everyday dressing

Between 2008 and 2010, Uranus and Saturn have been dancing opposite each other creating a tug of war between structures of preservation and status quo on the one hand, and forces of change and revolution on the other.

Jan Vormann, a young artist, is slowly transforming cities around the globe with his Dispatchwork. Most recently he tackled New York, filling cracks, holes and gaps he found around the city with legos. To read more about this and his other projects visit his project website. I mention Jan Vormann’s work because it functions in a similar way as Venus does in relation to Uranus and Saturn.

To better understand the Uranus-Saturn conflict it’s helpful to look to the mythological story of Cronus and Ouranus, as suggested by Howard Sasportas in his book The Gods of Change. Cronus, (who later became known as Saturn), the god of time, was the son of Gaia, mother earth, and Ouranus, the sky god. To avenge his mother, Cronus castrated his father and when the phallus fell to earth and some of the blood dropped on the ground the furies were born. Astrologically speaking, Saturn in opposition can function as the stern task-master that “cuts off the creative impulse and potency of Uranus.” (Sasportas 33) The furies represent envious anger, retaliation and neverendingness, and encapsulate the negative effects of one side of the Saturn-Uranus opposition being allowed to run the show.

The key with surviving and indeed profiting during a Saturn-Uranus opposition is balance. Returning to the myth of Cronus and Ouranus,after the birth of the furies, Cronus picks up the phallus and throws it in the sea. In the water the phallus merges with the seafoam and give birth to Aphrodite, as known as Venus. This myth suggests that the qualities of Venus, beauty, harmony, balance, and art, can be born as a result of Uranus-Saturn conflict. So rather than being stubborn and resolutely rejecting change, or rather than plowing full-steam ahead upturning every structure good or bad in our way, the task is to play the diplomat between these two opposite forces.

The Saturn-Uranus opposition will last from October 2008 to August 2010, with exact hits on the following dates: November 4, 2008, February 5, 2009, September 15, 2009, April 26, 2010, and July 26, 2010.

From more information about this transit from Astrology Lynn Hayes click here.

In astrology we often talk about the “faster” and “slower” planets, and if you’re not on rocket ship above the solar
system this concept may be difficult to visualize. To help, White Vinyl Design has created a flash animation titled, solarbeat, which shows the movements of our solar system.

As this month’s full moon lit up the sky on Monday, March 29^th at 10° Libra, Erykah Badu’s full moon lit up the internet with controversy. The music video for “Window Seat” a song off her newly released album, New Amerykah Part Two: Return of the Ankh, features a gorilla-style public performance where Badu strips down to nothing and re-enacts the JFK shooting at the very same spot the event actually happened. Reporters are calling it racy and disrespectful, and the Dallas police plan to cite her with public indecency charges. Badu has definitely ruffled some feathers with this video.

That this video did not pass by unnoticed isn’t surprising given the transits to Badu’s birth chart. First, the full moon at 10° Libra is conjunct her natal Uranus; thus she was seen by all (the moon represents the public and it was at its full brightness) as a revolutionary and rebel, acting in contradiction to the norms of social behavior (Uranus).

It may very well have been her intention to stir things up. She’s currently going through a transit of Uranus to her natal moon, which would be giving her the urge to act out against established rules. This transit is only made more intense by it being part of the Saturn-Uranus opposition cycle still underway. This opposition cycle has been the cause of tremendous tensions between chaos and order, between revolutionary forces of change and those who wish to keep things as they have always been. With Badu’s moon caught up in this opposition, conjunct Uranus and opposing Saturn, she is feeling the urge for change quite personally.

Also involved in the Moon-Uranus-Saturn transit is her natal Pluto, which is opposite her natal Moon and on Saturn’s side of the Saturn/Uranus split. In her natal chart, Moon opposite Pluto would indicate a need to keep the emotions hidden and an intense need for privacy. It would also indicate someone who feels things very deeply and may have some psychic abilities. In that light, we can see Badu’s very public actions as a big contradiction to her natural need for privacy. Therefore this was a bold move not just publicly but personally as well.

Interestingly, the video was shot on March 17^th, and Uranus was in exact conjunction to her moon on that day. It makes sense that when Uranus was in direct aspect to her natal moon that she would carry out this action that was personally so out of character. Then following that transit as Uranus moved part her moon, the full moon gave light to the event making it a public controversy.

I can’t sleep. Normally I’m a champion sleeper, and unless large amounts of caffeine are involved I’m not awake at 3am. Bored, frustrated and curious I checked the sky for answers. At 27 degrees Virgo the Moon is opposite Uranus at 27 degrees Pisces. In addition, Neptune at 27 degrees Aquarius sextile Venus at 27 degrees Aries is forming a yod (also know as the finger of god) with the moon’s help. 27 degrees Aquarius is often referred to as the astrologer’s degree. Aquarius moves slowly through the sky so it’s been at or near this degree for some time, but it’s interesting that when the faster moving Venus and Moon team up at the 27 degree mark—with Uranus in angle to boot—I would have the flash of inspiration to change the emphasis of my blog to astrology. Thus far I had been posting interesting images or blurbs about artists I enjoy. This was fun, and I’m sure mildly entertaining, but it made this blog just another drop in the bucket of distributing mildly entertaining information. Not that I ever aspire to be anything more than a drop, instead I’d just rather be in a different bucket. So as the bare-chested lady above faces the unknown blind-folded, I too take a U-turn and head into new territory. The plan is to marry substance with style, and both with the archiving and organizational features of content management systems. Ideally, after several posted have taken shape, this blog will begin to become a reservoir of facts and fictions about the planets that cycle by over our heads. In some small way addressing the biggest weakness of the practice of astrology in this country: the lack of accessible research.