December 2021: Horoscopes for Moderns
Omicron and more Kala Sarpa lockdown.
ONCE AGAIN THE SOLAR SYSTEM is about to slip into another Kala Sarpa Yoga pattern.
Kala Sarpa Yoga is generally studied in natal astrology and relates to a condition where the seven planets from Vedic astrology (Sun, Moon, Mars, Venus, Jupiter, Saturn, Mercury) are trapped between Rahu (the Moon's North Node) and Ketu (the Moon's South Node).
Of course, modern Western astrology also includes Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto in the pantheon. And this is why when I first started to consider the sky pattern back in early 2020—where the Nodes had locked all of the solar system into one half of the zodiac, I was struck by the pattern’s literal correlation to the COVID pandemic and the feeling that—well, people felt trapped—locked down and cornered by time.
Two Steps Forward and Three Back
And so here we are—again.
Presently Mars is the only planet that is free from the upcoming KSY corral. But independence ends on Dec 15 when Mars conjuncts the South Node in Sagittarius and joins the other planets in the eclipse points (the nodes) lockdown.
Hmmm, just in time for Omicron, the crazy-ass COVID variant that’s bloomed out of South Africa.
The Sabian symbol for 1 degree Sadge isn’t lost on me, it reads: “RETIRED ARMY VETERANS GATHER TO REAWAKEN OLD MEMORIES.”
This is akin to medical scientists who’ve been on the front lines for the last couple of years being forced to return to the drawing board to derive from previous solutions (memories) new ways to confront an ‘enemy’ (virus) that has no regard for the upcoming holiday (read: shopping) season.
From Micro (Viral) to Macro (Cultural)
The KSY pattern mirrors, in a more exaggerated form, all of the various disparities that people use to both define and maneuver through life with.
Meaning, reality exists as a mutual hallucination that we shore up by using opposites to define specifics. Polarities are constantly at play (what the Hindus call ‘the gunas’), only we see them more emphatically when the sky becomes divied up as its about to become in a couple of weeks.
Angelic people (altruists, liberals, heterosexuals) need to have devils (sinners, conservatives, pansexuals) roaming about to shore up their always wobbly sense of self. And the flip is true of course too.
But, as I’ve noted, during the KSY pattern, this condition is exacerbated out past Pluto.
Body Virus—Viral Meme
This same dichotomy is at work when applied to COVID as a dual-natured phenomenon.
Yes, the virus is a genuine submicroscopic infectious agent that attacks the body. But it’s also a ‘viral meme’. A sociocultural plague that’s infected the entire globe, disconnecting people en masse from reality. A culture can not function when agreed upon touchstones of what is ‘true’ fragment.
I blame the incessant, 25-year invasion of the cyber realm into the human for our predicament. Suddenly pragmatic components have been replaced with whatever new conspiracy your Aunt Gretchen has forwarded to you in this morning’s email.
Wabi-Sabi Rules
The good news is that there’s always some kind of seeming distortion at work in life, an imbalance that has a necessity of place about it. When we acknowledge this (and no one can argue with this fact) we can settle with ‘what is.’ Not becoming indifferent or passive, but just calmed the fuck down.
To us what seems out of whack or tragic is part and parcel of a larger cycle we have no insight into whatsoever. We comprehend only a small portion of Mother Nature’s mainframe. The rest is a series of blank-circuitry mysteries.
As Cory Doctorow points out here, what we’re about to re-experience is the dichotomy between Old Normal and New Normal. But as Omicron is about to demonstrate, there is no returning to Old Normal.
A key way in which Old Normal sucked was the way that monopolists were able to style themselves as heroic entrepreneurs whose great rewards were commensurate with their great risks – when in reality, the risks were always socialized and only the gains were privatized.
IOW: The greed of Big Pharma—and its false narrative of removing the public (i.e., taxpayers) from the trajectory of how the vaccines were developed, has led them to declare who on the globe (and who will not) receive protection.
This might work in the Old Narrative if applied to widget making but is genocidal when considering something as fiercely feral as a mutating virus.
It doesn’t take a Jonas Salk to imagine the blowback of this grotesque definition of ‘worthiness’. Despite how high Merck’s stock climbs, if half the planet is dead, what good are all of those derivatives and extra homes in the Hamptons?
And yet you and I still need to get out the bed in the morning and engage with our world. However, that might be configured right now.
Viruses have been bopping around the planet for billions of years. If I had to choose between worrying about a new viral lockdown and why minuscule particles of plastic are showing up in the testes of newborn baby boys, I’d probably fret over the later horror.
Anyway, here are some pragmatic suggestions for how you might best apply your focus this month. Or not.
But, regardless of your sign, keep uppermost the notion of ‘the flip’, that ‘other side’ that KSY puts in high detail.
To do so will prevent you from being thrown when its contrast invades your version of what’s real amidst the new wobble we’re about to enter.