The First in a Three-Part Series

Last night, I held the Dragon in my arms outside the Terminal B security gate at Bob Hope Airport. We waved goodbye, amidst tears, to my younger sister as she negotiated the gray trays, crisp uniforms and conveyor belts of contemporary airline travel.

A marketing professional with a public library system in Washington state, Jenny’s official purpose for the trip was to attend a highly reputable one-day power training in Web 2.0 promotion.

But her real purpose was to see the Dragon — and maybe Alan and me a bit, too.

We spent five days relaxing in the comfortable gladness of siblinghood, which we hadn’t done, just the two of us — outside of oft-interrupted exchanges in our parents’ kitchen during boisterous family gatherings — in almost 16 years of post-graduate adulthood (for sadness! for shame!). As we caught up on years of lost togetherness, I shared with Jenny the way my eyes had changed since I started studying astrology ten years ago, the way I now experience the world from two simultaneous perspectives: first as just a person, like any other person, coping with the present moment and leaning toward the next; second as a giant scope taking in the archetypes that pulse through the world around us, largely unnoticed, in every successive instant.

And so, below, Part 1 of an astrological photo essay (with lots of commentary: come on, it’s me!) of our five days together.

Day 1: After spending the morning catching up, then eating lunch in our laps at the Dragon’s daycare, Jenny and I and the Dragon hopped in the car and cruised out to the beach. We spent the day splashing, sunning and sauntering along the Santa Monica pier.

Traditionally, the ocean is associated with Pisces, which is “moving water” energy: the waves go back and forth, back and forth, seeking the seashells they have lost, the edges of sand, the toe-tips of little boys and girls.

Though the wide-open ocean can be fearsome and fierce, at the edges, usually, it just finds what’s there, curves around it, laps it up, pulls back. Sometimes shells, sand and sandcastles return with the waves; sometimes they escape the water’s prodding. The ocean’s edge mostly works with the landscape instead of against it; even on cliffsides and jutting rocks, the impact of each moment is not hammering so much as tendering: an offer, a waiting to receive. Pisces, at its best, is a gentle moving-with.

And astrologically, water is feeling, empathy, intuition: a knowing, a responding, without words. Indeed, while Jenny and I employed our Mercurial sides on the drive there — talking up a sisterly storm as the Dragon napped — being on the beach itself was an exercise in just opening to the elements, allowing the flow of sun-streams and water-waves to wash over us, to wear us down, bit by bit, as we gave ourselves over in return. Rhythmicity, reciprocity, response. Relaxation.

Even up on the pier, when the Dragon got restless, we donned a Piscean go-with-the-flow: Play on the railing? Sure! Have an ice cream cone? Yes! Toddle through the restaurant where we had no intention of eating? Why not? It wasn’t so much indulgence as just following the tide of the child as he ran back and forth, seeing and responding to the landscape of the pier, being at one with his guiding hand, with the little bundle of feeling and response walking around on two legs right beside us.

Happy. relaxed enablers, we were.

Day 2: Last year, I won (lucky Jupiter!) a $200 gift certificate to Glen Ivy Hot Springs and Spa for being one of the first customers to patronize my friend Lissa’s new Dream Dinners store. I’d been waiting for just the right time and person to spend it with. This was it.

Glen Ivy has lots of opportunities to frolic in Venus energy, Libra style: facials, body wraps, soaps and washes and delicate aromas; delectable food and drink (Jenny sipped almond-spiked champagne while I reveled in a peach smoothie); even the sumptuous cascades of bougainvillea that wrap their arms around the precisely-landscaped grounds fairly ooze Venus-in-Libra.

But it wasn’t the warm breezy beauty of Libra’s Venus I was after so much as the earthy ground of Taurus — Venus’s other preferred domicile. So after a quick dip in the sulfur hot springs (your nose gets used to the smell fast!), we found Club Mud and, standing hip-deep in muddy water, slathered ourselves in the red clay meant to open the skin and cleanse it deeply. Then we laid out in the 95-degree Sun to let the mud do its magic. Jenny, who’s never lived in such heat, couldn’t bear to stay out in it long.

Whereas Pisces is moving water, Taurus is still, silent earth. Like the Earth herself, Taurus at its best is persistent, enduring and resourceful. Out of balance, though, Taurus can be indulgent, lazy and impervious to input: It’s hard to get up and get moving when you’re as heavy and solid as the whole world. And so, for today, I gave in. I lay there for an hour, my body baking like a quiet clay figure in a kiln.

My mind dropped slowly, like a reverse periscope. I felt myself move away from the bounds of my skin while the clay went about its work.

I knew my mind wouldn’t wander too deep here, with strangers’ voices babbling and outdoor showers percolating all around me. So I just let it drift. It started with the sense of being encased in hard, dry earth, of my skin cracking every time it moved, of slowness and patience, of the stubbornness of time, of Taurus, which is opposite my own sign, Scorpio, still water: icebergs, deep dark lakes. Speaking of impervious.

Jenny and I are both water signs, but Alan’s a Taurus and from inside the layer of drying earth I caught a glimpse — a shadow of my shadow, the opposite I’d quite literally married. It’s important, say the Jungians, to integrate your opposite, make tentative friends with your shadow. If we deny our darkness, we give half our power away — at least.

Alan gets to shower in my element, in water, which is his opposite, every morning. Sometimes he goes swimming. He waters the lawn. He does the laundry. When, but once before, in this same place, have I ever been covered in earth? Maybe we could all start knowing ourselves better by playing with our shadow element. I imagined all the ways we could do just that. I’ll try to retrieve them and spin them out into a post in a few days or so.

Lying there in the quiet darkness of my own mind, my whole body encased in dried mud, I slowly realized that, in the midst of all that unmoving earth, the epicenter of our recent earthquake was very close by.

When Taurus moves, it’s big.

Stay awake for Part 2: the energy of children, global parties and Internet marketing.

Photo credits: Beach, Sand dollar, Bougainvillea

I’m fascinated by the interview with famed astrologer Robert Hand in the current issue of The Mountain Astrologer. What particularly interests me is Hand’s description of astrology not as a religion or a science but as a language — and, in modern times, a fuzzy one at that:

“We have to stop thinking of astrology as being like a scientific technology in which there is one and only one way of doing things. Instead, we must think of it as being a linguistic system, a language. The difference between a good and a bad language is not whether the language is English, German, Spanish, Chinese, or Hindu. These are all good languages. The difference in usefulness of one language over another stems from whether a language can say something. Insofar as a language cannot say something, it is deficient.

“The language of modern or 20th-century astrology is so impoverished that it cannot say things clearly. It is fuzzy, unfocused and simplistic. … In modern astrology, as it is done by many people, one cannot even tell if it is working or not. It might say something, but not clearly. In medieval astrology, you can be precise.” (Robert Hand quoted in The Mountain Astrologer, Aug/Sept 2008, p. 44)

I pondered this assertion as I walked through the crisp, clear air of the Los Angeles foothills this morning. Though I know little about medieval astrology, instinctively I agreed with Hand, perhaps because my training in Huber astrology emphasizes the basics — only the 10 planets, only aspects that are multiples of 30 degrees, a holistic view of the chart — in a drive toward clarity and usefulness.

Even ten years ago, as I was testing the waters of astrology, just barely dipping my toes in, I was being told by Huber tutors and texts that modern astrology had become so burdened with “extras” that the basics had been obscured. We had, they said, to get back to an astrology that emphasized the core.

But this morning in the still-cool mountains, my feet rhythming down against hard concrete, my mind pressed beyond that statement that I’d so taken for granted from the get-go. I wondered, then, why modern astrology had moved toward collecting and hoarding and valuing so much extra, so much that went beyond the simple clarity of other approaches. I wished for a horoscope chart for astrology itself, that I might take a peek at its second house, or the placement of its Venus, or how many trines criss-crossed its concentric circles. What transits or progressions had brought us to this place where prominent and pioneering astrologers weren’t diving into shiny new intricacies but instead saying, “Enough!“?

I wondered if the alleged obfuscation of astrological language has to do with the long haul of socioeconomic shifts, with the way western culture has moved from a feudal system to one where free choice is more central. In feudalism, we already knew a lot about the child before he was even born: his degree of wealth (or lack thereof), his career path, his religious practice. A lot more of the life path was determined by the collective than the individual. There was a lot more lower-hemisphere living, a lot less upper. It was the nature of life. Perhaps the language of medieval astrology grew up around that worldview.

“Practically speaking, … choices are very articularly decribed in medieval methods. It doesn’t just present foggy masses of possibilities. You can say this or that strategy should work very well, while this or that strategy probably won’t. But you never say that this will work and that will not. Modern astrology will say, ‘We-e-ell, let’s see…’” (Robert Hand quoted in The Mountain Astrologer, Aug/Sept 2008, p. 44)

Now, though, there is nothing tangible that keeps a millworker’s son from grow up to marry a princess — or even a prince, in some jurisdictions! The choices available to each individual are, even quantitatively, so much more than in centuries past that to look at a horoscope chart in modern times is, at first, to entertain every single possibility in the world. The scope of choice is so much greater now than ever before in human history, so the astrologer’s challenge, too, is perhaps greater. And the language of modern astrology grew up around that worldview: We try to accommodate all possibility, now. Perhaps our language is less clear because our world is less clear.

This broad stroke of theory is not meant to excuse the alleged fuzziness of modern astrological language, or to let modern astrologers off the hook. It is obviously important for people who come for a reading to leave with the understanding that the astrologer has not just promised, eyes dewey and bright, that “You can be anything you want to be!” There is grave responsibility in articulating the viable paths of an Other. To do it well in a wide-open world is a task of penetrating depth and seriousness of commitment.

This statement brings me to another linguistic question that’s been marbling around my thoughts on my morning walks in the mountains: the astrological difference between a symbol and a sign.

The word “sign” comes from the Indo-European root “sekw-” — “to point out” — whereas “symbol” comes from the combination of the Greek “syn-,” meaning “together” and “ballein,” which means “to throw” — that is, “to throw together.” Following on these roots, in the modern vernacular, “symbol” is associated with the richness of metaphor, whereas “sign” is understood as simpler, more direct.

For example, if a red, eight-sided placard posted at an intersection reads, “STOP,” and we understand that the rules of the road are inflexible, it is easy to know what to do. We press on the brakes, because the placard is a sign. It is one thing, an object, that points to another thing, an action. But if we’ve grown up believing that we have a choice about everything in life, then we might instead see the placard as a symbol — a metaphor for something else in life, a suggestion that it might not be a bad idea to slow down a bit, perhaps, in school or thought process or daily life … and by then we’ve run over a squirrel, or worse.

So, in a similar vein, when we look at a horoscope chart, do we see Jupiter as a sign of material wealth, or as a symbol of all possible paths related to growth and expansion? If the latter, how do we communicate that in a meaningful way to the client? Or is it, instead, possibly something in-between sign and symbol? Or more a symbol in the natal chart and more a sign when in transit? Or a symbol is isolation that is pruned into a sign when we add in other horoscope elements, such as aspects and house?

And where are the boundaries between sign and symbol, anyway? Are they a continuum, not a dichotomy? Do we just get lucky when a metaphor is literalized? Is the fuzziness of modern astrological language due to the combination of massive choice and metaphorical thinking?

I don’t know the answers to any of these questions — a sure sign, I suppose, that I need more reading.

Because Cancer, the sign, symbolically embodies the mother-child relationship, this month I have re-read the Grimm Brothers’ story Rapunzel, which I used in workshop to explore the opposite sign, Capricorn, six months ago. This time, I was seeking to understand how the idea of attachment, used in the context of early childhood development, related to the Cancer archetype.

In Capricorn, we turned to Rapunzel to study ideas surrounding the traditional father-child relationship: independence, authority, self-possession, individuation. Now, in Cancer, I wondered if the balance point, the mother-child relationship, would make an appearance as well. As a starting point, I looked at Rapunzel’s mother figures, the birth mother and the Wicked Witch, and quickly realized that each of them embodies one of the four widely documented attachment styles.

Rapunzel’s birth mother — or, I would say, her birth parents together — symbolize an avoidant style inasmuch as they allow Rapunzel to be taken immediately upon birth, exposed to the harshness of the world and expected to mature quickly enough to manage it on her own. (Please understand that I’m not suggesting this of real-life birth parents who release their children for adoption but am using Rapunzel rather as a metaphorical look at attachment.) Rapunzel cannot form any kind of attachment with her birth parents, to the point where they might as well be strangers to her. No emotional investment exists from her perspective, though her parents may feel differently.

On the other hand, the Wicked Witch forms an ambivalent attachment with Rapunzel, attempting to arrest her maturation process by locking her in a tower. The Witch appears in the tower only often enough to provide for Rapunzel’s physical needs and to ensure the girl is dependent on the older woman’s authority and resources. Rapunzel gets just enough from the Witch to want more: more warmth, more connection, more consistency. But what she develops instead is clinginess and insecurity — a near-neurotic need for reassurance and a terrible fear that any connection at all will vanish.

Attachment theory came out of studies by Englishman John Bowlby that found that infants and toddlers need responsiveness and sensitivity from close adults in their lives. Such interactions help children develop a sense of security, or “secure base,” from which they will then dare to move ever-further away from the parent in order to explore and build independence. A secure base is first embodied in the responsive, sensitive adult who provides empathy, compassion, self-management and consistency for the child. Over time, the secure base and its constituent parts are assimilated into the child’s self-image, influencing perceptions and expectations of all future relationships.

In other words, the development of safety and security, in the tradition of Cancer sensitivity and intuition, are critical to children’s eventual ability to risk independence and self-authority in the Capricorn way. Secure attachment in Cancer is necessary to authentic independence in Capricorn. When the Cancer archetype is seriously imbalanced in either direction — by way of an under- or over-emphasis on attachment — then independence becomes either the only available choice or too frightening even to contemplate.

But, you ask, didn’t Rapunzel manage to escape the tower and build a new life for herself despite her childhood? Yes. That’s because she had a third attachment figure that balanced the archetype nicely: the Handsome Prince.

I love this part of my musings because it re-visions traditional feminist interpretations of the Handsome Prince role in fairy tales. In a huge departure from the criticism that the Handsome Prince suggests a woman always needs a man to save her, I want to suggest that — at least in Rapunzel – the Handsome Prince provides Rapunzel with a very necessary secure attachment.

The Prince visits Rapunzel consistently, presumably providing warmth and responsiveness, which are key ingredients in secure attachment. He also treats Rapunzel appropriately for her age and her experience, neither infantilizing her nor heisting her away immediately, which would likely be too frightening for someone of her history. But perhaps most important, the Prince also helps Rapunzel transition from childhood to adulthood. He slowly but consistently provides her with the means to build a ladder to her own independence (one strand of silk thread each night) instead of simply carrying her off to be “his,” which would be just echoing the Wicked Witch’s role. Not only that, he also helps Rapunzel weave the ladder, demonstrating both that he will be there for her — a secure base — and that he simultaneously believes in her ability to create her own independence.

The Prince embodies the perfectly balanced Cancer archetype, the care-giving figure who is secure enough both to act as a secure base and to encourage independence in its own right time.

The Prince is such a strong and secure attachment figure, in fact, that when the Wicked Witch discovers Rapunzel is pregnant and exiles her into the desert, the young woman is able to survive and raise her twin children alone, without the aid of the Prince. We know she has succeeded in internalizing the Prince’s example when she is able to receive him back into her life after years of separation.

This is the legacy of a secure attachment: the capacity for authentic independence alongside the ability to be a secure base to one’s own children (or to others who need one). And to be able to do so, if one chooses, from within the embrace of a mutually loving, respectful and joyful adult relationship.

Putting yoga and astrology together in one workshop or retreat seems, at first blush, a little like sitting an elephant down at a computer and saying, “See? Now do you get it?”

In other words: No. It’s not obvious at all. Yoga is all about the body, isn’t it? While astrology is, well, a little arcane and out-there, a kind of voodoo psychobabble — right? So wouldn’t a workshop that brings the two together be more like two classes running alongside each other?

You would think, but you’d be wrong.

At the core of both yoga and astrology is an understanding of how energy operates in our lives — the energy to express oneself, to establish security, to learn, relate, experience and love. Yoga understands that energy as gaining expression through the body, while astrology views the psyche as the central medium. But both disciplines have identified the same basic energies coursing through our lives.

As mind-body integration is becoming more accepted and energized throughout the west, yoga and astrology both are growing disciplines. So it seems a natural time to explore how the roots of these two powerful and ancient technologies are connected, and how they can twine together for the benefit of individuals and humanity as a whole.

This is the principle on which my Yoga & Astrology work is grounded. I hope this little story, and the explanation following, will further illuminate the way we work in our workshops and retreats. And I hope it will intrigue you enough to come to one of our upcoming Los Angeles workshops or even our week-long retreat in Taos this fall.

The Story of Rapunzel
Originally told by the Brothers Grimm

After many years of barrenness, a poor couple was expecting a child, but they had little money for food. The pregnant wife craved radishes, which could only be gotten by the husband stealing them from the garden of the witch next door under cover of darkness. When the husband was finally caught, the witch demanded the unborn child in recompense. The frightened husband agreed.

After their child – a girl named Rapunzel – was born, the despondent couple brought her to the witch. When Rapunzel was 12 years old, the witch locked her in a tower with no doors and only one high window. Using Rapunzel’s long hair as a ladder, the witch brought food and drink to the tower. One day, a prince spied the witch climbing Rapunzel’s hair. He waited until night, then called to the girl and climbed her hair.

The prince visited nightly from then on, and soon the young couple was in love. By and by, they hatched a plan to free Rapunzel from the tower. But before they could carry it out, the witch discovered that Rapunzel was pregnant. Furious, the witch cut off Rapunzel’s hair and threw her from the tower. That night, the prince called to Rapunzel and, when her hair unfurled from the high window, he climbed it. He was astonished to see the witch’s face when she reached the top. She pushed him away from the window; he fell to the ground and was blinded by thorns when he landed.

Rapunzel, pregnant with twins, and the prince with gouged-out eyes, wandered separately in the wilderness for many years. One day, the prince heard Rapunzel singing near a well and approached, calling her name. They fell into each other’s arms, and their tears of joy restored the prince’s sight. He took Rapunzel and their children to the castle to live happily ever after.

Our Capricorn workshop last January began with this simple tale, which is rich with images and themes that evoke the Capricorn archetype. We then unpacked those themes, our eyes ever on Capricorn, to better understand the dynamics of the sign and how it might operate in our own lives. For example, we discussed the following themes, each of which is the sort of challenge a Capricorn person* might face:

• The poor couple had tried for many years to conceive a child but could not. They continued trying until finally their goal was within sight.
• The shortcut and dishonesty taken by the father to satisfy his wife’s temporary craving had disastrous results, hugely exacerbated by his fear and inability to stand up to the witch and protect his child.
• The witch, representing the opposite imbalance, became drastically overprotective of Rapunzel, locking her in a high tower and infantilizing her.
• Rapunzel was not allowed to touch her feet to the ground, to gain life experiences and build her own competence, survival instincts and independent selfhood.
• Rapunzel had to have tangible resources and a well-laid plan – aided by her own animus, or inner masculine – in order to reach the ground and begin experiencing life.
• But she also had to have the courage to overthrow her own limitations in the form of overprotectiveness, clinging to obligation, and so forth.
• Finally, she had to wander in the wilderness by herself. She could not again cling to another outer authority; she had to build her own inner resources by struggling on her own before coming back – more mature, more competent, freer – to the external partner.

As we explored these insights, each person identified a goal they’d been trying to reach and examined possible instances of self-sabotage or rigidity and limitation. We discussed the importance of having a “strong spine” in order to stand up for oneself and to individuate, then did some muscle-testing to find out how strong we could physically resist simple toxins like sugar and caffeine. Muscle-testing was followed by a yoga set for spine strengthening which was, in turn, followed by another round of muscle-testing. Participants were amazed at how much more they could resist after a single session of spine-strengthening yoga!

To counter the inflexibility and outdated assumptions that can accompany a stance of strength, we then turned to consider flexibility. We discussed the roles played by the symbol of stone in the Rapunzel story and tried to identify some assumptions that had calcified each person’s ability to meet challenges and achieve goals. Yoga for flexibility followed this discussion, and then people were asked to return to their assumptions and try out how it felt to change them — no matter how outrageous the change!

The workshop concluded with a look at the last part of the Rapunzel story: the part where the main character is thrown out of the tower, pregnant with twins, to fend for herself in the wilderness. This crystallizes the Capricorn challenge of developing our inner authority so that we may choose strength and flexibility, community and individual, the straight path and deviations from it, with consciousness and self-possession. The workshop concluded with yoga for survival and vision, and a visualization that helped participants access that powerful and authoritative figure within themselves.

Each of our workshops operates on several levels like this, engaging body, mind, heart and imagination, and cross-pollinating story with physical activity, self-reflection, creative artwork, peer dialogue and more. Our Taos retreat this fall will also integrate visits to local sites such as Taos Indian Pueblo and the Rio Grande Gorge to see how the signs manifest in the landscape and human creations. It will cover the whole cycle of 12 signs in a six-day period — a challenge, to be sure, but one that you’ll come away from with profound insight and deeper self-knowledge.

I hope you’ll join us.

—

* And by “Capricorn person,” I don’t only mean people with Capricorn as their sun sign. Anyone whose chart contains strong Capricorn energy — which can appear in a number of different ways — would qualify as a “Capricorn person” in my estimation. And certainly all of us could stand to know about the dynamics surrounding goal achievement and individuation!

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.