Happy Astro Pondering!
Weekly Metaphorcast
Bringing the Poetry of the skies down to the actuality of daily life
Metaphorcast 11/23-29, 2020
Over the weekend we had a Seasonal shift, from Scorpio’s realm to Sagittarius’ lift. What did we learn in the profound outerbounds, in the deep zone of our bones where truth hangs around? What comes next? After an encounter with such mystery?
French surrealist artist Yves Klein said, “At first there is nothing, then there is a profound nothingness, after that a blue profundity.”
At the age of 19 Klein and his two friends, the artist Arman and composer Claude Pascal, lay on a beach in Southern France. They decided to divide the world between themselves. Pascal chose words, Arman chose the Earth, and Klein chose the sky.
What ensued was a life-long obsession and devotion to the color blue. Signing the sky with his hand, he committed to a quest to reach the far side of the infinite. He saw that unlike other colors that arouse specific associative ideas, blue at most suggests the sea and sky, and thus is “beyond dimension.”
Sagittarius Season celebrates this sense of blue. Beyond dimension. A place to dream, and feel a full sense of vitality. Though it’s true that November is known more for it’s falling temperature, the horse insists on acknowledging this place of blue space; this high of open sky.
Goethe, in his theory of colors, saw the blue sky to be the darkness of space, lit up by the presence of sunlight in our atmosphere. The deep space of beyond lit up before our eyes, with each waking day under the blue of the skies. But what of the deep space that exists from within, does it too become lightened, a blue sky built-in?
An inner blue sky, lightened with optimism, hope and acknowledgment. Beyond just a knowing, a showing of knowing.
You know the music is good, from the depths of the dark, but nodding your head acknowledges this spark. That joke is funny says the depths of you, but laughing acknowledges this fact to be true! Darkness made light, in the truth of the blue. From knowledge to acknowledgment, a major breakthrough!
With Thanksgiving on thursday, acknowledgment will rise, with appreciation to those we have loved for so long. The spirit of appreciation, the sweetest of songs. William James saw the craving of appreciation to be the deepest principle of human nature. Be generous with it in this skyward Season.
The planets are short on air this week. Social and connected air. Holidays for most will be celebrated remote. With both Mercury and Venus in Scorpio, communication and relating is not short on depth. Over the phone or online, connection is primed, to make up for these distances of space and timezone, with a sense of belonging, Scorpio’s powerful lodestone. And even if no socialization occurs, tune into a place, that makes your blood stir. Earth magic abounds from its depths and yours too, from a profound nothingness to the profundity of blue!
Venus will oppose the great awakener Uranus in the bountiful earth of Taurus. William Blakes thankful receiver who “bears a plentiful harvest.”
Mars moving onward from the middle of Aries, no other direction better for such energy. Must be the Season of the horse, with those wide open plains, the galvanized Will grips gladly the reigns!
Ready to check him are Jupiter, Pluto and Saturn, who continue in Capricorn a most hyper-real pattern. Empowered hope and strong practicality, looming threats and good news in the same actuality. As Robert Frost said, “the best way out is always through.”
Neptune in Pisces, the sea-chariot that navigates a blue inner-sky.
The Moon
The Moon begins the week waxing gibbous in the later degrees of Pisces. Saturated with imaginative potential, be open to nuance, suggestion and subtlety- new roads of dreams are paved with discovery!
On Tuesday, original day of Mars, she will grow into Aries by mid morning. In the Season of Blue skies, a redness bursts forth. The connection of action to a home-base of hearth. As Rainer Maria Rilke wrote, “All the soarings of my mind begin in my blood.”
This kindred fire of Moonlight grows through most of Thanksgiving day. Big and bold this Aries Moon, singing in red a mysterious tune; of memory, family, belonging and desire. Towards what does your wolf-like yearning aspire? Joyce Carol Oates called the blood “memory without language.”
By Friday as Venus receives her strongest electric wave from Uranus, the Moon, moving into luxurious Taurus, wants in on the act. A sensual relaxing yet altogether lively signature, much like the way Goethe described the color blue. In his words, “This color has a peculiar and almost indescribable effect on the eye. As a hue it is powerful- but it is on the negative side, and in its highest purity is, as it were, a stimulating negation. Its appearance, then, is a kind of contradiction between excitement and repose.”
Perhaps it is this blue energy that prompts Neptune to finally station to move direct, on Saturday, after nearly 5 months of retrograde. The stimulating negation, the effortless creation, of a dream.
By Sunday midday she waxes extremely gibbous in Gemini, and there is at last, air in the planetary line-up. Perspective and ease of rationality, a lightness perhaps or just some good old fashioned fresh air. She moves towards being not only a Full Moon, but a Full Moon Lunar Eclipse, in sparkling Gemini, the dance of the Twins. This event will be exact the following Monday, at 4 am, so both nights will be excellent opportunities to view it.
As a Lunar Eclipse, the earth will be in between the Sagittarian Sun and the Gemini Moon, casting an earth Shadow, darkening the light, likely casting a coppery-red tone. In the Season of lightened darkness, we have a darkened brightness. The Twins laugh with delight. Use the youthful energy of Gemini Moonbeams, to acknowledge possibilities that are yet to be seen. Shine the light on just one and create something new. And Gemini loves words, especially the ones that need to be heard. Acknowledge another, with a kind-hearted word, it may kindle music from happiness’ blue bird.
From granted to gracious, life gets more spacious.
Yves Klein wrote his name on the sky, painting monochrome surfaces to see with his own eyes- an “absolute freedom” (his words exact). For the horse, it’s a wide open space that attracts.
As always, happy astro pondering!