Vengeance and Fury, Nerd-style

“Living well is the best revenge.”—F. Scott Fitzgerald

THE MASK

Saturn’s transit through Scorpio is a great excuse to explore some of the shady, unseemly and unpleasant elements of human nature that might just be easier to avoid altogether.  Steven Spielberg explores elements of racism and slavery in his new movie “Lincoln,” depicting the passing of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution which took place on December 6, 1865, while Saturn was transiting through Scorpio.  Huge defining pieces of the legacy of racism in the United States can be linked to Saturn transits in Scorpio.  We could also venture into issues of betrayal, deep bitterness and resentment, envy, jealousy and obsession, or lusty desires and lonely desperations.  So many choices!

For the purposes of this blog, I want to focus for a little bit on an extremely  popular “dark” emotion:  vengeance!  Getting even!  Ha!  Let’s put compassion to the side for just a little while (it’s not going anywhere, it’ll still be here when we’re done) and look at what it’s like to get really, really, really, really seriously angry.  What do you do with those kinds of emotions?  See, while Saturn in Libra wants to get balanced, Saturn in Scorpio whole-heartedly wants to get even.  That's one avenue it can take.  Saturn in Scorpio replaces the Libran blindfold (turning a blind eye) with the mask of the Avenger.  This desire to get even—or, as Adele aptly sings it, to “Set Fire To the Rain”—takes center stage when the unpredictable turns and twists of Fate weave themselves in and out of our lives, sometimes leaving us with nothing but the feeling that something has gone horribly wrong.  Whether it’s the tragic death of a loved one (depicted brilliantly in Jodie Foster’s “The Brave One”), the onset of a health crisis, or some other life event that, in theory, should have—if there is any justice in this world!!—gone very differently, these seemingly “unfair” events of life can start quite a quiet boil in the psyche, leaving a restless soul simmering underneath an otherwise calm exterior.

THE THREE FATES, THE FURIES & THE KINDLY ONES

How to approach this touchy subject and give vengeance its due?  And what does this have to do with Nerds?

First off, vengeance is nothing new to the human psyche.  As long as people have told stories, vengeance presents itself as one of the core archetypal themes of life.  Centuries ago, during the times of “Beowulf,” it was actually considered shameful to not seek revenge when you have been unjustly wronged in some way.

Second, because vengeance is archetypal, it helps to look at its mythic background.  Myths connect human beings to the eternal, archetypal realm, and the mythic background of vengeance features a cast of dramatic, darkly-clad figures (mostly female) like Nemesis, the Goddess of Vengeance and Divine Wrath.  Nemesis allots happiness to humans, and part of her job is actually to make sure people don’t get too happy.  !  Eris fits the bill quite nicely too, as she brought discord and strife to a wedding on Mount Olympus when the party planners neglected to invite her.  How dare they!  You don’t want to mess with Eris.

Most intriguing to me, though, are an offshoot of the Three Fates themselves, the Furies—three hideous, ugly, winged Gorgons who avenge injustice on a cosmic scale.  They hound, endlessly harp on and wreak havoc in the lives of those who transgress natural law, particularly those who commit murder.  If this starts to seem less and less like it has anything to do with your life, bear with me.  (Plus, you want to see how Nerds fit into this.)

Back in ancient Greece it was not cool to speak of the Furies directly.  You just didn’t do it.  You did not want to attract their attention.  I take enormous risk by even mentioning them by name here!  As a safeguard, the Furies became known as the Eumenides, or the Kindly Ones, which is where this gets really interesting.

The word “kindly” means far more than just being nice.  The original meaning of “kind” is “natural” or “nature” – as in, your inherent nature, and the kind of person you are.  What kind of a person are you?  As Tina Turner sings, “There are all kinds of people in this world.”  What comes naturally to you?  To be “one of a kind” is to be who you naturally are, to be in touch with your unique inherent nature.  Thus, to be “kind” is to be true to who you are, to embrace your unique bent on life, your natural inclinations and leanings.  To be un-kind means to not be yourself, to betray your own nature.  To be un-kind, then, calls in the Kindly Ones to avenge your wrong-doing!

On a personal level, the Kindly Ones keep you true to form, true to your inherent nature and the kind of person you were born to be.  Somehow they know the pattern inherent to your life, and keep you on course.  Stray too far from who you are, get too bent out of shape, and strange things can happen in life.  This is, in part, where medical intuition comes in, because the natural intelligence of our bodies is designed in large part to keep us true to our nature.  Health crises are not random.  They have a divine precision to them.  Medical intuition is much, much more complicated than that, and I can’t do it any justice in just a couple of sentences, but you hopefully get the idea I’m going after here.

Now, it’s interesting to consider how powerful a force vengeance is in today’s world, at a time when health crises continue to mount.  Vengeance is all over popular culture and has been for quite some time.  “The Avengers” has quickly become the third most popular movie in the history of all movies.  We also have “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo”—two versions, no less!—and its sequels (talk about revenge!).  We have “The Dark Knight Rises,” “Wrath of the Titans,” “Justified,” “Spartacus: Vengeance,” the new television series “Arrow,” and, last but certainly not least, “Revenge.”  Oh, and there are quite a few Angry Birds out there too, not to mention the phenomenon of the Vampire, which is tightly an inextricably bound up with the legacy of vengeance and revenge.  Considering that “revenge” simply means “to take back,” though, I want to take us back now to 1984, when Saturn was last in Scorpio, to a little movie called “Revenge of the Nerds.”

LOVING WHAT YOU LOVE

Back in 1984 a Nerd was a particular kind of person who was intelligent, typically unattractive, unfashionable, socially awkward, sexually undesirable, and in general a bit odd (to understate it).  Who on earth would want to be a Nerd, right?  And they really liked their computers.  A lot.  Perhaps a little too much, you know?  Like, freakishly too much.  As is usually the case with anyone too odd or too different, Nerds were harassed, bullied, beat up and tormented, and were the unwilling recipients of countless swirlies.  The movie “Revenge of the Nerds” arrived with its advertisement, “They’ve been laughed at, picked on and put down.  But now it’s time for the odd to get even!”  And in the movie, they did.  The Nerds got their revenge.

OK, so what?  Big deal.  Well, just remember that this is revenge we’re talking about.  Vengeance.  The Nerds got pushed to their limits and got seriously pissed off!  They didn’t avoid it and go quiet.  They did something about it.  This is where, as you’ll see, vengeance is not necessarily a bad thing at all.  If you’re the kind of person who stays as far away from words like “vengeance” and “wrath” and feelings of anger like you stay away from the plague (or golf!  Golf is so boring!), this is where you might want to tune in.  See, we can take the revenge of the Nerds out of the movies and see that, in life too, Nerds got their revenge.  Nerds, in fact, irrevocably changed the entire course of human history forever.  If that sounds overly-dramatic, I have one word for you:  Internet.  Or three words:  Word Wide Web.  Consider, really consider, the full impact so far that the Internet has had on life world-wide.  It’s extraordinary, and it's all thanks to the Nerds.

Despite the bullying and endless tormenting and harassment, Nerds did not compromise who they were one bit (pun intended).  They did not abandon their inherent nature.  Rather, the “dark night of the nerds” followed the archetypal pattern of the dark night of the soul, and—despite having every legitimate reason to get even in some shady back-handed manner—by embracing who they were and what they loved, and becoming it even more, Nerds got their revenge and changed the world.  Nerds got their revenge and brought more computers into the world, not less.  Nerds got their revenge and we have Macs, PCs, laptops, flash drives, iPhones, Androids, other Smart Phones, iPods, iPads, Nooks, Kindles, and WiFi—to name a few—as a result.  Nerds like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates (both born with Saturn in Scorpio) got their revenge and relentlessly carried on following their unique visions and passions.  A generation later, Mark Zuckerburg (also Saturn in Scorpio) took the mantle one step further with Facebook and his “maniacal focus” on connecting every single human being on the entire planet.  Nerds, you see—the most isolated and excluded and picked-on people—turned out to be the ones able to connect more of humanity together than ever before!  As Carl Jung noted, “Behind the wound lies the genius.”  Indeed!  When your computer crashes or your Internet goes down, who are you going to call?  Not the Ghostbusters, as it turns out; you call the Nerds!

As if that weren’t enough, Nerds became sexy too!  And did they ever!  Not entirely, not 100%, not every Nerd across-the-board, but the pantheon of sex symbols now includes some Nerds.  For sexy Nerds, look to the new Q in the James Bond movie “Skyfall,” or the new Sherlock Holmes portrayed by Benedict Cumberbatch.  Check out former weakling Steve Rogers in “Captain America,” Peter Parker (Andrew Garfield) in “The Amazing Spider-Man” (he’s amazing!), Tony Stark in “Iron Man,” or Auggie in the television show “Covert Affairs”—to name a few.  Even Doctor Who is sexy now!  See, this is the power of vengeance done right.

You may wrestle with a wrathful heart, struggling to shut it up, letting it go, or keeping it at bay, but to simply avoid these kinds of intense emotions or pretend-make them go away (spoiler:  they don't) takes its toll on a life.  Remember the Furies, and remember that heart disease is the number one killer in the United States.  Perhaps there's a connection.  The wrathful heart is still a heart, after all—a heart that powerfully and passionately beats and pulses with the fiery energies of both destruction and creation.  It's not only a destructive path.  The vengeful heart's ability to create is as profound as its ability to damage and destroy.  The choice is yours.

In her 1984 hit song “Twist of Fate” Olivia Newton-John sings, “Life doesn’t mean a thing without the love you bring.”  Which is to say, when the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune give you a bum deal—which is part of the “bazinga!” nature of life itself—the best revenge might just be to bring forth what you love—what means the most to you—with a vengeance.  It not only brings meaning to your life, but it adds to the meaning of the world as well.  Something in the world changes.  As evidenced by the Nerds, the art of transformation isn’t really about radically altering yourself and your life.  Rather, it’s about becoming more and more of who you are, revealing your inherent nature as a true one-of-a-kind, sometimes against all odds.  Bringing what you love into the world somehow transforms what needs transforming, naturally, because your heart is in it.  When it comes to actually doing this day after day, week after week, year after year, it may seem about as easy as remembering how to play Rock-Paper-Scissors-Lizard-Spock, but it might just be the kindest thing you ever do.

Saturn in Scorpio - Dark Eyes and Dark Nights

“I wear my sunglasses at night, so I can, so I can see the light that’s right before my eyes.”—Corey Hart, Sunglasses At Night, 1983

“We are shaped and fashioned by what we love.”—Goethe

On October 5, 2012, the planet Saturn moved into the sign of Scorpio, where he will reside for close to three years.  There’s a turning point in any good story when the tension mounts, the suspense heightens, and despite the increased intensity of the experience, something deep within compels you to stick around—fixed at the very edge of your seat—to see how it’s all going to work out.  This would be akin to the Saturn in Scorpio point of the story.

Things get dark when Saturn moves into Scorpio.  If Jim Henson can go there in order to create “The Dark Crystal,” which came out right when Saturn last entered Scorpio in late 1982, my hunch is we all can.  Interestingly, “The Dark Crystal” captures the symbolic essence of Saturn in Scorpio with uncanny precision, and for his efforts Jim Henson even won a Saturn Award (seriously!) for Best Fantasy Film.  While I can’t promise Saturn Awards for everyone, suffice to say that Saturn in Scorpio is really a time for recognizing that there’s a whole lot more going on in life than typically meets the eye.

EYES THAT SEE IN THE DARK

The late, formidable depth psychologist James Hillman, who was born in 1926 with Saturn in Scorpio, often noted about his work, “I have a dark eye.”  Probably a good quality for the eyes of a depth psychologist!

On February 2, 1985, a little girl named Melody Gardot was born with Saturn in Scorpio in her birth chart.  In November 2003, young Melody was hit by a car while riding her bicycle (transiting Uranus was square her Saturn), landing her in the hospital for a year, on her back.  Since the accident, Melody rebuilt her life and has become a highly-acclaimed, exquisitely elegant jazz singer, playing her music in dark, intimate clubs all around the world.  Her songs include “Deep Within the Corners of My Mind,” “Your Heart Is As Black As Night,” and “So We Meet Again My Heartache.”  Curiously, “The most noticeable effect of the neural injuries she suffered is that she was left hyper-sensitive to both light and sound, therefore requiring her to wear dark sunglasses at nearly all times to shield her eyes.”  (Wikipedia)

Meanwhile, an interesting phenomenon occurred between 1983 and 1985, the period of the entire Saturn transit through Scorpio, when a huge surge in the sales of Ray-Ban Wayfarer sunglasses led to the height of the company’s success.

Olivia Newton-John sported shades on the cover of her 1983 hit single, “Twist of Fate.”

Tom Cruise danced in his underwear and sported his sexy Ray-Ban shades while going about his "Risky Business" (1983).

At the same time, sexy Corey Hart hit the big time with his song "Sunglasses At Night":  “I wear my sunglasses at night, so I can, so I can see the light that’s right before my eyes.”

In 1983, country singer Kenny Rogers released a pop album called “Eyes That See In the Dark.”

In 1984, Tina Turner launched her massive comeback album “Private Dancer” with the lyrics, “I’m a new pair of eyes every time I am born.”

Movie Director James Cameron, born with Saturn in Scorpio in his birth chart, included the now-famous line “I see you” in both of his top-grossing movies “Titanic” and “Avatar.”  In "Titanic" Rose says to Jack, “You have a gift, Jack, you do.  You see people.”  To which he replied, “I see you.”  Jack could see into people, see their gifts, something about their inherent nature hidden in the dark.

Looking back to an earlier Saturn in Scorpio cycle, William Golding published his "Lord of the Flies," featuring the infamous Piggy’s shattered lenses on the cover.  The shattering of his lenses left Piggy in the dark, unable to see in the manner he was most accustomed.

When Saturn is in Scorpio, we see "through a glass darkly,” like x-ray vision.  The x-ray machine was actually invented while Saturn was in Scorpio.  We can see what is not typically seen under bright-light conditions.  It’s as if we all don Ray-Bans for the duration of the transit.

When our eyes enter darkness, our pupils dilate.  The muscles of the eye relax, causing the pupil to fully expand in order to obtain more light.  Dilated pupils enable us to see better in the darkness.  This is significant for Saturn’s transit in Scorpio and is the essence of the “in-sight” often associated with Scorpio.  The darkness has purpose.

Now, stretching our expanded pupils way back to the year 1542, we see that the young man who would become Saint John of the Cross was born with Saturn in Scorpio in his birth chart.  Amidst the toughest of life circumstances he would glean insight into what he called the Dark Night of the Soul and from that darkness he wrote one of the most mysterious and magical pieces of mystical poetry ever written.  The poem, with its reference to moving through life with “No other light, no other guide / Than the one burning in my heart” (Starr) is resonant of the particular experience of darkness we encounter with Saturn in Scorpio.

ALL THROUGH THE NIGHT

Both Saturn and Scorpio rule over the cold and dark places on earth—everything from cellars and mines to refrigerators and freezers.  Similarly, both Saturn and Scorpio rule over the cold and dark places of the human psyche.  Like a Detective exhuming a long-buried grave or sweeping away cobwebs to investigate cold-cases long-forgotten and left behind, Saturn in Scorpio asks us to look deeply into the dark of the present, the past, and ourselves, to find important flickers of life, valuable new evidence that may have been overlooked, neglected, or not recognized for its full worth when interrogated under brighter circumstances.  It’s a time to let the dark be the dark and allow our eyes enough time to adjust enough to expand intimately, inwardly, so that we can more fully see through the light that is already there.

Uranus square Pluto - Rebel Yell, Part 2

“I want  /  to think again of dangerous and noble things  /  I want to be light and frolicsome  /  I want to be improbable beautiful and afraid of nothing  /  as though I had wings.”—Mary Oliver, Starlings In Winter

“What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an Angel!”—Shakespeare, Hamlet

It’s time for further archetypal exploration of the Uranus-Pluto squares!  And by that I mean a really, really, really, really long article! The most recent square occurred on September 19, and the next one will be taking place on May 20, 2013. Even though that is still off in the distant future, the volatile, dynamic Uranus-Pluto energies with all of their complexities are simply part of life now, and will be into March of 2015. Let’s look at how we might wrestle with this intensity on an individual basis, remembering that the real changes taking place are occurring deep inside each of us. What might that look like?

HERE, THERE, and EVERYWHERE

To get us going, here are a couple of nuggets to consider about Uranus in Aries:

In late 1843, Uranus spent about eight months in Aries before dipping back into Pisces for a few weeks, during which time “A Christmas Carol” by Charles Dickens was published, with its call to "Live in the past, the present, and the future!" The beloved novel also brought us the miserable, rigid Scrooge’s infamous encounters with the ghost-spirits of the past, the present, and the future. Then, a few months later in 1844, after Uranus had been back in Aries for a while, Samuel Morse sent the first official electrical telegram, a long-distance message transmitted non-physically.  Curious!  Uranus has an orbit of 84 years, and when Uranus returned to Aries approximately 84 years later, Philo Farnsworth transmitted the first images that would become television.  Fast-forward (with emphasis on the fast) to present day, and we find ourselves immersed in a high-definition culture of iPads, Smart Phones, electronic tablets, and trillions upon trillions of text messages, voice messages, and instant messages—not to mention email messages!  You can see the relatively short period of time (168 years) in which technology has completely altered reality, connecting us invisibly across the entire globe.  These changes have a lot to do with the sense many people have that life has been speeding up for a while now.  Behind this sense is Uranus, breaking tradition and cracking the well-worn concrete pavement of history wide open, inciting revolution to bring in new, fresh, original, “outside of the box” thinking.

THE FLAME

One of Uranus’ main myths is that of Prometheus, the rebellious Titan who stole fire from Zeus, hid the fire inside a fennel stalk, and whisked it down to earth for the benefit of mankind, thus lighting the creative spark in humanity and giving us the ability to inspire, warm, and illuminate our lives and the lives of others.  Quite the noble cause, eh?  Prometheus, whose name means “forethought” (thinking before), also brought humanity science, culture, architecture, and cosmic knowledge (i. e., astronomy and astrology, and in the modern world, the technology that allows us to explore the cosmos).  Where there is fire, there is light, and Uranus-Prometheus carries a bright light.  Not surprisingly, Uranus was discovered during the Enlightenment period of Western history.  Similarly to the nature of that time, Uranus widens our perspective in a flash of insight, allowing us to see much greater connections and potentials where previously we experienced a more limited perspective.  This is the revolution of mind often associated with Uranus.

The tricky part—and it’s seriously tricky—is that while Prometheus’ name means “forethought” (“thinking before”)—forethought actually means more than just thinking ahead of time, planning ahead, or planning for the future.  It also means the thought that came before.  It means the first thought, the thinking that went on beforehand.  Foresight doesn’t just mean looking into the future; it also means seeing into the past, what came before.  Tricky!  Ow!  My brain hurts!  See, Uranus just doesn’t care about the tiny little box we call “time and space.”  It’s like how the Prologue of a book is always at the beginning of the book, even if you’re in the middle of reading the book, experiencing the story unfolding.  At that point, the Prologue that was once a “forethought” now exists before everything you have since read.  If this is confusing, it goes to show how Uranus does not deal with Time in the manner we are most accustomed to:  as a long, linear line.  Uranus gets the whole picture, all at once, without factoring in Time—no waiting.  That’s why it’s called an “a-ha!” moment and not a “hang on, let me think about that for a while” series of moments.  Many myths from ancient cultures suggest that our lives essentially have Prologues, that there is a first thought or image or pattern set out for us before we begin life, an image that captures the whole thing, all at once.  Prior to your actual time-bound life, there is a pattern that came first.  And if we’re talking about firsts, we might as well take a moment to talk about Aries!

Uranus is in the sign of Aries, which is ruled by Mars the God of War.  As the first sign of the zodiac, Aries is about taking initiative, taking first steps, standing up and fighting, and being at the front of the line.  And if you have a problem with that, we can just step outside and handle it man to man.  In a deeper sense, Aries can be heard in the Def Leppard song “Animal,” in the lyrics “I gotta feel it in my blood... and I want, and I need, and I lust... animal.”  Within Aries is this animal instinct, an instinct of the blood, often frowned upon and deemed “primitive” in our otherwise-sophisticated and seemingly-civilized culture, especially because it can be aggressive and violent.  Aries is often considered impulsive, acting before thinking, and causing a lot of problems in that regard.  This kind of talk came up after the fiery, destructive and rebellious riots in recent years in Canada and in London:  people just weren’t thinking.

You can hear Aries, not surprisingly, in the song “Eye of the Tiger” by Survivor.  Aries is in the eye of that tiger, and it’s in “the thrill of the fight, rising up to the challenge” of its rivals.  “Tiger, tiger, burning bright” wrote William Blake.  Aries has this constant drive to survive, because it has only recently emerged as a separate force from the great, overwhelming, all-encompassing Piscean ocean into which emerging life can be so easily pulled back and washed away, its fire extinguished, all potential and promise gone to sleep among the fishes.  Aries is the Pioneer in this regard, always stepping foot onto new shores, discovering new vistas and lands, pushing forward, fighting for survival.  Aries is the Warrior, fighting on the side of life.

What does this mean, then, when Uranus is moving through Aries?

Uranus reveals greater connections (a huge picture-vision), yet the vitality of Aries is primarily concerned with being separate and individual.  How does this work?  Well, when we put these two seemingly-conflicted pieces together, Uranus in Aries is awakening the sense of separation within an even larger sense of connection, like in the way the phrase “six degrees of separation” describes just how connected everyone really is.  This is the kind of connection that awakens with Uranus in Aries.  This is the revolution of mind that Uranus invites now:  I am separate and individual, and I am connected to the greater whole.

Let’s pull a small revolution now and apply Uranus to what I have already written about Aries.  We can take the typical notion that Aries “acts before thinking,” turn it around, and ask:  isn’t that called intuition?  Who needs to think something through to make sense of it, when the intuitive hunch makes sense on its own, instantly?  You get the intuition, and you act on it.  Uranus in Aries.  Similarly, the “animal instinct” turns into the instinctive anima, the soul.  What was once considered primitive now becomes sophisticated in its own right, having made the move from ego-driven survival instincts into soul-based intuitive wisdom (the “sophia” of sophisticated means “wisdom”), wisdom rooted in timeless-eternity.  Now we’re talking!  The soul’s wisdom is rooted in a deep sense of each of us as individuals, connected with the original and individual purpose for which each of us came to life, the purpose that continues to animate our lives and be animated by life.  Aries is the first step in the circle of life, and as ancient philosopher Plotinus said, “The soul moves in circles.”  The revolution of Uranus in Aries is, by no small account, a revolution of the soul.

You can see some of this dazzling, mind-bending maneuvering of Uranus in the movie “Minority Report” with its vision of the future, its pre-cogs, and its Pre-Crime Unit founded on foresight, designed to stop criminals before they can even commit the criminal acts they will apparently commit.  You can also see Prometheus in the movie “Prometheus” (couldn’t resist saying that!) in how any genuine, original progress is intimately linked with an origin, an original image.  And you can see these sensibilities perhaps most clearly and radically in the Doctor Who episodes “The Girl In the Fireplace” and “Blink” which both fundamentally operate in a place of time-outside-of-Time and are mini revolutions in and of themselves.  Watch them enough times and you’ll start to get the hang of it.  Like I said, it’s tricky.

THE LAST FULL MEASURE

While Uranus in Aries inspires the new, Pluto in Capricorn expires the old.  When Pluto moves through Capricorn, the traditional world structures can be remade.  An old, confining and claustrophobic order can be replaced with something new.  Pluto in Capricorn reveals the corruption within current systemic structures—the larger structures such as the government that hold our civilization in order, or the smaller structures of our own lives that keep us in order, such as our calendars and clocks.  With both Pluto in Capricorn and Uranus in Aries, Time certainly seems to get the short end of the stick, doesn’t it?

You can see this Uranus-Pluto combination quite prominently in Pixar’s latest movie “Brave.”  Imagine independent, fiery red-head Merida in the tight, tight, tight dress her mother (the Queen) required her to wear.  Merida’s dress is a good example of Pluto in Capricorn, because the dress represents generations-old traditions reaching a point of necessary change.  It’s not just the dress that didn’t fit Merida.  It’s a whole way of life, and the whole structure of authority within which she was trying to simply be herself (like an Aries) and live the life she was born to live.  Pluto in Capricorn takes those too-tight, too-restrictive structures (often called “tradition” when they fit well) and undresses them.

Remembering back to my earlier post about Pluto’s connection to the dead, Merida found her way to a new life by following the invisible guidance of her ancestors (in the form of will o’ wisps), the ones who came before.  Which brings us, now, back to Abraham Lincoln.

THE BETTER ANGEL

If all of this jumping around is obnoxious, you’re getting a good taste of Uranus!  With Uranus, Time stops being “back then” and “up ahead” and somehow it all merges into what is called “present time.”  It’s there all at once.  Remember “A Christmas Carol”?  “Live in the past, the present, and the future!”

Here we might see Abraham Lincoln as a Ghost of Christmas Past, not to mention a Ghost of Christmas Future when the upcoming Steven Spielberg movie Lincoln opens.  For the purposes of this article, what I find most fascinating about Lincoln as President of the United States of America is the scope of his vision, expressed in a most poetic manner, so as to include in his speeches phrases like “the better Angels of our nature” and “the mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land.”  Angels and mysticism gave his vision profound depth and substance.  It’s the same kind of vision that enriched the words of Joshua Chamberlain, enabling him to inspire disillusioned soldiers during the Civil War as if by magic and leave behind a legacy of breathtakingly dignified speeches that still inspire today.  Lincoln and Chamberlain drew from the past, like artists envisioning the future with clear eyes on the present.  If either of our main political contenders today spoke of Angels or mysticism, it would actually be difficult to take them seriously.  Such is the extent to which mystical vision and language of the soul have been stripped from our culture.  So, let’s bring it back (which is what Neptune in Pisces wants to do anyway).

Archetypally speaking, what exactly might the better Angels of our nature be, and what does this have to do with astrology and Uranus?

A main albeit rarely discussed archetype of Uranus is the Angel archetype.  Most typically this is referred to as the Genius archetype, though even then it’s not usually mentioned as an actual archetype.  Talk of geniuses usually brings up Steve Jobs or Albert Einstein or a similar figure.  But deep inside the roots of the word genius reside its true meaning:  “a guardian deity or spirit which watches over each person from birth.”  Genius isn’t about intelligence.  Rather, it’s about the inborn gifts each human being possesses, gifts held within the original vision of each individual life, an original vision that contains the whole picture of one’s life in the form of a pattern or design or story or image (think, for example, of an astrological chart), and in its one-of-a-kind manner makes each of us an original.  It’s not that I am a genius or you are a genius; rather, it’s about:  what is your genius?  What are you here to do?  What are you here to contribute to life that nobody else can?  These are perhaps some of the most important questions to consider at this time.

The Genius refers to your innate you-ness, and also to the invisible winged spirit guiding you along the way in life.  The same notion was given the name daimon in Greek culture, genie in North African culture, and the Guardian Angel in Christian culture.  Perhaps Abraham Lincoln knew something of this Angel when he appealed to the better Angels of our nature.  See, to him it was natural; in our nature resides an Angel.  It’s second-nature.  What we refer to today as a genius and isolate to a few really smart individuals can really be applied as an Angel or a Genie or a Daimon to the greater whole and refers to all individuals.

Abraham Lincoln’s genius was (among many things) a vision of freedom.  Decades later, General Patton’s genius was an absolute ruthless fortitude in bringing down Hitler.  Seriously, could anyone else have done that?  Steven Spielberg’s genius is movie-making.  Barbra Streisand’s genius is her voice.  It’s not really just one thing, though.  The Angel watches over the whole of your life, guiding you along a path that is uniquely yours, designed and tailored to your genius.  We see this in the story of Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer, or Nestor the Long-eared Christmas Donkey.  We see it more recently in Ratatouille.  Remy the Rat was a weirdo—a term often applied to Uranian people or Aquarians.  If you research the word “weird” you’ll probably find it strangely becoming, because that’s what it means:  becoming strange.  And it ties in with everything I have been writing about here.  Aquarian Charles Dickens’ genius was his writing, full of weird and unforgettable characters.  And, last but not least for now, Samuel Morse’s genius was envisioning the invisible transmission of messages across time and space, wholly resonant of the original instant messengers themselves, the Angels—the carriers of intuitive guidance, leading us on our individual paths.

There is still so much to explore as time goes on, but for now we shall wrap this up, lest it carry on like the Civil War, much, much, much longer than anyone (including me) anticipated.

THE REBEL YELL

In her song “The Power of the Dream” Celine Dion sings, “Deep within each heart there lies a magic spark that lights the fire of our imagination.”  This is the fire Prometheus stole.  It’s the eternal flame of creativity and passion, the solar fire, the fire that lights up the human imagination, which in turn illuminates our lives.  It is the fire of the human heart, the center of imagination, carried on the wings of love with its eternal connection to the spirit and soul.  Yet, remember back to Part 1 of my post, and back to 1865 when, symbolically speaking, the heart lost the Civil War.  We can see the remnants of that loss everywhere in our culture, from the loss of soul to the loss of basic rights and freedoms; from the crumbling of the education system to the absurd national debt; and from the antics on Wall Street to the length of the lines at every pharmacy—all turning the better angels of our creative nature into something far more destructive and some would even say demonic.

Back during the Civil War, the rebel yell was a battle cry used by the Southern Confederate soldiers.  In his Pulitzer Prize-winning book “The Killer Angels” Michael Shaara describes it as “that ripply sound that raised the hair, that high thin scream from far away coming out of the mist unbodied and terrible, inhuman.  The scream of a flood of charging men:  the rebel yell.”  Today, in 2012, the rebel yell of the solider has become the Rebel Yell of the Soul, waking us up to the eternal side of life as well as our unique, individual call to action.  There is something inhuman in human nature, something miraculous and wonderful, a fierce force that fights and guides and guards and protects us as we proceed.  If that was lost along with the heart a couple of centuries ago, be sure that it is calling again now, louder than ever.  The seven Uranus-Pluto squares over the next three years bring to my mind the image of a defibrillator, with enough electrical voltage to re-awaken, resuscitate, and re-animate the lost, shattered and broken heart of our culture back into life.  It will take a unique and original rebellion in which each brave individual can participate at any time, a risky rebellion of purpose—fighting to be who you were born to be—and most certainly backed by an army of Angels.