Compulsive Communication- Mercury in the 8th house

Do you ever find yourself completely bored by the topics being discussed around you? Are you lost in an endless sea of random polite conversations with little or no depth? Does talking to your fellow co-workers or friends feel like you're being hit in the head with a cement brick repeatedly? If so, you might be ready to move into complete isolation from the rest of humanity. However, if that doesn't sound practical, we must learn how to tolerate conformity in our conversations. Social niceties can drain us of our vitality, as the compulsive need to communicate about trivial matters with people who have little or no insight into one's personality is the norm these days. For those of us with artistic leanings who tend to express our thoughts passionately or even poetically, this can be maddening. How do we find solace in these superficialities? Send me an email if you have any coping strategies.

I See a Bad Moon Rising

Recently, I have been initiated into the sacred circle of motherhood. My co-workers threw a party for my “new baby”- they affectionately referred to it as a “kitty shower”. I didn’t have the nerve to tell them I was having second thoughts about taking my “new baby” home, as my thoughts drifted to the challenge of caring for another with trepidation and weariness. Last night, as I “kitty proofed” my apartment, I realized life was indeed changing. All of this focus on motherhood naturally had me thinking about my own mother and our relationship. What a burden it must’ve been for her to be saddled with caring for our every need day and night. The endless sob fests, runny noses, and temper tantrums could drive any normal sane person into postpartum depression. Could I really handle this new responsibility?

As I recall, a few months ago, an ex-boyfriend’s mere suggestion of the possibility of having children nearly drove me over the edge- it was time to get out fast! I broke up with him a few weeks later in an attempt to rid myself of what seemed to be an awful “mommy curse”. Even though, I knew these mommy issues had taken root somewhere in my psyche during youth, as they often do. These “roots” plant themselves firmly in our brains and perform an initiation all on their own. Consciously, we are unaware of their affect, but off-kilter reactions to certain normal adult conversations will reveal the root, or at least a leaf on the tree.

Because the idea of motherhood began to produce violent reactions in me, almost to the point of physical illness, I figured it was time to explore that hypocritical Cancer Moon placed prominently in my 10th house. Shouldn’t my domesticated, pregnant n’ barefoot in the kitchen Cancer Moon embrace the happy little homemaker role? Shouldn’t I be bubbling over with maternal energy, just waiting anxiously for my chance to procreate? Am I supposed to be scouring the Earth for a potential mate with my biological clock ticking away furiously? All research suggests that I should be, with that Cancer Moon shining at the top of my chart. However, if you take a second look you will see Pluto, Lord of Death, staring down my sensitive Cancer moon in a hard tight square. Enter Hades, the invisible death God, bringing us down to the deepest primal level where fears are confronted and life ceases to thrive. It is the icy frozen “night of the soul” or as Shakespeare said, “the winter of our discontent” where life meets death and death meets life. This is not a pleasant experience, folks, but it gets the job done. We leave the Underworld with much greater understanding of ourselves and others, with our invisible armor firmly in place. Right now, I am reading a very insightful book written by Judy Hall called “The Hades Moon”, which discusses the Moon/Pluto combination in all forms. The author herself has strong Moon-Pluto traits and uses her familiarity with the Underworld to help us navigate through our journey- more to come on this book and Moon-Pluto aspects in general.

In closing, I'm posting these song lyrics, which are so appropriately linked to the Moon-Pluto archetype.


Creedence Clearwater Revival

I see a bad moon rising
I see trouble on the way
I see earthquakes and lightnin'
I see bad times today
Don't go 'round tonight
It's bound to take your life
There's a bad moon on the rise
I hear hurricanes a blowin'
I know the end is commin' soon
I fear rivers over flowing
I hear the voice of rage and ruin
Hope you got your things together
Hope you are quite prepared to die
Looks like we'er in for nasty weather
One eye is taken for an eye

The Chiron Experience-confronting inner darkness

Where ever Chiron is present in our charts is where we have important lessons to teach others. It is where the gift comes through the wound. Our Chiron placement is very sensitive, it asks to go within and confront our inner darkness. (In classical mythology, Chiron is both animal and beast.) It is only in the confrontation, healing, and finally releasing that the poison arrow is pulled from our hearts. Does that sound a bit dramatic? Well, if it does- good. Everyone has Chiron somewhere in their chart, and it is in this area where we may find the more dramatic, trauma-filled experiences in our lives. According to classical mythology, Chiron resided in a “grotto” on Mt. Pelion where he lived with his terrible incurable wound. As you can see, this is not a light, breezy existence for our fated Chiron, but he does make good use of his time spent in the darkness by being of service to others through teaching. Hence, we run across the tendency of astrologers to associate Chiron with Virgo (the service sign) and Sagittarius (the sign of teaching and educating). The glyph (planetary symbol) for Chiron looks like a key turned upwards. This is symbolism at its best. The wound holds the key to our relief. It reaches out to help others. Through our service, we heal ourselves. It is one of the finest examples of God moving through the world. Not to get all religious on ya, but the “Chiron experience of woundedness” does have religious/spiritual overtones. Eventually, Chiron is released from his pain and ascends to a higher plane. In our day and age, we can view this as a metaphorical ascension. We reach a higher state of being and living when move through our own “Chiron cycle”. For those of us that have “prowled through the grottos” we have much to teach the world. It’s time to get started. Each one of us carries a wound, so what is yours? And how can you use it to change the world?

I Need to Believe

How did our great grandparents, grandparents, and in some cases, our parents manage to make love work? The smorgasbord of potential mates is dizzying and with the advent of internet dating and speed dating random pairings occur all day, every day, all over the world. Where does a person find balance amongst all this madness? The beautiful illusion of "true love" is sold to each person through the media and enforced by our interactions with others in the societal traditions we uphold. But, now our twenty-something generation holds the pain from generations past, plus carries the weight of being unable to conform to the coupledom thrust upon us. Can we take the out-dated prehistoric concepts involving relationships and apply it to an entirely different world? The problem our generation grapples with is our inability to integrate our partnerships with our individualism. We have all the parts of the puzzle in front of us, but we cannot put it together. We are unable to assimilate the previous generational experience into our experience. Love does not operate in a vacuum. We need cohesion between our inner lives and our outer world. If we are in a committed relationship, we need support and interaction with the rest of society. While this is all well and good as far as the community is concerned, we are also bombarded with conflicting messages about what finding a "soul mate" really means. We forget that once we find our "soul mate", we still have to live with them everyday. Do we do this from a place of necessity, obsession, or a truly elevated spiritual love- and what exactly IS that?

We need to believe in love, THAT IS WHY WE DON'T FALL IN LOVE. The harshness of reality will eventually visit each one of our relationships. Its impending doom hovers above the echo of our laughter. It must be dealt with. At some point, we will face one another's monsters, and if we don't turn and run the other way then we have succeed. But we hide our humanness in the shuffling of our feet, moving from this person to that person, trying to hide our boredom with ourselves. Even so, we end up repeating the same conversation with different people. Do we fully engage ourselves long enough for the illusion to pass and then start over again? Is that what love is supposed to be? And maybe there is a definitive line between what's real and not real, but those special cases give us headaches. We live with the tension of knowing what we've lost and what everyone else around us has lost too. It's true, the experience of being human has made us all experts in accepting our losses, but at a certain point, shouldn't we get to reach out our hand and touch the dream? One could build a lifetime on that hope, isolating themselves from the demands of a real commitment. And it's the demands pushing us into another dark corner that makes us ask strangers for answers to our impossible questions.

The Pluto in Libra Generation and what's not being said

Pluto in Libra (1971/72-1983/1984)

Transforming the concepts of marriage and relationships with our family, community, and ourselves.

Pluto is very slow moving planet. When it enters a sign, it stays there for a long time. For those born between 1971-1984 Pluto was in Libra. Pluto, being the planet of transformations, death, and rebirth promises many changes in relationships for our Pluto-Libra generation. Much discussion can be found on the Net regarding the Pluto in Leo and Virgo generations (1945-1970), but astrologers have very rarely expanded upon the Pluto in Libra generation. Since most of us are now in our late twenties/early thirties, our generational issues have been surfacing all over the place from the gay marriage debate to the rising divorce rates. Our generation has begun to face these issues, but with only marginal success. We need to take a closer look at how this placement is affecting us personally and also on a generational level. Because Pluto is in Libra for all born between 1971-1984, many of the "canned" rehearsed statements about this placement do very little justice to the actual feeling attached to it. Thus, this Pluto in Libra gal will attempt to bring greater insight into the reality behind this placement. Please see my essay entitled, "I need to believe" for a good summary of the feeling associated with Pluto in Libra.