Dear Friend and Reader:
I was just soaking in the irony of New York’s governor choosing an anti-choice, apparently regressive Senate replacement for Miss Rodham the day that Mars squares Eris. I’ve identified Eris as being the representative of the outcast woman; the one who lives on the edge of town, who comes to the market early so that she doesn’t have to deal with the judgment she feels. She could be anyone, but she’s not going along with situation as normal/moral.
Though she may not identify herself in public, I associate her with a number of feminine archetypes — the witch, the whore, the spinster, the lesbian, the solitary artist: generally she is not a householder, but she certainly can be, and this energy is getting stronger in the culture and that will resonate on some level with everyone. I think of Eris as the woman who knows she is different and is not afraid to be different, even though she may do it quietly.
She is the inner attribute of women who have not necessarily embodied their truth. For those who are aware of the Lilith archetype — the original woman, created equal to Adam — she is in this cycle of mythology. The problems with this energy generally arrive when she goes covert; when she conceals her agenda; when she refuses to state her needs because she is afraid that they will become a cause of discord. And this, more times than not, is the actual cause of discord.
Mars coming in for a square feels like a clash on the level of sibling rivalry. Mars and Eris are brother and sister. Mars is the essential male energy; the glyph is a circle with an arrow at the exact angle of an erect penis. The turbulence is between something that is inwardly authentically feminine and something that is outwardly, blatantly male. Men and women understand little about one another’s respective plights, or human conditions. I would propose as a man that most women think they “want their men to be men” but don’t understand what that really means. There is something a little wild about maleness, and I think this scares the bejesus out of the overwhelming majority of women, who feel that energy must be contained and controlled.
Men do the same thing to women. That inner Eris archetype wants the absolute freedom of self, and this is blatantly threatening to most men, who cannot deal with the fact that the women they engage with have the power of choice. I have also noticed, as have many feminist scholars, that many women are in a colossal conflict between their drive to individuate and their culturally-instilled conditioning to be “good” and well-behaved.
These are the basic ingredients of the misunderstanding that is the war between the sexes.
But think of it as a square: an internal crisis that we live with, often unconsciously. Gender conflict is exacerbated by a crisis of self-confidence that strikes most people down to their bones. I was walking around earlier today and it occurred to me (in the form of an email to send my therapist): I have said a lot about sexual repression, and gender oppression. I have not until now noticed how that is funded nearly 100% by the lack of self-confidence that it would take to take up these issues. In other words, if we are afraid of ourselves, we will never be able to meet one another face to face.
Instead, we spend a lot of time and I do mean a LOT of time either pandering to one another’s insecurities, or trampling on them.
With this as the background, there are two other aspects well worth mentioning. Venus is conjunct Uranus in Pisces, a brilliant illumination of passion and freedom of the kind that transcends conflict by its unmitigated originality. Venus, whose orbit and planetary properties are more similar to Uranus than any other planet, will invent her way out of this kind of Mars square Eris conflict if she needs to. But in that aspect structure, the next thing that happens is that she opposes Saturn and it can feel like back to the drawing board. And the drawing board is better than being discouraged. We need nothing, if not courage right now.
The Sun is in a stunning conjunction to Jupiter today, a central moment in the Aquarian lineup that is so strong right now — which by the way is also expressed as the two rulers of Aquarius (Saturn the traditional ruler, and Uranus, the modern one), face to face in a long opposition with Venus right in the mix. This is Aquarius six ways from Sunday.
I will have more on the eclipse later in the weekend.
Thanks for tuning in.
Hey Victoria, thank you for that straightforward click of perception:
“So as her walker crawls through her home dragging her feet along the floor, they say how pitiful. But every painful step she takes is a step of strength to me.
If you read this, thanks for listening.”
If you say the words in THAT moment you’ll have planted a seed in everyone there as a witness. Everyone IS listening! Speak and the door opens in the entire consciousness of your family, and they see the folly of their awkwardness and the richness of experiencing your mother as a human being (giving them permission to be human beings) what a gift and a relief!
It’s too simple!
I grow weary of this pointless empty digging in protoplasm, the enhanced feeling of being separate and caught (not getting past) the observation of everyone’s projections when anyone here can get up and puncture that isolated hypnotic state with a little crisp humor and a spot of warm empathy.
The English know how to comfort, cheer on and pull the most stubborn of heads out of their navels.
Ah, families. That clusterfuck where everybody loses.
As soon as I realize I’m alone and the way is ahead they cease to be a reference point. It is frightening to be free.
eric, did some review of the brothers of the most physically intimate kind. I have had a few extended relationships from 5-9 years in duration. There is a familiarity factor operating here in my findings.
So I call a brother. And I explained what I read. About what I thought ejaculation was. And what I am considering it isn’t. And about the male orgasm. His response was, “that is what I have read”. (What’s he reading? All those “women’s” mags at the checkout boast a million ways to “turn your man on”. I do not remember seeing any byline mentioning the male orgasm.)
“Well so you read it. Have you or have you not had an orgasm.” He softened and said, “yeah, kinda.” It was the tone of his voice that told me what the feel is. Yeah, he has. My years with him were long long ago and I have no memory of any awareness of his orgasm.
And then his voice went really deep and he said “I can tell you this. It sure doesn’t happen when I’m whacking off in the bathroom.” And then his laughter shook the phone line. I make no judgements. Men have their mystery too, I am finding.
The interesting thing was the conversation. It did not involve politics or economics as usual. It did involve women as usual. But there was no boast or brag or lust as usual. These were stories of women and places. Being a traveller of sorts he told of deep canyons and rushing rivers and cliffs and dams and diving. And the women he shared these places with were intwined in the experience. Best damn movie a man’s taken me to in a long time.
The long conversation ended and I was back in the lab, digesting the question, the answer, when I got a call from my vagina. That’s a call I just couldn’t deny. So I answered. Well, it seems that the tissue that surrounded the brothers had some stories to share too.
They are stories that came out of the familiarity. Stories inspired by the something in the voice that said “yeah kinda”. They are remembered by me as I cocked my head to the right in quizzical wonder. The head cocks came as I retreated and he said I’m not done yet. The head cocks came with the smiling answer “twice.” And the head cock came in a most joyous way with that small but powerful uh ha ha decrescendoing laughlike sound.
The “thing” where the sound came from reverberated in the sound and in the face I saw. Light. Beautiful beautiful light.
That I could remember the feel, the taste, the smell of every part of these brothers bodies, but overlooked their experience of the orgasm, I shake my head. But I guess I did experience it, I just did not know the experience had a name.
It gives me a new feeling of commonality with my brothers at this time. I say, at this time, because there is more research to be done. And any residual ‘not joy’ from these past relationships dissolves into the sights and sounds of that common experience.
So Eric it was a good ride to yesterday. Thanks for the ticket.
be, you know about this monster bio brother and company, I don’t want to cry no more. My cohorts are rising to the challenge. They are amazing. There is one of those ugly triangles here that we touched on before. I believe the rescuers and I will move with them on this are loosening the triangle just enough for the abusers to hang themselves. Just a feeling I am getting. But then it shifts to just who is the victim here. I see abuser. But I am getting ahead of the game here. Remember the yoke, remember the yoke. Slow steady stay with the pace.
So I am better today. Except for the fact that I am going to the dentist. As he gives me his lecture and guides me to cosmetics, I will be thinking, does he orgasm.
victoria,
No doubt in my heart that your mom is aware of your sensitivity and this contributes to the agitation. . .yours and hers. She knows – I bet – that you needed a change of environment. She also knows her other children and accepts them as they are. There just has to be a reason people like your mom have a world of their own apart from the rest of us… maybe to catch up on feelings and thoughts they never had time for. Maybe they don’t have words to communicate them, but some people, like you, can pick up parts of their loved one’s experiences telepathically.
Listening to your story makes me glad I only had one brother (& sister-in-law) to deal with. They too seemed only concerned with her assets, not-so-much about her comfort and safety and (yes it was possible) happiness. Don’t know how you could handle several siblings like that for as long as you have. But you did get to talk to her about leaving when she was pretty lucid. You will be able to remember this moment in time and be grateful for it forever.
As hard as these times must surely be, they will give you great strength to deal with future situations. Wishing you the best. Wishing you some rest.
Gardener, it is good to have you skipping in and out of this space. Especially now.
I do enjoy the dialogue, but today I have another reason for plugging into the phone line. If the phone rings, I will answer it in support. And I don’t know how much more water can flow out of these eyes before my eyeballs drop out of my head. Joy takes a rest I guess.
be, I left my Mother’s care in the hands of the care workers over two weeks ago. At the time of my leaving, I was down to overnite care watch 3-4 times a week, and some weekend days. Home care workers were there sun-fri 6:30a-6:30p. Two other family members did some time too.
Dimentia patients are very sensitive to everything around them, including people. They also go through periods of agitation when they are up 36-40 hours. When I do not sleep I get a bit strung out and agitated. I need my rest. And as I controlled my behavior, she still knew and that increased her agitation. As a result, I did my swan song, which I spoke to her about in one of her lucid(?) intervals. And she agreed it was a good idea that I leave her.
At my leaving homecare was extended t-th to 24 hour care.
It was good leaving time (somebody was looking out for me, and I’ve said that more than once) because a faction of angry siblings were firing up for another go around. It seems to be about her assets, but after 3 years to me, the pattern is like random anger with the dollars as a reason.
I learned alot doing the extended care. And not just about Mother. She is not as out there as she seems and she knows her children like the back of her hand. I think these people live in a world I am just starting to understand and they do not have the words to communicate what they are experiencing.
She is doing remarkably well with the rotating shift of health care workers and seems to be more at peace, more comfortable. I thought maybe I was imagining this or just hoping this peace. But my read was confirmed by my sister who commented that mother seems to be doing really well.
Well, that is never for long with a pack of snot nosed warriors that never grew up. “Best interests” are the words I hold to in all my decision making. But things are coming to a head. I have to back out. You wouldn’t believe what is spewing out of mouths, not to mention the heartless actions. I want to give them pea soup and tell them just go ahead and do the linda blair. At least it would give some comic relief.
The details are too many to tell. The web of lies and misrepresentation is complex. And as I see egoes being busted all around me, I fear for them. But there too, I must let go.
While the faction uses her as a mindless pawn, I know another Mother. A mother whose only goal was to raise strong children and she is tough and she ain’t done yet. I needed to let go so things can move to the next level as painful as that is.
So as her walker crawls through her home dragging her feet along the floor, they say how pitiful. But every painful step she takes is a step of strength to me.
If you read this, thanks for listening.
Victoria,……I snort and surrender, only to find the space again. In and out, back and forth, the cycle goes on.
No doubt it is very difficult living with your mother, but don’t stop trying to communicate with her. As my girl friend who’s mom has Alzheimer’s says, “I know she’s in there somewhere”. Keep trying to coax her to reveal to you who she sees.
Tell us about Lilith too. How do you see her now in your life? I don’t know a thing about her, but Frazier’s ex-wife always comes to mind when I see her name.
JD. . . thanks for the Philip Sedgwick site; I have a lot of confidence in his perceptions of how to read the gods & goddesses as they relate to the asteroids etc.
Gardener. . . .that is an amazing story about daughter and her surgery. Thanks for sharing. And I agree, we almost get it figured out and then it blows up again. Back to the drawing board!
Mystes and JD and Victoria and Be, I think it’s why we stay connected in this space, trying to figure it out. Right when I think we have the answer, something happens to blow it all up again.
The battle with that wretch ego will be won yet. Heal all relationships!
Grace and love surely await us in the other dimension.
be, with your referenced blessing, how can there be failure? There can only be acceptance.
In the slowness of time, I wear the yoke of the oxen still in training. My body aches with resistance and I move only to stop again. The toil is not yet broken into the acceptance of the knowing. I stumble and fall in the pace, pulled to the ground. The pace is the place opening into space. In the space, I hear the crack of the old whip, and I want to run, I want to fly, I want to ride. But I feel the weight of the yoke, the slow steadiness of the pace, and I snort, and surrender.
Gardener writes: “I’m so sorry you are losing your mother. I don’t know what I’ll do when my mom is gone. Mothers and daughters are connected for life, and post life too. Mystes is still connected to her daughter too.:
(G… thank you so much for doing this… I keep thinking about JD’s mom, but it slips away from my fingertips; you are soooo…. (sigh). )
~J, it is messy and weird, death and dying, and there’s no moment that will measure it, redeem it outside of the process itself. I feel you in this – that’s all.
M
JanesD,
My dead cousin visited me in 1997 and said I want you to meet someone. It was my daughter. When we met, we were so thrilled to see each other and we kissed each other’s’ faces all over! Then my daughter said, “I have to go now. I’ll see you in September.” She then misted through a double wooden door. I thought she was dead because of the reference to September which I thought was my old age, and because she turned into mist. This occurred during what I thought was a dream, only it seemed so real!
The next day I began searching for her. We finally met 3 years ago when I was 55. It turned out that on the night I met her in 1997, she was having open heart surgery. She told me later that they removed her heart from her body, so I’m guessing she might have been out of body during the visit. It occurred to me that that’s what happened during an email exchange with Mystes.
I’m so sorry you are losing your mother. I don’t know what I’ll do when my mom is gone. Mothers and daughters are connected for life, and post life too. Mystes is still connected to her daughter too.
Hi bkoehler:
I just wanted to rewind the everlasting scroll a little bit here to thank you for your compassionate note; and for the vote of confidence to the daughters at the mother’s passing.
I had never seen that site before — thanks for sharing it. Philip Sedgewick also has some cool and positive things to say about the Goddess of Chaos on his site — whole page of examples also. Interesting reading :).
~j
Janes Defense,
Your story about your grandmother – and her reason for being there with you – really moved me. I had no family members come to me when my mom was dying, but one of her kitties did jump on my chest while I was sleeping to let me know it was time. I was the only human in the house with mamma, but somehow I was able to function. In a trance or maybe it was an out-of-body situation, I went through the motions of calling the Hospice nurse, trying to make mom more comfortable, getting in touch with my brother’s family. What I’m saying is that I knew I wasn’t alone, and in fact, I wasn’t even doing the “things” my body/voice was doing. There could have been a room full of ancestors there for all I knew. But they got me through it.
I don’t suppose anyone is every ready when a time like this comes, but you will be surprised at how well you handle it.
Earlier this month I was looking for a site that had a more positive spin on Eris and was led to a place which, when I included it in a blog entry, was not accepted. If you want another view of this goddess, go to.. . . sacred dash texts dot com. Under the Book of the Goddess: Commentary: Ninth Principle:Eris
janes, I liked your “petticoats” turn of phrase, but I had to look a little further. Certainly ain’t no lack of info on this one out there. With my natal lilith in the 7th, ah, this would explain alot. Wow, I am a little overwelmed here right now. But I am laughing at myself. Thanks for pointing the way.
It’s close now. Sometimes it helps to listen to what they’re asking, even if it sounds completely insane, and try to resolve it — sometimes, you know, it’s just a process they have to work through themselves. Don’t worry, you’re doin really good. It sounds like it’s going exactly right.
Lilith: Astrologers have noted all this stuff about Lilith; that she attends painful situations of not belonging, or being different; or that there will be this ominous sounding thing – “female problems” — etc. But what I’m saying is that you have to go to the root of that and understand her purpose. Lilith is one place where the petticoats of a whole universe of hidden knowledge are showing; as is your sign Virgo. I’m saying the discomfort arises because it’s viewed through the lens of modern patriarchal thinking, instead of more sensible realities.
Dya see?
~j
I am a bit confused about Lilith. I thought she was situational like something maybe uncomfortable we have to deal with in life. Are all the physical symptoms listed a product of those situations? Or am I way off base here?
It is heartening that you know why they come. Recently reading back in my journals, I found that this has been going on for me for quite some time.
I ain’t so good at knowing why they come all the time. I guess that’s why I get so many redundant messages. I find it harder to understand the males. It seems more direct and repetitive. Like one liners. Either which way, maybe it’s like you said, they ain’t gonna leave till I get it.
I know that my mom sees them too. Sometimes, she gets freaked, and sometimes we talk about it. And then sometimes she blames me for bringing all those people in. In her dimentia, she gets confused, and thinks she has to prepare food for all of them. At those times, I want her to tell me who exactly she is seeing and all she says is you know what I’m talking about. She prays to die and I think there are many trying to help, but she’s got something to do yet before she goes. The mystery is still unfolding.
I don’t know what to say about your mom and letting go. I just don’t know. My redundant message from her brother, my uncle, was ‘you are not like your mother.’ I got a pre-ecliptic snap on that one so I got the message. But I still do love her passionately, despite the fact that she is hard to live with.
Same here, Victoria, sort of. I never saw any dead people til I got a lot older. I’m sure they probably thought I’d be stupid about it. Your own maternal line especially knows you pretty well and they’re extremely orderly and purposeful. They’re not all freaked out or “running from the light” or any bullshit like this — what would they run from? But as far as I know they tend to favor one in a family, if it’s that kind of family.
If it’s a friend or dead lover who comes, what I’ve been taught is that they want to finish telling you whatever they were in the middle of telling you when they had to leave. If it’s an Ancestor, that’s a big dream and it’s got a message in it — not something like hey, you got the job or you burnt the rice again. This time she came because my mom is dying, and they both know I’m not ready. I kind of knew she would, just…maybe not so soon. I was thinking maybe there might be one more winter.
Accept it…I live in it. We all do. 🙂
~j
Janes, your Grandmaw is awesome. You have made my day.
How do you feel about the vortex? Just accept? Would rather not deal with it?
It’s real hard sticking to a linear track of thinking when shit like that happens. And I’d blow it all off, but the healer that I went round and round with about this stuff, well he passed a while back. And he just had to make his point. And he did it in a big way. And then laughed and said I told you so.
:). You know, I really have to remember that I have no idea who is reading this stuff and at least try to be clear. In my mini-Eris opus, I skipped a step and implanted her in a human being for her effects. I don’t see her as a warrior-woman; I see her as the component that incites to action; the immediate spark of action upon desire. She’s essential to the female warrior: but she’s in all fighters –because courage is really a matter of just saying what the fuck and riding your impulse. But sometimes you throw the punch, and sometimes you don’t. Eris is that spark that drives the muscle twitch that results in somebody cold on a floor.
In other news, darlin, I think we got a mini-vortex goin here. See if you can spot it:
My grandmother, the White Tara, whose ancestors were Tibetan, swiped my door open last night at 2 AM. She is quite dead and looked it. She had a look of blank determination on her face. She was in a man’s green checked shirt, carrying two rolls of toilet paper, a cleaning rag and something in a spray bottle.
I thought she was a non-integrated ancestral memory and tried to eat her. She did not like that at all. No, you idiot, she said, it’s really me.
Oh, man, Grandma, I’m sorry, I said, and spit her out. I didn’t expect to see you here. You really didn’t have to come, I’m okay.
Immediately she melted into her living aspect, warmy pink, superreal shiny black braid and all. She sat down next to me. You’re not, she said. I am, I really am, don’t worry about me.
Well, she said after a minute or two of general inspection, if you don’t dry your tears and wipe your ass and clean this place up, I’ll do it for you.
Yeah, I know, I said. I’m really glad to see you.
And you know how they are, they don’t leave after that. They hang around to make sure you got it.
🙂 That’s how we do outside the Hallowed Halls, Miss.
~j
Jane’s writes: ” I thought at first you were resonating to Eris because I have a […] feeling that you are on schedule for some illumination about your Work; ”
Went through that door the first time on April 14, 1986 right after meeting and debating Maxine Hong Kingston. She is an emanation of White Tara, but I didn’t have those words at the time. Smacked me right in the kisser, she did. Found myself in a simultaneous three-headed conversation with Maxine, the head of the French department and a UC Irvine philosopher :: about (respectively) the female “warrior” motif, why Hillis Miller was a lousy pick for the French department, and what *really* crawled up Nietzsche’s ass and died. Humanity, I noted on that day, was in fact dead. Had in fact slipped down into the trachea of the Bardo, which it couldn’t swallow and couldn’t cough up. I have been pounding on its back for TWO, count ’em TWO fucking decades.
But something loosened early this morning. It’s going down or coming up. Maybe both.
Let X mark the spot where the Sun broke through…
yes, i was looking more at family secrets. We are all reaping what we’ve sown at one time or another I guess. Haven’t read a lot about Lilith but the first time I read about her I was really intrigued about the way families are connected. I have Ceres in Aquarius which is certainly being impacted by the current Chiron transits, which are both in trine to my lilith. I keep trying to heal my little family, and my larger family too.
🙂 Oh, oh, Gardener — I remembered something else I wanted to say;
Lilith representing “female problems” is a typical interpretation for Lilith in exile. Female problems, you mean like hemorrhage, stillbirth, birth defects, childraising, feeding abnormalities, issues of blood, genetics, and human husbandry? Those aren’t problems. That’s life. This is material reality that must be confronted for our survival as a race. It’s like saying that for a fisherman a storm at sea is a problem when there are five of them a week.
~j
JanesD – Protect, foster and guide – Right on! Right on!
When everyone gets that through their thick heads, we will all be walking into the light!
JanesD – right on – and thanks Eric for introducing Lilith.
My daughter also has the sun in early capricorn, but so far she is doing fine with the Pluto change, but she has Aries rising – I’m not sure if it is conjunct Eris, but it may be close. She is a very earth oriented girl.
My friend (twin spirit) is someone with whom I worked up to retirement. We still stay in touch almost daily. Over the years we learned a few truths about each other, some by accidental disclosure. He had an autistic child and a sick wife – you don’t run away from that. I had literally the same things in my life. I introduced him to his astrology chart a few years ago and it was like a total revelation to him. he is a lawyer, and has 2 PHD children. Boy, is he angry and bitter but I think he is healing now too. I used to read astrology for the romance and career stuff, now I just want the healing.
But speaking of orthogonal – I think the healing connection is right here, waiting for the door to open. The door really does open at times. Once, my bedroom disappeared and a beautiful woman was floating in the air smiling at me – the most tender and loving smile I had ever seen. Just as quickly, the room restored and she was gone. I’ve been chasing after the meaning of it ever since. I thought it was Mary smiling at me – or an angel!
Otay, a few months ago I did a Google search on Eris and I got to some site where the guy was saying; Eris is Violence in Women, She Loves to Torture People; Indian Women were known to be hideous and bloodthirsty, and just look at that military chick at Abu Ghraib.
What I thought about that was pffft….dude, you do not know what the fuck you are talking about. So I can understand your irritation.
All the Goddesses protect, foster and guide their tribe; I think the same way you do about Eris; she is the warrior/protector and the achiever and the fact of the matter is that she really can’t *afford* to be polite or play any silly games of inclusion because her aspect in ensuring the survival of her race is aggression and competition. She’s a great fighter — she has to be. There’s no room for analysis about it. People have to learn, evolve, act, compete. And like I said before, that’s not wildness or bad behavior, it’s necessary. She has a job.
You could look in your chart at what Ares is doing. Is he a friend to her? Are they in sympathetic signs? In the inner world, in the Jungian style, this can tell you how Eris is reacting to her exile. In her essence, though, she really does not give a shit what Ares thinks.
~j
oh and drink peppermint tea tonight. It is soul cleansing.
It is good to know that we can love each other unconditionally.
🙂 Hi Gardener:
Well, I could talk for years about Lilith. In my chart her Black Moon is in a very close stellium, on Ceres, on the South Node, on the Ascendant at zero Capricorn.
In my estimation she is everything we do not divulge that we are. And that would be probably 99 percent of our true experience of life. What I notice is that all the things we consider to be family secrets; what we hide from the public, what we think is not appropriate conversation is in fact the material that we personally interact with literally all day. Maybe, you know, you’ll tool into the city for coffee with an acquaintance and present an image to them of what you think they need to see. The rest of the time its you and Lilith and your crazy family.
So when Eric was expressing this idea that we are afraid to reveal our true natures there is no better example of that than the archetype of Lilith. But she is the reality of who we are; not who we are sometimes, but usually. Dirty laundry is really the human condition, which is apparently so ugly and unbearable we can’t tell anyone about it.
But that’s in the dead tradition. In another tradition I know the human condition is the Work. A Dad with Alzheimers is reality. Children who are different are kept and cared for. The human condition is what we are really doing all day, and there is outrageous beauty in it. That is not a secret. It’s the truth.
~j
Orthogonal – I sure am learning a lot of new words on this space – LOL. Never was much good at math after I had a stroke during my chiron return at around age 30.
Lilith, I think, is still representing woman problems of one kind or another. My 2nd daughter was overweight through school, but her friends were all 5’8″ beauties. She seems to have worked through that issue very gracefully, as she is now really quite beautiful, but the (former) beauty queens still think they are better than she is. I suspect she is coming into her own power and strength now, because she sees through them but is still friends with them too.
Post-its anyone? LOL.
Mystes — orthogonal….oh, yes, it is! I thought at first you were resonating to Eris because I have a( not an overwhelming, don’t get me wrong here) feeling that you are on schedule for some illumination about your Work; which I could guess at but but I’ll spare you the annoyance.
But it’s true, putting your attention here will absolutely open a door to another reality; and I don’t mean some tiny imaginary scene blossoming across the forebrain. This door will open and you will see and know it and then go walking around in it, thinking holy shit, where the hell was all this yesterday? It is not philosophy; this is actual experience on the level of everyday cognition.
And there is the little problem of once seeing it, how to sit in the dead world without going insane. Like I said, in modern Jungian thought, the consensus is that the Outcast Goddess is an abandoned part of Self; to me it’s no, there really is a fucking externally manifested problem here; and the problem is the distance between what is Real and what is manufactured by (male, come on, it’s true) fear. There really is an Unseen World under, behind, just inside this one. It’s the same as here only there’s not all this bullshit in it.
People get to similar illuminations with Kabbalah and sometimes Tarot meditation also; a person could do Rider Waite from 2 to 8 to 11…and maybe approach a similar revelation. Maybe. I’ve tried it but I’ve never gotten there that way. Besides, some people weren’t built to weave all these spangled webs in their heads. What I am talking about exists whether you believe it or not. This is why our an(sisters) saved the information.
~j
Vic – So true, “And they kept demanding that we all be together under the guise of pseudo family behaviour,” for me too.
A year and a half ago, I finally dropped EVERYTHING (which has serious consequences now) and drove across the country to a) have my “family” engage in authentic conversation or b) tell them I was D-O-N-E. 3 decades of this mixed message shit, trying different ways to be compassionate and in my moment of required assistance, being treated no better than a predatory inmate. I got angry finally at the correct folks! And, boy, do they still project out, my behavior just solidifies my inmate, crazy status for them, but who cares?! The hypocrisy at every level from the time I was 2-3 has been amazing… horror film, and yet, most people might “see” my family as perfectly normal which is the scariest part.
So, I agree the notion of family must change. Especially because when I am in need of help, and its taken me a lifetime to learn to ask for support (usually don’t get it, but at least I know how to ask at more appropriate moments now) the first thing people say to me is, can’t your family help?! And, I want to scream. No. And, if they did, I’d be in karmic hell for next kalpa.
But, all this is fine, as I am Eris poster girl – literally conjunct my MH. And, its made me exactly who I am today. Would I want it any other way? No way. Because we are part of the way to new value system of true equanimity, equality versus the mid-point of compensation for past flux.
You go sister!
So Gardener, all those people telling me how perfect their families are, they are being less than honest. I remember a neice spewing anger at a family gathering because she had heard that thing that all bio families are dysfunctional. When I consider that I say this: if that is true, then we were given or bought onto the wrong definition of family. Family cannot equal not family. We were set up for a no win situation.
My bio unit is no picnic in its entirety. I have given up trying to understand. But I have found some things out about myself.
I started getting all kinds of picutres. We talked about this. They were vivid and specific. And I said oh past lives. (as hillman said, doesn’t matter where they come from: it gives you something to work with). Past lives was the only lingo I had. But then an elder goddess came dancing out of her office one day with a 10 foot sheet of computer printout trailing in the air and showed me her geneology going back to the 1600s. I remembered something about wisdom being stored in the bones (guess that energy work knocked that shit loose).
My mother was 100% german, warrior woman and my father a man of peace (I don’t think his ancestors had seen the likes of us before). My great grandfather came from germany to avoid the draft in the 1800s. He broke the chain. And that’s all I need to know about my geneology. Competition doesn’t work for me. I’ve been on some kick ass teams that cooperatively achieved great things. And I’ve had to stand and do the right thing in the overwelming face of adversity. There was merciless firepower to contend with. It disabled me for awhile, but I am regrouping.
All I can say is that I was pissed because my family wasn’t like families “are supposed to be.” And they kept demanding that we all be together under the guise of pseudo family behaviour. It really fucked me up. Sometimes you just gotta disengage and watch the movie. And I keep an eye on that war gene.
PS I have an attorney now. All that’s left is the legal binding of family. And the joy of a few of us who have gotten really close. Oh yeah, there are two sides. Ain’t that just like the twisted warrior, sides.
Gardener… I am reading this whole line of discussion through the NewMoon/Eeeeklipse energy and I can’t begin to describe how orthogonal are your voices. They are like levers or crowbars that are prizing something loose that I can’t get to in any other way. So don’t worry about the appearance of personal disclosure, G. I don’t even know if I am going to be able to –or if it is important to– articulate what happened when I read through (and through and through) Jane’sD’s post.
JD… I have some surface tension about the Eris-as-Leader motif, but that’s irrelevant to what is happening at a deeper layer. Again, it’s orthogonal. Gardener’s willingness to lay out some of the gridlines of her Lilith energy is incredibly helpful.
***
Off I go to tuning up this body up for what’s on the way tonight. I do recommend you find purified salt water in aerial form and pull it through your tissues. It will make what’s coming so much easier.
With lilith too, the house system must be considered in figuring out the lessons to be learned.
My twin spirit’s (long time friend) spouse has a south node that is also conjunct his lilith in his 4th house.
Drama drama drama in all family relationships, where lilith is. I can look at my husband and son over the last 30 years and ‘see’ the issues that came up, and are still coming up. It’s curious that they have lilith and chiron on the same degree of libra, but the house is different. My son’s is a 2nd house aspect and he, even as a child, was obsessed with career, money and making money. He’s been hurt here, and probably will again until he learns to relax.
My spouse has this placement in the 10th house, which over the years has been both good and bad – good public image when he was good, and bad public image where he was less than honest or honorable.
Where there are karmic conditions to be met, it is impossible to walk away and wish for a new set of relatives. We’d probably just have to repeat the lesson later, and I sure as heck don’t want to do that. I could look for more links by looking up more points of astrology, but I don’t want it to drive me crazy. It is enough to know that we are in teh same family for a reason.
JanesD, maybe you could look at your close family members too, at least the ones where you know birth times. It sure is helpful to know how to help them out, when to withhold criticism, and when to find ways to help them relax about the issues they most fear. Like for my son, the perfect gift is a troy ounce of silver now and then, and assurance that the old homestead is secure and that he can come home if his job fails – that sort of thing.
I don’t mean to wash my laundry in public, but every family I know has issues they don’t quite understand, or at least think they are alone in. We are all in this together.
I didn’t look at the lilith in the obama election chart, but then I wouldn’t know how to look or compare it. Did you already do that Eric? I’ll go back and re-read what you wrote.
I’ve been thinking about this too….my lilith is at 17 degrees Gemini, about conjunct the daughter I put up for adoption. Her lilith is 11 degrees cancer, about conjunct her son, who is autistic. my son’s lilith is at 1 degree of libra, exactly conjunct his Chiron at 1 degree of libra – he has trouble with female relationships (expects too much).
My husband ahs lilith at 1 degree of libra, also conjunct his chiron. He’s been disabled since 1994. I’m ok with that, with it on my 12th house saturn within 1 degree, and 12th house sun.
My other daughter has lilith at 14 capricorn, close to her moon at 16 cap. There are some big emotional issues here
My twin spirit has lilith at 1 degree of Leo conjunct his South Node. Like me, he is married to someone who has been unavailable for many years. He recently returned to work to ‘get away from the mania.’ We live hundreds of miles apart, but are as in tune as if by radio signal.
Lilith = where the heavy karma lies, but it is imperative to figure it out and help it heal.
JD that’s good. We’re beginning to be less simplistic black/white about eris.
Never having considered purchasing a thigh-master I see myself as having the instincts of a protector, and will step into anything and take the consequences if I see harm happening to something or some-being. Then again, I have ceres in pisces rising before my sun which would be the first motivating impulse. Behind ceres is mars in pisces.
What I do is teach others self acceptance and all-rightness as one is = (confidence).
It isn’t some display full of self-reference or kick-assness or having something to prove. I have nothing to prove yet often am regarded as a threat to the thugs of this world which are too well represented to suffer any shortages.
The only thing I resent is being told who I am and how my nature is more of a cartoon of the real thing rather than how I directly experience it. Eris seems more like a tree stump or a bug being examined legs kicking on the end of a pin as an object of doomed revulsion than a living entity.
~JD… I have nothing useful to reply yet. Except: Reading you is like watching blood bounce from a knife wound. Extraordinary, riveting and. . . it panics me a little. I wish I could express this offlist, but maybe you can *hear* it privately.
It’ll take me a while to walk all the way around this one… feel free to keep talking.
M
Hi Eric, Hi Mysti and all:
I had a long ponder on this post. I finally got here:
In modern Jungian astrology the task is to integrate each archetype as part of the whole self; Eric here you’re saying that these goddesses are a call to Freedom at any price; or the consequence of rejecting the self. You’re talking about Wildness in its gender expression and Mysti is talking about charges and grounding; familiar ideas about yin and yang.
I can’t contact any of this, first of all because to me maleness in modern society is about containment, structure and all things unnatural; I associate maleness with killing things, enslaving things, and forcing them into unpaid labor for personal aggrandizement. Weirdly this counters other esoteric traditions, which attribute the containment aspect to the female yin.
So I appear to be a little fucked up in this regard.
However I also wanted to say this about feminine archetypes and Wildness: Most of the men in my family tend to end up run off or drunk or dead; or criminals or in some war… or whatever. I know the women who raised me can’t recall it being any other way even back to their villages in the Land That Time Forgot, so I live on the matriarchal line. The Jungian impulse to integrate the “wildness” from these archetypes makes sense in these integration-happy times, but I don’t see Eris and Lilith as the same. To me they are specific examples of female leadership — behind the portals of Virgo all the goddesses come together as everything a woman needs to become a good Chief; or at least an exemplary Priestess.
In this society, both Eris and Lilith are outcast because this society is not their true home. Lilith is supposed to be the painted woman, but in my personal mythology she is genetic innovation, the foster daughter, the foreign-born, creative diversity. Biologically she is the recessive gene. She is really different, but she is necessary, and really interesting, because she is nothing at all like the rest of us. She’s also evidence that despite all the ewe-counting a woman is still perfectly free to fuck outside the lines. The best way to keep a foster (or illegitimate) girl from getting exposed on the mountaintop or raped and murdered by foster Dad is to keep her a secret and claim she is part of the tribe. Sometimes the price you pay for your uniqueness is subversion, but hey man, at least you’re alive.
Eris isn’t just free, she’s an extremely high achiever. She doesn’t just incite wars, she incites Thighmaster purchases and graduate degree enrollments; any type of human strife touched off by the observation that you’re sucking somebody else’s wind. She is also the one who will no doubt kick the ass of any invader without being afraid that the dudes around aren’t going to put her on their dance cards anymore. I’ll take Eris over Ares any day, because she fights and achieves without pride. She just does it because she *can*. I associate Ares with the will to Power: I associate Eris with the will to achieve.
Anyway my real point is that we only perceive them as similar because they’re expatriates here, exiled, and they both live in in the same part of town. They don’t insist on freedom or have the cause of freedom; they’re not “wild”; they’re deeply intelligent and quite sure of their purpose. Problem is they simply can’t be any other way.
It’s occurred to me that the reason we suppress them is because we’ve been trained to find the idea of female leadership distasteful, dangerous, strange, but it wasn’t always like that. It’s really not even like that now. The goddesses are essentially an ancient Management Training Program; totally exemplary of some desirable attribute especially from the female perspective. Down here they’re only subversives because they have to be.
~j
Being born with eris exactly conjunct my sun in the first week of aries have to say, every time I hear about being nailed as the forever outkast is yet another moniker that says “hopeless”. Her description alone does her total disservice without resolution or hope for acceptance of any kind. That is cruel and unwarranted as well as shallow and short-sighted. Not one positive about her dynamic nature other than that she makes everyone uncomfy in their delusions. No solution, no resolution, no refuge for eris. The leper. She creates chaos when in fact she is probably deeply considerate and unable to “play the game” and shuns them (the games) because
as Jung put it, she is rejected by the HERD and so must individuate and keep company with the individuated. Such rejection by the herd is a compliment actually.
So I truly wish we could discuss her energy beyond that of a one-trick pony or the rejected shadow female. Christamitey!
I was driving yesterday on the NYS Thruway when all of a sudden I said to myself, Turn on the radio, now, Paterson is announcing that it’s Gillibrand.
I turned on the car radio and even though I was in an area where I don’t usually get reception, the press conference came on loud and clear at the exact moment Paterson had stepped up to the podium to speak.
Within a few minutes, I started to feel all shaky inside. This is trouble, I started thinking/feeling. A sense of explosive disruption swept through me. I was baffled; Gillibrand did not strike me as an “explosive” type who wanted to ruffle anyone’s feathers (I didn’t know about her NRA rating). But the feeling that chaos had just been put into play was undeniable.
In Futurist theory there is a concept called a “Wild Card” that specifically means “a high impact/low probability event.” Something unlikely to happen, DOES happen, and it has a huge impact. Obama is a Wild Card.
The concept of the Wild Card was developed by John Petersen; it would be interesting to do the astrology on when Petersen first introduced the Wild Card idea and the discovery/movements of Eris.
“Wild,” as Thoreau liked to point out, means “self-willed.” That seems to fit with the way Eric is describing the Eris archetype.
Maybe Eris has shown up (i.e., been discovered) so that we can all activate the Wild Card within us and bring our will, our intention, to do unlikely improbable things that have a huge impact.
Can you spell revolution?
Mimi K
Born free, as free as the wind blows, as free as the grass grows . . . la la la. Can’t wait for the grass to start growing. I am hungry for some fresh greens.
V…”If you could bottle that stuff, you’d be home free.”
I am.
(so are you…)
mystes, I probably need to clarify; I’m not suggesting you bottle it up. I meant like put it in a bottle and market it.
I just ate cheese again. It’s an addiction. It makes me weird or weirder.
I am not really following all this beingness, but it is not the first time I don’t get it, only to get it later, so I’m listening.
mystes, the equilibrium thing, I would expect that would drive you nuts. I do believe everything is already in equilibrium but a very complex one. And as far as personal equilibrium, true equilibrium, it only lasts for a split second of awareness. You probably would really hate the theory that we are suspended in space. Have at er. Appreciate your energy. If you could bottle that stuff, you’d be home free.
Gaiamaya says: “how can any relationship work without awareness of that fundamental relationship with self?”
and… as your maya-name implies… with the not/self. That’s the holospect which is the hardest to figure in. Self-love is a slippery, glittery, evanescent thing from within the ‘self’ — which is an intersection, a construct of multiple, moving planes. Not/self includes the self that rises like foam on waves, *and* the energy that drives it into Being.
Unconditioned, as the Old Guys say. But pure and active, as I say, purifying and putrifying in equal measure.
I’m loading this data into the Aquarian waterjar, even as you read. A flow beyond utopia, autopia, autretopia. . .
(~~Fe, prepare to hit your marks!~~)
Jaqui writes…”since it’s you guys that fucked up the world, put your heads together and make it better, or better still, give it back to women…”
*If* the world is fucked-up (it’s kind of a moire pattern, no?), we are blowing it together. I don’t (well, rarely) think of men as unduly powerful. I think of them as *charged,* and their sexual/affective partners as the grounding/discharge element. Want something to go a particular way? Go oblique, clear your mind, place the X on the spot where it needs to fluff (yes, I mean that in the pornfilm sense) and step back.
The longer I am here, the more clearly I see male/fe/male as a dynamic whole. But. This clarity is the product of a willingness to be in significant partnership with more than one man at a time — which yields a totally different multilibrium(*) to what we call gender relations.
(*Scuze the neologism, but it had to happen, “equilibrium” is just too static)
i would just add that to really love oneself, one must know oneself or is it thyself 🙂 and the road to knowing yourself is very painful isn’t it…fear/courage…i haven’t met many people with the ability to self-reflect, to change and to grow…the fear is so great and they end up getting stuck somewhere along the way…
the conspiracy of a few men that started this fear of the feminine so many centuries ago, how it makes me angry sometimes…so i propose to all the scared men out there, since it’s you guys that fucked up the world, put your heads together and make it better, or better still, give it back to women – we know what to do, we’ve always known…but then i hear you say we gave our power to you – indeed we did!!!
on another note, i was observing obama’s face and thought of a lioness rather than a lion…i think that he has his masculine/feminine energy in perfect balance…our previous prime minister ‘down under’, the very hopeless john howard and ‘little bush’ (or c…) is a leo as well, but his features are more of the primitive ‘lion’ kind. Just an observation, since they are both leos…
p.s. no spell check on this thing…
phew, i feel better now…
love
J
“I have not until now noticed how that is funded nearly 100% by the lack of self-confidence that it would take to take up these issues. In other words, if we are afraid of ourselves, we will never be able to meet one another face to face.”
This is the essential spiritual journey – to love oneself, face the brilliance of oneself and not be taken in by the illusion-based idea that we are less and not worthy. I agree with you – how can any relationship work without awareness of that fundamental relationship with self?