Down With Robots: Self-understanding, Creation & Growth With Astrology
In my experience, people learning astrology have a suspicion somewhere below their skin that tells them that it’s useful for self-transformation. What they find when beginning their study, though, might not seem to support that suspicion.
What I’d really like to say is that people are not as stupid as most of the teaching of astrology seems to assume they are.
While astrology employs many lists of data, those data are not the heart of astrology. Those coming to astrology bring their hearts usually before their heads (if you wanted simply to be seen as smart because you can master teachings, astrology with its entrenched & widespread misunderstanding by the culture won’t likely be your first choice), and such a study is a great way to work with that heart and understand what it means to have and create meaning in our lives, a fundamental issue for any human seeking self-knowledge.
Again: The heart of astrology is not sets of data. Every astrologer needs to have learned the lists of data, but not at the expense of creative thinking and the urge to connect with soul that drives so many of its students to find it.
People are not ever truly convinced at the soul level that they’re the robots that traditional astrological teaching and analysis with its emphasis on clear-cut delineations of planets in signs and houses, etc., indicates, and we should stop trying to believe that we are.
I know in my bones that no one truly wants to believe that he or she is a robot (and that a transiting square from Saturn to a planet in the 1st or any other nonsense interpretation will result in the development of arthritis), but the alternatives can be hard to identify and approach.
Over the last few days, a vision of my work, what I’ve been developing for over three years, has begun taking shape. I should say a clearer assignation of words to the feeling of inspiration I have when doing astrology either as a counselor for deep transformation or initiating students to the evolutionary, growth- and choice-oriented approach I practice.
The bottom line of that vision is my conviction that not only is no human a robot, but that anyone can learn to use astrology to understand and change his or her life. If you accept astrology as something that tells you what and who you are, you embrace a view that’s based in an absolute lack of imagination. If you buy into it, you will be confronted with the option of numbing yourself by attempting to fit yourself into little boxes created by organizing lists of data that were never meant to take into account your complexity - your humanity.
Personally, I love how truly complex you are. No matter how you see yourself, I can’t see you as a robot…because you’re not. You’re just not. You’re not the product of lists of data, and no matter how hard you try, you can’t make it true. No one can.
My vision of this work centers on the fact that anyone wishing to understand his- or herself better can learn a rudimentary approach to astrology that will serve as a profound tool for discovery and understanding of self. Beginning to learn the language of astrology by getting a grounding in the grammar of it.
No matter who you are, if you’re willing to look at your life in order to make it more reflective of your divine complexity, your magnificent conflictedness because you’re spirit temporarily tied to matter here on this wet, beautiful orb, you can learn to use astrology to transform your life.
I spoke with an old friend today on the telephone, someone who always inspires me to bring forth my vision…whichever one I’m harboring at any time we speak. She has this precious effect on me for which I’m perennially grateful. I told her about some of the stuff I’m working on these days, and she reminded me that people are hungry for meaning. And the only way to have meaning, I chimed in as I remembered my work with Albert Camus’ version of existentialism for my college thesis, is to create it.
You have the choice each day to create something, to be creative. Whether its art, music or literature or social change, an easing of suffering or a more ordered or beautiful world, you have this choice each and every day. The purpose and the meaning you have in your life you must create. Camus makes the statement that the only serious philosophical problem is that of suicide: So many of us can’t find a meaning to this whole life thing, and all we have to do is understand that up to us to have meaning at all.
(One reason I like this format is that when I stray from a point or dive into what seems like a tangent, you’re saying to yourselves, “Well it IS only a blog.” And you probably already have dreadfully short attention spans, polished blue hot dogs in cellophane shoes.)
My lord, finally a closing: No, no closing.
(It’s just a blog, after all.)
http://www.tdjacobs.com
July 22, 2007 By Tom Jacobs
Transit Lab: Venus square Neptune
Venus stationing in early Virgo is squaring my Sagittarius Neptune. Any surprise that I’m dreaming again and again about a recently-ended relationship?
I began more noting of dreams a few weeks ago, but I’m not feeling like writing these down. A tired part of me insists it’s hard enough without that.
This afternoon, though, I dreamed I’d scheduled something I’ve joked about repeatedly in my absurd fiction: having my face removed.
Surgically, I mean - this is Virgo, after all. Totally above board, too - I know better than to do that kind of thing at home - who do you take me for?! I scheduled an appointment with, you know, one of those professional face removers. It was a big step, and I was really looking foward to it. Mostly because of the overall changes to my life it signified. It had never really been my face, I’d figured out, had never been the face I would grow and show if I’d had anything to do with it. And removing it was a sure step in the direction of getting closer to who I really am underneath it, the Tom who didn’t get a chance to manifest because of this other outer face. I hadn’t told anyone but those directly involved, keeping it close to myself because I didn’t know how it would turn out and thought that blabbing about it to everyone wouldn’t serve any useful purpose. This face removal was for me, not for anyone else.
Toward the end of the dream some second thoughts made their way into my mind, specifically in worry that there’d been no plan generated to replace my face. With less than a week to go before the big day, I realized that the viscera below my facial skin would be exposed to the open air. Whoa, I realized, that might hurt. And even if the hurt kind of goes away or whatever after a few months, I’ll still have to be careful about stuff and air coming in contact with it.
If you’re a smarty, you’ve probably already dipped into the metaphor of face removal as a revealing of true self. The face as a mask and all that. But as someone with a Libra rising, I just know that there’s no such thing as living without a mask. All that’s underneath is the goo and gunk of the biological processes that make us up, and no one wants to go around flashing that to everyone. Everyone’s wearing such a face because that’s what we do.
I think I’m being facetious.
Wait. Yes.
No.
Yes, I am.
No, this was one of those run-of-the-mill dreams about having my face removed.
I know you have them all the time, admit it.
But at the end of the dream, I caught a look at my face in the mirror, noticing certain things about my face that indicated something about my true nature underneath it. You know the way you can see the lines of the cranium itself underneath the outer visage, if you know what to look for - how muscle and skin overlay the skull itself? I had a moment of inspiration from the thought of finally seeing what’s under this wrong face, this face that someone else gave me.
And now I know can cancel the surgery or let it stand. I know I’ll adjust to the pain of having all that air touch my wet & pulsating viscera. Part of me knows it’ll all be all right. In the sober hands of trained professionals and all that.
Though I do wonder if this stripping away will take place in a dream, and how much of a metaphor it might turn out to be.
Stay tuned.
http://www.tdjacobs.com
July 21, 2007 By Tom Jacobs
Small White Dogs
I’m aware that my Neptune-Mercury-Moon conjunction in Sagittarius in the 2nd/3rd contributes to my near-weak knees when encountering adorable, small, white dogs. A little boy me can come out to play when I get around them, and I’ve often caught myself making cute noises and practically squealing with joy when playing with them.
A palm-reading girlfriend of mine once looked at my palm and asked with wonder, “What’s the big deal with your work with animals down the road?” I didn’t really have any idea the time. Would my work take me to animals? Would my then-opening psychic abilities be applied to work with or heal animals? Would I start walking dogs for a living or volunteer at a shelter? Go back into cooking and cut up more headless carcasses? I suppose any of these things could happen, but I didn’t think so. Recently, though, I’ve become aware of another, entirely more likely possibility.
When the aliens invade earth in the near future, I will be chosen by them as an ambassador to represent humanity. Due to some physiological limitations, the only way a few, select humans will be able to communicate with them will be through psychic dialogues with our own small white dogs.
I know what you’re thinking: Yes, I’ll be a very important person. You have my word that I’ll try to look out for your interests, and I won’t demean you or point and laugh at you unless forced to. Or unless overcome by how silly you look in the uniforms they’re going to make you wear as you harvest the Yellow #5 fields for the casseroles you’ll prepare and bake that they’ll need to survive.
I read somewhere that my 2nd house Sun trine the Midheaven indicates being favored by those in high government positions later in life. I suppose if I did a kind of astrology that could include such statements I might be able to time the arrival of the invasion force and give you all a heads up, so you could scramble around and grab your most-treasured possessions and try to run, but as it is I’m just a counseling karmic astrologer. But hey, that means I’m uniquely situated to help you understand the kinds of larger soul journeys that have you signed up for enslavement and perpetual degradation by an alien invasion force.
It’ll be hard to be separated from all of you as you toil in the Yellow #5 fields, and I’ll miss you. I suppose I’ll have to get used to enjoying without you all the creature comforts imaginable as I hang out with my dogs, playing a lot of five card stud and being immortalized on velvet, the favorite art medium of this particular alien force. I’m going to do everything I can to adjust, because I’ll be working on behalf of humanity, all of you, you poor, exhausted, yellow-stained people.
All of my Libran diplomacy (Pluto-Venus in 12th, Ascendant, Uranus-Mars in 1st) will come into play when translating the volumes of edicts of the invasion force command over the loudspeakers towering over the Yellow #5 fields. I’m confident that even as your backs seem be breaking, I will be able to make you think that what you have in place of freedoms are in fact freedoms, and that I’ll be able to make you feel not so bad about the constant perversion and diminishment of them (Jupiter in Capricorn in the 3rd, Saturn in Gemini in the 9th).
And if for some reason you’re not buying any of this, maybe you’ll vote for me for tyrannical overlord in the preceding government, the one that’ll be destroyed by the alien invasion force. As tryannical overlord, I promise to….
July 11, 2007 By Tom Jacobs