Transit Lab: Jupiter Conjunct IC

I heard a rumor a few days ago that my favorite product at my favorite grocery store might be discontinued soon.

Over the following day or so I realized that I deeply desired to fill my entire freezer full of this particular product. I don’t usually have spurts of irrational desires, but I was amused. I decided to go with it, just to see what would happen. I mean, I just knew that I’d be happy if I did this.

A friend just pointed out that it’s Jupiter conjunct IC - stocking up at home. And it’s in Capricorn - my freezer as a site of abundance.

I’m also revisiting family memories and my relationship with my heritage, past life memories, and mourning the loss of my father and the evaporation of a significant relationship. And then there are friendships that have ended.

The point of this transit I’m seeing as clearing out, or at least processing, old things. Whatever stuff I’ve kept around in my foundation (4th house) that’s really just debris needs to go.

While Jupiter certainly presents opportunities for growth & expansion, outmoded things have to be cleared away in order for new growth to occur - for there to be room for new things to take shape and, ultimately, root.

So, don’t expect every Jupiter transit to be carefree. But understand that some things will need to go before you can even recognize the great opportunities that Jupiter can bring.

Since my friend pointed out the link between my freezer-filling urge and this transit, I’ve decided to just fill the whole thing, instead of this couple of bags at a time. To just go for it, which is what Jupiter asks us to do when making the rounds in our charts.

 (I admit that I’m just hoping there’s more to this transit than a full freezer…)

Tom is available for intuitive karmic astrology readings. See his website for more information.

February 24, 2008 By Tom Jacobs

Astrology on Internet TV

This Friday, from 11 AM PST to noon, I’ll be a guest on The Naked Salon, part of a panel discussing astrology. I like their approach of stripping away everything to get to the core of an issue (hence the naked part - so, I’m really saying, yes, I’ll be wearing pants the entire time).

There’ll be three astrologers on the show, each discussing how we use astrology and what we hope to achieve with clients by using it. I’m excited to share my thoughts of astrology as a symbolic language, which is stripping it down to its bare essentials (and is one key to learning the language so it’s useful, by the way).

You can see the show live at http://www.gotwebtv.com/TheNakedSalon/.

If you have something you’d like to ask the panel, feel free to call in. The number is (818) 991 - 6137.

Tom is available for spirit-guided astrology consultations. See his site for more info and to book a session.

February 6, 2008 By Tom Jacobs

Pluto in Capricorn: Discovering Assumptions

Capricorn is the sign of structures and the glue that holds social and political groups together. 

I’m listening to political reporting on the radio more than ever these days. What struck me today is the assumptions of some random citizens interviewed for some piece about some of the candidates. From their statements, these are the questions that some of us might not be asking themselves:

Does Hillary Clinton’s gender mean that she would bring heart & compassion to the office?

Does Barak Obama’s skin color mean that he would look out for minorities?

Does John McCain’s military history mean that he would work to defend this country?

Any general assumptions that we may have about what the members of any group would do because of their identification with it need to be reviewed.

The focus on the collective that Capricorn represents naturally calls up questions about the realities of the individuals making up that collective, as deeply entering any of the archetypes will naturally call up its axis partner, the opposing sign. Membership is more of an issue for the sign of Cancer (belongingness), but as Pluto begins its trek through Capricorn, assumptions about the structure of any group - and the realities of the people associated with it - might come up. 

Or, perhaps, should.

February 2, 2008 By Tom Jacobs

Transit Lab: Mercury in Aquarius

For a couple of days Mercury’s been trining my Mars-Uranus in Libra/1st and rx Saturn in Gemini/9th, leaving me up late with idea explosions and a charge of physical energy. Each night, at a certain point I stopped thinking I’m going to go to bed…

…ever.

Though of course it does happen, when my eyes shut down and make the decision for me.  In the mean time, I repeatedly move to put away the notebook or shut down the computer, and am stricken with some other marvelous thing to note. At least I’m clear that no one in my life would be cool with 3 AM phone calls to discuss my latest surges of inspiration, right?

It’s transiting my 5th, and so bringing together air signs and fire houses, and I’ve been having a great time being erratically inspired…at least on those days I know I don’t have to get up early…

January 29, 2008 By Tom Jacobs

Transit Lab: Jupiter return in Capricorn/3rd

It’s my 3rd Jupiter return, and I expected a few things along the lines of people hearing my voice differently. Perhaps taking a longer look at what I’ve been doing and saying for a few years, perhaps seeing me as more of an authority in my field than previously. And I have been getting positive feedback on my writing and ideas, and it’s been great.

What I did not expect is my very religious sister to ask my professional opinion about her most serious concern.

Since she transitioned into utter devoutitude over a dozen years ago, I’ve respected her beliefs and we haven’t had a serious conversation about what I believe or what I do. And today, she caught me off guard.

It’s her birthday, and I called to wish her a happy one. The conversation turned to my work, and I mentioned that when I work with people who are just curious about what I do, as opposed to feeling in need of guidance with at least one particular issue, the results are very different than the norm.

And she asked me to help her with her issue, which I’ve known has been on her mind for years. I was happy to do it, yet caught myself thinking I needed to edit my thoughts. I admit to being a little intimidated by her Mercury in Capricorn/1st, which has a staying power in doing and thinking through things that my Sagittarius parade and Mars-Uranus in Libra don’t understand (that Mercury of hers is on my North Node, so it understandably presents me with a new lesson - it’s in the spot that represents what I haven’t done much of in the karmic past, the new territory I’m challenged to stretch into now). My normal MO has to do with opening to intuitive guidance and inspiration to get things done, and steer around obstacles or change the plan to save resources, not workhorsing my way through no matter what. For one thing, I have to think there’s often a better solution than mere sustained effort over long periods of time. For another, I like my sleep.

But it was her 3rd house Pisces Moon that asked for help today.

I pulled up her chart - one without asteroids and the Vertex and such, just looking at the core message in terms of the issue she asked about. She was also open to the suggestion of a past-life regression in order to get to the bottom of the issue, with which she doesn’t consciously identify.

That surprise seems to count as more than one, as though I’ve had a day full of surprises.

By Tom Jacobs

Pluto in Capricorn: Thoughts on Politics

1. Dirty stuff.

Are there still people in this culture who don’t understand the psychology of politicking?

It’d been months since I’ve listened to NPR regularly. I keep hearing criticisms of the Clintons for their propaganda against Obama - mostly taking what he’s said out of context (at least that’s what I keep noting). Isn’t that what politicians do in this system?

What occurred to me was that we might be expecting Bill not do such things. Not because we think he is or should be spotless, but he’s got this patina that’s supposed to follow him everywhere - that of the Office of the President of the United States.

That we get to see him actively engaged in this is an example of the opportunity of Pluto in Capricorn. Pluto can show us what’s going on behind what’s going on. In this case (as if we needed more examples of this), we get to see how even the highest office holders in the land are still, regardless of the efforts of the purveyors of spin, human.

I can’t wait to learn what’s waiting for us re the current highest office holder in the land - believe me, there’s something. There’s got to be. There’s no way any sitting president could escape the revelations probably unavoidable as Pluto shifts into Capricorn…what I keep thinking is that not even these guys can escape the turning-over-the-soil imperative of Pluto.

2. Scandal

It seems that the media might not let French President Sarkozy, no matter what he achieves in office, escape the realities of his personal life: He has relationships, he drinks alcohol, he emerges from a plane with his new wife (an ex-model, for crying out loud!!) with one too many buttons on his shirt undone.

The shocking reality that he has a libido and one of those concave depressions below his Adam’s apple (and maybe chest hair) might be too much - a reporter just said that the French would prefer him to be “more presidential.”

January 27, 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

Last-minute thoughts before Pluto splits Sagittarius

1. Thirteen years might be a long time in human consciousness years, but might not be enough to rreeaallllyy intuit the truth. We’ve been trying on for size different versions of Truth, as well as different ways of arriving at it.

2. I’m pretty relieved now that I can stop trying to figure out what’s true. My job now is clearly to start building stuff - no more of this sitting around and checking in with my intuition, no more digging behind how things work. I mean, do you know how tiring all that fluffly perhaps-not-work is?

3. In honor of Pluto, I’m considering building a ladder down to hell.

Once I collected months’ worth of hair a roommate had brushed from her divinely adorable and wonderful cat and carefully rolled it together, a la dreds. I displayed this freak show entrant on the livingroom mantle, and when visitors asked what the disgusting snake-like lint thing was, I told them I was building a ladder to heaven from the cat’s hair, since she was so divinely adorable and wonderful, etc.

But now, it’s time to get serious. No more cat hair-as-joke lying in wait for unsuspecting visitors - no more frivolous games. Now is the time to earnestly build mental, physical and emotional structures to reflect what I learned from sitting around checking in with my intuition all those years (and preaching the truth left and right as I was deciding I was getting it). And one of the major things I learned during Pluto’s trek through Sagittarius is that doing spiritual work isn’t getting me anywhere if I’m not also doing soul work.

In depth psychologist and ecotherapist Bill Plotkin’s terminology, the former is ascension. While it has its place in our lives and journeys, integral to wholeness is also engaging in descension. I see we’re getting here and there better at ascension, for which we have some examples in our culture, but we don’t have acceptable, sanctioned models for descension, and so people don’t always know how to deal with that. I recommend Plotkin’s work to get a handle on this stuff - it’s conscious of how people and the world really are, and in it he suggests and explains numerous doorways to undertake the journey to gain consciousness of your most inner workings and, as I understand it, make friends with and reintegrate anything hiding down there that we’re afraid to look at. It’s a smorgasbord of shadow work.

Hence, a ladder down to hell.

Coincidence that I’m doing this waxing Pluto square thing?

Of course not. Why, I’m this week spending time with some monsters that’ve been under my psycho-emotio-spiritual bed. Probably I won’t report the encounters in detail, but suffice it to say that I’m learning just tons about stuff I think, feel and do that I’ve never been able to see before. And, of course, I’m happy to report that the reality is never as bad as you think - as bad as the fear of it. But something I got today when writing an e-mail to someone is this: One of the fears about coming to work with Pluto energy consciously at the waxing square is that in each of us, there’s a part that’s afraid to become the agent of change we so desperately want to become.*

*Pluto in evolutionary astrology, depending on whom you ask, represents the soul’s deepest desires/intentions or the soul’s deepest wounding. I work with it as representing both: To get to the desire and become that agent of change, we have to heal the layers of pain that inform our fear of living our lives in the ways we truly desire.

Tom is available for soul-centered consultations. See http://tdjacobs.com for more information.

By Tom Jacobs

Profile: Playwright Edward Albee

Playwright and philosopher Albert Camus held that every artist, no matter the medium, spends his or her entire life working out one idea or problem, has one thing to say. He wrote that even no matter how many media were used creatively, the same problem was the focus of the artist’s life and work.

Understanding this, I’ve gone through phases of working with and in response to (being inspired by) the work of various artists. We all do this, but we don’t always understand why. We’re living myths in our lives, and there are others who provide examples for us along our way. We can lose interest when the artist seems to diverge from our path, or when our path changes and that of the artist seems not to.

I had this experience with the work of the playwright Edward Albee, ending a few years ago. I’d read or seen most of his work, and what he was trying to do became clear to me. And after that, I was bored with him and moved on. Thanks, Ed, I seemed to say, but I’ve gotten all I can get from you. Thanks for your time, and best wishes on whatever you laid out for yourself this time around.

And then, yesterday, something happened.

I heard an NPR interview with and about him, about the first act he’d written and appended to his famous one-act, Zoo Story. It’s a story about a fairly well-to-do, rather uptight, unimaginative man who has a chance encounter with a very different sort of man in a park. The new version (Peter and Jerry) includes an act previous to this act that tells the story of the rather uptight man, putting him at home with his wife. (I haven’t yet read it, but this is from the description in the radio story.)

Albee said something about the play had always stayed with him and made him want to do something else with/to it. When I heard about the new act and therefore context, I got back on the Albee train - he’d enlarged his previous vision, the one I saw and read too much of and became bored by. This play is the one that launched his career, and many in the theater world hold it as sacred and were confounded by his audacity to change the play they loved so. He commented in the interview that he’s after all the one who wrote it.

I couldn’t locate a birth time for Albee (12 March 1928, Washington, DC), but he’s got a Uranus-Jupiter in Aries that I just really want to put in the 3rd house. That would be an early-morning birth, and Chiron in Taurus would be in the 4th, one kind of signature for adoption. Now, it’s just speculation, but I rreeaalllllyy want that Uranus-Jupiter to be in the 3rd, because of his lifelong unapologetic styles of writing and speaking, and the nature of the stories he’s inspired to tell.

Without the time of birth, we can see the South Node in Sagittarius, with Saturn pretty tightly on it. This paints a picture of an orientation to beliefs and ideas that’s built intentionally and with much hard work. The Sun in Pisces squares the nodes, indicating that something very large in the karmic past, something that was orbited, was not approached and understood in ways that seemed to get him where he was going, and he now has the challenge of learning the right size and use of ways of defining the sense of self.

The South Node ruler Jupiter is conjunct Uranus in Aries, and squared by Pluto in Cancer. The role he expects to have (South Node ruler) is that of Jupiter in Aries conjunct Uranus in Aries - someone with something big, original and probably cutting to say. The square to Pluto in Cancer screams that he is not aligned with tradition and the powers that wish to uphold it, but is doing something original that probably challenges everything traditional.

And then there’s the pileup in Aquarius - Eros, Pallas, Mars, Arjunsuri, Ceres, Venus, Mercury, and Vesta. This underscores his expectation of the role of being Uranian, given the conjunction of the South Node ruler with Uranus. His sense of proportion and how he understands harmony and balance (Venus) is working together with how he perceives things and his communication style (Mercury), in the sign of things that are different. And the drive to action being there indicates that not only is what he wants to think about and express creatively (Ve-Me) in the sign of things working differently than normal, but how he’s moved to get things done (Mars) also works differently - how he goes about getting out there his ideas and creativity we can also expect to be different.

His North Node is in Gemini, which indicates a call to stretch into the new territory of flexibility, and curiosity, of openness to new information. Reworking the piece that launched his career is a very Gemini thing, most certainly not a South Node in Sagittarius conjunct Saturn thing. His willingness to stretch into what is new territory for him (the North Node for any us is new territory) surprises me more than his willingness to “ruffle feathers,” as he’s always been very good at that (check his biography for stories of him as the editor of the school paper). But refiguring a major work of his intentional design (Saturn in Sagittarius)?

The best part for me is that Albee’s almost 80 years old. I’ve always knows it’s never too late for 0ld playwrights to learn new tricks, but to see it happening with this one is an inspiration to me.

January 20, 2008 By Tom Jacobs

Two or Three Thoughts on Libra + Transit Lab: Waxing Pluto Square

While Aries defines itself in terms of self, saying, “I am what I am because I am it,” Libra defines itself in terms of the other, saying, “I can tell what I am because I can tell what you are.”

This isn’t a terrible starting place, but it can’t be the only stop on the line. At some point, the Libran (whether it’s the Sun, Moon, Ascendant or some kind of planetary pileup there, or if there’s a very strong Venus/7th house signature) has to resort to understanding self first.

But the orientation to the other is a blind spot for Libra. The core aim of Libra, understanding it as a method, or a lens through which planets operate, is to create harmony and balance. Libra does not already understand how to do that. When people come in with heavy Venus/Libra/7th signatures in their charts, there’s an evolutionary intention to learn to relax, to slow down - to introduce moderation into their lives.

Last night I thought of the Pluto in Libra generation (1971-2 to 1984), specifically that they have the greatest soul wounding surrounding the aims and methods of Libra. There is a range of possibilities to each of the 12 energies of astrology, and yet people tend to focus more or less on specifics in their karmic journeys, as anyone’s conditioning necessarily limits the vast possible menu into a few subsections of it that can offer us appropriate playing fields on which to explore the core ideas of it.

The specific that came to me was in the prevalent Pluto in Libra fear of rejection, that can be based in a fear of abandonment. To be alone to these people is hard enough, but to be left by someone, a friend, lover or parent, is devastating.

What Libran Pluto people having this fear need to learn is that how people treat you has nothing to do with you.

Nothing.

It has everything to do with how they think of and feel about themselves.

This will make zero sense to most Pluto in Libra people who haven’t Plutoed themselves quite a lot somewhere along the way. And with Pluto entering Capricorn, the waxing Pluto squares for Libran Plutos are about to begin. Steven Forrest has said that this square is when the monsters that live under your bed come out and sit down with you at the dinner table. I have loved this image, and I find it very useful when working with clients.

When you’re sitting at the table with them, which is to say that what you hide is out in the open and needs to be faced directly and head-on, you see that they’re not as bad as you fear. That the fear of them is worse than their reality.

The next few years will see the older Libran Pluto people facing these monsters, and seeing how to navigate them. The basic message that Capricorn has to give Libra in its natural square is to stop looking around itself and to relationship for cues about how to be, and to get busy building stuctures to take care of the self. I expect that many people in this generation who haven’t learned to do so already will begin to take back what they put on other people (a Libran strategy to form relationships) and begin understanding the impact that kind of use of energy has on them and their lives (the Capricorn call to reality that feels like friction - the square - to Libra).

I’ll be writing on these and other themes about this business in the coming months. With my Pluto at 3 Libra, I’m one of those folks just beginning the square. And it natally squares my Jupiter at 6 Capricorn in the 3rd. How this has worked so far is that all the Pluto square stuff that wants to get thought ends up coming out in my writing and speaking.

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

January 18, 2008 By Tom Jacobs