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Astrology Writings

Simple’s Guide to Saturn

There is one dangerous misconception regarding Saturn that must be corrected- that Saturn is a realistic planet.

Saturn is realistic in the sense that he is a hardworker who builds everything solid in our world. He understands the material plane and society’s structures. HOWEVER….

When left alone in his room, lying in bed and listening to music, no planet is more delusional. Because Saturn is meant to build castles on the earth, not castles in the sky. With Saturn’s energy locked in your head, you look at the future and see a graveyard. You look at yourself and see a loser. You are viewing life through a dark and distorted lens, not a realistic one.

Understanding Saturn’s delusional nature is the key to thriving during Saturn transits (or in general if he is heavily emphasized in your chart.) Once you realize something is a delusion it doesn’t have the same grip on you. And this is critical cause those who believe Saturn’s negative messaging can end up wallowing in self-absorbed misery and wasting this precious energy.

Because these same fumes that are toxic when they live in your head can be turned into diamonds by actually doing something in the real world. Your goal during Saturn transits is to turn something gaseous into something solid.

I will repeat for those of us who are female. The first and most important step during Saturn transits is to recognize that depressive perceptions are hallucinations. You are not the rotting skeleton you see in the mirror.

The second step is to get to work.

You need tangible goals during a Saturn transit. You need to become a more productive person in some area of your life. Just as you can feel a Saturn transit (depression) without ever looking at an astrology chart, so can you know exactly what you need to do without consulting an astrologer. Saturn is usually about doing the obvious. Taking steps towards achieving long term goals and resolving glaring life problems.

But if you are in a situation where there isn’t a clear course of action, then make one up. As long as you do some form of work, you will gain under Saturn.

Saturn on the moon for example, is frequently a time when people brood and get depressed. But why? Instead you should be working hard around your home and learning the skills to become a domestic goddess. Take a cooking class. Become a better cleaner. Beautify and fix things.

With Saturn impacting the Sun, don’t stay home because you aren’t in a party mood. Socialization, friends, self-expression, these are now things you need to work at. So exert yourself in this realm. Saturn’s work ethic can be applied to any arena of life bringing feelings of satisfaction and mastery which go way deeper than fun.

If you are a naturally depressive person who has trouble moving into action- or perhaps the transit is so grim you just need a booster- here are a few tips to consider.

  1. Make it official. All work is important work in Saturn’s eyes. So take yourself seriously no matter what you are doing. You might consider taking an official course or getting a certificate related to your goals. And when you get that certificate, frame it and go out with friends for a celebratory dinner. Have them make a toast to you. Take your efforts seriously.
  2. Be a joiner. Saturn is a man of this world and wants to contribute something. Saturn transits are not about you- they are about what you bring to the table. Don’t isolate. Especially if you struggle with motivation, join clubs and associations relevant to your goals and interests. And remember, no work is too trivial to take seriously. You could start a housekeeper’s association where ladies meet to share cleaning tips.
  3. Friends in high places. Saturn loves upward mobility. So especially when Saturn is transiting Venus or the social houses, make a list of people you admire and befriend them. Or a list of people it would be useful to know. While Saturn tends to dry up woozy romantic feelings, relationships with those you consider superiors can flourish under his watch. If you are having trouble with your spouse at this time (a common side effect) try social climbing or becoming pretentious together. It’s a time to strive, not a time to cuddle. Give Saturn a constructive outlet and he can improve everything he touches.
  4. Go gay. Saturn loves pomp & circumstance, so if you need a motivation boost try gaying it up. Bring your teacher a polished apple. Wear a beret to art class. Wear a chef’s outfit in the kitchen and pair wines with your meals, pronouncing them in French. Whatever you are doing, make it a little extra until it finally brings a smile to your face.
  5. Fire. I don’t know if this will work for others, but my go-to Saturn tip is surrounding myself with fire and warm colors like red, orange & yellow until I gain enough zip to start moving in the right direction. Saturn can feel dim and heavy so an extra dose of zing can be just what the doctor ordered.

One last thing… during a Saturn transit sources of support and comfort you once enjoyed may disappear. However, this is temporary so don’t panic. It is just Saturn’s way of forcing growth in new directions. Whatever you lose will return, just as it did for Job.

But for now, detach and swizzle from any losses. Forget about the doors which are closed and focus on those which are open. Saturn transits only last a few months to a few years so you want to seize the opportunities you currently have. If you don’t, for 28 years the results will haunt you.

The key takeaway from astrology is really that time itself is alive and always changing, infusing your life with new possibilities. It is safe to focus on the now because the future will open up soon enough. Open doors will close and closed doors will open.

Categories
Astrology Charleston, West Virginia men My Life Story Writings

Mommy I’m scared!

I’m scared because tomorrow an astrological storm begins. It’s in James’s chart, not mine, but those are the worst. My transits tend to play out more internally- I draw a black cloud in my journal- while his involve car chases, explosions & wild animals.

Maybe it will be okay. My current strategy is to try to talk about transits as much as possible before they happen. “By the way James, tomorrow at 2 pm you’ll have an explosive rage transit.” He still feels the energy, but expecting it makes it less likely to be randomly projected at the nearest target (me).

This works well for little moon transits, which only last a few hours and are mostly about feelings anyway. But the upcoming storm is about 8 days long. The sun will ignite an underground river of slut fuel. A couple titans duke it out in the house of sex, death & money. It may be okay. Storms happen all the time. I just try to worry about them as much as possible before hand in case it helps.

As I shared before, I’m currently having a Saturn square Mercury transit. It’s basically shining a spotlight on all the negative thoughts I hold, all the things which bring me down. So while the voices are telling me I suck day and night, the good part is, it’s also giving me a chance to change some of my problematic thinking.

For example, I’d like to retract a blog post I wrote a few days back, expressing my love for the book ‘Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus.” I’ve decided it’s a crock of shit. And this is after 4 years of devotion. I even put the author on my top ten heroes list.

Cause when it comes down to it, what the book is really saying is suck ass constantly and you’ll have less friction in your relationships. Which is true. But is it a good way to live? Cause all those aspects of yourself you suppress just pile up behind you like ghosts. Eventually they cause problems of their own. Suppression of self is an emergency measure to use when kidnapped- it shouldn’t be a long term marriage strategy. It can’t be the ideal.

Although things are going pretty well with James. We found a new hobby. Watching movies. In the theater, where popcorn is $5 but refills & melted butter are unlimited. It’s the best thing ever. I like it when he chooses the movie so I am immersed in a world of foreign, exotic energies.

Not to sound schizophrenic, but it really feels like these movies are being handcrafted by God and filled with special messages just for me. I learn so much about astrology, the future, men, myself and everything really. It’s great.

So far I’ve seen…

1. Top Gun. (As mentioned here.)

2. The Black Phone. This perfectly expressed the third decan of Pisces we are now in. A time when people must be willing to confront the darkness and finally gather courage to stand and fight.

3. Jurassic Park. Traumatic. People getting eaten triggers me. I ran out of the theater crying, but James used logic to calm me down. He said the dinosaurs were CGI and not puppets. Therefore it would be impossible for them to eat anyone. He also explained that watching bad guys get eaten is good for men’s testicles. (I’m paraphrasing.) So I returned to my seat and watched the rest of the movie. It made me feel tough actually, and getting tough in preparation for 2024 is one of my goals.

4. Elvis. A beautiful movie. I didn’t get to extract its meaning though, cause at the end when I was crying and letting it all sink in James began whispering in my ear all the clues that Elvis was gay. I felt his theory held water but the mental processing erased the movie’s emotional impact on me. Using intellect to dry up emotion is the gift and curse of Virgo.

Slipper’s cookie jar.
A towel with blue roses.
A bear made of glass.

The river.


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Charleston, West Virginia men Uncategorized Writings

A Meducation

Have you read “Men are From Mars, Women are from Venus”? It is insane. The author describes my conversations with James word for word. He states the exact words I am hoping James will say, then the exact words James says instead, and explains the reason for the disconnect. It’s incredible.

I was going to share some muggets I learned, but decided I must first read it over and over, every day for an hour or so, until it becomes a part of me. The principles make so much sense while reading, but in real life you get lost figuring out how to apply them. I just need to simmer in this wisdom until it becomes part of my bones.

The basic gist though is don’t wear yourself out doing nice things for men. They don’t like this because it reminds them of their mother. What a man really needs is:

A) Permission to be emotionally unavailable so he can do man things, like think about problems. Men go into robot state to recharge and they must fully recharge before they are capable of bonding.

B) Approval and acknowledgment. But this doesn’t have to be as exhausting as it sounds. Think of the man as a robot. He only needs a straightforward acknowledgment of tasks completed and problems solved. “Thank you for taking out the trash.” No goo, no frills.

The most important mecret though is that men hate criticism. And they hear criticisms in statements which females would find loving. Because their core insecurity, is “Am I powerful? Am I capable? Am I being viewed as powerful and capable?” Females, on the other hand, are wondering “Am I lovable? Am I loved? Do I have care and support?”

For this reason, females love it if someone offers to help them. They share ideas and advice as a form of affection. They like being fussed over. Offering a man help, advice or fussiness, however, can easily be construed as an insult. You are telling him he is a pathetic little boy who can’t do anything right without mommy’s help.

So never offer to help men. Don’t give advice or suggestions, unless they ask. (When men DO ask for advice, however, this means they truly want it, whereas females may ask for advice when they are actually seeking care and affection.) And avoid criticism as much as humanly possible.

Now I’m still not 100% sure what you are supposed to do in cases where you are riding bucket seat in a car that a man is driving off a cliff. Is there some way you can suggest he turn left that won’t mortally offend him and cause him to press the accelerator harder? I can only hope multiple readings of this book will reveal the answers to me.

Still, the good news is- give less. Save your care for yourself. When you make yourself happy, that will make your man happy too, since he will take credit for your happiness. Likewise, when you are unhappy, men take credit for that. Hence, the expression of natural emotions like sadness and anger can be construed as insults by a man. Your tears may be telling him that he sucks as a husband and you wish you had married the neighbor.

This is the other tricky part. Females thrive on expressing the full range of emotions. If we emit happiness all the time, we become frayed and brittle. Negative emotions are our healing waters, where we go to regenerate. They give us depth and wisdom. But to men, they are threatening. And an insult to their competence as husband.

Women talk about negative feelings to heal and create bonds. Men don’t do this. If they express negative emotions, it means they are trying to attack or blame someone. So when they see women being negative, they feel attacked. And they counter-attack. Then women go into shock because they don’t understand why they are getting attacked when they were looking for love and bonding. Degeneration begins.

Now, the book says that if men can truly understand that expressing negative feelings is part of female nature- and not intended as an assault- they can gradually restrain their defensive impulses. They can learn to just listen and even say things like hmmmm, oh really? and tell me more. Then they discover that by simply listening, the female’s negative feelings magically transform into positive feelings, including love and appreciation for the listener. This gives men the sense of accomplishment they crave.

So the real challenge lies in convincing men not to be threatened by female style expression. How to do this though, when there is no chance men will read relationship books themselves? * I don’t know, but it must be done. Cause even if a female does everything right- gives space, appreciation, zero criticism etc- if she can’t express the full range of feelings there is no chance she will feel satisfied. She will either pop or fade away, and the man will be left with the very sense of failure he was trying to avoid.

A picture James took of his fingers. This is supposed to reveal something about his manhood. Isn’t it fascinating how we are basically living with a foreign species yet go through life imagining we inhabit the same reality?
Male and female. Living in happy harmony. (Slippers has a shaved leg since she had an operation for a sports injury. The truth is, I am afraid she got the injury from Patton humping her. Something for which I feel a lot of guilt. It was so easy to train Slippers that I didn’t realize what a challenge Patton would be. But I think he has been successfully trained out of this and she is recovering well.)

* I just read this to James and he said you could get men to do this by simply explaining it to them. However, you may need to be patient and remind them over and over that you only need them to listen until they are able to retrain their defensive reflexes.



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Astrology Charleston, West Virginia men Writings

James’s Slut Transit (Pluto opposite Venus)

One cool thing about astrology is you get so caught up in the symbolism that by the time you catch your husband in bed with a dwarf you are practically happy about it.

Oh my god- this is perfect! The dwarf had red hair! They were doing anal!! Can you think of anything better for Uranus in Aries?!?

The past year or so James (husband) has been having a transit which is supposed to make men irrationally attracted to skanky hoes who express something of their own repressed sexuality.

Since I had been majorly shook by a number of transits in the past 10 years, I wasn’t in the mood for the stars to defeat me again. I decided to take the bull by the horns and announce that he was entering a slut transit on facebook. (Sometimes I imagine that telling enough people about something BEFORE it happens will magically keep it from occurring.) And every day since then, I’ve asked him “So have you felt attracted to any skanks yet? Any nasty hoes caught your eye?” Occasionally I will drop a reminder that anyone he likes during this time probably has a cocktail of STDs as well, which is true. (Unless they have a prison record or are a geologist.)

And so far, I have not sensed any attraction to cumdumpsters. This transit (Pluto opposite Venus) has to work through the unconscious. If the idea of sexual obsession with Jezebels is put into the forefront of his mind and linked to a transit, it makes it harder for the dark magic to occur.

So yay, I outsmarted the stars.

Still it’s almost hard not to feel disappointed that the transit didn’t go as planned. All his other transits- in which I did not interfere- were textbook. But this time I prepared myself, made public announcements and now he is basically standing me up at the altar. I had mentally set aside a couple years of life to wage this war on skanks and now there are no skanks in sight. Never a quitter, I eventually started encouraging him. Why don’t you friend some skanks on facebook? Maybe you’d enjoy a trip to the gentlemen’s club? But no. Being a slut because your wife wants you to isn’t Pluto’s way. The taboo is what arouses him. He wants to defy people’s expectations to show them- and himself- that he can’t be controlled. He wants to do something which will make others hate him or cause him to hate himself.

But why, Pluto, why?

For starters, Pluto is the planet of intensity. Sometimes we cut off so much from our darker self that we just start to feel less alive. Sometimes a journey to the dark side is just what it takes to tap into deeper wells of life and emotion. Feeling negative emotions can be preferable to feeling nothing at all.

Secondly, Pluto goes dark to gain power. Nice guys finish last. Pluto crosses lines other people aren’t willing to cross and reaps the rewards. During Pluto transits he challenges us to question our own boundaries. Are we willing to sacrifice one pound of goodness to gain 5 pounds of power? Are we willing to push our neighbor in front of a train to save a bus full of children? Many times, during Pluto transits, we realize we are.

Thirdly, Pluto does bad things to create boundaries. To show himself (and sometimes others) that he can’t be controlled. That there are no rules for him and only his own will reigns supreme.

Lastly, Pluto trespasses to expand his mind. On one level, Pluto is really about the ability to have our own mind which can function independently from the group. People with pronounced Pluto in their chart frequently seem normal on the surface, but deep in their mind is a sort of existential autonomy that the average person lacks. They see life through their own eyes and don’t need social support to trust their own perceptions. So during Pluto transits we want to question the rules we have previously taken for granted. We want to gain psychic & psychological freedom.

* * *

Basically, Pluto is our reptilian mind. It likes to operate in darkness, secretly controlling our behavior while our conscious mind is busy attributing shinier motives to ourselves. Pluto shrinks away when the light is shining directly on him. He does not want the whole world watching him, waiting for him to get an astrologically sanctioned boner.

Still, I have read enough Greek myths to know what happens to those who brag about outsmarting the fates. And there is still a year left of this transit to go. So we’ll see what happens. Maybe whores will end up having the last laugh. Just like they always do.



Categories
Charleston, West Virginia Purple, Magic & Sorcerers Writings

Where is my Venus?

(Warning. This post may contain gross words.)

I am a female. I am an artiste. Why can’t I can’t relate to Venus, beautiful goddess of women and the arts? Ruler of money, comforts and social graces? Why can I only relate to Aries, god of blood and gore? Why do I turn to him when I have problems? I started wondering about this today and then vomited out the following words. I don’t know if they will shed light on the issue or not.

*

Growing up I wanted to be a boy. Or at least a tomboy. Not because I liked boy things. I didn’t. But I wanted to like boy things. I felt incredibly guilty for not reading the sports page, watching sports games or learning sports statistics. My ultimate dream was to be seen by others as someone who was obsessed with sports. My ultimate ultimate dream was to be the first female professional football player.

I wanted to be a great athlete, but was held back by my dislike for sports. They were smelly, dull, tiring, abrasive, and lacking in color.

Still, the world I grew up in was 90% sports, so even if you disliked them you were playing them anyways. Swimming, t-ball, tennis, gymnastics and ballet when you’re little and later volleyball, basketball, tennis and track. In half of these sports, being tall made up for the fact that I was spaced out and apathetic.

It wasn’t enough to just play sports though. Unless you wanted to be an absolute loser in life you needed to force yourself to do sporty things in between playing sports. Time between sports could be filled with competitive ping pong games, shooting pool, practicing freethrows or going for a bike ride. If there was a time lapse between swim practice and tennis practice, you should arrange to hit balls with a friend. Failing that hit balls against a wall or practice your serve. But do not sit there munching a grilled cheese like a lazy piece of shit.

I knew some people from public schools who would sometimes play sports in a silly way, like hitting ping pong balls against the wall and giggling. This shocked me. My husband grew up in a religion where pure thoughts & sexuality were moralized. In my world, sports were moralized. Sports and exertion. If you chose to relax when you could be playing sports, exercising or doing something strenuous, then you were a bad person. A lazy piece of shit, to be exact.

Also on my shoulders was the weight of needing to save the female species from disgrace. They were a disgrace because they were bad at sports. The superiority of men at sports was a favorite dinner conversation. My dad liked to discuss how one day my younger brothers would surpass me in sports and this filled me with dread and humiliation. I had to stop this from happening. I had to prove that females can do everything a man can do. And so from the beginning, I was at war with nature.

But the possibility of being a worthless piece of shit was not the worst part. On its own, I could have dealt with being a loser. The real problem was that if I did not become a professional football player I would have to become a regular woman. I knew I didn’t want this. Based on everything I heard they were absolutely disgusting. They used only one thing to get through life and that was “sexual wiles.” Whatever they appeared to have achieved it was those wiles that had done it. I didn’t know exactly what wiles were, but I knew they sounded gross like smooshing your body against someone else’s while wearing a silk blouse bulging with boobs.

And since I had three brothers and no sisters, I was the only one who would have to grow up and use sexual wiles. It made me feel humiliated. They would just get to grow up and be normal people. Beating me at sports until eventually my wiles took over. This sucked.


***

Fast forward to when I’m 18 and decide to legally change my first and last name. Of course I chose a man’s name. To me, a man’s name meant I would be the person I was within, not someone who played a role to please others. Males were subjects. Females objects. A man’s value came from his accomplishments. A female’s value came from what men thought of her. Unless she could beat them in sports. But I couldn’t. By this time I was just a series of injuries and could barely walk without pain. Dreams of becoming an athlete were over. Sort of.

Now I’m 19. My first boyfriend/spiritual guru/husband and Jesus have agreed. I should be a stripper. The reasoning has something to with achieving enlightenment. I agree I should do this. Why? Because it is my greatest nightmare. You must do the thing you fear. Or as my dad liked to say “That which does not kill you makes you stronger.” If you do what feels good to you, the ego wins. If you torture yourself, the ego starts to die. Then you will finally become free to fly past the Eagle in the sky and live forever. That is literally how I thought of it.

Some people see stripping as a feminine expression. Dumbasses. It is the most manly thing in the universe. No one with a feminine side goes near those places. I can only compare it to a man working up the courage to stab himself in a nut.

It is about as sexual as a man pulling down his pants to be examined by a doctor who happens to be his uncle. But I was honor bound to do it because it combined all the things I dreaded most- being on stage, dancing, acting ‘sexy’ and worst worst worst of all- not wearing clothes. I can’t really convey in words the extent to which I did not want to be without clothing. Would you like to be naked and carved up in the middle of a Thanksgiving feast? Would you like to be hog tied with your head buried in mud and your bare ass pointing towards the sky as friends walk by pointing and laughing at you? Cause that is how it felt. Disgusting but also like a horror movie. “Guts” was my name. But the disgust and the horror were why I had to do it. Only the ego has those feelings. Unless you kill the ego you will never fly past the Eagle.

This is also the time I decided to become a Professional Body Builder. This was probably a way of trying to turn my body into a suit of armor since I really didn’t want to be naked. I was not looking to become toned. I wanted to become absofreaking ginormous like those men in magazines with veins popping out of their forehead. I wanted to be a three hundred pound monster. I was convinced that if I ate enough canned chicken and spent all day at the gym, I would become just like those men. I didn’t realize this was as unlikely as becoming a professional football player. In the summer I spent all my time pumping iron and packing down protein. When I got back to school the teacher had me stand up for the class as an example of a body type that would never be able to gain muscle mass. I was confused because in my mind I already resembled those giant men.

But that one statement popped my dream. And if I couldn’t be a successful professional male body builder then I wasn’t going to be a stripper either. The two things went together.

***

Always people were breathing down on me, sculpting me. My psychology was built around finding ways to fend others off while also seeking them out for protection. But every new protector would become the one I needed protection from. Normal, healthy people probably steered clear of me, I was so weird. Or maybe I steered clear of them. To this day, I feel very uncomfortable around nice people. When people tell me I am the dumbest person they have ever met, I feel safe, like Briar Rabbit in his briar patch. When people gang up on me I feel at home. Nobody in my family liked me. I was surrounded by invisible cooties and you could see the disgust in their faces.

***


I don’t trust men who try to pretend like men and women are the same. My first husband was like this. He would wear women’s clothing and mascara. He would decorate my room with pictures of women carrying guns and knives. And naked women making weird expressions. To me they looked like men in those unnatural poses, their faces scrunched up as though (trigger warning) they were trying to take a crap. But to the males that came around they were hot and sexy women. I never knew what they were seeing.

Husband would wear my shirts and perfume. He would buy me knives whose handles were carved into skulls. He bought me swords. He gave me a stolen gun and told me to keep it in my backpack as a symbol of female empowerment. He called the cops and told them I was planning to murder someone. A man who had recently crushed my skull but whom I had no plans to murder. It is hard to explain the full extent to which murdering people was not on my mind. It really hit me from left field. The cops took me to get psychiatric evaluation. They looked at my dorm room, the walls covered in collages and posters hung there by my husband. Violence, nudity. The big black pirate flag he had hung in my window. I had thought it was funny and weird the way teenagers think it is funny to turn a sign upside down. It was better than naked women. But when you are a potential murderer these things take on a different glow. The collection of knives on my desk. It made me feel special when he bought these for me. He wanted me to be safe and powerful. At any rate, I hadn’t had much say in the way my room was decorated. Each new piece of decor was hung while I was out and then presented to me as a surprise, a gift filled with complex existential meanings which would be laboriously laid out. Usually something along the line of female empowerment or getting past the Eagle.

Aesthetically I didn’t care for his decorations but it never occurred to me to view them through the eyes of police men. Although this wasn’t the first time police had shown up in my dorm room. Once they came because there was a gigantic naked man handcuffed to the stairwell outside my door. My name was written over his naked body, presumably by my husband. He was rattling his chains and wailing my name. I don’t know why. My roommate and I were pretty scared because this was the middle of the night and we had been sleeping. But it had become normal for my husband to do weird things in the middle of the night, like pulling the fire alarm, sometimes repeatedly forcing everyone in the dorm to evacuate. It was so loud & startling & cold & then the nightmare of having to get out of bed in a panic and be around boys without real clothes or makeup on. But he said I needed to learn to go without sleep to get past the eagle.

So when a naked guy was chained to my room wailing my name it was not totally out of the ordinary. I was usually in a state of semi-horror. The cops came and I was hid from them because I didn’t want them to see me in my nightgown with no makeup. I couldn’t look at them and I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know why he was chained there and why my name was written on his body.

My husband would wear my clothes and give me his. Sheer mesh shirts from International Male that reeked of permanent b.o. He made fun of my clothes, saying I dressed like a gigantic baby. He bought me new ones. He said he needed me to be a classy elegant lady. This had something to do with existentialism and Apollo vs Dionysus. There were always very complicated explanations for things. Classy, elegant ladies wore cutaway tops. Cutaway tops were shirts which covered up one’s entire torso except for the breasts which were left bare and exposed. I said I had never seen a cutaway top and it made no sense that elegant ladies would wear these. But that is when he would start screaming. Really really loud, just like the fire alarm. I guess his pattern was to make a false or absurd statement and then start screaming until I accepted it. He especially liked to scream in public. It seemed as though the more he screamed at me in public the more our friends would come up with psychological theories as to why he was actually a good guy, just someone with problems. Which caused an ever increasing flow of kindness and generosity in his direction.

He liked to humiliate me in public. Screaming at me until I would take off clothes or dance. Taking off his clothes in a fancy restaurant. Telling me I had to say sexual things to people, including family members, or saying sexual things himself. Giving people inappropriate gifts that were supposedly from me or threatening teachers in my name. I became accustomed to living in a state of permanent humiliation. I was horrified to be associated with myself and the dark, perverted, murderous freak I was supposed to be. But this made me cling to him even tighter. He was the only one who could love me.

People say it is your fault if you are in a bad relationship because you didn’t leave. I don’t care. I don’t know what fault means anyway. There were reasons I was with him. For starters, even before him I was very confused. I remember running around outside at night screaming “Help!! I can’t see!!!” I felt there were things in my mind I couldn’t get to. I was confused as to what was real and what wasn’t. I was always looking for people who could help me make sense of things. Nothing ever made sense in my world. My parents would say things that didn’t make any sense either. They would project strange things onto me.

Even moreso I was with him due to fear. I was terrified of my parents. I still am. I preferred being escorted by cops as a potential murderer to being alone with them. And for all his faults, my husband had the virtues of being insanely brave and bold. He wasn’t afraid of anything. He would bite the head right off of a live snake knowing it was poisonous. It was insane.

I suppose my core flaw was not being an independent person. That is my core flaw to this day. Everyone is expected to be an independent person ready to handle life completely on their own at a moment’s notice. But it is hard to be independent when you can’t trust your mind to know what is real and what isn’t. The terror, the confusion & the dependence became this Bermuda triangle, each point playing off the others so there wasn’t any clear way to escape it. He was the only person willing to step into that mess.

Nothing has really changed. I am still confused, still terrified and still dependent. But I try to be a productive person to make up for my flaws. I don’t want to be a net drain on the world.

Categories
Astrology Charleston, West Virginia Writings

Projection

Although you probably hear the word “projection” being thrown around a lot, if you are like me (or at least the person I was until yesterday) you might not have a clear idea of how psychological projection works.

I vaguely saw projecting as the act of imagining others to have qualities they don’t actually possess. But what I’ve realized is that projecting is more about actively trying to dissociate from a specific part of yourself, which you then try to see in others. But seeing this quality in others is more of a side effect. The heart of projection is trying to detach from a part of yourself.

Another aspect of projection is that you don’t realize you are doing it. And while it is easy to imagine other people doing things unawares, it can come as a shock to realize you have been doing this yourself.

Yesterday, I experienced this shock when I became aware of a projection I have been carrying on throughout my life. I realized I have always tried to divorce myself from being in any way intellectual, educated, or sophisticated. Instead, I would project these traits onto others and feel in awe of their cosmopolitan qualities, despite the fact that they would frequently be people less “cultured” than myself.

This may seem like a strange aspect of oneself to project, since many people view sophistication as a desirable quality. Astrologically, though, it makes sense. There are a few factors in a person’s chart that determine which parts of themselves they desire to offload onto others. For example, the qualities of any planet opposite to Venus at the time of birth, will tend to get projected. I was born with Venus opposite Jupiter, who rules higher education, philosophy, wealth,  and the high brow parts of a culture in general. Therefore, I would want to see scholarly, urbane qualities in others, but never in myself.

I grew up wealthy and as a child my identity was the smart, intellectual one, which never made me feel especially cute. Perhaps this is why I dreamed of being an uneducated hayseed from the country.  When I first read Rousseau, his glamorization of the Noble Savage went straight to my heart. I wanted so badly to be that natural, lovable person, uncorrupted by human culture. And it seemed to me that poor people were somehow closer to Rousseau’s ideal.

Eventually I began trying (subconsciously) to associate myself with everything the opposite of the wealthy world I knew.  My favorite wine had to be Boone’s Farm, Strawberry-Kiwi. I tried to read harlequin novels and listen to cheesiest forms of country music. I attempted to become a secretary, a stripper, a worker at KFC. Some of which are noble jobs, but to the culture I came from, they were shocking and inappropriate choices. Especially secretary.

It was probably this same projection which caused me to move to West Virginia. I remember as a child how Kentucky (where I lived) was generally ranked second to last in everything. This made me proud. But West Virginia was always dead last in education, wealth, etc, which made me jealous. Being in last place made West Virginia pure. Beautiful.

And the more I convinced myself that I was, in fact, a rube, the more I would take pleasure in being wowed by the wealth and sophistication of those around me. If someone spoke a few words of another language, attended an art gallery, or took a plane ride to another country, I would be floored with admiration. Impressed. Delightfully intimidated. Feelings that gave me an almost sexual thrill. It made me feel warm and rosy to be a nothing, looking up in astonishment at someone else. Again, this was happening subconsciously, at the reptile level.

Over time, the projections grew more extreme. At first, it took a person’s trip to Africa to impress me. Eventually, their trip to the Olive Garden would do the trick. There was a point when I came close to being institutionalized for  mental retardation, while just a few years earlier I had been getting scholarships to Ivy League schools. So why did I feel such a desperate need to separate myself from the gloss of education and wealth? What was I trying to gain?

I don’t know. Maybe I felt more feminine and lovable as a simpleton. Maybe I felt restricted by my identity as a smart person. One drawback to being tagged intelligent is that you can only keep that label by expressing ideas that other people find intelligent. While for me, the ideas closest to my heart usually fall into realms which society finds fruit loopy, or sometimes just too far our and individualistic to be considered at all.

Maybe I felt confined by growing up wealthy. When your dinner chairs are valuable antiques, you can’t paint purple polka dots on them when the mood strikes. No one glues dinosaur figurines to a brand new Mercedes. It always seemed as though “the poor” had more options for how to express themselves. Of course, now I see things differently. Whimsical life choices are far more appealing when money is all around. When you are really poor, you don’t want to glue dinosaurs to your car.

Or it could be that we project aspects of ourselves as a response to external pressure. Another person convinces us to leave parts of ourselves behind so he can feed off them. After all, my obsession with being lowly made me eager to give away anything of value that I did possess, and to treat those around me like nobles. Maybe there were people encouraging me.

Causes aside, it is easy to see the damage this sort of projection can cause. Of course, people can project their “negative” qualities as well. If, for example, someone has a testy planet like Mars or Pluto opposite Venus, they will tend to see anger, hatred, and manipulation in those around them. Nonetheless, these projections are still damaging to the one doing them, because we can’t project our aggression onto someone else without giving them our power and agency as well.

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So, that is all I have to say. My hope is that by sharing my longstanding pattern of projection with the wide and faceless world, it will be harder for me to keep doing it! 🙂

 

 

 

Categories
Astrology Charleston, West Virginia

My brief life as an astrologer…

Recently, I decided to embark on a practical career path- astrology- to make my life feel more brisk and tidy. Not only would it be more sociable than being a solitary musician, but I hoped the dry objectivity of planets, houses & angles would add a touch of refreshing crispness to my existence.

However, it didn’t take long to realize that I can’t look at someone’s chart without being visited by their “ghost.” It isn’t an actual ghost, I suppose, but more like a colored transparency containing their emotions. These ghosts seem to arrive before I even have a chance to look at the person’s chart- as soon as I have the intent to look, there they are, super-imposing themselves onto me, causing me to feel and think in ways outside my normal character. It is a very unpleasant experience & makes me want to drop chart reading altogether.

I had hoped this experience would wear off once I had a little experience under my belt, but instead it seems to be getting worse. I tried stacking many different readings together, hoping that if there were a large enough number of ghosts they would cancel each other out. But that just made the ‘hauntings’ more confusing  and chaotic. At any rate, for this reason, I will probably retire on astrology after reading one last batch. But it has at least been a learning experience for me, and here are some things I have learned.

  • Everyone has their crosses to bear. This should be obvious, of course, but for me it was eye opening to realize how much pain and distress the average person is holding, especially when everyone appears so happy and perfect on the surface. But so long as Mars, Saturn & Pluto are flying around in the sky, I suppose we will all have our faces bashed against concrete walls from time to time, and all have our secrets to hide.
  • Women suffer more than men. At least emotionally. Male ghosts have a more abstract and mental quality, as though they are standing on top of a mountain. Their suffering tends to have a hollow, empty quality. Female ghosts, on the other hand, are more humid and visceral. Mothers are the most dense and muccoid of all.

    Perhaps men are designed to detach more easily from their emotions so they can perform well under stress, while women- and especially mothers- are forced by nature to remain connected to those around them, so they can’t easily abandon their families when times get rough.
  • Women are more vulnerable to relationship injuries. The majority of women seem to be living in an actively injured state, frequently due to stresses in their marriage. Of course men have relationship troubles too, but their ghosts are rarely oozing pus and blood as a result. They are more likely to feel discontent, or confusion. Disturbed, but not actively loosing life force. This may be where the idea of chivalry comes from… to remind men to treat women a little better than they themselves need to be treated.
  • Nobody has it all. In fact, nobody has more than anybody else. We all have the same number of planets in our chart, we just store them in different places. An excess in any area of life must always be balanced out by a deficiency somewhere else. Put an extra scoop in your house of marriage and there is less left for your children. An extra scoop for career leaves just a crumb behind for inner growth.

    What’s more- we don’t just have the name number of planets- they are actually the exact same planets. The person who isn’t married might experience Venus- the planet of love and romance- in a different part of their life. The person with no physical home might experience the moon- the planet of domestic bliss- through their relationships with friends or God.

    It is like we are all eating at the same Mexican restaurant. Whether you order tacos, enchiladas or chimichangas, you are getting the exact same ingredients.
Categories
Hurricane, West Virginia Music & Songs Plants and the Emerald Kingdom

I am Nature

 

 

Rose. She likes the feel of your nose.
She knows that everyone knows her, chose her, sigh.
Brown. You like the feel of the ground.
To feel it blow all around you, down you, sigh.

Don’t let me slip through.
Don’t let me walk invisible by.
I am Nature; I get you high.

Green. Too many places unseen.
Too many footsteps behind you, bind you, why?
Stray. Seek everything far away.
Don’t let nobody scold you, mold you, try.

Don’t let me slip through.
Don’t let me walk invisible by.
I am Nature; I get you high.

Burn. Too many pages to learn.
Too many pages to follow, swallow, sigh.
Strive. You always fought to survive.
You always fought them to conquest, multiply.

Don’t let me slip through.
Don’t let me walk invisible by.
I am Nature; I get you high.

 

MP3 (Free): I Am Nature