From an Astrologer's Notebook: Shut Downs National and Personal

The dome of the US Capitol at night in Washington DC

(photo credit: Florian Hirzinger, August 2010)

In case you didn't hear, the US government shut down. The last time this happened was back in the Clinton Era, and America survived that...so it's likely the country (and the world) will survive this.

The astrological question however, is why did this happen at this particular time?

For that, we look to the national chart - of which, when it comes to the US of A, there are many. Which is which and why which is used by whoever is a whole debate which goes on (rather endlessly) in the astrological community. Suffice it to say, however, the chart that this astrologer uses is that which is erected for the signing of a peace treaty by General Robert E. Lee in the tiny town (if you could have properly called it a town in those days) of Appomattox Courthouse, Virginia.

In other words, Chart USA - which is the only chart I know of which works by transit and return and whatever else, come what may - is the chart of the reunification of the United States at the end of the Civil War.

The keyword there is "reunification," a term which implies - accurately - that the country had broken apart. About the time that the Confederacy had written its own constitution, set up its own government and started printing its own money (it does always come down to money when you're talking nations, doesn't it?)...that 'terminated' the original 1776 compact...union...whatever you want to call it.

If you want to read more chapters and more verses on this, go to the blog sidebar and look under the list of national and political posts for 'Chart USA' posts. There's a bunch of them.

So this is Chart USA - the Appomattox Surrender Chart:

Chart USA (Appomattox Surender)

April 9, 1865 - 3:53 p.m. (LMT/+5:15) - Appomattox VA

Without belaboring the fact that this economics snafu has been long in the making, what we would be seeing during the course of this political season is a really sterling (ugh) example of the national Pluto conjunct Mercury in an Aries 8th house with both planets posited in Taurus.

Mercury is at 9 Taurus and Pluto is at 12 Taurus, both in premier position to be smacked by opposition by the November Solar Eclipse at 11 Scorpio.

That 11 Scorpio eclipse is in the nation's 2nd house - the house of security and 'our resources' (which would include money) but the effects are rather wide ranging. For one, the sign on the 2nd house where the eclipse is actually hitting is Libra. And Libra is ruled by Venus. The Venus of this chart is at 24 Taurus and the 9th house, a condition which tells us that this fight...and its repercussions do have widespread effects and that some of them will not be localized. In a national chart, any 3rd decanate placement (which is to say, anything positioned in the last ten degrees of any sign) is going to apply to 'them as well.' "They" will have input and opinions of what "we" or "I" do - in this case the 'we/I' thing being America.

In other words, with this Venusian 'ruling effect' coming from the 9th house, from education and media (both 9th house things) and in the international quadrant (the 9th being the house of all things 'foreign') the USA's actions are going to engender reactions in all those 9th house areas (media, foreign whatevers, etc.).

More close up, one would suppose is the fact that by being at 11 Scorpio, the eclipse is hitting both asteroid Industria (at 7 Scorpio) and the national 3rd house cusp - which rather brings up the whole 'what are they thinking?' reaction which has been heard from coast to coast (and abroad, as far as that goes).

Industria, in this notion, can be the effect on the nation's economy - and by Venusian implication - the international economy (which is to say, economies around the world). Being that solar eclipses have a 3-year 'evolution,' this is not any quick fix or quick dip in the economic shark tank, either.

Scorpio on the 3rd house tends to be insistent. Stubborn. The instinct is to try to get your own way, and why that would be - the plus and minus there - would be told through the rulers of Scorpio: Mars and Pluto. Mars is the 'choice' of what to do, not do, get involved with, deny, invest in or be 'operated' by when it comes to the pure Scorpio dynamic.

And in this chart, Mars is in Cancer (ouch) and the 10th house of government and world affairs. Mars in Cancer is Mars in a position to be insistent, sometimes to its own detriment. The Mars/Cancer effect generally stems from some sort of fear, and with Cancer being ruled by the Moon we look to the chart's Moon (which is in Libra, conjunct Black Moon Lilith and involving Black Hole M87)...and plainly that points to constituencies, political pressures and (Lilith) back room deals and other such things.

Meanwhile (back at the national ranch), the Pluto of this chart is sitting with Mercury in Taurus in a Mars ruled 8th house. What this rather tells us - because of the Mars ruling the effects/affects of this house - is that the US is perfectly willing to be badly behaved and even willing to discredit itself in the name of its (Venus in the rhetorical and theoretical 9th ruling the 2nd house of security and satisfaction with one's self) desire to do what it believes in...otherwise known as 'serving one's own purpose.'

So...what should we expect? We should expect a lot of 'pragmatism be damned!' and getting away with whatever can be gotten away from on the part of the nation as a nation - and specifically on the part of those who are in charge of doing the governing. The US of A is a nation which is willing to go out on any limb for what it believes in...and only once the (Plutonic) effects and outcomes hit does the nation respond. 

Call it 'clean up' mode. There are nations, just as there are people, who will just follow that theory right off a fifty story building only to do the 'uh-oh' thing as they plummet towards ground.

It's a trait.

Fortunately for Americans, the Pluto/Mercury in Taurus - once energized by a crisis, does well. But prior to that...? Uh, not so much. With Photographica ("the image") and Sabine ("being held captive by") conjunct Pluto and Mercury, we get the notion that until there IS some sort of crisis, the US will hold onto its theories and debate itself into a pickle barrel.

Perhaps also worth noting is the 2013 return on this chart...

Chart USA - Solar Return 2013

April 9, 2013  - 1:28 p.m. (EDT/+4) - Appomattox, VA

And oh...lookie there...! The 8th house natal is the 10th house solar, putting the issue of debt and finance right out there for all the world to see. Moreover, with the Midheaven (aka MC) at 23 Aries, Venus is exactly conjunct. So all that stuff we said about the 2nd house and Venus in the natal 9th and Industria will be affected - put that in BIG AND BOLD.

Incidentally, Industria doesn't only mean that government workers will be involved OR that the people working for (or as) the government will be the ones to set off the solar eclipse (or embody it, depending on how you think). No, this is also about 'work force' dynamics. And that natal Industria is very much in opposition to natal Mercury in Chart USA may give us the real clue about why and when this current shut down and the debt ceiling conversation soon to follow will get resolved.

Oh, there's nothing like debt to stir up an 8th house! And here it is, poised on the 10th house of governance. Issue...meet issue makers!

Et voila...the rationale for the problem.

But wait....! That's not all. Statistically speaking, the degrees which sit just before any angle are very powerful. So that puts Eris at 22 Aries, Mars at 21 Aries and the chart's Sun at 20 Aries right there to spoil for the honor of being most in the spotlight and most prone to thinking 'in the moment.'

The Sun in this solar return rules the Leo Ascendant. And with Circe sitting just behind that Ascendant, the (Leo) idea of the thing is spellbinding enough to reduce intelligence to mental myopia. That Circe is positioned at 2 Leo in the solar chart says it will "pick up" on natal Kleopatra at 4 Leo in the natal chart (with, for that matter, natal Kleopatra right under the solar Ascendant). Kleopatra was a very, very smart woman. But in the end, her cleverness drove her to a situation which somewhat bent to this purpose would refer to being a 'poisonous pain in the asp.'

(Yes, you can quote me.)

The closest planet/dwarf planet in this chart - which is to say the highest planet/dwarf planet in this return chart is Eris. And that tells us that disruption and discord will reign until such time as someone in government decides to make the (Midheaven) world a better place instead of just trying to prove their (Aries) point or have their (Aries) way.

Oh, and let's not forget that Pluto in 6. In a national chart, the 6th house is the house of its 'employee's and those who do the nation's business. So Pluto in that house, in an inconjunct to an intercepted Gemini Jupiter in the 11th house of income, social/societal thinking and social systems is a pretty darn good image of Congress not giving a graham cracker whether they screw up national functionality as well as their ability to not care whether they injure the income of a whole lot of people.

Put simply, Gemini is the sign of communication and thought. To have Gemini intercepted in the 11th in that inconjunct to Pluto is a perfect image of Congress just not 'hearing' what people are saying not just about them, but about what they're doing.

And let us not forget - Pluto is the 'outcome' ruler of Scorpio, as in "Scorpio solar eclipse." This Pluto in 6 with its attendant inconjunct is thus a perfect image of consequences and repercussions. 

The bottom line here is that this solar eclipse - like all solar eclipses - brings enormous focus to given subjects, wherever they may fall in our chart. (Or charts, should you want to also use your solar return and/or any applicable lunar return...and so on). Especially with a sign like Scorpio involved, we will tend to want to cling to some position or some sense of 'safety' or some notion even if we do so at some peril.

Solar eclipses are famous...yea verily infamous...for bringing out what really is funky and unworkable. In Scorpio, that 'thing' tends to be something we don't want others to know.

Heck, we don't even want to know such things about our Self.

We think (or know) they won't like us if we're honest... and that we'll have emotional hell to pay if we're honest with ourselves. It's all just a reflection of our shame or our fears or our insecurities with self - all of which are engendered when we refuse to grow, change, evolve and deal with our (Scorpio) emotions and the emotionality of life coolly, realistically and factually. With Scorpio, there is some tendency to glom onto ideals and forget the realities - the human cost, to ourselves and to others - for our trying to be 'perfect.'

Human perfection isn't theory. Human perfection is the process of being perfectly human, folks.

If we take our clue from the media (of which there is plenty of these days) it would seem to be that the 'Rule of Scorpio' which is to say, owning the truth calmly and factually and choosing to share that truth calmly and out of choice is the best way forward. Yes, there may be a moment of shock or dismay. But...

Washington Monument (photo credit: Snty-tact, July 2006)

....well, I'll just toss in here something from my own very human past. I used to be a gym rat. Health has kind of driven me away from that, though I still love grappling with weights and 'heavy feedback' (of all kinds, apparently!) Anyway...at once point I was invited by a friend of the day to work out at the very famous Gold's Gym in Venice Beach, California. And there, among the body buffniks and pro athletes, I soon found myself being cheered on by a bunch of pro wrestlers.

If you've ever seen pro wrestling, you know what I'm taking about - a bunch of guys who, if they know the word 'shy' certainly don't subscribe to it.

So there was very imperfect me, all gung ho but not anywhere near as fit as these guys, tackling the pig iron and going through my workout with these wrestlers standing around me urging me on with cries of  "JUST ONE MORE!!...GO FOR IT!!...YOU CAN DO IT!!"...and the like.

I finally asked one of them why they were being so supportive of someone who was plainly not in their class.

Their answer: "because you're here, and you're trying."

That's what Scorpio asks us to do. Scorpio asks us to try to be the better, braver - hopefully calmer and more 'think it through' person. Scorpio asks us to choose our friends, our associates and our efforts wisely, to recognize who we can trust, who we'd be a fool to trust, and to not get towed off track by what we don't know so that common sense - and human values (including the value of humans) - doesn't go out the window and thereafter return to haunt us, taunt us, and over time, undermine us.

Scorpio tempts us to think in response terms. Or reward terms. The temptation is to think in terms of power instead of self-respect. Scorpio will tempt us to deceive and not be honest about who we are and who we have been - most often to our own detriment.

Where we are blindly over OR under invested (in any sense) a Scorpio solar eclipse will explode those boundaries and barriers - particularly as it hits our Scorpio placements (should we have any). We will be asked and then forced to learn that we need to be trying, even when that's a very trying experience. The 'why?' here is obvious: life seeks to show us that we cannot live a depleted existence or a compartmentalized existence, that we are contiguous with ourselves and others.

You know...because of the E=mc2'd of it all.

And yes, sometimes we have to let go in order to hold on. The question is why and how we go about doing that. Scorpio is an intimate sign, so the public stuff, the outer stuff - and thus the money and prestige stuff - that's what tends to get in our way on the path to being the actual person we want to be.

So...

In that light (and on that note), the second half of this post is a form of personal "shut down" notice. No, I'm not stopping the blog - don't fret! This is more 'personally personal' than that.

As much as Scorpio is the sign of economics and debt and power struggles and intimacy and emotional conflicts big and small (from relationship trials to wars), there is also a very physical side to Scorpio which goes way beyond sex. Think through this list of Scorpio keywords: rehabilitation, detoxification, reconstruction, reclamation, purification, elimination.

For my solar eclipse, I'm up to a whole list of things. But then that's fitting, as this eclipse will conjunct my Scorpio Saturn/Moon while trining my Pisces Venus and Mercury. In short, a whole lot of chart factors, a whole lot doing in my life.

The Saturn part of this talks about what I'm doing to grow in an obvious and external manner quite consistent with Saturn being in the upper (public) half of my chart. It's also in the "thou" 7th house, which (all puns intended) 'speaks' to who I am with others and what I put out to others...and in this blog or any other work product or effort I make.

So it's apt that I'm in the middle of setting up publication of a four-volume epic fantasy. (Think "Lord of the Rings" if it had been written in a modern time with modern characters dealing with modern problems in a modern voice). This represents plural decades of work coming to fruition (which in Saturn representing duration and dedication seems apt). Plus I went into the production process to get these books into print just as I finished my year-long Saturn return.

All very fitting - and you can look for a release in the next few months. (I'll post an announcement here, on Facebook and LinkedIn when it happens.)

But there's another thing on my plate as well - on the 'who am I (the person) that I am putting out there? side of the coin. This concerns a medical process which in metaphysical terms is my 'eclipsing' a medical status in the purely Scorpio sense.

I want to be a better, less toxic me...which involves doing a detox. As noted above, any sort of 'detoxifying' is Scorpionic whether you're getting off some drug or refusing to go into some environment (like a home or some office) you find toxic.

Scorpio - as a process - is often about 'cleaning out' our life, our fears and any basis of relating or operating which is toxic, be that physical, emotional, sexual, financial, spiritual or otherwise. It can involve dealing with toxic waste, doing psychological work or utilizing any other form or format which activates the Scorpio 'reclamation,' 'tear down/build back' theme.

(Come to think of it, every part of that list applies to Congress...)

"Addiction" per se is astrologically thought of as Neptunian and Piscean. And yes, I am a Sun sign Pisces, which would tend to say my physical being is more prone to addiction than some - and you have no idea of the arguments I've gone through with MDs who have handed me plainly addictive prescriptions which I have then handed back saying things like 'I'm not in favor of addiction - are you?'...or the even more blatant 'Thanks, but I'm trying not to follow in Heath Ledger's footsteps.' 

That aside, when we talk about Pisces/Neptune addiction, we're generally talking about an addiction which grows out of some urge to escape, whether that's from life or physical or emotional pain.

At least that's where it starts. And it doesn't have to involve drugs. Wherever Pisces falls in your chart, that's the area of life which points to what you will tend to try to escape from, escape to or use as your medium of escape. (And sometimes all of the above are the very same thing.) I have a friend with Pisces on the 4th house who treats their home (and their office within the office complex) as their sanctuary and refuge. We all do that to some extent, but this person does it with such obvious 'flight' tendencies that the area around their (closed) office door vibrates like some energetic Hazmat zone.

In adult life they are flee the inability to tolerate feeling they were brought up as a child to avoid. And yes, childhood (as the experience of family) is also 4th house.

Pisces is a sign about our experiencing of our own  emotionality, emotional connections and the commonalty of human emotional experience, corporeal and otherwise. We often try to control our Pisces experience through escape when the answer is more about accepting how messy and imperfect - and yes, sometimes painful life really is.

We want the ideal. We want the dream. In Scorpio, we try to avoid invalidating the person inside ourselves who needs and wants that dream in order to feel better about life in general and in Pisces we try to escape feeling anything which hurts...which is why we manufacture that dream 'nirvana' in the first place.

Apply that to me and we get to a fact you already know if you've been around the blog long enough - namely that my sketchy (read: violent) early history has endowed me with all the anxieties and non-joys known as PTSD.

About seven years ago an enterprising MD put me on the medication I now need to stop. It was for PTSD and I didn't really fight it. I should have. But sometimes we have to learn the hard way. And that 'hard way' began for me when about three years ago I found out how unless you're fatally ill, you probably shouldn't take this medication but for a rather short amount of time.

NOW you tell me? Oh, great...

 Just in case you're into pharmaceuticals, no, this isn't

a photograph from any personal source!

I've tried all the common ways of trying to get weaned off this medication - all with stunningly bad results.And no, for the sake of the curious, I haven't abused my prescription.

Taking this all into metaphysics-speak we get yet another freaky example of Scorpio energetics and the 'use the energy wisely, lest it use you unwisely' lesson. I'm a Sun sign Pisces with a Scorpio Moon: I didn't abuse the drug but the drug has abused me.

So I get to do a detox...which may go just fine, but which (let's be real...!) may also not be a picnic in the park.

Full disclosure here...it probably hasn't been a picnic for people who know me in real time of late either.

Why? Well, for the last month or two I've been walking the edge of withdrawal. It's because of duration on the drug. Our bodies (which are amazing machines) learn to acclimate. So as you take many drugs, they do less and less...resulting in doctors amping up the amount of drug you take.

True to form however, given my stubborn little self, I simply refused to - as they say - "titer up." In part it's because I'd have to double the dose to change it at all (which sounds to me like a stunningly bad idea)...and since I've known this detox thing was coming, I've clung to my (maintenance) dose, even though of late I've been getting twinges of all those (very not cute) withdrawal symptoms which, as with most withdrawals had a way of turning me into one very anxious squirrel at emotionally provocative moments.

People in withdrawal just tend to be edgy and PTSD people in withdrawal tend to be very fight-and-flight prone. 

Yes, most people do 'fight or flight'...PTSD people tend to do fight and flight.

It's very decorative. (Not!)

Since I'm the child-abuse PTSD person and not the military grade PTSD person, the good news is that I don't shoot guns. But yes, I am a writer (surely you've noticed, right?) So I do tend to shoot my mouth off - most often when the mere idea of something scary scares me into trying to ward the scary thing off...Which usually makes it happen, yes.

Ah, life is so self fulfilling!

And once I manage to elicit exactly the thing I dread, I do what child abuse victims do - I go right to being childlike. (I'm guessing those on the receiving end call it childish.) In other words, I cry.

In fact, I have a PhD in weepery. (That's a joke, yes. But also not so much of a joke - also yes.)

I know...you're sitting there reading this and trying to envision your shiny-brained astrologer acting like a child. It happens, trust me. And people in real time have no better time with it than you're having imagining it - though I do have a few friends who know that no matter what happens, scared kids need hugs and reassurance and security.

So like everybody else who has been scared early and thoroughly, I freak out, I cry some (sometimes a lot) and then I...well...I guess you could say I 'sober up' and return to being the shiny-brained astrologer and generally glib girl most people think of me as.

Confession over. And now that you know much PTSD stuff you probably never thought you'd read on an astrological blog (though to be honest, having been abused is part of what led me to learning astrology)...on to the practical: for reasons classed as 'all of the above' I may be taking a couple of weeks away from the blog. As of today I will be setting it to 'automatic,' so you can still post comments. That way, if I do step away, a friend will step in to play monitor and delete anything off-color or off-track even if I won't be answering until I come back online, which at first guess will be...oh, after the first week of November.

In other words, until after the solar eclipse - at which time I'll catch up with comments, love notes and 'atta girls' left in the interim.

Whether or not I take time off, the process is akin to shutting down in order to clean up. I'm pulling back on the Scorpio interactivity side of things in order to reclaim and rebuild inside so as to be a better person to you...and myself as well.

Since I haven't jumped into the detox pool (it looks muddy) yet, I'm not sure how deep the water is going to be. Maybe all will be fine. But in any case, not to worry - posts will be pre-loaded to let you know what's going on. Therefore the worst case scenario is this: though you may miss my saucy Piscean presence, you'll remain informed on metaphysical doings.

I trust you understand.

 The glyph for Pisces

I also want to say that I'm telling you all of this not because I have some need to go public (I so don't follow that habit) but because I thought it would be a whole difference kind of good example of how solar eclipses - in particular a Scorpio solar eclipse - can work.

Positive things can come of whatever this eclipse brings, but the process of working through the whole of the eclipse's lesson can be difficult, challenging, trying, scary and ugly.

And let's not forget...eclipses have stages. First comes the 'pre-eclipse' break down of various things in our life. GIven that this eclipse is in Scorpio, the effect may appear to be external, but the real issue is internal.

Life is trying to get us all to learn something vital...and the closer this eclipse is to hitting anything in your chart squarely, the more basic or bigger the lesson is. As we often see with celebrities, politicians and such, eclipses frequently "out" us - or what we've been doing or hiding.

Particularly from ourselves.

Once the date of the actual eclipse passes, then we move into a 'coping' phase where we deal with whatever has happened and continue processing in present tense (i.e., what I need to do on a daily basis) as we (hopefully) also do a little contemplation of what this event - whatever it may be - is trying to 'tell' us in terms of who we really are, or should be.

Somewhere down the line...call it between two and two and a half years from now, those of us who have had a solid 'hit' from the eclipse (that would be me raising my hand, yes) will come across something or some situation or some person we would never have appreciated or 'known' was important had we not been through this time. 

But yes, eclipses can be a giant headache - literally and otherwise.

With that said, back to the book. As happy as I am about finally getting this book into print, there's also an aspect of wistfulness about it. My cousin likened this feeling to having children grow up and leave home. With the 'missing' of having something all to yourself is the understanding that an 'era' of your existence has come to its end.

And a new one begins, which brings us to the idea of how scary change can really be. It's no less scary to think of thinking of life in a new way at the governmental level than it is on an individual level. It's scary to think that the family you grew up with taught you things which now as an adult are crippling your life.

But at some point, we have to change. So just as I understand how many simply refuse to allow me to be anything but a titanium-minded computer who does astro-analysis at the drop of a diode (apparently I'm a clone of Commander Data) I also understand how hard it is for politicians to do what's right instead of what's popular.

I have seen wholesale bizarreness happen over the past few weeks and I bet you have too. My least favorite was the person who told me something was "illegal" when it plainly wasn't. They should never try such lines on someone prone to looking things up. (I'm a born research geek.)

By it happens. The Pisces in me wants to think they 'just don't know the truth' while my Scorpio Moon side suspects they're copping out. (Read: manipulate the situation, and 'manipulation' is a Scorpio word.)Or worse yet, that they've been lied to by someone trying to control them. (Control: another Scorpio word.)

Ah yes...so many questions, so little true and truly trusting and intimate communication of the Scorpio kind - the kind which challenges us to risk so we can grow. So many of us are so afraid of losing that we give up the chance to win.

Isn't that so often the way of humankind?

The glyph for Scorpio

 

But I understand why all of this is at stake and taking place. I understand the parameters of the Scorpio eclipse coming upon us, and the fact that it's going to affect each and every one of us in our own very special and equally trying way. (With that going double, yes, for anyone with planets, dwarf planets, nodes or axis points in Scorpio.) I comprehend our fears. I sympathize with our universal desire for comfort and security, however we define that for ourselves. 

Being human is seriously difficult. But what's our choice?

The old Zen master's saying...walk on...seems to apply here. And I hope that those who object to my vulnerabilities will, in spite of their preferences, choose to walk the road through life with me anyway.

And if they don't...for those who must walk their own paths for their own reasons, I wish them well and hope they can find it in their hearts to forgive me my very human and physical mortal failings even if they choose to follow a different...and probably equally challenging path.

We are in a time of shifting mortal energetics. And if I've learned anything as an astrologer it's that where Scorpio is concerned, hiding is a toxicity which corrodes, especially when we do it to evade our own fear.

Scorpio fears are about as toxic as toxic gets on the metaphysical level. And the power of that toxicity is in the fear, the secret, the denial and the unwillingness to believe you can live through whatever happens even if others don't like who you are or what you've done.

What's your choice - to live a lie? To deny that which would allow you to experience the greatest depths of your human self?

That's Scorpio at its most ineffectual.

I've compared Scorpio to ice (i.e., fixed water - which is what Scorpio is astrologically) many a time. To lie is thin ice. To own one's mortality and humanity and willingness to try in spite of our flaws... that's the ice which though perhaps not all slick and shiny is solid enough to walk on.

So there are a few comments on the eclipse and the US government...and my process of eclipsing that which I have been. Eclipses tend to bring out the worst like some overflowing sewer...and the worst of it seems to be looking at ourselves.

Whatever it takes for life to get us to let go, life will hand us. If we refuse to let go now, in 19 years (one Metonic or eclipse cycle) we will encounter the same process but at higher magnitude (as they say here in earthquake country) and with more devastating effects.

At some level the question is not can you hold on...but why would you want to?

And that's where the 'fixation' of Scorpio's gives way to transformation. Scorpio often manifests as wanting to be right when the better solution is getting it right - and 'right' is not what it looks like, but an intrinsic quality of unique individuality we each must find on our own.
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