Notes on the Black Moon Lilith and Saturn
The following is excerpted from the new natal report I’m writing on Lilith. Specifically, it belongs in the Lilith-Saturn natal aspects section, but since we’re all subject to Saturnian realities via the way we organize into a collective - how we figure out how to live together in society - it seems appropriate for everyone.
With a Lilith-Saturn aspect, maturity and structure in Lilith expression is called for. In a sense, this has to do with learning to choose one’s battles while also picking or creating the right kind of turf on which to have them. The urge to explode and the resulting violence of giving in to Lilith’s anger does not have to happen - havoc is not necessary. With this aspect, you’ve signed up to figure out how to learn how to grow in your Lilith expression by introducing structure and form to it, thereby enabling the development of maturity. Along the way, healing of all wounds related to having been judged and punished for carrying Lilith’s energy, or being her outwardly, is required. For anyone with difficult and painful histories of interacting with Saturnian energy, the healing includes becoming a Saturnian figure. These people need to develop their own versions of Saturnian expression, versions rooted in personal relevance. And with a Lilith-Saturn aspect, relevance means incorporating Lilith into the structures of one’s life in positive, pro-active, creative ways.
Anyone looking to consciously reconnect with the primal, wild energy inside that is Lilith, which fuels our creativity and sense of connectedness to all of life and the earth, faces this challenge. The biggest hindrance to incorporating the primal wisdom of Lilith we each carry is the fear of negative sanction/punishment from Saturnian figures and institutions.
Healing these fears is paramount if we want to live in the present and create total health. Anyone who chooses to look at the wild inside in a new light, and see how to integrate it into their outer lives, moves into a more-human stance than we’re used to being or seeing. It’s a place of radical honesty, healing, empowerment and aligning with our individual portion of natural wisdom.
Tom is available for private consultations. See his website for more information and to order his new Black Moon Lilith natal report, available when the Sun enters Gemini. Pre-orders with $5 off are available until the Sun leaves Taurus (May 20th, 2008), making the cost $22 instead of $27.
May 9, 2008 By Tom Jacobs
Pluto in Capricorn & Gender Identity
A few weeks ago, I wrote in a post here that Pluto’s entrance into Capricorn can call up questions about what men and women are supposed to be and do.
I listened today, rapt, to an NPR radio story on a family dealing with the assertions of their child that he is not inhabiting the right sort of body.
That this radio series focuses on children is an imporant point: Our Capricornian nurturing styles, which are certain about how to classify and treat boys and girls, can be challenged to adjust to information coming from deep under the surface that doesn’t fit with our surface version of how things should be. In this case, the emotional realities of the children themselves represent the deepest sort of Plutonian self-knowing and the parents are confronted with the challenge of change.
Capricorn seeks to make symbols of individuals, at times leading people to try to embody the lowest common denominator of the collective consciousness in order to fit in or succeed. What happens when some individuals just can’t seem to fit into our predefined categories can vary, but these parents have chosen to adjust, seeing that their child’s true nature is not subject to redefinition by conventional standards based in a consensus mechanistic reality.
Not all parents who hear such paradigm-busting things from their children are so receptive and respectful of the needs of their children, of course. But perhaps Pluto’s transit through Capricorn can inspire more to rethink and refeel their stances in general, and accept the difficulty as a challenge to grow into the present, changing reality right in front of them.
May 8, 2008 By Tom Jacobs
Emotional Healing with Astrology
To have the kind of life we want in the present, we must heal our memories of and attachments to the past.
Astrology offers a vocabulary for and means to heal whatever we’re carrying from the past into our lives in the present day.
Evolutionary astrology is based in the fact that people change, over the course of a life and over the courses of many lives. One of its aims is to help people heal and release the past and gain awareness of the present, so they can choose to develop the kinds of lives they’d rather be living.
No one wants to relive the pain of the past, yet we don’t often have the awareness to heal it and put it in its proper place and move in the present. We end up, then, reliving what’s comfortable, which is often painful, and wondering how to move out of these destructive patterns that keep us from enjoying life and being happy about what we’re doing here.
Some key players in the emotional healing process:
- The South Node of the Moon, the ruler of that node by sign (Venus for Taurus, Jupiter for Sagittarius, etc.) and Pluto (all three players by house, sign and aspect) offer the vocabulary for any person’s emotional imprinting from past lives. These configurations speak to our past-life conditioning and wounding. Identifying and integrating the lessons we’ve set ourselves up to learn, as told by these symbols, is a key to beginning to live in the present moment and move into the arenas of our unique syllabus of soul growth.
- The asteroid Lucifer (1930) tells us about a person’s relationship with the notion of a higher power. What’s a person’s relationship with what could be called his or her inner goodness barometer? Another side of it: Has the person learned how to develop a healthy, distinct sense of ego while serving something greater than the self?
- The true Black Moon Lilith (BML) represents the instinctive, primal & wild part of us we’ve experienced shame and punishment from others for expressing. As the empty focus of the Moon’s orbit around the earth, the true BML is a part of our emotional makeup. As a point that’s never visible from the Earth, however, it often seems an elusive part of us, usually seeming best left in the shadows of our psyches. Locating and reintegrating our hard-wired portion of Lilith energy means finding creative and constructive means to express our wildness, based on house, sign and aspect.
Tom is available for private consultations. See his website for more information and to order his new Black Moon Lilith natal report, available when the Sun enters Gemini. Pre-orders at a discount are available until the Sun leaves Taurus (May 20th, 2008).
By Tom Jacobs
The Right Way to Lilith
I’ve been working lately on the Black Moon Lilith (BML), working to describe how to integrate the energy into your day-to-day life, and getting over the automatic, conditioned fear that she’s to be feared and avoided.
By house, sign and aspect, each of us can find the right way to Lilith - as a noun (finding her energy), and as a verb (bringing her energy consciously into our lives).
As an example, my true BML is at 3 Sagittarius in the 2nd, with Neptune & Mercury in the 2nd and Moon in the 3rd house (4, 9, and 11 Sagittarius, respectively). It sextiles Pluto-Venus in Libra/12th.
For me, opening up the satellite dish that this Sagittarius stellium can seem, and flowing with words that want to come out, is one way. Allowing myself not to edit too much too early, just to let it flow. Lilith brings a primal, irrational, instinctive and uncontrollable energy, and when I open the channel and write what comes through, I’m more productive than working in any other way.
Incorporating Lilith into our lives, bringing her out of the closet, or out from under the rug, leads to a feeling of greater wholeness. When I allow myself to write in this way, I’m not only productive but also I feel like an important part of me had the chance to participate. It feels like a gift I give myself.
As I wrote above, anyone can figure out how to let his or her Lilith flow. The trick is in releasing the conditioning and pain we’ve accumulated along the way, when we’ve internalized the judgments of others that this natural part of us is not okay. It’s natural for others to try to get us to normalize, as they’re looking out for our best interests. Yet each of us at some point has opportunities to identify, reclaim and bring out who we really are.
Tom is available for private evolutionary astrology & intuitive counseling sessions. See his website for more information, and for information on his True Black Moon Lilith natal report, available in late May.
April 29, 2008 By Tom Jacobs
Announcing a new Black Moon Lilith natal report
I’m accepting pre-orders for a new natal true Black Moon Lilith report. It’s original material reflecting my work with clients, intuitive research and experiences over the last few years with this little-understood archetype.
If you know anything about Lilith and/or how she’s understood in astrological circles, you’ll have a sense of how important it is to get this information out. People want to reconnect with this authentic, creative part of themselves and heal the suppression and abuse, and release the limiting conditioning that gets heaped on those living out the archetype. They’re hungering to figure out more authentic ways to express themselves and live in greater alignment with their true natures. Understanding the natal true Black Moon Lilith is, in my experience, critical in such a process.
The report discusses the true Black Moon in general and in your chart. It has sections on Lilith’s mythology and how the archetype informs people’s lives (how we live her story), plus personalized info on your Lilith placement: natal house& sign, natal aspects with other planets/points, and important upcoming transits and progressions to Lilith. The report will be a 6,000-7,000 word PDF.
I’ll offer the report at $27, but by pre-ordering you’ll save $5, making the price $22.
This discount is available for the duration of the Sun’s trek through Taurus (until Tuesday, May 20th, at 9:01 AM PDT).
If you’re curious to learn more about Lilith before ordering the report, you can find an article on my site (http://tdjacobs.com/user/BML%2015Jun07doc.pdf) and some posts in my blog (http://tdjacobs.spiritcrossing.com/category/lilith/ - begin with the earlier posts first).
To order the report, e-mail me (tom at t d jacobs dot com). I’ll then invoice you via PayPal. I’ll also take checks mailed to me – contact me for the address. I’ll begin e-mailing the reports as PDFs when the Sun enters Gemini - the time of year to open up to new info and renew our curiosity.
April 21, 2008 By Tom Jacobs
Saturn in Virgo & Food
Virgo fundamentally is about choice, being the sign of working on the details to make a better bigger picture. What needs to be done when and in what order? it asks…and answers.
Virgo’s view of the body, as a machine made of many constituent parts, can take food into serious consideration. Any concern over the purity of one’s food are running Virgo in their lives. It can certainly be overdone (eating disorders) but can also be used to serve a body by making it work better (health conscious people you think must live only in California).
My approach to Virgo choice stuff, including the 6th house, has to do with increasing awareness of the body’s reactions to what’s eaten. If Virgo energy is allowed to grow itself away from whole-body awareness and only take into account the mind’s rules and concerns, there’s disconnect, and disconnect = your being becoming out of whack in one way or another.
I advise people to be aware of the reactions to what they intend to eat, and I myself choose food before purchasing based on how on board my body is about that food. My brain will say, “You can’t possibly be thinking of eating [name of food product],” yet if the rest of me votes a thumbs up, I buy it.
Saturn’s transit through Virgo means that the work of the moment (Saturn) involves figuring out what it means to be mature enough (Saturn) to take responsibility (Virgo) for how our lives work (Virgo), including our bodies. One big arena of how it works or doesn’t is in what kind of fuel we choose to give our bodies. Your energy level, moods, sleep cycle, libido and everything else are influenced by what kind of food you eat.
Saturn’s retrograde right now, and this is the perfect time to check in with what your body wants you to feed it. How does your body feel when you eat something? Does it make you feel like you want to feel? After you open the door to awareness, take this into the store with you and let your body guide your purchases.
Most of us are surrounded by easy availability of food that we know is no good for us. Saturn in Virgo is asking if you can be responsible enough for yourself to have the integrity to choose what feels right for you. I have no doubt that everyone can hear what their bodies are saying, it’s only a matter of how willing we are to listen.
Tom is available for 60- and 90-minute intuitive karmic astrology consultations. See his website for more information.
April 12, 2008 By Tom Jacobs
Pluto in Capricorn: Dis-covering Authentic Sexuality
Underneath multiple uncomfortable and discomfiting layers of conditioning lies a particular sexual animal that is uniquely you.
There, that wasn’t so hard to read, was it?
Good. But those are just words.
Pluto’s transit in Capricorn offers each of us an opportunity to get clarity on and, if need be, overturn any conditioning we carry (and each of us tends to carry a lot of it).
A blog post about sexuality from me isn’t about drawing you in to read me - and I’m not selling you anything. And this is not about sex - it’s about sexuality. An important distinction, given that we use sex to sell everything and we almost entirely misunderstand sexuality.
I’m interested in taking away the layers of conditioning any of us has so we can find out who’s really inside us. Given the Capricornian excesses we generate to cover up a natural sense of human sexuality, it was only a matter of time until my Pluto-in-Capricorn wanderings took me there.
Are you wondering what authentic sexuality is?
I don’t know how you’ll take this, but you’re the only one who can answer that question for you.
Capricorn is the normalizer of the zodiac, the denier-of-all-spice, the suppressor. We need its systematic approach and work ethic to organize ourselves into society (schools, courts, roads), no doubt. But Capricorn in essence works to distill each of into an aggregate of shoulds and should-nots, and that only works for individuals as far as it does. It’s the anti-individual sign, and I don’t know about you, but I see tons of people all the time hungering to be more individually who they really are.
Pluto’s present retro through Capricorn (it began April 2nd & lasts 5 months) offers anyone who’s willing to look insight into the depths of their social/cultural programming. Use the time to allow layers to peel themselves away, to observe your habits and preferred reactions. Learn the skill of seeing how what you do might be informed by what others think you should do - whether they’re actual presences in your life or nameless and faceless masses. And where in the timeline in your life you learned to adopt any particular stance.
Re authentic sexuality, ideas of what men do and what women do, but really what it means to be a man or a woman, are the playing field. How you’ve internalized external expectations of the expression of your most basic and natural self.
The retro period is about the idea. New action is not best initiated during retro periods because the energy is working differently than normal. But if you do begin something new, allow that revisions will be necessary and you might change your mind a lot along the way. So, it’s an idea at present. Gaining awareness of your assumptions about what is and is not involved in sexuality, in your sexuality, is the point.
For a few months, anyway.
For some people, finding out what’s really going on with tantra will be important - not what you overheard at a party or read in magazines about sexy tips and tricks, not what the guy who tries to pick you up tells you with a wink. Tantra is a way of approaching, using and engaging with energy (a way of being) that is tremendously healing for those who’ve bought into too many Capricornian injunctions against being what we truly are (the vast majority of us). You could use the next five months to explore what it means to relate to the world energetically-as-you, instead of as an aggregate of rules, shoulds and should-nots.
Whatever you do, understand that what you find in those layers peeling away are not yours - they’re ours. You’re a member of a system that’s run via inculcating its members with beliefs and expectations. You’ve taken them on as yours, as the good little member of a Capricornian group that you are.
In the notebook in my head, there are several dozen stars next to this sentence:
Resist the urge to shame yourself for whatever might come up, and be grateful to get to see the deeper layers.
Capricorn is famous for being willing to shame itself for being what it is, and your opportunity is in tapping into and running the Cap energy that takes responsibility for its directives as a collective, understanding that you don’t have to internalize anything that makes you feel less like loving yourself.
Collectively, then, a major opportunity is for us to learn to recognize that taking responsibility for how we’ve conditioned ourselves is critical. And I take this opportunity to remind you of the Uranian truth that all collective change begins with individual change.
One last thing: if when these layers are peeling away you find Lilith (or someone like her) and are not sure what to do, call me - I’ve got some notes for you.
Tom is available for intuitive evolutionary astrology consultations. See his website for more information.
April 7, 2008 By Tom Jacobs
Pluto’s 2008 Retro
Tomorrow, April 2nd, the planet of digging below the surface begins its annual 5-month trip against the grain.
As this retro includes a trip back into Sagittarius, Sagittarian stuff can be now be revisited in terms of what Capricornian efforts have been begun the last couple of months. Our deepest motivations for thinking, feeling, believing and doing are going to be more readily accessible to our conscious minds during this retro period.
It’s a great opportunity for anyone interested in participating more consciously in their own lives.
A full article on this is here - scroll down to the section with my name.
Tom is available for soul-centered, intuitive astrological consultations. See his website for more info and to book a session.
April 1, 2008 By Tom Jacobs
Pluto in Capricorn: China & Human Rights Dialogue re 2008 Summer Olympics
As the dialogue about potential boycotting and sponsors pulling out develops over the coming weeks & months, consider how huge an opportunity these games are for big business to establish or deepen a footing in China.
No one wants to turn down the opportunities that a presence in China will mean, economically, in the coming decades.
And yet no one really wants to be seen supporting China’s human rights record.
The US president recently said that he will attend the Olympics this summer, stating that the games are about the athletes and not about politics. Almost smooth, pres, almost. How many of us are in the dark enough to think he would say or do anything to endanger the development of footholds of American business anywhere in the world?
One angle on Pluto in Capricorn illustrated in this ongoing conversation is the prioritization of business concerns at all costs. Capricorn represents business and Pluto wealth & power, but more importantly this combo in part represents the drive to achieve big things via business activities.
On the collective level, Pluto shows us the depths of our evolving desires. Pluto ploughs up the settled earth and shows us what’s under the surface. Sometimes we forget we need to see whatever’s down there - there’s a reason it’s buried, after all! But we need to learn just what it is, and to see how pursuing it and admitting it into consciousness can change us…so that we can decide if those desires are really getting us where we want to go.
There’s nothing wrong with business, and there’s nothing wrong with money. Yet if we use the pursuit of either to cut ourselves off from a part of ourselves, Pluto’s transit through this sign will cause us to become aware of it. We’ll have to face ourselves with new and unprecedented levels of honesty. We then have the choice about how to respond to what we’ve been doing and creating, and allowing that we might need to change is the key to smoothing out the typically-dreaded transits of Pluto.
The evolving conversation about which is more important, human rights or business, is a fantastic illustration of how we’re navigating Pluto’s recent entry into Capricorn. For cultures more or less disconnected from a feeling of being a part of life as a whole, these might not seem like real questions.
And yet more and more individuals are reconnecting to themselves, and in the process reconnecting to life as a whole. One of the opportunities of Pluto in Capricorn is changing the structures (Cap.) from the inside out (Pluto), which certainly does involve individuals affecting the concensus by shifting, and changing their minds about how to participate in the world.
And it’s possible that in your life, there’s a microcosm of this issue up for review. A scale of it that’s all about you and how you treat yourself. Where are you in the human rights vs. business conversation? What are you learning about how you prioritize things?
March 21, 2008 By Tom Jacobs
Pluto in Capricorn: Bear Stearns, JPMorgan Chase and The Fed
The day the news about Bear Stearns broke, I heard a surprised radio report about the surprising situation and drastic measures the Fed authorized, and I thought, “Geez, if that isn’t Pluto in Capricorn…”
Bear Stearns hit a liquidity (aka cash) crisis as a result of the shifting structures of the housing crisis stuff in the US that you can read about all over every media outlet. JPMorgan Chase offered a bailout, backed by the Fed.
I felt we needed to tease this out and take a moment to smell the aromas of the complexity of the developing scenario. Aside from what it is and means, what it is and means that the Fed stepped in and engineered the solution is huge in this.
But, then, all of a sudden we’re looking today at JPMC buying Bear Stearns at $2 per share, drastically lower than recent Bear Stearns prices.
If you allow that this situation represents that existing structures (Capricorn) need to be dramatically, irrevocably overturned (Pluto), you can understand that we need to see these how things are really working, how they’re really set up. And if you get this, you will not take this situation to mean that we are doomed, which is the vibe coming over the airwaves.
But here’s what I have to say about this whole thing: Notice if your belly is contracting.
Notice your feelings about the idea of a threat to your/our financial security.
Watch whatever feelings might be arising about this, and understand the collective, global need to see how huge banks/corporations/governments are set up so that we can consciously improve what might not be working.
I’m reminded that there is a huge invitation open to us right now as time seems to be speeding up, as we near whatever big shift we’re collectively headed for. Most of us aware of it will feel it as a constant challenge to remain connected to our feelings.
I’m recommending you don’t shut down from the fear that’s coming over the airwaves and ethernets. Also that you keep your eyes and ears open to how this develops, and see how this giant thing might hold keys to understanding the personal, smaller-scale situations in your own life relative to Pluto turning over any of your existing structures.
Some questions to ask with this transit, individually and collectively, are who’s in charge?, why?, how does this thing really work and can we say it really does work?
Tom is available for private intuitive astrology consultations. See his website for more info and contact information.
March 17, 2008 By Tom Jacobs
