Venus, the sister planet to Earth, has slowed down. Each night until June 5, you can see her at sunset in the western skies. In the sign of Gemini for the next 2.5 months, we are all under an integrated Humpty Dumpty effect. (Resist any and all temptations to take something or someone apart that you cannot put back together, or you'll have a great fall!) Venus will be in retrograde from May 15 through June 27. In essence, she strongly suggests no overreacting to each other's flaws, and a little well-meant appreciation goes a long way.
It benefits all of us to integrate some new information to get us thinking and analyzing why we hold dear, what we hold dear.
In this vein, I want to say that I wrote these foregoing introductory words before our president ended his fence-sitting on the issue of marriage equality. As Venus runs our values and how we relate to each other, it is little wonder to this stargazer why he chose this time to "come out," as it were. Venus in Gemini categorically means an integration of words and deeds. It does matter what we call any relationship. It does matter that a majority cannot vote on the rights of a minority. I shudder to think what would have happened in the 1960s if the majority was called to vote on, ironically, the Voting Rights Act, Fair Housing Act or Civil Rights Act ... and we think the "new South" is still backward now? Like Kansas, what's wrong with them?
I say we need to smudge the southern states with sage because some Confederate ancestors have not moved on and into the Light. With our divisions in this country, Humpty Dumpty at his most broken self, we are in what I'd call a psychic Civil War. I'm reminded of this every day at my new office in the Film Row Building. There's a poster directly outside my door for the movie Quantrill's Raiders. Bushwhackers (guerrillas) who fought for the Confederacy at the Missouri and Kansas borders under William Clarke Quantrill. Love the synchronicity regarding my name; for whom they fought, not so much. Gemini also connects thoughts and situations in a unique way, hence psychoanalyst Carl Jung's recognizing and naming seeming coincidences "synchronicity." This poster was there before I leased the office. Just seeing and saying ...
It will take the integration (pun definitely intended this time) of our spirituality (seeing ourselves as one) and physicality (seeing how our differences shape our perspectives) to continue our human evolution. As I would not presume to know what it is like to move on this Earth in a female body, please do not presume what it is like to move on this Earth in a black male body, either. (I cannot tell you how many places of business I've had to leave because of this one too often overlooked fact, even in 2012. I'm in a new office now.) Anger alert! African-American men can be hypersexual or angry; these have been (are?) our only choices. Change is slow; true transformation is slower.
Let me break it down for you ... if you're heterosexual, be thankful for your rights that you can receive in Las Vegas and terminate almost as easily. And if you know a marriage-equality bigot (for whatever reason or deed) and you do not speak up, you are not an ally or friend. As a minority, one of my only privileges is whom I allow close to me, whom I drop my guard just enough for you to see all and the real me. Gemini is about the informal conversations we have with our siblings, neighbors, people we run into while running errands or handling our business. So, the same is true of men who denigrate women in all-male enclaves or whites who speak differently about people of color when none are around. How do you speak about the "other" when they are absent? (Damn, remember it was 1967 when the U.S. Supreme Court in Loving v. Virginia held that Virginia's Racial Integrity Act of 1924 was unconstitutional.) And do you really believe you have more to lose publicly than our biracial president? Really? In a relative world, maybe. But this is bigger than any one person.
