Lana Bragina's Tarotkarten

I’ve begun thinking that the modern way of saying everything is connected is everything is contingent. To the modern ear, the former phrase sounds vaguely positive and non-threatening, while the latter conjures up all the anxieties of an era of neo-liberalism.

Everything is contingent suggests to me a language and vocabulary derived from project management and capitalism and state power rather than a spiritualized woo woo language that doesn’t connect to our modern, everyday life.

Everything is contingent speaks to the inherent volatility of the financial market and its human fallout.

Everything is contingent calls the logic of the N. American cult of individualism and the narrative of the American Dream into question.

Everything is contingent presents to me, a more accurate understanding of modern life in which our freedoms (of consumer choice and a seeming ahistoricity) mask our dependencies upon modern networks of power and commerce.

I’m starting to think that in addition to the unequal distribution of material resources and wealth, we can also think of modernity as a force that has restructured the distribution of contingency. That is to say, we in the west/democratic/modern/”developed” world (and within the west, there are further divisions) have attempted to decrease the contingency in our own lives by downloading risk into other parts of the world where people now live highly precarious lives leaving them far more vulnerable to factors like market fluctuations, weather patterns, epidemics, what have you. I’ll refrain from examples – and there are many devastating ones – for the sake of staying on topic and I’ll return to this idea of distributing contingency in a moment.

We have a hoarding mentality in which everyone is fighting over security, never feeling satisfied, nor safe. Perversely, the historically aberrant levels of predictability and stability in the postwar west have only resulted in a collective state of vague dissatisfaction, anxiety and ennui while others have born the brunt of the west’s quest for security and happiness. First world problems. Mid life crisis. Quarter life crisis. What kind of crisis are we in?

The thing about contingency, is that fighting it is a losing game. As emotionally uncomfortable contingency is (and logistically frustrating due to your compromised ability to plan into the future), there’s an exhilarating emptiness that comes when you are connected with contingency and when the self made structures of your life that project into the future begin to loosen and unravel. In contrast, avoiding contingency numbs you to reality so that living experience is dampened and muted. And not being able to touch and experience reality will always precipitate an existential crisis and a crisis in meaning.

Found on piccsy, credited to Eriksson Jonas

Something I wrote awhile ago now makes more sense to me now in which I described modern life as living in a perpetual free fall. The dream and the nightmare of the modern man, his most deepest desire and most fervent fear, that which lies below our perverse fusion of lust, anxiety and reason, is the belief that he might actually be falling into something… Emptiness is not a void. If you wipe out all your plans, your narratives, your goals, if you radically embrace contingency, there is something else. I’m not sure what to call it. A different mode of being perhaps.

There is also an alternate approach to being and distributing contingency that I learned from living in a hunter-gatherer community. In our culture, we build beautiful castles in the sand (I really can’t think of a better way to describe the expectations market) and rail against contingency when the tide comes in. We’re like two year olds throwing a tantrum. I don’t say this to belittle our sense of injustice and loss, I only mean to capture the kind of instinctive and primal suffering we experience when life doesn’t go our way.

When I lived with hunter-gatherers, I learned from people who suffer as we do but who do not fight contingency. Nor does contingency cause them anxiety the way contingency causes the modern man to experience a pervasive, free floating anxiety. Contingency is in your face there everyday – unpredictable weather patterns and migrating herds, unexpected injuries and fatalities, etc. And the learned social response there is to spread contingency around the group. You never hoard or “manage risk” onto others. You always share because you know that you cannot own or possess anything. And because it’s obvious that your actions are a life or death matter. It is a life or death matter.

Elle Hanley photography

What I learned is that there is nothing contingent about how you choose to treat other people. That to me, is the existential challenge of the modern, western citizen living in a system of logic in which human rights abuses, torture, genocide, environmental degradation, etc. can all be rationalized. And for what? To continue to keep contingency at bay? Everything is contingent. How are you going to respond to that? What does humanity look like in this world and how are you going to express it? And how are we, as a society, working together and supporting each other, going to rise to this existential challenge?

Capricorn is like a diamond. It does best under pressure. If a Capricorn native has a hard Saturn-sun or Saturn-moon contact, then the pressure can be intense. It’s not remotely fun. So you have to forgive us Caps sun for having a dour outlook sometimes. But if Capricorn can take all that pressure, the result is dazzling. Diamonds symbolize the incorruptible. They arise from carbon, the most common element, to become hardest substance in the world.

All that diamond hardness contradicts N. American ideas about femininity. There is something distinctly unfeminine about the cool, cutting, measured steeliness of a practical Capricorn woman. There’s nothing brash or boss-say or rough-and-tumble tough about it, qualities that we find in other more masculine signs. This is not to say that it’s unnatural for women to be steely. I am saying that in terms of gender norms, whenever we see the forceful, commanding Capricornian woman, she’s de-feminized, just as a gentle Cancerian male is emasculated.

This de-feminization is largely related to emotions and gender norms. Being emotional (and the resultant “irrationality” of being emotional), one of the key characteristics that N. Americans ascribe to women and deny to men, is not the female Capricorn’s M.O. The Capricorn woman keeps her eye on the prize. She’s certainly not emotionless, but no matter how she feels, she can put that aside for maximum efficiency. She’s taking care of business.

Capricornian women and even girls, are also not as amenable to the frivolity associated with femininity. The infantalizing “shit girls say” style of gender performance doesn’t fly when you’re ruled by Old Father Time, the taskmaster Saturn. There is always an element of hard nosed pragmatism and sobriety, even if it remains hidden. Capricorn isn’t interested in playing princess afterall – unless it’s on the line of succession to being the ruler of something worth ruling.

Perhaps because of this combination of emotional control, maturity and ambition, Capricorn women can do male drag better than any other sign. Wearing signifiers of masculinity can enhance a Capricorn’s beauty, there’s something very natural about it.

Never met a lesbian who didn't at some point crush on the legendary Patti Smith

Gay icon Annie Lennox wishes that being a lesbian was "an option"

The ultra glam Marlene Dietrich wore the pants better than most men

In N. America, femininity is also about a submissive loss of control and dependence on others. Related to this is the objectification and lack of agency that defines the performance of femininity. An object for the male gaze. This is all very much at odds with the cardinal, self sufficient, goal oriented Capricorn ethos. But I don’t want to suggest that Capricornian women can’t luxuriate in the rituals of femininity or that they are incapable of expressing the receptivity, passivity, etc. we associate with the feminine. (They may in fact, enjoy playing the role of the helpless female – especially if they think they’re going to get a good return on investment from doing so.)

For this reason, the Capricorn femininity is much more of a performance. As such, Capricornian women look great in male and female drag.

Even with her body on display, there is nothing docile about Kate Moss. If anything, the little bows and frills on her outfit feel ironic.

The gorgeous Sade may have built her catalogue on love songs but she's still a soldier

As such, Capricornian femininity is complex. It’s not really accurate to call the sign masculine or feminine unless we are talking about gender performance. Capricorn merely does whatever needs to be done to finish the job.

Brian Foo via society6.com

If you missed part one, you can catch it here. These posts form a two part series about what you can look forward to with a Saturn Return.

I recently gave a tarot reading to a friend of mine and she remarked that she was surprized that I was still practicing tarot. That seemed like something the “Old Isthmus” would do. And I thought what a strange comment that was because I hadn’t realized how much I had changed. You’re so practical now, she clarifies. You’re so into these practical things. Joining groups, chairing meetings, all of it. And she’s right; in the past I never concerned myself with ideas about civic engagement, leadership and what not.

The Saturn Return has consolidated a lot of my responsibilities to society. A prosperous, vibrant, tolerant and creative society doesn’t just happen by magic or by virtue of inertia. And contrary to a lot of articles I read, leading a meaningful, happy life is very much a social endeavour that is deeply tied into the participation in the creation of shared meaning. Whenever we talk about happiness or satisfaction in the west, we always focus on the individual. But without shared meaning, shared narratives, shared metaphors that are authentic, we are lost in our own idiosyncratic, solipsistic fantasies or, as is very common, we become easy prey for systems of meaning that are inauthentic, harmful and do not accurately reflect our reality.

I remember having a conversation with the lovely Carol Horton over lunch in which we talked about the need for contemporary narratives and to not disassociate ourselves from our present context. She then teased me for thinking about my social privilege as “icky.” And it is icky in the sense that the great disparity we find in our society is disgusting (and frankly, also shameful!). But icky describes something that you want to be rid of, like something gross that is sticking to you and that you want to wash your hands of immediately. Quite the opposite, wealth disparity, capitalism, decadence, these are all things that I want to dive into, to understand, not simply to criticize it but to approach it with as open a mind as possible.

Capitalism and modernity, these things are not the enemy for me. I have a deep, visceral bond with the world and the narratives they have created. It is no accident that my preferred aesthetics are those that arise out of great wealth disparity: art deco, fascism, etc. The contours of the modern cityscape with its arrogant shining towers, are etched into my soul. Nothing fills my heart with joy and gratitude so easily as the dissonant wailing of an anonymous five alarm response team rushing past me on the street, pealing through my ears. A society in crisis? Bring. It. Motherfuckin. On.

I can’t say that I haven’t struggled with the dichotomy of my own privilege and my champagne tastes versus the socially oriented goals I share with others. The following exchange between Diogenes the cynic and Aristippus, another philosopher (paraphrased and embellished by myself) always helps me put things into perspective:

Aristippus: You know Diog, if you would only learn to kiss up to the king, you wouldn’t have to live on lentils.

Diogenes: You know Stippy, if you would only learn to live on lentils, you wouldn’t have to kiss up to the king.

Zing! Learn to live on lentils, babe.

But more seriously, in leading up to my Saturn Return, I have had to reexamine and reconfigure my own position when it comes to my social responsibilities and break down unhelpful ideas that are ingrained in the N. American individualistic world view. Ideas like:

• If you are helping others, you must be sacrificing/compromising a part of yourself (win-win situations do exist!);
• There exists some kind of ethical purity test out there by which you are always going to fall short (a construct I find many middle class liberals often subscribe to);
• Your contributions to society can be measured and ranked against those of others;
• And so on

The more I really connect with modernity, the less these dichotomies matter and the more I am drawn to participate. To be active in making difficult choices, to force myself to navigate ethical grey areas, to contribute to meaning making with others. It’s not about do-gooding or making the world a better place, it’s about existing and finding ways to express our humanity under inhumane circumstances. These extreme, radical opportunities are the beauty of modernity. This is why I love the modern world despite all the things in it that cause me rage and sorrow.

There have been many times in the past decade when I’ve felt in turns that this world is hopeless, barren, unforgiving or plentiful, beautiful, perfect. Now I realize it’s none of those things and that it doesn’t really matter.

Saturn has come, and passed. Now, I when I look in the mirror, I can say that I am my own person. And when I look out into the world, I can say that I am very much at home; here, now.

Andreas Preis

This is the final post in my contra-stereotyping water series. Please feel free to check out my Scorpio and Pisces posts.

In my experience, Cancer is the most poorly integrated sign in our society. I don’t find in other signs, such a polarized expression of a sign’s qualities when it comes to gender; women are allowed full expression of Cancer whereas men must basically repress all of it. I think it says a great deal about our attitudes toward femininity, female power and mothers. The patriarchy can co-opt and control the sensuality and femininity of Venus, but it can’t co-opt the menstrual cycle and motherhood of the moon so easily. The best it can do is pathologize and sentimentalize the hell out of it.

Very watery men have it rough. But while watery emotions are denied to men in general, Cancer has it the hardest. Mars ruled Scorpio gets to be the sex machine, the psychologist, the brooding bad boy. Jupiter ruled Pisces gets to be the spiritual visionary, the sensitive artist, the martyr on the cross. But what does Cancer get? Mama’s boy? Male “PMS?”

The expression of vacillating emotions and nurturing/maternal behaviours are both denied to N. American men. Cancer sun men are trained to repress the primary expressions of their own sign, or else they risk antagonizing the gender police force. Which is, despite all our genderfuck and liberal progressiveness, about as fascistic as it comes. For this reason alone, I consider a Cancer sun or moon placement in a man’s chart, indicative of a heightened risk factor for drug abuse and addiction. (Of course, we should expect other placements to support this theme before suggesting this is the case in reading a chart.) It’s about self medication to cope with the complete lack of social permission to unleash one’s full expression of self and one’s primal needs.

Underlying this problem is the idea of Cancerian traits as a weakness. It’s only acceptable for Cancer women to be emotional, because, well, all these weak, irrational, PMSing women can’t really help themselves but men of course, can hold themselves to a higher standard. (That was sarcasm, by the way.) So the fact that women are allowed to embrace Cancerian traits is not exactly something to celebrate.

All our lives, women are told our only power lies in our sexual attractiveness. It’s a double edged sword in which possessing this quality makes you at best, a desired object to be plundered and raped while a lack of it renders you safely invisible and non-existant. We spend so much time and energy learning to preen and pose and maybe we’ll even wield this power to get some of our own, but at the end of the day, the majority of women are unable to escape this paradigm we keep getting shoved into. Even motherhood is slowly being sucked into this vortex with the pressure to be a MILF.

A Cancer that has integrated Cancerian qualities are like exit doors to this madness. The sign’s focus on nurturing and protection, on family, legacy and heritage, on domesticity, on emotional intimacy, on instinct, on receptiveness, fertility and sensitivity, all these qualities offer us a different type of feminine strength that has nothing to do with attraction and seduction. It is not easy however, to find an integrated Cancer. We need more integrated Cancers, especially Cancerian men. Start a gender revolution and support the Cancers in your life!

I would like to suggest that NONE of LULU’s branding has anything to do with yoga. Branding is branding and that’s it. It’s a spectacle. Guy Debord warned us about this. “All that once was directly lived has become mere representation.”

I like to think that brands are only as powerful as we make them. We give the LULU brand power when we allow the brand to represent what yoga is. We give our power away to brand images when we infuse them with all of our hopes and fears about our own existence. Who we wish we could be, who we don’t want to be, how we want others to think of us. This is different than simply trying project a social image. That is a natural human social behaviour. What I’m talking about is letting brands co-opt our voices, our narratives, and enthralling us with their myths which, unlike the myths of yore, are not trying to teach us to BE HUMANS. They are trying to teach us to CONSUME.

Maybe that wouldn’t be so bad, except I find that brands are eroding a diversity of narratives and colonizing our imaginations with highly attractive mono-stories. Stories that do not teach us to be cunning, courageous or compassionate, but rather, stories that infantilize us and teach us to seek instant gratification, to gratify our individual selves. And unlike great human narratives, brands only bring us together by keeping us separate.

The spectacle divides the world into two parts, one of which is held up as a self-representation to the world, and is superior to the world. The spectacle is simply the common language that bridges this division. Spectators are linked only by a one-way relationship to the very center that maintains their isolation from one another. The spectacle thus unites what is separate, but it unites it only in its separateness. – Guy Debord.

So I’m not terribly concerned with what LULU’s latest branding tactic is in and of itself. They could quote Hitler or Ghandi on their bags for all I care. I don’t think the branding has anything to do with what LULU is all about in that these narratives are not the reality. Even the stories their business execs like to tell themselves about Ayn Rand or whatever, none of that is real. I’m not saying these stories don’t affect management or consumers. They do, and branding is very important to LULU’s business success. I’m just saying, they’re not real. I am suggesting that they are hiding/distracting us from reality. A reality that keeps us alienated from others, from our own selves.

I want to stop discussion getting trapped at the level of the brand and start talking about the companies themselves. If I want to know about LULU, this is what I would do. I’d go the stock exchanges their shares are listed on to see how the shares are doing. Then I’d read the latest annual report, especially the management discussion section. Then I’d read the management circular to see how much the tops execs are being compensated and to see how they have been performing in relation to their competitors.

It’s not as exciting as looking at branding. Ad campaigns and taglines and images and values and stories are just so engaging. They’re made to stir our emotions and devotions afterall. But. The brand is NOT real. We can’t forget that. We need to analyze the brand, yes, but also what it hides.

edit: it’s all yoga baby blog comments on LULU’s CEO of the year profile.

My tastes in art have always veered into the dark corners of the human psyche. I love tales that are perverse, gory, blasphemous, wicked, cerebral. My favourite film director at the moment is Catherine Breillat whose film A Ma Soeur! was banned in Ontario. Before that, it was Peter Greenaway, whose arguably most popular film, The Cook The Thief His Wife Her Lover, features a sadistic lout of a man whose actions lead to a spectacular revenge scene that involves cannibalism. In high school, I was a fangirl for stories like Ballard’s Crash and Battaile’s Story of the Eye. All these texts always seemed to me, to capture some truth about humanity and modernity that I wasn’t getting from mainstream society.

Another story I liked in high school was Dostoyevsky’s Notes from the Underground. It’s been a long time since I read it so my memory has probably coloured the main character with personal projections, but as I recall him, the Underground Man, he’s a miserable, vicious little guy. If there was ever a great example of self imposed suffering, Underground Man is it. His entire being is composed of defiance, of refusal, of a two year old’s first angry NO! and his perception is wholly based upon this ontological position of negation. What I loved about this character is how simultaneously petty and principled he is. He spends pages obsessing over a non-event (some guy brushes his shoulder in the street while walking the other way) and nursing this self perceived slight into a festering personal affront that he’s going to somehow avenge by finding the same guy and doing the same thing to him. Yes, he spends pages going on about how he’s gonna… bump the dude’s shoulder. It’s hilarious, right, but also deadly serious in its vindictiveness, a real vindictiveness that causes people to perpetuate cycles of affliction.

The thing is, the Underground Man is clearly driving himself crazy but his craziness is so familiar. Who hasn’t rebelled for the sake of rebellion? Who hasn’t found themselves unable to figure out what to do, except for knowing  that you’re not going to do that? And frankly, how many of us, when faced between the “right” choice* and the “wrong” choice, have done exactly the wrong thing, even as you’re harming yourself – and really fucking enjoyed it? And I mean, enjoyed being wrong to the hilt, lost in sensory damage, empty calories and carcinogens, pure meaningless distraction and arrogance, burning bridges, just doing it and doing it and doing it until you’re sick all over yourself. What a wonderfully twisted bunch we can be.

My first reaction to imagining a world without self deception was that we would lose all this rich art full of suffering and perversions and kinks. Which I don’t think is really possible. Not in an age of modernity anyway. Although who knows, maybe this whole capitalist-democratic-modern paradigm is in the final paroxysms of dying? I digress. So I started tracing that thought about losing self deception further and I think what bothered me was what bothered the Underground Man, that is, losing the ability and the desire to make the wrong choice. Without that, people would somehow become inhuman. That choice is such a precious thing, really. It’s a crossroads we stand at everyday – to act as a whole being and to treat others and ourselves as whole beings, or, to just not bother or, in more extreme situations to actively inflict harm and to like it. I mean, if there wasn’t an element of liking it, of really savouring the NO, why bother? What’s the point?

I spend a fair amount of time around self destructive people. I have a lot of patience for individuals expressing misogyny, racism, criminality and suchlike, esp if I can find that egalitarian one on one dyadic connection I’ve written about earlier on this blog. And at the end of the day, I see myself in these maladjusted people as much as anyone else I come into contact with. Or to be more precise, I see the potential for it. Why I have turned out the way I have is really beyond me. I may have put a lot of conscious effort into the whole process to becoming, but I must admit that ultimately, I haven’t a clue how it all works. All I know is that everyday, I stand at this crossroads with everyone else. And over and over again, we make choices.

*I am conflating for brevity’s sake, two “right” choices. The first “rightness” being choices that are constructed along modern, mechanistic, biopolitical lines (e.g. Radiohead’s Fitter Happier) and the “rightness” of moral behaviours.

Rachel Caldwell's Ocean Queen

Every sign has its stereotypes and misconceptions, but Pisces is a sign where the type doesn’t always fit well, especially with men. You know what type I’m talking about: the evasive, fickle, impressionable, hopeless new age space cadet who will lie straight to your face and is probably nursing an addiction of some kind. To be sure, there are some Pisces who fit the stereotype. But that kind of rigid thinking doesn’t work in Pisces-land.

Would it surprize you to learn that the late Steve Jobs, one of the most brilliant design innovators of our time, a man renowned as one of the world’s top business executives, famous for his intense and demanding leadership style, was a Pisces sun? Does this sound like someone unfocused, weak or out of touch with reality? Someone who doesn’t know anything about loyalty, commitment or power?

The first time I realized that the Pisces sun can make for an incredibly charismatic leader was when I learned one of the most driven girls in my school was a Pisces. It was a total WTF moment. She seemed nothing like the weak and effacing Pisces stereotype to me. She was competitive, suffered no fools, and always lead a team.

The thing you need to remember is that Pisces represents a permeable and fluid energy that can be channelled into a myriad of ways so that the placements of other planets will affect the expression of the Pisces energy. Pisces suns can be masterful adapters, soaking up influences like a sponge, making them formidable opponents. Who makes a good leader, fighter and strategist? Someone who is stubborn as a bulldog, narrowly focused and who single mindedly pursues their vision? Maybe. But what about someone who has no attachments, who is open to all angles of perception and is able to adapt accordingly? Brute strength, brute intellect, and bruteness overall, can only get you so far.

So when reading the chart of a Pisces sun or with strong Piscean signatures, consider certain placements, especially Saturn’s placement, the strength of Mars, and that of the ruling planet. Also consider which planets aspect Neptune and who is stronger. Let’s check out Steve Jobs’ chart (it has an AA Roden rating but do read this page regarding the accuracy of data – Jobs was adopted and is therefore, a complicated case).

Click image to enlarge

Firstly, the ruling planet, Mercury, is in scientist-inventor Aquarius (no surprize there), squaring heavyweight Saturn. (As an aside, here’s another so called “afflicted” Merc aspect that clearly does not indicate a weakened quality of mind.) Mars is dignified in Aries, with a badass trine to Pluto and forms a grand cardinal cross with Neptune, Jupiter/Uranus and Venus. In fact, Jobs has 6 planets in cardinal signs. Saturn aspects the hell out of a bunch of other planets. And yet, despite clearly being driven, Jobs’ life was heavily coloured by the drifting nature of the Pisces sun: dropping out of school, crashing in other people’s living rooms, visiting India in pursuit of spiritual enlightenment. Jobs notes, “Bill Gates’d be a broader guy if he had dropped acid once or gone off to an ashram when he was younger.”

My Pisces sun partner has Pluto conjunct his Scorpio ASC among other robust placements for key planets Mars (chart ruler) and Saturn. Far from the Pisces beta-male stereotype, he is an intimidating man with a commanding prescence, both physically and intellectually; men, even when older, physically larger or in a position of authority, instinctively defer to him, while women proposition him on a regular basis. He told me that even as a child, he was always the leader of the group. Yet his life path is very much characterized by the drift of Pisces. In his teens, he discovered his strategic mind possessed a natural business acumen, so he dropped out of high school to live the bling life much to the chagrin of his parents. But just like a Pisces, he abandonned that after reading philosophy. He quit business, sold his souped up car to amass a philosophy library, picked up ancient Greek, French and German and spent the next years of his life drifting through the world, some days flush with cash and others so broke he would sleep in the local parks and landromats of foreign countries like a displaced hobo.

You could easily mistake my partner’s drift for a lack of committment but it takes a different kind of committment to be able to leave behind your previous life to drink in something new. And in fact, with his Scorpio placements, he possesses a profound (Scorpio) loyalty that knows no bounds (Pisces). For underneath that scorpionic ferocity and fixity lie the sensitivity and openness of the twin fish, everywhere and nowhere at once. He’s a former boxer who cries when he reads poetry. He’s an ESL dropout who went on to receive acceptance letters from top ranking philosophy PhD programs in the English speaking world. Is that fickleness or evasiveness? Or is it just the vastness of the human condition slipping through our false boundaries?

Edward Blake Edwards

Was listening to a talk by Rob Burbea about metta practice, in which he dispels some common misunderstandings about metta. One of which is where metta is seen as a kind of “meditation lite” or even a remedial practice that one engages in when one cannot get a grip on the rigorousness of vipassana and insight. And he continues to describe how this kind of overlooking or even devaluing of metta was a part of meditation history in the west that caused an imbalance. Or, in the words of my sangha teacher, to only engage in vipassana, is to spend all this time cleaning and polishing the lens of your glasses, only to never put them on. Yet still, metta is sometimes thought by some of as a “baby” practice or at least one that is easier than vipassana.

Metta has never really been an easy practice for me. There is something very challenging to me about feeling out the boundaries of your own heart and moving through them, that is in some ways, more difficult than melting away the narrative of speaking mind that you know isn’t “real” anyway. Despite this, I did think of metta as easier. It’s not that I thought it was unimportant. One doesn’t practice meditation simply to be clear headed afterall; what use is clear perception if it cannot allow us to cultivate compassion, patience, joy, kindness and connectedness? But on the surface, from the perspective of immediacy, vipassana certainly seemed to require more effort. It was so obvious to me how it was a lot of hard work to constantly silence my mind.

Ultimately, it was prajna meditation that made me understand the depth of metta. I still remember my teacher describing prajna, in which we oscillated between vipassana and metta, with the abstract understanding that eventually we could do both at the same time. I just laughed inside (actually, I may have laughed aloud) because I found the idea utterly ludicrous. So ludicrous, that my approach to the practice was to accept that I would never experience whatever my teacher was going on about, but that was fine and one endeavours to continue a practice for the sake of trying alone. Because I couldn’t even grasp, on an intellectual level, how simultaneous metta-vipassana would work. He might as well have told me that we were working toward seated levitation.

Joy StClaire

Today, I really cannot conceive of vipassana without metta; it simply doesn’t make sense to me to have one without the other. Because you need to dissolve down the rigidity of your preconceptions first in order to facilitate the expansive movement of metta that is boundless. And that outward movement, that beautiful opening, that connectedness comes to facilitate the movement of dissolving. In this way, the two movements do become simultaneous, so that they come to amplify each other together; even if you are focusing on one, the other is kind of humming away in the background. And perhaps it was always like that, except I was unable to recognize it.

The interdependence of vipassana and metta showed me how the idea of metta being an easier, “baby” practice does not make any sense. If there is anything babyish about metta, it’s perhaps the ability to receive the way an infant receives love from its mother: without preconditions, expectations or attachments.

Anyways, Rob Burbea has offered a lot of talks about metta as well as related guided meditations and I highly recommend giving them a listen. Until the next post, <3

So I’m dedicating three posts to the water signs. Like many people, what I don’t have naturally in my chart, I instinctively seek from my environment. I hang with a lot of watery people and this series is about what I’ve learned from them. So it’s 100% applied astrology. It’s not about the water signs in and of themselves, but their expression in people. I’ll begin with Scorpio as the sun is currently transiting the sign.

Scorpio, by Abi Heyneke via Society6.com

COMING AROUND TO SCORPIO

Scorpio has a nasty reputation, arguably one of the worst of the zodiac. I’ll fess up and admit that my only water placements are in this sign. Yet there was a lot about Scorpio I didn’t relate to. I found the brooding and darkness unnecessary. The obsessiveness too narrowly focused. The mind and power games a waste of time, especially any notions of revenge or fucking around with people. The heartbroken, vengeful Scorpio always defied my understanding. My energy conserving Capricorn and carefree Sagittarius planets would kick in and I’d think, there are so many better things one could do with one’s time/energy than exact vengeance. I’d rather leave things up to “karma” (by which, I DON’T mean poetic justice or expecting bad things will happen to bad people. I mean the punishment for shitty behaviour is that one’s very being eventually becomes shitty).

But the closest people in my life have significant Scorpio placements. My sister, a Scorpio stellium. My partner, a Scorp ASC conjunct Pluto. One of my closest girlfriends and my only close male friend are also Scorpionic. So I’ve had a lot of time to observe Scorpio’s strengths up close.

First, the LOYALTY. Loyalty takes different forms, but for Scorpio that means going through hell for you, it means being willing to crawl through shit and broken glass on their knees for you without a second thought or without thinking they’re being melodramatic. It will take a lot of effort for you to gain the loyalty of a Scorpio, but once attained, it is fixed, concentrated and intense. You will never find a more devoted or committed friend or lover. It’s probably why the people closest to me are Scorpionic even if they aren’t the most fun or exciting people in my social network.

Secondly, the inability to let go of conflict and betrayal has its benefits. Unlike me, who simply forgives and walks away, those who keep themselves in those types of situations learn how to navigate in them. Scorpios are great STRATEGISTS. They have a natural talent for it to begin with: a unique ability to focus and obsess that non-Scorp planets don’t have. But those who have spent considerable amounts of time in certain situations have also honed their self preservation instincts into STRATEGY. There’s a militaristic aspect to it, and never forget that Scorps are ruled by Mars. I often turn to my Scorpio peeps for advice about how to handle other people. Despite my love for psychology, I am simply too laissez faire when it comes to emotions and human interaction. Sometimes I wish my Scorp planets gave me more ability in this area because strategy doesn’t mean just getting what you want or screwing with people. It also means the ability to motivate and empower people, to get a group to gel as a team, etc.

Finally, it’s obvious but the world needs the emotional DEPTH and focus Scorpio people bring. I just loved our recent new moon in Scorpio which hit off some important points in my chart; I had so many heartfelt conversations about difficult topics and shared things normally left unsaid. If you don’t have this in your life, your life can lack a certain emotional dimension. Emotional exchanges like this nourish your being.

John Tibbott via society6.com

CARE OF YOUR SCORPIO

People who have strong Scorpio signatures take trust and loyalty very seriously. Even if they are flippant on the surface, they are still probing. For most people there is a kind of passive, organic way in which trust is naturally assumed at first and then it deepens incrementally over time. For Scorpio, it doesn’t work like that. Either s/he’s in or out. You might ask, why does it have to be so black and white? But I kind of get this. I don’t consider anyone a “true friend” unless 1) we have resolved a serious personal conflict together and 2) s/he has pulled through for me in a time of difficulty. I think we all can think like this to a degree. Now the difference is that while most of us are content to go years without a friendship reaching the “true” level, Scorpio’s just not as interested. They don’t trust in increments the way other people can. They’re not going to open up and make themselves completely vulnerable.

So this extremity makes Scorpios more prone to things like hurting you to see if you’ll stick around, snooping on you or all kinds of destructive bullshit. Some can even become detached enough to make a game of it with the mentality that they play to win. I’m not saying other signs don’t do this, but Scorpios are more inclined. To avoid this as much as possible, you need to go out of your way and invest some extra effort with your Scorpio to make sure s/he understands that you are just as committed as s/he is. You need to prove yourself with actions and realize that expectations may be very high. You also need to decide how much of this testing you are willing to tolerate and realize that there are some Scorpios who won’t trust you no matter what you do. Remember that for a Scorpio, the motivation is a matter of self preservation because it’s that serious. Never take their terror of being hurt, humiliated or heartbroken lightly.

You might be asking yourself, this sounds like a lot of work so why should I bother? Let me tell you about how one of my closest friendships began. He has some Scorpio planets aspecting sun and moon, Pluto opposite sun. First, he was prickly to strangers and didn’t bother with small talk – test #1. Then he didn’t return my calls – test #2. Unsurprizingly, this man doesn’t have many friends. I had to call over and over, leaving messages for about a goddamn month. I wouldn’t normally put this kind of effort into someone who attracts me romantically, nevermind someone I just want to be friends with. But I just knew he needed the extra assurance that I was serious about being friends. Years later, when I was going through a rough patch, he was the only one who I felt accepted the depth of my grief. He saw me at my absolute worst, and never judged me for it. Seems like a lot to gain considering all I had to do was leave a bunch of voicemail messages, if you ask me.

Up next: Pisces as formidable leaders. I’m not kidding!

A lot of digital ink has virtually spilled online about the horrors of the Saturn return. I want to share a different take on the transit because there is far too much writing out there that I could not relate to and that, as an astrologer, did not match the experiences of the people I was reading charts for. (On that note, for a great series of videos about the Saturn Return that isn’t all sturm und drang, check out ElsaElsa’s blog.)

My return began with dreams of crossing a long river. Debating pragmatically what to take with me and what to leave behind. Knowing I had to swim alone.

Then, one by one, all the areas of my life, many of which had always seemed so difficult to consolidate, which were always in a constant state of flux, began to fall into place. I have received in a capacity that I have laboured so hard for, but would never have dared to ask for. People kept telling me, “I’m so happy for you; you deserve it.” All this stuff though, is really just impermanent stuff. The process of getting here however, taught me something very important.

Seven years ago, when I could not have envisioned any of this, I recognized that the part of the world that I interacted with was my kingdom, a reward. The root of the word re-ward means to guard again. A reward is a responsibility you’ve earned. But I was impatient. I was resentful of this land that was barren and unyielding and dry. What I didn’t understand was that I was trying to twist that kingdom into the image I wanted it to be, and to bear the fruits I was already well familiar with.

Sometime in the winter, feeling displaced in a tiny aboriginal community 7000 km away from my urban home and 7000 km even further from my partner, I drew a crow with a scavenged eye hanging from its beak and wrote, it is time to listen. Not to my ideas about god, or who I was or what my life was supposed to be. And not to other people’s expectations and projections. In the nights, the sky of this raw and beautiful land would split open to infinity and I let it pour right into me, make me so small. In this void, removed from any familiar context, I realized that this earthly kingdom was more incredible than I could have imagined. My life wasn’t a dutiful obligation to fulfill, it was a great privilege. A privilege you are supposed to share, to keep passing along.

With Saturn’s return, I had a powerful sense of looking back on the past seven years and realizing that I respect myself. Recognizing all the decisions I made, even the bad ones, the stupid ones, the careless ones, the ones that I regret, and knowing that I made them and they’re mine. There’s a sense of feeling more concrete, of being more settled in one’s skin.

It’s not happiness, it’s not pride, it’s not confidence. It’s not something you can buy, it’s not even something you can make although you certainly do have to work hard if it’s going to happen. It’s something that only comes with time and experience. It’s something that nothing and no one can ever take away from you. And you can look in the mirror and finally see in your face that you are your own person.

I’ll end this post with an apt little quote by Simon Doonan:

Your 30th birthday is an important landmark. You are now ready, after ten years of dicking around with your personal style, to select a signature lipstick. This is the lipstick that will get you through thick and thin. When you are screaming for mercy during childbirth, this is the lipstick that will be smeared across your face. When you kiss the corpses of your dead parents, this is the color that will stain their cheeks… This is the lipstick that will flow into the fine lines and wrinkles around your mouth as the death rattle grips your throat. Choosing this lipstick is a momentous task. In order to complete it, you need to be slightly drunk.

Stay tuned for part two of Saturn Return redux…