Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
— ‘The Road Not Taken’ by Robert Frost
Mercury rules keys, Saturn rules doors
Each decision we make opens the door to a new reality and a new set of possibilities and impossibilities. Most decisions are binary, to do it or not to do it, go or stay, accept or deny.
The key and the dark cube in the movie are representative of this mercurial aspect of life. Once the key opens the cube, a whole new story will unfold, which some people interpret as being the representation of a new dream by Diane’s character, but in fact, only represents that life has a dream-like aspect to it, and that, it will change as our decisions impact it.
In this lecture, Jordan Peterson comments on Mulholland Drive and brings up the game of chess and its close-to-infinite possible iterations as a reference to choices and the close-to-infinite outcomes of human life. Each move on the board opens a door, that determines future doors, and so on.
13 “Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the road is easy[d] that leads to destruction, and there are many who take it. 14 For the gate is narrow and the road is hard that leads to life, and there are few who find it. (Matthew 7:13-14 NRSVCE)
We can see in the earth signs that Capricorn is the mineral that articulates into a fertile state, or, the sign of Taurus, ruled by Venus. The tree or fruit will have a seed, the last stage of the earth's signs, Virgo, ruled by Mercury.
It could also be pointed out the different forms of manifestations of these symbols: just as the seed is the messenger of an intrinsic mineral that is the underlying base of all material manifestation, in the economy the currency is the exchange unity that carries an underlying fixed reality of all macroeconomics. The currency might change its value every day, and be allocated in different directions, but at the base of the economy stays the same group of fixed laws of supply and demand, scarcity, opportunity cost, etc. Also, economic science is already defined as the science of scarcity, which naturally implies a saturnine quality.
So just as seeds and minerals, we could associate Mercury and Saturn with currencies and macroeconomics. This can be seen in the traditional Chinese cash coins used for over two millennia, from the Qin Dynasty (221–206 BCE) to the end of the Qing Dynasty (1912). The coins have a square in the middle representing the earth, the immovable form, while the circle represents heaven or forms, the firmament.
So at the center of the currency, naturally a mercurial object, there is an underlying saturnine reality.
In Ingmar Bergman’s ‘The Seventh Seal‘, we find the same symbolism: the main character plays chess with death, knowing it won’t stop walking at his side, but, at least, he’ll be able to change the outer structure of reality that surrounds him to a certain extent in the time being.
Mars
Once a decision is made it needs execution, to take shape, to be materialized. That takes real energy, not only a mental effort anymore. Once a decision gets into the hands of the executioner there’s no turning back, because the door will be opened.
The shooter character is a depiction of martial mythology, and his chaotic murder scene is representative of many of the Greek myths on Mars. Ending the illustration of the so-called ‘superior planets’, mars appears as the first layer after the predefinition of the three dimensions and the filling of these dimensions into space quantity. So it represents the energy and matter that stand on top of those last principles.
In the study of planetary dignities in astrology, it can be confusing to see that Mars has its exaltation in Capricorn, a cold sign, being a hot planet (which is not something uncommon anyway), but looking at the perspective above, if Mars is the last of the superior planets, the last aspect of the material, primarily associated with energy and mass, it finds is exaltation in the cube aspect of Saturn, the beginning of the material, the base that holds the possibility for its manifestation.
In Mulholland Drive, it is after the shooter’s action that the cube will bring negative repercussions to Diane’s life: she made a choice and left it in his hands.
Venus and the reordering of the cosmos
How is it that our imagination falls for the temptations of the world?
If the imaginary reflects the possibilities for temptation, what is the substance in the real world that pushes it ahead into falsehood?
Rita represents the Venusian aspects of life: the closest tangible objects of desire that the imaginary struggle not to seek. That is where the close relationship between Diane and Rita comes from, they go through a lot together but eventually, Diane realizes that Rita is circling Adam and not her. The idea of venial sin here is also on point, there is a delusion after acting upon temptation: the happiness from the pursuit of pleasure is short-lived, and ultimately, on its own it is a pursuit alienated from higher principles.
Also, in the scene where Rita checks her purse, she takes money and a key from it, a reference to the materialistic nature of Venus (particularly the sign of Taurus where the Moon is exalted and Venus is domiciled) and the key of Mercury: the planet below Venus in the cosmic order. With the appearance of desire, comes the possibility of a choice.
There is also a hint when Rita looks at a poster of Rita Hayworth.
It is not a surprise to see that, once casting the actress's birth chart, the “lord of nativity” is Venus, the ascendant’s ruler: it is the strongest and most evidenced planet, while also representing the self and self-image. Venus is in domicile, receives domicile from the Sun, Mercury, and exaltation from the Moon.
But why does Rita start the movie in a car crash? It is believed that the order of the cosmos was different in the past. Venus came from outer space as a meteorite and clashed with a previous order of heavenly bodies, destabilizing it into another order and giving origin to the current configuration.
It is interesting to note that this theory says that Saturn used to be the old Sun: it was the main brightest body in the sky, and that, after that destabilization, from ancient Saturn came the current Sun and the current Saturn. More on this myth can be found in the book “The Saturn Myth” by David Talbott and on YouTube at ‘ThunderboltsProject’.
This destabilization might be linked to the idea of the Hindu Ages. The Kali Yuga in which we are now is the age of iron, an age of hardship, and the reordering of the planets from ancient Saturn separated the old Sun into two bodies, the new Sun and Saturn. Now, the sun seems to resemble the infinitude aspect of the ancient Sun, while Saturn is on the border of the current cosmos and in charge of the entropy and solidification, fundamental to the material.
This entropic factor seems to be precisely the ‘solidification’ that Guenon refers to in ‘The Reign of Quantity and the Sign of the Times’, and this seems also to be the main idea in the Kali Yuga, the ruler of this cosmos is current Saturn: “There’s sometimes a buggy. How many drivers does a buggy have? One.”
23 for God created us for incorruption
and made us in the image of his own eternity,[a]
24 but through an adversary’s[b] envy death entered the world,
and those who belong to his company experience it.
(Wisdom of Solomon 2:23-24)
Whether this theory is right is not in the scope of this text, but the fact is that the two scenes that start the movie correlate to it: before the reordering, the old Sun is said to emanate a purple light that remained constant throughout the day.
The clash of Venus, coming from the outside as an asteroid, gave birth to the instability of bodies that nowadays compose the planets in our galaxy, and that’s where the narrative of the movie begins, as an anthropomorphic representation of our galaxy’s current situation.
In the scene where Diane is taken to a diner with Adam and Cinthia, it is interesting to see the kiss between them. Going beyond natural symbolism and getting into technique, when asking about a relationship horary, house rulership is as always considered, but also there is the notion of natural rulers, or, co-signification, which, in this case, are always the Sun for the man and Venus for the woman (considering a heterosexual couple), and that seems to be what’s being represented in this scene: Venus is the natural female in the sky, while the Moon is the wondering self.