America’s Sacred Partner

Catholics have the Pope. The British, Dutch, Belgians, Saudis, Japanese and others have royal families. The North Koreans have Kim Jong-un. The Mexicans have the Virgin of Guadalupe.

What does America have?

America has The Sacred Partner.

The Sacred Partner talks to us at 11:30 pm from a chair on a platform in New York City or Los Angeles. Our Sacred Partner, liked many other revered figures, is male. Our Sacred Partner prepares us for sleep with simple talk, silly talk, unusual talk, but nothing that taxes our world-weary heads. The Sacred Partner is our sleeping pill, the sheep we count, a pleasant and harmless thought.

The Original Sacred Partner hour (The Tonight Show) was created under a Libra sun with moon, Neptune and Mercury all in Libra (September 27, 1954). Libra is the sign of partnership. The Sacred Partner is beautiful, charming, and pleasant to be around and doesn’t make the other cardinal signs’ — Aries, Cancer and Capricorn — demands that we speak up, come home for dinner and make a success of ourselves in the world. The Libra Sacred Partner simply sits up with us at night. The Sacred Partner talks to us in gentle tones.

Libra is a cocktail, a cocktail enjoyed in the Neptune-in-Libra way, without guilt, without counting calories, without the critical thoughts that ruin pleasure.

With Neptune in Libra men are men, women are woman (tough women, by the way), all look good and poetry speaks all about it. Poetry is read to you by Libra as you turn to look at the TV commercials and cars speeding down the pot-holed street. Libra paints the wall of the cheap, rented apartment and now you are in a beat café in San Francisco with Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac.

This all happens at 11:30 pm.

The First Sacred Partner was Steve Allen, Capricorn sun and Sagittarius moon, with Saturn and Jupiter in Libra. Capricorn sun says “follow the rules by the day” and Sagittarius moon says, “make every night a night in Las Vegas.”

After the First Sacred Partner came several others until the Golden Sacred Partner emerged during the sign of Libra on October 1, 1962. Neptune, the moon and Venus were all conjunct in Scorpio suggesting the new Sacred Partner brought a charismatic sex appeal.

The Golden Sacred Partner, Johnny Carson, had sun in Libra and moon and Jupiter in Capricorn. Our Golden Sacred Partner was all that was good about Libra – suave, charming, handsome, easygoing, pleasurable, amiable and non-threatening. The Capricorn moon kept the emotions far from view. Eleven thirty was a time for relaxing, not a time to be nagged by your wife, boss, children or neighbors, not a time to finish your homework. Eleven thirty was time to relax.

Johnny Carson was the last person you saw at night, your nightcap. A beautiful image before sleep.

On February 1, 1982, the Sacred Partner mutated into the Golden Sacred Partner, who remained at 11:30 pm and the Obnoxious Sacred Partner, who spoke to us at 12:30 am.

The Obnoxious Sacred Partner, David Letterman, also had moon in Capricorn but sun in Aries, the opposite of the pleasure-loving Libra. The Aries Sacred Partner allowed us a few self-aggrandizing slaps on the back before bed. The Obnoxious Sacred Partner made us feel cool.

The Obnoxious Sacred Partner, with Uranus in Gemini, appealed to a younger generation than those born during the reign of the Original Sacred Partner or the Golden Sacred Partner. This was the budding Pluto/Uranus in Virgo generation spreading its wings, knowing it was just a matter of time before the world had to hear its criticisms.

Virgo is the sign of pets and the Obnoxious Sacred Partner brought pet tricks of the non-intelligent kind to amuse the pet-loving generation.

On August 30, 1993, the Obnoxious Sacred Partner earned his place next to the Sacred Partner at 11:30 pm. On that day, sun and Mercury were in Virgo, Uranus and Neptune in Capricorn, Saturn and moon in Aquarius and Mars and Jupiter in Libra. The Obnoxious Sacred partner created tensions and sense of inclusion. The Obnoxious Sacred Partner created a challenge and forced us to choose the Perfect Partner.

After thirty years as Golden Sacred Partner, Johnny Carson retired to be replaced by Jay Leno on May 25, 1992. The sun was in Gemini and moon in Pisces changing the show from a pre-slumber nightcap into a round of chatty gossip.

Gemini and Pisces are rambling, lively, imaginative conversationalists.

Jay Leno, with sun in earthy Taurus and moon in earthy Virgo is the Stable Sacred Partner. The 11:30 pm hour changed from a nightcap to a routine before bed, to something more rational, practical and useful. Leno is part of the Neptune-in-Libra generation and understands pleasure, but also projects more essence, more corporeality, more reality. Leno is a guy you’d meet on the street. Carson was a God, someone you merely fantasized about.

The 12:30 am hour has brought us several Lessor Sacred Partners – Conan O’Brien (Aries), Jimmy Fallon (Virgo) and now Seth Myers (Capricorn).

Both the 11:30 pm and 12:30 am Sacred Hours are being populated with earth signs. Our images of Sacred Partners began as suave, moved to obnoxious and now are more like our actual husbands.

America’s Sacred Partner, unlike a Pope, dictator or royal family, is chosen by the people. The Sacred Partner is a product and reflection of our democracy. He has earned his way into our hearts, has not been forced there.

Our Sacred Partner speaks to us Monday through Friday. Saturday is still reserved for the Sacred Friendship Group when we spend time with the not-ready-for-prime-time players of Saturday Night Live. That show aired on October 11, 1975 with Pluto, Mercury and the sun in Libra, the sign of partnership.

Collective Guilt

Being a native of Cleveland, the Cleveland kidnapping story has been of great interest to me. When stories like this are close to home, it has a greater sense of being real, a greater sense of “this could happen here.”

The astrologer in me notices that the escape of one of the girls (which led to the freedom of two others held captive) occurred during the Saturn in Scorpio transit when sexual issues, including rape, are surfacing more in the news.

The Scorpio part of the Saturn-in-Scorpio transit involves penetration, violation and obsession. Scorpio’s positive manifestation is to rise above obsession, or stuck and frozen feelings, into a pure, unblocked experience of emotions.

The kidnapper was the negative side of Scorpio and the girls, to survive, may need to manifest the positive side of Scorpio, the letting go. I’ve heard that in these types of situations, there is not only physical bondage, but emotional bondage.

Letting go is very easy to say and very difficult to do.

Thinking of letting go as part of surviving may be a better path to the process than through moral or religious reasons, which can cause us to fight against our own negative emotions.

The brothers, the daughter, the community

Watching the news stories that involve interviews with the community, the brothers of the kidnapper and the daughter of the kidnapper, I’m wondering how much each feels a sense of guilt about not having known what was occurring. The daughter, it appears, was best friends with one of the captives before her disappearance.

The stories sometimes describe subtle hints of evidence that no one at the time recognized and certainly couldn’t recognize without some hypothesis that their brother/father/neighbor was mentally ill.

Are they feeling guilt? Or having thoughts like “What if I had . . .?”

In “Working in the Swamplands of the Soul” Anne Ortelee writes about guilt as:

Guilt: Saturn. Guilt is responsibility. Part of developing as a human is accepting responsibility for the consequences of one’s choices. Saturn marks our conscious choices and critical turning points. Guilt can reflect a lack of permission to be oneself combined with the power of early authorities. However unconscious a person was when they made a choice that made another suffer, acknowledging it and admitting error is the beginning of wisdom and the path to release. Task: Dealing with guilt in a mature fashion involves recognition, recompense (where it is possible~ remember symbolic actions count) and release. It includes forgiving yourself, a critical and difficult step. Otherwise good energy is wasted on the past and blocks new options. Ask your client “Against what are you defending yourself?”

As Saturn transits Scorpio, will we be feeling collective guilt about sexual violation and emotional bondage?

While we’re learning lessons about Scorpio, his water-sign friends Pisces and Cancer will be coming to help in the form of Neptune in Pisces and Jupiter in Cancer (in June). Transiting planets in all three of the water signs creates what’s called a grand water trine.

Neptune and Jupiter like to create spiritually accepting and loving conditions. Neptune in Pisces and Jupiter in Cancer invite you in to dinner. They see you are tired and offer you a place to sleep for the night. They make you a cup of hot milk before bed. They understand whatever it is you’ve gone through without judgment. They listen.

If you need a comforting rest, this is good. If you what you really need is a fire under your ass to get motivated, then this comfort can be an indulgence.

Water is compassionate and sometimes so much so that it has no boundary between itself and others. If a person is well adjusted, this is a warm and loving situation. But if a person is hurt and unable to process the feelings, they might be hurting others, as psychologists say, to feel their own pain through the pain of others.

The grand water trine will include the comforting Neptune in Pisces and Jupiter in Cancer with the responsible Saturn in Scorpio. Saturn may be involved to remind us that we are responsible for our own feelings. If we’re feeling collective guilt about emotional, physical and psychic abuse, then maybe the Neptune and Jupiter placements will help us establish emotional links with family and community to prevent these types of abuses.

The power to feel

While Scorpio gets its share of negative press for its obsessive qualities, I personally feel Scorpio is about the power to feel.

Why power?

It’s power because we avoid bad feelings. Avoiding bad feelings is like the overuse of anti-bacterial soap and antibiotics to avoid illness. The medical field is suspecting that if we don’t encounter, process and build immunity to certain bacteria, we are then more prone to super bugs and drug-resistant strains of bacteria.

Likewise if we don’t build immunity to unpleasant feelings, we can’t handle situations where intense negative feelings exist, like during the death of a loved one, a natural disaster or any unpleasant situation.

I heard a saying once that the heart is a muscle and needs to be exercised. Likewise the emotions might be made weak if we feed them only good feelings, like having only sugar in the diet. Our emotions need sugar but also need fiber to clean out the pipes and allow feelings to flow out and not get caught thereby causing a leak of sewage into other areas of life.

This also relates to the Asian concept of qi and energy flow. When flow is constricted is when we have problems. Saturn in Scorpio says we are having collective constriction with regard to sexual and survival energies. Guilt may be the response to that restriction.

Writing about guilt on a beautiful day

Writing about guilt on this beautiful Mother’s Day brings up feelings of guilt – why write about ugly stuff on a beautiful day?

The answer to myself is that both the ugly situation and the beautiful day have arisen. One doesn’t cancel the other – they both exist. Like food eaten, both must be digested.

Jupiter in Cancer

At the end of June, Jupiter will transit into Cancer from its year in Gemini. It’s going to be an emotional year. Collective emotional outpourings are in store.

Jupiter is in its exaltation in Cancer – it’s the best placement for Jupiter. Jupiter is expansive and generous and Cancer, in positive manifestation, is emotionally nurturing. The placement is compassionate, loving of family.

Hopefully there will be an abundance of compassion this year.

Jupiter takes 12 years to revolve around the sun. Twelve years to go through 12 signs means that Jupiter spends a year in a sign. Check out your life’s “good” years and “bad” years to see where Jupiter is in your chart during the “good” times and you’ll understand transits and your own horoscope.

The last time Jupiter was in Cancer was 12 years ago – 2001.

Does that year ring a bell?

Jupiter entered Cancer in July 2001 and in September the US faced a violent political assault. We were shocked and emotional with a Cancer response – desire for increased security. We also had an increased desire to know better the people in our community. Meetup.com was founded, according to Wikipedia (verified by an email I received from the organization) in this way:

“Following the September 11 attacks, the site’s co-founder Scott Heiferman publicly stated that the manner in which people in New York City came together in the aftermath of that traumatic event inspired him to use the Internet to make it easier for people to connect with strangers in their community.”

Jupiter in Cancer isn’t the symbolism for the 2001 violent assault. That rests with some astrologers as the Pluto / Saturn opposition which occurred in Sagittarius / Gemini respectively. Jupiter in Cancer was part of the energy, the energy of sharing the experience.

This Jupiter transit of Cancer, however, will make its own opposition to Pluto in Capricorn by August of this year. Security (Cancer) and rules (Capricorn) will be at odds. These are some of the other Cancer/Capricorn polarities:

Mom / Dad (with capital letters)
Home / career
Personal conscious / social consciousness
Feelings / defenses
Family dynamics / social dynamics

The phrase “once bitten, twice shy” is both a Cancer and Capricorn response. Cancer hides and Capricorn makes a vow never to lose control.

“Homeland Security” is a term and organization arising from the trauma of 2001. It’s a perfect combination of the Cancer/Capricorn axis and might be the object of attention this year.

News stories of bombings (Boston) and girls being kidnapped for ten years (Cleveland) are enough to scare loving family members into overly-protective behavior. I’m having some Jupiter in Cancer feelings right now.

In August there will be a T-square of Jupiter (in Cancer), Pluto (in Capricorn) and Uranus (in Aries). Adding fuel to the emotionally-charged bonfire will be Mars in Cancer. It will rain on the rain. Rain will fill the rivers. Water will seep into your life. You can’t ignore the emotional landscape around you.

Sounds like there is a wet summer ahead.

The sign of Cancer is known for its tenacity. To non-emotional signs, it feels clingy. Cancer, fed by belonging, is lonely when not surrounded by the warm, comforting waters of the emotionally and spiritually familiar.

The Cleveland kidnapper, I discovered today, has three planets in Cancer (sun, Mercury and Venus) opposed by Saturn in Capricorn. That’s some unpleasant symbolism of what it means to need something so badly (whatever he needed), that you’d take away someone’s freedom and life to get it. That’s a lot like eating, where something has to die to feed us.

Jupiter in Cancer will bring abundance in eating and other eating-like appetites such as medicine, cigarettes and drinking.

Neptune in still in watery Pisces (and will be there for quite some time) and Saturn is in watery Scorpio (for the next year)  - with the added Jupiter in Cancer, alcohol sales will do well this year. It’s a good time to invest in intoxicating watery substances.

Charities will probably also do well during this year of compassion. We feel each other’s pain and give.

Jupiter in Cancer is also a good time to go swimming. Swimming during Jupiter in Cancer will take you to the water so that the water doesn’t need to come to you.

Here’s site for the next year – Rainy Mood.com. Listen to the rain. Calm down.

Jupiter enters Cancer on June 26, 2013.

Reese Witherspoon and Class

The United States is known for its lack of class system. It’s certainly debatable whether or not a class system truly exists, but if it does, it is more subtle than some that exist around the globe.

In the Chapultepec Castle in Mexico City, you can take a glimpse of this painting that identifies the different “castas” or breeds of individuals born of the varying ethnicities existing in 17th and 18th century Mexico – Spanish, Indian and African – and all of the subsequent mixtures of these three ethnicities.

Picture from: link

And, of course, there is the Great British Class Calculator which aims to quantify your class.

Take the class quiz now!

In the United States, a class system, if we have one, is more subtle. Many believe we don’t have one which makes statements like “Do you know my name?” when stopped for a driving offense particularly difficult on American ears.

Actress Reese Witherspoon was caught on tape last week saying just this while being picked up for a driving offense.

Reese, you have trouble. You weren’t just unruly; you opened a can of worms on class.

The General

According to Astrotheme, Witherspoon has sun in Aries and moon in Capricorn with Leo ascendant. The Aries and Leo produce a great amount of pride where the Capricorn moon provides the need for order, rules and control. It’s the moon, I think, more than the fiery sun and ascendant that produced the “Do you know my name?” statement.

Aries and Capricorn are cardinal signs and push forward, as a flower bud through the soil in spring. A bud must push and so too must cardinal signs. The Aries/Capricorn combination is strong, pushy, bossy and needs to be in command at all times.

It makes for a great general.

The Capricorn moon isn’t a sensitive feeler which is why this combination leads to military ability. To take a command from someone you aren’t related to, implement it and not let the images of dying fathers and lonely babies enter your consciousness takes the emotional restraint of a Capricorn moon.

Aries/Capricorn has executive ability.

This Aries/Capricorn combination is extremely admirable which generates great respect but you often prefer to show your respect from a different room because if you join this combination in the living room and try to sit on the sofa, you will be told to sit on the chair. You will be commanded. Your wrinkled dress, lazy habits, messy hair, slouching posture and smeared eyeliner will all be commented upon.

Witherspoon’s Pluto in Libra and Mars in Cancer create a grand square to the Aries/Capricorn tension. The cardinal signs represent self-partner-career-family. Witherspoon is struggling with all of these relationships and the priority for each.

The current transits of Uranus in Aries and Pluto in Capricorn are lighting an already hot and volatile rocket. It’s a tense time for Witherspoon with or without a viral YouTube video demonstrating her unruly behavior. She’s feeling an immense amount of frustration due to thwarted goals. Everyone and everything is getting in the way and the video is just one more piece of frustration.

Everyone is out to get her.

Capricorn moon can get a little paranoid as well.

I Fought the Law and the Law Won

If OHA were sitting down with Witherspoon, the first piece of advice would be to close the lid on the class statement. A good way to do this is to through the Mars and Saturn in Cancer portion of her horoscope.

Community service with families or something family-oriented will dispel the scent of privilege. Witherspoon can demonstrate that she is just one of the family. She can bring the family. Family, family, family.

Saturn in Cancer indicates that Witherspoon has no sense of belonging. It’s a good time to nurture a feeling of belonging before Pluto in Capricorn makes a nasty square to natal Saturn (in Cancer) and natal Jupiter (in Aries) in years to come and really makes this problem extremely painful. Working on it now will make it easier later. It will help with both the video problem and the underlying problem of not feeling like part of the family, not feeling truly loved.

That’s the real problem here.

The second piece of advice OHA would provide is about the need for control. With Uranus transiting Aries and Pluto transiting Capricorn, the more Witherspoon tries to take control, the more problems will arise.

A great commander knows not only when to attack, but when to retreat. Retreat isn’t failure, a great fear with moon in Capricorn. Retreat can also be a tactic in a larger strategy.

While Aries/Capricorn can be controlling, it is also extreme disciplined. Learning both the fighting skills and meditative skills of a martial artist, for example, would be useful to Witherspoon right now. In other words, commanding the world will produce Pluto-in-Capricorn legal response from the world. Commanding the self, however, will produce entirely different results.

Witherspoon would make an awesome ninja.

Commanding the self would be the first step to loving the self, something Witherspoon may be working on right now. When everyone loves you and you don’t love yourself, it must feel a bit odd. I’m guessing a lot of folks who seek the limelight struggle with this.

OHA says this from afar, with simply a chart and a few new stories as guidance. As ever, the horoscope simply describes stories of our self. An actress like Witherspoon can certainly understand this and transform a ridiculous story into a living, breathing myth of adventure and discovery.

An Aries sun and Capricorn moon can do anything.

Retirement Planning with Iggy Pop

Apparently Iggy Pop wants to know if his new album will be successful and has been consulting tarot readers. According to this video, he wants his new album “to sell.” He says he “could sure use a hit.”

That sounds like the wish of a businessman, not a rock star. Makes sense for a guy with sun and moon in Taurus (according to Astrotheme) who enjoys luxury and material goods. Mr. Pop is possibly broke.

While Jupiter was transiting Taurus in from June 2011 to June 2012, Iggy may have had some windfalls of material gain. Today the astrological landscape is a bit different.

Saturn is transiting Scorpio creating a tense T-square with the sensual and material sun/moon (in Taurus) and the controlling and self-centered Saturn/Pluto in Leo. Saturn will conjunct natal Jupiter in Scorpio in fall of 2014.

The Scorpio/Taurus opposition creates a complicated financial situation. Pop may have some gains, but he may also find that his assets have lost value. In the case of Pop, his asset is his identity and he may be facing some unpleasant realities about time and space. Trying to sell an “album,” for example, is a bit dated.

Pop might do better selling his identity than selling music. Identities can be “monetized” these days in many ways: action figures, motivational speaking, reality shows, clothing lines, perfume, food, grills, theme parks and much more!

If Pop were to invest his identity through material means, I would suggest he involve his chart’s Taurus/Leo T-square and create the Iggy Pop Resort in Las Vegas.

Taurus likes material comfort and Leo likes grandeur. It’s the perfect way to remain a “name” and also “sell” stuff. Vegas is the perfect place for Pop’s energy. The resort would be big as everything in Vegas is monster-sized (appealing to both Taurus and Leo), ostentatious (Leo) with a few wild animals in the lobby (T-square tension).

Everything would be soft and comfortable with minimal effort exerted to derive pleasure. That means “you know what” would be encouraged here, maybe even the goal. OHA dares not speak the word, but suffice to say Charlie Sheen would like this resort.

This advice is free, as that is the kind of good OHA promotes, so pricey astrological consulting fees won’t threaten the profitability of the venture.

Escape from the body

Having seen Pop in the late 1980s, I was convinced his thrashing energy was due to something like the electrical energy that you see with Mars or Uranus. By the way, I think I blew an eardrum at that concert and should get some proceeds from the new album to cover the cost of all that I haven’t heard in the last 20 years.

Pop does have Mars and Mercury in Aries, but I think the thrashing is really about that T-square of Taurus and Leo. I’m wondering if he’s trying to get out of his body. He seems like a cartoon character that is trying to push its colors outside of the lines.

Taurus, Leo and Scorpio are fixed signs which are intense, focused and set in their ways. Fixed signs make great leaders because of this unwavering focus. If you’re not in a position to rule a small Communist island nation, too much fixed energy can create a bit of rigidity seen as uncooperative.

The moon in Taurus is considered its exaltation. The moon is where we react and Taurus is slow to react thereby calming the emotions. Taurus moon is a deep pool of water that ripples at the top from the wind, but not below the surface.

The princess and the pea, where the princess can feel a pea 20 mattresses deep is more like a Pisces or Virgo moon, so sensitive to the environment that they are like embodied emotional allergies.

Taurus moon, on the other hand, is not sensitive in that way and can drink its liquor straight. Because of that calmness, I find Taurus moon likes extreme sports. I think it’s because they have such thick skin, it takes a stronger force to feel what others feel more easily.

Possibly Pop’s extreme thrashing is simply a way to feel the pulse of the music. Others tap their foot for the same effect.

The thrashing might also be a way to push that T-square energy out and relax.

If the Astrotheme horoscope is correct, transiting Pluto in Capricorn is in Pop’s sixth house of health. Capricorn rules skin, teeth, bones and knees. Pop may be having health problems in these areas. This transiting Pluto is squaring natal Neptune in Libra in the third so the problems might be due to smoking (Libra being an air sign indicates something with breathing) or some other toxin in the immediate environment (third house being neighbors, siblings and neighborhood).

Pluto square the natal “make love not war” Neptune in Libra placement suggests some problems with a romantic partner.

Transiting Jupiter is completing its passage through Gemini this month, passing over Pop’s Uranus in Gemini. May will be a fun month, but then Jupiter will be hanging out in Pop’s twelfth house for a year. Pop may be spending more time at home than he expects.

Retirement planning

In summary, Pop’s album may do well in the first couple months of release, but probably won’t relieve him of his financial obligations. By fall 2014, money owed will come due. Health problems may also prohibit Pop from thrashing on stage which is his signature behavior.

If Pop is planning for retirement, he may want to consider other things to sell besides music. Because Taurus is an earth sign, it tends to approach the world from a material point-of-view. Pop wants to sell an “album,” a physical thing that no longer exists.

Pop might want to consult with air sign friends who sense opportunity in the air and know how to sell things in a non-tangible form or can help merge tangible and non-tangible. Music, for example, is what Pop is truly selling and music is now sold in bytes, not on plastic.

With Saturn transiting Scorpio in the fourth and fifth houses, debts from home expenditures, romance and children are coming due. It’s time for Pop to have a more creative approach to solving his financial problems.

Pop might be helped by his own Venus in Pisces which is hanging out in his intense chart promoting a more gentle and fluid approach to life.

Pier 1 Does Astrology

Retailer Pier 1 ever-so-boldly has a zodiac gift guide. It’s adorable – love the write-ups. Anyone out there write it?

Pier 1′s Zodiac Gift Guide

From the pictures:

Gemini, Libra and Sagittarius drink the most while Cancer eats the most.

Virgo cooks but doesn’t eat because it is busy keeping lists and using hand sanitizer.

Taurus and Leo like pillows.

Aries and Scorpio probably should never hook up – too much intensity.

Capricorn could decorate from discarded university furniture.

Pisces should live in the ocean.

Aquarius is weird, cats are weird and Uranus probably rules cats.

Snobbery is Ubiquitous

Watching the documentary Helvetica, I learned that Helvetica font ubiquitous. Watching designers struggle over font and identity, I realized, too, that snobbery is also ubiquitous.

What is snobbery?

Dictionary.com defines snobbery as:

1. A person who strives to associate with those of higher social status and who behaves condescendingly to others.
2. A person having similar pretensions with regard to his tastes, etc.

I think of snobbery as creating a hierarchical system where the bottom is perceived as bad, the top good and one’s own background, values and preferences are on top.

Gloria Steinem describes it best in “If Men Could Menstruate:”

“Whatever a ‘superior’ group has will be used to justify its superiority and whatever an ‘inferior’ group has will be used to justify its plight.”

Because it’s so funny, I have to share a little more of her essay. She goes on to write:

“So what would happen if suddenly, magically, men could menstruate, and women could not? Clearly menstruation would become an enviable, boast-worthy, masculine event:

Men would brag about how long and how much.

Young boys would talk about it as the envied beginning of manhood. Gifts, religious ceremonies, family dinners and stag parties would mark the day.”

She has many more, laugh-out-loud examples.

Pie Snobbery

Snobbery, then, is structure and within that structure can be any type of “snobbery.” It’s like snobbery is the pie crust and the pie filling is the type of snobbery.

You can have apple pie snobbery, or cherry pie snobbery or pecan pie snobbery (apple pie being the best, of course).

There can even be pie snobbery, like the kind you see at the county fair.

Michael Kinsley also describes “reverse snobbery” where the snobbery involves a reaction to perceived snobbery:

“Reverse snobbery, unlike the traditional kind, is a tribute to democracy—it’s egalitarianism overshooting the mark. And it is a countervailing social force against growing economic disparity. But when you’re faking it, if you’re not careful, reverse snobbery can look a lot like the traditional kind.”

Reverse snobbery is sort of like a pie without a crust claiming it’s not a pie but really is a pie. As Honest Fare says in this crustless pie recipe:

“If it looks like a pie and it feels like a pie, it’s a pie!”

While Dictionary.com defines snobbery as involving social status, that is just one form of snobbery.

Snobbery is Saturn

Saturn rules structure so snobbery is an offshoot of having to order the world from bottom to top, from good to bad, from Fords to BMWs.

Saturn rules Capricorn so this sign is particularly snobby about the fundamental societal hierarchy – social class. And, of course, Capricorns are often the ones leading the definition of social class.

Saturn in your horoscope may be where you exhibit the most snobbery in your life.

Are you a second house snob about money and possessions? A tenth house snob about career? A fourth house snob about your home environment and cooking? A fifth house snob about your creative work?

Saturn also represents our weakest link or insecurity. Often our snobberies are fed from our own insecurities. Seeing oneself as better than others can alleviate feelings of unworthiness.

Hyacinth Bucket

A most enjoyable, stereotypical social snob is found in Hyacinth Bucket (her last name she pronounces as “bouquet”), the main character in the 1990s British comedy “Keeping Up Appearances.”

Turning bucket, a common slop pail, into “bouquet” a beautiful gathering of flowers, is funny enough. But one day when someone brought a bouquet of hyacinth into the office I fully understood the pun. A bouquet of hyacinth is quite overpowering, so much so that we moved the offending bouquet into a closed office.

The character Hyacinth Bucket is also overpowering, as when she organizes an “indoor outdoor luxury barbeque with finger buffet” to impress the local garden store owner who has been “on the television.”

Hyacinth Bucket is the quintessential snob, and a British one at that.

The Land of Hierarchy

At one time I believed that all literature originating in England had snobbery as its foundation. I changed my mind on that for a few years, or possibly it was just a few minutes, I can’t recall, then returned to harboring this thought.

According to Astrology Weekly and Wikipedia, there are three main dates are associated with the “birth” of England:

1. December 25, 1066 – the date of William the Conqueror’s coronation.
2. May 1, 1707 – the date of merging of Great Britain and Scotland as the Kingdom of Great Britain.
3. January 1, 1801 – the date of merging of the Kingdom of Great Britain with the Kingdom of Ireland.

Two of those three dates are in the sign of Capricorn (1066 and 1801) while one is the sign of Taurus (May 1), which like Capricorn, is an earth sign.

One of the first astrologers I met commented that England is even shaped like the glyph for Capricorn/Saturn (glyphs in that order).

[Images from Wikipedia]

What’s interesting too is that 1066 and 1801 both have Pluto in Pisces. This would suggest that Great Britain’s formation into nationhood contained religious/spiritual roots and/or motivations. I don’t know the history of religions/spirituality in Britain to comment on this.

Maybe it’s the Pisces “merging” in this commonwealth of islands that is represented by Pisces.

Snobbery Quantified

When asking a woman traveler on the Tube in London if one could take jelly through airport security, my answer was “you mean jaaaaam (jam).” Every time I talked to a native during my week in London, my English was corrected in an insulting manner.

It felt a bit like this thing called snobbery. I would say language snobbery is a third house (communications) type of snobbery.

Or possibly it’s simply my perception as a profiled “Emergent Service Worker,” according to the “Great British Class Calculator.”

Who knows?

May 2013: Saturn Opposing Taurus

Welcome to Taurus. The sun, Venus and Mars are now in the fixed earth sign.

Feel calmer?

The earth may still continue to shake as Uranus in Aries and Pluto in Capricorn rub each other the wrong way in a cardinal square, but day-to-day might feel a little slower than felt in April.

Good time to plant that garden.

Calm is nice, yes, but while several planets enter Taurus (Mercury will be there too in May), Saturn is hanging out in Taurus’ opposite sign of Scorpio. Saturn transits a sign for two and a half years. This May and next May will have this Scorpio influence.

That’s called an opposition.

America loves opposition. Do you remember the day you had no view on abortion? Some readers may be too young to recollect this time (it did exist – it is not a myth). Today every American is expected to have a view, for or against, on this issue. It is a defining issue for candidates during elections.

Why?

Opposition occurs naturally, of course, but opposition can provoke you into responses for the sake of releasing your energy to the provoker. Scorpio lessons involve transfer of energy so it’s a good time to track energy that is released through provocation and see who benefits from it.

Expect more opposition in May of the kind that involves Taurus and Scorpio – body issues, sexual issues, religious issues and money issues that involve borrowing and lending.

Rape, a Scorpio issue in my mind, has been frequently in the news since Saturn entered Scorpio last October from a gang rape in India to girls being raped in the US and pictures of rape disseminated through social media.

Rape -what a terrible word. In a Google search some horrific stories appeared. During this opposition it may be necessary to stomach the intensity that arises when dealing with this issue.

On the positive side, one’s first pleasant sexual encounters are called a “sexual awakening.” My Google search on this revealed that awakening doesn’t always correspond to the beginning of sexuality.

What is it that has awakened?

Parents seem extremely distraught with the idea of their children ever having sex. When children have sex, is the parental bond severed forever?

On April 25 the moon will be full in the sign of Scorpio. This is the Halloween half-way point in the year and it might be a good time to dress up as ghouls and goblins and get a little wild.

Taurus – Scorpio Axis

As always, I’m thrilled and delighted with the amazing astrology blogs found in the Blogosphere. I’d like to share some varied and interesting blogs on the Taurus – Scorpio axis and current Saturn-in-Scorpio/Taurus oppositions.

Taurus-Scorpio, Part I: The Desire to Know and the Path of Illumination

CPA Seminar Series: Taurus/Scorpio Axis

A Deeper Cut: Saturn’s Opposition to Taurus

Scorpio and Taurus, the 2nd and the 8th

Ryan Gosling’s Stare

More than acting, Ryan Gosling’s movie presence seems to involve staring. Long stares. Quiet stares. Pensive stares. Emotionless stares. Mesmerizing stares.

A plethora of stares.

A congress of stares.

A fluther of stares.

A drove of stares.

Gosling, no wonder to astrologers, is a Scorpio sun. Of this sun sign the late Linda Goodman in “Sun Signs” writes:

“Look at the eyes. They can be green, blue, brown, or black, but they’ll be piercing with hypnotic intensity. Most people feel nervous or ill at ease under Scorpio’s steady gaze. You’ll have to break the spell and look away first. He’ll outshine you every time. It’s a foolproof identification of the Pluto personality. Scorpio eyes bore deeply into you, mercilessly, as if they’re penetrating your very soul. They are.”

Take a look at Gosling [picture from Wikipedia].

Controlling personality

Gosling has Mercury, sun and Uranus in Scorpio, a Capricorn moon and Jupiter/Saturn/Venus/Pluto all in Libra. Neptune and Mars are conjunct in Sagittarius.

There’s a complicated dude behind the stare.

Gosling is a controlling personality type having lots of Pluto and Saturn influence in his chart (Scorpio, Capricorn, Pluto conjunct Venus, Saturn conjunct Jupiter).

Here’s an image. Gosling mesmerizes you with that stare and you feel like the most special person in the world.

You plan a party together – a beautiful, elegant party where fine guests and fine food merge into an exquisite evening. All has gone well and you and Gosling joined in hug wave to the departing guests. They leave, you turn back into the house and suddenly Gosling has gone quiet, turned cold.

What happened?

He won’t tell you. You wonder, you worry, you fret. After a dramatic period of insecurity, you learn that you let one of his guests use his special silk napkin. You also, you learn, enjoyed kisses on the cheek from male guests a little too much. Your dress, by the way, was ugly.

You’re shocked and stunned.

Next afternoon the guests come over for leftovers and Gosling treats them and you with the same mesmerizing, engaging charisma of the night before.

If you told someone what last night felt like, would they believe you?

Drive

The Internet Movie Database (www.imdb.com) writes that Gosling’s trademark is that he “often plays quiet, emotionally distant characters.“

“Such mastery of the personality has to be envied. No matter how his emotions are stirred, you’ll rarely see them reflected on Scorpio’s frozen, immobile face.” [from Linda Goodman's "Sun Signs"]

In the movie Drive, Gosling is “quiet and emotionally distant” but also an extremely talented. I don’t think we ever learn the reason for the emotional distance.

Is he playing himself? What’s he distancing himself from?

Gosling is probably distancing himself from his own intensity. Living with sun conjunct Uranus in Scorpio is like carrying a black hole around that threatens to suck you in and spit you out at the other end of universe. It’s attached to you like a Siamese twin so you learn to live with it.

Scorpio and Capricorn are serious bedfellows and I’d expect Gosling to be drawn to roles of mafia or organized crime. I see a movie called “Gangster Squad” on his Filmography. In that movie it appears he’s on the side of the cops. I could also see him being drawn to the gangster side, as the head honcho.

Crazy, Stupid, Love

When our personality has no conflicts, we are comfortable with being serious or not-serious or whatever we are. Most of us have a conflict, which actually is a good thing. Conflicts or frustration often are the impetus we need to change and grow in life.

The conflict I see in Gosling’s personality is the Mars/Neptune conjunction in Sagittarius. This combination cares about the world but does not carry the weight of the world on its shoulders as does Scorpio and Capricorn.

Mars and Neptune in Sagittarius can be addicted to anything that provides a rush or sense of heightened experience. Gosling’s emotional distance may be in part to distance himself from his addictions.

In “Crazy, Stupid, Love,” Gosling’s character is the Mars/Neptune in Sagittarius conjunction – sexy, appealing, charismatic and having a good time. Sagittarius is not in love with commitment the way some other signs are.

The character in “Crazy, Stupid, Love” is teaching the frustrated, soon-to-be-divorced husband how to pick up women through developing style and confidence.

“Remark to a Scorpio that he has a talent which will someday be recognized, and he smoothly, casually replies, ‘Yes, I know.’” [from Linda Goodman's "Sun Signs"]

Lars and the Real Girl

In “Lars and the Real Girl,” our character Lars has decided that his mannequin is real. Those around him share in the delusion to help Lars through his issues.

While I can’t imagine Gosling falling for such delusion as it is a way of losing control, having four planets in Libra makes one uber-concerned with finding a mate.

Libra is seeking a mate and Scorpio is seeking an intense emotional relationship. The Libra mate-finding is complicated in Gosling’s chart because Venus is saying it’s about pleasure, Pluto wants control, Saturn wants boundaries and Jupiter wants shared ideals.

Jupiter and Saturn conjunct in Libra can represent partnership with someone of a different racial, social, religious or cultural background that creates a separation from the personal background. It can also create issues through those differences.

Gosling, like Lars, has some high ideals in a mate. Not deluded ideals, but a strong need for beauty and balance in a partner.

“There are Scorpios who can live a spartan existence in a bare room, denying themselves every comfort for some obscure, aesthetic reason, but the true nature of the sign is sensual. Normally, Scorpio will surround himself with luxury. He’ll lean toward excesses in food, drugs, drink and yes – in love.” [from Linda Goodman's "Sun Signs"]

Gosling’s next movie

Gosling’s next movie involves more Saturn and Pluto – Saturn transiting his sun and Uranus while Pluto transits his moon.

In this movie, Gosling meets a girl (I’m assuming he likes girls) from a different time and place. Her differences are extremely attractive but also disturbing. He’s obsessed. He has a compulsion to understand the differences.

This girl gives Gosling a pair of magical eye glasses then takes him on a walk through wet, swampy area in the middle of the night. The glasses throw him off balance and the girl is in control of where they walk and where they are going. In fact, having been led in wearing magical glasses, Gosling does not know the path out.

The world looks the same, but different with these glasses. What is it exactly? Is it good? Is it bad?

The eye glasses are removed and Gosling finds himself staring at his own obsessive melancholy. He can see both the depth and poetry of that character but also the futility of playing hard to get to test others’ devotion.

“Pluto’s symbol is the triumphant phoenix rising from its own smoldering ashes, and Scorpio personifies resurrection from the grave. Both the gray lizards and the stinging scorpions can become proud eagles without ever revealing the secret of their sorcery.” [from Linda Goodman's "Sun Signs"]

Please silence your cell phones as the feature presentation is about to begin.

Edwin Abbott – In Love with Ideas

In a delightful bout of synchronicity, yesterday the novella “Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions” fell upon my feet as I was taking my reserve video off the library shelf. The delightful part was that I had just finished a blog about Taurus and speculated in that blog about why the earth being round and not flat was so threatening to some during a previous portion of our history.

“Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions,” written in 1884 by Edwin A. Abbott, takes place in a two-dimensional world populated by geometric figures. The figures never see themselves or others in their entirety because of their two-dimensionality.

One day a visitor, Sphere from “Spaceland,” comes to visit our narrator, a self-defined Middle Class Square. Sphere looks like a circle because of Flatland’s two-dimensional reality.

The narrator is a middle-class “square.” Sound familiar? This is 1884, about 75 years before calling someone a middle-class square was an insult.

Sphere: Now stretch your imagination a little, and conceive a Square in Flatland, moving parallel to itself upward.

Square: What? Northward?

Sphere: No, not Northward; upward; out of Flatland altogether.

Edwin A. Abbott

The brief Wikipedia biography of “Flatland” author Edwin A. Abbott describes him as a schoolmaster and theologian.

[Picture from mathaware.org]

Abbott had sun in Sagittarius and moon in Aquarius, conjunct Neptune in Aquarius. Those placements are enough to earn a person the “Absentminded Professor” award. This combination is always thinking, always creating the perfect society – in its head. If others could just understand . . . If others could just see the perfection . . .

Neptune conjunct the moon in the rational sign of Aquarius is a bit confusing. Are the compulsive ideas truly rational or truly emotional? Have you gone crazy or have you truly penetrated the mysteries of time and space? If you’re emotionally attached to your radical ideas, will others see past the emotion?

Moreover, if you do penetrate the mysteries of time and space, how do you manage to return to the three-dimensional world?

As Sphere describes a three-dimensional cube to Square, Square has this reaction:

“‘Monster’, I shrieked, ‘be thou juggler, enchanter, dream, or devil, no more will I endure thy mockeries. Either thou or I must perish.’ And saying these words, I precipitated myself upon him.”

In addition to sun and Venus very tightly conjunct in Sagittarius (more on Venus later), Abbott also had Saturn in Sagittarius suggesting that his environment put limits on the meaning of the world around him. Sagittarius is ultimately about meaning and therefore drawn to religion. Saturn in religion makes rules whereas Sagittarius’ ruler Jupiter is about expansion and inclusion. As Sagittarius the archer gallops over fences, it runs smack into Saturn, the end of the world.

Past Saturn are Uranus, Neptune and Pluto which are like the psychotropic drugs ingested all too willingly and recklessly in the early 1950s and 1960s. They break the barrier of Saturn, but it is dangerous to travel past Saturn without psychic protection.

Square’s entry into Spaceland:

“. . . When I could find a voice I shrieked aloud in agony, ‘Either this is madness or it is Hell.’ ‘It is neither,’ calmly replied the voice of the Sphere, ‘it is Knowledge; it is Three Dimensions: open your eye once again and try to look steadily.”

“Flatland” is set on the night where 1999 becomes 2000. Abbott may well have enjoyed living in 1999, a technology and information age.

Air, air everywhere

Abbott had much air in his chart with moon/Neptune in Aquarius and Jupiter in Libra.

Air is detachment, air flows:

“I looked below, and saw with my physical eye all the domestic individuality which I had hitherto merely inferred with the understanding. And how poor and shadowy was the inferred conjecture in comparison with the reality which I now beheld.”

Air looks at the world and sees patterns:

“The further we receded from the object we beheld, the larger became the field of vision.”

As Square experiences Spaceland he wonders:

“. . . that this Space is really Thoughtland, then take me to that blessed Region where I in Thought shall see the insides of all solid things.”

Sagittarius, the philosopher

Those who look for meaning were once called “philosophers” and relate to Sagittarius. I fear in today’s world philosophy has been replaced by its polar opposite – Gemini, the journalist. We’re bombarded with facts but very little meaning.

Sagittarius is the philosopher in the ancient Greece sense of the word. Philosophers are seekers and teachers. In this part of the world at this time, respect for both philosophers and teachers seems to be at an all-time low due to the focus on profession with material output.

“Nothing could stem the flood of my ecstatic aspirations. Perhaps, I was to blame; but indeed I was intoxicated with the recent draughts of Truth to which he himself introduced me.”

A glimpse of the third dimension had the Middle Class Square seeking even higher dimensions:

“But my Lord has shewn me the intestines of all my countrymen in the Land of Two Dimensions by taking me with him into the Land of Three. What therefore more easy than now to take his servant on a second journey into the blessed region of the Fourth Dimension, where I shall look down with him once more upon this land of Three Dimensions . . .”

Three dimensions leads to a desire for the Fourth Dimension. Then more:

” . . .In that blessed region of Four Dimensions, shall we linger on the threshold of the Fifth, and not enter therein? Ah, no! Let us rather resolve that our ambition shall soar with our corporeal ascent. Then, yielding to our intellectual onset, the gates of the Sixth Dimension shall fly open; after that, a Seventh, and then an Eighth . . .”

Ecstasy of ideas or any other sort is difficult to maintain, although many a Sagittarius will try. An effort to maintain ecstasy can lead to what today are called addictive behaviors.

Once you fly high, the ground hurts on impact. Sagittarius can have as much melancholy as the most Saturnine Capricorn:

“One glimpse, one last and never-to-be-forgotten glimpse I had of the dull level wilderness – which was now to become my Universe again — spread out before my eye. Then a darkness. Then a final, all-consummating thunder-peal; and, when I came to myself, I was once more a common creeping Square, in my Study at home, listening to the Peace-Cry of my approaching Wife.”

The Wife

It’s interesting that the subtitle of the book is “A Romance of Many Dimensions” yet there is no romance in the physical sense. The wife is just a neurotic ball of emotion that must be managed.

A woman in “Flatland” is:

“a needle; being, so to speak, all point, at least at the two extremities. Add to this the power of making herself practically invisible at will, and you will perceive that a Female, in Flatland, is a creature by no means to be trifled with.”

With Venus and sun so closely joined, Abbott was probably quite attractive to the ladies (and gents) but may not have had a full awareness of this with moon in Aquarius. Neptune on the moon also emanates a charismatic, attractive quality.

I’m sure Abbott had devoted followers and admirers.

But “the wife” for Middle Class Square was clearly part of Flatland, a non-dimensional entity that didn’t factor the mathematical romance in any way. A point of pure, non-rational emotion.

“For whenever the temper of the Women is thus exasperated by confinement at home or hampering regulations abroad, they are apt to vent their spleen upon their husbands and children; and in the less temperate climates the whole male population of a village has been sometimes destroyed in one or two hours of a simultaneous female outbreak.”

How a needle has a spleen is a mystery unexplained.

Romance for the author (as he titled the book), was clearly a romance of ideas. I would suspect, however, that with Venus on the sun, there were a few (or more) physical attractions of the Aquarius kind – sudden, electric, intense but short.

The genius rebel

Aquarius is the water bearer, but is not a water sign. Aquarius brings “spiritual food” to the world. Aquarius can become the rebel due to the fixed nature of ideas which are not always in sync with the times.

For that reason, Aquarius is the sign of the genius. I think genius refers not simply to analytical smarts, but the ability to see past the current paradigm. To jump out of Flatland, however Flatland is defined during one’s time in three-dimensional reality.

“Flatland” has an unhappy ending. Our Middle Class Square has been imprisoned (at the time he writes, it’s been seven years) for spreading the word of Spaceland.

Square leaves us with this entreat:

“Yet I exist in the hope that these memoirs, in some manner, I know not how, may find their way to the minds of humanity in Some Dimension, and may stir up a race of rebels who shall refuse to be confined to limited Dimensionality.”