Galactic Attraction
& horoscopes via Simone de Beauvoir
ALCHEMY OF THE WORD
A few more astrology openings this month
“I looked up at those motionless bodies which were tugging at each other with opposing forces. The moon was being pulled by the earth, the earth by the sun. Was the sun being pulled? By what unknown stars? And was it not possible that its flight compensated somehow for the earth’s and that in reality our planet was frozen in the middle of the heavens? How could it be known? Wold it be known some day in the future? And would it ever be known why masses attract each other? Attraction…a handy word that served to explain it all. But was it any more than a word? Did we really know more than the alchemists of Carmona? We had brought to light certain facts of which the alchemists were ignorant and we had classified them in an orderly manner. But had we penetrated a single inch further into the mysterious heart of things? Was the word Force any clearer than the word Virtue? Or Attraction clearer than Soul?” —Simone de Beauvoir, All Men Are Mortal
1
The vessel (womb, grave, egg, bath, bird…) holds the work. The furnace (castle, fort, tower…) keeps it heated. Alembic and athanor, miniature world and the directed fire which furnishes it. The vessel is not (merely) a container, Carl Jung reminds us, but a mystical thing—an image, inexhaustible symbol with infinite synonyms. Out of presymbolic chaos, or what Hegel called the night of the world—vessels, words. From the vessel: hallucinatory images, volatile interactions, and conjunctions. Art.
Mars (separation) and Venus (conjunction) present in every relation. Attraction. One planetary mass pulling another. To separate or sever, the nature of Mars, is more primary, as James Hillman writes in his lectures on psychoanalysis and alchemy, because only separated things can be conjoined. Without difference, otherness, disagreement, and rupture—-no alchemy/art. The vessel is style, the risk of holding unlike things together and seeing what transpires: mercurial poison and alexipharmic.
Many have perished in the art, say the alchemists. Warnings everywhere, and madness—falling back into chaos, sun blocked, dazzled. How do we fight for art and love? Can we take the heat? Of attraction, difference, volatility, cringe, critique?
2
On the heels of the new moon in Capricorn: Mercury, Mars, Sun, and Pluto congregate there—-Capricorn stellium. Sun and Pluto are near the end of the sign, and this weekend they cross over, together, into Aquarius—earth to air—-as Mercury finishes its post-retrograde shadow—clearing the ground it traversed while appearing to move backward up there. What is a conversation? Pluto, with its far out galactic time (248 years to orbit) weighing down, attracting, and informing the sun—-our heart held by the underworld’s lord as they move together into a new zone.
More, plus horoscopes taken from the writings of Simone de Beauvoir, whose birthday was last week, below—-
