The great storyteller returns
Mars trine Jupiter as Jupiter stations direct in Aquarius
Both Mercury and Jupiter stationed direct on Monday, October 18. Having two planets return to direct motion on the same day is a fairly rare occurrence. Adding to the sense of forward momentum, Mars completed an exact trine aspect to Jupiter Monday night.
Mars is in Libra, his detriment sign, and also combust of the Sun — two astrological terms that indicate a planet is in a weakened condition. Weakened planets often tend to “act out” more than they would in normal circumstances. Think of a tired toddler fighting off bedtime — or a cornered animal — and you get the idea.
But — the trine is an inherently harmonious aspect. Also, Mars and Jupiter tend to get along. Both planets want to move matters forward and neither is afraid to stir the pot in order to drum up action.
I could be wrong about this, but my sense is that this aspect starts off slowly but steadily builds momentum over the next couple months.1
A negative Mars in Libra shows people appearing to fight for justice and harmony but doing it in a self-centered, destructive, or passive-aggressive manner that ends up producing exactly the opposite. This is the social justice warrior who is (perhaps unconsciously) using a popular cause as a justification for dumping her anger and projecting her toxic shame onto people who are labeled as the cause of “the problem” she is supposedly fighting against. People, it should be noted, who are likely to emerge from their encounter with the SJW more committed to resisting social change than they were before. (You can watch this happening on Twitter pretty much in real time.)
Positive Mars in Libra activates our courage to really stand up for truth, beauty, freedom and justice. Mars here is still likely to stir up relationship conflict. But this is more of an “embracing conflict as a means of achieving intimacy” kind of vibe.
At its best, this placement can take us back to the heady days before social media when adults with completely differing points of view could engage in passionate arguments and walk away satisfied because they’d gotten to share their point of view and had also learned something new. Even if that something new was understanding how this other person could believe what they did.
Mars in Libra can also provide the foundation for building bridges to the many people who are waking up and realizing they don’t wish to remain subservient to the politicians, celebrities and billionaires who are using our energy and our data to create a society based in fear, censorship, and a level of total control over the people that the self-styled elites have been striving for since forever.
The Great Storyteller
Jupiter in astrology is the archetype of expansion, faith, belief — and story. I’m reminded of Don Miguel Ruiz’s grandpa telling him that what he thought of as the conflict between good and evil is really a conflict between truth and lies. His grandfather tells him that faith is the power humans have to create. When we put our faith in lies, we suffer:
“As I said before, you suffer because you believe lies. It’s that simple. Humanity is the way it is because collectively we believe so many lies. Humans have carried the lies for thousands of years, and we react to the lies with anger, with violence. But they’re only lies.”
Ruiz goes on to compare the mind’s representation of reality to a Picasso portrait. “You pose for Picasso, and after many days, he finally shows you your portrait. You will say, ‘This is not me,’ and Picasso will say, ‘Of course it is you. This is how I see you.’”
Once we really internalize the fact that someone else’s reality — Covid is going to kill us all; Trump is the savior; Trump is the devil; we can’t reopen society until everyone is fully vaccinated; I trust The Science; I trust the Word of God; humans are destroying the planet and global warming is going to kill us all — is just a story they’ve invested their faith in, we no longer feel so compelled to defend our own stories. As Ruiz says:
“Every human is a storyteller, which means that every human is also an artist. What Picasso does with colors, we do with words. Humans witness life happening inside us and all around us, and we use words to make a portrait of what we witness. Humans make up stories about everything we perceive, and just like Picasso, we distort the truth; but for us, it is the truth. Of course, the way we express our distortion could be something other people enjoy. Picasso’s art is highly valued by many people.”
We can disengage with people whose stories don’t entertain us and let them go their way, wishing them luck on their admittedly depressing and gloomy path. Or we may choose to share the stories we’ve invested our faith in believing. Either way, we’re going to have a lot more fun, even in highly charged conversations.2
Don’t yike dat story
When my daughter was two years old, we spent a lot of time in various New Orleans parks. One day I was pushing her through Washington Square Park in her stroller and this little girl came up and wanted to play. The other girl was a few years older, at that age where some little girls seem obsessed with having a baby to boss around.
My daughter was a precocious talker and reader. To the point some adults would look at her sideways as if thinking, “What’s wrong with that child? Two-year-olds shouldn’t be able to talk that way.” But she couldn’t couldn’t say her “l”s until she was three. So she said “yuv” for love and “yadies” for ladies.
This little girl asked me if she could play with Roya. I asked Roya if she wanted to play and Roya said, “No.”
The girl asked Roya if she could pick her up out of the stroller. Roya said, “No.”
The girl wouldn’t let it go. She stood there with her hands on her hips, trying to alternately cajole and impress Roya. My daughter just crossed her arms, set her mouth into a frown and said nothing.
I was tired and it would have been really nice if my daughter had a friend to play with for just a few minutes. I was fantasizing about the park benches not far away on the Royal Street side, under the live oaks. “Why don’t you let her play with you?” I implored.
“No.” My daughter said.
It was clear Roya wasn’t going to crack and equally clear the other girl wasn’t going to leave. So I started pushing the stroller toward Elysian Fields and the long, hot walk home. When we reached the other side of the park, I asked Roya why she hadn’t wanted to play.
“Don’t yike dat kid!” she replied.
As we walked home I replayed the scene in my mind. As I did, I realized how pushy, needy, and demanding the other girl’s energy was. I was glad I hadn’t done the desperate parent move of taking Roya out of the stroller and making her interact with the other girl against her will. You know, the kind of thing parents often justify to kids as “for your own good.”
I wouldn’t have wanted to play with that kid either.
I’ve been baffled for much of the last year and a half at how eagerly people have embraced stories that seem a lot like having to play with the pushy, bigger kid who gets off on being bigger and stronger than you and being able to push you around and treat you like a baby.
Only instead of spending an afternoon with a child bully, these stories are offering us a perpetual dystopia.
In my posts about complying with evil, I proposed that we could evaluate the agendas we’re being offered based on whether they come with an energy of love or from an energy of fear.
The more I reflected on this simple math, the more it struck me that none of the official narratives offer a wonderful, love-filled vision of the future. Whether it’s the story of what we must do to survive a global pandemic, or how we must change to cope with climate emergency, or the constant self-surveillance and social media watchdogging required to defeat the scourge of white supremacy — all of the stories are driven by fear, scarcity, and shame.
They don’t promise to release clean energy or quantum healing technologies to the people; technologies that can extend our lifespans and enable us to remain vigorous and attractive into old age. They don’t talk about taking back the money that billionaires have plundered from the commons and sharing it among the people. They don’t talk about returning the commons to the people and transforming the education system so children learn how to think for themselves, develop real self-esteem, and developing their own nourishing connections with Nature.
The vision put forth by Klaus Schwab and the World Economic Forum of the world in 2030 tries to take a utopian tone, but people aren’t living in smart cities because they adore owning nothing, having no privacy, and sharing their rented space and cricket burgers with a billion climate refugees. They’re living there because the most harmonious vision of the future the Controllers can envision is the one in which they have asserted the maximum amount of control possible over both humanity and nature.
For our own good, natch.
The Controllers see “human” and “nature” as teeming, dirty, and dangerous. As Yuval Harari says in this interview, humans are now just hackable animals. “The whole idea that we have a soul, or spirit, and they have free will, and no one knows what's happening inside me, so whatever I choose in the election, or the supermarket, that's my free will — that's over.”
If I may quote from Terry Eagleton’s piece on the emptiness of evil again:
“One reason why the evil detest human life is because it is messy. Evil is unnerved by the untidy and unfinished. Materiality is shapeless, mercurial stuff which seeps all over the place. The evil, however, are purists and disciples of order who find chaos unbearable, and who are therefore deeply hostile to the human body.”
Machines, not humans — or machined humans — are the future the Controllers visualize. Machines are clean and predictable. Machines, they fantasize, can be controlled. It is humanity that constitutes the biggest danger to the purity they seek; humanity is the real virus.
Jupiter direct in Aquarius (the sign of the collective) through the end of the year is going to amplify our collective imaginings. As Phoenix and I discuss on our new podcast, we are faced with the perhaps-epochal choice of either lending our energy and faith to the dystopian narratives being proffered by the global media and governments; or telling our own stories of the future and inspiring others to weave that future together with us.
Although astrological Jupiter is associated with religion, law and philosophy, we could argue that he is an amoral archetype. Jupiter just wants to entertain himself and us by inspiring us to make great stories and share them on the stage of Life.
Jupiter is also the god of luck (he is associated with the Wheel of Fortune card in the tarot) and he’s famous for blessing the bold with good fortune, although usually at the very last minute.
We may be getting close to that time.
It’s up to us which stories we want to invest our faith in.
In my view, astrology is a symbolic language. A horoscope is a snapshot of a moment in time that enables us to translate (and sometimes correctly discern) the qualities that make up this moment. We can use the chart for the moment Jupiter returns to direct motion to tune in to some of the archetypal themes we can expect in the period of time until the next Jupiter retrograde. Jupiter doesn’t retrograde until July 29 of next year, however; by that time he will have whipped through the entire sign of Pisces and be nearly one-third of the way through Aries. So we’re probably going to see this material as being most relevant between now and December 29 when Jupiter leaves Aquarius and enters Pisces.
Also, I believe some things are true and others are not. I’m going to tell the truth as I see it, sometimes passionately, even when I know people are going to attack me for doing so. Ruiz isn’t saying we should water down the truth so as not to offend others.