Transit Lab: Venus square Neptune
Venus stationing in early Virgo is squaring my Sagittarius Neptune. Any surprise that I’m dreaming again and again about a recently-ended relationship?
I began more noting of dreams a few weeks ago, but I’m not feeling like writing these down. A tired part of me insists it’s hard enough without that.
This afternoon, though, I dreamed I’d scheduled something I’ve joked about repeatedly in my absurd fiction: having my face removed.
Surgically, I mean - this is Virgo, after all. Totally above board, too - I know better than to do that kind of thing at home - who do you take me for?! I scheduled an appointment with, you know, one of those professional face removers. It was a big step, and I was really looking foward to it. Mostly because of the overall changes to my life it signified. It had never really been my face, I’d figured out, had never been the face I would grow and show if I’d had anything to do with it. And removing it was a sure step in the direction of getting closer to who I really am underneath it, the Tom who didn’t get a chance to manifest because of this other outer face. I hadn’t told anyone but those directly involved, keeping it close to myself because I didn’t know how it would turn out and thought that blabbing about it to everyone wouldn’t serve any useful purpose. This face removal was for me, not for anyone else.
Toward the end of the dream some second thoughts made their way into my mind, specifically in worry that there’d been no plan generated to replace my face. With less than a week to go before the big day, I realized that the viscera below my facial skin would be exposed to the open air. Whoa, I realized, that might hurt. And even if the hurt kind of goes away or whatever after a few months, I’ll still have to be careful about stuff and air coming in contact with it.
If you’re a smarty, you’ve probably already dipped into the metaphor of face removal as a revealing of true self. The face as a mask and all that. But as someone with a Libra rising, I just know that there’s no such thing as living without a mask. All that’s underneath is the goo and gunk of the biological processes that make us up, and no one wants to go around flashing that to everyone. Everyone’s wearing such a face because that’s what we do.
I think I’m being facetious.
Wait. Yes.
No.
Yes, I am.
No, this was one of those run-of-the-mill dreams about having my face removed.
I know you have them all the time, admit it.
But at the end of the dream, I caught a look at my face in the mirror, noticing certain things about my face that indicated something about my true nature underneath it. You know the way you can see the lines of the cranium itself underneath the outer visage, if you know what to look for - how muscle and skin overlay the skull itself? I had a moment of inspiration from the thought of finally seeing what’s under this wrong face, this face that someone else gave me.
And now I know can cancel the surgery or let it stand. I know I’ll adjust to the pain of having all that air touch my wet & pulsating viscera. Part of me knows it’ll all be all right. In the sober hands of trained professionals and all that.
Though I do wonder if this stripping away will take place in a dream, and how much of a metaphor it might turn out to be.
Stay tuned.
http://www.tdjacobs.com
July 21, 2007 By Tom Jacobs
Transit Lab: Jupiter
The last couple of days, when I’ve thought about coming up with and posting something here, the ideas turn into something really juicy. I realize that it could blossom into something more than a casual blog post and get working on developing it into something more. As of now, it’s three in two days, and I just need to get everything down and not worry about editing or having something coherent - it’s Jupiter transiting my Mercury in Sagittarius. Don’t ever stop the Jupiter energy for silly things like editing and planning! Save that for your Saturn transits…
July 20, 2007 By Tom Jacobs
Notes on the Waxing Pluto Square
Pluto’s 248-year orbit is rather eliptical, so people born in different eras experience the separating square to Pluto at different times in their lives. On average, it would be at age 62 that we would experience this, but people alive today experience it at younger ages. People in their mid-30s these days are experiencing theirs, bringing an entire generation a wake-up call about how fear and desire play a role in, and indeed shape, their lives.
Pluto in the horoscope from the perspective of evolutionary astrology represents our deepest intentions and desires, as well as our deepest wounding. Some see it as the marker of the soul, indicating by house, sign and aspect the arenas of life we over many lives desire on the deepest levels to experience and transform ourselves through. Others see it as the marker of the soul’s deepest wounding. I see it as both, as when we go for what we truly want, we are bound to encounter painful experiences along the way.
By transit, Pluto asks us to dig deep into our subsconscious in order to see how we tick. When it’s transited, we’re asked by various planets in various ways to uncover layers of resistance we have to working through our fears to find our most potent power. When the layers of our resistance to understanding our true natures are stripped away, we can begin having access to that most potent source of power. In effect, the Pluto square offers the opportunity to get real with ourselves, as real as we possibly can. And the challenge is to confront unseen parts of ourselves and heal whatever’s held by them in our deepest layers.
Evolutionary astrologer Steven Forrest says of this square it’s the time when the monsters who live under your bed come out and sit down with you at the dinner table. All of our deepest fears can be brought to light, and brought to life, via experiences and people who bring us our shadow (what we don’t want to see or know about ourselves) or present us with challenges that cause us to choose to dig deep within to find our ultimate source of strength…or not. As with any transit, whether potentially life-altering or not, we have the choice of how to respond to the pressures to change with which we’re presented. In the case of this square, we can choose to look our fears (and demons) in the eye and see what change is being asked of us, or we can shut our eyes and hope it goes away (which we should all remember it tends not to do). But, at the same time, if we look at what we fear, the monsters often turn out not to be so bad after all.
The opportunity is to understand our deepest fears, and whatever emotional stuff we haven’t been able to deal with or heal. It’s natural to want to avoid these serious issues, and it’s also natural for the ongoing clock of the solar system, transits, to highlight them for us and present the opportunity for confronting, processing and healing them.
If you’re experiencing your Pluto square, a good strategy is to allow the unseen parts of yourself air time to tell you what they have to say. The nature of Pluto stuff is that it will come up sooner or later, and the Pluto square is an opportunity to work with them while getting to the core of what’s happening.
http://www.tdjacobs.com
July 19, 2007 By Tom Jacobs
Transit Lab: Uranus
I often write about my experiences and understandings of my own transits and progressions. I seem to think it’s a really useful way to translate the theories of astrology into real life, so it can make some sense on the material plane. Each person is unique, so my take on a transit or progression will be unique to me and my journey, but I still believe there’s use in it to readers.
When my Scorpio Sun side + Pluto in the 12th side realize that I’ve been writing and posting about myself, I sometimes consider bagging the whole journal thing altogether - you wrote what about us??!! But for better or worse, I refrain from deleting all the posts.
Besides, I often need to write or talk about what’s happening with me before I have any clue what it is and what it might mean or require. It’s one of the features of my Sagittarius stellium, and I often write in my own private journal (a thing called a book made of actual paper!), but there are a few things that might be useful to others, too.
Today it’s Uranus. Trining my natal 2nd house Sun from Pisces/6th, and squaring my natal Saturn, Rx in Gemini/9th. As with any transit to a planet with aspects, we’re looking at Uranus affecting the pre-existing conversation between the Sun and Saturn in my chart, which is an inconjunct. The basic story is that there’s a seemingly unresolveable misunderstanding between that Sun and that Saturn, and Uranus seems to be taking the Sun’s side (the trine supports, the square challenges with friction).
I can see this at play in my life these days, as change I pursue works at the level of my core, yet my planning, efforts and expectations based in past patterns aren’t working. Basically, wherever there are rules (Saturn) in my life, I’m being challenged to let them go. The energy of Uranus is about breaking free, but in order to raise the lowest common denominator or find new levels of authenticity. The square to Saturn, from Pisces in the 6th, calls for a fluidity in how I work, as the 9th house Gemini energy that’s crystallized no longer offers me chances to grow.
A great example of this happened last night. I was at a meeting with other alternative health practitioners at a coffee shop, and one of them asked me if I could help her psychically, regarding her friend. I said I couldn’t, that I don’t do psychic work. I said I probably could do it, but that there were a few reasons I choose not to do it. And when I heard myself tell her this, I saw it as a Uranian square opportunity to go with the flow.
As she talked about her friend, I received information and shared it. I released the worry about being wrong or misleading her, and just did it. My rule that I don’t call myself a psychic or do that work outside the structure (but I mean safety) of my astrological counseling sessions no longer serves me. It felt good to access that energy and offer her what I could - the flow of the moment (Uranus in Pisces) offered a chance to work on (6th house) an ability I know I have, but that conflicts with a version of reality I’ve constructed intellectually as a response to fear (Saturn in Gemini/9th).
The next step is to understand how the person understands and lives with Saturn and Uranus in his natal chart, as you can’t grasp the effects of a transit without knowing how the energies in question work in someone. The differences in how we experience energies natally contributes to the vast range of reactions to various transits. Some people respond to the work called for by a Saturn transit better than others. It’s not that it’s necessarily easier (they still have to work), but that they have a different attitude about the energy in general.
I’m going to do more of these Transit Labs over the coming months, to illustrate my evolving understanding of transits I’m experiencing. I’ve got a couple of years of this Uranus square business, and I expect I’ll have a lot more to say about how I release and break patterns.
July 16, 2007 By Tom Jacobs
Lightning Strikes As/& Uranus Trines
Currently, Uranus is trining my 2nd house Sun, MC and 10th house South Node. As the Sun has transited that South Node over the last few days, I made a re-connection with a fellow astrologer that promises electricity. I felt that ending that sentence with an exclamation point might be too much, but I’m pretty excited nonetheless.
I met her in Steven Forrest’s training program a few years ago, and our Suns are trine within a minute of orb. So, Uranus is currently trining each of our Suns. I spoke with her last night and we agreed to do a few podcast interviews of work I’m developing. She said the whole podcast thing was brought to her attention and reality by guidance, and most of my research work is brought to me the same way, so it seems to each of us a marvelous opportunity to do something, well, marvelous.
As we spoke, an unseasonal lightning storm was hitting her hometown of Portland, offering amusing punctuation to salient statements from each of us. We agreed that Uranus was giving his emphatic approval of this astro-collaboration.
The ideas I shared as potential interview topics piqued her interest, particularly the asteroid work I’m developing. But her perspective on the direction of astrology resonates entirely with mine, and I wouldn’t be surprised if we come up with topics together about where astrology’s headed.
It turns out that people need more meaning than traditional astrological thinking can offer, and it’s time to bring forward and broad(/pod)cast perspectives that support the self-development and empowerment people all over are hungering for and pursuing.
The first podcast will be on Arjunsuri (asteroid 20300), an archetype I’m presently introducing to astrology. It’s about the process of coming to believe what we believe and, ultimately & ideally, living according to conscience. After the slew of excesses surrounding matters of belief we’ve all been witnessing/expriencing/learning about/staring at with gaping jaws during Pluto’s transit through Sagittarius (beginning 1995), we can all benefit from use of this archetype and its message about evaluating what we align ourselves with and why.
I can’t wait to get this stuff out there, and I’ll post here and on my site when the podcast is available.
July 13, 2007 By Tom Jacobs
Small White Dogs
I’m aware that my Neptune-Mercury-Moon conjunction in Sagittarius in the 2nd/3rd contributes to my near-weak knees when encountering adorable, small, white dogs. A little boy me can come out to play when I get around them, and I’ve often caught myself making cute noises and practically squealing with joy when playing with them.
A palm-reading girlfriend of mine once looked at my palm and asked with wonder, “What’s the big deal with your work with animals down the road?” I didn’t really have any idea the time. Would my work take me to animals? Would my then-opening psychic abilities be applied to work with or heal animals? Would I start walking dogs for a living or volunteer at a shelter? Go back into cooking and cut up more headless carcasses? I suppose any of these things could happen, but I didn’t think so. Recently, though, I’ve become aware of another, entirely more likely possibility.
When the aliens invade earth in the near future, I will be chosen by them as an ambassador to represent humanity. Due to some physiological limitations, the only way a few, select humans will be able to communicate with them will be through psychic dialogues with our own small white dogs.
I know what you’re thinking: Yes, I’ll be a very important person. You have my word that I’ll try to look out for your interests, and I won’t demean you or point and laugh at you unless forced to. Or unless overcome by how silly you look in the uniforms they’re going to make you wear as you harvest the Yellow #5 fields for the casseroles you’ll prepare and bake that they’ll need to survive.
I read somewhere that my 2nd house Sun trine the Midheaven indicates being favored by those in high government positions later in life. I suppose if I did a kind of astrology that could include such statements I might be able to time the arrival of the invasion force and give you all a heads up, so you could scramble around and grab your most-treasured possessions and try to run, but as it is I’m just a counseling karmic astrologer. But hey, that means I’m uniquely situated to help you understand the kinds of larger soul journeys that have you signed up for enslavement and perpetual degradation by an alien invasion force.
It’ll be hard to be separated from all of you as you toil in the Yellow #5 fields, and I’ll miss you. I suppose I’ll have to get used to enjoying without you all the creature comforts imaginable as I hang out with my dogs, playing a lot of five card stud and being immortalized on velvet, the favorite art medium of this particular alien force. I’m going to do everything I can to adjust, because I’ll be working on behalf of humanity, all of you, you poor, exhausted, yellow-stained people.
All of my Libran diplomacy (Pluto-Venus in 12th, Ascendant, Uranus-Mars in 1st) will come into play when translating the volumes of edicts of the invasion force command over the loudspeakers towering over the Yellow #5 fields. I’m confident that even as your backs seem be breaking, I will be able to make you think that what you have in place of freedoms are in fact freedoms, and that I’ll be able to make you feel not so bad about the constant perversion and diminishment of them (Jupiter in Capricorn in the 3rd, Saturn in Gemini in the 9th).
And if for some reason you’re not buying any of this, maybe you’ll vote for me for tyrannical overlord in the preceding government, the one that’ll be destroyed by the alien invasion force. As tryannical overlord, I promise to….
July 11, 2007 By Tom Jacobs
The Longest Three Weeks of My Life?
Perhaps. And with about an hour left in Mercury’s retrograde in early Cancer, I’m preparing to engage in various types of spontaneous dancing including, I suspect, jigs.
I was open to all the reflections, lessons, new views, realizations, opportunities for self-healing and so on for the first two weeks, and then found myself on an emotional roller coaster for the last week as Jupiter came into exact conjunction with my Moon, pumping me full of flooding emotions of all kinds, leaving me on the verge of losing it every time I left the house. That Moon is conjunct Mercury and Neptune, trine Chiron on the DSC, opposite Saturn in the 9th, and sextile Venus-Pluto in the 12th - there’s a lot of energy that’s been triggered. I’ve gotten kind of tired, to tell you the truth. So Mercury direct for me is a chance to rest a bit, and I can’t wait.
The biggest swings have been from feeling on top of the world as a slew of writing projects have seen significant progress the last couple of weeks, to feeling on the other side of the world as I process lingering lessons learned (and, um, waiting to be learned) from a relationship that either ended or seems to have ended a couple of months ago. As the transiting Moon (Taurus/8th) opposed my Sun (Scorpio/2nd) today, I was able to get clear on a major piece of it and, to tell you the truth, find center and chill out. This morning, I doubted I still had a center to find.
My posted writing has never been as personal as during this Rx period, though I do tend to use myself as an example to bring various astrology happenings alive for people. I’m not sure if I should be self-conscious or not - is that the MO of a Scorpio Sun with Pluto-Venus in the 12th?
A friend reminded me today to take advantage of the Jupiter shot in the arm on my already highly Sagittarius Moon-Mercury-Neptune, and to get everything on paper that wants to come…she reminded me that I can edit later. So, with Mercury going direct in an hour, I’m going to happily lead myself into what will probably be cramps from typing for hours at a time…I can’t wait.
What juicy stuff did you learn during this retrograde?
July 9, 2007 By Tom Jacobs
More Mercury Rxing…and Jupiter-on-Moon…
A friend left me a message, a very angry message with enough venom that I assumed it must be a joke. I called him and it was no joke, though he didn’t have time to talk and said he’d call later.
A part of me was nervous that I had angered him, one of my dearest friends. But I didn’t anger him. I had nothing to do with it, even as he sees my actions as having caused it. Can I really anger someone? Can I anger anyone but myself? I might show him something he doesn’t want to see, or I might give his wife advice that doesn’t fit with how he hopes things go (what seems to have happened), but his anger is his choice. The truth is that what comes up for him is, in the best light possible, an opportunity to heal some old control fear.
Oh, did I mention that Mercury’s retrograding over his natal Rx Saturn in Cancer in the 4th, almost to the minute when he left that message? Of course he’s angry: There’s bound to be new information coming to him that stirs up all the fears of that Saturn, about security and stability, the viability of his emotional reality and the foundational things of pesonal life.
My friend is what I would call “evolved,” meaning that he’s open to learning new information and releasing outmoded stuff to find himself in more wholeness as a result of it (he many times presents an inspiring Sun-Neptune in Sagittarius). I just sent him an e-mail inviting him to listen to the part of him that’s speaking out so clearly, and to find the opportunity to heal an old fear from what he learns from it.
The Jupiter transit part is that I knew after a moment that there’s nothing actually wrong. And what I just now noticed is the benevolent attitude I’m taking here: Receiving vitriol from a friend and offering in response an invitation for him to see how to treat himself with compassionate awareness, which means love. That’s pretty cool in my book.
Now, how can I get Jupiter to stay on my Moon indefinitely?
July 5, 2007 By Tom Jacobs
Mercury Retrograde in Cancer: Things Explode
By Tom Jacobs
Ah, the 4th of July. The time when yahoos all over the land head out to the streets to set off fireworks to express their nationalistic fervor. Could you ever doubt that the US has a Cancer Sun?! I think of the movie “V” - we think conditioning has everything to do with Saturn, but check out the Moon’s role in it as well if you want to get a clearer picture.
Neighbors of mine are exploding explosive devices. Fitting with the theme of these posts, revisiting emotional conditioning and seeing things in a new light, I admit that in movies I love to see things blow up. Sometimes I go to a movie specifically because it promises a wealth of huge explosions. But in front of my house, the sounds of exploding things terrifies a part of me. Even though I know it’s just the healthy sound of patriotism (or something), a part of me is still afraid that “they” are coming for me, and rockets and bombs are par for the course.
Just what “happened” in what I presume was “another” “life” “of mine,” I don’t know. I don’t know if I frequented far-off bunkers or stuck it out in muddy trenches. It doesn’t matter. What does matter is that I can choose to chill out about what’s actually happening now.
Spending all this time working on Cancerian memories naturally brings up what I’ve called here my individuation imperative, Uranus in the 1st squaring the Cancerian South Node. (Okay, he gasps, the volleys are getting closer. Breathe. Breathe deeply…) This part of me wants to go out and shake these degenerates by their lapels and take away their lethal toys. I don’t know if that’s the best solution, so I’ll just sit here and watch this part of me re-experience its utter terror. Uranus in Libra in the 1st as a marker of extreme physical trauma, right? [Pause.] There, that’s not so bad, is it? It’s just a little terror, some bone-shaking fear of personal apocalypse…
The other thing is that my MC is 14 Cancer, making me more aware of what I’m doing with my life when Independence Day comes around. And my feelings about this country and what happens here, how it’s run (which you won’t find me commenting on much anywhere). And with my SN at 18 Cancer in the 10th, - um, expletive smorgasbord, an arsenal was just opened up out there. I have no idea how that last sentence was supposed to end.
But with the MC reflection, currently I’m in a phase of writing, getting a lot of stuff onto paper that’s been floating around in my mind and notebook for years. Some of it is writing about these conditioning issues, which fits with Cancerian energy. And Jupiter’s transiting my Moon-Mercury in Sagittarius, Mercury’s retrograding opposite my Jupiter in Capricorn in the 3rd, Pluto’s in my 3rd, and my progressed Mercury recently re-entered Sagittarius after an entirely depressing retrograde back into Scorpio, during which I collected and meticulously noted all of your secrets in a series of black notebooks. Sorry people, but your secrets get tiring and this shift was entirely welcome.
At least no one’s screaming or wailing out there, right? That’s a sure-fire indication that now is now, and not some “other” “life” “of mine,” no pun intended.
July 4, 2007 By Tom Jacobs
Mercury Retrograde in Cancer: Who’s Your Daddy?
By Tom Jacobs
Oh my lord, I realized, I am.
I’m my daddy.
Or, rather, I’ve somehow become a carbon copy of my father. You know the one - the one I was trying everything not to become?
Yeah, that one.
It’s true. I deal with my feline, my friends, my food and my feelings the same way.
Now, while my North Node in Capricorn in the 4th house has sometimes seemed to indicate to me, “Become a father to yourself,” I thought I’d have more options. I proclaim now in half mock disbelief, “There was no menu! I didn’t order this one! I never ordered this one!”
Because I knew it all along. Why else would I fear and seem to think I thought I hoped I could avoid it?
The Mercury Rx in Cancer has afforded me numerous opportunities to get closer to the bottoms of these sorts of emotional things (see my previous three posts here). Now that I am finally aware of these things, though, what do I do? I have the option of feeling ripped off and angry that the single thing I didn’t want to happen has, and I have the option of chilling out a bit and accepting that I finally can see these things about myself and make peace with the part of me that resists it. In other words, I have the option of being angry or being real.
The other day, in my first Gestalt therapy exercise (the full moon was on my 3rd house Capricorn Jupiter, for crying out loud - I opened up to a new idea to get a grasp on emotional stuff. And to tell you the truth, I thought before I did it that it would be ridiculous. The stuff of satire I myself am prone to writing, so my mind can run off with a thread when someone tells me in all seriousness that they do this or ask me if I might be willing to do it), which I could not believe I was doing, I had a conversation with a part of me we’ll call Angry Tom. I imagined him opposite me and we conversed about our positions, and it came out that (big surprise here, Angry Tom) holding on to anger isn’t getting us anywhere.* So, am I going to stay angry, or am I going to get real?
I’m pretty much sitting on the edge of my seat waiting to see what I’ll do.
*I have to say that the Gestalt business beats hands down a version of Byron Katie’s “The Work” I experienced early last year. It’s a process of evaluating the truth of things versus what we think is true, and had the unique therapeutic result of making me literally sick to my stomach as I saw the actual shape of my thought patterns. The practitioner I was with stopped questioning me when I got that “I might vomit” look on my face at one point, and she said, “You sick yet? It does that to people.” It even now seems to me a great party trick totally undervalued by being relegated to therapeutic contexts alone.
July 2, 2007 By Tom Jacobs