Yin Yang XX
Valley of the know it all
The story begins in a backyard, fenced, sister and brother playing with a hose, spraying water and catching the light. The sister liked it so much that she wouldn’t give her brother a chance.
“Give it to me! It’s my turn!” he said.
On and on it went, until they heard laughter. A girl was looking at them over the fence, having a good laugh. “Give it to me!” she mocked. “It’s my turn!” She caught the sister’s eye as if to say, join me. “Give it to me! It’s my turn!”
The sister joined in the laughter and her brother ran indoors. Left alone and confused, the sister aimed the hose at the girl looking over the fence, but the girl wasn’t there anymore. She dropped the hose and ran after her brother.
Now imagine variations of this scenario happening all over the valley, a boy or a girl suddenly appears, looking over a fence or through an open window, a person that came to be known as the know it all. That’s how the valley got its name.
“That’s awful. I thought it was filled with haughty scholars like my parents. I don’t think I want to live here.”
“When did you move?”
“A week ago. I have to warn my parents. Do you think it’s because of a magic spell?”
“The valley attracts scholars interested in solving the mystery of the know it all. I’ve never heard anyone mention a magic spell. I’ve heard many theories, but never a magic spell.”
“What theories have you heard?”
“You should join the king’s daughter’s club to keep up with the latest.”
“Who’s the king’s daughter?”
“Lara. C’mon, I’ll introduce you.”
They were between classes at the academy, and all the students were hanging out in the inner courtyard, a rectangular field surrounded by buildings that made up the academy.
Lara was talking to a group sitting in a circle.
“That’s her,” said Yayua.
“The one talking? What’s she studying?”
“Childhood education.”
“It’s all outward in the beginning, isn’t it?” Lara was saying. “The baby crying out and the parents trying to figure out if it’s hungry, if it’s cold, if it’s sick-“
“Reaching for the sun,” said Tigist. “Reaching for life.”
Lara looked up to see Tigist standing beside Yayua, and Yayua introduced them.
“You could also interpret it as the beginning of ego formation,” said Anne who was in the circle.
“Of course,” said Lara. “The ego.”
“That makes more sense,” said Tigist.
The circle opened to include Yayua and Tigist.
“Remember they used to tell us that storks brought us? They picked us up from a mysterious lake and brought us to our parents.”
“Dropped us down the chimney!”
“The chimney the birth canal.”
“Birth of the ego.”
by Tarsila do Amaral
Chimes broke the circle up and they all walked in different directions, except Lara, Yayua and Tigist who walked together for a while.
“How do you like the valley so far?”
“I liked it fine until Yayua told me about the apparitions of the know it all. Have you ever experienced one?”
Lara put a finger to her lips.
“It’s taboo to ask,” said Yayua. “We don’t want scholars experimenting on us. When word first got out of what occurs here, scholars came with the intention of psychoanalyzing us, were we in our right mind sort of thing, did we have a tendency to make stories up. Kind of what happened to the shepherd children who said the Virgin had appeared to them. The king read about all the tests they were put through, lie detecting machines, hypnosis and what not, and he declared it taboo to ask anyone in the valley if they had encountered the know it all.”
“So what do scholars come for?”
“They study the culture, the myths, the terrain, the properties of plants, maybe we eat something that gives us hallucinations.”
“Is it your parents who’ve come to study our lake? A couple of scholars applied to study the water in our lake.”
“That could be them.”
“Ultimately, I believe they come here hoping to have a firsthand experience,” said Yayua.
“They’re not getting it, are they?” said Tigist.
“No, they’re not,” said Lara. “We better hurry-“
“It was nice meeting you-“
“Why don’t you come over to the castle for dinner?”
“Sure, I’d love to. Where’s the castle?”
“I’ll bring her,” said Yayua.
The sister entered her brother’s bedroom. He was lying in bed, sobbing.
“Bubs?”
“Go away. I hate you.”
She came in, anyway, and lay down beside him.
“I’m sorry, Bubs. I’m really, really sorry.”
“I think Anne gave us the key, dad, when she said it’s about the development of the ego. Having an ego is a healthy thing, but egos can get out of hand.”
“True.”
“I have a feeling you’re about to give the know it all a function.”
“Yes! What if the know it all’s function is to curb the ego, you know, keep it in check?”
“But the example Yayua gave me was of children playing in their backyard. It felt cruel, more like an interruption of ego development.”
“What if it stirred the beginning of an interior life? Ego development has to be followed by the development of an interior life,” said the queen consort.
“My question is, why do we have a know it all interfering in the development of our children?” said the king. “That’s my question. That’s the reason why we have all these scholars poking their noses in our affairs.”
“Could the valley be under a spell? Or maybe a curse-“
“It’s the second time you mention that.”
“Well, what’s the latest theory? Lara, Yayua told me you have a club that keeps up with the latest.”
“It has to do with the goddess Hera,” said Lara.
The queen stood up and whispered a few words to the king. “Carry on without me,” she said. “I have some matters to attend to.”
“What about the goddess?” the king prodded.
“The goddess Hera and her peacock eyes, eyes that once belonged to Argus Panoptes. She sends them here and there to spy for her, and one of them is always in charge of spying on her husband. The theory is that an eye may have ended up in our valley somehow-“
The king laughed.
Lara covered his mouth, “Don’t laugh, dad.”
“Okay, okay, I won’t. I always forget who your mother named you after.”
Tigist looked at the queen’s empty chair and then at the door. The queen was still in the dining room, standing by the door. Their eyes met briefly before she left, closing the door soundlessly.
When Tigist returned her eyes to the table, Lara looked at her and said, “She is not my mother.” She didn’t offer more and Tigist was afraid to ask for more, remembering the taboo.
“Are there any stories to back up the theory?” said Yayua. “Any stories about the adventures of a renegade eye?”
“No,” said Lara. “It’s based on a scholar’s personal experience. She’s a native of the valley-“
The king objected, “Did she-“
“No, dad, she didn’t reveal any details. She just described the experience as night breaking into day. But now we have the word ego, and night breaking into ego makes more sense because it’s personal, and it happens in an intimate setting, home, where you least expect to be watched.”
“We could take the word to her and see what she thinks. You said she lives in the valley.”
“But it doesn’t solve the problem,” said the king.
“How far is Embrun?” said Tigist.
“Embrun? Why Embrun?” said the king. “Wait a minute, wait a minute. Of course Embrun, of course. What’s an academician going to do if one of Hera’s eyes is roaming the valley? But the great Op-Pollo may know what to do. You should go to his Temple and see the Oracle.”
“Brilliant idea,” said Yayua.
“I agree,” said Lara, “but I still want us to go see Tarsila, the woman who came up with the theory of Hera’s eye.”
“Do that tomorrow,” said the king. “We need a day to send word of your arrival to the Temple Attendant. We’ll send messengers on horseback, but the three of you, as querents, will have to walk the pilgrim road. The royal geographer will draw you a map.”
“Thank you for bringing me this word, said Tarsila. It does make more sense, but I was afraid to use it because it takes us into the territory of Leto’s children. Their arrows can deflate an ego.”
“You don’t think they’re involved?”
“I think the know it all is some kind of punishment.”
“A curse!”
“When Hera surprised Jupiter with Io, Jupiter turned Io into a cow, and Hera had Argus Panoptes guard the cow.”
“That’s nothing like what happens here.”
“No, but the children are being watched, and when someone has an outburst, the know it all appears.”
“The mockery feels like arrows-“
“And for a moment there’s betrayal, when the sister joined the know it all in the example Yayua gave me.”
“But it begins with an eye,” said Tarsila, taking a marble from a glass bowl and rolling it on the wooden floor.
They watched the marble roll until it hit the wall.
“What about Mercury?”
“He killed Argus, and Hera sent a gadfly to torment the cow. If it wasn’t Argus watching her, it was the gadfly following her. If this is a curse, it will be a difficult one to break.”
“We’re going to walk the pilgrim road.”
“When do you leave?”
“Tomorrow.”
“Take this with you,” said Tarsila, reaching for an object on a shelf and giving it to Yayua. It will come in handy in an emergency.
“What did she give you?”
“An egg,” said Yayua, holding it up.
“An egg! What if it cracks?”
“It feels sturdier than a chicken’s egg,” said Yayua, dropping it into his coat pocket.
“Tigist, did you tell your parents?”
“They’re okay with it.”
“Mine are okay, too,” said Yayua. “After all, we’re accompanying the princess.”
In this moment of lightness, Tigist took a chance and said, “Lara, would I transgress if I asked you the meaning of your name?”
“No,” said Lara. “I like to tell the story. I am named after the naiad Lara who couldn’t hold her tongue. She told Hera that Jupiter was in love with Juturna, a naiad like herself, and for telling on him, Jupiter cut her tongue off and told Mercury to take her to the marshes of the underworld. On the way there, they say Lara taught Mercury the art of silence, the kind of silence that inspires a writer or a painter.
“Lara became the goddess Muta, and people pray to her to seal up hostile mouths and unfriendly tongues. The ritual is to put seven black beans in your mouth and twirl them around with your tongue, and while you do this, you take needle and thread and sew the mouth of a fish shut.
“My mother named me after her to protect me from gossip, princess that I am and the next in line.”
They had reached the castle.
“Come inside,” she said. “I want to show you something.”
She took them to a gallery and turned on the lights, “Look how Hendrick Goltzius painted her.”
They moved up close to see her better.
“It would take some time to get used to her,” said Yayua.
Lara laughed, “My mother said she would be my protector and my teacher.”
“Did your mom-“
“She passed away. You know, sometimes I think that my stepmother may have said unfriendly things about me to my dad when they got married, because for a long time, he was aloof toward me. Things are back to normal now, but when Tarsila said that the know it all could be some kind of punishment, I thought maybe- But it would be self-centred of me to think it.”
“You thought maybe Hera had punished her.”
“Yes, because Lara came to Hera’s aid.”
“But she’s punished the whole valley.”
“Yes, but it’s affecting their marriage.”
“When did the know it all make its first appearance?”
“When they got married.”
“What was the valley called before?”
“Valley of the stamp.”
“We need the heavens to help us with this.”
“On that note, I should go home and pack.”
“Me too.”
“See you tomorrow.”
That evening the queen knocked on Lara’s door.
“Lara?”
“Come in, Maria.”
Lara was reading in bed.
“Can we talk?”
“Sure,” said Lara, patting the bed.
Maria sat down. “What are you reading?”
“A book for one of my classes,” said Lara, showing her the book.
“Lara, I heard you talking to your friends in the gallery today.”
“I-“
“No, please, let me explain. I owe you an explanation. When I first met you and saw you and your dad together, I felt you were too old to be needing him so much, his attention, his proximity. You would lie down next to him to read, and I would be sitting across from you thinking that it should be me lying down next to him. I didn’t consider that you had lost your mom. I didn’t consider that you and your dad only had each other after she passed away.
“I did tell your dad that he needed to create some distance between you. I told him pretty much what I said at table yesterday, that you needed to work on your interior life, find comfort in yourself.”
Lara was crying and Maria got up and asked if she could sit next to her. “May I, Lara?”
Lara nodded, and Maria sat next to her and put her arm around her.
“Then I did something I regret,” she continued. “I took a peacock feather and prayed to the goddess Hera, queen of heaven, protector of marriage and family. I asked that she make you more independent. I wasn’t willing to wait for you to develop naturally, even though your dad had asked me to give it time.
“The day after was the day you and I encountered the know it all. I asked you to take your books to your room, go study in your room, and you wouldn’t, and we heard the mocking voice of the boy looking in through the window, and you went running to your room.
“The guards couldn’t find him, no trace of the intruder, and then we heard it happening all over the valley.
“I’ve caused it, Lara. I want you to take the peacock feather with you to the Temple-“
“Come with us, Maria.”
“No, I can’t.”
Lara held her hand. “You must come with us.”
“I don’t want your dad to know. He blames me already.”
“I will tell him that I want you to come.”
They left early in the morning.
The queen had cut her hair, and in simple clothes, even the guards didn’t recognise her.
“I thought there were only three, your majesty.”
“Her friend Anne decided to join at the last minute.”
“And the queen?”
“In bed with a cold.”
“Right, sire. Should I send word to El Cristo Negro?”
“Do you think it’s necessary?”
“Seeing that her majesty and the next in line are headed toward hostile territory-“
“How is the pilgrim road hostile?”
“Anything beyond our borders, beyond our reach is hostile, your majesty.”
“Yves, you haven’t been able to catch a hostile within our borders!”
“That hurt, your majesty.”
“I’m sorry.”
“The latest is that one of Hera’s eyes is on the loose.”
“Send him word.”
The journey to Embrun began with Maria telling Yayua and Tigist that she had heard Lara talking to them in the gallery. She told them what she had told Lara, but this time it was her who cried, because she had come to realise how much she loved her stepdaughter, and told her that she loved her.
They could still see the moon in the sky, a growing crescent.
“We’ll probably be back with the full moon.”
“Hopefully we’ll have an answer, an antidote.”
“I’ve been thinking about this whole idea of the ego,” said Lara. “I mean, it’s something people have been talking about since ancient times. We can say whatever we want about it, we can postulate our own theories, and nobody can ever really say that we’re wrong or right.”
“They can disagree with you, but you’re right, they wouldn’t be able to prove you wrong because it’s not a physical thing,” said Tigist.
“Okay, so I want to postulate my own theory,” said Yayua.
“Go for it.”
“Like Lara said, it’s all outward in the beginning, all about ego formation, but the moment you put a breast to the child, it’s inward. In other words, the breast makes room for an interior life, a soul let’s call it, in the midst of ego formation.”
“I like that. I actually got a visual of that. A golden disk beginning to crack in the middle.”
“I see it,” said Maria. “Keep going.”
“Okay, so we’re with Hera at this point. But now let’s say that the golden disk has grown too big and we reach the territory of Leto’s children.”
“They chip the edges with their arrows.”
“Correct, and they draw attention inward.”
“Could all of this be happening simultaneously?”
“Sure, why not?”
“So what happens when we reach the territory of the fish?”
“That’s where we’re going, isn’t it?”
“What do you mean?”
“I think he means the Temple of Op-Pollo.”
“Specifically the site of the high priestess, the pythia who speaks his words.”
“This is my theory,” said Maria. “Whatever they burn in the pit beneath her makes her golden disk translucent.”
“Your majesty.”
“El Cristo. Good to see you, my friend.”
“I heard about the eye.”
“Yes, but there’s more to it than spying.”
“You know Hera always calls for help. Who do you think answered her call?”
“Leto’s children for sure.”
“I hope her apparitions aren’t too monstrous.”
“They’re not. She’s targeting children.”
“What’s happening to the children?”
“Nothing’s happening to the children.”
“How are the stamp contests going?”
“We have them all the time. Collect 5 stamps for a toy car, 10 for a doll, 20 for a puppy. They’re very successful.”
“I meant the contests your father used to have, where the winner’s work of art was turned into a stamp. Your valley’s known for its artists. Didn’t you win one of the contests?”
“I did. It feels like a long time ago. It was a long time ago. The subject was storks delivering babies, but I did something different. It’s in the gallery.”
They went to see it.
The mysterious lake by Adrienne Ball-Demont
“It’s exquisite, your majesty. How did you come up with the idea?”
“I read an old folktale. I think it was French.”
“I would never tire of looking at it.”
“El Cristo, I think I’ve been neglecting the essence of my valley.”
“It’s never too late, your majesty.”
They made their way out, and before the king turned the lights off, El Cristo pointed at Hendrick Goltzius’ painting. “Do you think he answered her call?”
The king looked at Mercury. Behind him was the one his daughter was named after, La Muta. “Yes,” he said.
“Yves told me that her majesty and Lara went to see the Oracle. I advised him to put guards in disguise on the pilgrim road and around the Temple.”
“It’s being done as we speak.”
by Tarsila do Amaral
“I didn’t expect it to be so crowded,” said Maria. “Stay close.”
“Look over there, a stage.”
“Today we celebrate the marriage of Psyche and Eros,” said a man wearing a costume.
“You must be Jupiter.”
“I am,” he said. “See the wire above you?”
They looked up and saw the wire.
“I’m going to be asking everyone to move away from it pretty soon. Mercury will be zip lining down to the stage, heralding the marriage.”
“How cool.”
Something caught Yayua’s eyes. “I want to go see that trinket man. He’s selling eggs, the same kind that Tarsila gave me.”
They went to see him together.
“What caught your eye, young man?” said the trinket man.
“Those eggs. What exactly are they?”
The trinket man took one and said, “This is the egg of Eros.” His voice stilled the noise around them, and they heard the sound of emptiness and his words, “In the beginning there was only Night and Chaos, and from Night and Chaos, Eros was born.”
He handed the egg to Maria and the crowd came back to life.
Maria held the egg, looking at the trinket man.
“What do you do with it?” said Yayua.
“It’s a symbol of what our soul longs for, union with Eros,” he said, his body beginning to shimmer, his cart losing substance, his voice becoming a whisper. “Hera can tell us where to find him. The moon can tell us where to find him. The key is to be satisfied with the search.”
He vanished.
Maria fell to the ground, and Lara, Yayua and Tigist knelt down around her.
“Op-Shiva,” she said.
They made a still life in the middle of the crowd, until Jupiter came to check on them. “Are you okay? Is the lady okay? I’ve brought you some water.”
“You are kind. Thank you. We’re okay.”
“Look up!”
Mercury zip lined to the stage, “Come and witness the nuptials of Psyche and Eros!”
In the castle, a carrier pigeon brought a message.
“They’re okay, your majesty.”
On the pilgrim road, the four querents waved to Jupiter and continued on their way.
“I hope we make it to Embrun before sundown,” said Maria.
“I just thought of the saying: Whenever you’re down, reach for the sun,” said Yayua.
“It’s what brings us joy,” said Maria.
“If the moon does the work of Eros and nourishes the soul, what does the sun do?” said Lara.
“While the work of Eros goes on in the background, the sun shows results,” said Tigist. “It’s what we achieve doing the work of Eros, what we bring to life, and it nourishes us, it nourishes the ego.”
“Is that your theory?”
“It’s the beginning of my theory.”
“Give an example.”
“Okay, well, let’s say the man we just met, dressed as Jupiter. Let’s say his search for Eros makes him curious about different cultures and gods, and he falls in love with the Olympians, and he studies them and becomes a teacher. He teaches his students about the Olympians, and they decide to put on a show for the community, and they choose the union of Psyche and Eros as the subject. Parents get involved and make the costumes and prepare a potluck, a heavenly feast after the show. If all goes well, there is a feeling of satisfaction, and the pride and joy that comes with a work well done. A reason to live.”
“What about sex?” said Lara.
“It gives us a taste of what it will be like to meet Eros,” said Tigist.
“It’s the physical manifestation of the union of Psyche and Eros,” said Yayua.
“The search for Eros may very well be the driving force behind sex,” said Maria. “To be completed by another, made whole by another-“
The earth trembled.
“Did you feel that? The earth just trembled.”
“I didn’t feel anything.”
“I did.”
“Me too.”
“What about the idea of the Annunciation?” said Lara. “I mean, that’s real Eros coming to earth and uniting with a real person.”
“It gives Jesus a higher status because he wasn’t made with the sperm of a man.”
“It gives the Virgin a higher status.”
“She didn’t feel anything, though. She had to be told about it.”
“An angel came to tell her.”
“An angel from the sky,” said Maria, looking up. “Something just flashed by.”
“What was it?”
“I don’t know. A bird maybe.”
“Look, there’s Embrun.”
“Let me get the directions to the Inn,” said Yayua, pulling the map out of his pack. “Maria, do you still have the egg?”
“I have it in my pocket. Do you want it, Yayua?”
“No, just checking. I have mine in my pocket too.”
They following morning, they got ready and met in the dining room for breakfast.
“What’s in the envelope, Maria?”
Maris stroked the envelope. “The peacock feather.”
“Are you going to the Temple?” said a woman sitting at the table next to them.
“We are,” said Maria.
“I ask because I just saw the Temple Attendant walk by.” She pointed at the window. “If you leave soon, you will be first in line.”
“Thank you kindly.”
“You’re welcome,” she said, going back to her book.
They finished their breakfast in silence and left.
“I’m not sure how I’m going to word this,” said Maria, holding the envelope tight.
They reached the temple steps and walked up to the door, and the Temple Attendant received them.
“Greetings,” he said.
“Greetings, said Maria.
“Have you come to receive an oracle?”
“Yes, we have come to seek the advice of the great Op-Pollo.”
They followed him inside.
“The high priestess is in meditation. You may speak to her when she opens her eyes.”
The high priestess sat on a tripod chair above a pit of smoke that rose to envelop her. They knelt down in front of her and the Temple Attendant stood beside them.
The high priestess opened her eyes.
“Greetings, high priestess,” said Maria, holding the feather in her hand. “To this feather I once prayed, to this feather that is the symbol of the goddess Hera.”
She couldn’t go on and Tigist took over. “The lady prayed to the goddess and the goddess answered her prayer. She sent an eye to watch over the lady’s valley. The lady would now like to return the eye to the goddess and thank her for the wisdom gained.”
The priestess nodded and began to speak, and the words that came out of her mouth sounded like the chitter-chatter chirping sounds of little animals.
The querents looked at her in utter perplexity, until she was silent and closed her eyes.
“We thank the high priestess,” said the Temple Attendant
“Thank you, high priestess,” said Maria, kissing the ground in front of her.
The others did the same.
They followed the Temple Attendant to the ante chamber. He told Maria to walk away from the Temple holding the feather to the sky.
Maria walked away holding the feather up, and the others walked behind her.
“The bird I saw yesterday,” said Maria, pointing with the feather.
“It’s coming closer. Maybe it’s coming to take the feather from you.”
“That’s a pretty big bird-“
“Is it a woodpecker?”
“That’s not a bird. It’s- it’s-“
Op-Maul, the god of war, swooped down from the sky, scooped Maria into his net, and flew back up.
“What just happened!”
“Maria!”
“Maria!”
The clouds opened up, and the god of war flew into the golden light, with Maria holding the net with one arm and the other extending the feather to the heavenly abyss.
“Maria! No!”
“Maria! Come back! Mom! Mom! Come back!”
“Yayua! Break the egg! Break it!”
Yayua took the egg from his pocket and smashed it on the ground
Maria let the feather go, and the golden light swallowed it. She took the egg from her pocket and held it. “Mighty god of war, please take me back.”
“Haha!” he said, swinging her up in the air and catching her.
She held the egg and tumbled around in the net. “Mighty god! Be careful with the egg!”
“Haha!” he said, swinging her up again.
“Caw!”
A crow came to perch on the rim of the net, and the god of war descended.
Lara, Yayua and Tigist lowered their eyes in his presence, at his terrifying magnificence, and helped Maria out of the net.
When they looked up, the god of war was gone.
Hera received the feather and called the eye back, but the eye did not come back. She conferred with Leto’s children and Mercury of the goddess Muta.
“We gave the eye too much power. He won’t respond to me.”
“He may just enjoy being on earth,” said Op-Maul, returning from his mission. “There’s nothing like the gravity on earth. To feel the weight of my footsteps on earth always gives me immense pleasure.”
Jupiter appeared, lying on a cloud, one of Hera’s eyes camouflaged in the cloud’s fluffiness. “Do you have a renegade, darling?”
“I may,” she said.
“What if ill has come to it?” said Op-Pollo. “When the high priestess spoke my words to the querents who returned the feather, she chattered away like a chipmunk. At the time, I thought she had inhaled too much incense, but in hindsight, it may have been interference, someone sending an S.O.S.”
“I wonder if the Temple Attendant understood it,” said Mercury.
“When was the last time the eye reported back to you, Hera?” said Themis, passing by and overhearing the conversation.
“I must confess, I don’t remember. I sent it to the valley of the stamp so long ago-“
A stork brought her a child to feed and she put the child to her breast.
“I sent it years ago,” she continued, melodious, caressing the child she held. “It was taking them so long to gain wisdom that I grew bored. I must say I neglected the valley and left the eye to its own devices.”
Jupiter looked at her tenderly, breastfeeding the child. All the gods did, as she tended to new life.
When the child was satiated, Op-Maul whispered into its ear, “I will watch you take your first steps.” Then the stork carried the child away.
“The valley is now called the valley of the know it all,” said Themis.
“Named after a renegade eye,” said Jupiter.
“I’ll catch him,” said Op-Maul.
“Not without me,” said Op-Shiva.
“Or me,” said Op-Pollo.
The Temple Attendant lowered his eyes too. He waited on the temple steps, until he heard the querents walk by. They had to walk by the Temple to reach the Inn.
“My lady,” he said.
“Yes?” said Maria, still trembling, holding the egg and being held by the others.
“The message I gave you was the first part of the message, the words of the great Op-Pollo.”
“I don’t understand.”
“There was a second part to the message, or should I say, simultaneous to the words of Op-Pollo. Little animals asking for help. El Cuco, they said, El Cuco.”
“That’s what the children of our valley call the sudden apparition of a boy or a girl.”
“El Cuco is causing havoc, said the little animals. He’s disturbing the natural rhythms.”
“The problem may be solved now that I returned the feather.”
“We won’t know for sure until we get back,” said Lara, looking in the direction of the pilgrim road and the valley, valley of the stamp, valley of the know it all, where the king prepared an announcement with the help of El Cristo.
“I can’t say that I’ve dishonoured my father-“
“Begin with his memory, in memory of my father.”
“People of the valley of the stamp, today I remember my father from whom I inherited this valley, a valley known for its artists. We receive commissions from all around the world to create postage stamps: commemorative stamps, celebratory stamps, stamps that highlight an achievement that a valley is proud of.
“In memory of my father, I would like to announce an art competition open to the valley’s school children-“
“Honour the goddess.”
“The theme will be the goddess Hera and her sacred bird, the peacock. The latest theory is that one of her peacock eyes escaped to our valley and lives among us, a renegade. Where would we find it? Where does it hide? How would we catch it without bringing it harm? And how would we return it to Hera, goddess who breastfeeds every child? Use your imagination, children of the valley. Every art work will be on display in the schools, and the children will choose one from each school for a book of stamps-“
“Ask them what the title of the art competition should be.”
“Children, what should we call the art competition? What title should we give it?”
“The hunt for Hera’s eye!”
“Begone know it all!”
“Children to the rescue!”
“Op-Maul to the rescue!”
“Shh” said the parents.
“Look! Storks!”
“Maybe the storks know where the eye is!”
“Follow the storks!”
Children dragged their parents to follow the storks and the crowd dispersed.
“What are they?”
“Storks,” said a man driving a carriage. He stopped beside the querents returning from Embrun. “Would you like a ride?”
“Actually, we would,” said Maria.
“Where are you headed?”
“Valley of the stamp.”
They got into the carriage and the man drove on. “The king of the valley announced an art competition yesterday,” he said. “It’s for the children. He has them out exploring, finding inspiration.”
“What’s the theme?”
“An eye gone astray, one of Hera’s peacock eyes. It seems it’s been causing the valley some trouble, making sudden appearances. They’ve doubled up recently. Ten appearances last night alone.”
“Mercury put those eyes to sleep telling them stories,” said Yayua.
“Some have him playing the flute,” said the man.
“How do you know so much about the valley?” said Maria.
“I took the king to Embrun this morning. The guard Yves wouldn’t let him walk the pilgrim road. The king took an offering for the goddess, a painting of a mysterious lake. I couldn’t take my eyes off it, it was so beautiful. I’m meant to drive them back tomorrow.”
“Stop the carriage, please.” said Maria.
“Have I offended you, My Lady?”
“No, no. Stop the carriage, please. I need you to do something for me.”
The man dismounted and opened the carriage door.
Maria got out and took the egg of Eros from her pocket. “You must take this to the king.”
“I’m just a driver, My Lady. He may not see me.”
“Tell him his wife Maria and his daughter Lara asked you to deliver this egg to him. Tell him that he must hold it at all times. Be swift.”
“We can go with him, Maria. Two of us can go-“
But the man turned the carriage around and was swift.
“I couldn’t go back,” said Maria. “I felt like it should have ended with the return of the feather.”
“Maybe dad felt responsible too and wanted to do his part,” said Lara. “I bet you he left El Cristo Negro at the helm.”
El Cristo Negro greeted them at the entrance to the valley.
“Maria,” he said. She had once asked him to call her by her first name and so he did. “The king and Yves rode to Embrun this morning. The king took an offering for the goddess.”
“We know. We met the carriage man who took them.”
“What carriage man?”
Maria looked at his confusion and understood that she had returned the egg of Eros to the one who gave it to her. They all understood it. The king was in the hands of forces that she had no control over.
The king and Yves knelt down in front of the high priestess.
When the high priestess opened her eyes, the king said, “Greetings high priestess, she who speaks the words of the great Op-Pollo. I have come with an offering for the goddess Hera.”
Yves waited for the king to say more, and when he didn’t, he took over. “The king’s valley is experiencing a hostile situation, a know it all that we haven’t been able to catch. Could the great Op-Pollo give us clues on how to catch it. Better yet, precise instructions on how to catch it and dispose of it, or return it to its rightful place would be greatly appreciated.”
Once again, chirping sounds came out of the priestess’ mouth, and before the king and Yves could react in any way, the priestess was silent and closed her eyes.
They thanked her and followed the Temple Attendant to the ante chamber. “She said, after the music, go fishing. Take the first fish you catch to the castle and perform the rites of Lara.”
“After what music?”
“Those were her words. Also, take the painting back to the gallery, to remember.”
The king took the painting and they walked back to their horses. “Yves, don’t you dare laugh, and don’t let me laugh either.”
They rode back.
The valley was sleeping when they arrived and they bid each other good night.
“We’ll figure it out in the morning.”
In the morning, they woke up to music. Music filled the air and the whole valley went outside to see where it came from. Storks stood on chimneys and crows danced in the sky.
“It’s coming from above.”
“Heavenly music.”
“Op-Pollo must be playing his lyre.”
“He’s playing lullabies.”
“He’s lulling the eye to sleep.”
The eye fell asleep and rolled into the river.
The music grew faint, and the king and Yves searched for each other and found each other. Time to go fishing.
“Where are you going?” said Maria.
“How was Embrun?” said El Cristo.
“Wait for us in the castle! Lara too!”
The king and Yves went fishing and brought the first fish they caught to the castle.
Maria, Lara, Yayua, Tigist and El Cristo were waiting for them.
“Let’s go to the kitchen,” said the king. “The high priestess said that after the music, we should go fishing, and to the first fish we caught, we should perform the rites of Lara.”
Lara opened the mouth of the fish and saw the eye inside. She held the mouth shut. “Mom, we need needle and thread.” Maria went to get them. “Yayua, Tigist, look around the kitchen for black beans.” They looked around and found them. “Take seven beans each and twirl them in your mouth.” They took seven beans each and twirled them. Then Lara took the needle and thread and made the first stitch and passed the fish around, and they all took turns stitching the mouth shut.
People had gathered outside the castle balcony and they took the fish to the balcony. The king told them about the oracle and showed them the fish that had swallowed the eye. He held it up and a stork plucked it out of his hands. The stork flew into the sky with the fish in its beak and the crows flew around it.
“Haha!” they heard. “Haha!”
“Op-Maul!” the people of the valley almost said, covering their mouths in time.
A hand that was red and black and holding a net came out of the sky and caught the stork, a vision that slowly cleared.
In the heavens, Hera received the fish. She unstitched the mouth and took the eye out. “Bad boy,” she said, putting it back into her peacock’s tail.
On earth, the people of the valley cheered.
“Your majesty, is the art competition still on?”
“Of course it is,” said the king. “Now more than ever.”
“What’s the title, your majesty?”
“The day we got our name back.”
“We did it before the full moon,” said Yayua
“It has grown to include more people,” said Maria. “It went from being personal, at least for me, to include the entire valley.”
“Even the little animals,” said Yves, allowing himself to laugh.
“But we’ve left Tarsila out,” said Tigist. “His majesty referred to her theory without giving her credit.”
“You’re right,” said the king. “To be honest, when Lara first told me about it, I found it preposterous. Like she said, night broke into day. I owe the woman an apology. I think I’ll go see her after breakfast.”
“You can’t just go see her,” said Maria. “She’ll feel bad if she’s unprepared.”
“We’ll bring her over,” said Lara.
“Good. I’d like to meet her,” said El Cristo.
So Lara, Yayua and Tigist went to Tarsila’s house. They found her in the garden.
“So much has happened since I last saw you,” she said. “Come join me. Pull up some chairs.”
“Thank you for the egg,” said Yayua. “Where did you get it?”
“I met a trinket man on the pilgrim road once. He gave them to me. He called them the eggs of Eros, one to break a spell, the kind of spell that longing for Eros can put us in, and one to remind us that no matter what, Eros awaits.”
“Do you know which one you gave me?”
“No. I trusted that I would reach for the right one. Did it serve you well?”
“Yes. Tigist knew what to do with it.”
“It just came to me,” said Tigist.
“Tarsila, my dad would like to apologise for not giving you credit for your theory.”
“I thought he was saving me from possible embarrassment.”
“He’d like you to come to the castle.”
“I’d be delighted to go.”
They waited for her to get ready and went to the castle.
When the king saw her, he knew how he would make it up to her.
“I’d like to paint your portrait, Tarsila.”
She agreed and came to sit for the king every morning, until the work was completed.
“It should be the centrepiece of the new stamp collection,” said Maria. “Without Tarsila’s theory, we’d still be the valley of the know it all.”
“We still call it a theory,” said Lara. “We’re afraid to say that it was proven right.”
“I always wished for proof that the gods existed,” said Tarsila. “For a long time, I felt that my longing for proof manifested El Cuco. I had brought a curse upon the valley. I was at my lowest when I heard people talk of the Oracle who speaks the words of Op-Pollo. I decided to go to the Temple and ask him to help me break the curse.”
“Did the high priestess sound like little critters?” said Yves.
“She did, and in the middle of it, she bellowed like a bull.”
“What did the Temple Attendant say?”
“He said that a bull had swallowed a peacock eye. One day, when a fish swallowed it, the curse would be broken.”
The moon in the sky waxes until she’s full and wanes until she’s new. She is always lit by the sun, and when she isn’t, she is cazimi the sun, in the heart of the sun.
The changing light of the moon affects each one of us in personal ways. No theory has been proven to be a defining one.
They say she is the archetype of the feminine, subjective, yin.
In the birth chart, the Moon seems to always be complete, full, no matter her position in relation to the Sun, no matter the glyph that represents her, waxing, waning, new or full.
The sign she is in and the aspects she makes speak of comfort, nurture, the public, and the search for Eros, the soul’s longing for Eros.
In the birth chart she seems to always be full, whether she is in the same sign as the Sun, cazimi the Sun, in the same polarity, or in a different polarity altogether,
she is always full and married to the Sun.
Her alchemy is to change the search for Eros into silver.
His alchemy is to change her silver into gold.
Tarsila do Amaral was born in Capivari, Brazil, on September 1, 1886. There is a chart that makes her a Sagittarius rising without citing the time of birth or the source of the data.
She was born after Jupiter applying Uranus and after the exact conjunction. She did not invent modernism. She participated in the movement and in bringing it to Brazil. She studied in Paris and was encouraged to paint her land of origin, to make it her subject.
Her parents disapproved. She had to reassure them that painting the black people of Brazil and using bright colours weren’t seen in a negative light in Paris. She had to convince them that her art was fine art. It distinguished her and delighted those around her with the exotic. She wrote to them and said it made her thankful for having been brought up in Brazil.
She spent her childhood on her father’s farmlands, and black nannies took care of her and told her their stories. Some were scary stories about El Cuco.
The Moon in Libra in the seventh house,
brought up by nannies hired by her parents.
The search for Eros brought her back home.
With the Moon in a square to Saturn in Cancer, she claimed back the colours of her childhood,
and with Uranus Jupiter, she broke the norm.
Silver.
She came back to Brazil and joined a group of artists, writers and poets, who had also studied in Europe. They traveled the land together, bohemians in a cadillac, searching for inspiration and inspiring each other with the words they wrote and the paintings they painted, she painted.
A hermeneutic circle, feeding off each other.
She fell in love with one of them, Oswald de Andrade. Her father helped her annul her first marriage so that she could marry him.
She explored the different styles of modernism, primitivism, cubism, surrealism, to arrive at a style of her own, and her style, her work was used by Andrade and the Group of Five to describe a cultural movement, Antropofágica. It was a movement that exploded myths and prejudices about Brazilians, man eaters, cannibals. It was a movement that encouraged people to eat it all, foreign and native influences, to arrive at a Brazilian modernism.
Her marriage to Andrade lasted three years. She fell in love with a Russian. She fell in love with a man 18 years younger to her.
She continued to paint, the people, the animals, landscapes and cityscapes, colours,
and a sun that looked like a sliced orange.
She lived a long life, died in 1973, and Brazilians had a chance to thank her for what she did. She brought them out of the margins.
A retrospective described her as the most Brazilian of painters.
The Family by Tarsila do Amaral, 1925
Chart for Gustave Moreau, born April 6, 1826, Paris, data from birth record
There were two ways that Thetis could immerse Achilles in the waters of the River Styx,
the linear, classical way,
by Antoine Borel, 18th century
and with the release of colour
by Peter Paul Rubens, 17th century
The world of art in 19th century France was dominated by the rivalry between Ingres and Delacroix, line and colour, Neoclassicism and Romanticism.
He wouldn’t know it until he entered that world. For the moment he was shielded at home. He read and he drew to pass the time.
He showed his parents and the company they had at home his drawings.
He was learning the art of seduction, how to seduce his public.
He studied at the academy. He studied Ingres.
Oedipus and the Sphinx by Jean Auguste Dominque Ingres, 1827
“What do you think, mom?”
“I think it’s too cerebral. The story is about a sphinx who wouldn’t let anyone into Thebes unless they solved her riddles. If you didn’t solve them, she killed you. But if you solved them, she would kill herself. A matter of life or death. This painting says nothing of life or death, except for that foot on the left corner. Oedipus took a risk knowing that he could die.”
“Mom-“
“Ever since your sister died, I am not afraid of death. For Oedipus to confront such a creature, he had to lose his fear of death.”
He sketched while she spoke. “Like this?”
“Yes, he is ready. (pause) Paint her after he’s solved the first riddle. Paint fear in her eyes.”
Oedipus and the Sphinx by Gustave Moreau, 1864
“Not quite dead,” said his father, pointing at the hand grasping the rock.
“Dad, I want to leave the academy.”
“Why? Your work is well received. You’re finding success!”
“Because no one can look at my work without comparing it to Ingres. I want to paint pictures that have no reference point other than me. I want to find my own vision. I want to paint in pure colours. The academy cannot teach me that.”
“Teach yourself,” said his mother.
“And who will be the judge of his work?”
“Let him be his own judge. Everyone knows he’s capable of painting in the academic style. Let him experiment and see what he comes up with.”
The Peacock complaining to Hera about a missing eye by Gustave Moreau, 1881
“I’m not quite there,” he said.
“What are you aiming for?”
“To offer the viewer a riddle.”
“A sphinx, are you?”
Moreau laughed. “Yes, a sphinx. What is this? my painting will ask the viewer. The viewer’s eyes will have to do the work of making sense of dabs of colour, jewels, dabs of colour that form shapes, a body, an arm pointing at an apparition. No reference other than what’s in front of them.”
“By god, if it isn’t John the Baptist!”
Silver.
He received commissions and requests to exhibit his work. He only accepted those that would not have him leave home.
His parents bought a bigger home and he set up his studio on the top floor.
Times were changing. A new beauty was taking shape and he participated in giving it shape.
The academy asked him to teach, but he wasn’t ready yet. It was only after a good friend passed away that he became a teacher, taking over his friend’s class. His pupils were the likes of Rouault and Matisse, a younger generation hungry to express themselves,
the modernists.
He wouldn’t let them copy him. He did not want followers. If you copy, do it to find yourselves. The key is originality. When the viewer turns and sees your work and recognises it as a Matisse, that is your gold.
The young modernists relied on him to be the judge of their work.
He left his home to the State, something they say was unprecedented in France. He left his own museum.
“They’re mourning her death.”
“Mother of Dionysus, died of excess.”
“The Eastern influence, Byzantine art, the symbols. Here’s the planet Jupiter.”
“Her expression reminds me of his Sphinx, her eyes.”
“He catches the unexpected encounter of the psyche with Eros. The moment of comprehension.”
“Artemis on the bottom left, and who’s beside her?”
“Op-Pollo.”
Chart for October 19, 1946, the day Philip Pullman was born, author of the Golden Compass
In an interview, he says that he wouldn’t call the daemon a soul.
But when the daemon dies, the person dies too, immediately, and when a daemon and child are severed, the child doesn’t survive for too long.
He says that the daemon is a metaphor for a part of ourselves, call it the imaginative side, aware of a world we may not be aware of, the world of spirits and witches and ghosts. And there is the whole idea of dust that may have something to do with human consciousness and daemons.
He came up with the idea for his story in 1993, when Pluto was transiting Scorpio and Neptune Uranus were transiting Capricorn. They would still be in Scorpio and in Capricorn when he published book one of the trilogy, with Pluto beginning his entry into Sagittarius.
He has a stellium in Scorpio, and in Scorpio there is the underworld of Ereshkigal and Nergal, and there can be an interest in the mysteries.
He is a RAF child who lived in many places, until he was brought back to live with his grandparents in Norfolk, around age 10, his progressed sun conjunct his natal Jupiter. His grandfather was rector of a local church, a clergyman. He describes his grandfather as a master storyteller. “When I was young he was the sun at the centre of my life.”
In another interview, he is at home and takes us into his study. He shows us the statue of a Buddha that his son gave him. When he holds it, he holds the conversations he’s had with his son about other religions.
He says that there will always be religion, people looking for answers creates religion. He isn’t against religion. He is against religion telling us what to think, how to dress and what to eat.
Don’t mess with my soul.
Lyra knows never to touch someone else’s daemon. No matter how impulsive she is, she wouldn’t dare, it’s not allowed, it’s wrong. When people at the experimental station hold her daemon, “It was as if an alien hand had reached right inside her where no hand had a right to be, and wrenched at something deep and precious.”
The highest authority in the land, the magisterium, was behind the experimental station, the magisterium was breaking the moral code.
If he is a Cancer rising.
His natal Pluto digs in Leo in his house of strengths, Leo where there is a campfire, where there are moral crossroads, and children, the child in all of us.
In Leo where nothing can hide, he gives the part of ourselves that he wouldn’t call a soul the playful shape of a daemon,
and captivates the reader with a story that would see the daemon severed from a child.
He initiates the reader into the dangers of the magisterium, the bones that hold a society up.
Silver in writing a good story. He says that if he were to die today, all he wants on his tombstone is Philip Pullman, author of Clockwork or All Wound Up.
He considers it his best story.
With Lyra’s story, he was aiming for gold.
A story to protect children, arming them with a fantasy that does not underestimate their intelligence. A fantasy with psychological depth.
He created a longing in the story, characters longing for dust, characters preventing it from being mentioned, and Lyra setting off to find it.
He worked as a teacher before he became a full time writer. He practised the craft of storytelling in the classroom.
Father of two boys.
And out there were stories of the church abusing the most vulnerable.
“It’s an attack on the church,” said the Church. “The book should be banned. It will give children a bad impression of us.”
“But it’s a book of fiction-“
“It’s an attack in disguise. He’s coming at us sideways. Ban it.”
“No,” said the Archbishop. “It’s a good story. A child and her daemon trying to understand why the magisterium is so scared of dust, what is dust exactly? From matter came dust. I should like to have a conversation with him.”
The Sun in Libra conjunct Chiron, in a trine to Uranus in Gemini. Gold in controversy, in opening dialogue and debate, and having the freedom to do so.
“What exactly is dust?”
“I’m still understanding it myself. Every book reveals more of its nature.”
“Well, keep writing. I’d like to get to the nitty gritty.”
rowanwilliams.archbishopofcanterbury.org/articles.php/2005/the-dark-materials-debate-life-god-the-universe….html
Transiting Pluto was conjoining his natal Venus in Sagittarius where his work lies.
41:00
Without religion, how would we educate children to help them develop a spiritual life, someone in the audience asks.
“I think it depends on your view of education. If you believe that the purpose of education is to help children acquire the skills and grow up to compete and face the economic challenges of a global environment that we’re going to face in the 21st century,
“or whether you see it as helping them see that they are the true heirs and inheritors of the riches, the philosophical, artistic, scientific and literary riches of the whole world. Whether you believe in setting children’s minds alive and ablaze with excitement and passion, or whether you think it a matter of filling them up with facts and testing everyone. It depends on your vision of education and I know which one I’d go for.”
Neptune in the fourth house can give the feeling of having been born in the wrong place. But with Pluto’s transit through the sixth house, the completion of the trilogy, the series made, the theatrical productions, and his participation in conversations, the feeling may have eased-
theguardian.com/books/2010/apr/19/philip-pullman-interview-catholic-church
He’s not done unraveling yet.
Psyche by J.W. Waterhouse, 1903
Chart for Eddie Van Halen, born January 26, 1955, Amsterdam, data from birth record
youtube.com/watch?v=yb26D8bBZB8
Fulfillment of the American dream. He arranges his story by putting himself in context, and begins with mom and dad and his brother, and how he ended up holding a guitar and tinkering with it.
Hephaestus.
They made fun of him when Dionysus brought him back to Olympus, drunk and riding a donkey backwards, his lame leg facing the right way. Brought back because he had the key to unlock Hera from the throne that kept her prisoner. He’d sent her a magical golden throne with fetters.
He made Pluto’s cap of invisibility that allowed him to take Persephone to the underworld unseen.
He made the girdle of Venus, the one Hera borrows from time to time-
Van Halen.
His search for Eros is in Aquarius, in his fifth house of romance and creativity. With Mercury.
His search for Eros and his search for individuality entwined,
in a sign that asked him to be inventive, without throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
The Moon joins Aquarius with Cancer, and in Cancer is Jupiter applying Uranus, in retrograde. Compelled to do the work of Cancer where there is a lake that can exclude and that can include. Compelled to create something new.
He upgraded his guitar whenever the guitar stalled his search, and found an out of the box way to play what he wanted to express.
youtube.com/watch?v=9X6e7uctAww
Across from Mercury Moon is Pluto in Leo in the eleventh house, where there are standards, where there is competition, where there is a spotlight.
An even light in Aquarius,
and a spotlight in Leo
to express the longing of his soul.
youtube.com/watch?v=mIpHZo7BsT8
He says that ideas came to him when he wanted to fix a problem, downloads from heaven.
A ladder that brought him downloads
and drew copycats. It infuriated him, but his dad helped him change his perspective and see it as a compliment.
Aquarius and Leo are in t square with Saturn in Scorpio. His family was his biggest resource, his parents and then his son.
Saturn, ruler of Capricorn and traditional ruler of Aquarius in Scorpio, and Mars joins Scorpio with Aries.
Every contract in his dad’s surname.
He changed his perspective and allowed people into his fifth house, house of the nadir in his chart, to study him and notate his tappings.
Teach us, said his public. Teach us your technique.
His arrangements had broken limits. He had expanded what was possible with a Frankenstrat.
He taught them
youtube.com/watch?v=SN8dmSiYypE
and the Van Halen style grew roots. There is a branch in Leo that can grow roots,
and there was silver.
Teach me, said his son.
Silver turned to gold when he passed the torch to his son.
youtube.com/watch?v=39MiqfR7-8s
Chart for Marilyn Monroe, born June 1, 1926, Los Angeles, data from birth record
youtube.com/watch?v=L05TYBXwU3A
Van Halen said that he didn’t listen to other people’s music. He didn’t want their arrangements to influence him. He didn’t want them to interfere with the purity of his search. His body was the medium that made contact with that other dimension, his body the receptor of the downloads from heaven. Neptune in Libra conjunct the Ascendant.
Marilyn Monroe also has Neptune in the first house, in Leo where there is the pelt of the Nemean lion, the lion that imitated women’s voices in distress and drew men to the rescue, men who became the lion’s dinner, the lion with the impenetrable skin. The cave he lived in had two openings, and Hercules had to block one to confront him, struggle with him, kill him. He needed proof to take to Eurystheus, and Athena came to help him, to whisper what to do. Pelt him with his own claw, she said, and that’s what Hercules did. And he wore the pelt.
Neptune in opposition to the Moon Jupiter in Aquarius, where there is a boy of ideal beauty, chosen by Jupiter to be cupbearer of the gods.
Her search for Eros in Aquarius, in the seventh house of contracts.
She became a model.
Her search for Eros in the eye of the camera, the eyes of others.
To please.
Neptune and Jupiter join the Leo Aquarius polarity to Pisces in the eighth house of other people’s resources.
She took the advice of others to change her physical appearance.
She tested the waters of the lake to see what pose, facial expression, manner of speech the waters liked best.
She became familiar with the quincunx between Mars in Pisces and Neptune in Leo, the ability to shapeshift,
and she shapeshifted to please an audience, and she pleased a male audience best.
Her search for Eros and the desire to please her audience became entwined.
She gave them innocence coupled with sexuality, a child woman, a dream.
Marilyn Monroe with her first husband James Dougherty, ca 1943-44
Marilyn Monroe, 1954
When she was a child, she became a ward of the State.
Her chart asked her to master the fourth house in Scorpio.
Her work was in Capricorn in the sixth house, with Saturn in Scorpio, and she mastered a floating island.
So the interviewer asks Amy if Marilyn makes her own bed and tidies her room, and he asks Milton about Marilyn Monroe Productions, the company that she established.
They were taking care of her.
And Marilyn tells the interviewer that she didn’t want a director who stood by like an audience. She wanted a director who was with her at every moment, like the acting coach that she brought to the set.
Because her island was adrift,
because she became her pelt.
She tells him that she longed to be in the Ladies Home Journal. She had been in all the men’s magazines, on the covers of Squint, Peek, Take a Peek-
Amy and Milton laugh, and she laughs as well.
They know her game,
her war in the heavens with women who would deny her entrance in the Ladies Home Journal.
Her body her silver. Her pelt her silver, the vehicle of her search,
until it became a burden. Nobody could see the labour involved, hidden in her water houses.
Pisces in the eighth house of crisis, with Uranus and Mars, asked her to study some more.
Falling back into Cancer, she fell into a lake with Pluto to test the waters some more.
Resting in Scorpio, she rested with Saturn, ruler of the sixth house of work and seventh house of contracts
where it all began
in the eyes of others, the reaction of others. She perfected an art that was instinctual, erotic, the dance that draws a mate, the dream of Eros here on this earth.
youtube.com/watch?v=oUJRhiOAs1g
The Prince and the Showgirl, 1957
In 1962 Uranus in the sky was finishing his transit in Leo. He had brought her opportunities to change her pelt. Her movie The Prince and the Showgirl may not have been a success in the U.S., but it did well in the UK, released with the transiting Moon in Jupiter, romance with a foreign audience. There are scenes in the movie that may have influenced The Sound of Music.
Neptune in the sky was transiting Scorpio, dissolving her commitment with the floating island, making room for a new commitment.
Jupiter in the sky was transiting Pisces, 10 degrees away from her natal Mars, and in opposition to Pluto transiting Virgo.
To do something of influence,
dig in her house of strengths and change her pelt,
set a new example,
find a new beauty-
Chart for August 4, 1962, timed to match her rising sign
Hercules wore the pelt of the Nemean lion, and his longing to reach the heavens became entwined with the pelt.
He took it off one day to please his wife, and wore the shirt of Nessus, and the shirt brought him excruciating pain, burned him. He tried to take it off but it was like tearing the skin off his bones.
He built his own pyre.
She didn’t. She wanted to find refuge. She wanted medicine to help her sleep, dissolve her body into sleep
eternal
sleep.
youtube.com/watch?v=lv_VC2gyxYI
There were people she worked with, doctors, photographers, whom she counted on as friends, friends who would not betray her, who would keep her image unblemished
for the fans that had given her strength,
fans that had shown her the way,
an image forever young.
Her gold to them.
amateurphotographer.com/technique/interviews/marilyn-monroe-restored-photographs/
Chart for Carol Burnett, born April 26, 1933, San Antonio, TX, data from birth record
14:20
17:20
18:14
youtube.com/watch?v=myXJk0PiEPg
2:46
youtube.com/watch?v=qzJgmc18f3I
They say the Moon has her joy in the third house, and her Moon is in the third house in Taurus, with the Sun conjunct Venus, ruler of the sign.
She went to the movies with her grandmother.
There is locality in the Taurus Scorpio polarity. Taurus is a localised sign, on earth, in the village that raised her, the grandmother who held her hand, the local entertainers she watched on the screen, her body,
anti erotic. They asked her to be girlfriend of the ventriloquist’s dummies.
facebook.com/thehowardsternshow/videos/carol-burnett-explains-how-she-started-tugging-on-her-ear-2015/879795233387811/
There is Olympus in Aquarius, and to enter it, she would have to make the best of what she had, let her body be the guide, her face,
her voice.
pbs.org/wnet/pioneers-of-television/video/the-carol-burnett-show/
A shy girl growing up who found her footing on stage, the side of Virgo that can entertain with sketches and variety. But all very proper in her case.
Battered by the Sun Venus first.
57:30
youtube.com/watch?v=myXJk0PiEPg
When she got too full of herself, the audience did not identify with her and thought she stank.
The Sun Venus in Taurus in a trine to the planets in Virgo with Mars at the lowest degree, Mars, ruler of Scorpio, where Ereshkigal hung Inanna’s corpse on a hook.
Back down to earth.
The Moon in a sextile to Pluto in Cancer and to the ascendant in Pisces, digging in a lake with all generations.
And the rulers of Pisces in her house of contracts.
To be anybody. To make anybody laugh.
youtube.com/watch?v=lDUsGN5kNqg
She let her body be the guide,
and the earth,
the rain.
They spoke to her.
Her belief in signs her strength.
Aries in her second house of strengths, Aries where a golden ram came to the rescue, sent by the gods. A thousand dollars to go to New York given to her by someone who asked to remain anonymous.
Her natal Uranus in Aries,
and Neptune in the sky transiting the last degrees of Libra in her eighth house.
It was the impulse she needed to break into her tenth house in Sagittarius, with the ruler in Virgo. Playing different roles in sketch comedies.
If she was going to break limits, it would be in a specific field.
youtube.com/watch?v=nPrRfBy-jGw
There is Pabilsag in Sagittarius, guide.
Her audience was her guide, and her grandmother before she died.
Her grandmother died the year the Carol Burnett Show aired, so when she tugged on her ear at the end of each show, she was making a sign for a grandmother in the spirit world.
Of the Pluto in Cancer and Uranus in Aries generation, like Shirley MacLaine. They brought New Age spirituality into the entertainment business.
With Pluto in Cancer and the Moon in Taurus, she also trusted the rain and birds of paradise to guide her.
They were the signs that told her everything was going to be alright.
Searching for Eros on this earth.
Silver in the signs of divine guidance.
She ended the Carol Burnett show when she felt it become repetitive.
Virgo and Aries are joined by their rulers, and Aries asked for something fresh each time.
When she couldn’t deliver, she ended it.
She knows from fan letters how much it meant to so many people, and it makes her feel good inside. She was hearthfire for families and medicine for the lonely.
She enjoyed making the show, but it didn’t take over her life. There was room for family, the children and friends. They rehearsed during the week when the children were at school, and the recording was on Fridays. Weekends were off.
Practical sign, Taurus.
Sign of preservation.
The Sun Venus in Taurus in a square to Saturn in Aquarius with an orb of 10 degrees, she entered Olympus and grew roots.
Gold in growing roots, a part of the heritage,
glad to still having her hips and her knees and her mind.
youtube.com/watch?v=2mg7qIB0OJA
Chart for March 12, 1951, the day Rhonda Byrne was born, author of The Secret
She works hard to keep her life in order.
Saturn at 29 degrees Virgo in retrograde motion across from Jupiter Sun Mercury churning things up in Pisces, place of raw material.
They say her name is in the credits of the TV production OZ Encounters: UFO’s in Australia. Making sense of the paranormal. And she was working on a documentary about psychics trying to solve unsolved murders before she established her own company. Meeting people with paranormal abilities opened her mind to what was possible.
She says that 2004 was the year her life fell apart,
and the year her daughter Hayley gave her a book that turned her life around. The Science of Getting Rich by Wallace D. Wattles, published in 1910.
In 1910, Pluto was digging in Gemini and Uranus was in Capricorn. He bridged the heavens and the earth with a law he said was a natural law. He called it the law of attraction. Easy steps. Visualize what you want and it materializes here on earth. Engage your mind with the formless substance in the heavens to create what you want. Attitude is key. In order to align yourself with the positive forces of the natural law, a loving and non competitive attitude is key.
It resonated with her, with her Moon in Taurus, practical moon.
She put Wattles’ method into practice and her life improved.
There is nurture in her chart, she labours to nurture, and here was a book nurturing her.
In 2004, the planets in the sky were activating her chart. Uranus was transiting Pisces, compelling her to do the work of the sign.
She gathered all the material she could find on the law of attraction. She found people in the English world, mainly in the United States, who practised it.
She couldn’t believe that it had been out there all this time, like a secret, waiting to be revealed.
Jupiter was transiting Virgo and would free her natal Saturn, and she would put the material in order and make it accessible to everyone,
because she was going to reveal the secret. It’s how she would market it. It had been in the lake of memories all this time, and she would be the first to reveal it and give it its proper place in culture.
The first, with many contributors.
She put everything she owned on the line to make the documentary. Her ultimate test to the law of attraction.
Chart for March 12, 1951, timed to make Libra the rising sign
Her personal experience is involved in the secret, and the experience of her contributors.
Be careful what you think. It can send ripples into the heavens.
Eros responds.
She worked hard for Eros to respond, and she took a risk, but she leaves that out. Her focus is on divine intervention.
A daughter in the fifth house, handing her a book that brought order back into her life. The ruler of Aquarius in Virgo. The modern ruler in Cancer, natural ruler of the nadir.
Born with the spirit of the times in Cancer where Psyche longs for Eros, where there is a search for Eros.
The ruler of Cancer in Taurus in the eighth house.
She found him during a crisis.
It was up to her to change the way she thought, and she took a leap of faith.
The Moon in a square to Pluto in Leo in the eleventh house.
There are individuals in Leo.
To transform the individual, empower the individual,
to capture the individual’s attention, she came up with a simple formula, a magic formula.
Ask, Believe, Receive.
Silver.
She expanded Wattles’ method to all areas of life, even health.
youtube.com/watch?v=9z8kwGOHepA
People wanted to understand the secret better. Were they doing it right?
There is responsibility in Taurus, and the Moon holds her responsible.
Fingers of god pointing at Pisces in the sixth house where people from around the world can gather for LIVE Q&A’s.
Gold in facing her public.
She makes corrections.
12:12
youtube.com/watch?v=jIhyS86JF8o
32:17
youtube.com/watch?v=626vJj9_Vg8
32:22
youtube.com/watch?v=jIhyS86JF8o
Neptune in Libra in the first house,
she teaches that the body is a medium,
Neptune, ruler of Pisces, with Jupiter,
elastic.
Pisces where the walls are thin,
29:07
youtube.com/watch?v=626vJj9_Vg8
where the boundaries of time dissolve,
23:20
youtube.com/watch?v=jIhyS86JF8o
place of the Pythia.
Priestess of Hera
Witch
They would have hanged her not so long ago.
Come to offer medicine for the longing
here,
wherever we are,
to labour with Venus,
Psyche at the throne of Venus by Edward Matthew Hale, 1883
Venus in Aries.
To labour with this body, this mind,
she locates the soul in the mind,
in our thoughts,
in our awareness,
eternal,
to touch the divine.
Chart for October 27, 1973, the day Sophie Deraspe was born
youtube.com/watch?v=IYr0saY5Pr4
lycees.netocentre.fr/POD/video/5398-antigone-film-de-sophie-deraspe/
Lakes filled with stories.
She pulled a story out of her lake to make a movie. She had read it when she was a student, and the character of Antigone had stayed with her. Antigone who would not obey the king’s command to leave her dead brother, traitor to the city, unburied. The ultimate disgrace. Her loyalty to the gods and the ritual of a burial, and above all, her loyalty to her brother, traitor or not.
She would update the story and weave in elements of her society.
She would update it for her society.
The comments she read on YouTube that had made her feel ashamed triggered the project.
To break down racism and hatred and take an empathetic look at a fictional family going through a similar situation, with one of the sisters being an Antigone.
She calls her a hero, mythical, and raises her as an archetype of a young woman who will stand up against what she feels is unjust, a young woman who will take a stance.
It’s not a political film. It’s not critical of the laws of the land.
She portrays a family that confronts the laws of the land,
and Antigone rises to put her brother above them, to put family above them.
With Saturn R in Cancer her focus is on the people of the land, people who work in the system upholding the laws, people who find solutions within the law.
With the Moon Mercury in Scorpio her focus is on Antigone, her home and her family.
Her camera moves back and forth, zooming in with the Moon Mercury, and zooming out with Saturn R Cancer to the greater lake.
Her work is in Gemini in the eleventh house
where she found her actors, via an open casting. 800 young people filled out the application and she went through all of them, until she found Antigone and her family.
Mercury, ruler of Gemini, in Scorpio with the Moon.
She wasn’t too concerned whether they looked alike. If there was chemistry between them and if she crafted the story well, the audience would believe they were a unit.
Mars, ruler of Scorpio and Aries,
under the lintel, between Aries and Taurus,
a family suspended between survival and permanence,
waiting for an initiation,
to move forward,
to go back.
Mars across from the Sun, standing at the moral crossroads.
She would not betray her brother even after they revealed his crimes to her, because her heart told her to help him.
Mars across from Uranus in Libra.
Of the Pluto and Uranus in Libra generation, come to bring us new aesthetics.
Pluto and Uranus in the sign of her nadir.
The village that raised her, her inspiration, the spark of her subject matter.
Libra, with the ruler in Sagittarius.
A new aesthetics that breaks boundaries and has a purpose.
Sagittarius, with the ruler in Aquarius.
Socially conscious, conscious of the influence films can have, films and protest art.
Storyteller.
The story of an ancient hero in modern times, Antigone who follows her heart.
Fingers of god pointing at Saturn R in Cancer.
She updated her story, took liberties.
The chorus in the book turned into cellphone ringtones.
The actors reflecting the diversity of the land.
She makes room for romance with the people of the land. Builds hope.
Initiatory sign, Scorpio, ruled by Mars and Pluto, Pluto in a square to Saturn R.
She measures carefully.
She doesn’t live in Creon’s autocracy, the king who entombed Antigone alive.
She lives in a democracy, and democracies begin with people, the hoi polloi.
She doesn’t ask people to identify with the characters. She puts a barrier when we’re told the brothers were in a gang.
She asks that we have empathy.
Silver in zooming in to know her
and watch her be stripped of everything she has
for family.
The sacrifice of a hero.
Gold in not betraying her.
Loyal to the archetype.
When the cellphone rings and she turns around hoping for the chorus that embraced her,
the movie ends.
Chart for July 13, 1932, the day Dr. Alan B. Scott was born
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_B._Scott
jaapos.org/article/S1091-8531(22)00011-8/pdf#:~:text=Alan%20was%20born%20in%20Berkeley,the%20University%20of%20California%2C%20Berkeley.
Scorpio,
sign of Asclepius,
son of Apollo and the mortal Coronis,
raised by Chiron who taught him the medicinal arts.
They say that in return for a favour, a snake licked his ears clean and taught him secret knowledge.
He raised the dead
and for this hubris Jupiter struck him with a thunderbolt.
Worshipped in Greece, sanctuaries and temples dedicated to him.
They say his temple on the island of Kos, a healing centre and a school,
inspired Hippocrates to study medicine.
The rulers of the Virgo Pisces and Gemini Sagittarius polarity in Leo.
He became an ophthalmologist, supreme, generous. Medicine man and teacher, his knowledge carried off to other lands, South America in particular.
Aquarius rules the nervous system.
Patients with muscle spasms in the eye.
He knew about botulinum neurotoxin and the fatal muscle paralysis it caused, nerve palsies. There was ongoing research to develop it as a biological weapon. He asked a colleague to send him some.
His longing for Eros in Scorpio where there is medicine,
with Mars in Gemini where there are multiple points of view, experimental sign, sign that makes connections, sign of rescue,
and Pluto conjunct his Sun in Cancer.
Digging in Cancer,
in a lake with an entrance to the underworld, place of dreams,
in a lake of memories, stories, healing manuals, the experience of those who came before.
He received the culture of the bacterium with a note attached to it. Mind the gap in Taurus.
He took it to the lab and began to dilute it and sterilize it and test it on lab animals.
This wasn’t going to cure the problem.
Cure the problem, kill the nerves.
He diluted it some more
to freeze the nerves and put the muscle to sleep temporarily,
diluted enough to wear off.
“A major discovery, Alan.”
“Your name will be highlighted in the lake of ophthalmology.”
“What’s the formula?”
He didn’t answer the question.
He had laboured in Gemini with Mars, and with Venus, and his labour in the lab got entangled with his labour for Eros.
There is secret knowledge in Scorpio
and Cancer can make sacred, the home, the homeland, the flag,
and the formula was secret and sacred to him.
“What’s the formula?” someone asked a member of his team.
“Wait for the doctor to publish his paper on the research.”
The Sun Pluto can bring transformation,
and in 1972, Uranus transiting Libra opposed his natal Uranus in Aries, squaring Cancer, and there was transformation.
He emerged from the bubble he’d been in and became We.
Our formula.
Hercules and Iolaus and the Hydra.
There is another kind of making sacred, with a sacrifice, one that was personal.
Whole for a moment.
He published the first paper on his dilution, the eye aligner he called Oculinum, in 1973,
with Saturn transiting Gemini,
compiling his research,
and Jupiter transiting Capricorn,
of influence.
Transiting Pluto had settled in Libra with Uranus.
He couldn’t see that it would bring a new aesthetic one day.
Whole for a moment, a moment that brought him a taste of what was to come, completion, peace. It slowed his pace, and allowed him to wait the four years it took the FDA to approve the use of Oculinum on a patient.
A temporary correction that became raw material for so many other spasms, his creation.
He continued his work in the eighth house, in the lab, refining the drug, improving its stability, and he continued to perform surgeries.
With Oculinum, he drew doctors from around the world, not just in his field, but in the greater lake of medicine.
barkansociety.com/alan-scott-the-story-of-botox-in-his-own-words/
Technicalities that prevented him from getting a patent.
He would mortgage his house, establish a company and produce it himself. He would ask for a donation per vial.
Then came a situation that prevented him from producing it,
and patients got involved, sending letters to the FDA.
Saturn joins Capricorn in the third house with Aquarius in the fourth.
The village that raised him and home. He grew up with the laws of science, his father a dentist and his mother worked in a lab.
Home in Aquarius where there is service, pooled resources, universality.
House of the nadir,
house of dreams,
in a sextile to the Moon in Scorpio.
He dreamt of a snake that licked his ears clean, immunized him, and gave him secret knowledge to turn medicine that can kill into medicine that can heal,
for universal use.
Fingers of god pointing at Venus in Gemini where he laboured in the lab, laboured for Eros.
Silver.
Gold in diffusing the knowledge. It began with Jupiter’s transit in Capricorn, where there are bones that hold us up, and the mes for every area of life. Jupiter in opposition to his natal planets in Cancer in the ninth house, the Sun Pluto.
Mars,
traditional ruler of Scorpio, in Gemini, gave him dexterity coupled with intuition.
Mars,
ruler of Aries in the sixth house asked for firsthand experience, to build on knowledge already in the lake, add something new, and to pass the oar.
In 1978, with Uranus transiting Scorpio, he injected the first patient, holding a needle in each hand, one with the EMG and the other with the drug,
an uncanny precision not too many had,
which is why they constructed a rational model to guide doctors,
and turned the two needles into one, the EMG guided injection.
Briefly,
Here.
youtube.com/watch?v=v0CIcU_SOeM
She says that the idea for her song came from a party she went to. She was so uncomfortable that she asked her mom to come get her.
The day she was born began with the Moon at 29 degrees Taurus and ended with the Moon at 5 degrees Gemini. Her chart has been rectified to 3:30 am by Astrotheme, with the Moon at 0 degrees 50 minutes of Gemini, in that place between Taurus and Gemini.
Chart for July 11, 1996, 3:30am, Mississauga, Ontario
Across from the Moon is Pluto digging in the riches between Scorpio and Sagittarius.
Her longing between here and there,
and Mercury who rules spaces in between conjunct the Sun in Cancer. Her strength her music. She writes her own songs.
But she didn’t write How far I’ll go, first sang by Auli’i Cravalho.
Disney asked her to sing it, drawn perhaps by her longing to be here, to go there.
youtube.com/watch?v=ZNra8eK0K6k
Disney didn’t ask her to sing a song. Disney asked her to sing a melody, drawn perhaps by her longing to find the purpose of her gift, her place in the world.
youtube.com/watch?v=1LLve4AA4CU
The melody drew Elsa like a siren’s call, but not to her death. It brought her the understanding that she was the fifth spirit, the bridge between the elemental spirits and people. She gave up her throne, gave it to her sister, to become the protector of the enchanted forest.
There is a chart for AURORA that makes her a Taurus rising. It is drawn from memory or autobiographical data.
Chart for June 15, 1996, 3 am, Stavanger, Norway
Venus, ruler of her first house, in retrograde motion, falling into the arms of the Moon in Gemini, in her house of strengths.
Her body, her voice, her longing for Eros.
youtube.com/watch?v=d_HlPboLRL8
Venus, ruler of her sixth house of work in Libra.
Arrangements.
A vocal arrangement.
An arrangement of words, with Mercury who is Hermes who is Thoth at the lowest degree of Gemini, the sign he rules.
youtube.com/watch?v=P_-aEdRG95I
When she feels the way she felt when she wrote the song, she knows that she’s already put those emotions into words.
Centred on her body and her inner life.
Her obsession with death. Once she climbed a tree and a branch broke. She didn’t fall, but she could have fallen to her death.
Conscious of the initiation that awaits every human.
Her ascendant and descendant in the Taurus Scorpio polarity,
here,
and Mars, ruler of Scorpio and Aries, where there is no barrier between life and death, conjunct Mercury in Gemini,
in opposition to Pluto in Sagittarius,
Gemini and Sagittarius,
there.
Every song she puts out there is in preparation for her death. Her documentary too. She begins by saying that you never know when you’re going to die, so it’s important to acknowledge the people you love, parents, sisters, friends, all bundled in the second house.
youtube.com/watch?v=4vdBorK67tk
To speak of the end of life so matter of fact.
Gemini, ruled by the messenger of the gods, god of the roads and a chthonic god, trickster and psychopomp.
youtube.com/watch?v=K17df81RL9Y
Of the Pluto in Sagittarius and Uranus in Aquarius generation,
rejecting conversion therapy and medicine to sit still,
weaving all humans into society.
youtube.com/watch?v=DhyTn1GGKEo
A voice of her generation.
The riches of Sagittarius in the eighth house, place of crisis, place of healing, where a centaur lives, civilized and uncivilized, bound and unbound, with the ruler in Capricorn where there is Pan, chasing.
Saturn in Aries asks that she tame them,
turn them into a quest,
the wildness in her,
give it structure,
a melody with words,
because what she feels, a thousand others feel as well.
The Moon in a stellium in Gemini, quincunx to Jupiter in Capricorn,
she found out that more than a thousand felt what she felt,
the longing she expressed in Runaway.
She found her purpose, her place
when she released it on February 16, 2015, the chart timed to match her rising sign
Pluto was transiting Capricorn, conjunct her MC and Jupiter, and Uranus was transiting Aries, where her natal Saturn is.
Mars and Venus would conjoin in Aries.
The seed of an institution, invisible in her twelfth house, building a barrier between life and death, Pan saving Psyche with songs,
arming herself with songs,
arming her public with songs,
silver,
songs that speak of a longing that is universal,
satisfying it with a song,
songs that tell us
we’re not alone.
Silver into gold,
sign that makes connections,
pass the word along,
listen to this song,
this one too,
you’re not alone,
sign of rescue.
She would need the resources of others to make music, show her music, and would have to leave home, her forest, her place of refuge, her kingdom. Jupiter’s gifts don’t come easy.
youtube.com/watch?v=eT6dLJd3rYk
Chart for December 2, 1899, the day Sir John Barbirolli was born
youtube.com/watch?v=JcDBBYBTP-4
For the proponents of a Taurus rising.
His first marriage did not last, but his second marriage lasted for the rest of his life.
His first permanent position was with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, but in 1943, during his Uranus opposition Uranus, he decided to leave New York and return home to England. An Atlantic crossing in 1943. He said he’d always been something of a fatalist. What had to happen would happen.
Seven from the seventh is Taurus, and with Jupiter in Scorpio he rebuilt a clan, brought the Hallé Orchestra back to life.
For the proponents of an Aries rising.
His first marriage did not last. Within four years, they were living separately, and she sued him for abandonment. His second marriage lasted for the rest of his life.
theguardian.com/music/2008/jan/29/classicalmusicandopera.obituaries#:~:text=After%20two%20years%2C%20Evelyn%20went,women%20to%20join%20the%20ensemble.
A marriage in Aries, seventh from the seventh, that allowed her to pursue her career.
4:30
youtube.com/watch?v=GhSAh6srFSA
He was born after the Venus Mars conjunction in Sagittarius.
He didn’t create works of his own. He brought the works of others back to life. The ruler of Sagittarius in Scorpio in the eighth house.
His strength in Taurus with Venus at the highest degree in Sagittarius, and the Moon at the lowest degree, ruling the grand stellium.
Soul work, the stability he needed to do soul work, the search for Eros in Sagittarius where he obsessively read and marked scores. To learn every work note by note in his head, so that the orchestra would play it as he had heard it.
He grew up in a family of musicians, switched from violin to cello, and wanted to conduct. He got his first experience in the army.
youtube.com/watch?v=YoysWb5S5wI&list=PLkqe8pPLnuLmpMHdebdZwAFdjbV5Ayxpq&index=3
People speak of him as a great raconteur.
He began rebuilding the Hallé by holding auditions for anyone who could play an instrument. He jokes and says that he held auditions for the partially maimed, those with flat feet not allowed in the army, but with good fingers.
His work in Gemini, with Mercury R in Sagittarius, in the middle of the stellium, next to Chiron minding the gap in information.
He brings out Pabilsag, guiding souls to the galactic centre.
He worked with people and learnt to have tact when he guided them. The psychology of each musician, the sensitive ones, the ones who needed to be pushed, the ones who needed time.
The psychology of each composer.
Jupiter in Scorpio where there are mysteries, the mysteries of the mind, and Mars in Sagittarius.
To understand the psychology of a composer in the sign that breaks boundaries.
To pierce the mind of the composer and get inside, and know how short and how accented he meant the dash above the note to be.
The sign with a taste for the foreign. Barbirolli fulfilled it in this way, through the intimate study of scores.
He didn’t have to travel too far to get access to them. Pluto in the sign of short distance travel and Uranus in the sign of long distance travel, Pluto opening the door to a taste of the foreign.
7:40
youtube.com/watch?v=9gaQyw-zXCQ&list=PLkqe8pPLnuLmpMHdebdZwAFdjbV5Ayxpq&index=4
He liked an audience willing to be challenged with composers that he unearthed and scores that he unearthed,
and he liked the challenge himself. Every piece an initiation into another world.
The hard part was Saturn,
Saturn in a semi sextile to Jupiter,
the knowledge he had obtained,
how to transmit it to the orchestra,
Saturn in opposition to Neptune in Gemini, making room for the knowledge to be transmitted,
Saturn at 24 degrees in opposition to Neptune in Gemini at 26 degrees, Saturn ruling the opposition, ruling structure, making room for the knowledge to be transmitted,
with gestures, sounds, the baton.
Nobody had taught him how to make the orchestra sound the way he wanted it to sound. It was a god given gift, perhaps, to have the power to do that.
When he got them to play a piece of music the way he’d heard it in his head,
there was silver.
youtube.com/watch?v=WSGb-vOKKCk&list=PLkqe8pPLnuLmpMHdebdZwAFdjbV5Ayxpq&index=5
Cancer in his fourth house with the Moon in Sagittarius settled him in Manchester. He says that nerve centres are usually in drab cities where you can concentrate,
do the work of Eros.
Mercury R closing the gap in information to find enlightenment with the Sun Uranus, and fulfillment with the Moon.
He was given the Freedom of the City in 1958, during his Jupiter and Saturn return. Pluto was transiting Virgo in his sixth house and Uranus was transiting Leo in his fifth, distinguishing him in the profession of the arts. No greater honour for the centaur to be given freedom,
but Jupiter didn’t let it go to his head.
“Wonderful concert sir, so far.”
youtube.com/watch?v=2EfEJwm3Ms8&list=PLkqe8pPLnuLmpMHdebdZwAFdjbV5Ayxpq&index=6
The number of cigarettes he smoked to stay awake and reach the Moon.
Driven. Mars conjunct the point of Rahu in Sagittarius, place of the galactic centre, place of convergence.
Gold when he knew how a composer would have ended an unfinished composition, something he would never have boasted about, knowledge that was private to him, gold unseen.
He suggested to the producers of his portrait that they might end it with the final section of Edward Elgar’s 2nd Symphony, “the passionate pilgrimage of the soul.”
youtube.com/watch?v=zPtZTlIPuME
Chart for Jacques Mayol, born April 1, 1927, Shanghai, data from birth record
youtube.com/watch?v=4zf_vYJI6K0
Pisces in the twelfth house of big animals. It’s where he worked, in an aquarium with sea mammals, dolphins, and where he met Clown, the dolphin that taught him what he needed to know about free diving, the dolphin that was his teacher.
He says they recognized each other.
It was 1957. Pluto was beginning his transit in Virgo, and Uranus was beginning his transit in Leo, activating his natal Neptune, in a square to Aries, his Ascendant and Solar house, and in a quincunx to the stellium in Pisces.
In his house of work a friendship was born, and with this friendship, a new reflection of himself. It was a reflection based on the belief that people originated in water and had forgotten how to accomplish apnea, the ability to suspend breathing, like dolphins. He believed that the raw material lay dormant in us, in him.
His natal Pluto in Cancer in the fourth house and Uranus in the space between Pisces and Aries.
He would work on himself, his inner self, to awaken this ability, make it a part of who he was, complete who he was. There was a part of him missing, the beginning, the part that could roam free in the water.
He practised with Clown.
Mercury, ruler of Virgo in the sixth house of work, in Pisces.
Mercury, ruler of Gemini in the third house of skills, in Pisces.
Mercury Hey, Mars!
Mars What is it, Merc? How’s he doing?
Mercury Find out if there are any good yoga instructors in the area.
Mars What for?
Mercury To help him quiet his mind.
Mars Where’s the phone book?
The resources of others to work on his body and his mind.
Arete in navigating through chaos.
He learnt techniques and practised some more, and his longing to awaken the dormant ability became entangled with his longing for Eros, his search for Eros.
If he pushed himself too hard too soon, Venus would reprimand him. Venus who is Inanna Ereshkigal in Taurus, sign of preservation. In a trine to Capricorn where she holds the mes.
His work was in Capricorn, in a square to the Sun that is life.
To hold the mes
when he dove to the depths of the sea,
to the depths of himself,
minding the gap in survival and the gap in the body.
Saturn R, ruler of Capricorn in his house of reputation, and ruler of Aquarius in the eleventh house,
in Sagittarius.
Knowledge. To share the knowledge, he became an experiment.
His public from all around the world and every generation, in a square to Mars in Gemini, where he was monitored, his pressure, his pulse like the pulse of a dolphin.
Silver for awakening the ability to accomplish apnea. He broke the record going 100 metres below.
He wasn’t reaching for a taste of the foreign. He wanted to shapeshift to include his original self,
Home delphinus.
He says that when he was in that state, the boundaries of himself dissolved, he was one with the sea, he was the sea.
Eros.
They say that Pluto in the fourth house can make us move to a place not far from where we live, in the same city, in the same body
he understood the meaning of Eros
in consciousness.
Pluto in Cancer, in a trine to Mercury, Jupiter, the Moon in Pisces, and in a quincunx to Saturn in Sagittarius.
The responsibility of bringing knowledge to his public,
the beauty of the sea,
the beauty of sea mammals,
like us.
He rose to the surface.
They say Jupiter in the twelfth house is a guardian angel,
guardian of the sea.
He stopped when he reached the depth of 105 metres, he stopped when he reached the limit of his transformation.
Gold in knowing when to stop. The ruler of Aries in Gemini. Gold in setting an example for his followers.
He stopped in 1983, and in 1988 he gave us another example with Luc Besson. They wrote the screenplay for The Big Blue together.
Chart for Luc Besson, born March 18, 1959, Paris, data from birth record
Besson’s natal Sun at 27 degrees 11 minutes Pisces.
Uranus was well established in Leo when he was born, 12 degrees 41 minutes Leo.
His natal Jupiter at 1 degree 59 minutes Sagittarius.
Mars in Gemini.
Saturn in Capricorn and the Moon in Cancer.
Synastry chart for Mayol and Besson with interaspects, Mayol’s chart in the inner wheel
youtube.com/watch?v=NP6BtzdS-9Y
Luc asked him about his friendship with Clown. Jacques sat back, closed his eyes, and found himself in the grand trine in fire.
Jacques We were swimming. I was holding her. We were dancing underwater. I needed air and signaled to her that I was going up, and just as I pushed up, she slammed down on me. It sent shock waves through my body and pushed my urge to breathe down. I broke a barrier that day. Fear, then calm. I had to stay calm. I held her again and we resurfaced.
Luc What if you had stayed down there?
Jacques C’mon Luc!
Luc C’mon Jacques! Play a little. We’re making a movie. They call you the dolphin man and you say that we come from water. This is your chance for total transformation.
Jacques You’re going to make my dream come true?
Luc Why not? (pause) I’m putting you and Enzo in this triangle of fire. Friends and rivals in an olympic field, pushing each other to break barriers. We can take liberties here.
Jacques Luc, we need to be responsible.
Luc Responsibility will play an important part. The responsibility of a friendship. The responsibility of a romance. What you will do for Enzo, and what the woman who loves you will do for you. The kind of responsibility that makes room in a one’s psychology. (pause) Then there’s you, Jacques. What will you do to complete yourself?
Luc felt the pressure of Jacques’s natal Mars conjoining his own, the pressure to unlock more potential.
Jacques (taking hold of his chart) I have my spiritual practice.
Luc Would you answer the call of a mermaid that promises to free you?
Jacques That’s not what I’m looking for. It’s the ability to suspend breath, inside me and not outside. The challenge it involves-
Luc What if the mermaid is a dolphin, Clown, giving you the last push you need to have easy access to it? Make it natural? You’d be taking a chance-
Jacques You’re shifting my romance. You’re asking me what I would do for a dolphin.
Luc I’m asking you what you would do to complete the transformation. The movie will end with you and Clown swimming away together. Homo and dolphin, a metaphor for homo delphinus. Gold in unity.
Jacques was charmed and allowed the synastry of their charts. He allowed Luc’s Sun to occupy his twelfth house and considered the movie’s ending.
Jacques An ambiguous ending. It could very well be the union of Psyche and Eros. (pause) The audience may ask you to change it. At least half may ask for clarification.
Luc I’m not having you grow a fin.
Jacques You could have us come to the surface for a breath of air.
youtube.com/watch?v=AWmdA59DUvQ
Chart for June 21, 1931, the day Enzo Maiorca was born
There is proof in Capricorn and Saturn R in Capricorn can give proof.
Dig in the lake of memories and come up with proof that people had dived more than 50 metres, and their lungs had not collapsed. Like the fisherman Yorgos Haggi Statti.
Enzo wouldn’t be the first to do it. Born with Jupiter in Cancer at a higher degree than Uranus in Aries, he wasn’t fertilizing something new. Born after the Jupiter Pluto conjunction, he wasn’t of influence as a pioneer.
He was the first to put it on the record, with witnesses. He set the mark and triggered competition in free diving.
Specificity.
Born with Neptune in Virgo, paving the way in Virgo, where there are the Eleusinian Mysteries, lost to us today. Someone wrote that the initiation made them lose their fear of death. To live without fear of life ending. Mysteries of the cult of Demeter and Persephone.
Curious about the great expanse that lay before him, and fearful.
He found a gas mask left over from the war on the beach.
A sign
to go beneath the surface.
Verticality.
In 1961, he set the record of 50 metres. The year Jupiter and Saturn were transiting Capricorn, his Saturn return, and Jupiter crowning his Saturn, freeing him. Pluto was transiting Virgo and Uranus was transiting Leo.
He defied a medical belief and distinguished himself.
No sooner had he done that, someone came to erase it. His natal Neptune at a lower degree than Mars, Neptune erasing the mark he set.
He seeded again and left another mark, and Neptune erased it.
He got caught in the competition.
If he was a Taurus rising.
Chart for June 21, 1931, timed
The fifth house of personality and friendship in Virgo, with the Moon Neptune and Mars. The Moon joined to Cancer in maintaining his position as being the first to set the mark.
Jupiter and Neptune, rulers of Pisces in the eleventh house of the groups that he belonged to.
A trying fifth house, maintenance, dissolution, seeding.
A trying eleventh house, unbounded.
Change came in 1974 when he attempted his 87 metre dive, streamed live.
video.gazzetta.it/maiorca-scontro-col-sub-rai-bestemmia-diretta-tv/63a82106-a995-11e6-8481-ff5e347d19fe
He attempted the dive a week later and was successful,
his last competitive dive for over a decade.
Some say it was because he was banned from television, banned from competition because he cursed on camera.
He said it was because the sea told him to stop. His body too. He believed that people were made to walk on earth, terrestrial. Apnea was unnatural. The body protected the vital organs as much as it could to make it possible, but it was in essence unnatural, a feat. It wasn’t something you played with.
In 1974,
Jupiter was transiting Pisces where things can get out of hand. Jupiter, bringer of gifts, in his eleventh house.
Saturn was transiting Cancer, bringing constraint, capping his natal Jupiter in the third house.
Pluto and Uranus were transiting Libra, rearrangements in his sixth house of work.
He went back to being local, but his life was transformed, he had reinvented himself. A local hero.
In 1977 he was in a movie where the centrepiece was a heroic dive to save a child who had been kidnapped.
1:08:00
youtube.com/watch?v=h2qItwI1A8Y
There is culture in Virgo and he participated in culture, in local politics, a spokesperson for the protection of the environment, the sea.
Firsts for him that nobody could dissolve.
His longing for Eros in Virgo, his search satisfied in this way, becoming a local institution, in the village that raised him and in the village he died.
Neptune added poetry to his undertakings. Neptune can turn Mars into a poet.
He published books about the sea and told a local story that sailors told him.
youtube.com/watch?v=5rjqQXTgSFg
Mercury, ruler of Virgo, in the other sign he rules, the sign of Castor and Pollux, protectors of sailors.
In Gemini, the signs of the gods are around us, in everyday life, like the sign he saw before going for a dive. He named a book after it. Sotto il segno di Tanit. Under the sign of Tanit.
He read the signs.
In Virgo, the Eleusinian mysteries, to be initiated, and in Virgo a hidden life.
The longing for Eros here too, when he found the gas mask and repurposed it to dive beneath the surface of the sea. He says he fell in love with it, he fell in love with the beautiful body of the sea, and learned not to conquer it but to encounter it.
He found another way to satisfy this longing in 1977, when he was initiated into the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry. A new social group, a fraternity with its many levels and secret symbols revealed at each level.
In 1986 he started diving again to break his own record, and he reached his maximum depth of 101 metres in 1988, the year the movie The Big Blue was released.
It made a caricature of him and Sicilians.
They had taken too many liberties.
They had changed Enzo’s last name, but everyone knew it was meant to be him.
He blocked the movie from being released in Italy.
He had the help of powerful people in his third house to block it and prevent the erasure of his image,
their image.
Silver.
There came requests for interviews.
He was asked why he had taken the movie to court, and he began the process of differentiating himself from the Enzo and the Jacques Mayol in the movie.
He would never take money to rescue someone.
No, he didn’t do yoga.
“I love the sea because there is land: when I go down, I always hope to return. One feels that the soul of the sea transfers its purity to the soul of man and that is an indescribable sensation.”
Gold in leaving a different example.
He allowed the film to be released after Mayol’s death. By then the world of diving knew where he stood.
youtube.com/watch?v=WpGEnWjITkI
Chart for Umberto Pelizzari, born August 28, 1965, Busto Arsizio, data from birth record
youtube.com/watch?v=ltb0Hl0ahMs
His body guides him.
deeperblue.com/profile-umberto-pelzzari/
He set the world record to 150 metres with a broken eardrum and stopped competing after that. Maiorca had set the world record to 50m, his tutor Mayol to 100m, and he to 150m. In line with the masters.
He carries their memory, the memory of the remembered dead, in his natal Moon at 29 degrees Virgo, conjunct his MC at 0 degrees Libra.
Virgo where there is apprenticeship.
His reputation is tied to his apprenticeship with Mayol, and it carries over into his eleventh house of the group that he belongs to. Venus, ruler of Libra and Taurus in his sixth house of work. The body and the techniques he teaches to others, the responsibility of others underwater. He cannot hide the results, Libra brings him feedback.
He has popularized the sport of free diving with his academy, an academy that he created with others, but that is in essence his. Jupiter, ruler of Sagittarius, in Gemini in his seventh house. He is the face of the academy, and his philosophy is the foundation, a philosophy that began when he learnt to relax in a bay near Mayol’s home in Elba in 1991.
In 1991, Jupiter was transiting Leo in his ninth house of knowledge.
His natal Mercury in Leo, ruler of Gemini and Virgo.
You know nothing about free diving, his tutor told him, erasing all that had come before and initiating him into breathing exercises and yoga.
Knowledge in Leo came from a man who wore a pelt and who took him to a place he hadn’t been to before, in the backyard.
On April 13, 1991, transiting Jupiter was at 3 degrees Leo, squaring his natal Mars in Scorpio. Mars, ruler of Aries and Scorpio.
Mayol was passing the oar, giving it to a student who must have felt like kin.
Pelizzari says that the month he spent with Mayol was the most important part of his career.
He was given an oar.
He keeps up with all the new techniques in free diving and teaches them at the academy, but he begins with Mayol, relaxation and good sensation.
His focus is on the techniques he used by instinct first, available to the body by instinct, and later found out they had a name.
He feels fortunate to have had the time to discover them for himself, and he would have continued in this manner, watching his body become more and more aquatic,
if it weren’t for Saturn R in Pisces asking him to consolidate.
Saturn R across from Uranus and Pluto in Virgo.
With Uranus he has created modules, putting things in order, what is taught in the first lesson, the second and the third. It is here that he finds out about the new techniques in his field. With Pluto he tests them to see if they are helpful or not, if they should stay or be weeded.
There is commerce in his chart.
There is faithfulness in Virgo, in the seeds of a pomegranate.
Commerce while remaining a faithful disciple.
Silver.
His natal Mars in Scorpio, warrior of the Sun, touches his natal Sun in Virgo where there is morality in how one uses a craft, teaches a craft.
Saturn was transiting Leo when his academy had its first instructor course in 2006.
Rigorous selection, rigorous training. He mentions public speaking as one of the instructor modules, the ability to communicate.
Relationships based on the love of diving.
The competitions the academy holds are more to bring the family together, instructors and students.
Gold in sharing the oar with family, sharing the mysteries, the teachings.
Departure of Triptolemos on his journey through Greece to teach the people agriculture, attic red figure vase, ca 450 BC
Neptune in Scorpio in a square to Mercury in Leo can bring self doubt. Neptune in a sextile to Virgo and in a trine to Pisces can bring temptation to dissolve it all,
but something always comes to help him hold it together.
Three weeks ago, during the Mercury Retrograde in Sagittarius, in a square to the Virgo Pisces polarity, he was asked to read a story written by Lara Sarrecchia for the non profit organization Home away from home. About a river tired of being a river, not feeling special. The river became a lake and couldn’t handle being a lake. The river became a pool and couldn’t handle being a pool. The river became an ocean and couldn’t handle being an ocean. The river went back to being a river again, and understood that to be special, it simply had to stay put and be what it was.
youtube.com/watch?v=JSy868WBe4g
youtube.com/watch?v=qS7bCoIqL-M&list=OLAK5uy_lsh3F7WIEX4k9CnUmfBDMxcgbeDhtBSGY&index=3
Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin were born on February 12, 1809
Darwin showed to his public evidence that made room for a new truth, evidence accompanied by the theory of natural selection, the theory of evolution.
There is coexistence in Libra, relationship in Libra, Venus in Libra.
Here Mars is in Libra, the Moon in Capricorn in a square to Mars in Libra. Images that were persuasive. Persuasion, to be of one mind.
Silver.
It brought mockery. Mars in a quincunx to Jupiter in Pisces brought a war in the heavens, creation versus evolution.
Raw material that could change people’s psychology, change how people saw themselves, other creatures and plants. Applicable in so many ways.
A system applicable to everyone, everywhere.
Unifying.
Universal.
Gold.
Lincoln didn’t look for evidence. He looked for authority.
When he looked for evidence in politics, it didn’t turn out well. Like in 1846, when Mexican soldiers killed American soldiers on what they say was disputed territory. President Polk said it was American soil and asked Congress to declare war on Mexico. Lincoln asked the president to show Congress the exact spot where blood was shed and prove that it was American soil.
Spotty Lincoln
who questioned the president
went back to practising law
until Henry Clay died in 1852.
He eulogized Clay, a statesman devoted to public service, involved in all matters that endangered the stability of the Union, including slavery. He shared Clay’s wish to see a captive people restored to Africa their fatherland.
Chart for July 6, 1852
He was having his Uranus opposition Uranus with Jupiter, Pluto and Saturn involved when he ventured into politics again.
The stain of slavery, may god forgive them.
The responsibility of clan.
He didn’t mind the gap in Sagittarius though, the gap in missing information. There were more than 3 million slaves in the United States when he eulogized Clay.
In 1854 he relied on Jefferson when he opposed the extension of slavery in any new territory brought into the Union. Jefferson had made it policy not to extend slavery in the north western territory. Should this not apply to new territory ceded to the government?
In 1858 he took a quote from the bible and gave the House Divided Speech. He said the house would not fall, the Union would not fall. It would cease to be divided. He believed that the government could not endure permanently half slave and half free. It would become all one thing or all the other.
Chart for June 16, 1858
Raw material that could change people’s psychology.
He would take it a step further with Pluto in Taurus and Uranus stepping into Gemini, where there are sisters differentiated and brothers undifferentiated. Uranus in Gemini for 7 years, until 1865.
He gave his speech in this sign, with transiting Mercury Jupiter and the Sun, the Sun in a square to Neptune and his natal Jupiter in Pisces, his dream speech, erasing division one way or another.
His natal Jupiter in a sextile to the Moon in Capricorn, the Moon ruler of Cancer, his public a lake, sparking a war in the heavens to make room for a new truth. Looking for the authority that would bring it.
Transiting Mars was retrograding in Scorpio, and here he was again, with Clay, with Jefferson, and now the Bible, playing with words, words that strengthened his conviction. A quincunx that fertilized resolve and brought restraint, because a war in the heavens could be brought down to earth, resources could be mobilised to change people’s psychology.
He stuck with words, to persuade.
In 1860 he gave a speech at Cooper Union. It was a history lesson that had at its core the authority of the fathers who framed the government under which they lived.
He said there was nothing in the constitution that prevented the federal government from controlling slavery in federal territory, no dividing line between local and federal authority that prevented it from prohibiting it, and the fathers who framed the government had prohibited it in the Free States. There was also no mention of slave being considered property.
If slavery was right, then all words, laws, constitutions against it were wrong. If it was right, they could not object to it nationally or universally. But if it was wrong as he thought it was, their duty was to prevent it from extending into the National Territories and overrunning the Free States.
Chart for February 26, 1860
There is a centre in Leo.
He put the fathers who framed the government in the centre, the constitution in the centre, and made a case against slavery.
He put the whole made up of parts, the Union, above all, the Union that would not fall.
Mars was transiting Sagittarius, energizing the sign, energizing his natal planets, pushing them forward, Saturn Neptune in Sagittarius where we can weave into the fabric of society, where we can unweave from the fabric of society,
Saturn that asks for mastery, Saturn that asks for longevity, Saturn that can uphold, with Neptune of dreams and illusions, Neptune that can take us on a winding road to the final destination, Neptune that paves the way, Neptune that can cave and loosen Saturn’s hold,
in a square to his natal planets in Pisces, Mercury Pluto and Jupiter, shapeshifter of words, shapeshifting words to dismantle slavery
while preserving the union.
He became president, the first Republican president on March 4, 1861, and a war between brothers, a war that was in the heavens erupted on earth on April 12, 1861.
In his inaugural speech he said that he would keep the order of things. He would not interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it existed.
Saturn was retrograding in Virgo, keeping the order of things, in a square with Uranus in Gemini.
He said that if there was civil war, he would preserve protect and defend the government.
Mars touched Uranus and civil war broke out.
He said that his personal wish was to end slavery, but his official duty was to save the Union. If he could save the Union by not freeing any slave, he would it. If he could save the Union by feeing all slaves, he would do it. If he could save the Union by freeing some slaves, he would do it.
He would save it. He would take charge, conduct the war, shape the military strategy, appoint Republican or Democrat, ability over partisanship.
His natal Moon in Capricorn in a square to Mars in Libra.
He used his authority within the bounds of the constitution and within the bounds of the promise he made when he became president,
and found an opportunity to free slaves.
He would free them as punishment.
In September 1862 he proclaimed that the slaves of any State still in rebellion on January 1, 1863 would be freed.
Many were freed.
To be done with it once and for all.
It became a campaign promise.
He found his own authority and worked on a constitutional amendment to abolish slavery during his second term. The thirteenth amendment, submitted to the States for ratification on February 1, 1865.
Silver.
There were 36 States and it needed to be ratified by 27 to come into force. 18 had ratified it when he was assassinated.
He was the 16th president. The first one to do something tangible to abolish slavery.
There is freedom in Gemini, and Sagittarius can tie it to the fabric of society. Capricorn can turn it into law.
He set the wheels in motion and left the work for future generations
in a Union that was whole.
Gold.
There is a chart for him with data from a biography, Rodden Rating B
Astrology is not an academic art but an esoteric art. Not all astrologers feel obliged to give reference to the source of information.
The time given for the chart is 6:54 am, precise, as if it were taken from the birth record.
If a more general time of birth was described in the biography, the chart may have been rectified for the Ascendant to conjoin the Sun, the Midheaven to conjoin Neptune,
but the angles describe the alchemical work he came to do, the compromises he had to make, society versus self.
Aquarius Leo and Gemini Sagittarius.
When he became president, he strengthened federal control, the centre of the Union.
He struggled with the presence of slavery in half the land and tried to abolish it.
The nadir in Gemini in the fifth house. Uranus’ transit through Gemini awoke the need to take action. When Mars joined Uranus in Gemini, his words provoked, he stirred the pot.
He wasn’t a dreamer.
He travelled in the direction of the lunar nodes, the rulers of the nodal signs, and became a strategist.
Transiting Saturn pulled his attention to the sign and the house he was in.
Ruler of Capricorn and Aquarius.
Looking for authority figures in his lake, until he found it in himself, to update the system he lived in, without throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
With transiting Saturn in Libra in the ninth house, he worked with others on the thirteenth amendment. He took everyone to a place they had never been to before. Saturn reached zero degrees Scorpio when the amendment was submitted to the States for ratification. Saturn stationed retrograde at zero degrees and retrograded back into Libra, keeping his attention there, getting every State to ratify it.
His natal Saturn conjunct the MC.
Minding the gap in Aquarius.
eatlife.net/lincoln-memorial/attic-frieze-states.php
Chart for Susan Butcher, born December 26, 1954, Boston, data from birth record
youtube.com/watch?v=rJfFRjaDRtM
There is a side of Capricorn that Pan rules, god of the virgin wilderness, companion of nymphs, god of the panpipes.
There is a side of Capricorn that swims in the waters of the abzu, seminal waters, and rises to bring forth laws, to bring forth structure.
There is a side of Capricorn that the goddess Ninmah rules, goddess of the mountains, the goddess who challenged Enki and broke the molds, and Enki found them a place to earn bread.
An ancient branch of astrology said that the soul enters the body in Cancer, ruled by the Moon. The soul enters the body and the search for Eros begins, the work of alchemy, the Labours dictated by Venus.
Saturn Venus in Scorpio in the fourth house. To secure the basic necessities of life for her family, the ruler of Taurus in Scorpio. To secure a community for her family, the ruler of Libra in Scorpio.
When her mother held her chart, when she lived with her mother, her mother participated in ensuring that she could provide for herself.
She became a veterinary assistant. Animal medicine. She could have become a veterinarian, but the course requirements were too much for her, and she didn’t want to work inside, spend her life indoors.
She knew her limitations.
She was compelled to do the work of Cancer where there is nurture, work done by many before her, but for her it was tied to her longing for Eros, tied to her Moon in Capricorn,
and it asked for originality. Uranus first, Uranus Jupiter in Cancer in the twelfth house of faraway places, places of recovery and seclusion, places of exile.
She ended up living in Alaska, within the boundaries of her own lake, but as far away from Boston as she could get
to raise her family of dogs. Capricorn in the sixth house of small animals, house of apprenticeship.
Her originality, maybe not to others, but to her and her society it was original, and she broke a mold, already chipped by dyslexia.
Snap.
The Cancer Capricorn polarity in a square to Neptune in Libra, in the third house of the village that raises us, Libra where there is relationship, where there is a contest that leads to war, where there are the gates of Troy.
The ground kept breaking beneath her, the ice. The depth of the water never beyond her neck, but so cold that she could have died. Her confrontations with death, and her ability to rise back to the surface, her dogs pulling her out.
It wasn’t easy for her to secure the ground beneath her,
but Alaska felt like home.
She arrived in 1974, 20 years old, with a boyfriend. He didn’t stay long, but she remained.
Mars in Pisces in the eighth house of crisis and healing, her will to live in Pisces where the walls are thin,
Mars ruler of Aries in the ninth house asked her for first hand experience, find your own raw material, don’t depend on others,
Mars ruler of Scorpio in the fourth house of family, house of the nadir, with Saturn Venus, asked her to master her psychology, her sixth sense, the instincts to ensure survival in the wilderness, with the help of her family, community, apprenticeship.
She would train her dogs, learn to train them, learn about health and nutrition, make her own booties, harnesses, sleds.
The Sun in Capricorn conjunct the point of Rahu and Mercury, bringing Gemini in the house of pooled resources, and Virgo in the house of strengths.
Destiny drove her to reach out to others. She worked for others, learned from others, to carve her own methods and design.
In the quincunx between the Moon Chiron in Capricorn and Pluto in Leo in her first house, she laboured with her body, her life, for a pelt that she didn’t know about yet, she laboured for Venus, her search for Eros in a broken mold,
not just as far away from Boston as she could get, but as far away from civilization as she could get,
the civilization that she knew.
Sagittarius in her fifth house of personality and creativity gave her a taste of what was foreign to her, natural ruler of the ninth house. She says that she read a book about the Inuit and was attracted to their way of living. She read Jack London too.
She would find out for herself.
She experimented with dog mushing. She could give adventure tours one day.
She began to breed and raise her own dogs.
In 1979, she participated in the Iditarod race and finished in 19th place. She won 600 dollars.
The race begins the first Saturday in March, and on March 3 1979, transiting Mars was at 2 degrees Pisces, and transiting Saturn was at 10 degrees Virgo, retrograding to meet him in opposition and add discipline.
Jupiter had begun his transit through Leo, but retrograded back into Cancer during the race. Her Jupiter return.
She felt satisfaction. The challenge had satisfied her longing.
She says that there had always been a competitive streak in her, and the race sparked her competitive streak.
She says that depression would always set in at the end of every race, and the only way to combat it was to begin preparing for the next one.
She began to prepare for it and to add reserves to her pool of dogs.
She would end up with more than a hundred dogs in her isolated property in Eureka, her source of prime material and her future source of income.
The next five years saw her finish in the top ten and then in the top 5.
She says friends became enemies during the race, putting obstacles in her way. Sagittarius in her fifth house of friendship, and the ruler conjunct Uranus in Cancer in the twelfth house of secret enemies, territorial enemies,
twelfth house of big animals.
In 1985 a crazed moose charged at her dogs killing 2 and injuring 13. She pulled out of the race to care for them.
1985 was also the year she got married, with Saturn finishing his transit through Scorpio and Jupiter transiting Aquarius, bringing her a gift in the seventh house. A husband who came with a telephone, a partner who would help her manage the kennel that she was establishing. He would one day encourage her to bring it closer to a city, modernise it and make it more accessible.
She won the race in 1986.
She had been in the making for the past eight years. If she hadn’t won the race yet, it was perhaps because she didn’t have the vision of winning. This time she gave it an extra push.
Chart for March 13, 1986, timed to match her rising sign
Jupiter transiting Pisces in her eighth house of other people’s resources. She won first prize. She won and her mirror broke. Saturn asked her to fashion a new one. She wasn’t an outsider anymore. She was inside the gates of Troy.
Self doubt washed away and she wore her new pelt, and won again in 1987, 1988 and 1990.
Her passion and articulation attracted media attention to her, the relationship she had with her dogs, her treatment of them as professional athletes. She attracted attention to the Iditarod and raised the standards of the race, vet care at every check point.
In the 1991 interview, she speaks of having children, raising a family, but she held on to her search for Eros until her Uranus opposition Uranus. She retired in 1994 when she came in 9th place, but she was still sought after.
youtube.com/watch?v=iZbnb9FgM-s
I hate the city.
I love the country.
She wanted to live in the wilderness.
To have lived the life she wanted to live, her way, with her dogs, to get back and discover what was innate in us, to have survived the wilderness in Alaska is her silver.
Between silver and gold are the interviews she gave and the stories she told with her panpipes, giving shape to her life and bringing her into the light.
She found home and set down roots.
She prepared for a flood with reserves, and left her family a legacy, Alaska a legacy.
runawayjuno.com/runaway-to/trail-breaker-kennel/
Her ashes were scattered on the Iditarod trail, and the first Saturday of every March in Alaska is Susan Butcher day. Sarah Palin, with her grand stellium in Aquarius, Saturn Mars the Sun Moon Mercury, signed the bill that recognised her.
She left her mark.
Gold.
Chart for March 15, 1943, Toronto, the day David Cronenberg was born
He decided there was no god, no afterlife. Everything begins and ends with the body, and so it made perfect sense to study it. Cell biology and claustrophobia. He was much happier in the required English class.
“That was great insight on Elliot.”
“Thanks.”
“What’s your major?”
“Biochemistry. Yours?’
“English. You should consider it.”
“What will you do with it?”
“Make films.”
“Hollywood?”
“Here. I’m screening my first film this weekend. Come see it.”
He went to see it.
It was filmed right there, at the university, and he knew everyone in it, all students. A film about the body and desire, the wrong desire, taboo. Everything begins and ends with the body and the mind, what goes on inside, desire, jealousy, cruelty.
He got in his car and drove home. He couldn’t concentrate, he had to stop. He turned the hazard lights on and pulled over the shoulder. He got out of the car and walked to the middle of the traffic island, careful not to slip, the ground covered in snow. He stood in the cold watching the river of cars and knew what he would do.
“I’m changing my major,” he said, joining his family at the dinner table.
“Why? What happened?”
He told them what happened. About the movie as well.
youtube.com/watch?v=vodBSKDxin4
“I’ve tried to encourage you to go see Bergman and Fellini,” said his dad.
“I’m going to now, dad, I promise, but I’m not sure I want to make art films. I mean, all I could think of watching Winter kept us warm was, what if Doug’s head exploded because he couldn’t contain the dilemma he was in, all his frustration, all the energy inside him spilling out.”
“Horror movies! Good luck getting funding for that. (pause) Listen, son, for now, get your degree, good credentials are the first step inside the system. Then you can worry about working with it.”
youtube.com/watch?v=vKbgZrRHeTY
The logic was that his movies had to be sensationalistic to make money
because his movies were about the body and the mind, in the Taurus Scorpio polarity, with Venus in Aries, unselfconscious, and Mars in Aquarius, engaged in battle, fighting for freedom of expression.
Born with the spirit of the times in Gemini where there are multiple points of view, the freedom to have multiple points of view, Uranus in Gemini
with Saturn, ruler of Capricorn where there are bones, the bones that hold us up,
questioning his use of tax money, even if he had returned it, questioning the nature of his movies.
Uranus Saturn in Gemini, rulers of Aquarius, most socialized sign.
youtube.com/watch?v=EL31jYevzTo
In 1982, the lunar nodes were in the Capricorn Cancer polarity, and they entered the subject of censorship. He says he doesn’t think there’s anything that should not be shown in films, but believes there should be a structure that would make this possible.
When he drove to Buffalo to see his movie Shivers, he saw someone bring a 3 year old to the movie, and this upset him, having a three year old himself. Clearly, left to the parents or guardians, things weren’t going to work. That’s the reason why they were so tough with handing out the R rating in the States.
The R rating or the X rating. He offers a solution and says there could be another category, like 14+, between R and X.
Freedom and social responsibility, a solution for them to co exist.
They talk about the use of special effects in creating scenes of horror.
In 1982, Pluto was finishing his transit in Libra and Uranus was transiting Sagittarius, digging in the field of arrangements and aesthetics to break boundaries and enter new territory.
His movie Videodrome was released on February 4, 1983.
youtube.com/watch?v=kcKMn3CZ1bk
Mind the gap in the body,
and Mercury in Capricorn gave the cry of Pan, playing with his public’s fears about technology.
His Moon Jupiter in Cancer in a square to Venus in Aries.
His search for Eros in Cancer,
where there is a lake with an entrance to the underworld,
lake of stories, dreams, nightmares,
natural ruler of the nadir,
cloaked in the cover of night.
Jupiter doesn’t bring to light. Jupiter is a fertilizing god, stories begin with him, stories of the nadir,
to tell them unselfconsciously.
His search for Eros opening new territory in the nadir,
to be l’enfant terrible of Canada.
Silver.
The movie was released during his Uranus opposition Uranus, with Jupiter and his natal Saturn involved, Jupiter freeing Saturn, and past the exact opposition in the Gemini Sagittarius polarity.
He was at the cutting edge of special effects, he brought ideas, had a philosophy. His public would decry the censorship of his films, and the bones of his society would ask for order in the movie industry,
because his movies brought disorder.
Up until then he had directed his own screeplays, written, co written by him,
and now a new stage of his life was beginning, when he would consider writing screenplays based on other people’s work, directorial projects that would allow him full control, never letting anyone hold his chart.
The beginning of his own genre of films, the Cronenberg genre, with the Cronenberg rating.
There are moral crossroads in Leo, Hercules making a choice between virtue and vice. In Gemini, they loose judgement. They become subject matter, raw material.
Drawn to subject matter that comes from the Nadir, Burrough’s, Ballard’s, and he drew conclusions about Jung’s Nadir which upset a lot of people. He doesn’t blame us if we don’t go see it.
There is the technical side to movie making.
5:45
youtube.com/watch?v=jzUsrzrj1sQ
Mastery in problem solving, finding solutions to make technology an extension of the human body, to juxtapose parallel realities on the same the plane,
connecting the dots to make a whole and make room for his aesthetics.
He says that one of the things he is doing in his movies is trying to change the audience’s aesthetics. In the course of however long the movie is, he wants them to start with the normal revulsion that they have, and by the end of the movie, to see some kind of beauty, or some possibility of beauty, in things that they thought were repulsive to begin with.
To offer a new challenge with every film, new territory to explore.
Gemini rising,
freedom kept in check by government funding and social responsibility.
In 1983, the success of Videodrome turned the tables.
Mercury, ruler of his first house and ruler of Virgo in the fourth, was transiting Capricorn, quincunxing his Ascendant.
He still relied on, fell back on government funding, funding that came with its own set of restrictions,
16:07
but he now had the clout to keep the government in check,
18:04
youtube.com/watch?v=7lrWhx5AxYo
hammering anything that threatened the movie industry at home.
ctvnews.ca/famed-director-cronenberg-hammers-bill-c-10-1.295780
Mercury was transiting Capricorn
and Saturn was transiting Scorpio in his sixth house, signalling a master in this place of mysteries, mysteries of the mind,
in this place where there is clan. To become the guardian of his clan, to stand for the rights of filmmakers in Canada,
their creativity not to be stifled.
There is a loyal crab in Cancer, terrible as he may be,
with access to the Nadir,
making gold in Pisces.
Solar Pisces, shapeshifter. He’s left enough raw material to be studied for generations to come.
Catch him if you can.
Chart for June 27, 1976, the day Amber MacArthur was born
youtube.com/watch?v=lCsjUr7NlGE
In the Mars in Leo and Jupiter in Taurus square, she could labour for or against, for and against the technology she heralds.
She has laboured for it,
youtube.com/watch?v=uEx3DyMnmD4
encouraging businesses to use the new tools to market their products, to engage with customers,
come into the fold.
She participates in the arrangements that are changing her clan, changing the psychology of people, the way they learn and think. She is witnessing this too with her child.
To be included, with the Sun, Moon, Venus in Cancer, she includes. She works with others to tie in a foreign language. She heralds and she markets, and she predicts, measuring the ripples.
Pluto began his transit in Sagittarius in 1995, when Uranus and Neptune danced together in Capricorn, activating her natal planets. She participated in the structure of a new language,
a language that keeps changing and keeps her learning.
There is singularity in Leo, singularity of purpose, and Saturn at 2 degrees Leo asks for mastery in singularity. He joins Aquarius where there are parallel universes, and Capriocrn where there are bones that hold us up, to Leo. Saturn in a square to Uranus at 3 degrees Scorpio, holding the fort in the face of
reluctance to change, mistrust, concerns with privacy.
At the privacy conference in 2015, she gave the audience the responsiblity of taking care of consumer privacy. I’m glad you’re here, she said, because the tide is coming.
The Moon was transiting Virgo that day, and an audience had come together to discuss a specific topic.
This wasn’t her usual audience, the audience she tried to bring into the fold.
She didn’t have answers on how to protect privacy, but she highlighted the need, raised the alarm.
In 2015, Pluto was transiting Capricorn opposing her natal planets in Cancer,
and Uranus was transiting Aries,
The Capricorn Cancer polarity in a t square with Aries.
A grand square with her natal Pluto in Libra.
An opportunity, perhaps, for her to get involved in privacy issues, to consider what new rules and regulations would be needed to protect privacy.
Jupiter was transiting Leo, and in Leo there are children, the child in all of us. Jupiter freeing her natal Saturn from holding the fort, and Saturn was retrograding into Scorpio.
An opportunity, perhaps, to address people’s concerns and her own.
Chart for May 26, 2015, the first day of the conference
It is around this time that she met Michael Bazzell.
youtube.com/watch?v=JUN82xwNmus
She tackled the problem of privacy by educating parents to outsmart their kids. Chiron was transiting Pisces where he minds the gap in things getting out of hand, and where he might also mind the gap between generations.
She published the book on May 1, 2016
The lunar work was in Pisces, and Jupiter was transiting Virgo where Demeter put the seasons in order. The Pisces Virgo polarity was in a t square to Saturn Mars retrograding in Sagittarius, asking for discipline.
Her natal planets in Cancer touched earth and she offered solutions, not rules, but smarts.
She continued giving talks, there was no stopping the new technology, the endless possibilities, adaptations would be necessary, join in or be excluded.
youtube.com/watch?v=VRtI4rO0TBc
A dream for some and a nightmare for others.
Touching the Nadir.
Sounding the alarm.
With Uranus and Jupiter transiting Taurus, she changed her blueprint. She spoke of compassion and trust, offered some practical advice, down to earth, an AI playground, playing with tools, incorporating them with policies in place.
youtube.com/watch?v=k1pW44gVyHc
Her ability to move with the times, to sense what the audience needs to hear, what will capture their attention, her silver.
Chart for May 7, 2024
The lunar destiny and Chiron Mercury were in Aries, minding the gap in survival, teaching survival, independence.
Pluto had just taken his first steps into Aquarius where we are separate but equal, where we are careful not to throw the baby out with the bathwater,
Pluto in a square to her natal Chiron in Taurus where there is the body, the earth, Europa and a javelin that never misses, Laelaps the hunting dog that always catches its prey, and Talos the automaton protecting her. Ensuring survival, the basic necessities of life.
Urnaus and Jupiter were transiting Taurus, compelling her to do the work of the sign. A stellium in Taurus that day.
Things can get out of hand in Pisces, and Saturn can set limits.
What does she offer?
What’s coming.
Chart for June 27, 1976, timed, with AC and MC aspects
Libra rising, sign of Themis, prophetess.
She can tell us what’s coming sending ripples.
She grounds her story in the history of her homeland.
instagram.com/p/DCO6NKeOxum/
Her homeland, her primary stage. The group that she belongs to gives her centre stage and is a source of her contracts. Saturn doesn’t give easily, he takes time. Mastery in public speaking, mastery in a lake.
She tells us stories of growing up, stories of how the brain adapts, stories of her child, evidence in the stories.
A lake within a lake,
a lake with its own language,
business and the tech industry, there from the beginning, she carries the memories of a lake.
Some are difficult memories, when she wanted to report on her expertise and they had her report on pedophiles instead, in a separate corner of the studio. Her brother helped her. Jupiter, ruler of Sagittarius in the third house of siblings, in Taurus in the eighth.
Saturn doesn’t give easily and Jupiter’s gifts don’t come easy. A gift in Taurus, an ability to earn a living.
Labour, he said, in a square to Mars who asks for Arete.
Jupiter, ruler of Pisces in the sixth house of work, where there can be a gap between generations, where there is a change of age.
She works to get everyone on board, faithful to her industry, her lake. Even the grand square of 2015 could not push her out. She used the energies to stay in.
Her story in the lake is her gold.
On this day, what she had to say was of influence in her homeland. Mercury was transiting Cancer, joining her house of knowledge with her house of reputation. Jupiter Pluto were conjunct at 22-23 degrees Capricorn, across her MC, diffusing. Saturn R was at 28 degrees Capricorn, joining Capricorn with Aquarius in her fifth house of personality, romance, her creations.
1:00:25
youtube.com/watch?v=5CqCvIt26-8