Monday, April 17 | Aries Point Alive THE INNER space known as astrology is making some exciting patterns right now. We have passed through the firestorm between the eclipses of Sept. 2005 and March 2006, with all the inner planet retrogrades and much else besides. The stretch between now and autumn is entirely different territory with a different feeling, probably a lot less chaotic (though we have yet to see what the Saturn-Neptune opposition is really about). However, the one thing that really distinguishes the current phase from many others, at least through the spring, a focus on the Aries Point, or the first degree of the tropical zodiac, 1 Aries and thereabout. Such as right at the moment. In the past few days, Mars entered Cancer and Mercury entered Aries. At the moment, the two are in an exact square, with Mercury applying to Mars (that is, Mercury's degree is slightly earlier than that of Mars, and the aspect is reaching exactitude now). I'll put the article summarizing the Aries Point (from Astrology Secrets) at the bottom of this blog. As I repeat nearly as often than McDonald's reminds you of its existence, the first degree of Aries and by extension, Cancer, Libra and Capricorn, is a sensitive double axis (a cross) of the zodiac where we pick up the theme "the personal is political." It's also been summed up as, "The 'I' embodied on Earth" and was considered by the German astrologer Witte to be the second most important point in a chart, after the midheaven. I just googled this term and found an editorial from Z Magazine, by Mike or Lydia (it's not signed, but I think it's Mike) that gives some of the history of the phrase. I first heard it in the American Women Writers graduate English seminar of Prof. Carol Smith at Rutgers. Z writes: "The phrase 'the personal is political' first took hold via the women's movement of the 1960s. It provided useful insight, dear to Z, which, however, has recently been turned into its opposite. "In the 1950s to mid-1960s there was sexism, racism, poverty, and so on, but little public recognition of these oppressions. Folks assumed each individual's plight was personal and of their own making. To improve one’s lot meant overcoming one’s own character inadequacies. "The civil rights movement demonstrated that many of the conditions that each Black person faced were duplicated in the conditions most other Black people faced. The enemy was no longer one’s own inadequacies; it became systemic and political and we called it institutional racism or, later, white supremacy" [underline added for emphasis]. This is just an example from history, and the leaders of the social movements of the 50s and 60s were probably not studying Witte's astrology texts. But they identified an idea that rings true with the Aries Point. It is an intersection of public and private realities. As Adrienne Rich explained it, there is no private life that is not, at least in part, determined by the larger public life. Z continues, "The 'personal is political' -- meaning that personal outcomes are largely a product of systemic relations and of structures beyond each individual that need to be addressed—came to mean, instead, that all political phenomena arise from the accumulated personal choices of individuals, so that what needed to be addressed to win better circumstances was primarily people’s personal choices." Okay so, now there are personal planets on the Aries Point: Mercury is right there, setting off Mars. Mars, for its part, has just walked over the degree of the June 21, 2001 total solar eclipse that ushered in so much change that summer, and which I think we're still living under the influences of, both collectively and to a large extent individually. What's also interesting is that the lunar nodes are walking toward the Aries Point as well. A lot of astrology students struggle with understanding the nodes, and it does take some time to get a feel for them (questions on the subject are welcome at Astrology Secrets Revealed). There is something that the nodes and the Aries Point have in common, which is that intersection of the big world and the individual world. They are the points near where eclipses happen, and eclipses have this feeling too. What's interesting about the nodes is how people with them prominent in their charts (angular, or with key planets aspecting them) tend to make contact with the public so easily. So the feeling of the Aries Point and the nodes has a similar feeling. But it may be that the nodes are more personal, because they do seem to direct the individual path so intensely. They are the thing you cannot quite escape -- whether it's your past or whether it's what you must do. No matter what, you just have to work with the information and influence coming from the nodes. One trick to reading the nodes is to look at what the planets that rule the nodes are doing. And that's interesting right now. In the case of the North Node in Aries, we have Mars, the ruler, in Cancer, squaring the nodal axis closely. This represents a change in direction, a decision point, or an orientation on distinguishing the past from future. Second, Venus, ruler of the South Node in Libra, is in Pisces, and about to form a conjunction to Uranus. This is just basically one of those 'good for all' aspects, since it vibes with adventure and freedom and brings together so many different sign energies. Liberation from the past, inventing the future, lots of creativity and some unusual encounters with others are suggested; Uranus and Venus are a pretty sexy match, and if you're ever curious, you'll find that the two have an impressive list of astronomical similarities (a steep inclination to the ecliptic, rotating backwards, and so on). So yeah, a new time. Something other than the feeling of taking a ride in a row boat in a blender that we've grown accustomed to since late last summer. Here is the Z magazine editorial on the personal being political. http://zmag.org/zmag/articles/julyeditorial97.html Here is an illustration of "the political is personal," courtesy of Pink Floyd. The illustration of the cow and the association with atomic energy is a message about how nuclear fallout, from bombs, experimentation and power production (a political and industrial issue), winds up in the grass, which winds up in the cow, which winds up in the milk, which winds up in you and your kids. http://www.allfloyd.com/images/covers/atom.jpg Here is the Astrology Secrets page on the Aries Point. There are others. http://planetwaves.net/cainer/archive/003790.php -- Eric Francis Den Haag