New reading offered: Personalized, Satirical Chart Analysis
These written, 1,000-word portraits take an absurd look at your chart and life, making all manner of stereotypes, baseless assumptions and predictions drawing on the stereotypes of astrology. It’s different from any other humorous look at astrology because it’s tailored to you and your chart, drawing on the actual placements in your chart. There’s nothing else like it out there.
The entertainment value is independent of a knowledge of astrology, making them a great gift for anyone you know who retains the capacity to laugh and/or enjoy things.
Details
What: A unique, personalized 1,000 written satirical astrological analysis of your chart
What’s needed: Name and full birth data of the person to be read for (day/month/year, time of day, location of birth) – include this in the notes section of the PayPal payment or send me an e-mail just after the payment
Investment: $30 introductory price ($35 after November 1st), payable via PayPal (payment address is tom at tdjacobs dot com)
When to expect it: Allow two weeks for e-mail delivery
Excerpts from actual readings:
1.
Your Pluto is in Virgo in the 10th house. Uranus in Virgo in the 11th is conjunct it, indicating that the deepest desires of your soul center on helping prepare society for the coming devastation from the invading alien hordes that are now but a few light years from earth. With Sun in Libra/11th, you will be chosen as the human ambassador to the alien force. This Sun is sextile Mars in Sagittarius in the 2nd house, a clear indication that your greatest allies in your preparation for your future role are fundamentalist farmers, from whom you can learn key agricultural tehniques that will come in handy when the alien invaders enslave the rest of humanity and unrealistically expect them to farm diamonds and mine corn.
2.
The North Node is in Leo in the 5th house, indicating that your most significant avenue for growth in this life is to get louder and louder, to make as much as noise about yourself as possible. Its ruler is the Sun, in Aries in the 1st house, conjunct Mercury. This means that the way to do this will be to develop and create your own multilevel marketing scheme, one that’s based on how wonderful you are, on letting people know in a variety of ways how spectacular a human being you offer the planet the benefit of being exposed to. This conjunction is square the Cancer Moon in the 4th house. This means that when your family stages interventions at your televised birthday parties to beg you to give up your explosive, viral megalomania (which at that point will be spreading like wildfire over the globe), you must fight them tooth and nail until they leave you alone. You must at all costs be victorious when the enormous size and radical expression of your ego is in any way challenged.
3.
Your Sun is in Virgo in the 6th house, opposing Pisces Moon in the 12th and square Neptune in Sagittarius/8th. This t-square is a clear indication that all the time you spend being down on yourself for the lies you insist in telling yourself about your made-up faults could be infinitely better spent lying to others about their faults. You have the unique ability to see the faults of others, and maintaining sanity in this life for you is to learn to acknowledge your perceptions of others, inflate them beyond belief, and then abuse others with them.
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I’ve been practicing astrology professionally for over three years, and writing satire for almost a decade. I’ve done these readings for friends now and then for a few years, and people loved them so much that I’m offering them as a service in addition to the karmic, soul-centered readings I do. If you’re curious about that work, see http://tdjacobs.com.
September 24, 2007 By Tom Jacobs
Transit Lab: Saturn in Virgo conjunct Arjunsuri
Yesterday I returned from a 10-day Vipassana meditation course, having learned this technique recovered by the Buddha 2500 years ago. The ultimate aim of it is the end of suffering, and it’s possible for every person to do this, given a commitment to patience, ardent work, awareness, perseverance and persistance.
Sound like a list of keywords for Saturn in Virgo, doesn’t it?
This is the kind of thing most of think we could never do, but each of us can choose to do it. I heard about it from a friend who has in common with me a strong mental and communicative energy (Mars-Mercury in Leo in 11th-12th, with a 10th-house Gemini stellium I totally jive with), and a desire for progress that shapes a work ethic that keeps one going going going, that keeps one driven. She told me she’d done one of these courses a while ago, and I was inspired that if she could cause herself to do it, I could cause myself to do it.
Each of the things I knew about it before going in were entries on my well-established and -entrenched list of not-to-dos: sitting still, focusing the awareness on only the breath, following the ethical code central to the technique (read: someone else’s rules), refraining from any communication with other students for the duration of the course, no exercise other than walking, and - here’s the big one - no reading or writing of any kind. I mean, go down the list of attitudes and behaviors I’ve used to define myself, and each needed to be shelved for the duration of the course if I wanted to give myself the chance to suceed with the technique.
But in the face of the opportunity to take better care of myself, and to get to the bottom of a couple of personal issues I wanted to heal, I was willing to do a little Saturn-in-Virgo…which was, I desperately need to tell someone mean, a lot of Saturn-in-Virgo. A lot. I’ve never worked as hard as I did during the course. Never. As a matter of fact, I realized while I was doing it that I can’t remember even a handful of times I chose to challenge myself and work extremely hard in order to achieve something I wanted. When I chose to sideline the rules I’ve developed for myself and submit to someone else’s program (that Mars-Uranus in the 1st bristles at the notion of someone else’s rules, and my Rx Saturn in Gemini/9th and Jupiter in Capricorn/3rd are pretty sure I know what’s good for me and probably that no one else could).
When I studied music, it came easily to me. When I studied philosophy, I couldn’t find the point of most of it and didn’t work very hard, until I found Albert Camus’ brand of life-affirming existentialism and was armed with something eminently useful. When I began writing poetry and satire, it just poured out like you wouldn’t believe (it took a while to bring out my own voice in each, but that was less a matter of hard work than one of doing it enough that other people’s voices played themselves out in me and fell away). When I began with astrology, I dove in and it was, frankly, pretty easy. I seemed primed to incorporate it into the vocabulary I had already been developing about the meaning of life, etc. (building on my work with Camus, in fact). There have been questions and issues along the way in my astrology education that have caused more perplexation than others, but, generally speaking, it was just sitting there and I drank it in in giant gulps.
Okay, so, channeling class was difficult, but in a specific way. I simply had to make sure I didn’t turn down the opportunity every week for four months to confront my fear of doing it; I had to make sure I showed up to do the work and chose to be willing to learn what I needed to learn. And those four months, each weekly installment of which I dreaded like nothing else, were nothing compared with the challenge of sitting still to meditate for ten days and not communicating with anyone.
Do you know many people with Pluto in Libra (those born 1971-1984) who are willing to sit still for 10 days and not communicate with anyone at all? I realized that that in itself was a healing opportunity for me, giving myself the chance to develop a stronger relationship with myself. The soul wound in these people is in relationship, the relating function: the area of fairness, equality and balance - in the area of dealing with others as equals. To learn to sit with one’s self and get grounded in a deep understanding of and relating to that self is Pluto-in-Aries work, or Pluto-in-Libra polarity point work. Doing this is precisely what a Pluto-in-Libra person needs to do when stuck in cycles of Libra misfirings, malfunctionings and junk…which I admit to being prone to be in my more robotic, unaware moments.
The shiny experience worth noting here in terms of Saturn is that the eclipse at 18 Virgo squared from the 12th my own Saturn, Rx in Gemini/9th. I learned something critical about owning up (Virgo) to having compassion (12th house) that I allowed to override (square) an extremely fixed guiding principle I’ve carried (Rx Saturn in Gemini/9th) that no longer serves me. Okay, I’ll just say it: It hasn’t served me for hundreds of years. Even in a past-life regression taking me back to the 1080s, I had this fixed idea! It’s what I’ve known about myself, what I understand as me. I haven’t known any other baseline. So, understandably, I can’t wait to see what will happen next - it’s anybody’s guess.
I work with an archetype I’m introducing to astrology, associated with asteroid 20300, Arjunsuri. This asteroid is in my chart at the first minute of Virgo, so when Saturn entered Virgo, I was in need of some hard work of figuring out to whom to listen. The basic story of Arjunsuri has to do with the process of seeking Truth externally and ultimately learning to listen to your conscience as your guide, allowing the inner voice of knowing to be your final authority. “Finding Conscience on the Path to Truth,” the title of the article I’ve completed describing the archetype, is a good summary of the process.
The meditation course for me, then, had to do with doing some real, some hard Saturn-in-Virgo work, but also with developing a closer relationship with my conscience. One of the conditions students agree to before taking a Vipassana course is to refrain from killing anything, which includes eating meat (as I understand it, if you eat it, you’re participating in a process that began with the killing of the animal). I found myself yesterday on the way home from the course at a restaurant, evaluating the excitingly extensive omelet list. (Omelets with the trimmings are my favorite meal these days, and if I’m going out to eat, I’m going to gravitate toward homey places that serve such things.) Aware that the meditation technique is built on a foundation of vegetarianism, and aware that I’m presently beginning a practice of that technique, I opted not to choose a meat-ridden omelet. I recognized this choice as a Saturn-transiting-Virgoan-Arjunsuri choice: My conscience, with its commitment to giving the technique a real chance in my normal life, overrode my love of meat-riddled omelets. And this asteroid is in my 11th house, indicating how I look to the future and realize goals. My mouth was a little disappointed, but the rest of me felt great in making an informed, healthy choice (Virgo) that supports achieving my goals (11th house).
If you’re interested in learning more about Vipassana meditation, check out: http://www.dhamma.org.
If you’re interested in learning more about asteroid 20300 Arjunsuri, sign up for my mailing list at http://www.tdjacobs.com. It’s the best way to keep up with my activities in introducing this archetype to the astrological community. Within the next few months I’ll be doing a podcast interview about it, and I’ve written an article that will in one form or another be published in the near future, both of which will be announced via my mailing list.
Tom is available for consultations and lessons. See http://tdjacobs.com for more information and to book a consultation.
September 17, 2007 By Tom Jacobs
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
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: 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
Transit Lab: Jupiter Gigantifies My Mind [Five Hundred Exclamation Points]
I have to add more about this Jupiter transit - it’s stationing on my Mercury in Sag, after all. I kind of can’t help it. My Jupiter’s natally in my 3rd, so this is kind of to be expected - I’m fully at home with the energy of communication getting injected with what feels like a cocktail of nine kinds of uppers.
I’m simultaneously having a desire to reach out and communicate with a bunch of people (everyone on earth), talk to my roommate nonstop, write on a dozen articles, and at the same time I feel remarkably calm and mentally with it. If none of those things happen, great. My mind feels huge right now, and it’s entirely a rad feeling. What I’m making sure to do is note all the ideas that crossing my mind whevever they do. This looks like writing random sentences and titles in my journal. And I know I can come back to them later and know exactly what they’re about.
New experiences in the psychic realm I’ve written about here are related, as are my ability to listen to others right now and hear their perspectives in a new way. Jupiter in this light is totally the benefactor! Okay, I’m a little hyper. But this energy’s about exaggeration, right?! Maybe I don’t use enough exclamation points for Jupiter’s taste!!! Let’s rectify that right now!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
July 31, 2007 By Tom Jacobs
Transit Lab: Uranus Square Saturn (The Passive-aggressive Horse)
Recently a couple of new friends came into my life, and one in particular seems to be bringing me numerous opportunities to work out the energy of transiting Uranus square my natal Saturn. The first thing was an invitation to a service at a local spiritual center. Get this: I chose to go to what amounts to a church! And I wasn’t even being paid! (I used to work as a musician in churches.) She’s offering ideas for new experiences and chances for new input that’s really helpful right now.
Today, we went horseback riding. For an activity a few days ago, I suggested hiking or tennis, and she came back with horseback riding. It’s something I hadn’t thought of since I was 12 and it sounded reeaallllly rad so I agreed.
When it was time to mount up, I was told I would ride Noah, the biggest horse there. I thought it was this huge brown guy in front of us, who looked terrifyingly large, but that was the guide’s horse. Noah, in fact, is the second biggest horse in the country, or was it world - no joke. Apparently Clydesdales can run kind of big, and he’s a huge one. If you’re in a human suit right now, don’t you tend to think of horses as large anyway? Think of a big horse and then inflate it to the point that you’re nervous that your eyes are seeing correctly - he’s that big.
I looked at this giant that I was supposed to somehow get into a sitting position on, and in a moment a stepstool appeared with a guide. I climbed up, and the stirrups and saddle were adjusted. I was a little hesitant (but not nearly as much as when we trotted on the ride), but things were shaping up well.
During the actual ride, Noah engaged in a range of behaviors I was told were tests to see how much he could get away with. At first he got away with all of them, but after I guided him to stay in line, stay a horse-length behind the one in front, and wouldn’t let him stop to chew on branches here and there, he got that I wouldn’t any longer let him do whatever he felt like. So he started drifting over to the side of the trail whenever there was a big tree that he could drag me up against. No kidding, this horse is passive-aggressive. So that’s why he likes being the last in line, as the guide mentioned. After he’d started that crap, I told him lovingly (and soft enough that the other people there couldn’t hear) that he couldn’t intimidate me, and that he could drag me up against all the trees he could; I wasn’t going to give up the reins.
One thing I’ve experienced with Uranus transits over the past two years is an inconsistent influx of information about my conditioning from past lives. First with it squaring my Moon, then with the transiting South Node of the Moon conjuncting my natal Uranus, and now with it squaring my natal Saturn, which opposes that Moon. It happens in different ways. A few times in the form of people coming up to me here or there and tell me things about me in past lives, or asking pointed questions about past-life stuff that, were you asked them, you’d think you entered some kind of joke-on-you hidden camera show in which people are armed with too much info about you for comfort. Also in the form of suddenly-available emotional memories that leave me balling, etc. - people in public love this one.
Also it’s been in the form of people I most definitely know from other incarnations. My new friend, for example, whose casual comments to me teach me so much about me in this moment & life that I know she knows me from another. And it comes in the form of new views on experiences that awaken a quality of memory in me. Being on that horse this morning is in that last category.
I felt on top of the world, and aware of a sense of pride and purpose. I don’t know how to explain it better, but reconnecting to a horse is a very good thing for me in my present process of deconditioning current and past-life beliefs. When we were done riding, as my friend and I stood next to the horses, we saw just how big Noah is. My friend gave me I think two high fives for actually riding such a monstrously large horse. And I didn’t think about it like that until we went for lunch afterwards, after picking up her book on animal totems, Animal Speak, by Ted Andrews.
The basic idea on the horse entry is that when a horse comes into your life (as a totem, but I’m not yet sure that’s what happened - I just, um, rode a really gigantic horse), “it may be time to examine aspects of travel and freedom in your life” (p.282). So, here I am, opening up to what Uranus squaring my natal retrograde Saturn in Gemini in the 9th has to say.
When I write joke horoscopes based on natal charts, the intersection of Pisces and the 6th house (including Neptune in Virgo or the 6th, and Mercury in Pisces or the 12th, etc.), I usually include a prediction that person will become or be swept off his feet by a large-animal veterinarian. Instead of that, I just met a phenomenally large horse and let him teach me something about freedom, a new kind or one that I’d forgotten.
I’m considering some travel opps that fit the Uranus/Pisces/6th symbolism as I understand it, opening to lose the idea that I’m not traveling much for a few years (the understanding I’ve had about my feeling of mobility the last few years - it’s seemed more important to do inner work and be more still than to travel). But it looks like exactly what’s needed is to travel, even if to do quiet inner work.
Okay, then, I’m open to what drifts my way, even if it involves more bone-chillingly large animals that I’m expected to ride and guide. And the overall message will probably have to do with the challenge to actually ride it - and being sure I’m not going to give up the reins.
July 27, 2007 By Tom Jacobs
Transit Lab: The Sun Hits Leo
From just when the Sun entered Leo, but delayed in posting due to technical difficulties:
I thought about posting re the Sun entering Leo but beginning every sentence with “I” and making it all about me. I wasn’t sure, though, if my subtlety would come across.
I swear to you that I could feel this ingress a few moments ago. I found my head feeing a little lighter, in fact.
I felt a bit of release, happy to have a shift after a month of the shining light of the transiting Sun making more evident certain things about my emotional reality. I know that this is important and that it’s my choice and mine alone, but I acknowledge a part of myself that would rather not have 30 days every year that bring a gargantuan flashlight to my own South Node issues. I’m really saying that I have to admit that I’m human, even if the coming alien invaders are tuning in and might think twice about installing me in that great translator job I mentioned a few posts back.
I spent the evening working on a written reading for a baby, but really for the parents. I love doing this kind of reading, as the whole reason I do this work centers on the chance to help people to better understand each other, and what better application is there than new parents wanting to know more about the tiny person they just welcomed into the world? I was surprised to find myself adding to the end of it, It has been an honor to offer this interpretation for your increased understanding of your young daughter. With congratulations and best wishes, [my name].
July 24, 2007 By Tom Jacobs