Lunar eclipse conjunct Mars: Lights go out

The recent Capricorn lunar eclipse didn’t seem to have affected me in a dramatic way, but more subtly. The eclipse occurred a few degrees away from my Mars and I know I woke up on the day feeling like my fire had been put out. I was fortunate enough to take the day off.

Small wonder: Banana pancakes

I have been making banana pancakes.

It’s the only thing I know to do right now in this coffee-press climate of clusterfucks, eclipses, internal turmoil, change, transition, transformation, etc., etc. (I refuse to use the ‘h—–’ and the ‘w—–’ words!).

Too-tight shoes

If I could describe how I feel in these strange times, it would be what I just wrote on Julie Demboski’s blog:

Like wearing too-tight shoes and forgetting what it’s like not to have them pinch your feet…

Melancholy baby

I have been weepy all week.

There. I’ve come out and said it. Ordinarily, I’d wait to process the pain before confessing to it, my Capricorn moon preferring to hide in the basement until it passes, but I have been bolstered by the courage of those like the inimitable Lucy Looking Upward to bear their souls and share mine.

Put it down to the yod in my chart, the Hades Moon, the current Pluto transits, or the once-in-a-lifetime Jupiter-Neptune-Chiron conjunction (personally, I prefer Lucy’s more colourful ‘Clusterfuck of Doom’), it doesn’t really matter. In reality, it’s probably all the above exerting tremendous pressure on my 7th house Venus in Cancer.

We are reminded constantly of the message behind this rare triple conjunction: wounding, awareness, healing, and so on. Personally, I wouldn’t mind the occasional dose of Neptunian anaesthesia from time to time. I know I’m supposed to take lessons from it, I know I am being asked to re-assess what I value, I just wish it didn’t have to feel like a botched bikini wax, metaphorically speaking.

‘Active laziness’

The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying (1992) is an interpretation for the modern world by Sogyal Rinpoche a collection of texts commonly known as the Tibetan Book of the Dead.

Sogyal Rinpoche interprets some of the ideas from the ancient texts for the modern world, and argues that the lack of respect for death in the modern world prevents us from living life to its fullest potential. This is not, however, license for hedonism, to do what you like, ‘cos we’re all dying anyway’. It is, in fact, a call for more responsible living, rather than less. Death is a fact of life, and death is encountered in every facet of life, not just the physical — we may experience the death of an idea, the death of a relationship, a feeling, a way of life, and so on. In other words, death speaks to impermanence. The death of our physical bodies is just one aspect of that process.

Down the (rabbit) hole

I came across this poem in Sogyal Rinpoche’s The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying (1992) (Will say more about the book another time).

‘Peace is this moment without judgement’

As the Moon conjuncts Pluto in Capricorn and buried emotions rise to the surface, I was originally intending to blog about a heartbreaking experience that happened to me recently. My natal moon is in Capricorn (trine Pluto = Hades Moon!) and Eric Francis writes about how Capricorn moons often have their hearts shattered; well, I feel like it’s still holding together — sort of like seeing cracks in the glass but the shape is visibly intact. At the tipping point, I can shatter or I can reconfigure the shards, and right now, I choose the latter.

Buddha-field

I thought I’ll take a break from my Hades Moon for a bit.

My Buddhist group is currently studying The Holy Teaching of Vimalakirti: A Mahayana Scripture (alternatively known as the
Vimalakirti Nirdesa Sutra). We covered Chapter One* last week called ‘The Purification of the Buddha-field’, which led to a discussion of what that ‘buddha-field’ might be.

Originally, I thought it might be something akin to an aura, but looking at the formal definitions, which describe it as a ‘field of influence’ (of a buddha or bodhisattva) that transcends time and space, I realised it is something far more abstract. Robert Thurman describes it as being akin to a ‘buddha-verse’, as in ‘uni-verse’, which makes the concept a bit easier to grasp.

Hades Moon III: When our darknesses meet

Part I, II.

One of the characteristics of natives with the Hades Moon, Judy Hall notes, is the karmic link to other people with Hades Moons. She provides numerous examples in her book, which point to individual and familial karma.

After I put the book down, I logged in to my astrology software and looked at the charts of my family and close friends, including those with whom the closeness was only short-lived. Should I be surprised that every single one has a Hades Moon? Either with Moon in Scorpio, or with Pluto in (Ptolemic) aspect to the Moon. I didn’t look up the more minor aspects because I didn’t need to. Everyone who is, or was at one time, important to me had a Hades Moon. Given that the moon changes signs every two and a half days or so, this doesn’t feel like simply a series of random coincidences.

Hades Moon II: The darkness that is mine

Part I.

Judy Hall’s book spooked me (in a good way) because nearly everything she described about the Hades Moon I recognised from my own life. Now, I like working with astrology, but there are times when the general descriptions in astrology ‘cookbooks’ don’t necessarily apply, and thus require creative interpretation. Because Hall’s book focuses on individuals with the Pluto-Moon aspects, and thus their specific life circumstances, description and implication of the aspect become that much more personal and vivid. The Hades Moon is not about behaviour or circumstance but about psychic experience so deep there are few words to describe it.

Until I read Eric Francis’ delineation of the Capricorn Moon, I could never really identify with textbook descriptions of the Cap moon as ambitious, money-grabbing, and so on. It is likely that many with Cap moons come across that way because they channel their repressed emotions into tangible achievements, as if to say ‘If my material circumstances are okay, I’m okay’. The impact of Pluto aspecting this fragile but tough moon never really crossed my mind until, in consultation with Eric Francis himself one day, he said, ‘Pluto aspecting your moon gives me the sense of hanging onto a cliff by your fingertips’. He meant having both planets at their anaretic degrees, or the last degrees of the signs. My Pluto at 29+° Virgo was in exact trine to my moon at 29+° Capricorn.

Hades Moon

I spent this new moon in Gemini (quincunx Pluto) weekend reading Judy Hall’s
Hades Moon: Pluto in Aspect to the Moon
. The book is powerful and carries a strong Plutonian aura. While I was (am) very drawn to it, I had to put it down a number of times and actually go into short, but deep, naps, as if my unconscious needed the down time to process everything I was taking in. I ended up reading with while handling a small quartz tumblestone crystal in my hand. In metaphysical healing, quartz is said to help with harmonising inner and outer energies, along with dissolving built-up energies.

My Amazon Store

[Cross-posted in my Mercury Retrograde blog.]

In honour of Mercury retrograding in material-minded Taurus, I’ve posted a link to my Amazon Store on the side bar, where I’ve gathered the books I’ve reviewed or mentioned and a few more besides.