She looked lovely, of course, her hair, makeup and clothes tasteful and appealing. She spoke with a quiet, comfortable sort [...]]]> Retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor was Jon Stewart’s guest on The Daily Show last night and, befitting of the nation’s first female Supreme Court Justice, she did an exemplary job of demonstrating the Libra-Venus archetype.

She looked lovely, of course, her hair, makeup and clothes tasteful and appealing. She spoke with a quiet, comfortable sort of humor and an affability that moved in consort with Stewart’s traditional teasing and deadpan jokes. Unlike some guests, she did not try to match Stewart’s humorous style or skill but, instead, met his personality with a light and grace all her own. That is, she didn’t spar with him but allowed him to make the joke and then responded in a similar vein, mirroring him but not trying to become him.

This ability to move with another person is uniquely Venusian, and it finds its most familiar home in the sign of Libra. Whereas a Mars/Aries person might wear louder clothes, spar more competitively with Stewart and try to make a big splash, O’Connor seemed happy to share the limelight and make an impression with her mere presence. The way she matched Stewart’s style with her own calm self-possession — and a twinkle in her eye — made me think what a pleasure it would be to have lunch with her.

But the gracious manner and lovely appearance of strong Libra-Venus types are only the most outwardly-obvious signs of what underlies the personality. There were a couple moments in the interview that belied the archetype even more deeply than O’Connor’s visible style.

The first sign was early on (at about the 11:50 mark in the video). Stewart asked O’Connor about her latest project, the website www.ourcourts.org. She said she got the idea as a response to the growing criticism, over the last several years, of “activist judges,” adding that she had read, in a study by the Annenberg Foundation, that only one-third of Americans can name the three branches of government (while 75% can name at least one American Idol judge!). The implication was that something seemed amiss in her environment — she was feeling criticized, something Libra-Venus types don’t take lightly — and she had to do something to fix the situation to her satisfaction, to bring it back into harmony with her own experience.

The other telling moment came at about the 18:40 mark on the video, after Stewart noted that, “The Supreme Court is famous for its collegiate atmosphere,” and asked how the justices are able to maintain that cordiality with each other over so many years of making tough, sometimes controversial decisions together. O’Connor’s response was simple, profound and quintessentially Libra-Venus.

She said, “One of the things you have to start learning in law school is how to disagree agreeably. Because when you’re on a court like that, a collegial court with an odd number of people — which they all are — you have to learn to disagree agreeably. Because you’re going to be there together a long time.”

It is not that Libra-Venus types are always agreeable — not by a long shot. But both relationship and harmony are of paramount importance to them. It is uncomfortable for strong Librans to not be in relationship. Yet whenever two people are engaged together, differences will arise and have to be resolved. An undeveloped Libra-Venus type might lash out, get jealous or feel slighted — and definitely regret it later because the all-important relationship has been damaged or lost.

But the developed type finds a way to get along with people, even people with whom she disagrees. She learns to “disagree agreeably” so the relationship can survive, flourish and bring good things in the long-term — because she knows that disagreement does not have to mean dissolution.

He isn’t [...]]]> 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

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 [...]]]> 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.

I’m working on fleshing the ideas out into a full-length article but I’m itching [...]]]> Yesterday marked the fourth workshop in our Astro-Play series at Yoga Grounds, with Vera on yoga and myself on astrology. Yesterday’s theme was the process of goal-setting and goal-getting, as prismed through the Capricorn archetype, as illustrated through the Grimm Brothers fairy-tale Rapunzel.

I’m working on fleshing the ideas out into a full-length article but I’m itching to share a couple themes that I didn’t get to in the short time allotted. I hope participants will find this an interesting supplement to the workshop (and that others will find it merely interesting).

The recurring symbol I’m most interested in exploring is the use of stone in the Rapunzel story. It is especially intriguing, I think, since Capricorn is an earth sign — signaling practicality, patience, tactility, solidity and determination. These are all traits that can assist in setting and reaching goals. But look at what happens to the image of stone at three key points throughout the story.

Stone Wall: The first appearance of stone comes when the poor miller, father of Rapunzel herself, jumps the stone wall dividing his garden from the witch’s. The wall is meant to be a boundary, a dividing line that signals a limitation, a law, a social custom that demarcates one person’s property from another’s. But the miller steals over the wall at night — breaches the accepted boundary when he believes he won’t be seen — in order to take something that the law says he must not take: radishes that his pregnant wife craves that are growing not in his garden, but in the garden of the witch next door.

The wall is a symbol for limits (when we stonewall something, we put up our hand and say “no,” refusing all arguments and pleas). But it turns out to be an ineffective one. In the context of pursuing goals, the message here is that, faced with a powerful craving or temptation — and lacking the capacity for resistance — we are vulnerable to crossing the line that separates achievement of the goal from lack thereof. Unless we are aware of the temptation, and work consciously to build our own strength against it, we will continually find ways to breach the wall. We will repeatedly keep ourselves separate from our goal.

For example, if our goal is to lose weight, we may breach the wall through excuses like, “Just one cookie won’t hurt” or “She spent so long making dinner — it would be impolite to refuse.” In our workshop, we looked at a cross-section of a stone wall and noted how much it looks like a spine — each vertebra stacked upon the next. When that wall is not strong, we become spineless against our temptations. In fact, the idea of “spinelessness” seemed to echo the miller’s actions not just because he stole the radishes (he apparently never considered knocking on the witch’s door and explaining the situation) but also because, ultimately, he gave into the witch’s demand for the baby Rapunzel as exorbitant payment for his crime.

If you find yourself prone to breaching the boundaries you have set for yourself — whether in pursuit of a goal or for some other purpose — you might consider doing some spine-strengthening yoga. We did some last night, preceded by muscle-testing with various substances. After the yoga, we muscle-tested again and found ourselves much better able to resist things like coffee, sugar and other temptations that tend to thwart our goals.

Stone Tower: The witch indeed takes Rapunzel, on the day she is born, as restitution for her father’s crime. When Rapunzel is 12 years old, the witch locks her in the topmost room of a stone tower without door or stairs. Now the image of stone — of the patience, determination and solidity that were utterly lacking in her father and in the stone wall — has become a tall, imposing structure. Much in contrast to the long, low line of stones along the ground, which was probably crumbling and easy to breach, the tower is imagined as a rigid, impenetrable structure that is impervious to callers who lack the secret words.

The stone tower is so impenetrable, in fact, that it imprisons the girl Rapunzel in a state of innocence (literally, not-knowing) — infantilized and atrophied at a point in life when she should be growing, blossoming and experiencing the pleasures of the world on the ground. This is the polar opposite of the spinelessness of the stone wall. Here, the spine is rigid from the imposition of too much authority, from the totalitarian-style treatment of Rapunzel by the witch. And after a time, certainly, the witch’s demeanor becomes so engraved on Rapunzel’s psyche that the girl begins to believe, herself, that she cannot exist outside the stone walls of a high, impenetrable tower: She internalizes the rigidity imposed upon her from without.

This might not be so terrible if growth or juice or lust for life existed for Rapunzel in the confines of the tower. But the suggestion is one of sameness, boredom and loneliness — a stultifying existence contrary to growth and blossoming. This might look, in modern life, like a person who has stayed too long in the same job “for the sake of the children” or “because Dad always wanted me to take over the family business.” Reluctance to risk other people’s needs or desires can imprison our own passion, enslave us to other people’s ideas of who we should be. Obligation, submission, fear, guilt and shame all live in this place.

If you find yourself pursuing a goal that has lost its juice for you — because of obligation, politeness, habit, whatever — your yoga might be one of flexibility. Like the ability to stand up for yourself and adhere to important limits, flexibility is also centered on the spine. Think about the obligations, assumptions and habits that have built up around your goal. Do some work on building flexibility in both your mind and your body, and see what kind of twists and turns the “can’ts” and “shoulds” in your life end up taking.

Stone Well: The prince begins visiting Rapunzel each night, and the two hatch a plan to get her out of the tower. But the girl lets it slip that she has a lover and, furious, the witch cuts off Rapunzel’s famous hair and throws her — pregnant with twins — out of the tower to wander in the desert. That night, the prince comes and, when he sees the witch in Rapunzel’s room, falls off the tower, blinding himself on the thorns below. He, too, wanders the desert for many years. And then one day, he hears Rapunzel singing as she draws water from a well.

While the tower represents rigidity, and the wall represents spinelessness, the stone well represents practical, purposeful and effective limits. The well is both a signal that something unseen is close by — that the goal is within reach — and a structure to protect that thing while also allowing access to it: neither totally confining like the tower nor totally open like the wall. Even imagistically, a well is halfway between a wall and a tower: a low wall, really, in the circular shape of a tower, which can be entered from above but that descends far below the earth to welcome water into its deep, narrow bowl.

In astrology and other symbol systems, water represents, among other things, the feeling function. Drawn from deep within the earth, the suggestion is one of unconscious feeling being brought up into consciousness. Capricorn, like Rapunzel in the desert, must survive on its own, drawing on its own resources to climb to the top. This process is often practical, tedious, tangible and necessarily patient: earth energy. Rapunzel learns how to survive the worst imaginable circumstances. Now, when water appears in the story, we know that she is ready for relationship to flow back into her life.

Capricorn is usually signaled by a mountain goat, but its esoteric animal is the mythic sea goat. Half-goat, half-fish, it embodies the intrepid independence of the mountain goat while also suggesting the need to integrate the feeling function that lives opposite it in the chart, in Cancer. In traditional astrology, Cancer and its ruler, the Moon, are identified with the mother, but in Huber astrology that honor goes to Saturn, the ruler of Capricorn. In either case, the suggestion is that Rapunzel has now become an integrated mother who can draw on deep feeling for her children while also imposing the fair limits they will need in order to become thriving adults.

And the love relationship for which Rapunzel is now ready is drawn on her own established internal authority — her knowledge that she has built her own foundation from which to act freely. She is not a dewy dumpling confined in a tower or a frightened girl thrown into the desert. She has survived the desert, raised two children in it and become a bona fide woman on her own terms. The pinnacle of the story is that, within this harsh environment, she even finds water — finds the capacity to love and relate, to give and take, drawn up from the harsh ground of her solitary survival. The stone well surrounding this new adventure is an assurance (or a caution?) that she will neither succumb to the dewy nature of naive love, nor allow it to calcify into a prison of her own making.

These are the balance points in the pursuit of any goal: How to observe the limits without becoming enslaved to them; how to stick with a plan while maintaining flexibility within it; how to keep alive passion for the work while also surviving the harsh desert in which you may find yourself. Strength and flexibility; passion and practicality.

***
In the end, the blind prince follows the sound of Rapunzel’s voice to the well. The family is reunited, Rapunzel’s tears restore the prince’s sight, and the couple and their children go off to live in the castle — happily ever after, of course: the ultimate goal.

The castle is a metaphor for the final fulfillment of Rapunzel’s dream. She has gone from victim of her father’s tender spinelessness, to victim of her stepmother’s rigid fury, to solitary survivor, to the embodiment of alive, integrated wholeness.

The delightful thing about a castle is that it is so complex. There are turrets and moats, towers and keeps, chapels and stables and kitchens and courts. It is really a symbol of the rich inner life each of us has, of all 360 degrees of possibility embodied in the horoscope chart. Some rooms get used more than others; some are uncomfortable; some are adored. Some are open in the summer and closed in the winter. Some are private while others are public.

The possibilities are, as they say, endless.

***
The other theme I would like to have touched on in yesterday’s workshop was the appearance of various head coverings throughout the Rapunzel story. Though the Grimm Brothers might not have envisioned it this way, the phrase “witch’s hat” conjures a clear and striking image in modern culture. A handsome prince must necessarily come with a jeweled crown. Of course Rapunzel herself is distinguished by her long hair — and then by her shorn locks later in the story. We can even imagine the miller with a dilapidated cap and his wife with a scarf tied over her hair.

As Capricorn symbolizes the archetype of individuation, of distinguishing oneself from others in the process of fulfilling your destiny — and as its energy is encompassed in the 10th house at the top of the chart — it seems appropriate to look at how we treat our hair, our hats, our brains and other things up top for a look at another aspect of this archetype.

But that’s for another time.

In other words, we continually and spontane- ously create images to make sense of our lives.

To wit:

“I feel like my head’s going to explode!”“She thinks she’s my mother.”“There’s a wall between us.”

We perceive that many of the things we go through (if not [...]]]> Carl Jung said that analogy- making is the central organizing principle of the psyche.

In other words, we continually and spontane- ously create images to make sense of our lives.

To wit:

“I feel like my head’s going to explode!”
“She thinks she’s my mother.”
“There’s a wall between us.”

We perceive that many of the things we go through (if not all of them) are like something else. Images of those something elses come out when we speak, when we feel, when we dream, when we make art, when we imagine — so that we can see and know ourselves better. It is often quite difficult, and sometimes even impossible, to look directly at ourselves. But to look at something that is like ourselves, well, that is a great deal easier, and often more productive.

The horoscope chart is the only metaphor in the world that reflects your — and only your – psyche with the degree of complexity, nuance and completeness needed to accurately unravel your continually evolving life experiences.

Astrology is a complex system for organizing the analogy-making that we do all the time. Your horoscope chart is populated with the major metaphors, called archetypes, that your psyche naturally uses to describe its experiences. Those archetypes exist in an ordered format that, engaged correctly, can help focus and streamline your self-understanding. And because your chart is unique in all the world, the archetypes are arranged there in the nuanced and unique way that reflects you — and only you.

Your chart, then, is the mythic structure of your individual psyche, told in metaphorical language. And because it is metaphorical, the chart enables you to grasp your own story in a way that is often obstructed by more naked confrontation of the self. Your chart helps you understand yourself and the situations you face through the fertile medium of metaphor.

Depth astrology is a practice of engaging life’s major metaphors, or archetypes, in the precise way that you experience them in your individual psyche. Depth astrology readings guide you through the process of making sense of your own story through the images that best describe your experience.

And then, by understanding your own story, you can begin to write it to your own specifications.