Magicicada

Rest is not retreat. It is Revolution.

art by Sydney Hanson

Writing to you from the singing hills of western North Carolina, I have my doors open and the fans on. It is temperate enough to keep the outside air in the house (although without fans it’d be stickier). June 1st. Rabbit Rabbit to those who celebrate. I hear the “drink your tea-ea-ea-ea-ea-ea” song from the Eastern Towhee, our neighbor’s donkey braying and the mocking “cawcaw” from the curious and easily spooked crows. I’ve built a crow altar across the street for them. That’s another post.

The predominant sound tonight is the song of the cicadas, genus Magicicada Spp, in an eerie, collective mating song in the key of E. Periodical cicadas of Brood XIV have emerged in these woods after a seventeen year rest. Seventeen years. When they emerge from the ground, they instinctively rise up as high as they can reach. They’ve broken out of the ground and even in their 17 year slumber they kept count, they knew when it was time. Their magic is their timing. They ascend so that they can land in order to learn to fly. They crawl as high as they can, most of the ones in our yard are high in the trees, and latch onto a tree or plant so that they can molt. When they emerge again, they hang from their own exoskeleton and struggle with the resistance of their vulnerable weight, now with wings.

The resistance builds their strength so that they can fly. That’s their goal: get strong enough to fly, to sing and not get eaten. They change color as they hang: their eyes go from black to red, their wings go from translucent white/green to black. In this process of visible transformation, they are collectively fulfilling their fate. Yes they only have just a few weeks above ground but during that time, they SING and they fuck. What a life. What we hear is their mating call. The call reaches around 80 decibels, about the sound of a vacuum cleaner, and in some neighborhoods you have to nearly yell to speak over the chorus of cicada song. The first time I stood outside under a massive chorus, I thought I was losing my mind. I stepped out of my car and heard the surrounding noise, looked around wondering what sort of weird alarm that was. I just stood there listening to see if I could locate the source until it dawned on me: CICADAS! I won’t go into the rest of their mating cycle, because if you’re interested in them you can geek tf out on them for days. Blame me for the rabbit holes you’re about to go deep through, if you so choose. I chose the astrology shaped rabbit hole:

I was in a particular rabbit hole, thinking about the 17 year cycle. As an astrologer, our talent/curse is thinking through patterns and so my first thought was (squints eyes, strokes imaginary beard) Nodal Return? But the math wasn’t quite good enough since it’s a bit over 18 years for that cycle. Too long to be a Jupiter cycle, too short to be a Saturn cycle…maybe it was Pluto going through a sign! Nah, that math doesn’t math…but then I thought Pluto feels right. So, throwing the ephemeris to the side (because the cicadas don’t just operate through exacting time in the Kronos sense, but more in the Kairos sense. The temperature, the moisture and the safety all have to align for them to emerge. This averages 17 years but isn’t blocked out on anyone’s calendar.

When we experienced the geological event that was Hurricane Helene (second most deadly hurricane to hit the US, after the horror of Hurricane Katrina) there was so much disruption of the land from floods, mudslides, losing 40% of our tree canopy and death, by the time that the cicadas emerged this spring we were all surprised that there were any cicadas in the ground at all. Everything for us had changed, so why did the cicadas think that the best time to come out was now? Didn’t anyone tell them about HELENE? We don’t have to understand them, but their emergence has taught some of us to trust timing. Their emergence is our own emergence. Like Turkey Tail mushrooms, thriving on the dying nutrients of a fallen tree, we collectively are growing out of our trauma from the past 9 months. Of how we came together as a community and built mutual aid networks without internet and electricity. How most of us have a renewed sense of humanity because of the way we emerged together to keep our towns alive. We were vulnerable, but our resistance helped us grow wings.

Ok, back to Pluto. Yes there are standard words for Pluto that are often said in it’s company: transformation being the million dollar one. But the process of being woken up after a 17 year slumber and ascending to the highest point that your body can crawl, only to crack out of said body to have created a new one altogether is bad. ass. It is Plutonic. It is badass transformation coming from the depths of an earthly cycle of rest and singing as LOUDLY as you can to keep your cycle going. This is Pluto. It is the planet of revolution in the “Ya say you want a revo-lution” John Lennon style but also in the revolving way that everything returns. There is nothing new in the cycles of time.

In 2008, the last time that Magicicada of Brood XIV emerged, was the year that Pluto first entered Capricorn in our lifetime. I found a March 13 2008 post on a Cicada forum (of which there are quite a few) that they expect Brood XIV to emerge “any day now” followed by a spring of cicada choruses. A week prior to that early post, we had the first Mars Pluto opposition in this Cancer/Capricorn pairing in our lifetime. A hot, wet Mars waking up a distant, sleeping Pluto to emerge like the Plutonian magic insects that cicadas are, feels appropriate. They’re Latin name reads “MAGIC”

Fast forward to 2025, the next iteration of this brood, around the middle of April I began to hear rumors that they’d be emerging “any day now” and began to see them by the end of the month. What happened in late April? Mars opposite Pluto again:

In 17 years from now, we will hopefully have the new Brood XIV babies, the very ones a product of the current mating that I’m listening to right now.

Let’s look at the astrology of spring 2042 and there’s a Mars Pluto opposition:

What I appreciate about these three charts, is that the Mars Pluto opposition is happening either at the end or beginning of a sign. Each planet is on their own threshold of transforming into what happens next. Break out of the ground to climb, break out of themselves to fly. We get Mars Pluto oppositions every two years on average, give or take a retrograde, especially when Pluto changes signs a few times during its retrograde. The years between now and 2042 when Brood XIV newest generation emerge, we will have ten Mars Pluto opposition in the Leo/Aquarius axis from 3°-26°. So this brood will spend the entire Pluto in Aquarius cycle resting underground only to be called to emerge as Pluto prepares to enter Pisces in 2043.

I haven’t figured it out. Their song is calling and I’m trying to translate the melody. It sounds Plutonian, their lessons certainly are. I’m thankful that they are here, that they weren’t all flooded away when our landscape was ripped up. I love finding their cthonic little shells everywhere and will be saving them as a reminder that breaking out of one’s ideas of oneself can be a beautiful, if vulnerable, process.

At an herbal conference today, my friend Lupo Passero, talked about the cicadas and she said that while in times of chaos, the disruption may be loud but “LOVE IS LOUDER” This is the cicada song. I hope we all find our voice and sing it for the next 17 years.