Corona, Saturn/Pluto, and #23

The Corona virus and  astrology. So what are the stars telling us? Go back to January 12, when Saturn and Pluto were exactly conjunct at 23 degrees in Capricorn. As I wrote last November about this conjunction: Saturn represents structures, self-discipline, responsibility, and karma – a word I really dislike. Pluto governs profound and permanent change, regeneration, obsession, destruction, and power. This conjunction occurs in earth-sign Capricorn, which rules – among other things – government, structures, the status quo.

These two planets have been approaching an exact conjunction since late January 2019, when they were just seven degrees apart. It’s like a game of tag with these two. Gonna catch you, Saturn cackles, then it turns retrogrades and appears to go backward relative to Earth. But during the second week of January 2020, the conjunction becomes exact. This also coincidences with the first eclipse of 2020, a lunar eclipse in Cancer on January 10.

So, if we take the meanings of these two planets at face value, Pluto’s destructive power arrived as a virus – a kind of terrorist – and knocked the status quo – government, structures intended to deal with pandemics – on its face. Pluto exposes what is hidden beneath the surface and it certainly has done that with the trump administration. The man who congratulates his own greatness every opportunity he gets, the man who announced several weeks ago that the virus was a hoax, said today, on March 16, that it might be July, maybe August, before things get better. That’s a far cry from “hoax.”

From the firing of CDC employees – 500 of them – to the dismantling of structures intended to deal with health crises, this administration is completely unprepared for this kind of terrorist. So mayors and governors are making determinations about their communities, cities, and states. The pathetic part of this is that the administration has offered few guidelines other than trump telling the states to find their own ventilators.
Jan 12 was the only time in 2020 these 2 planets are exactly conjunct, at 23 degrees Capricorn. Interestingly, that number has a rather odd and mystical history.

William S. Burroughs, author of Naked Lunch, claimed he had known a Captain Clark in Tangier around 1960, who once bragged that he had been sailing 23 years without an accident. That very day, Clark’s ship had an accident that killed him and everybody else aboard. That very evening, a new bulletin on the radio announced the crash of an airliner in Florida, USA. The pilot was another Captain Clark and the flight was Flight 23. A synchronicity. The enigma of this number was the topic of an early post on our blog in 2009.

But when it comes to enigmatic numbers, my first source for insight is The I Ching, a Chinese divination system that dates back at least 5,000 years. Even though I’ve been using the Ching since I was 18, I’m still a beginner. I know only two women who are absolute masters of this divination system – author Nancy Pickard, and artist and writer Adele Aldridge who is illustrating and interpreting every line and hexagram in the I Ching on her website

In the I Ching, hexagram 23 is called Splitting Apart. The hexagram looks like this:
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Here’s the beginning of the interpretation in the Richard Wilhelm translation of the I Ching, to which Carl Jung wrote the introduction in 1949:

The dark lines are about to mount upward and overthrow the last firm, light line by exerting a disintegrating influence on it. The inferior, dark forces overcome what is superior and strong, not by direct means, but by undermining it gradually and imperceptibly, so that it finally collapses.

The lines of the hexagram present the image of a house, the top line being the roof, and because the roof is being shattered the house collapses.
The Judgement: Splitting Apart. It does not further anyone to go anywhere.

Go to Adele’s website for her interp of hexagram 23 or Google it.
So, Saturn and Pluto and 23, here we are.