Nobody sees a flower — really — it is so small it takes time — we haven’t time — and to see takes time, like to have a friend takes time.

And Georgia O’Keefe should know about time. She lived for ninety-nine years, from 1887 until 1986.

I recently advised a client to spend an hour eating [...]]]>

Nobody sees a flower — really — it is so small it takes time — we haven’t time — and to see takes time, like to have a friend takes time.

And Georgia O’Keefe should know about time. She lived for ninety-nine years, from 1887 until 1986.

I recently advised a client to spend an hour eating an orange. This was not originally my idea; it came from Thich Nhat Hanh’s book Peace is Every Step, a series of short but profound thoughts, such as “Tangerine Meditation” which reads, in part:

[The children] saw not only the tangerine, but also its mother, the tangerine tree. With some guidance, they began to visualize the blossoms in the sunshine and in the rain. Then they saw petals falling down and the tiny green fruit appear. The sunshine and the rain continued, and the tiny tangerine grew. … Each child was invited to peel the tangerine slowly, noticing the mist and the fragrance of the tangerine, and then bring it up to his or her mouth and have a mindful bite …

Each time you look at a tangerine, you can see deeply into it. You can see everything in the universe in one tangerine. (Source)

This, in turn, reminds me of the beautiful poem “The Shirt” by Robert Pinsky, wherein the poet sees, in his simple button-down shirt, the whole world and the whole, in its own way, of history: the farm laborers harvesting the cotton, the sweat shop workers cutting and piecing it together, the fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, the development of Scottish tartans, more, and more.

Astrologically, Mercury can be seen as little bits of data like Pinsky’s “The back, the yoke, the yardage. Lapped seams / The nearly invisible stitches along the collar.” It is the calories and grams of fat we eat, the telephone numbers we store in our heads, the time we’re scheduled to meet someone and the silent agreement with other drivers that we pass on the left and stop at red lights. None of life could go forward without these things, but they are not the essence or the energy of the life.

On the other hand, Jupiter is the entirety of the poem, the full-tongued experience of eating an orange, the whole breath-sucking vision of an O’Keefe. It is the sweeping view of the day, the sensory themes, the long arc of energy that embraces the whole.

And yet neither of these things is seeing a flower deeply, or taking an hour to eat an orange, or knowing your shirt so well that you feel its history. These, I would say — the interweaving, the interlocking, of many visible details into an integrated, structured whole — is Saturn. Saturn is physical, boundaried structure that binds together many small pieces into a coherent and useful whole. It is the legal code and all its individual laws, ordinances and rulings. It is the work plan and each step that must be taken. It is the mother’s security and each little thing she does — the schedule, the snacks, the snuggles — to create it.

Saturn is the way the cuticle, the xylem, the phloem, the stoma, the upper and lower epidermis, the cells, the veins arrange themselves in startling symmetry to become a single leaf. It is the way that leaf retools and restructures its resources and sends them back out into the world to sustain life.

Poor Saturn. It has been denigrated as malefic and destructive. It turns the world, sometimes, in ways that make us want to cover our ears and sing, “La la la la la la la…” But Saturn is about preserving what it important. And what is important may not always be to our liking.

Photo: didbygraham

In ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome, the frog [...]]]> 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

I love this picture because I have no idea what it means.

To me it looks like sophisticated doodling, the meanderings of a creative mind stuck in a dull situation: chemistry class, a doctor’s waiting room, a train station without a train.

I fantasize that my ignorance would be enlightened if I could only read — what’s that, [...]]]>

I love this picture because I have no idea what it means.

To me it looks like sophisticated doodling, the meanderings of a creative mind stuck in a dull situation: chemistry class, a doctor’s waiting room, a train station without a train.

I fantasize that my ignorance would be enlightened if I could only read — what’s that, French? Italian? — but maybe it wouldn’t. Perhaps the words are meaningful only in the turnabout pathways of the artist’s wandering mind.

The picture evokes the Mercury archetype and his tendency to show up in the in-between places, in those spaces of life where boredom looms, in the margins between more noticeable events. The Roman god Mercury — Hermes, in the Greek — was in constant motion, wings on his feet, traveling between Olympus, earth and the underworld to deliver messages between gods and monsters and humans. He was the only one who could slip in and out of Hades without paying the ferryman.

We all have Mercury in our minds, slipping between the layers of our psyches, moving from conscious awareness (Oh! I should be taking notes on what the teacher is saying!) to the mundane insects of thought that cross our paths (I wonder if they’ll have that pea soup again at the cafe today.) to the unconscious, often-unwanted depths (I really don’t deserve all the good in my life.) to the upper registers of love and connectedness (I feel so alive today!).

Though he is normally associated, in the astrological chart, with mundane thought, Mercury’s real power lies in his ability to connect things. On a physiological level, connections are brain neurons — that is, the ability to process information through our minds. On a practical, everyday level, connections are made through language: through the words we hear and the words we speak back (which, by the way, are processed through neurons).

But on an esoteric level, connections are metaphor. And Mercury is the master of metaphor.

Carl Jung said that metaphor-making is the primary function of the psyche. Metaphor means, literally, to carry between. Interestingly, both parts of the word, both meta and phor, are related in their roots to words meaning “childbirth” and “midwife.” So there is a sense, in a metaphor, of carrying and delivering something profound, creative and meaningful in the space in-between two people. The thing is not Person 1, and the thing is not Person 2. It is something entirely third, but which connects the two together.

Where Mercury is concerned, the quintessential example of metaphor is language. All language is a symbol of something else: the word apple is a symbol of the apple sitting on my desk; the word relationship is a symbol of the collection of interactions between us; the word run is a symbol of me moving fast using my feet.

And all symbols, or metaphors, and thus all words, are ways of mediating between two things: a real thing and a way of representing it with my lips, with my tongue; a real feeling and the connection I want to have with you through it; an idea I have and the way it will become manifest in life.

And so I look at the picture above and I see Mercury in the margins, some sketching or maybe doodling that is a symbol of what’s going on in the artist’s mind in some in-between space: a space where a gap exists between what is going on around him or her and what is going on inside him or her.

The pictures here look like something being born from the artist’s inside to the artist’s outside. I see symbols being made, symbols that represent something in the mind that wants to come to the fore, symbols that are more direct even than words, that speak directly to the psyche instead of through the often-twisting manner of language, symbols that evoke quiet and pensiveness and reflectiveness and perhaps age.

Perhaps memory.

Photo: La Eu la lia

Though I believe it is hanging in the Pergamon Museum in Berlin, I was unable to discover anything more about this painting, the photo of which is this week’s Picture of the Week.

There are two different schools of thought about womanhood in astrology. (Well, truth be told, there are probably many, many more. But I’m only [...]]]>

Though I believe it is hanging in the Pergamon Museum in Berlin, I was unable to discover anything more about this painting, the photo of which is this week’s Picture of the Week.

There are two different schools of thought about womanhood in astrology. (Well, truth be told, there are probably many, many more. But I’m only going to discuss two of them here.) While all astrologers, to my knowledge, recognize Venus as the holder of feminine energy, most western astrologers also ascribe the mother role, and general feminine traits, to the Moon. The Huber school, on the other hand, says the Moon is gender-neutral — pertaining to emotional and contact needs — whereas Saturn represents the mother principle: It is keyed toward physical security, survival, protection, boundaries and attachment. It is most comfortable near the bottom of the chart, where it can grow roots and provide stability and assurance to the chart native. In the midst of crisis, it is this sturdy sort of mother that we all seek, not the mother figure suggested by the Moon.

But these motherly traits of sturdiness and security are not always the ones associated with femininity in popular culture. Femininity is seen as much less solid than Saturn: more emotional, changeable, flirtatious and irrational as well as tender, loving, caring and abundant. (It is this changeability, as well as this tenderness, that are sometimes missing in strong Saturn types.)

In my eyes, the picture above models the Saturn style of the feminine. Here is a woman alone with two animals: one domestic, one wild. She appears to be leading the horse, as if she has already gained mastery and command over it; she has tamed it, provided rules and boundaries, and made it dependent on her in some way. But then she comes upon a wild tiger — a beast from whom most people I know would run. Yet she holds out her hands as if to tame it, too, as if to say, “Here, kitty, kitty, kitty.” What’s more, the tiger is bowing its head at her feet, as if it already knows the woman’s power — already knows she will be the authority in the relationship.

Saturn may put reins on wild horses, but when confronted with wildness, chaos or danger a healthy Saturn will not freeze or run or kick but, instead, draw on its own resources to survive. In action films, that often means shooting guns and outrunning bad guys (more masculine, Mars-oriented stuff). But in real life, it may take fortitude, determination and creativity more than speed and strength.

A 2000 study published in Psychological Review claimed the traditional explanation of human stress response (“fight or flight”) was insufficient — particularly in females, for whom stress responses lean more toward, as the study put it, “tend and befriend” (notice it’s not an either-or but a both-and):

Behaviorally, females’ [stress] responses are more marked by a pattern of “tend-and-befriend.” Tending involves nurturant activities designed to protect the self and offspring that promote safety and reduce distress; befriending is the creation and maintenance of social networks that may aid in this process.

So when the going gets rough, women tend: They hunker down, grow roots and ensure they and their loved ones are protected and provided for. In other words, they go all Saturn on you. They also befriend, more a function of the social Venus archetype (with a good dose of Mercury, perhaps) than of the Moon (though a healthy Moon may certainly have a role to play in befriending as well). Yet even befriending, at least for the long-term, requires some Saturn energy of sacrifice, memory and protection as well as nurturing and maintaining deep connections.

In the picture above, the woman is tending and befriending. She is holding close to her faithful friend, the horse; developing an attachment with the tiger rather than separating from it; making the tiger dependent on her rather than chasing it off; taming it, restraining its wildness the way Saturn imposes order on chaos, organizes what feels unruly, protects us from the dangers of the world. What’s more, the woman appears calm and unruffled, sure of herself, not at all hysterical or flirtatious or indecisive.

After all, she is just going about her business, tending and befriending, in order to survive the wilderness of her life.

Photo credit

Like all things astrological, a Mercury retrograde is both unavoidable and, yes, manageable. A [...]]]> People with a passing interest in astrology tend to know that “things go wrong” during a Mercury retrograde. They come wanting to know when it’s going to happen and how to minimize the pain of it — or how to avoid it altogether.

Like all things astrological, a Mercury retrograde is both unavoidable and, yes, manageable. A horoscope reading can help with the management of this and other  passages because it allows you to see how a Mercury retrograde, a Saturn return or some other cycle fits into your particular way of being in the world.

Recently, a friend experienced a series of disruptions to her life in the space of just a few days: a fender-bender, an insurance mix-up, a miscommunication with her son’s teacher. She was concerned that things were going to get worse and worse, that this series of mishaps was just the forerunner to greater strife and trauma.

The events started just after Mercury went retrograde — but although we often advise caution during these periods, not everyone will have such a run of low-grade bad luck during a Mercury retrograde. I looked at my friend’s horoscope chart and, sure enough, Mercury was passing back and forth right over her Sun-Moon conjunction. Sun and Moon form the core of our awareness — desire and need — and Mercury was playing havoc with this part of her life for a period of time.

But what purpose does this serve? We often joke about Mercury retrograde: It’s an excuse for misspeaking, or a lighthearted warning; and it seems rare that truly serious traumas arise from this transitory period (barring other astrological factors coming into play). But I’ve often thought that times like these — when the insurance company “accidentally” drops you, or you have a little fender-bender, or you put in 3 cups of sugar instead of the 1/3 cup the recipe calls for — are designed to get our attention.

We usually, out of necessity, walk through life with one eye closed. We drive the same route day after day without realizing it. We say, “Fine” when asked, “How are you?” We eat the same thing for breakfast, expect this co-worker or that client to act a certain way, buy the same color lipstick year in and year out. We type without looking at the keyboard.

On a typical day, Mercury helps us absorb and assimilate all these rote ways of being, all these under-the-radar ways of getting through life. He operates in in-between spaces, provides the connective glue that lets life go forward, brings together people and things and information to make sure things can happen. It’s an extremely important function; without it, we would have too many decisions to make anew each day. We wouldn’t be able to move from the small decisions to the big ones. We would be paralyzed.

But on an atypical day — when Mercury turns on its head and appears to be going backwards in the sky — those little rules and traditions and habits get a bit twisted. Mercury is not just a facilitator but also a trickster who gets bored easily. He needs variety and newness, so old habits are a prime target for messing with. The road you usually drive to work is closed; your faithful old vacuum cleaner breaks down; telephone lines get crossed; the store is out of your lipstick color; the Monday meeting you’ve had for years is suddenly changed to Tuesdays.

These aren’t dramatic or traumatic changes but they do require alertness, small decisions, flexibility, fluidity and awareness of what’s really important. Mercury demands that we not be too fixed, too attached to a certain way of being. When he goes retrograde, it’s a reminder that we must not be too stuck in our ways, that we have the capacity to roll with the punches, keep our priorities straight and make sure our sense of humor is alive.

If you can adapt quickly to drive a new route to work, get a new lipstick color, sweep instead of vacuum, respond with humor when a co-worker throws you a curve ball, then you have a good capacity for dealing with Mercury retrograde.

But if you’re like another friend — who, when I called to cancel a lunch date, wailed, “But it’s in my DayTimer! What am I going to do now?” — then it’s time to work on your relationship with Mercury in your chart. The trickster will visit us all. The most you resist him, the more disturbing his visit will be.

Mercury is retrograde from Sunday, January 11 through the end of this month. What mishaps have befallen you? And more importantly, how have they made you more conscious, more flexible or more humor-filled?

Photo credit

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