The Secret Life of Mother

The New Moon early Sunday morning swept gently through its position in late Libra, trine the triple Aquarius conjunction (really, quadruple, if you count Nessus) and square the lunar nodes: a tipping point. The nature of that may be coming in more clearly now.

We pick up the story with the Sun in the last days of Libra, many other planets in Libra, and the Moon in Scorpio, about to square Nessus. Ceres, similar to the Moon but with a more focused adult energy, entered Scorpio last week. The Moon and Ceres can represent many of the same things, but Ceres has more to do with the feelings and experiences of mature women, in particular mothers, than does the Moon.

My own biases lead me to believe that there will be more get-real conversation on days with a powerful Moon-Nessus aspect, though this may be more about cultivating inner awareness and potent emotions brewing around. Humans have an odd tendency to avoid talking about what matters to them the most; we’re luck to even be aware of it. With the Scorpio Moon square the planet of healing transgressions, those feelings could surround inner revelations about the extent to which we are ruled, as in dragged around, bullied and even pushed into a corner, by our sexual injuries. These would include all forms of wounded trust, trust being the primary thing that takes the brunt of any abuse. The issue here seems to be why we put up with it, which is something we could all profitably preoccupy ourselves with.

Ceres, now in Scorpio, suggests that we get to know the sexuality and relationship lives of our mothers. I recognize that for most people, this is not exactly appealing, for a diversity of reasons; but she is keeping secrets, and her secrets from you are your secrets from yourself. This chart tells a story, and remembering the ‘mythical fiction’ aspect of astrology, consider this: her relationship life was more complex than she let on by way of her public image. Mothers must maintain a PR position to be considered ‘fit for motherhood’, and there is always more to the story than appears on the surface of that appearance.

Along with this comes the image of the good wife or partner. Unfortunately, that image is given more weight than the substance it usually conceals. This works great in the world of egos, and terribly in the world where actual maturity and growth are given any importance or emphasis.В  Even if the image you were shown was that of an absolutely perfect marriage and the actual scenario did not involve her being unfaithful to your father, there was more to her inner life than you recognized.

There was her relationship history prior to knowing your father, which is typically something that is suppressed in the ‘normal’ family lifestyle. Mon’s prior history is basically erased in many families, particularly those that were forming in the 1940s through the early 1970s (before it started to be revealed by various social currents that women are actually people with lives independent of their families). The differential between what you were told and what you felt created tension within you that may to this day be unresolved. Between the image and the truth was created a space wherein it was possible for you to deceive yourself about your own needs, desires and experiences.

You know more than you think about all of this, though you have considered the impact on your psyche somewhat less than would be helpful. There is also a hint mixed in here about how the food-related themes of your life are connected to the sexual and relational themes of your mother’s life. We often wonder what is going on down in the core emotional or psychological engine underneath all this stuff about food and weight and body image. In this discussion, which focuses on Ceres in Scorpio throwing a veil over a number of planets in Libra (Sun, Mercury, Pallas Athene, Venus), we have a significant clue. And with the Moon in Scorpio square Nessus, there is a reminder that self-reproach is one of the most dangerous psychological habits we can have running our lives, and truth be told, it does.

Speaking of Scorpio, Mars is underway in Leo, now in what some call ‘shadow phase’. In other words, when Mars turns retrograde just before the Capricorn solstice, it will back up all the way to the beginning of Leo; and after the station direct it will cover those degrees for a third time. As I mentioned Friday, Mars will spend more than seven months in Leo, covering 18 degrees of that sign three times: currently in direct motion, then retrograde then direct beginning March 10.

Leo is about self-esteem and the state of health of our self concept. Both Mars and Leo are also about money: Leo, in particular, being the second sign of the Thema Mundi and the sign of the gold standard. The economic news is personal; it is about you, how you feel about yourself and how you are able to transpose this into the ability to take care of yourself.

14 thoughts on “The Secret Life of Mother”

  2. Hi Eric, This is my first posting to your blog. I’m a long-time fan and have thought a lot about my mom re: some of your suggestions–what did she go through? My mom was completely out there with sex–many multiple boyfriends, some living with us at various times when my sister and I were kids, some not. Bringing a drunk person home from the bar for a one-nighter. Most of them were “good guys” in how they treated my sister and me (and my mom), a few were not so great. In any event, I know there is always something hidden, but I’m having trouble figuring out what was hidden about her sexuality–it was in our face all the time, and she is still very willing to talk about anything and everything sexual (she’s in her 70s now). I guess it seemed like a reaction to something, and that matched the time I grew up: late 1960s & into the 1970s. But I couldn’t stand it. I didn’t want to see my mom and her boyfriends walking around the house naked, or hear my mom telling me the details of her orgasms, then making me feel like a prude for being uncomfortable. “You’ve gotta loosen up,” she would tell me. “Here, have a little wine.” Meanwhile, I was getting a lot of inappropriate sexual attention myself, starting around age 5 or 6, and she didn’t seem to notice or care. Now I notice I’m getting a little angry, which was not my intention here, but I’m going to put this out there and see what comes back. Thank you.

  3. Hey There,

    My mother was never secretive about the boyfriends she had before she and my father married. They met as teenagers. She was a high school student, and he was an enlisted man; and married five years later. Fifty-five years later, they are still married and still having sex when they can work around the different back, hip, and neck injuries. I frequently tell her that she has had so more sex during her life than I have, that I doubt that I can ever catch up even if I get married tomorrow and have sex everyday until I die. she laughs.

    Of the two, she is much more forthcoming about her history. Also, of the two she is much more open about sex and has always been. She is a Scorpio with a Venus in Capricorn. He is a Capricorn with Venus in Scorpio.

  4. Awesome, isn’t it, Sarah?!! 😉

    And that the collective “we” is talking about and birthing children without the guilt and negative-pain of past is double-awesome! That gets a ” whoo-hoo!”

  5. Hi, awordedgewise. Yes, I didn’t make myself clear – you summed it up better. I agree: it isn’t “either/or”, but we humans tend towards that kind of judgement of a situation. Basically, my experience of birth was beyond words; and a whole mix of feelings and emotions.

  6. The birth of my son was the biggest Release I have ever experienced. Now I consciously set my brain to “Release like That (or better!)” when I am about to let go into sexual experience.

    Perhaps Pain and Orgasim and Release are facets on the gem. We are learning, like with sexual orientation, that the world isn’t so very “either/or”.

  7. I’m ambivalent about the focus on orgasm during labour as a preference to feeling pain. Not that I’m against orgasm, you understand! But pain is a subjective thing – it can be either “good” or “bad”. I will never forget the pain of birthing my son. It was both excruciating and vital. It marked a rite of passage that created a new life down here on earth. I wouldn’t have changed a thing about it.

  8. Yeti!! This is the *best* news I’ve seen in a long, long time!!

    I’ve taught fathers to use their voices (hmmming deep in their pelves) to relax the laboring mother’s symphysis pubis and cervix, and I’ve seen pleasure – but never witnessed (or experienced) the O during labor. Theoretically, it just makes sense!

    Fabulous, fabulous, fabulous! This one “little” thing is going to lead to a whole new humanity!! And maybe we can get a footnote in the Bible, eh?

    Thank you!!!!

    M

  9. yes yes, I see it now – I don’t know who just sent me this message, but Thank You — I must do a clearing for my Mother’s Grief. I’m going to see if I still have the locket….

  10. One moment can hold all the depth we need to see our mothers differently and heal great wounds.

    In my young childhood, my mother revealed to me two tidbits and only two – even then it felt like she had come the resignation that she was actually married to my dad and “that was that”.

    The first tidbit was the mention of a boy in high school that had been electrocuted by a downed live electical cable during a thunderstorm while attempting to rescue someone from a car.

    The second tidbit; on a different day, but not too far apart, she gave me the heart-shaped locket that her high-school boyfriend had given her. (Imagine! mom admitting she had a boyfriend in high school!)

    Even then I felt the energy in both those “stories”, but was never never never willing to admit to myself that they were connected – even though I knew from the first that they were.

    I think my mother never recovered; knowing her/my family, she had no opportunity to mourn, no acknowledgement of her grief, just “buck-up” and carry on. Marriage to my father – a man she hardly knew who ‘swept her off her feet’ – in grad school (she was approaching old-maid status) makes lots more sense now (among other things).

  11. Yowza, we’re walking into weighty waters here.

    As I’ve written about here before, I know my mother was never sexually repressed. But she was limited by her education and therefore aspiration-limited. She knew she had potential particularly in business, but did not know how to begin to succeed in a new country, particularly one as daunting as 1950’s America.

    Therefore, she had all the yearnings but no access. She pressured my dad to move up. He had an education and did succeed in management in Hawaii, but rules, particularly the ceiling which was held over him because of ethnicity, was a barrier here on the mainland.

    There was a constant feeling of him not being able to move fast enough so they could get ahead financially, and she learned to also rely on her brothers, who employed my dad to help out. This must have been quite disempowering to say the least for my father, and he succumbed quite early to a heart attack at age 63. For a long time into my adulthood, I felt resentment towards my mother, at one time blaming her for my father’s heart attack. I was blinded with a child’s eyes that only saw a portion of the picture, and could not see past the pain in my heart for my wounded father.

    It was not until her death in 2003 that I realized how much my mother truly loved us, and was quite successful in making sure the loose ends of her life were tied neatly before her death. There was a legacy — more than what my father could ever have made, that was there when I really needed it.

    Her prescience in response to my life, was, as always, and continues to be, other-worldly. The connection is still very very strong. In my dreams it is her presence that reminds me of what more needs to be done with my own life, and oddly enough, with the life of her granddaughter, my niece. And quite ironically, she is the Go-Getter voice in my head, who works in harmony with mine to move up in the world. She is Venus in Sagittarius and Ceres in Capricorn–both in my 10th House. The house of the Father inhabited by the quintessential Mother.

  13. Thanks for this bit of news, Chrysane.

    Important to note, these are exoplanets — that is, bodies outside our solar system. All of the planets referenced in Planet Waves, such as Chiron, Nessus, QB1, Quaoar, Sedna and so on, are part of our solar system, orbiting our Sun. The planets referenced in this article orbit other stars. We recently did a news item on this phenomenon in Astrology News, which I will dig up and repost shortly.

Leave a Comment