This week, after much ado in my mind, I launched the Zodiac Signs section of my website, with the addition of four complete sign pages. The other eight signs will roll out over the next few weeks.

These pages go beyond the usual textbook descriptions of each zodiac [...]]]> If it’s Aries, Taurus, Libra or Scorpio, you’re in luck!

This week, after much ado in my mind, I launched the Zodiac Signs section of my website, with the addition of four complete sign pages. The other eight signs will roll out over the next few weeks.

These pages go beyond the usual textbook descriptions of each zodiac sign, digging deeper into each archetype to get at the psychological dynamics underlying each common trait and behavior. So even if you think you’re all read out on your Sun sign, check it out — you might get new insight after all.

The pages also include some shopping links so you can explore birthday or holiday gifts sign by sign. Currently there are shopping links for all four signs listed above, plus Gemini and Sagittarius. Enjoy!

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 [...]]]> 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 he 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 the 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

Gemini is sometimes [...]]]> The cusp of Gemini barely at our backs, it’s hard not to think about thresholds, margins and in-between spaces, since sign ruler Mercury (Hermes in Greek myth) is the messenger, the go-between, the slipster, the one breezing in and out of the doorways from here to there, all backwards sometimes, upside down, inside out.

Gemini is sometimes written off as the chipper trickster, the perfect party-goer, the motormouth or chatterbox or data bank who can catalogue and spit back astounding amounts of seemingly useless information, from restaurant menus to the latest e-gadget specs to the most crucial words needed to get around town in a dozen different foreign cities.

But lying beneath all the motion, the movement, the hyperactivity is just that: the need to get around town, to be the pen connecting the dots between various points on the map, to be not just the mover of news and information, but the agent of exchange, the one whose vast knowledge of places and people and pieces can move a coin from one person’s hand and into another’s, and a bag of spices back in the other direction.

Hermes is the consummate traveler, the guide of souls from life in this world to the world beyond, the underworld where everything was upside-down and not at all as it seemed. He is Alice in Wonderland’s rabbit hole, the Little Prince who questioned with simple words the old man set in his ways, the Peter Pan in each of us who refuses to grow up and so is unafraid of death, of risk, of taking off out a window in the wild faithful flight of the young.

Hermes is also the patron of commerce and thieves, who rely on the movement of hands to trade and grasp and take — yes, even thieves; Hermes is not, like Jupiter/Zeus, concerned with what’s right, with moral context or human righteousness. Like Mercury and Gemini, Hermes is an amoral energy — a facilitator, an agent, a gatekeeper, not a judge. He is the messenger, not the decider. It’s not the content of the message that’s important, it’s the fact of being the messenger, of being the agent of exchange, the carrier of information, the connector. The glue along the edges.

Hermes can span the margin between two people to create a momentary connection, an exchange, a circulation of energy from one to the other and back and beyond. When the breath moves in and out of the nose, stopping briefly at the top of the inhale before making its quick descent, its release back out into the world, that is a Hermes task. We take in, we give back, we take in, we give back. It’s exchange; it’s one for one; it’s tit for tat. There is no judgment — no thought, even, really, to speak of. It just is.

It’s not that Hermes, Mercury, Gemini are thoughtless, it’s more that there are so many thoughts that require circulation, there is little time to stop and think about each one, no life energy allocated to differentiating one from the other. That’s not Gemini’s job. It’s someone else’s job: the recipient, perhaps; the person or people affected. Gemini, appropriately symbolized by twins, by two, spans the margins between two people, provides the pathways for exchange, lives in the margins around the boundaries of each of us, connects them up with other people’s margins, creates doorways where none had before existed, in order to help each of us travel between worlds from which we would otherwise isolate, retreat or shy away.

Ironically, Gemini — a sign so brimming with information — is often quite misunderstood. It is not lightheaded or fizzy. Its currency, though often invisible, is the currency of life. It is astounding and crucial and encompassing.

And, yes, it can be a lot of fun at parties.

doorway breath

Note: You don’t have [...]]]> 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.