Hostage to emotion

My natal Moon in Capricorn wants to rant.

Every now and then I get sick of being told how closed off to emotion I am, and I accuse all those astrology textbooks describing people with Cap Moons as cold, brittle, harsh, and ambitious as being part of the conspiracy!

Speaking for my own Cap Moon, it frequently feels under siege by more feeling types who privilege the immediacy of their intuition and sensory knowledge over those of us who take longer to get there. It has become politically incorrect to make quick judgements about people who are slow with reading and writing; but it seems perfectly acceptable still to consider people slower to access their emotions as having none.

I’m sick of it.

Just because I don’t always express my emotions clearly doesn’t mean I don’t have them. It doesn’t mean anyone has the right to hurt me by insinuating I’m incomplete, damaged, or worst of all, dishonest. Sometimes it takes me two days before I even realise I’ve been hurt, and then they think I’m crazy for bringing it up two days after the event. I’m sick of it!

Breathing between thoughts

Or at least speaking them out loud.

Mars in Virgo is squaring my Gemini stellium at the moment, and will do so three times in the next few months. Mercurial thoughts are racing fast and furious — only I forget that thinking aloud doesn’t always communicate what I’m feeling to others. And thinking my frustrations aloud just makes things worse.

As Mars prepares to retrograde in a few weeks for nearly four months, my note to self is to take a breath between each thought, if not literally, then metaphorically. And stay the quip, the tongue lash, the Martian urge to insist that what I think must ‘count’.

Image: Hieronymus Bosch, The Seven Deadly Sins and the Four Last Things (1485) (Wikimedia Commons)

2010 — self-alignment

The cardinal cross of 2010 has been good to me on many levels, though it hasn’t been by any means easy. Occurring in the angular houses of my chart, it has become evident as I look back on the year that 2010 has been for me a series of lessons on aligning my inner self with my outer world. It has been about learning to be comfortable in my own skin, but also about creating environments — physical, social, emotional — that resonate well with my instincts.

Eclipse in the first house: And the scabs fall off…

I like this picture of a replica of Donatello’s David (1430) (front view here) with the paint peeling off his butt like a scab. After the partial lunar eclipse in my first house (conj Jupiter opp Venus) this past weekend, it feels like the ones on my metaphorical behind are falling off too.

I can’t really explain what’s happened — nothing ‘big’ has occurred (so far). It is more like a sense that something’s shifted, and that while the movement was minimal the effects are multiplied. It’s a bit like that arcade game where you drop in coins one by one trying to move the coins in the moving drawer bit by bit. The process seems to take forever and then suddenly you drop in a coin at the right moment and a whole bunch (and maybe a prize or two) falls into the tray.

Cheap, not cheerful

There has been a very energetic discussion on Neptune and boundaries recently on Donna Cunningham’s blog. It has reminded me again of the importance of establishing my boundaries against emotional or energy vampires. As Mercury readies for its retrograde in Taurus, I find myself rethinking my availability to cheapskates.

Scrooge McDuck as Ebenezer Scrooge

The Sunshine Boy

The Sunshine Boy (Fridrik Thor Fridriksson, Iceland 2009)

There are some films that have the power to change the world, and I hope this one actually proves it.

Fridrik Thor Fridriksson directs this documentary about one woman’s journey to try and understand her autistic son’s mind. In adopting the voice of one mother’s search for answers, and help, for her son, the film introduces the wide spectrum of effects this condition can have on individuals and families, many of them heart-breaking.

Healing Pluto problems: Obsidian order, Walnut way

If you are currently experiencing the Pluto station at a sensitive point on your chart — it is currently square my natal Pluto, and opposite my natal Venus — it’s likely you’re feeling just a bit taut, like waiting for a shoe to fall, but not knowing if it’s going to be made of soft leather or hard concrete.

Detail of Pluto and Proserpina (It's stone!)

Pluto issues are deep and transformative (cellular, as I once put it) and healing them requires a genuine and concerted effort at looking inwards, and the courage to square with yourself, your desires and your fears, warts and all. Plutonians who choose to look away often end up projecting their shadow sides onto others, hurting themselves and loved ones in the process. I know a Plutonian (still) undergoing a tough Pluto transit who once asked me what the point of therapy was. He said, ‘What’s wrong with just getting on with life? Won’t therapy just raise things that are better hidden?’ My answer was: ‘Sure, you can just do that and time will pass and you will get older and die. But who do you hurt in the meantime? Do you want to live life awake or asleep?’ My questions were not meant to be rhetorical but he never answered them. As far as I can tell, he’s still sleepwalking.

Healing Pluto Problems

In honour of Pluto going direct on 11 September 2009, I thought I’d share some thoughts about Donna Cunningham‘s book, Healing Pluto Problems, whose title I’ve borrowed for the title of this post.

I picked up this book on Neith’s recommendation. It is not as heavy-going as Judy Hall’s Hades Moon, which I’ve written about here and also like for different reasons. Rather, Cunningham’s book contextualises Plutonian issues (deep transformation, sex, death, guilt, resentment and so on) in terms of the things one can do to mitigate their effects, whether one is the Plutonian or on the receiving end of one. And it could well be both — Plutonians tend to attract other Plutonians.

Being a Plutonian herself, Cunningham exhibits great empathy for the depth and intensity of Plutonian feelings. If there are ‘problems’ with being Plutonian, it is not the natures of Plutonians that are put on the line, only a lack of understanding (and resources) in wider society to address them. The book does not victimise Plutonian native either — each one is required to take responsibility for their own actions and feelings, and the author is quick to point out that the unevolved can quite easily turn their Plutonian power on others and themselves.

I/Thou/We/They

The world is made for people who aren’t cursed with self-awareness
— Annie Savoy (played by Susan Sarandon), Bull Durham (Ron Shelton, 1988)

On the verge of … verging

The title of this post came from a comment by my astro-blogging friend, Neeti Ray. I was trying to describe the weird sense of limbo I’m feeling that I can’t shake, like being on the verge of something that hasn’t yet manifested, and she wrote: ‘On, the verge of, verging’. Perfect! My original title was going to be ‘How to be in two places at once’.

As Venus opposes Pluto this weekend, continuing to put pressure on my own natal Venus-Pluto square, my thoughts turn to how one might process, or, indeed, metabolise, pain. With her customary bluntness, Lucy describes Venus’ recent ingress into Cancer as being akin to putting a ‘Band Aid on a gunshot wound’. It made me think again about the nature of Plutonian pain. And then there is what Elizabeth Spring describes as the ‘core pain’ of Neptune (no doubt accentuated by its conjunction to Chiron). If Plutonian pain is like a gunshot wound, I’d say Neptunian pain is like a bruising — you don’t notice it at first, until you accidentally press on it, or bump into the furniture again!

Safe space, open space

Neeti Ray‘s comment about my use of the analogy of the front porch below got me thinking about how we create psychic spaces safely for others to enter, and how we behave when we are invited into another’s.

The 100-Acre Wood, illustrated by E. H. Shepard

Children’s literature is full of these spaces: Winnie-the-Pooh’s 100 Acre Wood is one, Narnia is another. These are not hermetically-sealed spaces; dangers sometimes lurk, but are, in the realm of the psyche, ultimately contained. Like a playground where children learn to rough and tumble, to fight as well as get along.

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.