Where’s Lilith?
Lilith is everywhere.
Everywhere.
In everyone.
Everyone is Lilith.
As everyone is every archetype we could talk about.
Except that the times in which we live now are calling for us to heal our Liliths, so I talk about her a lot.
Hey, you -
Stop believing that your true nature is wrong.
Stop believing that there’s something wrong with you because you have desires and visions that don’t fit the mandates of your environment.
Just go ahead and give that crap up.
(How?
You’ve got to do some of what’s often called “shadow work.” You’ve got to bring up and out parts of yourself you’ve been led to believe are dangerous, ugly, and raw - and integrate them. That rawness, it turns out, is your aliveness.
There are limitless ways to do this, as Lilith is best served in any activity that gets our primal juices flowing. Art and sex are two ready examples, but anything can be done from the place where the fountain gets switched on.
I ordered a cup of tea last night from that place. I noticed that I was pleased when a particular counter person at a particular coffee place was on shift, and when I ordered my tea, I felt the raw desire that I associate with Lilith and I sent it down into the earth. (A way of grounding one’s self in strong energy and not throwing it at those around one.) I knew she felt it because when I turned to leave, one word in her sentence to the next customer came out at about 1500% her normal volume. Her energetic footing was a little shaken when I withdrew all that Lilith-inspired attention.
[NB: The lunar eclipse yesterday squared my true Black Moon Lilith-Neptune conjunction in the 2nd house, at 3 and 4 Sagittarius, respectively - I got to see new things about what Lilith-Neptune stuff I hide or de-emphasize, and as it squared, it wanted action - squares require resolution.]
When we find Lilith in ourselves, we’re prone to remembering the injunctions against our raw intensity our families, clans and societies teach us in our youth, or have beaten into or raped out of us when we stray from their accepted norms. Here’s the beautiful part: Your rawness doesn’t have to be violent. Violence surrounding this raw energy is a corruption of the energy, a forcing of it into a tiny shape that can be swept out of the way…until it explodes. (And if there’s anything in everything that I teach for the rest of my life that is heard, I’d be honored if it’s this: Any energy in us suppressed is subject to explosion. Honoring our true natures, whatever corner we’re thinking or talking about, is vital to happiness, health and survival.)
After, of course, a lot of time feeling resentment and anger from the suppression. The best or worst thing about society, depending on how Saturnian or Uranian you are, is that you don’t have to teach every single person to do this or not to do that; people from their love, and from their fear, will spread the word on their own. Because of this, any of us can choose to support authentic expression in other people.)
Yeah, just go ahead and give that crap up.
Tom is available for consultations and lessons. See http://tdjacobs.com for more information and to book a consultation.
August 29, 2007 By Tom Jacobs
Venus Rx + Mars Opposing Mercury/Moon = Horror-movie Haircut
Something I’ve joked about Venus retrograding in Virgo are potential disastrous results of picking a new hair style or having one implemented - your idea of style is different when Venus retrogrades (your style function is operating differently than normal). A friend recently had a very expensive negative experience with a new ‘do during the Rx, and while I didn’t laugh at her experience (really, I didn’t), it fed the urge to joke about the possbilities during the Rx.
So, even as I laughed at myself, almost unable to contain my excitement to see what could happen next, I the other day purchased some clippers and went at my hair. I note now that Mars was in my 8th opposing my natal Mercury-Moon in Sagittarius - and so I can’t say I didn’t see all this coming.
I started to grow my hair out a while ago, and learned that there’s a nice period when it’s shoulder length that it’s wavy as all get out and I like that - it becomes a mane. But, after that, I also learned, it needs to go. So, I got the clippers and went to work. As much as cutting hair can be, it was brutal. And given my mood and obvious level of thoughtless, mindless determination, I’m surprised that I hadn’t sat down with a bottle of liquor beforehand. (You might’ve wondered if you’d seen me.)
I was unable to work the clippers like I’ve seen them done in dozens of movies, leaving me sad, confused and frustrated. Practically overflowing with urges to cut off most of my hair and being unable to do it. So what did I do? I went for the scissors.
I was grabbing and chopping wherever the hair was, um, I guess I was working with the techinical term “too long,” and at the end, it was standing every which way and I realized I needed to wash it to see what needed to be done next. After a shower, it looked like I’d just gotten back from SuperCuts. Some rough edges, but actually kind of good-looking, or as good-looking as $15 would have gotten me. I expected to do such a horrible job that the only thing to do was shave my head entirely, something I’ve been afraid to do my whole life for a few reasons but am now tempted to do. The next day, I have to tell you, a cashier at a grocery store whispered to me that (I’m paraphrasing here) my current particular configuration of facial hair and style of haircut add up to me being a sexy man in her estimation. Can you believe that? I just chop up my hair like an out-of-control-type person and am suddenly sexy? I guess the haggard, runs-with-scissors-when-drunk look works for me?
An appropriate move for a Mars-Uranus in the 1st kind of guy, right? Talk about the multidimensionality of the symbols (http://tdjacobs.com/Articles.html) - I’ve been working with what past-life trauma to the head can do to a person, looking at the symbolism and various possibilities for healing the fears associated with it. Oh, so cutting my own hair impulsively and, even though it’s in Libra, not caring about the result, is a proactive approach to this conjunction?
Rad.
Tom is available for consultations and lessons. See http://tdjacobs.com for more information and to book a consultation.
August 26, 2007 By Tom Jacobs
Past Lives & Astrology: The Soul Knows No Time
A friend and I were considering attending a talk recently on karma and past lives. She asked me if I thought if spending a lot of time thinking and talking about past lives might be counterproductive. Does it keep you from the here and now? Can you use it to distract yourself from the present? Is being in that mode a kind of addiction to therapy that can keep you from healing, choosing to heal?
The potential benefits of therapies exist outside of how we use them. You can respect a modality and encounter a practitioner of it that makes you think twice about trusting it. The juice is in how it’s used. I do think about past lives a lot, it’s my work. But if they’re made useful to present tasks of healing, there’s nothing wrong with thinking and talking about them a lot. I can speak for how I use them in my work: To understand the present, we have to understand the past. The goal of the work is in helping you live here and now, but if you’re using the past to keep you from the here and now (which we all have done and many of us actively do), we have to talk about the past to learn how be here now, which is learning to move on.
Here’s something: The soul knows no time. You come into any given life with a soul agenda, and you will create circumstances to give you the opportunities to experience the themes listed on that agenda. The multidimensional nature of the symbols (that, for instance, Mars is aggression/violence as well as defense/rescue; Saturn is the burden of hard work as well as achievement/recognition once hard work is done) means that the themes on the soul’s agenda can be studied and checked off the list, so to speak, in many different ways.
What I’d like you to hear today is this: You are reliving your past lives right now.
Right now, the fears you’re learning to either heed or heal can be traced to a past life.
The joys and passions you’re presently expressing and craving to express can be traced to a past life.
Each life is an opportunity to experience the desires and heal the wounds of the soul.
Whatever themes your chart reflects, learning to understand your deepest desires, intentions and fears takes you closer to consciously understanding the journey of your soul. Healing something now is healing something that exists outside time. When you shift (heal) your perception about the circumstances of your life, you increase the level of restfulness of your soul. And the more restful is your soul, the more you will be inclined to figure out how to bring your deepest gifts to the world.
Which is what I guarantee you your soul truly wants to do.
That’s the foundation goal of my work as a karmic astrological counselor (there has to be a more manageable term! I’ve been called a “soul doctor,” but that doesn’t even really cover it). People in all stages of the journey to getting to know their souls come in, and I do what I can to address the needs of the stage they’re in, whatever it is in the moment they sit down with me. Some people need to be recognized or seen at the soul level, while some need to share their personal vision with someone and find out what it feels like to acknowledge their soul’s deepest desires to another person. And there are others who come in with a need to learn to sort out what it means to work with soul, given the conditioning they’ve picked up about what life is and is about.
For all of them, there’s a suspicion that there’s more going on than they were taught. In every case, it’s evidence that the soul is trying in one way or another to break through the confines of the ego. In each of the stages there’s a component to this, as the grip of the ego operates on multiple levels. The healing work we do to allow the ego to take second chair to the soul happens in layers, and I recognize that a big portion of my work is to encourage people to have patience with the process as they crack through layer after layer, and still don’t feel they have the ultimate prize/destination. All resistance to the process is from the ego, as is all judgement about the ideas of speed and progress of the process.
Ego is a construct of defense mechanisms intended to guide us through the painful maze of life. Ego consists of a number of scripts we use to shield us from the harshness of the world. Healing the soul’s wounding involves releasing dependence on these scripts to the degree that soul can come forward and take the wheel.
Each of us is living with wounds to our souls. Evolutionary astrology aims to uncover that wounding and help people learn to heal themselves. In effect, evolutionary astrology is a tool to help you make nice with and learn to heal your soul. In my version of evolutionary astrology, this aim undergirds a belief that the more of us who release dependence on ego and heal the wounding of the soul, the less relevant the divisiveness we employ as defense mechanisms to keep us from each other. What’s the point of racism, colonialism, exploitation, slavery of any kind? What’s the use? Those of us consciously employing them are disconnected from soul, and those of us unconsciously supporting these modes are equally disconnected from soul.
Whatever healing at the soul level you do now, you’re actually working outside time. You’re traveling in time - did you know?! And it’s just this work outside time that is the key to healing anything in our own time. Real change in the world is the result of real change of individuals.
How much energy do you spend outside time?
How’s your relationship with soul developing?
Tom is available for consultations and lessons. See http://tdjacobs.com for more information and to book a consultation.
August 18, 2007 By Tom Jacobs
Transit Lab: A Lucifer Return
Aha.
That’s it.
I’m a(n astrological) minute from having a Lucifer return. The asteroid (1930) is natally on my Sun, and seeing that I’m at the end of one chapter and the beginning of another is the only thing that’s made sense about the self-inflicted drama and fireworks of the last few days.
My ego is fighting its imminent death like crazy, like never before. I’m being asked to give up my need for control and open to what’s better than what my control can bring me. And for a 2nd house Scorpio, giving up control can be quite a challenge.
For any return, this chapter idea is this: Your experience of any energy in life is divided up into chapters. Returns of the bodies delineate the chapters, and big moments regarding the energies can be created around the time of the return. The transiting, returning body’s function in your life is highlighted during the return, and you’re supposed to have a great time when the return happens. In truth, though, the infusion of the returning planet’s energy into its natal position, into you, will reinforce whatever’s happening with the energy in your life. Birthdays, for example (solar returns), are supposed to be great. You get an infusion of solar energy into your Sun. Ever had a birthday that sucked? They suck when the solar energy you’re running is already subpar or unhealthy; whatever you’re doing with your Sun energy is magnified and highlighted.
As I continue on a path of opening more to what my higher self or spirit guidance is offering me and asking of me, my own Lucifer work (= my learning to choose to give up control) gets a little more rocky. Lucifer is the separating influence, what in us decides if we’re going to recognize and serve something greater than ourselves. With it on my Sun natally, I will naturally have lessons in this life of finding out just how big the ego can be and what it should serve (itself or something higher).
I’ve been “answering the call” of Spirit lately, including moving to an area of town I specifically never wanted to live in, changing my eating habits from something I thought was really good for me, beginning to learn a foreign language I’ve resisted learning my whole life even though presented with an absurd number of cues to learn it, and giving up relationships of various kinds - basically, as I understand it, everything that I’ve chosen for myself is being replaced by something else I’d clearly decided I didn’t want. Its like living the life you specifically chose not to live, and being asked to learn to love it. A little dose of feeling in a strange reality where someone else seems to have chosen for you the life you’d already opted not to live.
Immature Lucifer energy considers giving up control a threat to its being. Lucifer energy needing to mature is in fact an egocentric control freak sure that God/the Universe/Creation doesn’t love it. I’ve been experiencing this in spades the last few days, as I feel I can’t have anything that I want for myself. By the way, if you give this part of yourself time to make some noise, you’ll see that you’re a crazy mofo in no time. (And what an awesome exercise this can be - I can’t recommend it enough - find out what really makes you tick by giving into the egocentric control freak inside you that you go to great lengths to hide from everyone, including probably yourself.)
In order for Lucifer to mature, the ego has to find the right sort of expression and place in the rest of you. Which is to say that the ego needs to find a healthy role in the workings of the overall life. He needs to find the right seat at the conference or dinner table, you might say - he thinks he’s deserving of the seat at the head of the table, and for developing personality and soul maturity, he needs to learn to be okay with any other seat at the table.
For many of us, we need to experience something that wows us in order for the ego to choose to take another seat. Some sort of numinous/soul enlargening experience that knocks the logic-clinging pants off your egocentricity. (I’m reminded of Angels in America, when that dude with the name I forget meets and wrestles with the angel played by Emma Thompson.) This is another way of saying that the intellect must learn the benefit in choosing to take a back seat in running the life. In the end, the ego must merge with the heart/emotional guidance system, but Lucifer in no way can conceive of this and so must learn to choose the second seat.
In me, this fight in necessary. I’m not yet at the big wowing experience that convinces my ego to chill out and serve the rest of me. It’s on its way, I know, and it could take one of many forms (I’m open to what it is, and terrified of what I’ll be asked to do - ego never thinks it’s ready to choose to relinquish the illusion of control). In the mean time, I’m letting the fight happen because I thereby show myself, all of myself, what are the issues needing to be addressed in order for healing the wounded part of the ego.
And for each of us, healing needs to happen along the way to ego relinquishing the insistence on (illusion of) control. I see in my work as an evolutionary astrologer and counselor the effects of wounding to the ego, as if my life itself isn’t enough. Its insistence on supremacy is a reaction to feeling out of control in the past (the past of this life is informed by the past of other lives - we’re talking about all of them). Learning to trust something higher is the lesson for all of our Lucifers, and working with this in my counseling work is about healing the relationship with Spitir/God/Creation/the Universe - pick whatever word works best for you.
So, at this return I have the opportunity to see all of the fireworks I’ve been setting off and, reading between the lines, heal something about my willingness to trust the unfolding of the bigger show, the one that’s larger than my conscious mind/ego/Lucifer can grasp or ever devise. After writing all this out, I can finally see what’s happening, and what is the use for all the feelings and anger that’s been coming up - until I noted that I’m having this return, I was pretty sure everything as I knew it was over and I was headed for some unstopped existential drain, and in a hurry.
Speaking of returns, returning is the inevitable conclusion of anyone’s Luciferian journey. Anger at the bigger authority is what leads to the separating behvaior. At root, each Luciferian reason is anger at the perception and feeling of having been betrayed, and all Luciferian scheming, plotting and resistance to the bigger - someone else’s - version of things are attempts to protect one’s self from feeling betrayed again. Feeling forgotten by God, etc., is pretty serious wounding, and each of us has some version of it.
The return of Lucifer is the return to love. To accepting the love of the greater reality (again, choose your label for it). To releasing the need to be separate in order to prove a point about exhibiting on one’s sleeve evidence of the deep existential hurt.
And in the end, Lucifer healing hinges on our willingness to accept that the hurt is about our perception that we’re separate from that greater thing. In the mythology, Lucifer rebels against God because he takes the fact that God is sending a son to earth (whether Adam in the Hebrew tradition or Jesus in the Christian); he takes this as a clear signal that God does not love him as much as he thinks God does. The pain of Lucifer stems from his decision that he’s got the market on defining love. The question for him becomes this: Can he give up his narrow definition of love? Of course he can. Will he choose to do so?
And since this journey is being taken by each of us, can you? Can I? I know I can, can choose to, and at the same time recognize there’s more fight left in me because there’s more healing to be done on this karmic wounding to the relationship with God[/your word here].
And that’s where I am today at this Lucifer return. Egads, do I feel better. Amazing what some caffeine-driven blogging can do for an existentially wounded (& healing) spirit.
August 15, 2007 By Tom Jacobs
Rx Venus Trine Rx Pluto: Pleasure-seeking Behavior
As long as retrograde Venus in Leo is conjunct Saturn and trining retrograde Pluto in Sagittarius, and Jupiter’s turned direct on my Mercury-Moon:
I’m being reminded of the health issues/epidemics we’re facing because of how we eat. A few years ago I for some reason was up on a soapbox re the reversability of Type II diabetes (which both my parents have) with my mom, and when I stopped to take a breath, she excitedly told me I should go on tour as a motivational speaker to get people revved up about taking control of their lives by learning about what their bodies actually need.
Venus is our values, and also pleasure-seeking behavior, and Pluto’s about digging. In Leo and Sagittarius, respectively, and we’re talking about a deepening of review of our personal relationship to pleasure-seeking behavior. What’s the truth of what you’re doing to please yourself? What are you learning about what you think makes you happy? There’s truth trying to come out of underneath your expectations and desires – are you open to hearing it?
Some other questions: Are the old things still working for you? What are you eating? Why did you eat it? Does it still work? What feels right for you right now? Can you open to changing your behavior to see if there’s something better for you in this moment? Can you listen to the signals your body gives you about what you actually eat? How does your body react as you chew it? Swallow it? After it lands in your stomach? What about five minutes later? Twenty? Two hours? The next morning?
The key to feeding your body what it needs is choosing awareness of what you’re eating. That’s the bottom line. And the key to health in large part is developing this kind of relationship to your body…and honoring it. Venus retrograde is a great time for Venus-related course corrections, by the way…
Currently (& inexplicably), I’m eating a lot of Mexican food. I’m not sure why this is happening, but it’s what feels right. Recently I was transplanted to an area of the city that seems predominantly Mexican, prompted to learn Spanish and eat what the locals are eating. I’m not sure I’m fully clear on what this immersion is about, but deviating from my mostly-raw diet of the last 18 months or so has been interesting. It’s become fully inconvenient to travel to get the raw dairy & meat I’m used to, and even for a while to get to farmers’ markets. So, I get to review why I eat what I do and why, what makes me want to eat what I’m used to. And it just hit me a few minutes ago that the trine between these two retrogrades is an opportunity to do it.
I’m currently a human, so being led away from my habits is the opposite of comforting. But I have to believe there’s something useful to learn with this, since it’s so insistent on happening.
During the recent new Moon of Leo, in my 11th house and squaring my Sun and sextiling my 1st house Uranus, I was at a talk given by a raw vegan dude screening the teaser for a documentary he made about reversing diabetes with 30 days of a raw food diet. It reinforced what I’ve been harping about for years but had kind of forgotten about of late, and now I’m living in an area with people who are either in the diabetes ranks or likely to be in danger of it. If you know me, you may have heard my dinner party soapboxing about the reversability of diabetes or the connection between what you eat and how you feel. (And if you’re a client and heard this in your session, I hope I relayed it with love as an invitation to live in a deeper state of compassionate awareness with yourself.)
In my philosophy studies in college, I ran across an idea of Nietzsche’s (in some book - I can’t remember which - The Genealogy of Morals?) that the problem with the German-speaking philosophers’ ideas is that what they eat is heavy, deadening, the opposite of life-affirming – in other words, the problem with the thought coming out of those cultures is what the people in them eat. Their philosophy is dead because what they eat is deadening. That it leaves them with a general and persistent indigestion that adversely affects their ability to think clearly. I remember putting N. on my list of favorites forever when I read this (especially as I wondered why the people he was criticising always made me feel like I’d eaten too much of the wrong thing – I mean, have you read any Schopenhauer lately?! I have to tell you that I repeatedly endangered my life by nearing comatose states as I parsed line by line of several chapters of some impenetrable English translation of an even more impenetrable German original work of his that I’m content to report I’ve blessedly forgotten even the title of).
It’s a good thing I’m too hopped up on this fine Mayan mocha to focus any of my rambling – we could be here all day…
By Tom Jacobs
Transit Lab: Uranus Square Saturn (Outer Events Show You Inner Realities)
Last night I stopped in my tracks after my roommate removed the drywall from the bathroom. I realized that she’s Uranus-squaring her own house’s Saturn, and I saw that there’s an outer reality thing that’s showing me some inner reality stuff.
The first thing catching my attention was my noting that most of the renovations she’s doing to her property have to do with water. A large koi pond is going to replace the guest house we tore down over the last week, and the bathroom’s being totally redone. Sure, I thought, retooling some emotional focus and expression is part of my job these days.
But then my part in this work came home: Our arrangement for my staying there involves work on these projects. I’m getting that the more I tear down with my hands old structures on her property that are outmoded, unpermitted or in need of upgrade, the more opportunities I have to see and spend time with my inner parallels to the work, and tear some things down and let others be torn down.
She warned me when I agreed to move there that it’s chaos, and I told her that I’ve been inviting it in (since it’s been knocking so pesistently and loudly). I told myself I’d do what I could to relax into it, in an effort to make space for Uranus squaring my Saturn to do its work.
Now, living in a Uranian-square space and not being able to uphold your Saturnian status quo can inspire a fair amount, or universes, of resistance. A few days last week saw me negotiating that resistance in trying to figure out what I was going to eat (my normal food sources, including the raw grocery, is 20 miles away and I haven’t been since I moved). What am I supposed to put in my food hole in this transition? I haven’t known, and so have been improvising, losing my rules. The result does include, to be fair, some choices that six months ago I would have run from, but the whole having rules thing seems not to be working.
I thought I would dread carrying rubble to the street. I did it for an hour this morning, and it was kind of fun. Kind of comforting - removing the pieces of the things that no longer work and need to go. Until tomorrow there’s a rental dumpster thing in front of the house that contains all the debris. Part of this morning’s work involved hauling debris in a big plastic planter as a bucket and dumping it over the side. I dropped it in a few times and had to scale the side and get in to retrieve it, and there was something entirely cool about seeing all that rubble in there, climbling back out and knowing it’s being haued away tomorrow.
Also, I realize that my roommate’s orientation to the chaos is useful for me. I’m learning to see it as what’s on the menu, what’s happening right now. She’s helping me keep an eye on the expected results, at least the general kind of results that can be expected. Holding a vision of possibilities that open as a result of my stepping into this transition is steadying. In other words, I can override the Saturnian resistance to change by remembering the new structures coming in going to reflect the needs and features of the present, something Saturn in its focus on the past and familiarity isn’t usually on board with.
So, there’s another installment of Uranus square Saturn. I hope that you’re helped in looking at your own outer planet transits the deeper I’m able to go into and explain mine. Outer planet transits in their slowness offer the opportunity to build great significance over time, and the changes in your life will be happening on many levels. Giving yourself time and awareness to get into the changes they invite on all levels is a big part of living more consciously.
August 9, 2007 By Tom Jacobs
Transit Lab: Sun Square Sun
I envision a day when I get back to writing posts about something other than my own transits, but for the time being it seems useful.
Today I had the transiting Sun in Leo/10th square my natal Sun in Scorpio/2nd. A few days ago I remembered this was coming up, but didn’t think much about it. Transits of the Sun are not super significant because they’re brief; they don’t have time to build into significance. I still watch them from time to time, however, as having a giant light shining for about three days now and then can show you something interesting about myself. In the course of the year, the Sun hits everything in your chart in every way. Again, it’s not the biggest show in town, but if you’re taking the day off from wrestling with an outer planet square or opposition, you might entertain yourself a bit with solar transits.
The square brings friction and requires something to change (to have resolution of the friction), and the transiting Sun shines light. We’re therefore looking at some thing I might see today about what my Sun needs to open up to in order to proceed. Very often a transiting planet squaring a natal planet is asking that natal planet to open to something new (or forgotten) about what the transiting planet is about.
I have some visions of my work and place in the world that have been coming together slowly. Yesterday, I ran across a passage in a book that gives words to my vision, and I was appropriately whelmed. The picture got a little clearer, some dots were connected, and suddenly here were words in front of me stating plainly things I’ve been unable to articulate but that have been shaping my work and heart stuff about that work for quite a while.
One of the expressions of 2nd house Sun people is a self-reliance. The 2nd is about values, skills, resources, self-esteem, and so the sanity of the person can seem to rest on how much he can do himself and not need to ask for help. I reached a moment today when that 2nd house Scorpio Sun got very clear that I need help, input and guidance to continue this transformation. I relaxed into the moment and asked to be shown what to do next. Asking for guidance is not foreign to me, but in that moment I opened up to be lead to do things I wouldn’t normally include in my 2nd house transformative tool belt. From Leo in the 10th house, the message is something like this: If you want to show yourself to the world (10th house), you have to open up to expression (Leo) that you wouldn’t normally dig (square). Your focus on deep transformation (Scorpio) of self (2nd house) needs to add some expressive stuff (Leo) to its repertory.
I can’t wait to see what’s coming. I’ve been reading a book about modern-day vision quests, and have found myself challenged by imagining participating in some of the practices. Today I said that if that’s the best thing for me to do, then I’m willing to do it. It’s not even the big stuff (fasting in the wilderness for 3 or 4 days, etc.), but some parts of the preparation for it that would cause me to look at my life and self in new ways.
A square to the Sun is in effect a challenge to who you think you are, how you organize your coherent sense of self. A square from the transiting Sun is just enough time to show you something interesting, but not enough time to dig deep and drag something out of you, as with squares from the outer planets.
Because the movement of the Sun is the basis of the Gregorian calendar, you can figure easily the dates when you have solar squares to your own natal Sun. Three months before and after your birthday is when this happens. Build it up like this: Wherever the transiting Sun is in your chart, ask yourself what the house and sign it’s transiting would have to say to your natal Sun in its house and sign. The example here is, what’s the challenge Leo in the 10th house offers to Scorpio in the 2nd house? The italics above are one kind of answer.
August 8, 2007 By Tom Jacobs
Transit Lab: Jupiter’s Station in Food and Words
Yesterday, my roommate, her friend and I tore down most of an old guest house on her property that the city said had to go. She’d invited a bunch more people who never showed, but she was prepared for them with food and drink. Among the food is a giant bowl of fruit salad.
If I weren’t experiencing a dearth of patience, I’d list for you all the words from various thick books that might fit with an attempt to give justice to the size of this bowl. There must be have been seven thousand pounds of watermelon alone in this bowl, that melon being one of I think six fruits in the mix.
Today has seen periodic gorging on this entirely beautiful fruit. She seems to eat some of the fruit from time to time, like a person would, and I seem to eat it like the world’s gonna end tomorrow and this fruit from this bowl is my ticket into the VIP room in the afterlife.
(Fitting with Jupiter’s influence of bringing to one the novel, foreign and new, I must note that there is a kind of cantaloupe represented in the fruit salad that I’ve never had before. Its taste is different, its rind is different, but its color and texture are exactly the same. Thanks, Jupiter, for making my fruit world a bigger place.)
Re the words part of the title, there is a distinct lack of word flow as Jupiter stations. If I could plug your mind into my mind, or even pry back the edge of my cranium and let you peek inside, like that time last week, you would see a ton of mental energy with very few words to go with it. It’s kind of ridiculous. In this moment I’m aware that I’m typing a “there has to be a better word than blog” post, and I’m simply shocked that there’s something to say.
I spoke Friday night at LA’s raddest metaphysical bookstore, The Bodhi Tree in West Hollywood. The title was “Unraveling Karma,” and the idea was to flesh out an appropriately useful definition of that notion and show, using a few chart examples, how to change karma (karma defined as the patterns we make from our habits, beliefs and conditioning from past lives - essentially, change your beliefs and then patterns and choices, and you can change your karma). The prep for the talk was comically rocky, and I think it went okay as of the moment when a few people in the audience began asking juicy questions. I apparently could respond well to input, but couldn’t generate a consistent flow on my own, like I seem to believe I usually can.
I have no idea how to end this post.
Um.
Hrrm.
The end?
August 5, 2007 By Tom Jacobs
Giving Your Gifts
How much of a priority are you to you?
Are you in touch with the gifts you’re here to give?
What of import, what love, what genius, can be given in service as long as we keep us from ourselves?
August 2, 2007 By Tom Jacobs