Dear Friend and Reader,
Have you ever been headed out the door and then you paused at the mirror and what you saw changed your attitude for the worse? Perhaps you fussed with your hair or reapplied your rouge, or even changed your clothes because a certain word flashed in your head that you wouldn’t want anyone to direct at you. The word I am thinking of is “ugly” and I wonder if today’s Venus-Chiron conjunction isn’t about our fear of being seen as unattractive or as anything else but a commodity.
Chiron, the first centaur planet, is an energy with the capacity to bring about tremendous healing in the way of making a system whole again. It is about deep, life altering wounds that translate into flaws in the system. Flaws can be enhanced by first accepting them. Only then can we go on our personal missions of whatever comes next in the journey the flaw in question requires to mend.
Venus is the energy of love and attraction. She is also the planet that symbolizes women-folk, though the Moon is an important significator o women as well. We have come a long way, it is true, from what our grandmothers survived, but there is more work to do, as I know almost everyone can testify. One of the ways our culture affirms our “inequality” is by reinforcing that we have no value unless we are gorgeous. They give us examples of gorgeous models who really only have the body types of prepubescent boys. No curves, no bumps, no juice. Then we are told that we are only half as good unless we have a partner or “better half.” The result of this poison is a race to be the most beautiful woman in the room at all times, which, if we are not careful brings about envy, hatred and all around bad feelings and vibes.
We live in a time of real fear over what one thinks of another. Many of us have felt the cold slice of gossip or rejection from a click. Many of us have burned in the cheeks by gossiping about someone else just to fit in. It is a sad state of affairs when I walk into a room and I am more worried about the women being cruel to me than anyone else. Unfortunately, it takes a little manipulating to understand the exercise being set up in these circumstances. It’s hard to say and to keep saying “I am who I am and I may be alone because of it” over and over again, but I would suggest that is what this conjunction is about.
If we take the time to get to know ourselves in an honest manner, without worrying or fretting, the bumpy skin, the flabby thighs, the twisted toes and tiny breasts perhaps would take on a new meaning for us. They would not be ugliness, but signs of life beneath the surface — signs of individual character. Once we accept our bodies for what they are, a new kind of beauty would come through, the kind that is not as ephemeral as Maybelline and Neutrogena would have you believe. It would be the unshakable beauty of confidence.
It’s occuring in Aquarius right now, the sign which we at Planet Waves have labeled as the sign of the future and the sign of the tribe. So perhaps this conjunction in the sign of the tribal future is about accepting what we really look like and what everyone else really looks like. Then we could get all the pomp and circumstance out of the way and we could get down to knowing one another, and trusting one another not based on a strut for a handbag or a “what is she wearing?” but on the fact that we are all sisters and brothers.
If you haven’t already gotten a chance to read his take on it, click here to read Eric’s entry from last night about this aspect and what it means to be fearlessly yourself.
Thanks to everyone who is reading this right now for giving me the chance to talk about this. I appreciate the fact that I am here to do it and the fact that I am blessed with an audience to listen to it. I am so grateful that we have the choice to help one another grow and that once we make that choice the rest comes right into focus.
Merry Met!
Genevieve Sophia
No matter where I thought I was, I was where I was, just wasn’t paying attention. It is good to be home.
Thank you dears. I keep wondering why I have so many people with severe disabilities in my life, and the thought about McCain was rather fleeting, but it seemed real too. I thought perhaps the hip problem was a way for spirit to call my attention to their very real problems so that I really could *love* them. My nephew brought a stranger to Thanksgiving whose legs had been amputated, and he now lives with my nephew.
One time a family came to our house to participate in the sweat lodge. Their little child was going blind – a girl about 18 months old. I picked up the little girl – the parents hadn’t said anything – and I said ‘what’s wrong with this kid?’ They told me she was going blind. I went into the ceremony with them and when it was my turn to pray, the drumstick jumped out of the doorkeeper’s hand and beat furiously on the drum by itself as I prayed for all children with incurable disease. I learned later that the little girl’s vision healed. What followed for me was a pretty hard time emotionally. too much ‘anxiety and apprehension’ – my spouse got sick and lost his job. Do we take on the killing energy of the sick as we work with them?
I’ve never really feared transits, but the conjunctions can bring about life-altering changes – new forks in the road that lead you where spirit wants you to go? You can get hit by a car, but your guardian angel will be holding your hand when it happens? I think that’s what draws people like us to astrology. We are looking for answers to questions that aren’t covered by medical books, history, or the bible.
Today through New Year’s might be a good time for everyone to think *Love Me* – and open hearts to the new pathway that is opening in our wilderness. I’m sure as heck going to think about it – thanks Mystes!
You know, yesterday and on Thanksgiving I noticed the dern airplanes in the sky laying out the weave of chemtrails. What is that all about? I want to reach up and rip them out of the sky. eeuuwwwwgh – anger management – gotta love them too.
Janes’a’Lady: “It’s simply that if there truly is no time, then all things are occurring together. We only notice some of them…”
But it’s *why and when* we notice that rocks the 700 Billion Dollar question. Asian philosophical systems are adorable for a certain fecklessness, and Lady Gnows we Westerners can use a break from the incessant narrative arc from time to time (to time to time). To time.
Things bound by the aching endfulness of time *are* consequential. One of the great lessons of (physical) pain is figuring out where the fulcrum is set between the outside and inside. While guilt isn’t the issue for Gardener (her pain, as you observed subtly above, has more to do with who she focuses on), hefting a mighty load is her wont, hence the sudden recalibration in the hip. Damn! This is where co-selfing comes in right handy. Or hippy, as the case may be.
Gardener, funny, I was working with a woman just about 2 years ago who had a similar thing happen to her shoulder. She was a professional drummer, and beat the holy crap out of the pin that blew loose.
Anyway, fulcrums. And pain. There’s a spot in what we laughingly call ‘the flesh’ where you *begin.* It’s back behind language, just, and right in front of the thetadroop of sleepytime. Right there is where surgery without painkillers is okay. It’s later, getting sucked into the place where we mirror each others ‘anxiety and apprehension’ that is the eeentsy-weentsy, running-out-of-time, too-much-outside part. Last time it happened to me, I just looked around and said (no shit): *Love me.*
But be ready for what happens when they do. (“Straight to the moon, Alice…”)
“I had the feeling that I was John McCain.”
:). Poor Johnny. That kid always signs up for the negative attention doesn’t he? It’s a hard road. It also makes me wonder what other people were doing with this spectacle of you while you were in the midst of.. I mean what do you call that? * Severe* disarray.
You know, the greatest gift that astrology has for us in modern times is a universal internal language. Without all of this rich association that goes back through the centuries we would be flattened beings, unable to contact the depth of our own experience and awkward in expressing our truth to everybody else enmired in the human condition.
In mythology that is from Western tradition, though, what you get on the side is unending cause and effect. This is why Mt. Aetna belches fire ( Typhon lives there, or is Hephaestus, I forget); this is why we have to suffer ( Eve’s fault); this is why. And there is also a strong concentration on time; on what happens next. To us, mostly.
So a lot of western tradition has to do with soothing human anxiety. Why and what next. And because of this we are trained to scope out causes and fear effects, not to mention find fault and overscrutinize both the future and the past, which leads to fearing these causes themselves and this, do you see, can lead to an infinite spiral of anxiety and attachment.
So there is never a reason to fear any transit. Transits more describe a condition than predict it; and most often, really almost always, they describe a change in consciousness as new archetypes come forward in the psyche to be expressed.
Eastern and Advanced ( some parts of that book you’ve got with the Red Words in it) traditions don’t even bother with causes and effects. They allow two things to occur at once without causing each other. It’s simply that if there truly is no time, then all things are occurring together. We only notice some of them.
You could say this is also true of all of the archetypes that live in us. As well, they are all occurring together. But we tend to only notice…some of them.
So that should logically mean this: Healing the present moment is the only choice possible. But in doing so you have healed all things. Change right now and you never have to go back. In an instant, the one you are in now. In fact: if you could live one instant with perfect perception, it would change everything. Everything. In the twinkling of an eye.
Love to you and yours amiga
~j
Mystes, Good advice as always. Yes’m you are light years ahead of the rest of us and so is JanesD!!
I don’t know why, but it was John McCain’s pain that came up before me this week, when i started thinking about Chiron and the healing. I went for a week with a broken and dislocated prosthetic hip 2 years ago, and then surgery where anasthetic wore off- and I have to tell you it was quite bearable. The hip was hanging down in my leg. The only thing that was out of the ordinary was the adrenalin and vomit – oh yeah – projectile vomiting for 3 weeks. This week, I knew we are all one spirit, just as God is “I Am”. I had the feeling that I was John McCain.
I used to have a supervisor I called ‘I Am’. I’m probably paying back triple time and 1/2 for my catty ways. LOL.
Amen to the Gospel of Thomas. I like the letters of Philip too.
Happiest holidays to you!
Gardening One…
“JanesD – you must be going through an enlightenment. You and Mystes are freaking me out a little, but frankly I’ve been seeing the past as present too. ”
Yeah, JD is going through . . . I’m not sure what. I’ve had moments of bonemelting pleasure from his/her straight-on answers to various questions, written and otherwise.
She describes pretty well how a coven/circle can work in her ‘spiritual spa’ vision. It’s a good one. I hope we all find a way to realize it. There’s almost always trauma here, especially for offworlders just taking their first laps. We’re all holding up nicely, all things considered. (But my gen’dar is also ticking and shivering… keeps slipping over the ‘Janes’ and into something else…)
AnnaT: ‘Bout that mirror: “Go by the remembering the best image you hold within;” yeah, baby… and remember to hold it just ajar so that it swings ( )pen when you feel *that* glance. But not an iota more, until you get a sense that whoever is glancing is capable of *seeing* you.
Gardener, I’m slowly separating these two Ideas: 1) loving those who hate me, 2) doing what I think they would want if they loved me. In other words, I am slowly untangling my actions from unconsciously appeasing others – not only the ones who love me, but the more convoluted mirror held by those who despise me (I’m doing my year-end inventory right now, it’s quite a list).
When making choices about where to devote my creative energy, I stop about 12 times a day and ask: Am I doing this to cause someone else to like me, agree with me, not-fear-me, trust me? If I feel even the edge of the answer on ‘Yes,’ I stop and remember why I am here (I’m gonna borrow the Gospel of Thomas now): To tell the truth, and to do what you love.* Past –as you say– becomes Now; even as the Future is the-Now-Before-We-Know-It. It has taken me most of this year to learn the mental wristflick that sees the past-now as open –as unknowable!– as the future-now.
You can’t imagine how nervous this has made even my closest friends.
I gotta tell ya, that QoH bathroom had quite a few stalls. Weird, huh?
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* Actually the Gospel of Thomas brushed the nap the other direction. When the apostles approached Jesus and asked what they must do to become like him, he is reported to have sighed back the ‘seek ye first the kingdom of heaven,’ line. When they pressed him for specifics he said: These two things only are essential: Do not lie; and do not do what you hate.
Sweet. And like any lifetime, short enough.
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JanesD – you must be going through an enlightenment. You and Mystes are freaking me out a little, but frankly I’ve been seeing the past as present too. If it is true that there is no such thing as time, then the past is creating the same time as we are writing here, and to heal the past in the present, we must live the highest love – that which does not condemn, nor remembers – but just is. So the question is how do we correct the past without anger, anxiety or hate? By loving without condition even the most vile? The sins of the past keep repeating – all you ahve to do is read some history and put it together. There is nothing new under the sun. Is that what Solomon was trying to teach us in Ecclisiastes?
Sometimes I get a glimpse of the past that I think might be part of what is actually the present, and it finally sunk in the past few days (even though I’ve read it many times) that if I can love those in my life who i previously condemned, that i can make the ‘past’ collapse so it no longer exists in my personal history, and then perhaps I will no longer need the physical body. Because what is that which we hate, but ourselves? We see someone else, but it is really ourselves – because ‘we’ don’t really exist. Visioning love to one you previously disliked changes everything.
This capricorn conjunction coming up is freaking my out too. When mars was conjunct my 2 degree Chiron 2 years ago, my hip replacement failed – breaking through bones. A week later a new hip replacement was performed, and the anasthetic failed! Oh yes. What was I thinking?! I thought I was being quite the loving and forgiving soul but I wasn’t. I still carried much judgment.
I can tell you that this upcoming pluto, mars will be conjunct my chiron, but I’m thinking it is going to be more of an enlightenment and I think it has already started.
Well if it happens, I’ll meet you in heaven in the bathroom for a big laugh!
Phew – Christmas gathering is over for another year – but we had a good Christmas!
Thanks, Genevieve, Mystes, Gardener, JanesDefense – you all rock!
I came to the realization about mirrors, after all those years of desperately and minutely measuring my female worth – they all lie! Go by the remembering the best image you hold within; create your glamour; make love to the world – your mirror. But don’t believe those ill-lit, grotesque reflections of insecurity!
Thanks for remembering and connecting ancient/mythical female ritual with spa pampering. This a rich avenue to further explore and ground, in our 21st century culture.
And – the Queen of Heavan Bathroom – oh, I can just see it! I wanna go there!
xxAnnaT
Hi Geneieve, you rock darlin. I hope you feel the support you’ve got from your blogvironment, because it’s out there. I’m a friend and a fan.
I wish I could show you the Star card in the Motherpeace tarot deck. It’s a picture of a girl bathing in a spring circled with stones, with flowers in her hair.
After the occurence of the card, the next thing that happens is that the women of her tribe come to attend her. They help her out of the pool, and wrap her in the best soft blankets, and then they lead her to a place where they can comb her hair, and admire her smile, her manner, her humor, her skills and her kindness, and pet her and sing to her and most of all tell her that she is beautiful. It is exactly the right time for exactly that. In the sunlight, other women validate the essence of her. They will tell her all the good things about her. They will reassure her that all of her is welcome here. Typically, her biological mother is not there.
This is a Mystery. When this female is seven years old, thirteen years or at menarche, at the time of her marriage, after childbirth, at the end of the menses. Also, at the death of the spouse or when violence is done to her, for example a rape, especially that, or a criminal act against her. Also, you know, sometimes a woman will get weird about something or other. Start eating chalk or screwing demons or something. And it was there for that too.
This was an essential process. It brought a girl back to herself from a trauma unlike any pyschotherapy and it washed all the doubts and nightmares out of her with love and clear water and sunlight.
We have these spa treatments today and so forth. Go to New Mexico and have some lady put hot stones on you for six thousand dollars. But this is what it really was, in the beginning.
Anyway, out of the blue for the past two days I’ve been remembering it. What I’ve been wondering is, why am I the only person I know who remembers how to do that?
~j
Thanks Genevieve, for all you do.
Here is an article about an 8 year old girl in Saudi Arabia who was refused a divorce on the grounds she wasn’t old enough to make the decision whether to divorce. The husband is 58. http://www.salon.com/mwt/broadsheet/2008/12/22/divorce/index.html?source=rss&aim=/mwt/broadsheet
There is much work to do, and more slavery than ever. When will we wake up?
I recently read the etymology of ‘fascinum’ – which I think G knows as well as anyone (per the totem around her neck). The flare/glamour that we eskry in the mirror may be deeper than just skin; what is looking is more than mere. That glance organizes the parts to the whole.
Once I dreamed going into the Queen of Heaven bathroom to see if I could catch a glimpse of Her. Noted, as I was washing my hands, that there was no mirror. As I explained it to a friend who stepped in with me: If She wants to know what She looks ‘like,’ she watches the World.
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(and this is a test…)