Hope & Dread Extra: Phyllis Mitz
Hope & Dread Extra: Phyllis Mitz brings you a vision for the future in this interview with astrologer Phyllis Mitz.
Hope & Dread Extra is a series of short, sharp bonus episodes featuring your season favorites from Hope & Dread. Our guests were brimming with additional ideas and extra insights that we just didn’t have room for within the documentary series. But we didn’t want to leave them on the cutting room floor. Join hosts Charlotte Burns and Allan Schwartzman for new Hope & Dread Extra every Tuesday and Thursday.
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Transcript:
Charlotte Burns:
This is Hope & Dread Extra. I’m Charlotte Burns.
Allan Schwartzman:
And I’m Allan Schwartzman.
Charlotte Burns:
Hope & Dread was a program about the tectonic shifts in power in art. We’ve heard from people who are making change and from people who are resisting change.
Our guests were brimming with ideas and off-topic thoughts that we just didn’t have room for within the documentary series. But we didn’t want to leave them on the cutting-room floor. So now, we’re bringing you a set of short, sharp bonus episodes featuring some of your season favorites, which we’ll be dropping twice a week.
Roughly every 2,150 years the sun moves position and we enter a new astrological age. Right now we’re on the precipice of a new era. Here to tell us more is the astrologer Phyllis Mitz.
Phyllis Mitz:
In the very big picture, we are moving from the age of Pisces, which has a lot to do with a lot of sacrifice and suffering. This idea that if we're not martyring ourselves, we're not going to get close to God or the universe however we would say it. That we're moving into the age of Aquarius, which is the age where each individual brings out their unique quality and then blends that together with the community as a whole; the world as a whole. And the interesting thing about Aquarius is it isn't hierarchical.
It has to do with working as a team, working shoulder to shoulder. And so right now, as we're recording this, we're going through a great deal of hubbub with hierarchies and governments and the patriarchy, however, we would put that because we're learning a whole new level of leadership and how do we work together as humans and work as a team?
In a way, we're in a grand experiment right now, where we as individuals are playing important parts and contributing to the Aquarian whole of, well, how are we going to recreate this idea of power organizations, stability, which honestly, I don't see a lot of stability until 2023.
When I look at 2022, there's a strong influence there of almost the very dreamy, almost like a watercolor, it goes from technology into almost something that is antithetical to that but there's a jump, let me put it that way. There's a leap going on, not only in the inventiveness but in human beings valuing art itself.
And an interesting part of that is what people will be willing to pay for art because there's another planet in the solar system, Uranus, that has to do with awakening and shake-ups in technology. And interestingly, it's in the sign of currency and literal money, which means that I think by the time it leaves in a few years, by 2025, I can't even imagine currencies being in this state that it is now. For us to go to our purses or our wallets and get out some dollars. I can't imagine that's going to be so.
Interestingly Taurus also has to do with value. So in the past, there were certain forms of art that were valued, certain artists that made a lot of money and Uranus is about to shake that whole thing up. What kind of art do we value? What are we willing to pay? How do we pay for art? And because Uranus has to do with shocking events, it's also saying that there could be shocking events that happened with the value of art and the traditionally highly-valued art pieces themselves, because Taurus has to do with the luxury items. And if there is a planet of radical change running through that, it's suggesting that the status, the nature, the currency, the commerce of what's considered high or expensive or luxury—the luxury world of art—there's something that's going to radically change there. And I think if that could happen by the end of 2022 and then reverberate, of course, through 2025. But something is up there. Something is trying to break through.
Allan Schwartzman:
So what you're saying, Phyllis is completely aligned with how I've been looking at contemporary art.
I find it imaginable, whether this is in the short run or in the long run that we are in a period within art that is as profound in its transition, as let's say that from the Medieval to the Renaissance or from the Modern to, I won't even call it post-modern, but out of a world of art-about-art into a world of art about other things—and maybe even how art functions within society, how we experience it in a museum.
Phyllis Mitz:
I agree so wholeheartedly. The planets’ placement at this time, the way that the solar system moves, it will not repeat itself directly to the Renaissance, but there are some direct correlations going on here. The awakening of the human spirit via art and how art can awaken the human spirit, not in, let's say the religious sense, but in the spiritual or in the high human potential way, that is what is rolling in.
The middle of 2022 things get more daring. There's a daring, innovative quality from the middle of 2022 to the middle of 2023. And I'm very heartened, extremely excited about what's going on in 2023 in terms of again, the valuing and the lusciousness of what's going on with our appreciation of art and really our appreciation of the material world actually.
So we’re seeing both sides of the human consciousness, the very linear and the very spiritual—but they’re both really exaggerated. So the question that I asked myself when looking at art and value is the whole system is the bottom going to fall out of the whole system. In other words, and I think maybe Allan, you are intimating that in order to get to this revelation, this Aquarian sense where humanity is sharing things in a way shoulder-to-shoulder, will there be a dramatic earthquake in the valuing and the funding of art as a necessary kind of falling apart so that things can be rebuilt in a way that matches more of where humanity is going?
I think in 2023, we may have a last surge towards materialism. And then after that, I really think we're really understanding it's not going to be about ownership. I think we're going to try one more time to own a whole bunch of stuff. And then I think we're really going to be relating to the beauty and the materiality of all things in a more distant collective, “Let's all have this” way.
Charlotte Burns:
This is something that several of the artists that we've interviewed for this show are really concerned with. They see their art as very much rooted in community as coming from a specific place to serve a specific place.
Phyllis Mitz:
Charlotte, what you were just expressing is, again, the essence of this age of Aquarius, where the individual says: "I've got this, and let me communicate to my community in a way where we can all benefit from this."
The idea of even what has prestige is completely changing. And it is going to transfer into how the economy works. The philosophy of intelligent investing and what to do with our money is within the next four years it's radically, radically, radically shifting. And so artists that are younger that are really coming just now coming up are born with this consciousness of this Aquarian consciousness. They've got it in them.
I think we have to decide whether we allow power and money and control to be gathered up into a teeny-weeny-weeny, little, teeny-weeny-weeny group of people or situations you're in institutions. Which isn't encouraged astrologically, but the opportunity is there, like, “All right, you want to let this happen? Okay.”
But because there's such arguing going on in such awareness, at least the universe is giving us a chance to say this is toxic. But it looks like it's going to last for a little while longer. And if you say, "Well, how long does it look like the power grab?" The traditional power grab looks like it's going to go at least until 2024 if not 2025. At least. That the old hierarchy is going to keep trying to get in there and all get all the holdings and get out. And there's a lot of opportunity in between all that for people to go, "Wait a minute! Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait! No, let's do it differently." So we have to be on our toes. We have to be on our toes. We can't go to sleep.
Charlotte Burns:
When you look ahead, you probably have a clearer picture than most of us. Do you feel hope? Do you feel dread?
Phyllis Mitz:
I feel a tremendous amount of hope because again, as I say, I feel very privileged and I'm aware of being here on planet earth while we are shifting eras. Like, “Hey, what can I do to bring in this Aquarian age where humans are really expressing a high potential?”
And as I look ahead, I think, oh, that looks good, that looks exciting, that looks luscious. So I'm very excited about what is to come. The dread, [laughs] I have to say, frankly, is the getting there.
So I have a little bit of a balance of both, but in general, if you say, “Well, come on, looking ahead at it the next 20 years or so”, which I am, I think this is going to be amazing if we can just get through the next five years and make good decisions about how we allocate our resources. And that sounds funny. I mean, I don't want to make it sound like it's completely decided by 2025, but the dramatic shifts that we are making our decisions about between now and 2025, I feel like, “Everybody stay awake. Stay awake! Participate, watch. Give your two cents, even if it's different, radically than your neighbor. Participate.”
Charlotte Burns:
For more from Phyllis, tune in to episode 10 of Hope & Dread, “The Business of Art” and episode 12, “Are You Sitting Uncomfortably?”.
Listen to Hope & Dread Extra every Tuesday and Thursday and subscribe wherever it is you find your podcasts.
Hope & Dread is brought to you by Art&, the new editorial platform created by Schwartzman&.
The executive producer is Allan Schwartzman, who co-hosts the show together with me, Charlotte Burns of Studio Burns, which produces the series.
Robert Bound is our associate editor.
Holly Fisher mixes and edits the sound.
Additional research has been provided by Julia Hernandez.
And our theme music is by the inimitable Philip Glass.
