MARS EXALTED
Mars in Capricorn, exaltation, love, jokers
I opened a few more slots for Alchemy of the Word, per some requests. We begin this Saturday.
A few January openings for:
Art + Stars Consultations /// Year Ahead Readings
“What ambiguity there is in exalted things. We despise them a little,”
—Don DeLillo, The Names
“Intelligence offends by its very nature, thinking annoys the people in the cave.”
—Simone Weil, Lectures on Philosophy
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Today: Mars enters Capricorn, where it’s said to be exalted.
Mars and Venus, Sun and Moon, come together in Mercury—-a shimmering medium, permanent liquid: language, a pharmakon. See above.
From “Plato’s Pharmacy,” by Derrida:
“The god of writing is thus at once his father, his son, and himself. He cannot be assigned a fixed spot in the play of differences. Sly and slippery, and masked, an intriguer and a card, like Hermes, he is neither king nor jack, but rather a sort of joker, a floating signifier, a wild card, one who puts play into play.”
Ever a matter of dosage—-signal, noise—-
These days, easier than ever to OD on Mercury/Hermes/jokers. Maybe the ancient astrological notion of exaltation—like how the form-giving bones of Capricorn (a feminine earth sign) house and make joyous Mars’s unfathomable and active heat, can help us.
The crucial differences (Mars/Venus, Sun/Moon) which comprise the cosmos, making language and play possible.
In The Parasite, Michel Serres says that the universe is organized according to the distribution of jokers (!!!) Cosmos←→chaos. Too few jokers means constraint. Too many jokers, polysemy. At the limits of the universe, he says, only jokers….
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Mars, planet of action and war, is driven, grounded, and operatic in Capricorn—-
It gets structure and lives by Saturn’s slow and steady notes. Martian teen heat is given cool form. Held, can do more.
Exaltations, in astrology, are intimately connected to falls. To be high up, jubilant, ecstatic, is to confront the perils of tumbling down.
There’s an intelligence, erotics, and ambiguity of exaltation, with its glimmering risks. Mars fights for many things. Most of all, Venus. Love, beauty, harmony.
Mars separates and Venus conjoins. + / - / //////
The ambiguity of exalted things and the offensiveness of intelligence relate to the boldness and incomprehensibility of love, its grenades.
The below alchemical love stories are remixed from my Alchemy of the Word lecture notes, in honor of Mars traveling through its place of exaltation, Capricorn, from January 4-February 13….
