Three Aquarian Age Dealios as Uranus Goes Retro
If you’re highly Uranian in some way (and not numbed out from food/drugs/meds/booze/porn/TV/video games/etc. or combos of some or all of these), you might feel like you’re on a bullet train into some radical, exciting and somehow unimaginable future. In my circles, admittedly fully Southern Californian and progressive in nature, a lot of us feel this way.
Uranus is stationing retrograde today, so I’m thinking about the kinds of Uranian change we each have the opportunity to see over the next 5 months as it appears to travel backward in Pisces. And since the age of Pisces always leads to the age of Aquarius, it seems a good day to get these comments out to you.
Regardless of whether you think the Age of Aquarius is here already or not (but FYI, it’s not), here are some notes about what’s taking root in the collective consciousness these days that will serve to enable what’s coming.
Aquarian Age Dealio #1: Self-knowledge and self-reliance are key. Individuals must learn to listen to themselves, to trust their inner voices even as they will differ from the normative reality in which they find themselves, or precisely because they differ.
Contrast this with the Piscean dealio that’s about mass control. Pisces is about going with the flow, and works to include the all of everything in whatever it does. The monotheistic religion thing we’ve been doing for a few thousand years is about control and controlling people into the fearing of the asking of questions, because doing that can lead to individuation, what they can’t afford we do.
Aquarian Age Dealio #2: Self-care is paramount. Taking care of the self first enables us to offer what we’d like to offer others and the world. That everyone else needs fixing first is a misconception, a red herring we use to keep ourselves from self-responsibility.
Contrast this with the prevalence of misdirection when it comes to what care is currently surrounding us. Many relationships between humans can use a dose of “I take back my crap and give you back your crap,” and more and more people are waking up to taking responsibility for themselves.
Aquarian Age Dealio #3: Coming together to work with others is about shared perspectives and goals.
I think this one is sometimes a little misunderstood, as people think that in the Aquarian age, we’ll all want the same things and we’ll all get along. There will be no strife, and everyone will be wandering around with glassy, happied-over eyes.
Not that we won’t get along, but that the point of being with other people in a Uranian/Aquarian fashion is that the choice of people needs to be about getting in with people who agree with you about what the future should look like. Aquarius is the sign of “friends, groups and wishes” in that you need to ally with like-minded people to create the kind of future you want to see - no one can do it alone.
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What you get to see over the next 5 months during the retro might not seem to fit any of these. Yet the opportunities for the retro are in understanding what Uranian individuation relative to Piscean assumptions and conditioning you carry and don’t act on most certainly is - it’s just some zodiacal semantics, people.
Tom is available for private consultations. See his website to book a session or order a new true Black Moon Lilith natal report.
June 26, 2008 By Tom Jacobs
News Items for Pluto’s Current Retro into Sagittarius
Marriage redefined in California…more financial industry dirt coming to the surface…high food and gas prices forcing lifestyle changes…
Each of these news items relates to Pluto’s January entrance in Capricorn: The underlying structures of our world, policies and lives come to light. Pluto when it enters a new sign stirs up a flurry of issues related to that sign, and the issues being kicked up now have to do with the current structure of our society.
And in case you’re wondering: No, it couldn’t be any less noisy or significant. Pluto’s directive is to turn over existing soil to find out what’s underneath. How do our banks and monetary & stock markets work? What should be the definition of marriage and (more importantly) who gets to decide it? How does our goods-to-consumer infrastructure, designed for something like $12-15 per barrel for oil hold up when oil selling at ten times that price?
So, that’s the Cap business. Last week Pluto retroed into Sagittarius, the previous sign, where it hung out from 1995 to early 2008. Sagittarius relates to putting an intuitive finger on what might be true, and in the natural zodiac is followed by Capricorn, which aims to bring into manifestation whatever is perceived to be true (for more on this, see my other “Pluto in Capricorn” posts here).
When anything retrogrades from Capricorn to Sagittarius, it’s time to revisit the beliefs we’ve been fashioning during the Capricorn time relative to the planet retrograding. As an example, take the marriage business in California. Two questions come to mind to go with this transit, ones we would serve ourselves well by being open to asking:
Is a belief that society is held together by defining marriage as a man-woman thing more important than the fact that people are people, that we all love and want to spend our lives with someone we love? Is the truth of who we are less important how this word has been defined?
There’s a dose of reality waiting for us in each of the three situations mentioned above, of which we’ve gotten a taste since Pluto entered Capricorn in January. Will we choose to examine our beliefs from now to late November, when Pluto re-enters Capricorn until 2024? Or will we blow our tops because we don’t want to change, and don’t even want to know where we could change?
Pluto’s questions as it transits are about addressing what doesn’t work, what isn’t serving us anymore, what’s outdated that we’re clinging to, and how we can be more truthful about who we and what we want. It wants to know what’s hiding under the surface that might be a truer reflection of who we really are. Being willing to look into ourselves and at our beliefs during this period brings the opportunity to empower ourselves by choosing to change, instead of feeling it forced on us with no way out, the feeling that most of us experience with Pluto transits - it doesn’t have to be that way.
See Tom’s website to order a new true Black Moon Lilith natal report and to book a private consultation.
June 20, 2008 By Tom Jacobs
Lilith: Myth vs. Archetype
I’m spending a lot of time these days with Adam, Lilith & Eve, digging into the mythos to understand more about why the natural feminine is perceived to be so dangerous.
We hear that Lilith represents the demonic feminine and that she’s to be feared. Yet when you actually read the myth, you’ll find that you don’t know anyone who’s done the heinous things attributed to her.
There’s a gigantic gulf between how we’re taught to think of Lilith and how we live her story. This is because the story of Lilith is essentially the myth of the patriarchy, and the feminine expressed is, from its perspective, the most dangerous possibility. There’s a lot to work with here, but the underlying message I have for you today is to keep in mind this gulf between the theory we teach our children and the way that they will in actuality live the story.
Look up the myth anywhere and read it. As you do, remember that it’s a control mechanism designed to make people feel bad about having an instinctive side that can’t be controlled by the mind. Essentially, we’re supposed to feel bad about ourselves because we are biological beings, and not mere computer minds.
The fact that we still live her story, despite the attempts to demonize her, is a perpetual thorn in the side of those charged with maintaining our culture as it is. This natural part of us can’t be stomped out, no matter how much it might seem to serve the aims of the particular kind of society we’ve created.
Our task now is to re-interpret Lilith based in how we actually live her story, the archetype, as we leave behind the feminine-negating mythos that villifies Lilith, Adam’s other half, and elevates in her place the bland, milquetoast, watered-down, opinionless submissive who is Eve.
See Tom’s website to order a new true Black Moon Lilith natal report and to book a private consultation.
June 11, 2008 By Tom Jacobs
Lilith in Real Life
I’m taking a pause after writing a natal true Black Moon Lilith report while the Sun was in Taurus. I have a sense of needing to bring my energy back in and recharge. The present Mercury retro is pretty convenient timing, isn’t it?
Here’s me debriefing myself: I learned a tremendous amount about Lilith while writing the report, with useful words coming through about what I know in my bones about Lilith. I also connected on a new level with my own experience of the archetype (it’s in everyone, not just women). For a few years I’ve been working with my clients’ Liliths, helping them see in what arena of life they’ve invited suppression for bringing out their instinctual selves, and what they can do now to release whatever they’ve taken on about others’ fear of witnessing the wildness in them.
A major part of this is in affirming for people that this part of themselves is not a bad thing to feel shameful for having. We’re told Lilith is a demon, and the word needs to get around that demonizing the wild in us is a measure of control devised by people afraid that individuals will flail around violently and injure others, and destroy groups. Yet it’s our instinct, and we need it to be healthy.
The truth is that the wild in us can be integrated into our daily lives. Sometimes it does involve flailing (but this can be enabled consciously), and it acts violently only as a result of suppression. I’m assiting people to figure out how to integrate this energy proactively, with consciousness, into their lives.
My true Black Moon is in Sagittarius in the 2nd, conjunct Neptune-Mercury-Moon in Sagittarius/2nd-3rd. An astrologer a few years ago used a phrase for this that’s stuck with me: the satellite dish. It seems I can gather intuitive information of any sort if I just choose and figure out where to aim the dish, and that’s a fun and exciting part of the work that I do. And yet with Lilith there, I’ve internalized others’ fears that I might say inappropriate things, so I’ve mostly had a big tarp draped over this amazing tool.
A few years ago I realized that a key dynamic in my family growing up was that there were two people who were terrified someone would say something important-seeming and disturb the status quo, and there were two people who couldn’t stop saying things they felt were important, precisely to disturb the status quo.
I was in the second group, and when young, it seemed to my child logic that love and acceptance from my sister and father might depend on keeping my mouth shut.
So, can you guess what I did?
Yup, threw a tarp over the dish that seems designed to bring info to shake up the status quo.
And now, here I am, being asked what astrology conferences I speak at and where are my books, and I’m learning how and why to take the tarp off this admittedly amazing piece of equipment I’m blessed to be sporting.
Everyone has a Lilith story. Understanding what your Lilith has to say, and how to bring that out with consciousness, is an integral part of wholeness, of health. You have an instinctive voice waiting to come out that offers you a chance to usher yourself into a more vibrant aliveness. Lilith represents our primal selves, which are our means of connecting with life on a more meaningful, less merely-brainy ways.
Tom is available for private consultations. See his website for more info, to book a consultation, or to order a new true Black Moon Lilith natal report, outlining your Lilith by natal house, sign and aspect and upcoming transits and progressions.
May 27, 2008 By Tom Jacobs
A Lilith Profile
Recently, I met an astrologer with Neptune in Scorpio precisely on the Midheaven (Aug. 24, 1968, 6:22 PM, Redding, CA). I asked her if she’s an antenna for Neptunian power plays, and we talked about her 8th house South Node and what the 2nd house North Node is asking her to do.
All of us are conditioned in early life, and therefore much of what we have to heal & release typically involves what we learned from our families, whether spoken outwardly in the environments of our youth or not. She told me about the dynamics in her home growing up, mostly in terms of the differing levels of support for each of the children in the family, the attitudes their parents had about each of them that carry through to the present. And it sounded a little like something beyond an 8th house Libra South Node might be at work, though there were plenty of 8th house-related power plays and dark Libran issues of relationship imbalances and buried resentment.
Something in the story told me she’d been singled out in her family system for some reason that no one understood or had any idea how to talk about, so I looked up her true Black Moon Lilith (BML), which is opposite that Neptune, precisely on the Taurus IC.
Adding Lilith to the discussion helped contextualize her experience. Lilith in a person’s chart tells us many things, but the first is what part of the person is judged by others to be dangerous, and is therefore (according to others) in need of editing or suppressing. Lilith is a wild, instinctive influence in us and doesn’t want to be corralled, edited or reshaped. Yet we might give in to this pressure because, especially when we’re young, our survival might be threatened if we were to be thrown out of the group.
Not every situation is really that dramatic, of course, but many of us are carrying emotional memories from past lives in which we didn’t survive precisely because we didn’t yield to the mandates of the groups of which we were members. And when we’re young and our families are most of our world, it can certainly seem that survival is at stake.
Her true BML is in Taurus on the IC, the beginning of the 4th house, the house of family, heritage, roots and a person’s most private self. My acquaintance seems viewed by her family as Lilith, dangerous and in need of editing or suppressing. Her natural sense of establishing a value-based approach to life (Taurus) seems dangerous to them, and gets her into trouble with them. If she’s honest with herself about where she’s rooted (4th house), and what’s truly going on inside (4th house again), she’ll find Lilith there. And even if she doesn’t, others will still see the energy in her.
With Lilith on the IC or in the 4th house, it’s also true that our family of origin (or those who raised us, whether blood relatives or not) carries Lilith’s story. Her family has, likely for many generations, experienced at least some aspects of Lilith’s story. The censure from the greater society that any family would receive for representing Lilith will be distilled into rules and directives centered on how not to draw negative attention or punishment for being in some way wild and outside the reach of a community’s or society’s censuring arm, and will then be passed down through the generations framed as information necessary for survival.
The underlying energy of such inheritance can feel/seem like this: People, we can’t afford to have anyone around here acting out of bounds. Get in line, stop complaining and get with the group program. There’s a reason for everything, and just trust that it’s for your own good.
And then you have my acquaintance, who appears as Lilith to them, threatening to start leaking uncomfortable truths that seem to threaten the stability of the family system (Taurus/4th) at any moment. Even if she never spoke truths that made them uncomfortable, she would, to them, always seem on the verge of potentially doing so. And so they do everything they can to make her feel like she shouldn’t express herself - of course they do! They’re afraid of the potential repercussions, the kind they carry emotional memories of from the karmic past (past lives).
She’s got a karmic role in her family system as someone volunteering to speak uncomfortable truths, and exploring how to develop and stick with her own value system in a filial climate that doesn’t want what she’s bringing, that’s afraid of it. A big challenge for her is to honor her own needs while not cutting herself off from her family.
Much of her healing related to Lilith involves accepting that the ways that they have treated her are reflections not of her actual value or worth as a person (Taurus/4th house), but of their fear of having the status quo of the family disturbed by uncomfortable truths (also Taurus/4th house). As she lives the story of Lilith, she can change the entire dynamic by honoring who she deeply knows she is above all the feedback from others that might be hurtful.
And in case you didn’t see this coming, this echoes and underscores the symbolism of her Aries 2nd house North Node, where she’s asking herself to learn to bravely assert and directly live (Aries) a life based in her own value system (2nd house), which will result for her in a new level of self-esteem (2nd house), putting her love for herself before the judgments/esteem of others (Libra/8th house South Node).
Tom is available for private evolutionary astrology & intuitive counseling sessions. See his website for more information, and to pre-order on his new True Black Moon Lilith natal report, available in late May.
May 19, 2008 By Tom Jacobs
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