Lucy Looking Upward

It’s been a little while since I blogged, and I didn’t want to lose my touch, so I thought I’d come back. The time has mostly been spent studying for exams (and acing exams- A+ on the first big biopsych test!) and weathering out some more stressful home and health situations that again played out beautifully in an astrological sense but not so much in the true sense (Saturn-Uranus opposition, I’m looking at you). I’ve found that for the most part if I just do what Stephanie Gailing tells me to do, I should be okay. And I’m realizing now more than ever that I kind of really need her advice. (I shall explain.)

I feel like there are certain elements of my natal chart that I understand forwards and backwards, but there have always been a couple of things that elude me a little- namely my 5th and 6th Houses. The 5th and 6th Houses, naturally ruled by Leo and Virgo, in certain respects seem to be polar opposites. Leo is self-serving; Virgo is all about service to others. The 5th House is play; the 6th House is work. The Leo 5th House is sex, and the Virgo 6th House is condoms and dental dams and baby wipes. The natural Leo 5th House and natural Virgo 6th House, mind you. But of course, mine can’t be simple that way. My natal 5th House begins in Virgo and contains asteroid Lilith in Libra (which is intercepted) and Pluto in Scorpio. My natal 6 House begins in Scorpio and contains Mars and Saturn in Scorpio, as well as Uranus in Sagittarius.

I’ve been pretty stumped about the 5th House, because all most cookbooks have told me is that I’ll probably never be able to have children. (So if anyone else wants to shed light, knock yourself out. It’s too dark in there.) I was given some vague insight into my 6th House around age eighteen, when my boyfriend-at-the-time joined a cult group of shamans and Jim Jones the leader of the group said that having Mars, Saturn and Pluto, the most highly concentrated masculine planetary energies, in Scorpio implied that in a past life I had been some kind of all-powerful warlock who was forced to hide my craft for fear of being persecuted. He said that was why, in this life, I seemed to be resentful of the cult’s group’s practice and how much closer to enlightenment they were than I would allow myself to be. (Actually, I was concerned that my boyfriend-at-the-time would suddenly break out in a roaring “OOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMM” when we were in public, was now unable to do anything without calculating the mystical numbers of everything he touched and constantly carried around this giant glass walking stick because it had “exactly 72 spirals,” and had started to demand that I visualize a blue triangle with an eye in the center while we had sex. No, I’m totally not exaggerating.) Then he offered me some Kool-Aid. Good times.

Somehow, I have this hunch that being a formerly all-powerful warlock is not all there is to it, as much as I love The Craft. But it wasn’t until over this weekend that I finally figured out what it could actually mean in a way that’s relevant. Two nights ago I watched this Korean horror film called A Tale of Two Sisters. This has become something I frequently do, as I’m sure regular readers have gathered by now- I will watch one or more horror films just before I intend to retire for the night, and regardless of how scary they are in reality, due to my overactive imagination they become ten thousand times scarier as I continue thinking about them. Obviously, I’m most often alone at that hour of the night, but even if I wasn’t, I wouldn’t trust another person to make me feel less afraid- the last time I slept in a bed with someone else right after watching a horror movie, she spent a good part of the night waiting until I was almost asleep only to make that “CH-CH-CH-AHH-AHH-AHH” sound from Friday the 13th. So alone, I’ll spend the next several hours (or hell, the rest of the night if it was scary enough) watching episodes of The Muppet Show or The Office and not actually feel ready to go to bed until the sun has risen. Which is what happened two nights ago- A Tale of Two Sisters is more than scary enough, and in fact, I waited until about eight a.m. to actually fall asleep because one of the most frightening scenes in the entire film takes place at exactly dawn. Needless to say, I felt pretty rough when I finally staggered out of bed around 12:45 p.m. (One reason among many that I was so grateful to be working freelance.)

When people hear that this is a regular occurrence- nay, practically a ritual, they’re always like, “Why do you do this to yourself? If you’re so scared of these movies, why do you watch them? It’s not good to stay up all night!” (STOP THE PRESSES!) Well, it occurred to me yesterday morning (afternoon, whatever) that there are several reasons why I do this to myself, chiefly:

1) I have Mars and Saturn conjunct in Scorpio in my 6th House. Mars and Saturn are the two dichotomies of pushing yourself, and when they’re together, what you end up with is this jerky kind of stop-start energy that gradually gathers momentum but will eventually run you down. And while I mostly tend to think that Scorpio gets a bad rap, seeing how it plays out in my 6th House, as far as my health and my daily routines are concerned, I can totally grok the sadomasochistic, obsessive, destructive side of it. Even as I’m becoming healthier in certain areas, such as body image, my relationship with food, thinking less about aesthetics and more about my actual health, there is definitely a pervasive Scorpionic aspect of wanting to see just how far I can push myself until I literally burn out. Working in television, what with the occupational hazards of constant traveling and 14-20-hour days and minimum of five Diet Cokes a day and (secondhand) chain-smoking and practically medicinal drinking that occurred after hours, was a fortunate outlet for that impulse. Now that I’m not doing that anymore, I have no excuse- but maybe I miss it. Stranger things have happened.

2) I watch horror movies even though they terrify me because I have Pluto and Lilith in my 5th House. On some level, I must really love being scared. My former roommate (a double-Capricorn and equally avid horror-and-exploitation buff) and I once had a conversation about how even as the current quality of films is declining on the whole, the horror genre has not exactly suffered as much, because in a sense it’s the purest genre, and the most truthful. It’s the easiest with which to identify. Not everyone finds love eventually, not everyone thinks that all the same things are funny, not everyone has the intelligence to understand that a movie based on an actual event is not necessarily historical truth- but everyone- everyone- gets scared. And even if you’re not literally scared of what is actually being portrayed in any given horror film, it still probably has some latent content that’s relevant to everyone subconsciously. That’s where my former roommate and I differed; in typical Capricorn fashion, he insisted that I read too closely into things. But I’m not looking for these things, per se- that’s what I experience when I watch these films. I’ve been interested in horror films academically since college, but I notice that my interest has especially peaked since my attack last year; perhaps it’s a further attempt to make sense of feeling abjectly terrified, and to find an outlet for the frustration I feel at expectations of certain behavior I’m supposed to have in order to somehow not be victimized. In a similar fashion, taking into account that the 5th House deals with “children of the body and children of the mind” and my own little addendum, “inner children frozen in time in the damaged psyche,” it could also be a less literal (and ultimately less anxiety-inducing) way of driving home the reality that I am actually an adult now, and if I don’t start to make more responsible decisions, adulthood will be full of fear. I was never allowed to watch these kinds of films as a child. My (Taurus) parents understood that I was super-sensitive, but they kind of took it to an extreme and in a lot of ways treated me like I was in a glass box. And even though I’ve been independent and I’m very accomplished, there are a lot of times when I still do feel like I’m in a glass box, and I’m looking at other adults from inside and wondering about being grown-up, as if I were still a child. Somehow if I can scare myself shitless, I’ll be able to catch up realizing something about adulthood that maybe I should have been better prepared for a long time ago.

When I’d finally shaken myself conscious, I went to a yoga class that afternoon. I’ve started yoga again and it’s making a gigantic difference in my stress levels, even when things are still pretty stress-y. The theme of the class was about balance, and somewhere in my practice it occurred to me that my 5th-6th House confusion also requires balance. With Pluto dignified in the 5th and Scorpio ruling the 6th, I can understand now why I would be conflating super-serious psychological work I have to do in the form of a really stupid-seeming pastime with physically pummeling myself in the form of too little sleep and an erratic diet. I think- no, I KNOW that despite Scorpio, it is possible to face deep darkness without totally destroying oneself, and that being kind to my body will not decrease my capacity for catharsis or my appreciation of Dario Argento. Not to mention that in several weeks, transiting Ceres is going to enter Scorpio and then my 6th House- at which point I will probably have no choice but to start pruning away more of the destructive behaviors so I can actually feel ready to take better care of myself.

With that in mind, I am going to actually go to bed now. I have a feeling I’m going to be mining through this one for quite some time. But somehow, it seems less scary now than, for instance, A Tale of Two Sisters.