One of the reasons I like astrology is because it takes us away from the senses of time made by capitalist and imperial systems, and makes them nonsense! (Not all of course, many astrological practices align with imperial, casteist and capitalist agenda, so let us say I am talking here of an unsettling way of astrology)… Capitalist and imperial systems seek to control and minisculise time by reducing it to attention, labour, conquest. By contrast, astrology can often help root us in time in a more expansive yet grounded way. Astrology, well done, roots us in the Earth. It reminds us that we are, after all, a part of the Earth and the relations this planet bears to everything that is in the solar system and outer space. Perhaps it is the same reason why so many of us are drawn to the stars or find comfort in astronomy and outer space news: Connecting with these galactic Earth relations disrupts our shrunken senses of time and limited senses of relational possibilities. It expands and humbles us, transporting us into wonderment.
And what we are living through now is a especially potent time of wonderment. It is a place of connecting to an unsettling fourth dimension, one of the dimensions of time, or whatever that means. As the Saturn-Neptune conjunction in 0 degree Aries in February 2026 indicated, the relational shifts we are experiencing and will be experiencing for the coming timespaces, are not just once-in-a-lifetime shifts, or even once-in-a-generation shifts. Rather these are the kind of shifting movements that have not occurred in seven, nine, or fourteen and more generations.
It is hard to grasp time at such vast scales, because modern systems of oppression and liberation have numbed us to these versions of time and the ways of relating they bring, numbed us to the sense of wonder or magic that emanates from this way of deep time relational connectedness. Relationships in time have been reduced to the here and now, instant gratification, current crisis, success failure, efficiency, optimisation, entitlement, speculative profit and impatience. Deep time, we have been told, is a subject of scholarly pursuits, not our everyday lives, where we live and die. And so much is distorted in this reduction, this purposefulness!
Yet the Great Mystery persists in its paradoxical beauty. So, even as we are numbed, it is simultaneously supremely easy for us to feel time at such vast scales, and in such depth. Because even when we don’t like it, even when we are wont to feel burdened by our relationships in a culture that reduces connections to reesponsibility, debt and obligation, even when we feel we are not enough or are incapacitated, our relational connections to the Earth, the solar system or the larger galaxy and beyond, never break. Like it or not or feel nothing, we are always in this whole, intricately connected, impossibly entangled.
The edges of reality still beckon to us in our dreams, the jellyfish effortlessly carried by the deep ocean as we sleep. The irrational and useless desire to fall over the edge is a testament to these relationships of deep time. And walking along that edge fills us with a sense of deep wonder and total lack of understanding. It is humbling. Something beyond language, our relationships exist beyond language. And so in Reality™, shaped and controlled linguistically, these old old long relationships may be forgotten. But also there, and in real reality, they never leave.
And what is that but love? 🙂
So, if like me this season, you are are being made to take this unsettling walk on the edge (and hey! edges are sharp, and sharpness can hurt), give yourself some love, some kindness, some rest. And remember that love is not self-indulgence, quite the opposite, in fact! Love is self-destruction, a surrender to the Great Mystery, like our oldest galactic relations remind us. And self-destruction can be unfamiliar and painful, but when the self is surrendered to the Great Mystery, it is also a kindness shown to us.
For deep in, deep deep within, you will remember the ecstatic beauty of that void as you shiver in anticipation and fear; for already you know what is real…
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