Category Archives: Saturday Archives

Saturday Archives: When Will I Find Love?

Of all the posts I’ve written for my blog, The Pisces Chronicles, this one continues to get several hits a week. And with a powerful solar eclipse coming up this week in my seventh house of relationships, it’s a topic that is foremost in my mind.

When we’re talking among ourselves, astrologers often lament that the question we get most often is, “When will I find love?” or the even lower version, “Will he come back to me?”

Well, I just love it when people ask about love, no matter what version of the question they ask!

There’s no greater treasure in life than true love. It’s what we’re here for, and it’s what we all want, in our deepest heart of hearts. When you get right down to it, what else is there? That so many people are asking about it – even in what we consider to be an “unenlightened” way – is very encouraging.

It means they have started down the path.

I’m going to digress for a minute and talk about the Hollywood movie plot. In the mid-1990s, Chris Vogler circulated a paper at his studio about how the journey of the mythical hero could be incorporated into scripts to make the story more compelling. He drew heavily on the work of Joseph Campbell, notably The Hero with a Thousand Faces. His formula was so successful that he ended up writing a book, The Writer’s Journey, which is now on the must-read list of every Hollywood screenwriter.

The reason I mention it is that, while it might not be immediately obvious, the hero’s journey is extremely relevant to romance films, be they serious love stories or romantic comedies. After all, what is the classic formula “boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back” if not a hero’s journey? The story starts with desire – the strongest desire human beings ever feel – and that puts the hero or heroine on a path of testing, trials, and self-discovery as they get closer to what they really want. Pay attention the next time you watch a romance film, and you’ll see this formula at work.

Astrology is an extremely cerebral discipline. Contrary to what many people think, you have to be very bright to understand all the math involved, to grasp the nature of the various planetary energies and how they interact with each other, to keep so much information in your head, and to be able to recall it on demand and see how it applies in a given chart or situation. Of course, someone thought of writing a book called Astrology for Dummies, but the fact is, there’s no such thing, because if you’re really a dummy, you won’t get it.

And, good astrologers have to be more than just smart. We also have to have excellent intuition, because astrology is both a science and an art. The best astrologers are those rare individuals whose left and right brains are in synch.

Because we are so cerebral and so immersed in our subject, we are easily trapped into using astrology as an intellectual exercise to avoid having to actually live. The special knowledge we have of how the Universe works does not make us immune to having to feel what everyone else feels. The fact is that love is extremely scary, because it’s the one thing that forces us to face up to ourselves. Could that be why we hate the common question so much?

When a client asks me about love, my response is, “Let’s have a look at your chart.” Inside, I’m smiling, because I know that she doesn’t have a clue what she’s really asking, especially if she’s very young. But of course I don’t tell her that. She’ll figure out soon enough that anyone who is seeking true love has to go through a complete metamorphosis. Fortunately, there’s no better tool for helping the process along than astrology. The tests and trials that come in a romantic relationship ultimately have to do with the self, and astrology is incredibly efficient in this regard, because it allows the client to step outside herself and get some distance. Once her perceptions are validated, she can get out of the pit of guilt, shame, and blame that keep her stuck.

So that’s my devious plan: help people on their quest for love, and the world ultimately will be a better place.

What I really want to know, though, is when will I find true love?

Saturday Archives: Pluto in Synastry

I decided to continue with the Pluto theme and pulled out this post on Pluto in Synastry. Because Pluto in our charts, in synastry and by transit teaches us about control and how in the long run how little we really have, it is my opinion we can never learn too much about this small but powerful planet at the outer edges of our solar system.

When I was asked about Pluto in synastry that question started this amazing upwelling of information . . . so here’s a big Thank You to the person who asked! In fact, there is so much coming up from the depths of my mind I may be at this for awhile . . .

First, it is necessary to remember Pluto is a major player (ignore those deluded folks who reclassified him as a dwarf planet) among the outer planets. The nature of the outer planets and the impact they have on us poor humans is profound and often difficult to discern and articulate. The only reason I’m attempting this is because Pluto by transit has conjuncted every single planet in my chart except Uranus and he opposed that. I’m sure there are a lot of other people out there who have shared this experience but as an astrologer I’m probably most compelled to use those experiences to help others understand just what the hell happened to their carefully crafted lives!

As always we need to look at how Pluto operates in our own charts first before we can look at how he works in synastry. Those of us with lots of Scorpio, loaded 8th Houses or Pluto in aspect to the personal planets and Ascendant, all have at least a starting point. My recommendation is to take note of where you are obsessing about something or someone, or having someone obsessing about you – then stop feeding energy into that. And personal experience says that is HARD sometimes! However, unless we can shine some light in those areas and apply good old fashioned common sense, we will continue to beat our heads against the wall of those obsessions. Liz Greene has written some amazing information about Pluto in her book, “The Astrology of Fate”. Reading that was very helpful for me in identifying and reducing my obsessions to a manageable level. “Manageable” is the key as the darn things are not going to disappear and blow away. So all you high-minded sorts that would prefer to remain above all that . . . not going to happen and it will only make things worse.

When it comes to relationships and Pluto we have to prepare ourselves to be an honest as possible about our motives and expectations. If a person has Pluto in the 7th House natally, they are just about guaranteed to find themselves dealing with control issues in their one-on-one relationships. Pluto/Moon aspects natally will often translate for men as seeing women as ball busting bitches, sad to say. And for women, well, that can emerge as this horrifying desire to run someone else’s life done to the tiniest detail. The way I see it these urges can end up eating up so much time and energy, there is nothing left for simply enjoying life as a couple. This is why I keep going back to the theme of getting to know, understand and accept ourselves first before running out and jumping into relationships. Being Libra, I have to say . . . on the other hand . . . there is the school of thought that says we learn by doing!

There will be much more forthcoming but for now, I’d like to pay homage to Pluto, Hades, Kali, Erishkagal and the many faces of that part of Life where something must be destroyed to make way for the possibility of renewal. By surrendering ourselves to this aspect of the cycle of being, we can open ourselves up to transformation as expressed by the Phoenix.

This is a painting done by David A. Hardy titled “Pluto and Charon” . . . simply stunning! To see more go to: http://www.solarvoyager.com/dhardy.asp

posted by Neith . . .

Saturday Archives: Pluto’s Retrograde

Pluto entered Capricorn in January but went retrograde on April 2 and has been back in Sagittarius for the past month. Here’s a post I wrote for The Pisces Chronicles, still relevant and worth revisiting.

The Tower, from the Haindl deck
When Pluto entered Capricorn in late January, we began seeing some effects in world affairs. …

Individually, the effects have been more subtle. Those who have planets or chart angles at 1 degree Capricorn or any of the other cardinal signs (Aries, Cancer, and Libra) have felt this transit the most, especially when Mars directly opposed Pluto on March 7. But all of us felt a rumble during the previous Full Moon, which squared Pluto and Mars. I had a couple of meltdowns myself, and Pluto and Mars aren’t in particularly difficult locations in my chart. Ultimately, those incidents created openings for better connections with others, but the going was turbulent there for awhile.

The dust is settling, and most of us have felt a shift. There are lots of potential reasons, astrologically, for this shift, but it feels to me like we assimilated some new energy. This is a transformational process, and anytime transformation happens, you can bet that Pluto is involved.

In the year leading up to his entry into Capricorn, Pluto conjoined the Galactic Core. During that time, many of us went through a deconstruction phase, and we also felt disoriented in space/time. Sagittarius is associated with religion, spiritual beliefs, and, ultimately, spiritual growth. The Archer aims for the truth, but an extreme manifestation of this sign is a mistaken believe that one has found Truth with a capital “T.” That’s where some of us seem to be stuck.

If nothing else, Pluto in Capricorn is sending us a clear message that beliefs have a serious impact on one’s external circumstances. In other words, there are practical implications. While changing your beliefs doesn’t guarantee that you’ll get what you want, clinging to outdated beliefs is a pretty surefire way to stay stuck in what isn’t working for you.

As Pluto turns retrograde and revisits Sagittarius from June 13 to November 26, we’ll get a chance to examine this whole process. I would especially encourage you to question where you may be operating on mistaken assumptions, as assumptions are the foundation of our belief system. You might call them the infrastructure of our personal thought matrix.

As an astrologer, I continually question the underlying assumptions of the craft, but I also try to root them out in my personal life – not an easy task, because our beliefs often are programmed into us at such an early age that we aren’t even aware that we have them. And we often continue to operate on these wrong assumptions even when presented with evidence that they’re invalid. Our mental filters are very powerful. That’s why it takes something like a heavy dose of Plutonian energy to blast them wide open.

One of the things I’ve worked on over the past several months is the belief that God, Source, Spirit, (fill in the blank) provides for us, whether through the Law of Attraction or some other mysterious mechanism, and that if we aren’t getting what we want, then we either aren’t “evolved” enough, don’t believe enough (because, after all, all you need to do is believe firmly enough), or somehow are failing to perform the rituals properly, haven’t purified enough, haven’t purged anger, hatred, jealousy, etcetera ad nauseam.

The wrong assumptions here are that failure is punishment, that a period of bad luck must be due to bad karma, consequences of past actions, choices we’ve made, and so forth. Although there does seem to be a widespread inability to accept the consequences of our actions and move on, there also seems to be an erroneous belief that we cause all of the bad things that happen to us, if not in this lifetime, then in previous incarnations.

What this erroneous belief does is to discourage failure and to make those who fail outcasts. However, failure is a means – perhaps the only means – to make new discoveries, change your life, and maybe even change the course of human history. Most scientists know this, as do entrepreneurs. Nine times out of ten, failure provides more insight and information than success, which can be so hit-or-miss that we often have no idea how it happened.

So how does one fail “successfully?” By being secure enough not to fear failure and knowing that failures, even successive ones, do not make you a failure. By understanding the role of failure in discovery and innovation. But most importantly, by being willing to give up your beliefs when they repeatedly fail to get the desired results all or at least most of the time. Too often, we take a success here and there as “proof” that our beliefs are valid, and we ignore the many incidences of their failure, which we prefer to see as anomalies.

I would love to hear from all of you about what beliefs, if any, you are questioning, and how this has impacted your life.

Love and blessings,
Pat

Image: The Tower, from the Haindl deck. This image represents upheaval, including the disruption created by the forced change of erroneous beliefs.

Saturday Archives: Moon’s Nodes in Synastry

Because of the interest in the Moon’s nodes in synastry, I decided to pull up a post from the archives on this subject. So far the additional compatibility work I’ve done continues to support the importance of aspects to the lunar nodes. In fact, the feedback consistently suggests a karmic connection or, at the very least, a sense of familiarity and ease with each other. It is always good to know we’re on the right track!

One of my regular readers asked: “Could you explain a little bit more about the south node between partners. If I’m correct my south node in Scorpio conjunct’s my partner’s Saturn, and his south node in Sag conjuncts my Saturn & Mercury. Typically the south node scares me, Lol. Should I be worried?”

As with everything is astrology, the answer is particular to these two individuals. Yes, I know . . . “That’s an Answer?!”

I will start by taking a quick look at their personal planet synastry. She’s a very Sagittarius Sun person with Mercury, Venus, Saturn, Uranus and Ascendant in Sagittarius. Her Moon is in Aquarius and all this equals a spontaneous, outgoing, forward looking individual. Her partner has his Sun in Leo and Moon in Aquarius. Right away we see these two not only have Suns trine but Moons conjoined – very compatible.They do have Mercury square with hers in Sagittarius and his in Virgo. However these are Mutable signs and though there may be differences in their approach to problem solving and expression, they may enjoy these occasionally heated discussions. We are talking two Fire sign Suns here!

They have good chemistry with her Mars in Scorpio sextile his Venus in Virgo, and his Mars in Scorpio semi-sextile her Venus in Sagittarius. Note that both have Mars in Scorpio and from the perspective of a person who shares this aspect with her S/O, I see this is a real plus!

The Saturn/South Node aspects go like this . . . her Saturn/Mercury are conjoined with his South Node/Vertex and her South Node/Pluto is conjoined with his Saturn. Naturally she went “whoa!” Yes, that set of aspects looks like there is a deep need for these two to be together, karmic as it were.

I offered to take a look at their composite chart which is a chart of the relationship to see what it had to say.They have a great composite chart that emphasizes the partnership aspect of the relationship between them. The Sun, Mercury, Venus are conjoined in Libra in the 7th House trine the Moon in Aquarius in the 11th House. This is wonderful combination and has genuine partners written all over it. Saturn is square to the Moon in the composite and it’s possible this aspect brings stability and grounding to all the Fire & Air energy. Neptune forms an out-of-sign sextile to Venus and the Moon adding a touch of romantic overtones.

If the relationship is working fine, then go with the flow for now . . . both people are in their early twenties and my guess is that with Saturn involved, it’s when they reach their first Saturn return, more information and issues will arise and can be dealt with then. There is an old saying . . . “don’t go borrowing trouble”! Enjoying the “now” never hurts. :-)

The Two of Cups is the card for the first stages in a partnership, when all is fresh and new.