This Sunday
at 7:50pm local time (12:50am Monday British Summer Time) Venus will enter
Virgo for just long enough to reverse course Saturday July 25 and head back
into Leo. He, Venus, will look like a
lover returning to his great muse Jupiter for one last long drink of pleasure
before entering school Oct 9. The funny
thing is the greater benific will enter school Aug 12, less than 2 weeks after
Venus comes back for their second meeting.
These are
the kinds of movements that would have generated some really good stories back
in the days when people talked about the planets like they were revered founding
members of our living family. Plato
walked a line, honoring the stories but trying to bring the public closer to
the spherical geometry of Earth turning on its tilted axis that informed
them. He was the last writer I know of
who described celestial motions with the reverence of a poetic scientist as
opposed to Delphic mystics or engineers promising results of a certain nature.
That’s a
little secret about the history of astrology and philosophy. It’s not a secret because anyone tried to
hide it, it’s just that few people who practice astrology read Plato and few
people who read Plato are familiar with the language that was taught in all
academies back in his day. That to me is
a form of social-schizophrenia. We see
this phenomenon take many forms throughout the ages. I see it every day in the struggle among my
Mexican friends for immigration rights.
They come to see the American government as their oppressor, forgetting
the wrongs done to them by the country they fled. It is natural for humans to think this
way. I suspect we tend to fight the
battle that is closest to us at the moment and ignore other complicating
factors which might weaken our sense of conviction about the drastic actions we
feel forced to take.
Now I will
share a little secret about my personal past.
It used to really bother me that I had Venus and Mars in Pisces. I wasn’t too crazy about having my Sun in a
sign passively ruled by Venus (Taurus) either.
I wanted to think of myself as a strong, masculine woman of action. For a few years I was attached to the idea of
being a macho slut. Being around
lesbians and strong older women for many years helped me understand the nuances
of what it means to be a strong woman.
The change did not happen overnight or in one victorious moment as I
wished it would, knowing better, but still, always hoping for that miraculous transformation.
That burning
desire for transformation is natural too, especially in Pisces, because the
next place we see anything in this solar system after Pisces is Aries. Without knowing anything about celestial
mechanics, most people know Aries is explosive as a rutting ram. Aries is a prolonged developmental passage for
most humans born when Venus, Mars or Sun was in Pisces. In the case of the Sun in Pisces, every
Piscean Sun can count on 30 years of Arian development, like the unwinding
spring of a clock. It’s just part of the
Piscean package.
We are not
just an incarnation of our first moment, but of our first cycles. We take our first breath in motion. It is a bit confusing for beginners to see
experienced astrologers talking about progressions after being trained with a
moment frozen in time. I imagine it is
like seeing an engine come to life after taking it apart and putting it back
together without ever witnessing what happens when volatile gas enters the
cylinders and a hidden spark is set to it.
Without progressions a human life is seen as something static, buffeted
by the moments encountered throughout life’s journey.
There must
be others, but Dane Rudyer and Plato are the only two I can think of who always
discuss the signs as steps in repeating, yet with each repetition, varying cycles. Though recipes for predictions have been
handed down based on these cycles, the philosophy of why we follow them has been
buried. Most astrologers have passed it over
in the race to satisfy the public’s craving to outwit nature. They have to compete after all with engineers
who can bring down or raise whole nations with ingenious devices.
K E D
K E D K E
D K E
D K E
D K
Last night I
celebrated Mars opposing Pluto by taking down and throwing away all the charts
on my walls. I began in the kitchen with
the charts for the end of WWII and establishment of Israel, the one for the
beginning of the Berlin Airlift; I took down the ones for St. John of the Cross
and the establishment of a monastery devoted to poverty and charity, scandalous
at the time, resulting in persecution that ruined his health; the charts for
the early Huguenot battles, the day of the Greensboro lunch counter sit-in, the
first operatic performance of Orpheus and the one for Faye Weldon. I took down the charts for the early campaign
to get pedestrians off the streets and make way for cars in the 1920’s, the annual
mass rallies of Nazi’s in post WWI Germany, the chart for Italy invading and
occupying Ethiopia. Bored yet? Maybe that’s why I took them all down.
I took the ones
in the hallway down of the Pope being named and presenting himself to the public,
Lincoln, Carl Jung, Thoreau going to jail for not paying taxes in protest of
government sanctioned slavery…
To be
honest, there were a lot of bitter thoughts going through my mind. It felt liberating to let the burden go, but
the bitterness was there that so few people seemed to care. Then I moved into my bedroom, stripped the
walls completely of all the charts and notes I taped up over the last few years
to have these ideas where I could readily see them. Charts, quotes, alphabets in Greek and
Hebrew. Then I went through my files
and threw away all but maybe 15 of the hundreds of charts I’ve saved from over
30 years of studying charts of friends and customers. I filled more than 10 bags with charts from
walls and files.
To a non
astrologer this is just one of those moments, but to me it is a manifestation
of the power of Mars. I had to keep
releasing the bitter thoughts- aside from that, the action felt good, though
rash because it was completely unanticipated.
It had never occurred to me to throw away all that had been so important
to me.
But among
the bitter thoughts there was an affirmation from the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali
that any spiritual path is just a ladder to liberation. Once we get to heaven we kick the ladder away
because we no longer need it. In Jack
and the Beanstalk the impoverished farmer steals the magic goose, returns to
Earth and chops down the stalk.
I’m getting
threatening letters from the IRS and will have to clean a few extra houses to
appease them. I have credit card debt
that I cannot pay with my current income.
As I removed all those white pages from the dark paneling in my bedroom
I surfed back through the years of study with a feeling of having found the
magic goose against all odds. It was
almost a stumbling, or at least it felt that way. I sifted through mountains of other peoples’
knowledge before the mystery that had driven me forward finally took hold of me
and gave me a smile from across the centuries like any archeologist dreams of.
Now I can go
back to cleaning houses. It is what my community
wants from me. It is what my community
is willing to pay me to do. While it may
sting, it doesn’t matter if just a few people care for just a few minutes about
what I have learned. As one friend said
of her husband’s loss of memory, “he has a very limited attention span.” The same can be said of people struggling against
all odds to survive or improve the lives of others. It doesn’t matter that I cannot make my
message more entertaining or hold the attention of my community. I have received a quieter gift, that for now fills
me with enough hope to carry on with the existence I have been given. The golden eggs of knowledge about what the
constellation myths actually refer to are my inner peace. There is no need to bring the goose down to
Earth. The giant roars and says
frightening things, but I don’t believe he will eat me.
