Natal Astrology : Big Sky AstroBlog

May

10

So last night I added another to the long list of physical activities at which I am hopelessly incompetent.

It seems I really, really suck at bowling.

Awhile back, our friends decided that each month we would choose some wacky new activity to enjoy together. We’re a bunch of middle-aged people with failing backs and poor eyesight, so we expect a certain amount of hapless flailing to be part of the entertainment value of these experiences. Last month we went to a roller skating rink, where I actually distinguished myself by remaining upright all evening - but then, roller skating was one of the few physical activities I enjoyed as a kid. The 44-year-old flesh was weak, but the muscle memory was willing, and it all more or less came back to me. Good fun.

But man, I cannot bowl. I was sort of getting the hang of it, and even managed a strike at the top of the second game, but it all went horribly awry from there. To make matters worse, several of my friends - even my own husband! - demonstrated their natural athletic abilities by picking up on the rudiments of the game fairly quickly, steadily improving as the night progressed. Whereas I… didn’t. At all.

I blame the rented shoes, which looked like a carnival geek threw up on them - sort of neon orange and green. Really awful. I was psychologically diminished by these shoes. And I developed a small rash on my thumb. Yeah, that’s it - the shoes and rash. That’s why I sucked.

Oh, wait - I just thought of something else to blame: astrology! Today, still demoralized by my poor showing at the alleys (a mood not improved by Jonny’s tactful reassurance that “you have…an interesting style”), I thumbed through my well-worn copy of Rex Bills’ Rulership Book, which identifies physical coordination as a function of Mercury and … Taurus. Aha! Unlike my husband, with his Taurus Moon, and my friends with their sundry Venuses and Marses and Mercuries in Taurus, I was born with Mercury in a fire sign and nothing at all in Taurus.

I suppose this explains why, although I’ve always been a fairly good mimic when it comes to anything mental, I simply can’t watch someone do something physical and then replicate it. I have always been hopeless at dance, aerobics, volleyball, baseball, and basically any and all pursuits requiring motor skill and coordination. I can ride a bike and drive a car, and that’s about it. Little did I know of my profound astrological disadvantage, the sad disconnect between my Mercury and the physical world.

But that’s okay. At least I’ve got decent taste in shoes.

May 10, 2006 | Comments Off

Mar

20

More celebration of Virgo’s practical magic in this excellent article at Oculus Divinorum, entitled “From Subservient Secretary to Ritual Priestess.”

It’s easy to forget, in the push to simplify astrology for the masses, to look a little deeper at the signs of the zodiac and what they say about our style of doing things, perhaps more so than the kind of things we do. I am a recovered executive secretary myself (though not exactly subservient - my MC is flanked by Mars and Pluto, which often got me into trouble) with a Virgo midheaven. It’s work I respect, but ultimately it wasn’t right for me (too many Leo planets), even though all the astrology books claimed it was the perfect career choice for a Virgo MC.

While I wouldn’t exactly call myelf a ritual priestess these days, I do find a very Virgo-like satisfaction in work that allows me to help people sort things out - websites, wedding dates, lives. Now, if I could do the same thing in my own office…

March 20, 2006 | Comments Off

Jun

7

The Friggin’Book is unfolding at the rate of about fifteen badly written pages per week. Several mornings each week I hie to my office, fire up the laptop, and crank out some dreck. It’s painless work, because I’m not trying to write well; I’m just trying to get a lot of stuff written down so that I can imagine a little more clearly what its final form should be. The painful process of making it all worth something will come later.

Elsewhere, the flow of my words is absolutely drying up. This blog is languishing a bit, I realize it, and I haven’t written anything new for my website in a month. I’m even procrastinating about answering my email, which for years has been one of my life’s great satisfactions. Used to be, writing felt like a dip in a reflecting pool of feeling and meaning. But lately, I’d rather do almost anything else than try to write well. It’s as though my keyboard were subjecting me to aversion therapy, sending out little electric shocks every time I put my fingers on it. And as the textbooks would suggest, my stomach (ruled by the Moon) is a wreck, jumpy and upset, a bit like seasickness or that inner-ear disturbance that animals get before an earthquake.

I was born when the Moon was in Gemini, a lunar sign that finds comfort and refuge in words; for as long as I can remember, I’ve never really known how I felt about anything until I wrote it down. But now, with transiting Uranus squaring my Moon, I’m rather stereotypically cut off from that source of inspiration. I don’t want to write about my bloody feelings, I’m bored with the narrative of my life. I’d rather move to a new house, learn the piano, practice conjugating Spanish verbs. And aside from bloodless technical manuals, anything, anything but writing.

Well, what a perfect moment to be writing a book, right? I suppose if a client came to me with this transit, and this particular dilemma, I would suggest a Uranian approach. “Keep changing your schedule,” I might advise. “Make a little altar to Uranus, with a radio and a big old crystal and some aluminum foil on it.” Or, “Move your furniture around.” I think I would have, perhaps short-sightedly, advised courses of action designed to bring a sense of order and stability to what I would have assumed was a chaotic inner life.

I see now that while that’s not strictly bad advice, neither is it strictly helpful. I think if I were to sit myself down in the client chair, my wiser astrologer self might instead say something like this:

Go ahead and run wild; be a bad, wicked child. Break some pottery and use the chips to make a mosaic. If you must write, try fiction for a change. Do something weird to your hair. Shake out the cobwebs of your old personality. The keynote here is change: you can’t outwit it and you can’t control it, so embrace it! Your old sources of knowledge and inspiration are fast drying up - so if you want to stay alive, be a wise animal and go looking for a fresh stream to drink from.

June 7, 2005 | Comments Off

May

19

It’s been a busy couple of weeks, with lots of work, plenty of socializing, and a root canal (which I can only attribute to a bad Neptune transit). And I’ve been spending a lot of time over at my new office, painting everything in sight. Despite my best intentions and hours of time I could ill afford, none of it is perfect. I ran out of paint before I could put a second coat on the walls, so it looks a little blotchy in places. I accidentally bought an oil-based polyurethane for the floor instead of water-based, and rather than schlep all the way across town for a replacement I used floor wax over the white paint, which immediately turned it the same color as very old, very well-used dentures. There is a water stain on the ceiling that is too high for me to reach, so I’ll be living with it. So none of it is perfect; I have enough Virgo planets to wish it were, and to beat myself up a bit for my haste and laziness, but apparently not enough to keep me on task.

Truth is, it’s a habit of mine to settle for less than perfection (except in my choice of spouse, of course - hi dear!). I’ve had the kind of life that put perfection patently out of reach early on; I’ve never had a chance of getting anywhere close to the perfect figure, the perfect career, the perfect family life, or even, apparently, perfect teeth. There’s a sadness to that, and occasionally the sense of wishing one could trade in a beat-up old life for a shiny new one. Maybe in my next life I’ll take my time and do it all right the first time. Maybe I’ll lay off all those cans of Pepsi in high school and never get that first filling.

This time around, though, I’ve found that there is a certain relaxation that comes with giving up on perfection and making do with what comes your way. For instance, if I squint and tilt my head the right way, the blotchy paint on the walls looks a little like a faux finish. If I use my imagination, the yellowed floor looks nicely antiqued. And I’ve learned all kinds of interesting things about endodontics.

It’s a grand mess of a life. I wonder how perfectionists get anything done. I’d rather get five things done reasonably well in a day than one thing perfectly. I’m pretty sure that makes me a bad person; at least, my Pluto in Virgo thinks so.

May 19, 2005 | Comments Off

keep looking »

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