The world’s re-opening. Rightly; wrongly; too fast; too slowly. There is an urgency driven by anger and fear–and anger AT the fear–to GET ON WITH THINGS….so we push and then get stopped. Like a child’s game of “Mother-may-I?”, we almost get to the door and are sent back into disarray. But we keep at it–surely THIS TIME it will work–schools will stay open, the economy will bounce back. And, eventually, it probably WILL. Things will get back to normal. But will they? I don’t think so, because WE are not the same people that we were pre-pandemic. We are scarred–some by tragedy; some by illness; some by the dizzying sensation that nothing’s where we left it 19 months ago. And it’s not: people have died; lives have been altered utterly by the carnage we have endured. We need it to end.
This near-manic insistence on hurling ourselves at the problem of renewal will only be successful if what we come up with actually IS new–a continuation simply will not do. But it’s been done before, and more than once.
Astrology is a terrific lens for placing oneself in history. Take Mars, for instance: what were we doing 2 years ago, the last time the Planet of Action roared through Cancer into Leo? Pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong and President Trump’s overtures to the Ukrainian President. What were we trying to build 29.5 years ago, the last time Saturn occupied Aquarius? Mali got a new constitution and the Russian Federation succeeded the Soviet Union. How were we last shaken up by Uranus in Taurus, some 84 years ago? That was 1937, in the latter years of the Great Depression, when the world was still pondering how to get back to “normal” after the economic and social ravages following the Market Crash of ’29…the policies of the New Deal and its ilk were considered as radical then as the current stimulus and infrastructure proposals, and drew just as much resistance from those who benefitted by the status quo. These planetary sign-posts are rabbit holes for astro-geeks like me, but they serve a purpose: they reassure that in some sense, we have been here before; and the sky didn’t fall then, either.
Fear–I mentioned fear at the outset–is generally one of two kinds: fear of loss and fear of monsters. I think that if we figure out which one is driving us, either personally or societally, we stand a better chance of not being defeated by it. We can use this time to fix what’s broken. Who we are and what we’ve lived probably determines what we dread; but we CAN look beyond the abyss and the demons who lurk around it, if we are clear-eyed and keep things in perspective.
Astrology’s helpful that way.