I am often asked why the time of birth from a birth certificate is important. An astrological example from a memorable moment of life is a good way to illustrate the power of knowing the exact time and place of first breath. Today's post is such an example in my chart.
Venus passed over the location of my natal Moon yesterday, Dec 19. It was late, actually I should have said the transit was last night. I was going to the car to do a couple of night errands; I needed to pick up a winter jacket I had left at my customer's house Monday, the day before, and then head to the Food Lion (the one on Avent Ferry that stays open till midnight) for onions and greens etc.
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| Venus is in 3rd house (bottom left quadrant of circle) at 18°♏15' |
As I was walking to the car I called for Brownie - she'd been missing since Monday when I left for work at lunch time. She was not out front in the morn, when I got up, waiting patiently in the sun, facing the front door so she could see me when I looked out the little window. There was still no sign of her when I left for work just before 1pm. I wasn't worried, just figured that was lucky because I was running a bit late and feeling very sluggish. If she had been out front I would have been pressed to return to the house to put crunchies in her dish and fresh water in her bowl. She does occasionally skip a meal. Saturday night I was up till 4am cleaning windows to beat the coming storm. And she was in and out the whole time. Then Sunday while it rained all day she spent a lot of time inside and on my lap. It seemed natural that she would want to enjoy the clear skies after so much time in the house. She likes to lick water from the various buckets I use to catch the rain. There was a wide assortment of freshly filled buckets to taste from. So even though I didn't see her around I figured she'd be waiting for dinner when I got home from work.
It was after dark, 7:15 and pretty chilly. I missed her meeting me at the car, meowing loudly as she approached the driver's side door. Lately, she is at the foot of the driveway and wanders from one side to the other a couple of times; I stop, back up a bit and talk to her from behind the windshield, asking her to get out of the way. Ugh, wondering if I will have to put the car in park, turn off the engine and get out to move her, but no, she always crosses to the roots of the giant oak tree eventually. I pull in the driveway, park the car, and our evening conversion begins as soon as I exit with my bag of cleaning gloves, and 'cleaning uniform', an old pair of shorts and a t-shirt covered with bleach marks. We talk all the way to the mailbox and into the house. Unless it's really cold she stops at the door and waits for me to come back out with food.
On the bottom left of the chart you can see Venus; most non astrologers will recognize it as the female symbol, but don't be fooled, Venus is about much more than traditional notions of sex and gender. That pie slice is the 3rd house counting counter clockwise from the AC (ascendent). When we say Venus is in the 3rd house we are saying it is in the 3rd section of the ecliptic lined up to rise above the eastern horizon. See the Sun (little circle with dot) in the 4th house? Right now Venus is a morning 'star', it rises before the Sun, so early birds can see it in the wee hours of darkness right before daylight.
At 9:54 Tuesday night, when I found Brownie's corpse on the other side of the street, Raleigh was turning back toward the Scorpio area of the ecliptic where Venus is currently traveling. The Sun is almost finished going through Capricorn, while Venus is flyng through the second half of Scorpio.
Plato had Timeaus talk extensively about how our casual notions of up and down are very misleading. The chart makes it look like Venus will eventually (in about 6.5 hours) cross above the horizontal line, but actually, we in Raleigh are revolving toward Venus and it just looks to us like 'her' beautiful light rises up out of the sea of darkness before daybreak.
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| When we go backwards in time, by 12 minutes, we can see Sun in 5th house and Pluto in 6th. |
I do feel the loss, but writing about the detailed order of our sister planets helps enormously to keep me focused on the long haul of life. A taste of immortality does actually diminish the ache of loss and worry about failure.
So there she had probably lain, her corpse at least, since Monday morning when she did not show up for breakfast. All those times I had called her, night and day, her body was within hearing distance. But the breath of life was gone. Psyche in Greek, ruach in Hebrew.
I skooped her up in an old towel, placed her on a rug in the mudroom, it was down in the 20's last night so I was not worried about bugs yet, then I went to run my night errands with no more worries about where she was.
That's the kindness of Venus in Scorpio.
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| My natal chart showing Moon at 18°♏ 14' in the 2nd house. |
My natal Moon is 18° ♏ 14'. During the 12 minutes that I was making my mind up to pick up the jacket and go to the store, instead of putting it off till morn, Venus was passing over the place where the Moon was the moment I was born. The Moon travels at least 12° in the Zodiac every 24 hours. That means it takes about 1 minute of clock time for the Moon to travel half a minute in the Zodiac, which is about 1/120 of a degree. That's pretty specific. We're not talking about Venus being in the same sign as my natal Moon - Venus has been in Scorpio since Dec 5. That's 2 weeks. We're not even talking about the same degree. Venus right now takes about 24 hours to pass through a degree. We're talking about the 12 minutes of clock time Venus took to pass through 1/2 a minute of the Zodiac - the same 1/2 minute of arc my natal Moon passed through in just one clock minute 65 years ago.
Only by having my exact time of birth from my birth certificate could I know that last night, while I was about to find Brownie's body, Venus was moving over the same position as the Moon when I drew my first breath.
Brownie was 21 years old when she died. Though she ate and lingered around my husband as he used to sit on the front porch, noone could touch her. Her greatest fear was to be touched by us or enter the house. That was when she first appeared. She was young, but already full size. She never sprung or jumped from one place to the other. After a few years and auspicious but seemingly tragic events: she lost a litter of kittens to a predator and tried to steal another litter from the cat who left her babies in my closet to go out. I had no screen in my bedroom window, and she snuck in to nurse the babies. Only then could we touch her. Gradually over many years she came to love sitting on our lap or having her thick winter coat brushed out in the summer.
She never iniated play like a kitten. She would occasionally swat at a crumpled paper at the end of a string. Sometimes at night I would see her stalking something under the street light. But there was always something very humble, practical and uncatlike about her.
Scorpio is associated with procreation and death.
