Cyrus the Great

When I returned from Uruguay yesterday, I discovered that Miley Cyrus, of all people, was all over the news. Really, all over it.

It turns out that Ms. Cyrus gave a provocative performance on the MTV Video Music Awards on Sunday, during which she wore devil horns, demonstrated the truly impressive size of her tongue, gyrated suggestively, sorta-kinda pretended the microphone was her penis, and twerked with Juicy J (hey, I learned a new word!). As we would expect, reaction ran between incensed ("My kids were watching that!") and sadness ("She's got problems and someone should have stopped her").

It doesn't take much to impress a country that freaked out for a week over the micro-second view of Janet Jackson's nipple, and Cyrus surely shocked people. No wonder, with Venus - goddess of love and a general symbol of the feminine - opposite independent and shocking Uranus. Venus is in conservative Libra, where more traditional approaches to aesthetics prevail, while Uranus is in individualistic Aries. Reaction to the performance clearly shows the conservative side of the equation.
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But Miley Cyrus sided with Uranus in Aries. We shouldn't be surprised - her name, Cyrus, is also the name of the ancient Persian king, who was known as Cyrus the Great. Cyrus ruled around 600 B.C.E., at the very end of the Age of Aries, where kings were kings and the very embodiment of ego. These heroic egos were determined to make their mark on the world, as Miley also was, in her own way.

Cyrus the great was known for his progressive values and something like tolerance of other peoples. He had a strong influence on the Greeks and Jews. He was thus a kind of transitional figure, moving between the Age of Heroes (with their Terrible Twos attitudes) and The Age of Law.

Our Cyrus won't leave such a legacy. It was just a one-day thing, and it will be gone in a week. Yet she pushed the limits (however close-in they are) of sexuality, if just a bit. Her performance was no coy "come and get me" passive sexuality, as it would have been 50 or 60 years ago. It showed her as overtly horny (Aries) and empowered. No wonder people are saying that she was desperate for attention - we tend to try to "protect" women who are openly sexual.

The moon was in sensual Taurus at the time of the performance, opposite Saturn, who was sitting in judgement of sexuality in Scorpio. It's a minor moment in an ongoing process of the power shift towards the feminine, but the symbolism should get out attention.