Depth Astrology

The town where I live with my little family backs up to Angeles National Forest. There is a small canyon not far from our house, right at the forest’s edge, that I sometimes pass through on my morning walk. On one side is a row of houses; on the other is a craggy hillside full of shrubs and sharp stones. This morning, as I crested the hill going down to the canyon, I noticed a small group of people gathered, gazing, smiling softly at the hillside.

I knew what they were smiling at. Deer occasionally come down from the hills, especially when it’s hot, to feast on the scrub. I slowed my pace a bit to enjoy the animals’ grace and share a rare moment of connection with my neighbors. Then I continued walking, happy for the brief gift.

Last month, Alan and I took our son to visit extended family in Minnesota. Alan’s aunt and uncle live on five rural acres — a brace of trees close in to their house, seas of long, native grass beyond. As we chatted, I noticed a mother deer and fawn passing within 20 feet of the house. I scooped up our three-year-old and went running to the window. “Look, sweetie!” I exclaimed, pointing. “Look!” He and I, and Alan and his aunt, stood at the window staring at the deer for a long time. But Alan’s uncle declined to come have a look. “I’ve seen ‘em,” he teased.

A deer in the city is a case of exquisite oppositeness.

It is unexpected, yes, but more than that it is an utter affront to the fast, forward, frenetic energy of urban life. A deer is everything a city is not: quiet, leisurely, graceful, present. Satisfied. Also, apparently, unafraid. Its appearance infects us city-dwellers with deerlike energy. We slow down, we breathe deeper, we remember to savor this moment. Perhaps we even imagine what it would be like to inhabit those elegant legs, that decidedly unself-conscious form, those lightly twitching ears. Perhaps we walk more lightly for a few brief steps.

One of the things I always look for in a horoscope chart is whether there are two planets pulling at each other from opposite sides of the circle. I also look for crowds of planets on one side of the chart with no balancing force on the other. Oddly enough, both configurations can look rather similar in real life: The person goes to the extreme of one side without a healthy counterbalance. Only through consciousness are we able to recognize and address this tendency. Yet when we do, we are presented with another problem: Rather than going all-out to one side, we experience a standoff between two competing forces. It becomes necessary, as Carl Jung said, to reconcile the opposites. The horoscope chart has specific suggestions for how to do this.

In Los Angeles, we tend to go full-boar urban. Ten million people live here, the city is ablaze with headlights, taillights and neon signs. Cars and buses and trucks seem always in a hurry. People bump into you as they yammer into their cell phones. High rises hover like stooped shoulders. Elevators whir interminably up and down. Long lines of people slink around corners. Music barks from garage-door storefronts. All the activity seems to double or triple in size as it bounces off buildings and freeways, revving everyone up, up, up.

It is rare, in city life, to have such a gentle and organic reminder of our opposite as the sudden, quiet appearance of a deer sauntering by. When it happens, then, it is an occasion. It is a chance to remember how much we’ve gone lopsided to one side of our collective psyche — to the fast, the forward, the frenetic — without even being aware of it. Without consciousness, without deliberation and intention, we get caught up in the swirl of urban life around us.

The appearance of a deer is a tap on the shoulder, saying, “Ssshhhhh. Ssshhhhh.” It is a gentle pull to the other side of the chart, a counterweight to the way we forget our breath, an exquisite reminder that the opposite is encased, however deeply, in the shadows of what we choose to do and be. It is an invitation to begin reconciling our opposites.

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