Atropos-Lyrids: New Ends

 The Three Fates by Christian Friedrich Staizel (1797)

In Greek mythic terms fate is a process, not a single or finite thing. That we know because there are three ‘Fates’: Klotho (inceptions or beginnings), Lachesis (duration, extent) and Atropos (endings). Together they describe the whole experience arc, however that may come to happen and whatever it may apply to.

This version of ‘fate,’ in other words, is about how we deal with facts as they come to be presented - an idea which mirrors the idea that the astrology of asteroids refers to life factors we encounter along our ‘path.’ The asteroids - specifically here asteroids Klotho, Lachesis and Atropos - whether aspected in our personal natal chart or 'bestirring' us to take note as they go in and out of retrograde - so we are given basic notice about moments, situations, meetings and such things as relationships, negotiations, efforts, feelings - as each goes through its 'process' of inception to end.

How we respond to such moments and that 'thing' and what we experience through such responses, these are the things which, in teaching us that life is not entirely “up to the Fates,” empower us to become that we should be.

Or at least that's what we think. Somewhere along the way something may occur. Maybe you'll get diverted from one thing to another, effectively 'ending' the original effort. Maybe you'll just give up on something which has outlived its use or usefulness.

And there is that other little matter...the one which says that when it comes to the Fates, we have no control. In that, Greek Fates are just like any other tale of the inevitable. And we humans don't like not having control.

After all, if you don't have control, you don't know which emotional button is going to get pushed...which is the emotional side of Atropos, Klotho and Lachesis as they represent what we must contend with along our merry (or even not so merry) way.

Yes, we can learn from such moments...or not. And what we learn may help us...or not. In general, its probably safe to say that where Atropos is concerned we cannot hold on.

Then again, maybe we don't want to.

Either situation is equally likely as Atropos enters the station 'allowance' on April 14th in anticipation of going retrograde on April 16th. Some of us will meander through these days, some will confront some ‘fateful’ sort of moment in time. Atropos can represent losing something, finishing something, terminating something, changing our mind. It can even refer to finding something which fills a gap, ‘ending’ some sort of personal, group - even societal deprivation.

It all depends.

In going retrograde at 27 Leo, that which happens involves others…and what we learn from it, or what we need to do (or not do) because of it involves others – and often the world or society in which we live. As a degree of influence, 27 Leo tends to be hasty and is known for causing things to ‘blow up in one’s face,’ creating injuries and resentments which given Atropos’ influence may require taking a step back or reconsideration.

As in all things Leo, the idea of the thing…the ‘vision’ is powerful and sometimes magical, thought it isn’t always practical or well received – particularly when we aren’t taking the perspectives and agendas of others into account. So with Atropos going retrograde this year one day after the joint Pluto station and Libra lunar eclipse…

- link to -

A Plutonic Lunar Eclipse

…that suggests many a change of direction, attitude or perception reflecting either situations which ‘move’ us or those which – in keeping with the incoming Taurus solar eclipse – evoke or refer to values which stir emotions or which are typically (even known to be) emotionally sensitive.

If we were only to think of this ‘teaming up’ of events in terms of Pluto’s station, we would say that Atropos turn to retrograde in Leo denotes the beginning of some internal transformation – one involving some personal ‘vision.’ And purely in Plutonic terms, that would bracket us into an April 2014 to mid/late September 2014 timetable as once Pluto goes retrograde it will be in retrograde until September 23rd.

Pluto transformations are metamorphic. They take time and they involve pressure…most of all that internal pressure which gets us to back away (retrograde away from) one thing so that we can take on something else. Or maybe both things in tandem or synthesis.

Pluto represents the energy of tearing one thing down and purifying the concept so that something better can be put in its place. Whether associated positively or negatively Pluto times displays of passions – even obsessions – because we don’t want the alternative.

And the real Pluto question is that: what’s so wrong about the alternative (and) why are we reactive to that alternative?

Those insights…plus whatever feelings have been (or are being) touched on as we move into and through the April 15th lunar eclipse will play out initially in the three months yet to come on a primary level – and evolve from there.

It’s not necessarily a scary process – just one we need to attend to, which in true Plutonic manner will become more ‘sticky’ the more we try to avert, avoid or control it to our pleasure.

Nothing Scorpio is ever simply about us – and that includes Pluto, symbol of all outcomes Scorpio and Scorpionic. We may want to control the outcome – in fact, most Scorpio situations will define, regulate or place constraints of some sort on us. Such measures can be perfectly simple, such as learning how to bake a cake, work a latch or otherwise conduct yourself in sensible company…or they can be exotically trying to one’s ability to negotiate.

War, surgery, debt, taxes and sexuality are all Scorpionic subjects – need I say more?

But they reason they are Scorpionic? That’s the important part here – and important to keep somewhere on our mental desk over the next few weeks as new input, new ideas and more insights are likely to be in the offing.

Why?

Because it’s meteor shower time.

Produced by Comet Thatcher (which is currently still moving away from Earth as part of its 400+ year-long orbit) the Lyrid Meteor Shower begins April 16th and extends through April 25th as part of whatever Aries-Taurus themes have us dealing with who we are not to others in this world, but in our own eyes.

Such insights may or may not be major. And if you’re wondering why Scorpio and Pluto seem so important here as we consider Atropos and the Lyrids, that would be because comet Thatcher’s origination point – it’s ‘radiant’ as seen from Earth is in constellation Lyra.

And guess where Pluto is?

We think of Pluto as being in Capricorn because Capricorn is the constellation which intersects Earth’s path around the Sun – the ecliptic. That’s the rule for constellations being included in our zodiac. But apart from that, as of 2013 Pluto came into standard 5-degree orb of Lyra’s best-known star, Vega – our symbol of charisma and charismatic communication, indicating a period when many people and ideas we were taken by will lose their appeal or validity as we discover new ways of thinking and new priorities to go along with those new approaches and aims.

Constellation Lyra

Pluto’s primary conjunction of Vega will be completed by the end of 2016, though the changes which will inevitably occur between now and then will take several more years to play out. For some, the overall effect of this time will bring them more into line with a flesh-and-blood (Capricorn) reality they’ve been less than fully affected by. For others, needing to consider (or reconsider) how they’re going about embodying some goal, persona or message will become a focus worthy of time, dedication and effort.

It all depends. On what? On you, and where you are right now, coming into this time. Whoever we are and whatever we’re trying to do, this long-term, multi-year Pluto-Vega conjunction will challenge many a notion of identity, structured values and worth, particularly in light of how we ultimately regard our Self as a citizen of, and in this world.

It’s all just to...think about.
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Venus in Capricorn

Venus Verticordia by Dante Rossetti (1886)

The Sun will be getting ready to cross the Scorpio cross-quarter point when on November 5th, Venus moves into Capricorn.

In the wake of the solar eclipse, Venus’ change of signs along with the cross-quarter crossing are the first signs of life moving on.

Moving on from…what?

From that strange Scorpio ability to freeze us in our tracks even as we are magically (even for some, magickally) transformed.

Scorpio has a strange quality which philosophically we associate with it’s representation of water (the energy of fluid emotions) in its ‘fixed modality’ or state – thus water’s ‘frozen’ state. And there’s no question but that things which happen under a Scorpio influence…or things which strongly activate factors we associate with Scorpio in your personal chart can freeze you - in your mind, in your tracks, in that moment or those weeks of experiencing the depths of some transformative or even traumatic issue.

It can also elicit the experience of those place in our emotional psyches (in particular) where we are particularly ‘frozen’…stuck somewhere in emotional time.

Then again, there are things which benefit from freezing. That’s something which occurred to me as I considered Scorpio’s various facets as being both about our darkness and our light. All astrological emblems can be something better…or something worse. They can even simultaneously function to our advantage and our disadvantage.

Which yes, can – and often does drive us half past bonkers.

As I thought…suddenly it hit me: only that which has been frozen can thaw.

Put that in Scorpio terms, and we come to the things which are most precious to us are also the most frightening as that’s where we stand the most to lose – especially in our own eyes.

There may be someone alive who has seamlessly come to love…for whom life has been peaceful and devoid of even a single bruise, but in general, that doesn’t seem to be the human rule.

And when it comes to the pitfalls of interaction, Scorpio pits us against the pittiest of pits in the most pitiful and pitiless of manners. And there, even as we shake in our frost-bitten misery we experience the heat of ‘being burned’ in that singularly Scorpionic sort of way. Exposed to our own foibles we stand naked, whipped by the cold fury of our shame, our regrets, our feelings of helpless haplessness.

So it’s been very Scorpio of late. And even now as Venus moves into Capricorn, Scorpio is still compressing our attentions. Despite the deceptive brightness of floating normalcy, we have each been confronting and confronted by personal ghouls we would like to blame on anything but our own inability to cope…to grapple…to be honest…to own our feelings.

As the Sun moves over the cross-quarter point early on November 7th (UT/+0) we are being moved into a realm and phase of life which requires of us that we deal with greater things. The bigger picture, the fact that the microcosm of our life or of our situation exists as (and reflects) dynamics in the greater realm and in our greater outlook…that would be the focus.

Some reality has come upon us. For you it may have many parts…or one driving issues which like some mythic monster, has many heads, each one of which you face in turn.

For most of us, the underlying Scorpio dynamic of asking us to face whatever it is about our Self which frightens us the most lies at the heart of all. And though we may not yet know the answer to our quandaries, Venus’s shift into Capricorn does mark a new phase in what we might call ‘the process of our processing how to get where we want to go’ in our life, with some situation – whatever.

Venus in Capricorn elicits life’s endless ability to show us the worth and acceptability of our being, our direction, our efforts and our choices. The Venus energetic being that which creates results (where causal Mars efforts ‘become’ the result), the very long Venus in Capricorn passage ahead of us will show us what works…and what doesn’t work.

An orbital Sunrise with Venus and Mars

(photo credit: NASA, Aug 1995)

And through that…and while that is going on…and while we are trying to figure out if what we’re trying so hard to achieve is even worth it – as all that happens we will reflect on life’s opportunities and how often times the effort to not be seen becomes a form of self-imprisonment.

Venus enters Capricorn on November 5, 2013. As of November 13th it will conjunct the North Node as Neptune goes on station, challenging us to take on some act on faith which.

Will this be easy? Probably not. But is it necessary? Probably yes. That the Sun’s movement enters a transiting period of trining Jupiter on November 5th (UT/+0) as Jupiter is just going retrograde marks a shift of our tide. The very act of the Sun crossing over the cross-quarter point is what brings it into orb to ignite this massively energetic trine…and let’s remember, both Sun and Jupiter are in position to highlight…and to push and pull at how we are feeling about our lives. About how life works and doesn’t work. About the difference between how life would be if we could run it merely from our own perspective against the incredible difficulties of living in a world with other people who are equally as bent and as fervent as we are.

That trine will last into November 17th – a period which will have most of us dedicatedly pushing to get things done (Mars is still in Virgo representing our efforts to keep ourselves on track). But there will be some of us who during this time will realize that we have embarked on some path or effort which isn’t worth our while, our precious and un-refundable time.

If you’re one of those people, expect life to seem like a drudge…one long wade through peanut-butter-and-molasses-filled days which are both sticky and cloying, which feel not at all good and which are telling you that you have forgotten something very vital.

But it’s not ‘out there.’ It’s inside of you. Those of us who have ‘left out’ some intrinsic part of our nature in what we have ourselves invested in will be meeting up with it at this time. How difficult that Self encounter becomes is not about the quality of what that part of you is… remember, this is Scorpio turf and we’re just coming out of a Scorpio eclipse. So no, the issue isn’t what the thing ‘is’ – it’s how you feel about it. And that it is part of who you are.

Only that which has been frozen can thaw.

Difficulties with Self will reflect now and increasingly as we move forward through lack of positive results, an ever-bothersome sense that ‘you’re in the wrong place’ (no matter how hard you try to tell yourself otherwise) and a lingering, drifting sense that life’s externals don’t validate our internal being.

That’s the point. If we are not being who we are, or being the whole of that Self honestly – replete with whatever mistakes we have made – then we will find this period moving forward particularly shallow. Hollow. Unrewarding. Even numbing.

And when come November 19th Venus enters the shadow of its upcoming retrograde, the ‘cocooning’ effect of the shadow will have us shadow boxing with ourselves. And our disappointments and quandaries, all of which reflect our realization that reality isn’t cruel…it just Is. Whatever need we have to anthropomorphize Existence and make it 'loving' or otherwise, that's not Existence...that's our desire, our willing life to be good to us when life - as Venus - merely responds to the quality and qualities that we put out there.

We can neither sacrifice ourselves nor try to command all. We cannot succeed without being whole nor wholly succeed at being whole.

Life is what it is. Ultimately, quality and the qualities of relationship to Self are what create what comes back to us through others. The avoiding our injuries through not feeling them fixes nothing just as the refusal to value our Self as a Self worth valuing (which so often manifests in our rejecting those who really care about us while we busily glom onto those who in...REALITY...don't give a tinker's darn about us)...all that is Venusian.

Venus is the quality in all things. It cannot be feigned or fake or the effect is merely fleeting - like makeup.

Besides, we cannot wear makeup with ourselves, on the inside. There we live a naked life with our bare-faced Self.

Venus enters its shadow at 13 Capricorn – the degree it will retrograde back to and go direct at come January 31 (2014). Known for qualities of integrity and a willingness to be committed to the very difficult as well as walking away from any  personal (or worldly) battle when it cannot be won within the present temporal parameters, 13 Capricorn is a degree which focuses on correctness as opposed to ego and other-worldliness as opposed to this one.

That may seem odd for a Capricorn degree, considering that Capricorn is the heart and soul of worldly accomplishment and tangible results. But Capricorn isn’t just about any result. Yes, it is a sign about bringing things into being…and thus Venus in Capricorn is a very good combination which amounts to manifesting the goal.

But if that goal isn’t a lasting one? Or if it isn’t true to your nature? Capricorn is often thought of as the sign of penalties as in, you broke the law and now you have to suffer the consequences for having broken that law.

With Capricorn – the sign at the top of the zodiac’s natural wheel – all that may be true in a worldly sense, and then again, also be true in the spiritual or energetic sense. If we are not doing something we were intended to do, Capricorn transits will tend to manifest as blockades, limitations and ‘realities’ which plainly show you that you’re doing “it” wrong, in the wrong place, using the wrong tools or in the wrong company.

Or else it just manifests as malcontent. Or ennui. Or that awful feeling that you’re alone in this world…or devoid of any chance to be happy.

Venus actual turn to retrograde, on the other hand, will occur on December 21st (UT/+0) at 28 Capricorn. And 28 Capricorn is a degree which underscores the above by being all about whatever our ‘burden’ is in life.

Consider the Scorpio solar eclipse and the fact that it is now being followed by Venus working over the degrees 13-to-28 Capricorn. The eclipse was seeking to get us to face our own emotionality and now Venus is testing our externally driven sense of contentment with our life.

Yes, astrological tales are ongoing and truly epic. ‘War and Peace’ ain’t got nothing on real life for poignant trials.

Question: does this mean everything is just going to be miserable for the whole of this Venus-in-Capricorn transit? Does this mean the holidays and the start to 2014 are going to be just plain miserable?

Answer: Not if we are willing to be real about who we are. Under most circumstances we would simply look at the reality of the situation…but with that which we have seen rolling through of late plus what this astrologer knows will be coming down the celestial pipleline in the next six to eight months, the better bet...the more profitable direction lies in going within. Everything is pointing us to our Selves. Everything in life is asking that we get perspective on who we really are so that what we invest in, what we put so much effort into…so it will last.

Lasting durable structures are the Capricorn aim. Under Venus in Capricorn (November 5 – January 31) we will have many a structure tested. And not all will come up as being sound.

To the extent that we are willing to make corrections and deal not just ‘what it is’ buy why we got ourselves to wherever we are now…if we deal with the truth, then we can better our lot. That’s another really important concept to think about now. Though we might think things are ‘settled’ or ‘immutable’ or ‘set in stone’ the universe is a far, far bigger place than we imagine.

And we can be free to the extent that we are willing to free ourselves – first and last – from our urge to limit what our Self is, especially when that’s not the whole truth…and nothing but our truth.

There is help in Existence, in our existing, and in our willingness to exist for who we are as who we are.

We just have to be that person, in totality at the individual level and as part of that greater world which would honor us if we could only bear to the enduring beauty of our imperfect humanity rather than the being beautiful merely in our flesh. 
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Mercury-North Node at 7 Scorpio

Venus over Otter Lake from Goddard Bay by Darren Baker

A ‘heads up’ in case you care...planet Mercury (that scamp) is going to be exactly conjunct that lunar North Node which none of us seem to take so kindly to as of November 3 at 1:51 in the morning UT/+0 time.

Which would put it just some hours before the eclipse. Sounds like confluence…and yet, I’m never sure whether to be gleefully fascinated or frightened as all get-out when I see one of these harmonic notices scribbled across maps of our heavens.

Leaving that to be what it is, Mercury (which if you remember is in retrograde) will remain in its 7 degrees of Scorpio through the whole of November 3rd (UT/+0) eking backwards into 6 Scorpio at about half-past nine in the evening. (Yes, that means 9:30-ish in the UT/+0 zone.)

The degree 7 Scorpio is a degree of enduring, almost imperceptible motion capable of changing entire landscapes, natural or social. There is a deceptive sheen to all things 7 Scorpio, the most common illustration of which is the astounding task which in the hands of a Master somehow looks so simple that…well! Surely anyone can do that, right?

No.

There is a huge positive and equal negative to this degree – as there are to most things astrological. And yes, there are often four (one per element) degrees which embody various concepts like ‘as much good as bad.’ So 7 Scorpio is just one of those degrees.

Except that it’s the ‘as much good as bad’ as experienced in the water (read: emotion) department.
And this is Scorpio we’re talking about.

The Nodes always represent relationships. So the energetic of November 3rd is greatly about Mercury (communication, information, ideas) as being experienced or thought about in conjunction with relationships. That would be relationships personal, relationships business, relationships philosophical – all of it.

Indeed, this is a busy time – and convoluted or complicated where not exactly busy. But that’s not the heart and soul to Mercury-North Node, and certainly not with Mercury retrograde.

Not to mention all of this happening not just days before an eclipse, but where the eclipse is going to hit. (Within conjunction distance, anyway.)

At its best, this is a revelation – the flowering of some understanding as if by epiphany.

At it’s worst, this is the realization that things just made known are not in your favor.

These effects will be more or less apparent depending on how your chart answers to the degree 7 Scorpio with the essence of this moment being Mercurial: a matter of thought, ideas or about the quality, frequency or context of communication.

With this comes the North Node, the relationship marker which is about what we should do…as opposed to what we might like to do, find comfortable to do, find easy or even personally feasible to do. The premise of the North Node has, no doubt, given rise to many a questing tale where some hero undertakes the job no one else wants to do. Or the job they don’t think can even be done.

And that’s the thing about the North Node which may come to us today in whatever form or format: the North Node asks that we try…despite what others say, despite what we ‘know,’ despite any misgiving we may have.

But when you combine this idea with an eclipse…? The solar eclipse is its own emblem in its own right, and it has an intrinsic meaning. To add a North Node-Mercury conjunction is that is to add a sincere commentary that it is through our relationships and how we relate to our world…the way we see things or communicate / don’t communicate who we are to others or communicate with others or hear what they actually say as opposed to what we want to hear.

Having to hear is one very true Mercury-North Node concept. And yet…when we get to a situation of necessity, that begs us to ask whether this is simply ‘new news’ or whether we’ve been reluctant to hear others…or that niggling little voice inside…or our better sense…in making our changes.

One, this conjunction says, must be worthy of the other. To evolve apart from our world is no better than being a slave to its unfeeling ministrations. If all the many intense Scorpionic tests are imbedded in this conjunction – even just for the day – then the question becomes whether we are willing to understand that people come to us and become part of our lives to enhance that life not through agreeing with us, but by getting us to think and test our own boundaries…particularly those we accept as ‘good enough’ when we know we can do – and be better.

The Mercurial touch here (of course!) is likely to be of the self-revelation type since Mercury is in retrograde. So this is about understanding something beyond all else. Something we learn through interactions. Or about relationships or a particular relationship. This is about what we didn't want to know or see about ourselves.

Retrograde, remember? This Mercury/North Node is not about "them" - it's about each and every one of us and what we experience because we know them, or through direction interaction with them.

Scorpio is, among other things, the zodiacal land of tough love. Under a heavy Scorpio influence, it's hard just 'to love' freely and openly. Scorpio is the sign of passion yes - but it's also the sign of heartache and heartbreak unintended and otherwise.

With Scorpio, there's always something. If you have a planet in Scorpio you know that it represents an area which for you oozes drama. Even when you try to ignore that subject the ignoring becomes an issue.

With Scorpio, something always makes the thing downright complicated. Right people aren't right, right activities don't feel like we imagine they should, the very thing yearned for so often feels unrewarding.

It is ours to listen...and hear through the veil, through the permeable barrier of dimensionality to that place where we instinctively comprehend the very thing which seems so hard and the sense of its existence.

Scorpio is the essence of the medicine tasting bad. And with Scorpio here expressed through what we think of our relationships, our ability to relate and how well we even relate to our thoughts (or whether our thoughts have even the remotest bearing on reality) this is the Scorpio way. Once we get past thinking of the Scorpio thing not as That Which Is To Be Avoided but rather That Which Can Be Learned From (or About), then we make progress.

No, we won't always think those 'Scorpio Things' are 'right.' But whether they're right or wrong, learning about what they are and understanding from that why they work well for us...or maybe even why we continue doing things which don't work but rather alienate us from others is a way forward now. Maybe we don't like someone. Okay - why? Do they remind you of someone you knew and didn't like? Do they embody something you wish you were doing in your own life? And you don't want to deal with the reality of why you would rather do anything rather than go after what you really want because your real goals would ask you to step it up and take on new challenges?

Scorpio is many things to many people. At every level however, the test of Scorpio - here given to us mentally and experiential is meant to evoke an emotional response.

It's through our responses that we will now recognize what relationships really are. And aren't. And what really matters to us, whether or not somebody else approves of it or not. That is Scorpio's mission: through relationship to force us to identify who we are and get us to solidify our hold on ourselves through the process of being in the presence of others...or sometimes, a single Other.

It's not that easy. Scorpio is relating as medicine, a medication of our own making which hits us only in the guts that we know are most sensitive. Here applied through the nodal energetic which moves through our connections, our connective efforts and our connectivity of manifestation, who we are with and who we are to others...through what we are willing to hear or think or ignore, deny or accept...through all of this we will carve a path at its best will embrace us while liberating our insight through heartfelt and quixotic, challenged efforts, all of which force us to care, lest we lose ourselves altogether to some nebulous fear of being who we truly are.

Sometimes we only realize that through things which happen to others. Or what we feel helpless to respond to. 

We respond deeply to the blindness and hurts of those we love.

However we need to be 'gotten to' so that we will (Mercury) think about things we need to think about as part of the greater (solar eclipse) process of changing and being changed by things going on in our world...those are the things which are likely to happen now.

Or be somehow preoccupying your (Mercury) mind.

Or maybe you're thinking about (nodes) relationships more or differently in light of what you've (Mercury) learned about yourself, the way you think or communicate (or don't think or communicate!) with others...or something you've learned about yourself in relationship from someone else. Or from some other relationship.

Mercury/North Node: our relationship to the concepts which work for us in the long run.

Mercury/North Node in Scorpio: our relationship to whatever works for us in the long run either as experienced (and/or) learned through interactions with others.

Considering the solar eclipse...

Mercury/North Node in Scorpio as part of the solar eclipse complex: our emotionally challenging (even difficult) relationship to the concept that 'what works for us in the long run often requires difficult, even painful emotional self-confrontations as we struggle to achieve true autonomy and thus independent security (and a basis for further satisfaction) based on our most authentically individual convictions...in other words, those capable of inspiring support through sheer honesty.'

It may not be achievable, but that would seem to be the theme here.

What can I tell you?
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Sun-Node Connecting

Atlas Turned to Stone by Edward Burne Jones (1882)

 

From October 25th through November 4th, the Sun will be in conjunction with the North Node.

Why would we care about a little thing like that?

We would care because all nodal locations (and every planet has nodes, which gives you an idea of what you don’t know is operative out there…) …all nodal locations represent connections. And since they (by the definition of what a node is) represent where the orbit of the planet’s moon intersects the orbit of the planet itself around the Sun, planetary nodes represent where the ‘essence of the thing’ (the planet) where that intersects or attempts to work with the ongoing processes of life.

And when you consider that ol’ Luna Moon up there represents our feelings and memories and money and all we hold dear…(including but not limited to the positive stuff)…those lunar nodes represent the ‘stirring of connections’ and some of our prime or primary energetic opportunity ‘nodules’ (if you will) to create, work on, change, reinvigorate, alter or otherwise hone our relationships with anybody and/or anything in our world.

Which is why, oh you who read, nodes are of such infinite interest – even to astrologers. They represent our connections, our interactions with our world…and why we intersect others – why we attract certain people to interact with.

You know…as we’re also interacting with everybody else. And as they’re intersecting with and interacting with everybody else in their world.

The particular set of days I’m talking about here would be greatly present tense because we’re talking about the Sun rolling through the North Node’s position. So matters of the moment are pretty much how we’re going to handle things in the moment, though the repercussions of what we do now may have extensive or expansive meanings up and down our personal food chain.

(Take a bite out of that, why don’t you…?)

And as we discuss all this, it is worth noting (and bearing in mind) that anyone with planets/dwarf planets, node or axis cusp points in the early-to-middle degrees of Scorpio are probably liking this period less than the rest of us due to the solar eclipse. Things in their lives (and others whose charts are being fixated on by the eclipse as well) seem intent and intense enough, thank you. They’re busy feeling more…and dealing with whatever it is which causes them to feel more – which in the case of some also causes them to consider why they try to avoid their feelings all the time.

It just depends. In general, this is a period all about feeling ourselves succumbing to our own feelings.

Okay, and that’s just what it is.

As for this passage, it starts with the Sun crossing 2 Scorpio, thereby entering the 5-degree standard orb to the North Node, which are at this October 30th point is at 7 Scorpio, a degree about an almost mystical depth of strength capable of dealing with flexing situations. 7 Scorpio is a degree which has an unquenchable draw which requires complete surrender to the experience of experiencing whatever this degree (or matters associated with its activation) stirs up…and that’s tough for a lot of us. We’re intrigued, but we are wary. And let’s face it, it’s easy to think that the person who invites us to experience something 7 Scorpio is doing it for their own reasons, their own gain.

That’s part of the vibe as well – and this is a degree I happen to know a particular amount about as it’s the degree of my Moon.

'Motherless' a young child in loving arms

(by Luke Fildes, c 1914)

So trust me: this degree tends to cause people to think you’re doing things for reasons which haven’t even occurred to you. What they’re reacting to is an odd ‘mirroring’ effect which goes with 7 Scorpio which causes them to think that what is going on in them because their psyche has been tripped has anything to do with the intent of your psyche.

It doesn’t. But that isn’t going to stop them from thinking it does…and that you have some devious, underhanded plan which is bent on taking advantage of same.

And you may have some devious plan and you may be planning something underhanded. But it’s not a definite, and where 7 Scorpio is concerned there is a quality of ‘revelation’ which arises… unbidden… from the unformulated depths of this energetic.

The North Node is going to be at 7 Scorpio throughout this period. In fact, the North Node is going to be at this degree until mid-December – which should tell us all this is a time to be using our relationships to plumb our own depths and elicit those revelations and realizations which will allow us to clear out our mistakes and avoid some of our more poignant karmic errors.

So there’s the North Node, and along comes the Sun. And when we combine 7 Scorpio with the Sun at 2 Scorpio we get the sort of energetic which promotes the ability to do more than tread water. Real accomplishment can be promised here, specifically to those who though influenced by their surroundings (lifestyle, life path) and whatever else are not ruled by any of it.

This could also be a time when those who are ‘stuck’ in the material or the manifest see the trick…the veil which material focus throws over greater purposes and power which is not detracted on by having come into the limits of fixed, materialistic form.

The conjunction of Sun and North Node occurs on October 30th just shortly after dawn, UT/+0 time. The Sabian Symbol here is not unlikely: A CALM LAKE BATHED IN MOONLIGHT (keynote: a quiet openness to higher inspiration - keyword/Dane Rudhyar: quiescence)…as the image of his degree suggests that it is one where the different ‘levels’ of Scorpionic experience separate enough to be noted.

Though the ideal in this symbol is calm, do we know what every person brings to this degree in their natal chart? No. So perhaps this is not a time of calm in (Nodal) relationships (platonic-intimate or business-personal) in your (Sun) life? Maybe it’s a moment in which relationships or your ability to relate is face to face (in conjunction with) situations which serve to evidence things which calls your attention to vulnerabilities and therefore your (Scorpio) attitude towards and ability to handle power.

Okay…so maybe this is when you are finally getting in touch with those unexpressed little pock holes in your most feeling (Scorpio) makeup. And maybe that’s making you feel somehow (Scorpio/Taurus polarity) sensitive to your own standards and thoughts about (Taurus) self worth/vs/”worth.”

Not you? That’s okay too. There’s something in your life where the tar is seeping out from under the tiles, where, try as you may, you know you aren’t in control.

Something could still get you.

Ah yes, Scorpio. The sign which asks us to accept the risk and walk right into the emotional realm which governs how…or whether…we react to what we feel.

How we can feel secure or be secured…which includes but is not limited to manipulation.

And maybe why we fear…as distinct from feeling fear, of course.

Or maybe our instinct regarding instinct.

Given such concepts, it would seem likely that as October closes out a new sense of our own awareness seems likely. You may well have been reading these columns for weeks now…and you may be absolutely, pozzolutely certain you know what these energies are ‘about’ by now.

And then comes along an innocent day or two and…well, let’s just say your outlook may change. This is a time when many changes become upon you because for whatever reason, you have arrived at a moment when you benefit from getting a different perspective.

Thus, one is magically provided.

Will you look at what is shown? Could you dare to stand in a hall of mirrors where every surface reflects your suppositions, your assumptions, your yearnings, your hungers, your instinct to survive?

Hope in a Prison of Despair by Evelyn De Morgan (1855-1919)

If you had to spend a day or two experiencing things which would cause you to realize that life is – at some level – that very hall of mirrored aspects, all arranged so that you would encounter them without (generally) recognizing at first glance that what you were seeing was your Self….

…how would your opinion of knowing you change?

By November 4th the eclipse is over and we start feeling not the experience of life’s energies but our feelings about who was doing all that experiencing.  We come to some greater feeling of freedom to be who we are and respect for the world.

Or at least we recognize how to have our freedom and be responsive too once we accept that whatever we have attracted we have attracted because we needed to respond as we have.

And we needed to do all those things and respond as we have so that we can mix all our thoughts about who we are, who we aren’t, who we could be, who we’d like to be…we can mix all that in with the next phase of building our own recognition of the beautiful beast and beastly beauty of being part of a world, a life, an existence which we help manifest for better and for however we think we’re cursed.
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Breathe the Scorpio

Baby star HH 46-37 blowing 2 bubble jets

(image courtesy of the Spitzer Space Telescope, NASA, JPL, 

Caltech, T Veusamy, November 2007)

 

Have you perhaps come by the blog and wondered when I was going to post again?

Or maybe…over the past day or so you’ve come to some degree of realization that being made to wait is perhaps the greatest essence of Scorpio manifestation?

Every person I know with a Scorpio anything (and yes, I’m on this list) goes through life either feeling pain or feeling pained by knowing pain exists just beyond….you know, there.

Waiting…the feeling the pain and the dreading of the moment when change comes upon you unexpectedly, all that is Scorpio.

So yes…sometimes in Scorpio terms…. sitting with the same information and just never thinking about moving on is the very thing through which you feel yourself testing your ability to resist against your ability to defend (your Self) first and last.

It is in feeling the surge, the concern, the weight of necessity or loss or the massive unknown…the fact that we’re meant to feel and how that has all sorts of implications…

That’s all simply the essence of Scorpio.

So yes, the blog will move on. But first, first we will pause here for yet a little while more...with the controlling thought of Scorpio capturing you at an ever deeper, ever tighter level of internal knowing.

Scorpio always fascinates. Starting out, we are  fascinated by the wonder of allure allied by sizzling cord to the risk and possibility, the danger and salvation we experience when we are helplessly enveloped by the depths of experiential emotion.

But then...after a time we finally learn that Scorpio's greatest glory is knowing that we can fall. We can afford to fall because we know we will survive. Maybe it won't be pretty. But maybe we won't be thinking about how pretty anything this once something of true life value rears its head.

Ultimately the spells we weave we are either entirely unaware of casting...or unable to escape from. We are spun by that which we spin in the hopes of never having to be spun. 

Let us pause. Let us be held just longer than we would like to be held where in the last few moments wondering turns to internal conflict as to the truth of this or that - the Scorpio of it all.

Let us want that which we know we should simply ask for. And when we don't ask, let us feel ourselves simmering in self-willed pain which we (no doubt!) will claim we had part in creating.

We are all fools. We are all brilliant, knowing fools when confronted by what we really are.

No wonder we all like Scorpio. It's not the good or bad or the doing against the stasis. Its the feeling alive in the moment when dread triggers an ecstatic angst of quivering insecurity.

In that moment, we are all Scorpio.

Feel its potency and breathe in the drama which Scorpio is...for it is upon you.
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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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