Report for Saturday 6, Sunday 7 May and Week Ahead

Saturday and Sunday and Week of May 6-12, 2017

\Recovery/

Saturday 6 May 2017

|Karmically difficult or sobering third| of this week continues   ** |

/moon goes void-of-course at 5:43a PT | 8:43a ET | 12:43p UT   * / |

until it enters Libra at 11:21a PT | 2:21p ET | 6:21p UT   ** |

Sunday 7 May 2017

Moon in Libra   ** |
moon enters the Via Combusta at 4:30p PT | 7:30p ET | 11:30p UT   ** >

[The |difficult third| ends about the time the Via Combusta begins]

I try to talk about longer-term matters in the weekly reports. 

This week, the horrid Venus-square-Saturn aspect, going on since March 21, finally comes to an end as of Wednesday the 10th. Hurrah! 

However, I have found to my discomfort that such aspects, which are major, are in fact still with us up to the full ten-degree orb, so for the next few days, and also to review our experiences since March 21, let's talk about what is one of the most miserable aspects in astrology.

This time it is amazingly easy to discuss it, because the Netflix series Thirteen Reasons Why was released toward the end of March, just when this aspect started, and people have been watching it and reacting to it heavily. Just yesterday I heard an intense and lengthy discussion of whether or not teenagers and their parents should watch it, whether it helps or hurts, and on and on. If you don't know, it's about a high school girl who commits suicide but not before making thirteen tapes discussing her reasons for doing so, and incriminating her fellow students as well as some teachers. It's a matter of bullying, insulting, insensitivity, coarse rudeness, and even rape. I shall not review it here, but you get the drift. I actually did enjoy watching it and learned a lot from it. 

Well, if you don't know what Venus square Saturn is about, just watch this. I used to call it "the crucifixion aspect" because that is what it feels like sometimes. Now I don't know how it has played out in your life over the past six weeks, but I know that for me it has been tough. I did lose one wonderful friend to a sad death. More than that, I saw into my own insensitivity about many people and my carelessness about their feelings and my disloyalty to them, as it were, by failing to keep in touch with them. Going along with that, of course, is the less exalted response: "What right have they to ruin my life, why are they so cruel, no one will ever understand or love me" and so on---the very responses of the fictional Hannah Baker in the series. 

Usually this aspect lasts about 18 days. This time it was almost 7 weeks (because of Venus's retrogradation). We have been through the mill. Here are a few things I noticed today, thinking about it:

1. Often it seems that people are crazy. You think, "How could someone have done that?" and you feel grieved about it. It was either inconsiderate or cruel or just so thoughtless one's mouth drops open. (The male lead in Thirteen Reasons often had his mouth open while pondering what Hannah went through and how he himself was responsible for some of it.)

2. People misunderstand things. They are hurt because they think you insulted them, when you had no such intention; or you blurt out something because you are suffering or upset and that makes things worse. 

3. On the positive side, you think a lot about the people who mean the most to you, or have meant the most to you in the past, and learn something about loyalty. These are your buddies and your family! What else do you have? That can be an awe-inspiring realization. True, there is God; but even He said that you need to love "your neighbor" as well as Him, and are you capable of doing that, really? These kinds of questions come up in anyone with spiritual sensitivity and even in those without it. 

4. There is a lot of fear or anxiety, not only about love and loved ones and one's own status in their eyes but about money, often, or security. Venus is wealth; Saturn poverty. You might feel, "I would be more loving, or help people more, if I had more money." That could be a delusion but one might feel it. Or you may worry about the poverty of someone else. True, there are palliatives; and Saturn-Venus is a sort of "borrow" or "loan" aspect, often. You incur a karmic obligation (Saturn) to get temporary money or security (Venus). Or someone borrows from you. 

5. Latent fears are lurking and ruining your mood, often. Now here is where we could do some work on ourselves to try to get rid of those fears. Here is what I read today in the Christian Science textbook: ""Latent fear diagnosed:  The patient turns involuntarily from the contemplation of a hopeless state [a terrifying image of disease], but though unacknowledged, the latent fear and the despair of recovery remain in thought." Of course, according to Christian Science, to remove the fear and the despair is to cure the disease, though this requires the supernal remedy, Love. "Perfect love casteth out fear." "The fear and the despair of recovery" remaining in her thought were exactly what killed Hannah Baker, for example. And then the active as opposed to the passive error, sin, was what possessed some of those, both boys and girls, who were responsible for her fears. Mrs. Eddy continues: "Just so is it with the greatest sin. It is the most subtle, and does its work almost self-deceived. The diseases deemed dangerous sometimes come from the most hidden, undefined, and insidious beliefs." I believe all of us, except perfect saints or yogis, are specially subject to such fears and "sins" during the Venus-square Saturn transit. This is not because of Venus and Saturn but because of ourselves; the planets merely make objective what we have brought upon ourselves subjectively. Mrs. Eddy: "There is more life and immortality in one good motive and act than in all the blood which ever flowed through mortal veins." 

So, for these final days of this aspect, through Tuesday, let's see if we can realize something about ourselves, repair our "sinful" or erring attitudes toward others, sense how to be more loving and accepting. It's easy to say that, but for each of us it requires patient work on ourselves and subjecting ourselves to the rough-and-tumble of interaction with those who, we feel, do not understand us or care about us. (That is something which, if Hannah Baker had been able to do it, would have saved her.) (Oh, of course, in the series not one individual ever prayed, except for a few who uttered "Jesus!" at frightening moments, as nonbelievers will do. It is a sort of nonbeliever prayer.)

Now, for the other big bogeyman of the past weeks, Mercury retrograde. That ended this past Wednesday but the Dark Hermetic Epoch continues until May 21. I wish it were otherwise and believe me, though I discovered and named the Hermetic Epochs, I wish they were shorter. They cover less than half the time, but almost half. That's just the way it is, like night and day. We need to learn, again, how to use these periods rather than just curse them and suffer them. They have a positive value, but the negative is easier to see as:

1. Yesterday I lost my wallet--I thought. For a half hour I was upset and worried; called two places I might have left it; decided I would have to call the credit card people and ask for my card to be canceled; and on and on. Finally I looked in the right place and found it. It's embarrassing, but a typical Mercury retrograde happening. It happens to all of us. 

2. Even after I found my wallet, I went out and found after ordering something in a restaurant that I had forgotten to take it with me! More embarrassment. Finally I remembered that I knew my debit card number, and gave it to the bartender, and all was well. No, you are not losing it or going senile if such things happen during the Dark Hermetic Epoch. 

3. The Republicans passed the health bill they wanted, but everybody knows it will be shaped out of all recognition by the time the Senate gets it. This illustrates another factor about the DHE: Incompleteness. It is hard to finish things perfectly, and new things are almost impossible to get off the ground until they have been fixed, repaired, revised a dozen times. So if that is happening to you in some important areas of your life, don't despair. By the 21st and later you will be able to get them resolved. 

I am invited to a party downstairs and must go. 

{Weekend and Week ahead, May 6-12}  /Recovery\

Cosmic Piper