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 Ask a friend to name an animal commonly depicted in literature, myth and culture, and the answer isn’t likely to be “frog.” But from the ancient Egyptian goddess Heket to The Frog Prince to Michigan J. Frog, the croaking amphibians have populated the cultural imagination for thousands of years.
In ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome, the frog was associated with fertility, probably in part because the animals appeared in droves following the annual flooding of the Nile, whose silt deposits fertilized the Egyptian soil. In Asia, frogs are harbingers of fortune and luck, as they are in Scotland: “Households often keep stone frogs in their gardens and they are often given as house warming presents.” (Source) And in the Celtic Druidic tradition:
[The frog] unites the elements of water and earth, bringing joy, delight and healing in its singing and hopping … The frog possesses an extremely sensitive skin, considered magical by shamans. A companion of the rain spirits, the frog can help you develop sensitivity to others, to healing and to sound through your skin and your whole body and aura. (Source)
This symbolic sensitivity actually shows up on a scientific level as frogs are a documented sentinel, or indicator, species. In recent years, deformities in frogs have been noted as an early indicator of chemical farm pollution impacting local ecosystems. (Source) As well, in nature, frogs occupy the space between water and land, much as Heket represents the final stages of childbirth, when the baby emerges from the amniotic fluid to come live on the drier earth.
The composition of the photo above (wittingly? unwittingly?) reveals this sensitive in-the-margins space that frogs occupy both in the scientific research and in the cultural imagination: The stone sculpture of the frog sits at the shoreline between foliage and bark, and its skin is painted both red and blue, as if it could flux back and forth between two innate ways of being. (In Huber astrology, different colors represent different energies: red squares and oppositions are active; blue sextiles and trines are restful.)
The astrological archetype that first jumps to mind when I think about these characteristics of the frog is Mercury: it is light, flexible, sensitive, magical; it traverses the margins between defined worlds. But Mercury is a bit “drier” than a frog, airier and more detached than water and earth would suggest. So I want to say the frog, perhaps, is Mercury in a water sign (Cancer, Scorpio, Pisces) or, under the right conditions, in an earth sign (Taurus, Virgo, Capricorn). Or perhaps it is Mercury coupled with Virgo or the Moon or maybe even Jupiter: a planet that brings it a waterier, earthier sensibility, that deepens its sensitivity in an intuitive and sensual way.
There is one more element in the photo above that deserves comment: the paint is peeling. The frog is obviously old and may be neglected or forgotten (or, on the other hand, intentionally left to the weather). Whatever the case, there is a whisper of Saturn here, of the slow decay that comes with time. In our culture, we tend to turn away from such things.
But the photo instead shows how, over time, the bravely sensitive — and patient — person exposes what is underneath, makes raw and available what is inside, perhaps to help others, perhaps to move closer authenticity, perhaps to become more fertile with the deepening of each passing year.
Photo: lisa_eglinton
The Second of a Three-Part Series
Click here for Part 1
 Day 3: Jenny’s friend Jessica moved to L.A. about the same time I did, and came for a visit on Sunday to see her old pal. The Dragon was a little disappointed when he realized that Jessica hadn’t come to play with him. Though he mostly kept a polite distance from the two as they caught up on each other’s lives, he punctuated their conversation with a few well-placed strategies for interacting.
First, he offered them popsicles and, when they accepted, carefully carried each one, its stick wrapped gently in a cloth napkin, to present to his guests. Next, he invited them to shoot Nerf rockets from his crossbow in the backyard and was thrilled when they agreed. Finally, when Jessica asked Jenny if she wanted to go out for lunch, the Dragon looked up at me with big eyes. “I want to go out to lunch!” he said. I had to break it to him that we wouldn’t be going. He cried as they drove away, said how much h e missed them.
The Moon, ruler of Cancer, symbolizes children, feelings and relationship needs: What do we need to get from someone in order to feel secure, to feel we belong, to expect kindness to visit again? Childhood relationships give us a template for negotiating all other future relationships. The feelings we get from everyday interactions, like those the Dragon experienced on Sunday, are the feelings we ultimately expect to have throughout life: supported? rejected? appreciated? scorned? loved? hated?
It’s not saying “yes” or “no” to every request that’s important; it’s how you say “yes” or “no.” Jenny and Jessica could have sighed and rolled their eyes but said “yes” to Nerf rockets anyway. The Dragon would have caught the tone, and that’s what he would have taken in. But, the Moon strong in both of them, they didn’t respond that way. Similarly, it was okay that we couldn’t go to lunch with them, because what was important was that t he Dragon felt his disappointment was an acceptable response. He was supported in it and allowed to feel it. And, when the time came, he was eased out of it, into the next moment.
The Moon is perhaps best described as a mirror. It reflects the light of the Sun: It can only give out what it receives. It can only shine in the manner it is shone upon. A child cannot generate compassion or appreciation for himself if he doesn’t learn how to by those around him.
I’m grateful for Jenny and Jessica and others around my son who understand this, instinctively.
Day 4: Jenny went to her Web 2.0 workshop and I went to work. We’re both embroiled, right now, in figuring out how to disseminate information and products we love across a worldwide electronic network of people who may or may not care.
In other words, we’re selling stuff online.
Sales has long been the domain of Mercury, ruler of  Gemini, god of commerce, connections and fast talk. But these days, some Uranus stuff — ruler of Aquarius — is thrown into the mix. Mercury is no longer walking door-to-door, opening his briefcase and showing off the stuff inside. Now he requires the aid of people who know about a quirkily structured system that innovates and evolves at lightning-quick rates. He requires an Internet guru.
As quickly as we can take in the information, organize it in our minds and implement its new forms in our work, the Internet changes. This is where Uranus is truly at home: in a system that changes and innovates constantly; that keeps wriggling out from under the thumb of authorities; that serves, as best it can, the egalitarian principles of equal access, freedom of information, and opportunities for all.
The term “Web 2.0″ seems so quaint now. Surely we’re several generations past that moniker. I want to call it “Web Two-Point-Whoa.” Though, for the most part, I love its values and principles, the pace of the Internet is uncomfortable for me. Mostly, it’s too fast for my style. I’d rather roll a bit slower through my thoughts, let them dry like mud in the sun or ooze through me like water in a sponge. Internet marketing overwhelms me. Sometimes, I fantasize about an Internet for people who like to ponder sloooowly. I’d call it the Ruminet.
 So in the evening, overwhelmed with information, a wakeful toddler on our hands, Jenny and I and the Dragon drove up a narrow mountain highway above the city to see the lights spread out below. I can’t help but think, facing a scene like that, about how small I am, how much I’m just one person, how many quintillions of connections are constantly being made not just on the Internet but in real life, electricity buzzing down wires, into homes, into light bulbs — on, off, on, off, on, off — and microwaves and UV rays and X-rays and all those unseen undulations connecting people with people and things and words everywhere.
And also the connections between people all over, face to face, in the dark clay huts huddled in the hills of north Africa, and in the concrete block homes braced against the Caribbean winds, and in the tall office  towers rising over the megacities of East Asia, and in the burning desert heats and the pouring-down tropical rains and the silent snowfalls of elsewhere. And I always wonder what they’re saying, and how the response forms in the other’s mind, and what happens to their words when they rise up, or sink in.
And then the connections between people and plants and animals, in so many ways, and between people and images and words, and between Sun and Moon and Earth and other spheres, and between elements, and between the neurons in each individual’s mind, and between molecules and cells and atoms, and between chemicals and matter and energy.
And between what else, we don’t even know.
And we drove back down the mountain, and came home, and went to sleep, and I dreamt that Uranus himself was stealing people from my bed.
Photo credits: Crescent moon, computer, observatory view, telephone pole
 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.
 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.
Dates have been set for the next three Yoga & Astrology workshops at Yoga Grounds in La Crescenta, California! As we do every month, Yoga & Meditation Teacher Vera Silva, M.A. and I will blend yoga, meditation, storytelling, creativity and fun to explore and learn from the energy of the current zodiac sign.
Note: You don’t have to be born under the sign to get tremendous insight and benefit from the workshop. All signs are present in all people in some form — expand your self-understanding way beyond what the newspaper horoscopes have to say!
 Gemini: Letting Out the Inner Child
Sunday, June 8, 4:00-6:30 p.m.
Do you delight in the garden of life? Does your sense of wonder get regular exercise? Do you play? Or does your inner child get short shrift while obligations run the show? Come let out your playful spirit in an afternoon of freedom, curiosity and lightness — and learn to integrate it into your daily life.
 Cancer: Caring for the Inner Mother
Sunday, July 13, 4:00-6:30 p.m.
You mother yourself whether you know it or not! But if your inner mother is neglectful, critical, demanding or otherwise negative, she may need some attention and care. Come connect with your own self-nurturing instincts and really start making self-care a part of your everyday life.
Leo: Unmasking the Inner Superhero
Sunday, August 3, 4:00-6:30 p.m.
Most of us walk around like Clark Kent every day, while just under our skin lurks a latent superhero. What’s your superpower — the one that puts you in the leading role, attracts countless admirers, and ultimately saves the day? Would you know it if you saw it? Find out!
Cost is $25 for first-timers and $20 for returning folks.
RSVP to kathy@depthastrology.net with your name, birth date, birth time* and birth place — so you can get your free horoscope chart at the workshop.
(Photo credits: Inner child; spa; superhero)
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* Birth time should be as exact as possible. If you don’t have the time, no worries; we’ll just erect the chart for noon.
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What People Say “Truly gifted astrologers are a rarity. Kathy Crabb is one such person. She is a brilliant, original thinker, an intuitive and empathic counselor and a superb workshop facilitator.”
Pam Tyler, Dip. API (1981), Dip. FAS (1979),
AFA Teacher Cert. (1978); Astrologer since 1977;
Co-founder of Astrological Psychology Institute (UK);
Author of Mercury: Anatomy of a Planet
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