The nice thing about astrology is that it gives us a temporal structure within which we can reflect on certain areas of life. As above, so below, and the grand dramas of the planets take up themes that we can apply to the stories of our individual or collective lives.
Random Thoughts, for Valentines Day, 2004. The day’s a holiday invented by greeting card companies, to make people feel like crap.
In Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind the main character Joel is so distraught by the disintegration of his relationship with Clementine that he seeks a neurological treatment that will erase targeted memories. He elects to erase Clementine and his past with her so that he might find peace in his life again. As part of the procedure, he must relive all of his moments with Clementine over again in excruciatingly fine detail as they are erased. He realizes that he doesn’t want to be void of this life experience and tries his best to retain the memory of Clementine. His efforts fail and he wakes up after the procedure with no recollection of this woman who had a profound impact on him. I’m sure we all know how this film ends at this point, but for the uninitiated: they meet by chance and then find out they’ve both erased each other. They decide to fall in love all over again.
Eternal Sunshine is like the Venus-Mars planetary cycle, which resets on February 21, 2024 at 11:26PM MST (February 22nd for the majority of the world). After nearly two years since their last conjunction, Venus meets Mars at 6° Aquarius. Over the last two years these two have been steeped in a tumultuous cycle of meeting, disagreeing, and chasing. Both planets went through retrogrades during this cycle, too, which is partly why it took years for them to reunite again. After the initiating conjunction, two planets will meet again forming different kinds of aspects, or geometric relationships, to one another and every aspect carries different energies. Squares, Trines, the Opposition, Sextiles all carry with them a different arc in the story that is the Venus-Mars cycle. Since it’s the goddess of love and beauty and the god of war and aggression, the story is going to be about relationships and relationship patterns. Their cycle in the sky spins a tale of lovers meeting and parting and coming back together again, and we can see these same kind of moments playing out in our own lives throughout this cycle.
In every planetary cycle there is a story. The gods of our celestial heavens are all in unique relationships with one another and they move in a constant choreography at a pace set forth from the beginning of time. At times they are squaring up to each other, in reviled apprehension; at others they are in harmonious balance assisting one another with joy and gratitude. The relationship dynamics of the stars are energetic and thrilling, and, depending on which planets are involved and how fast they move, every year/couple of years these relationships renew through a conjunction—an ecstatic union—that resets the cycle. A new story begins.
Wish me a Happy Valentine’s Day when you call! That’d be nice.
The last two years have been significant for me personally and the story never quite felt finished like it does now. Two years is short, but there was a lot of life packed in and I was struggling to process most of what happened. Reflecting on the themes of values, loves, action, agency, power, relationships, conflicts, and balance I identified the dates of each major aspect made between Venus and Mars since March 2022. I revisited those moments with hindsight perspective and a sort of auto-anthropological curiosity to do a forensics of the self—to feel less heavy about the intense feelings and psychic residue plaguing me these last few days. With every triumph and setback going on in the developing love story of Mars and Venus during this long cycle I found my own personal drama reflected. Normally, when I’m delineating astrology, I’m looking ahead to make predictions and read the forecast. This post is different in that I am specifically trying to predict my past, as it were. Applying patterns to reflections is useful. It was cathartic to explore my recent past and memories like this, like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind without the horrific brain damage at the end.
It all started with a conjunction in Aquarius. It’s not a particularly romantic sign, and perhaps this was a doomed romantic love all along; a love meant to carry us deeper into filial connection with a stronger appreciation for how we develop friendships. Venus and Mars found each other in a crowded place and neither of them were really looking for the other. Instead of being led by feelings, the two lovers intellectualized their connection and strategized for best possible outcomes. Leading with the head over the heart is called for in some situations, but in others it can be misleading—leading us to think that we can logically think our way through something like love, which cannot be reasoned with.
It was so intimate, like we were already lovers.
The love story played out relatively quietly over the next six months. Mars was traveling far from home in Taurus, but still found a way to support his queen in Cancer. He was weak, though, and Venus indulged far too much. This led to great agitations during the fall of 2022. Mars ingressed into Gemini, another overly analytical sign, where he would eventually spend several months as he journeyed through a retrograde. Relationship dynamics became soured and distressing as Venus, in neurotic Virgo, made a square to Mars and everyone settled into a time of feeling defensive and perturbed by the other people in their life. I think a lot of the problems during this time in the cycle boiled down to overthought suppression of emotions. Thinking too hard about what was ailing the heart, but the only remedy is to simply feel.
Venus made a favorable trine to Mars in October, but it was a sweet moment that wouldn’t last because Mars was about to station retrograde. The most heartbreaking kind of self-sabotage is when you have a good thing in front of you and then retreat from it to try and save it from any blemish or harm. There are so many times throughout the disintegration of a relationship that we feel we have a second chance, or like everything might be okay. We overthink, we destroy, or it’s simply not meant to be, and we retreat.
Are we like those bored couples you feel sorry for at restaurants?
By the end of 2022 everything irritating and negative was coming to a head. Venus opposed Mars while he was moving backwards and the opposition was like a shit test that solidified the decision to end the relationship for good. Every day we’re presented with decisions, and we never know until we have hindsight perspective whether those decisions are irrevocable or trivial. Sometimes it takes years to realize that what seemed like an ordinary moment or choice was actually a major turning point in our lives. Between October 30, 2022 and January 12, 2023 we were presented with significant options and if you search hard enough and take an unflinching inventory, I’m certain you’ll find the moments that mattered and reverberated throughout the year.
In the spring of 2023 Venus and Mars clashed again in a moment of frustrated irritation, but an impasse was reached and white flags were flown. Real power struggles in our relationships were starting to manifest at this time, but they were below the surface and we may not have been fully aware of them. Some people may have unwittingly been taking advantage of the power, while others were making compromises in a Faustian Bargain kind of way, sacrificing a huge part of ourselves for the sake of keeping the peace. The consequences of these maneuvers didn’t reveal themselves until the summer of 2023 when Venus chased Mars and then turned around and made her way through the underworld during her retrograde. It was a radicalizing and purifying time for all, although many losses were endured and injuries of the heart sustained. By the time fall of 2023 came around, if you didn’t already know what role you played in those power struggles from earlier in the year, you knew by then.
The last few months have held contradictions as Venus sped up and started to pursue Mars once again. We may be feeling both hollow and hopeful, as though we’ve past a point of no return and there’s nothing left to lose. “Nothing to gain, nothing to lose, nothing we desired anymore” etc. As Venus catches up to Mars in these final days before the next conjunction, there’s a restless feeling in the air. Like we’re rushing around to get started on something, but having to endure a slower-than-normal passage of time: hurry up and wait. I never got closure from my last relationship—no one ever does—but I’m feeling ready to let it go, finally. It feels like exhausting dead weight and I just want to be on the other side of it. I want a tabula rasa.
“I can’t think of anything I don’t like about you.” “But you will. And I’ll get bored with you and feel trapped because that’s what happens with me.” “Okay.” “Okay.”
The trouble is, we can’t undo our relationships, we can’t force ourselves to forget them. Sometimes I will myself into forgetting embarrassing moments to cope, and I think it’s a scientific fact that the brain can force itself to strategically forget moments of extreme trauma in order to survive. But when it comes to a long term entanglement with another person, we can’t erase that, or at least not easily. Our memories are embedded in another person’s brain that we have no control over. Not to mention about a third of humanity’s technological progress has centered around developing methods of record-keeping and devices for record-keeping. We have a deep (possibly innate) desire to keep our memories. It’s natural to forget, but we have conditioned ourselves not to and we are so often the memory keepers for our friends and lovers. It makes disentangling that much harder.
Next week, when Venus and Mars come together again after two years and in the same sign of Aquarius, we can think of it like a second chance, or a do-over, but there has been no undoing, or forgetting. The unfolding journey will not be exactly the same as this last cycle, so we will not have endless second chances either. Nor do we have to think that repeating patterns means we are fated to make the same mistakes. My hope for you, for myself, for all of us, is that we pointedly remember these planetary inflection points in the cycle and see the moments when we were acting out, or being supportive, or stubborn. Eventually we must begin again and we cannot step into those beginnings in fear. I think the solution is to approach this new start trying to feel the “eternal sunshine of the spotless mind,” behaving as though we have forgotten the pain and anxiety of whatever chapters are closing now, but carrying the wisdom of it all confidently.
This was very strongly written - and on an important topic. I really like that movie - eternal sunshine of the spotless mind.
Just because of random connections I watched “Scott pilgrim” recently for the first time - and I strongly suspect that as that movie is to middle and younger millennials - eternal sunshine is to the older millennials. Both films touched such emotional nerves of “extremely accurate” sentiment in different ways.
In other significant ways - both those worlds are gone. Interactions are different. But we don’t forget. I don’t want to forget - ever. My stubborn challenge is integrating it I guess.
There is a fair amount of hope in feeling. Some “this time is different and better” energy - and I hope a lot of people feel that.
People who have cling on to old cycles are panicking now - on serval levels. People like me “cancelled” several times over - the immunity conferred is now opening up into new positivity. - so it seems.