Depth Astrology

It’s my personal mission to take astrology out of the head and into the body, because I don’t think it really helps or transforms unless you’re feeling it. So in my workshops, I try to play music that reflects the energy of the sign we’re discussing. But I’ve realized over the last year that my musical repertoire is rather limited. Also, I’m not very hip. So I called out for input from a few astute music lovers among my friends. Below are the bands they associated with each sign, preceded by the brief sign description I provided to get their juices flowing.

See if you agree — then help expand and grow the list by e-mailing your picks for one or more signs to kathy (at sign) depthastrology.net. Get going!

Aries: Music that fires you up with energy, really makes you want to get on your feet and MOVE. Rodrigo y Gabriela • AC/DC • Van Halen • Prince • Stevie Wonder • Jackson Five • Fatboy Slim • Parliament • The Meters • Chevelle • Muse • Depeche Mode • Primus • James Asher, Feet in the Soil• Lunasa

Taurus: Music that’s heavy and thick with sound. Not dirges, but slow and earthy and calm. It would take a lot to get you out of the La-Z-Boy here. Tom Waits • Supreme Beings of Leisure • Nick Drake • Van Morrison • Donovan • Grant Lee Phillips • Keith Jarrett • Devendra Banhart

Gemini: Quick, light, fun, short-attention-span music. The kind of music you want playing in the background at a party. The Ramones • They Might Be Giants • The Locust • Paul McCartney, Ram • B-52s • Barenaked Ladies • Weezer • OK Go • The 88• The Gispy Kings

Cancer: Music to make you feel at home — comforting — that just wraps you in its arms and holds you. James Taylor • Cat Stevens • Aretha Franklin • Crosby, Stills & Nash • Ray Charles • Bill Withers • The Band • Grateful Dead • Gram Parsons • Rickie Lee Jones • Bonnie Raitt • Van Morrison • Barry Manilow

Leo: Regal, magnetic, “look at me!” music — the kind that rivets you, not just with the music but with all the pomp and fun of the performance. Queen • David Bowie • Roxy Music • T. Rex • KISS •Madonna

Virgo: Music that’s focused, clean and crisp — yet complicated and ponderous, alchemical and, of course, technically perfect. Emerson, Lake & Palmer • King Crimson • Rush • Yes • Mid-period Jethro Tull • Frank Zappa • Vivaldi • The Cure • Snatam Kaur

Libra: Music featuring the harmony, balance and back-and-forth of a well-paired duo. Indigo Girls • The White Stripes • Simon & Garfunkel • Tegan & Sara • The Wilshires

Scorpio: Music that takes you to the depths, dark and powerful. Not pretty. Music that leaves you kind of ravaged. Metallica • Rob Zombie • Korn • Marilyn Manson • Tool • Bob Mould, Black Sheets of Rain • Nine Inch Nails • Elliott Smith • The Plastic Ono Band • Black Sabbath • Funkadelic • Nirvana • Soundgarden • Alice in Chains

Sagittarius: Music that’s lively, traveling up and down the scales with lots of experimentation and lots of fun. Flogging Molly • Steely Dan • Jellyfish • Sufjan Stevens • The Negro Problem/Stew • The Pogues

Capricorn: Music that starts on the ground and takes you to the summit – but slowly, carefully. Music in which you have to work for the reward. Pink Floyd • Genesis (with Peter Gabriel) • Robert Fripp • Krishna Das • Green Day, American Idiot

Aquarius: Quirky, creative, independent music that pushes the envelope. Bonus points if the lyrics address social justice issues. Rage Against the Machine • Bob Marley • Spearhead • Billy Bragg • Steve Earle • Street Dogs • Ani DiFranco

Pisces: Music of the spheres. Music that leaves you feeling like you just had a direct encounter with the gods. Led Zeppelin • The Who • Late-period Beatles • Mid-period Rolling Stones • Cirque du Soleil, Delirium • Pink Floyd • Jimi Hendrix• Angels of Venice • Sophia • Enya

What favorite bands would you add to the list? E-mail your picks to kathy (at sign) depthastrology.net and I’ll continually update the list. They’ll also ultimately appear on the sign pages that will debut on this site shortly.

—

Hat tips to Simon and Julia over at Editorial Emergency, as well as friends Emily and Vera and spouse Alan for their input so far. Also, a photo credit.

I’ve come across two dead crows on my morning walks recently in the Los Angeles foothills. In years past I’d just shudder a bit, step aside and let the faint whiff of flying-rodent death wisp away on the breeze.

But first, these crows didn’t showcase the bloodletting and bodily trauma normally associated with accidental encounters with cars. And second, Alan had informed-slash-reminded me that mysteriously deceased birds in these parts could be indicators of West Nile Virus.

So I regretfully interrupted the obsessive ruminating I love to do on my walks and, instead, repeated to myself, for the last 10 minutes of my walk, the address where lay this morning’s particular dead bird. Neatly decapitated, if you want to know the truth. As if a polite coyote had removed the lid from the tureen to see what kind of soup was inside, then gone on his way when he saw what it was.

When I got home, I Googled, then telephoned, the state’s vector control hotline. The kind lady on the other end took my name, address and phone number, then asked the location of the dead bird, its color, its size, how long it had been there. I could hear the clickety-clack of fingertips on keyboard as I gave her all the information.

Then she said, in a foreboding yet lilting voice, “Would you be willing — ”

And I knew what she was going to say. And I wished I’d given her a different name, address, phone number so I couldn’t be reached when I hung up the phone quickly.

Which I didn’t do. I let her keep talking. ” — to take a double plastic bag — ”

No, no, no, no, no. Dammit. I knew it. It’s not that I’d never seen death before; in fact, Alan once gently reprimanded me for bringing home a dead snake from a walk. It was flat. I thought the patterns were pretty.

” — and return to the location to pick it up?”

I thought, I could say no. What were they going to do?

But I didn’t, because I am a Good Citizen. I got a certificate in sixth grade that said so.

“Ummm…sure,” I said. She gave me further instructions, and I wrote them down, even though my mind was already back at the streetside, the bird — mysteriously — in much gorier condition than when I’d left it.

When I got off the phone, I gathered a rake, a dustpan, thick rubber gloves and — not a double plastic bag, not a triple plastic bag, but, yes, a quadruple plastic bag. I threw my provisions in the back of the truck and drove the half-mile to the bird.

I left the car running and the driver’s side door open because, you know, I might have to make a quick getaway from the dead bird. I worked quickly and quietly, all business. I threw away the rubber gloves when I got home and washed my hands three times in near-scalding water.

And then I went to look at my horoscope. Because that’s what astrologers do: Feeling depressed? What’s up with Saturn in my chart? Feeling confused? What’s got my Neptune? Dead bird on the porch? Check out the 8th house!

Of course, it’s never so simple as all that.

My collaboration with today’s transits (Aries Moon transiting my 8th House in exact opposition to Uranus, sextile Mars in Aquarius in my 6th and semi-sextile Saturn on the MC) might have been less institutional, more impetuous, had I not that looming specter of Saturn perched high atop my natal chart like — well, like a crow screeching from a treetop. Were it not for that Saturn, and a couple other things like, I don’t know, my solid upbringing, I might actually have hung up on the hotline when I had the chance. Or I might have just plucked it up with my bare hands on the spot, tossed it into the nearest trash can and forgotten about it.

What I love about astrology, yet what makes it so frustrating for people who want it to be simple — A plus B must always equal winning the lottery — is that it has room for complexity, diversity and that fearsome wild beast called free will. A Moon-Mars-Uranus ambivalence figure (as the Hubers call it when an opposition, sextile and trine form a triangle) might manifest one way for me, another way for you depending on transits, progressions, other factors in the chart and things like upbringing, environment and beliefs about the self. Which, of course, are all reflected in the chart as well.

So although picking up the dead, possibly virus-infested, bird grossed me out beyond belief, I’m glad — now — that I didn’t hang up on the hotline. When Saturn gets out of balance, it’s so easy to crawl under a rock and give into fear or a sense of inadequacy. And I’ve certainly done that plenty in my life. But Saturn also comes with conscience, and with an awareness of the consequences of one’s actions.

The incidence of West Nile in L.A. County is way up from last year. There are kids in these parts, and other vulnerable folk, who just can’t put up a winning fight against it. I had to figure out a way to do what I had to do to support my conscience, distasteful as it was, instead of my disgust.

Saturn, in the Greek tradition, was called Kronos. That “Kr” element is enough to remember me to karma. Say what you will about nature taking its course — it’s just not good karma to let deadly viruses fester in your neighborhood.

And so there I was, this morning, with the rubber gloves, the quadruple plastic bag and the excessive hand-washing.

Ah! Saturn lives.

Photo credits: Crow, Flag, Telescope

A fellow astrologer recently asked about earning a living through astrology. Though he doesn’t put it exactly in these words, his question boils down to three things: (1) What I do has value. (2) What I do helps people. (3) What I do is my calling. So why aren’t I making enough money at it?

He isn’t alone. I’ve heard his ponderings echoed many times over among astrologers and in other circles: massage therapists, energy healers, hypnotherapists, even psychotherapists. I know writers, artists and performers who struggle with similar frustrations. Why is this so damn hard?

As I chewed on the question, it struck me that the astrological triumvirate of livelihood was contained in my colleague’s question:

• 2nd House: Do I value what I do? Check.
• 6th House: Are others served well when I do it? Check.
• 10th House: Does it bring me closer to my highest self? Check.

Then why, oh why, are we still toiling behind filing cabinets and cash registers and delivery truck steering wheels just to fill the mewling mouths of our young? Why can’t we free ourselves from the leaden weight of worry, grow light with the shininess of self-realization?

Before I was a full-time astrologer, I was a fundraiser for nonprofit organizations. We asked these same questions, but we said them a little differently — something more like: Do we believe in this program? Does the community benefit from it? Does it help fulfill our mission?

I suppose any supervisor of widget-makers or fast-food restaurant manager could ask the same things, in yet again a different way: Can we get behind this hamburger? Do our customers big-heart it? Are we absolutely the best Yummy-in-my-Tummy Burger we could be?

It boils down to meeting needs in three areas: self-with-a-little-s, others, and Self-with-a-big-S. That last is kinda transcendent.

But as my bosses in the nonprofit sector liked to point out, meeting needs (even everyone’s needs) isn’t always enough. You can’t just educate people about the value of your work and watch them jump on board. They have a million causes to choose from — a million astrologers, massage therapists and energy healers; a million poets, painters and dancers. Six billion hamburgers and counting. Lots and lots and lots of people are already sold on your 6th House (what you do serves them — or could serve them — well). Ninety-nine percent of them don’t care about your 2nd (what you value) or your 10th (what you’re called to do).

So what’s an entrepreneur to do?

I went spelunking around the rest of the chart to figure out what I was missing. Because, yes, my colleague’s question quickly became a question about my own business as well.

And what I came to was this: Entrepreneurship — especially entrepreneurship that’s led by a calling — is way, way, waaay more than how you make your living. It’s more than value and service, more even than marketing. It’s your life and your lifestyle. It’s what you eat and breathe and play and dream. It touches, and proceeds from, and knits into, every single aspect of your everyday, your relationships, your self-conduct, your belief system, your trust in the world (or lack thereof), your internal life.

And that means the whole entire horoscope chart is implicated, from the 1st House to the 12th, and back, and around, and across. To take some simple examples:

• Just because people are helped by what I do (6th House) doesn’t mean they value it (8th House) in the same way I do (2nd House).
• Just because it’s my calling (10th House) doesn’t mean the people I’m closest to (4th House) will automatically support it.
• Just because I have a nice website (1st House) doesn’t mean it’s attracting enough people (5th House) or the right people (11th House).

And so on.

I’ve been running back and forth across the chart with these ideas, trying to ask (and answer, for myself) all the relevant questions about financial success in the land of the business owner, trying to see how they all get caught up in each other, trying to untangle them a bit for your benefit and mine.

There are lots, and lots, and lots of questions that dig deeper than the usual 10 Questions to Ask Before You Quit Your Day Job.

I’m now organizing those questions into a coherent and usable framework that you can use to appraise and tackle your entrepreneurial predicaments. I want to say, “It’s guaranteed to help you!” But I know that’s not enough.

But it will.

So keep your eyes out.

Photo credits: Lemonade stand, Crowd, Chelada

Part Three of a Three-Part Series
Click for Part 1 and Part 2

Day 5: Jenny and I had coffee with friends in the morning, then headed out to Griffith Observatory for the afternoon. In retrospect, it was a fitting way to braid together the sensory indulgences and the intellectual intakes of the previous four days.

If you know something about astrology, you might associate an observatory with Jupiter (the great eye, the long view, the wide view) or Neptune (the boundlessness of space) or even the Sun (the shining core of our little circle of planets, our awareness, our self-understanding).

But what I saw was Saturn. Not Saturn in the traditional malefic way, the way of stripping you bare and paring you down. Saturn in the way that energy becomes matter and integrates and tells the story of deep time.

It started with the rattlesnake signs in the hillsides above the observatory: a warning of our mortality, of the instantaneous ability of forces beyond our control to swiftly and unequivocally define our time on earth. In the flash of a fang, poison mixes with blood, commutes to the brain and stops the body dead in its tracks.

Okay, so maybe that’s a little malefic. But it didn’t feel that way so much as injecting a little more somberness, a little more awareness, into our day. We didn’t turn back because of the sign, but our attention turned a bit from the hills, the Hollywood sign across the bright canyon, the little blue birds sailing in the foreground, and toward our feet on the ground, the fraying fabric there, the careful placement of each step.

After a few minutes of slow climbing, we picked our way back down the trail and were confronted again with the dead: a sculpture featuring notable contributors to the long train of wisdom flowing out behind modern astronomers (left: Galileo and Copernicus). They were reminders that, with the proper application of energy, ambition and integrity, we could stretch ourselves out past the bounds of our body’s time here on earth. We can each leave a legacy in our own achievements. We can be the giants on whose shoulders future humans stand. I was reminded of the horoscope, the 4/10 axis, the long climb from the bottom of the hill to the summit, the process of coming from one’s ancestry and going toward one’s future.

Inside the hall, the historic building welcomed us with a giant pendulum that swung slowly, always aimed at True North, while the clock below it turned with the motion of the Earth. On one side was the Hall of the Eye; on the other was the Hall of the Sky. These exhibits house more traditional — more Saturnine, if you will — information on astronomy: navigation, telescopes, phases of the Moon and other such expected features. But plunk down a side staircase and you enter the building’s newer spheres, which debuted in 2004 after the observatory’s extended closure.

At the bottom of the stairs, you turn right to enter the “wormhole stairway,” really a simple channel taking you one more flight down into the basement exhibits. Jenny and I joked that the wormhole ought to have been graced with some more interesting features if they were going to bother with a name like that: spooky music or ghostly lights, perhaps. We opted to go straight, instead. And were glad we did.

Because by going straight, we entered the Cosmic Connection, a hallway featuring a simultaneously whimsical and profound timeline that traces the development of the universe from the Big Bang until today. Below the traditional horizontal layout of the unending march of years is pinned a long, sparkling river of more than 2,000 pieces of jewelry that look like stars, moons, comets and other astronomical ingredients. The pieces were contributed by a longtime donor and associate of the observatory, who had collected them over more than four decades. It was fun to walk the hallway and try to figure out from which era different bracelets, pendants and earrings hailed. Jenny and I called to each other: “Look at this hairclip!” “I want that necklace!”

But the jewelry, cool as it was, was really just a Venusian side note to the Cosmic Connection itself. The hallway curves — maybe like space, maybe like time — so that just a few feet in, I started to feel a little disoriented, a little overwhelmed. Large-scale photo-quality illustrations of the Big Bang and other cosmic developments reminded me both of own sense of smallness and of my intimate connection with every particle of dust floating by. Randomness and order converged. I could almost hear the grand symphony of the spheres tuning up, gathering in, pausing, breathless, before the conductor’s baton sliced downward, setting the great wheel of time in motion. I thought, How could anyone look at these photos and not believe in a god, or a goddess, or a marvelous dancing troupe of deities?

Even though the Big Bang occurred 13.7 billion years ago, the Cosmic Connection made me feel like it’s right next door — like its long shimmering arms still reach around us, holding us, rippling through us, getting caught in our mortal webs, pushing us to grow upward and outward, while yet holding us to the bounds of its physical laws. Its motion is like the ripples of a pond where a rock has just been thrown: concentric undulations, moving out, and yet in, at the same time. Its long arms seem, to me, to reach back in time to gather up the detritus of our origins, then bring them forth to us in offering, asking us to repurpose the very material from which we came, so many billions of years ago, to put it to good use for the next step — outward? upward? inward? — on our long, curving journey through time.

Photo credits: jewelry, Big Bang

The Second of a Three-Part Series
Click here for Part 1

Day 3: Jenny’s friend Jessica moved to L.A. about the same time I did, and came for a visit on Sunday to see her old pal. The Dragon was a little disappointed when he realized that Jessica hadn’t come to play with him. Though he mostly kept a polite distance from the two as they caught up on each other’s lives, he punctuated their conversation with a few well-placed strategies for interacting.

First, he offered them popsicles and, when they accepted, carefully carried each one, its stick wrapped gently in a cloth napkin, to present to his guests. Next, he invited them to shoot Nerf rockets from his crossbow in the backyard and was thrilled when they agreed. Finally, when Jessica asked Jenny if she wanted to go out for lunch, the Dragon looked up at me with big eyes. “I want to go out to lunch!” he said. I had to break it to him that we wouldn’t be going. He cried as they drove away, said how much he missed them.

The Moon, ruler of Cancer, symbolizes children, feelings and relationship needs: What do we need to get from someone in order to feel secure, to feel we belong, to expect kindness to visit again? Childhood relationships give us a template for negotiating all other future relationships. The feelings we get from everyday interactions, like those the Dragon experienced on Sunday, are the feelings we ultimately expect to have throughout life: supported? rejected? appreciated? scorned? loved? hated?

It’s not saying “yes” or “no” to every request that’s important; it’s how you say “yes” or “no.” Jenny and Jessica could have sighed and rolled their eyes but said “yes” to Nerf rockets anyway. The Dragon would have caught the tone, and that’s what he would have taken in. But, the Moon strong in both of them, they didn’t respond that way. Similarly, it was okay that we couldn’t go to lunch with them, because what was important was that the Dragon felt his disappointment was an acceptable response. He was supported in it and allowed to feel it. And, when the time came, he was eased out of it, into the next moment.

The Moon is perhaps best described as a mirror. It reflects the light of the Sun: It can only give out what it receives. It can only shine in the manner it is shone upon. A child cannot generate compassion or appreciation for himself if he doesn’t learn how to by those around him.

I’m grateful for Jenny and Jessica and others around my son who understand this, instinctively.

Day 4: Jenny went to her Web 2.0 workshop and I went to work. We’re both embroiled, right now, in figuring out how to disseminate information and products we love across a worldwide electronic network of people who may or may not care.

In other words, we’re selling stuff online.

Sales has long been the domain of Mercury, ruler of Gemini, god of commerce, connections and fast talk. But these days, some Uranus stuff — ruler of Aquarius — is thrown into the mix. Mercury is no longer walking door-to-door, opening his briefcase and showing off the stuff inside. Now he requires the aid of people who know about a quirkily structured system that innovates and evolves at lightning-quick rates. He requires an Internet guru.

As quickly as we can take in the information, organize it in our minds and implement its new forms in our work, the Internet changes. This is where Uranus is truly at home: in a system that changes and innovates constantly; that keeps wriggling out from under the thumb of authorities; that serves, as best it can, the egalitarian principles of equal access, freedom of information, and opportunities for all.

The term “Web 2.0″ seems so quaint now. Surely we’re several generations past that moniker. I want to call it “Web Two-Point-Whoa.” Though, for the most part, I love its values and principles, the pace of the Internet is uncomfortable for me. Mostly, it’s too fast for my style. I’d rather roll a bit slower through my thoughts, let them dry like mud in the sun or ooze through me like water in a sponge. Internet marketing overwhelms me. Sometimes, I fantasize about an Internet for people who like to ponder sloooowly. I’d call it the Ruminet.

So in the evening, overwhelmed with information, a wakeful toddler on our hands, Jenny and I and the Dragon drove up a narrow mountain highway above the city to see the lights spread out below. I can’t help but think, facing a scene like that, about how small I am, how much I’m just one person, how many quintillions of connections are constantly being made not just on the Internet but in real life, electricity buzzing down wires, into homes, into light bulbs — on, off, on, off, on, off — and microwaves and UV rays and X-rays and all those unseen undulations connecting people with people and things and words everywhere.

And also the connections between people all over, face to face, in the dark clay huts huddled in the hills of north Africa, and in the concrete block homes braced against the Caribbean winds, and in the tall office towers rising over the megacities of East Asia, and in the burning desert heats and the pouring-down tropical rains and the silent snowfalls of elsewhere. And I always wonder what they’re saying, and how the response forms in the other’s mind, and what happens to their words when they rise up, or sink in.

And then the connections between people and plants and animals, in so many ways, and between people and images and words, and between Sun and Moon and Earth and other spheres, and between elements, and between the neurons in each individual’s mind, and between molecules and cells and atoms, and between chemicals and matter and energy.

And between what else, we don’t even know.

And we drove back down the mountain, and came home, and went to sleep, and I dreamt that Uranus himself was stealing people from my bed.

Photo credits: Crescent moon, computer, observatory view, telephone pole