Depth Astrology

No Longer at this Address

2008-05-06T21:10:00.001-07:00

Hi everyone!

Thanks for visiting.

I'm no longer blogging at this address, as I've expanded to a full website at www.depthastrology.net. Hooray!

I continue to blog there -- check out my latest post (as of May 6, 2008) pondering the geographic metaphors for Taurus. There's also information about my Astrology & Yoga workshops in L.A. and my October retreat in Taos, New Mexico.

Please be sure to bookmark www.depthastrology.net for future visits and news about my growing business.

Thanks again!
Kathy

(Photo credit)

Growth

2008-04-04T14:20:00.000-07:00

It's been a long time since I posted: I've been growing.

I've been exhuming my innate knowledge of how to keep house, play with toddlers and get dinner on the table at a decent hour. I'll blog about that here soon.

I've also been doing chart interpretations and reading more books on astrology than I've been able to get to in a long time. I feel like I've finally made it across the desert to a cool, deep well.

And I've been planning and promoting workshops -- not only here in L.A. but now a week-long one in Taos, New Mexico, slated for October 12-19. Put it on your calendar and check back here for more info soon!

Finally, I've been building new skills and expanding my audience over at Offsprung.com, a humorous website for parents. I didn't think I could write funny, and trying my hand at it has definitely been a challenge: Check out my inaugural column here. But in the yin-yang of life, it's been fun to push myself into a new way of seeing the world and communicating about it. It's also been a wonderful reminder not to take myself too seriously -- a crime I tend to commit serially.

While I use the Offsprung opportunity to poke fun at myself, at the poorly-formed public image of astrology, and at the world at large, I do try to balance it with a little dose of serious information about horoscopes, astrologers and the state of the stars each time I write: I'm hoping to indoctrinate readers one-by-unsuspecting-one.

So this space will likely be a bit slower for a few more weeks as I find my sea legs in the world of online snark, sarcasm and parenting advice. But don't give up on me! I'll be back, deepening the tracks of depth astrology on a regular basis once again.

(Photo credit)

...and, Curtain.

2008-02-16T19:53:00.001-08:00

I started my career in the California nonprofit sector on Monday, January 26, 1998.

I ended it yesterday -- Friday, February 15, 2008.

Whew.

These days I'm reading about the Age Point in Huber astrology. It starts at birth at the Ascendant and moves through each house over a period of six years. So, for example, the day you turn six, your Age Point enters the second house; the day you turn 12, your Age Point enters the third house; and so on.

Each house is divided into three sections: cardinal, fixed and mutable. You enter the fixed zone two years, three months and 15 days after the multiple-of-six birthday.

I mention this now because on Thursday, February 21, I'll reach that "balance point" in the seventh house, having also just moved into Pisces from Aquarius on November 29, 2007.

For non-astrologers, or even non-Huber astrologers, this probably sounds pretty technical. But what it means is that I've spent the last couple years trying to extract myself from a way of life that was very cerebral, idealistic, systems-oriented -- and, yes, sometimes psychosomatically maddening -- and into one more concerned with empathic, intuitive engagement in relationship.

I don't mean to disparage my work in the nonprofit sector. I did lots of good stuff over the last ten years: raised funds for good causes, wrote helpful articles, managed people for better or for worse (I hope for better) and supported positive change in the world.

But in a way, I also wasn't greatly suited to it. Though I am a good writer, a good manager, a good employee, I also felt the confines of my work strongly. I am not an institutional enthusiast, and I prefer interchange and mutuality over hierarchy and dependence. The deeper I worked my way into the nonprofit sector, the more of the latter I felt.

Charitable giving is an honorable and generous act -- yet it bothers me deeply that our most-needed institutions spend inordinate amounts of time and resources simply struggling to survive, to get the money and please the donors they need to keep the lights on. And even in the context of self-sufficiency, nonprofit organizations have to work so much within the bounds of what is socially, legally and politically acceptable that that, too, eventually began to grate on me.

As I moved out of sixth-house Aquarius and into seventh-house Pisces, the hardness of thought and airy analysis that I had to put into my everyday work began to wear me down, to wear me thin. I operate so much better through feeling and intuition than through thinking and research. So much so that, just a month before I left my career, my neck -- the gateway between heart and mind, between feeling and thinking, gave out as if it had finally had enough of simply trying to shoulder the density of my thoughts. I was laid up for a week, popping Vicodin and musing on the metaphor.

Today was my first day of my new life. I woke up sick: sore throat, cough, general aches and malaise. I know what this is; it happens every time. It's gunk I've been carrying around throughout a cycle I wasn't suited to -- gunk I needed to make it through, which my body can now expel in anticipation of a new cycle that's more aligned to my truth.

I can't wait to see what this cycle brings.

(Photo credits: curtain call, Pisces)

Capricorn, Rapunzel, and the Function of Stone

2008-01-07T13:49:00.000-08:00

Yesterday marked the fourth workshop in our Astro-Play series at Yoga Grounds, with Vera on yoga and myself on astrology. Yesterday's theme was the process of goal-setting and goal-getting, as prismed through the Capricorn archetype, as illustrated through the Grimm Brothers fairy-tale Rapunzel.

I'm working on fleshing the ideas out into a full-length article but I'm itching to share a couple themes that I didn't get to in the short time allotted. I hope participants will find this an interesting supplement to the workshop (and that others will find it merely interesting).

The recurring symbol I'm most interested in exploring is the use of stone in the Rapunzel story. It is especially intriguing, I think, since Capricorn is an earth sign -- signaling practicality, patience, tactility, solidity and determination. These are all traits that can assist in setting and reaching goals. But look at what happens to the image of stone at three key points throughout the story.

Stone Wall: The first appearance of stone comes when the poor miller, father of Rapunzel herself, jumps the stone wall dividing his garden from the witch's. The wall is meant to be a boundary, a dividing line that signals a limitation, a law, a social custom that demarcates one person's property from another's. But the miller steals over the wall at night -- breaches the accepted boundary when he believes he won't be seen -- in order to take something that the law says he must not take: radishes that his pregnant wife craves that are growing not in his garden, but in the garden of the witch next door.

The wall is a symbol for limits (when we stonewall something, we put up our hand and say "no," refusing all arguments and pleas). But it turns out to be an ineffective one. In the context of pursuing goals, the message here is that, faced with a powerful craving or temptation -- and lacking the capacity for resistance -- we are vulnerable to crossing the line that separates achievement of the goal from lack thereof. Unless we are aware of the temptation, and work consciously to build our own strength against it, we will continually find ways to breach the wall. We will repeatedly keep ourselves separate from our goal.

For example, if our goal is to lose weight, we may breach the wall through excuses like, "Just one cookie won't hurt" or "She spent so long making dinner -- it would be impolite to refuse." In our workshop, we looked at a cross-section of a stone wall and noted how much it looks like a spine -- each vertebra stacked upon the next. When that wall is not strong, we become spineless against our temptations. In fact, the idea of "spinelessness" seemed to echo the miller's actions not just because he stole the radishes (he apparently never considered knocking on the witch's door and explaining the situation) but also because, ultimately, he gave into the witch's demand for the baby Rapunzel as exorbitant payment for his crime.

If you find yourself prone to breaching the boundaries you have set for yourself -- whether in pursuit of a goal or for some other purpose -- you might consider doing some spine-strengthening yoga. We did some last night, preceded by muscle-testing with various substances. After the yoga, we muscle-tested again and found ourselves much better able to resist things like coffee, sugar and other temptations that tend to thwart our goals.

Stone Tower: The witch indeed takes Rapunzel, on the day she is born, as restitution for her father's crime. When Rapunzel is 12 years old, the witch locks her in the topmost room of a stone tower without door or stairs. Now the image of stone -- of the patience, determination and solidity that were utterly lacking in her father and in the stone wall -- has become a tall, imposing structure. Much in contrast to the long, low line of stones along the ground, which was probably crumbling and easy to breach, the tower is imagined as a rigid, impenetrable structure that is impervious to callers who lack the secret words.

The stone tower is so impenetrable, in fact, that it imprisons the girl Rapunzel in a state of innocence (literally, not-knowing) -- infantilized and atrophied at a point in life when she should be growing, blossoming and experiencing the pleasures of the world on the ground. This is the polar opposite of the spinelessness of the stone wall. Here, the spine is rigid from the imposition of too much authority, from the totalitarian-style treatment of Rapunzel by the witch. And after a time, certainly, the witch's demeanor becomes so engraved on Rapunzel's psyche that the girl begins to believe, herself, that she cannot exist outside the stone walls of a high, impenetrable tower: She internalizes the rigidity imposed upon her from without.

This might not be so terrible if growth or juice or lust for life existed for Rapunzel in the confines of the tower. But the suggestion is one of sameness, boredom and loneliness -- a stultifying existence contrary to growth and blossoming. This might look, in modern life, like a person who has stayed too long in the same job "for the sake of the children" or "because Dad always wanted me to take over the family business." Reluctance to risk other people's needs or desires can imprison our own passion, enslave us to other people's ideas of who we should be. Obligation, submission, fear, guilt and shame all live in this place.

If you find yourself pursuing a goal that has lost its juice for you -- because of obligation, politeness, habit, whatever -- your yoga might be one of flexibility. Like the ability to stand up for yourself and adhere to important limits, flexibility is also centered on the spine. Think about the obligations, assumptions and habits that have built up around your goal. Do some work on building flexibility in both your mind and your body, and see what kind of twists and turns the "can'ts" and "shoulds" in your life end up taking.

Stone Well: The prince begins visiting Rapunzel each night, and the two hatch a plan to get her out of the tower. But the girl lets it slip that she has a lover and, furious, the witch cuts off Rapunzel's famous hair and throws her -- pregnant with twins -- out of the tower to wander in the desert. That night, the prince comes and, when he sees the witch in Rapunzel's room, falls off the tower, blinding himself on the thorns below. He, too, wanders the desert for many years. And then one day, he hears Rapunzel singing as she draws water from a well.

While the tower represents rigidity, and the wall represents spinelessness, the stone well represents practical, purposeful and effective limits. The well is both a signal that something unseen is close by -- that the goal is within reach -- and a structure to protect that thing while also allowing access to it: neither totally confining like the tower nor totally open like the wall. Even imagistically, a well is halfway between a wall and a tower: a low wall, really, in the circular shape of a tower, which can be entered from above but that descends far below the earth to welcome water into its deep, narrow bowl.

In astrology and other symbol systems, water represents, among other things, the feeling function. Drawn from deep within the earth, the suggestion is one of unconscious feeling being brought up into consciousness. Capricorn, like Rapunzel in the desert, must survive on its own, drawing on its own resources to climb to the top. This process is often practical, tedious, tangible and necessarily patient: earth energy. Rapunzel learns how to survive the worst imaginable circumstances. Now, when water appears in the story, we know that she is ready for relationship to flow back into her life.

Capricorn is usually signaled by a mountain goat, but its esoteric animal is the mythic sea goat. Half-goat, half-fish, it embodies the intrepid independence of the mountain goat while also suggesting the need to integrate the feeling function that lives opposite it in the chart, in Cancer. In traditional astrology, Cancer and its ruler, the Moon, are identified with the mother, but in Huber astrology that honor goes to Saturn, the ruler of Capricorn. In either case, the suggestion is that Rapunzel has now become an integrated mother who can draw on deep feeling for her children while also imposing the fair limits they will need in order to become thriving adults.

And the love relationship for which Rapunzel is now ready is drawn on her own established internal authority -- her knowledge that she has built her own foundation from which to act freely. She is not a dewy dumpling confined in a tower or a frightened girl thrown into the desert. She has survived the desert, raised two children in it and become a bona fide woman on her own terms. The pinnacle of the story is that, within this harsh environment, she even finds water -- finds the capacity to love and relate, to give and take, drawn up from the harsh ground of her solitary survival. The stone well surrounding this new adventure is an assurance (or a caution?) that she will neither succumb to the dewy nature of naive love, nor allow it to calcify into a prison of her own making.

These are the balance points in the pursuit of any goal: How to observe the limits without becoming enslaved to them; how to stick with a plan while maintaining flexibility within it; how to keep alive passion for the work while also surviving the harsh desert in which you may find yourself. Strength and flexibility; passion and practicality.

***
In the end, the blind prince follows the sound of Rapunzel's voice to the well. The family is reunited, Rapunzel's tears restore the prince's sight, and the couple and their children go off to live in the castle -- happily ever after, of course: the ultimate goal.

The castle is a metaphor for the final fulfillment of Rapunzel's dream. She has gone from victim of her father's tender spinelessness, to victim of her stepmother's rigid fury, to solitary survivor, to the embodiment of alive, integrated wholeness.

The delightful thing about a castle is that it is so complex. There are turrets and moats, towers and keeps, chapels and stables and kitchens and courts. It is really a symbol of the rich inner life each of us has, of all 360 degrees of possibility embodied in the horoscope chart. Some rooms get used more than others; some are uncomfortable; some are adored. Some are open in the summer and closed in the winter. Some are private while others are public.

The possibilities are, as they say, endless.

***
The other theme I would like to have touched on in yesterday's workshop was the appearance of various head coverings throughout the Rapunzel story. Though the Grimm Brothers might not have envisioned it this way, the phrase "witch's hat" conjures a clear and striking image in modern culture. A handsome prince must necessarily come with a jeweled crown. Of course Rapunzel herself is distinguished by her long hair -- and then by her shorn locks later in the story. We can even imagine the miller with a dilapidated cap and his wife with a scarf tied over her hair.

As Capricorn symbolizes the archetype of individuation, of distinguishing oneself from others in the process of fulfilling your destiny -- and as its energy is encompassed in the 10th house at the top of the chart -- it seems appropriate to look at how we treat our hair, our hats, our brains and other things up top for a look at another aspect of this archetype.

But that's for another time.

Image credits: wall, tower, well, castle

Winter Solstice

2007-12-21T21:08:00.000-08:00

The morning after I wrote this post, I woke up at 4:27 -- three minutes before Sadhana was to start -- with a terrible cough that's clung to me for two days now. I fell back into my pillows and slept until 7:00 a.m.

This morning, same thing. I've been coughing violently all day, trying to hold it together through this Solstice Eve, hoping I have the strength to return for the final two days of Sadhana tomorrow.

Illness and exhaustion have happened to several of us doing this Sadhana. Vera, the studio owner and yoga teacher, said it happens often that participants have similar personal experiences during the seven or forty days of Sadhana, as if a like energy draws the group together, or pervades it, generating the particular experiences they need as a collective.

A Sadhana done as Sagittarius is waning and Capricorn begins to take hold -- as the Winter Sun stands still in its path -- would naturally, then, bring people who seek spiritual truth in preparation for personal growth. The stillness of Solstice reflects the deepest part of this process, the final letting-go of old attachments, old habits, old assumptions. It is the act of succumbing to the darkest hour just before the long, slow ascent into light. The Sun, standing still for three days, asks us to stand in place, to be quietly where we are, to feel Will, Spirit and Energy shift around us, shift inside of us.

But before the Spirit can move through, the body needs clearing. Illness, though unpleasant, is our way of getting rid of what we don't need. Not unlike feng shui, illness clears sick or unbalanced energy from the space of the body. It washes our internal pathways clean of debris so energies of a higher order may travel well and smoothly through us.

We might well ask ourselves what the body is trying to clear: If it's nausea, have you allowed yourself to swallow something that you can't digest -- a belief, a habit, a way of being? If it's coughing, have you allowed your authentic voice to be swallowed? If it's an achy back, in what way might you need to strengthen your spine -- literally or figuratively? What is the body trying to expel, and how, and what do those things tell you?

As I write, I am hearing my two-year-old son cry in his father's arms as he tries to let go of the day, to fall into sleep. He, too, is trying to reach a new truth, a new understanding of who he is without the constant doting of his mom, without nursing, without the comforting helplessness of infancy to curl up in. He is afraid -- as the ancients were afraid, at Winter Solstice, that the Sun would disappear completely -- that nothing as good as babyhood will come to fill his cup. He tries to cling to the old times, to the summer Sun, all the while knowing that he must let go.

He's had this cough, too. Maybe as I creep out of the house at 4:20 each morning, he, too, is doing his own Sadhana in the instinctive way of the toddler.

(Solstice image credit)
(Toddler image credit)

Sadhana

2007-12-19T16:49:00.000-08:00

This morning marked the third day of a week-long Sadhana at my beloved local yoga studio.

Sadhana is a spiritual practice that entails a lengthy morning prayer at 4:30 a.m., followed by a half-hour or more of yoga, followed by an hour-plus of chanting meditation. The practice ends by about 6:45 a.m.

Though I was looking forward to it, I was definitely not thrilled when 4:00 a.m. came on Monday. After not a little grousing and groaning, I crept to the bathroom, splashed my face and brushed my teeth as quietly as I could, grudgingly trying to maintain our home's still-nighttime stillness for my husband and son.

When I opened the front door to the dark chill of night, I realized it had been ages since I'd stargazed. I think about the stars, the Sun, the Moon, the planets all the time, under wall sconces and floor lamps, my face buried in a book. But so rarely these last few years had I breathed in the night air and lost myself in the flecks of light stippled across the open sky. I was a little skittish of being out alone in the silent dark, but with the sight of those stars, I began to inhale more evenly, more slowly.

And so I began Sadhana before I even got into my car.

***

Depth astrology works on the Hermetic principle, "As above, so below." That is, the vast cosmos itself is a reflection of the individual psyche. The cycles, rhythms, timing and dynamic principles that order the stars and the planets also order each human's way of living in the world.

As the universe goes about the business of being -- of growing, flowering and dying; of pushing, erupting and flowing; of rising, shining and setting -- those cycles are constantly echoed in each of us. We are born, we live, we die. We rise, we work, we sleep. Relationships bud, flower, fruit and wither. Art is created, enjoyed and destroyed or replaced or refined or transformed.

The astrological chart describes potential; it does not prescribe fate. But the potential mapped by symbols in the chart orbits something even more basic: the small, powerful circle at the center of the chart. This circle is to our personality what the axis is to each planet. It is the changeless, eternal symbol of the Divine within -- the Self-with-a- capital-S, around which the planet orbits, around which the hurricane or the gentle river of each personality flows. That still, small circle is a reflection, perhaps even a fragment, of the unfathomable universal Divine that lives within each of us and that gives us the power to create our own destiny.

Astrology gives us the language of symbols to better frame and understand exactly how the vibrations of the universe settle into each person's particular bones and particular blood -- and then, being processed through the body and the psyche, recapitulate back out into the cosmos in a massive and complex cycle of in-breaths and out-breaths between the universe and the beings that live here.

The energy we generate in this exchange -- lethargic or enlivened, relational or individual, empathic or violent -- is released and becomes part of the universe, for better or for worse. We then breathe it back in to further create ourselves. We shape the universe with each out-breath, and we are shaped by it every time we inhale. We can look at our charts to understand the kind of breath we are prone to blow out to the world and the kind we expect to breathe in from it.

***

Sadhana literally means practice, and because of this I am reminded today also of the Muses. Though there were many muses over many years and many mythologies, the Greeks called the three primary ones Mneme (Memory), Aoide (Voice) and Melete (Practice). Inspiration -- literally, to breathe in Spirit -- overtakes us only when we have the discipline to give voice to memory over and over again. In Sadhana that means we take the words that the Gurus breathed in as Spirit -- we enter, for two hours, the collective Memory of a wide, deep community -- and perpetuate it in our own Voice for seven, or forty, or a thousand, days in a row.

Yogi Bhajan, who brought the Kundalini tradition to the west, said that sound -- voice, music, chanting -- is the most direct connection between two beings. The Sadhana prayer, the Japji Sahib (Song of the Soul), speaking directly to God, says:

The celestial jewels which You created ... sing. ... The planets, solar systems and galaxies, created and arranged by Your Hand, sing.

Echoing the song of the cosmos, we chant the long memory of our community in practice each day of Sadhana to inspire ourselves and the world: to breathe in Spirit. Through this practice, we not only connect with our spiritual ancestors and cleanse our own spirits, we also echo the universal vibrations of connection between all sentient beings, from the smallest one-celled organism to "the planets, solar systems and galaxies, created and arranged by Your Hand."

Even if you don't believe that we reflect and influence universal rhythms in the way we conduct our lives, you may still be intrigued by what Practice means in our everyday lives. Why not just go to church every Sunday and get the whole spiritual thing over with for the week? Why get up at 4:00 each morning for seven days in a row to chant in a language you don't understand?

This, then, brings me to psychoneurobiology, which is a field about which I know just enough to be dangerous. Work in this area over the last 35 years has shown that, in Bruce Perry's words, "states become traits" -- that is, our brain cells literally form in response to our life experiences, especially our earliest ones. For instance, a child who grows up with parents who yell and scream when they're angry will develop neurons that are shaped to recognize yelling and screaming as the normal, appropriate response to anger. A child who grows up with compassion will develop a capacity for that state.

Though children are especially vulnerable to this process, it doesn't stop happening just because you hit voting age. Adult brains do it, too: The more we repeat a behavior, or emotion, or habit, the more it comes to define us. Every time we eat a chocolate bar to fill a hole of sadness or loneliness or anxiety, we dig a deeper rut in the neural pathway that says that's what we must do when upset. Every time we gripe about a co-worker, our brain moves in the direction of negativity.

The Japji Sahib says it best:

Virtue and vice do not come by mere words --
actions repeated, over and over again,
are engraved upon the soul.

Without self-knowledge -- through the astrological chart, through journaling, through therapy or art or prayer or chanting or discipline or self-reflection of some sort -- we are prone to repeating patterns that perpetuate negativity, that engrave unhappiness upon an increasingly polluted soul. When we don't know ourselves well, we are subject to the hurricanes and gentle rivers that comprise the personality, that whirl around the still core of the Self. In this state, we simply cannot conduct ourselves in alignment with the unfathomable universal Divine that lives within each of us.

***

And so every time we awaken at 4:00 a.m. for Sadhana, creep through the house, open the front door and breathe in the sharp, starry, deep night air, we repeat a pattern that engraves something different upon the soul. We affirm in Sadhana that our truth and our destiny rest not only alone in the warm, cozy bed behind us but also together with our fellow yogis, with all sentient beings and with the long, shimmering arms of the cosmos that bend to embrace us -- when we choose to allow it.

(Sadhana image credit)
(Abstract image credit)
(Brain image credit)

Hunting the Mother Bear

2007-12-12T14:31:00.000-08:00

When my dad was a young man, he spent summers working in the canneries and crab traps in Alaska to pay for college.

One day he and a Norwegian gentleman, who was spending some time on the trap with him, rowed ashore for a break from the waves and the wide-open sea. They spied a group of mother bears relaxing in the river -- splashing, bathing and lolling about on sunny rocks. One mother bear's cubs kept tumbling down the hill and splashing into the water, only to be swatted away by their mother. They retreated back up the hill, waited until her back was turned, then tumbled down into the water again.

After three or four turns at this game, the mother bear got frustrated and charged her cubs, growling and scolding at them. She turned her back -- and the cubs chased after her yet again. The Norwegian gentleman -- apparently trying to help the mother bear -- bent down, picked up a rock and, with no warning at all, hurled it at the cubs. My dad yelped a garbled protest and ran for his life, the Norwegian and the mother bear in hot pursuit. The humans barely made it to the boat and back out to sea.

Now, most people are aware of this basic life lesson, but just to be clear: You have to be very, very careful with other people's children.

I've been thinking about this lately because of the effects of transiting Saturn in Virgo. It's currently criss-crossing our two-year-old son's natal Moon and my own progressed Saturn, both in the first house. In other words, the boy and I are being challenged right now to define, shore up and secure our identities vis-a-vis one another (Saturn: the mother; Moon: the child).

So there is a lot of jockeying for position, much back-and-forth of "I want," "I need" and "You can't have" -- from both of us. Limits are being set. Lines are being drawn. Laws are being laid down. Tears are being shed. The sweet, snuggly oneness of infancy has dissolved into memory.

At the same time, it is thrilling to see his growth. He's expressive and intentional. He identifies what he wants and sets out to get it. He's learning, it seems, in leaps and bounds -- puzzles, colors, shapes, numbers. Where things go. What words mean. How to use his body. How to control it.

Now, I banked on both these developments even before the boy was born. I knew about the so-called "terrible twos" and even felt excited to see how we would negotiate the terrain. And my husband is a wonderful parenting partner; we've fallen into a great tag-teaming system to make sure we can both give our best and avoid the overwhelm that can come easily with parenting.

What I didn't bank on was the difficulty of bringing a third parent -- a daycare provider -- into the mix. Saturn is getting my ire up, bringing out the mother bear when I watch how his teachers (another aspect of Saturn) interact with their two-year-old charges. And I don't always like what I see.

Saturn's instinct is toward protection and safety; this can sometimes result in defensiveness and growling. Lately, these instincts in me have been directed toward the militant approach one of his teachers takes toward art.

I observe her over-directing the kids' process, criticizing their methods and inhibiting their free expression. This morning she wouldn't let them turn over the construction paper they were painting to look at the other side. She wouldn't let them glue pieces of dried popcorn onto their paper one at a time because she "needed" (her word) them to drop a handful onto the glue all at once. This morning, she barked to one of them, "I didn't tell you to explore. I told you to work."

These are two-year-olds.

And as much as I might get on this child about eating his vegetables, wearing a jacket when it's cold and going back to sleep when he wakes at three a.m., I would never presume to tell him how he should make art -- express his feeling life in tangible, living, breathing form. Art is self-expression, any time of life, but especially at two years old. The Saturnine response to his core emotional needs he must be experiencing right now cannot only be coming from the limits set by me, the chief Saturn figure in his life, and his father. It is also coming from other teacher/mother figures.

And when it's done poorly, when it's done in a way that threatens his playfulness and expressiveness and sense of competence and sense of self, when it's intrusive and know-it-all and demanding, that brings out the mother bear in me. It fuels a feeling of being hunted, of having my protective, nurturing, growth-encouraging approach stalked and choked by someone who is not comfortable with fluid limits, someone who must be in control all the time, someone who seems to fear play and spontaneity and self-expression -- all those constricted, intolerant, shadowy aspects of Saturn -- someone who would throw rocks at someone else's bear cub when it's engaged in play.

(Image credit)

Go away, big monsters

2007-11-28T13:05:00.000-08:00

Our two-year-old son, whom we call the Dragon, has always had a hard time getting to sleep. Most nights it takes an hour for him to find a breath that is steady enough for dreamland. It’s often another half-hour before we can tiptoe out of his bedroom and quietly shut the door, our own breaths tight and thin in hopes of not waking him.

During this 90-minute toss-and-turning jag, the Dragon sometimes whispers under his breath – a light, lilting babble like a little brook with its volume down low. Or, alternately, a sweet, innocent version of the disconcerting jungle whispers in the American TV drama Lost just before something creepy happens. In any case, I’ve never been able to decipher what he says when he’s whispering just before sleep.

Until two nights ago, when I distinctly heard him command: “Go away, big monsters.”

My first response was a little internal maternal heartbreak – first, that this dear, sweet child felt he had to deal with the monsters on his own; and second, that he was even seeing / hearing / imagining monsters to begin with.

My second response was the thought, "I’m the big, strong, wise adult here. I have to do something smart. And helpful. And now." And then: "Dammit." And then: "Now."

I don’t know whether it’s built into the DNA of parenthood or into the sociological knee-jerk response structure of our society, but my initial impulse was to tell the Dragon, “There’s no such thing as monsters.” But I didn’t.

I didn’t because, although we might believe in the objective truth of the statement “There’s no such thing as monsters,” there is a deeper truth that this child needed validated in that moment: that he was, in fact, experiencing monsters. Infinitely more than scientific explanations, he needed me to be compassionate – literally, to “feel with” him in that state, in his fear of monsters, and to acknowledge the truth of his fear.

***

I see the birth chart as a collection of archetypes arranged in a way that describes the native’s particular experience of life. An archetype is essentially a universal experience: a relationship, role or situation that is a basic part of everyone’s psychological makeup. There are archetypes of mother, father, child, savior, teacher, warrior, lover, rebel, nomad, god, goddess, addict, shadow, trickster, despot. And many more. Including monster.

Archetypes often show up in our dreams or imaginings or artwork as literal pictures or symbols. Those archetypes that we’re having trouble with in life may show up as frightening pictures, like venomous snakes or axe murderers or big monsters. The picture gives form to the problem, helps us to see it and address it -- often much better than if it remained a slippery, abstract, cerebral description. Bringing the problem from Logos to Soma, from mind to body, means we can grapple with it through all of our senses. We can meet it on its own terms.

The monster in a dream may be an emotion that the child (or the adult) is having trouble processing: frustration about potty training, sadness about a dog who has died, the perils of separation anxiety. It could be a secret he’s keeping: abuse, illness, something “bad” he’s done that he doesn’t want to admit. It could be a situation he doesn’t know how to handle: An overly-demanding teacher, a new brother or sister, a move to a different home. It could be the bigness of growing up, of leaving babyhood behind and becoming a little boy and all that that means.

Symbols demand that we respond, at least initially, in their own language. This is especially true when the person visited by the symbol is a child: Children live and breathe metaphor. The logic-based response, “There’s no such thing as monsters; you don’t have to be afraid,” takes them out of that reality and plunges them into one that makes as little sense to them as monsters and magic make to us wise old adults. Because, in their reality, there are monsters. We’re not going to logic the monsters away. And suggesting there aren’t any only implies that the child is lying, or loony. And we know he is neither.

And maybe when we – or rather, I – read astrological charts, I would do well to linger in the images a little longer, to help the client envision Pluto and ask what it wants; to make friends with Saturn, share a drink together and relish its wisdom; to speak kindly to the needy Moon and wait patiently for the response. We don’t always know in which planets lurk monsters, waiting in the closet to visit our clients’ dreams or relationships or habits. Maybe none of them; maybe all. But we can facilitate that knowledge. Maybe some monsters are friendly, though they appear menacing. Maybe some are scared themselves. Maybe some just feel lost and are trying to make their way back home. It doesn’t hurt to ask.

***

But there is also the readiness of the client to consider. This child I was confronted with two nights ago, who in turn was confronting monsters, is only two years old. He is not yet ready to understand explanations about archetypes, symbols and metaphors. He is not yet ready for a discussion of his feelings beyond telling me what they are: “Scared.” “Sad.” “Happy.” It turns out he is also not ready to imagine what the monsters might want when they visit.

So we just got a little more familiar with the monsters. We talked about what they looked like (hairy, with eyes and teeth), how many there were (ten: interesting, that) and where they gathered (definitely in the Dragon's room, definitely not in Mama and Daddy’s room). But when I asked what they wanted, the Dragon remained silent. He just knew he needed them to go away. So I left that question for sometime later.

Instead, I marched out to the kitchen, dug around in some cupboards and finally located the Monster Spray I keep on hand for just such occasions. I returned to the bedroom shouting, “Go away, monsters! You’re not welcome here! You leave the Dragon alone!” I circled the room’s periphery, spraying walls, corners and furniture so no monsters could enter that night, so the Dragon felt safe.

And within literally – and I do mean literally – ten seconds, he was fast asleep.

***

The Dragon’s dad, Alan, was out that night, and when he returned home, I told him what had happened. The next morning, when the Dragon awoke, Alan asked him all about the monsters. Then he led his son by the hand to the hall closet and took down a feather duster. “I know Mama sprayed for monsters,” he said. “But if they come back, you can use this to fight them off.”

The Dragon took the duster earnestly by the handle and brandished it like a sword. “Go away, big monsters!” he shouted, stabbing at the air, practicing. “Go away!” He ran all over the house fighting monsters.

“Why didn’t I think of that?” I mused. “I just protected him. I didn’t let him take care of the problem himself.” I felt badly, then, that I had taken the monsters into my own hands and let the Dragon sit back without an active role.

And then, after a cup of coffee and a few musing hours, I realized that Alan and I had acted in true Sun and Saturn fashion: Myself to protect our son, to engender a sense of safety; and Alan to empower him to go out on his own, to fight any monsters he might face. Both roles are necessary: A child must feel a certain level of safety and security before he can venture out to become the hero of his own life.

This truth is reflected in developmental psychology’s attachment theory as well as in the natural archetypes symbolized in the birth chart.

***

The next night, the Dragon again awoke screaming. “Tigers!” he cried, flailing his arms. “No! No! Tigers!” His little face, even with eyes closed, was anguished and fearful.

Breathing soothing and encouraging words, I groped for the feather duster and pressed it into his palm. He squeezed his hand around it and dropped back into the pillow. His body relaxed, and his breathing evened out. He was asleep again. He had not even opened his eyes. The whole episode lasted, again, only about ten seconds.

He slept until morning, the hero of his dreams.

Photo credit 1
Photo credit 2

What is Depth Astrology?

2007-11-20T09:23:00.000-08:00

Carl Jung said that analogy- making is the central organizing principle of the psyche.

In other words, we continually and spontane- ously create images to make sense of our lives.

To wit:

"I feel like my head's going to explode!"
"She thinks she's my mother."
"There's a wall between us."

We perceive that many of the things we go through (if not all of them) are like something else. Images of those something elses come out when we speak, when we feel, when we dream, when we make art, when we imagine -- so that we can see and know ourselves better. It is often quite difficult, and sometimes even impossible, to look directly at ourselves. But to look at something that is like ourselves, well, that is a great deal easier, and often more productive.

The horoscope chart is the only metaphor in the world that reflects your -- and only your -- psyche with the degree of complexity, nuance and completeness needed to accurately unravel your continually evolving life experiences.

Astrology is a complex system for organizing the analogy-making that we do all the time. Your horoscope chart is populated with the major metaphors, called archetypes, that your psyche naturally uses to describe its experiences. Those archetypes exist in an ordered format that, engaged correctly, can help focus and streamline your self-understanding. And because your chart is unique in all the world, the archetypes are arranged there in the nuanced and unique way that reflects you -- and only you.

Your chart, then, is the mythic structure of your individual psyche, told in metaphorical language. And because it is metaphorical, the chart enables you to grasp your own story in a way that is often obstructed by more naked confrontation of the self. Your chart helps you understand yourself and the situations you face through the fertile medium of metaphor.

Depth astrology is a practice of engaging life's major metaphors, or archetypes, in the precise way that you experience them in your individual psyche. Depth astrology readings guide you through the process of making sense of your own story through the images that best describe your experience.

And then, by understanding your own story, you can begin to write it to your own specifications.

(Image credit)

Happy New Year?

2007-10-08T21:40:00.000-07:00

Since I left elementary school, the anticipation of Halloween has grown thinner and more distant with each year. For my twenties and most of my thirties -- living in urban apartments, a block without streetlights and, for two years, a rural village in a Muslim country -- the holiday would often be upon me before I realized it. I'd dash out for some candy if I had the time; if I didn't, I'd keep my lights low so trick-or-treaters would pass me by. I rarely carved a pumpkin.

Until this year. When you have a kid in daycare, anticipation of Halloween starts well before October. Our son is still a little young, at two, to be aware of the day, what it means and why he'll be dressed as a dragon. But his daycare, which is connected to a Christian church, sent home a note saying they wouldn't be observing Halloween but, instead, celebrating "the harvest." Here in Los Angeles -- a desert city of 10 million people -- this seems a little silly to me: What's being harvested here, and who's doing it? Still, I was amused that they shunned the modern holiday -- and one with costumes, no less: what could better spur the child's imagination?! -- but then chose to honor a traditionally pagan value in its place.

Many people, apparently including our daycare administrators, are aware that Halloween is a derivative of an ancient pagan holiday. Lots of people even know that the ancient rites involved rituals meant to stave off evil spirits -- including, sometimes, dressing in costume to trick the spirits away.

But that tradition is by no means the basis for the holiday. The observation of Halloween actually stemmed from the date's significance in the cycle of the year -- in the turning dance of the Sun and the Earth. In the ancient Celtic tradition, Halloween marked the final phase of dying that begins with the shortening of days at Summer Solstice. After a worthy fight, the Sun has finally succumbed to the darkness that started its gradual takeover when summer began.

If you have ever sat with a peaceful dying person, you know the moment on a human level. There comes a certain point when a long or labored breath -- the breath of life, the intent to survive -- gives way to a softer, shallower rhythm, to an acceptance of the next stage. The energy of the room shifts as the space makes way for the transition to the unknown. Quiet may come instinctively to the still-living who occupy the space, as if any noise will disturb or upset the journey now underway. Communion happens silently but assuredly.

This time of year, the gathering darkness and the energy of harvest's end is referential to sleep, unconsciousness, death and dying. During such times, we are subject to the whims and decisions and values of others: We must trust them to do right by us. This tends to make us quite uncomfortable: We're not in control. Forces beyond our reckoning may have their way with us. So we devise rituals to fight the dark with jack-o-lanterns, trick the dead with ghoulish costumes and throw the spirits off our scent. These obstinate and devious ways are often associated with Scorpio -- the sign during which Halloween falls. They are attempts to regain control over the will of others, the will of unseen forces, the will of the universe itself.

Yet in its higher register -- when it's not clenching its fists and fighting the inevitable -- Scorpio can tolerate the most unbearable changes with fortitude and courage. At its finest, when it can finally let go and acknowledge the power of the universe, Scorpio acts as the eye of the storm, bringing silent stillness to the center of chaos. Scorpio is skilled at sitting with the dying -- because it recognizes that death is followed by renewal. In death, in darkness, in destruction, Scorpio recognizes the seeds of renewal. People with strong Scorpio energy are often misunderstood or mischaracterized as negative or upsetting because of this perspective.

But Scorpio instinctively knows that it is followed by Sagittarius, a distant light that, paradoxically, leads us to the deepest dark of winter -- our first guide past the throes of death, the light at the end of Halloween's tunnel. It is Scorpio's job to get us to Sagittarius, a task even the most hardy soul may understandably shy away from.

This is why the ancient Celts observed Halloween as their New Year. Rather than being the apex of experience and wisdom signified by Capricorn (during which our modern western New Year is observed), the Celtic new year is grounded in Scorpio's instinctive knowledge of the cycles of death and renewal. The Halloween traditions of scaring off death-spirits and building fire against the darkness may remind us that, most of all, we are afraid of our own powerlessness in the face of the grand changes that life has in store for us, death or otherwise.

So...Happy New Year?

(Jack-o-lantern photo credit)
(Painting image credit)
(Phoenix image credit)

Venus, Vulcan and the Art of Libra

2007-09-17T11:44:00.000-07:00

This weekend marked the kick-off of my Astro-Play workshop series in conjunction with Vera Silva, certified Kundalini yoga instructor and owner of Yoga Grounds studio in La Crescenta, California. The series takes participants through a variety of exercises -- kinetic, creative, sensory, meditative -- that deepen their relationship with the upcoming astrological sign in their own lives. They are fun, lively, interactive sessions designed to integrate sign energies in an interesting and different way.

Afterwards, one participant e-mailed me:

"Thank you sooooo much for allowing me to participate and enjoy your AMAZING workshop ... It was such a beautiful, educational, nourishing experience. What an extraordinary experience you are offering the world ... and you conducted it so organically and effectively. I kept all of the materials of the day and hope to create an entire zodiac notebook!"

We did a number of exercises exploring the Libran themes of beauty, love, partnership, balance and compromise in the world and in ourselves and told stories of Venus, the goddess whose namesake is Libra's ruling planet. The wrap-up included reflections on keeping in touch with our own inner beauty throughout the upcoming Libra month -- and fruit and chocolate to boot. And everyone left with a flower!

Perhaps my favorite Venus story is the one of the goddess's marriage to Vulcan. Venus was born of the churning ocean foam but chose to be a goddess of the sky instead of the sea -- a horizontal energy reflected in her Libra and seventh house rulership. Vulcan, on the other hand, was born on Mount Olympus to Juno, who found him so ugly and deformed that she threw him off a cliff into the sea: a deep and vertical energy if there ever was one.

So already, the couple's birth stories have them going in different directions: Opposites attracting, or at least being forced into coupledom. Venus went on to play out much of her divine drama with earthy humans -- a social, desired, sought-after goddess -- whereas Vulcan made his life rather solitary, deep underground in a forge, shunning the other gods. Even today, he is often left behind or forgotten in the litany of ancient deities.

Both could be jealous, vengeful and spiteful, however: Venus demanded impossible tasks of Psyche -- including a trip to the underworld to get a bit of Persephone's beauty in a box -- when the beautiful human wanted to marry Venus's son, Cupid. And Vulcan ensnared his wife and her lover, Mars, in bed with a golden net he had made, then invited all the gods to come and laugh at them. Both incidents ended grudgingly with the release of the "guilty" and a bit of egg on the face of the vengeful one.

And both Venus and Vulcan were artistic in their own way, though Vulcan's artistry was more about process -- forging metal into intricate and powerful pieces -- whereas Venus's was more about product: What is the aesthetic of the body, of the room, of the home? How best to make people comfortable, social, relaxed? How to render harmony and maintain its delicate balance? There is purpose and relationship in Venus's art -- which makes it no less deep than Vulcan's own. The art of love and relationship, in fact, is one of the most subtle, difficult and demanding arts there is. Libra is equipped to manage this balance in a way that no other sign energy can.

In a way, Venus and Vulcan are the original Beauty and the Beast, the archetype of projection itself. Venus can't own or abide ugliness in herself, yet must be married to the very essence of it. Vulcan can't stand the beautiful but must persist in making it, owning it and capturing it. Each resents and even despises the other, even as they each live out beauty and ugliness in their own unowned ways. Owning your own beauty and your own ugliness is essential to the balance for which Libra is renowned. Reclaiming your projections -- from beauty magazines, from people you shun, from wherever you have trouble looking at yourself honestly -- is the hard work and the art of Libra.

And it's what ultimately disarms the most genuine of suitors.

Don't miss the next workshop on Scorpio -- a very different energy indeed! It's scheduled for Saturday, October 20 from 12:00-2:30 p.m. $25 first-timers, $20 returning participants.

(Workshop photo: Participants do Libra-inspired yoga)
(Venus and Vulcan image credit)
(Beauty and the Beast image credit)

Happy Birthday!

2007-09-09T12:46:00.000-07:00

My little family has celebrated three birthdays of two-year-olds in the last week, including our son's.

Everyone knows birthdays happen once a year, to celebrate the day you were born. But besides marking a momentous occasion and counting the years of maturity, birthdays also celebrate the solar return -- the day each year when the Sun returns to the exact place it was in the sky when you were born.

The customs of gift-giving, candle-adorned cakes and "Happy Birthday" greetings are sourced in the ancient pagan belief that each birth is attended by a spirit or angel charged with guarding the new person throughout his or her life. Ancient people believed the spirit was more susceptible to influence by humans on its charge's birthday, thus they offered gifts, cakes and greetings to appease the spirit and ensure its continued protection for the loved one.

I've noticed something else on these recent birthdays as well: The celebrated child simply shines. Even our little boy, who is delightful but not usually comfortable with crowds, owned the place at his party, but not obnoxiously so; and same with the other two. Each of the three children we've celebrated this week has exuded an ineffable assurance that they are the center of the universe -- yet accompanied, somehow, by a bounteous, joyful welcome to all who entered their orbit. They had enough space, and energy, and arms for everyone who came to celebrate.

The fire atop the birthday cake reflects the glow of the Sun that returns on this day. It's as if the center of the life of the world -- the Sun, the bringer of light, the marker of day and night, the source of energy and nourishment and inspiration -- is paying a special visit to the center of the family's life, the child who brings light, energy and inspiration to each day. These two energies coming together align the universe's intentions with that of the child, and the child feels "in her element," that the world reflects her very soul, that her wish on the candles will come true -- because how could it not, in a world with a Sun that kisses her soul?

(Photo credit)

Landscape of the Horoscope

2007-08-14T13:17:00.000-07:00

Lots of astrologers get caught up in the planets and signs (Saturn in Capricorn? Very serious! Mars in Aries? Very combative!) or in the single aspects that connect two planets (Venus trine Mercury? What a charmer!). The houses, if anything, are seen as an afterthought: Oh, and by the way, this characteristic is seen most in your work life or Especially watch out for this in your romantic relationships!

The client is then left with a collection of insight-fragments that neither capture the essence of the personality nor give a sense of relative proportion to each insight: The seriousness and combativeness, the romantic relationships and the work life all receive the same uniform treatment; the client is left without focus or direction. She feels she has to remember everything you said and absorb it mentally instead of walking away with a felt sense of the reading, understanding on a gut level how her total personality integrates and impacts her life.

The houses and aspects together create a map for understanding how a person traverses his or her interior landscape, for integrating a holistic understanding of one's personality.

Etymologically, the word landscape comes from the Dutch word land (patch or area, from the Basquish word landa: labored earth) and the suffix -schap, which corresponds to the English suffix "-ship." Beyond the more recent understanding of "-ship" as a state of being (kinship, rulership, etc.), the deeper roots of this suffix are words meaning to create, ordain or appoint (Source 1 and 2).

So there is, in the word landscape, an active sense of laboring and creating, as well as the more mystical sense of being appointed or ordained to a certain state. In addition, the word holds the more fixed ideas of land itself and the more-or-less passive "state of being."

In the horoscope, the interior landscape is signified by the criss-cross of aspect avenues between planets. Different parts of your personality trudge along well-worn paths in your internal neighborhood, moving from one house to another, nudging, teasing, influencing, interacting to create the dynamics and issues particular to your personality. Just as in a village or neighborhood, some planets receive many visitors, while others live more solitary lives. Some avenues hook up with others, while some remain separate, awaiting paths to be cleared by foragers or adventurers.

Part of what works and what doesn't in each case is influenced not only by the roadways that exist in the chart but also by how, and how well, the person "labors" that earth. Does he believe his lot is cast from birth, so makes few attempts to create his own destiny? Does she fight against what she's been given, wishing for a different avenue entirely? Or does each recognize that a road has been forged and yet can be worked -- that growth and happiness are neither nature nor nurture but, in fact, a glorious and challenging both at once?

(Image credit)

Mercury, Saturn and Mythopoesis

2007-07-23T09:11:00.000-07:00

I was fortunate enough this weekend to soak up a talk on memory, voice and writing by the inspiring and insightful Dennis Patrick Slattery, who I once heard speak, seemingly off the cuff, on Dante's Inferno for about seven hours straight. (Okay, there was a lunch break in the middle of that one. But still. Seven hours.)

This weekend, Slattery finally defined for me a word I'd rather helplessly watched tossed around during my Master's studies at Pacifica Graduate Institute: mythopoesis. I believe I was probably in the bathroom or getting a Diet Coke from the vending machine outside when the term was defined, and I never really got around to finding out more about it, though it intrigued me a lot. So it always seemed to me to be a very academic, but also a kind of airy-faery, word. I got the feeling of it -- or so I thought -- but could never, as they say, use it in a sentence.

I'm still not sure, even after Slattery's entrancing definition this past Saturday night, that I could use it in a sentence. But it watered more interesting seeds in my mind, anyway, which is almost certainly more important. Myth, he said, comes from the Greek word muthos, which means both story and mouth. Poesis is the act of giving something shape or form. So mythopoesis can be understood as a fancy word for storytelling.

Except there's something more there. It's not just fancy-talk. Mythopoesis, I think, is more than storytelling. Maybe storytelling is the first leg of mythopoesis which, it seems to me, lies somewhere on the boundary between speaking and writing. If muthos is mouth and story, which imply verbal speech, but poesis is shape and form, which imply a tangible kind of something -- paper and letters, a hand and a pen -- then perhaps mythopoesis is the kind of deep truth that can only come of a story that is told and retold until it becomes so etched in memory that it has form in and of itself. The story becomes a living image -- voice becomes form -- and is released into the world for others to witness, experience, respond.

Astrologically, when we think of words, we think Mercury. When we think of form, we think Saturn. But, too, there is a path to travel -- not just the archetypal points in space -- the planets -- that symbolize words and form, but also the landscape around them, the roadways in our bodies, minds and memories that connect words with form. So, as an exercise in self-discovery, start by seeing how your own instinct for mythopoesis is reflected in your Mercury and Saturn: In which houses and signs do they sit? Are one or both on a cusp? Are they connected somehow -- even if indirectly? Are they conjunct any other planets that might impact their character?

Then go a little further. Forget Mercury and Saturn specifically, and try to understand how else your voice takes form in the world. So look: Which planets sit on cusps, especially the ascendant or the midheaven? Are there pathways that connect the lower half or the left half of the chart -- those generally more private spheres -- with the upper half or the right half, where your public awaits? How do your words travel? What do people hear?

Even deeper, now: Words may be just the end-product of voice because the latter is constantly being generated deep within the psyche. Words are the common symbols that try to describe the deeper ongoing process inside. So look more: Where do you stew? Which planets sit more in the middle third of a house? In fixed houses? Along particularly difficult or particularly complacent aspects? Where does your focus dip down inside of you, and how does it return to the surface? With what does it return?

And then: How do those more internal planets connect with more external ones -- the ones on the outer thirds of each house, or the ones on cusps, or the ones to the right or above the horizon? How do you bring the gift of your internal stew out of your throat with your voice, or out of your fingers with a pen? When it emerges -- when you poesis your muthos, where does it land? Who hears you? What form does it take?

What response comes back?

(Photo credit)

Attachment Types and Huber Astrology

2007-07-10T12:07:00.000-07:00

The Huber way of analyzing family dynamics through the birth chart dovetails beautifully with attachment theory -- and adds one critical dimension that mainstream psychology has so far only been able to lightly sketch out.

By my own definition, attachment is the ability of the child to develop a sense of security and self (or not) through relationship to the parents (or parental figures). Without a strong, secure, positive relationship, the child's security and sense of self founder. Insecurity and low self-esteem result. Relationships throughout life are deeply and directly impacted by the quality of attachment in the child's early years.

There are three basic "attachment types" that children (and the adults they become) exhibit:

Secure attachment results from parents' consistent and empathic attunement with the child. These children -- and the adults they become -- are likely to be curious, engaged and generally not fearful of relationships. They are playful, empathic, resilient and resourceful.
Avoidant attachment stems from lack of parental attunement and from perhaps inappropriate demands for the child's independence. These children can grow into adults whose defenses include disengagement or lack of commitment; some may display anger, antipathy or compulsive self-reliance.
Ambivalent attachment is rooted in the parents' inconsistent response to the child -- sometimes warm, sometimes cold. These personalities can be reactive, volatile or anxious as well as co-dependent or not fully self-reliant.

Psychologists can determine developing attachment styles by watching children's response to separation from the parent(s). Interventions can be taught that help the parent better and more consistently attune to their child's emotional and physical needs -- and so possibly change the course of the child's lifelong relationship style, self-esteem and sense of security in the world. This is an amazing development!

But Huber astrology can contribute to intervention through prevention with a thoughtful and sensitive reading of the child's chart. My caveat is that it's not an exact or foolproof match for the three attachment types noted above -- consciousness, environment and other astrological factors certainly impact attachment styles and how relationships develop. However, my instinct is that the Huber reading of family dynamics in the birth chart can help us detect the child's inherent tendencies in the area of attachment. For example:

Secure attachment may have the best chance when there is an indirect connection between Moon (child) and Sun (father) and/or Saturn (mother). An indirect aspect ensures a connection that allows approach and attunement -- but one that has enough slack to allow the child to grow into himself over time. This jives with the notion that secure attachment is rooted in the "secure base" -- a sense of safety provided by the parent, and eventually internalized by the child, that allows the youngster to venture ever-further out into the world: a growing practice of healthy separation, identity formation and individuation.
Avoidant attachment may loom when there are no connections between Moon and the other two ego planets. This is because the parents expect (even unconsciously) the child to be independent and self-reliant right from the get-go. The child has the early impression that he or she is alone in the world, that the safety net must be completely created and maintained by himself. (However, I have seen children with no such connections whose parents are warm, connected and attuned.)
Ambivalent attachment may occur when Moon makes a direct aspect to Sun or Saturn. The obvious danger here, particularly with Sun-Moon or Saturn-Moon conjunctions, is enmeshment -- that is, the tendency to get so wrapped up in each other's needs, wants and identity that it's hard to separate the parent from the child. But enmeshment does not mean attunement (sometimes precisely the opposite!), so while the child may sometimes feel attuned to, at other times his or her needs may be so subsumed by the parents' that the child can feel lost and confused. The closeness feels nice, but there's something amiss in it.

It's important to note that a child can display one attachment style with one parent but something entirely different with the other -- further validating the Huber model that considers father and mother separately. And yet, of course, there are a lot of other factors to consider when attachment issues are afoot, including placement of the ego planets within the chart, strength and sign of each planet, interceptions and so forth. Still, simply observing the aspect relationships of the ego planets may help us conduct intervention so early that it could legitimately be called prevention. Consciousness can go a long way in mitigating what could otherwise become an insecure attachment.

As I believe early attachment experiences are the root of emotional stability, there may be no more important consideration when reading a chart, whether that chart is for a newborn or a wizened elder -- because no matter how old, having our particular attachment style understood, interpreted and validated can only be healing.

Has anyone out there observed the intersection of astrology and attachment types -- either formally or anecdotally? If so, I'd love to know!

Family Constellations

2007-07-06T00:38:00.001-07:00

In California, the hours you intern in preparation for licensure as a Marriage and Family Therapist must directly relate to the way people conduct their relationships: It ain't called "Marriage and Family Therapist" for nothin'. The state is markedly interested in perpetuating the stability of marriages and families. They don't much care about your archetypes, the Divine within, the transcendent function, blah blah blah.

That said, pretty much any therapy you do -- even therapy focused on the slipperier aspects of the Self -- can be understood as directly relating to the way the client conducts relationships. After all, Who You Are is what you bring to relationships -- marriage, family and all the rest of 'em.

Still, being part of a Marriage and Family myself, and being, for once, in agreement with the state -- there really is nothing more important to me than the strength of my little trio in the L.A. Foothills -- I am very taken by the Hubers' understanding of the nuclear family within the birth chart.

Because in a few quick glances at a child's chart, you can actually get a glimpse of how you, the parent, are being experienced by your child. You can start to make sense of the overwhelm of parenting advice out there -- from the Internet to your mother-in-law and everyone in between. You can start to trust your own intuition about how you parent -- and catch yourself when you start to slide sideways. You can not only separate the wheat from the chaff but also the wheat that's good for you from the wheat that might just give your family bloat.

For example, in the chart at the right, which was randomly generated from a date, time and place I just picked out of nowhere, the child (Moon) is going to naturally feel more kinship with the father (Sun) than with the mother (Saturn) -- by simple virtue of the fact that Moon and Sun have a direct aspect relationship, whereas Saturn is not connected to either Sun or Moon. This indicates not a "bad mother" (too much of those accusations going on in traditional psychotherapy!) but a mother who the child may perceive as distant or disconnected. The child's perception, whether "accurate" or not (and, really, who's to say?) is what informs his emotional development. Understanding not how you parent, but how your parenting is perceived by the person to whom it's directed, is critically important.

What's so great about this way of reading the chart is that we can know it before it's too late -- before attachment disorders develop, before parent and child grow up stewing in misunderstanding and missed opportunity, before anger and accusations overtake interactions, before the most extreme and incomprehensible nightmare of estrangement. Because we can know the likely skews in perception and even in actual behavior, we can head them off at the pass. The mother in the above randomly-generated chart could compensate for the perceived disconnect by making a conscious effort to connect -- by setting aside time and devoted energy just for her child every day. Another mother might not have to be so deliberate about doing so because her child will naturally have the expectation, propensity and experience of connectedness. In fact, in the chart above, the child would probably have such an experience of the father.

Consciousness can prevent and cure a lot of things. The state and I, for once, agree: Marriage and Family Problems are among the most important targets for prevention and cure. Now if only they'd reimburse astrologers with public funds...

(Image credit)

8 Random Things

2007-07-02T22:35:00.000-07:00

Astrologer Extraordinaire Joyce Hopewell challenged her blog-reading astrologers to come up with eight random things about themselves through the lens of a single aspect structure in their birth chart. So, because I can't get it out of my head, I choose my irritation triangle, that red-green-green dog biting my chart in two along the MC-IC line.

1. The structure itself -- the irritation triangle -- is an intensely restless figure that, strung up across the 3rd-9th house axis, has me thinking constantly. I'm a super-mental person who is always gathering and processing data (Mercury), putting it into a useful, organized structure or form (Saturn) that's infused (I hope) with wild insight (Uranus). In fact, this blog was created as a place for me to put my passing thoughts (Mercury) on the depths of astrological ideas (Uranus) into lasting form (Saturn).

2. Saturn in Taurus, however, can also make me come off as quite serious and deliberate (or, ahem, slow), though I do have a sense of humor that emerges elsewhere -- no, really, I do! Anyway, I was very relieved to read The Introvert Advantage, which pointed out that, in introverts, the pathway that thoughts travel to reach comprehension is actually physically longer than it is in extraverts. In the 9th house (which is about long-distance travel and deep thinking), this makes perfect sense to me. And it makes me happy.

3. Speaking of deep thinking, yes, the 9th house Saturn definitely scores big on that one. But Sun-Mercury in Scorpio at the IC is no slouch, either. I have that pair constantly plumbing the depths for information that I can chew on, turn over, revel in, have fun with and ultimately put to good use. My favorite dispatch for Sun-Mercury is the collective unconscious, the realm of the archetypes -- living, breathing, ancient models for human behavior and interactions. So favorite, in fact, that I went and got a Master's degree in the stuff from Pac ifica Graduate Institute.

4. Mercury also loves collecting stories -- and at the bottom of the birth chart, the more collective and unconscious, the better. So I've launched a venture which should go public this fall that will help people tell stories about transformative events in their family lives. Mercury-Sun in Scorpio straddling the IC! More to come...

5. And speaking of stories, my dad is a master storyteller (Sun-Mercury). He didn't fight in a war, he never spied on the Soviets (remember that whole thing?!), he hasn't (yet) achieved fame as a rock star (except in my childhood eyes). But grab a glass of wine (uh -- that's my Venus-Jupiter conjunction in Libra talking) and get comfortable (again with the Venus-Jupiter!), because once you get him going, his storytelling could keep you captivated for hours.

6. But don't let me sit too long, because that red line straight up the chart is my spine -- and it hurts. It connects my playful, instinctive self (Sun conjunct Mercury) with my demanding Saturn overlord. For years, a tug-of-war between these two has wreaked psychosomatic havoc on my back. The only thing that seems to help is emptying my mind through yoga and meditation. Kundalini yoga is my passion; the creative lifeforce of Kundalini energy is often symbolized by a snake (one symbol of Scorpio) curled at the base of the spine (IC), waiting to be awakened. I have a curled snake tattooed on my sacrum.

7. It's best for my thoughts that I don't sit long, though, whether in meditation or vegetation. My thoughts seem to converge, cohere and clarify best when I'm walking ... and walking ... and walking. I've always loved hiking, and the image of Mercury in the shadow of the 4th house -- climbing to the summit of the mountain of the depths -- really resonates with me. Literal vigorous walking brings me closer to that summit. When I don't walk regularly, my thoughts go flabby. Yuck.

8. Uranus. Surprise! Orange you glad I didn't say Saturn again? With semisextile and quincunx antennae, and a lunar conjunction to boot, this little green man is the feeler-into-er of the irritation trio. While Mercury's spewing out data and Saturn's trying to categorize it, organize it and make something of it, Uranus -- if it can get a word in edgewise -- helps me focus on the intuitive center of all that info. I used to try and logic everything out. I made some serious missteps that way that I'd rather not discuss, thanks anyway. Now, if I can hear through the babble of the thick red line, my gut usually tells me everything I need to know.

9. Bonus #9. It took me forever to get this post completed and up because of the perfectionism, anxiety and change-my-mind-iness of that irritating triangle!

What are some random things you've learned about yourself through astrology? My irritation triangle wants to know!

Learn, Think, Speak. Repeat.

2007-06-19T14:54:00.001-07:00

Mercury is never more than 30 degrees away from the Sun. That's unique among the planets -- all the others trek much further astray from the great ball of fire.

And if you know just a tad about Mercury and Sun's roles in the birth chart, you can begin to appreciate the importance of our smallest, fastest planet.

In a nutshell, the Sun is the core of your identity, an expression of your essential energy. It is self-awareness and will, an urge toward Being Yourself, the drive to create a space for yourself, for your uniqueness, within the sphere of the world.

Mercury is the way you learn, know and communicate. Mercury trolls the environment for useful information that helps you know how to be, move, speak and act in the world. And then, in turn, he helps you communicate back out to the world. Mercury resides in the in-between spaces, the open space between you and me -- and it's what gets tossed back and forth in that space. It's how I throw the ball to you and how you catch it. It's how we know what we know, what we do with it, how we transmit it. Mercury helps us exchange and connect with the people around us -- or not. But it's not the relationship itself -- that exists elsewhere.

The fact that Mercury is always close in to the Sun means that our ways of learning, knowing and communicating have a direct and real bearing on who we are and how we're perceived in the world -- whether that's really who we are or not.

Consider a person you greatly admire, or someone who gets on your nerves. What it is that you love or loathe? Chances are, the way that person thinks and -- especially -- communicates is among the top attractors or detractors. People who speak haltingly, rudely or sloppily give the impression not just of speaking that way but of being that way. On the other hand, people who communicate with charisma, charm, kindness or other such qualities attract us because we believe that is who they are. And, in a way, it is.

In turn -- in the true spirit of exchange that characterizes Mercury -- the way someone speaks impacts the way we feel about ourselves in their presence. The charming person draws us into her orbit, makes us feel good being around her, makes us feel more important or loved or wanted. The rude person makes us feel unwanted or unloved -- and, given enough time, power or both -- diminishes our self-esteem.

Most importantly, whether you communicate quickly, lovingly, charmingly, rudely, whatever, that habit informs your own sense of self -- your own Sun -- whether you're aware of it or not. (Much Mercury energy happens under the radar, so be careful what you say, and how you say it!). Learning, knowing and speaking are so ubiquitous that they can hardly help informing who we are.

An example: I was telling a friend a small story about my toddler the other day. Part of the story had my little boy banging on the door of our home office yelling, "Daddy! Daddy!" trying to get my husband, Alan, to come out. The office is two doors down the hallway from the room I was in, but in the interest of brevity, I just said, "Alan was in the next room, and the baby kept banging on the door."

Over the next day or two, I realized that the memory had shifted so that, even in my own mind, my son was banging not on the office door -- as he actually had -- but on the bedroom door, which in fact is "the next room" in real life. I had spoken a small and presumably harmless lie, and the lie became truth in my mind. Just like that, even though I consciously knew the truth.

What do we become when we speak? Do we speak from what we are? Or do we become who we are through what we speak?

(Photo credit)

Opposites, Like, Attract

2007-06-11T17:11:00.003-07:00

Remember the case of Nature v. Nurture? And how the brilliant psychoneuro- biologists finally resolved it with a burning, complex, insightful answer ("Uh, it's both, people.")?

Well, the even-more-esoteric among us have been taking sides for years in a similar debate: Opposites Attract v. Likes Attract. Which is it?

Uh. It's both.

Because, like Nature and Nurture, if you look deeply enough, Opposites and Likes are so intertwined that, ultimately, they find the seeds of themselves in the other.

Huh?

Look: The astrological chart is comprised of opposites. Because it's a circle, every point is exactly 180 degrees away from exactly one other point in the chart. Yet at the same time, every point is really the same as its opposite because both are equidistant from the Self -- from the center of the circle. No point can exist on the circle without the tension wrought by its polar opposite.

So any given planet, sign or house in the chart is -- often unwillingly, often resentfully -- beholden for its very existence to the energy of whatever opposes it. The opposite is what anchors it in place, what makes it part of the whole, what ties it to the core, to the Self.

If we ignore the energy pulling on the other end of the rope, it gets stronger and yanks the rope away and runs wild around our lives while we're standing there without a rope.

Or, conversely, if we pull too hard, get too attached to a particular way of being, the opposing force loses steam and lets go. And we fall on our asses. And if we still insist on holding tight, instead of getting up to offer a sportsman's handshake, the opposite comes up from behind and kicks us while we're down.

This opposite stuff is what Carl Jung termed the shadow -- the very stuff we'd rather ignore, rather deny in ourselves. If we're perfectly happy swimming in our Sagittarius soup, why on earth would we try to engage its opposite, Gemini?

Because if we don't, the world will do it for us. Deny your shadow and the world sends it forth in spades.

And because if we deny that energy, we're not really living up to the potential of what comes naturally. The blow-me-away insights of Sagittarius mean little unless they're grounded in the everyday understanding of Gemini. Internal Scorpionic instinct is well-buttressed by the external Taurean senses. Capricorn does better standing on the shoulders of giants than climbing on the backs of the little guys -- both possible ways of using the Cancer energy that stands opposite Capricorn.

I've been reminded of this lately as I've been planning a workshop on Libra. (E-mail me at enantiodromia1@verizon.net for more info about the workshop this September in the Los Angeles Foothills.) At its core, Libra is about balance -- in aesthetics, in relationships, in society, in ideas. As I looked for images of balance to share with my students, I saw a lot of healthy meals, scales of justice and perfectly symmetrical flowers. These were nice. They communicate Libra energy well enough.

But the images with the most energy were the ones of gymnasts on balance beams and daredevils on tightropes -- the images that incorporated Libra's opposite, bold and daring Aries, into the mix. Not that it's easy to eat healthy or achieve justice or grow a perfect flower. But the energy in those images was pretty one-sided. Flat. There was Like, but there was no obvious Opposite to give the true flavor of what was there. I wanted to see the chocolate ice cream alongside the salad, the attorneys' arguments that led to the just judgment, the seedling's bold decision to press through the soil and open its face into wild sunlight.

I wanted to see Libra's true nature -- the smooth cool that is energized by raucous Aries, the saint that welcomes the rebel, the astoundingly bold and balanced walk across the nauseatingly-high tightrope. The tension that brings deep meaning to the balance that Libra so delights in.

Jung identified the tension of opposites as a core affliction of the human spirit -- one that produces shadow material in each of us, unless we accept and integrate the opposites. If we pretend that Libran balance doesn't matter, that the only important thing is the crazy guts needed to run across the rope, we fall deep into the chasm below. But if we pretend that we're entirely balance and peace and light, the Aries daredevil will chase us into Hell and back till we take a deep breath and step out onto that tightrope.

And balance there.

Matter, Mother, Molecule

2007-06-06T14:26:00.001-07:00

Lunching with a friend this afternoon, she told me she'd had her chart read once and that it's amazing how accurate it is. I agreed and then couldn't help adding, "When it's done right." She agreed back. She'd had a good experience, for which I'm always grateful.

But it got me wondering what I meant by that. What's "right" in astrology? Everyone has their own version. So here's mine.

I have a decided bias against readings that don't penetrate the personality deeply. Just skimming the surface (How should I invest my money? Who is my ideal partner? What kind of job should I get?) might provide some useful and true information. But it neglects the roots of issues embedded in the personality, which can be seen all over the chart -- if it's viewed and utilized that way. (Superficial readings also, by the way, place control in the hands of the astrologer, ultimately leaving the client as unempowered as they were upon arrival.)

Take matter, for instance. No, really. Matter generally looks solid to us, unmoving. The book on the shelf is just sitting there; the phone on the desk, the curtains covering the window, the sleeve encasing my arm. All appear stable. But if we look closer -- as closely, as deeply, as we can -- we know now that each one of these things is made up of molecules that are jiggling, spinning, dancing and swimming around each other fluidly, beautifully, perhaps mercurially.

Similarly, if we look out the window, we see the city or the yard or whatever's out there beyond the walls, in all its solid and stable glory. We know the earth will hold us up, the same streets will be there predictably day after day, the same buildings, the same trees. But earth is spinning on its axis at about 800 miles per hour in the U.S. (more than 1,000 mph at the Equator) and orbiting the Sun at about 67,000 miles per hour. So, like the things that surround us that appear "inanimate," the earth itself isn't exactly unmoving, either.

So the level at which we exist is one that's able to perceive movement as stillness -- for the very practical purpose of negotiating a state of being that we come to know as "reality." Some people are more comfortable with this practical reality than others. But we should not forget that even the most earthy or stable of personalities -- those with fixed squares, for example, or lots of planets in Taurus, or strong Saturn energy -- are moving, too. Their emotional lives may (or may not) be less apparent than others', or what others describe as their stubbornness or laziness may simply be slowness as they work to integrate all those molecules spinning underneath. They may need more time to observe, to test, to taste, to dip their toes in before plunging into the lake that their Sagittarian friend is already halfway across.

Everything is matter in our world. We come into the world through the mother -- mater -- matter -- almost as a fierce reminder or admonishment that that's what this life is about. We live in a physical 3-D reality, bounded, governed, limited by the laws of matter: Two things cannot exist in the same place at the same time. Matter cannot be created, just converted. And so on.

Yet a whole different reality lies beneath and above the apparent stillness of matter. Penetrating beneath our everyday assumptions, moving out beyond our usual periphery, we see that "fixed" matter is actually in constant motion. It's going places within itself and far beyond. It's churning, it's dancing inside, it's encompassing entire solar systems beyond our range of vision.

We just have to get close enough, or step back far enough, to see.

Wide-Open Hope

2007-06-01T14:07:00.001-07:00

A friend gave birth this morning, and of course my first instinct (after tearing up, staring at the pictures and sending my excited congratulations) was to check out the child's birth chart.

It is an extraordinary thing to look at the chart of a new person because, like the baby, it is pure potential. It is the clay just now quarried, which could eventually become brick, pipe, pot or sculpture -- nobody yet knows. Stories are not yet inscribed on this chart, just lines, colors and shapes that hold the unsullied energy of the newborn.

It is a profound exercise in imagination to look at a new chart, a new child, and feel the unfathomable hope of total potential open your own heart to the possibilities of the world.

Welcome, sweet girl.

Sacred Geometry, Part III: The Triangle, The Square

2007-05-30T16:32:00.000-07:00

It's impossible to create a closed shape with only two lines, making the triangle the most basic closed shape after the circle.

Thinker extraordinaire Euclid of Alexandria noticed a few neat things about triangles around 300 B.C. that we can use today to understand how this shape plays in the birth chart.

One of those things is that the sum of any triangle's three exterior angles is 360 degrees. In other words, if you measure all three angles from the outside, not from the inside, then add them up, you'll get 360.

What else is 360 degrees around? A circle.

This discussion could go places on its own but at this point it might be more interesting to bring the square in for comparison's sake. That's because, in the square, it's the four internal angles that add up to 360 degrees.

So the triangle suggests that, to move back toward the spiritual wholeness of the circle (the original 360 degrees), the person needs to move -- to get outside the structure, break out, be original and daring and different. Individuation is the dynamic of the triangle.

On the other hand, the square suggests safety in the status quo, in remaining inside the structure, hugged by the familiar confines, each corner and each side of which is marked by sameness. The familiar -- the family -- by extension, the pre-set structures, habits and customs of the environment -- is the habitat of the square.

The perfect square is the most stable (and stubborn!) of astrological shapes, whereas the triangle is dynamic with direction in a way that the unboundaried and infinite line is not. There are also many variations on the square -- the rectangle, obviously, but also many quadrangles with internal angles that deviate from 90 degrees. But the fact remains that the sum of the internal angles always equals 360. The quadrangle, whether square, rectangle or anything else, no matter how outwardly-focused the action -- is always focused on the inward stability suggested by this fact.

The dominance of linear, triangular or quadrangular structures in your chart (as well as their direction, coloring and other nuances pertaining to your chart in particular) will provide insight about your core motivations in life. Take a look and see what's there...

More musings on sacred geometry here, here and here.

(Triangle photo credit)

(Square photo credit)

Sacred Geometry: A Quick Pit Stop

2007-05-23T14:49:00.000-07:00

When we start to draw lines across the circle of our selves, we start fragmenting the personality into pieces that compete for energy, attention and territory.

Bringing those fragments back together into a coherent and self-referential (and self-reverential) whole is the driving focus of depth astrology and depth psychotherapy.

There is nothing inherently wrong with lines, whether they're independent of triangles or quadrangles, or part of these larger shapes. It's just that, in the absence of conscious awareness, they tend to Balkanize the Self until it's hard to find our center, our wholeness again. That center is the place from which we act as boldly and wholly ourselves, not as a pawn of people who seem more powerful or as a needy or frightened being. The center is our true power because it is at once the root of our individuality and our compassion. It is there that power is not based on fear but on exuberant selfhood.

Knowing where your lines are -- what parts of you compete for attention, or hide away in fear, or puff themselves up, or writhe like a cobra out of control -- is a first step toward the center, toward feeling comfortable in your skin, toward self-assurance and the ability to breathe deeply because you can locate and listen to your Self, instead of to your fragments, in any given moment.

(More on sacred geometry here and here)

Sacred Geometry, Part II: The Line

2007-05-22T09:20:00.000-07:00

The simplest way to carve a circle into parts is by drawing a line between two points on the circle's circumference.

(We do this in an effort to get a foothold within the angle-less realm of the circle -- the wholeness of the self -- which is the basic shape of the horoscope: More on that in Part I: The Circle.)

Mathematically, a line is three things.

First, it is infinite. Infinitely thin and infinitely long, it contains an infinite number of points. Infinite: without end. Mind-boggling.

Second, a line is precise. If two lines aren't parallel, they meet at one, and only one, point. If they are parallel, they are exactly the same distance from each other down their entire infinite length. If they don't meet one or the other of these conditions, they're not lines.

Third, a line is efficient. It's the shortest way between two points. Enough said.

So what does this mean to the horoscope?

When you have lines that aren't part of a larger structure -- a triangle or a quadrangle -- you have an infinite, precise and efficient kind of energy. You can easily look at your own chart and see if you have any lines that aren't part of a shape. If you do, you have some linear energy and you need to know about it.

There are some great things about linear energy: It's sharp and quick, it is open to infinite possibilities and able to encompass much. On these lines, you quickly ascertain information, process it, integrate it and go out looking for more. You are open to what comes in, able to leap to the next step -- nimble, flexible.

But people may also see you as flighty: She just keeps talking/thinking/gathering. She is infinite. She needs to slow down, to let other people catch up before she moves onto the next thing. You may also feel overloaded sometimes, or unable to sustain your interest or focus your energy long enough to complete a task. Like that line containing an infinite number of points and extending out into infinity, you must keep moving.

And that can be exciting, but it can also be exhausting.

This would be the purest form of linear energy, and few people's charts are entirely made up of lines that aren't part of a triangle or quadrangle (although it definitely happens). So it may be that you're linear in these ways in one or two areas of life, but more dominated by triangular or quadrangular energy in other areas.

Linear energy is not, after all, much removed from the circle. It is one line but instead of meeting end to end, it opens up and extends out ad infinitum. It lacks the contained self-reference of the circle that allows for integration. But it does produce some exciting thought waves that, if you can draw them back into the circle, can serve you well.

More on triangles and quadrangles soon...

Money Money Money

2007-05-21T09:32:00.001-07:00

When I analyze people's horoscope charts, they often ask, "What does it say about money?" Usually there's either a gleam of excitement or a flash of doubt in their eyes. This tells me more than any single element of the chart might. For while there are some typical chart elements that might quickly give a clue about money, they really only scratch the surface. You have to look quite deep into the chart's complexities to understand a person's relationship with money.

That's because money -- like the other most common query, love -- penetrates so deeply into our consciousness and is, in turn, so deeply impacted by our internal life, that the question is much more complicated than it sounds.

For example, are you someone who "spends money to make money" or do you believe, rather, that "a penny saved is a penny earned"? Are you someone who needs material things to feel secure, or does security for you come from a different place? Does a lack of self-discipline let money slip from your fingers? Does a heavy concern with saving mean you're pinching pennies but wasting dollars? Do you spend money because you think you have to -- on expensive gifts, fine clothing, picking up the check, playing the big guy?

Delving deeper, are you someone who is willing to use your talents to create wealth -- material or otherwise? Have you been led to believe you don't have talents that can generate money for you? Or have you been made to feel ashamed or afraid of your talents and so find yourself in a profession that doesn't quite fit? The latter case is where "rising to the level of your own incompetence" tends to occur -- and doing so depletes your energy and limits your financial potential. How worth it do you really feel? Be honest.

Going even deeper, is your general stance on life one of prosperity or one of loss? Do you tend to think the world will provide for your needs? Or do you fear not having enough to get by? Do you hoard things -- not just dollars and cents but friendships, food, knick-knacks? Are you so protective of self or others that you're afraid to let go, to see what comes in naturally to support you, to protect you? Or do you trust abundantly?

Indications about each of these things live in the chart, but they can't all be summed up by what's in your 2nd house or where Jupiter sits (the typical places astrologers look for money). Martha Sinetar says that hang-ups tend to come in constellations: For example, if you feel unworthy of career success, tones and shades of that feeling will probably show up in other areas, too.

So too with money in the horoscope chart. Money is a tool, an external entity with which we have a relationship. It can bring us value, pain, hurt, ecstasy, embarrassment, security and more. Our feelings about money, our relationship with it, where we get it, what we do with it, how quickly or slowly it comes and goes -- that's infused throughout your personality.

Which means it's written all over your chart.

Copyright (C) 2007 by Kathy Crabb
About the image: This Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons image is from the user
Chris 73 and is freely available at http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Forms_for_fake_coins.JPG under the creative commons cc-by-sa 2.5 license.

Sacred Geometry, Part I

2007-05-16T09:35:00.000-07:00

Pioneering astrological thinkers Bruno and Louisa Huber identified the golden mean, a geometric ratio found commonly in nature, as a cornerstone of horoscope interpretation. Though I have been a mathaphobe since about 7th grade, I am fascinated by the role of geometry in astrological understanding. Forget the faraway flapping of butterfly wings: That non-material ideas -- numbers, ratios, shapes and lines -- impact our understanding of self, other and world is the ultimate mind-trip.

So while I'm not yet ready to swim in the slipperiness of abstract numbers, I can talk about their more concrete relations with some relative confidence.

Part I: The circle (and its 3-D form, the sphere) is a common symbol of wholeness seen in group mythologies and individual dreams the world over. As the basic canvas on which the birth chart is drawn, the circle can be seen as a reflection of the whole person. Every breath, bone and drop of blood; every thought that flutters through your head; every heartbeat, puff of anger and surge of love; every utterance, every silence, everything you possess and relinquish and reclaim; every insecurity, every sure step, every memory -- visceral or distant or utterly lost -- falls within the scope of the circle that is you. So do all the ripples, histories and potentialities of every one of these things, and more.

If you have trouble imagining the vast scope of your own wholeness, you're not alone. It's no coincidence that perfect circles, while pleasing to the eye, are hard to navigate: If you tried to climb a circle, either inside or out, where would you fall? No corners, bumps or angles serve as footholds. Urban myths report people living in spherical structures tend to go mad quickly: What do you grasp onto? Where do you focus? How do you arrange your thoughts, your furniture? Is there any human experience more awesome and more fearsome alike than being alone in the great circle of ocean or desert or sky, the horizon unbroken in every direction? (If you haven't read it, I highly recommend Life of Pi to get a sense of this experience.) In the great, unfathomable sphere of the universe, gravity falls away from our small, fathomable bodies. Tension and traction evaporate -- can you imagine? -- and we remain solely with our Selves to comprehend.

Perhaps this is at the core of why astrology has been reviled by the dominant culture for centuries -- and why some astrologers tend to play at the edges with keywords and predictions instead of going for the chart's jugular.

For the horoscope's very structure implies that, in the end, God/the eternal/the divine/the universe -- the Circle -- is within each of us -- is each of us.

That implies immense potential power in the individual -- power that is awesome and fearsome alike -- power that might be best symbolized in the quintessential mark of the universe, its birth moment: the Big Bang. The universe, like each of us, beginning with the moment of birth, is ever-expanding -- forever trying to encompass its own greatness, grow into its astounding potential, push ever-outward the curve of its own sphere -- whether it wants to, whether we want to, or not. The difference is, unlike most of us humble humans, the universe seems utterly unafraid of its own power.

So in an effort to grasp our own power, perhaps, we overlay our sphere with Prime Meridians and Tropics of Cancer, with the borders of nations and the scars of tract housing, etching our own unconscious striving onto the sphere of the natural world. We lay down lines, triangles and squares on the birth chart to help us make sense of the circle inside, to give us traction, footholds, in the otherwise vast and slippery expanse of ourselves.

More on that geometry in Part II.

More on Mercury

2007-05-14T15:08:00.000-07:00

Duh.

In the haze of a sinus infection last week (more on that later), I left some very important information on Mercury out of this post.

In addition to commerce, travelers, gymnastics and the underworld, Mercury is also closely associated with data, information, learning and communication. (Though not patently obvious at first glance, these themes do dovetail with the kind of impersonal exchange associated with Mercury's other traits: Looking deeper than the kind of "keyword astrology" that's so common can help open up the core archetypal energy driving a planet's role in the personality.)

Specifically, in the same way that coins and bills are the basic unit of exchange in commerce, data and information are the currency of learning and communication. Through Mercury, you exchange items of impersonal worth to create something of personal value and meaning. Our 20-month-old son is in an intense Mercury phase right now (as are most toddlers as they learn to walk and talk). He wants to hear the ABCs and the names of things over and over again, taking in bits of data and repeating them back to us, getting used to using information in order to communicate and get his needs met.

At the most basic level, learning and communication are simple exchanges of currency. Our son has learned to say "No" and "Down" and "I did it!" as a way of communicating and, as a result, getting what he wants (most of the time!). There is no particular morality connected to his words except that of his own instincts. That we infuse the words that we and other people say with our own values, hopes and frustrations is not Mercury's fault. He simply provides the space and energy for the go-between, opening up channels for exchange between two people, two ideas, two items of value.

People with Mercury placed strongly on a point of outward focus tend to have a lot to say. Those with a strong Mercury turned inward might take in a lot, absorb information and chew on it, store it for future reference. Each can learn to turn their responses inside-out -- the talker quieting down to absorb and the introvert speaking up sometimes -- but it takes consciousness and effort.

When Mercury is retrograde (as it next will be June 15-July 9 this year), many people get conscious against their will when they experience hassles with data and communication: a phone number is wrong, the computer freezes, you take the wrong turn and it takes you an hour to get back on track. Mercury ret reminds you how important it is to attend to the little things.

When Mercury is on overload, as it often is in my life, it sometimes feels like information is coming at you (or from you) at warp speed -- so much so, sometimes, that value is difficult to create. This is what recent writers have termed "data smog," "information overload" and so forth. The Internet is a prime example of Mercury on overdrive: so much data, so little time.

My Mercury happens to be in a stress zone (just before the cusp of the next house), which means it tends to suck energy from other parts of my chart in order to achieve, at its best, lots and lots of learning and communication -- at its worst, sifting through data just trying to stay on top of it. I spend a lot of time responding to e-mail, going through stacks of documents I once thought I couldn't live without -- but also synthesizing information and crafting words in the precise way I want them to sound. Right now, I have about a half-dozen books stacked next to the bed that I'm excited to read. But the stack of papers in my office is so high, I get a headache just thinking about it.

But that last part -- that's also psychosomatics -- an issue for another post. Coming soon.

Debunking a Myth

2007-05-11T09:52:00.000-07:00

Lots of people assume Aquarius is a water sign. After all, its patron is the water-bearer ... aqua = water ... her glyph looks like two waves ... seems like a no-brainer, huh? But many depictions of Aquarius actually show the water-bearer dumping out the water from her vessel.

Aquarius is, in fact, an air sign.

There are four elements associated with the zodiac signs: fire, earth, air and water. Each one carries a different energy that informs the temperament of the person or planet involved. The characteristics of each element mirror those found in the natural world. In very general terms:

Fire signs are intuitive, quick and creative; impulsive, reckless and showy.
Earth signs are deliberate, realistic and hard-working; materialistic, stubborn and cautious.
Air signs are intelligent, rational and social; restless, removed and flirtatious.
Water signs are deep, passionate and insightful; emotional, sensitive and elusive.

So while Aquarius is an air sign she is also a carrier of water. Her nature is still air -- more focused on ideas and information than on compassion and empathy. But her progressive, egalitarian understanding of the world, coupled with her social nature, gives the impression of empathy as people tend to feel accepted and welcome in her presence. She carries water, and readily shares it, but she doesn't get personally and emotionally invested in it in the way of a water sign.

But she might get invested enough in her ideas and especially her ideals that she'll surprise you with her obstinacy when she doesn't get her way. If something is important enough to her, she'll dump out the waters of compassion and dig in her heels until she gets what she wants. And as a stubborn fixed sign, that obstinacy can last a good long time.

Everyone has Aquarius in their chart. In what house does your Aquarius reside? Do you have any planets in Aquarius? If you do, how are you using them?

(By the way: Two more so-called no-brainers debunked: Scorpio is a water sign and Aries, the ram, is a fire sign.)

Shameless Commerce

2007-05-10T23:19:00.000-07:00

In mythology, Mercury (aka Hermes) is the God of A Lot of Things: thieves, travelers, wrestling, gymnastics, trade, profit, merchants -- and commerce. His stories are legion and his legacy is, well, legend.

He is also known as "guide of souls" because of his role escorting the newly-dead to the underworld. In this capacity, he is also a patron of depth (especially Jungian) psychology, which understands the journey to the underworld as a metaphor for going deep within the self as part of individuation.

The complexities of Mercury perplex the literal mind. What has wrestling to do with thievery? The underworld with commerce and profit? Remember that the ancients were required to pay the ferryman to get to the underworld, and in many cultures (even today), people are sent to their rest with worldly goods to help them through the period post-mortem.

But even this is certainly metaphoric to the underworld experience of the living. What does one give up with the decision to delve deep within the self? What is the price of self-knowledge and individuation? The ancient goddess Inanna hung on a meat hook in the underworld for three days before she ascended back to her heavenly throne (not unlike another, more "modern" Son of God we know). Is that a high enough price? How are we asked to hang in preparation for becoming more ourselves?

Mercury is amoral -- that is, although he is known as a "personal planet" in astrology, in mythology his character is one that remains fairly apart from individual desire. His actions defer to the larger universal dynamic rather than the fleeting wants of the individual. So allowing Mercury to guide you requires faith that the universe has your best, highest outcome in store -- a trust that you might not, in fact, be always best-suited to choose your exact course. Mercury's price might feel steep, but it almost always has a reason.

Has Mercury ever enticed you into underworld experiences -- regretful purchases, slips of the tongue, misguided information or worse -- that nevertheless helped you know yourself better? What is Mercury connected to in your chart? Where is he placed -- in what sign, in what house? How might he pull you into experiences that feel like rabbit holes but ultimately lead to your higher self?

(And speaking of Mercury: Click on the Cafe Press link to the right to engage in a little shameless commerce -- I've just introduced my first line of astrology apparel, so you can wear the stars on your sleeve! And more is on the way...)

Hamsters and the Mutable Cross

2007-05-10T13:06:00.000-07:00

Astrological charts can be looked at in a number of ways: concentric circles, connected lines, the relationship of colors... Each way of looking tells the story of your personality from a different perspective. And usually, similar stories and themes emerge from different perspectives -- deepening your self-understanding.

One way of looking is through the set up opposites. One set of opposites is the houses: those pie-pieces demarcated by short lines on the outermost perimeter of the circle. Some are marked with a number, others with abbreviations: AC (=1st house), DC (=7th house), MC (=10th house) and IC (=4th house).

House oppositions are important because they illuminate some tensions in the personality -- and, moreover, what to do about it.

If a red line bisects the chart, running between two planets that are 180 degrees from each other, that is an obvious tension. Think of it as a tug-of-war with -- for example, in the chart above -- Saturn high up in the chart (in the 9th house) tugging at one end of the rope and Mercury down in the 3rd house tugging at the other end. The 3rd house-9th house axis is, at its core, about thinking. And a core tension in this woman's personality -- which, looked at another way, is also a big strength -- revolves around her thought process.

Planets in the 3rd house collect information from the environment, store it away for future use like a hamster filling its cheeks with kibble. The thinking here isn't really original or creative, it's more like a trawler just collecting data from knowledge that already exists out in the world. Ninth-house planets, on the other hand, have the ability to engage in deep, original thinking of the kind that -- at its utmost -- can set humanity on a whole new course. The tension here is one of toeing the line between traditional, accepted thought and edgy, revolutionary propositions. What's a revolutionary to do to be accepted?

Jungian psychology looks at the tension of opposites as a critical part of psychological development, and at reconciling the opposites as a key achievement in individuation. (Jung was not necessarily talking astrology, but the concept is clearly illuminated in the horoscope.) Huber astrology proposes that the resolution of opposites occurs through the "third pole," or the pair of houses directly perpendicular to the pair where tension resides.

So the person with the chart above might consider developing the energy of the 6th house-12th house pair (what we call the 6/12 axis) as a remedy for tensions on the 3/9 axis. Energy in the 6/12 axis gathers around issues of existence: What will you do for survival -- both physical (6th house) and mental/emotional (12th house)? Will you heed the call of the collective or march to your own drummer? If you march to your own drummer, how are your environs affected? If you bend to what others expect of you, what suffers in yourself? Can you drop off the hamster-wheel of thought for long enough to just be? What happens to your body when you give your mind a break?

Do you have any red lines bisecting your chart? Alternately (or in addition), do you have any houses where there are several planets but none in the opposite pie-slice? Where do you feel the tension in your personality -- in relationships? Thought process? Possessiveness? Elsewhere? Where do your biggest frustrations lie? Can you see how they might also be a source of talent and strength?

Cycles of Life

2007-05-01T22:06:00.000-07:00

Astrology is incredibly useful when it comes to throwing a wrench in old, useless, painful patterns. When a situation feels familiar, sometimes it helps to identify when in your past the feeling, circumstances or behaviors have troubled you before.

If you can identify a pattern that coincides (even roughly) with any of the following cycles, it might just be the beginning of change and healing:

Moon -- 29 days (about a month)
Mercury -- 88 days (just under three months)
Venus -- 224.7 days (about 7.75 months)
Sun -- 365 days (one year)
Mars -- 687.0 days (about 23 months)
Jupiter -- 4,332 days (almost 12 years)
Saturn -- 10,760 days (about 29.5 years)

Uranus, Neptune and Pluto all have cycles that reach beyond the ability to identify patterns in the course of a single lifetime (84, 165 and 248 years respectively).

Of course, the birth chart being a series of five concentric circles with virtually infinite possible combinations of planetary placements and angles, the seven cycles of time above are only the beginning. Other cycles occur in fairly regular wave patterns that can suggest periods of creativity, fallow time, focused work and other energies.

And it's not only patterns of time that the chart can suggest. It's also associations between seemingly disparate events. When you're frustrated at work, does your back tend to go out? When your love life is on the fritz, does your bank account suffer? When you feel connected and cared for, does your mind flood with astounding insight? Certain energies in the chart tend to activate (or aggravate) other energies -- even ones we don't normally associate with one another.

If you mapped the most trying, most rewarding, most creative or most connected times of your life, what patterns and associations would you begin to see?

The Fittest Gorilla

2007-04-27T21:21:00.000-07:00

Richard Feynmann -- famous physicist, womanizer and bongo player -- said this in his renowned Feynman Lectures on Physics (Vol. 1):

"It is just a strange fact that we can calculate some number, and when we finish watching nature go through her tricks and calculate the number again, it is the same." (source)

He was talking about energy. Basically, he was saying that whatever you have -- a gorilla, say -- is energy of a given quantity. If you add more energy to it -- for example a hard push, a jog around the block or a pound of peanuts -- the form may change. But the amount of energy, the calculation, remains the same. The gorilla is knocked over, more physically fit or a pound of peanuts heavier, but the calculation is still 800 pounds plus the energy of the push or the run or the peanuts.

What does this have to do with astrology? Everything. The birth chart represents the energy you were born with -- that is, the natural tendencies to which your personality leans (notice I didn't say "is enslaved for life").

If you're the gorilla, are you the one vulnerable to being pushed around by the rest of your tribe? Are you the one that gets up every morning for a jog around the block? Are you the one that can most often be found under a tree eating a pound of peanuts?

If you're the bicycle, are you the one that prefers to amble down a country lane, stopping in the shade on occasion to pick flowers and enjoy the breeze? Or the one that blasts past the other competitors in the Tour de France? Or the one collecting dust in the garage?

It can all be read in your chart. You're given certain tools -- a body, a heart, a mind and more -- a gorilla, perhaps -- and your chart gives you certain energetic tendencies to apply to each one: working mind, sluggish body, perceptive heart, blocked instinct, dynamic persona... Knowing your chart can help you open up or change the energy, help you see how to bring different kinds of energy to apply to different tools when what you're doing now results in unhappiness or worse.

In the end, the calculation will still be the same -- you'll still have a body, a heart, a mind and more. Perhaps even a gorilla. But the result will be different. If you shift from scattered energy to focused energy, your mind will look different. If you shift from me-energy to we-energy, your heart will look different. If you shift from thinking energy to doing energy, your body will look different.

And maybe you'll be the fittest gorilla on the block.

Are You the Decider?

2007-04-26T14:57:00.000-07:00

George W. Bush drew much derision when he uttered his famous declaration, "I am the decider."

In my reading, the derision wasn't directed so much at the sentiment as at his phraseology. But his plainspeak was still intriguing. Who else but someone with six of ten planets in so-called "cardinal zones" -- and most planets on the "I" side of the chart -- would make such a statement? (Answer: someone with 7, 8, 9 or 10 cardinal planets on the "I" side!)

By contrast, certain web pages at my husband's organization used to carry the words, "Maintainer: Alan." Without violating his privacy too much, I will tell you, confidentially, that Alan does have a lot of fixed energy in his chart.

Myself? It's all summed up in my About Me tagline (at right), which reads, "It changes every day." (Believe me, I wasn't thinking about my chart specifically when I wrote it; I was merely trying to identify the phrase that best captures my mutable personality.)

Cardinal, fixed and mutable are the three main motivational energies of the astrological chart. If you have strong cardinal energy, you forge ahead and envision the future, make decisions, initiate action. These are the folks people follow. Fixed types -- the "maintainers" among us -- consolidate what's been achieved and make sure it is safe and secure. They're the ones who will stick with you through thick and thin (whether you want them to or not). We mutable folk tinker with what's there, trying to perfect it, preparing it for the next round of action. We make good editors, good housekeepers.

Of course, everyone has a mix of these energies within them; it is exceedingly rare to find someone whose insides are entirely populated with one type of energy. So there are areas of life in which we tend to initiate more, others where we prefer to sit back and enjoy what we have, others where we just can't leave it alone. Sometimes we're good at two of those modes or even all three of them in a single area of life: establishing, maintaining and refining strong relationships, for instance, or a thriving career, or a solid sense of self.

Do you know yourself well enough to guess whether your chart has more cardinal (decider), more fixed (maintainer) or more mutable (changer) energy in:

Relationships?
Security?
Learning?
Communicating?
Community?
Surviving?
Other areas that are important to you?

Are there areas you'd like to be more energetic, relaxed or persistent about than you find you naturally are? Where do you want to be the Decider? The Maintainer? The Changer?

Where Energy Comes From

2007-04-25T13:19:00.000-07:00

Another image that stuck with me from my walk to work this morning was a bicycle chained to a lamppost. Although it's not abnormal for a bicycle to be chained up, we don't tend to think of it that way. Say "bicycle" to any innocent bystander and the imagery and energy you'll most likely conjure is that of movement, swift and sleek.

But that's not the bicycle's fault. The bicycle doesn't necessarily inherit swift, sleek movement. That's what we bring to it -- our preconceived notion about what a bicycle is and does. And it could, in fact, be argued that a bicycle does naturally come with the energy of movement. After all, that's what it was made for.

But only if it's joined with an able and willing pair of legs to put it in motion. If it happens to be coupled with something besides that pair of legs -- a chain and lock, for instance, or the grill of a large truck, or a house fire -- it gives off entirely different energy.

And so it goes. If you have, say, Mars conjunct Saturn in your birth chart, you might feel like the first image much of the time -- motion restrained. But what if your Mars is conjunct Jupiter and Mercury high in your chart?

I'd say don't fly too close to the sun.

But you'd probably just look at me and laugh.

Elevator to the 12th Floor

2007-04-25T09:31:00.000-07:00

You've been there many times: In an elevator with one other person.

Maybe you made brief eye contact when you stepped in -- before the door closed behind you -- but you quickly looked down, and so did he. Or she.

You punched the button for your floor and settled back on your heels, heard yourself breathing, fixed your eyes on a nondescript spot on the steel doors or let them wander anywhere but within range of the human being not two feet from you.

The brief zero-gravity feel of the elevator pulling you up into space took on a small dimension of eternity, then matter nonchalantly settled back into your belly. The ride went on.

Though the 12th house has traditionally been associated with prisons and mental hospitals, it could be argued that this most typical of modern-day scenes is a quintessential, if quick, 12th house experience.

You are trapped in an enclosed space with nothing but your thoughts, your feelings and time. In the 12th house, you are essentially alone, at the end of individuation, with pure consciousness, pure selfhood. It's a scary place to be if you don't know what to do, if you're not comfortable with yourself.

The most obvious answer is to make contact with the person next to you -- but this is very rare in an elevator situation. Less obvious is that you use the moment to dwell on those existential questions that press uncomfortably up against you. Most likely, though, you just think about mundane things beyond the elevator: the walk down the hall after the doors open, the day's to-do list, whether you left the oven on at home. Sixth house concerns.

Only when the doors open might it feel safe to say, "Have a nice day" or some similarly benign post-greeting to your elevator-mate. Knowing you can escape makes all the difference in the world in our willingness to engage. Having a way out of the 12th house -- through aspect lines that open the doors from 12th house planets to other realms or through the development of consciousness -- is important for a productive and healthy 12th house.

What's in your 12th house?