Posts Tagged ‘Clusterfuck of Doom’

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Progress! An observation about progressions

February 1, 2010

So wow, I just realized that it has been a really, really long time since I last posted anything. Part of it was due to being extremely busy in the past month- I was on winter break, but I still went in to work in the neuropsych lab for most of it, and when I wasn’t doing that, I was getting ready for this semester, seriously falling behind on a lot of blog-reading, and working on a couple of other projects that have yet to be disclosed. Additionally, I managed to further compromise my CFS by completely reversing my circadian rhythm such that I may as well have added “and drinking blood” to the previous sentence. Classes have begun, so getting it back to normal has become an imperative and not just something I’ll do if I have time. But more than just being busy (which is not exactly a new state of affairs for me), I wasn’t really sensing that I had anything urgent to write about. I go back and forth between watching transits obsessively and forgetting that even I know astrology, but even in the moments when I’m forgetting, I will nonetheless feel it and notice it if something hits me really hard. At the moment, nothing is really “hitting” me, unless you count Neptune, which doesn’t exactly “hit.” It smothers, it drugs, or it drowns, and I haven’t really been feeling that either, not lately, anyway.

Surely you all remember The Clusterfuck of Doom. Neptune and Chiron are still on my MC and my Venus; however, they feel far less Clusterfuck-y than they did last year. This is true for several reasons: 1) they have both gone direct, so their energies can be utilized the way they’re actually supposed to be, i.e. not liquifying my insides and making me really sick, 2) Jupiter, having just ingressed into Pisces, is no longer attached to them, so it translates to just a little bit of fog and not agonizing Clusterfuck-y madness, and 3) I had kind of a “Soylent Green is people!” realization about why it felt particularly difficult this whole time, which sort of ties in with an upcoming undisclosed project.

As I’ve come to understand the higher implications of what it means to have Venus in Aquarius on as prominent of an angle as the MC, I’m finally owning how much I love it. Seriously, I LOVE having Venus in Aquarius on my MC, like LOVE, L-U-V. I could have eliminated so much earlier heartache if I’d only realized just how amazing it is sooner. In all my gung ho newfound appreciation, though, I was so completely confused as to why the Neptune-Chiron transit appeared to be messing it up. But here’s what I realized: your natal placements are not the only thing at work at any given time. They’re the only thing a lot of people use, because there is of course such a thing as too much information. But sometimes when transits or whatever don’t match up the way they’re “supposed” to, some people will get into a simplistic huff and decide that astrology must not work- when actually, if you just look from a slightly different angle, there is a reason for the cognitive dissonance somewhere. Maybe you have to look at your progressed chart. Maybe you have to use another house system. The debate over which is better, tropical or sidereal time, is always popular, but I think it’s totally pointless and ridiculous, because neither is “better”; they’re different. But they’re all relevant, if you’re willing to include them all.

I realized that the Clusterfuck of Doom was that much more confounding because despite having natal Venus and my MC in Aquarius, I’ve also had my progressed Venus and MC in Pisces for a really long time (Venus since I was five, MC I don’t know because it’s late and I’m too lazy to calculate it right now, but probably about the same). It goes without saying that Venus in Aquarius and Venus in Pisces are very, very different. But it explains a lot about the trajectory of my life until recently, and why I’ve often been really confused about how I could have such significant Aquarius placements when I felt like “SUCH a Pisces.” I mean, that’s one whopping fucking dose of Neptune and Jupiter. It’s seriously kind of amazing that I’m not fried on drugs or a Christian Scientist right now. It’s reassuring to realize that progressions are strong influences, but they are not actually who you really are. Nothing against Pisces, but its energy can be seriously overwhelming if unfiltered, and it’s not like I don’t have enough other placements and aspects in my natal chart that make me ridiculously oversensitive as is. Being able to put the former Clusterfuck of Doom in perspective that way, to realize that it only felt as strong as it did because of the complete excess of Pisces/Neptune energy I’ve been swimming in (*rimshot*) all this time, makes me think I should have chosen a more appropriate name for it, like The Biggest Margarita You’ve Ever Drank. When I think about it, in a lot of ways I really embody my Venus and MC in Aquarius much more than I’d previously given myself credit for. Like, for instance, the fact that I have never and would never sacrifice anything I was doing professionally for a relationship. The Venus in Pisces by progression has put me in situations where that’s been an issue, and you’d think I would have- but the idea of doing so always felt really, really wrong to me, even when I was in early high school. Or the fact that even while I was actively making and enjoying art, something about doing it as a career didn’t sit right with me. Or the fact that there are certain things about the culture we live in that I am simply not okay with and am not willing to ignore or let slide, where the Pisces influence would have me “forgiving,” “accepting,” “living and letting live.” Or hell, even the fact that I write my blog the way I do, that despite being extremely interested in astrology and the occult and magic, I’ve always treated it kind of academically and managed to be one of the least New Age-y people I’ve ever met.

Part of my growth in studying astrology has included not being married to what one chart says to the point where I doubt my own intuition and gut sense. So I’d say that being able to tease out what’s actually me and what’s just an outside influence is kind of empowering. And now I’m more excited about what I’m going to do next than EVAR, because it involves significant pieces of everything described above. YES.

Has anyone else had a similar “Soylent Green is people!” moment in astrology?

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The Leo New Moon, privilege, and the right to be angry

August 21, 2009

Today was the New Moon in Leo. Thank God, thank Jesus, thank Buddha, thank Cthulu, it was not an eclipse. It was just a regular old New Moon. But it’s not as if it wasn’t fraught with its own specific type of weird. The magnificence of the Leo New Moon was partially clouded by an opposition to the Clusterfuck of Doom. Picture, if you will, a big fluffy cloud passing by the Sun at the peak of the daytime- and everything suddenly going quite dark.

Here’s something you may not know: diffuse sunlight, such as what I described above, is actually a lot more dangerous than direct sunlight. It’s true. You can take my word for it, as the girl who has to wear 50 SPF sunscreen every time she goes to the corner store for more ginger ale and who could be in Antarctica wearing a parka and still get sunburned. In direct sunlight, of course you think to protect yourself. You wear sunscreen, you wear your sunglasses, and you generally stay out of it as much as you can. When it’s cloudy, you can’t see the direct sunlight from which to shield yourself, so you mistakenly assume that there is none. Dermatologists are not being crazy when they tell you to wear sunscreen every single day, even in the dead of winter. Clouds are not protection. You still have to protect yourself, even when there is no apparent threat.

This is how the New Moon-Clusterfuck of Doom opposition is working right about now. Sure, it’s easy to be like, “Yay, Leo New Moon! RAR!” But I feel like most people will hesitate after that exclamation, and ask themselves, “Really?” Really? My teacher Shirley Soffer describes the Leo impulse as “wanting to jump out of a cake.” This New Moon lets you do that- but the opposition comes into play when, panting and covered in buttercream, you discover that you’re in the wrong room. Or at the wrong party entirely. That doesn’t feel good.

I think it’s very hard for a lot of people to healthily connect to the part of Leo that is pure ego and sense of self. Jessica at Moonkissd wrote about it beautifully, how it’s complicated to grasp when significant numbers of the world population are deprived of selfhood; indeed, thinking you truly know yourself could almost be seen as privileged thinking. Abraham Maslow caught a lot of flack for that in his hierarchy of needs model. It would be great if everyone could achieve self-actualization, but realistically, there is privilege inherent in self-actualization. Millions of people in the world never get past satisfying their physiological needs.

That said, though, it is important to know yourself, and know your place, and know the limitations of your place and what you will and will not tolerate. That’s why this is an interesting New Moon, and one that I think has a lot more potential for growth than your average Leo New Moon. The Clusterfuck of Doom can be a little confusing and disorienting at first, but once it hits home where it needs to, you can expect a whole new level of awareness, and one that helps the healthiest aspects of Leo cut through that much more sharply.

One of the downsides to Leo is that it can get so caught up in its own ego and its own perspective that it doesn’t think before it speaks. I can’t even begin to list all the subtle daily examples of this that exist in the world. But think white Western feminists launching personal crusades against all of Islam. Think well-meaning but clueless men incredulously exclaiming, “Do women REALLY get catcalled by men all the time, or are you just EXAGGERATING?” Think white people who think Skip Gates shouldn’t have yelled at the police for collaring him outside his own home. I won’t go on, or my eye will start hurting.

Unadulterated Leo allows for this sort of thing to happen. An opposition to a stellium of consciousness-raising planets checks it. It lets you be yourself, but it stops you from expressing yourself at the expense of others who can’t do so in the same way. And it also stops you from getting into pissing contests when someone says, “That isn’t my experience, and I’ll tell you why.” With that perspective in mind, it makes you all the better equipped to defend yourself when you truly have to. That is healthy Leo: realizing your value as a human being, but when this is threatened, not deciding that these threats outrank all other potential forms of abuse and persecution that others have suffered and continue to suffer.

When I got attacked, I was definitely shocked, hurt, and infuriated by the way I was treated by the authorities. But you know what else I found infuriating? The fact that their solution to the crime was not to investigate it, but to order me to move. Not because I felt like they had a particular responsibility to protect me. Because by removing me (or any other white person who was the victim of a crime like this, for that matter) from the situation, they could continue to ignore their responsibility to protect the long-term residents of that neighborhood- who were, of note, mostly African-American working-middle-class families. In that particular neighborhood, the general feeling for a long time has been that the police are not on their side, regardless of gender. It’s totally shitty that the police acted like I was a whore who wasn’t “supposed” to be there, and that was why it made sense that I was beaten nearly unconscious with a loaded gun. It’s also totally shitty that there are people who have never even had the luxury of assuming the police will protect them. Is one worse than the other? No. They’re different. But understanding that does make somewhat of a difference in how I’m going to direct my anger, which is a couple of steps ahead in the healing process.

On Tuesday I had my first session with a therapist who has actually specialized in PTSD and is not a total snotty quack. On the contrary, she’s lovely. We made a lot of contact with my spirit animal. She said I should imagine what I would want to do to my attacker and feel it in my body. Part of me imagined impaling him with a spear. Part of me imagined reaching into him and just ripping out two giant handfuls of his guts like in The Toxic Avenger and watching the absolute shock and terror on his face. And then I stopped and said, “But wait, I can’t imagine that. He was just a kid.” And the therapist said, “Don’t think about that now. Empathy comes later.”

Then she asked me to imagine myself exactly as I want to be, and to describe where I was. The first thing that came out of my mouth was, “I’m doing exactly what I want to do, and no one is telling me how it’s wrong.”

I realized how my two thoughts were connected. Empathy for my attacker is not the same as making excuses for him. And standing up for myself does not mean laughing it off or “picking my battles” when someone attacks me, either physically or verbally. I am not going to apologize for myself anymore. I am not going to apologize for being an outspoken feminist. I am not going to apologize for being hungry or not being hungry or wanting to eat food that isn’t good for me sometimes or wanting to eat too much food that maybe is good for me. I am not going to defend a dissertation on why I like horror movies if someone tells me it’s weird. I am not going to let people who know little to zero about astrology tell me how something I’ve been studying since I was fourteen years old and understand very well is bullshit. I’m not going to let inconsequential idiots like the police or the emotionally paralyzed man-babies I tend to date or men I work with or some kid sticking a gun in my face- or hell, even my parents, as well as they mean most of the time- determine how I feel about myself.

The Leo New Moon is in my 4th House, conjunct my IC and opposing my Venus. That kind of self-defense is long overdue. And so fucking what if I’m wearing a dress and make-up while I’m telling someone off. So fucking what if men are intimidated and don’t want to date me. So fucking what if people don’t think I’m “nice.” They never have, not in the traditional sense of what a “nice” girl is, anyway. And I’m not just angry on my own behalf. I’m angry because I know I’m not the only woman who does this and suffers because of it. I’m angry because I know there are people who aren’t even aware of falling into traps that have been set for them. I’m angry because despite all the ways I know I have no right to be angry, I still have plenty of other ways to be justifiably furious.

In a lot of ways, I fall right alongside what everyone criticized about Maslow. I’m not denying it. But within that, I’ve still got some pretty insidious shit to face, that I am tired of putting up with. And I’m not going to anymore.

And neither should you. But really, really think about it first, and make sure you know exactly what you’re angry about. Take as many steps back as you need to. Distance and anger are not mutually exclusive. You deserve that much.

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