Thanks to the circular movement of the planets around the Sun — more specifically, our Sun— the notion of human time is a cyclical one. It does not seem to have a beginning or an end, but to be a succession of never-ending experiences-producing events. All things that seem to reach an end are nothing but the announcement of a new beginning. Thus, the hours, days, weeks, months, seasons and years pass one after the other, always maintaining the same sequence, although their deeds and characters vary.
This week a new month begins; a peculiar month, because during same two eclipses will occur: the first one, Lunar, on Monday seven, when our satellite will transit through Aquarius; and the following one, Solar, when —two weeks later, in its passage through the last degree of Leo, (Monday 21) — the Moon will interpose itself between us and our source of life, light and heat, preventing us from seeing and perceiving its rays.
An identical astral condition came to happen 19 years ago, when, on the same dates (August 7 and 21), the Moon and the Sun became respectively eclipsed, in their journeys through the same zodiacal points of now. It takes 254 lunar cycles, 6,940 rotations of the Earth around its own axis and 19 rounds of it around the Sun, to reproduce the same aligned positions of these three main celestial bodies.
The most relevant astral quality of the week corresponds to the peak of the confrontation between Jupiter and Pluto; it gives a different touch to the astronomical features governing this time. The combination of the meanings between the two celestial bodies speaks of an end. Jupiter expands Pluto’s annihilating power. With this quadrature (90°) between them, a destiny is sealed linked to an end that will not manifest itself fully until November 12, 2020, when both bodies shall meet again in Capricorn.
The same end-announcing character that does not come to curdle completely occurred 13 years ago, when, on August 6, 2004 (with only 9 days left for the Revocatory Referendum against Hugo Chavez), the previous identical end-announcing quadrature took place between Jupiter and Pluto. I was then necessary to wait three more years, until December 11, 2007, with the exact conjunction between these same planets, for the first electoral defeat of Chavismo to take place (Referendum that prevented an intended Constitutional Reform).
As already seen, that which announces or decrees an end does not culminate as such, but it becomes the postponement of an agonizing process, transformed into a difficult labor. The August- 1998 eclipses announced the approaching collapse of the prevailing political model and presaged a different system; but it was only six years later (August 2004), with the last Jupiter-Pluto quadrature, when the new regime became consolidated, through the reversal of a revocatory consultation into a confirmatory popular support.
The first electoral defeat of the Chavista revolution, in December 2007, occurred simultaneously with the most recent Jupiter-Pluto conjunction. This event seemed to augur the beginning of the end for the Revolution but, in practice, it meant the beginning of a new stage in which the sectors that for seven years had adversely affected the Bolivarian Constitution, finally assumed same as their own. Fourteen months later, the revolutionary process would be consolidated, with the approval of the first amendment, reversing thereby the negative experience of the previous year, into greater political strength.
On December 6, 2015, the aggressive Mars formed an end-type quadrature with the deadly Pluto. It was the date of the second electoral triumph of the Venezuelan opposition in 17 years, when it attained the majority of the seats of the National Assembly. It seemed then that Chavism’s countdown had begun. A month later, the own President of the Assembly would even name an illusory date (six months) for the end of the Bolivarian government. It took only Mars reaching Pluto (October 19, 2016) to send adrift the National Assembly, convicted as being in contempt.
As philosopher Yogi Berra (Major Leagues’ player and manager) once said about the game: “It ain’t over ‘til it’s over”. The election of a new National Constituent Assembly in Venezuela indicates once again that what appeared to be the imminent collapse of Chavismo-madurismo ends up becoming the beginning of a new stage in the struggle for survival.
While the upcoming August eclipses, along with the Jupiter-Pluto quadrature of Friday 4, are in tune with the idea of a final point, it is now when a new game seems about to start. The erratic leadership of the opposition leaders, together with Mr. Trump‘s distempered threats and sanctions, has provided enough oxygen to the government for it to wage a new battle. Thus, 2017 becomes a reissue —corrected and augmented— of 1998.
Translated by Jorge Pardo Febres-Cordero, Certified Public Translator (Spanish-English-Spanish) – [email protected]
Photo Credits: Stephen Rahn