Thursday: Psyche squares Saturn and plays Mother-May-I?

Dear Friend and Reader,

Do you remember playing the game where a group of youngsters would form a line at one end of the sidewalk, and one child, who would be the “Mother” would give them permission to take steps, slowly, up the sidewalk. The group would ask one at a time, “Mother, may I?” and wait with their toes curling in their sneakers, and a little butterfly of anxiety hatching in their tummies for permission to be granted or denied. It was all up to the Mother of the sidewalk who went ahead and eventually overtook her. She got to choose.

Today’s aspect is a little like that in the way it combined the heavy, forbidding energy of Saturn with the ephemeral, sensitive, trepidation of Psyche. On one hand, you have Psyche’s vulnerability, the recognition of childhood trauma looming like a great big bogey at the shoulder of the crouching son/daughter who struggled to do everything just right with such devotion that it seems as though there is nothing left but subservience. On the other hand, you have Saturn’s hand pushing and forging a personality that is totally commanding, overseeing every aspect of what needs to be done, which doors need to be crossed on the journey to unification with the spirit.

Isabel Hickey rightly calls Saturn the guardian at the door. When I hear a statement like that, I think of what the guardian Carlos Castaneda encountered on one of his psychedelic sojourns. There was a giant, drooling, vile fly creature that barred him from getting anything but terror out of the experience, until one day he simply decided to accept the existence of the creature. The moment he did that, the monster shrunk down to its normal size: smaller than a house fly.

Saturn has a lot to do with integrity and the surface of things. Psyche has to do with the head wound. I would suggest that the square between these two bodies suggests a situation of fixation on one of two things: perfection/denial or obsession/hurt. Luckily, it is a question of balance.

Eros also enters Sagittarius today, bringing the god of carnal energies into the sign of the visionary. Have fun, kiss with your eyes open, have sex with the lights on! Sagittarius is all about explorations.

What Eros’ ingress and Psyche’s square to Saturn have in common is the puzzle of acceptance and the freeing of the burden related to it which enables a person to move forward. Think about like a crowded bus in a new place you’ve always wanted to visit. You have packed EVERYTHING you think you might need. As it turns out, you have packed your bags so full of stuff that not only did you almost get stuck in the aisle, but no one can get near you.

This aspect suggests to me a situation in which a person has been oppressed, preened and shackled by the obligations and expectations of the past. Freud’s suggestion that we take over the job of our oppressors might be pertinent for this aspect today.

We are all children who have grown older. Who is going to tell us to move forward on the sidewalk?

Merry Met,

Genevieve