Tuesday, June 28, 2005 (by Eric) Venus and Mercury are now close together in Leo, making an opposition to the Chiron-Nessus conjunction. This is a rare, precise opposition of two tight conjunctions; it represents a moment to study and in particular a moment to make progress. If you click on the link below, you'll get a mini ephemeris with the current positions so you can see the what it looks like, in degrees. Remember that Leo and Aquarius are opposite signs, so planets in similar degrees of those signs will be in close oppositions. Have a look: http://snipurl.com/fvx7 Reading my email these days, I am noticing the fear level going up, much of which seems to be assigned to the sign change of Saturn. There is something else brewing. It's like a subtle panic is in the air, and some are working it out personally and others are looking at the political situation for information. I have no doubt that Saturn is involved, because sweeping out the last degrees of Cancer can bring up quite a bit of insecurity and emotional complexity. I am also not thrilled that NASA is going to blow up a comet on Monday. That is stupid to the point of being inconceivable. But we have a good specimen of astrology with the Venus/Mercury opposite Chirion/Nessus. Because Chiron and Nessus are slow-moving outer planets, they are bodies which will have an era-defining theme for the times we're living in -- as well as for those born now. This is always true of outer planet conjunctions. A Google search can probably pull up some of what I've been writing about this conjunction over the past six or eight months, but to sum up, it sets a theme of being aware of the ways in which we live in a society that subjects us to constant psychological abuse. When you add two rich, sensitive personal planets to the mix, the issues (which may formerly have been abstract, like book knowledge, or something on TV) can descend in to the human realm and take up a life of their own. With centaurs Chiron and Nessus in Aquarius, we have the image of something large, and which affects millions of people; with Venus and Mercury in Leo, we have the image of something personal and individual. Venus and Mercury in Leo are strong together, and they can help with healthy self-consciousness. The placement of the two centaur planets in Aquarius describes how the natural tribal tendencies of humans, our need to have the protection of one another, to fit into the world we inhabit, and to live with a sense of purpose, are entirely exploited by politics, news and advertising. The opposition is a stand-off. The basic role of Chiron is to raise awareness so that healing may happen. In Aquarius it's working on both the tribal level and the level where the individual meets the tribe. There is some piece of "what we all carry, but which I personally also carry" coming up for evaluation. The sense of "my part in the big picture" is right here for us to see. There's no telling what will come up, except a person's, tribe's or society's past history is a good place to get a feeling. Nessus works much like Chiron, though addressing more specifically situations that involve psychological abuse (the kind we know about, and the kind we don't notice), potentially inappropriate sex, sexual abuse, or the use of sex as a weapon. It covers revenge and the circular nature of karma. Melanie Reinhart gives the keywords, "The buck stops here." With personal planets in position, in a sense picking up and reflecting the centaur conjunction on a personal level, we have a great moment to take our inner temperature, and to study our lives to see what is up. And the moment is equally rich to do something about it. There are, no doubt, some people who are really, really struggling under this astrology. Others are using it as a lever to much greater awareness. If you can see your problems, and you are willing, you can solve them. Most people don't watch the news in a particularly conscious way; it functions primarily as mind control because it infuses so much negativity and negative expectations into our minds, and presents an entirely biased picture of the human experience. To make matters worse, "none of it matters" because "we can't do anything about it anyway." Thus, it could be viewed as an addiction to pure negativity. Here, we reach the bottom line. Something has to give, to use the current expression. At a certain point, something has to make a difference; something has to matter; something must be important enough to respond to. With centaurs involved, the first and easiest step is to pay attention; to listen to yourself.