High Hopes, Hatred, and the Final Hurrah of Neptune in Pisces
Tuesday's partial eclipse merges Saturn (the reality principle) and Neptune (dreams of the future) into an awkward alliance.
You’re reading WOODRUFF. I cover the convergence of pop culture, psychology, and astrology. Join my entourage of subscribers—the party won’t start until you arrive.
6 AM, AND ANXIETY IS already hedged ‘round my skull. Buffalo Springfield’s 1967 hit For What It’s Worth is the subtextual soundtrack: “Paranoia strikes deep—into your life, it will creep.”
As summer shuts down, I wake up to witness the dark and the dawn in negotiations. The dark yields, but I still can’t tell if it’s 3 AM or 7 AM. Gurdjieff claimed pre-sunrise was an excellent time to work with whatever light particles were shimmying through the atmosphere. I mean, one of his fundamental tenets was the phenomenon of light as food, a study that also applies to astrology’s alchemical processes. I scoot out of bed.
Kitchen. Coffee. Sitting on the couch and staring out at the harbor. Amidst the beauty, I take a long breath and sense a knot of hatred in my chest. Right away, I know I must ratchet down how much ‘news’ I absorb throughout the day. Having an addictive personality, it’s not an easy aim. Plus, Trump knows how to bring the fuel. Last night, he tweeted that he hates Taylor Swift. That was the entirety of the tweet. “I hate Taylor Swift.” Again, this is a man running for the highest office on Earth? Wow. Like attracts like, and then there’s another assassination attempt this afternoon while Trump’s playing golf.
You’re probably feeling the hatred, too. Everyone hating everyone nowadays. Hatred is the new black. It’s the bell jar we live beneath—ancient Civil War grievances and other sins too numerous to mention. It’s funny—when I think back to when I was in my late teens and early twenties—I didn’t even know who the vice president was. Politics was light years away from pop music, astrology, and my gurgling hormones. I miss the dumbness of those days. Of course, having a president like Nixon at the time should have been training for what ensued as I matured into my thirties and forties. But then, could anyone—save for a time-traveling vampire—have been prepared for a MAGA-ified America?
The vampire is emblematic of my reaction to Trump while watching the presidential debate the other night. I think Abe Lincoln (or maybe Anna Nicole Smith) said a man has the face he deserves once he’s in his fifties. Trump’s countenance throughout the broadcast was a hybrid between an ape’s and a lizard’s. I’m convinced that his simian-reptilian conflation became a subliminal afterimage that worked its black magic through the night while people across the nation slept. I mean, god forbid anyone should have a moment when Trump wasn’t uppermost in their consciousness. So what were his expressions telegraphing? I saw it as a seething prelude to mitosis.1
Mitosis is a good word because it describes the intense vibration that proceeds a cell’s metamorphosis. It’s a bardo, where an old arrangement (one cell) struggles to become a pair of cells. “Two—two mints in one!” As the presidential debate occurred during a square between the Moon and the Sun—a quarter Moon—I read that as a prelude to a final blooming—once the Moon turns full this Tuesday. (Now we’re into werewolf metaphors).