Venus and Mars and The Mind as the Body’s Largest Erogenous Zone

This post comes via a suggestion from astrologer Sherrye Weinstein, and I’d like to thank her off the top for it.
I’d posted a request for article ideas over on Facebook today and Sherrye suggested an inquiry into the peculiar — and rather long — transits of Venus in Capricorn and Mars in Libra. Venus will move through the sign Capricorn until early March 2014; and Mars will transit Libra, beginning tomorrow, until the end of July 2014. That is a long Mars transit, and in a sign that, conventionally, Mars is muddled in. Not to mention Venus’s FAIL in Capricorn.
Without launching into a diatribe against the too-tight limitations traditional astrology applies to interpretation (with its rulerships, laws, dignities, falls and train wrecks), I want to focus more on the fascinating possibilities that exist for each of us while the planet of love traverses the sign of structure and limitation — Capricorn (where Mars is exalted and runs free — bastard!).
As you’ll see, I’m not negating our heritage from traditional astrology, but I’m amplifying the various paradoxes in a way that fit a modern logos, one imbued with the merits of psychological understanding. Having said that, it’s interesting to remember that Saturn, Capricorn’s ruler is exalted in Libra, a Venusian sign — and that offers a cogent clue here. We’ve a bit of a cluster fuck with these transits, and it’s fun to untangle the various limbs and gender parts, to find the goose that lays the golden egg (I think I mixed metaphors, yes?)
In a a kind of Agatha Christie mindset, we might look to Mars to discover a way out of this Venusian restriction, (as Mars and Venus are viewed as a pair when we study desire, attraction and impulse), but with Mars transiting a Venus-ruled sign we are, in a sense, thrown back towards Venus to unravel the mystery. So Venus in Capricorn becomes the predominate theme. Solve the Venus in Capricorn riddle and you can then ride Mars’ transit through Libra with a clarity that might startle you once it delivers the goods at the end of the sojourn: An entirely new way of thinking about affection and sex.
Mars discriminates and galvanizes. So, what does it mean when you apply Martian clarity to quandaries like “limited love” or “tough love” or what I call “quid pro quo love”. Meaning, when Venus is in Capricorn you only get what you are willing to pay for: something for something; which is a crude way of saying that in the theater of reality (Capricorn) there is perfect justice every second (despite our inability to see or register it). And justice like that, from a spiritual perspective, is symmetrical; beautiful.
The catch? Venus in Capricorn will highlight the disparity in our relationships and make us work to solve the imbalance before a sense of harmony can reestablish. Sounds chilly and abstract doesn’t it? But, wait! Consider how good sex is when you feel your power and your partner’s power simultaneously (quid pro quo), oscillating freely, back and forth, up and down, in and out. (God, I’m flushed just typing that out). That’s a Venus in Capricorn for you.
And Mars in Libra says “Yes, that’s right.” And in Venus’s sign: “I can show you how, because it’s what I want right now. Goddamnit!”
Mars in Libra is, again, from the traditional matrix considered disadvantaged. Mars needs to move forward in a straight line, yes? Why? Who says so? — I guess because the erect penis is pointed and straight it must be so, but women are not exempt from the Martian essence, so what gives?
We’re told Mars gets into a Libran muddle. Again, a cliche, for Libra as a cardinal sign is forceful, dramatic and disrupts the status quo to see which side it wants to test or explore.
So if anything, Mars in Libra is too much mental or intellectual stimulation. And the mind (Venus-ruled Libra) being the body’s largest erogenous zone, when activated by Mars, creates too many desires, too much stimulation, too much variance. Have you ever tried to have sex when your mind is over-amped? Not so good.
Viagra was invented not to stimulate erections but to blow-out the mind by sending so much blood to the head that the brain has no choice but to settle on one particular desire — and follow it; much like Ritalin helps overactive kids ‘settle’ because it burns out their nervous system to the point of zombie-hood.
Venus from Capricorn signals: Chill. And then Mars in Libra brings on focus. Activity through conscious effort is slowed, a rhythm is reached and suddenly a full blown form of tantra is at work. That’s the beauty of Mars in Libra.
The usual quandary of over-thinking and comparing, as in: “This looks good, but also that looks good, and if I go for this over that I’ll lose that” is disciplined. The impulse to have things our way (Mars) can suspend (Libra) allowing a sharp (Mars), no bullshit apprehension of reality (Capricorn) to arise. Objectivity becomes involved in the mechanics and laws of desire. Which really is what tantra or alchemy is about: Head and heart uniting.
So, if you want to understand how life is an ongoing expression of the constant dance, as typified by the sexual impulse (the Venus Mars polarity), of both creation (Venus) and destruction (Mars), take advantage (Capricorn) of these two transits (Libra) to slow down (Venus in Capricorn) and employ temperance (Mars in Libra) for optimal satisfaction. Optimal insight. Optimal love.
Happy Holidays!
And thanks again Sherrye.
source  http://www.astroinquiry.com/2013/12/venus-and-mars-and-the-mind-as-the-bodys-biggest-erogenous-zone/#more-7206http://www.astroinquiry.com/2013/12/venus-and-mars-and-the-mind-as-the-bodys-biggest-erogenous-zone/#more-7206

Saturn: The Work and the Love

Love and work … work and love, that’s all there is.
— Sigmund Freud

The outcome of my life is no more than these three lines:
I was a raw material;
I was cooked and became mature;
I was burned in love.
— Rumi

Rarely is the astrological Saturn associated with love. Traditional astrology certainly doesn’t make that distinction. Though esoteric astrology does. Alice Bailey once noted that to view Saturn as the bringer of opportunity, and not simply disaster, was a sign that one had touched upon the path towards wholeness. Both Freud and Rumi understood the truth related to this alchemical process. Work, as a kind of friction, and love as the driving force that is also the culmination of the process. A willing mixture of work and love, a conscious acknowledgment and co-mingling that denotes spiritual maturity and wisdom.
That is how Rumi summarized his life work — in the above poem. And for each of us, the journey from ‘raw material’ to alchemical cooking and maturing, to the eventual transmutation through love, is an unavoidable engagement. We each have our appointed time with this process. Freud, who devoted his life work to rummaging through and classifying the structure of the unconscious, emerged for light in the end with his simple truism. It’s all about love and work, work and love.
One does the work and discovers the love, but more specifically one sees that love facilitated the work all along. And in this sense Saturn can be associated with love. We think of Saturn’s exaltation in Libra as being related to equanimity and the uncompromising law of what is fair. Which in one sense is true — within the Saturnine cosmology there is never cheating. You pay a dollar and you get a dollar’s worth.
As Ouspensky once said, it’s true people do occasionally find money in the street, but such an event is rare, you can’t count on a philosophy of happenstance to sustain a life. Saturn in Libra evokes a force that is the exact opposite of magical thinking. There is simply reality, seen in all its ‘is-ness’ and from there one begins their work. Libra, being a sign that is not human or animal, facilitates this sharp sort of clarity.
I would add, too, that Saturn’s exaltation in Venus’ sign conveys a deeper mystery. When we meet reality head on — that is to say, without filters, buffers or illusions we actually begin to sense the ground of love, and its unifying, form-making presence. A power that maintains the manifestation, keeps it visible — with distinct and particular colors and shapes, but all united in love. Evolving and deepening, the movement of love.
It’s a shocking insight, really, this equating of love with Saturn. But I’d like to suggest you contemplate Saturn’s placement by house and sign in your horoscope and see if you can’t connect to that unifying, form-making principle of love related to the particular ‘stage set’ of your life — represented by Saturn’s house placement. And then tease out, as you reflect over your history, the various trials and limitations that — as a kind of friction-making conundrum — generate the warmth, light and, yes, love, that create meaning and purpose. These are Saturn’s gifts to each of us.
Try this inquiry, and please feel free to share your observations below.

Opening painting by Odilon Redon Silence. 1911. Museum of Modern Art

 

source  http://www.astroinquiry.com/2013/12/saturn-the-work-and-the-love/

Why Astrologers Need to Study Wittgenstein

Paul Horwich, in a long NY Times essay wrote:

“The singular achievement of the controversial early 20th century philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein was to have discerned the true nature of Western philosophy — what is special about its problems, where they come from, how they should and should not be addressed, and what can and cannot be accomplished by grappling with them. The uniquely insightful answers provided to these meta-questions are what give his treatments of specific issues within the subject — concerning language, experience, knowledge, mathematics, art and religion among them — a power of illumination that cannot be found in the work of others.”

Wittgenstein isn’t an easy immersion, but he’s worth your effort because the more you study his philosophy — which was actually, in spots, more akin to mysticism — the more freedom you might gain as an astrologer.
Like the closet mystic Carl Jung, Wittgenstein knew how to couch his propositions to pass the scrutiny of his peers (well, except for his mentor Bertrand Russell who he drove to fury by disregarding traditional formulations of logic.)
And because of this sketchy dance, between chilly logic and the nimbus of mysticism, I find Wittgenstein to be the most satisfying of linguistic rebels. His mix of the effable with the ineffable mirrors in a direct way how human beings toil with making sense (or a muddle) of astrology.
Like many philosophers Wittgenstein focused on the power of language to shape — and entrap us — in our world. And the same limitation develops in astrology with the application of ‘keywords’ and concepts to shape our understanding, to communicate our insights. There is nothing harmful in this application — I mean, none of us are telepathic (yet) — save for the fact that results very rarely achieve the sort of promise astrologers like to imagine being in possession of.
We end up mistaking the map of the Himalayans (the horoscope) for the Himalayans (the human being). And this distortion, this throwback into symbol, does not make for efficacious astrology. Yes, it allows for communication of sketchy outlines and impressions, but as Wittgenstein explained, we must remember that words “reach out to” referents, without really touching them. Astrology, I feel, can actually allow the astrologer to touch (perceive directly) the essence of each quality astrology has heretofore couched in symbolic structures.
This condition is doubly complicated by the fact that modern psychological astrology now employs Jungian archetypes to impart an air of legitimacy to the practice. But, ironically, the very foundation of astrological principle — that there is no separation between the cosmos and the particular, is undone by the concept of archetypes which reconfirm a dualistic relationship to the universe. This kind of loopy blind spot must stop. And Wittgenstein can help unravel the hypocrisy.
We speak of the planets as gods but then we define their qualities in human terms, reducing them instantly to human status, when, as living beings of a higher order, the planets do not correspond in a direct way to human qualities. A relationship does exist, but not in the subject/object way astrologers have couched it. As Wittgenstein stressed, we only can know what language allows us to know, and what lies beyond the realm of language is unspeakable: “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent,” he wrote. And this is where the relationship between the human and the divine exists. Where astrology begins.
What is beyond speech and language is a different kind of perception, another kind of relationship, and this, ultimately is what astrology actually is: a relationship. It is not a science, art or religion — it might have facets that touch on each of those categories, but ultimately astrology is a relationship that is a living dialectic that defines, reveals directly, a unified field of existence. The complete Being-ness of reality.

To move beyond astrology’s symbolic or archetypal matrixes invites direct knowing. A quality of communion that illuminates our consciousness to that of the cosmos’, not vice versa. This, then, is when astrology becomes a spiritual practice. Meister Eckhart warned: “That person never gets to the underlying truth who stops at the enjoyment of its symbol.”
Using archetypes to describe qualities that are inherent to each planet is like describing your relationship to your wife or boyfriend with a symbol. This is dehumanizing. People live through and experience their lives, not a collection of archetypes. Your wife or boyfriend is a living being; planets are living beings — there is no need to dilute the experience of one’s relationship to reality with a symbol or an archetype.
Astrologers have spent the last several centuries relying on the symbolic to create a lexicon for their craft, to allow the archetypal to replace the enchanting mystery of astrology’s logos — its beauty and potency. It is time to step beyond this limitation. Simply stated, astrologers need to stop anthropomorphizing the divine. We need to shut up and listen. Studying Wittgenstein can help.

source http://www.astroinquiry.com/2014/04/whty-free-thinking-astrologers-need-to-study-wittgenstein/http://www.astroinquiry.com/2014/04/whty-free-thinking-astrologers-need-to-study-wittgenstein/

Gurdjieff’s Solar/Lunar Dychotomy

To simply consider the Full Moon invites Luna directly into your head.
The evolutionary process has burrowed her image deep into our cerebral cortex. We can’t escape her colossal, fat roundness — pushing out the boundaries of our inner vision.
The Sun radiates and sustains whereas the Moon reflects and craves, as Martha Heyneman writes, always the Moon “…is tugging at everything on her side of the surface of the earth. She sucks on the very rocks. As she passes overhead the earth’s crust rises a few inches beneath her and is elsewhere compressed, kneaded as a cat kneads your stomach.”
Astrologically we associate the Moon with Mother, but is that correspondence correct? According to the Russian mystic G.I. Gurdjieff the Earth and the Moon are in a kind of symbiotic relationship with one another. As he explained to P.D. Ouspensky, as recounted in the book In Search of the Miraculous: “The moon is a huge living being feeding upon all that lives and grows on earth. The moon could not not exist without organic life on earth, any more than organic life on earth could exist without the moon.” Gurdjieff describes the Moon as a planet-in-the-making that depends on vital forces generated by life on Earth to continue her process of ‘warming’. The Moon’s evolution. This is a very different understanding from what Western astrology teaches us.
Why do we often feel anxious during the Full Moon? And why is the Full Moon phase considered one of heightened spiritual activity? Consider the phases in life when you’ve changed homes, ended a longterm relationship, lost your job, or experienced the death of a loved one. Psychologists consider those four ‘life events’ as some of the toughest emotional adjustments we ever make. Within the realm of planetary and luminary aspects, the moment of the Full Moon corresponds to a similar set of shocks.
At the exact opposition, the Moon has momentarily lost her function — that of ‘gathering’ light from the Sun. Too, Luna and Sol undergo a pivotal relational ‘shift’, the cycle of waxing changes to one of waning, a loss of light. This, too, is akin to a death. Post Full Moon, all of the solar light that the Moon has gathered is drained away — night after night — as Luna moves back, bereft, to complete darkness during the New Moon phase — her next conjunction with the Sun.
In traditional astrology, before contemporary psychology was integrated into the stargazer’s methodologies — the Moon was considered greedy.
Wizard astrologer John Frawley describes the lunation cycle this way: “The waxing Moon can be characterized as greed for what it has not yet got; the waning Moon as greed for what it once had but has lost. At Full, it is full; its greed is momently satisfied. It has all that it can want, its capacity is filled. With its greed at last sated it has no power, for its whole motive force has gone.” (Italics are mine).
The anthroposophic Rudolph Steiner reminded us that human beings are a direct reflection of the cosmos and that our consciousness is imbued with the entirety of the universe. In The Sun Mystery lectures he wrote: “Throughout a human lifetime, what happens in the head remains an image of the entire cosmos. The very fact that we have a head means that each of us carries an image of the entire cosmos around with us…In fact the Earth perceives the cosmos through human beings…”
During the Full Moon we could say that, spiritually, a veil parts, a haze is pierced, and the Moon’s powerful pull drops momentarily ‘off the grid.’ An opportunity is under way, a kind of shock moment where the matrix of the solar system opens within our consciousness in a flash of totality — freed momentarily from the Moon’s constant demand. The exact position and angles of the planets are vivified — are felt directly, palpably. Which is to say, we’ve a greater opportunity for sensing presence, how we are situated exactly — at this moment — unencumbered by ego. The Moon’s craving corresponds to our ego’s craving, the self’s constant niggling, fidgeting and agitation; its inability to be still. The gnawing sense of there being ‘too little’ or too much of this or that –the  lunar-like state. At Full Moon there is a gap and a cessation.
In his fascinating book Disruption, the Gurdjieffian philosopher David Appelbaum notes: “When consciousness is fractured, its world-making powers are momentarily disrupted. In the gap, during which spatio-temporal categories of thought cease to apply, consciousness realigns with that which it is meant to serve: The moment of self-remembering…”
Within the cyclic dance between the luminaries, the Full Moon moment is akin to Gurdjieff’s ‘stop exercise.’ The stop exercise was one of Gurdjieff’s most literal techniques to develop his students’ capacities for ‘self-remembering.’ A directed form of attention that reminds one of their presence and “I Am-ness.” We are afforded this moment, a cosmic fiat — at the moment of each Full Moon. This ‘stop’ might reveal key elements to our behavior that complicate alignment with our solar nature. The Moon reflects our history and habits; whereas the Sun sustains our present moment and the condition of presence. Henry Van Dyke wrote: “As long as habit and routine dictate the pattern of living, new dimensions of the soul will not emerge.”
Gurdjieff claimed that we experience two primary ‘pulls’ in life. Towards the Sun or towards the Moon. Both processes served a function within the Ray of Creation (his diagram which outlined the scale of all bodies within the universe), but efforts that awakened solar consciousness were of a non-mechanical sort and required applied, conscious effort and acts of self-remembering.
In Gurdjieff’s cosmology we live in a reciprocal universe. Nothing in life is ever wasted. All organic substance serves as a type of food for something else within the chain of existence. Human consciousness, too, is a kind of food. Either for the Sun or the Moon. To simplify Gurdjieff’s ideas, it could be said that if human consciousness is not aligned with — does not assist the Sun’s evolution — we are then fodder for the Earth and its ward, the Moon.
Everything we do mechanically from habit, from the desire for comfort, from our instinctive fear of change — all of that feeds the Moon’s hunger. It’s as if our abdicated solar light is passed along to the Moon and her desire for light and warmth. In this sense Gurdjieff’s statement that humanity’s constant creation of turmoil and dissatisfaction — the sturm und drang of existence — creates high-octane food for the Moon. Again, nothing in the universe is ever wasted.
Although Gurdjieff confirmed astrology’s relevance, his depiction of the universe had little in common with exoteric astrology. Instead of an anthropic projection onto the cosmos, Gurdjieff considered the Moon and planets not as rocks in space imbued with human qualities and conditions, but as beings unto themselves; evolving life forms that we, as Earth beings, have a reciprocal relationship with.
It might be helpful to consider the lifepath and function of the Moon-ruled sign Cancer, for clues to unraveling the Lunar quandry. As Debbie Kempton Smith once noted: “Cancer is the most powerful sign of the zodiac — without food and love life can not go on.” True, but given Cancer’s unusual position within the Zodiacal cycle, that of the summer solstice, when solar radiation is strongest — we have a true mystery. The Sun is at its most potent in Cancer and yet the sign is ruled by the Moon. In describing this unusual sequence, Dane Rudhyar once again presents us with the notion of a stop, pause and gap in preparation for the reception of greater consciousness; he writes in The Pulse of Life:
Cancer “…refers to a time of the year when the Sun moves very slowly; stands still. There is a stillness about it at the same time that there is the possibility of intense light. It is the moment of the longest days; yet astrology makes it ruled by the Moon, waiting until one more sign to glorify in Leo the creative radiance of the Sun.”
So the mystery of our relationship with the Moon is encountered in the sign Cancer as a stillness. Or rather the challenge to develop stillness within the classic moods and passions of the Cancerian psyche. If one considers the cusp between Cancer and Leo as the nexus — marriage point between the lunar and solar principles, an alchemy of awareness and balance — we have another way of comprehending Cancer’s dominion of the summer solstice. As Rudhyar notes, Cancer proceeds Leo because “…all great sacraments come when there is a pause, silence and tremor.” Taken within the Gurdjieffian cosmology — and the power of a full stop — we can see the potency of this moment — its potential and promise.

Opening photograph: Model of the bright side of the Moon (c. 1908). Photographer unknown.

source  http://www.astroinquiry.com/2014/04/moon/#more-3174

An Introduction to Astrology by William Lilly

First published in 1647, as Christian Astrology, this is one of the best known post-classical works on Astrology. the present edition, heavily edited by 'Zadkiel,' was released under the current title in 1852. As the planet Uranus ('Hershel'), discovered in 1781, is mentioned throughout, and Neptune, discovered in 1846, is not, we can bracket the date of composition of the revised edition to the mid-19th century.
Horary Astrology, the subject of this book, interprets planetary positions to answer a wide range of questions, from lost dogs and stolen fish, to the death of kings. While there is a basic repertoire of interpretations, (e.g., Saturn bad, Venus good), the horoscope is used as a jumping off point for the astrologer's intuition.
And Lilly apparently had spectacularly good intuition. His famous prediction of the London fire of 1666 was so accurate that he was suspected of starting it, a charge he was later acquitted of. Lilly also used Astrology in medical practice and this book discusses the use of horoscopes in diagnosing diseases, determining whether a patient will die or get better, and so on.
Zadkiel was apparently the pseudonym of Richard James Morrison (1795-1874). Thanks to John Mark Ockerbloom of Online Books for pointing this out.
This etext uses Unicode extensively to display astrological symbols; for instructions on viewing Unicode in your browser, refer to this file.

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Title Page
Preface
Table of Contents
Life of William Lilly
Chapter I.
Chapter II.
Chapter III. Of the Aspects
Chapter IV Of the Twelve Houses, Their Nature and Signification
Chapter V. Of Saturn, and his Signification
Chapter VI. Of the Planet Jupiter, and his Signification
Chapter VII. Of the Planet Mars, and his Several Significations
Chapter VIII. Of the Sun, His General and Particular Significations
Chapter IX. Of the Planet Venus, and her Several Signification and Nature
Chapter X. Of Mercury, and his Signification, Nature, and Property
Chapter XI. Of the Moon, her Properties and Significations
Chapter XII
Chapter XIII. Another Brief Description of the Shapes and Forms of the Planets
Chapter XIV. The Colours of the Planets and Signs
Chapter XV. The Nature, Place, Countries, General Description, and Diseases Signified by the Twelve Signs
Chapter XVI. Teaching What Use May Be Made of the Former Discourse of the Twelve Signs
Chapter XVII. Of the Essential Dignities of the Planets
Chapter XVIII. Table of the Essential Dignities of the Planets
Chapter XIX. Considerations Before Judgment
Chapter XX. What Significator, Querent, and Quesited, are; and an Introduction to the Judgment of a Question.
Chapter XXI. To Know Whether a Thing Demanded will be Brought to Perfection, Yea or Nay

The Resolution of all Manner of Questions and Demands

Chapter XXII. Questions Concerning the First House. If the Querent be Likely to Live Long--Yea or Not?
Chapter XXIII. If One Shall Find the Party at Home he Would Speak with?
Chapter XXIV. Of a Ship, and her Safety or Destruction
Chapter XXV. Judgments Concerning the Second House
Chapter XXVI. Of the Third House, viz. of Brethren, Sisters, Kindred, News, Short Journeys, etc.
Chapter XXVII. Of the Fourth House, and Judgments Depending Thereon
Chapter XXVIII. Of the Fifth House and its Questions
Chapter XXIX. Of the Sixth House
Chapter XXX. The Seventh House, and its Questions
Chapter XXXI. Of the Eighth House, and its Questions: These are Death, Dowry, the Wife's Substance, &c.
Chapter XXXII. Of The Ninth House and its Questions. Long Journeys, Voyages, Arts, Science, Church Preferment, Law, &c.
Chapter XXXIII. The Tenth House and its Questions.--viz. Office, Dignity, Preferment, Government, Trade, or Profession, &c.
Chapter XXXIV. Of the Eleventh House, and its Questions, viz. of Friends, Hopes, Property of the King, &c.
Chapter XXXV. Of the Twelfth House, and its Questions, viz. of Imprisonment, Great Cattle, Private Enemies, Banished Men, &c.
Aphorisms, by Zadkiel

Appendix

Explanation of the Hieroglyphics
Description of Persons According as the Significator may be Found in Each of the Twelve Signs
Effects of the Aspects Between the Significators
Of the ✶ and △ Aspects Between the Significators
The Effects of the ☐ or ☍ Aspects Between the Significators
List of Fixed Stars Which may be Considered in Horary Questions
Explanation of Terms Used in this Work