Lachesis Direct

 Les Parques (the Greek Fates) by Alfred Agache, c. 1885

Without having spend a lot of time reading Greek myth (which I did as a kid, having some sort of fascination for the stuff), I’m not sure how anyone would know to draw a dotted line between asteroids Klotho, Lachesis, and Atropos. They’re the ‘Fates’ of Greek myth who represented the processes of life.

Klotho spins fleece into yarn and thus is associated with creating, beginnings, initiations and birth.

Lachesis measures out the length of the thread (the length of a life) and thus asteroid Lachesis is astrologically associated with duration, length and what gets ‘done’ during the time something goes on, be it a life or a process.

Atropos cuts the thread, which metaphysically causes us to think of asteroid Atropos as endings or finalities or the ‘death’ of some idea, a relationship, a job, even (yes,) physical death.

But a note on this last statement: Atropos in the chart is NOT to be seen as an astrological marker for someone’s death. There are methods by which astrologers know to predict the death of a person. They are never (NEVER, mind you!) marked by one single factor.

Also: if you find an astrologer who says they are willing to predict a person’s death, you should be thinking twice. It is considered one of the great and true no-no’s in astrology (as in medicine) to “predict” death, which is why doctors speak in probabilities and likelihoods when it comes to this subject.

So saying, back to Lachesis. Asteroid Lachesis is going to go direct at 17 Aries on Saturday, December 8th, which is one day after Pluto’s conjunction of nebula Facies (in Capricorn) hits the ‘exact point.’

Link to November 22nd's post on Pluto/Facies

Obviously this means that Pluto/Facies is reaching its maximal point of ‘exactitude’ during Lachesis’ station window – that ‘two days before, two days after’ allowance we give to celestial objects going in or out of retrograde motion. But let’s also remember, it isn’t the asteroid which is changing directions – it’s our perspective on that asteroid (or planet, or whatever) as seen from here on Earth.

So here we have Pluto/Facies providing us with the image of something very complicated which we might what to change in spite of how it seems to be controlling us (or maybe even bringing the worst out in us) in ways which are (Capricorn) visible to others and which pertain to the structure of our life. And as Lachesis goes on station, the internal (retrograde) debate about all this becomes more…what, obvious? Externally prompted?

Maybe both.

That Lachesis is making this turn in Aries says this is happening to us, or it’s a matter which is very personal or intrinsic to our life. Prepare to take things personally!

Or here’s another way to think about it…maybe Lachesis (as “duration’) is your realizing that whatever is going on will only last ‘so long.’ Or that you can only put up with it for so long?

 Bernard Gitton's Time-Flow 'water clock' 

(photo credit: Luna04, July 2006)

Duration, duration, duration! How long will it last? How do deal with it in the meantime? Or what must you do while something lasts?

To all of this gets added the 17 Aries part. And 17 Aries, besides being an emotional (and possibly emotionally evocative) degree, speaks more specifically to the idea of pushing something more towards its extreme. So whatever that attribute is… a tendency to splurge, a habit of lying, the tendency to think of everything in an optimistic light…at this point that Pluto/Facies conjunction is probably pushing many of us to “exaggerated” displays of our native tendencies.

Or…if we’re lucky…a moment when we get in touch, when we gain perspective ON our tendency to be greedy or overly optimistic or whatever else.

There is a note in the writings on 17 Aries which talk about ‘awareness.’ This awareness is curiously what apparently drives people to be more exaggerated about what they do. They’re aware of the issue and they think they can change the direction of things by pushing.

That, when we think of it in tandem with Lachesis’ station is why we may now be seeing we can’t go on doing things as we have been doing them. Pluto-Facies complexities or no, this turn of Lachesis to direct motion may have us realizing that we can’t keep doing what we have been doing – at least not the way we’ve been doing it.

That Lachesis is going direct with Pelion (a mountain to climb) at 14 Aries and Eris (ouch!) at 21 Aries says we may well feel very uncomfortable with the situation we’re in. And that we should…or maybe that we need to feel sufficiently uncomfortable in order to get into gear with whatever needs doing.

At least for a time. Or because we only have so much time.

The tightest (closest) planetary aspect to Lachesis’ station is the Sun at 16 Sagittarius, drawing our attention to ‘how we’re going about doing things.’ With the Sun conjunct Tantalus at 14 Sag, Hidalgo at 17 Sag and Ixion/Pholus at 19 Sag, we need to be careful about how (Hidalgo) we do things and the degree of ‘wanting to do what we want to do simply because we want to do it’ (Tantalus) which is in the daily mix as plainly Ixion/Pholus is telling us that we can bring our own efforts to naught with just a little off-handed carelessness.

This sounds like we need to be careful about grandstanding or anything which smacks even remotely of hubris.

One other aspect which seems particularly worthy of note here: in going direct at 17 Aries, Lachesis is taking station in square to Mars at 15 Capricorn. This puts Mars (mercifully!) out of range of Pluto-Facies, but Mars is exactly conjunct Vega (charisma), and mighty closely allied in this moment with Nemesis (at 14 Capricorn) and Eros at (17 Capricorn)…which would seem to be an amalgamation about ‘public charm’ and a passion for that which we know may not be popular, but is actually true.

An alternative here would be that public charm (appearances, call it…) in spite of knowing something isn’t right, or isn’t going to stand the test of Capricorn time.

 Back in Roman times, the toga (shown here on a statue restored with the head of Nerva),

was what Roman male citizens wore to be seen as men of Rome. Considering people and how

competitive Roman society was, togas were probably 'the thing' to be seen in, and not just a few

probably tried to get away with wearing them even if they weren't proper "citizens of Rome."

Oh, how times don't seem to change all that much, right? 

(photo credit: Sailko)

The good news here is that this is just a period of time – a duration. The tough news is that in being connected to Pluto-Facies, there’s a smidge, a note, a whiff of this which is going to be with us at least through September, 2013.

And that’s the spin of the yarn for today!

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