“Of Cerberus and Blackest Midnight Born"
Article ©
2009-13 by Anne Whitaker, Guest Blogger
All
Rights Reserved
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| The Underworld - Ancient Egypt |
In
my Horoscope the IC is conjunct the South Node at 28 degrees of Scorpio. Pluto,
its ruler, is placed in the 12th House conjunct Mercury, Saturn, Venus, Moon
and Sun in Leo. As a child I would lie in bed watching the roses on the
wallpaper turn into malevolent faces as daylight faded; I had to make bargains
with them before they would let me sleep.
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I
read voraciously, and particularly recall the works of Victorian novelist H.
Rider Haggard whose myth-steeped descriptions of his characters’ adventures in
Africa last century fascinated me. But da
Silva, the Dutch explorer whose frozen body was found centuries after his
death in a cave high up Mt. Kilimanjaro, transferred himself from “King
Solomon’s Mines” to the wardrobe in my bedroom, on and off, for a couple of
years. Getting to sleep was no mean feat with an imagination like mine!
My
‘real’ life in Scotland—eating, sleeping, going to school—was incidental to my
inner life which was full of what I felt were the really interesting questions:
Why are we alive, where do we go after
death, do we live on several planes of existence at once, what is happening in
other galaxies, if there are x million Catholics and even more Buddhists and
Hindus, how come they are all Wrong and Damned and a few thousand members of
the Free Church of Scotland are Right and Saved?
And what would happen if you
unwrapped an Egyptian mummy and I wonder if I could make a shrunken head like
the Jivaro Indians and why did people paint pictures on cave walls thousands of
years ago?
These
were the issues which preoccupied me for years. No-one knew about them except
my maternal grandfather. He had spent time taming wild horses alone in the
middle of Argentina before World War I, and in later life was the only Church
of Scotland missionary to visit ill or injured foreign sailors of all religions
in the local island hospital, despite the disapproval of the Free Church. “We
are all God’s children,” he would say firmly to his critics—and to me. He died
when I was eleven, after which I spoke to no-one until I grew up and left home
about anything which really mattered to me.
As
Pluto squared 12th House Venus, Moon and Sun, then crossed the IC conjunct
South Node from ‘93-95, what was left of my family of origin fell apart in a
particularly painful and tragic way. I had to make choices in order to protect
myself from the destructive urges of other family members which involved
separation from loved ones which is probably permanent.
The major decision I made during those years was that the blood tie does not give others the right to destroy your life.
I
was indeed fortunate in having an astrological framework, which helped to
provide a meaningful context for the pain.
As
part of trying to process what was happening, I decided to compile a family
history, and went back to my native island to collect some oral material from
old people who knew my family back a couple of generations. The day I sat down
to write it up, transiting Pluto was exactly conjunct the South Node, within
half a degree of the IC. During the same
week, I looked back through some old writings of my own, and found two
unpublished pieces.
The
first was written in July 1970, six months after the start of Neptune
transiting the IC. I had no knowledge of astrology then...
“...
My sister and I decided to take the dog and walk from our house, just outside
the town, to the Braighe, a beach very exposed to the sea well beyond the
harbour. It would be a long walk but it was a beautiful briskly windy sunny day—snatched
from the usual bleak incessant rains of a Hebridean July.
We
took a curving route through the town, via the district of Sandwick overlooking
the Beacon, which had winked reassuringly at the mouth of the harbour for as
long as I could remember. We approached Sandwick cemetery; my sister walked on
by, but I slowed down. The inevitability of Sandwick had been with me throughout
my childhood, constant as the Beacon, but
I had never passed through its gates. Only men attend funerals on the
Isle of Lewis.
"The
sun is shining on the dead today!" I called to my sister. "Let's go
and pay our respects." She wasn’t too keen. “Have you ever visited
Granddad and Granny's grave?" I asked. "No," she said." I
suppose we could do that."
We pushed open the heavy creaking gate. The graveyard, beautifully tended, sloped gently down to within a few hundred yards of the sea. I realised that I did not know where my father's parents lay.
"I
remember Daddy saying that the grave was down at the bottom end to the left
hand side,” my sister said. “With our English name, it shouldn't be difficult
to find."
Our
paternal grandfather had been posted to Lewis before the First World War and
met our grandmother on his first trip ashore. English gentlemen were a great
rarity in these parts, and very desirable "catches" to aspiring
island girls like Granny, who had by all accounts been a strong and willful
young woman. He was well and truly caught; apart from his period of war service
he remained in Lewis for the rest of his long life.
My
grandmother was devastated when he died; they had been married for 52 years. I
remember sitting with her in her bedroom, she who had always turned herself out
so elegantly propped up in bed, an old singlet of my grandfather's failing to
conceal her droopy, withered breasts from my young eyes. Up to then I had never
known the desolation of not being able to console another human being—or that
old people ever cried. She wept and wailed and moaned, repeating:
"I
don't want to live any more. What's the use, what's the use now he's
away?"
Live
on she did, doggedly, for nine years, lightened only by a late addition to the
family. I was 15 when my brother was born. Granny was 82 and half way senile.
The child was called Frederick, after Granddad; as the novelty wore off Granny
slipped into senility, a querulous fractious husk, and finally just a husk, and
a medical miracle, carried off at 86 with her fourth bout of pneumonia.
I
was at university when she died, having become so distant from her by then that
I felt nothing but a vague sense of relief ....
"I've
found it!"
I
had fallen behind my sister in my reverie. She was standing about twenty yards
away; I hurried to the spot.
It
was a plain, simple grave. A low railing ran round it. The headstone was in
grey granite, with only the facts of their births and deaths etched on it in
gold lettering. Noting with satisfaction, which my grandmother would have
shared, the absence of 'fancy versification', I stood and looked at the grave.
Without
any warning, for I had felt quiet and composed, there was a rush and a roar in
a deep silent centre of my being; a torrent of desolation and grief swept
through me. I wept and wept and wept, quite uncontrolled.
There
they were, half my being. Where had it all gone: the passion of their early
love; the conception of their children; her sweat and blood and pain as she
thrust my father into the world; their quarrels, silences, love, laughter,
loneliness and grief; their shared and separate lives? And this was it. On a
hot beautiful day with the sea lapping on the shore and the seabirds wheeling
and diving, a few bits of cloth and bone under the earth, an iron railing and a
stone above.
I was not weeping just for them. I was overwhelmed by a total awareness of my own mortality and that of all human beings before and after me. I had never felt so stricken, so vunerable, so alone.
The
second piece, however, written in the autumn of 1971, at the end of the Neptune
transit to the IC, whilst Neptune was 0 Sagittarius, shows that something else was now emerging from the
underworld which would offer me inspiration and support:
(The
‘pibroch’ referred to is the music of lament played on the Scottish bagpipes.)
“It
was a lovely autumn evening. D. came round for me after seven; he was going out
to practice some pibroch. Would I like to come along? It was a time of perfect
balance—in the weather, in the satisfaction of work which was still new enough
to be stimulating, in the fact that D. and I were beginning to fall in love.
We
went out into the clear air; it would soon grow dark. D. drove several miles
out of town along deserted country roads to a hill above a small village.
Taking out the pipes he began to blow them up, and after much tinkering, began
to play. It was the first night I had accompanied D. on a practice; to avoid
distracting him I strolled off down the road. D. was standing on a bank of
grass at the top of the hill; beside him on one side was a little wood. On the
other side of the road there was a ditch with whin bushes growing in it.
Beyond
the ditch was a rusty, sagging fence; beyond the fence smooth, mossy moorland
dotted with whins, their vivid yellow colour fading into shadows in the
gathering dusk. Opposite the moorland, below the wood, there was a field of
long reedy grass; beyond the field, the darkening Perthshire hills.
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| Venus Rising |
I
looked from the skyline right up above me; a myriad of stars, taking their lead
from Venus, were growing bright with increasing intensity as the dusk deepened.
A mellow harvest moon was rising, casting a glow on the hills. The air held a
hint of cold. The clear notes of the pibroch in such a setting, blending with
the rare state of harmony which I felt in my own life, created in me an
emotional intensity which was impossible to contain; I could feel the
melancholy music of the pipes flowing through me like a magical current.
By
this time I had reached the foot of the hill. I was overcome with a desire to
surrender myself completely to the moment. Lying down in the middle of the
road, I spread out my arms, and gazed up at the stars.
I
could just feel a gentle breeze blowing over my body; could hear it soughing
through the reedy grass. Drifting with the music through the night sky,
slipping away from awareness of myself or the present, I was a timeless spirit
of the air, travelling the vastness of space on the notes of the pibroch. An
unobtrusive rhythm, a pulse, began to beat: growing more and more steady, it became
a whispering message in my mind:
”There
is nothing to fear,” it said. “There is
nothing to fear.”
An
image of my lying dead, under the earth, came to me. Such images, occurring at
other times, had filled me with panic and disgust. Now, there was none of that.
I could gladly have died at that moment; my flesh would return to the earth and
nourish it, my spirit would soar to infinity. The pulse continued, flooding me
with its light:
”There
is nothing to fear,” it said. “There is
nothing to fear.”
At that point of spiritual ecstasy I felt the absolute reality of my soul. Such a moment might have lasted a second, an hour, or a hundred thousand years; but the music ceased, and the chill which was gradually taking over my body drew me back gently into the present....
The
knowledge that connection was possible, glimpsed during the above experience,
kept me going through the struggle to believe that life had an overall meaning,
and to find my own way of making a creative contribution.
This difficult, slow process was at the core of the rest of my twenties and much of my thirties.
When
Uranus crossed the South Node/IC in 1980/81, I began to study astrology,
thereby fulfilling a prediction made by an astrologer I had casually
encountered in a laundrette in Bath in England in the early 1970s. I also met,
moved in with and later married my partner—his Scorpio Moon is conjunct my IC
and South Node, and he has an Aquarian Sun and Venus. All very appropriate
symbolism for the timing of the Uranus IC transit!
His
steadfast support, combined with the deep awareness of teleology which many
years’ practice of astrology brings, have been vital for my personal and
professional growth and development from the time Uranus crossed the IC until
now, as Pluto moves off that point.
When
Pluto was still transiting the IC, but from Sagittarius, I applied and was
accepted for a major astrological study course. The very day that Pluto was
exactly on the South Node and about to cross the IC for the last time saw me
beginning the first year of study. I felt a powerful sense of standing on firm
inner ground after the turbulence and trauma of the last few years—of being in
the right place at the right time, of having done what I could, for now, with
my family inheritance —of being ready to move on to the next growth cycle.
Now
that the outer planets have crossed the IC and moved into the Western
hemisphere of my Horoscope, I feel liberated from much of the pathology of the
past, and more able to use directly in the world the undoubted creativity
inherited with it. Nor do I need any longer to make bargains with the shadowy
figures who emerge when the light of day is dimming....
~~~
Notes:
This article is reprinted in its entirety from Writing from the 12th House with the author's permission.
This article is reprinted in its entirety from Writing from the 12th House with the author's permission.
“Of Cerberus and Blackest Midnight Born” is a quote from L’Allegro by the English poet John Milton.
Anne Whitaker lives and works in Glasgow, Scotland, UK.
With a long background in adult education, generic and psychiatric social work,
and private practice as a trainer, counsellor, counselling supervisor and
mentor, Anne has also been a practising
astrologer, teacher and writer since 1983. She has kept a blog “Writing from the Twelfth House” since
2008, where there is now an extensive archive of in-depth astrology articles in
the Not the Astrology Column section.
Anne returned to her astrology practice in 2012 following a very long
sabbatical. Find her blog at www.anne-whitaker.com.
Contact her at info@anne-whitaker.com.
