Depth Astrology » Sun

Picture of the Week: I Heart Boys and Girls

Kathy — Tue, 26 May 2009 23:51:19 +0000

Funny, after what seems to be a lifetime of being female-oriented — going to a women’s college, working in lots of women-owned and women-dominated businesses (including at a women’s PAC), being generally very pro-female and pro-feminist — boys seem to be springing up everywhere in my life these days. I blame Jung and the tension of opposites.

I knew my first child was going to be a boy, and I was right (call it intuition if you want), but I was 99% sure my second child — the one still twisting and gestating in my belly — would be a girl.

Nope. Bubbaloo, as he’s been dubbed till he emerges, is full-on boy as well. Two sons!? I never really considered the possibility that I would be the only family member without a Y. Or, on a more positive note, with a very fine double-dose of X.

And then there’s this freelance work I’m doing, writing grant proposals for a boys’ mentoring program. I’ve been engrossed in distressing research about how the school system is stacked against boy energy; how boys receive messages that set up a struggle between traditional masculinity and contemporary ideals; how, despite appearances, boys’ self-esteem is actually quite fragile; and so on.

The knee-jerk part of me wants to say, Oh, waaah. Get over it. Let me tell you about being female. But the therapist, the mother, the wife and — yes — the feminist in me shush the reactionary, not just with concern for the boys and men I know and love but also with increasingly clear glimpses of how very, very important it is for women that men, too, are deeply understood and valued. Not valued for their traditional power/control/management roles but for their natural, wild, authentic maleness.

And, while we’re at it, how very important that women can claim and integrate traditionally masculine features and that men can claim and integrate traditionally feminine features.

One of the traditional elements of maturing in our society — the rite of passage — has largely been lost to both genders. Oh, the trappings are still there among some sub-populations: confirmation, debutante balls, fraternity hazings. But none that I know of (and admittedly I don’t know them all) carries the deep drumbeat of the initiation process that characterizes a traditional rite of passage: the conscious, ritualized separation from the former, more childish self; the dreamlike hang-time in liminal space; the sense of accomplishing feats of physical and mental survival; the deliberate opening to and cultivation of adult spiritual wisdom; the reincorporation, as an adult, into the society where one was once a child.

In astrological terms, the rite of passage is/was a sort of “graduation” from unconscious, undifferentiated Mars/Venus energy into a firmer grasp of gender energies on a more subtle, conscious, individual level — from Mars to Sun (mental will and awareness) and from Venus to Saturn (physical security and awareness). In other words, it is the movement from the communal energy of the lower half of the chart to the individuated energy of the upper half through the fires of the most fundamental questions of identity: What does it mean to be a man? What does it mean to be a woman? With luck, depth and wise guidance, the initiate may even glimpse Pluto and Uranus energy during this process.

When a boy or girl can claim their gender birthright, not as prescribed behaviors like flirting or competing or giggling or dominating, but as unique, self-aware expressions of their individual mix of gender — XX, XY or some lovely soup of the spectrum in-between — then a rite of passage has taken place. We move away from stereotyped gender roles and into the embrace of all possibilities within, able to move in and out of stereotypical maleness, femaleness and gender-neutrality with much more ease, assurance and spiritual wisdom than we did as children.

And we become able, as it seems too few do in contemporary life, to turn around to the generation that follows, to become mentors and guides to the boys and girls behind us, who still struggle to understand what it means to be a boy or a girl or a man or a woman — or anything else, for that matter — in today’s society. The astrological archetypes are not the only container for these energies, for this process, but they are vivid and tangible ones that can be useful guides along the way.

Can you identify a rite of passage in your life? Was it intentional or not? How did you grow through it? What did you sacrifice and what did you gain? Who guided you? What archetypal energies — masculine, feminine or anything else — were important in that journey?

Image: John Paul Bosbolo

Happy Birthday!

Kathy — Sun, 09 Sep 2007 19:46:00 +0000

My little family has celebrated three birthdays of two-year-olds in the last week, including our son’s.

Everyone knows birthdays happen once a year, to celebrate the day you were born. But besides marking a momentous occasion and counting the years of maturity, birthdays also celebrate the solar return — the day each year when the Sun returns to the exact place it was in the sky when you were born.

The customs of gift-giving, candle-adorned cakes and “Happy Birthday” greetings are sourced in the ancient pagan belief that each birth is attended by a spirit or angel charged with guarding the new person throughout his or her life. Ancient people believed the spirit was more susceptible to influence by humans on its charge’s birthday, thus they offered gifts, cakes and greetings to appease the spirit and ensure its continued protection for the loved one.

I’ve noticed something else on these recent birthdays as well: The celebrated child simply shines. Even our little boy, who is delightful but not usually comfortable with crowds, owned the place at his party, but not obnoxiously so; and same with the other two. Each of the three children we’ve celebrated this week has exuded an ineffable assurance that they are the center of the universe — yet accompanied, somehow, by a bounteous, joyful welcome to all who entered their orbit. They had enough space, and energy, and arms for everyone who came to celebrate.

The fire atop the birthday cake reflects the glow of the Sun that returns on this day. It’s as if the center of the life of the world — the Sun, the bringer of light, the marker of day and night, the source of energy and nourishment and inspiration — is paying a special visit to the center of the family’s life, the child who brings light, energy and inspiration to each day. These two energies coming together align the universe’s intentions with that of the child, and the child feels “in her element,” that the world reflects her very soul, that her wish on the candles will come true — because how could it not, in a world with a Sun that kisses her soul?

(Photo credit)

Learn, Think, Speak. Repeat.

Kathy — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 21:54:00 +0000

Mercury is never more than 30 degrees away from the Sun. That’s unique among the planets — all the others trek much further astray from the great ball of fire.

And if you know just a tad about Mercury and Sun’s roles in the birth chart, you can begin to appreciate the importance of our smallest, fastest planet.

In a nutshell, the Sun is the core of your identity, an expression of your essential energy. It is self-awareness and will, an urge toward Being Yourself, the drive to create a space for yourself, for your uniqueness, within the sphere of the world.

Mercury is the way you learn, know and communicate. Mercury trolls the environment for useful information that helps you know how to be, move, speak and act in the world. And then, in turn, he helps you communicate back out to the world. Mercury resides in the in-between spaces, the open space between you and me — and it’s what gets tossed back and forth in that space. It’s how I throw the ball to you and how you catch it. It’s how we know what we know, what we do with it, how we transmit it. Mercury helps us exchange and connect with the people around us — or not. But it’s not the relationship itself — that exists elsewhere.

The fact that Mercury is always close in to the Sun means that our ways of learning, knowing and communicating have a direct and real bearing on who we are and how we’re perceived in the world — whether that’s really who we are or not.

Consider a person you greatly admire, or someone who gets on your nerves. What it is that you love or loathe? Chances are, the way that person thinks and — especially — communicates is among the top attractors or detractors. People who speak haltingly, rudely or sloppily give the impression not just of speaking that way but of being that way. On the other hand, people who communicate with charisma, charm, kindness or other such qualities attract us because we believe that is who they are. And, in a way, it is.

In turn — in the true spirit of exchange that characterizes Mercury — the way someone speaks impacts the way we feel about ourselves in their presence. The charming person draws us into her orbit, makes us feel good being around her, makes us feel more important or loved or wanted. The rude person makes us feel unwanted or unloved — and, given enough time, power or both — diminishes our self-esteem.

Most importantly, whether you communicate quickly, lovingly, charmingly, rudely, whatever, that habit informs your own sense of self — your own Sun — whether you’re aware of it or not. (Much Mercury energy happens under the radar, so be careful what you say, and how you say it!). Learning, knowing and speaking are so ubiquitous that they can hardly help informing who we are.

An example: I was telling a friend a small story about my toddler the other day. Part of the story had my little boy banging on the door of our home office yelling, “Daddy! Daddy!” trying to get my husband, Alan, to come out. The office is two doors down the hallway from the room I was in, but in the interest of brevity, I just said, “Alan was in the next room, and the baby kept banging on the door.”

Over the next day or two, I realized that the memory had shifted so that, even in my own mind, my son was banging not on the office door — as he actually had — but on the bedroom door, which in fact is “the next room” in real life. I had spoken a small and presumably harmless lie, and the lie became truth in my mind. Just like that, even though I consciously knew the truth.

What do we become when we speak? Do we speak from what we are? Or do we become who we are through what we speak?

(Photo credit)