More cake-smeared art & roses this weekend?
Venus and Uranus collide and crack the cast of conformity
Within 36 hours of Venus entering Taurus, on May 29th, at the Louvre Museum in Paris, a guy disguised himself as an old lady in a wheelchair in order to get to the front of the crowd admiring De Vinci’s famous Mona Lisa painting.
Sergio Migliaccio, who was in the same room at the time, describes what happened next:
“All of a sudden the guy jumped from the wheelchair and, with a red rose between his lips, he climbed the fences and attacked the Mona Lisa with a cake.” (nbcnews)
After smearing the piece of cake all over the glass protecting the painting, the guy then throws rose petals all over the floor while calling out in French:
"Think of the Earth! There are people who are destroying the Earth! Think about it. Artists tell you: think of the Earth. That's why I did this."
Another visitor to the Louvre caught the incident on video, as published in a viral Tweet:
Luke Sundberg also caught some captures of the roses being gloriously flung:
Mars conjunct Jupiter in Aries probably takes the cake as the most noteworthy and talked about transit on May 29th - and sure, this was a bold daring public act for a greater cause (i.e. Mars + Jupiter), but honestly, the symbolism in this incident reminds me moreso of Venus together with Uranus in Taurus.
On Saturday, June 11th, Venus will conjoin with Uranus at 16 degrees Taurus - the aspect will be exact this weekend.
However, when two planets are co-present in the same sign this is often considered to be a type of loose conjunction. It’s as if the planets are in the same house, but perhaps different rooms. They are still aware of each other and may overhear the other talking or moving about, even if they are not yet side-by-side.
On May 29th Venus had just joined Uranus in her home sign. One might say that Venus crossing the threshold into Taurus was a catalyst; activating the energy of the conjunction and signaling that the friction-gilded collaboration between the two planets had just begun.
Consider all the blatant Venus in Taurus expressions in this incident:
Cake + its sweet icing
Highly valued art & art galleries
Roses & strewn petals
The sensual beauty of nature and the Earth in general (on whose behalf the individual was advocating for with his act of protest)
Women & expressions of the feminine (e.g. the Mona Lisa painting and his disguise as an old lady to gain special access it)
Uranus, the radical shit-disturber, takes all these typical Venus in Taurus signifiers (cake + art + roses + earth + feminine)… mixes them up in a blender on high speed… and out comes something that looks like what happened at the Louvre Museum on May 29th.
That’s the vibe of this upcoming weekend, with extending ripples of potent engagement from about Thursday through to Monday, June 9th-13th.
Furthermore, as Venus and Uranus unite the Moon will be at 16 degrees Scorpio, in exact opposition to the tumultuous conjunction.
Maybe this means some form of cake-smeared art and roses for you, but of course, it could also express in numerous other ways.
Since the Taurus-Scorpio axis is being activated at both ends of the polarity, many of the themes of this axis that I discussed in my previous post may appear, such as: money/stuff/ownership themes, secrets being made public (especially regarding personal or relational matters), body modification and body autonomy issues.
Venus wants to attach and be close to others, whereas Uranus wants to detach and be free. If Venus and Uranus are tussling in your life, than this may express as a bit of an uncomfortable push-pull. There may be a reaction to anything or anyone that appears to curb your sense of independence. There could be conflicting aims to either tie oneself to an object of desire, or finally burn some bridges in regards to a situation that is going nowhere.
If Venus and Uranus are harmonizing well this could look like inspired creativity, strange but wonderful art, passionate earth-based activism aligned with one’s values, unexpected access to resources, or exciting relational developments.
You may find yourself feeling like one of the visitors at the Louvre on that cake and roses day; in stunned state you may find yourself saying, “Well. THAT was unexpected.”
But you may also feel like the activist in disguise - you may be proceeding with an action that is not at all a surprise for you, but may still be unconventional and represent freedom and liberation in some way.
Perhaps you are the one who will surprise others with a Uranian curve ball.
Venus is soft, Taurus is slow… and Uranus is fast, aggressive and often shockingly jarring. How this mixture will play out will be unique for everyone.
The Uranian blender action is (mostly) unpredictable!
Cracking Conformity with Uranus
I am part of a “bookclub-of-two” and we are currently reading and discussing a book called Willful Blindness: Why we ignore the obvious at our peril, by Margaret Heffernan (published in 2011).
It’s a great book. It is so insightful and Heffernan uses many examples to support her well-crafted arguments… but the book can also be really heavy and rather depressing at times! It’s discouraging how easily humans can be misled, unfortunately, as history clearly illustrates.
In chapter 7, Heffernan looks more closely at the phenomenon of social conformity that occurs even when there is no explicit pressure to conform (as there is when there is a formal authority ordering you to do something).
She references a famous study from the 1950s, conducted by Solomon Ash (“the great American psychologist of conformity”), where a group of college students were shown a vertical line of a certain length, and then were asked to identify which of three other vertical lines matched the first line in length.
Seems simple enough?
It looked something like this…
In the control group, nearly everyone selected the correct matching vertical line.
Asch arranged the other group of students so that there was one real participant with seven others who had been secretly told to pick the same incorrect answer. They all were asked to state their selection out loud - the real participant went last.
“On average, about one third (32%) of the participants (!) who were placed in this situation went along and conformed with the clearly incorrect majority on the critical trials.
Over the 12 critical trials, about 75% of participants conformed at least once, and 25% of participants never conformed.” (~Simply Psychology)
This study of social conformity was about something as simple and low stakes as picking a matching vertical line without any external threat of punishment. What happens when the stakes are much higher?
The study has since been critiqued of course, with one argument being that the 1950s in the U.S. was a time when social conformity had greater value than it does now, or then it did in later decades.
However, there is research and solid evidence indicating that the drive to belong and be accepted by the group is hardwired into human biology - and conforming is often perceived (or enforced) as a necessary condition of belonging.
Even if there is no external authority figure threatening punishment if we do not conform and obey, the consequences of not conforming and risking exclusion from the group, are multiple - including on a physical level:
“There is a physical reality to the pain that we feel when we are excluded. Uncomfortable feelings of social exclusion and physical pain arise, in part, from the same regions of the brain, and the same neurochemicals that regulate physical pain also control the psychological pain of social loss. When we form and validate our social relationships, this stimulates the production of opioids that make us feel great.” (~Margaret Heffernan)
Heffernan also describes the results of a 2005 study conducted by Gregory Berns that somewhat replicated the methods of Asch’s line-matching study, but this time the participants were placed into fMRI brain scanners. Those who conformed to choosing incorrect answers had…
“…no activity in the prefrontal cortex - that is, a conscious decision was not being made. The brain’s activity centered on those areas of the brain responsible for perception. In other words, knowing what the group saw, changed what the participants saw; they became blind to the differences…
When asked in a debriefing questionnaire how they explained their conforming errors, the participants had no sense of having conformed; they believed that they had all reached the same decision purely serendipitously. They may have thought that they’d made a free choice where in fact, they had not.”
[This freaks me out - how much of what we see and believe is due to the influence of consensus reality? What might be right in front of us yet invisible, due to the sway of consensus reality?]
“Furthermore, in the rarer examples of a participant taking an independent stand against the crowd, something else happened: the amygdala, the area of the brain that governs emotions, became highly active. Something tantamount to distress seemed to take place. Independence, it seems, comes at a high cost.” (~Margaret Heffernan)
Independence, it seems, comes at a high cost. Indeed it often does. As Venus conjoins Uranus this weekend, many of us many be grappling with this.
In Asche’s study only 25% of participants never conformed.
If this weekend presents such an opportunity, crack the mold of conformity and choose the equivalent of the matching line!
(Well, unless everyone else is choosing the “matching line”…)
Wishing you all cake and roses in the midst of whatever Venus-Uranus in Taurus brings!