The Zodiac Club #7: Lunar Eclipse in Pisces
Tonight's Lunar Eclipse invites us to consider what's real and what's illusory, suggesting a much-needed pivot to tangible, concrete reality.
Hauntology Now! is the Substack of interdisciplinary artist, designer, musician, academic writer, and cultural critic J. Simpson, where he writes about all things hauntological, atemporal, philosophical, as well as sharing thoughts, reflections, and musings on music, movies, books, and life.
photo: Lins #2, George Byrne
On Tuesday, October 17, at 10:32 PM EST, there’s going to be a partial lunar eclipse in the Full Moon in Pisces. This is going to kick off a series of lunar events that will continue until 2027. It will also be the culmination of energies that began from 2015 - 2017, when a series of eclipses occurred across the Virgo - Pisces axis.
Some astrologers equate this polarity with “structure vs. chaos,” with Pisces emphasizing “the importance of compassion, intuition, and alchemical fluidity” as opposed to Virgo’s focus on details and routines. Ruled by Neptune, Pisces is expansive, ocean, psychic, and intuitive but also prone to illusions and escapism. This aspect seems worth focusing on, as Neptune is gearing up to complete its 13-year transit of Pisces for the fiery, direct sign of Aries on March 30, 2025.
Regarding Neptune’s 13-year residence in the watery mansions of Pisces, my favorite astrologer Alchemilie talks about the proliferation of the spiritual marketplace in the last 13 years, which has blossomed during a time of unprecedented tumult.
welcome to the saturn/neptune cycle, a 35-38 yr long struggle between the collective finite, structured & inescapable reality of saturn and the imaginal, subtle, unrealized + ideal potential that can be felt (but not quite grasped), just beyond our conscious awareness aka Neptune’s realms.
it’s not an easy archetypal complex to sum up but one key takeaway is this- when confronted with saturninan strife and horrors (societal collapse, famine, war, plagues, ideological upheaval) both the collective & the individual tend to reach for neptunian remedies to cope + adjust. spirituality, intoxicants, maladaptive daydreaming, sorcery, store bought transcendence, dissociation in all its forms; these are some of the illusory comforts humanity reaches for when Everything Has Gone Horribly Wrong.
what’s more, neptunian subjects are deeply compensatory. we seek them to provide us agency or protection when we feel powerless in real life. rarely do people dedicate their lives to mastering occult sciences or spending decades in meditation because they are well adjusted, high functioning individuals. abuse, trauma, bullying, social exile, unstable childhoods + caregivers - these are more common catalysts in the quest for transformative power/protection from The Great Beyond. (i am very much in this category, so truly, no judgement). it’s a vulnerable crowd that fills these woo spaces, more open than most to neptune’s shadow; deception.
and now after 13 years of neptune in pisces (a sign that parallels many neptunian archetypes) the metaphysical marketplace is BOOMING. youtube is filled with channels devoted to consciousness expansion, occultism, mystery traditions, the paranormal + the paranoid. you can buy magic on amazon (some of it very real but good luck telling which w/o some serious magical study).
demonolatry + deity worship are no longer (completely) taboo subjects and you can hire anyone from a shaman to an exorcist thru instagram. but is the collective more spiritually fit, trusting, loving and sane to show for it? maybe not.
so we find ourselves in a loaded + miraculous moment; the otherworlds have never been more normalized, arcane mystery traditions have never been more available to the masses, and the collective consciousness has NEVER been more bloated with magical bullshit.
something has to give and everyone (magical or otherwise) knows it.
Time will tell how this all plays out. It’s also a topic of particular interest to me, both as a somewhat practitioner of “new age woo,” as Alchemilie puts it, as well as dealing with some of my most pressing on-going research.
For coming up on 10 years, much has been made that we’re living in a “post-truth era.” Powerful new technologies combined with the mental and spiritual rot of late-stage capitalism to create an environment of hyper-cynicism. It’s easy to fall into the pit of “nothing is true” and “nothing is real.” While it’s true that life in the modern world is impossibly complicated and confusing and that there are many different ways of looking at things, to quote a beloved media property from another cynical, paranoid era “The Truth Is Out There.”
As i’ve said, this gets at research i’ve been working on for some time and i don’t want to be hasty nor devolve into political screed. It’s my hypothesis that something happened circa 2015, or more likely a deadly confluence of some things that culminated in a former reality TV star becoming President of the United States and doing his damnedest to start the Fourth Reich. These energies are resurfacing, as this last weekend an armed vigilante was found near the current Republican’s golf course with an assault rifle and scope, allegedly intending to assassinate the Republican nominee.
As is always the case with Donald J. Trump, it’s impossible to get a clear story on what went down. Some, including myself to be honest, feel that he may have even staged both of the attempts on his life to spin the media in his favor. More shall be revealed, as another saying goes. In the meanwhile, i’m reading the news cycle through arched eyebrows.
The photo i used for today’s newsletter is from a collection called Post Truth by the photographer George Byrne (which I reviewed for Spectrum Culture). In Post Truth, Byrne captures the pastel candyscapes of Los Angeles, which seems to be in a perpetual state of renewal, as if the city were built fresh every morning. In a metaphysical, metaphorical and philosophical sense, this is true. Every day is born anew, etc. Illustrating the idea with the physicality of the built landscape is especially apt, though. While many things are reborn each day, many other things are not. Reality exists, no matter what postmodern scholars and philosophers may say. The Truth Is Out There.
These are some of the ideas that i’ve begun exploring in my postpostmodernism project. For coming on 10 years, i’ve been investigating the simple idea that something’s wrong. “There’s something rotten in Denmark,” to quote two of the texts from which this newsletter draws its name. With PostPostmodernism, i’ll be investigating what to do about it, investigating possible ways forward while deciphering the perplexities of modern living.
During tonight’s eclipse, take the opportunity to Touch Grass. Get back in touch with yrself, yr heart and spirit, and learn to trust your own authority. The Truth is Out There, regardless of what the headlines and the oligarchs say.
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