Interference. Cruelty. And the Mind Untethered

Gemini transits like you haven't considered them before. PLUS: a new Rage of Aquarius cast, Celine Dion sheds her Saturn, and Fame Whores revealed!

Jul 29, 2024

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MARS IS APPROACHING a conjunction with Jupiter in Gemini, becoming exact on August 14. If you reference Aleister Crowley’s Thoth Tarot’s astrological correlates, you’ll be surprised by some insights that are much more cogent than the astro babble we’re accustomed to reading about these planets coming together in the most untethered of the mutable signs.

The Tarot’s Sword suit, associated with the enigmatic element of Air, is unpredictable and unmoored. As Crowley elucidates, Air is a product of the fusion of Fire and Water, a concept that requires a vivid imagination to penetrate. Air is the renegade element. He writes of the Swords:

“This suit, governing all intellectual manifestations, is always complicated and disordered. It is subject to change as is no other suit…In nature, the obvious symbol of Air is the Wind ‘which bloweth whithersoever it listeth.’ It lacks the concentrated Will of Fire to unite with Water: it has no corresponding passion for its Twin Element, Earth.”

Thus, ungrounded, the Swords—the Air element—are, quite literally, wild cards.

The garden variety takes on Mars, and Jupiter in Gemini usually makes euphemisms for the Air element’s mercurial attributes. You’ll read a lot about increased intellectual activity but not a lot about the misery that accompanies mental obsession. Once the mind gets something between its teeth, you have no choice but to let the grind die of its own accord. You can’t turn the mind on and off like a light bulb.

My greatest anxiety about what occurs after death (if anything happens at all) is primarily about what happens to the/my mind. This concern prompted Tibetan Buddhists to write their Book of the Dead. The bardos, so they say, keep perturbating, whirling, and swirling, revealing their light shows without the dulling effect of being housed in a body. For what it’s worth, the spiritual school I was in for over 25 years required constant meditation practice; for me, it did little to nothing when it came to quelling the mind. Crowley is correct, as elements go, Air goes wherever in the fuck it wants to go—like the wind.

Based on the attributions established by the Order of the Golden Dawn, Crowley associates Jupiter in Gemini with the Tarot’s Eight of Swords, which he called Interference. And that’s a no-brainer. Too many (Jupiter) thoughts (Gemini), too many ideas, too many possibilities, and probabilities leave one stranded. Mars in Gemini is more troubling and is associated with one of the two most brutal cards in the Tarot (both in the Swords suit)—the Nine of Swords, which Crowley calls Cruelty. Crowley notes: “…crude rage of hunger operating without restraint; although its form is intellectual, is the temper of the inquisitor.”

As the upcoming Mars-Jupiter conjunction will land on Donald Trump’s Uranus in Gemini, I’m guessing this will trigger his J.D. Vance tipping point. I’m expecting an unceremonious dumping of Peter Thiel’s hillbilly stooge, most likely replaced by an unfortunate female. Nikki Haley, anyone?

Shore yourself; August promises to expand beyond the vulgarity limits of a reality TV catastrophe.

On a Lighter Note

In our new Rage of Aquarius: The Outsider Astrology podcast, Rachel, Andrei, and I take another look under the hood of the ongoing Jupiter in Gemini transit. A few of the topics we rummage through:

• Jupiter's square with Saturn in Pisces and the implications for the current political atmosphere.

• Naomi Klein’s new book Doppelganger (speaking of mirroring and Gemini).

• Hollywood’s Hidden Agendas.

And next month on Rage: the indubitably charming, mega-Leo, Nick Dagan Best, AKA The Human Ephemeris. We’ll discuss the ongoing debate between traditional and psychological astrology, and of course—because he’s everywhere—even when you don’t want him: Donald Trump.

Kulture Klatch

WHAT I’M READING THIS WEEK: In preparation for the launch of my new podcast Fame Whores, with my good friend, the novelist

John Calendo

, I’ve been boning up on two of the best Tarot books ever written: Aleister Crowley’s Book of Thoth (obviously, as mentioned above) and for more modern sensibilities, Tarot scholar

Cynthia Giles

’ Tarot: History, Mystery and Lore. Cynthia somehow managed to capture the Tarot genie and coax it back into its bottle—or, in this case, into a book. You must have this book in your library.

Why Tarot? Well, I’ll get to that in a second.

First, a little about Fame Whores. As pop culture mavens, John (my former editor from years back) and I decided one night, after wrapping up an epic conversation that covered the TV series Fellow Travelers, Phil Spector’s unhinged impresario role with his roster of female artists, close reads from crucial moments in the film Whatever Happened to Baby Jane, fabulous moments from the latest episode of Ru Paul’s Drag Race—a seed idea took root between us. Oh, and also, amidst our chatter, there was a lot of cross-referencing to different astrological transits and Tarot pulls related to ongoing political events. Anyway, we came up with the idea to turn our discourse into a gossipy podcast—and that’s how Fame Whores was hatched. As we are both in the process of self-publishing our own books, we’re describing the cast like this: Disrespectful HOT TAKES on Pop TV, Porn Creep, and the Publishing Hustle with Astrologer Frederick Woodruff and Editor-at-Large John Calendo.

See! A Mars-Jupiter Gemini confluence can result in positive things. It just needs to be discursive and gossipy.

Subscribe here to Fame Whores for updates and news about our debut episode.

WHAT I’M WATCHING THIS WEEK: A whiplashing lurch. A week or so ago, I caught the Celine Dion documentary I Am: Celine Dion (Celine is a double Aries, after all, so there’s that about the title). After coming to terms with the idea that we might not get to hear her sing again due to Dion’s mysterious neurological disorder, suddenly (like, the other day), she was closing the opening ceremony of the Olympics in Paris, singing (more like transmitting from Valhalla) for the entire universe from the Eiffel Tower. All I could say, after getting all misty-eyed, was, well, nothing. I was (for real) speechless. Magnificient doesn’t quite describe her performance, but it will do. I’m a sucker for these from-the-bottom-to-the-top rehabilitations. (I think most of us are). Especially those of us aging out into the wild blue yonder.

Celine’s Moon and Sun in Aries bookend her Saturn in Aries, so a disorder like Stiff Person Syndrome made sense. Saturn is hardening and calcifying, and when you’ve been performing for people every day since you were two years old, I think you’d probably want to fall back on your Saturn for a protracted time-out to relish what Saturn is about—namely, some solitude and cessation of the magnetic charm accompanying a New Moon birth like Dion’s. But that’s just my astro take. New Moon folks often lack objectivity and don’t understand limits. Saturn can help, even if it seems like a setback.

Anyway, if you missed her performance, you can watch it right here:

YESTERDAY’S WALK:

WHAT I’M LISTENING TO THIS WEEK: I’ve added about 27 new tracks to my 2024 Spotify playlist Titanica. Follow along here and set playback to ‘shuffle.’

Love,

Interference. Cruelty. And the Mind Untethered

Gemini transits like you haven't considered them before. PLUS: a new Rage of Aquarius cast, Celine Dion sheds her Saturn, and Fame Whores revealed!

On a Lighter Note

Kulture Klatch

Opening collage by FW, ©2024 Nightcharm, Inc.

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