I spent a few days in Taos, New Mexico last week, checking out San Geronimo Lodge and the larger community in preparation for my Yoga & Astrology retreat there October 12-19.
I was deeply moved, while there, by the way different archetypal energies are expressed not only through our personalities and relationships but also through the landscape itself — both natural and humanmade.
I’ve explored this idea a bit through posts like The Slow, Salty Dance of Taurus and Landscape of the Horoscope, but the phenomenon really landed for me during my visit to Taos.
As my dear friend and mentor, Pam Tyler, toured me through and around town, we noticed that certain features of the landscape reflected the dynamics of different polarities. For example, driving out of town, you cross over an utterly flat, seemingly endless plain. Suddenly, then, after a dozen miles or so, the earth just opens — there’s no other way to describe it. The deep, long, narrow gorge of the Rio Grande grins up at you, its thin murky waters sitting still and quiet at the bottom.
I was awed into silence myself by the Taurus-Scorpio energy in this one staggering slit of land.
Similarly, but also profoundly different, the Taos Indian Pueblo spoke of the mother-father-child energies inherent in the Cancer-Capricorn polarity, while the drive up, and then down, the High Road fed into my understanding of the Virgo-Pisces polarity.
What astounds me the most is not that our world reflects the eternal truths held within each archetypal complex: That makes sense, after all. No, what astounds me, really, is the unfailing consistency with which each archetype is upheld within symbols of integrity and longevity. And, furthermore, that the polarity can always be found nearby.
For example, any home in the world could be said to reflect Cancer energy. But Taos Pueblo is a remarkable symbol of the Cancer-Capricorn polarity archetype. Not only is it a home, it’s a tribal home that has been occupied continuously for more than a millennium, and the tribe considers nearby Blue Lake to be the original source of its people. Though tourists are allowed within the pueblo, the Indians protect their people, beliefs and structures with care. All these are components of the Cancerian archetype: mother, child, community, home, history, sourcing, birthing, self-protection. They all awaken together when ideas of mother, child and nurturing are aroused.
Yet Pam’s and my tour guide was a young college student who had left the pueblo to attend college and aspires to make films after going to the Art Institute of Chicago. “I’m just so tired of seeing movies,” he said, “where Indians are portrayed as poor, drunk or stupid.”
Back home for summer vacation, he embodied the Capricorn polarity of individuation — moving out from the tribe, distinguishing oneself from the community, the old ways, the accepted path. He was walking the polarity tightrope, balancing both worlds within his single frame.
Other sites, too, renewed my respect for the eternal truths that course through our daily lives. I’m excited to dig into preparations for the October retreat, where we can ponder even further how the horoscope’s polarities live and breathe, in ways big and small, all around us.
I hope you can come explore Taos with me in this way.
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