Tag: astrology

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Charleston, West Virginia Plants and the Emerald Kingdom Purple, Magic & Sorcerers Uncategorized Writings

Me & Geography

Recently, I haven’t been feeling like myself. This could be from spending too much time on Facebook where you don’t get treated like yourself, but more as a dumping bin for people’s unwanted emotions.

The reason I was on Facebook, though, was because I couldn’t move for a while due to a kidney infection. And so I’ve been taking antibiotics which might also be causing me to feel strange as the bacteria I have loved and relied upon die off around me.

Last night in a dream, I was attacked by two men. A third one came up to save me, but it turned out he was a friend of the bad guys and stuffed me into their black van.

My life feels upside down. I live in a large historic house which requires money and care, but my husband’s job is building a cryptocurrency trading site that pays nothing. Nor does he want me to work, since he prefers I spend my time on music & other shadowy interests. So, financially, there is not just a paucity but a growing vacuum, with no sign of change in sight.

Psychically, I feel depleted because my husband sleeps through the day and works through the night, meaning I rarely see him. Lacking transportation or friends in this city, I rarely see anyone else either. I can make friends online, but there I am just a replaceable commodity. People are friends so long as political ideas align, but the second ideas diverge it is over. And still it is essential to talk about politics, because it is the only thing online people are passionate about.

And then I do astrology readings, which makes me feel both connected and depleted at the same time. I don’t charge for them, because it is easier that way.  I learn a lot from looking at people’s charts and I enjoy it. If I turned this into a business, it would limit the number of charts I could see. Nonetheless this creates a void situation. Psychic energy going out, psychic energy not coming back in.

It feels like my whole life is a void, one that I must fill with my own energy. But sometimes this becomes exhausting and I don’t want to entertain myself anymore. I want the world to take me for a ride.

So, as usual, I have devised an impractical solution. Unless you have a lot of patience, you should probably stop reading now, since this may be difficult to explain…

Basically, I don’t believe all humans live in the same reality. In the USA, we believe we are living in a scientific world, and things generally appear that way. But that is not how all humans experience things.

The different realities a human can inhabit correspond to the different climates and ecosystems of the earth. For example, as you move closer to the equator and heat increases, the objective grid of reality starts to melt. Scientific laws become more mutable.

Likewise, in places with dense plant life, more energy starts to come in from an alternate reality which I call “the other world” for lack of anything better to call it. This ‘other world’ is not a scientific one, but more closely adheres to the laws of dreams & imagination. Anything conceivable can be.

Water and humidity also create a more fluid and malleable reality than dryness. Hence, why our Judeo-Christian religions- in which spirituality depends upon restraint and holding fixed beliefs- come from the desert.

Therefore, in a tropical rainforest, science is at its weakest and magic at its strongest. In a northern climate (less sun, drier air, sparser plant life) rationality is at its zenith.

Higher powers, of course, can still come into play in Northern climates, but they will play by the rules, maintaining the perception that a person lives within a  fixed objective reality and not a swirling dreamlike one.

None of this means that location determines reality. Humans learn from nature for the purpose of re-sculpting it. Ecosystems are patterns. A northerner who felt their soul was dying could emulate the patterns of the south. A southerner who felt their brain was melting could emulate the patterns of the north. (Generally, northern patterns suppress the heart and enliven the brain, while southern patterns do the reverse.)

So, back to my own life. I am going to try to bring in more energy from the South- the tropical rainforest to be exact. Because in a rainforest, there are no voids.  Voids belong to the north and to deserts. In the rainforest, energy is so plentiful, you are constantly beating it back with a stick.

But why am I even sharing this with you- my faceless, invisible readers? Normally, I prefer to keep my inner world safely hidden. But this is yet another experiment I am trying. I am going to imagine you, reader, as a wise and loving friend, someone who truly understands me. Perhaps I will pretend your name is Brad.*  You are a perceptive and open-minded man with intense interest in everything I have to say. I love you, Brad.

* I might rethink that name. We will see.

Slippers & nature. Two forever friends. Plus, a very strained smile since we are so near the edge of a cliff, and Slippers loves to pull and is way stronger than me.
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Astrology Charleston, West Virginia Writings

Projection

Although you probably hear the word “projection” being thrown around a lot, if you are like me (or at least the person I was until yesterday) you might not have a clear idea of how psychological projection works.

I vaguely saw projecting as the act of imagining others to have qualities they don’t actually possess. But what I’ve realized is that projecting is more about actively trying to dissociate from a specific part of yourself, which you then try to see in others. But seeing this quality in others is more of a side effect. The heart of projection is trying to detach from a part of yourself.

Another aspect of projection is that you don’t realize you are doing it. And while it is easy to imagine other people doing things unawares, it can come as a shock to realize you have been doing this yourself.

Yesterday, I experienced this shock when I became aware of a projection I have been carrying on throughout my life. I realized I have always tried to divorce myself from being in any way intellectual, educated, or sophisticated. Instead, I would project these traits onto others and feel in awe of their cosmopolitan qualities, despite the fact that they would frequently be people less “cultured” than myself.

This may seem like a strange aspect of oneself to project, since many people view sophistication as a desirable quality. Astrologically, though, it makes sense. There are a few factors in a person’s chart that determine which parts of themselves they desire to offload onto others. For example, the qualities of any planet opposite to Venus at the time of birth, will tend to get projected. I was born with Venus opposite Jupiter, who rules higher education, philosophy, wealth,  and the high brow parts of a culture in general. Therefore, I would want to see scholarly, urbane qualities in others, but never in myself.

I grew up wealthy and as a child my identity was the smart, intellectual one, which never made me feel especially cute. Perhaps this is why I dreamed of being an uneducated hayseed from the country.  When I first read Rousseau, his glamorization of the Noble Savage went straight to my heart. I wanted so badly to be that natural, lovable person, uncorrupted by human culture. And it seemed to me that poor people were somehow closer to Rousseau’s ideal.

Eventually I began trying (subconsciously) to associate myself with everything the opposite of the wealthy world I knew.  My favorite wine had to be Boone’s Farm, Strawberry-Kiwi. I tried to read harlequin novels and listen to cheesiest forms of country music. I attempted to become a secretary, a stripper, a worker at KFC. Some of which are noble jobs, but to the culture I came from, they were shocking and inappropriate choices. Especially secretary.

It was probably this same projection which caused me to move to West Virginia. I remember as a child how Kentucky (where I lived) was generally ranked second to last in everything. This made me proud. But West Virginia was always dead last in education, wealth, etc, which made me jealous. Being in last place made West Virginia pure. Beautiful.

And the more I convinced myself that I was, in fact, a rube, the more I would take pleasure in being wowed by the wealth and sophistication of those around me. If someone spoke a few words of another language, attended an art gallery, or took a plane ride to another country, I would be floored with admiration. Impressed. Delightfully intimidated. Feelings that gave me an almost sexual thrill. It made me feel warm and rosy to be a nothing, looking up in astonishment at someone else. Again, this was happening subconsciously, at the reptile level.

Over time, the projections grew more extreme. At first, it took a person’s trip to Africa to impress me. Eventually, their trip to the Olive Garden would do the trick. There was a point when I came close to being institutionalized for  mental retardation, while just a few years earlier I had been getting scholarships to Ivy League schools. So why did I feel such a desperate need to separate myself from the gloss of education and wealth? What was I trying to gain?

I don’t know. Maybe I felt more feminine and lovable as a simpleton. Maybe I felt restricted by my identity as a smart person. One drawback to being tagged intelligent is that you can only keep that label by expressing ideas that other people find intelligent. While for me, the ideas closest to my heart usually fall into realms which society finds fruit loopy, or sometimes just too far our and individualistic to be considered at all.

Maybe I felt confined by growing up wealthy. When your dinner chairs are valuable antiques, you can’t paint purple polka dots on them when the mood strikes. No one glues dinosaur figurines to a brand new Mercedes. It always seemed as though “the poor” had more options for how to express themselves. Of course, now I see things differently. Whimsical life choices are far more appealing when money is all around. When you are really poor, you don’t want to glue dinosaurs to your car.

Or it could be that we project aspects of ourselves as a response to external pressure. Another person convinces us to leave parts of ourselves behind so he can feed off them. After all, my obsession with being lowly made me eager to give away anything of value that I did possess, and to treat those around me like nobles. Maybe there were people encouraging me.

Causes aside, it is easy to see the damage this sort of projection can cause. Of course, people can project their “negative” qualities as well. If, for example, someone has a testy planet like Mars or Pluto opposite Venus, they will tend to see anger, hatred, and manipulation in those around them. Nonetheless, these projections are still damaging to the one doing them, because we can’t project our aggression onto someone else without giving them our power and agency as well.

*

So, that is all I have to say. My hope is that by sharing my longstanding pattern of projection with the wide and faceless world, it will be harder for me to keep doing it! 🙂

 

 

 

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Astrology Charleston, West Virginia

Mercury: Separate a person’s words from their character, or suffer the consequences!

One thing I have learned from reading people’s charts is the importance of Mercury, a planet I frequently overlook, since on the surface it seems so boring. Mercury rules communication and the intellect. Who cares?! People don’t get astrology readings to learn more about their writing style. But I have come to realize that if you DON’T take a person’s Mercury into account, you run the deadly risk of mistaking the way a person talks for who they actually are.

My Mercury, for example, is in the sign of Scorpio, which rules sex, death and everything gruesome. And it is true that I can hardly speak more than a couple sentences without bringing serial killers into the conversation. The more I try to control myself, the more the “Freudian slips” begin. Not to mention that I have three overlapping codes I write in which are constantly changing so the patterns won’t stay consistent. Do I have anything particularly secretive to write about? No. Because I never actually DO anything secretive. But even if I am writing a to do list, I might suddenly become paranoid about someone else being able to read it. Scorpio rules secrets.

Mercury also governs listening and attention. If someone tries to talk about Buddhism or saving the environment around me, I start to sink into a coma. But mention sex with a goat, and I am all ears. And I live in terror that someday google histories will be made public because when I zone out I tend to google things related to crime, perversion, Woody Allen, and how to know if your husband had sex with his mother.

However, this is just my mercury and luckily not my moon. Which means it has no correlation to what I actually do in real life. My physical existence is the opposite of dark, intense & perverted. I never wear black. I don’t even like Halloween. My favorite activities are walking, talking and going for car rides thanks to a moon in breezy and superficial Gemini. Being involved in anything remotely criminal would be my worst nightmare. I don’t have the nerves for it, nor the interest. But my speech patterns have at times caused people to reach the wrong conclusions about me.

Likewise, I have known humble people who speak like braggarts (Mercury in Leo). Power hungry people who talk like saints. Saints who talk like serial killers. Happy people who sound sad. Crazy people who sounds presidential. Dumb people who seem smart. And smart people who sound dumb. The point is that our style of communication can be a totally different animal from what lies beneath. So don’t be confused! Have you ever heard Jeffrey Dahmer’s sweet and thoughtful baby speech? Assuming a person’s words are a window into their soul may be the last thing you ever do!

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Astrology Charleston, West Virginia

My brief life as an astrologer…

Recently, I decided to embark on a practical career path- astrology- to make my life feel more brisk and tidy. Not only would it be more sociable than being a solitary musician, but I hoped the dry objectivity of planets, houses & angles would add a touch of refreshing crispness to my existence.

However, it didn’t take long to realize that I can’t look at someone’s chart without being visited by their “ghost.” It isn’t an actual ghost, I suppose, but more like a colored transparency containing their emotions. These ghosts seem to arrive before I even have a chance to look at the person’s chart- as soon as I have the intent to look, there they are, super-imposing themselves onto me, causing me to feel and think in ways outside my normal character. It is a very unpleasant experience & makes me want to drop chart reading altogether.

I had hoped this experience would wear off once I had a little experience under my belt, but instead it seems to be getting worse. I tried stacking many different readings together, hoping that if there were a large enough number of ghosts they would cancel each other out. But that just made the ‘hauntings’ more confusing  and chaotic. At any rate, for this reason, I will probably retire on astrology after reading one last batch. But it has at least been a learning experience for me, and here are some things I have learned.

  • Everyone has their crosses to bear. This should be obvious, of course, but for me it was eye opening to realize how much pain and distress the average person is holding, especially when everyone appears so happy and perfect on the surface. But so long as Mars, Saturn & Pluto are flying around in the sky, I suppose we will all have our faces bashed against concrete walls from time to time, and all have our secrets to hide.
  • Women suffer more than men. At least emotionally. Male ghosts have a more abstract and mental quality, as though they are standing on top of a mountain. Their suffering tends to have a hollow, empty quality. Female ghosts, on the other hand, are more humid and visceral. Mothers are the most dense and muccoid of all.

    Perhaps men are designed to detach more easily from their emotions so they can perform well under stress, while women- and especially mothers- are forced by nature to remain connected to those around them, so they can’t easily abandon their families when times get rough.
  • Women are more vulnerable to relationship injuries. The majority of women seem to be living in an actively injured state, frequently due to stresses in their marriage. Of course men have relationship troubles too, but their ghosts are rarely oozing pus and blood as a result. They are more likely to feel discontent, or confusion. Disturbed, but not actively loosing life force. This may be where the idea of chivalry comes from… to remind men to treat women a little better than they themselves need to be treated.
  • Nobody has it all. In fact, nobody has more than anybody else. We all have the same number of planets in our chart, we just store them in different places. An excess in any area of life must always be balanced out by a deficiency somewhere else. Put an extra scoop in your house of marriage and there is less left for your children. An extra scoop for career leaves just a crumb behind for inner growth.

    What’s more- we don’t just have the name number of planets- they are actually the exact same planets. The person who isn’t married might experience Venus- the planet of love and romance- in a different part of their life. The person with no physical home might experience the moon- the planet of domestic bliss- through their relationships with friends or God.

    It is like we are all eating at the same Mexican restaurant. Whether you order tacos, enchiladas or chimichangas, you are getting the exact same ingredients.
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Minerals, Mountains, Crystals, Ice, and White Music & Songs New Hampshire Plants and the Emerald Kingdom Uncategorized

We Can Mate with Rabbits

 

Painting of Nude man holding sign that says, "Please believe in me, we can mate with rabbits."

I feel like I should apologize to the whole world for posting up so many paintings of people who aren’t wearing clothes. I can understand why people don’t like pictures of naked people, because generally I don’t like them myself.

Astrology believes that, on average, half of a person’s life is what they make of it, and the other half is in the control of outside forces. The exact ratio, however, varies from person to person. For some people, the majority of their life is a reflection of the choices they have made. For others, the majority of their life was completely outside of their control. Sometimes I feel that I fall slightly into the latter group.

So, although I don’t wish to tell the story of WHY I ended up painting naked people, I will say this- that I don’t generally enjoy being surrounded by nakedness, BUT once you have begun to paint naked people, it is only a matter of time before they no longer seem naked to you, and they just start to seem like people. Their bodies become a symbolic extension of their inner life and the workings of their minds. And once you reach this point, you have to be CAREFUL- because the figures that have become so harmless and normal in your own mind, still have the power to trip off ideas of perversity and lewdness in other people.

So, in closing, I would like to say that although nakedness is frequently interpreted as a symbol of moral slackness and crudity, sometimes people are naked just because there are no more clothes to wear.

 

Download MP3: We Can Mate with Rabbits