I'm so excited. We're coming upon my favourite day of the year - October 31. Hallowe'en!!! This is the one day of the year when I feel that I can truly be myself...witchy ho that I am. hahahaha
Pagan New Year or Samhain (pronounced sow-in). The day that marked the end of summer and the harvest and the beginning of the long, cold winter. The day in which the division between the living and the dead was paper-thin...or non-existent, depending who you ask.
Is it just me or was this Mercury Retrograde in Libra (ruled by Venus in Scorpio) some heavy stuff? We're only just into full-on Mercury Direct (at full speed). Ugh. And we won't get into new intellectual territory until October 30. Regurgitating what has come before. Sweet Lord. Just in time for All Hallow's Eve. The dark creepy crawlies are ready and waiting.
We've also got a couple of other astro events going on between now and then:
The Sun enters Scorpio tomorrow evening. Retracing and bringing to our conscious awareness what Venus and then Mars have been up to in the sign. Digging up shizzle de dizzle in our relations with others and with our soul selves.
Chiron goes direct in Aquarius October 25.
New Moon in Scorpio October 28.
And Juno (soul mate asteroid) conjoins Pluto at the 29th degree of Sagittarius on October 30.
These are some interesting times, all right.
The Juno-Pluto connection at the 29th degree of Sagittarius is especially interesting to me. If you were going to die...if death were palpable...you could smell the breath of the reaper...what would you do? WHAT...WOULD...YOU...DO??!?!
The connections being made around that time have very much to do with what you wanted to do with this lifetime - what you wanted to do before you died. The weight of cultural detritus you wanted to shed, the crystallized belief systems you wanted to be reborn from, the raw, ultimate truth for which you wanted to stand.
Your soul mates could be helping you to get to a ground zero point related to that stuff...or you could be helping them...probably a combination of the two. We are helping each other to complete what needed to be completed during Pluto in Sagittarius - the purging and regeneration of our cultural/religious/educational belief systems...our concepts of "truth."
Stripping down to only the soul-level imperatives, nothing more. Stripping the excesses of the entire Pluto in Sagittarius regime. And beyond.
Scorpio is all about purging those things that reek of death, those things that will hold us back and kill us on a soul level, drawing us into the mesmerizing black. It does this to get to vitality, to the energy and evolutionary imperatives propelling us forward.
With Chiron going direct, we are purging that which has wounded us in the past, on our way to the future. When we KNEW what was going to happen but couldn't get anyone to believe us. When we were vilified as crazy oddballs and had to see the downfall that could have been avoided, if only...
We're breaking the dynamics that hold us to that past.
With Juno involved, our current soul mates and past soul mates (ancestors) are helping us. We're the living. We're bringing about what generation after generation have desired to bring about. A world that works for everyone, in which every living thing is honoured.
Aren't we special? And honoured. We're the living, breathing ones who are releasing the horrors of the past, healing it, by bringing about a present and future we've ALL wanted to live.
A lot of responsibility, but also a lot of satisfaction if we manage it. We release generation after generation from the burden of suffering.
Sagittarius is ruled by Jupiter, which is related to the concept of luck.
But let me ask you: is it luck that brings us to this point? Or is it the vision and faith of generations? Is it the bone-wearying work of those who have come before us? Whose work we now take up and continue as our own? I'm not sure luck has all that much to do with it. More like painstaking preparation.
This Hallowe'en, let's honour the day for what it truly is. Let's remember all those who have come before us, all those whose wisdom has guided us through the dark nights of our own souls and the dark night of the collective soul. Let's fall down on our knees and thank that which has reached up through our DNA and whispered in our ears that we are loved, that we are honoured for the struggles we take up, that we are part of something bigger than just our personal lives. Let's light a candle, as so many others have, and honour this day and these people, of which we are a part.
Happy Hallowe'en.
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
And here we go...the same old arguments. Damn, Pluto...aren't you sick of this yet?
Ah, yes. Here we are, right on schedule. I received a perfect example of the leaps in logic and judgement related to this topic, folks...
It's like clockwork, yo. The same comments, put forth in the same ways...
And since I have dealt with this so many times in the past, here is the refutation, as well.
Questioning made this comment (regarding the previous post: The Secret Vs. Evolutionary Astrology):
"Neptune rules, not only illusion and denial, but also faith. You may say that the Age of Pisces, the Age of Faith is behind us, but faith, Neptune in it highest expression is never out-of-date, and never a mistake. For faith is what keeps the meek, the dispossessed, the downtrodden going. (read "Man's Search For Meaning" by Viktor Frankl and you'll get what I'm trying to say) Sooner or later, everyone needs it. I see life as a process which involves ALL the planets, interacting more or less in each of our lives; each representing a valuable psychological component of what it means to be human.Who can say what is delusion and what is tremendous faith? Who is the final judge in determining what is reality? Perhaps, for now, you choose to believe in a reality where faith is delusion, fantasy. Perhaps this is why you cannot manifest what you desire. Because you don't believe you can; because at the heart of your being, you believe in scarcity, lack, or unworthiness. I'm just suggesting this because you seem so negative about the possibility of manifesting one's dreams. It can happen, Willow. Why it works for some and not others, one can only imagine. But perhaps experiencing enough disappointments in this area is just what a person needs to clarify what it is he really wants. When what you say you want is what your soul actually wants, I think nothing can prevent its manifestation."
I understand what Neptune rules, Questioning. But what I also understand is that at the tail-end of any era, there are certain forms that reach a point of stagnation. This is what we are experiencing right now. The Age of Pisces is, for all intents and purposes, over, and the Age of Aquarius is beginning. We need to evolve Neptune's expression...
Does that mean faith is no longer necessary? Of course not. I didn't say anything remotely like that. And here is your first leap in logic.
Questioning says: "Perhaps, for now, you choose to believe in a reality where faith is delusion, fantasy."
I didn't say anything about faith being delusion or fantasy. What I said was that a delusional world view in which nothing "bad" ever happens (or if it does, it's the individual's problem for "creating it") was not a progressive or responsible thing to which to prescribe.
Insisting upon living with Neptunian blinders in a "different dimension" from the rest of the planet is not what the situation requires at the moment.
Yes, I agree, faith is what sustains most of us as human beings. But faith does not have to involve mass delusion.
Neptune relates to our spiritual guidance, our connection with the divine, yes. It doesn't have to relate to avoidance of anything that doesn't fit its preferred understanding of life. It doesn't have to involve refusing to look at material reality, at what is going on on the planet. Those are some of its expressions at tail-end Pisces, and these expressions must be brought to awareness in order to have a successful transition to Aquarius. Otherwise, we carry the problems of the past forward...blind to them.
Let me be clear! Escapism, transcendence, detaching from the problems of the planet - they all have their place. At times. And in the proper doses. But again, it's about evolving the expression and integrating all parts of the human experience/birth chart - not living in denial of the parts that don't suit us.
I'm not refuting faith here. What I'm refuting is the application of the ideology found in The Secret, and the assumptions/leaps in logic that people seem to make in that application.
Questioning says:
"Perhaps this is why you cannot manifest what you desire. Because you don't believe you can; because at the heart of your being, you believe in scarcity, lack, or unworthiness."
Second leap in logic. Who said I can't manifest what I desire? Who says I haven't or that I don't? Pretty presumptuous of you, considering you know little to nothing about me or my life. But this is the same thing many people come out with when anyone attempts to turn any kind of critical analysis or personal discernment on this subject.
I'm only saying what I'm saying because it "didn't work for me," right?
Monday, October 13, 2008
The Secret Vs. My Use of Astrology (Or Why The Secret Doesn’t Do it For Me)
In honour of Pluto going through the last degrees of Sagittarius (breaking down and transforming our belief systems and ideologies as it goes), I am reposting an old article on a subject near and dear to my heart...
So, The Secret. Hmm…
People really seem to love it, don’t they? It hit the big time. Spread like wildfire. It’s been on Oprah. Many New Age-y people seem to find that it hits the spot. They love it. Eat it up. Espouse it’s merits and talk about it to anyone who will listen. People are being trained as “Belief Repatterning Practitioners” in order to use its teachings on the general public. It’s pretty much everywhere, and people are basing their entire philosophies, their businesses, their entire ways of living, on it.
For those who don’t know, The Secret is a book (later made into a movie) talking about the Law of Attraction. The basic premise is that everything experienced in the life of a human being is something he/she has attracted into his/her life. Like attracts like. So positive thoughts attract positive events/things. Negative thoughts attract negative events/things. “We create our own reality” is the constant refrain. If we are attracting circumstances into our lives that we do not want, The Secret says, it is because we have limiting negative beliefs (that need to be “repatterned” by those Belief Repatterning people).
The Secret focuses quite a lot on "material abundance." We live in an endlessly abundant Universe, it says, and if we can visualize it, we can have it. A new car, a new home, a diamond ring, a wonderful mate - all these things can be our’s, almost instantly, if we think positively, believe we can have them and visualize them into being.
Now, I do understand the power of positive thinking and creative visualization. (So do all those positive thinking gurus from the 60s, by the way - this is not new information.) And, on a basic level, I agree that we have some role in creating the realities in which we live. It’s not so much the basic ideas The Secret is putting forth that I have a problem with, it’s the blanket applications of those ideas and the leaps in logic that so often seem to come with. There are a lot of blind spots I can see regarding how this ideology is being applied, which I will attempt to explain in this post.
I understand the Law of Attraction in theory, but this single (supposed) law is not the only law at work in our lives. The explanation that our negative and limiting beliefs are the only things keeping us from the exact lives we want is far too simplistic to me.
When I delve into my problems with this message and its application, I realize it is just not fitting with my use of astrology.
The major difference between the two is that with The Secret, what a human being wants (along with the ability to positively visualize this want into existence) is the most powerful force in his or her life. Seemingly, the only reason one would not get what one wants is that the person has "negative, limiting beliefs" holding him or herself back. (And this can possibly be remedied with Belief Repatterning Sessions.)
Using my version of astrology, the broader, soul-driven desire for a human being (connected to the situation on the planet) trumps individual, personality-related will almost every time.
My understanding of astrology works with the idea that there are specific imperatives involved in our existences, reasons for being born at the time and place that we did, specific things we are meant to do during our lifetimes and certain directions we are meant to take - and much of this we may not be 100% consciously aware of at all times. These experiences can take a number of different forms, but the themes remain pretty much the same. There are certain things we need to learn and master, certain things we need to move on from, and certain things we need to steer away from altogether. There are certain marks we need to hit. Some individuals have quite a lot of leeway (or free will) in their lives, and others have less because their life experiences must be very specific.
Within this framework, what a person wants on a conscious, personal level is not always in alignment with the broader, soul-level bird's eye view, and when it isn’t, it appears that the person is not getting what he or she wants. Rather than holding him or herself back with "limiting beliefs," the person is simply not meant to have that particular want fulfilled at that particular time. (Didn't we all learn delayed gratification when we were two years old? Maybe not.) Unfulfilled wants are most often purposeful, not simply the "fault" of the person’s limited and negative beliefs/thoughts. The broader, soul-level imperative (Pluto) is not in alignment with conscious, personal desire (Mars) at that time, and the process of “not getting what you want” is often instrumental in bringing those two things closer together - what the sign Scorpio is primarily about. I want only what is right and in my best interests within the entire context of my life on the planet.
I see this concept illustrated in the birth chart.
One example is the Moon’s Nodes. There is a North Node and a South Node in every chart. The North Node represents the path to be taken on and mastered in the lifetime. It is new and uncharted territory that can feel quite foreign and uncomfortable, but this is where the energy lies, so this is what the person must develop in order to achieve soul-level success.
The South Node relates to an area that the person has already mastered to a certain extent. It feels comfortable and familiar and is where the person often feels that his or her glory lies. But this is an area where the person can’t hang out too much. There is no glory to be relived by staying in the South Node and no new energy there, only karmic loops trying to kick the person out onto the North Node path. (There are some exceptions to this, but this is the basic concept.)
The point is that people don’t always want to take the path that is the most beneficial for them on a soul level. They don’t want to venture out of old territory and into new. The challenges that lie there aren’t things they would necessarily desire from an egoic perspective, but they are desired on an broader level related to soul-driven achievement.
Another example is Saturn. Saturn is not considered the most fun or desirable planet. It relates to an area where we take on difficult challenges - challenges that take a great deal of time and effort and skill-building. Saturn points out an area where we need to mature, grow the hell up, and get serious. An area that we need to structure and plan carefully. For illustration sake, think about your Dad standing over you making sure you study for your Grade Six final math exam when all you want to do is go outside and play. That’s Saturn. It’s something you do because it’s “for your own good.” And it (along with the Nodes) is an area that often has fear and discomfort attached. Again, this is not an area that a person would necessarily WANT to take on. It’s scary and challenging, sometimes to the extreme. But it’s something a person NEEDS to take on, for the sake of his or her personal development, not to mention broader sociological/socio-political development.
People might not understand why they aren’t getting that new car they're visualizing or that awesome new mate. The Secret would suggest they are just not believing they can have it hard enough and that they only need to change their negative beliefs, and it can be their's. But to me, this ventures into the territory of solipsism - the idea that we exist in our own little bubbles, not affected by those realities around us. It loses an element of purpose and energetic connection with people of all walks of life, not to mention any concept of a larger context for our individual lives.
An example of the context of which I’m speaking of is this: What about culture shaping our desires? What do people want in 2008 in consumer capitalist North America and why? And are all desires completely justified? Is it in the best interests of ourselves or of the planet that we all have exactly what we want when we want it? Who and what taught us to want those things? Where are the roots of our personal desires?
Personally, I don’t want to live in a world of consumer capitalists hell-bent on instant gratification who have figured out how to have exactly what they want, when they want it. I’m pretty sure we would need a few more planets if that were to happen, considering the level of excess we have been taught we deserve to have by the Market Gods.
Another example of missing context, in my opinion, is already existing power and control structures, reinforced for millenia, that people are born into. The Secret would have us believe we are all born into a completely clean slate and that it is nothing but our negative beliefs keeping us from have our every desire fulfilled. The entire discipline of sociology, especially as it relates to social stratification, would say otherwise. People are born into a broader cultural and planetary context, and that includes unjust power structures along class, sex, race, spiritual inclination, sexual preference and any number of other lines.
The real question to me that people seem to be missing is why these power and control structures are being created and why they are systemically supported and reinforced? Why are some people living overprivileged lives and others living underprivileged? Why are some living with extreme excess and others living with horrible deprivation? Why the imbalances, and how are they related? And why is none of this addressed in The Secret?
If we sever ourselves from that energetic connection (that my life might have something to do with your life and vice versa), we start to look at things in an extremely individualistic and, again, solipsistic, way. We lose sense of any responsibility to our fellow human being and it’s just another race to the material manifestation (or spiritual materialist) finish line. At that point, you can disconnect yourself from the suffering of others on the planet because they are “creating their own reality” and you are creating your’s. We can blame other people (and ourselves) for negative experiences/circumstances and turn a blind eye to the other forces at work in their creation.
Of course there is a level of individual responsibility that must be taken regarding life's cirumstances. But let's not take that individuality to an extreme. Let's not make it the only aspect of reality.
And let's not pretend that the reality that one person "creates" doesn't affect the realities of others, especially when that person holds a great deal of wealth, political connection and power. George Bush, Jr.'s reality of "terror against America," for example, has affected the realities of everyone on this planet. Let's not turn a blind eye to the fact that systemic realities, reinforced through ideology and mass belief systems, affect the reality of each individual greatly.
So many times, I’ve heard from people espousing this theory: “That isn’t in my reality.” The judgement goes that once you reach a certain level of “enlightenment” (IE. that person’s level), you will no longer experience anything “negative” or upsetting at all.
This isn’t how life on Earth actually exists. Positive and negative are charges that co-exist in nature. They're yin and yang. You can’t get rid of negative by denying it exists in “your reality.”
The idea that positive creates more positive and more positive and more positive, and that anyone experiencing a “negative” situation is simply bringing it on him or herself is simply not true. Positive and negative seek to create balance, neutralizing the excesses of both. To me, opposites attract more often than like attracting like. So people who insist on experiencing only “positive” are actually creating a by-product of excessive “negative” for someone else to experience - usually someone with a "can't deny reality" signature like a strong Pluto or a lot of Scorpio.
Again, energetic connection of realities. My choices affect your choices and vice versa. As long as some people refuse to look at the supposedly "dark and negative" realities of human experience and explain them away with all sorts of justifications, they are leaving a disproportionate amount of that awareness to be carried by those who cannot refuse their existence.
As long as we look the other way and pretend things like poverty, classism, racism, sexism, abuse of power, violence, etc. etc. do not exist in “our dimension,” or that people are creating these realities strictly on a personal level through “negative, limiting beliefs,” it leaves those aspects of life free to come out in ever more excessive, disturbing and unconscious ways.
I think the use of radioactive weapons is a perfect example of how the choices or "realities" of the few affect us all, whether we want to admit it.
We have to look at this stuff directly, address it directly. There is nowhere to transcend to - it’s all right here, right in front of us, asking for us to take notice.
In 2008, there are too many manufactured wants being created by consumer capitalism and not enough responsibility being taken for what is desired/created - not to mention, often, an absence of spiritual discipline and understanding to guide the manifestation process. To me, the world The Secret is attempting to create is not one I desire to inhabit.
So maybe you aren’t getting that ocean-view bungalow in Hawaii that you’re attempting to manifest. But you know what? Maybe the world doesn’t need another person isolated in the wilds of Hawaii, lost in meditation. Maybe the world needs you right where you are, doing what you’re doing.
So, The Secret. Hmm…
People really seem to love it, don’t they? It hit the big time. Spread like wildfire. It’s been on Oprah. Many New Age-y people seem to find that it hits the spot. They love it. Eat it up. Espouse it’s merits and talk about it to anyone who will listen. People are being trained as “Belief Repatterning Practitioners” in order to use its teachings on the general public. It’s pretty much everywhere, and people are basing their entire philosophies, their businesses, their entire ways of living, on it.
For those who don’t know, The Secret is a book (later made into a movie) talking about the Law of Attraction. The basic premise is that everything experienced in the life of a human being is something he/she has attracted into his/her life. Like attracts like. So positive thoughts attract positive events/things. Negative thoughts attract negative events/things. “We create our own reality” is the constant refrain. If we are attracting circumstances into our lives that we do not want, The Secret says, it is because we have limiting negative beliefs (that need to be “repatterned” by those Belief Repatterning people).
The Secret focuses quite a lot on "material abundance." We live in an endlessly abundant Universe, it says, and if we can visualize it, we can have it. A new car, a new home, a diamond ring, a wonderful mate - all these things can be our’s, almost instantly, if we think positively, believe we can have them and visualize them into being.
Now, I do understand the power of positive thinking and creative visualization. (So do all those positive thinking gurus from the 60s, by the way - this is not new information.) And, on a basic level, I agree that we have some role in creating the realities in which we live. It’s not so much the basic ideas The Secret is putting forth that I have a problem with, it’s the blanket applications of those ideas and the leaps in logic that so often seem to come with. There are a lot of blind spots I can see regarding how this ideology is being applied, which I will attempt to explain in this post.
I understand the Law of Attraction in theory, but this single (supposed) law is not the only law at work in our lives. The explanation that our negative and limiting beliefs are the only things keeping us from the exact lives we want is far too simplistic to me.
When I delve into my problems with this message and its application, I realize it is just not fitting with my use of astrology.
The major difference between the two is that with The Secret, what a human being wants (along with the ability to positively visualize this want into existence) is the most powerful force in his or her life. Seemingly, the only reason one would not get what one wants is that the person has "negative, limiting beliefs" holding him or herself back. (And this can possibly be remedied with Belief Repatterning Sessions.)
Using my version of astrology, the broader, soul-driven desire for a human being (connected to the situation on the planet) trumps individual, personality-related will almost every time.
My understanding of astrology works with the idea that there are specific imperatives involved in our existences, reasons for being born at the time and place that we did, specific things we are meant to do during our lifetimes and certain directions we are meant to take - and much of this we may not be 100% consciously aware of at all times. These experiences can take a number of different forms, but the themes remain pretty much the same. There are certain things we need to learn and master, certain things we need to move on from, and certain things we need to steer away from altogether. There are certain marks we need to hit. Some individuals have quite a lot of leeway (or free will) in their lives, and others have less because their life experiences must be very specific.
Within this framework, what a person wants on a conscious, personal level is not always in alignment with the broader, soul-level bird's eye view, and when it isn’t, it appears that the person is not getting what he or she wants. Rather than holding him or herself back with "limiting beliefs," the person is simply not meant to have that particular want fulfilled at that particular time. (Didn't we all learn delayed gratification when we were two years old? Maybe not.) Unfulfilled wants are most often purposeful, not simply the "fault" of the person’s limited and negative beliefs/thoughts. The broader, soul-level imperative (Pluto) is not in alignment with conscious, personal desire (Mars) at that time, and the process of “not getting what you want” is often instrumental in bringing those two things closer together - what the sign Scorpio is primarily about. I want only what is right and in my best interests within the entire context of my life on the planet.
I see this concept illustrated in the birth chart.
One example is the Moon’s Nodes. There is a North Node and a South Node in every chart. The North Node represents the path to be taken on and mastered in the lifetime. It is new and uncharted territory that can feel quite foreign and uncomfortable, but this is where the energy lies, so this is what the person must develop in order to achieve soul-level success.
The South Node relates to an area that the person has already mastered to a certain extent. It feels comfortable and familiar and is where the person often feels that his or her glory lies. But this is an area where the person can’t hang out too much. There is no glory to be relived by staying in the South Node and no new energy there, only karmic loops trying to kick the person out onto the North Node path. (There are some exceptions to this, but this is the basic concept.)
The point is that people don’t always want to take the path that is the most beneficial for them on a soul level. They don’t want to venture out of old territory and into new. The challenges that lie there aren’t things they would necessarily desire from an egoic perspective, but they are desired on an broader level related to soul-driven achievement.
Another example is Saturn. Saturn is not considered the most fun or desirable planet. It relates to an area where we take on difficult challenges - challenges that take a great deal of time and effort and skill-building. Saturn points out an area where we need to mature, grow the hell up, and get serious. An area that we need to structure and plan carefully. For illustration sake, think about your Dad standing over you making sure you study for your Grade Six final math exam when all you want to do is go outside and play. That’s Saturn. It’s something you do because it’s “for your own good.” And it (along with the Nodes) is an area that often has fear and discomfort attached. Again, this is not an area that a person would necessarily WANT to take on. It’s scary and challenging, sometimes to the extreme. But it’s something a person NEEDS to take on, for the sake of his or her personal development, not to mention broader sociological/socio-political development.
People might not understand why they aren’t getting that new car they're visualizing or that awesome new mate. The Secret would suggest they are just not believing they can have it hard enough and that they only need to change their negative beliefs, and it can be their's. But to me, this ventures into the territory of solipsism - the idea that we exist in our own little bubbles, not affected by those realities around us. It loses an element of purpose and energetic connection with people of all walks of life, not to mention any concept of a larger context for our individual lives.
An example of the context of which I’m speaking of is this: What about culture shaping our desires? What do people want in 2008 in consumer capitalist North America and why? And are all desires completely justified? Is it in the best interests of ourselves or of the planet that we all have exactly what we want when we want it? Who and what taught us to want those things? Where are the roots of our personal desires?
Personally, I don’t want to live in a world of consumer capitalists hell-bent on instant gratification who have figured out how to have exactly what they want, when they want it. I’m pretty sure we would need a few more planets if that were to happen, considering the level of excess we have been taught we deserve to have by the Market Gods.
Another example of missing context, in my opinion, is already existing power and control structures, reinforced for millenia, that people are born into. The Secret would have us believe we are all born into a completely clean slate and that it is nothing but our negative beliefs keeping us from have our every desire fulfilled. The entire discipline of sociology, especially as it relates to social stratification, would say otherwise. People are born into a broader cultural and planetary context, and that includes unjust power structures along class, sex, race, spiritual inclination, sexual preference and any number of other lines.
The real question to me that people seem to be missing is why these power and control structures are being created and why they are systemically supported and reinforced? Why are some people living overprivileged lives and others living underprivileged? Why are some living with extreme excess and others living with horrible deprivation? Why the imbalances, and how are they related? And why is none of this addressed in The Secret?
If we sever ourselves from that energetic connection (that my life might have something to do with your life and vice versa), we start to look at things in an extremely individualistic and, again, solipsistic, way. We lose sense of any responsibility to our fellow human being and it’s just another race to the material manifestation (or spiritual materialist) finish line. At that point, you can disconnect yourself from the suffering of others on the planet because they are “creating their own reality” and you are creating your’s. We can blame other people (and ourselves) for negative experiences/circumstances and turn a blind eye to the other forces at work in their creation.
Of course there is a level of individual responsibility that must be taken regarding life's cirumstances. But let's not take that individuality to an extreme. Let's not make it the only aspect of reality.
And let's not pretend that the reality that one person "creates" doesn't affect the realities of others, especially when that person holds a great deal of wealth, political connection and power. George Bush, Jr.'s reality of "terror against America," for example, has affected the realities of everyone on this planet. Let's not turn a blind eye to the fact that systemic realities, reinforced through ideology and mass belief systems, affect the reality of each individual greatly.
So many times, I’ve heard from people espousing this theory: “That isn’t in my reality.” The judgement goes that once you reach a certain level of “enlightenment” (IE. that person’s level), you will no longer experience anything “negative” or upsetting at all.
This isn’t how life on Earth actually exists. Positive and negative are charges that co-exist in nature. They're yin and yang. You can’t get rid of negative by denying it exists in “your reality.”
The idea that positive creates more positive and more positive and more positive, and that anyone experiencing a “negative” situation is simply bringing it on him or herself is simply not true. Positive and negative seek to create balance, neutralizing the excesses of both. To me, opposites attract more often than like attracting like. So people who insist on experiencing only “positive” are actually creating a by-product of excessive “negative” for someone else to experience - usually someone with a "can't deny reality" signature like a strong Pluto or a lot of Scorpio.
Again, energetic connection of realities. My choices affect your choices and vice versa. As long as some people refuse to look at the supposedly "dark and negative" realities of human experience and explain them away with all sorts of justifications, they are leaving a disproportionate amount of that awareness to be carried by those who cannot refuse their existence.
As long as we look the other way and pretend things like poverty, classism, racism, sexism, abuse of power, violence, etc. etc. do not exist in “our dimension,” or that people are creating these realities strictly on a personal level through “negative, limiting beliefs,” it leaves those aspects of life free to come out in ever more excessive, disturbing and unconscious ways.
I think the use of radioactive weapons is a perfect example of how the choices or "realities" of the few affect us all, whether we want to admit it.
We have to look at this stuff directly, address it directly. There is nowhere to transcend to - it’s all right here, right in front of us, asking for us to take notice.
In 2008, there are too many manufactured wants being created by consumer capitalism and not enough responsibility being taken for what is desired/created - not to mention, often, an absence of spiritual discipline and understanding to guide the manifestation process. To me, the world The Secret is attempting to create is not one I desire to inhabit.
So maybe you aren’t getting that ocean-view bungalow in Hawaii that you’re attempting to manifest. But you know what? Maybe the world doesn’t need another person isolated in the wilds of Hawaii, lost in meditation. Maybe the world needs you right where you are, doing what you’re doing.
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
Venus in Scorpio, I Love Your Hardcore Ass! And Yet, You Make Me Want To Die...
Disclaimer: This is a personal post, so if you're not down with that, please don't read further...)
So I'm one of those lucky, lucky people with a Scorpio stellium. (A stellium is three or more planets in one sign.) There are a lot of us out there, and we all pretty much feel each other's pain because we're the people who can never deny the dark and twisted elements of human experience. We see through the glossy, personality veneer right to the soul, right to the denied parts that people try to cover up and pretend don't exist. We see through the song-and-dance right to the hidden motivations of each individual we come into contact with. We know what they want from us and see the ways they're not being straight about getting it.
Basically, we can tell who's full of shit right from the get go.
(People without a stellium in Scorp can also live these phenomena - any of the personal planets in Scorp would do it, a strongly placed/aspected Pluto or bodies in the 8th house, etc.)
Unlike other people, we can't pretend we don't know about this stuff. We can't pretend that we don't know you're trying to manipulate us. We can't pretend we don't see you doing the wrong thing and getting rewarded for it, gaining power from it. We can't turn a blind eye when we see you sucking other people dry and using their energy for personal gain.
If we try to look the other way, it makes us weak and sick and attracts all kinds of hell-type karmic experiences until we finally give in and live what we know to be true. Basically, we get bitten in the ass and energetically exhausted so many times from being dragged into hideous situations that we have to look this shit right in the eye and live with it as a prime motivator for our own actions.
This is also why most Plutonic/Scorpionic-types can't stand the current "everything has to be happy, happy and positive" propaganda in the pseudo-spiritual circles. Scorpio knows negative and positive, light and dark, co-exist. They are yin and yang. To deny the dark and negative is to deny the realities of life. And it's this denial that actually gives the dark free rein to come out in ugly, twisted, unconscious ways - ways that can then be even further denied!
When the masses insist that the dark doesn't exist, or that it doesn't exist IN THEM, it leaves a disproportionate amount of dark and ugly for the people who can't refuse its existence. In other words, it's just not fair, not balanced, when people refuse to accept and integrate the reality of light and dark co-existing. When people refuse to take responsibility for conscious awareness of the darker aspects of life and self, they leave a very skewed reality for those who know otherwise and can't bury their heads in the sand.
At this time of the year, as we slide from "keeping it all socially nicey nice" Libra to "I'd rather die than live like this" Scorpio, some ugly shit is bound to be spun off and into conscious awareness.
Venus and Mars are currently in Scorpio. The Sun will be there in a couple of weeks, and the currently retrograde Mercury in Libra is ruled by Venus in Scorpio.
So wherever Scorpio is in your chart, this is the area being rooted around in by Scorpio planets right now.
But for me, it's Venus and Mars in Scorpio all year round! Lucky me.
Whatever house a stellium is in is the area of life where the themes of the sign(s) involved will be prevalent. For me, the Scorpio stellium is in the 4th house. A placement that makes family, home, roots, inner, emotional world and early life areas where this dark, twisted, hellish bullshit comes to the forefront. Stuff that is being brought to conscious awareness and regenerated for the collective, not just for me, personally, I might add.
So true to form, I learned some extremely hurtful information a few days ago about what one side of my family truly thinks about me. It's always a betrayal to find out that people have been talking shit about you, especially when it's your own family and especially when what's being said is false - just mudslinging designed to denigrate my character. But it's always best to know exactly what people's underlying concept of you is - especially when it's mostly a fabrication. Says more about them than it does about you, actually.
Mercury is retrograde, so the information I got was slightly off, but it led to the root of the issue, which was this side of the family constantly treating me like a second class citizen, talking behind my back and running me down, making derogatory comments with insidious tones in my presence. And inviting me to their family gatherings just so they'd have more fodder.
Their view of me is connected to my Chiron in Taurus placement.
Let's just say there are themes, among others, of not having myself or my contributions valued or appreciated by the mainstream business world, and consequently, often not being paid well for the work I do. It is an aspect that leads to being invisible or treated badly in the public world, to not achieving what the mainstream thinks you should achieve, to not being considered a valuable member of the mainstream hierarchy because you just don't fit in. It's about your own personal values not being the same as most other people's or the same as those of the traditional hierarchical structures. Never having the safe, secure career path because you are working within the structures for change and justice, not to maintain the status quo. Not having the material rewards or recognition that others have because you can't use money or public prestige as your prime motivators. Doing spiritual/emotional/energetic work that is not recognized or valued by the current structures or often by other people. It's being compelled to do the work you do, reward or not, because you know it has to be done and because there aren't too damn many other people who would take it on and then be shit on for it. Because, as I said in the October update, most people don't like being around Scorpio energy at work and eventually try to get rid of it - even though it's necessary, now more than ever.
Anyway, I've always had to deal with these issues. As many people experience, my family thought they knew better than I how I should live my life. They always treated my work as if it were a triviality, pushing me into getting a corporate office job or marrying rich (using the Scorpio part of the polarity).
What they could never accept was that a corporate office job would be death to me - literally. (As would marrying strictly for money.) I have a very specific life path. I'm not here just to go along with the crap I see going on and collect my paycheque. I'm here to do the work that I consider important to change things, and it doesn't matter a good Goddamn if anyone else thinks it's important. I know it is.
As I said before, with a Scorpio stellium, I see things other people don't. And I'm compelled to act in ways that other people are not.
I know what I've done during my time on the planet. I know what I've done spiritually/energetically. I know the changes I've initiated, from the time I was 13 years old in small-town Saskatchewan until now. And I know that my work has been absolutely priceless - whether other people know it is not really my concern.
Although it does hurt (Chiron) not to be recognized or paid well for what I do, that doesn't make the work less valuable, and it doesn't make me less valuable as a person. It doesn't mean I'm wasting my education or my life.
If my family (or anyone else) doesn't know that, that's their problem. Short-sighted people, these...
So thank-you, Scorpio. I've been working on this stuff for years (since birth? longer?), and you finally gave me the proof I need and the strength I need to sever unhealthy dynamics in my life related to these family members. The thorn finally came out, and we got it all out. I'll no longer be connecting to a source of enervating poison out of an outdated understanding of what family is. I don't have to accept this treatment from anyone.
And thank-you because now I don't have to sit through their Goddamn bullshit Thanksgiving meal dodging their toxic barbs!!! Woo-hoo!!
Now that's something to be thankful for.
So I'm one of those lucky, lucky people with a Scorpio stellium. (A stellium is three or more planets in one sign.) There are a lot of us out there, and we all pretty much feel each other's pain because we're the people who can never deny the dark and twisted elements of human experience. We see through the glossy, personality veneer right to the soul, right to the denied parts that people try to cover up and pretend don't exist. We see through the song-and-dance right to the hidden motivations of each individual we come into contact with. We know what they want from us and see the ways they're not being straight about getting it.
Basically, we can tell who's full of shit right from the get go.
(People without a stellium in Scorp can also live these phenomena - any of the personal planets in Scorp would do it, a strongly placed/aspected Pluto or bodies in the 8th house, etc.)
Unlike other people, we can't pretend we don't know about this stuff. We can't pretend that we don't know you're trying to manipulate us. We can't pretend we don't see you doing the wrong thing and getting rewarded for it, gaining power from it. We can't turn a blind eye when we see you sucking other people dry and using their energy for personal gain.
If we try to look the other way, it makes us weak and sick and attracts all kinds of hell-type karmic experiences until we finally give in and live what we know to be true. Basically, we get bitten in the ass and energetically exhausted so many times from being dragged into hideous situations that we have to look this shit right in the eye and live with it as a prime motivator for our own actions.
This is also why most Plutonic/Scorpionic-types can't stand the current "everything has to be happy, happy and positive" propaganda in the pseudo-spiritual circles. Scorpio knows negative and positive, light and dark, co-exist. They are yin and yang. To deny the dark and negative is to deny the realities of life. And it's this denial that actually gives the dark free rein to come out in ugly, twisted, unconscious ways - ways that can then be even further denied!
When the masses insist that the dark doesn't exist, or that it doesn't exist IN THEM, it leaves a disproportionate amount of dark and ugly for the people who can't refuse its existence. In other words, it's just not fair, not balanced, when people refuse to accept and integrate the reality of light and dark co-existing. When people refuse to take responsibility for conscious awareness of the darker aspects of life and self, they leave a very skewed reality for those who know otherwise and can't bury their heads in the sand.
At this time of the year, as we slide from "keeping it all socially nicey nice" Libra to "I'd rather die than live like this" Scorpio, some ugly shit is bound to be spun off and into conscious awareness.
Venus and Mars are currently in Scorpio. The Sun will be there in a couple of weeks, and the currently retrograde Mercury in Libra is ruled by Venus in Scorpio.
So wherever Scorpio is in your chart, this is the area being rooted around in by Scorpio planets right now.
But for me, it's Venus and Mars in Scorpio all year round! Lucky me.
Whatever house a stellium is in is the area of life where the themes of the sign(s) involved will be prevalent. For me, the Scorpio stellium is in the 4th house. A placement that makes family, home, roots, inner, emotional world and early life areas where this dark, twisted, hellish bullshit comes to the forefront. Stuff that is being brought to conscious awareness and regenerated for the collective, not just for me, personally, I might add.
So true to form, I learned some extremely hurtful information a few days ago about what one side of my family truly thinks about me. It's always a betrayal to find out that people have been talking shit about you, especially when it's your own family and especially when what's being said is false - just mudslinging designed to denigrate my character. But it's always best to know exactly what people's underlying concept of you is - especially when it's mostly a fabrication. Says more about them than it does about you, actually.
Mercury is retrograde, so the information I got was slightly off, but it led to the root of the issue, which was this side of the family constantly treating me like a second class citizen, talking behind my back and running me down, making derogatory comments with insidious tones in my presence. And inviting me to their family gatherings just so they'd have more fodder.
Their view of me is connected to my Chiron in Taurus placement.
Let's just say there are themes, among others, of not having myself or my contributions valued or appreciated by the mainstream business world, and consequently, often not being paid well for the work I do. It is an aspect that leads to being invisible or treated badly in the public world, to not achieving what the mainstream thinks you should achieve, to not being considered a valuable member of the mainstream hierarchy because you just don't fit in. It's about your own personal values not being the same as most other people's or the same as those of the traditional hierarchical structures. Never having the safe, secure career path because you are working within the structures for change and justice, not to maintain the status quo. Not having the material rewards or recognition that others have because you can't use money or public prestige as your prime motivators. Doing spiritual/emotional/energetic work that is not recognized or valued by the current structures or often by other people. It's being compelled to do the work you do, reward or not, because you know it has to be done and because there aren't too damn many other people who would take it on and then be shit on for it. Because, as I said in the October update, most people don't like being around Scorpio energy at work and eventually try to get rid of it - even though it's necessary, now more than ever.
Anyway, I've always had to deal with these issues. As many people experience, my family thought they knew better than I how I should live my life. They always treated my work as if it were a triviality, pushing me into getting a corporate office job or marrying rich (using the Scorpio part of the polarity).
What they could never accept was that a corporate office job would be death to me - literally. (As would marrying strictly for money.) I have a very specific life path. I'm not here just to go along with the crap I see going on and collect my paycheque. I'm here to do the work that I consider important to change things, and it doesn't matter a good Goddamn if anyone else thinks it's important. I know it is.
As I said before, with a Scorpio stellium, I see things other people don't. And I'm compelled to act in ways that other people are not.
I know what I've done during my time on the planet. I know what I've done spiritually/energetically. I know the changes I've initiated, from the time I was 13 years old in small-town Saskatchewan until now. And I know that my work has been absolutely priceless - whether other people know it is not really my concern.
Although it does hurt (Chiron) not to be recognized or paid well for what I do, that doesn't make the work less valuable, and it doesn't make me less valuable as a person. It doesn't mean I'm wasting my education or my life.
If my family (or anyone else) doesn't know that, that's their problem. Short-sighted people, these...
So thank-you, Scorpio. I've been working on this stuff for years (since birth? longer?), and you finally gave me the proof I need and the strength I need to sever unhealthy dynamics in my life related to these family members. The thorn finally came out, and we got it all out. I'll no longer be connecting to a source of enervating poison out of an outdated understanding of what family is. I don't have to accept this treatment from anyone.
And thank-you because now I don't have to sit through their Goddamn bullshit Thanksgiving meal dodging their toxic barbs!!! Woo-hoo!!
Now that's something to be thankful for.
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
Willow's October 2008 Astro Perspective
Man, I'm a rockstar. Here's the monthly update...on time! And after a hellish five days of packing, moving, cleaning, unpacking, painting, more cleaning and still the astrology is flowing like water. heh heh
This month, we will be striving with all our ability to find our equilibrium, attempting to find a neutral point between the wild events of September and those yet to come in November. This is always the case with Libra energy (where the Sun will be for most of the month and the currently retrograding Mercury will be until November 4), but Libra's refined airiness and awareness of beauty are needed more than ever at this point to give us a moment to breathe, to give us something lovely to inspire us through some bumpy channels.
Libra is the sign where we attempt to achieve balance, equilibrium, and peace - sweet, sweet, peace - if only for a moment. As fleeting as they seem to be, peace is Libra’s goal, its directive. It is the sign of partnership and relationship, where we are constantly existing in relation to and acting accordingly.
As I said in the September Astro Perspective, Libra energy has its work cut out for it at the moment. We’ve got a lot to balance, a lot piled on the scales and only more to come, it seems. The scales are working hard, correcting where necessary, swinging wildly up and down at times. We just think we’ve gotten it together, a moment to relax (which Libra, ruled by Venus, loves to do most of all), when something else gets added to the pile and we’re forced to take yet another angle into consideration, to rebalance.
Libra is driven for justice, and it just wouldn’t do to leave something or someone out who should be taken into the fold. That wouldn’t be fair. True harmony, true peace (and the peace of mind that comes with it) can only come when we have left nothing out, when every piece gets its say and its consideration. Bringing many disparate elements together into one beautiful, harmonious tone.
But of course, this is not as easy as it looks. Getting a ragtag group of human beings who all sing in different languages, who all have different levels of experience, all singing in harmony, seeing the beauty in each other and enjoying being together. Libra is one harried choir director at times.
Which brings us to the other parts of Libra and Venus, the parts that are sometimes glossed over and that is the strife and battle and discord that exist on our way to finding that harmony.
This month, the Sun in Libra and retrograding Mercury in Libra are ruled by Venus in Scorpio, making it a very strong influence. Venus isn’t ever-so happy in Scorpio, but nonetheless, she will do her job here. She would rather keep things lovely, smiley and beautiful, but in Scorpio, we're faced with both sides of the coin. We understand that our relations with other people contain ugly things as well as beautiful, and that we have to see the dark parts of our relations with others in order to bring them to light.
Scorpio knows that superficial, surface-level peace will never last. Whatever we leave hidden and neglected will eventually come out in nasty, indirect ways to undermine the peace and harmony in our relationships. It drives us to the root, to the very centre, to see what’s REALLY going on underneath it all, so that we can break underlying dynamics that are holding us in a places where we don’t want to be. Also so we can intuitively recognize and merge with those who will strengthen our ability to reach our soul’s directives - both personal and collective - without dragging a bunch of detritus along with us that will smother the alchemical flame guiding us through.
Scorpio shows us the dark parts to bring about awareness of them, so that we can choose wisely when it comes to merging our precious energies with another. So that we don’t walk blindly into situations and relationships designed to give us karmic bites in the ass.
As the balance shifts from Libra energy to Scorpio throughout the month, things take on a depth and an intensity. A “do or die” quality. We are driven to tunnel, tunnel, tunnel right to the core of what is going on in our relations with others and root out what we know in our guts is rotten. Scorpio, ruled by Pluto and Mars, is about bottom-line reality. Whatever can’t morph into something better and stronger, more adapted to what is going on right now, will die, plain and simple. This means in our relationships, our lives, our selves. Any part of the cocoon that threatens to catch and contain our butterfly wings has to go, with little to no sentimentality. Why attach ourselves to something that will hold us back, smother us, kill us? This is what Scorpio energy teaches. To cut ourselves out of that which will eventually collapse us, to trust our intuition to nip it in the bud and to move directly to a new force field that will hold us in a mutually beneficial orbit as we continue to unfold.
Scorpio understands intuitively what needs to be done and sets a goal, directed by the soul - often a complicated, multi-layered, emotionally and/or energetically dangerous goal. And it does not give up until that goal is reached or until it is “told” that to continue would bring it closer to destruction than abandoning the goal.
Scorpio energy can see things no one else can. It sees what no one else will. Will. That’s the word. Scorpio is the place where the will of nature/of the universe and personal will join forces, merging into one direction. To ignore the directives of the soul is to die, either literally or figuratively. To refuse to root out what is rotten is to choose to infect everything. Nothing can be right until this is right. That’s what Scorpio knows. It knows it would rather die than leave things as they are. It knows it is already dead if things are left as they are.
So much talk about death. But this is a Scorpionic subject. To die a million deaths before the physical death. To say goodbye to multitudes of versions of self, relationship, life. To shed a million cocoons, all that is done, to get to the fresh, raw strength of the emerging soul-driven path. And to have the otherworldly Plutonic drive to continue, against all odds, to face deeper and deeper, at times darker and darker, realities. Intricate and intimate. Complex. To burn through an amount of energetic detritus that would be unimaginable to someone without the guidance of that alchemical flame, ridding us of the garbage that threatens to clog up the works and screw us over.
It is to this end that Scorpio energy does its work, so that it can lay the very purest of matter on Libra’s scales. So that the shifts in balance that are made are only the necessary ones. The upsets of the scales are as minimal as possible. Nothing laden in the energetic tar of the past.
This is why Plutonic people sometimes creep other people out. They are driven by something unseen, something not understood by people looking from the outside. Plutonic people must follow the directives of the soul, from the gut, bringing things to light that most people would avoid looking at. Severing unhealthy dynamics as they go, freeing the energy up for new growth, and going deeper than most people care to go. It can be seen as an obsession by other people. But when one understands that it is a case of: do it or perish. there is nothing else to be done.
What Scorpio energy does can also be seen as not very nice (which is why Libra takes issue with it at times). It often doesn’t feel too great to have a Scorpionic surgeon dicing energetic dynamics up around you or within you. But it's necessary. Scorpio energy triggers in us an awareness of what needs to come out and what needs to be purged completely. It triggers an alchemical process where we have to look into the depths of ourselves and our lives to see what is not in integrity and to see old energetic patterns that we fall into and continue unaware. Places where we’ve been fooling ourselves, where we haven’t gone deep enough, where we haven't truly looked reality in the face. In Scorpionic interactions (which will be coming up with Venus in Scorpio), the relationship dynamics make each person aware of certain dynamics that are past their usefulness.
We can be repulsed by what we see during this process, blaming the person who did the triggering. (This is a dynamic that goes on all the time - as Scorpionic/Plutonic people know all too well.) Not so comfortable.
Too much Plutonic energy is poison. Best to take only as much as you need, nothing more.
This is a hard lesson that most Plutonic people have to learn - that some people find being around them a medicine taken best in small, maybe even tiny, maybe even microscopic, doses - or not at all. But once one understands that it's the process being triggered that people find distasteful, it’s possible not to take it personally - sort of.
Scorpio and Pluto go beyond the personal ego. The process trumps social niceties. But it still smarts at times.
Note: “Plutonic” people are what I would call anyone who has these similar drives for getting to the core of the matter, bringing hidden or neglected parts of reality to awareness - planets/placements in Scorpio, aspects to natal Pluto, bodies in the 8th house, and such.
As I said, our Mercury in Libra retrograde this month is ruled by Venus in Scorpio until Venus enters Sagittarius on October 18th.
The Sun in Libra is also ruled by Venus in Scorpio until it enters Scorpio itself on October 22.
Mars enters Scorpio October 3 and is there into November. (Note a pile-up of consequences for any passive-aggressive tendencies/Libra avoidance techniques as Mars passes through the last degrees of Libra before entering Scorpio. October 1 - 3)
So these Libra - Scorpio themes are prevalent.
What we’re leading up to this month is a big month in November. We’re getting our bearings, doing the prep work, so that we can navigate these energies.
There are two big things going on in November (which I will, of course, write about in November’s Astro Perspective):
First, Saturn in Virgo opposes Uranus in Pisces for the first time since the 60s. Saturn rules our concrete material structures (how things are set up) and Uranus rules revolution. Hmm…sounds about right. The current structures of our material world are about to get a shake up.
Saturn will be opposing Uranus’ freewheeling, future-oriented, slightly erratic, nothing-to-hold-onto-but-the-vision-of-where-we're-going, revolutionary, maverick spirit. And Uranus will be opposing Saturn’s traditional, tried-and-true, conservative, for-our-own-good limitations, restrictions and concrete structures.
Material structural readjustment related to a new understanding and vision of things to come. But also making sure that our revolutionary vision is grounded, that it has legs. That it is practically applied and will really take root within the material and build there - not just stay on the fringes as fluffy, pie-in-the-sky ideas from a bunch of drug-addled burn-outs. (No offense to drug-addled burn-outs, but this is a time when we really have to stay in reality” to bring it to the people - especially those people in suits and SUVs.)
A leap of faith into the future, but one concrete and common sense enough to appeal to more conservative minds.
The last time Saturn and Uranus opposed each other was in the 1960s, so you can see where this is heading. Think of the upheaval of those times that brought strides for humanity - civil rights, women’s rights, anti-war, etc.
But at the same time, the wave of revolutionary spirit didn’t go far enough. The mainstream Baby Boomers got caught up in material trappings and the ego glorification of being the person with the biggest and best.
So now is a chance to continue what began then, to go farther, hopefully to go as far as we need to go. To make the revolution structural, to come in from the fringes and really affect the mainstream flow.
The second big event in November is Pluto moving through the final degree of Sagittarius and heading into Capricorn November 27. Here is the transformation of allllllll our material structures and our understanding of success, prestige and importance on a public level. This is why it is crucial that we take this step-by-step, to really give it lasting impact.
Anyway, that’s next month. But as nothing exists in a vacuum, we have to see October as leading up to that. This is why the Scorpio energy is insisting that everything be put on the table. We have to be real now. It’s imperative to our survival as human beings on Planet Earth. We have to see through the shellaced smiles of those attempting to lead us somewhere our gut tells us we don’t want to go - not only in politics but in our personal lives. The personal is political.
We have to look for motivation - a big thing for Scorpio. What is the root motivation? If it’s something you can get behind, good stuff. If you get a little sick feeling in your stomach, no matter how slight, listen to it and take action, even if it seems like drastic action - action that no one but a Plutonic person would understand. The Mars influence on Scorpio means we often don’t know why we don’t like something or someone. We just don’t. We can sense we don’t agree with the root motivation or that we are being somehow manipulated. We just might not know the particulars in the moment because they’re somehow hidden to us. Here, we have to act on instinct, taking action based on intuition and gut-feeling…and figure out the logistics later, at a safe distance from whatever dynamic/situation/person we didn’t want to participate with.
From October 9 to October 14, Venus in Scorpio is squaring the North Node, Chiron and Neptune in Aquarius. This is a bottom-line, reality checking-type of aspect…again, related to not getting too far ahead of ourselves on this future vision thing. Especially with Neptune here, there is a tendency to get a little starry-eyed and lose sight of where we actually are. To get caught up in the rhetoric (Pluto in the last degrees of Sagittarius) of what’s possible and to act as if we’re already there. Scorpio keeps us right in the thick of what is going on right now. It doesn’t allow us to move forward until things are dealt with, until all the crap is brought out into the open for resolution. Until the subjugation-domination dynamics are truly destroyed and we’re truly equals. We’ve still got a lot of work to do here. The vision may be there, but are we really willing to do what it takes to get there? Are we willing to go to the mat on this one? To fight for that vision with everything we have? To leave no one behind? These are the kinds of questions brought up with these squares.
Mars in Scorpio will repeat the squares to the North Node, Chiron and Neptune in Aquarius during the last week of October. Here, we’re challenged to put our personal energy behind it. To make it personal, a personal goal, to deal with everything Scorpio brings up, especially the ouchy, ugly parts. To look at the inequality, the injustice that still exists, the fallacies we’re being told, the manipulation of the people - and to really deal with it.
Mercury Retrograde is also working away, bringing up all the things we might have missed since September 4. A whole lot happened last month, so this is a good thing. Any decisions made or actions taken will come up for a review. We’ll get information that we didn’t have at the time. and, again, with Venus in Scorpio ruling, it could be stuff that was hidden at the time.
All giving us a chance to orient ourselves with as much information and understanding as possible.
Mercury goes direct October 15 and leaves its shadow (heads into new territory) October 30.
Just in time for my favourite time of year: Hallowe’en! Mwah-ha-ha-ha-haaa! (also known as Samhain or pagan New Year) A time when the barrier between life and death is oh-so-thin.
So nothing really “new” until then, but lots of necessary information coming up and interactions playing out, especially those interactions that have a sort of fated, soul-mate quality to them. Déjà vu.
Our Full Moon this month is in Aries on October 14. (On the same day as the federal election here in Canada.) The new directions we’ve taken related to our new sense of personal identity are bearing fruit now. The Sabian Symbol for the degree of Aries where this Full Moon takes place is: The Gate Opens to the Garden of all Fulfilled Desires. Let’s hope that’s not just hype. ;-) My Scorpionic “show me the money” side is acting up on this one, but let’s give the universe the benefit of the doubt on this one, shall we? Heh heh
The New Moon in Scorpio on October 28 starts a new cycle of growth - a shedding of past dynamics, as was talked about earlier. The New Moon kicks off a month that will probably feel very unstable as the past structures and dynamics of our lives turn to rubble. As I said before, November is going to be a heck of a month, and this New Moon is an indicator. It really does feel as if we’re going through a gateway, and we have to be 100% real, stripped down, doing only what feels right to us to make it through. It’s a tight squeeze! Getting caught up in what others want us to do, getting caught up in THEIR stuff, allowing any kind of abuse of your energy (no matter how subtle) - all this is detrimental now in a big way.
I have this image lately of always having to stay a step ahead of what is crumbling under our feet, to keep moving on, moving on as a matter of survival. If we aren’t staying true to our own path here, we’re asking for trouble. If we’re clinging to old structures, relationships, ego constructs, personality traits, we just might go down with the ship.
So as always, to thine own self be true. It’s more important now than ever as the waters get a little choppy.
This month, we will be striving with all our ability to find our equilibrium, attempting to find a neutral point between the wild events of September and those yet to come in November. This is always the case with Libra energy (where the Sun will be for most of the month and the currently retrograding Mercury will be until November 4), but Libra's refined airiness and awareness of beauty are needed more than ever at this point to give us a moment to breathe, to give us something lovely to inspire us through some bumpy channels.
Libra is the sign where we attempt to achieve balance, equilibrium, and peace - sweet, sweet, peace - if only for a moment. As fleeting as they seem to be, peace is Libra’s goal, its directive. It is the sign of partnership and relationship, where we are constantly existing in relation to and acting accordingly.
As I said in the September Astro Perspective, Libra energy has its work cut out for it at the moment. We’ve got a lot to balance, a lot piled on the scales and only more to come, it seems. The scales are working hard, correcting where necessary, swinging wildly up and down at times. We just think we’ve gotten it together, a moment to relax (which Libra, ruled by Venus, loves to do most of all), when something else gets added to the pile and we’re forced to take yet another angle into consideration, to rebalance.
Libra is driven for justice, and it just wouldn’t do to leave something or someone out who should be taken into the fold. That wouldn’t be fair. True harmony, true peace (and the peace of mind that comes with it) can only come when we have left nothing out, when every piece gets its say and its consideration. Bringing many disparate elements together into one beautiful, harmonious tone.
But of course, this is not as easy as it looks. Getting a ragtag group of human beings who all sing in different languages, who all have different levels of experience, all singing in harmony, seeing the beauty in each other and enjoying being together. Libra is one harried choir director at times.
Which brings us to the other parts of Libra and Venus, the parts that are sometimes glossed over and that is the strife and battle and discord that exist on our way to finding that harmony.
This month, the Sun in Libra and retrograding Mercury in Libra are ruled by Venus in Scorpio, making it a very strong influence. Venus isn’t ever-so happy in Scorpio, but nonetheless, she will do her job here. She would rather keep things lovely, smiley and beautiful, but in Scorpio, we're faced with both sides of the coin. We understand that our relations with other people contain ugly things as well as beautiful, and that we have to see the dark parts of our relations with others in order to bring them to light.
Scorpio knows that superficial, surface-level peace will never last. Whatever we leave hidden and neglected will eventually come out in nasty, indirect ways to undermine the peace and harmony in our relationships. It drives us to the root, to the very centre, to see what’s REALLY going on underneath it all, so that we can break underlying dynamics that are holding us in a places where we don’t want to be. Also so we can intuitively recognize and merge with those who will strengthen our ability to reach our soul’s directives - both personal and collective - without dragging a bunch of detritus along with us that will smother the alchemical flame guiding us through.
Scorpio shows us the dark parts to bring about awareness of them, so that we can choose wisely when it comes to merging our precious energies with another. So that we don’t walk blindly into situations and relationships designed to give us karmic bites in the ass.
As the balance shifts from Libra energy to Scorpio throughout the month, things take on a depth and an intensity. A “do or die” quality. We are driven to tunnel, tunnel, tunnel right to the core of what is going on in our relations with others and root out what we know in our guts is rotten. Scorpio, ruled by Pluto and Mars, is about bottom-line reality. Whatever can’t morph into something better and stronger, more adapted to what is going on right now, will die, plain and simple. This means in our relationships, our lives, our selves. Any part of the cocoon that threatens to catch and contain our butterfly wings has to go, with little to no sentimentality. Why attach ourselves to something that will hold us back, smother us, kill us? This is what Scorpio energy teaches. To cut ourselves out of that which will eventually collapse us, to trust our intuition to nip it in the bud and to move directly to a new force field that will hold us in a mutually beneficial orbit as we continue to unfold.
Scorpio understands intuitively what needs to be done and sets a goal, directed by the soul - often a complicated, multi-layered, emotionally and/or energetically dangerous goal. And it does not give up until that goal is reached or until it is “told” that to continue would bring it closer to destruction than abandoning the goal.
Scorpio energy can see things no one else can. It sees what no one else will. Will. That’s the word. Scorpio is the place where the will of nature/of the universe and personal will join forces, merging into one direction. To ignore the directives of the soul is to die, either literally or figuratively. To refuse to root out what is rotten is to choose to infect everything. Nothing can be right until this is right. That’s what Scorpio knows. It knows it would rather die than leave things as they are. It knows it is already dead if things are left as they are.
So much talk about death. But this is a Scorpionic subject. To die a million deaths before the physical death. To say goodbye to multitudes of versions of self, relationship, life. To shed a million cocoons, all that is done, to get to the fresh, raw strength of the emerging soul-driven path. And to have the otherworldly Plutonic drive to continue, against all odds, to face deeper and deeper, at times darker and darker, realities. Intricate and intimate. Complex. To burn through an amount of energetic detritus that would be unimaginable to someone without the guidance of that alchemical flame, ridding us of the garbage that threatens to clog up the works and screw us over.
It is to this end that Scorpio energy does its work, so that it can lay the very purest of matter on Libra’s scales. So that the shifts in balance that are made are only the necessary ones. The upsets of the scales are as minimal as possible. Nothing laden in the energetic tar of the past.
This is why Plutonic people sometimes creep other people out. They are driven by something unseen, something not understood by people looking from the outside. Plutonic people must follow the directives of the soul, from the gut, bringing things to light that most people would avoid looking at. Severing unhealthy dynamics as they go, freeing the energy up for new growth, and going deeper than most people care to go. It can be seen as an obsession by other people. But when one understands that it is a case of: do it or perish. there is nothing else to be done.
What Scorpio energy does can also be seen as not very nice (which is why Libra takes issue with it at times). It often doesn’t feel too great to have a Scorpionic surgeon dicing energetic dynamics up around you or within you. But it's necessary. Scorpio energy triggers in us an awareness of what needs to come out and what needs to be purged completely. It triggers an alchemical process where we have to look into the depths of ourselves and our lives to see what is not in integrity and to see old energetic patterns that we fall into and continue unaware. Places where we’ve been fooling ourselves, where we haven’t gone deep enough, where we haven't truly looked reality in the face. In Scorpionic interactions (which will be coming up with Venus in Scorpio), the relationship dynamics make each person aware of certain dynamics that are past their usefulness.
We can be repulsed by what we see during this process, blaming the person who did the triggering. (This is a dynamic that goes on all the time - as Scorpionic/Plutonic people know all too well.) Not so comfortable.
Too much Plutonic energy is poison. Best to take only as much as you need, nothing more.
This is a hard lesson that most Plutonic people have to learn - that some people find being around them a medicine taken best in small, maybe even tiny, maybe even microscopic, doses - or not at all. But once one understands that it's the process being triggered that people find distasteful, it’s possible not to take it personally - sort of.
Scorpio and Pluto go beyond the personal ego. The process trumps social niceties. But it still smarts at times.
Note: “Plutonic” people are what I would call anyone who has these similar drives for getting to the core of the matter, bringing hidden or neglected parts of reality to awareness - planets/placements in Scorpio, aspects to natal Pluto, bodies in the 8th house, and such.
As I said, our Mercury in Libra retrograde this month is ruled by Venus in Scorpio until Venus enters Sagittarius on October 18th.
The Sun in Libra is also ruled by Venus in Scorpio until it enters Scorpio itself on October 22.
Mars enters Scorpio October 3 and is there into November. (Note a pile-up of consequences for any passive-aggressive tendencies/Libra avoidance techniques as Mars passes through the last degrees of Libra before entering Scorpio. October 1 - 3)
So these Libra - Scorpio themes are prevalent.
What we’re leading up to this month is a big month in November. We’re getting our bearings, doing the prep work, so that we can navigate these energies.
There are two big things going on in November (which I will, of course, write about in November’s Astro Perspective):
First, Saturn in Virgo opposes Uranus in Pisces for the first time since the 60s. Saturn rules our concrete material structures (how things are set up) and Uranus rules revolution. Hmm…sounds about right. The current structures of our material world are about to get a shake up.
Saturn will be opposing Uranus’ freewheeling, future-oriented, slightly erratic, nothing-to-hold-onto-but-the-vision-of-where-we're-going, revolutionary, maverick spirit. And Uranus will be opposing Saturn’s traditional, tried-and-true, conservative, for-our-own-good limitations, restrictions and concrete structures.
Material structural readjustment related to a new understanding and vision of things to come. But also making sure that our revolutionary vision is grounded, that it has legs. That it is practically applied and will really take root within the material and build there - not just stay on the fringes as fluffy, pie-in-the-sky ideas from a bunch of drug-addled burn-outs. (No offense to drug-addled burn-outs, but this is a time when we really have to stay in reality” to bring it to the people - especially those people in suits and SUVs.)
A leap of faith into the future, but one concrete and common sense enough to appeal to more conservative minds.
The last time Saturn and Uranus opposed each other was in the 1960s, so you can see where this is heading. Think of the upheaval of those times that brought strides for humanity - civil rights, women’s rights, anti-war, etc.
But at the same time, the wave of revolutionary spirit didn’t go far enough. The mainstream Baby Boomers got caught up in material trappings and the ego glorification of being the person with the biggest and best.
So now is a chance to continue what began then, to go farther, hopefully to go as far as we need to go. To make the revolution structural, to come in from the fringes and really affect the mainstream flow.
The second big event in November is Pluto moving through the final degree of Sagittarius and heading into Capricorn November 27. Here is the transformation of allllllll our material structures and our understanding of success, prestige and importance on a public level. This is why it is crucial that we take this step-by-step, to really give it lasting impact.
Anyway, that’s next month. But as nothing exists in a vacuum, we have to see October as leading up to that. This is why the Scorpio energy is insisting that everything be put on the table. We have to be real now. It’s imperative to our survival as human beings on Planet Earth. We have to see through the shellaced smiles of those attempting to lead us somewhere our gut tells us we don’t want to go - not only in politics but in our personal lives. The personal is political.
We have to look for motivation - a big thing for Scorpio. What is the root motivation? If it’s something you can get behind, good stuff. If you get a little sick feeling in your stomach, no matter how slight, listen to it and take action, even if it seems like drastic action - action that no one but a Plutonic person would understand. The Mars influence on Scorpio means we often don’t know why we don’t like something or someone. We just don’t. We can sense we don’t agree with the root motivation or that we are being somehow manipulated. We just might not know the particulars in the moment because they’re somehow hidden to us. Here, we have to act on instinct, taking action based on intuition and gut-feeling…and figure out the logistics later, at a safe distance from whatever dynamic/situation/person we didn’t want to participate with.
From October 9 to October 14, Venus in Scorpio is squaring the North Node, Chiron and Neptune in Aquarius. This is a bottom-line, reality checking-type of aspect…again, related to not getting too far ahead of ourselves on this future vision thing. Especially with Neptune here, there is a tendency to get a little starry-eyed and lose sight of where we actually are. To get caught up in the rhetoric (Pluto in the last degrees of Sagittarius) of what’s possible and to act as if we’re already there. Scorpio keeps us right in the thick of what is going on right now. It doesn’t allow us to move forward until things are dealt with, until all the crap is brought out into the open for resolution. Until the subjugation-domination dynamics are truly destroyed and we’re truly equals. We’ve still got a lot of work to do here. The vision may be there, but are we really willing to do what it takes to get there? Are we willing to go to the mat on this one? To fight for that vision with everything we have? To leave no one behind? These are the kinds of questions brought up with these squares.
Mars in Scorpio will repeat the squares to the North Node, Chiron and Neptune in Aquarius during the last week of October. Here, we’re challenged to put our personal energy behind it. To make it personal, a personal goal, to deal with everything Scorpio brings up, especially the ouchy, ugly parts. To look at the inequality, the injustice that still exists, the fallacies we’re being told, the manipulation of the people - and to really deal with it.
Mercury Retrograde is also working away, bringing up all the things we might have missed since September 4. A whole lot happened last month, so this is a good thing. Any decisions made or actions taken will come up for a review. We’ll get information that we didn’t have at the time. and, again, with Venus in Scorpio ruling, it could be stuff that was hidden at the time.
All giving us a chance to orient ourselves with as much information and understanding as possible.
Mercury goes direct October 15 and leaves its shadow (heads into new territory) October 30.
Just in time for my favourite time of year: Hallowe’en! Mwah-ha-ha-ha-haaa! (also known as Samhain or pagan New Year) A time when the barrier between life and death is oh-so-thin.
So nothing really “new” until then, but lots of necessary information coming up and interactions playing out, especially those interactions that have a sort of fated, soul-mate quality to them. Déjà vu.
Our Full Moon this month is in Aries on October 14. (On the same day as the federal election here in Canada.) The new directions we’ve taken related to our new sense of personal identity are bearing fruit now. The Sabian Symbol for the degree of Aries where this Full Moon takes place is: The Gate Opens to the Garden of all Fulfilled Desires. Let’s hope that’s not just hype. ;-) My Scorpionic “show me the money” side is acting up on this one, but let’s give the universe the benefit of the doubt on this one, shall we? Heh heh
The New Moon in Scorpio on October 28 starts a new cycle of growth - a shedding of past dynamics, as was talked about earlier. The New Moon kicks off a month that will probably feel very unstable as the past structures and dynamics of our lives turn to rubble. As I said before, November is going to be a heck of a month, and this New Moon is an indicator. It really does feel as if we’re going through a gateway, and we have to be 100% real, stripped down, doing only what feels right to us to make it through. It’s a tight squeeze! Getting caught up in what others want us to do, getting caught up in THEIR stuff, allowing any kind of abuse of your energy (no matter how subtle) - all this is detrimental now in a big way.
I have this image lately of always having to stay a step ahead of what is crumbling under our feet, to keep moving on, moving on as a matter of survival. If we aren’t staying true to our own path here, we’re asking for trouble. If we’re clinging to old structures, relationships, ego constructs, personality traits, we just might go down with the ship.
So as always, to thine own self be true. It’s more important now than ever as the waters get a little choppy.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)