When a player gets played: Full Moons, Exorcisms and Jupiter in Virgo

Last week’s Full Moon on August 24th fell very close to my Jupiter in Virgo, so it “activated” it. Activate means that the topics of interest concerning the planet Jupiter and then all the other specific issues concerning my chart like the fact that my Jupiter is in Virgo, the other relationships that Jupiter has with the other planets in my chart and that it falls in my 7th house.First things first: what does Jupiter mean in my chart?

Symbol for Jupiter

Jupiter is the planetary signature that deals with spirituality, faith, philosophy, religion, devotion, noble thoughts, and generosity.  Next, all planets move or wander (as the word planet means “wanderer”) going from sign to sign. My Jupiter was wandering through the lush grainy fields of the Virgin or Virgo when I was born.  There’s another layer to understanding why my Jupiter in Virgo is a big deal for me. It is one of the strongest planets in my chart because it’s at what we call an angle. This happens when you have a planet in the 1st, 4th, 7th or 10th house.

Look at the numbers toward the center...

My Jupiter is in the 7th house and that’s the sector of a chart that deals with marriage, relationships, partners and adversaries. How did the full moon all pan out for me? Well, that’s where it gets complicated and simple. Let’s start with the simple manifestation or activation.

First, I was inspired to be generous. For one day only, I offered my “friends” on facebook (and their friends),  a free report to break down the natal chart and to see what planets were activated by the 8/24 full moon. (Don’t worry. I will do something like this again soon.)

The more complex “level” of activation is still going on as it’s more reflective.  This past weekend I saw “The Last Exorcism.” I won’t say too much about the movie as I don’t want to provide any spoilers. I enjoyed it, though I don’t know if a lot of people will. In the movie, the main character is a minister who has lost his faith and hires a film crew to do one last exorcism of a teenage girl.  Initially, he “stages” an exorcism only to discover quickly that he can’t tell what’s real and what’s “staged” anymore.  As a former Christian minister,  I can definitely relate, and I believe my Jupiter in Virgo prompts me to struggle with dimensions of faith all the time.  With a Jupiter in Virgo, I have an incessant need to rationally understand behavior and beliefs, especially with it being in the sector of my chart dealing with relationships (public and intimate). It also suggests that I have a highly analytical and critical nature.  In fact, my mother used to joke when I was younger that “Why?” would be the epitaph on my tombstone because I would ask her that question so much. I’m particularly attentive to my analytical nature with people and their beliefs or faith.

Here I need to make a distinction between belief and faith. Belief values a certain set of facts or principles that one assumes are true based on tradition, culture, valued opinions or experience.  Faith values a certain set of perspectives on the world based on one’s experience and/or one’s conscience that may or may not be based on one’s beliefs.  Faith puts us in the position of knowing only that we know and not having any particular beliefs that either affirm or deny that knowing. I take faith as a far more personal and perhaps mystical encounter with the known and unknown.  I think the problem with Jupiter in Virgo, considering that Jupiter does as planetary chief of staff in the opposite sign, Pisces, is that Jupiter isn’t inspired easily to faith, per se.  But you can’t fake the funk with faith. If you ain’t got it, you ain’t got it.  Watching “The Last Exorcism” is a good morality tale on what happens when you fake the funk with faith.  I almost went down that same path as the fake-ass exorcist.

When I was 19 and realized that I didn’t have much faith in my religion, I started talking with a few ministers about it. I learned many of them didn’t have much either! But they enjoyed the idea of helping people in life and there were other perks, like the schedule and the money weren’t too bad either. Many of them also had started young as I did. (I started when I was 12 years old, not too much older than the minister in “The Last Exorcism”) Well, I was too idealistic to care about schedule or money.  So I left and figured I would return to the ministry once I had answered my questions sufficiently.  I’ve never gone back, and it looks like I never will return back to the Christian ministry.  And I can say I’ve made the right choice.  Looking at this movie, I could see why and how real faith really re-surfaces.  Critical inquiry and rational thinking gets you to the precipice of faith, but it can never get you to take a leap of faith.  For me, astrology and a spiritual practice of meditation, reflection and discussion have encouraged me to get beyond “Why?” and more in the space to know. How I know this knowledge is not something I bother about (too much).  I step beyond belief and faith.  I go backwards along the path of the wanderer. Instead of embracing Jupiter IN Virgo, I step out of Virgo (critique and pruning) into Jupiter (faith and expansion), then into infinity. Not with most things and not all the time, but enough that I can move beyond faith.  That feels good…enough.

What a half-billion egg recall is really about…

This morning, while only thinking about having eggs for breakfast, I saw that there’s a half-billion egg recall because of a salmonella breakout in 17 U.S. states.  I was flummoxed because I couldn’t recall when I’ve seen a 1/2 billion recall of anything.  And let’s be clear about something here: we’re not really talking about a recall as much as throwing all that food in the trash! Of course, someone might test some of the eggs, but the truth is that these companies have fouled up and fouled up big!

The short answer for why this happened is greed.  Astrologically, there may be a slightly more complicated answer: Pluto in Capricorn.  I’m not blaming Pluto in Capricorn as much as suggesting that Pluto in Capricorn can help explain why this is happening.  (I think it’s silly to blame planets for what humans do. Planets relay choices to be made in the cosmos, but we’re the sages or idiots who make them.)  First, a few words about Pluto, Capricorn and what it means when I say Pluto is in Capricorn.

Astrological symbol for the Planet Pluto

Pluto is still a planet for astrologers. Why? Because what a planet means for astronomers is not the same as what it means for astrologers.  A planet has layers of meanings related to many kinds of activities, people and places on earth.  For astronomers, what is or is not a planet is defined far more technically and scientifically.  Pluto relates to the idea of the underworld, intensity, metamorphoses that bring irrevocable change, the riches of the Earth (where we get Plutocracy), and dark aspects of our psyches we resist acknowledging.

Capricorn, the sea goat

Capricorn is best thought of as a zodiac symbol that directs us to seek out our destinies or to evolve. A lot of people only focus on Capricorn as a goat, but it is a sea-goat. This means that it is an animal of the sea AND land.  It is concerned with taking primal force and energy as suggested by its connection with the sea and transforming it into a creature that climbs mountains, reaching the highest heights.  Saturn is the spokesperson and chief of staff for the sign of Capricorn. Saturn is a planet that relates to how we experience structure, discipline and the meaningful roles we are to play in life, like parent, son, executive, doctor, etc.  So some measure of Capricorn is going to be colored by its serious and sobering spokesperson Saturn, whether he’s in that sign at any particular time or not.

Right now, Pluto is traveling through the sign of Capricorn and will be until 2024.  (This is like when the Sun travels through a sign for 30 days, as it is in Virgo, but we’re talking about a slower moving planet over a longer period of time.) Now when we combine all of what we understand about Pluto and Capricorn, we gain insight into several kinds of possibilities of manifestation or meaning: metamorphoses in how we deal with primal force/power, whether it’s our own, the Earth’s or other creatures; we start thinking about and re-thinking how we experience structure and “regulation” of the “riches of the Earth”; and we have to be willing to evolve from those dark places where we’ve resisted even to look.

This massive egg recall is just one manifestation of what Pluto in Capricorn means.  You can’t get more primal than how we relate to animals and the riches of the Earth.  Stacking hens on top of each other and breeding them for plumpness or for eggs with no consideration for the chicken is asking for a cosmic ass-kicking (and recall), all in the name of greed.   Greed stems from fearing there won’t be and can’t be enough.And we can pat ourselves on the back thinking that greed is only something for the rich and big corporations. But that’s not true.  Big monster farms are not the only people who may have to break a few eggs now.  We all do.

The Lady Meets the (Former) Champ: the Venus-Mars Libra Conjunction of Aug. 2010

Today I have my Venus return conjoined to Mars in Libra.  A Venus return literally means, like other more famous returns of planets like the Sun, Saturn or Jupiter, that the planet comes “home” to its original position when you were born.  Its deeper meaning is that the affairs of the planet, as it has been set up in your natal/birth chart, will work well, badly or indifferently during the course of the year based on the time of that actual return.  This return looks pretty good for me, so I’m expecting some friskiness this weekend and in general, off and on, for the year.  But I really started thinking deeper about the Mars in Libra part of the equation more than the Venus in Libra part. (As I’ve lived with Venus in Libra all my life already.)

Now, Mars in Libra is a whole different issue as Mars “rules” the opposite sign, Aries.  “Rules” could be better translated as spokesperson and chief of staff for the zodiac sign.  The problem with modern astrology is that most people seem to have more respect for the sign (the offices) rather than the planets who manage the affairs of the office.  It would be comparable to always talking about the office of the President without taking notice of who’s holding the office. Big difference between President Bush (take your pick) and President Obama, for example. If you let that sink in, then you’ll see why when you ask a real astrologer about signs, like an Aries with a Capricorn, they hedge or qualify their answers. It all depends on who we’re talking about here (and when they were born.)  Planets do better when they have a “natural” connection to the office.

As Mars feels better managing the affairs of Aries, the sign of the pioneer, of fierce independence, valor and “Me, Me, Me!”, he feels at a loss when he’s in Libra, the sign of charm, mediated interdependence, and “We, We, We!” It would be like Rahm Emanuel, President Obama’s fiesty Chief of Staff, becoming the Executive Director of a Charm School–you’re going to have a serious mismatch! (In fact, Emanuel is a very good example as he has a Mars that’s very strong in Scorpio, another place where Mars is a natural “ruler” for that sign.)  And Mars in Libra is not comfortable with the natural charms of Libra, whereas Venus has these charms effortlessly as she’s the “ruler” for Libra.  So this conjunction between Venus and Mars could be re-dubbed as “Lady meets the Former Champ,” but it’s a former champ of the Mike Tyson variety rather than Muhammad Ali, more beast than beauty. So what do we make of this?

Well, on top of having a Venus in Libra, I was blessed with having two parents who had moons in Libra.  My mom also had a Sun in Libra.  I often call them my civilizers, because they used to say, and even now I would say, that I came into the world as if I had been first born on an thinly populated and largely uncivilized island. So I had to learn to play nice…a lot.  This was not natural for me because I had a naturally imperious, devil-may-care kind of temperament. My often brattish response to my Mom was  “Why can’t I have it?” or “Why can’t I say that?!” with a dash of self-righteous indignation.  My mom and I had lots of fights for a long time.  And she would always say ish that would drive me literally bananas, like quoting Thumper of “Bambi” fame.  “If you can’t say something nice, then don’t say nothing at all,”  would instantly start an argument.

Here’s a good idea of how those kind of conversations with my mom would go:

Me (at 10): Then how about the truth, Mom? Why can’t I just say the truth?
Mom: Cuz the truth might hurt somebody, son. You gotta consider people’s feelings.
Me (to my newly married older brother): Your wife is completely insane! And here’s why…
*WHAP!* (from Mom)
Me (whimpering): But it’s true.
Mom: Sometimes feelings are more important than the truth and peace is more valuable than gold, son.

And that was usually the end of the convos like that. Then I would sulk off to my room to read a book and daydream about being free of a mother who listened to Thumper, of all the silly and stupid creatures in the universe!  Now, 32 years later, after my mom has been laid to rest and many years after my brother discovered that his first wife was, indeed, batshit crazy at the time (and they both way too young), I can say that my mom was so right.  (I actually didn’t watch “Bambi” until I was nearly 30 years old just because my mother quoted from it. When I did, I liked it. Sigh.) The nature of Mars is to be authentic and passionate, and though the nature of Venus is also to be passionate, in Libra, they both have to learn to be rational and proportionate.  Libra reminds us, more than any other sign, that everything has its place and all things change.  This conjunction of Venus and Mars in Libra asks us, “How do we maintain authenticity and passion in the face of change or our ever-changing passions?” Well, what I love about mixed-blessing transits like this one is that they prompt our creativity and deliver a cosmic challenge to tame our passions in a way that is balanced and beautiful. I really didn’t listen to what my mother or Thumper was saying about “saying something nice or nothing at all.” Perhaps my problem could have been solved with an adverb, like nicely, rather than thinking that my mom was attempting to censure me by forcing me to be inauthentically “nice.”  You don’t have to sacrifice authenticity or “the truth” (whatever that is) to deliver news, insight or feelings…nicely.  You also can sometimes speak louder through silence than talking just to talk or be heard (as was often the case when I was a child.) But through discipline, you can be so much more authentic.

This happens in love too.  Celebrated author Paulo Coehlo tweeted this today on Twitter:  “The art of sex is the art of controlled abandon.” No one wants to do more with abandon than Mars and Venus (and usually together.)  But, in Libra, we have to find the right collaboration between control, authentic expression and abandon.  This is the time to remember that. But this does depend on your own make-up.  You may figure correctly from this post that I’m more Mars-like. So, for me, I’m always learning the fine art of finessing my desires. But for you, it might be time to uncork your finesse and let your hair down in some way.  Or maybe asking for something nicely will prompt the right kind of action this weekend or soon enough.  If that happens for me, in a Venusian way, I can only say “Thank you, Mom…and Thumper.  We’ll see.

Breaking the Fear and Tyranny of Mercury Retrograde

Mercury retrograde happens about three times a year and lasts about 21 days each time. (Click here to learn why planets “retrograde”)It has come to signify a time when people fear that all the affairs associated with the planet Mercury–commerce, contracts, communication and travel–are somehow warped, waylaid or altogether foiled.  Although I fall victim to that kind of fear too, as I’ve thought about it recently, I don’t think we should make as big of a deal about Mercury’s retrograde as we do.  We may have created a self-fulfilling reality with Mercury, because we feed this “god” too much without due attention to “higher” principles.A few weeks ago, a member of my spiritual meditation group asked a question following a meeting. He said, “Who do you think is the patron god or spirit of the United States, as a country?” We bandied about a few names. I suggested Mercury, for reasons I’m going to list a little later. However, my colleague, who asked the question originally, agreed that Mercury could be the patron deity now, but he felt the founding fathers had Athena/Minerva in mind.  Athena was not only the patron goddess of Athens, birthplace of Western democracy, but also war, civilization, wisdom, strength, strategy, crafts, justice and skill.  (Minerva is the Roman version of the Greek goddess.) He then broke down some of the logic for his choice.  He saw how Athena’s owl was replaced by the eagle; her spear and shield replaced by a torch and book on our Statue of Liberty; and how classical Athenian notions of democracy inspired the formation of the US. There are also other things that he didn’t say that I knew, like how an olive branch (one of her sacred plants) figures frequently in American iconography and one of the earliest animal “totems” for the US was the snake, one of her key totems. Though it’s true that this country has had high aspirations to epitomize the best attributes of Athena, we’re a lot more like Mercury as I stated.

There’s no question that this country, with its 24 hour news cycle, ever growing number of cellphones and “webs” of networking (social or otherwise) has made  strange bedfellows of communication and commerce. If a hundred years ago, we trusted Mercury to zip and alight from sundry places in minutes or hours for us, via rail, carrier pigeon or letter, then there’s no doubt that he’s zipping now in nanoseconds and we’re running him dogged tired. Dude has to go retrograde just to relax now, and maybe that’s the better way to look at his retrograde. (In fact, classically, when Mercury goes retrograde, he starts his “descent” into the “underworld” of our collective psyches to “extract” the things we don’t want to say–but should and venture into the uncomfortable places we don’t like to go–but must)

Mercury--mediator between worlds!

Mercury Retrograde is a time to lay off the caffeine-powered Mercury engines of our lives and find something else–stillness, Athena, Jupiter, anybody but Hermes/Mercury.  And this is what could be filling us with dread as we think of Mercury receding away from us.  We’ve come to depend so much on him that we can’t picture him moving away from us.  We come to think only about a Mercury who moves with us or ahead of us (if we think about our motion as the Sun’s motion), but it’s too painful to think that he’s moving behind us.  We don’t use it as a time to reflect on our attachment to our computers, our phones, our social networking accounts, our blogs, or even ways of communicating, whether electronically or not. It doesn’t mean that we have to cut off Mercury or Mercury related concerns entirely, even if that were possible.

It means that we can give space to other dimensions of Mercury through other “gods” or principles, like looking at the beauty of our handwriting, which is more of a Venus/Jupiter concern.  (Yes, when was the last time you looked at your writing script? Have you ever pushed to develop or improve it, especially since writing in script is becoming a dying art?) Or does a recent argument with a friend highlight how you might not listen as well as you think you do? Or do you speak more forcefully, with too much Mars, than you might think or would like? Similarly, are you being as serious about your communication or your spoken commitments as you could, which is to evoke more Saturn? Or how are you evoking Athena (strategy) and wisdom on your job? Maybe this Mercury retrograde is what you need to keep some things closer to your chest, rather than blabbing it all off to your officemate or on twitter!

Mercury retrograde can only dominate and foul-up as much of our lives as we’ve allowed Mercury to foul-up and dominate our lives. It may be time to invoke other spirits or manifestations of the Divine rather than Mercury.  Don’t think about this too much, though. With a little quiet space and reflection (honoring the Moon), see what other images or parts of yourself need honoring–other than Mercury. Then like Athena Nike, a combination of Nike (goddess of Victory) and Athena, just do it!