Posts by Laura Orcutt

There’s a scene in Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey when Odysseus and his men have to sail past the island of the Sirens. The Sirens are a flock of beautiful bird women who sing to sailors and lure them to their deaths. Everyone knows to plug their ears with wax when navigating these treacherous waters, but Odysseus refuses and asks to be lashed to the mast of his ship instead so that he can hear what they have to say. When asked afterwards what the song said, Odysseus responds, “It told you what you most want is what you most can’t have, and what you most can’t have, is what you already had, and lost. It was the song of all promises I failed to keep.” And then Odysseus weeps. In many ways this is what Mars in Cancer forming a square to Neptune in Aries on August 17th will be like. It won’t drive you half mad like what happens to Odysseus in the film, but it will fill you with both a longing and regret. The longing is for all the things you want (Mars) and the regret is the realization that those things are behind you rather than ahead of you (Neptune). This sounds dreary and disillusioning until you realize that the Sirens are singing about time. If you’re too caught up in the future then you miss out on what those precious moments that you only live once have to offer and if you’re too caught up in the past then you miss out on the promise of what the future can bring because you’re mourning the loss of things that were once here and are now gone. The escape from this ouroboric loop is to live in the present, the only moment that any of us can live in. It’s one of the great lessons that Aries, the zodiac sign of Be Here Now, has to teach.