Friends, Cousins,
I am about to dive into tomorrow’s Planet Waves, still figuring if I want to write it in Taco Juan’s over in Woodstock. My current concept is to sum up some of the conversations I’m having about the nature and the purpose of astrology. This feels a bit like pearl diving, so let’s see what I come back with.
Today the Moon is in Aquarius, where it will stay until Friday just before noon Eastern Time. The Moon will make a conjunction to retrograde Nessus today. Recall that it was at exact opposition to Nessus at the time of Michael Jackson’s passing, so it’s been two weeks or half a lunar cycle since that happened. Before going into Pisces the Moon will make conjunctions to three additional planets in Aquarius — in order, Chiron, Neptune and Jupiter. All three are retrograde, due to the position of the Earth relative to them.
Mars ingresses Gemini late Saturday night Eastern Time, and for now will be dangling at the edge of Taurus, gradually working toward its new sign and new cycle. This to me is an illustration of integrating male energy, as is often the case when Mars is on the edge of a sign; in this case a sign traditionally ruled by Venus.
We live in an era where both sexes struggle to integrate male energy. Very few girls or women spend enough time around men who have integrated their Mars to have any clue what it feels like; the same can be said for men, who at least are handed the circumstance of being male and have no choice but to have at least some few experiences; but we see a lot of men who polarize either macho or feminized without actually consciously taking over the functions of Mars, one by one. I would just remind us again that we face a special challenge because there are so few examples how to do this in a healthy way.
And there are so many misunderstandings about sex. For example, consider how the thing we rely on the most dependably for sex or reproduction to happen at all, male erotic desire, is one of the most maligned emotions in the universe; it currently verges on a crime. I believe that our society (meaning Western society, the only one I have a clue about) runs in cycles, where one sex or the other is blamed for sex. At different points — we can name a few — sex was the ‘fault’ of women and men were expected to be victims. In other times sex is the ‘fault’ of men and women are the presumed victims, such as currently.
To me this is about the alternation of attempts to integrate Venus or Mars. I know that woman, as a collective entity, are struggling for their sexual identity — though there are many venues for women to make discoveries about being female, from the birthing process (which pretty much guarantees certain discoveries) to a gradually evolving notion of female equality, many new opportunities to participate in the world that were unheard of within our culture 50 years ago, to neo-Pagan movements that worship and honor the Goddess and connect femininity to nature.
Mars void of course in Taurus reminds me that we live in a time when, many places and in many ways, maleness is disconnected from reality; it is considered a crime; the vast majority of people paraded before TV and newspaper cameras are men; and an erect penis is often considered a weapon. It would be a grand idea to consider the adverse effects of this fact on both women and men; and to consider what we might do about it here and now.
The first thing as astrologers would be to remember that we both possess Venus and Mars in our charts, and we need to take full ownership of both.
Patty… ah. Yes, I see. Why didn’t you just talk to the ‘babysitters’ themselves? Ask them what was up? I’m still trying to find the voice-key that communicates that something is out of bounds without stirring up even more weirdness for the listener. Its a fine line, but by golly, we’ll figure it out.
We can either figure out how to discuss this person-to-person, or keep throwing the whole issue to our overtaxed penal codes, defining more and more curious and/or borderline behavior as felonious. Which wouldn’t help the babysitters, the kids or we-the-witnesses.
It’s all in the tone, eh?
Love you,
M
Oh yes Mystes, I know all of that. But the women i’m thinking of were ‘babysitters’ – not the mom. The older I get, the more I wished I’d told on them when I heard about it. There is a fine line that you don’t cross with babies. Lots of fathers change diapers, but they surely don’t stroke their daughters hoping to bring them to excitement, unless they are sick fuckers. We’ve all read about three year olds that have to have surgery to repair that kind of damage. The idea to do that to a baby had to start someplace.
HdW…” Now, as a caveat to what I stated baldly above – sex between two people IS about the sexual acts taking place between them. But, it is when the expressive, shared energy between them has dwindled that our routinised stock of cultural conditionings, cajole us once again to make the acts the FOCUS, rather than the vehicle. ”
Thanks, this is helping me think through some things I am feeling about the two sides of the Tantra question: one being a stringently religious use of sexual energy for ‘spiritual’ ends; the other being a gauzy spirituality brought to bear on sex. Both feel like a misplaced focus.
Patty, there’s a sexual bond between mother and child from the get-go, you know that! It’s explicit in breastfeeding (most women have at least one “accidental” orgasm during BF’ing) and even more explicit during the act of childbirth, when the little angel comes flying out of Heaven (chortle). You know that labor itself is a cascade of the very same hormones that result otherwise in orgasm.
If that actual, real, *natural*, and quite good physicality isn’t part of the mothering (of both sexes) experience — consciously realized, then I can see touch degenerating. But honestly, most baby boys get hard-ons from everything – and they show us how deeply aroused we are by life in general from the earliest age. I’m not sure its “sexual” until there’s a reason for it to be. Before that, it’s just libidinal, an “I want life” phase. These young mothers might be overestimating their effects.
I do think you’re on to something about growth spurts and hormones. But my kid is almost 6 feet tall at nearly 14, though he’s been a vegetarian since 9 and was only fed organic before that. Young women with more testosterone? Not all aggression is wasted, I’m thinkin’ of one young woman I know who spent half an hour telling a cop that he could NOT arrest her for not showing her papers. She was showing off a bit for her nephew (who is 14), but the point was taken.
Well Half-deWitte, you are saying what I am saying – genuine comfort is needed, only I call it love.
But my guess is that about half the women of the world are married to men that they don’t love, and are not comfortable with at all. How many cultures still promise the girl at age 5 or 6 to some old man?
Mystes, I don’t know that it is that far-fetched. Lots of people who were abused as children end up as abusers. It is a vicious cycle. I’ve heard young women talk about stroking a baby to get him hard, because they think it is funny! That is crossing the line! Babies can be manipulated emotionally right from the start! Then the kid grows up addicted to porn and dirty jokes and we can’t figure it out. The sweet and intellectual young man kills a prostitute and everyone is saying no way!
I could be wrong, but I don’t think I’m off target by much.
The observation is that the women today seem to have a lot more testosterone, or at least that’s what I imagine. My daughter’s friends are all well over 5′ 8″ with little parents that look like me at 5′ 2″. The speeding tickets and love sports are what show on the outside. None of them are sitting at home knitting I can tell you that much, and they are aggressive! By contrast, the men seem to be taking a back seat. It is just an observation, but even my son mentioned that so many guys his age are feminine. He does organic food to limit the hormone intake.
“And the only antidote here? Genuine comfort with self and connection with those of similar disposition.”
And I should add to this something about working at the rest of life and relationships generally and in essence working at anything which prevents one from falling into any trap which involves separating life into boxes that fragment and do not allow life force to flow.
If a partner has taken their eye of the ball and your shared sex life is suffering, it is the wiser path to enquire about the other’s energy flow, the maintenance of balance in all areas of their life – for if you directly emphasise the ‘sex’ *part*, the normative conditioning problems will likely rear their monstrous heads.
Patty: “If the woman feels like the man is just doing his business on her/in her, she is never going to desire him – never. There are things the man can do to help his situation, and that is this: he can love the woman. Love covers a multitude of sins. Works both ways, but the guy better have more to offer than just a hard on. ”
This paragraph illustrates perfectly the problems modern people face in their intimacy – a successful cultural conditioning into collective faulty perceptics.
How so?
Sex between a man and a woman is precisely NOT about the sexual acts taking place between them. It IS about the two people engaged in the exchange. This false dichotomy between physiology (“hard on”) and feeling (“love”) with love being some kind of corrective, is part of our stock of popular fiction and this was outlined earlier in this thread.
Patty, how can the “hard on”, which is the prerequisite for the macho, stud-like “he goes on all night and is hung like a horse” mentalities which so oppress and trap men, be compatible with the “love” of which you speak?
Our culture is obsessed with sexual acts and this is why traditional porn is simultaneously so alluring (it feeds the imagination, which makes up for perceived deficiency and esteem issues) and so problematic (the people involved are reduced to mere functionaries).
Now, as a caveat to what I stated baldly above – sex between two people IS about the sexual acts taking place between them. But, it is when the expressive, shared energy between them has dwindled that our routinised stock of cultural conditionings, cajole us once again to make the acts the FOCUS, rather than the vehicle.
And this corrupts the whole symphony by making the final chord the point. Just as perfectionism precludes process, a satisfactory end product becomes impossible and then… it’s well and truly “in your head”… and everybody elses.
And the only antidote here? Genuine comfort with self and connection with those of similar disposition.
On a collective level, a counter-cultural community of such folk, gradually replacing the normative experience, would offer hope for our children..
Patty:: “There are just as many women who are abusers, but they seem to cover it up better. I’ve had several men tell me that it was an older woman who first gave them the blow job or the sex when they were but 11 or 12 years old.”
whoof! that’s a *big* claim – just as many? Hmmm… I guess it’s possible. But Pat, women have a much more touch-oriented relationship to their kids. So there is much less repression and therefore less need to act out inappropriate touch.
I know at least one male relative who was sexually-abused by his mother, but she watched her other son drown in front of her, and was really, truly out of her mind for about 5 years. Shortly after the incident she was died of breast cancer, her own body’s way of ‘paying’ for the loss and the abuse.
My ex remarked one time that he thought that testosterone was an anti-empathy drug in the body. Seems about right for the current statistics on male to female rape ratios.
There are just as many women who are abusers, but they seem to cover it up better. I’ve had several men tell me that it was an older woman who first gave them the blow job or the sex when they were but 11 or 12 years old. What is that if not child sexual abuse/rape? My little brother needs a hip replacement, and I strongly suspect abuse somewhere along the way – but I’ve never asked him. I’d bet a paycheck he has been used sexually.
If the woman feels like the man is just doing his business on her/in her, she is never going to desire him – never. There are things the man can do to help his situation, and that is this: he can love the woman. Love covers a multitude of sins. Works both ways, but the guy better have more to offer than just a hard on.
I don’t think anyone today is enslaved to God or Goddess. The church is not the problem. Slaves are enslaved to low-life people, and that is what needs to be fixed. Turning our eyes to God is the cure, not the problem. For what is God? God is Love. And what are we? We are love, and have nothing to fear.
yeah, just the other day in response to the MJ article i commented that most females are not in touch with their masculine side the same way most males are not in touch with their feminine side. well explained here, Eric – thanks for sharing the deeper awareness of sexuality.
Rather, thank you, Eric!
Most of the rest of us make occasional forays here, whilst you remain the constant architect of the infrastructure, creating the space for the rest of us to contribute. It is appreciated that you take the time to engage in the debate – it makes the community project real. The fact that you have transcended cyberspace in doing this, recently, speaks volumes.
I have known some problematic cyber-communities. This one, however, shapes up more than fit-for-purpose.. 😉
Well, I like good communication. And I like deep submission.
Half Witte has come off with his whole wit yet again…thank you…
Debates on the nature of personhood are inevitablt in the mix here. We’ve never really transcended Greek conceptuality on the nature of deity, which through time fully infected our conceptions of personhood, funded in the West in large measure from theological debates in the first 5 centuries CE regarding the closely allied issues of confessional orthodoxy within christendom and the nature of Jesus Christ. Descartes’ cogito merely helped cement the mind/body split, much later on, within a kind of phenomenology of consciousness.
The upshot has been that in the contemporary situation, desiring AND loving the body of the other have become mutual exclusives within the human psyche. If you desire another’s body THAT is selfish, according to the hidden subtext. This does not (at core) originate in religion but rather greek conceptuality as related to judeo-christian culture – but it surely IS driven by religion (aka morality – it is the same thing). It is cemented by false conceptualities of love as lofty, spiritual, pure and the flesh as base, corrupt, perishing.
The gender switches progress dialectically within history, as Eric pints out.
Priorities and responsibilities (morality under another name) just as truth (as pointed out by Foucault) claim a sort of self-authenticated validity, such that even to question our assumptions in these areas is evidence of deviance. Nietzsche unerstood this dynamic well, in taking the role of anti-Christ he attempted to disembowl the self-perpetuating, fear-generating mythologies, which kept people enslaved to a tyrannical Other (a concept of God, no kind of reality of *Goddess*).
So ‘truth’ and ‘responsibility’ always mean it is vulgar to prioritise the self – it is selfish to desire the mere flesh of another. At the present time, it is too easy when a man makes overtures to a tired/stressed modern woman for sexual intimacy and closeness, for that woman to feel he is wanting her body and not the rest of her and to guilt trip him into an impossible position, where he may feel like a rapist (if he is sensitive) for even presenting sexual requests. Of course, in any given dynamic between two people and their shared reality, he MAY be being utterly selfish. However, that is NOT a given.
Since sex is a form of energy exchange and flow it is just as possible that the woman has denied her bodily existence and the nourishment that may come from sexual exchange than that the man is being selfish. She may be nurturing a false sense of neglect through cultural conditioning and guilt tripping from her early socialisation.
We have rendered the body immaterial (do you like that word play?) and we have vulgarised SEX. There is no separation in truth, except the one that has riven our psyches into false dichotomies, dichotomies which alienate men and women by kidding them that they have differing sexual needs – they don’t. They may have other needs that differ, according to cultural conditioning and power differentials. But communication is the answer to those problems, not mythologies of the ‘war of the sexes’.
And anyway, isn’t good communication what sex is supposed to be all about?
Thank you, Eric. Your words soothe my heart, making me feel less alone in being aware of and facing the “special challenge” of being a male human being at this point of the cycle. Since i’m older than you (56) i would like to add that the crime of maleness is evidently exacerbated with age.
My approach is, first, not to take it personally. i tell myself that my name is Len, not Men. Second, compassion and empathy help me to realize that it’s not only “…the vast majority… paraded before TV and newspaper cameras…” but the vast majority of abusers in homes, schools and workplaces whose skin and hair resemble mine. No wonder my book is judged by its cover.
There is work to be done and an opportunity for healing in my every day. For that i am grateful and from that i take my solace.
Finally, in my moments of devotional practice i feel not only the presence of the Goddess but acceptance from her. As a small child, being obligated to kneel and pray before bedtime i would close my eyes and see a woman as i repeated words directed to “Our Father”. i kept that a secret, fearing punishment. Now i know that there was nothing to fear and much to be grateful for.
With Deep Appreciation,
Len Wallick