Monday, I noticed some large squiggly floaters in my left eye (they look like sigils by the way). On Tuesday they were joined by flashing lights. Now, due to some vision stuff from my past, I’m potentially at a higher risk of retinal detachment. So off I went to get checked out.
Fortunately, I’m not in need of surgery. There is some damage in my eye, not caused by any trauma or illness (I might have overdone it with some strenuous yard work on the weekend) but not bleeding or detachment at this time. It should stabilize and heal up in 6-8 weeks and in the mean time I’m prohibited from jostling around too much (so no bungee jumping or roller coasters). I texted one of my close friends about it and she said, “Really? Because we all have pink eye!” Then, when I was leaving the follow up appointment (and could barely see with my massively dilated eyes) I got a text from our optometrist’s office. My kid’s new glasses were ready to be picked up. To top this whole week off, my kid broke a mirror in his boyfriend’s apartment on Friday night (I suggested some magical remediation for him because I am a good mother).
In fact, Venus had a conjunction with Algol on Friday. Which means that the Goddess of beauty and connection and classical femininity was on the eye of Medusa — a being of feminine anger and power of a very different type and a being that seems to invite disconnection (as well as decapitation).
Note, I don’t want to imply that the eye-related experiences of my friends and family are only a message for me. I think that there’s a message coming from the stars (and the powers they embody) for many people to encounter and interpret.
So, I am sitting with the idea of vision and reflection, anger and power. What am I not seeing clearly? What perspective am I missing? Where might I have ‘rose-colored glasses’ on? And what am I afraid to look directly at? And how do I contextualize this from both the standpoint of a modern feminist reading of Medusa or a Freudian one (fear of castration because with Freud it’s always about the cock, isn’t it?) as well as Algol’s original malefic astrological meaning.
It is interesting timing that Friday a Texas judge ruled that mifepristone shouldn’t have received FDA approval thereby further threatening the right to obtain a safe abortion. It’s interesting too the raging cultural battle about who can be a woman or claim womanhood and whether those choices are actually threatening to others or only appear to be. Medusa’s ugliness (which may be apocryphal) was an excuse for her murder and her body (or at least her head) used as a weapon after her death. I don’t see how you can read her story as anything but tragic. Imagine if you hurt anything you looked at, because of how you looked, even if you didn’t want to.
This hole goes deeper still, which is how you know that it has real power. I’m being pulled there pretty forcefully and don’t plan to resist, but it’s new territory for me. In the mean time, members, you’ll be seeing more fixed star information in the planner starting in May (because what I’m tracking, you’re tracking, by virtue of the spreadsheet of doom that drives the planner).
