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Meatballs?! Harumph.
“These meatballs are okay till 15th, so I’ll cook them for everyone on Tuesday night”, I informed him.
“Really?”
He sounded skeptical and I sensed the necessity for convincing kicking in.
“Yeah. There are 18 of them.”
“But 3 each… Really? They’re tiny!”
My mind pedalled furiously, doing the maths.
“But the boys only need two each. They often don’t even have meat with their pasta. They probably won’t even eat them. That leaves five each for us.”
He didn’t look convinced, but shrugged his shoulders and muttered “Okay…”
He took his cup of tea into the sitting room.
-0-
It wasn’t a heated exchange.
There was no reason for distress.
So why was I shaking?
My heart was pounding, hands trembling, I felt sick and couldn’t eat the toast he’d made for me.
He, on the other hand, was a little irked at best, had noticed a little edge to the conversation, was perhaps somewhat disgruntled. But he felt nowhere near the distress that I did.
And I was getting worse. My inner monologue had begun to rant:
“Why is everything so difficult? I was only talking about bloody meatballs for God’s sake! Why is there this edge?”
He walked back into the kitchen, offering to make me more toast. Then:
“Oh. You haven’t eaten this one.”
“I can’t eat when I feel like this!”
He, sensibly he thought, kept a low profile. Then he came back into the room with some notes he’d written on asteroids.
“Read this.”
But I was too far gone. ‘Now” I thought, “Now he wants to batter me with astrology!’ (Who’d live with an astrologer?!) And I refused to read it.
It escalated of course, he attempting to escape and I following, demanding to sort “it” out.
Sort what out? It was only bloody meatballs, for heaven’s sake!
-0-
When the dust had settled and I read the extract he had wanted me to read, the beginnings of a dawning illuminated a darkened space inside my head.
Sun square Pandora. It is an aspect whose native is constantly surprised, or dismayed (especially in my case) at how things spiral out of control; is thinking four steps ahead on the look-out for pitfalls or being wrong-footed; finds it hard to get anything done because things ‘keep happening’. And the native doesn’t realise his or her own part in the situation either, but it is usuallya pattern learned from the father, repeated with men and authority figures.
Of course, it is never quite so one-sided. He could have said, or I could have said, either one of us could have said: “How about we make a couple more, just to be on the safe side?” but he, thanks to his very close conjunction of Sun and Psyche, becomes defensive terribly easily. For him I was saying “Don’t be so extravagant! Of course this is enough for all of us.”
It could have gone on all day, if it weren’t for the fact that I live with…
… an astrologer.
Easy to understand when you have the tools.
Doesn’t make it any less uncomfortable, though.
He awoke with determination yesterday morning, my lovely astrologer.
“Today is the day we rectify your chart. I need to know where your Ascendant is.”
And of course, weekends are generally the only time for any ‘recreational’ astrology. The rest of the working week is… well… working.
So we huddled around his computer and came up with a list of about 10 events in my life of great significance. Those of you familiar with the process probably know that this is not, as a matter of course, a particularly comfortable experience. Those dates work best if they were the cause of some discomfort or distress to you. Naturally, though, the births of your children are likely to have a large impact on you, too. It’s not all bad.
He worked his magic on his software, looking at dates, angles and progressions; occasionally muttering “We’re about a year out”, or “Another few degrees or so…” and fiddling with dates and times.
It took some time, I can tell you. It is not a quick process (or I guess he might have done it before now…); rather somewhat involved, fiddly, occasionally exasperating. None of this was aided by the fact that I have possibly the worst memory in the history of humankind, especially for dates. But some things you just don’t forget, eh? The date of your marriage, your firstborn, your divorce…
The pointers that he had finally got it spot on included the following:
- May of 1989 when, as a result of the death of my grandfather, my family upped sticks and left suburban London for a tiny village in the South-East of England. By Solar Arc, Midheaven was quincunx Uranus: “A sudden turn of destiny, big upsets”.
- December of 1991, the midst of one of the hardest years of my life (a year spent studying abroad in hostile situations, due to two separate but equally vitriolic instances of victimisation). By Solar Arc, my Ascendant was semi-square my Midheaven: “Inhibitions or suffering caused through the environment or others”.
- August of 1998, when my ex-husband and I were married. By Solar Arc, my Ascendant was conjunct Saturn: demonstration to the world that I was ‘growing up’ and doing the ‘mature and responsible’ thing. Time to ‘get serious’ about life.
- March of 2000, my first son was born. By Solar Arc, Moon conjunct my Midheaven: motherhood was born.
These were the most noteworthy dates until we got to the final one. As ever, he saved the best till last. August 2008, when we finally met, by Solar Arc Pluto trined Venus. If that doesn’t intensify the love, what does? It takes Pluto 360 years to traverse the zodiac by Solar Arc (which has nothing to do with rectification – I mention it merely as an aside). You get one trine every 120 years. In other words, you may never get one. And there it was, by Solar Arc, the day we met.
Worth rectifying it, wasn’t it?
By way of a brief aside, he was awfully grumpy yesterday, my lovely astrologer. (And I find it unfailingly touching that he is grateful to be allowed to be). All day. I mean all day. On and off, of course. And I might add that nowhere near as explosively as I the day before.
I rather got the impression that it was baffling him, too. I mean, there is nothing majorly wrong (aside from the usual, which is too laborious and painful to go into here). In fact, he is utterly enthused with his life and vocation just now. If anything, he is generally wishing for more hours in the day: too many projects, too little time.
But he was grumpy, man.
Is THIS how you feel, Sweetheart?
It started when we first sat down to write, it continued through the morning, into the afternoon, it peaked when he was washing up and waned a little once that loathsome task was complete, and picked up again as, children tucked up in bed, we snuggled up to watch a film.
He was about to press “Play” when I urged him to check out his transits.
“Ahaaaaa!” he uttered, snorting somewhat sheepishly.
“Mmm?”
“Mars square Moon, exact at 11pm tonight.”
Snuggling into his chest, I muttered “I’ll keep my head down till then, then.”
Alice and Jeremy
My head is spinning somewhat. Under our roof, the search for detail, that detail which provides the colour and shading for the outline that the common or garden Nativity provides, continues and is ever-dizzying. I mean, of course, that the study of the asteroids is ongoing and all-consuming.
Today he tells me I have a Cazimi Cora in Cancer. Cora is an alternate name for the Greek Goddess Persephone, daughter of Demeter. (Also known, of course, as Proserpina and Ceres.) She is the embodiment of the Earth’s fertility, so it should be no great surprise that I have four children and only stopped because I “had to”.
More importantly, however, she was abducted by Hades, Lord of the Underworld and separated from her mother. (Cazimi Cora in Cancer, ruled by the Moon which, coincidentally, I have in the 8th so something I have to give up?) Wikipedia, I might mention, also has this to add: “This myth also can be interpreted as an allegory of ancient Greek marriage rituals. The Classical Greeks felt that marriage was a sort of abduction of the bride by the groom from the bride’s family, and this myth may have explained the origins of the marriage ritual.“
I have previously mentioned the fact that Jupiter is transiting my natal Odysseus, Odysseus being exile, ex-patriate, feeling rootless or homeless, a stranger in a strange land, being sent away from “home”. I have mentioned that I am exiled from my family.
And here we have the illuminating piece of the puzzle that has enabled my family to project onto my lovely astrologer the personification of Hades (and those of you who know him will be laughing aloud by now). No protestation can dissuade them – indeed any protestation appears to be protesting too much. I have been abducted by the evil Lord of the Underworld. So here we are, Persephone and Hades (or Proserpina and Pluto), in exile.
And again the cry goes up: Nothing in this astrology lark, is there?
The details are ever increasing. And bewitchingly accurate. It becomes rather difficult to think about anything much else at the moment. Indeed, he is seldom apart from his books and his software, my lovely astrologer.
He has a Cazimi Daedalus, conjunct Psyche, all in Libra. As he has mentioned before, the Cazimi placement purifies that with which it is so closely configured. Psyche brings, amongst other things, raw psychological wounds and vulnerabilities.
So he investigates Daedalus. I’m sure you are familiar with the story of Daedalus and Icarus. Daedalus constructed wings, held together with wax, with which he and his boy Icarus could escape. Icarus, the daredevil, flew too close to the Sun. The wax melted and Icarus fell to his death. So, Daedalus built wings to escape. And, indeed, he did escape but lost his son in the process.
Daedalus and Icarus
What has this to do with my lovely astrologer? In Libra? It was in escaping from his marriage that he lost his son.
And with Psyche configured there? It is not a wound that has healed.
My Capricorn Moon
Sitting up in bed this morning, thanking our lucky stars it was the weekend, sipping tea and wincing slightly at the sounds of clamour and chaos ensuing from the four wild monkeys downstairs, we discussed the not-so-pretty points of motherhood. You know, the yuckier stuff. Blood, poo, the whole damn thing.
“There’s bugger all I can do about it but get on with it” was, I decided, to be carved on my gravestone.
He grinned his sometimes rather smug astrologer’s grin at me and declared: “There speaks a Moon in an Earth sign.”
Pragmatism.
Where would I be without it?
Lil' Pluto Dude
My little Pluto dude is a Gemini. He does, in fact, have crazy amounts of Gemini: Sun, Mercury and Venus. It’s a loopy little stellium all opposed and super-charged by Pluto (rising, as I may have mentioned).
Being so utterly Gemini, it’s kind of tricky keeping him on the planet. Out and about, he’s the lagger, looking up at the sky, in his own little world, tripping over the kerb and walking into shop windows. He has scars on his forehead to prove it. At school… well… He’s only five, but already I sense the exasperation of his teachers as they describe their attempts to keep his floating head in the room. We did, in fact, devise a scheme whereby each time he reaches the end of a school-day I ask his teacher whether he managed to focus, to concentrate, or not. Each time she says yes, he gets a sticker on the starchart on the wall above his bed. Each time he has 10 stickers, he gets a reward.
So, today. He’s piled into the car with his three brothers and his surprisingly deep little voice emanates from his pixie face, big blue eyes piercing me from under his mop of straw: “I got a sticker today.” This surprises me, because I’m the one supposed to be handing out the stickers.
“Oh yes,” I reply. “What for?”
I am anticipating a prolonged stint of applied concentration, a task well done, a whole five minutes sitting still…
His little chest is puffed with pride, his face-splitting grin showing all his milk teeth.
“I finished my lunch before they’d got round the school. I was first for pudding and I finished first!”
I didn’t mention his Moon in Taurus, did I? My little tummy on legs.
He had me in tears today, my lovely astrologer.
They bubbled up, out of nowhere, and flowed down my cheeks to splash on the notes on my desk.
His latest passion is Asteroids and Trans-Neptunians and his reasearch exhaustive. Greedily, he devours books, pores over charts, identifies personality traits, deep-rooted problems, potential pitfalls.
Jupiter, right now, is at 19° 18′ Aquarius and is transiting my Odysseus. So he looks up Odysseus. Odysseus is the asteroid for one who is sent into exile. “This sense of exile is to be seen as poignant because there is a longing for home; one has been banished and yet yearns to go home, to have a home, to find a place that offers what they idealise as home.” The tears, by now, are streaming unbidden down my face. “There is the perception that one doesn’t have a place to call his own.”
Then, of course, having punched this asteroid into the software, we discover that it is conjunct my Mars in the 9th – the lure of the open road, eh? And Odysseus conjunct Mars, to quote the pertinent paragraph: “Angry scenes in connection with being sent away” from ‘Go to your room’ as a child to “later in life, anger, independence or criticism carry the potential for echoes of banishment – being driven out.”
He is, inadvertently, enormously good at summoning my pain, dredging it up from its hiding place deep within my soul, standing it in front of me and saying: “Here it is. Confront it. It will make it better.” Or put another way, as he often says: “With awareness comes relief.” I suppose it is some small relief to know that it is there, in black and white, in my Nativity.
I am exiled from my family.
More than that, whenever I have dared speak out, rock the boat, step out of line, I have been royally punished for it. And (conjunct Mars in the 9th, remember?) hauled my cookies abroad and lived there for a good long time. Since I can remember I have longed to live far away from the family home. I have left and found it bittersweet because from a distance I can pretend that home is perfect. I can miss it. And if I stay away too long, I run the risk of forgetting that it isn’t what I believe it should be.
My whole life I have been mystified by the discrepancies between my understanding of home and family and the reality. Don’t misunderstand me, I have had a privileged and comfortable life, upbringing. On the surface of it, you would consider me the luckiest in the world. But it is about appearances, doing and saying the right thing. The substance of it, the meat of it, the depths of it… they have been conspicuous by their absence. Behaviours have been so utterly not what I expect of a family.
And, with what my lovely astrologer calls “The Jupiter Effect”, Jupiter is magnifying this conjunction. No wonder it hurts, huh?
-0-
His research is not exactly painless for him either, you know.
Inevitably, he uses his own Nativity as a test or control case (and mine follows on as the live-in guinea pig), and turns up aspects and placements that have him drawing in his own breath in recognition, wonder or pain.
The latest example of such was his discovery, yesterday, of how Psyche plays out in his own chart. Apart from Daedalus, the Sun’s conjunction with Psyche is the closest aspect it makes. It is a massively sensitive point, arising mostly from one’s own pain “the excessively present trauma of the past”, which creates a hypersensitivity. It can be nigh on crippling “as one identifies oneself in terms of one’s ‘pain’ and the emotional complexes of the childhood. One may feel that what they are, at root, is the sum total of their pain and damage”.
As the tears rolled off his cheeks and into his beard, I began at last to understand from where his unsettling, extreme sensitivity and deep anxiety stem.
Surely only one with such levels of insight into pain and damage is qualified to help others overcome theirs?
He’s well and truly into his asteroids, my lovely astrologer. Like the thirstiest of sponges he’s soaking up this information as though his life depended on it.
My life, right now, is punctuated with such gems as:
“You have a Cazimi Cupido. Barbara Cartland had a Cazimi Cupido. You could make a fortune writing romance novels.”
Or bodice-rippers as my mother used to call them…
I tell him, a little spooked, “Barbara Cartland was born on the 9th July, like me.” (I have told him before how I used to skive my P.E. classes at school and hide in my dorm reading Mills & Boon – all too Venus/Pluto as well, methinks…) Seems my birthday and the delightful Ms Cartland’s aren’t all we have in common, then. But in spite of the life I live punctuated with blue (oh, so many sons) I refuse to wear fluffy pink, keep a lapdog or glue on false eyelashes every morning. You can go too far, in my humble…
He also tells me, in the next breath, that I have Asclepius conjunct Hygeia on the astrologers’ degree of Leo. Allegedly, that means I should be more than capable of being a fabulous medical astrologer, aiding those with health and weight problems.
How does that sit with weaving tales of unrequited love? Sigh… Decisions, decisions.
Decisions, decisions...
I did, of course, put this conundrum to him and he kindly obliged with this pertinent information. The Cupido in my astrology is not quite the same as the delightful Barbara’s. Mine is Cupido A which, apparently, relates much more to the appearance. You see where I’m going with this? Perhaps they are not such very different things after all?
He’s lying on the sofa.
Dying.
He’s been fading all afternoon.
He aches, he’s feeling hopeless, helpless, grim.
I busy myself with the children, get them to bed, pop in periodically and administer affection, hot wheatbags, tea and sympathy, for which he is weakly grateful.
I’ve just got the supper in the oven and sit down to play something mindless at my computer, when:
“Al! Sorry… If it’s not too much trouble…?”
I smile.
“What is it?”
“Just have a look and tell me where the Sun is, would you?”
I open the software to see.
“It’s at 8 degrees 45 Libra.” I tell him
“Open my Nativity?”
“OK?”
“Where’s my Saturn?”
I laugh out loud.
“It’s at 8 degrees 45 Aries.”
He is visibly relieved; like he’s just been granted a reprieve. Death no longer haunts him.
“I’ll be better tomorrow.”
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