Having Trouble?
A client once asked me, “What the hell is going on?” She had suddenly realized that her marriage was a sham, her teenagers moved in with her sister and that she was actually an asshole after all. She really needed to know what the hell was going on. Was it FATE Or CHOICE? Could she have modified her behavior, perspective, tone of voice or simply suffered more, to become a better person?
How often do you ask yourself that question? Everyone says it to me when they come for an astrology reading. The charts always answer these questions. Always. The planets spinning around the sun are all connected to us. We are not separate. Some very smart people figured out the paths of these universal companions and put them to numbers. We can type a few numbers into a computer and look up the exact nature of your troubles and tell you how long it will last.
The Baby Preacher-Fate or Free Will?
This little guy is my go-to image for the Nurture Principle. In this video he has every movement and voice inflection of his father emblazoned on to his neural network. He can’t even say words yet. His fully functioning pre-verbal Yin consciousness has patterned all it needs to know. The Yin consciousness, like every other animal speaks without words.
Was the baby preacher born to that family to have the experience of passionate preaching? We could say that he was born to the family that would nurture him into his proper fate. Or was he included in the sermon since birth and learned how to preach by infant observation? That would be fate-nurture. Oops, maybe I don’t recognize choice-free will. I don’t believe in free will. If you are born an otter, then you are an otter for life.
Archetypes
Certain people step out of their mundane lives to achieve greatness. I believe that greatness is in us all, including animals and plants. We are genetically programmed to be us. After our birth we continue that programming by responding to environments, which also have personalities. Programming is simply Archetype. Archetypes are Memes. Archetypes and Stereotypes are the same.
In Modernia we insist on believing that each person excels or fails on her own, by choice, without influence from nature-genetics or nurture-environment. That is an unfriendly belief. Unfriendly to us, to our environments and our future, if we even have one remaining. This stoic ‘one person’ against the world syndrome is damaging in many ways, but the most traumatic way being isolation; disconnection.
People don’t trust Astrology because they want to live their stories as lone heroes. Join an Archetype, and lose your Solitary Status. Everyone wants to become an instant billionaire. For 99% that’s not going to happen. Then you are unhappy because you are alone, poor and confused. My first Astrology reading filled me with joy. I felt complete. I felt understood. It was remarkable.
Astrology reveals a time table for your misery. There is even a name for it: transits and progressions. Like loss, fear, craving or deep depression, all of your experiences have names and timetables. You can find that comforting to know, and the best part is that you don’t have to ‘believe in’ it to make it work; all you have to do is show up.
Archetypes are Personalities frozen in Amber. We use these images to understand ourselves. It is okay to talk about the dark. The dark is our Mother who has been vilified. We must learn to honor the dark, not in a creepy old dude-weird ceremony-way; but in a realistic way. Half of every is darkness.
Horrible Mothers
In my early 20s I had many friends in Colorado. We all had kids, so I created a babysitting co-op. One of us would babysit and the rest of us would drink wine and talk about our mothers. We hated our mothers and we had every right to. My friend Susan’s mother literally beat her and locked her in a closet; with frequency. She was the first one of us to forgive her mother, 25 years before I did. At the time I thought she was crazy, but what she was; was a healer. She ‘put the mask on herself first.’
I hated my mother, who only slapped me twice, but told me horrible things about myself. Her words were so cruel that my brother asked my father why did mom hate Julie so much. From the age of 7 I did my best to hide from her. She shouted my name to the rafters, “Juleeeeeeeeeeee, where the hell are you?” To this day I hate being shouted at.
She had me raped at 13 by the 30 year-old lifeguard from the officers’ pool, and then she hung me out to dry, never discussed it, just started calling me ‘whore.’ I had not even had my first mense yet. The thought of being like her was the worst thought. I wanted nothing to do with her after leaving home at 19, at night, on a train, with a note in the family mailbox. Years went by with me denying my mother until I started learning Astrology from a terrific teacher, Paul Reeder of Tucson. He taught me how to change a victim into a saint. It’s easy if you know how.
What can you do? Hate your mother: hate yourself. That is inevitable. Would you rather inherit alcoholism or shamanism. Do you want to be a victim of rape or a receiver? Do not fight yourself; redefine your self, through the words. The English language has many synonyms for most words. Each Archetype has a lot of synonyms. You can be a fucker or a lover. You can be a radical or an innovator. You can be a sheep or part of a productive collective. See? Definition and word choice can shape you for life. How you self-define is important. Sticks and stones hurt your bones and words will destroy you. Bad words crush your spirit and rot your heart. Bad words make you act bad. Bad words make kids kill kids.
Astrology is White Magic
Magic struck me while learning astrology. My astrology chart told my life script and it was eloquent. It spoke in symbols, the language of Yin, the feminine. I came to see that I was born to shaman in a world that despised shamanism. We had no context for our innate skills, so the parents acted out the 50s martini paradigm, which was a disaster for impressionable souls with a penchant for repetitive rebirths. In other words, the shaman endures ‘death-ish’ experiences, manages to survive, and through those experiences has a unique perspective with which to counsel and heal others.
In another dimension my talented, but spoiled mother would have been trained to understand the connections she had made. She would have understood why she loved stalling her plane, going into a nose dive and coming out of it just in time. She was 15 years old when she started flying on a deserted runway at Ft. Sheridan, just outside of Chicago. Her father, the respected Colonel Bray, saw to it that his beautiful daughter had plenty of opportunities. If they had known Astrology, she would not have married at 18 just so she could have legal sex. She would have learned that her big lust was a factor of her life desire and she would have been taught how to use her massive kundalini flow in many ways. If she had learned Astrology in this alternate universe, she would know that, “An earthy woman like yourself with 4 planets in Virgo and Taurus rising will be quite horny, and that’s okay.”
The Angles Talked to Me
I compared our charts and found lots of difficulties, not the least of which is my Saturn conjunct her sun and mercury. I must have been an anchor to her. She displaced all her lost potential on me. I was to be the reason she felt so frustrated, so unfulfilled, so small. I did not have to say or do anything to justify an attack, the energy was tactile. Virgo criticizes, but hates being criticized. Virgo critical analysis is razor sharp as she wields her scalpel with the skill of a Walter Reed surgeon, cutting away my self confidence as quickly as it showed up.
Squares are object lessons that can be worked out over time, but oppositions are misunderstandings of the highest order, and we had plenty of those.
Oppositions are the closest thing to light and dark. They are so different that there can be reconciliation only if the dark surrenders, allowing the light to penetrate. Oppositions say, “Either/Or” without mediation. There is no middle. They are the classic Merkin point of view – good/bad; right/wrong; black/white. My theory is that the two ends swing around to touch each other, twist into a dna ladder and then become a Mobius strip.
What the hell is going on in your life? We can chat about it and you can find comfort, direction and even some heroism. I know how to change self-words from negative to positive. I will take you to the middle of you. It’s a great place to look around.