Medusa-Industria: Functional Reconciliation

A Mandelbrot factile of 500 interactions rendered using UltraFractal

(image credit: Danwills, Jan 2007)

By now you understand that Medusa is about our ability to face our fears – particularly when it comes to who we really are…or maybe have been…or in the sense of what we’re afraid it’s going to take to get where we want to go.

Or to be the person we want to be.

Even the person we’ve told others we are…even though we know we aren’t.

Medusa events are always about our being tested by our own desire – or ability – to forget our commitments, especially to ourselves.

Asteroid Medusa is going retrograde at 1:57 in the afternoon (UT/+0) on August 20th, which means its station will begin on the 18th and continue on through the 22nd, enveloping the August Full Moon (which will be in Aquarius) the Sun moving into Virgo and a transiting cardinal square between Jupiter and Uranus.

So Medusa’s station begins while the Sun is just finishing up its transit of Leo – a time when we can expect to be full of a sense of what we need to do, what we want to do, where we think we’re going…all of which then meets up with Medusa’s turn to retrograde – a sign that maybe we don’t know all we think we know, even about ourselves.

Imagine you’re an actor. You’re running late, you’re rushing, you arrive at the theater with spare minutes to go before your starring role entrance. Filled with thoughts of what you need to do and how you need to focus on your lines and getting into character, you race through putting on your makeup with people pounding on the door trying to get you to hurry up.

So hurry you do. And barely do you walk out on stage but you realize (because there’s a draft) that you took off your clothes, then forgot to put your costume on.

These are the kind of “obvious” errors we can run into during this time. Of course some of us will reach this turn and something “Medusa-scary” will resolve itself, but since Medusa is taking its turn at 15 Aries and Uranus is still hanging around 12 Aries (which is absolutely close enough for lobbing astrological planetary boomerangs), this astrologer would honestly say that if all goes nicely in this moment with nary a quiver to your Jello…well, it might be the day to go play the lottery.

There’s just that much energy in the mix, yes.

15 Aries is an interesting sort of degree which says we need to learn from experience, and that playing the conservative or “proven” card is often best. But since experience is needed to turn this degree from problem into productivity, despite all we tend to ‘create’ the dynamic we need to learn from no matter how hard we try.

Not making this any easier is the fact that fixed star Alpheratz is sitting one degree behind at 14 Aries – a degree known for isolation which is based in a need for self development.

And then we add in Alpheratz, a fixed star which is part victim, part beauty and part cut-and-run dynamic – all in the name of a self-protective isolation which can ultimately be productive if harnessed in a ‘great cause’ but which all too often simply leads to a life of self-imposed separations from that which needs to be served…things which can only be served through a ‘marriage’ of courage and effort (in the person) which leads to the willingness to enter into companionable duty and duty through close alliance.

Frankly, with Medusa taking station virtually atop Alpheratz, many things, many situations and many relationships from the personal to the international may become seriously difficult during this time. Yet most of these difficulties can be moderated if we remember that the onus is not on ‘them’ (whoever “they” may be) to face our unwillingness to face our fears or the fear of self-exposure or the fear of sharing one’s work, one’s life, one’s feelings…. whatever you’re scared of sharing about now.

As the Sun shifts into Virgo late on August 22nd (the last “official” day of Medusa’s station) we’ll feel a subtle shift from the ‘idea of the thing’ (the intensity of Leo at its most critical point) into a more sober, clarified mindset.

Of course, this will be when some will decide to cut their loses and vamoose, with or without taking their toys home to play with.

Is there a better course? Probably yes. Considering that Virgo is about service, recognizing that our fears are probably more universal than we suspect and working from that base of compassion in the search for a better way to work with matters at hand is probably a better course.

Medusa, 3D (image credit: Nikita Verprikov, January 2007)

In a sense, Medusa taking this change of course (in conjunction with Alpheratz at 14 Aries) as the Sun moves from Leo into Virgo indeed may be exactly that: a challenge to not simply retreat but to live up to the best of our abilities. Where we utilize the Alpheratz tendency towards isolation as a maintaining of perspective on ourselves and others, we are likely to gain insight on not just how we tend to (re)create those dynamics which cause us to shy away but what it is in ourselves which is so ‘shy’ (or prone to shy) in the first place.

Furthermore, Medusa isn’t alone in this moment of turnabouts-as-playing-fair-with-ourselves. Asteroid Industria is also going on station, and it’s going direct. The date of Industria’s station is August 19 – the day before Medusa’s turn. So Industria’s effects start first (on the 17th) and end first (on the 21st – which is the date of the Full Moon/Jupiter-Uranus square, which will be talked about in the next post here at astroPPM).

Industria – literally “industriousness” – is all about what we’re working on. And yes, it can represent literal work (or works) as in something you do for a living. But Industria can also be all about what you have been working on in your life. Or with regards to dealing with a bad habit. Or your effort to learn some pesky piece of software.

Anything we’re “working on” qualifies for Industria symbolism. And seeing as Industria is now going direct, there’s a definite aura that a ‘matter you have run into’ (asteroids being emblems of things we learn about and from along the way through life) is now moving towards some sort of active resolution…or maybe dissolution.

The plus or minus here has to do with the optimal, which given the Sun’s shift from Leo into Virgo during this time would tend to say it’s about moving from a focus on the idea into a realm where we take the reality – and maybe the fact that we’re talking about real lives and real life parameters – into account.
 

Hésiode et la Muse by Gustave Moreau (1857)...

...because sometimes we have to serve as our own muse

Medusa’s turn to retrograde surely asks us why we are afraid. Conjunct Alpheratz, this is a conversation we probably need to have with ourselves. But that Industria is going direct at 4 Capricorn? That does lend a very positive social note to the whole of this dynamic. 4 Capricorn has a reputation for being warmly social and often concerned with welcoming people into our home – or into our life (our essential ‘home’) in some very real and hospitable manner. And all can go very well providing we are willing to work (Industria) as we move forward with whatever we initiate now.

So maybe we are scared. But that doesn’t mean advances can’t be made and things can’t be – and become – ever more whole and wholesome in the days and weeks and even years to come.
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