Weekly Metaphysical Forecast 5.11.23
A REVOLUTIONARY PERSPECTIVE
WHAT?
Cazimi (religion,spiritualism,and occult) - Cazimi (an Arabic term meaning “heart of the Sun”) refers to a very close conjunction — within 17 minutes — between a planet and the Sun. In contrast to the wider combust conjunction, which supposedly weakened a planet, the cazimi position was traditionally said to strengthen the influence of the planet involved.
The planets do an interesting series of dances this week which could reverberate throughout the month, possibly years in the case of a Uranus cazimi in Taurus.
With generational ice giant Uranus being so close to our sun, we will feel like shaking things up and looking at old, long term issues from completely new and untested perspectives. Ideas that we may have automatically shunned as unworkable or unnecessarily dramatic in the past will start to feel plausible, even necessary to solving current dilemmas, and we will find ourselves shining light on our more radical, combative selves in order to navigate the aspects of existence that are clearly not working for us. Events may occur in the public sphere that were once considered highly unlikely or ridiculous, and they will contribute to a general sense of building chaos or upheaval.
Whether this upheaval leads to productivity or dissolution remains to be seen.
WHY?
Mythological Uranus was the father of Saturn and the god of the sky, who partnered with Gaia to produce the Titans. He is both a place and an entity in Graeco-Roman mythology, having created life and then becoming a harbor within which life may dwell. He was a big weirdo, though, and the children Gaia bore for him disgusted him so much that he banished them back inside her body. (Toxic masculinity and deadbeat dads are primordial, apparently.) For some perspective, his first children included powerful Cyclopes and creatures with fifty heads and a hundred arms each in addition to the more well-known Titans, so Uranus claimed he was reticent to unleash their power into the universe. This pissed Gaia off to no end, as both her agency and her babies were now forfeit, so she fashioned an adamantine sickle and implored her imprisoned children to deal with their father. Only one had the chutzpah to take Uranus to task - the youngest of the Titans and future child slayer himself, Cronos.
Cronos, or Saturn to the Romans, took up the sickle with glee and castrated his father, tossing his naughty bits to the ocean and his blood to the land, ensuring Cronos' power grab over the universe as well as Uranus' seat in the heavens, doomed to watch his children make pretty much exactly the same mistakes as himself.
This is the sort of longevity that affects our perspectives right now - the ability to see generation after generation making the same mistakes and prompting us to wonder what it all means, and to marinate on how might we break the cycle. Can these cycles even be broken? Uranus takes eighty-four years to circle the sun, making it's effect on our lives slow but profound, as new generations are birthed and presented with the same eternal conundrums over and over again. Is creation possible without simultaneous destruction? How radical are we willing to be in order to bring a new regime to existence? Are we willing to become monstrous ourselves in order to annihilate the violent monsters that hold our current world in their grasp?
WHEN?
Tuesday kicked off the Uranus/Sun hand holding, but we can expect the effects to linger much longer and for these sweeping, difficult questions to color many smaller ideas and actions as spring unfurls toward summer. We also have a Venus/Saturn trine on Saturday, May 13th, which will ease the way for discussions about structure and finances both personally and collectively. Those of us who need to have frank conversations with family or friends regarding money and discipline have the best chance of a breakthrough over the weekend, but with Venus in Cancer and Saturn in Pisces, there is zero chance that feelings and emotions will be left to the wayside. People WILL have feelings about money and the divsion of power, but the ultimate conclusion might be fruitful and clarifying.
And finally, on Sunday, May 14th, Mercury will move direct again in Taurus, facilitating an end to the computer gremlins, cringey social posts, travel delays, and ex-partner hauntings that have been plaguing us for the last 3 weeks or so. Don't go ham writing missives and booking vacations just yet, though - Mercury (Hermes to the Greeks) is a trickster and a fuckboi in the tradition of his great peepaw Uranus, and it takes a week or so to truly be free of his impish influence.
TAROT
Speaking of Mercury The Fuckboi, an interesting little retrograde snafu contributed to very complex tarot pulls for this week. I always pull for the next 7 days on Tuesdays of each week, filming as I go, then I transfer the video files to a drive via memory card. This week, for no discernable reason, the memory card I used was corrupted and none of the video could be accessed, prompting me to do a second round of filmed pulls - but I still had the original pulls with their corresponding crystal. In the interest of skepticism and my own curiosity, I kept both pulls and compared/combined them in my readings.
Thursday's initial pull of The Moon reversed already indicated a negative thought spiral, and the second pull of The Fool reversed indicated the lack of motivation as a result. Friday's initial pull of 6 of Swords reversed indicates an inability to compromise or see completion of a project, and the secondary pull of 4 of Coins shows us how finances could be affected. (Looking at you, useless fucking U.S. government.) Saturday, the day of a Venus/Saturn trine, showcases first the need to make a decision, and the secondary pull of King of Cups reversed shows us all the feelings people are going to have about it. On Monday, The Queen of Pentacles was pulled both times from different decks, and the 6 of Swords showed up again for Tuesday, this time upright and with the first pull of The Lovers, indicating that a solution of mutual progress might be found for Friday's stasis. Wild.
Check out the more detailed results and competing card pulls on our stories at RitualPNW on IG and YouTube. Find the channel at http://youtube.com/@alectochaos. You can also book one on one readings in person at buyritual.com, or walk-in for a reading at our brick and mortar location on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays.
RITUAL ELEMENTS FOR DISRUPTION
In March of 1781, British star gazer William Herschel discovered Uranus from his terrace with a homemade telescope. The ice giant had been seen and recorded by humans before as early as 1690, but was assumed to be a star in the Taurus constellation as opposed to a planet orbiting our sun, probably due to its oblong, 84 year orbit.
When Herschel brought his find to the Royal Society, Britain's official science academy for nerds, they waffled on calling it a planet until confirmation from several other scientists in Finland and Russia, and in 1783 everyone agreed that they had a new, distant addition to our solar system on their hands. If everything had been running smoothly for the empire, we might be referring to this planet as George III, or George's Planet, since that is legitimately what Herschel wanted to preserve as it's moniker. Why? Well, he wanted to glorify what he assumed would be the posterity of the British Empire as it waged war with a bunch of upstarts in swampy territory across the Atlantic - colonists with the audacity to think their labor and resources belonged to them, and not a fat monarch stuffing his face with tarts an ocean away.
On top of all that, things were looking decidedly sketchy for Britain's favorite nemesis, France, who not only seemed poised to assist the ungrateful swamp people in the Americas, but who were dealing with disturbing, violent rumblings amidst their own citizenry. As a result, astronomers grappled with the new planet's nom de plume for several more years, abandoning the idea of "George's Planet" once it became apparent that the people who violently disagreed with Britain claiming sovereignty over planet Earth also took umbrage with Britain owning the cosmos.
Ultimately we have German astronomer Johann Bode to thank for walking Occam's Razor and proposing the most obvious, logical name of Uranus in 1782, since he was the father of Saturn, the next closest planet inward. Unfortunately, blood and rage were already beginning to flow in the streets of America and France by 1784, and it would take until 1850 for British institutions to get it through their thick heads that they lost the war and, more importantly, no one wanted to call a planet Georgium Sidus.
Thus Uranus, the sky god doomed to obsolescence and omnipotence was immortalized as a celestial body, right when the idea of mercantilism and monarchy began their death throes. In 2023, a year most of us live one paycheck away from destitution and 10% of the population owns 76% of the world's wealth, let us contemplate this sticker art depicting the invention of a French doctor, Joseph-Ignace Guillotin. Stick on your computer, your water bottle, your vehicle, your favorite billionaire, or a letter to the U.S. congress. Purely for history and art appreciation, of course.