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:

1. 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.
2. 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?
3. 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).

May 8, 2008 By Tom Jacobs

Profile: Director & Writer Julie Taymor

Last week I saw Julie Taymor’s film Titus (1999), an adaptation of Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus. I had no idea what it was about, but a blue-painted & affectless Anthony Hopkins mug on the cover seemed to draw me in. I guess I was in the mood for something serious?

Well, if you know anything about that Shakespeare guy, you know that he’s got two kinds of properties: comedy and tragedy. This is one of the tragedies, it was easy to figure out pretty quick. And the only thing I knew about Julie Taymor was her name, and I was trying to figure out if I was merely confusing it with “Jeffrey Tambor.”

Anyway, I stepped into the film with no idea of anything about it. It’s been on my mind since seeing it, and I just looked up Taymor’s birth data (12/15/52, Boston, MA, 10:06 AM) to try to put a vocabulary to my reaction to the film, which has to do with the particular flavor of vision that informs the production design, timing and the framing of many of the visuals - the shots.

The first things I note are the aspects to the nodal axis:

-true Black Moon Lilith (BML) on the Leo/7th South Node

-the asteroid Lucifer (1930) in Scorpio/9th square the axis

-retrograde Jupiter in Taurus in the 3rd house square the axis and opposing Lucifer

-Venus in Aquarius/12th and Mars in Aquarius/1st, both conjunct the North Node

-Descendant conjunct the South Node

This is just one conversation, in more or less fixed grand-square fashion, yet it needs to be broken down. What she knows a lot about is Leo BML in the 7th, as anything on the South Node indicates something we come into this life understanding much about. BML here points to an understanding of the power of one’s primal creativity, and the effect such expressions can have on other people. And conjunct the Descendant, ways of exploring how to achieve balance and harmony are well-understood.

The unresolved issues (squares to the nodes) are Lucifer in Scorpio/9th and rx Jupiter in Taurus/3rd, indicating a conversation between the urge to get to the bottom lines of, via & with ideas (Scorpio/9th) and the desire to slow down the mind in order to get clearer about what it is that’s worth expressing (rx Jupiter in Taurus/3rd).

And then this business on the North Node - Venus in the 12th, Mars in the 1st and the Ascendant, all in Aquarius. Perhaps her karmic past includes a getting caught up in the collaborative expression (SN Leo/7th) that left out her unique creative vision (Venus in Aquarius/12th on NN), leaving her feeling she didn’t get to assert herself creatively as a true expression of her independence (Aquarius Ascendant & Mars in Aqua/1st on NN).

The 3rd-9th axis has something to say about how information gets in and out (and what kind of information it is), and Taurus-Scorpio as an axis has much to do with power: Taurus is about learning to run under the steam of self, while Scorpio is about pooling steams and running with others.

She certainly seems to have learned to integrate that stuff on the North Node - nothing she does looks even remotely like what others are doing, and it’s the last thing you’d expect. She seems also to have found a balance between that Leo SN and the Aquarius NN in doing that unique thing that makes her work stand out and be immediately recognizable, yet not having left behind her skills and strengths of working collaboratively with others.

Tom is available for soul-centered astrology consultations. See http://tdjacobs.com for more information and to sign up for his mailing list.

January 25, 2008 By Tom Jacobs

A Thought on Conditioning

After being related a story by a friend just back from a rather intense family Thanksgiving visit, I loaned her a favorite book of mine, What Do You Say After You Say Hello?, by Eric Berne, MD. If you’ve ever wondered why people do the things they do, check out this book. It’s a pretty easy read, given it’s a text for psychoanalysts.

So, what is it that you say after you say hello? It depends on what you’re trying to get from any given interaction. Berne outlines the scripts people live, and shows how we’re conditioned by our early home environments to perform certain roles.

SO, then, again: conditioning. The roles we play aren’t indicative of our true natures. An astrological birth chart is a map of possibilities, and two major factors determine which sets of realities we create from those possibilities: conditioning and free will.

Our free will is often, by our beliefs of what’s possible, shaped by that conditioning. Okay, so I’m really saying that it’s often not even two factors that determine what reality we’ll create; there are times when it’s all about conditioning.

Last week I gave a talk on a new view of spirituality in the birth chart. When dealing with any issue, including spirituality, key is a client’s conditioning. Regarding matters of spirit, we have to look not only at Neptune/Pisces/12th house, but also Jupiter/Sagittarius/9th house to understand the conditioning surrounding belief. We have to look at the asteroid Lucifer (1930) to understand the conditioning around a person’s relationship with the idea of and the reality of the existence of a higher power. We have to look at the asteriod Arjunsuri (20300) to understand the person’s relationship with his or her own conscience (whose voice/authority is considered the ultimate authority?). The picture is pretty complex when you get deeply into any individual chart, but it all comes down to conditioning.

As long as we’re on the subject, I’ll note that every interaction you have with your family and those with whom you’ve been close for a long time, offer the opportunity to see your conditioning. If you’re someone who has difficulty dealing on some level dealing with family/where you came from and yet are going back for upcoming holiday festivities of some sort or other, see if you can catch yourself in however you want to react to any stressful situations and hold up a second. Wait a minute, and instead of reacting how you perhaps always have, make a different choice. That’s how you start breaking conditioning!

Brought to you by the “Down With Outmoded Conditioning” Committee, with additional support from the “Pluto in Libra ‘Can’t We All Get Along?’” Cabal.

Tom is available for spirit-guided karmic astrology readings. Contact him via his website.

November 25, 2007 By Tom Jacobs

Mercury Retro on this one’s Mars-Uranus

Oh, happy blessed opportunity to recognize and express heretofore-unseen-yet-necessary boundaries!

When Mercury was rxing right over my 1st-house Mars yesterday, I was aflame with the need to express some statements of fact about my constitution, limits, boundaries and the particular contours of my developing sense of personal will to a few folks. I was, admittedly, a little emotional about it. A friend who was present said, “You were sort of off the charts, emotionally speaking.” And she was right - I felt filled with fire, the need to assert my boundaries.

The charge melted away significantly when I reminded myself a bit later that it’s one’s ongoing (& evolutionary) job (argh, but I mean opportunity) to gain and maintain awareness of Martian issues, especially if one has the red planet with Uranus, the planet of sudden change, disruption and differentiation in the 1st house…and square the nodes (indicating that there is a new way the energies must be understood, which is done through making different choices than are habit). Some folks see this conjunction in Libra and think it’s probably toned down in the sign of the diplomat, but it’s toned down only when it’s afraid to really express itself, when it’s hesitant to make waves - and only until the pressure to express has reached boiling point, and then it seems to need to explode.

The user’s manual for this conjunction includes a chapter on preventative maintenance, a proactive scanning of the contents of the closet into which some self-assertion urges are sometimes stuffed so that a much-desired Venusian sense of social harmony, balance and proportion may be maintained. The evolutionary challenge of the placement, then, is to learn moderation of self-assertion and -individuation, to experience directly the cliche of enlightened self-interest while staying within relationship - no slashing and burning is healthy for one with this combo.

Keeping this in mind, I connected telephonically with the friend of mine who runs the group I was participating in, my experience in which triggered my need to assert the ol’ boundaries. I did what I could to frame what I was saying in the interests of the fact that I’ve appreciated the space she very intentionally creates the group to offer, and have benefitted from greatly - that I appreciate the opportunity she through it has offered. And my need to assert boundaries has nothing to do with her or the group - it simply offers the opportunity for me to see something about myself that can use some attention.

I may not return to the group, but I seem to have communicated in a fairly reasonable way what I needed to say. And this is the work of Mercury retroing over a 1st-house Mars. Between you and me, I’m giving myself a little gold star for coming out of the emotional imperative of the angry response and recovering my sense of honoring the opportunity I’ve had and have, and not making anyone else wrong for the parameters and feel of my experience.

Also, I’m having a Juno return today, the asteroid being natally less than a degree off my 2nd house Scorpio Sun-Lucifer conjunction. I’ve been working on the chapter on Hera (the earlier, Greek version of Juno) in Christine Downing’s fullyexciting and rad book about the mythological feminine (The Goddess: Mythogical Images of the Feminine, Continuum: 2000), in which she treats (among other things) the projections of Hera onto Zeus, her husband. With the Sun in Scorpio, Mercury retroing in late Libra, and Juno in mid-Scorpio, it seems an appropriate time for any of us to evaluate our projections and take back some shadow self stuff. This is an oportunity for anyone, yet especially anyone with strong Libra, Scorpio or Juno placements.

Tom is available for consultations and lessons. See http://tdjacobs.com for more information and to book a consultation.

October 28, 2007 By Tom Jacobs

Profile: Film Director David Cronenberg

I was drawn to see Cronenberg’s new film, “Eastern Promises,” yesterday. After noting my reactions to various aspects of it, I thought to look up his list of films on IMDB. My suspicion was correct: I’ve been drawn to his films for years, and always have a major discomfort when watching them, even as I know I need to watch them.

It’s something like 8 of his films that I’ve seen, not that many, really. But the impact they’ve had on me has been deep, and brought me to look up his chart (March 15, 943, Toronto, ON Canada, no time).

The first thing that jumped out at me from his chart is retrograde Chiron in the same degree as the Leo North Node. It tells me that his own unique brand of creative expression in the karmic past had no outlet, or was not supported or possible (given the circumstances of the situations in which he found himself), and that its expression may feel like an imperative in this life. Pluto is also retrograde and in the sign of Leo…and directly opposite Mars in Aquarius. This tells me that his conscious and unconscious desires (Mars and Pluto, respectively), have an argument running, and that the product of the argument will be an outward expression of Martian stuff that can shock and disturb, but that will support the needs of the Rx Pluto in a way that perhaps only makes a clear sort of sense to Cronenberg himself.

South Node ruler Uranus is in Gemini, conjunct Saturn in Gemini, the former being square the nodal axis. Uranus therefore represents unresolved issues from the karmic past this time around for him. From Steve Forrest I’ve picked up a great phrase for when the South Node ruler squares the nodal axis: He was his own worst enemy. In Cronenberg’s case, it looks like he achieved status as his own worst enemy by what he communicated and how he did it.

The asteroid Lucifer is also square the nodal axis, from the last degree of Scorpio. This tells of the perception in the karmic past that he did things that were bad, wrong - or, if you prefer, evil. Given the relative nature of right and wrong, the perception of having done wrong is enough to have this asteroid square the nodal axis. In Scorpio, we’re talking about intensity, probing the depths, telling difficult truths - we’re talking about the use of power. The dialogue between Lucifer in Scorpio and Uranus in Gemini, the opposition squaring the nodes in Aquarius/Leo, centers on the right use of information for the right reasons, the right expression for the right reasons. One read on them is just because you can surprise the stuff out of people with your message and how you deliver it doesn’t mean that you should. The opposition can serve to keep both energies in check, as they’re having a conversation and can offer each other the differing perspectives (the signs they’re in) they each understand. If they do serve to keep each other in check, Lucifer will ask Uranus if the message needs to be as explosive as Uranus wants it to be, and Uranus will ask Lucifer if anything out of the ordinary is automatically wrong to express.

When going down the list of films yesterday, one of the big ahas was when seeing “Dead Ringers” there. I’ve been hypnotically drawn to see that movie twice (forgetting between viewings everything about it), and each time felt my skin crawl, and my resolve to remember my own version of sanity dissipate…and I couldn’t just quit it and move on to something else. For me, Cronenberg’s work offers the opportunity to see this kind of Mars-Pluto/Chiron expression in action, and I seem to be hooked. And fully disturbed. In the end, I objected to the fact that the film was even made (yes, I can laugh at myself for this now), and understanding the Uranus/Gemini-Lucifer/Scorpio opposition in square to the nodes offers the energy I was responding to with my objection.

The last thing I’ll mention is the true Black Moon Lilith (listed as “osc.” in the embedded chart). With the messages we can/I do variously assume Cronenberg offers us, the data I’ve mentioned so far can come into play. With his true BML, however, I offer that understanding his reasons for his own expression (taking the content of the work out of the picture) are helped by understanding this placement. It’s retrograde, and conjunct Jupiter in the sign of Cancer. What I see with true BML when conjunct other bodies is that there’s a specific dependence on the expression of that other body and the willingness to experience, be, view or meet Lilith. Conjunct Jupiter, his sense of bigness, his ability to risk optimism and fulfill his natural human need to develop a sense of largeness within and for life, is tied to admitting (and perhaps being) Lilith.

This tells me that when he risks sharing his vision, he risks being treated as a Lilith figure. That he’s a man makes no difference to this story; when you bring Lilith, you run the risk of being labeled and treated as dangerous, a malcontent, deserving of abuse for what you brought. (One of the giantly needed teachings surrounding Lilith is that each of us, male and female, has her as part of our makeup.)

When we have conjunctions to Lilith, it’s natural to avoid knowing or expressing the energy of the conjuncting planet, because we’re taught to fear Lilith and avoid learning who she is and what she has to offer. When I see Lilith with Neptune, for example, the typical, default orientation is to avoid knowing the direct connection with God/Goddess/Spirit that we each as humans on some level crave. When Lilith is with the Sun, being seen is the issue; creative expression of ourselves as a cohesive unit (the job of the Sun), is what’s avoided…until, of course, it isn’t.

It makes me curious about Cronenberg’s sense of Jupiter, his willingness to Jupiter, in his early days (he clearly has no problem exploring this energy now). I guess I’ll add that to my Lilith homework list.

And I didn’t even mention that the Mars-Pluto opposition is actually a t-square between Mars-Pluto-Eros, the Sun-Arjunsuri conjunction in Pisces, or the square from Venus in Aries to Moon-Jupiter-true BML…

Tom is available for consultations and lessons. See http://tdjacobs.com for more information and to book a consultation.

September 27, 2007 By Tom Jacobs

Shadow Suppression: Lilith, Lucifer and the Dark

It takes a lot of energy to keep out of your consciousness things you don’t want to see. This is the heart of the healing work surrounding wounding associated with Pluto, but it’s also associated with any archetype’s natural expression that we attempt for any reason to suppress.

Pluto’s the obvious example, but we’re talking about every archetype. There are varying levels of social sanction for the different sorts of explosions stemming from an individual’s inability to continue suppression. But all such expressions (explosions following suppression) are seen by society through the lens of Saturn, the glue that we use to hold ourselves in a meaningful sort of structure. They will therefore be seen rather one-dimensionally, as they would if viewed through the lens of any single archetype.

Associated with every archetype are shadow elements we’d rather not see. Mars offers an obvious example in those who use violence outside the structures of the military/police/civic rescue arenas and sports. Uranus offers the terrorist, Venus offers the heart-breaking and deceptive seducer, Sun offers the fascist and the tyrant.

But there are archetypal shadows for which we don’t currently have a vocabulary. Those offered by Lilith, for example, are what come to mind. As a matter of fact, everything about Lilith is made into shadow, leaving people with strong Lilith energy often terrified to again receive the brutal punishment they’ve gotten in the past from embodying the natural energy of this dark goddess.

What’s happened in our history is that we’ve forgotten how to face the dark. Which means that we have come to attempt to deny our true natures. We are light and dark. Each of us covers the whole range of possibilities. If this idea frightens you, take a moment to find out what part of you is conditioned to be afraid. I guarantee you that you have Lilith in you and she wants to find expression, and that there are parts of you that tell yourself that you’re bad for having this part.

Recently I understood that going deeply into Lilith requires me to give up my idea of what love is. I’ve had to confront my assumptions of what it means to support, honor and love others. Specifically, on one level, there are times when not helping someone is helping them more than they know. This is pretty obvious, but on another level entirely, one from which the journey of life is seen as the point of it (and not the pursuit or attainment of happiness, pleasure, ease or goodness), that I try to help you is absurd. No one but you can help you - your journey is in your hands and there’s nothing in reality that I do that actually helps, even if it looks like I do.

This is the level from which we can come to know Lilith. If we assume that destruction is always negative, we miss the point of what she would teach us. Who’s to say what’s good and what’s bad? Is there any such thing? Or is there just creation and destruction and the aftermath of each that forms the bulk of our lives?

So, this is the kind of stuff that makes a deep part of you nervous. Having a relationship with the dark doesn’t destroy existing relationships to moral systems, it only puts those moral systems into context. Perhaps they’re then dropped, but what follows isn’t automatically anarchy, as our conditioned fear of the dark tells us.

Similarly, stepping into Lucifer work doesn’t take us to a higher moral ground, but in truth tends to evaporate the boundaries of specific moral systems. Deeply meaningful Lucifer work takes one to the threshold at which it’s seen that all one can do about developing a relationship to the divine is to choose to do it or not to do it. To either manifest our idea of the divine through our actions or to manifest the opposite.

The path that takes us there is very often informed by the (conditioned) expectation that God is to be found somewhere, if only we were doing the right thing, looking in the right places, or trafficking in the right lingo. The darkness we find in Lucifer work is facing the terrible fact that we can choose to turn away from our idea of God - and there will be no penalty from an external power for doing so. The darkness is in accepting responsibility for ourselves by facing the truth that we have the choice to work for or against what we know is good.

Suppressing Lilith leads to all manner of destructive expression surrounding anger at not having power or being recognized for our true natures, or being forced to deny them. Suppressing Lucifer leads to all manner of destructive action to one’s self and to others, in varying kinds of expression based in anger of feeling abandoned by God and being afraid of aloneness. All these archetypes have in common is that we teach each other to be afraid to look them in the eye, leaving us afraid to look ourselves in the eye. We tell each other that expression of them brings darkness, oblivious to the fact that expression of any archetype can bring darkness.

The truth is that each of us has choice in how to use any energy. This truth is what we as defined as larger groups can’t handle, can’t deal with. That there is choice in each individual terrifies anyone in any sort of conventional seat of authority and power.

And yet, I write again, people will always have access to their true natures. No one will ever truly forget the truth of their nature. And they will in time figure out that the whole human suit game is about choice, and they will in time learn to decondition themselves and exercise free will, which will in fact require looking at these darknesses we carry, getting to know and accept them, and love ourselves for having them. Accepting your self fully, which is creating wholeness in your life and the only true measure of health, means seeing, integrating and loving each part of your complex, multihued nature.

Tom is available for consultations and lessons. See http://tdjacobs.com for more information and to book a consultation.

September 3, 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

Evil, Astrologically: Lucifer

I have what might be a tome about evil gestating in my innards. For a few years I’ve been working with the asteroid Lucifer (1930), making notes, numerous false starts on that tome and working extensively with clients on the archetype as it plays out in their lives. It’s just not time for the big statement to come out. But today, I’m inspired to share a tiny bit of one corner of it.

The only useful definition of evil is that which we can use to move away from what we think of as good. Each of us has an internal goodmeter that’s a part of our makeup as conscious beings; it’s the part of us that is the God nature. Whether yours is informed by someone else’s moral system (religion) or your own inner compass, you have one and you use it constantly to one end or the other. When you behave in line with what you understand is good, you feel good about yourself and life. When you behave out of line with that, for any reason, you feel bad about yourself and life. It’s that simple. There’s a soul sickness we engender as we go against what we know is good, what we know is the vibration of God.

As soon as I began putting it in charts and mentioning here and there that I use this asteroid and work with the notion of evil, I drew people who needed deeply to learn to understand this part of themselves. Many times it appears in my clients’ nodal configurations, indicating that there are karmic issues with doing or the perception of doing, or the fear of having done, or the fear of being, evil.

The Lucifer archetype is the part of us that makes the decision about which way we’re headed, toward the good or away from it. The heart of what I want to share in this post is that each of us has this part of ourselves, and each of us is always choosing which direction we’re headed. It is very important to learn to understand this part of ourselves, and why we allow it to do what it does (if it ever gets to run the show), and it is very important to understand that the things that we do are, simply, the things that we do. They’re part of the journey of experiencing what it is to be a human.

I encourage people who have suspicions or memories (or reports from psychics, etc.) that they have done evil in the karmic past and in this life to understand the archetype of Lucifer as it plays out in their psyches, hearts and lives. We’re talking at root here about the choice to recognize and be aligned with something greater/bigger than ourselves, or refuse to do so and invest everything in our own egos. The human experience is defined on a key level by navigating the terrain of relationship with ego, and I note that all existential questions are Lucifer questions. So, when people come into the counseling room with a sense of having done wrong, I help them understand what the energy is about, help them sort out the past from the present, and work to give a solid ground to their understanding of their options.

This post was triggered by an e-mail conversation with a colleague having Lucifer square the nodal axis, indicating a misuse or perception of misuse of ego energy in the karmic past to evil ends, ends that achieved what was understood at the soul level to be not good. His response in this life is to make sure that he speaks what is true. There’s more to it than that, but I want to share that even with the knowledge or memory of having done wrong, which, frankly, we all have, the healthy response now is learn what is our choice and choose what is best right now. Allowing ourselves to restrict living in the here and now because of memories of having done wrong (and so being defined as bad, or evil), is a self hate that does no one any good. This healing work is about recognizing how the energy of evil, the move away from good, can be turned around with understanding and some heart-opening, forgiveness work to become the energy of the light bearer (Lucifer is Latin for light bearer), the servant of good/God - the healing opportunity offered by Lucifer work is the healing of the relationship with God.

My efforts to get this teaching together in a cohesive fashion have been stalled due to my own lab time in the lessons of Lucifer. Or, better put, they’re slow in coming as I live my own Lucifer story and learn about my own choices. As I wrote to that colleague, I’m usually quiet about the fact that this asteroid is conjunct my natal Sun. Pretty much no one who fears he or she might have done wrong in the past will tell you, but here we are. I know my present choices are in line with what I know is good - I’m determined never to forget what the power of choice can create - and so I’m okay with telling you here. Part of my hesitation, incidentally, is due to the myopic understanding and terror in some parts of our culture regarding the name Lucifer. But as you’ll see if you stay tuned to my work, the real Lucifer inside each and every one of us has nothing to do with Judeo-Christian notions of the devil. That, my friends, is a red herring to keep you from integrating this powerful part of yourself and living with your own understanding of serving good as your compass.

In the mean time, I’m working with clients who are open to understanding themselves fully, and I recognize that their openness to this archetype inside them is part of my lab experience in the Lucifer course: The more they accept their Luciferian natures, the more I can accept mine. Who knew that becoming an astrologer would be my path to heal karma?

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July 26, 2007 By Tom Jacobs