Happy Equinox Plague!

So I was wondering what the big Capricorn energy was going to bring, but I didn’t guess pandemic. Yet, with Saturn at the 29th degree of Capricorn, it held on desperately, and the evil witch cast her spell upon the world, and it was all sealed up until further notice.

Good one, universe.

We’re now on skeleton crews for the next month. We’re not even allowed in the building when we’re not scheduled to come in. We’re around vulnerable populations and have to make sure we’re not exposing people to a virus that could kill some of them..

And I’m a lawyer, not a medical professional. Yes: the courts are all still in session, and while some courts are allowing continuances in light of the pandemic, that’s a handful of courts. The circuit courts are stripped down and doing criminal and emergency hearings only.

And I haven’t stocked up on anything. It just doesn’t make sense for me to do so, because having 24 extra rolls of toilet paper isn’t helpful when you have a respiratory illness, and I can’t find any cold or flu medicine for purchase.

So my hope is, obviously, that I don’t catch it, since it’s not me, but someone I live with, who could get very sick.

One of the harsher lessons of Jupiter in Saturn is that knowledge isn’t actually democratic. This, despite what we tend to believe, that the veracity of someone’s beliefs in their ideas is too often only measured by the strength of their conviction in beliefs. Now, some beliefs are just beliefs – belief in God, belief that there are biological genders and that there’s only two, belief that the money in your pocket has intrinsic value – and that’s just all there is to it, but in general, we’re monkeys, and we want to maintain the status quo, and the status quo is an invisible net woven from the emotion-based convictions of others.

If this quaratine is successful, there will be a faction of people who will insist that because no one got sick, we were overreacting, and that this is a hoax. If this quarantine is unsuccessful, that same faction of people will insist that this was because some institution, or all of them, failed to prepare them, failed to warn them, failed to have infrastructure in place to deal with this, etc., etc.

Because there is a faction of people who want to believe that what comes from the learned is fake, and that they perpetually live as prey to those in society who know more about some thing than they do.

It’s not a good way to live.

But nonetheless, even the naysayers were hoarding, because what if, or more precisely, what if I try to go to the store next week and the dang fools who believe in this coronavirus thing buy up all the dang toilet paper?

What a way to end the year, right?

But it’s the equinox and I took the day off from telecommuting to enjoy the new year.

Happy Equinox! The Spring Equinox is the day that the sun returns to the first degree of Aries, signifying the Earth making one full revolution around the Sun. Night and day last the same amount of time. This is the first day of Spring, the season of birth and new beginnings.

I have more appreciation for Spring than I have in the past, despite developing seasonable allergies as an adult. Spring is considered a gentle season, with it’s bright, warm colors, flowers, tender buds on trees. In reality though, Spring is brutal.

Spring is when the weather is at its most insane – right now, in Chicago it’s raining and with temperatures in the high forties. However, it will likely snow this week. It may also get to be in the mid-fifites tonight, but the wind will be high. Chicago, like the Northeast, has erratic weather, especially during Spring and Fall, but Spring is an additional rollercoaster.

Spring is when plants force their way out of the ground, when animals eat those plants, and animals eat those animals, and visa versa. The bugs are coming back, and their predators are coming back, too. The bugs of summer? Their eggs laid in spring. Slumber is over for the icky things of nature, who are just getting their mojos back now.

Spring is also Horny Season. This is when everything – including you – want to fuck more. Animals fuck and make babies. Plants fuck everything in sight by releasing pollen, which is their sperm – indiscriminately, for days and weeks, in the air without concern as to where it lands.

When you’re allergic to pollen, you’re allergic to plant sperm, and when you’re having an allergic reaction to pollen, it’s because you have plant sperm all over your face, in your eyes, up your nose, in your mouth and down your throat, and your body thinks it’s poison.

Sexy.

But you, human mammal, are also horny. Your body is actually responding to the warm weather and the warm golden sunshine. Your hair is getting thicker. Your scent is changing. Your desire to socialize is coming back, and your desire to look good for potential sexual partners is returning. You may think Summer is the Horny Season, but the party has to get started sometime, and like with a lot us, our first sexual stirrings happened when we were just children.

And doesn’t this all sound like the sign Aries?

It would seem strange for the first sign of the year, Aries, to be the first sign of the gentle season. This is a new sign, a rough sign, a raw sign with direct, explosive energy, the astrological juggernaut.

So yeah, we’re currently doing the Capricorn thing of social distancing, taking preventative measures, either hoarding or facing austerity, paring down, and waiting things out. However, we’re also doing a lot of Aries things. This self-quarantine, for example, is a new thing for me because I have never experienced the real threat of an epidemic. We’re reconsidering our needs right now, and what it means to be a community, and who actually gets hurt when we’re selfish. Actually, there are unfortunately people doing the negative Aries thing, which is to be completely selfish and doggedly individualistic, but there are people doing positive Aries things.

But Aries types don’t necessarily come off as oafs. All of them, from what I have learned, have at least some unregulated emotional response, whether it’s anger or joy, all have a strong need for attention, all want to not necessarily be number one, but to be the only one. All Aries types also really, really need people to like them, and part of the i-don’t-need-you schtick they do is an attempt to avoid rejection.

But they still blend in and do their jobs. Most don’t actually have explosive tempers (if you want explosive temper, look at Cancer), or a need for speed.

But they do all seem to really love horror movies, which is cool, and a love for the macabre that’s normally ascribed to Scorpio.

Aries get hurt often because of a desire to show off. With Aries Moon, there’s a need to show off, and that’s different. An Aries Sun or Aries rising not allowed to be what it is longs to the show off, but can keep it under wraps usually. Aries Moon will inevitably do things unconsciously or impulsively to fulfill that need, like a small child.

Aries are childlike in a sense, but not necessarily childish. Aries is the child that can’t wait to grow up so they can finally be free to do whatever they want, and once they get the chance to be a grown up, somehow manage to remain children in some sort of fundamental way, whether it’s their approach to fun and entertainment, their beliefs, their ideals, their hopes, or their general approach to work, faith, or vocation.

Aries loves to dance, act, clown, mime, and perform in general.

Aries may not necessarily look young for their ages; some even age faster if they’re spend life in the fast lane. The glint in their eye lets you know that Aries doesn’t actually grow up – it’s an intergalactic rock star that never grows old, taking on a human life for size, and it’s merely wearing a people suit that keeps aging.

It’s the puppy dog of the zodiac.

Mars, the ruler of Aries, is currently in Capricorn, making an exact conjunction to Jupiter. This is an aspect of conquest. Mars conjunct Jupiter is success, winning, good health, and regality. It’s a good thing to have in your chart.

You know who has Mars conjunct Jupiter exactly conjunct in her natal chart? Joan Rivers.

Mars, the ruler of the Sun in Aries, is conjunct Jupiter in late Capricorn, in a Capricorn stellium.

This whole coronavirus thing could be a disaster. It could be just public fever (Aries) or actual fever (Aries), but if we’re determined to do it, we’ll get through it…or we’ll become even more divided in a need to preserve ourselves. I mean it. I’m wiping my ass with facial tissues and using a makeshift bidet because stupid me went to the store when I actually needed to buy toilet paper, not when I thought I would need 6,000 rolls weeks ago to build a toilet paper fence around my home to keep a virus out.

And you guys: how much shitting do you think you’re going to be doing in quarantine – or fuck, even if you catch coronavirus? Are you going to be shitting a lot more at home, so much more at home? Do you know that coronavirus is an upper respiratory disease, not a stomach bug?

But I digress.

Aries is a jokester, a prankster. Not the court jester – that’s Sagittarius. It’s humor that comes from the need to dominate. [All humor is an expression of sadism or masochism. I didn’t say that was a bad thing. That’s just what it is.]

Aries is the guy who gets hurt at the gym because he tries to lift too much weight. Aries is the girl who will have a bikini body by June, for real. Aries is the person who enters and wins hot dog eating contests. Aries is the person who eats spicy things just to make an impression on others.

Aries will compete even when it’s obviously no one else wants to play like that. Aries will compete and pretend that’s not what they’re doing. Aries will compete over things that no one else would make a competition. Aries also tend to take innocuous things as challenges, which they then frame as a competition to the bewildered person who only said “I get so much junk mail nowadays.”

Right now, the world is in flux as we attempt to hunker down and turn chaos into order. The aloneness is odd for many of us, and the onliness, the solitude, may be torturous. I had to go for a long walk through Evanston today. No one was out. I needed it. There is something Aries though about preserving life through being a singleton – when you don’t have to worry about what others think of you, you can blossom.

Spring is the season of blossoms. What are you planting? Have you got any seeds?