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I don’t use astrology to predict events. I use it to help make sense of life.
Of course, I have other tools, too, like feelings, family, friends and faith. Astrology isn’t always the first place I go, especially in the midst of tragedy, but I often end up there, searching for clarity, groping toward meaning.
 So when a dear friend was killed this weekend in a horrible accident, my first reaction was gasping disbelief. Second came a deep and jagged grief. Third, a need to connect with other friends who loved her. Then, as the reality coursed through me, came numbness, and emptiness.
This morning, because I am who I am, I awoke yearning to understand the senselessness of her death through the perspective of my craft of astrology.
Why does it hurt so much that she’s gone?
Why can’t I grasp that she went the way she did?
What are we supposed to do, anyway, with grief?
I’m not pretentious enough to claim I found answers. But below are my thoughts, the small bits of meaning I glimpsed as I pondered the sudden, premature, tragic death of a beautiful, life-loving woman.
I wrote on Friday about the way astrology views the usual cycle of energy that guides an event, whether it’s the blossoming of a flower, the unfolding of a life or the movement of seasons. There is output, then enjoyment, then — usually; hopefully — slow shifts that dismantle the old order and prepare for the next cycle. I pointed out how important it is to take time when contemplating great changes to an old way of being, how rushing change could lead to crisis. I thought I was talking about politics, and money.
The suddenness of Heather’s death interrupts our sense of how time unfolds. Life is supposed to spin out evenly from its spool, one long flowing arc at a time. When it doesn’t, we say things like: “How can this be?” And: “I can’t believe it.” And: “It just doesn’t make sense.” A sudden, tragic end to a life doesn’t fit into the expected patterns of our mind, nor the gently sloping pathways of our hearts. Life is supposed to allow us some time to get used to change, to learn what we need ahead of time, to shift our gaze toward the next phase. It’s not meant to thrust us into loss all at once. At the very, very least, life is supposed to allow us a bit of time to say goodbye.
When death comes unanticipated, we don’t know what to do with ourselves: our hands, our voices, the alarm rising up in our chests. Our minds: What are we supposed to even think?
Often, then, not knowing what to do, we turn to the specifics of the departed person herself. This is the other way I can look to astrology to make sense of this loss. Because it occurred to me that, while astrology views each planet and sign as a symbol of an internal personal trait, other people in our lives also carry some traits for us — especially, perhaps, the ones we’re not able to manifest well ourselves. We need them to show us the way, the proper expression of laughter, or confidence, or drivenness.
I kept remembering, yesterday, how much Heather simply embraced life — how deeply she drank in the pleasures of the world all around her. She seemed always engaged, passionate about everything from coffee to music to movies to the people she loved. She laughed easily. She teased and admonished and was always good-natured. She seemed to let troubles roll off her back, shooing them away like flies.
Other traits might stand out more for other people, depending who they are and how they related with her. But whatever the specific experience, in relationship generally, each person brings something that the other needs in their life. Sometimes it’s the thing that drives us crazy; sometimes it’s the thing we most admire. Sometimes we don’t even notice the trait till they are gone. And when they are gone, we are left holding our hands out, waiting for more of what they brought: that passion, or that teasing, or that laughter. And when it doesn’t come — again, we don’t know what to do.
We have, then, to find her elsewhere — not to replace her, but to fill the emptiness her death leaves in our lives. Maybe, hopefully, we find her gifts in ourselves.
So my questions now are: What gifts did Heather give me that I could not accept when she was alive? What traits did I unconsciously ask her to hold that I could not yet make a part of myself? What do I need to become, now that she is no longer there to be it for me? I look at the list above and know immediately.
And so to celebrate Heather’s life, and to defy the tragedy of her death, I promise myself, and my family, and my friends, to cling less fiercely to worry — to let it go — so I can sink much more into each delectable moment life hands me, the way I saw her do.
Photo credit
 There are lots of places you can get play-by-play astrological analysis on the Wall Street bailout ballyhoo, and I encourage you to check them out: The brand-spanking-new site AstroDispatch is an excellent place to start. But here, I want to pull back and look wider — not at the specific events or the twirling of particular planets, but at the process itself. Because really: What in the hell is going on?
A little brief background in how astrology sees the world: Basically, there are three types of energy — active, stable and changing. (The technical terms are cardinal, fixed and mutable.) At first glance, you’d think the goings-on in Washington were active energy — I mean, there is a lot of stuff swirling. It doesn’t get much more active than this, right?
Right — kind of.
But this morning we got news that last night’s summit of government leaders broke down into one of the wildest meetings Washington has ever seen. There were proposals and counter-proposals flying frantically back and forth, there were charges of politicizing the event with electoral politics, and at one point Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson reportedly got down on one knee to beg the Democrats not to “blow up” his proposal.
Nothing, apparently, got done. And that’s what characterizes active energy: You put effort into a process, and out comes a product.
But there is no product out of Washington today.
That’s because the truly active phase has not yet arrived. It may — we hope — arrive this weekend. But right now our lawmakers are still in the grips of changing energy. See, the cycles of our lives, whether in government, in our private lives, in the turning of seasons, or in the lifetimes of stars, all follow this same basic pattern of energy output:
 Stable. This is where we suckle on the fruits of our labor, where life exists in a certain set way. Your relationship is good, the value of your house more or less rises, Wall Street and Washington work the way they seem always to have worked. On the positive side, it’s a luscious, comfy existence. We don’t have to bother with newness. On the negative side, it’s lazy and/or stubborn — I mean, really, who wants to get up from the couch?- Changing. Something occurs that gets you up from the couch. It might be slow change; it might come quickly: A partner has a protracted disease or, at the other extreme, dies suddenly in an accident. Housing prices fall slowly but surely, or one surprise day the Dow Jones drops 1,000 points. If we stay on the couch, we risk being stuck in old and ineffective patterns. But when change is on the doorstep, we should not always act right away. We first need brainstorming, information, consultation, analysis, perspective and synthesis of ideas in order to prepare the way for whatever is next. Granted, sometimes this has to occur quickly. But it still must occur.
- Active. Armed with information, and perhaps even wisdom, we can move ahead with confidence — letting go of old patterns for good, working to bring about a new order. We pursue a new love interest, we find a new job, we move, we put reasonable regulations in place to prevent the next Great Depression. If we are effective in this phase, we cycle up to a new plateau of stability, where we can once again suckle on the fruits of our labor — until the next change comes.
I see the bailout debate now in a late changing stage. This is the stage, says the Huber perspective, wherein a person, an entity, a country, pours everything they have into a task. It’s like a climber who finally sees the summit he’s after. No result is yet produced — he’s still climbing, and climbing, and climbing — but the end is in sight. We can see it; we know what we want: Stability. Rest. The gorgeous view from the top. We want to get through the changing phase, the active phase, and settle Wall Street back on its couch to get fat again.
But Washington doesn’t yet seem to know how to reach that end. That’s because we first need brainstorming, information, consultation, analysis, perspective and synthesis of ideas in order to prepare the way for whatever is next. We need to complete the changing phase before we can move on to the active phase.
 I have a hard time with people who won’t stop to think, to gather information, to analyze and imagine the unfolding of different scenarios. Oh, I don’t care if the question is, “What movie do you want to see?” or even, “What shall we name the baby?” But when the question is, “How shall we save this country’s economy?” or “How shall we spend $700 billion today?” — then I get a little perturbed. Future stability is put at risk when the changing phase — learning, processing, analyzing — is bowled over in the rush to action. Acting prematurely can send us right back into crisis.
Or, at the risk of sounding schoolmarmish: Haste makes waste.
Look, an old structure has been decaying for several years. An old stable phase has been changing and is now in the final throes of its death. Our leaders are scrambling to manifest its next form — to move from a changing phase to an active phase. The sense of urgency — of needing an anchor in stormy waters — is natural at this point. It could almost be no other way. But it does not have to be managed with panic, fear or — worst of all — divisiveness. It can, with the right leadership, be managed with wisdom and perspective, with vision and unity.
Hey, a girl can dream.
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P.S. I realize that, after using the word “change” in my headline, I should probably have mentioned something about the presidential candidates’ (over?)use of that word. I plan to analyze each of their charts next week, and the subject of change will no doubt come up. So stay tuned. In the meantime, click below to comment — I’d love to know what you think!
Photo credits: Money, Couch potato, Don’t panic
Thoughts on the interplay of power and seduction in Bush’s appeal for support on the financial markets bailout proposal.
Click to continue reading “Seduction and Power, Take 2: Venus, Scorpio, Money and Control”
 In the last 24 hours, without even trying, I came across two news stories that caught me up in the Libra energy now swirling around the ether: ideas of love, beauty, partnership, seduction — and power.
Yes, power.
First, our local NPR station featured an interview with two Woodbury University professors: Architecture Department Chair Norman Millar and Architecture Professor Paulette Singley.
The topic, delectably risque, was Architecture and Seduction.
Now, let’s just be up-front about this: Libra, by no means, corners the market on seduction. There are plenty of other signs — Scorpio, for instance, or Leo — with their own unique brands of come-hither. But Libra is the quintessential sign of relationship and art, so it was intriguing to hear the two topics linked up in discussion, with nary a mention of astrology.
The discussion was a preview of a panel held last night at UCLA’s Hammer Museum, which is running an exhibition on John Lautner’s work, “Between Earth and Heaven,” through October 12th. The pair (of course!) exchanged opinions and insights about how a home could be laid out (pun intended) and accessorized to seduce a lover from front porch to kitchen to hallway to bedroom. It was agreed, for instance, that there was something very, very sexy about an open floor plan, about glass.
This struck me as very Libran: A whole environment designed not to bonk a potential bedmate over the head with garish flirtations but, instead, to evoke an atmosphere that slowly draws the lover into your embrace. Venus in Libra might be a little headier than, for example, sensual Venus in Taurus — perhaps engaging in a lively debate that stirs the passions — but it still knows how to evoke an atmosphere. After all, at its best, Libra, ruled by Venus, wants you to agree to follow her lead through the house. Where’s the fun, the challenge, in dragging you?
I drove home slowly, thoughts of a seductive house twirling about in my brain. I parked the car in the driveway, grabbed the mail from the box and slowly opened the door.
 There were model train tracks on the floor, a pile of clean diapers on the easy chair and breakfast dishes still strewn on the kitchen table. The lair of a temptress this was not.
I sighed and forgot about the story. I had an evening packed with power struggles with my preschooler. I went to sleep feeling unsettled and pessimistic. When and how would these power struggles ever end? Would we ever just have fun together again? Why can’t he just do what I say?
I didn’t sleep well.
When I logged onto my e-mail this morning, another unwittingly Libran message awaited me. The same message, really, just from a different perspective. It read, in part:
When parents model the “healthy selfishness” of partnership and don’t resist their children’s narcissism, the children eventually learn that it feels good to care for others.
Today, notice all the ways in which *giving* makes you feel good, and how others feel good when you allow them to give to you. Let the line between giving and receiving dissolve. That’s the magic of partnership! (Source)
Hmmmm, indeed.Perhaps I don’t need to seduce my husband as much as I need to charm my child.
Because between the lines of the Libra impulse to compromise, agree and charm is really a question of power. As one of yesterday’s radio panelists put it, a bachelor pad is a place designed to get someone to give up a certain amount of power, to bend that person to your will, to make them want to go to bed with you.
To make them want. There is power there, no matter how much sugar you pour on it.
We often tell our child that hitting us isn’t a good way to get what he wants. Ditto whining, yelling and stomping. So why would I think anger would work well going the other direction? Last night, and many nights before, I tried to force this child to bend to my will and go to sleep before he’s ready. But Louise Huber’s seed thought for Libra goes like this:
I choose the way which leads between two great lines of force. (Source)
What way leads between the two forces, instead of toppling everyone over to one or the other? How can we move beyond either-or into a space where all boats rise, where a  third alternative is viable and good? How can we acknowledge the powerful forces that snarl within each of us, but not enable them to dominate? How can we reframe our goal to be not power-over but power-with?
What would happen if we asked questions like this in public life as well as in our private lives?
Photo credits: bachelor pad, messy house, candidates
A different kind of tool, based on thousands of years of wisdom about human nature, for assessing whether self-employment is right for you; identifying your strengths, challenges and unconscious influences; and seeing how you might sabotage yourself without even realizing it.
Click to continue reading “Entrepreneurship: Not Just a Job Anymore”
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So when a dear friend was killed this weekend in a horrible accident, my first reaction was gasping disbelief. Second came a deep and jagged grief. Third, a need to connect with other friends who loved her. Then, as the reality coursed through me, came numbness, and emptiness.
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