“Tom and myself rode down this hill in a ropey old 1950′s Leyland bus, typical of the Maltese bus fleet, but driven by the stunt driver for the bus scenes in ‘Speed’ where the bomb would go off if they slowed to less than [...]]]> The photographer’s description of this image is as striking as the picture itself:

“Tom and myself rode down this hill in a ropey old 1950′s Leyland bus, typical of the Maltese bus fleet, but driven by the stunt driver for the bus scenes in ‘Speed’ where the bomb would go off if they slowed to less than 40mph! We were on high seats opposite the exit door and had to grip on whilst centripetal force took us and the bus closer to the outside wall. Tyres squealed on the hot tarmac and we were saved by some old dear in black who didn’t seem to need to hang on and dinged the bell as calmly as you like for the driver to stop and let her off.” (Source)

Life feels like this, sometimes, for each of us. Yet some people are more prone than others to careening through the days, whipped back and forth by forces they feel they can’t control. They complain of other people’s actions and influences on their lives: “He made me feel bad,” “She won’t let me go,” “They really have me tied down.”

In traditional psychology, this innate sense of where control lies in one’s life is referred to as the locus of control. In astrology — namely in Huber astrology — we can determine where a chart native’s locus of control lies in different areas of life by examining the dynamic calculations: a series of negative and positive numbers whose values reflect the strength of various mode and element combinations within the chart, based on planet, sign and house placements.

For example, someone with dynamic calculations of +33 mutable and +14 earth will end up with a “build-up” of +47 in Virgo energy (Virgo being the mutable earth sign). This means, in a nutshell, that the person tends to assume that Virgo-type control over life exists externally, out in the world, not within her own domain. So though she may have several planets in Virgo, she may feel their obligation, responsibility and critical analysis being imposed on her from others rather than from within herself.

Similarly, someone with dynamic calculations of -18 fixed and +10 water will end up with a “cut-down” of -8 in Scorpio (fixed water) energy. The person’s sense of emotional depth, intensity and control will lie more within himself than without; he is more likely to acknowledge that his strong feelings are generated internally rather than to blame someone else, or some external circumstance, for them.

This basic knowledge of dynamic calculations, alongside the psychological concept of locus of control, can be enormously helpful for clients who feel they are careening down a mountainside in a runaway bus with a crazy driver and a bomb on board. The astrologer may be the wise woman in black, calmly ringing the bell, telling the client it’s okay to get off, to see what it’s like to descend calmly and quietly on his own two feet.

Image: Harry Willis

Psychology and sociology have conspired in recent decades to promote the belief that temperament and personality are all nurture, no nature. But as most parents will tell you (and [...]]]> This picture is appropriate in that I’m now reading The Wonder of Boys by Michael Gurian in an effort to better understand the burgeoning boy in my life.

Psychology and sociology have conspired in recent decades to promote the belief that temperament and personality are all nurture, no nature. But as most parents will tell you (and as researchers have finally begun to admit), kids come out with their own distinct natures — a portion of which are clearly gender-specific.

Though he is careful to allow for each person’s individuality, Gurian’s book describes the ways testosterone, fetal brain development and other biochemical processes drive the traits we’ve come to identify as “typically” male: physicality, competitiveness, task-orientation, skill-building, independence-seeking and so forth. As someone who has historically experienced competition as anxiety- and shame-producing, this sentence particularly struck me: “Competition, for boys, is a form of nurturing behavior.” (p. 29)

I read the sentence to my husband who, as my mind was still reeling, casually remarked that he understood it instinctively. I had to start reshuffling my own neurons, start accepting the idea that the teasing element to my husband’s and son’s relationship might be, in fact, not a form of put-down or rivalry but, instead, a display of deep affection. How strange, I thought.

Not surprisingly, these “typically male” characteristics are part and parcel of the Mars archetype. Mars is the rawest expression of masculinity in the horoscope chart; it gets refined and strengthened as it goes “up the ladder” to solar consciousness and, then, transformative Plutonian will (this structure is per the Huber schema). But at the instinctive level, we can truly feel the testosterone pumping through, the competitiveness and the physicality and the drive to build skills, the urge to perform and succeed.

In my son’s chart, Mars is in Taurus in the 9th house. He learns well through large-muscle movement, through experiences that engage his mind in whole-body knowing. At three, he’s interested in reading and writing, but sitting in a chair and going over symbols and sounds won’t do for him the way it did for me. He is much better with interactivity, with word games that challenge him to build new skills, with learning new words and trying them out in a sentence, with connecting pictures with letters through books or television shows. (He is currently obsessed with PBS’s Word World, which makes letters into pictures of the things they represent.)

He also needs to move in a way I’ve never experienced: If he doesn’t ride his bike or scooter, kick a soccer ball, hit a baseball or run for several hours each day, he is restless and grumpy all night.

My Mars, on the other hand, is in Aquarius in the 6th house — a very different orientation. My body has always seemed, somewhat, like an appendage to my mind; give me an idea and I’ll chew on it and chew on it and chew on it until it’s spent. If there’s time later and I’m inspired, I might go for a stroll around the neighborhood. My Mars gets pumped by exploring and analyzing ideas, especially if I can organize them into a thought system. That’s why astrology works so well for me as a discipline. Whereas other tasks might bore me, I am continually absorbed by astrology, working to increase my knowledge and skills; it gives me energy rather than depleting it. I want to distinguish myself and be the best I can be in this field.

Sports? Meh, I prefer watching instead.

Take a look at the Mars in your chart. What sign and house is it in? Do you feel the energy pumping through you in the ways suggested by the sign and house? How so?

Photo: Lochnagarth

i knew you before you had a mother, when you were newtlike, swimming … when your connections belonged only to yourself, when you had no history to hook on to, barnacle … i knew you when you were all eyes and a cocktail, blank as [...]]]> A friend sent me a lovely, aching poem this morning. “In Knowledge of Young Boys” by Toi Derricotte reads, in part,

i knew you before you had a mother,
when you were newtlike, swimming
… when your connections
belonged only to yourself,
when you had no history
to hook on to,
barnacle …
i knew you when you were all
eyes and a cocktail,
blank as the sky of a mind,
a root, neither ground nor placental;
not yet
red with the cut nor astonished
by pain, one terrible eye
open in the center of your head
to night, turning

People often ask me whether a birth time is legitimate for astrological purposes if labor has been induced, or the baby was born by C-section, or a child has come prematurely. “Of course,” I tell them. “The birth time is the birth time.” It marks the primordial energetic imprint of the universe on the inhaling, exhaling, screaming, shocked, squishy little being when it emerges from the newty swamp of the womb onto the dry horizon of earth.

Before that instant, the instant of imprint, the child is without a chart, without its own native markings bestowed by the cosmos. It is utterly unto itself, with “connections [belonging] only to yourself,” with “no history to hook onto, barnacle … blank as the sky of a mind, a root, neither ground nor placental.” It is the moment of breakage, when the baby separates from the mother’s body, when the umbilicus is severed, that the child has a chart — which is to say that, at that instant, the child begins, at first unwittingly and then with more intention, to craft connections and hooks and roots of its own.

These connections and hooks and roots are embedded in the horoscope chart. They are described by the etchings of aspect lines and the archetypal astro-glyphs that dot the chart like cuneiform: the bones that give shape to the life. And like bones, such natural tendencies — to love exuberantly, perhaps, or to think deeply or to revel in the pleasure of the senses — can be broken, sprained or strained; can hurt for no obvious reason, can become lame or numb or awkward, can burn. They can, as Derricotte writes, become

red with the cut [or] astonished
by pain, one terrible eye
open in the center of your head
to night, turning

When the astonishment of pain — physical or otherwise — takes the child, the youth, the grown-up away from its natural state, fears and complexes and dysfunctions result; shadow settles in. We live this way for a while, often for a long time. We feel the ways that poorly-tended pain gives birth to itself, over and over and over and over, until we forget, maybe, how it is to feel good, to feel whole and natural and vibrant. Maybe this forgetfulness pervades the whole life. Maybe it is isolated, confined to just one area or just one era of the life.

Whenever and however pain happens, repair and restoration are necessary for healing which, at its root, means wholeness. Instead of repair and restoration, though, so many of us adapt to the pain: We limp, or sit differently, or give parts of ourselves away. We begin to forget who we are, what the healthy and whole expression of our natural connections and hooks and roots really looks like, really feels like. We self-medicate or complain a lot or take bold risks or leave our relationships or quit our jobs to “find ourselves.” This is hard work in service of pain.

The horoscope chart is not the end word in healing and wholeness. In fact, it is to that stillpoint at the center of the chart that all roads finally, lovingly, lead. But some pain is so profound that it’s taken us off the road completely, placed blinders over our eyes and cotton in our ears, made it crushingly difficult to find the way back. The chart is like a map — not back to the womb, when we had no history to hook onto, barnacle, but back to our aboriginal selves, to integrate the astonishment of pain with the wholeness of who we were in that first moment of squishy aliveness.

If you dump a cup of bleach into a tide pool or command a sudden storm to a shaky cliffside, nothing in those environments is the same afterwards. If fragile flora are so lucky as to survive, if [...]]]> I’ve been turning this idea over in my mind like a rock in the tide for some time now.

If you dump a cup of bleach into a tide pool or command a sudden storm to a shaky cliffside, nothing in those environments is the same afterwards. If fragile flora are so lucky as to survive, if animals are not sickened or injured or displaced, they then adapt to their new surroundings in order to survive.

So, too, in astrology: Everything is related, even unaspected planets or completely separate aspect structures or the charts of two people who don’t even know each other. The Wikipedia definition of an ecosystem goes like this:

An ecosystem is a natural unit consisting of all plants, animals and micro-organisms (biotic factors) in an area functioning together with all of the non-living physical (abiotic) factors of the environment. An ecosystem is a completely independent unit of interdependent organisms which share the same habitat. (Source)

The Wikipedia article goes on to say:

Eugene Odum, a founder of ecology, stated: “Any unit that includes all of the organisms in a given area interacting with the physical environment so that a flow of energy leads to clearly defined trophic structure, biotic diversity and material cycles (i.e., exchange of materials between living and nonliving parts) within the system is an ecosystem.” (Source)

It is easy to make the case for all planets interacting with each other and none being immune to the influence of another. For example, Deborah, a strongly Saturnine person who adheres strictly to rules, plans out her day and looks before she leaps is seized, one morning, by the spontaneous urge to quit her job, dye her hair purple and run away for a weekend — or for a year.

What has happened in her environment — what bleach has gotten into her water? (Likely something like transiting Uranus is aspecting her Saturn, perhaps with Mars thrown into the picture as well.) If she follows through on those urges, how will her life and personality change? How will the “trophic structure” — i.e., that heretofore stable, symbiotic system that feeds and sustains Deborah’s life — need to shift to accommodate the new, impetuous element that the environment of her personality has not experienced before?

On a subtler level, David has spent years in therapy working to replace his knee-jerk need for others’ reassurance (a weak Moon, perhaps) with a more self-assured, self-aware  independence (a strong Sun). How will this shift affect the other parts of his internal environment: Saturn’s need for security, Mars’s urge to explore and express, Venus’s desire to relate? How will the edges of that internal environment — that is, David’s relationships with other people — be affected? How will his shifting relationships impact his own internal ecosystem?

There is much more to say on this topic, for the idea of an ecosystem itself is complex. But for now, I leave you these questions to ponder: How does the flow of energy in my own chart create a “trophic structure” within me? In other words, how does my aspect structure feed each of my planets, creating a clearly defined personality system? Are any of my planets starving? Are any of them gorging? What shifts might bring more balance to my internal ecosystem? What unintended impacts might those shifts also bring?

Photo: joguldi

Sometime during the evening, our thoughts turned to telekinetics — [...]]]> The other night my husband and I were discussing psychic phenomena and related curiosities with a skeptic friend. I enjoy these kinds of discussions very much because they force me to do some challenging mental acrobatics, to grapple with important concepts like doubt and proof and faith.

Sometime during the evening, our thoughts turned to telekinetics — spoon-bending, moving things with your mind, et cetera. Our friend said, “Moving things requires energy. How could something move if you weren’t applying energy to it?”

I pointed out that mental energy could be very powerful and, if applied correctly, who’s to say it couldn’t move things from a distance? I concluded my argument with what I believed to be ironclad fact: “After all,” I said triumphantly, “if we only use 10 percent of our brains, who’s to say what’s possible if we used much more of them?”

I got scoffed at.

Our friend challenged the “10 percent myth,” saying the claim is bandied about too much without any real evidence or backing. He said he doubted, very much, that it was true. I was flummoxed — no one had ever argued back on that point before — so we did what any self-respecting group of forty-ish Americans would do: We consulted the Internet.

Sure enough, my friend was right. Scientific American said so. The University of Washington said so. Even that sacred guardian of Internet truth and legend, Snopes, said so.

Yet I also know, from my work in early childhood development, that psychoneurobiologists have discovered that brain neurons are malleable — they can change and adapt according to input from the self and the environment. So although we might use all of our brains, our brains can also change. So I still contend that there is a possibility they can change in ways we’re not, as a species, even aware of yet, even to the point of bending spoons and lifting oak tables with our minds. I’m sure there are rules and structures and limitations governing how neurons can change (Saturn!), but for now I’d like to maintain my belief in at least the possibility of more than we know.

Interestingly, what the facts did, instead of dashing my hopes, was to bring me back to the sticky questions of faith, proof and doubt, to understand more about the nature of these things than I did before. I got, suddenly, how different people require different things for faith. There are a lot of people, our friend included, who require physical proof of things: “Seeing is believing”-type people. On the other end of the spectrum are the “I just know it in my heart”-type people — those who require no proof other than their own intuition.

These differing attitudes correspond to the Jungian typologies Sensate and Intuitive which, in turn, correspond to the astrological elements Earth and Fire. I would expect those heavy on Earth energy in their horoscope charts to require more solid proof of things and those with more Fire to follow their intuitive beliefs much more readily.

I think, though, that it is not an either-or question. We all have both Earth and Fire in our charts, requiring us to weigh which beliefs we approach from an Earthy perspective and which ones are more Fiery for us. Each of us carries a spectrum along which we fall according to the belief in question. Rare is the person who requires hard proof for everything, or for nothing.

What about you? Where do you fall on the spectrum? Do you require physical verification or strong intuition when it comes to, say, your beliefs about an afterlife? About God/Spirit/Divine? About human nature? About love?

How certain are you of your beliefs? What makes you so sure?

Photo: blondyimp

But my eye is drawn this time to the colors, which put me in mind of the Huber school, which uses color [...]]]> It would be so easy to write about Venus with this photo: the beauty, the light, the symmetry, the suggested fragrance, the gorgeous growth created through the symbiosis of earth and sun, water and stem.

But my eye is drawn this time to the colors, which put me in mind of the Huber school, which uses color to great effect in its rendering and reading of horoscope charts.

The most obvious color here is the winged violet, but the dark lush of green and pinprick shocks of orange both compete with, and complete, the purple. In this way, all four aspect colors — orange and green, red and blue (i.e., purple) — are present in this close-up photo of flowers in a field.

Orange, green, red and blue represent the four different ways that energy can flow between two things: in the case of astrology, between two planets — that is, between two archetypes.

The field of green grass is the fertile ground of openness where perception occurs. In Huber astrology, the quincunx (150 degrees) and the semi-sextile (30 degrees) are rendered in green, signaling the fecundity of the open mind, of learning, of perceiving, of making decisions through information gleaned from many different corridors.

From this field of grass — receiver and channeler of water and nutrients — comes the impulse for growth. This impulse is sourced in a single seed and symbolized by red in the Huber scheme, red of initiative and activity and pushing-up through the cold winter ground to find the new spring. The essence of red lines (the 180-degree opposition and the 90-degree square) is action, restlessness, forging a path, creating new things. There is often some tension here, some work that must be done or an obstacle to overcome. The red lines are rarely easy, but they are always energized.

At the end of the red phase comes blue: the trine (120 degrees) and the sextile (60 degrees). Here the enjoyment phase starts, cooling the sweat of action, putting a lemonade in our hand and showing us to the chaise lounge, to sit back, to enjoy our work. The green has sourced the flower, the red has pushed it upward into our sights and now the blue allows us to rest. If there is yet work to be done, it is only the work of perfection, of fussing and cleaning and maybe a lazy pulling of a weed here and there. But mostly it is the energy of appreciation, a Look what I’ve done!

And then there is orange (the conjunction: 0 degrees). Orange is the tightest, most intense color, the kind of energy you get when you braid two things together so tightly that it’s hard to tell them apart. It is here, in the flower’s pistil, that the energy of receptivity, creativity and restfulness come together, where its generative ovaries and receptive stamen meet to perpetuate the life of its species. The riotous intensity is emblematic of this clashing mergence, a clashing so bright it hurts — yet it is totally natural, totally at one with the nature of the flower itself.

And so, in the end, there is something of the Venusian even in this rainbow of colors. It is the Venusian manner of bringing elements together into the perfect balance that’s needed to create and to enjoy and to continue unfolding the luscious beauty of purple flowers in open green fields through the unconscious, impulsive union of the orange.

Photo: cornish celt

They want to know how each person will express [...]]]> Astrologers don’t often talk about the structure of the horoscope chart. They’re concerned, instead, with the movements of planets and stars: how the heavenly bodies move across the skies to interact with each other, to brand upon each individual a small, unique form of their unfathomable universal energies.

They want to know how each person will express a Moon square Saturn or a Mars trine Uranus or any other of the seemingly infinite combinations of stars, planets and houses that describe our lives. They want to tell people how these energies may play out in their lives, what to watch for, how to manage the difficult ones delicately, how to exploit the positive ones for maximum gain.

But in the center of the chart (at least when it is drawn Huber-style, like the one to the right) is a small, inviolable circle. I see this circle as the meeting-point of the individual and the universal — that is, the point where the Divine within the person reaches out toward the overarching Divine that pervades and penetrates the whole universe. That small circle is the doorway between the limited self and the unlimited eternal. It is the stillpoint we all long for, even as we try to understand the whirlwind of energies that move and change and dance around us, pulling us in and pushing us back, every day.

In this time of chaos and fear — I know more people now, in this moment, who are jobless than I’ve ever known, collectively, my entire life — I’ve also heard more people say, “I have faith” than I’ve ever heard before. I’ve heard the certainty in their voices, too: They’re not just repeating a platitude, trying to convince themselves it’ll all be okay when underneath they’re quaking. Instead of giving into chaos and fear, they’ve somehow moved closer to the stillpoints at their centers, become able to dance with the rhythms of their charts, no matter how chaotic or frightening. They’re letting go into the largeness that engulfs us — not in a powerless, belly-up kind of way but in a powerful, God’s-will kind of way.

When we’re tested, we can fight back, we can turn over or we can spread our arms to receive what is coming.

In Buddhist terms, this last choice is the choice to let go of attachment to outcome A to welcome whatever may arrive, to trust that the universe will bring what is needed next. My astrology mentor says, “We live our charts, whether we know it or not.” Indeed, energies will evolve in each of our lives, bringing us to Point A or Avenue B without us ever really intending it. But what we do when we get there is still largely up to us: If we want to see a monkey at Point A, are we going to fight back if we see a taco stand instead? Or will we embrace the taco for what it is?

In either case, we can still breathe, and feel the universe well up within us.

Photo credit