Munchies for Astro-Thought: The Dual Signs

Munchies © 2015 by Joyce Mason

 

When we think of dual signs, Gemini comes to mind, the Twins. Not far behind are the two fish of Pisces.

The other two dual signs are a little more subtle and take a bit of extra thought to recognize. Sagittarius has the dual centaur as its symbol, part man and part horse.

Virgo, on the other hand, is a sleeper when it comes to recognition of its duality. That’s in large part because its original depiction is not seen as often anymore. The Maiden in early art has wings, a commentary on her combined earthy and heavenly natures. The mental earth sign receives transmissions through her mind and uses them for practical purposes. She is a cosmic bridge and earthly builder.

Today’s Munchie asks you to examine the dual signs in your chart. If you don’t have Gemini, Virgo, Sag or Pisces planets, work with your dual houses, the ones they would “rule” in a natural, Aries-rising chart (3^rd, 6^th, 9^th and 12^th).

Isn’t it metaphorical perfection that the dual signs are mutable?

Your question to munch on: How does the duality of these signs and/or houses express itself in your life? Quick personal model:

Uranus in Gemini (2^nd house): My inspirations come as a package deal bearing both sides of the story or a continuum on which a principle travels. For example, early in my Astro-writing career, I suggested we quit talking about polarities and start talking about continuums. I saw that opposites have a smidge of each other, like the yin-yang symbol.

Sun in Virgo (5^th house): This one’s easy. I’ve spent my whole astrological career studying and sharing what I’ve found out about Chiron. Chiron is the epitome of assimilating a dual nature and how humans are also divine, represented by Chiron’s horse and human halves.

Your dualities might come in much different ways, but the principle is the same. On the downside of my Uranus in Gemini, for instance, sometimes I see both sides so well; it’s hard to discern where and how I need integration along the road from one to another. My dual Sun in Virgo sometimes has difficulty with staying too long in the heady and heavenly side of the split instead of heading back home, down to earth, fast enough. Ironically, that’s a Pisces characteristic—accenting my point about the bit of the opposite in every duality.

Let us know what you discover in the Comments!

~~~

Photo Credit:  Virgo Astrological Sign © Toni Allen – Fotolia.com

Gear Down and Jest Humor Mercury Retrograde

September 6 - 29, 2009

My Moon and Mercury Pedigree

Many of you who know me personally are aware that I found my birth mom in the mid-‘80s after a 38-year separation by adoption. What a lunar overdose to have had two moms in my life. (My adoptive mom died in 1980. We were joined at the hip.) After my conjoined mom and I were separated, I enjoyed 15 years with my birth mom before she died in late 2001. Our relationship felt more like cousins, since she had not raised me, but what a treat I got, finally, to see how genetics play into who I am.

A large mom load seems appropriate for someone with my Moon configuration and Moon out of bounds, a concept that has felt at times in my life as scary as it sounds. I often feel overwhelmed by my emotions—too many feelings I can barely contain—and you can only imagine how well that sits with a Capricorn Moon in love with control and order. All this lunar pedigree is a set-up, actually, to talk about Mercury. (The poet in me cannot be silenced. I notice every few articles I have a rhyming line with no malice aforethought.) Helen, my birth mom, was a double Gemini with Venus in the Twins as well. Her late Gem Moon squared my Virgo Sun, which was quite prickly at times. But her reaction to Mercury Retrograde is what I want to talk about.

Don’t Kill the Messenger

When I found Helen in 1986, it was days before she was going to have a lumpectomy for breast cancer. Giving me up for adoption was the wound of her lifetime, which the manifestation of this disease no doubt expressed, at least in part. Our reunion brought deep healing on both sides. She survived cancer a long time before ultimately succumbing to it. When it crept back into her life several years before she passed, it was during Mercury’s retrograde cycle. From that point forward, she called me late each year to get the Murky Retro dates for the year to come. She marked them in her calendar and shook in her shoes every time the cycle came ‘round. She said it herself, “I’m superstitious about Mercury Retrograde.”

We have to get a grip about Mercury Retrograde! Especially since we have to live with this funomenon three to four times a year for more than three weeks at a time. I don’t want to minimize my mother’s situation. It was scary, and it didn’t end well—but then life on earth always has that same ending for all of us, eventually. Unfortunate news, even a cancer recurrence, is not the disease or the message content itself. It’s just information. Here we have another case of the expression, “Don’t kill the messenger.” Mercury may have “told” her some bad news, but Mercury wasn’t her cancer nor did Mercury cause it. If we want to “blame” a planet, there were certainly other planets more reflective of her situation.

But memories of this Mercury mother/daughter duo (Gemini and Virgo both Mercury-ruled) nudged me to want to talk about how we make the best of Mercury’s retrograde cycles. Even more so, I want to talk about how we keep living in spite of it, even when we’re stuck doing things we normally shouldn’t while Mercury is retrograde.

What Is Mercury Retrograde Good For?

On my other blog, Hot Flashbacks, Cool Insights, I always note Mercury’s direct or retrograde cycles in the SkyHints sidebar. Rather than reinvent the wheel completely, I’d like to introduce you to an article by Karyl Jackson linked there, Mercury Retrograde: What Does It Mean and How Does It Impact You? I love her opening sentence: “Mercury retrograde provides the opportunity to adjust our thoughts, attitudes and decisions about our issues and adjust our new direction …”

Yes, Mercury Retrograde is good for something. It has a rhyme and reason. How we get into so much trouble when Mercury appears to move backwards in the sky has to do with the word disaster. Disaster means against the stars. When we rush forward in our mad dash Aries-like lifestyles, whether we have a single planet in Aries or not, we are completely ignoring what the sky is hinting loudly that we should do at this time. Retrograde starts with “re" and re-things are what we need to do: review, reconsider, reassess, and retreat, to name just a few.

The famous admonition not to start new projects, sign contracts, or initiate anything of real importance comes from the fact that most people won’t synchronize with the season of a few weeks of Mercury in reverse. When we keep going forward during a time designed for inner thinking and adjustment, our brains can be muddled, communications and communications devices go kaflooey, and short trips can be minor nightmares. Not always, but these are the prevailing winds because most of us refuse to become introverted for a few weeks three times a year. When we don’t hear the universe the first time when it whispers to us to slow down, it eventually has to yell.

"It's to Laugh"


Birth mom Helen had an expression when something could be so frustrating, the choice was to laugh or cry. “It’s to laugh, Joyceka,” she’d say to me. Most of Mercury’s disasters are actually more annoying and frustrating than serious. Mind you, they can annoy to distraction, but probably we will not disincarnate or lose our minds, even if we feel like we’re on the brink. We can minimize the impact by doing what Mercury Retrograde is good for. Two of the best things I’ve found involve the re-word review—editing or reviewing my financial books. Many a mistake and avoided complication has come out of balancing my checkbook during this time. Reflect is another wonderful re-word that will make the quicksilver god blow you a kiss.

Other coping mechanisms: Swap Murky Retro horror stories with your friends with the intent of making light of them. You’ll quickly see how fun The Trickster is, because most of us humans take ourselves far too seriously. Journal your Mercury Retro experiences and figure out what they are trying to tell you. Both of these are fabulous alternatives to pulling your hair out.

What If You Can’t Avoid the Don’t-Do’s During Mercury Retro

Example #1: Here’s my chance to tell you some more tales from the laboratory of my life. Much to my nervous chagrin, when my husband Tim and I went to buy our first house together, we had to sign the contract during Mercury Retrograde. We were both in love with the house. It had a view of Folsom Lake from the backyard and was situated a block from my best friend’s house. It was a hot property at the right price. We knew if we didn’t strike while the iron was hot, someone else would snap it up.

The Murky Retro disaster that ensued was one of my most memorable ones, the one that should have made me more permanently superstitious about Mercury Retro than my mom. Long story short, the owner backed out on the signed contract, went into hiding, and we could not get our $1000 earnest money back without hiring an attorney to the tune of half of that amount. Tim's Leo Moon had him pacing like a caged Lion, and he was livid. It took a long time for us to get over the loss …

… until we recognized it as a divine delay, distracting us from purchasing a wrong house till the right one came on the market for us. As the drama died down from House #1, our realtor discovered our truly perfect property, the one we bought and have lived in for 11 years.

Example 2: I have had several friends forget that they could actually consult me about their marriage or other important dates. I have stopped asking them to reconsider when they have chosen to be married during Mercury Retro, especially when it is not a first marriage. If Mercury Retro is good for re-things, why not remarriage? At some level, the second or third marriage is a redo, a do-over, a return to a committed relationship with a new person and hopefully in a new way. I think the key to whether or not a remarriage chart works well under Mercury Retro has more to do with attitude than anything. Is there renewal—a return to marriage with lessons learned—or is it, to use one of my husband’s favorite expressions, “another lap around the track?”

Example 3: This is the one I’m living right now. Our house is suffering from dry rot, and we have been working on replacing the wood with vinyl siding that has high insulation factor to give us a lifetime new exterior and energy savings to boot. If the Shadow of this Mercury Retrograde is anything like the real thing, maybe I should listen to my mother and hide under the covers for the next three weeks. Due to an assorted comedy of errors and the lending market, now tight as a drum, we had difficulty getting a loan for the full amount of the project. This primarily had to do with a low-ball estimate on the value of our home. I have spent the last two weeks a nervous wreck—a Mercurial condition if there ever was one. Today it all got resolved in the positive, but guess what? Now we have to sign those loan papers during Mercury Retrograde.

Here’s what I figure: The loan is for repair and renovation—both Mercury Retro re-things. I had my grief and we had our glitches during the Shadow. I should be all paid up. There’s nothing we can do but go along with the program, since neither the bank nor the contractor is going to wait for me to be astrologically comfortable. We started early enough that this should not have happened—in theory. The project “should” have been done by now! What I can do under the circumstances is to review the fine print—more than once.

Intuition and Attitude

I had an opportunity, recently, to have surgery on a day Western Astrology would not exactly have deemed a good one. Yet I had a strong sense that I should do it then without further delay. (There wasn’t a single “good” Thursday, the only day my doctor does surgery, for months.) The date was July 23. I learned from a friend who follows the channeled material of Lazaris that this is the most powerful day of every year, when the Sirius Vortex opens and the goddess/creative energy is most accessible in a window ending September 15. Other symbol systems backed it up as a better time than my astrological lens would have indicated. These things helped me decide to go forward, but most of all; gut instinct led me to say yes. To overcome my “astrological programming” took a strong feeling!

Although there were a few complications on the way, the outcome was all my doctor and I could have hoped for--and more. She is convinced it’s my attitude that made it so. I determined that this was going to be successful, and nothing would keep me from remaining calm, centered, and positive. For the first time I can ever recall (I’m quite Neptunian), I set firm boundaries about sharing information on this health issue. I never discuss the details in public; I chose not to tell anyone who might worry or envision a negative outcome; and I asked for exactly the kind of support I needed. Namely, I asked everyone to see this condition healed, to say only positive things, and to send healing energy and visions of a good outcome my way.

Let’s do an experiment this Mercury Retrograde. Let’s see how well a positive and playful attitude works on getting us through this cycle of The Messenger pedaling backwards. If there are things you just have to do on the Avoid During Mercury Retro List, let your intuition guide you—and your sense of humor smooth over any wrinkles.

There are billions of people living under the same sky, and the Creator has ways of working with you to customize experience according to your needs, despite the general cosmic weather conditions.

It’s just like those lucky families—we are friends with one of them—who survive the destructive forces of a hurricane. (Mercury only seems that awful at times.)

We can’t stop living during Mercury Retrograde. We can only align with it as much as possible and do what needs to be done, even if we have a few discomforts to pay for it. Lead with your sense of humor. The Trickster’s joke will be on us if we allow too much doomsday and fear to dominate this cycle that seems to be back too soon, too many times a year.

Rethink it!

High Signs 1: Living on the Upside of the Zodiac

Aries through Cancer

© 2009 by Joyce Mason

One of my all-time favorite artists is Corita Kent, a former Catholic nun whose pop artwork was very “inspirational ‘60s.” She wove words and color together in a rainbow of good causes: the women’s movement, the peace movement, and the love and joy movement—the movement that’s timeless. (Here’s a short film clip that gives an animated tour in a minute and a half about the difference she made.) Corita literally made peace and love signs.

My closest connection to Corita was through her High Cards. They were some of her best poster-like art on colorful half-page postcards. I still treasure my High Cards, which are older than dirt and have accumulated their share of actual dirt from well-worn reading and display in my office for encouragement.

One of the High Cards I love best is black and white and says:

“Change your melodrama into a mellow drama.” – Corita Kent

Since The Radical Virgo advocates evolutionary astrology where each person becomes all he or she was meant to be in optimal self-expression, I thought I’d take page out of Corita’s book and offer some “high ideas” on how that would look on each of the signs of the zodiac. My article, The Radical Virgo, does that in detail for the Virgo, but how about the complete set of twelve? Each sign can choose mellow drama instead of melodrama, high sign or low sign.

Learning the potentials of the 12 prototypes is a life-long quest—a conversation we can never have too often or stop exploring in depth—because the zodiac signs are the foundation of the astrological alphabet and our sky-to-earth understanding.

Here are my thoughts on how the High Signs would look from A(ries) to P(isces). We are living organisms. It's no surprise that an inner growth cycle emerges from the zodiac that largely parallels plant growth. Most of us know the popular saying, paraphrased in several biblical passages and more recently made popular by artist Mary Engelbreit: “Bloom where you are planted.” The seeds of our personalities are indeed sown in the signs of the zodiac. We are responsible for tending them like good gardeners for the best yield and quality of crop.

To keep this meaty but to avoid overwhelm, we’ll take this tour around the zodiac in three posts. Today, #1: Aries through Cancer. In the next two weeks, #2 – Leo through Scorpio; and finally, #3 - Sagittarius through Pisces.

Aries Firestorm – Controlled Burn and Renewal

What boundless energy! This person’s creativity is on fire. (My friend, Pop Art Diva, has Aries Moon, and I swear that woman draws and doodles in her sleep! She is an artist whose productivity and non-stop creative flow boggle the imagination.)

Some of the most exciting qualities of this sign are self-starting, adventurous, and courageous. Aries is the spring seed energy, the Get Up and Go of Life. This Mars-ruled sign needs action! When qualities of impulsiveness, hotheadedness, need to win at all costs, and self-centeredness can be contained like a controlled burn or burned off to leave their tempered complement, Aries begins to evolve to its highest calling—conception. Aries is a think tank, not a bureaucrat. This soul does its most sacred work scattering the seeds of new life and belongs in places where he contributes to constant new beginnings. When Aries is being himself, his mantra is, be-gin. A starter more than a finisher, Aries is most at home in the exciting first stages of a business, project, or relationship. Projects that are short from conception to fruition are his forte.

Obviously, to succeed in certain areas of life, especially relationship; you can’t be just a starter. You need to be in it for the long haul. At her best, Aries finds a way to create constant renewal in all areas of life. Very appealing to Ram-mates who might dig the continuous honeymoon possibilities!

Taurus – Dirt Revels

What on earth do I mean by that? Taurus revels in the upside of the Earth element (dirt)—the beauty of nature, physicality, sensuousness, and all the resources money can buy. The Bull’s steady, persistent nature allows him or her to acquire a lot of goodies.

As a Taurus evolves, she lets go of materialistic tendencies, realizing that if you clutch dirt, you just get your hands dirty. Learning to let go of possessiveness also goes for people and relationships. I love that Earth Day occurs when the Sun is in Taurus. This holiday is a reminder to let go of concern about greenbacks and, instead, to let in the green all around us. Taurus “rising,” as in evolving, comes to terms with the psycho-spiritual aspects of abundance. He is in the constant flow of prosperity and does not need to be possessive or obsessive about security.

This Venus-ruled sign must be surrounded by beauty, especially nature. Often artistic with an eye for color, if the Aries conceives, Taurus takes root. Using steadfastness and her love of the good things in life, this sign sends out deep taproots of living abundance. Earthy, in deed!

Gemini—Making Friends with the Not So Evil Twin

How does a Gemini overcome talking too much, being scattered, distracted, restless or who has trouble following through? She takes her duality and makes it her friend. There are two Gemini Twins, Castor and Pollux, male and female. We often joke about Gemini’s split personality, but as Gemini evolves, she makes it a good thing. If her mental high energy causes her fuss or fidget, the other twin can put an arm around her shoulder, like a loving but firm mom, and say, “Sweetheart, you’ve got to knock it off.” This sign, more than most, has the capacity to get outside itself to observe itself. Gemini is an air sign ruled by Mercury. The trick is to make friends with both twins and a pact that they’re going to work together to channel all that airy, Mercurial energy before it blows them away like so much dandelion fluff.

I have a favorite image from an old childhood cartoon. It showed, arguing repeatedly, an angel and devil on the shoulder of the main character (who must have been a Gemini!). The angel was arguing for the high road; the devil, of course, voted for the self-serving pleasure of the moment. Gemini is facile with our greatest tool, the mind, which can be an angel of positive manifestation or the devil that takes us to hell in a hand basket, if not managed.

The Twins working as a team with Gemini’s Higher Self can take him and his mind to full expression of his charms: spontaneous, innovative, alert, energetic, and unbiased. With his intellectual and logical mind, he can grow not just in the ability to think, but also in the joy of true knowledge. He can become an authority, not just a dabbler.

Lastly, as a purveyor of possibilities, Gemini shows us all the ways the wind could blow. This is a critical next step in the psycho-spiritual growth process that parallels nature. In Aries, the creation is conceived; in Taurus, it takes root. In Gemini, we assess atmospheric growing conditions that influence how our plant will flourish.

Cancer: Feelers, Not Tentacles

The Moon-Ruled Cancer makes me think about how the much of the human body is made up of water—55-60 %. Think of the Moon’s gravitational pull on the tides. No wonder emergency rooms overflow with physical and mental crises at the Full Moon! By definition, Cancer is more sensitive—even hypersensitive—to the forces of nature around her. How does she go from clingy, moody, self-indulgent, hoarding, and gluttonous to the high ground of receptivity, devotion, protection, positive changeability, and imaginative intuition?

The key is how she chooses to create a safe container. Whether it’s her home/nest or a the vision of a crystal bowl that holds her psyche, Cancer’s bowl or cup must contain her considerable water without spillage and leave her reflective and receptive without undue fear.

Cancers find security in being held, both literally and figuratively. That can be in her home, her psychic container, or a relationship with someone she trusts. All these things keep Cancer’s nurturing from running all over the place. Leaking the waters of Self are what leads to the clutchy, smothering behavior for which some Cancers are infamous. She wants to be held to get a hold of her feelings.

When Cancer puts attention on this key issue, she has created an incubator or greenhouse for her Self. In the psycho-spiritual growth process, we have gone from conception in Aries, to rooting in Taurus, and attention to weather and growth conditions in Gemini. Now, in Cancer, we have the flowerbed, row or container garden for seedling protection.



Next: High Signs, Part 2: Leo through Scorpio

~~~

Learn more about Sr. Corita’s work in this video by LA Curator Aaron Rose who calls her art “radical, political graffiti” and captures it in this clip from her Passion for the Possible exhibit.

Corita Kent's birth data: 20-Nov-1918 in Ft. Dodge, IA. Time unknown.

Photo credit: HAPPY CHILDREN GIVING VICTORY SIGN © Maszas Dreamstime.com

Can U Blog? What to Look for in the Birth Chart

©2009 by Donna Cunningham
Guest Author

I’ve been a blogger for just about five months now, and have actively sought out great blogs for longer than that as a way to determine if I have what it takes to blog. The sites I enjoy most share the quality of freshness—both in the sense of originality and in the sense of being a touch sassy. My role models write like newspaper columnists, informally and personably sharing their commentaries on life in this weird millennium.

They aren’t afraid to express controversial opinions in a light-hearted way or to share a joke on themselves. A good post isn’t fine literature for the NY Times Notable Books list, but it’s fun to read, teaches me something new, and piques my curiosity. The primo blogger is somewhat of an authority on one—or ideally, several—subjects, but can make an arcane field understandable and interesting. (You can find some neat examples on my blog roll at Skywriter.)

What placements in an astrology chart would go along with qualities like these? What planet am I describing? It would be people who are strongly mercurial in nature. They’d have a strong Mercury, maybe with a little jolt from Uranus. Mercury becomes high focus in a chart by appearing on the Ascendant or Midheaven or aspecting the Sun, Moon, or several planets. It is heightened by having planets in the Mercury-ruled signs Gemini or Virgo. Having the Sun, Moon, or two or more planets in the 3rd house of the chart, the house of communication and writing, also would help.

However, I know lots of people with several planets in Gemini—it’s what was happening from May-July in the early 1940s—and many of them have yet to write a single article. I had one friend who had six planets in Gemini, incredibly and irreverently funny, an exceptional raconteur, but despite all my urging, she didn’t write any of it down. Maybe they’re all starting blogs now—it’s the trendy thing, with millions of new ones every week. However, I’d wager you could find many of their sites in Blog Ghost Town, abandoned after a week or two of intense posting. There’s a collection of them at One Post Wonders.

What creates stick-to-it-iveness is some help from Saturn or maybe Pluto, good aspects or even bad ones. The Virgo side of Mercury is also more conducive to regularity…on the verbal level, though it doesn’t always extend to the physical level, if you listen to their chronic complaints about constipation. (I know, I know, I ought to delete that last remark!) Many of them are more driven to write because they want to be useful and they have many practical skills to offer and to set other people on the right path.

Note: I’ll be sharing more of my observations about writing signatures in a teleseminar on Sunday evening, May 3rd. Click on the announcement below. And I’ll be teaching a teleseminar series in mid-June that guides people step-by-step through creating a blog and posts for it.

Donna Cunningham’s Teleseminar May 3, 2009
Writing Signatures in the Astrology Chart


In case you can’t make the May 3 seminar, check Moon Maven Publications for writers’ materials and future class date announcements.