XXI. THE WORLD
I’ve been waiting for this: the conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn, two slow-moving outer planets, was exact today, December 21, 2020, at 2:20pm eastern. This happens every twenty years. That it happens on the winter solstice doesn’t seem to be particularly astrologically significant, but it feels auspicious. And this conjunction is particularly close: the rings of Saturn and the moons of Jupiter will be close together, visible by telescope.
Astrologically, this conjuction marks a major shift; I’ve heard it referred to as a kind of portal. I won’t get into it. I’m not an astrologer. But I noted it in White Magic, in the context of my own natal chart and the planets’ movements through it, and the significance of the celestial event to the plot of Twin Peaks.
In one of the last episodes of the original run of Twin Peaks, the cops are working to decipher a cave painting. Agent Cooper, a clever man, realizes that the painting contains the planetary symbols for Jupiter and Saturn, and looking at the Ephemeris, he realizes their conjunction is happening that very night, ad midnight. Cooper says:
“Historically, when Jupiter and Saturn are conjunct, large shifts occur in power and fortune. Jupiter is expansive in its influence; Saturn, contractive. Conjunction suggests a state of concentration, intensification. What we have indicated here is something potentially explosive. . . . My God, Harry, the door to the Lodge, that's when it opens. That's what the puzzle's telling us.”
In astrology, the great conjunction is the kind of planetary aspect that’s said to affect us all. The planets also make aspects with the planets in a person’s natal chart as they move through it. (More here and here and many other places.) For most of 2018, Jupiter was transiting my natal Saturn. Like with most major transits, I can look back and see the significance in my life. But even then, I knew that I was going through a portal, and everything was about to change for me.
I still don’t totally understand the effects Jupiter conjunct Saturn is supposed to have, astrologically. I think that’s because the quick descriptions can’t say enough. I needed an entire book to explain: the Jupiter-Saturn conjunction may be the portal at the heart of White Magic, or one of a set of interlocking portals: the time between eclipses, the transit of Venus into the underworld and back, the Black Lodge, the arc of a magic trick.
(Composite image of Saturn taken by Hubble in 2018)
In the tarot, The World card is associated with Saturn. It’s the final card in the major arcana, representing the end of a cycle and a sense of completion. The figure on the card holds two batons, familiar from the very beginning of the major arcana, where on the first card, we saw the magician holding one.
I don’t feel like I’m in a portal anymore, but I might be wrong. Is a portal the same as a threshold? And how do you know if you’re on it, or in it? I should, hundreds of pages into the answer to this question, know by now.
Anyway, here’s my Black Lodge lamp, 3D printed for me last year by my partner, Wes. Happy Solstice.
[See also, for more about the conjunction in the world of Twin Peaks: “Saturn, that Old Devil” by Matt Zoller Seitz]