The Bardo
Tags: Solstice, Capitalism, Lockdown, Great Conjunction

The Great Conjunction

The sense of “bardic” transition is highlighted by further events happening around this time — and the narratives they push. According to the narrative of astrology, today (as of December 17), Saturn completes its Capricorn cycle, culminating in a “great conjunction” with Jupiter at the Solstice (December 21):

At the end of 2020 a major 200-year cycle ends and a new one begins. Jupiter and Saturn come together first in Capricorn, then move fully into a grand conjunction in Aquarius. These momentous conjunctions of Jupiter and Saturn take place every 20 years and can be used to signal changes in politics, culture and everyday life. Those 20-year cycles combine into roughly 200-year cycles in which all of the conjunctions happen in the same element. In the 200-year cycle that is now ending, the conjunctions have been in earth signs. December 2020 marks a major shift, as all of the grand conjunctions for the following 200 years will take place in air signs. (source)

In short, the famous “Age of Aquarius,”a meme popular already since the Sixties, acquires a new sense of justification — whether real or simply mythopoietic. As the story goes:

the Capricorn cycle of the last 200 years saw the onset of the industrial revolution, the expansion of global capitalism, and the propagation of its economic growth (by means of profit accumulation). It saw the “cycle of rebirth” of industrial capitalism, incarnation after incarnation, from the world of the steam engines to the interconnected digital media multiverse. Yet during the December 2020, according to astrology, our planetary constellations exit the great cycle (“cycle of cycles”) of the past 200 years, entering something new and yet to be known. Compared to the “cold” and “materialistic” Capricorn cycle (oriented on profit, growth, accumulation), the Aquarian one is supposed to develop more “ethereal,” “spiritual,” as well as “progressive” values (we will return to this later).

The Solstice

The winter Solstice— the date of the “great conjunction” — represents by itself a liminal state or a threshold point. It is itself a turning point zero, or a “bardo:” the Sun of the one cycle dies, and a new one is born. The most important celebrations and festivals of the year have been celebrated around the time of winter Solstice across distinct cultures and civilizations, with Christmas themselves grafted on top of the “pagan” Saturnalia.

The time of the Solstice can be associated with death or with deflation and depression (on the psychological level). After all it is the darkest day of the year when the Sun is “dead.” The absence of Sun affects mood through hormonal swings (the extreme form of midwinter depression is called the SAD — seasonal affective disorder). This is most commonly explained bio-chemically by linking the darkness with an increased production of the hormone melatonin, associated with sleep and decreased energy. The time of the Solstice, as the darkest day of the year, is therefore a moment when daily consciousness is the weakest and awareness attains an oneiric, nocturnal, as well as “spectral” character. The dead are supposed to be closest to this world at exactly this time of the year, while “spirits were long thought to have walked the Earth on Christmas Eve.”

Due to an increased production of melatonin, associated with sleep (and therefore the unconscious), the voluntaristic conscious and controlling “subject” is closer than ever to dissolution. The midwinter Solstice welcomes fogs and miasmas that smear the normal and stable rasters of perception. In the carnivalesque atmosphere of Saturnalia, the hierarchical social roles valid for the rest of the year were overturned: “masters provided table service for their slaves as it was seen as a time of liberty for both slaves and freedmen alike.” The carnivalesque, the dreamy, and death, all swarm together.

Solstice, like bardo, is a moment of a passage through the underworld, a liminal time when physical reality morphs into hallucinations, playing with dreams and visions, preparing for the new birth (of the new Sun, the birth of Christ for Christians). And although also dangerous, the dark waters of the unconscious allow re-attuning with the flux of the Tao.