Transiting Reflections: Life Isn't Just an Accident

 A Sherman m4a2e8 tank 
(photo by Balcer)

Today, a little story.... 

Maybe a confession. Or lesson in wolf diary clothing.

I went to see my doctor yesterday. Friend, Medico and sometimes Chief Nudge, he was into checking up on my progress after a recent car accident.

In my honest if only semi-dutiful report (let's be real, this is me we're talking about here...) I included how in the aftermath of crunching metal I've found commitments - such as this blog - ever harder to keep up with.

Turns out that I somehow had never told him I was blogging. So after we sorted out how this was an astrological and not strictly personal blog and how the blog therefore had nothing to do with my accident, there was a moment of reflection...on both sides.

Then (not very much to my surprise) he came up with a suggestion, one voiced in his usual bright if just slightly nudgy way. But maybe it should! Maybe you should write a blog about the accident. You're the astrologer...it must have astrological meaning, right?

If I was a witch, my doctor would surely be my Familiar.
And if he was a witch, I'd probably be his.

Totally apart from that, he was right. Annoyingly right. How do I know? Well, mostly because...

....Back in 1981 I was working my way through a long, drawn out recovery after a fall at work which had gifted me with a broken pelvis. Yes, some of that 'giftedness' is sarcastic, but there was also that I had survived to prove the MD's wrong. They had said I would never walk again and thanks to a lovable chiropractor who assured me that I 'would again live to annoy people from my full, if diminutive height,' I had not only lived to walk again, but prove to myself I could survive a rather grizzly time.

During said painful morass was when I'd learned astrology. That was another gift - one given me by a friend intending on installing something in my head I could wrestle with as a productive alternative to pain.

And it's not like I was all for it - at least at first. Like many, when he first said 'astrology' I replied with the more or less 'are you kidding?' snort, to which he responded with 'if you think it's bunk, I'll teach it to you and you can prove to me that astrology doesn't work.'

Obviously I learned better. Astrology does work. You have to treat it like a science, and you can't just learn the parts which appeal to you, but that makes total sense. I mean...who wants their surgeon to learn all about scalpels and nothing about hygiene, or all about diseases but nothing about physiology?

So I learned astrology, long hand. This being the days before computers, I lay on an ice pack on my bed, penciling out the math on a yellow pad held overhead. And with basics barely stuffed in my mental pockets, I then started hand calculating transits, that oh-so useful personal data guide of planets casting angles to positions in one's natal chart.

Somewhere about half way through this three year  limp-and-gimp period I spotted what looked like an 'ugly' transit coming down the pike. It's name was Saturn inconjunct Sun, which reads roughly like this: an "adjustment" (inconjunct) to be encountered in life (Sun) by some limiting or 'hard' frontal force (Saturn).

Can inconjuncts be positives? Yes. But particularly in the case of any so-called 'hard transit' (of which inconjuncts are one type) one needs to use the energy positively in order for it to manifest for the better.

And not only did I not know that rule at the time, I was not exactly in the position to do much. But being the clever little duck I was, I had a plan. My plan was to do nothing. I'd stay home all day. I'd stay home all week if necessary! Surely I was bigger than some planetary symbol, no? I wasn't going to play this Saturn game.

The day came, the hour passed. Sitting in my apartment, I looked out at flowering trees and heaved a victorious sigh of relief.  And since I'd beaten this Saturn thing to the punch, I gathered myself to the painful act of going down the stairs to get the mail.

Painful indeed! I got to the mailboxes - situated right next to the carport, got my mail and by habit, glanced at my parking space.

My car was gone.

After standing there for a minute staring (as if I would will my car back into being) panic hit and I went to wrangle up a neighbor. Sure enough, one of the neighbors had noticed my car there, then gone during a very specific window of time.

Yes, the time when the transit had become exact against my chart.

I absolutely got the message. Life is unavoidable - meaning you can't just opt out.
Later I would see a bumper sticker issued by California State University Northridge's Geology Department expressing this very idea in a geologic manner which I've adopted as a personal truism:

SILT HAPPENS

I vowed never to 'avoid' a transit again. Energy IS. We either use it for some purpose or it flows through our life without guidance or input from what we call 'Free Will.'

As for my car, it was found about twelve hours later, stripped to its axles. This being then and not now, my insurance company flinched only slightly, then at my request rebuilt the entire vehicle.

Now we come back to 2010. It's 110 degrees in the oven called Los Angeles and in the aftermath of the accident and the chat with my much beloved GP, I come home, take a shower, have a bit of a rest then look up the date of the recent accident. I'd looked it up at the time, and knew something was there, but just what had fallen out of my mental file folder.

Being its usual prompt and flawless self, my software spewed transits as requested onto my screen.

I looked to the date. Oh yes...now isn't that interesting...the one major transit to my chart the day of this month's accident was Saturn inconjunct Sun.

So maybe this is all about a lesson in learning about cycles. If so I've learned. Moreover, I offer what I've learned to you so you can consider such things in your own life.

As for the big picture, the bad news is that Saturn will return to this evidently personally problematic position yet again. Every 29 years or so, this transit will automatically come around.

The good news is that Saturn only returns to the same position once every 29 years or so.

And if I'm lucky, I'll still be here to see another round.

Hopefully I'll be driving a tank by then.