Some Call Me Jezebel: Astrology Questions & Answers

Dear Eric,

You know something of my past which has led me to today — and this space here is the only place in the wild webbed world that we live in where I felt I could express this inner storm.

Naomi from the Book of Blue. Photo by Eric Francis.

I’ve been having dreams, if you can call them that. Actually it’s more like I get into astral state, which is fairly easy for me to do — I chalk it up to my 1st house Neptune in Sagittarius.

But over the past few months I’ve had a few such astral projections which begin fairly “normally” but suddenly burst into a cataclysmic explosion of raw primal energy where all I want to do is fuck someone. Usually it is the first person I can see, not necessarily someone I would be attracted to in “real life,” and I will just grab him and basically open my legs “offering” myself in total submission. In fact, it is often someone who I would likely not fuck in real life. It’s a weird power trip along with wanting them to have their way with me, desire me, lust for me and want me to surrender to them.

While I am experiencing this, it’s almost as if my body is possessed and “I,” or my higher awareness, is watching this whole scenario play out in observation and detachment. I have the ability to experience all the emotional responses that my dream body is experiencing. There are feelings of guilt, shame, powerlessness, submission, throbbing lust, desire, and ecstasy as I watch this.

I am aware of every emotion and pulse, and I don’t try to control it or stop it. I am only an observer — removed but present and aware. These feelings aren’t just feelings; they are real in my physical flesh and blood body. I go into orgasmic states and I wake up fully aroused, throbbing and quivering.

Now although I am observing and not controlling or judging in my dream state, there is a knowledge that I am not in the “real world.” When I wake up in this heated up state I am confused and unsure. Is this right? What does this mean? Am I just a whore and slut, who would fuck anyone, or let anyone fuck her? In the middle of the street, in a crowded room with people watching, sometimes not being satisfied with even two or three men? Is this me? Is this what I am repressing? On a level of fucked up, just how fucked up would I call this? Is it really fucked up if these states at times give me more physical pleasure and ecstasy than a real encounter with a person?

I wonder if I am jaded. My relationship with men can well be seen in my chart. Although Venus-Mars-Pluto can call for intense relationships that often start off very spontaneously, passionate and sexual, they just as quickly want to be friends with no sex, and they never leave. I am friends with all of my exes. I don’t have an issue with sleeping with someone on the first night that I meet them if the chemistry is right. I did with my ex-husband with whom I had a long enough marriage. Let’s just say I have pretty good instincts.

But lately over the past few years I find I have refused more sex than I have had sex. Although I have a healthy sexual relationship with myself and masturbate every day, with my Sun on the descendant, I yearn to experience this within a real relationship. I want to explore my partner’s flesh like a divine landscape, discovering new territory with each encounter that takes us to that raw, earthy peak where we’re just exploding in rainbows. Yet I always maintain what turns me on is what’s between the ears, not their legs. I can start with a physical attraction but it is the elusive spiritual connection I seek.

I’ve been single (not celibate) for five years, going through a phase of time in my life where I just fucked I don’t know how many guys over a summer when I was going through my divorce in 2003. It is the closest thing I have experienced in “real life” to this dream experience which is why I wonder about this now. When I was having sex with these men, I knew exactly what I was doing. I knew they wanted to fuck me, and I just wanted to be fucked, to feel good about myself, to feel like a woman, to feel desirable, and more so just needed “physical” contact.

Of course I could only allow this to happen when I was exceptionally inebriated. But even then I was VERY aware of what I was doing; it was kind of like my soul checked out and was watching my body take over to fulfill her needs. I have never felt guilty about this, although I know it isn’t ever something I knew I had in me. When I was going through it, that was what my body needed.

Years later, I have grown and matured in ways that surprise me. For the past few years my sexual partner has primarily been myself. Not for a lack of options, but rather not enough depth of connection. With these recent eclipses, I have learned that I don’t need intensity and drama to have a fulfilling connection. It can flow, be rich, soft, sensual, earthy, healing, soothing, deep, sexual and yet a friendship. I’m more content in ways that I cannot explain. There is a quiet stillness within me most of the time. There is also a sadness that comes from having an overflow of raw primal life force with no one to ‘physically’ channel to on a regular basis.

These “dreams” have me a little confused and intrigued, which hasn’t actually happened since the eclipses. Since this is a New Moon in my 5th house of sexuality — I want to understand this and not reject it. Is this Vesta? Is this Lilith? Is this my Venus-Mars-Eris conjunction? Is this really me? Is this right? Is this true? I want to understand so I can make peace with it. I am hoping you will be able to give me your astrological insight on this subject. Because if you can’t I don’t know who else can.

— some call me Jezebel

Dear Jezebel:

I suggest you make some distinctions between your feelings and your judgments about them. You, and the rest of us, that is — this is something we all need to learn. Any time we’re discussing or considering sex, real or symbolic, we need to remember that we have next to no knowledge of what our organic sexuality really is beneath all the judgments that have been heaped on us — that is, unless we actually feel it (and that can bring conflict). To me it feels like you’re feeling. And in the next breath, judging yourself for doing so.

I suggest you print out your letter and using two different-colored highlighters, mark off everything that’s stated as a fact in one color, and everything that is an assessment of that fact in another color. Here is an example.

But lately over the past few months I’ve had a few such astral projections which begin fairly “normally” but suddenly burst into a cataclysmic explosion of raw primal energy where all I want to do is fuck someone. Usually it is the first person I can see, not necessarily someone I would be attracted to in “real life,” and I will just grab him and basically open my legs “offering” myself in total submission. In fact, it is often someone who I would likely not fuck in real life. It’s a weird power trip along with wanting them to have their way with me, desire me, lust for me and want me to surrender to them.

You are doing great with the facts until this statement: It’s a weird power trip along with wanting them to have their way with me, desire me, lust for me and want me to surrender to them.

I think this one statement basically sums up your whole dilemma. And as your statement above develops, you descend from your description of your primal feelings, your unfettered desire for completion and your willingness not only to say yes but to BE yes…into a lot of ideas about relationships, along with numerous doubts about what you’re experiencing. In one moment you are the Sun shining. In another you are the clouds obscuring the Sun.

Another thing I notice is that you’re confusing dreams or astral experiences and physical reality. I think we could make some meaningful comparisons, but for our basic purposes here, a dream is a dream and physical reality is physical reality. You seem to be treating the events of the astral plane as if they have their full consequences in physical reality.

Let’s address just the dream sequence. I am partial to the Gestalt dream method, which is based on the idea that everything in the dream is a manifestation of your own psyche. That’s a useful place to draw the boundary in terms of what material you own in a dream — all of it. Even if a dream seems to take you “beyond yourself” (i.e., an astral experience, whatever that is) for the sake of discussion, we can treat it as a dream of being taken beyond yourself.

Based on this theory, your dream says you are seeking self-completion and you see the world as a means of doing so, which it is. That self-completion comes from wanting to give yourself to life and wanting to be penetrated by your experiences — these things being choices that you make based on what you actually want. So here you have an energetic model of wanting something for yourself and then actually giving it to yourself.

You describe wanting to fuck people you would not normally fuck in real life; the suggestion here is that you are someone different than you imagined, and are perfectly willing to accept that person; you want experiences different than you imagined you would have — but you are but equally (and rather powerfully) yourself.

The rest, all of it — everything else you say you want in the subsequent paragraphs in your letter, all your notions of relationships, are all basically a collection of moralisms, judgments and attempts to control your primal energy before it has a chance to express itself; that is, before you take the chance to express yourself.

The essence of the dream to me is the doubt with which you awaken. That is the contrast; that is the wall you are coming up against in your life. You feel alive, and taste fulfillment; then you doubt yourself. I suggest you begin to dismantle this rather damning psychic apparatus so that you finally have a chance to express yourself freely, through sex or however else you might do it.

Here are two variants on the same statement, translated into this basic method. I suggest you read the statements out loud to yourself and see how they feel.

Original: I suddenly burst into a cataclysmic explosion of raw primal energy where all I want to do is fuck someone. Usually it is the first person I can see, not necessarily someone I would be attracted to in “real life,” and I will just grab him and basically open my legs “offering” myself in total submission. In fact, it is often someone who I would likely not fuck in real life. It’s a weird power trip along with wanting them to have their way with me, desire me, lust for me and want me to surrender to them.

Revised: I suddenly burst into a cataclysmic explosion of raw primal energy where all I want to do is fuck myself. Usually it is the first version of myself that I can see, not necessarily some aspect of myself that I would be attracted to in “real life,” and I will just grab myself and basically open my legs “offering” myself in total submission. In fact, it is often an idea about myself who I would likely not fuck in real life. It’s a weird power trip along with wanting myself to have my way with me, desire me, lust for me and want me to surrender to myself.

You get what I mean? So who is making you being you into a power struggle?

Yours & truly,