The Story Behind the Story

One of the most striking features of this particular historical moment is the astounding difficulty in figuring out what in the hell is actually going on. The number of simultaneous and conflicting narratives pulling for our attention is probably more than any one person can sift through without being plunged into existential despair or some form of nihilism. This is mirrored in the conjunction of Rahu (the planet of disturbance) and Mercury (the planet of communication and information). Rahu essentially eclipses, or darkens any planet he conjoins and he happens to be exalted in the sign of Gemini, so his ability to do so is very strong. Rahu in Gemini alone can have this effect, but the conjunction with mercury since the end of May has intensified the issue. While Mercury will move on from Gemini the first week of August, Rahu will remain until the end of September. Perhaps clarity will not require such an elaborate treasure-hunt after that time.

This is where all that talk about the importance of stories comes in. You can see the very tangible effects of any one story-line: the virus is perhaps the most obvious—it being considered a world-wide threat to health turned us all into mask-wearing-compulsive-hand-washer-hermits almost overnight. The impact of this story line is seen in stark relief when we see that even Dr. Anthony Fauci is now downgrading the threat and saying that the impacts of the virus may be “ akin to those of a severe seasonal influenza.” The world has been turned upside down as a result of this story, however accurate it may or may not be.

With Rahu exalted the collective tendency toward panic and anxiety is particularly high, making us susceptible to fear-provoking narratives. What we are suffering is essentially a collective disturbance of prana. That being said, I don’t think the goal is necessarily to exist in a perpetual state of equilibrium, particularly when that ‘sense of peace’ requires some serious denial of reality as it is i.e. the outsourcing of discomfort to subjugated segments of the population and/or your consciousness. Right now is actually an excellent time to be disturbed, as the planet of disturbance in exaltation in the sky reflects. If you are not disturbed you are numb (another effect of Rahu) which in my book is the worst possible outcome: numbness being a sort of living death.

A story-line that’s come under fire is the one that says that police and people in power will always protect those that need protecting, and that we are all somehow on equal playing-ground regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, physical ability and appearance i.e. that humans have somehow moved beyond bias. Bias is absolutely impossible to escape as long as we each have personal histories that cause us to see the world in certain patterns. We can certainly begin to pry our predilections open a bit with some concerted effort, but to be human is to fall into certain unavoidable patterns of thought and behavior. Rather than imagine these don’t exist, it’s best to factor them in and assume that our one story is incomplete and do our best to expand it. From an astrological perspective this can be seen from the way in which the zodiac is considered the body of God, and we all enter into that body from a slightly different angle (rising sign) and with different patterns of attention (placement and strength of planets) which lead to different philosophies and beliefs.

Jupiter is the story-teller of the zodiac, and Sagittarius is the place where that story is told, generally by a teacher or guide of some sort for whom the story is not just bits of undigested information, but fully assimilated living wisdom. In deeper history, knowledge was transmitted through oral teaching, and even the gigantic storehouse of information that is the Vedas (from which the Vedic Sciences such as Vedic Astrology, Ayurveda and Yoga derive) was probably passed down from teacher to student for thousands of years before it was eventually written down. And the story goes that the decision to put it on paper came with Kali Yuga—the ‘dark age’ of human kind which began around the birth of Christ—when it became obvious that the ability to hold such subtle wisdom through spoken word only would be threatened by the coming moral decline, spiritual darkness, forgetfulness and the blindness that would cloud our ability to prioritize what actually matters i.e. the deeper truths. This larger context of which ‘age’ we’re in is important to consider, since it’s been predicted for millennia that this Kali Yuga would bring a lack of morals and overall disintegration of human integrity which we are seeing realized in many ways. Just a statement that lives that have been marginalized ‘matter’ is considered controversial, for example.

For some more context: Jupiter is retrograde and debilitated—AND severely afflicted by three malefic planets at the moment. The planet that holds reality together through the web of story—the fascia of the zodiac— is fighting for its survival. This is also the planet that rules the element of space or Akash/ether. And you can see how the disturbance and confusion around what’s going on alters the collective space we inhabit. If there’s one thing we are all sharing it’s tension; for most people this moment does not feel particularly spacious.

But this is not necessarily bad news. This may mean that the ‘truth’ is elusive and we must dig deep to find the subterranean river that is a story which can quench our thirst for understanding and help guide us forward. But something about the effort required in this quest means that we may uncover deeper truths in the process, which were waiting just below the surface of things. Despite the heart-breaking difficulty of what we’ve seen exposed around race-relations in America, there is something relieving, I think, in seeing one’s own false stories eroded by the constant onslaught of undeniable reality. What we are walking into is one or many collective lacunae—the blindspots we have all habitually avoided through any means necessary without even realizing that’s what we’re doing. Lacunae are extremely capable of causing us to ‘check-out’—through denial or avoidance or any form of unconsciousness. These parts of collective and personal history were blocked out and shoved into the cellar of unconsciousness for a reason: they were too painful to face. So their resurfacing can be extremely unpleasant.

It’s relevant that Jupiter is debilitated in the sign of Capricorn because he is concerned with purity. Capricorn is anything but pure—being the burial ground of the zodiac and the place of left-handed tantra—and Jupiter is a little uneasy, to say the least, in such an environment. But there can be no question that Jupiter’s walkabout to the darker side of life and his mingling with the ghosts in the closet will enrich his capacity—spiritual and otherwise—to hold the difficult elements of the human experience. I think this is a pertinent message for white people the world over who might feel destabilized by the understanding that the stories they held to be true about the world they are living in were by and large hugely incomplete. Everyone is strengthened when the unconscious parts of a shared reality are brought to light.

Jupiter’s retrogradation will actually serve to create a reversal wherein—after much effort—he becomes exalted. This means there can be a huge payoff for the dedication to bringing to the surface deeply buried inequalities and injustices which we see as a shift in the “dominant narrative” circulating through our country and culture. Jupiter in exaltation is extremely expansive, so we can expect that whatever contraction we may be feeling now—in our lives and in the world—will eventually create more space and a more expansive story line in the future, provided we do the hard work of rooting out the collective ghosts. And it must be kept in mind that any ‘truth’ which emerges will still have to go through the wringer of Rahu/Mercury twisting facts and obscuring reality.

So the work right now is complex. To actually get a good handle on what is going on requires incorporating the context not only of who you are, but where you are, when you are and who/where/when everyone else is now and hundreds of thousands of years into history and the interaction between all those who/when/wheres. Cultural lacunae doesn’t allow for this more comprehensive understanding that the seeds of the patterns we’re enmeshed in now were planted long ago in the form of stories lines. Good that we are at least beginning to wake up. Be open to your own un-doing! That is what you came here for.