The waxing gibbous Moon is in Aries today, applying to trine the Sun and then conjoin Uranus in Aries and square Pluto in Capricorn. As the Moon is gaining power right now so is the historic Uranus/Pluto square, which will be exact on December 19th. It’s a good day to get a sense of what Uranus and Pluto might be up to in your life this month, so pay special attention to whatever topics and themes are most prevalent in your life today, especially the areas of conflict, change or challenge.
In the meantime, Mars is heavily featured in today’s astrology both because of the Moon’s location in the mars ruled sign of Aries and because of today’s exact mutual reception of Mars and Saturn (see yesterday’s horoscope). It’s a good day to think on the subject of boundaries, as well as the subjects of guardianship and protection.
CNN Image: Ferguson protestors call for national demonstration against police violence.
Right now we are looking at what we treasure or value most, and we’re looking at how to structure our lives to support, hold, or protect what we cherish. We’re also looking at how to create a society or lifestyle in which we feel safer, healthier, and stronger, and we’re willing to uproot or get rid of whatever needs to go in order to get there.
CNN image: Obama makes executive reform to immigration policies.
One god that comes to mind right now is the roman god of gardens, Priapus. In some stories Priapus was the cursed son of Venus/Aphrodite. Cursed by Hera while in Venus’ womb because the hero Paris chose Venus over Hera in a beauty contest. Hera cursed him with “ugliness, foul-mindedness, and impotence.” Born in just this manner, and with a giant and always erect penis, he was looked down upon by the other deities and forced to live on a hillside, where he was eventually raised by shepherds. As his stories go, Priapus was generally as horny and foul as could be but he was also constantly being thwarted sexually. In a sense, there was no “container” that was appropriate for his misshapen and sexually overcharged/oversized libido. Priapus is known for his failed attempts to rape or take unwilling nymphs and goddesses.
So what does Priapus have to do with today’s astrology? Simply put, Priapus is thought by many archetypal thinkers to have become the God of gardens (among other protector roles) specifically because of his failed attempts to “take” the feminine (where the feminine is thought as something like the walled enclosure of a secret garden). Priapus is a sort of ironic god of beautiful enclosures. As Venus’ cursed son he reflects the shadow side of Venus..all that is rejected, ugly, foul, failed, and kept out or uncontained.
Right now we should be intensely aware of what we do and don’t want in our lives. What we’re building is something like a beautifully landscaped garden, and we’re feeling very focused and serious about it right now. It’s meant to be safe, it’s meant to contain or hold our enduring values, it’s meant to last a long time, and it’s meant to produce beautiful things. At the same time, we are very aware of what we don’t want and we’re contemplating how to get rid of it or how to weed it out. The trick is that the patron saint of protection for whatever we’re building, in some ways, is exactly all that we put on the other side of the wall or all that we’re trying to weed out. Everything we find ugly, unproductive, and threatening or unsustainable, in a sense is exactly the deity we need to make sure we pay some kind of homage to, just like ugly Priapus was the ironic guardian of the roman gardens. So the question becomes, how can we include whatever we feel like we want to get rid of most intensely right now?
For example…though the image of the corrupt police officer is something many of us are excited to “weed out” of our societal garden, to what extent is the image of the corrupt police officer also an image of vitality? We have to consider (just consider) that part of this image is not so different from our love of renegade law enforcers like “Batman,” (the dark knight/guardian of the city). Even touchier, though many people consider immigrants to this country a threat to our economy (or whatever else), how is the archetype of the “immigrant” an essential component of national security or cultural psychic wealth?
We love to think that whatever we hold as beautiful or valuable should be upheld and protected at all costs, and yet within every garden wall is the implication of an “unnatural” force living outside of the wall. Mars/Saturn has us looking very closely at all of this right now. We are being asked to steady our executioners impulses and become subtler judges in all different kinds of beauty competitions.
Prayer: God of gardens, help me to build the kind of walls that still allow for the gentle visitations of all that I fear or would like to exclude the most.
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Image by Jerome, courtesy of creative commons image licensing.