The Astrology of me too: Re-Visioning Our Society’s Values and Attitudes Toward Women

If you want to see the astrology of me too in action, look no further than the chart for the September 27 Senate hearing of Christine Blasey Ford’s allegations that Supreme Court nominee (and now justice) Brett Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her when they were both in high school.

In the current climate it would be shocking but not surprising were Kavanaugh to be confirmed as the new Supreme Court Justice. This, despite Kavanaugh’s having put on a display of erratic behavior – and having lied under oath – in front of the Judiciary Committee that almost certainly would have seen him thrown out of his own courtroom.

We Need to Have a Real Conversation About Sex and Women’s Safety

The themes in the chart for the hearing ‘s official start time (Thursday, September 27, 2018, 10 am EDT, Washington, DC) couldn’t be more explicit.

First, we note that Ceres is exactly conjunct Mercury (1/60th of a degree) in the 10th House of the USA’s natal chart. In our country’s birth chart, the 10th House is our public face, what we aspire to, our life’s work: This is what we stand for as a nation.

Mercury, of course, is how we think and what we’re thinking about. And how we communicate our thoughts to the world. With transiting Mercury in Libra squaring the USA’s natal Cancer Sun, there’s an implicit tension in this moment. As a Cancer, we want everything to be nice and cushy. We want to feel safe and comfortable and to think highly of ourselves. Mercury in the sign of the scales of justice, though, wants to think and talk about balance, fairness, and equality.

The conjunction with dwarf planet Ceres is incredibly close to exact. Placed at the top of the chart, conjunct the USA’s natal Saturn (the exaltation of fairness and equality, backed by our authority), the Mercury-Ceres pairing shows what the ongoing Senate circus is really about.

Ceres is often described in astrology writing as an impersonal mother energy in the chart, as if she’s similar to the Moon, but less emotional.

(See my breakout piece on the myth of Ceres and Proserpine and the dark side of Ceres in astrology charts.)

In my experience, Ceres tends to be a much more challenging archetype than these bland write-ups would suggest. In fact, natives with a prominent Ceres placement often tend to struggle with the key themes introduced in the ancient myths: losing a  child through death, miscarriage or abortion, separation of child from the mother, sexual abuse, food security issues, and food allergies or other health problems resulting from inadequate or toxic nurturing.

Watching clips of Dr. Ford’s and Judge Kavanaugh’s testimony, I was reminded of a discussion we had in my patrons group a couple weeks ago. This conversation happened before Dr. Ford’s allegations were made public and wasn’t connected to politics or current news.

One of my colleagues was experiencing some heavy grief about the price she has had to pay – and still continues to have to pay – for being a woman in our society. Like most of the adult women I’ve known as friends, clients, and colleagues, she has been sexually assaulted. “But it goes deeper than that,” she said. “It’s about not being able to walk down the street without feeling men’s eyes on you. It took me a long time to learn that you can’t smile and look a man in the eyes or he takes it as an invitation to come on to you – that you want to have sex with him.”

My colleague’s grief and anger came from realizing that even before being assaulted, she hadn’t felt safe in the world since she was a small child. Like most empaths and sensitives, she has suffered from “autoimmune disorders” ranging from the unpleasant to the seriously debilitating for much of her adult life.

I see all autoimmune disorders – allergies, food sensitivities, celiac, lyme disease, chronic fatigue, MS, and the like – as physical symptoms pointing to a repeated violation of the person’s emotional body by other people’s energy.

How much of my friend’s life energy had been drained away or spent trying to keep her emotional and psychic boundaries functioning just because she was born female, we wondered.

Sen. Lindsey Graham’s blustering about how this was all a calculated ploy by Democrats to ruin a good man’s life and similar reactions from the President and other prominent politicians and commentators is the real story of these hearings.

The fact that a troglodyte like Graham hasn’t been forced to resign in shame after his performance last Thursday, and the extent to which it is deemed acceptable to completely dismiss how the alleged assault has affected Dr. Ford’s life, shows how far we still have to go as a society to ensure the psychological, emotional, and physical safety of women in our country.

This Storm Has Been Brewing for a While

Oh, hey! Did I say brewing? Nice unintentional pun. It must be “I like beer!” time:

One striking feature of the timing of the hearing is the T-square from Moon/Uranus in the 5th House opposition Venus in Scorpio in the 11th House all pointing directly to the USA’s natal South Node in Aquarius. Which is being activated by – guess who? – Mars and Black Moon Lilith.

Here’s the chart for Thursday afternoon while Kavanaugh was telling his side of the story:

Mars, Black Moon Lilith and the USA’s South Node

The USA’s South Node (our comfort zone, what comes naturally to us) has been under duress since mid-June, when Mars stationed retrograde at 9 Aquarius. A big hit happened at the total lunar eclipse in Aquarius on July 27, when Mars (retrograde), BML, and the eclipse Moon were all conjunct the USA’s South Node.

Mars is now back to direct motion and about to make his final conjunction with the U.S. node until he returns to Aquarius in April 2020.

The entire 2018 Mars retrograde happened in the USA’s 2nd House. This is the house that symbolizes our money, income, personal power, resources, and possessions. I wrote of this transit in June:

“The USA as a nation will be examining its attitudes and beliefs about money and resources during this time. Many people will be angry when they realize how our shared resources are being used.

With most of the USA’s second house in the sign of Aquarius (liberty, equality, brotherhood of man), our natural inclination as a nation is to use our resources to help the less fortunate. ‘Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,’ as the poem on the Statue of Liberty says.

Mars rules the 4th, 11th and 12th Houses in the USA’s chart. This indicates that issues of home (and the ominous concept of homeland) will play a role in this re-evaluation process.  As will our relations with our colleagues, questioning how well society is working for us, and our collective hopes for the future (11th House).”

Black Moon Lilith and Mars have remained within four degrees of one another since the end of July. They are now separating, but I find it interesting that the Ford-Kavanaugh hearing happened:

• As Mars and BML were applying to the final conjunction of this period (1°08′ from exact at the start of the Judiciary Committee hearing); and
• With both once again conjunct the USA’s South Node (less than 3 degrees orb; Mars makes his last conjunction with the U.S. node on October 4 and BML is conjunct the node on October 13).

Mars in Aquarius is energizing not only the USA’s natal promise (the land of opportunity, the melting pot, liberty and justice for all), but BML’s warrior goddess potential.

Towards A More Perfect Union

Look, I’m not going to sit here and tell you that a rosy future is assured for all. We, the people, are the ones who decide the outcome¹. If we want to change our society, we need to get clear about what kind of life we desire for ourselves and for our children. Laura Walker says that BML in Aquarius often manifests as the fear of one’s own power. Are we fed up enough with the piggish attitudes of the so-called elite that we are prepared to make a firm decision to own our power? Are we prepared to look foolish, to risk a temporary loss of status, of credit, of ownership, to live even more radically outside the current norms?

Black Moon Lilith symbolizes the suppressed or repressed rage of the divine feminine that has been crushed by the power of the patriarchy. Remember that we all have a feminine side. Lilith activates our rage at being forced into the service of the military-industrial poison and war machine, using up our life energy getting by rather than enjoying the amazingness of being in a body on this garden planet. As well as our rage over more specific violations of the feminine principle, such as rape, assault, child abuse, and the like.

Lilith in Aquarius wants to activate our righteous anger – our fierce protectiveness of what is good and beautiful –  so that rather than repressing it and making ourselves sicker, weaker, and more depressed, we can channel it into a fierce affirmation of the Aquarian credo that begins our nation’s Declaration of Independence. Slightly updated to reflect our evolving human consciousness:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men beings are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

To do this, we will need to honor our grief in the spirit of Ceres. We will need to allow Lilith to lead us to the anger we have stuffed. We will need to face and feel this old anger, trusting that we are both capable of and supported in channeling that raw power into recreating our society as a place in which women and children no longer have to live under the burdens of fear, shame and anger that have been passed down through the generations.

And we will have to face the fear of our own power, a fear which was implanted in us thousands of years ago as a program to keep us from throwing off the shackles of our collective energetic slavery.

It’s going to take time, but I say we’ve got it in us to pull this off.

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Notes

1 – The astrology, as challenging as it us, supports this shift on multiple levels. As noted in my piece on the equinox chart, Saturn in Capricorn periods tend to result in political and legal reforms oriented towards equality. The passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1960 being one recent example.