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 [...]

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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 [...]

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So, does the world look different yet?

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Controlled chaos, or thoughts on the Saturn-Uranus opposition

Call it ‘the Grand Irrationality’, as Robert Wilkinson does, or a ‘tricky time’ as this reader does on ElsaElsa.com. There’s a weirdness in the air — a sense that what we know, experiences we have built up (Saturn), may not, or cannot, help us make sense of the chaos (Uranus) we sense. The economy is [...]

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Love and possession

As the Sun (self/ego) opposes Uranus (unpredictability, sudden change) today, bringing to light our need for, and often also our fear of, change, we are given a little taste of the greater struggle to come when Saturn (the planet of discipline, constriction, and conservatism) opposes Uranus on the 4th of November later this year. Yes, [...]

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Recycling toxicity

I wondered a little while ago about getting upset with people who choose to live emotional toxic waste dumps. Last night, my unconscious must’ve been trying to tell me something because the word ‘tonglen‘ popped up in my dream. I know very little about Tibetan Buddhism but I do know a little bit about [...]

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Sex and Zen III: 8th house astrology

Parts I, and II.

Trawling through my archives, I came across this article by Eric Francis on eighth house astrology, bringing together ideas of orgasm, death, and self-renewal, I’d been musing about earlier. ‘Typically,’ he writes, ‘the 8th becomes a dance of death: ego death; flirtation with orgasm and desire (often secret desire)’.
In the previous [...]

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Sex and Zen II: Quelle probleme?

Part I
When asked how to deal with the ‘problem’ of sex, Krishnamurti gave this answer:
Why is it that whatever we touch we turn into a problem? We have made God a problem, we have made love a problem, we have made relationship, living, a problem, and we have made sex a problem Why? Why is [...]

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Sex and Zen I: Vesta

As Venus (pleasure) moves into a watery trine (emotion) with Mars (libido), sex seems to be on everyone’s mind. Eric Francis of Planet Waves rants about the hypocrisy surrounding the supposed sexual misconduct of Eliot Spitzer, the governor of New York. Jundo Cohen of Treeleaf has made it the subject of his talks for the [...]

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Finding the words to break boundaries — navigating Mercury in Aquarius

All this talk about Capricorn has made me forget that what follows Capricorn is Aquarius, the sign of the inventor and the great humanitarian.
It’s funny and apt that my concerns about navigating social norms and boundaries should be so eloquently answered by Eric Francis writing on Mercury’s current ingress in Aquarius, and the upcoming Mercury [...]

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Stand-by / by-stand

Can we stop our buttons being pushed? Meditation helps me catch myself out before the situation escalates, but can I stop the button being pushed in the first place? We can’t stop the push-er, but can we stop being the pushed? Can we drain the power and render the button inert? Can we be by-standers [...]

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Letting life happen

I was listening to a talk by Paul Haller recently, called ‘Just Sitting Being Alive’, which he delivered in Belfast sometime last year (it can be found on the Black Mountain website).
One thing he said about Zen practice that struck me; that stillness is ‘when we can just let life happen around us’ (or [...]

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