houses

(Warning- slight reference to astrology. Does this bother people who know nothing about astrology? Personally, I never mind a few indigestible references, but I don’t know if others- especially men- feel the same.)

I haven’t been able to express anything in a while. I’ve written about 50 blog posts but have not been able to publish any of them due to this feeling that everything I say is completely pointless. So, I thought maybe I would take some time off to become more presidential & then go back to expressing myself.

Last night though I realized this reluctance to speak wasn’t about a true desire to resemble Nixon but rather a clamming up in response to a recent spike of low level enemies. For starters, Mars Bringer of War had been moving through my House of Relationships and when this happens you tend to experience death by a thousand cuts. Minor hostility directed at you from multiple directions. No single event worth crying over and yet the sum leaves you feeling demoralized, as though no good people exist. And as I’ve said before, faith in people, the dream that good people exist, is the force that pulls the words out of your mouth. Without that the words stay stuck inside.

Also, Pluto has been sextiling my sun. When Pluto sextiles* a planet, it basically releases a stream of mini enemies in that planet’s direction. These minis teach you how to fight & stand up for yourself so when the biggie transits happen, you are be ready.

Plutonic enemies are different from Martian ones. Martians attack fast and furious, shooting you in the knees, elbows, wherever. Plutonic enemies study you to find your kill spots. Then they execute the most subtle blow necessary to inflict true damage while appearing not to do anything at all. They do not want to be seen covered in blood and guts. They want to be seen as your friend. An understanding of your insecurities is essential to them. So you could see why the presence of Plutonic enemies would make you uninclined to blog about your inner self. They make you want to close off. Obscure. Misdirect.

And they were attacking me in a different way from usual. Normally, the attacks I get are “You’re dumb. You’re dumb. You’re dumb.” Recently it has been people sending me messages about how I’m a horrible singer, criticizing my videos, my blog, saying I’m a bad wife & leaving weird stuff on my doorstep. And other stuff which I can’t go into without seeming paranoid. That is the weird paradox of life- that you have to lie to seem truthful & if you try to be truthful you seem like a liar.

So anyway, like I said, the sextile releases baby enemies. What are baby enemies? They are enemies who you clearly have the power to defeat. The trick is, you might convince yourself they are too small to be worth defeating. You are a big boy. You can shrug it off. But this is big boy’s big mistake. When something is small, that may be the only chance you have to squash it. Once problems get bigger than you are, your chance of success goes down considerably.

So I prefer to over-analyze the heck out of the tiniest of things. It is probably natural for women to do this, though we are sometimes mocked for it. But if people understand how the female mind works they will realize we are humanity’s first line of defense. Your current problems would probably not exist had you listened to your wife. Once the problems do become full grown gorillas then women tend to take a step back and let men do their thing.

***

While I was busy not expressing myself, I did have the chance to go on a learning spree. But let me say here that I am not a huge advocate of learning. I think people are too obsessed with it and overlook more important mental activities like thinking. Still, I do consider myself 15% scholar and like to learn the life stories of those who came before. I like history. My only problem is that it focuses so much on politics and war. I want to know- I NEED to know- what people ate for breakfast. Were their hankerchiefs embroidered? With what kind of flower? Why that one? What perfume did they wear? Did they match their perfume to their hankerchief? These are my obsessions, the little details that cue me in to what was really going on in their minds, but it is hard to find that sort of info. Cause history trumps herstory, right? Once again we are encouraged to look at the big things and overlook the small ones.

* A sextile is basically the softest bump one planet gives another as it circles round your chart. To put it more technically, it is when the current position of a planet is 60 degrees away from the position of a planet in your birth chart, inside the ring of the zodiac.

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.