barbault's basket is empty
against astrological grandiosity in the wake of july 4
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There’s been a lot of discourse about this weekend’s Mars-Uranus conjunction and how it didn’t live up to the hype. Nothing earth shaking or utterly cataclysmic happened, people note. What gives?
In the leadup to July 4, I was thinking how Mars conjoining Uranus sextile to the benefics in Leo simply matched what was already planned for the day: a Uranian figure (Trump) putting on a grandiose (Venus and Jupiter in Leo) display of fireworks (Mars-Uranus).
And indeed, sometimes when we predict, it’s simply good to note that what’s already planned and expected will match the astrology. We ground ourselves in what is already known.
On top of this, we can add an additional layer and note that this astrology will indicate unexpected things, but likely things that are not unprecedented or super far-fetched. We can simply note the kinds of expected unexpected things that happen when you put on an event while Mars is conjoining Uranus during a Mercury retrograde.
The stage for the DC July 4th celebration fell apart during rehearsals Thursday, with a piece of the ceiling falling off. There were thunderstorms Saturday, leading to an evacuation order at the National Mall that led people to take shelter, most notably at The National Museum of African American History and Culture. And in Mercury retrograde fashion, this evacuation order was rescinded prior to Trump giving a delayed speech.
Moreover, we saw the Martial-Uranian in the form of masked white supremacists marching in DC, disrupting commutes, which we have seen in widespread images of Black commuters going about their lives while riding in Metro cars packed with masked white men wearing Patriot Front gear. Mars-Uranus sextile Neptune in Aries and trine Pluto in Aquarius manifested here as an outburst of the violent, reactionary utopian impulse.
Personally, astrology is most helpful for me, less to make richly specific predictions for days like these, but to note that there is an air of chaos, volatility, delay, and frustration and to plan accordingly, which to me meant avoiding crowds, staying home most of the day and doing lowkey things with people I’m close to.
Just because something isn’t utterly unprecedented or big on a grand scale, it does not mean that it isn’t unsettling or tragic. Incidents this weekend of mass shootings, wildfires, severe storms, and heatwaves are all tragic and fireworks displays are intrinsically violent and disruptive. Moreover, we can point to all the disruptions and mishaps that have occurred in our own lives and in the lives of people we know.
I have a friend who works at a grocery store. The power there went out due to a thunderstorm and the alarm system intended to notify staff of outages wasn’t operational when power went out overnight on July 4. Food had to be thrown out and there was chaos all day for staff, including the stress of fielding all that customers had to say about the situation.
This is how a Mars-Uranus conjunction shows up during a Mercury retrograde. And I will add that this conjunction happened in Gemini, my friend’s 6th house of work and toil.
Saturday, we saw the Moon in Pisces squaring Uranus and Mars. It makes sense, with these being double-bodied signs, that we would see a plurality of incidents showing up in locally acute, but transient ways, though there was also a lot that happened in the days leading up to Saturday, including Taylor Swift’s wedding disrupting a major city during a heat dome on a holiday weekend.
When people make grandiose predictions, it obscures the fact that these transits are going to show up in the ways that they always tend to do, and in ways that are tragic but get erased because they don’t align with the wildest predictions. The omens indicated violence, tragedy, and disruption and that’s what we got, alas.
If we do want to go big and situate all this within broader themes or more epoch-defining astrology, we can think of Mars’ activation of the basket (or bucket) formation between Jupiter and the three modern outer planets as a moment of tragedy, disruption, and spectacle within a broader confluence of the rot of empire, climate catastrophe, white supremacy, gun violence, and human disregard. Simply put, the manifestations of the moment indicate larger crises that unfold through time.
Moreover, because July 4 is the birthday of the US, the Moon’s square to Mars and Uranus, while a transient phenomenon, was baked into the solar return of the United States, so it’s an omen for the year to come. Moreover, Mars and Uranus are still within orb and will be activated again.
As Emme.Ellle (@skoobieedoo on Threads) notes,
I think there are two really important things to remember about this Mars-Uranus conjunction:
1. It’s baked into the US solar return chart for the next 12 months.
2. It was aspected by Pluto (underground) and Neptune (fog).
We are not yet privy to what will ultimately play out over this time frame.
No doubt everyone will continue to speculate the 💩out of this, but I have a feeling the significations will only become clear through the lens of hindsight.
This suggests to me that we cannot call an omen a dud when all that it has to signify has yet to unfold.
I think all of this asks the serious question: what is the use of prediction in moments like these?
Just as there has been a lot of hype around the Mars-Uranus conjunction, there’s been a lot of hype around what’s been dubbed “Barbault’s basket,” a configuration whereby Jupiter in Leo will activate the minor grand trine between the three outer planets later this month. This formation has been framed by its namesake as a kind of collective reset, bringing in a kind of uplift.
But I want to suggest, rather than take André Barbault’s word for it (which we know is suspect), we regard this planetary formation as an open signifier.
It is our job to fill in the meaning of this configuration rather than rely on the delineations set out by Barbault. It’s an invitation to be skeptical, to be rigorous, to simply be observant and sit with what is to arise, to avoid both wishcasting and catastrophizing, and to open space for collective agency. It’s clear that this configuration is significant, but how so?
With Mercury retrograde, I think it’s prime time to reevaluate all the astrological hype.
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10000% we’re the ones living this moment, and astrology as a predictive tool serves us best when it helps us plan ahead and protect ourselves from what’s coming. That’s actually how we honor the tradition… its not about treating Barbault’s accuracy as the end goal of astrological work, but rather by putting the technique to work for the living. The dead masters were doing exactly that in their own time. prediction was always in service of the people navigating the precarity of their times