Pisces 11 and 12

One of my most important spiritual teachers is an astrologer by trade, and I'm erstwhile her astrology student. I used to think astrology was a bunch of nonsense and hokum. But then I met my teacher, Linda, and I couldn't deny the genius expressed in her understanding of this complicated art. I still have only the smallest idea of what's going on or what she's talking about, but Linda's way of doing astrology makes each person the hero of her own life and each life replete with meaning.

I have come to understand myself as an initiate because of two symbols that appear in my natal astrological chart (the snapshot of the sky taken at the minute of my birth from the perspective of my location on earth). First, my sun is at Pisces 11 (in the 11th house). The Sabian symbol for Pisces 11 is: A group of serious eyed, earnest faced men are seeking illumination and are conducted into a massive sanctuary. Second, my north node is conjunct my sun, at Pisces 12, the symbol for which is: A convocation of the Lodge of Initiates has bought the earth's glorious souls in spirit to examine the candidates.

The sun represents the meaning of one's life. The north node represents where one is headed in this lifetime. That my sun and north node are conjunct means that the meaning of my life and where I'm headed in life (my north star, if you will) are in sync. To me, both of these symbols are deeply spiritual. They make sense to me as someone who has sought meaning and the Divine her whole life.

While an initiate has mastered a body of knowledge in order to be initiated, she is also very much at the beginning of something: she us up for examination, she is being ushered into a sanctuary. At first this idea of being a beginner, not a master, chafed my ego: "Well crap, in this lifetime I only ever get to be a newbie?"

But I assume the mantle of initiate with reverence anyway, and I remind myself of the archetypal importance of the beginner (for example, the Fool in the tarot). My life snaps into narrative focus--it makes sense--when I remember myself as an initiate, when I narrate my life as a story of initiations. The story of undergoing an initiation is a way to make sense of and revere difficult times, because initiation isn't easy. Inanna had to give up her very life, her flesh and bones. The old saying that in childbirth a woman descends to the underworld to retrieve the soul of her child isn't an unfair description of my experience in labor.

As for my nom de blog, I chose it before I understood anything about myself as an initiate. But now I think it makes lovely, prescient sense.

Passing through the gates

I'm loving being a parent. The sight, smell, and sounds of my lovely boy fill me with pure joy and happiness. That's true, though it's also true that the first weeks of parenting are singularly challenging. He'll be seven weeks old on Saturday.

Labor was a harrowing rite of passage. "Initiation" seems like such a lilting, romantic idea, till you go through one. Hurts like hell.

When I began this blog nearly four years ago, I chose "Inanna" as a nom de blog because she seemed like an ancient Mama Goddess who didn't get a lot of air time (what did I know?). Also, I loved Talia Took's depiction of Innana in her aspect as a goddess of sexual love and fertility. Later, I felt a bit sheepish about my choice: "queen of heaven and earth" was meant as an ironic descriptor for little ol' me.

However, what you might know about Inanna is that her descent into the underworld is a paradigmatic rite of passage. Her initation involved giving up every claim to identity she had and all her worldly goods, abasing herself in front of her sister/shadow, the queen of the underworld, and having her corpse hung on a meat hook in hell. We might call it the mother of all initations.

Shortly after beginning this blog, I began studying astrology, and I learned that the Sabian symbol for my sun at Pisces 11 is "a group of serious-eyed, earnest-faced men are seeking illumination and are conducted into a massive sanctuary." The symbol for my conjunct north node, at Pisces 12, is "a convocation of the Lodge of Initiates has brought the earth's glorious souls in spirit to examine candidates." In other words, initiation is my raison d'etre, in this lifetime at least.

And so after a series of initations over these last several years, one fast upon the heels of another--mystery school initation, ordination, traveling to Turkey, ending my academic career, the illnesses that pointed the way out of academe, adopting my beloved dog Lugh, Lugh's death--I decided to become a mother, Goddess willing.

Labor was a dark door that I approached unwillingly but also with singular determination. I was wary and afraid, but I also believed in its necessity, its sacredness. There were times during my labor with Lucian when I thought, "this is the worst day of my life"--a thought I don't think I've had on any other day. The pain was unlike anything I've ever experienced, and the thought floated through my mind that childbirth is more physically challenging than war. ("Take that, you big, macho, patriarchal, death-fetishizing assholes," was the other part of that thought.)

I worked in a huge cauldron of warm water at home, surrounded by midwives, and I had the dream that I was reliving my own birth, my mother's labor. I screamed often, and worried the dog, though Adonis reports that my focus was inward and away. There was an abrupt break in the labor at transition; the baby's heartrate dropped and didn't recover, and my midwife made a quick decision to move us to the hospital, where Lucian was born four hours later, after I pushed him out myself under conditions that mostly felt hostile. But I was held by a large community saying prayers, meditating, visualizing, and making magic. The magic worked; more on that later.

At the end of labor, with a roar--his, mine, that of the people in the room--my sweet baby entered this life. Someone placed him on my chest. Adonis cried. And--forgive the cliche--I knew that that day was also the best day of my life.

Embodying the abundant universe

(From the Gaian Tarot by Joanna Powell Colbert)

I believe as a tenet of faith that the universe--the Goddess, the Mother--provides what we need in abundance. Always.

This belief doesn't reside in my intellect, if you will, but in my gut. My brain easily generates myriad reasons why this belief is false; begin with the reality of poverty. But my belief, which relies on faith, isn't so much a proposition against which to marshal arguments. It is, rather, a way of understanding the world. It functions like a background assumption. (I'm well aware of problems with confirmation bias, but I'm not doing science here. Grant me poetic license.)

I think that whether or not this belief (or way of understanding the world) comes easily to you depends on the circumstances of your early life. That's not to say that we can't come to believe that the universe provides for our needs in abundance even if the circumstances of early life were meager in the relevant sense. The first step in coming to believe is realizing that we believe otherwise; for example, to realize that we're acting from an assumption of penury, that we believe fundamentally that life is hard, that we're its victims, that we're undeserving, that things never get better, that people are out to get us. Thus we uncover our operating assumptions. We work to accept that we have them (and acceptance is no small feat, though I give it short shrift here). And we begin to pay attention to all the hints we're given that assumptions of scarcity are false. When people make gratitude a practice, that's what they're doing: they're paying attention; they're counting their blessings.

(I've had a hard time with the idea of practicing gratitude because I have an old belief that I don't deserve my many blessings. Gratitude is, in my mind, and for biographical reasons, linked with feelings of guilt and undeservingness.)

Very early in one's life sojourn, one learns on a basic, physical, preverbal level that the universe provides for one's needs, or one learns that it doesn't. I think I'm lucky; I got the message, somehow, that my needs would be met. Maybe I carried that belief into this life with me. (My "soul card," in tarot, is the Empress. Both my rising sign and my Pluto carry the message, too.) Maybe my faith formed as the result of responsive early mothering. (Thanks, Mom!) Things--mostly thoughts--have happened to occlude my faith, but I think that at its foundation it's solid. It is a glorious piece of luck.

I know that as I spend these early weeks with my child, my one task, as I see it, is literally to embody for him the abundant universe. He's still coming into this life; he's new here. How is the world as he finds it? There is a lot of big, scary, uncertain stuff that he doesn't need to know about yet. But he is almost always held. We hold him bare skin against bare skin. We hold him in the sunlight streaming through our bedroom windows. We carry him, we sleep next to him, we wear him in a sling. He is never away from us. He is never left alone. We sing and babble and kiss him and make jokes. He is always fed when, or even before, he asks. There is plenty to eat. He is kept dry and clean and warm. That big, loud beast, the dog, is his friend. He shows no fear.

And there is a huge, excited, welcoming, loving community holding him and his parents. We were held during the birth by an extended network of friends. Witches worked magic for him. Astrologers watched the sky. Gifts continue to arrive. People come to visit. Home-cooked dinners appear on our doorstep every other day; his body is literally being built by the community. I'm in awe of the generosity, love, and good will engendered by this small being.

He affirms my faith in all things good.

"You were born in a merry hour"

When Lucian was born, my astrology teacher sent me his natal chart. Several astrologers I know had been watching the stars for weeks, awaiting the birth. I know just enough astrology, and am just enough a new parent, that I could look at the chart, look up a few things, and freak myself out. A very little bit of knowledge is dangerous, at least to oneself.

Yesterday I was looking at the chart again and freaking out, so I emailed my teacher about scheduling a March appointment for the family. I told her how I was scaring myself and what some of my concerns are.

Today, visiting our favorite cafe for lunch following a pediatrician's appointment, we saw my teacher. Adonis and I walked in, Adonis carrying the baby in his car seat. We were immediately greeted by several people we knew. My teacher came over to us in the midst of the whirlwind and said, "I didn't even see you guys, but I saw the baby and knew immediately who he was." She gave me a big hug and said loudly into my ear, "don't be stupid; just look at him." Then she leaned over Lucian and, like a fairy godmother from a fairy tale, whispered words for only him to hear. He watched her intently, and when she was finished, he closed his eyes and slept.

Uber-Cap

One day past our due date, and baby and I are hanging out with Adonis, Gryphon, and my sister, who arrived yesterday and is blessedly doing housework. If the baby comes in the next day or two, s/he'll have six planets in Capricorn, including sun and moon. Sun, moon, Mars, and Pluto are basically conjunct in the first six degrees of the sign. That's a little hard to get my head around.

Full moon in Gemini

(Virgen de Guadalupe by Susan Grice; image found here.)


Today is the full moon in Gemini 22: Dancing couples crowd the barn in a harvest festival.

This degree Symbol is about celebrating the warmth and providence of the earth, the joy of nature's harvest, joining with others to celebrate, the reality of rhythmical or seasonal adjustments, agriculture, good old-time values, going out, having fun, listening and dancing to music, barns and dance halls.

Today's full moon is at its perigree for the year, the closest to the earth it will come. I don't think it will be visible where I am, given the cloud cover. But do try to see it if you can! Go here to read Lynda's full report for the day.

Today is also the feast day of the Virgen de Guadalupe, one of my favorite faces of the Goddess, beloved in Mexico and the southwestern U.S. Despite her roots in Catholicism, I consider her a goddess native to the Americas.

Today is the first day of the We'Moon calendar for the upcoming year. The theme for the year is "At the Crossroads." Since 2000, We'Moon has been progressing through the major arcana of the tarot for its yearly themes. 2009 is card 9, the hermit or the crone; Hecate the crone rules the crossroads. At the crossroads, our elders and ancestors, those who walked the path before us, serve as our guides. Read a statement of alliance from the International Council of 13 Indigenous Grandmothers here (and in the new We'Moon).

Today I'm ordering herbs to restock my pantry in preparation for birth and days postpartum. There is still cleaning and stocking to do before the little one, due at the new moon, arrives.

Lunations

I spent the weekend in a workshop studying astrological lunations. Lunations are roughly 29-year cycles divided into 8 phases (like the 8 phases of the moon) of 3+ years. An individual's cycles depend on what phase of the moon s/he's born under and the progression each year of the natal sun and moon (the natal sun progressing about 1 degree per year and the natal moon progressing about 1 degree per month); where sun and moon come together on the same degree of the zodiac, that's the new moon.

For example, I was born under a last quarter moon in 1970; my first new moon occurred right after I turned six, in 1976. My second new moon occurred in 2005, and I'm nearing the end of that phase, moving into a crescent moon phase early next year. Each 3+ year phase has a different energy, so it's interesting and useful to track the events of one's life via the moon cycles in order to reach a better understanding of what was happening when and why.

In short, studying lunations is one way to study the energetic cycles in a life and to get a "big-picture," relatively impersonal view of the events in that life. The Sabian symbol for each new moon is like a book title describing the 29-30 years covered by that volume of one's life. The first volume of my life was marked by Pisces 17; title: "An Easter Promenade." There I see the symbolism of traditional religion, of crucifixion and resurrection, and of stately walking in one's best apparel. The title of the current volume is Aries 16: "Browning dancing in the twilight." I love the magical feeling of this symbol, the picture of the elementals dancing in liminal space.

I began the mystery school and this blog is 2005, with the dawning of my dark moon.

What makes us wise

Today is the first day it's been warm--in the high 50s--and sunny. After spending the morning cleaning house, Adonis and I spent two hours walking around the neighborhood: getting mochas at the coffee shop, stopping to talk with friends and neighbors working in yards, assessing the little house for sale that we have our eye on, pausing to love up the neighborhood dogs. It finally feels like spring. (How I long for a garden and dogs! My dad cautions us not to buy a house just because we want dogs, but of course that's exactly why we're buying a house. Oh, and it's a good investment. Unlike most places in the U.S., my little town hasn't been hit by the housing and mortgage crises. Prices continue to climb. Why do people move here? Don't they know winter is six months long?)

Tomorrow is the new moon in Aries. Even as the cold days have lingered here in the north, I've felt the shift in energy that early spring brings. I'm moving more, working off winter's lethargy, and feeling stronger, more vital. I have a renewed taste for raw, bitter, green things. I'm starved for sunshine. Adonis and I seem to occupy the slightest lull, a suspension, before the activity of summer commences. Beginning this week, we're both traveling. Adonis is headed to New York City a couple of times for work; I'm headed to Atlanta to do healing work and visit my good friend; and we're traveling home together at the end of the month to celebrate my grandmother's 98th birthday.

I've been thinking a lot about happiness. This past year has been challenging for me: lots of intense growth and new life emerging, but also, and perhaps not coincidentally nor paradoxically, stark confrontations with mortality and grief. It's been just six months since I lost my beloved Lugh. On that very six month date, last week, my sister had cancer surgery (and is doing well). I'm learning something about the kind of happiness that depends on things going my way, and about the kind of happiness that can arise independently of felicitous circumstances. I'm thinking about happiness as a spiritual practice and what that entails for me. I often dream of that lyric from Sinead O'Connor's song "What Doesn't Belong to Me;" I take this to be a profound thealogical truth:

And the goddess meant for me only joy.

Rising up out of the ocean*

I had a wonderful, amazing, powerful weekend at the mystery school. I'm only three months away from my ordination! (Or, a quarter turn of the wheel away--this week is Ostara, and I get ordained at the summer solstice.) My class meets officially as a group only one more weekend between now and then. I can't believe how close we are.

There are still several weekends to assist, plus a weekend-long astrology class (optional, so not all my classmates will be there), and a weekend-long integral anatomy class (also optional for my class, since we had anatomy in our second year, but the format for the anatomy class changes a lot each year, so it's always worth going). I'm also traveling in April to work with a "healee" who lives far from here.

My friend John brought me a beautiful orange silk scarf back from India (and a cd of the Gayatri mantra); I intend to wear the scarf for my ordination. John has been a true friend on my journey; a "tree guy" and a radical faerie, he encouraged my interest in Paganism back when I thought I was nuts, gave me my first deck of tarot cards, and has taught me a lot about dog-love.

I've been thinking a lot about "next steps," since this is my fourth and final year as a student at the mystery school. (I will continue to assist for at least another year.) I've almost made the decision to enroll in a six-month apprenticeship program in herbalism, pending financial discussion with my sweet and generous partner. That would begin in May. And I'm seriously considering applying to Cherry Hill for the fall.

I'm so excited by new plans and opportunities. Aries must be right around the corner!

(*The title for this post comes from the Sabian symbol for 1 degree Aries.)

New moon in Pisces

I assure you this won't turn into an astrology blog, but there have been some big astrological events lately--or at least they've been having a big impact on me. And there is just one more that I want to write about right now.

(One thing I love about Wicca and Paganism, at least as I think about them, is that they encourage reading the events of our lives like a literary text. Did you have the experience in high school where your English teacher would explain the symbolism in the book you were reading, or you would study various critical reviews of, I don't know, The Scarlet Letter, and someone--maybe even you--would complain, "yeah, right, how do you see all that in this book? We're just making this stuff up." Many people--maybe even me, at times--feel the same way about a magical worldview, about religion, about tarot, astrology and other kinds of divination. Did the bird that flew into the glass of my bedroom window [the only time it's ever happened in my seven years living in a window-filled, second-story apartment] on New Year's Day last year while Adonis and I were discussing getting pregnant really presage the miscarriage I had six weeks later? Was that event a symbol invested with meaning? Is it "okay" to read our lives that way? Sometimes I feel that if my life were a novel, the symbolism would be pretty heavy handed.)

I often think of astrology (and tarot) as a set of texts for interpreting human existence. Recently, I've talked about Pluto entering Capricorn and the lunar eclipse in Virgo. Today is the new moon, completing the lunar cycle and beginning another anew. The moon is in Pisces, as is the sun. I found the article by Simone Butler on Mooncircles to be particularly apt.

All addictions stem from the same root: feeling separate from Source. The Alcoholics Anonymous 12-step program succeeds because it teaches participants to give their problems over to a higher power. Making the connection to Source through prayer, meditation, or spending time in nature reminds us that we are one with all that is.

During most of March, with the sun in Pisces, a sign that rules both addiction and spiritual surrender, we're asked to awaken from our illusion of separation and jettison crippling habits that hold us back. February's solar eclipse on the 7th opened our wounds for healing, and the lunar eclipse on the 21st shone a bright light on the need to fix what's broken.

(Deborah Oak had a particularly harrowing wake-up call.)

Now, on March 7, Uranus the Awakener conjoins the New Moon in Pisces--a wake-up call for sure. In Pisces, the last sign of the zodiac, we merge with Source on our journey back home....

Trust is a key word for Pisces.... The Hopi say we're in a rushing river, that we should stop clinging to the shore and allow the current to bring us to the river's calm center.... Pisces demands surrender to "what is," rather than railing against what isn't. Surrender leads to the calm center within. Otherwise, you end up lost in your fears--and the endless cycle of addiction.

If you're feeling unusually vulnerable or empty these days, remember that the aching void is also your access point to Source.

As in the beloved Leonard Cohen song,

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.

Even at the dark of the moon, blessings.

The cosmic bulldozer

You know how sometimes everything that happens to you points in the same direction? Like you couldn't ignore the signs if you tried? This is one of those times. Witness the power of one pledge. The message? To tend to the roots.

(1) Partly, it's the astrological weather. Pluto has moved into Capricorn, though it will move forward and retrograde throughout this year, before settling in for the ride till 2023. We tend to be afraid of Pluto. He's the king of the underworld, after all. He rules death and transformation. Like death, he's impersonal. He doesn't care if a little destruction is going to mess up your plans. Whatever has outlived its usefulness has to go. Structures that no longer serve us are upended, no matter how attached to them we might feel. Practical Capricorn is firmly rooted in the material world: wealth, home, property, business, building, construction, management of resources. Earthly institutions: marriage, church, government, economy. Got one that isn't working? Pluto is gonna bust it up and break it down. For example, the last time Pluto was in Capricorn (November 1762-December 1778), there was this little event we call the American Revolution.

(2) My own challenges these last few months have been those relating to first chakra issues: home, survival, and money. Here is what Anodea Judith has to say about the first, or root chakra, called Muladhara, located at the base of the spine:

It relates to the element earth, and all solid, earthly things, such as our bodies, our health, our survival, our material and monetary existence, and our ability to focus and manifest our needs. It is the manifestation of consciousness in its final form--solid and tangible. It is our need to stay alive and be healthy, and the acceptance of limitation and discipline so crucial to manifestation. (Wheels of Life, p. 60)

My sister's illness, the trouble with buying a house, some issues with my finances; these all have to do with the first chakra, and with Capricorn.

(3) In my last post I mentioned something called the schizoid defense. That defense has to do with root chakra issues: physical survival, manifestation, living on the earth. Do I have a right to be here? Do I have a right to the things I need to survive (food, sleep, shelter, a job, medicine, health care, love)?

--

Patterns. In the past I've had trouble grasping how my own schizoid defense works. It's been the one to elude my understanding. But now I'm beginning to see it in the parts of my life I try to fragment and hide from, the places where I practice denial because to broach them seems terrifying. One of the biggest areas, for me, is money. And the message I've been getting loud and clear these last several weeks is that my old way of (not) dealing is really not going to work anymore. Fragmentation and denial are becoming impossible. This is Pluto at work in Capricorn.

Because I'm a pretty grounded person in many ways, and I don't suffer a lot of anxiety, I've had trouble discerning challenges around my root chakra. The cosmic 2x4 has had to swing this way several times. The biggest hit was what got me to begin studying healing in the first place: surgery at the bottom of my lumbar spine. Yes, surgery on my first chakra. Three years later, I'm starting to understand the connections. Survival, support, money, home, earth, belonging, manifestation, deserving.

The structures have been threatening collapse for some time; a few years ago, they started to fall. I picture Pluto as this big bulldozer or backhoe. I imagine Arthur Dent waking one morning to find the bulldozers reflected in his shaving mirror, poised to destroy his house. He doesn't realize that bulldozers are the least of his worries, since his planet is also scheduled for demolition that morning. That's Pluto, blandly informing us that the plans have been on display at the central office for some time for those who cared to consult them.

But the other thing about Pluto? He guards all the earth's hidden riches. To discover them, to spy them glinting in the sunlight, you need only turn over some earth.

So what happened next?

I wrote the previous post a week ago. The next morning, I woke up feeling out of sorts and decided to stay home from work in order to fend off whatever malaise was encroaching. By late afternoon, I was in a state of high anxiety--and I'm not prone to anxiety. I called my therapist and made an appointment for the next day, and I called two friends to come be with me. By the time my friends arrived, the migraine had begun. The migraine that lasted five days.

I know the moon was full in Virgo, shadow to my beloved Pisces. (I have two planets, sun and Venus, and the north node in Pisces, above the horizon in the 11th house. I have fateful Pluto and the south node in Virgo, below the horizon in the 5th house.) I know there was a lunar eclipse. And I was just about to start bleeding. A Witch knows what these things mean.

I began getting migraines in my early 30s. For a while they were quite disabling, coming hard and often, but then I met an acupuncturist who all but cured them. I stay on a regimen of Chinese herbs, and I get few migraines. The ones I have aren't severe.

But this one: the aura of high anxiety at its cusp, the pain on the left side of my head, tight muscles throughout my body, sensitivity to light and smell, heat rising through my body, time distortion, upset stomach, vomiting, no appetite, extreme fatigue. I pretty much spent three days asleep with an ice pack on my head. I did get to see my therapist, who talked me down from the ledge o' anxiety, as I lay on her couch with an ice pack on my head. Oh, and my acupuncturist? She's in India.

Emotionally, I was just miserable. (What am I doing with my life? What's the point anyway? Why don't I take better care of myself? That sort of thing.)

I started to feel better on Sunday and was able to take a walk in the sunshine. By Monday afternoon, back at work, I could feel that the energy had shifted, and I started to feel more like myself, a bit more optimistic. I took a dance class last night and got to stretch all my muscles, which is such a relief after the thick, turgid tightness of a migraine.

One of my friends who came over to help me during the eclipse, herself a healer, said something that helped me:

"To be a healer just means to be willing to be in healing, with yourself and with other people. To be a healer means to be willing to be in healing."

My therapist said something else that helped:

"Hope is out there, even if you don't feel it right now. Just because you feel hopeless doesn't mean there is no hope."

Winding my way toward a pledge

I'm still thinking about Imbolc. I like what Arachne has to say about celebrating the creative spark at this time of year, about making art out of "just more winter." We celebrated poetry on February 2, but I haven't yet made my commitments for the year. Maybe it's because I spent Saturday cleaning and shopping for the party and Sunday sleeping, but I wasn't able to gather energy to make promises for the week, let alone a year and a day.

I decided that it would make more sense to do ritual and make pledges tomorrow, on the new moon in Aquarius. The energy will be powerful, with Chiron aligning the sun during a solar eclipse at 18 degrees Aquarius. The Sabian symbol for 18 Aquarius is: "The masquerade has long been in progress and laughing young ladies at last have forced the final male to unmask."

In my own natal chart, Aquarius fits neatly in the 10th house, the house of career and public reputation; the only planet nearby is Mercury, the communicator, at 24 Aquarius. ("A man obviously of the world has turned his back on passion and is giving people a deep and undying wisdom.") Tomorrow's new moon is thus "a cosmically ordered moment to shake lose the restrictions that limit me from fulfilling my potential" in the realms of the tenth house: career, role modeling, teaching, public reputation.

The symbol is one of final unmasking in a masquerade that has long been in progress; the realm is that of my public face, my public role. My transformation from devotedly rational academic to mystically minded...what? what is my work, my path, my identity now? - has been vertiginous. What commitment do I make when the energy is that of the trickster god teasing away masks?

And then there's Chiron, the wounded healer. Astrologer Simone Butler says of tomorrow that

"We will all have an opportunity to heal old wounds as Chiron...aligns with the Sun in a solar eclipse in Aquarius.... During this extra-powerful New Moon eclipse, a time when electromagnetic patterns get short-circuited and rerouted in the heavens, a giant leap in awareness is possible. Whichever house and/or planets in our charts fall at or near 18 degrees of Aquarius are about to be triggered for the purpose of healing and growth. Old wounds reflected by our natal Chiron placement may also be activated."

My natal Chiron is in Aries in the 12th house, the house of spirit and the unconscious. I don't yet understand what my wound is, but here is a question posed by Elizabeth Rose Campbell for those with Chiron in the 12th house: "How can I trust my own unique bridge to the sacred, not getting caught in anyone else's definition of it?"

I think I need to sleep on all of this, perchance to dream, and revisit the idea of pledges tomorrow.

Art projects of the zodiac

Lunaea has a fun post about what kinds of art projects might appeal to different astrological (sun) signs. This is what she has to say about my sign, Pisces:

Pisces is the dreamer of the zodiac, and all things mystical and visionary appeal to her: mermaids, faeries, fantastic underwater castles, secret gardens. Watercolor is a natural medium, with its fluidity and soft misty colors. Pisces dreams are rich with symbolism, so an obvious project for Pisces is to create a special dream journal. Start with a pre-made journal or create your own hand-bound book. Decorate the cover with dreamy imagery, and use watercolors to do a light wash of colors over the inside pages. When it’s time to record your dreams, use a combination of words and pictures (drawn or collage). This dream-filled journal will inspire you to further works of art as well. Other art themes to whet the Piscean appetite include religion, seashells, the Pre-Raphaelites, chalices, and poetry.

Well, who doesn't like mermaids?

More on Venus in retrograde

The following is from the wonderful site, Mooncircles, from the most recent article by Dana Gerhardt.

Think twice before you buy the polka dotted rain boots. And I know the way your partner mispronounces certain words drives you crazy, but pause before ending the relationship just now. Recognize it's Venus talking - planet of love and all good things. Venus is in retrograde from July 27 to September 8. She's slowed way down and appears to be moving backward. This means she's been and will be traveling through the same sixteen degrees of the zodiac for approximately four months. Usually her transits are brief - bringing a gift of flowers, a smile from a stranger, a delicious meal, or a feeling of bliss for no reason. But now she's lingering in your life. Especially where the degrees between 2 Virgo and 16 Leo fall in your chart, you'll feel her influence for a while.

You may be inspired with unexpected joy or new creativity. But it may not be all sweetness and light. Venus retrograde periods can make you cranky, especially if you've been ignoring Venus in this area of your life. Her dissatisfactions must be listened to, although be cautious about acting on any sudden urges. A pent-up Venus can be a little crazy - spending money she doesn't have or saying yes when she should say no, issuing relationship ultimatums, or suddenly dying her hair bright green. Don't abandon all judgment, but pay attention to your desires. Problems with happiness, money, or relationships can emerge, but so can new solutions. This is a wonderful time to gain new perspective in the highlighted area of your life.

(The image of Venus is from the Hubble space telescope.)

Venus retrograde

In the comments to the last post, Oak reminded me that Venus is in retrograde. Here is Lynda Hill's take on what that could mean. Or, as another site sums it up, "Vibes can get really weird during this time, and a lot of people will be freaking out about relationships." Really.

I've got Venus on my mind a lot these days. She was the patroness of my journey to Turkey, and in my chart she plays a major role for the next nineteen years or so. I expect you'll be hearing more from me about that!

A pathwork of stars

"Life is either a daring adventure or it is nothing." (Helen Keller)

What you never learn from that sentimental, sanitized play, "The Miracle Worker," is that Helen Keller was a feminist, a socialist, a poet, and an activist on behalf of African-Americans, workers, and people with disabilities. Also, she had a pit bull as a companion. Ergo, she was righteous.

But I'm thinking of that famous quotation in the context of astrology. As I've said here before, I didn't take astrology seriously - nay, I scorned it, like any good humanist skeptic - until I met my teacher. In the astrology that Linda teaches and practices, each person's life becomes a mythic journey, replete with meaning and purpose. We might say that astrology provides a way of reading the text of a life, a method that reveals the sacred in each life. The natal chart is a mandala showing the patterns of the universe from a individual perspective, and providing a mythic template - a map only in the most impressionistic sense - for the life. As I study my chart, as I immerse myself in its symbols and patterns, I come to know myself better.

Right now, I'm experiencing a transition in my life where the modi operandi I've relied on for years are finally breaking down. I literally don't know how to think of myself anymore. When I'm not madly scrambling to hold onto my old patterns, habits, and ways of being, the sensation is like floating in space. I don't know what's next. I'm trying to discern the voice of my authentic being - a voice I've spend years trying to drown out with a chorus of demands. Studying my chart offers me comfort during this time, because as I see the patterns in the chart emerge in my life - however tentatively, like spring buds in the snow - I take heart. My life journey, like yours, has a mythic quality. It is a hero's journey. Even in the midst of all this muck, life has meaning. And our stories light up the night sky.

Where you are planted

When I was in the 9th grade, my best friend was an aspiring actress who was a smash as Lady Bracknell in our school's production of The Importance of Being Earnest. That spring she attended auditions for our local summer stock theater; I agreed to go along to provide moral support. (That's my official story, anyway; secretly, I wanted to audition but was terrified.) We both auditioned; I was cast, but she wasn't. Many people, according to my memory at least, were surprised by this. Our English and drama teacher attempted to comfort my friend by telling her that, "when I was a blonde, I got all the parts, too." (Or so reported my friend, who was not my friend for much longer.) The thing was, I was cast in the chorus of Wiley and the Hairy Man; in order to play a shapeshifter in a swamp, I was swathed in green burlap and rags, and green makeup, covering my head. I wasn't cast for my yellow hair alone.

I've never forgiven that teacher for saying that, or for writing in my yearbook - rather pointedly, I thought - "bloom where you are planted." (I took "and not on stage where my star pupil belongs" to be implicit in that.)

"Bloom where you are planted and not somewhere else where you don't belong." In understanding her inscription thus, I accused my teacher of wanting to limit me. But might we understand the adage another way? "BLOOM where you are planted, rather than wither on the vine or perish in your seed-shell." For much like a flowering plant, we cannot with our wills control where we are planted.

In the astrological chart, the Sabian symbol at the chart's nadir has significance. It's the pile of shit we land in when we come to earth. It's the family matrix. It's our stuff, our shit - our compost, if you're feeling positive. It's what we have to work with. As an adult I've labored for many years under the impression that I can get rid of my shit by willing it away, ignoring it, trying to bury it, being good enough, doing enough therapy, getting enlightened ... somehow. I thought the point of growing up and becoming a mature human being was to get rid of my shit. To be free from it. To outgrow it.

Turns out I was wrong.

My shit is my shit. It's what I have to work with in this lifetime. There is no uprooting. So, now, what does it mean to bloom here? In this shithole?

(My nadir is at 1 degree Leo: "A fat and normally good-natured little man of affairs is bursting with determination to have his own way." Oy. If you only knew how apt this is.)

Accepting the person I am without judgment is enormously difficult. Now I get to watch my patterns as they arise again and again: denial, depression, feeling overwhelmed. These are the places I go to out of habit. The ruts in my ego. And fear. What is the dark swirl of fear that catches me up? Where is terra firma?

Mercury

I've begun taking an astrology class with a teacher I admire utterly. I've been trying to get into her class for over a year, and I've finally managed. I'm intrigued and excited. This six-week term, we're talking about Mercury. (There he is in the picture.)

Here are some words and ideas associated with Mercury -

quicksilver / fugitive / changeable / imagination / trickster / mirror / communication / scoundrels & thieves / messenger / poisonous / morph / untrustworthy / reflector / traveller / deceitful / truth-telling liar / the poison that heals / bloodthirsty / an impudent demon

You know who that makes me think of? Spike from BtVS. (That's "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," for the uninitiated.)

My teacher said that Mercury in your chart is that part of your life you're always living, always returning to, always trying to figure out. "If you understand the person's Mercury, you understand what their life is about."

Each degree on the zodiac has a short description, a story or metaphor, attached to it. These are the Sabian symbols, and they're the keys to unlocking the meaning of the planets in your life. Our homework involves "working on" our Mercury symbols to start unlocking their meaning - through journaling, dreamwork, art, etc. My Mercury is at 24 degrees Aquarius. Its symbol is:

A man obviously of the world has turned his back on passion and is giving people a deep and undying wisdom.