Category Archives: Astrology Musings

HOLLYWOOD SCORPIO

 I haven’t written much about Astrology in my posts,  because I like to present what can be spoken about using Astrology without using Astrological language. But today I will. In the first week of October, Jupiter passed from Libra into Scorpio.  Right about the time that the first Harvey Weinstein stories came out.  The planets themselves, whether in a natal chart, a transit, or in a sign change(lIke from Libra to Scorpio) don’t cause anything, just as a mirror doesn’t cause your eyes to be brown. But, they do reflect some larger collective dynamics in play.

      Scorpio is ruled by Pluto, the god of the underworld.  It is in the underworld where we hide our deepest secrets, and what secrets are deeper than our sexuality,  it’s distorted expression, and the shame that distortions gives birth to?  A perfect storm composed of these things had been gathering for years in Harvey Weinstein.  With his eye for good stories, his bullying manner in getting those stories made, and his hidden assaults on women that were discussed,  but tolerated, because of the power he wielded.  Once a producing  avatar of the film world, he will die(probably sooner than later) an avatar of abusive power, sexuality and shame. Most likely finally seen by everyone trapped  in the Underworld  Prison where he had secretly lived his whole life.

      I recently told a Scorpio friend of mine who is publishing her memoirs this month, “Jupiter in Scorpio, good for your book, bad for Harvey Weinstein.”  Scorpio is a sign of depth and revelation.  But in our superficial culture we usually store our depths in the basement, where nobody can see them. Root around down there, and you’ll find lust, rage, shame, illnesses and all kind of unrealized fantasies.  And the basement is where the first report of Harvey Weinstein’s abuse came from.  There beneath a restaurant he partly owned, he masturbated into a potted plant.  But how did he find himself there pleasuring himself in front of an unwitting victim? What had happened to him, that created that desire?

     I make no excuses for Harvey Weinstein or the other sexual assaulters and rapists who are being exposed,  and will continue to be exposed in the days, weeks, and months to come.  I find their actions disgusting and their choices reprehensible.  Every single one of them should go to jail for what they’ve done.  But there are reasons why they’ve behaved this way, and their sexuality has became so distorted in its expression and function.  I can say with surety about them or anyone who exploits other people sexually, the genesis of their behavior usually can be found in their own sexual abuse.  People who behave this way, have usually been treated this way. It’s like a game of tag.  It’s not an excuse.  But, it is one of our culture’s darkest Underworld secrets.

     I myself was not a victim of sexual abuse, but it’s been close to me.  In my 20’s I had an incredibly beautiful and talented girlfriend, who as a small child had been abused by her father’s best friend.  The impact on her sense of herself was global.  It affected every part of her life, and always will. Like Persephone(read the myth) she had been dragged to the Underworld, and it is her life’s work after dragging herself back out, to help others escape.  Some, like Harvey Weinstein, never get back out, and they spend their lives dragging others down to the Underworld to be with them.  Their struggle to survive in such a dark and frightening environment energizes them with a great power, that in it’s purest and least camoflaged form, is rage.

     I grew up in Los Angeles and had a couple of close calls with the Underworld as a child.  I remember being ten and having my father take me to Malibu Colony to watch the US OPEN final at one of his friend’s house.  The man had been a producer on Laugh In.  He lived on the beach and his incredibly beautiful and enchanting British ex-wife had her own place in Coldwater Canyon and a butler.  My father had once been a producer for the Carol Burnett show, but had fallen on hard times in the industry, and probably viewed the outing as something that offered him professional opportunities.

    As the match (Connors-Borg as I recall) wore on, the producer became more and more drunk.  I’d never seen an adult drunk during the day, and was semi amused by it.  His watery eyes, and his slurred speech were a new experience of adults, and I was titilated by it.  He began to speak about his days playing professional football in the Canadian Football League. I sensed that along with his watery eyes, and slurred speech, I was also being exposed to a new world of adults lying.   I told him I didn’t believe him several times.  Each time I said I didn’t believe him, he grew more angry.  Not only was I meeting a daytime drunk for the first time, I was popping the lie balloons of adults.  It was great fun!

    Since his environment was so permissive, I’d been matching his whiskey on the rocks with Coca Colas.  I asked him where the bathroom was, and he rose up to show me.  We had passed into the next room, out of sight of my father,  when he hustled up behind me, pulled my right arm up behind my back in a hammer lock and put his left hand over my mouth.  He uttered something insolent and mean, which I can’t recall, because my memory is dominated by the smell of whiskey and the sensation in my right shoulder, that it was  about to come out of the socket.  I struggled to get away from him and did.,  and ran into the next room, tears streaming down my face, and curses poring from lips.  I shouted to my father about what this lying drunk had done to me, and was waiting for him to leap from his seat and begin beating him to death with his bare hands.  My father had once been awarded a certificate of bravery by the City of New York, for grabbing a Lion by its’ mane that had escaped its handler,  and was cornering a group of children on the tv show he was worked on(remember Wonderama?) So I was sure he was going to rip this asshole limb from limb.

     To my surprise,  and profound disappointment, rather than sprinting to the other room to rain death and destruction(Hello Pluto!)upon this idiot who had attacked his son, he rose up, “shhhhhd” me and tried to get me to stop yelling.  My rage, unleashed in the presence of an adult that I did not know for the first time, turned back toward his cowardice.  I carried on for a good five minutes and may have even taken a run at the lying drunk, before my father told me to knock it off.  I was so angry at the drunk, and so disappointed with my father, I felt like I was going to pass out.  It wasn’t until years later, that I realized that my father probably wanted a job.  I suppose that was a version of how power imbalances between people allow awful behavior to go unchecked, and allow people to compromise their values in response to the misbehavior of those who have power.  People will sacrifice their dignity if they want something from those who offend decency.

     A second incident of my childhood also carried some Underworld darkness that could be found in L.A. or anywhere.  When I was 13, a group of my friends were having sex with someone’s mother’s boyfriend’s 13 year old daughter.  All of them.  They were very excited that they had found someone to divest them of their virginity.  One of them went on to be a successful actor.  When I turned down their offer to join in, sensing I thought it was wrong, they attacked me.  They suggested I was gay(the worst insult one thirteen year old could hurl at another at the time) and told me that I was a pussy.  But, I knew what they were doing was wrong, and I also felt like if my father found out that I was doing some thing like that he would have beat the shit out of me.  That was not a bad thing to fear, in retrospect.  It was a good compass, and more men would do better to worry about such things.

    A third Underworld incident happened when I first returned to Los Angeles as an adult.  I had done an Astrology reading for a very well known comedy writer.  When I was finished, he told me that it was an amazing reading,  and that, “he would lose his card carrying membership as a gay man, if he didn’t offer me a blowjob.”  I declined, at which point he offered to put me in touch with a big hollywood honcho, who no doubt would be interested in my screenwriting as well, “but would want to give me a blowjob before the reading.”   I passed on the referral.

      Partly what is at issue here is in these predatory behaviors is Illness, and partly what is at issue is internal authority.  I knew better at 13 the difference between right and wrong  than a lot of these men we are hearing about do as adults.  Some of them have been victimized by sexual abuse, some were neglected by authority figures, some are predatory, and some of are just plain stupid.  All deserve the same punishment.  Whether their healthy sexual instincts has been distorted by abuse, twisted by the desire to express power against another person, or merged with a predatory instinct, it doesn’t matter.  Once sexuality turns down toward the Underworld, it will reach up to grab others to join it it in its isolation and shame.  That is a fact of psychological life.  Shining a light on this reality is the best antidote.  Exposing the secrets of distorted Underworld sexuality will allow people to identify it something that occurs in real life, and defend themselves against it in the future. Carl Jung said, “We do not become enlightened by aspiring to the light, we becoming enlightened by shining a light into our darkness.”  That is Jupiter in Scorpio’s gift. It exposes our darkness.   It’s going to be here all year.

MARCH 17, 2018

URANUS, PLUTO, CHRIS

  I’ve found myself feeling very sad about Chris Cornell dying, but honestly, I feel more sad about the way he died. He was someone I had appreciated my whole adult life, sort of through my peripheral vision. I never was such a big fan that I saw Soundgarden live, until a couple of years ago. But I saw they were playing Neil Young’s Bridge concert, which I have been a regular attendee of, and knew they would sparkle in that all acoustic setting, and I wanted my kids to see them. I’ve written about the night before, and have some great pictures. Chris Cornell soared high above all other soaring voices that night that included Tom Jones, Norah Jones, Florence Welch, Eddie Vedder and Neil Young. Lukas,my oldest who had complained of having to go to “a Middle Aged Rock concert”, turned to me in amazement and said, “Eddie Vedder has such a big, handsome voice, but Chris Cornell singing is like Michael Jordan playing basketball.”

  I thought Badmotorfinger was the quintessential Gen X album. Heavy, dark, alluding to mysticism and suffering. It came out before Nevermind, and Soundgarden was the reason Nirvana signed with SubPop. By 1992 the big bands on MTV that seemed to be riding a wave of an emerging generation(Gen X) were Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, Blind Melon, and Stone Temple Pilots along with some other bands that wouldn’t last. Now, the lead singers of every one of those bands is dead from either overdosing or committing suicide(a distinction that seems pretty thin to me). The one exception is Eddie Vedder who stepped in for the lead singer for Mother Love Bone, Andrew Wood after he died from an overdose(Chris Cornell’s roommate and best friend) and made them Pearl Jam. Every single one of those guys from Seattle is dead. None survived without Od’ing or killing themselves.
I’ve always thought the great artists of a generation spring up from the Primordial Ground we all share. When you see them, you know them. Often the first members of a generation to make themselves visible are Rock Stars because instruments and singing can be mastered by young men and women at an early age, and it’s a democratic form of expression(all you need are instruments). Athletes are the same. There have been other great bands, and other great singers from this time, and there have been other great artists in other medium(film, painting, architecture, literature)but the initial generation musical expression sprung up underneath the grey skies of Seattle. I tend to think of places as more states of mind that the collective gathering together share, then actually physical locations. Quantum Physics would say the same, and Tibetan Buddhism thinks of locations in this life, and before and after it as Bardo states. So Seattle is one living Bardo, Los Angeles is another, San Francisco another. But Seattle is where the singers from these seminal bands sprung up, and under it’s cloudy skies their fates were sealed.
More interesting than the place these Singers sprung from is the time. Look at the birthdates of all these singers who brought their life to an artificial end

Andrew Wood January 8, 1966
Kurt Cobain February 20, 1967
Shannon Hoon September 26, 1967
Layne Staley August 22 1967
Scott Weiland October 26,1967
Chris Cornell July 20 1964

     Those who know me, know I am a long time (mostly closeted) practitioner of Astrology(albeit with a Jungian bent.) For those who wonder if Astrology is real, my response is, “Is music real?”  In Astrological history every one of these Singers was born during what was known as the historical Uranus Pluto Conjunction, which occurred from Roughly 1964-1971. The last time this conjunction occurred previously was during the Renaissance in Europe. But if you want to think of it in American Culture, it was roughly from Kennedy’s Assassination until Jim Morrison’s death(The final of three generational Rock N Roll avatars who died, )along with obviously more importantly, Martin Luther King and the Kennedys. You don’t have to believe in astrology to know how turbulent this time was historically. From the Vietnam War, to the rise of the Counter Culture, to the Apollo Program to the paranoid lenses through which Richard Nixon, and those like him viewed it all.  It was a time like no other in our history. The Trans Saturnian Planets are messengers of the Primordial. The machinations of the Solar System are the largest moving parts we can observe consistently. They’re as close to indications of the mechanics of the Universe as we can see with the Naked Eye. Uranus represents the Primordial Archetype of Revolution. It’s the moment when you realize the old ways are dead, and a new ways have arrived, whether you like it or not. Pluto is the God of the Underworld. He rules death, deep dark secrets, sex, violence, depression, and addiction(whose roots are always grown in depression), and the mysteries. He is the god of Rock N Roll. If you want to see the Influence that the Uranus Pluto energies had on particular people. Look at who the Beatles were in 1963, then look at who they were in 1970. But more importantly everybody(including the author of this piece) who was born during these times had these archetypal energies in their psychic make up. These are not particular easy archetypes to live with. They demand transformation of the deepest kind. A transformation of the Ego where it lets go of its’ moorings in history and recall, and incorporates deeper Primordial Energies into it’s experience of itself. Part of the fate of this experience is being provided with an ego constructed of unsatisfying experiences. Whether that be a family of origin, a culture’s values, or a specific environment hostile to that particular ego’s sensitivities. That could be a family that creates chaos and fear around a growing child, or it could be working class Aberdeen for a sensitive, creative person like Kurt Cobain. Sometimes, it’s both.
So what does this have to do with Chris Cornell? I’m gonna get there. I wasn’t particularly upset by Kurt Cobain killed himself. He’d already tried it and it seemed inevitable. He was an extraordinary talent, but seemed more interested in using irony and Heroin to hide his suffering, which to me always seemed like an admission of being unwilling to bear it honestly. I thought Shannon Hoon was uniquely talented and possessed something in his spirit and his band that recalled the hippie inspirations that would have been in the air and on the radio when he came into the world. He was also well on his way to bringing his own demise before we ever met him. Scott Weiland ran into me once when at a FourSeasons and gave me a dirty look, and my response to it was “Hey Fake Pearl Jam, watch where you’re going.” It was a strange moment in my life and in this writing, cause it showed me I wasn’t susceptible to the charms of all Rock Stars. There was something about Chris Cornell that seemed different. He was incomparably talented. His voice transcended Rock N Roll. He was probably one of the most talented male singers alive in any medium during his life, and served both Soundgarden, Audioslave, and countless covers that he played with just his guitar, and a four octave tremelo that didn’t seem real.  He was a singular talent. Tall, incredible looking, amazingly gifted, and charismatic. He probably bore the struggles of a generation on the biggest frame with the most personal resources of all who fell before him. .
But as it had been with all the other members of his generation ,the Uranus Pluto conjunction in his native structure was difficult to live with. Uranus is electric, like amplified music, or like lightning. It pushes and pushes and pushes for something greater and yet unseen.  Anxiety was a constant companion for Chris Cornell. He’d self medicated from the age of 12 with Marijuana, alcohol, nicotine, and it was finally Oxycontin sent him to Rehab in 2003. His sober years were the most productive of his life, he fronted two bands and released five solo records. He blossomed as a cultural archetypal presence.  But the anxiety of his native experience never left him. And it was with him on tour with Soundgarden this year as he was using prescribed Ativan.
Pluto, arm in arm with Uranus, continued to dance along his side his whole life. Pluto rules death and the underworld, and when he left the underworld he wore a hat that made him invisible. But he was certainly visible during the Uranus Pluto conjunction from 63-71. Beginning with John Kennedy’s public murder, followed by Martin Luther King’s, Robert Kennedy’s and the Rock N Roll Triumvirate overdoses of Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin of Jim Morrison. You’d think that the public deaths of the Uranus Pluto era would be enough to make Pluto visible in the Upper World. But electrified by Uranus, Pluto wasn’t even getting started. The Vietnam War and the democratized death by conscription it doled out, made death a presence in almost every neighborhood in America, and in those who lived in a class beyond the reaches of the draft, death seeped from their televisions into their living rooms on the nightly news. For the carefree youth of the time, death was never really far from anyone’s mind, even during the Summer of Love. As the youth culture prepared for the ecstatic rapture inspired by Uranus, Pluto appeared as Charles Manson and as the Master of Ceremonies at Altamont.  In a moment when Uranus and Pluto are most naked, the Rolling Stones played ‘Sympathy for the Devil”(sometimes if Pluto is called he will appear) as Hell’s Angels (Pluto’s minions) beat a man to death right in front of them.  In his feeble attempts to vanquish Pluto from what he had hoped would be The Rolling Stones Woodstock, Jagger pleaded for Uranus’s help.  “Brothers and sisters, could we all just cool out.”  Jagger pleaded for Uranus and his push toward universal brotherhood and values to control Pluto in what was surely the most egalitarian moment of his life.

Cornell’s music was dark, and Plutonion. The heaviness of Soundgardens music, like the music of Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin(heavy metal is a plutoninan expression in almost it’s purest form besides death ) evoked the underworld. He moved away from it with his solo work. But he continued to struggle with depression(a forced descent to the underworld.) Once saying “It’s hard to tell what everyday depression is, one day you’re talking about someone having everyday depression and the next day, he’s hanging from the end of a rope.” Here he foreshadowed his own death and shows that the seeds of his demise were already sprouting. Perhaps they’d always been there.
But Cornell ,who survived the death of his peers and even of his best friend and roommate, succumbed to Pluto later in life than many of his Uranus Pluto twenty something peers(but earlier than everyone reading this right now.). Everyone meets Pluto personally during their own death. We all get plenty of previews though as we lose friends and family who die before us. Anybody who has ever been around a dying person or even a pet can feel Pluto’s presence. But he is here nonetheless beside us in every moment waiting for his opportunity to reveal himself.
Cornell himself has become part of what is a larger generational pattern, mostly unseen to the naked eye.(As Pluto usually is). The Uranus Pluto generation of which he is part is in the midst of an epidemic of middle aged suicide. What he had avoided in his twenties, he had succumbed to, at 52. And perhaps this is why his death is so shocking. He seemed to have cleared that hurdle after escaping from his youth. Unlike Jim Morrison, who had a similar personal resources, he had made it into full blown adulthood, and seemed to be thriving. But he continued to struggle with Pluto as he revealed in the aforementioned quote. Though many from his generation have struggled with the same dynamics he finally succumbed to, Pluto doesn’t have to come calling before his natural time. The opportunity that Pluto offers is transformation, to let die what no longer serves us, so that new life can emerge in our Psyches and our lives. Pluto is also the god of regeneration, literally of plants and crops emerging seemingly from the Underworld. As Jungian Analyst James Hillman wrote in Suicide and The Soul, the suicidal impulse is a symbolic one. It’s desire to have something in us die, and in the charnels of our old life, something rises up through the ceiling and grows anew . Unfortunately for Chris Cornell, this symbolic instinct which can be heard in so much of his creativity(Nothing seems to kill me, no matter how hard I try” in Blow Up The Outside World)was literalized. That’s why it hurts so much for a generation who thought he had cleared the acute challenges of the Uranus Pluto pressure. I found his song, “Say Hello to Heaven”, running through my head on Friday as his funeral was going on. It was as though, it was on a continuous loop, and it made me feel bummed. It was written for his best friend Andrew Wood, who had died of a heroin overdose in 1990, and performed with Temple of the Dog, who consisted of members of Soundgarden and until their recent discovery of Eddie Vedder, a singer less and grieving Motherlovebone. Andrew was the first of his generation’s singer’s to die prematurely, and Chris, its’ last. As it rang through my head, it seemed like a song that ultimately, he written for himself. It’s a paen to the ultimate transformation. Whether or not this can be achieved in this very life or not is perhaps the greatest mystery of them all.

AT(ONE) NOV 7, 2018

Every six months or so, I go into my handwritten dream journal and take what I have recorded and transfer my dreams onto a file on my computer. I have been doing this since 1991. Mostly I do this because I am able to search out themes, places and people, and see how a narrative about these things stretches over long periods of time. Sometimes I have a dream with a location, person, or experience that seems odd, and when I search the file on my computer, I find that it is something that has reoccured and changed over years, or even decades. Occasionally, I am struck by dreams that I have forgotten having had. This is one such dream.

6933.  6/1/18  Dreamed that a woman asked me about the NEW RELIGION, AT ONE. ATONE.  It’s a religion where you are at one with God. Your relationship is personal.  It(the intelligence) knows what you are doing. It’s not impersonal, it’s not objective.  She is super excited about it. 

This dream reminded me of something that I always discuss with Astrology clients in the beginning of a session. Astrology is useful and it is inspiring because each person has a unique astrological arrangement that is unlike anyone else’s that they will ever know. Like a fingerprint, or a DNA profile, an Astrology Chart demonstrates one’s unique arrangement of consciousness. Astrology talks about how that unique arrangement of consciousness precedes experience. Even though, you can see a person’s family in their Astrology Chart, you can assume that their experience of their family is shaped by the specific dynamics of their consciousness. This is as identifiable at the moment of their birth, as it is decades later.

But there is more. Astrology describes a momentum that is carried into this lifetime. Fate is not a rigid thing. Events are not predetermined, however the tendencies of consciousness over time will bear unique fruit. Astrology offers objectivity on those tendencies, while highlighting opportunities for transformation that are both beneficial and desired. Each one of us has a unique “mission” that ultimately is ours to carry out, that isn’t just beneficial to ourselves, because our transformation benefits all whom we encounter.

The most exciting thing about Astrology is the objective fact that there is an intelligence animating the structures of our consciousness, and ultimately our life. This intelligence is aware of each one of us. it understands our resources, challenges and capacities, and knows what we are working on. It’s investment is democratized, and individualized. To be aware of this intelligence is to be fully alive. To be unaware of it is to have a blind spot. There are other ways to become aware of it. Intuition, dreams, a calling, but Astrology actually provides bridge for every single person to contact this intelligence.

Another important aspect of the investment that this intelligence has in each individual is the current interface between their original natal astrological structure and the current arrangement of the solar system. The geometric relationship between the current arrangement of the solar system and the structure we are born with tell a very specific story about our present circumstances. Every person’s story is different, and every person’s story is identifiable in present time. These transformative opportunities last for months and sometimes years. Astrology offers the opportunity to yoke the power of the transformative influence for one’s well being, rather than having these influences blindly impact one’s experience. Astrology offers the opportunity to become aware of an invested intelligence that wants things for each person, and it can speak to what that intelligence wants specifically from you at any time.

This brings me back to the original dream that inspired the post. My dream reminds me of another dream that was reported in 1949 by Max Zeller, a disciple of the visionary psychiatrist Dr. Carl Jung. He came to Jung with a dream he could not understand. In the dream, he saw a “temple of vast dimensions” under construction. As far as he could see, in every direction, there were multitudes of people participating in the building of the temple. Though the temple was only in its beginning stages, the foundation had already been laid, and he was himself working on a pillar. Hearing this, Jung simply nodded and said, “This is the temple we are all building today.” It is “the new religion.” We don’t know all the builders, of course, because they are “in India and China and in Russia, and all over the world.” But “this new religion will come together.”

This religion is the democratizing of religious experience., with no intermediaries between the individual and the intelligence behind all existence. No priests, no rabbis, no imams. No centralized authority. The realization that there is an intelligence behind all manifestations of life, physical and non physical, and that intelligence is aware, invested, and offering guidance. Carl Jung thought that all psychological problems are in their essence, religious. I agree. Where one is cut off from their origins, and not their historical origins, but the origins of their consciousness is where they struggle. Astrology is a tool to reconcile the historical individual with their eternal origins. It does not disappoint. It is an emissary of the intelligence present in each life.

The recent eclipse was stunning.   I happened to be standing on the beach in Santa Monica when it occurred.  Even though the Sun was only 2/3 eclipsed by the moon, its impact manifested all around me.  The light flattened, the air cooled, and the wind picked up as though it cascaded down from the moon’s shadow.  Through special glasses I saw the Sun become a crescent, as in the past, I had only seen the moon become when it was in a position to reflect a fraction of the Sun’s light.  Now the Sun was appearing crescent like, as the moon blocked all but a third of its light from reaching my location. That’s what my logical mind said. It uses rational materialism to explain what it encounters.  But the experience roared down at me from the sky and stimulated another part of myself.  It made me question the reality behind an inanimate object(the moon)blocking the radiance of a star releasing energy through from the most stunning process in physical existence.  Pure energy being released from the bonds of the matter that contains it, into it’s radiant form.

      A human life at it’s core is the same kind of expression of energy that a star is.  A pure expression of natural energy and intelligence and intention.  I suspect that there is some unconscious understanding of this in the expression of extraordinary human expression in our use of the word star.  A “Rock Star,’ a “Movie Star, a “Pop Star”, a “Rap Star,” “A Superstar.”    All call to mind some unfettered expression that makes its way to our awareness in its purest form.

      We all arrive attempting to express ourselves in our purest, most unfettered form.  To what degree we are successful is probably determined by how we are mirrored by our environment.   That environment could be our parents capacity to see us and celebrate us for who we are, or that environment could be a culture that values our gifts and provides us encouragement to express what is ours uniquely to express.

In the East(Taoism, Hinduism and Buddhism) the Impediments you encountered in your full self expression could be seen as the result of karma(or in the case of Taoism conditioning).  You encounter an environment that reflects back to you perfectly the distance between you and clear understanding of a transcendent reality and your place in it.  Your circumstances, your family, your culture, and their capacity to mirror you back to you is proportional to your own understanding, or lack thereof.  In the West, we see ourselves more as a construct of our environment, a psychodynamic response to plain and pleasure.  I myself have always loved Jung’s theories( and subsequently Astrology) cause they utilize aspects of both conceptual systems.

     Jung believed, as do I, that there is a Primordial Self.  That it exists outside of physical space and time. A natural intelligence that is expressed by you, just as a natural intelligence expresses itself in the creation of a Lion or a Sequoia Tree.  In each case, a natural intelligence creates the best Lion, or best Sequoia as an ambassador for that intelligence in the physical world.  If that Sequoia is growing in a forest that provides it the nutrients and environment it requires, it’s going to grow to be one of the biggest trees in the world.  If that Lion is born on the African Savannah with lots of animals to eat, and no imbeciles shooting high powered rifles at it, it’s gonna be a pretty spectacular expression of a Lion.

     But as humans, we have different challenges, and different resources.  If we find ourselves in an environment where our full self expression is not welcome, than we may choose to express ourselves in a compromised manner that receives more favor.  We compromise our natural selves to accommodate the expectations of those we rely on for love.  Oftentimes, parents ask this of us unconsciously, by not having the capacity to recognize or value our purest self expressions because of their own limitations and struggles.  Sometimes the rejection of our purest selves can be the result of envy for not having access to that experience in those observing it.  Once we are no longer living with our families we may take the baton from them and continue to judge ourselves by the same limited understanding of our totality.

       When this happens, some of our gifts and our joys can be tucked away in our Shadow.  Many think of “The Shadow” as the place where the rejected parts of our ego(our conditioned self) that are bad.  Rage, hatred, bigotry, envy, these are the sorts of things our ego(which forms in response to our environment) says are unwelcome.  But there is gold there, too.  We often put our most profound gifts and joys away when the Primordial Self arrives and finds no takers for its gifts.  This is the same sort of tragedy as a Sequoia Tree being cut down by loggers, or a Lion being killed senselessly by a trophy hunter.  It puts us in a position where the purest and most valuable expression of The Primordial Self does not get incarnated.

     As humans, we have the resource of consciousness.  We can contemplate and explore our historical origins to see how they allowed us to thrive in our SELF EXPRESSION and how they didn’t.  We can see how we were conditioned to reject parts of ourselves that are actually really useful and life confirming. As an act of recognition of the Solar Eclipse, I would suggest everyone who reads this should contemplate what pure expressions of THE PRIMORDIAL SELF haven’t made it to full expression yet?  What un-selfconscious joys have we buried in our Shadow with the other aspects of ourselves that we thought to be unwelcome?  Find one, and begin to express it, and I guarantee it will add a surprising and unexpected vitality to your life TODAY.  After you experience the utility of that, find another, then another.  That’s what the eclipse was, and continues to be about.  Use it for yourself.  Use it for others.

As for what it mean collectively, well that’s an interesting question. The eclipse landed at 26 degrees Leo within two degrees of Donald Trump’s ascendant. In the courts of kings, nothing was feared like the eclipse that landed upon a king’s chart. Nothing created more of a feeling of dread for the future of the king and in this case, it is no different. Trump’s entire life has been about lining him up for this public failure and humiliation. His ascendant(his worldly face) has been fated to be built to be destroyed. All his bluster, all his bullshit will be shown to be empty and so will his power(Leo). Everything he has done has been built for the failure to come. It would be of great surprise to me if he was the President in 2020 when the next election occurs.

URANUS IS COMING       Recently I have noticed a trend in the clients that have been coming to see me.  One after another they show up in the midst of a Uranus transit, or a month or two before one is about to occur that will last a couple of years.  Uranus is agency of the transpersonal push toward revolution.  It wants each person to travel from the known, and previously conditioned by the circumstances of their life parts of oneself, to the unknown and ready to be discovered parts of oneself and one’s life.  Uranus rules lightning and like lightning, revolution isn’t something that occurs spontaneously.  An unseen charge builds up invisibly over time, and when it reaches it’s mature flashpoint, lightning strikes and lights up everything and reveals a previously invisible landscape as though the midday Sun is shining.          Besides lightning, Uranus rules revolutionary thinking, computers, Astrology, and hyper logic that occurs so quickly, it appears to be intuition.  A process that appears to have jumped from 1-10, moves at such speed that steps  2-9 weren’t visible.  Both computers and the internet follow a logical, linear process that appear to function instantaneously to the naked eye.  Steve Jobs, was an entirely Uranian person,  with a very public and heavily aspected tenth house(public life) Uranus.  As is Bill Gates, Nikolas Tesla and Elon Musk(GET READY FOR THE HYPERLINK) What Uranus calls for is the incarnation of things that have never existed before, but are part of a rapidly occurring logical evolution.   It puts pressure on consciousness both collective and personal  to be able to  physically create things that previously only seemed conceptual, or pre-conceptual.        So what does this have to do with my Astrology clients?  Uranus shows that something is ready to be revealed in consciousness that has been lying latent, and in order to become aware of it, the status quo has gotta go.  People are coming to have the previously unknown structure of their consciousness revealed to them.  They arrive at the moment when they are ready to see the architecture of their consciousness, and they realize that if there is architecture, than there must be an architect, and it has structured their consciousness with an intent that is ready to be known. Whether they are 12 or 52, they are coming to have the facade lifted from the foundations of their experience, and it is Uranus that brings them.  It points to this time in their lives,  and says there is a quantum(beyond physical reality) intent behind their experience.  It was there at the moment of  birth, is here today, will be here tomorrow, and it wants its intention to be known.  It is not hiding, it is not invisible, and no longer wants to be experienced as mysterious.  It is ready to be revealed and harnessed for personal and collective benefit.  So why is this happening now?  Uranus is passing through the final degrees of Aries where it has been since 2011. It will enter Taurus in May and will be passing through there until July 2025. Uranus takes about 84 years to travel around the Sun . The last time it was in Taurus was from 1934 till 1942.  Almost nobody alive has experienced this before.  Taurus is the sign of manifestation.  It is earthy, sensual, aesthetic, and the archetype of making things real and manifest.  Hyper-conceptual  Uranus in Taurus will be a time when things come into being which a few years ago, would not have seemed possible.  This is true collectively and personally.  For those with planets or angles in Taurus,  or the other fixed signs(Leo, Aquarius, Scorpio), Uranus comes for you. Taurus is a fixed sign, and for those with fixed signs in their make up, Uranus is intent on shaking you up.  It wants to eliminate your rigidity, take down your fences and allow you to see that your horizons are much broader than you had previously thought.  For those who were comfortable with their little lot of land, they may be disoriented to find that they are the heir to something greater.  Uranus is coming.  Get ready.