Beauty, Death, and Pie
Sorcery
YYears ago, on the eve of my first book launch, a very successful colleague advised me to lose weight. “The total package is what will help you promote the book,” was the message. It was kind of appalling; but from a strictly practical point of view, it wasn’t wrong. Beauty is a powerful tool, and in this highly visual age not even a writer can avoid the public eye. Look at the most successful people in many fields, and you’ll see that they are overwhelmingly attractive. (This requirement is waived for extremely wealthy men.)
Venus is the astrological symbol of this kind of magnetic beauty, the siren call that brings others close enough to appreciate what else we have to offer. Venus expresses herself through the bright plumage, beautiful colors, and captivating forms that attract the eye. She is in all the ways we fascinate others and pull them into our orbit, from the attractive book cover to the beautiful author.
But as Venus makes a trine aspect to Neptune this week (Oct. 21, 12:41 pm), she reminds us that there are qualities of beauty that transcend the physical. That the enchantment of soulfulness, gentleness, and empathy make for powerful sorcery. That the most irresistible force of all is pure love, unconditionally offered. And that even when the cover is not terribly beautiful, what’s inside can sometimes be enough to draw the reader in.
Answering the phone
The Sun enters Scorpio (Oct. 23, 10:20 am PDT) just in advance of the New Moon. The Scorpio season, poised between the autumn equinox and the winter solstice, is a time of harvest celebrations and holidays, like Wiccan Samhain and Mexican Dia de los Muertos, that acknowledge endings and death as part of life’s great circle.
This is more easily done in the abstract. Halloween is spookiness played for laughs, the mystery of death kept at a safe remove; how cute to see the little kids in their costumes, and what fun it is to imagine that the dead overstay their welcome in order to mess with us!
But the truth underlying this season is the phone call that brings horrible news, or nightmares that continue for years after a trauma, or a life’s landscape changed irrevocably in a single day. Endings and death are part of life’s great circle, but they’re nobody’s favorite part.
And yet we love autumn. The fall color brings thousands of visitors to gape at the maples of Vermont. Halloween rivals Christmas as America’s favorite holiday. The drama of death makes life itself pop; in contrast, its narrative is more vivid and compelling. The drama of Scorpio, with its witchy magic and the strength to answer life’s scariest phone calls, does the same.
New life in the season of endings
October 25 finds lovely Venus entangled in the arms of Pluto in a sextile (Oct. 25, 2:49 am PDT), like Persephone in the clutches of Hades. Venus is on the symbol A soldier derelict in duty, which reminded me of a recent Saturday when I ran away from home.
Well actually, Jonny needed some peace and quiet to work, so I hopped in the car and headed east. I ended up in the mountain town of Julian, where the trees are changing color, the autumn apple season is underway, and it’s hard to find parking.
I took a window table at a diner in the center of town and ate my breakfast with a view of the autumn leaves and bustling tourists – determined to wear their autumn sweaters even though the temperature was rising, determined to buy fresh apple pies to take home although no one is eating gluten. In short, determined to have the best damn autumn Saturday possible in the mountains of San Diego.
And I noticed something else: Everywhere I looked, there were pregnant women. Even my waitress was pregnant!
Venus, the goddess of attraction, walked among us glowing and fecund, radiating new life in the season of endings. Venus and Pluto in combination contain the contrasting wisdom of life and death, brightness and dark; and from time to time, if we sit quietly at the window, we can glimpse them holding hands and carrying an apple pie.
The last word
Two interesting bits of astrology converge on October 27. Mars makes a square aspect to Saturn (7:30 am PDT) –will vs. constraint – and there’s a New Moon (8:38 pm PDT, at 4.25 Scorpio).
Mars is on the Sabian Symbol A boat landing washed away, and the Scorpio New Moon is on the symbol, A massive, rocky shore. In other words: A boat landing built by man is no match for the sea. But neither is the massive, rocky shore. It will unquestionably last longer than the landing, but it will eventually succumb to the sea as well.
There are cultures, fewer and fewer of them, that take the world as it is and pretty much leave it that way. They live simply, using only the resources they need for survival.
I didn’t grow up in a culture like that one. In mine, we build, Saturn-like. We bend nature to our Mars-like will. And like Mars in a hard-work square to Saturn, we adapt and disrupt and build higher buildings and stronger fortresses, levees and dykes. Not because we’re bad people, but because that’s the machine we were dropped into.
But while you might have a preference for one of these cultures over the other, neither has the last word. The last word belongs to the sea.
© 2019 by April Elliott Kent
