Dear Jeanne... I want to thank you for this forum and for all of your hard work in bringing this community of amazing people together. What a blessing it is!
When first I became aware your site and saw the image of the starry sky with silloueted treetops that you display as a header, I felt an instant connection... I actually have this print and have enjoyed it for many years. It has a caption:
'Reach high, for stars lie hidden in you.
Dream deep, for every dream precedes the goal.'
(Rabindranath Tagore)
Stargazer,
"Karmic burn-off," indeed! It's a good thing our souls grows stronger with each lifetime, the way a tree's roots grow deeper and more resilient after a shock.
Speaking of Uranus, I mentioned somewhere in a post above that last May when he entered earthy Taurus, the Kilauea Volcano in Hawaii erupted. This week, he slid back into fiery Aries and wildfires broke out in both Northern and Southern California. Already, over 90,000 acres devastated and most of one town, Paradise, obliterated.
Fire is purifying, but it's a deeply painful passage.
Thank you for sharing some of your chart! It's curious and wonderful to me that your NN is in Aries in your 5th this go round, while your SN—all that you've learned, and all that you're being called to integrate from the unconscious—is hanging out in Libra in the 11th, with Mercury, arguably, the god of the Conscious Mind and its finer arts: thinking, speaking, and writing, and Neptune, the god of the Unconscious, who asks: Will you be lost to fragmentation and the illusion of the false self, or clarified by illumination through awakening to the True Self?
I'd say you've been doing a fine job of healing and integrating the karma of your SN, regardless of all the pain you've experienced. (This is the part where I give you a knowing look like, 'me and you both, sister' and we high five.)
This placement suggests to me that you've also spent lifetimes in service, since Libra is service through relationships to others, as well as higher service to community. It also tells me there has likely been a lot of sacrifice there. Neptune in your SN (if I'm understanding you correctly), suggests that you've been psychically attuned in other lifetimes, as well, and that you may have even worked in that capacity. You may have been punished for it. (How many of us on this site lived through the Burning Times, I wonder?)
Specifically, I'm seeing a lifetime spent in temple service somewhere in the ancient world, Greece or Mesopotamia. You would have belonged to an order similar to the Vestal Virgins of Rome. Your services were oracular in nature, divinatory, but it feels as though they were being coopted and eventually overtaken by a powerful force, the result of a political and cultural transformation. Despite what you could see and predict, your gifts couldn't protect you. They may even have marked you for death.
With your NN in Aries, a cardinal fire sign whose energy centers on activation of the personal will, I'd say your work in this lifetime is about calling down all of the deep wisdom you've acquired through service and sacrifice—and the lessons you've learned having healed from many traumas, in other lives and in this one—in order to actualize your gifts, liberating them from the painful cauldron fires which were required to prepare you for them. I'm picking up that you actively suppressed something vital (and powerful) about your gifts out of self-preservation for many lifetimes, and it's time now to reactivate this.
Aries corresponds to the Magician Card, and flows through the 7th Ray of Ceremonial Magick. It isn't just about personal will; it's about the alignment of the personal will with the Higher Will in order to manifest one's desires in the world.
I'd be interested to know where your Pluto is.
My Chiron is in Aries in the 5th. It's no accident that he's in a fiery sign, or that in this life, my soul is focused on helping us heal our collective traumas. Chiron and I are old friends, like I said.
My mother had my brother and me when she was a teenager. Shortly before this, while she was still living at home, a series of significant tragedies occurred in her life. The final one happened when she was 14. She was home babysitting and the house exploded. It burned to the ground and the youngest, her 2-year-old nephew, was killed in the fire. She was blamed for his death and kicked out of the family, which is how she ended up moving in with a boy and falling pregnant with my brother.
I'd grown up hearing conflicting stories of how this explosion likely happened, but only just found out that members of the KKK were storing dynamite at my grandparent's home. This dynamite was used in bombings of Black homes and churches across southwest Mississippi in 1964. There were 14 bombings in all, that year.
Our karma intimately weds us to everyone we've touched or been touched by. It's ancestral and historical. So, when you shared your vision of my life as a Viking, it resonated. I have chronic migraines and my aura is olfactory instead of visual; right before I get a serious headache, I often smell things that aren't there. Usually, I smell pipe tobacco, but many times I've smelled soot and ash from a wood fire.
Whatever my grandfather or uncles were involved in in Mississippi, they bound my mother to it—and therefore my brother and me, because we share their energetic roots. And those tangled roots have bound all of us to generations of trauma committed upon innocent families; we're tied to those families and their pain. We can work to heal all kinds of personal trauma, but we're not separate. Healing isn't individual and we can't transcend alone.
I can see the beautiful faces of little girls in Sunday clothes, placing their brown hands in white gloves. I can hear the tinkle of their voices, singing and giggling. I can sense how safe they feel, how free, standing in God's own house.
And I can smell the sulfur burning off the lit match stick. Feel the terrible percussion, the ground shaking under that church when it blows. I see it as though I were standing there—and it horrifies me still.
So, yes. I've felt responsible for many lives. And I still do.
I’ve used horary charts before to help with decisions. This is a natal chart you’re discussing? My question is when you have insight about your larger purpose and this souls purpose- how do you interact with an unwoken world? When you’re pulled into ‘worldly’ conflict how do you detach? When you have pain or struggle what are your coping mechanisms to work through them besides just telling yourself- this is all just a stage for us to work through karmic baggage. Or is it as simple as telling yourself that this struggle is a gift to help you work out your karma, or that we are all doing the best we can, etc. I read a lot, ram dass and rumi and whatever/whomever hits the spot, but I’m always looking for other resources- this site being one.
Jaidy, I love these questions and am so glad you felt called to ask them here, if only to give them a voice.
I believe we're all ultimately searching for some way to synthesize the suffering of life into some kind of meaningful wisdom, if not purpose (though I believe in its purpose). Right now I'm waiting to go into a client call, but I'll be back. Just wanted to share a little ---> ❤️
My gratitude Vestralux... (here I give my sweeping cavalier bow to you ;-) Thank you for your laser-like understanding........ (((U)))
I was so saddened by the story of your family and the burden you still bear because of the their blindness and hatred. I too had a very difficult family situation as you saw from my Saturn/Venus square, and I had to separate from them at a young age. When we set our steps on the path of Spirit, we are moved toward our highest purpose, and no matter how painful or rocky that path may become there is really no turning back. We fulfill our karmic agreements with one another and go on, though not always by choice and not always without pain.
The lightning bolts of Uranus are liberating ultimately, and right now I'm experiencing that intense opposition of transiting Uranus to my natal Sun in exact degree. Needless to say not sleeping too well, and a bit overwhelmed by all the creative energy sizzling, but staying grounded (Saturn I have made my friend ;). One of the great blessings from this transit, and Jupiter in Sagittarius, has been connecting with this community and you and Jeanne especially.
I was surprised that you picked up on that ancient past life, V. Yes it was the Oracle of Delphi. I had many dreams of it as child, and although I don't remember so much the persecutions, there was death there. Maybe we knew each other in that time for I feel that you were there too.
Speaking of Native American heritage, I have two NA grandparents, Sioux and Cherokee, and have had several pastlives as a warrior... (Leo Mars conjunct Regulus in the 12th, and Leo Pluto there too).
Today I revisited the beautiful writings of Chief Si'ahl (Seattle) to remind myself that heritage, collective or personal, need not be a great burden, but an honor and a grace that we are responsible for. Forgiveness, especially to ourselves, is one of the most difficult karmic lessons to integrate. It is hard to surrender our burdens to Spirit, but how else do we experience true peace, or joy?
I like this quote from Chief Seattle...
'Take your memories, but leave only footprints'
This is a natal chart you’re discussing?
My question is when you have insight about your larger purpose and this souls purpose- how do you interact with an unwoken world? When you’re pulled into ‘worldly’ conflict how do you detach? When you have pain or struggle what are your coping mechanisms to work through them besides just telling yourself- this is all just a stage for us to work through karmic baggage. Or is it as simple as telling yourself that this struggle is a gift to help you work out your karma, or that we are all doing the best we can, etc. I read a lot, ram dass and rumi and whatever/whomever hits the spot, but I’m always looking for other resources- this site being one.
Yes, Stargazer and I were talking about our natal charts. We may have gotten a little carried away, but I love that kind of carried away and could do it for ages. ?
Most of my life I was living with intense C-PTSD and the symptoms of avoidant attachment as a result of my early life trauma. For me, at least, I wouldn't have become capable of engaging my world, or really even other people, without first focusing on healing my trauma. For me that's involved a regular contemplative practice—meditation and writing, specifically—which have taught me attunement and presencing. How to be with whatever arises, both in myself and others. Or (because I was always highly sensitive) even just in the energies of a building or a particular city.
This has been the foundation of my spiritual practice, and it's saved my life. It's allowed my interior space to expand and strengthen. Traumatized states are terribly collapsed and constricted; they're fragmented and lack resilience to change. So, a sense of interior expansion allows me to feel fluid enough to hold whatever comes up, without becoming fixated (or triggered, as they say).
Because I practice this, I usually don't try to detach from worldly conflict, as you said, or even from interpersonal struggle—not anymore. Instead, I'm generally able to hold conflict states simply as an arising. If whatever is happening is stressful enough to regress me temporarily, I try to hold that with compassion too. (I tend to do a lot of laughing at myself, which makes life easier.)
Of course, there are lots of moments—like the Kavanaugh confirmation, for example—when I feel this expanded sense collapsing because I'm momentarily activated by some kind of painful content, which tells me I need to take time apart in order to feel into it and address it, rather than suppressing or dissociating it—or worse, reacting from it. In the instance of Kavanaugh, it was a feeling of profound heaviness due to unresolved pain about not being believed after my own sexual abuse. As I sensed into it, it was clear that the heaviness I felt was a collective energy. I wasn't alone in it; women all over the country were experiencing the very same thing. We were all sad and hurting and angry together, even if we felt terribly alone in our own corners of the country.
I took a couple of days away from the news and social media and spent time in silence, simply holding those emotions for me and for all of us. I felt them and honored them and allowed myself to release what I could without pushing the sensations down again. I think that's part of the work too, maybe the most important bit. It's about giving ourselves a strong and safe container for holding everything we are and everything we've been put through, so that the pain our soul's have borne can be safely purged.
You asked about the soul's purpose in relation to a sleeping world. I believe the collective is actually very alive, very awake—at least relative to where we were only a couple of decades ago. Actually feeling and expressing our distress is a sign we're waking up together. As humans, we belong to a single, mutual being. So when we cry out about injustice or apathy in others, it's really no different from times some part of us has said, "I really need to be a better person," or "I want to become more involved..." It's how we grow.
Trauma dissociates. It numbs and suppresses and invokes sleep. All of this itching and scratching and calling for change is a damn good sign, imo. Of course, trauma can also create hyperarousal/ hypervigilance, so we have to be aware of the difference: Some people are talking about what they feel because they're finally allowing themselves to feel anything at all, which may indicate they're waking up. But others are screaming about everything that evokes sensation because they're trapped in a nightmare. And that's the same as being asleep.
I don't believe we can simply tell ourselves that struggle is a gift to help us work out our karma. Our karma is the struggle we've inherited from our ancestors and our culture (i.e., collective trauma), and it is the consequence of that struggle, plus our own karma that we either amplify or alleviate according to our path.
If we desire to be truly awake, we have to create the best possible conditions for awakening and tend that garden regularly. For me, this requires regular contemplative practice, but also mutual practice (I work in conscious "we-space" with other practitioners multiple times per week). Both the I and the We needs our regular attunement, presence, and compassion. A willingness to feel into and hold.
All of that, plus the ineffable love of the Divine—which I can't possibly claim to understand or even begin to describe—is how I've begun to answer some of your questions for myself. No one can answer them for you, but the very fact that you're asking suggests you're already headed in a beautiful direction. ❤️
Stargazer,
Delphi. Hit me over the head with a bronze scrying bowl! Right. Well, there's a lot I could say about this. For now...
So, you're a solar Libra at 29-degrees? Bless, you my child, for transiting Uranus has just hand-delivered a certified package, addressed to your DNA. I'd call it a stellar activation code, but you can call it an upgrade. With a Virgo Ascendant, and Saturn as a friend, I'd say you're all kinds of ready for this.
My daughter's boyfriend is a late-term Libra/Scorpio Ascendant with some stuff to work out in his life. Suffice it to say that he's not hanging with this Uranus transit too well. (Also! We actually just heard the sound of a loud car accident somewhere not far away, and remarked that Uranus is having his way. I hope everyone's all right.)
I have a Saturn/Uranus square. I couldn't tell you what that means, but I'm going to dismiss this interpretation from Astro-seek: "This aspect is responsible for the fact that these people often have no principles and that they are chaotic." Yikes. (Who writes for them?!)
Saturn is at 2-deg Leo in my "dreaded" 8th house, but I'm more than okay with that—now. I've also learned to see his hard lessons as gifts, and consider him a kind of paternal, professorial forcefield. He doesn't protect us or provide for us; he offers something much more valuable. He teaches us (beginning the hard way) how to do these things for ourselves. Saturn is my favorite Jedi Master.
(My Uranus is at 4-deg Scorpio in my 11th, in case you were curious.)
If you have two Native grandparents, then you have many thousands. (Mine have been teaching me to see our ancestral lineages in multi-dimensional forms.) Do you know which tribal group (or region, or possibly language) your Sioux grandparent belonged to? I'm fascinated by the Sioux.
My own ancestors made up the Southeastern tribes and would have had a lot of contact with the Cherokee. I had a distant great-grandmother who was Natchez Indian, but her tribe was genocided by the French in 1730. They hadn't been strictly matrilineal, but they were profoundly egalitarian in a way that was far ahead of its time. In order to ensure that class divisions/caste systems didn't entrap a family for generations, a person who was born into royalty had to marry a commoner. There were all kinds of rules like this, related to one's status and work and whom they could marry. These customs ensured that an elite class of powerful rulers never dominated a subservient class who lacked status or access to resources. In fact, it prevented rigid classes from forming at all.
So satisfying to finally be learning about them all. So, sad that they aren't still flourishing in this dimension.
Thank you for your wisdom and perspective.
*By detach I meant- avoid being triggered. As you say the difference between amplifying or alleviating your karma.
What you mention re Kavanaugh is interesting; as a survivor (believed but dismissed), I struggled bearing witness, so I got the highlights and then I tuned out and re-centered but what I remember most is the collective feeling that women everywhere were coming out with their stories and that our collective voices gave me a sense of community...
I've had a hard time since I moved from nyc to and lost my satsang community, the midwest is a different energy.
Jaidy, I did the same thing you did with respect to Kavanaugh. I watched what I could (mostly just Dr. Ford's testimony) and then turned everything off. I did catch 5 or so minutes of Brett shrieking, but then I was thoroughly done. (Some stuff surfaced for me relating to aggressive people in power who'd successfully gaslighted me, then lashed out when they thought they might be caught.) Never provoke an entitled rooster unless you've got a good 5 - 8 hours to sit through painful dramaturgy, I guess.
Not sure where you are in the Midwest, but anywhere there is a 180 from NY, even if you're only talking NY state. I'm sending you a prayer that you soon find yourself another satsang, or something equally as nourishing.?