2007 November : Big Sky AstroBlog

Nov

27

I was standing in a dusty, enchanting used bookstore in Julian, California yesterday afternoon when the universe nearly hit me over the head with a subtle message regarding my future.

I was making a pilgrimage to meet with Steven Forrest, master of myth and mischief, in the remote and forbidding desert town of Borrego Springs. My mind was itchy with thoughts about my so-called career; which direction to take next, what kinds of worthy projects might occupy my time and thoughts. After having a quick lunch and procuring a couple of famous Julian pies as a treat for Steve, Jonny and I strolled across the road to investigate the local bookstore. It was a sleepy Monday afternoon and we had the place all to ourselves - four or five rooms of an old bungalow, filled with well-organized shelves. Moments after I entered the room marked “Metaphysics”, I heard a book-like thud from the next room. I peeked around the corner; no one was in the room. On a whim, I bent over to retrieve the fallen volume.

It wasn’t the rather lurid picture of a gun on the cover that caught my eye. Rather, it was the title: Solar Eclipse. As many Big Sky Astrology readers know, eclipses are one of my real astrological passions. In fact, I pitched the idea for a book about eclipses to my publisher before we ever talked about a wedding book - but they had Celeste Teal’s fine book in the queue, so we had moved on to other ideas. But a book about eclipses is one I’ve always felt most passionately that I’d like to write.

So I looked at the book, and I thought about why I was on the road to see The Great Man, and all the questions I’d been turning over in the my mind, all the things I wanted to ask him about, most of which boiled down to a single question: Should I write another book? And I thought about something I once learned, which is that moving in the direction of the North Node always gets you something that’s absolutely right for you, even if it’s not in precisely the form you’d expected.

Yesterday, Pluto was trine my natal North Node in the 9th house within one minute of orb, with Jupiter close behind. Fittingly, Pluto had picked me up and was carrying me toward one of my teachers, a suitably 9th house figure. The meeting was fabulous and magical, and the reading began (naturally) with my North Node. I came away with all the insights I didn’t even know I was looking for, and confirmation that the path ahead is one with heart.

But along the way, wise Pluto waylaid me in a tiny, remote mountain town and nearly dropped a book (9th house!) on my head - just to make sure the message was unmistakable, and to let me feel like the discovery was all mine.

November 27, 2007 | 9 Comments

Nov

24

Gift of Listening Greetings, all! Hope all my U.S. pals had a delightful Thanksgiving celebration. As for me, if I never see another piece of pumpkin pie, it’ll be too soon. (Oh, who am I kidding? There’s no such thing as too much pie!)

Today’s Full Moon in Gemini (6:30 am PST / 9:30 am EST) prompted my latest essay, “The Gift of Listening”:

This year’s Full Moon chart features the Sun and Moon in square aspect to terse, exacting Saturn in Virgo… As always, Saturn offers valuable insights if we can get past his harsh rebukes. When we give up pretending that we know everything, we free ourselves to learn from what other people have to say. And if we fold up the cell phone and stop talking for two minutes, we might notice that the woman sitting next to us in the doctor’s waiting room looks scared to death and might be grateful for someone to talk to. Listening - that simple gift of attention and love, like holding open a door for someone leaving a store as you’re entering - makes the world feel a little kinder, a little more civilized….
read the full article here

November 24, 2007 | Leave a Comment

Nov

19

How is the Mars retrograde treating everyone? The last Mars retrograde in late 2005 kicked my butt, even if it took a month or so to gather steam; so although I’m toddling along pretty happily at the moment, I’m pretty sure I’m not out of the woods yet. Jonny’s getting some pretty nasty smacks already, what with the retrograde conjunct his natal Uranus and square Saturn. But so far, my role is mostly to stand on the sidelines making comforting noises.

But of course, dealing with retrogrades is not just a matter of playing defense, passively sitting by and waiting for it all to pass. Retrograde periods are great times to reflect on our relationship with the planet in question and what it represents, to look within for answers, to retrace our steps and restore whatever we knocked over on our first sprint across the landscape.

Mars is moving through my eighth house, the house of psychological housekeeping, and that’s a part of my life that’s been needing attention for awhile. I’ve kept myself very, very busy for the past couple of years, mostly out of sheer necessity, but often to the detriment of my overall well-being. So last month I took drastic measures to reduce my workload. I had some loose ends to finish up, but finally I now find myself with time to sort through the rubble and figure out which direction to go in next. It’s a little disconcerting, after pushing so hard for so long, to find myself with the occasional free morning, a deliciously empty couple of hours in an afternoon, entire swaths of weekend to clean my house and hang out watching old Cary Grant movies. I’m grateful for that; I’m sleeping better and smiling more. But it’s interesting to observe the thoughts and feelings that are bubbling to the surface, now that my mind has a little time to focus on other than work. It ain’t all peaches and herb.

If there’s a universal message for Mars in retrograde, maybe it’s something like: Rethink your work. Do you like what you do for a living, the tasks that occupy your day? Do you enjoy a healthy balance of work and leisure in your life? These are questions of the privileged, aren’t they; people all over the world would love the luxury of contemplating questions like these. “What do you mean, enjoy my work?” asks the destitute third-world farmer who spends every waking moment trying to provide for his family. “What do you mean, leisure?” demands the family straining to rebuild their Mississippi home, destroyed by Hurricane Katrina two years ago.

What does Mars retrograde mean for people who are straining every nerve, every resource, every drop of strength just to get by? People who don’t have the luxury of distracting themselves with wacky screwball comedies of the 1940s? I suppose it’s a time of tapping into even deeper resources of strength and courage, two vital and necessary qualities of Mars. To summon the sheer grit and determination to get through another seemingly impossible day.

As we approach Thursday’s Thanksgiving holiday here in the U.S., here’ s hoping Mars retrograde helps us all uncover the strength and courage to slay whatever dragons lay in our paths; that we all find the grace to remember just how good most of us have it; and that we find ways in the year ahead to lend a little of our Mars strength to those who need it most.

November 19, 2007 | 1 Comment

Nov

7

I’m in the throes of editing the author proofs for my book, and it’s painful. Over the years, I’ve perfected a rather obsessive writing process - dashing off a draft, printing it out, marking it up; typing in the changes, printing it out, marking it up; lather, rinse, and repeat as needed, often five or six times for a simple essay. One weeps for the trees, but I can’t seem to edit on the computer - I’ve got to see it on the page, cross things out, and shoehorn in barely-legible transitional phrases. It’s messy, but it works for me; with a 1,000 word essay, I can usually get the prose so tight you could bounce a quarter off it.

This is the process I used, more or less, when writing the book. But it simply wasn’t feasible to massage all fourteen sections of the book to the extent I would a single essay. So now, as I roam the pages I find mess after hot mess. I don’t blame my scrupulous editor or careful proofreader, because these are not the sorts of messes they would have been expected to catch or clean up. They’re messes of rhythm and word choice, meter and imagery. So I’m itching to scrawl all over every clean, cute page with my brand-new purple marker; but I restrain myself, because someone else has to be able to read my notes and I can’t just scrawl them in my usual haphazard fashion. And even after I’ve written in my neatly printed comments, I can’t be sure I’ve fixed something to my satisfaction because I can’t type in the new stuff and print it out in exactly the same format. I should have broken down in the beginning and taken the thing down to Kinkos and had a “mess” copy made for myself, then transferred everything over to the proofs in a sane, legible fashion.

Ack! I’m in mildly OCD, Saturn in Virgo hell. I can only work through a couple of chapters a day because I’m so tense as I read through it, waiting to find something intrinsically stupid and not-easily-fixable. It seems to fit the symbolism of transiting Saturn conjoining my natal Pluto, though I couldn’t explain exactly why.

# # #

In other Saturn/Pluto news, I’ve been working with a hypnotherapist for a few weeks. He’s a fabulous fellow - he’s one of those November 1 birthday Scorpios I seem to magnetize, with his Sun, appropriately enough, conjoining my natal Neptune (and his, since he was born just a few months after me). Needless to say we click, and the hypnosis has been startlingly effective in altering some long-troublesome thought and behavior patterns. But it seems to work a bit like chiropractic, in that you make an adjustment and initially everything feels great, but then the shock of realignment freaks out the rest of the system and before you know it, you’re right back where you started. I’ll stay with it, though; it certainly seems like exactly the right work to do under the influence of Saturn/Pluto.

# # #

Finally, I don’t know what cosmic noise to attribute this to, but doesn’t it seem like there’s a hell of a lot of horrendous torture imagery in the news and in film right now? Or am I feeling especially sensitive to it because of my own Saturn/Pluto situation? I’m sitting there last night watching, I don’t know, the Chappelle Show or something, and suddenly I’m presented with this nightmarish commercial for a movie about anesthesia… the gist seemed to be that the patients in the film aren’t actually asleep, just paralyzed during a surgical procedure? I can barely write about it, it freaked me out so profoundly. How, exactly, is this entertainment? Meanwhile, congress appears to be a stone’s throw away from officially endorsing torture by confirming Bush’s latest AG nominee/horror. What is it in our collective unconscious that’s rearing up and inflicting this violent cruelty and ugliness on the world? It’s not just Mars turning retrograde in the progressed US chart, because it ain’t just happening here.

Are any of you getting hit with a Saturn/Pluto
transit? What’s happening with you?

November 7, 2007 | 12 Comments

Sign of Leo

Moon sextiles Mercury at
4:20 pm on Jul.5, 2008

Moon opposes Neptune at
5:22 pm on Jul.5, 2008

Moon trines Pluto at
3:05 am on Jul.6, 2008

Moon goes void of course at
3:05 am on Jul.6, 2008

Moon enters Virgo at
4:04 am on Jul.6, 2008

Moon conjuncts Mars at
9:19 am on Jul.6, 2008