (12/1300s) saw the advent of movable type, perhaps we will soon develop novel means of recording our impressionistic realities.
Finally, Babylon was host to the famous hanging gardens. Supposedly built by king Nebuchadnezzar to please his wife who missed the natural beauty of Iran, it is still unclear whether this wonder of the world ever existed in physical reality. In any case, the story is relevant: a ruler, in the midst of tremendous infrastructural expansion, and with it the inevitable subjugation of nature, finds that his greatest cultural influence across the centuries is ecological restoration. Looking at these three legacies of Babylon together is rather interesting: the law code stele, though purportedly divine in origin, is unquestionably real to our materialist sensibilities—you can go and see it. The Tower of Babel, taken from the Bible, was probably not real in the same fundamental way; though there was without question a great ziggurat in Babylon, the Biblical account is not literal. The hanging gardens is the most mythological. So between the three we have different concentrations of myth and historical fact.
Second Second Life
I write this in the first few weeks of social isolation during the coronavirus pandemic. There is much more to be said about the connection between this unprecedented social condition and the imminent radical astrology—maybe the subject of some other essay. But off the dome, we can see plainly the defaulting of Capricornian things: governments, businesses, economies, and social infrastructure. Without much of a choice, we are withdrawing our energy from the material to which we are accustomed. We’re cooped up in our houses, where the merciful currents of the internet continue to draw us on, to operate in cyberspace as normal. New social functions and vocabularies are already emerging as we are forced to reconsider the online networks that have seemed so toxic for the last few years. People find themselves operating “peer to peer” out of necessity. Some “inessential” products may no longer be available on amazon, but your neighbor might have them. More importantly, people are reaching out to each other for nothing more than human contact. We’ve been wringing our hands about the importance of human connection, but capitalism—through spectacle or stranglehold—has drawn us away from putting it first.
Social service is (along with certain essential aspects of the internet) ruled by Aquarius. Saturn, governor of concern, has already ingressed into this sign, but will retrograde back out in a few months; and then at the end of the year, it will be joined by Jupiter, who greases the wheels, expands the potentiation of Saturn’s concern, and affords prosperity to those who take social service seriously. And together they will inaugurate the new age.
“Santa’s fucked” say planets
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The 2019 Christmas season has been profoundly understated. If the time between Thanksgiving and Christmas Day is a measure of the length of the season, this season sees only 27 days, compared to the 33 days of last year! That is almost a week less to work with. How stressful! Incidentally, last year Jupiter was in its home, and this year it is in its fall. Let’s take a look at at that.
The season of giving is in the weeks preceding Christmas; this is when the sun enters Sagittarius, the sign of generosity. This sign is ruled by Jupiter, who is identified with Santa. Our words “jovial” and “jolly” are, uhh, Jovian in origin. Thus the Christmas spirit—the optimism, the curiosity, and the charity—which precedes the holy day, are all expressions of Jovian/Sagittarian energy.
Christmas Day itself always falls in Capricorn season, which has a very different attitude. Capricorn, ruled by Saturn, is notoriously strict and unfun. It is serious, respectful, and solemn. When the holly-jolly wassailing of the Christmas season is over, the observance of Christmas begins. This means being polite to family, lighting candles before dignified nativity scenes, going to midnight mass, or whatever.
Sagittarian energy is very externally focused: reaching a goal, setting a new goal, sharing with others, and traveling to places. This is expressed by Christmas shopping, Christmas activities, taking vacations, etc. On the other hand, Capricorn energy is relatively internal: duty, responsibility, asceticism, adherence to inner authority. So on Christmas Day we are less likely to be out among the world having experiences; we are instead reflective, possibly in our homes, among our families, or figuring out how to put the occasion together.
Capricorn restricts! So it should be no surprise that the Christmas season this year is a week shorter, when Jupiter, planet of the Christmas spirit, is in the sign of restriction.
Conjunctions
When Jupiter entered Capricorn this November, people started living in 2020. The most dramatic aspect of this coming year—and for many of us, of our lifetimes—is a conjunction of Saturn and Pluto in that sign, on the nodal axis. Jupiter will be joining them, which only happens about once in 1,000 years. The last time this happened in Capricorn, famously, was during the time of Babylon in the 19th century BCE! So, as Jupiter entered Capricorn, it began a wide orb of conjunction that will only get closer. The story has begun! So who has time to pay attention to the Christmas spirit when we are looking consciously at the end of a decade, and unconsciously at the dawn of an epoch?
What to Do?
Generally when Capricorn/Saturnine energy comes about and limits our capacity to act, it is for the purpose of sustainability. Capricorn demands the painstaking creation of the solid and the enduring. Perhaps a season of jingle-jangle merriment is less appropriate than aligning with a sober inner understanding of our own capacities. And let’s not forget that Christmas itself is strongly Saturnine; maybe it’s a good idea to lean in to the more devotional aspects of Christmas. That doesn’t necessarily mean doing Christian stuff, but finding a way to cultivate a deeper respect for life, since all the rollicking Jovian energy is muted for the time being. Light a candle and begin to prepare the psyche for the axial moment of next year.
Astrology functions as an assessment of temporal quality, but is the archetype of time ruled by any particular sign?
Preface
The wheel of the zodiac is often depicted with Aries on the left, thus keeping it in line with the houses: that is, Aries corresponds to the ascendant and first house, Taurus occupies the second house, and so on.
However, there are some interesting patterns that emerge under other rotations. Rotating the wheel one sign counter clockwise, so that the first house is held by Taurus, we find Cancer and Leo on either side of the nadir, the lowest point of the wheel. This emphasizes the wonderful symmetry between each pair of signs that share rulers:
The exception being, of course, the Sun and Moon which rule one sign each. This might point to a secret identification between these forces, which are typically conceptualized as the most fundamental opposites: consciousness and the unconscious, light and dark, etc. The arcane marriage of these principles is a motif which humanity has been pondering since antiquity. Positioning this syzygy at the bottom of the wheel gives the impression that the other signs spring forth from this coupling as a series of portraits from one luminary to the other; as call and response music, or dance steps. One can say that the entire zodiac functions as a mythological alphabet that elaborates of the riddle of the Sun and Moon.
Time
Under this cosmic lens, let’s examine a feature essential to our experience of the universe: time. Where does time show up in the zodiac? Can any particular sign be said to govern this concept? At the very least, we can draw the strongest general associations between time and these signs:
If you ask astrologers which sign most corresponds to the concept of time, Gemini would be a common and reasonable answer. It is the traditional ruler of clocks and measurements of time, and is said to rule the time-dependent concepts of transit and commuting.
Capricorn is another traditional response, since it rules the schedule, the time table, the restriction of time, the inexorable march of time. Father Time, the bearded old man with the scythe and the hourglass, is one of the most well known personifications of Saturn.
Aquarius is a bit more esoteric in this regard, but perfectly valid. Aquarius is most associated with the concepts of the instant, the moment ... suddenness! Moreover, it is the traditional ruler of kairos, the ancient Greek idea of “pregnant time.” From Wikipedia:
The ancient Greeks had two words for time: chronos (χρόνος) and kairos. The former refers to chronological or sequential time, while the latter signifies a proper or opportune time for action. While chronos is quantitative, kairos has a qualitative, permanent nature.
Chronos is a clear attribute of Capricorn, therefore these two notions of time are represented by the two Saturn-ruled signs. These two signs are farthest from our supposed origin-nadir, the Cancer/Leo threshold. Capricorn is opposite Cancer, and Aquarius is opposite Leo. This suits the mythological conception of Saturn as the demiurge, the architect of mundane incarnation, the mechanic of the machinery of the cosmos.
To complete this symmetry, we would hope that Virgo is also associated with time. That way, Saturn-ruled signs can roost up at the dome of time, representing its furthest limits, while Mercury ruled signs can reflect each other as attendants to the atemporal solar/lunar archetypes, initiating those forces into the game of time. Gemini does this job perfectly for the Moon, showing how time is “reflected” in the mind through the image of the clock.
So, is Virgo then one of our rulers of time? Ever humble and self-diminishing, Virgo does not jump out as readily as the others, but it does indeed complete a very crucial and unglamorous role. Any astrologer will tell you that Virgo rules punctuality. That is, the adherence to time. If Gemini is the clock at the train station, and Capricorn is the schedule, and Aquarius is the fortune of sliding through the closing door, then Virgo is the plain fact of showing up on time.
So it is clear that there are affinities between rulerships. The two mercury-ruled signs rule basic, mundane relationships to time: time measurement and time observance. The two Saturn-ruled signs rule the extremes of time: time’s bondage and time’s potentiation. There are also affinities between elements, which we explore later. But there are also delightful parallels between the pairs of signs which share no essential qualities. Consider that Gemini and Capricorn both rule structural, objective attributes of time, summarized by the clock and the schedule respectively. The other pair rules more subjective qualities of time: Virgo corresponds to the season, and Aquarius to the zeitgeist.
Elemental Purports
What does it mean that all four of these time-governing signs are earth or air? At the most obvious level, we should note that in the cultural imagination water and fire are characterized by motion, while earth and air are not. Air is about potentiation; it is the closest element to pure yang. It is the breath, which corresponds esoterically to the pneuma, the coherence of spirit which vivifies matter. It is atmosphere: that which surrounds every atom, and every germ of life, from the smallest bud to the egg of the cosmos. In a sense, pure potentiation means being eternally unborn. It is actually full activity—boundless perpetual motion—or “unlimited wind” in the Vedas—the inexhaustible first word of creation which has no duration, and obviously no equivalent upon the time-dependent material plane.
That plane is brought to us in part by earth, the closest element to pure yin. It is easy to understand how “pure passivity” is not comprehensible within time—easier than the concept of “pure activity” which we looked at previously. There is only ever the appearance of stillness in our perception; never an object which is actually fully static. The signature “movements” of matter may be entropy and decay.
We should also understand the conventional elemental associations with the astrological attitudes: cardinality is “like” fire; fixidity like earth; mutability like air. Therefore these time signs are:
The airy part of air (Gemini)
The airy part of earth (Virgo)
The fiery part of earth (Capricorn)
The earthy part of air (Aquarius)
So earth is implicated in three of these, and air is implicated in three of these. The only exception to air is the fiery part of earth; earth in its cardinal aspect. This means it is the apparent, self-projecting aspect of earth; earth with its essence on display. Capricorn governs, if you’ll remember, the bondage aspect of time, and the sign that is the most common answer to the naive question of time rulership.
The only exception to earth is the airy part of air: Gemini. This is notably the second-most common response to the question of time rulership. And, as we have seen, together Gemini and Capricorn account for the objective qualities of time. Here’s a weird one: if Gemini and Capricorn are the most obvious rulers of time, perhaps that is partially due to the subjective quality of our time, which is so concerned with, and aware of, objective qualities!
Or maybe it is the fact that the subjective qualities of time are defined by contradiction, and thus more difficult to understand in any age. After all, what is the “earthy part of air” and “the airy part of earth”? There does seem to be an especially elusive mystery about Aquarius: the concept of kairos, but also of the wish, and of heaven. What are we to make of the fact that Aquarius is “familiar to the alien”? Or the fact that it is associated both with the moment and with “timelessness”? We have seen air as pure potentiation, necessitating boundless movement; how could there be a “fixed” expression of such a principle?
In contradiction to the most “alien” sign, Virgo is typically tagged as the most mundane sign. The relative anonymity of Virgo is also contrasted with the radical idiosyncrasy of Aquarius. And its tradition-mindedness would appear also to chafe against Aquarian novelty. Yet let us remember what these signs share: they given definition to the subjective attributes of time. We mentioned that Aquarius holds both the uniqueness of the moment, and the unchanging eternal, but Virgo holds this mystery too. Virgo’s anonymity comes from a deep, intuitive understand that we are all the same. That is why the goddess and the virgin go by so many names. In fact, they necessitate that many names, because the multiplicity of the expression is part of the expression. Virgo is the scattering of the atoms; matter in full possible diffusion. The secondary ruler of Virgo, besides mercury, is not one planet but an abundance of asteroids. Virgo knows both “I am a link in a chain” and also “I am this link.” What is punctuality but specificity? What is a unit of matter but a detail? Virgo knows both, “This season has come before,” and also, “This summer is this summer.”
Summary
The wind of Gemini is the wind that blows in the quality of time, existing in some unknowable potentiation beyond this world. Capricorn is the slow-burn of matter upon which quality plays, and is thereby bound. Virgo rotates the wheel, perpetuating the cycle through its incremental movement. The rotations are then recognized by their quality of motion. Aquarius imagines the wheel stopped, glimpsed in gestalt, and the wheel is recognized by the quality of its stillness. Cumulatively, these four archetypes collaborate to describe the terms of the dance through which psyche extends itself into its many other guises.
