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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 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 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.”
So this morning I received an email from my beloved mother. It was by way of response to mine. The original email, from me, was sent yesterday, bemoaning the fact that she simply will not stick to any rules (she has Sun quincunx Pluto) and is happy to side-step me at all costs, in order to get to my children. This latest complaint of mine was that she had sent my son a birthday card at his school – am I the only one to see that as subversive?! Yes, dear reader, we are in the process of attempting to “work out” our relationship after I dared to make a decision about my life that she didn’t like. I, I hope understandably, have put everything on hold until it is sorted out, which means of course that she doesn’t see my children at the moment. After all, how does one carry on a relationship with one’s grandchildren if one will not speak to their mother? Simple logic, it seems to me.
As usual, I digress.
Where does astrology come into this?
Well, this morning, as I say, I received a pretty hideous email – anger, manipulation, threats of death (other people’s, but the implication was at my door)… that kind of stuff.
During the school-run it occurred to me that I might ask my astrologer to glance at what the sky was up to today. So, on our return, we took a look at today’s astrology:
Transits of 22nd May 2009
Here I found that Mars was squaring Pallas in Cancer, thus ruled by the Moon in Taurus in 8th. She, in turn, was squaring Pluto in Capricorn in 4th. (Coincidentally, this Moon in 8th – Pluto in 4th is a facsimile of my own natal Moon trine Pluto). What does it all mean? Well, Mars squaring Pallas in Cancer is clearly tension with the daughter, ruled by the Moon brings the mother into the equation and the Moon in trine aspect to Pluto creates an easy ability to amputate the emotions. Interesting for me, especially, since I told my mother goodbye. Oh, and I mentioned that today’s Moon and my own natal Moon are both in the 8th House of things we give up? And while I’m discussing aspects that already exist in our natal charts corresponding to today’s transits, might I point out the Sun quincunx Pluto that exists in dear Mama’s? And while I’m at it, the Moon trine Pluto alive and well in my own?
These observations led us to look a little more closely at what had been going on when I had sent my original email yesterday afternoon. This is what we found:
Transits of 21st May 2009 at 16:18
I sent my email expressing my anger at my mother at the exact moment that Mars and Moon were in partile conjunction (anger with the mother), both squaring Pallas (tension with the daughter).
Finally, on leaving the school this morning having dropped off three little boys, my friend collapsed on me in tears having just had a godawful morning with her daughter.
Good job I take on board my parents’ assertion that there’s nothing in this astrology lark, isn’t it?
A very simplistic view of life from under the curse of Venus-Pluto as depicted by an entirely novice astrologer. Bear with me. It may make a little sense…
I have Venus rising in Cancer in the 1st House. Not a bad place for Venus, really, you might say. Only trouble is, she’s squaring Pluto, in Virgo in the 4th and, other than a conjunction with Ceres, this is the only major aspect she makes. So the only way I am able to express Venus is through the medium of Pluto. The compulsive and deep, dark, brooding undercurrent of Pluto.
OK. Well. That’s all well and good. Now that I am aware of it, that is. But let me tell you the harrowing tale of one uninitiated in the ways of astrology, living her life through blind compulsion with nothing but a vague and watery sense that things weren’t quite right. In oh, so many ways…
Other than a square to 11th House Chiron, my Cancerian Sun is to all intents and purposes peregrine. This will describe to you the ambience of my relationship with my father: distant and rather painful. Add to this the fact that my Saturn is opposing Neptune: a weak or distant father and bingo! There you have it. My father is a source of angst and pain because I have never felt close to him, or that he would even want that. An unloveable daughter.
As a brief aside, I might mention by way of example that I spent the night before my wedding crying in my parents’ spare bedroom, wondering how in God’s name I was going to sit next to my father in the wedding car the following day for fully half an hour when he didn’t even seem to like me very much. It was rather a source of confusion that he wanted to walk down the aisle with me at all, though I could far more easily understand the concept of his wanting to give me away…
My Moon, by a similar twist of fate, is in Capricorn (and thus in her detriment) in the 8th: early difficulty, something I may have to give up. She trines Pluto (a mother who was able to amputate her feelings to display her displeasure) and Saturn (denoting an easy self-control in me as a result of my relationship with her – duty over emotion). They, in turn, trine one another to create a wonderfully isolating Grand Trine across earth and air to hide inside. The ruler of my 10th House cusp, in Aquarius, is Uranus opposing Chiron, thus the pain of the mother. And the ruler of my 4th House cusp in Leo takes us back to the Sun in Cancer squaring Chiron: the pain of the father. Phew! I just about manage to retain the import of these facts, but the psychological legacy of them is all too evident to me: I am unloveable and have struggled to redress that balance for pretty much my entire life.
So let’s bring Venus, the principle of attraction (and thus also repulsion), into the mix. She represents those things we attract and are attracted to and, it logically follows, those that we are repelled by and that we repel. She is love. And in my Nativity, she is supercharged. As I mentioned before, for me she is also rising which makes her principle of attraction something I innately want to approach the world with. I want to be liked, to fit in, to be popular. I want to be diplomatic, long for peace and harmony. I will naturally avoid over-complication. But, and here is the rub, I am also concerned with appearance: Venus on the Ascendant means that physically, I have a strong need to make myself as attractive and pleasing as possible. And now (drum-roll, please) let us introduce that Lord of the Underworld… Pluto.
Time for a little more personal anecdote, I feel.
It is unlikely you will find someone with more friends who feels lonelier. That’s the first point. It would be hard to over-emphasise how much I would bend over backwards to be liked. Everyone in my path. The postman, the playground mums, the guy delivering logs, the butcher’s wife. You name someone, I’ll have tried to make them like me. It may be time, of course, to redefine the word “friend”. But that is, perhaps, a debate for another time. It feels, looking back on it now, like a form of prostitution, frankly.
Which leads me neatly on to intimate relationships. Never successful. Never. Because that yearning to be liked, loved even, when brought into a potentially romantic relationship, brings with it a sense of desperation, of neediness, a “yes-girl” mentality: you tell me what you want to do, where you want to go… I’ll just follow like your faithful puppy. And which red-blooded male in today’s somewhat skewed society, wants someone who presents no challenge whatsoever? I don’t want to sound like a pushover. After all, I have Mars square Jupiter – I’m very capable of being pretty feisty. But in matters of love, I was a doormat. I should add, too, that to put another spin on my Mars square Jupiter and add fuel to the already pretty desperate Venus-Pluto fire, women with the Mars-Jupiter aspect often fall victim to bed-hopping men. Sigh. Yup. Guilty as charged.
I married a man who was not a serial bed-hopper. I met him at 19, left him at 21, came back to him again and again because he didn’t treat me badly. We married when I was 27 and separated when I was 37, when Pluto crossed my Descendant for the 2nd time, into my 7th House of marriage and, by solar arc, I had Pluto trine Venus 6 days after which I met my astrologer. It will be 120 years before that aspect is repeated, and I had it 6 days before I physically met the man I hope to spend the rest of my life with. And I nearly lost him.
I have always known, as must be evident from the life I have thus far described, that I had a problem relating to men. I did not know why. I was uncomfortable around them, didn’t know how to behave, how to speak to them. Growing up in a strict Catholic family with three sisters (my one brother is so much younger than me that he barely registered as a “man” when we were children) and being sent to an all-girls school did nothing but exacerbate the matter. I realise now that I took courage in alcohol once I reached university and pretty much any “successful” contact I had with the opposite sex was beer-fuelled. I suppose that did not really change, since I have taken refuge in wine since then. Without a drink, I became a wallflower. With a drink, the life and soul. But I digress (albeit to the point).
My husband had become used to the way I behaved around men. I guess the best way of describing it was flirtatious. He knew there was no threat involved but it has only become clear to me since discovering the Venus-Pluto effect how much he struggled with it when we were first together. I had totally forgotten the fights we had during which I found myself baffled by his apparently unfounded and unreasonable jealousy.
So, I had moved in with my astrologer and everything was, initially, tickety-boo. Until I began to see the same pattern. Suddenly, he appeared to me to be controlling, jealous, suspicious. I could not work it out. I feared I had made a desperate mistake. We began to argue in desperation. This was our dream, our one true love, and it looked like falling down around our ears. Until one morning, after an especially bleak, fraught and wretched night, a book about astrological transformation and empowerment landed on our doorstep. I read the piece about Venus-Pluto, subtitled “Love and Survival”. It described my life experience: from the early days of one-way relationships when I felt that I loved and could not be loved in return, that I was seen as a trophy and ran the constant risk of being dumped. It told how I found the fear of not being loved as unconsciously life-threatening, that it sprang from a childhood in which affection was used as a manipulation tool, that I had learned emotional amputation techniques to beat those I loved at their own game. Most importantly for me at that particular time, though, it explained my attitude to men. “Venus-Pluto people are concerned about the impression they make and can sometimes invest enormous energy into being liked. Generally they successfully enrol people into liking them through a kind of relentless charm… long-term partners will learn to identify the anxiety that lies behind the efforts to be loved. Jealousy can plague their early relationships as they feel they are at the mercy of another’s love and cannot control whether it will be given or withheld. These people give intensely of themselves, and there is no way their relationships can be superficial, but at the same time, they draw the emotional energy from others and leave them exhausted.” My poor darling was utterly confused by the mixed messages I appeared to be emitting. With one breath I was telling him he was my world, my life, the reason I was alive and with the next I appeared to be attempting to seduce a shopkeeper.
With awareness comes release.
Might I recommend two courses of action, should you find yourself in a similar boat? 1) If you have a good level of astrological proficiency, try Donna Cunningham’s Healing Pluto Problems and 2) Ask a good astrologer for help.
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