Weekly Woo-Woo Wrap-Up 6.14.24
In true Gemini fashion, the news had been overwhelming, the secret reveals both invigorating and exhausting, and half of what we've heard is probably bullshit.
What Has Happened So Far?
Our biggest influences this week have been happening under a loud Gemini stellium, which means they all manifest most strongly around communication - what we are saying, who we’re speaking to, the channels we use to facilitate our speech, and how we choose (or choose not) to broadcast our own perspectives.
Amidst all this confabulation, we’ve also been navigating some difficult squares; an astrological aspect of a stubbornly combative, martial nature. Further, these squares involved Saturn, Mars, and Pluto; two malefic planets who deeply enjoy smacking us down and a planet/not planet that rules our longstanding generational wounds and secrets.
On the micro level, this may have shown up in our lives as power struggles with work or family, as well as the discovery of hidden information that may or may not be entirely true. Part of the problem with Pluto is that his realm is chaos, and the god of the underworld doesn’t really care if we have the capacity to be productive with his revelations - we are subject to his difficult truth, whether we like it or not.
6.11.24 - Mars in Taurus Square to Pluto in Aquarius
On Tuesday, the morose Hades/Pluto formed a square with everyone’s favorite red hothead, Ares/Mars, who just started chilling in Taurus while Pluto was traversing Aquarius in retrograde. This was a perfect aspect for escalating violence, confrontation, and angry litigation about the past, and the fixed nature of the square meant there could be a glaring lack of open dialogue or compromise about, well, anything. So it’s not surprising that the world confirmed by early Tuesday morning a stunning, right-wing election surge across the European Union that threatens the current liberal rule of Germany, France, Belgium, and Bulgaria, among others. A worrisome, retrograde movement led by the AfD in Germany garnered 16% of parliamentary votes, which seems quite a bit like Pluto shoving our past back into our faces, given the lack of breathing room between AfD’s party platform and the main policy thrust of Nazi Germany. Cool, cool, cool.
Mars Sponsored Violence Meets Pluto Sponsored Recrimination in Gaza
Monday and Tuesday also brought us a proliferation of coverage on the U.S./Israeli military operation that killed about 200 Palestinians (we really have no way of knowing precise death tolls until far, far later) and rescued 4 Israeli hostages, which, tragically, epitomizes the violent nature of a Mars/Pluto square, particularly in deference to generational trauma or grievance.
Mars is down for destruction 24/7, and while he is in Venus-ruled Taurus, he convinces himself (and us) that this destruction, this leveling of the present is necessary for beauty and nature to flourish in the future. Pluto, in the role of an antagonist, is basically here saying, ”Oh yeah? Feel righteous do you? Well look at all this dirty stuff from your past. Muddies the waters, doesn’t it? ” No one compromises under this sort of astrology, but no one really wins, either.
6.12.24 - Mercury in Gemini Square to Saturn in Pisces
Not to be outdone by their fixed zodiacal brethren, the double-bodied signs of Gemini and Pisces formed a mutable square on Wednesday, forcing us to synchronize heaps of information from wildly different, often antagonistic perspectives. Mercury has never cared much about the nature of the data being exposed, and they have also never placed much emphasis on curation or prioritization of content - like their bustling home in the house of Gemini, Mercury wants us to ingest all the information available, true, false, fact-checked, or otherwise. Who cares if it’s conflicting or weird, we can sort that out later! Which leads us to…
Alex Jones and a Case of Ascension via Mercury, Destruction via Saturn
This aspect is also known for showcasing the consequences and limits of unfettered, unvetted speech, which seems to be exemplified in the case of Alex Jones and Infowars. Having spectacularly lost his defamation case against parents of slain kindergarteners, Jones has been leading victim’s families through a legal maze in a craven attempt to delay paying the absolutely massive amounts of money the court awarded his opponents. It is that free speech fanatic, Mercury, who influenced Jones to spout irresponsible and dangerous conspiracy theories questioning the existence of very real, and ultimately very dead children, but it is Saturn who brings the consequences for such loose, dangerous forms of communication. Nobody can escape our ringed planet when he fully embodies Kronos, the formidable Greek god of timekeeping and the true deity of fuck-around-and-find-out-isms, which Jones is painfully discovering. This week, courts approved the liquidation of over half of his personal assets, with further liquidation of his company and share holdings likely to follow. It couldn’t have happened to a nicer fellow! Speaking of compassionate, benevolent fellows…
Mercury eggs on a dogmatic, verbose SCOTUS justice, prompting a swift kick in the same justice’s ass by Saturn
Not to be outdone in mercurial stupidity by Alex Jones, justice Samual Alito - he of patriarchal-witch-finding and insurrectionist-flag-waving infamy - was caught on tape alluding to some sort of Christian Holy War that the right-flank of the United States must win in order to cement their power and force everybody to have really boring sex, or whatever the hell it is these prudes fantasize about in their down time. Activist Lauren Windsor released tapes to Rolling Stone that she recorded earlier this year wherein we hear both the justice and his flag-obsessed wife bemoan compromise and pluralism while seeming to endorse brute power and authoritarianism in order to defeat non-Christians.
This news encapsulates so many facets of the week’s astrology; the chattiness of Gemini can be found in both Alito’s loose lips as well as Rolling Stone magazine’s decision to publish the story, and the consequences of Saturn in Pisces show up in emotional backlash to the recordings and further eroding of faith in our institutions by the American public. Samual Alito undoubtedly sees himself as a fighter in the way that Mars chooses violence in Taurus - he believes the destruction he is wrecking is necessary in order to usher in his version of a better world. Laura Windsor takes on the role of Mercury themself in this story, filling in for Hermes as a chaos agent who can get anyone to talk about anything, who then brings that information back to humankind in the same unbothered fashion that Hermes once carried notes from Hades to Olympus.
6.14.24 - Mercury Cazimi in Gemini
I often imagine Mercury as Julian Assange - an anti-hero of sorts, Assange, like Hermes, has only one goal, which is to deliver all the information to us in completion, regardless of context or the toll any ambiguity may take on their own integrity. In a personal sense, this might have shaped a week full of more opportunity for change and growth than many of us have experienced in a while, but the bummer of it becomes clear when we have to work unusually hard for trust, clarity and precision.
So many of the issues fighting for space in our collective heads right now - war, Gaza, climate change, economic upheaval, and cultural polarization - are difficult to properly assess due to the fractured political landscape and corporate media consolidation of 2024. Even as I am collecting headlines to examine the stories that align with our astrological happenings, I am shocked at the amount of conflicting opinion and unverified information being touted as concrete fact. I’ve linked to data from sources whom I think are trustworthy and capable of due diligence, but in this age, do we even know what that means? Different polls on all manner of different issues seem to come out everyday, and none of them show consistent trends or data, which rightfully makes people cautious about paying smug pollsters and shouty talking heads any mind at all. I can’t tell you the truth about the death toll in Gaza, or what SCOTUS is going to rule on next, or which geriatric criminal is ahead in any number of elections the world over without questioning the veracity of my statements. It’s Gemini season, baby, and that always means we will be inundated with wave after wave of information; some of it true, some of it false, and all of it increasing the noise in our heads.
In the spirit of good faith, what we can all emphasize is the need for fact-checking, deep-diving, and dogged searches for the original source material of any news story or world event, which is what Saturn shows up to teach us when Mercury gets chatty and insane the way they are doing today as they form a conjunction with the sun. Try not to jump on any extreme bandwagons or dogpiles, digital or otherwise, until the facts are clear and verified. Interpersonally, we should strive to reserve judgement if we hear gossip or second-hand information about pertinent people in our lives, because Mercury in Gemini can talk a LOT of shit, whether they believe the information or not.
Weekend Reads
Overtly Plutonian themes of obfuscation, shadowy dealings, and karma have shown up very strongly in public discourse this week. As inevitable as the collapse of a reliable media ecosystem feels, there are still journalists going above and beyond when it comes to investigating the powerful people and institutions responsible for our unwitting ignorance. It’s just that, like Gemini, we need to be discerning as we sift through the mountains of total crap that are available to us.
This piece is a nice bit of investigative journalism by Mimi Swartz out of Texas that examines the questionable funding of the forced-birth movement - https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/whos-bankrolling-these-prominent-abortion-rights-opponents/
If you follow global politics or are interested in watchdog style journalism, check out Ken Klippenstein on Substack. Ken left The Intercept when corporate overlords started censoring his journalism in favor of cronyism, and he continues to break stories about corporate greed and military misdeeds like this one, which details just a tiny bit of the deception in which our government engages.
If you are a political or journalism junkie and especially enjoy hearing about what TOTAL JACKASSES are in charge of us over in The United States, check out Talking Points memo with veteran journalist Josh Marshall. He has a remarkable team of writers who eschew hysterics in favor of circumspect analysis, and they just published a cautious addendum to a story about an underground society of men who aim to take over the infamous ‘7 mountains’ of American society by installing theocrats in both corporate and political positions of power.
Finally, because we need hope and light to counterbalance so much weirdness, I am currently reading and loving Poetry as Spellcasting by Tomiko Beyer, Destiny Hemphill, and Lisbeth White, which posits that our words and language alone are powerful, magical tools that can act as a first line of defense against all the ugliness permeating our global atmosphere.
Stay safe and enjoy the hedonistic Venus/Neptune square on Sunday, 6.16 - next week we will be taking a cranky look at Cancer season, horoscopes for the rest of the Gemini lunar cycle, and options for harnessing the power of the summer solstice.