The Darker Side of the Age of Aquarius

No song captures more the popular conception of the “Aquarian Age” as Fifth Dimension’s runaway hit from the musical “Hair,” Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In.”  For those who might be a bit fuzzy on their Broadway musicals, here are the actual lyrics:

When the moon is in the Seventh House
And Jupiter aligns with Mars
Then peace will guide the planets
And love will steer the stars
This is the dawning of the age of Aquarius
Age of Aquarius
Aquarius!
Aquarius!

It makes for an entertaining song and a catchy tune for TV commercials, but the astrology in this song is beyond bad.  First, the moon goes into the 7^th house of a day’s chart for about two hours every single day…without fail.   Second, I’m not sure what it means for Jupiter to be “aligned” with Mars as there several different kinds of “alignments,” but it happens many times a year.  So this song doesn’t give us any real clues about the dawning of the Age of Aquarius.

Okay, so a Broadway show might stoop to such silliness as having a song that gives an impression about the Aquarius Age based on…nothing.  Alas, there are other sources that make similar claims about the Aquaboogie’s Age, sometimes without any astrological evidence at all.  (At least the song did better!)

Take this paragraph about the coming Aquarius Age from now a defunct site www.aquariuswater.org.  Now mind you, they once sold expensive bottled water at this site and the copy may not have been written by an astrologer, but, again, we’re talking about common conceptions of the Aquarius age:

“Aquarius is the age of self-realization (Kundalini Awakening). Aquarius is the true age of knowledge. In this age, dogmatic types of religion will cease to be taught, and all dogmatic forms will disappear. Science and religion will merge and people will begin to comprehend that spirit and matter are derived from the same source, and are only modifications of the One Universal Energy. It is the desire to pool and merge the time, efforts, and resources of the individual with those of the larger society in order to create something new for the benefit of everyone. Enhancement of the polity overwhelms the desire for self-aggrandizement, and the wall of Ego come tumbling down and the individual communes with the totality of the species.”

So far, popular conceptions of the Aquarius Age seem to ensure more peace, understanding, freedom, cooperation, and egolessness.  It sounds awesome; but if it also sounds too good to be true, then you’re probably more on the right track.   It seems odd that human beings would have endured all these other “documented” ages, from the Leo Age (about 12,000 years ago) to this one, the Piscean Age, and yet each one has brought more war and other nasty things from Pandora’s Box.  Why and how is the next age going to be any different?   Well, it will be different, but, perhaps, not along the lines we’ve been made to believe.    But before we get hip deep into my own vision of the Waterman’s grand epoch and flow, what is meant by the age of a particular sign anyway?

The Great Year

The Great Year is just another way to measure “astrological” time, but on a much longer scale:  25, 920 years.  In a regular year, the length of time that a “sign” is on the horizon point is about a month.  In the Great Year, it’s about 2160 years.  Right now, we are in the last 6 degrees of the Piscean Age.  However, the Earth takes about 72 years to go through one degree, so we won’t be into the Age of Aquarius until sometime in the 25^th century.

You might have noticed that the motion of the astrological ages is exactly OPPOSITE to how “regular” time and signs move.  Our observation is that Aquarius moves into Pisces.  The difference is prompted by the Earth’s rotation on its axis.   As an elliptical object, rather than a perfect sphere, the Earth spins at an angle, causing it to wobble.  This wobble means that when the Earth revolves around the Sun every year, it won’t always be facing the star constellation behind the Sun at the same point.  In fact, as the Earth wobbles and rotates, its “face” moves westward, Aries to Pisces, although we experience the signs, in regular time, moving eastward, Pisces to Aries.

During this whole movement, the key point we watch is the Vernal equinox, when the Sun “appears” at our Equator in the sign of Aries.  It’s when the Earth’s “face” is lined up with a particular constellation and sign at spring time, the beginning of the Zodiacal year.  (Not in January at the start of the calendrical year). But the truth of the matter is that the Sun hasn’t appeared in the constellation of Aries at spring in nearly 2000 years.  It’s been in Pisces.  So, at the exact moment that spring begins, the Sun is in the sign of Aries, but it is at about 6 degrees of the constellation of Pisces.  When the Earth begins spring in the northern hemisphere and is also at 29 59’ of Aquarius, then we’re at the start of the Aquarian age.  (Note:  the ages move backward in time from 29 to 0 degrees.)   To be clear, the signs are not the same as the constellations; they share the same names, but represent different “places” in space.  This is a big thorny issue between astrologers.  Some astrologers go by the actual positions of the constellations and some go by the imagined stationary place of the signs, which most of us use.  Who’s right?  I say both, but that’s a different article.  What’s important to know is that we are, in fact, at the dawning of the Age of Aquarius.  The song got that much right.  However, by astronomical calculations, if dawn is at 6 am, then it’s about 5 am.  We’re close, but it’s still kind of dark.

The Twilight of the Age of Pisces

With some 500 years left of the age of Pisces, we will still have to grapple with some of its fundamental lessons.  The clearest ideas conveyed, developed and often brutally honed during the age of Pisces are religion and reason.  In no other age of human history had faith, for instance, risen to the large scale as it has in this age.  In fact, it has been the meteoric rise of one religion, Christianity, that most characterizes this age.  In fact, one of Christianity’s key symbols, even before the cross, has been the fish.  However, the idea of “reason” surfaced in Europe in the Age of Enlightenment as a knee-jerk reaction to zealous, unreflective belief.  This manifests Pisces’s polarity, Virgo.  Virgo as an Earth sign is about using order, reason, service and structure for engaging reality.  In contrast, Pisces is about losing boundaries in belief and imagination.  Some of the good that came out of this age has been that human beings lost our collective boundaries with the sea and land, using reason but fueled by belief and watery desire.  We have created worlds of imagination in books and our advances in technology.  However, the enslavement and wholesale murder of millions of people and the equally brutal collapsing of national boundaries for colonization are a few of the negative manifestations of the Pisces-Virgo age.

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In the Piscean age, the key question was, “What do you believe?”

In the Aquarian age, the question will be, “How are we connected?”

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And now, in the early part of the 21^st century, we find ourselves still wrestling with reason versus religion.  People have lost their boundaries in faith so much that they’re willing to kill themselves (ultimate individual dissolution) to kill thousands of people, if they can.  Or many choose to believe in nothing and marvel at feeling so empty.   We also have more opportunities to lose ourselves in worlds of imagination, through video, DVDs, cable, mp3 players, cinema, novels, portable games, etc, than at anytime in human history.   However, these things aren’t enough.  There is yet another collective way that many seek to fulfill the ultimate Piscean vision of dissolution:  the idea of the apocalypse—universal destruction.

The Baby Boomers and Generation X’ers grew up with the idea that the world could end in a great conflagration of nuclear fire.  As the USSR collapsed, those fears were transformed into Y2K, the idea that all our modern civilization will come to a standstill on 1/1/2000 because of a computer programming glitch.  Nothing happened, obviously.  Then our popular imaginations resurfaced Biblical apocalypse with the runaway hits of the “Left Behind” novels.  We also made a slew of movies on the end of the world.  When the biblical vision of apocalypse became too much, then our apocalyptic imaginations were captured by ecological disasters fueling our fears.   And since 9/11/2001, many live with an apocalypse fueled by terrorist ire.  But all our fears for the end of the world could be nothing more than the fear of the end of an age, the Piscean age.  Of course, we could be putting ourselves in tremendous danger by abusing some of the “fruits” of this age, but focusing on our own ruin won’t keep the Pisces age around any longer.  We’ll still have to wait another 25,000 years before we see it again.  In the interim, Aquarius looms on the horizon.

What are we likely to expect during the Age of Aquarius?

If Pisces can be described as the age of revelation versus reason, then the Aquarius age will be the age of collective integrity versus individual dignity.  In the Piscean Age, we looked to have our minds and souls revealed to us, either through our imaginations or interpretations of Divinity.  Reason was the counterfoil to that impulse.  In the Aquarian Age, I believe we will strive more to condition our minds to be better integrated into the collective.  In the Piscean age, the key question was, “What do you believe?”  In the Aquarian age, the question will be, “How are we connected?”  Considering we’re already at the dawn of the Aquarius age, it’s not surprising to see that this is already happening, in subtle and not so subtle ways.   This contrast was made clear to me while I traveled through parts of Europe and North Africa in 2001,  “the Old World,” a month before 9/11.

Of course, modernity has crept into almost every nook and cranny of human life everywhere, but as I walked through parts of the “Old World,” I would imagine what Europeans and Africans of old saw around them on a daily basis.  The cathedrals, mosques and palaces were definitely the main attractions of recent antiquity and their architecture focused on religious themes and geometrical designs meant to stimulate higher consciousness and awe.   Although most people lived humble lives, the imagery around them was made to be sublime enough to compel them to contemplate the heavens and the after-life, regardless of whether it would be better for them or not.   In contrast, in modern life, we are bombarded with advertising images that constantly compel us to evaluate our social standing and our connections to others.  We’re not necessarily propelled to the heavens by our daily images as much as to the store.  We are never quite good enough as we are.  It is true that in the “old world” we had those who told us that God said we weren’t good enough.   However, now it’s some copywriter or witty graphic artist working on behalf of a huge unseen conglomerate that tells us we aren’t good enough. A very striking contrast.

This has even more serious implications as we are even more connected and in more ways.  Ask people in an urban setting how they are connected and  they may not even be able to think about all the ways they’re on the hook-up:  cable television, cell phones (and some people have two), land line telephone, electricity, gas, wi-fi internet service, boost mobile, myspace.com, match.com, ipod, ps2, etc.  To be sure, our technology and gadgets may highlight what’s truly bound to happen at more profound levels in the Aquarian age rather than being the source of what’s happening.  They presage our growing interest in having the ability to craft how we are connected (or not) from the molecular level to outer space.  This sounds great, but the foil, manifested through the sign of Leo, reveals the nightmare.

In an age where we are becoming more and more connected, there will be less room to fully detach.  Likewise, if you’re not on the “grid” somehow, you’re not likely to be perceived as someone worth even acknowledging.  In the Piscean age, if you didn’t believe in a particular thing, you were an infidel, sinner or just a heathen.   However, in the Aquarian age, if you are not connected, you will cease to exist.  In fact, you’re less than zero.   If you don’t believe that, then ask an adult who attempts to socially advance in the U.S. without a social security number.  It’s not impossible, but it’s really difficult as that person’s not “connected.”  This brings us back to a person having inherent dignity for just being a person.  The counterpoint to Aquarius, Leo, will stress human rights and the right for people to be themselves, be off the grid.   In the future, the struggle will be for raw individual dignity and expression versus the beauty and majesty of collective’s network.   Let’s hope “resistance” is not futile.

Truth be, as Saturn is the traditional ruler of Aquarius, not just Uranus, there is a tyrant in every batch of Aquarian zodiacal soup.   (I bet you always wondered what really was in Aquarius’s pitcher!)  There very well could be peace in the Age of Aquarius, but will it be a peace based on conformity?   And as great as having a grand human network project sounds, will it feel good to have another person or set of entities, like a government, watch your every move, even if in the spirit of protection?  Will modern marketing’s ideology that everyone can be segmented into groups triumph over our traditional belief that we are individuals, with our own individual destinies?

These questions can be asked by us, but they will also be answered by generations to come.  However, the one advantage we have over the Piscean age is that there are, at least, more people who understand the depth and issue of an astrological age.  Nonetheless, if we squander that insight on empty and insanely optimistic descriptions of the coming Aquarian age, we will again find ourselves on the cusp of another age, thinking apocalyptic thoughts, like having our galactic federation of planetary networks dissolve or something like that and we’ll be no wiser for our troubles.  My hope is that this long day of Aquarius dawns with insight and sets with understanding.  As individuals working in our respective collectives we can ensure that much.   Here’s my attempt.  May the starwinds be at your back for all your endeavors.

Yolo Akili’s interview with me…

Here’s astrologer Yolo Akili’s interview with me on his blog. Enjoy!

How about a Mercury Retrograde with a nice solar eclipse finish for after Thanksgiving dinner?

Or we can make this really simple.  Today, November 25, 2011, Mercury goes retrograde AND there’s a solar eclipse.  My astrology colleague, Gary Caton, does a thorough job of breaking down what this solar eclipse (and a bit about the coming lunar eclipse on Dec. 10th) portends. He says:

“In the short term, this partial solar eclipse is followed in two weeks by a total lunar eclipse. Both eclipses occur during Mercury retrograde. As I suggested earlier this year the Mercury retrogrades in the fire element, along with a total lunar eclipse in air, are going to once again further invigorate the current global conflagrations.”

In explaining the way eclipses function in cycles, he says:

“The Taurus theme tells us it is appropriate to focus on economic issues.”

This is pretty much on track what I’ve been tweeting about with what’s happening in the global financial markets and how it’s inciting people to protest and challenge economic disparities. Essentially, the honeymoons for the new technocrat governments for Italy and Greece are over and that the global economy is bound for some serious shakeups to start manifesting over the next two weeks. Solar eclipses, in my book, usually have a three month window for taking even clearer shape. That’s right in alignment with Gary’s forecast for bigger developments in March.

On a more everyday level, Mercury Retrogrades are nothing to fear.  Here are some insights I’ve shared about it before.

Lessons learned at great cost…Saturn/Jupiter returns

A dying 60 year-old woman decided to come clean about lying under oath on two men she helped to send prison for 20 years. I was touched by the story as I saw how she was having her Saturn and Jupiter returns as does happen between 59-60 years old.  Saturn is in Libra now, the sign associated with justice, so it’s only fitting that she would help to mete out justice for these wrongly convicted men. Unfortunately, over the last 20 years, her body transmogrified her guilt into a cancer that will most likely kill her. Considering that she was a nurse, I suspect the woman has the caring sign Cancer prominent in her chart.  I believe she’s learning a lesson about how to properly care for others.

It’s clear that she cares for her family, particularly her son. Her son was 14 years-old at the time that she helped a zealous detective send two men to prison for a crime that they didn’t or couldn’t have committed.  Her son’s age is interesting because he was having his Saturn opposition, meaning that Saturn was half way from the point when the son was born.  This Saturn opposition is a time a great upheaval in the lives of young people as they struggle to figure out their social responsibilities and allegiances.  He chose to be silent, aligning himself with his neighborhood (rather than the truth) and his mom chose to lie to protect him.  And now, the mom has come full circle and helped give these two men their lives back.

Of course, “At what cost?” is a natural reaction, considering that lying cost her her health and the two men 20 years of their freedom and life. (Although one guy got a settlement for $7.5 million from NYC, it may not be enough to sweeten the bitterness of 20 years lost. But that’s his lesson.)  However, the cost was not the soul of Penny Cameron. And ultimately that’s the pearl of great price and it’s never too late to cherish that.

Thoughts about supposedly nasty mofos known as malefic planets…

In traditional astrology, there are two planets that are considered malefics: Mars and Saturn. Modern astrologers tend to abhor the word malefics and I can’t blame them. But I still think the intention to *not* have malefics is wrong-headed. I think it’s all about where your head is actually. If your mind is only on terrestrial desires, then I think it’s okay to think of malefics as malefics. If your mind is oriented toward the spiritual, then the malefics can be Godsends.

Saturn signifies loss, restriction, discipline, structure, societal expectations, societal roles, solitude, deprivation, and maturity. Mars signifies action, desire, anger, wars, fights, destruction, initiative, distinction, and injury. Most of that sounds pretty bad to me. But not all of it.

If we only want to have worldly success and worldly treasures, then rest assured when malefics signify something in your natal chart or perhaps by transit, then they rock your world…and usually not in a good way. That’s what we usually call bad. However, Saturn and Mars can be seen as great liberators because they can be the demolition crew that literally opens your house to see the heavens…perhaps prompting us to reach higher.

If we choose not to reach higher, then stuff just seems messed up. If we reach higher, then they’re really not so bad.

Chiron in Pisces: Coming home

I’ve been a Chiron skeptic for most of my astrological career.  I know it’s kinda silly to be an astrologer and skeptical of other aspects of astrology, but things have to make sense to me. And most explanations of Chiron just didn’t. I couldn’t wrap my around the pat answers of it being the wounded healer or representing the part of your chart where you’re in need of healing. Pardon me for asking the obvious, but doesn’t and couldn’t the whole chart represent areas of your psyche where one needs healing?  It’s kind of how I feel descriptions of Pluto as the transformation planet are as useless. Aren’t all the planets agents or symbols of transformation?

Anyway, to add insult to never-ending injury,  people would feel compelled to take the joke too far by saying even crazier stuff like Chiron is the ruler of Virgo or whatever.  Then nearly three months ago, after many years of gnashing of teeth and really struggling to make sense of Chiron, I found my way to an understanding of the comet/planetoid. I published my thoughts as a chirpstory, based on my tweets on twitter.

In the last month, Chiron’s deeper meanings have hit even more at home since I started swim lessons at the Harlem YMCA.  I have basically known how to “survive” in water since going away in my pre-teen years at Cradle Beach Camp, a Fresh Air Mission summer camp. But I didn’t really learn how to swim. So when I went to the Y, I didn’t go for any grand reasons like to finish unfinished business. I just wanted to beat the heatwave that I thought would continue a lot longer than it actually did this summer.

In interim, I found myself in a giant pool wanting to do more and I couldn’t. I looked on the schedule and saw the Y had adult classes when I was free in the evenings.  My first class was great!  I had a Jamaican guy who basically nurtured my basic learning nature of full immersion or sink or swim.  He wasn’t so much about structured steps as much as learn this component, practice it and then learn by doing.  That day I nearly swam the length of the pool for the first time in life on my own.

The second class was with a different instructor who reminded me a lot of my father, oddly enough. He was big, with a wit that mocked you and disarmed you at the same time and a fairly methodical, prop-laden approach.  I struggled in that class and went from feeling confident to being able to swim the length of the pool to wanting to trade in my swimming cap for a dunce cap.  The remarkable thing about that class is that it prompted me to get to the pool more to practice.  And more than most things I’ve attempted to learn, it was a JOY to practice.  As someone who trains folks in learning new things, I knew that it was key to figure out things with my own body, not attempting to intellectually picture it in my head what I had been instructed. I also realized that the success of my first class was a mix of beginner’s luck and my teacher’s appreciation for effort more than demonstration of technique. Not knocking it as much as the second class (and subsequent ones) frequently reveals the hard part.

And it did. I had to do something that I often don’t like to do often or that I do well: trust.  And it wasn’t about trusting my instructor or his instruction. I had to trust the water.  I had to surrender.  Intellectually, I got early on that most of swimming was allowing the water and our natural reactions to the water to do its work…without panic. Swimming is definitely more about the practice of getting in your body than the panic of it.  If you panic, you are likely to drown or end up with a lot of water up your nose.

With a Chiron in Pisces in the part of my chart representing my body (my 1st house), I think it’s reasonable that I would have a problem with surrendering into my body.  I was born with spina bifida, so it hasn’t always been comfortable being in my body, especially since the first 20 years of my life were spent getting surgeries (25 of them).  However, my health has mostly been good when I’m eating right and exercising. I may have to get a hip replacement within 5-10 years my doctor tells me, but perhaps my active working out will keep it at bay for 10-15 years. We’ll see.

Regardless, my own lessons with futility, as I’ve come to understand Chiron, is learning to trust my body to a process or a state that’s beyond my control, while at the same time learning a set of motions that helps me cooperate with this process. And learning to swim has already shown me what the other side of futility can look like if I’m willing. It’s realizing that you can either fail or exceed your expectations, but only if you’re willing to let them go.  I didn’t have to beat the heat this summer in a pool. I had to beat myself.

Is astrology an instrument of control or understanding?

For the last few months, I’ve been working with a friend to bring the Zodiac Lounge to Philadelphia. Yesterday I spoke with an important connection, based on referral from my friend, to make that happen. We had a good convo about the space where we might have the Zodiac Lounge, some common people we know (as Philly is a wonderful big little town) and some next steps. As we were getting off the phone, she surprised me by relaying a question that someone in the background was asking her, “Do I want our chart (astrological) information?” I laughed and said, “No. I didn’t need that quite yet.” She laughed and then we said our goodbyes.

As I hung up, I wondered for a second if they will think I’m not a serious astrologer if I would be remiss in getting such *vital* information? In fact, at astrology conferences, many astrologers will have their rising, moon and sun signs right on their name tags under their names.  People will have whole conversations talking only about their placements. Even after studying, teaching and practicing astrology for over 20 years, I find that strange and baffling.

I had to think why don’t I think about that kinda stuff first.  The only thing I could realize is that I only use astrology with people I meet in real life, who aren’t clients, when I want to understand something that I don’t understand.  When I’m meeting people for the first time, I want to experience them as I perceive them, not as astrology “snapshots” them.  However, before the first meeting, there’s rarely something that I don’t understand as I don’t have any real information or knowledge of the person anyway. Nor do I want it.  So why do people do use astrology that way? The only thing I could reason is that people are struck by the allure of control that astrology offers.

For many reasons, legitimate or otherwise, people seem to negotiate safety and trust in people through knowledge or things that they feel give the knowledge.  This knowledge can either lead to understanding or feed control issues.  There is a thin line between the two and we can fool ourselves as we dance along that line.

If we use knowledge as a tool of understanding, then we can see how a dynamic works without necessarily attempting to alter it. We may be just content to experience it…or not. When knowledge becomes a tool of control, we feel the need to do something about what can or should happen with this knowledge or to anticipate events based on what we perceive. For me, that’s stressful although I recognize that may be soothing for others.

For instance, let’s say I get the chart info of my new contact before I meet her. Then let’s say she turns out to have a Sun at 29 degrees Taurus, meaning she’s born May 20, 21 or 22 (depending on the year and hour), I might conjecture that I could have problems w/ her based on my recent challenging experiences with people having planets at that degree.  (My Sun is at 29 degrees Scorpio.) Can I truly avoid coming in with possibly erroneous thoughts and perceptions about her based on my experiences? Will I stay disciplined (and open) or will I look for information that confirms my bias?  Likewise, will I modify my behavior to counter perceptions of her behavior that may or may not be there?  If I modify my behavior based on perceptions that haven’t even clearly formed yet, then am I authentically meeting her…or her scarecrow that I’ve made? I tend to think I would be constructing a scarecrow as I won’t have enough information about her to really know.

That’s why I think establishing relationships based on synastry alone is a crapshoot at best. One can blind oneself to a host of possibilities using astrology by ONLY focusing on the astrology, not on how the person is living the chart or a host of other factors. For instance, an astrologer, with enough charts, can find your ideal astrologically derived partner, but what if they’re a different sex than you prefer? Or way older or younger than you prefer? This goes to show you that it’s not just about the astro compatibility.  It’s about how and if you can really meet that person where they are. The astrology is a map to navigate the sea of relationship, not to contain it. It can tell you how vast or close the sea may be, but not always the condition of the waters.

Shying away from sea metaphors for a sec, the compatibility of charts only testify to possibilities and probabilities. I think giving too much primacy to those things sets up too many temptations for control more than understanding.

So I’m glad I said, “Not yet.” If my contacts wonder among themselves about what kind of astrologer I am who doesn’t ask for the info of new people he encounters, then I hope they realize that I’m the adventurous kind. I’ll pick up a map once I get there, but charting out too much before I get to the destination could blind me from seeing what’s most important while giving me the illusion that I know more than I do.

Talking about Amy Winehouse, the 27 Club and the significance of being 27-30

 

 

 

Here’s what I posted on twitter last week on this topic all in one chirpstory:

 

http://chirpstory.com/li/2082

My talk on Cancer at the Zodiac Lounge this past weekend…

Enjoy!

Cancer Talk 2011

(You can right click on it to download to save it on your favorite mp3 playing device as well.)

The Father’s Day that isn’t…

Today’s Father’s Day. Last night and early this morning, on twitter and facebook, I had a series of conversations w/ people about this statement:

“Followers/Friends, I love you, but you can miss me tmrw w/ all that celebrating mothers as fathers for Father’s Day. You may have raised your child, as a single mom, by yourself (and that is awesome), but you. are. not. the. father. #KeepItReal”

The conversations were illuminating, emotional and powerful. But I didn’t make the most controversial statement that’s been raging in my mind, especially today.

On a lot of levels, it’s reasonable for me to think at 43 years old that I may not become a father. I have many friends and family who say I would be a great father and I believe that’s true.  I am a proud godfather to three children. I am an Uncle Sam many times over, and I enjoy that role.  But it’s simply not true that a man can become a father however and at whatever age he wants.  In fact, I’ve come to think of fatherhood as an exercise in not in having control, though many men try.  Let me explain.

I once partnered with a woman who I got pregnant. She didn’t want to have the baby, and I did.  But as a proponent of her ability to choose (and I still am and would be), it was her choice about what happened with her body. I was with her in the “procedure” room when we terminated the pregnancy. I had a lot of of emotions, but in that moment, I focused on holding her hand, sensing, correctly, that it might be a long time before I would be on the brink of having a child.  I didn’t have a choice. And that doesn’t become a rallying point for me nor should it for anyone else to embrace pro-life, but it does bring to the fore that much of what happens after conception isn’t in a man’s circle of control. (Although Congress is trying for it to be, unfortunately.)

I also think that the question of having children doesn’t stop at pregnancy or delivery. It really does depend on a heterosexual man’s partner as well. Unless I am fortunate to jointly fall in love with a younger woman who wants and can have children, it becomes more and more likely that I will be with an older woman as a long-time partner.

This means that my partner could be hazarding a high-risk pregnancy. Or it could mean that she may not want children at all, because she either has some already and doesn’t want more or can’t have more.  The latter scenario leaves me either looking elsewhere because I may want to have a child more than be with the woman I love. Or I stay with the woman I love, but just minus producing children with her. The first scenario is something I would only hazard with an older woman if it were really, really important to her.  If I were dating a woman my age, I’m not so sure I could be selfish enough to request her to risk her life or the baby’s to have a child for me…unless that’s also what she really wanted.

I could also partner with a woman who is younger than I am, but, again, life offers no guarantees with pregnancy for a man or a woman.  I’m still faced with the choice of loving the idea of having a child more than having a partner who may or may not be able to have a child.  I’m no Henry VIII-like dude,  so I’m not interested in seeking some kind of “insurance” for having a child by being with a younger woman because there is none, really.

Of course, many have suggested adoption or foster care, but I’m not so sure about the State being excited about a single male astrologer adopting children or providing foster care.  I don’t even want to be a single parent.  I never did.  I know many women are single parents and that wasn’t by choice.  But it was still with a lot more choice than I really have, unless I just want to sire children without regard to any genuine connection to the mother, which, of course, some men do. I am not one of them.

So I really wish people would stop saying, at least to me, that you’re a man, you can have a child whenever you want to. No, I can’t.  Fatherhood is a fortunate blessing. Some men impregnate and many men step beyond that moment and assume a role–fatherhood. However, at this stage in our evolution, the key vehicle of birth is through a woman’s body. I’m fine with that as that provides a genuine opportunity for partnership for a man. I may find that opportunity, but I am now beginning to accept the idea that I may not step into that role.

The child I didn’t have would be 12 now.  I tend to think she would have been a girl. Perhaps she would be wishing me a happy father’s day today. Perhaps she would be with her mother or we would all be together.  But she’s not here. It’s useless to really wonder what would have been as it’s not. I still do anyway. I live with the choices I make and the ones I don’t and didn’t.