Nessus Stationary

Nessus the Mythical Centaur was a rapist who got caught and killed, but not before he arranged the death of his killer.  It’s an interesting twist, because Nessus certainly represents the self-appointed Privilege of the Patriarchy, yet he was killed by, and indirectly killed, Hercules, whose “God-Given” Assignment was to kill the pre-existing Matriarchy.  Reminds me of all the politicians who are so skillfully shooting themselves in the foot with their tirades against Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité as they defend their favorite Corruption.  So we’ve been interpreting the Cosmological Centaur and minor planet Nessus as dealing with Privilege, especially Masculine Privilege, and the other side of its Coin, Abuse.

But looking at the chart of Nessus’s “Discovery,” we find that there’s a lot more going on here.  

To begin with, Nessus was “Discovered” during the 1993 Uranus-Neptune Conjunction, which we consider to be the final and pinnacle event of the Harmonic Convergence.  Neptune had already Initiated Uranus, and a few months later, when they were both Stationary turning Retrograde, Nessus was “Discovered.”  The Initation occurred at 20 Capricorn, “A hidden choir is singing during a religious service,” hidden meaning occult, and implying Unconscious.  Since the Uranus-Neptune Cycle is about the relationship between the Individual and Society, and between the Individual Soul and the Group Soul, Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité – avec la bénédiction de Dieu (Neptune representing anything larger than ourSelf, including the concept of God/Goddess) – is an excellent motto for the 170-year Cycle.  While the Unconscious sings hymns to us.

• Which sort of makes Nessus a lad in the choir.  And lo, as is so often the case, a “malevolent” planet turns out to be “just” a Teacher.  As usual, it’s not the external World that harms us, it’s our Resistance to the external World.

So let’s start with the Quintile Patterns in the Nessus “Discovery” chart.  A Quintile is the Angle formed when two planets are one fifth of the way around the chart from one another, and it signifies Teaching and Learning.

The Discovery chart includes four fifths of a Grand Quintile, between Juno (the Edges of Consciousness), the Sun (Essence), a Conjunction between Vesta and 2007 OR10 (Bringing Unconscious Beliefs into Consciousness), and the North Node (Our Mission).  The Vacancy is 1 Libra, “In a collection of perfect specimens of many biological forms, a butterfly displays the beauty of its wings, its body impaled on a fine dart.”  Normally we’d be horrified by this Symbol, as it indicates Death enjoying the beauty of Life.  But in this case, its our Unconscious Beliefs that are frozen and revealed for all to see – and Makemake (Manifestation of New Survival Skills) has just crossed this Degree.

• So we can expect Nessus to be associated with our Learning how to Liberate ourselves from Archetypes, Self-Sabotage, and Limitation.

The chart also includes a “Quintangle” – two Quintiles end-to-end, with a Biquintile connecting the two planets on the ends, forming a triangle.  The Quintangle is focused on a Conjunction between Ceres and a Stationary Venus (Learning to Trust our Heart Consistently).  The ends are the South Node (Our Hidden Skills) and the Uranus-Neptune Conjunction, with both Stationary (We Are All One).

• And we can expect Nessus to Teach us about our Separation.

Next we can look at the segment of the Discovery chart that includes Nessus itself.

The major Configuration in this segment of the chart is five sixths of a Grand Sextile, between Nessus (Liberation), Makemake (Manifestation), Chariklo (Beauty and Charm), The Sun (Essence), and a Conjunction between Pallas and Saturn (Solid Boundaries).  The Vacancy is 7 Capricorn, “A veiled prophet speaks, seized by the power of a god.”  

Here we also have both a Star and an asteroid completing the Grand Sextile.  The Star is Facies –

“War as a concept in the human way of life.  It has no mercy and is ruthless in its aggression and its attitudes.  [It can imply] a person who loves the combative way of life, loves the military, and may even be sadistically inclined,” according to Bernadette Brady (Brady’s Book of Fixed Stars, p.39).  

Fun.  

The asteroid is Kassandra, a prophet who was condemned never to be believed, and who therefore was unable to save Troy from the invading Greeks.  She even set fire to the Trojan Horse, but the Trojans put it out.  The Trojan War was the result of Paris and the rest of the Gods trying to appease the Ladies who were competing to be “the Fairest of them All” and lay claim to Eris’s Golden Apple – we can see it as the complexities and “unintended” consequences we create by failing to Acknowledge and Trust our Intuition.

• So we can also expect Nessus to Teach us to set Solid Boundaries against Denying our Intuition.  Since many of us have worked hard most of our Lives to suppress our Intuition, this is a Lesson we really need.

Next let’s look at the chart segment that includes the Stationary Uranus-Neptune Conjunction, which is an extraordinarily Strong indication.  This segment is extraordinarily busy.

It includes ten twelfths of a Grand Unx, which is twelve planets equally distributed around the Zodiac (an “Unx” is one twelfth of something).  A Grand Unx yields three Grand Crosses, two Grand Sextiles, and handfuls of Fingers of God and Diamond Stars.  With the two Vacancies, we have one Grand Cross, two T-Squares, one Grand Sextile, and the T-Squares are both Diamond Stars.  The Vacancies are 22 Libra “A child giving birds a drink at a fountain,” and 22 Sagittarius, “A Chinese Laundry,”  The participants are Pluto Conjunct Ixion (Mandatory Expression of our Hidden Genius), Hylonome Conjunct Asbolus (Intuitions about Yindependence), Chiron (Despair, Empathy, and Miracle), Juno (Edges of Consciousness), the Moon (Instincts), Chaos (Unlimited Potential), Mercury Conjunct Eris (Revelation of Denial), Lilith (Yindependence), Vesta Conjunct 2007 OR10 (Revelation of Unconscious Beliefs), and Uranus-Neptune (We Are All One).  Whew!

Since an Unx is about Pattern-Breaking, Karma doesn’t stand a chance against a Grand Unx.  We need only add Compassion (drinks for the birds) and appreciation of our role in and contribution to the larger Culture (Chinese Laundry), since Vacancies show what the Universe expects us to provide Consciously.

• So we can expect Nessus to introduce Complexity into our Lives, because when Unconscious Complexes erupt into our Conscious Lives, it blows all of our Organizing Beliefs, and we have to start from scratch to Reorganize our Life.  That Feels like a Gordian Knot.  Empathize with your Hopelessness.  “You poor Sweetheart, you’re Feeling trapped, aren’t you.”  Then Change the Subject.  You want to look for your overriding Goals, and the simplest ways to start working toward them.  The Complexity is overwhelming because it needs to be replaced by Simplicity.

The last segment of the Nessus Discovery chart is a lot simpler than the others.  It’s salient feature is a Stationary (Strong) dwarf planet Orcus.  We haven’t examined Orcus yet, but the Mythical Orcus was a son of Eris whose job was to punish oath-breakers with Death.  Orcus is Conjunct both Pholus (Taking Full Responsibility) and Chiron (Despair, Empathy, Miracles).  So this week while Nessus is Stationary, “You better watch out / You better not shout” might be a good idea.

Orcus and friends Trine Orcus’s mom Eris, and they both Trine the North Node – which, however, forms a Kite focused on the South Node.  Orcus-Pholus-Chiron Square a Conjunction of Sedna and Chaos (Fear of the Unknown, and ill-advised Actions taken to Prevent it).

• So finally, we can expect Nessus to reveal to us the Oaths we swore at some point in this or another Lifetime in order to prevent some unappreciated event or process from recurring.  Swearing an Oath (which can be as simple as “God Damn It!”) is how we Vow “never to do that again,” which unfortunately can prevent us from doing that precisely when we need to do that.  Remember that Archetypes, Karma, Addictions, and other untoward Patterns are not  inherently negative.  They become negative when they’re our only Reaction to certain stimuli, in situations where other Responses would be more productive.  Reacting to criticism with Anger whether or not the criticism would be useful for us to hear, is an example.  More relevant are the places where we go into Fear and Anxiety – or Panic or Shutdown – in the very situations where we most need to be Grounded and Present.  Our Oaths get ossified into our Limiting Beliefs, which in a fundamental sense are anti-Life, so there is a Death there.  Each Limiting Belief is a Loss of Soul.

All told, our best strategy for the coming week is probably to be uncompromisingly Self-Loving, and to PIAVA that we Learn oodles of new useful Skills for just that.  If we start to get into Overwhelm, get ourself Safe and work on getting Grounded and Present again, before we attend to whatever triggered our Overwhelm.  Don’t hesitate to scream for Help if you need to.  Unless the Sky is Falling, a false alarm is far better than a Traumatic Experience.

Error as Intuition

 A Star Cluster

All of this post is intended for folks with some knowledge of or interest in astrology, so we recommend that general readers ignore it.

Well, this is interesting.  Our Planet is misaligned slightly, such that every year at midnight on the Spring Equinox, the Stars are in slightly different positions than they were the year before.  It’s a predictable movement, called the “Precession of the Equinoxes.”  Because it takes about 70 years for the Stars to shift one Degree (with is 1/360th of the Circle), we don’t much notice this day to day.  However, if we’re looking at phenomena that span several Centuries, we might indeed notice it.

We speak of Midnight on the Spring Equinox, because that’s when we can see the Stars – assuming there are no clouds.  To be technical about it, we need to look at the moment of the Spring Equinox, which could occur at any time of day.  Most of the jiggling is caused by Leap Years, but there are other jiggles as well.

You can do astrology hundreds of different ways, but there are two main schools of Western astrology, “Tropical” astrology and “Sidereal” astrology.  In Tropical astrology, one Degree of Aries occurs when the Sun crosses the Equator heading north, on its way to the Tropic of Cancer.  So it’s not “Tropical” as in hot weather with downpours every afternoon, but “Tropical” as in the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn, two lines of Latitude that are 23 degrees and 27 minutes north and south of the Equator, respectively.  Tropical astrology watches the planets as they move relative to the Earth.

Sidereal astrology on the other hand, watches the planets as they move relative to the Sun.  For instance, Mars never actually goes backwards, that would be silly.  But when we watch Mars from our Perspective on Earth, it appears to go backwards every couple of years, because as we go around the Sun we pass it up.  The classic example is passing another car on the freeway.  If you’re just watching the other car, it looks like it starts to go backwards as we pass it.  If we assume the the Earth goes around the Sun, then it seems silly to look at things relative to the Earth.  However, Earth is where we live, so looking at things relative to the Earth is the same as looking at things relative to us. 

In Sidereal astrology, because of Earth’s misalignment, the Stars and Constellations are constantly shifting their position relative to the Spring Equinox.  Sidereal astrology assumes that we should define the Signs based on the Constellations they’re named after.  So we can map out the Sign Cancer, for instance, by when certain planets pass certain Stars.  Tropical astrology is based instead on Linear Time.  In Tropical astrology the Sign Cancer is defined as the first 30 days after the Sun gets to 27:23 of north Latitude – the Tropic of Cancer.  If in Tropical astrology we just renamed the Sign Cancer to be called “July” instead, it would make a lot more sense relative to the weather (though of course it would be Confusing relative to the wall calendar) and we wouldn’t confuse it with the Constellation Cancer and the Sidereal Sign.

Terminology aside, it’s always Both/And.  Both Tropical and Sidereal astrology contribute important information to our understanding, and their contributions are different.  The more Perspectives we can use, the wider our understanding, so Tropical and Sidereal astrology should Celebrate one another rather than Competing with one another.

Sabian Symbols are readings for each Degree.  They were channeled in 1925 by Elsie Wheeler, a California psychic.  Here’s some history…

http://sabian.org/sabian_symbols.php

I use Tropical astrology and always have, so I can’t speak for Sidereal astrology (in fact, even the above my be misconceptions on my part!), but Tropical astrology (and the Astrobuss blog) relies on the Sabian Symbols a fair amount.  In Sidereal astrology, one Degree refers to 1/360th of the Sky – roughly the width of a finger held at arm’s length.  In Tropical astrology, one Degree refers to one Day of the Year.  When Marc Jones hired Elsie to do the readings, he was a Tropical astrologer, and I don’t think he instructed Elsie about the difference between a Degree as a portion of the Sky and a Degree as a portion of the Year.

So when Marc asked Elsie what she saw relative to Taurus 25, we don’t know whether she was viewing the Sky and Stars, or a Day in mid-May.  It’s been 90 years since Elsie Channeled the Sabian Symbols, and since the Stars move 1.3 Degrees relative to the Spring Equinox in that time, it’s possible that some or all of the Symbols – whenever Elsie was thinking about the Sky rather than the Year – should be shifted by 1.3 Degrees.  The Stars move forward relative to the Equinoxes, and the Equinoxes move backward relative to the Stars.  This is not a new question…

http://www.timsmith7.com/faqs/astrology/faq_astro004.php

So when Elsie Channeled 24 Taurus as a Warrior with human scalps in his belt and 25 Taurus as A vast public park, the Star Capulus, signifying Aggression, was in 24 Taurus.  Capulus is now in 25 Taurus.  So if Elsie was looking at Capulus when she was reading 24 Taurus, we can make a good case that we should be looking to 24 Taurus and a Warrior for our interpretation of the Sedna-Mars Initiation.  But if she was looking at the Day in mid-May, we should choose 25 Taurus and Park.  To be safe, we’d just choose Both/And.  All Elsie had to go on was the phrase “24 Taurus.”  It’s easier to read someone’s mind than to read the Ethers, and Marc may have known about Capulus, but he had shuffled the cards, and he could not see which Degree was being read.

What about other Stars and Degrees.  If we take several Strong Stars and compare them to their Degrees in 1925…

• Algol (Female Passion) in 26 Taurus
• Zosma (Victimization) in 11 Virgo
• Menkar (Arising into Consciousness) in 14 Taurus
• Facies (Violence) in 7 Capricorn

We get some indications that Elsie was looking at the Sky, but it’s not consistent.

So, Capulus aside, there’s no strong evidence either way, but there is a strong indication that the Stars have significant impact apart from the Sabian Symbols.  So rather than try to Precess the Sabian Symbols, I’d recommend just adding major Stars to your astrological toolkit, as a separate process.