JOKER’S DANCE

Black Moon Lilith and Neptune in Pisces

By Vanessa Guazzelli

As Black Moon Lilith  enters Aries, her new dispositor, Mars, is in an tense and exact square with  her former dispositor, Neptune, who happens to be accompanied by Venus and the Moon in Pisces. It is necessary to dive into the transit of the Black Moon through Pisces, where she conjuncted Neptune, to better understand what comes now with her transit through Aries.

On 27/Jan/2020, the Black Moon crossed from Pisces to Aries. Not so fast… Yes, she’s in Aries. But not so fast, ladies and gentlemen – wait a moment. Let us first listen to the original instrumental soundtrack of JOKER.

A “bathroom dance” introduction

This is how this ingress takes place, crossing from one bank to the other through music and the sea, for the Piscean/Neptunian emphasis still predominates in the first two days of this entry – Venus in Pisces conjuncts Neptune (the ruler of Pisces himself), Mars (the ruler of Aries) squares Neptune, while the White Moon transits through Pisces until Jan 29,2020 and then enters Aries, joining the Black Moon – crystal and steel, forming the mirror that inaugurates the 9-month period of Black Moon Lilith in Aries.

This time, the passage from the last to the first sign happens this way, marked by a square between both former and current dispositors. No doubt, it had to be so, for the recent BML transit through Pisces was indeed a peculiar one. In this cycle, the lord of the seas was found to be home. Pisces is the domicile of Neptune, a planet that stays for 14 years in the same sign and takes 164 years to get around the Zodiac. In other words, for Neptune to be at home, it takes a while. The Black Moon, in turn, spends 9 months in a sign, going around the Zodiac in 9 years. Every 9 years, she goes through Pisces and in these 14 years of Neptune in Pisces – from 2011/12 to 2025/26 – she visits him only once, in 2019, indicating essential issues of the Neptune in Pisces transit gain a more visceral tone.

That said, let us see what the current position of Neptune is about, to understand the larger context, the significance of BML’s transit in Pisces and its connection with what is now unfolding in 2020.

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Neptune in Pisces and the Expansion of our Symbolic Capacity 

At the very beginning of the Neptune in Pisces transit, Clovis Peres told me: “Neptune in Pisces demands that we expand our symbolic capacity.” Bang! The wave crashed, the beach sparkled up. Herein lies the key to this transit. I have taken this discernment into consideration over the years, articulating it in many moments, especially in the transits to Neptune, among which are the square with Saturn (2015/2016) and the conjunction to Black Moon Lilith (2019).

Neptune is THE symbol of the great synthesis – beyond reason and affection, comprehension. He is the ruler of the last sign, in which all dissolve. He is the immensity of the sea to which all rivers finally arrive. He is also what is neither heaven, realm of Jupiter-Zeus, nor hell, realm of Hades-Pluto. Poseidon-Neptune’s kingdom is the ocean, which evaporates into the heavens and rains down from it as well, penetrating the earth and evaporating from it again. He is the great connector. He is turbid, cloudy water that distorts and confuses. He is also clear water that mirrors the sky and clears the eyes. Neptune is confusion and deception. Neptune is also the fullest capacity for comprehension and enchantment. He is the ambiguous and the paradoxical. He is also the ability to compose something other, out of differences. It is what dissolves and what integrates. More than this or that, it is this and that on yet another level of bonding.

Pisces is the sea itself. Do you know how to navigate the sea? Do you know how to navigate forward in the high seas? Turning the rudder constantly from one side to another. Anyone who tries to drive a boat like driving a car on the ground ends up going around in circles. To move forward in the sea, you must aim at the island, know your direction, but never try to go straight to it. You must turn to port… When the boat actually starts to go port, it’s time to turn to starboard – not turning too much, just enough to stay in a straight line. For that, when you start to feel that the boat responds to the command and changes its direction, it’s time to again turn the other way… Sometimes smoother, sometimes stronger, because you also have to feel the tides, the waves, responding to them as you move along. It’s not linear, but the art of the sailor is precise. One must be with the sea, dance with it, never in a straight line, to move forward.

This is the dimension of the mutable – as are the signs of Virgo, Pisces, Gemini and Sagittarius, those very much aware of duality and the other side of a coin, of life’s paradoxes and complexities. Mutables know it is better to learn about the tides than to ignore them and get thrown over the rocks.

In the mutable water of Pisces, Neptune is in domicile, intensifying its meanings. And this, again, is a double-edged sword. If, on the one hand, it sensitizes the perception of how everything and everyone is interconnected and, in fact, provides opportunities and calls for an expansion of our capacity for symbolic articulation; on the other hand, it anesthetizes and intoxicates the masses in a sea of ​​enticements, blurring perception.

To reveal the deceptions that imprison minds and bodies, it is necessary to know how to invert and subvert, like shaking a compass in order to rediscover its north. It is necessary to know how to turn the rudder to one side and the other in order to move ahead in a straight line as we sail the high seas.

Being able to observe opposites in their different dimensions and discerning becomes essential in an era in which lie has stolen the garment of truth and accuses it of being a lie – banishing or imprisoning virtually or physically those who reveal facts and evidence truths. Whistleblowers and truth tellers who reveal war crimes are treated as criminals, and countries that defend their sovereignty are treated as a threat to others. The “war on terror” is declared by those who actually sponsor and propagate terror. The “peace for prosperity” plan is made by those who terrorize, usurp and destroy wealth – material, cultural and human.

Working on our symbolic capacity means not avoiding seeing or letting ourselves be blinded by mirages. Expanding symbolic capacity means actually seeing images as they present themselves, and reading words as they arise, as they appear. Neither to believe nor to assume, but to actually observe – including the observation of the concrete unfolding of words and actions, and the actual effects of images. Are we closer to dry land or just going in circles? Since not everything is visible to the naked eye, sometimes it is necessary to resort to the visceral, to the perceptive dimension of reality that underlies words and images, in order to better understand them. For this, the Black Moon is key.

Black Moon Lilith in Pisces

Black Moon Lilith is the astrological point that marks the lunar apogee, the point in the Moon’s elliptical orbit around the Earth at which it is furthest away from our planet. It is right there that the pull of gravity shows its force, bringing the Moon back towards the Earth to continue its orbit. Its stay for 9 months in each sign reminding us of pregnancy, gestation, bringing down to Earth, materializing, forming the body. It concerns the basic death or life drives, the survival instinct and the intrauterine experience – perceived not by images or words, but sensations of tension or relaxation, comfort or discomfort. It is the astrological point that tells of what is most visceral in us, the rawness of existence, that which is not elaborated, a dimension either below or beyond words and images.

We discuss here its transit through Pisces, which comprises the following period:

03/May/2019 to 27/Jan/2020 (MEAN and main Node)

01/Oct/2018 a 27/Aug/2020 (OSCILATING and additional Node)

BML in the water element indicates a visceral incessant flow. In Pisces, it refers to the basic instinct of sleep – or sueño, as said in Spanish, which can mean both sleep (fundamental in the maintenance of physical life) and dream (fundamental in the maintenance of psychic life). It is akin to a compulsion to surrender, to dissolution, to drunkenness, or devotion. There is an urge to surrender to something greater, to dissolve – this is the incessant impulse that underlies the experience of those born with BML in Pisces.

When incessant compulsion has a course through which to flow into a creative expression, the drive effectively inscribes itself in the body, bringing it more vividly to life. What was morbid compulsion becomes a potent, visceral talent. In Pisces, this incessant drive is moved by surrender, sleep, madness, dreams, fantasy. It expresses itself in the dissolution present in Salvador Dalí’s art, in the devotion to the sea in Pablo Neruda’s poetry, in Joseph Campbell’s mythological navigation, or in the name of r&b singer Fantasia. It is also found in the fascination of cinema, as in Jean-Luc Godard or Slavoj Zizek.

The mythical and the arts in general are always within the Piscean realm. Dance – which articulates parts, sides, limbs – is one of the most emblematic expressions of surrendering body and soul, as in the presentation of ballerina Mary Wigman, reported by Roger Garaudy in his book Danser Sa Vie, when referring to Wigman’s most typical work, the Death Call choreography:

When it comes to Black Moon Lilith, the question is what to do with the rawness of the experience. How to move from states of despair and helplessness to a place of fully owning oneself? When life becomes explicitly visceral, as if we were a mere piece of flesh taken by thrust, how to inscribe desire in the body we inhabit in order to, as Wigman says, fully live this experience?

All people mentioned above have Black Moon Lilith in Pisces in their natal astrological charts, as does Argentina, a country that has a dance as its greatest symbol, Tango – and, with it, a visceral power entrenched in Argentinian culture.

The paths and the course taken by the drive in us are, in the most intimate instance, what either submits us or frees us, what destroys us or what makes us create.

Compulsions, in their many different forms, end up serving as ways to keep human beings enslaved to the modes of existence imposed by neoliberalism’s devouring abduction. It is through this human frailty that the system supplies itself, submitting the mass.

Just as, on the other hand, it is through the appropriation of our bodies, as bodies of desire (as in desiring subjects and not mere subjected objects), that shifts in habits and affections take place, modulating our experience and the perception of our own possibilities.

I am writing this to say that, in this dimension of the Black Moon, something of a liberation can actually take place – certainly in the personal sphere, but also when we think in collective terms. Black Moon Lilith always indicates what is the undercurrent of the moment, the visceral tone that underlies the collective flow – what impulses, deeper than its conscious elaborations, set it in motion? What sensations and affections are being mobilized and what possible course is there for them?

Black Moon Lilith dances with Neptune in Joker’s Dance

A movie to be danced. A magnificent soundtrack, both the original and the selected one are a delight. It’s a movie to watch dancing, if not in body, in spirit. In fact, it is a spirit to bring to the body – and reinvent it, subverting the paths to which the system submits the drive.

The bathroom dance is a scene of conversion, alchemy, a posteriori to the surprise of the act. A shift happens, turning away from the condition of abuse, in response to to the perversity inflicted – not to match it, but in the search to end it. When once again he is attacked and kicked to the ground, but this time, Arthur defends himself, after saving the girl who was harassed in the subway – a vehicle, a means of passage, transition.

Arthur’s act brings about not only the JOKER he becomes, but the JOKER as a certain state of existence. Arthur’s “Art” takes place in him and beyond him. It is in the nature of art, it is in the nature of Neptune, to take beyond, radically resignifying here and now.

Transits of Black Moon Lilith bring out what is not elaborated there where it touches. It brings up the strangeness of things and experiences, mobilizing from our guts. Therefore, it is commonly associated with rebellion or nonconformity. Well, it is this kind of organically connected force that is not convinced by what, in reality, is not actually confirmed. When the Black Moon conjuncts Neptune in Pisces, it triggers what is not quite right and has become irremediable in the polis – just as the garbage strike and the rat epidemic in Gotham.

Joker, in addition to highlighting several of the contradictions of our time, marks a shift, felt on the face of the Earth at the same time the film comes to theaters.

The premiere of Joker takes place in Venice, on August 31, 2019. Its release in theaters, however, only takes place on October 4 of the same year. Both dates are significant as to the emergence of Joker in its astrological configuration. At both times, Black Moon Lilith (in both its mean and oscillating nodes) is in Pisces together with retrograde Neptune, but at launch it is actually in partile conjunction (one degree orb, mean node).

Degrees 13 to 18 of Pisces are significant to the themes addressed in this article. At the première, BML was at 13º and Neptune at 17º. At launch, BML was at 17º and Neptune at 16º. At 16º45 of Pisces is where the BML-Neptune conjunction occurred. Now in direct motion, Neptune is at this same degree during BML’s change of signs. The exact square with Mars in Sagittarius now reproduces the square with Jupiter in the same sign and degree (16º59) in 2019 – straight to the point: trouble in the polis, challenges, unrest, protests and demonstrations.

Along with Joker, public demonstrations around the globe are increasing, in all hemispheres, of all sorts. Latin America really seems to wake up in some countries, with fierce, courageous demonstrations against neoliberalism. In Hong Kong, legitimate demands are mixed with empty uprisings and depredations that turn against the very interests of the population, with strong indications of foreign meddling. Meanwhile, in Italy, anti-extreme right-wing demonstrations bring to the streets large numbers of well-meaning citizens, but who seem to fall like little fish into the lure of the sharks war.

The first time I saw, a few years ago, an image in which many small fish formed a large fish that could then snap up the shark, at that moment I thought it was brilliant. When I found out about the “sardines” that were gathered in the Italian squares in November 2019, I immediately went for information, to find out directly from Italy what was going on. Wow… sardines! At this moment of Neptune and Black Moon in Pisces, right after Joker appeared with all the symbolism I’ve explained here, it called of course a lot of my attention. While still receiving different perspectives on it, this time, the representation of the sardines that got together to face the shark, thinking that they were bigger than it, as if they could snap it up, appeared really naive to me.

This time, looking at the representation of the image made in the streets, I couldn’t help but see how obvious it was that several little fish drawing a big fish was not a big fish, but a cluster easily snapped up by the shark! I couldn’t help but see the naiveté, which my investigations through conversations and readings would confirm. And if there was still any trace of doubt, it was fully dismissed by hearing of George Soros’s statements in Davos last week, celebrating and encouraging the demonstrations in Hong Kong and the Sardines in Italy – a sure sign of there being something undeniably wrong with the direction in which such movements were going – whether intentional or naïve, a manipulated mass.

There are so many protests around the world, I obviously won’t mention them all. I mention a minimum for us to think about the range of variations found regarding the meanings and directions of the manifestations, as this requires discernment.

There are protests mobilized by people aware of the drastic seriousness of what they are facing, sometimes even to the point of being literally blinded by police repression, as in Chile – so they don’t see, don’t open their eyes.

There are demonstrations instigated and sponsored by the sharks themselves, trying to use the population’s indignation and unrest to, once again, manipulate them.

There are movements that appear genuine and need great care not to be distorted.

There are also public demonstrations with millions in the streets, with a very clear and vehement message, but reported in the mainstream Western media as if they had a totally opposite meaning. That was the case recently in Iraq, where millions took to the streets to tell Americans to leave their country. The images and posters in Arabic and English were absolutely clear – but in the Western media they were described as anti-government demonstrations.

Masses sometimes move almost like a virus, an infection. Not always knowing so clearly which direction to navigate, but propagating. Masses also have the power of the shoal and the swarm and can be such a powerful antidote. The French have a vivid historical record of such power and persevere.

In this transition that intertwines Pisces and Aries, Neptune and Mars, we will see the increase of fire from the waves. It is necessary to discern in order to know how to navigate. The contradictions that are not addressed and the distortions made up in the official narrative of a collapsing system are felt in the body, and from the body something impels the collective to manifest the discomfort experienced in submission to an existence which makes cents, but does not make sense.

On the Importance of Knowing how to Invert and Subvert

Once asked why she calls herself La Mala, ‘the bad’, Spanish singer and rapper Mala Rodriguez, originally Maria, answered: “Well, since all in this world is on the contrary!” Upside down.

To see and discern beyond the Neptunian fog, a symbolic capacity to articulate and disarticulate meanings, not taking them as ready made absolutes, is a basic need. Merely treating everything as nonsense and trivializing the absurd won’t be of much assistance either. But, it is necessary to know how to invert and subvert, in order to be able to de-invert and reverse.

Observant of this necessity, I currently focus on the study of dialectics, aware of its “irreducibly revolutionary dimension”, as Safatle proposes. It converges to what, with Clovis Peres, we consider fundamental to the astrological work and to the present times, the mutable articulation and the expansion of our symbolic capacity. Negative dialectics – or, as we conceive, the mutable articulation – urges.

In this study I come across a Piscean/Neptunian peculiarity: scholars and theorists of dialectics like Marx, Adorno and Safatle have planets in the spectrum of 13 to 18 degrees of Pisces. Deleuze, who criticized dialectics, has it too. Hegel, in turn, has Neptune aspected by many angles in his astrological chart. In other words, these five philosophers who dedicated themselves, in one way or another to dialectics, have this Neptune or Pisces touch, specifically between 13º and 18º, where Black Moon Lilith and Neptune marked their presence as wild cards.

Safatle, by the way, in his recent book, proposes to consider that perhaps thinking in negative dialectics and thinking the issue of difference in Deleuze have more in common than Deleuze was aware of. Considering how to embody the impossible, based on the Adornian theory, Safatle observes, with Martin Seel, that at the heart of negative dialectics is not negation, “but the exposure of the positivity that force and focus on negation produce”. In this, perhaps, is the synthesis of Joker and the potential of Neptune.

In continuous processing, dialectics move in a time that is not only temporal but historical, demanding strategic plasticity, not afraid to make use of either the positive or the negative or the positive, depending on the historical moment in which it is located. Turning the rudder port and starboard time and again, towards the island.

Possibility is not just mere possibility that appears as an unrealized ideal. It is the latency of the existent that shows from where existence draws its strength to move forth. This is the irreducibly revolutionary dimension of dialectics. (SAFATLE, 2019, p. 23)

It should not be taken for face value that the interest of the Global North are above those of the Global South, that the Global North has the right to subjugate the resources and livelihoods of the Global South – it is astonishing how this is still taken as “natural”. In order to conceive other possibilities to our reality, let us turn the map around! Not to turn everything upside down… but to shake the compass.

After diving into this intertwining, I will bring other considerations  when addressing Black Moon Lilith in Aries.

This is the antechamber. Two days of Piscean/Neptunian hiatus, passing from the last sign to the first. Like the dance in the bathroom, or even the moment in the dressing room, when we are already dressed in red, the color of Aries, and with a painted face we say: “Call me Joker.”

 

 

Hiatus, silence, joker, wild card – lack, which makes subjects emerge, soon in Aries.

 

By Vanessa Guazzelli

 

Written through the days of passage of Black Moon Lilith in Pisces to Aries, with Neptune at 16º to 17º of Pisces – South Atlantic Island, Jan/2020.

Translated from the original, written in Portuguese.

 

REFERENCES:

GARAUDY, Roger. Dançar a Vida. Rio de Janeiro: Nova Fronteira, 1980.

JOKER. Dirigido por Todd Phillips. Produzido por Todd Phillips, Bradley Cooper e Emma Tillinger Koskoff. United States. Warner Bros. 2019.

SAFATLE, Vladimir. Dar Corpo ao Impossível – o sentido da dialética a partir de Theodor Adorno. Belo Horizonte: Autêntica, 2019.

SEEL, Martin. Adornos Philosophie der Kontemplation. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 2004.