Mars and Mobs and Capitol Mayhem

Questions about the theatrics (and danger) of an over-amped Martian Melee.

Something I always keep my eye on amidst astrological tooling is the 29th degree of any sign of the zodiac.

There’s something charged and puzzling about the cusp between signs. And it remains an endless area of debate amongst astrologers.

And that demarcation is especially curious for people born on the cusp. Are they a blend of both signs? Or some kind of hybrid?

Uhm, I say ‘no’. They are either a Leo or a Virgo, not a Levirgo (ALERT: name for a new clothing line!) I think it was Liz Greene who noted that signs are like lightbulbs, they can’t be half on or half off at any given time.

There seems to be an amplification of essence at the 29th degree, sort of like a high octane charge of whatever organic function the sign is aligned with in nature. And so I do not read cusps as a confluence of signs.

I see the cusp—the demarcation—as being similar to a separation between organs in the body. The kidneys are not part and parcel of the liver, they work together but do not invade each other’s anatomical space. But whatever.

Cosplay Mania

We’d a perfect opportunity for observing a 29-degree at work on Wednesday, January 5, in Washington DC, when Mars in Aries moved across the last degree of the sign on its way to a conjunction with Uranus in Taurus, which will perfect on—uh oh—Inauguration Day.

There is a literal way to read this 29th-degree traversal. Aries an explosive sign. And Mars an explosive planet. Add the magnification flashpoint of the 29th degree. And baby go boom! A riot or insurrection or seditious act—whatever you call it—something that will mark the history books for decades to come.

(Although the word melee is most fitting. From Webster’s: “…a confused mass of people.”)

And could there be a more fitting mascot for the moment than Jake Angeli’s buffalo-horned Viking ‘shaman’ beamed in from planet QAnon? Who, typical of an accelerated Aries-Mars moment, dominated every photo op available amidst the marauding patriots’ 15-minutes of fame.

What About Those Costumes?

As the writer, Ben Sixsmith tweeted: “It’s like the Storming of the Bastille as recreated by the cast of National Lampoon’s Animal House. These photos will outlive us all.”

Images of superheroes, Daniel Boones, backwoods medicine men, and riot gear ensembles (ordered from Army surplus stores) blurred into Halloween grab-bag vestiges—tiger print vests, Darth Vader and Guy Fawkes masks (from the old Occupy Wallstreet days) and plain ole WTFs:

This NY Times article brings a semiotic semblance of clarity to Wednesday’s hyper-animated Cosplay:

When you leave the totems of your usual identity behind you free yourself from the laws that govern that identity and assume those of another character — a frontiersman, a hunter, a warrior, even a superhero — that can then be twisted through a dark mirror into the outfits of the insurrection. 

And more fitting to my point:

It was as if normal dress — jeans, T-shirts, sweaters, puffers — couldn’t contain the extremity of the outburst. It needed to be expressed in out-there clothing, clothing that demanded attention, clothing you couldn’t ignore, clothing that refused to play by the rules because the whole point it was telegraphing (the point the president was making) was that the rules couldn’t be trusted; instead they needed to be shredded, torqued into some sort of fantasy he-man form.

This is all very Mars at 29 degrees of Aries on route to rendezvousing with a stranded Uranus in Taurus: “The extremity of the outburst.”

Of course much more was at play, with Mars squaring a clusterfuck of planets in Capricorn before Mars crossed the cusp and set off another square—to Jupiter and Saturn already in Aquarius (still negotiating their recent conjunction in that sign.)

Shorthand for this last paragraph is hard to cram into a simple delineation, but I’d venture something like:

The airtight tension that we’ve lived through throughout 2020—while Jupiter, Saturn, and Pluto kept grinding back and forth in Capricorn, gnawing at the floorboards and the walls and the restraints of the sign—well, that torsion was moving us to a tipping point. Mars finally freed from the dispersive bubble of Pisces, started gathering ammo for his late degree exit from Aries; triggering the aforementioned squares in Capricorn, and the just-released Jupiter and Saturn.

Final Thoughts

As to the desecration of the Capitol, I was fascinated by my response to watching historically sacred symbols and icons (images that we’ve all been steeped in since childhood or visited as tourists) vandalized and disrespected. As Glenn Greenwald wrote:

The U.S. Capitol remains a potent and cherished symbol even for Americans who are deeply cynical about the ruling class and political system. Its nobility is something continually engrained deep into our collective psyche since childhood, and that meaning endures even when our rational faculties reject it.

An invasion of the Mother turf made doubly bizarre by the over-the-top attire of the milling and mindless mob. I kept thinking of that book by John Kennedy Toole: A Confederacy of Dunces.

Watching the imagery stream past me on my laptop I realized the country had hit a new level of cognitive dissonance. An event that was every bit in keeping with the astrological transits of the moment. And acting as a prelude to the nation’s upcoming Pluto return in 2022.

In the old days when they told us to “stay tuned,” little did we know how much play could be afforded the word ‘tuned’.

As in looney. As in tuned-in and acutely aware.

As in a sad song.

Love,