Gabriel - The Father Son and the Holy Ghost

Every father is an archetypal figure, a demi-god to his baby. However, a person's experience of the SORT of deity he was is suggested by planets in the parental house (generally the 4th, but it's not an iron-cast rule), as well as aspects to the Sun. A Martian father is a dynamic figure, a Saturnian father is a tough LawMaker, a Uranian father can be both brilliant and cold, a Plutonic father is powerful. A Neptunian father is mystical and often in some way a wounded, tragic, vanishing figure. And a Jupiterian father is larger than life and although Jupiter has benign associations in traditional astrology, a Jupiterian father is by no means a benign or cuddly figure - in fact he may have been convinced of his supriority and rash and irresponsible, or simply not there - more interested in continuing his own bright journey in the world than the tediuous mundanity of feedings and diapers.

And although all fathers start out as dieties to their children - as babies grow and individuate and the relationship develops - fathers become human - although some never do.

In Gabriel's chart the Sun is conjunct Jupiter in Aquarius and they are conjunct the IC of the chart (the MC and IC correspond to the zenith and nadir and the parental axis of the chart, showing what is most public - MC and what is most private -IC). In Gabriel's case his parents split up in his infancy and his father left the family, going on to have another family and another son and then dying while Gabriel was still a child before he had a chance to know his father as anything but a figure of story and legend.

Strangely enough, there is often a correlation in astrology between death and the transits of Jupiter - where death may be seen as a healing process - the part of someone's ongoing and larger journey. In Gabriel's case - his Jupiterian father is always in the act of travelling, beyond any known horizon and the only human figures he could really pin his emotions (and anger) on, were his half-brother and his mother.

Gabriel is a Jupiterian figure in many ways - emotionally and physicially he has a large, gregarious presence and he is often in a sate of transit - changing countries and business ventures more often than some people buy shoes. He has a generosity and an openess of spirit but all this comes with a shadow side - an inconstancy of nature, a conflict between his loyalty and wish to commit deeply (Scorpio Moon and Ascendant, Mars in Taurus) and his need for change and to not be tied down. Gabriel's experience of his father is deeply tied in with his own sense of self, as a person and as a man. The father story is central to Gabriel's attempts to understand himself, which has led to an opening of his horizons and expansion of his ideas about the world (another Jupiterian function).

Currently Chiron and Neptune are moving towards Gabriel's IC and transiting his Sun-Jupiter conjunction, bringing up old pain and unhealed wounds to the surface as well as offering a vehicle for their exploration (through various kinds of modes and therapies). Making peace with that which was lost and cannot be changed is helping Gabriel transcend the situation and find his peace with it.

Pressure Pressure - The Moon and Saturn - How do you cope with stress?

Resilience and need, resource and weakness is shown by many parts and aspects of a natal chart. However looking at the sign, house and aspect of an individual's Saturn and Moon gives a flavour of their endurance (Saturn) and emotional coping strategy (Moon).

Saturn is a stern teacher. On the one hand it represents an area of hurt in ourselves - where we feel we were short-changed by life or not good enough. On the other hand Saturn also promises bliss - that if you work hard then you can conquer that which hobbles you and you can master it. Saturn imposes constraints and limitations, but it also helps us stick to them and honour our commitments. Saturn (in synastry, natally and by transit) may be intensely frustrating but it can also be supportive. Saturn in relationship is a prime example of things that don't kill you (or make you strangle the other) making you stronger.

On the other hand the Moon is the naked part of the chart. Wherever it falls (even a secretive Moon or a hard-to-access 12th house Moon) tells us about the needs of that person, what their instinctual responses are, what hungers and yearnings they have, how they try and gain a sense of safety. The position, aspect and house of the Moon can also say quite a lot about what strategy a person will use to cope with stress and emotional turmoil.

As a working example of this I will use my husband's and my chart.

Z is a Sagittarius with a Taurus Ascendant and an Aries Moon in the 12th House. He has a Saturn in Cancer square Pluto in Libra. I have a Virgo Ascendant and Saturn in Virgo in the 1st House sextile the Moon and square a Venus Neptune opposition. My Moon is conjunct Uranus in Scorpio and falls in the 3rd House.

The most acutely stressful period Z and I lived through was our transition into parenthood, exacerbated as it was by inexperience and our son's refusal to sleep for three months. It was an experience so harrowing and intense that it pushed us (individually and as a couple) to breaking point and we used quite different strategies to get through it.

We both had a strong feeling of duty and responsibility (Saturn) to this child we had created and it was this which compelled us to keep responding to his cries and getting up and feeding him and walking around the house endlessly. It certainly wasn't a feeling of love or reward. We just gritted our teeth and did it like a job which had to be done. Z was better at it than me. Squares are energising aspects and a Saturn-Pluto square translates as Determination(Saturn) to Survive (Pluto). For him giving up was not an option while I gave up on a daily basis (usually multiple times) and then would just pull myself up and start again. In fact, my primary struggle was between the determination to stay with my child (Saturn) and a bone-deep wish to erase myself and dissapear (Neptune). I knew I couldn't do it, but for months, ceasing to exist was all I wanted to do.

The fifth house in the chart represents the area of our life concerned with creativity (and by extension, children). My fifth house is empty but falls in Saturn-ruled Capricorn which fuelled my own sense of parental duty. There was this completely helpless baby who I was responsible (Saturn) for and I was determined (Saturn) to work hard and do my best by him (also a Saturnian drive).

In my chart the Saturn and Moon are sextile. A watery moon feels a lot and the Virgoan Saturn takes what is too much to handle or what cannot be expressed (3rd House) and stores it in the body (1st House). Therefore as my mind raged against the difficulties of looking after this infant my body began to fall apart. Mostly it was through chronic injuries to my back (Saturn) which limited and incapacited me (Saturn) while at the same time giving me a high pain threshold to go on in spite of injury (Saturn) when there was no other choice.

In the meantime our Moons were doing their best (in different ways) to cope emotionally. My Scorpio Moon-Uranus felt assaulted and strangled by (what felt like) enslavement to this baby. In order to recharge I desperately needed to detach (Uranus) and be free for a while. I was in a bit of an identity crisis (Uranus) because I felt like I was being asked to give up myself and merge my identity with the role of being a mother. I defended myself through respite (I owe a lifetime depth of gratitude to all the people who took my son off my hands for a while in order to give me a breather) and through talking about the powerful feelings -good and bad- that I was experiencing (3rd house and Scorpio).

On the other hand Z simply went into a disconnect. He says : "I wasn't really there. I was running on autopilot telling myself - you can't afford to give up or snap, because you need your job and that howling monkey is still your son and that woman is still your wife. So fight for your family (Aries Moon) and don't think about feelings (12th House). Just get through each day and do what is honourable (Aries) and what needs to be done."

Where are the positions and aspects of your Moon and Saturn? How have you coped with stressful situations?

The dreams of my father - Pluto-Moon

If I had chosen a birthday for my son I would have chosen early January 2008 which had a much easier, more harmonious chart than the one he was born with on the 30th of December 2007.

But the one thing I know now from motherhood and pregnancy is that our thoughts of what we wish for our children are not as important as the wishes of the children themselves.

When I was pregnant my husband and I had done a lot of planning and saving in preparation for our transition into parenthood and the resulting drop in income and increase in underslept stressed-out craziness. We had been feeling pretty on track about things and wanted to spend the last month of my pregnancy being as relaxed as possible, just taking it easy and enjoying the last days of being a family of two.

Instead when last December rolled around all hell broke loose. My husband found out he was a victim of (essentially a form of fraud) that nonetheless jeopardised his credit rating and livelihood and decimated both his morale and his savings. The ultimate sword hanging over his head was the possibility that he would not be able to get a re-mortage and lose his house and considering that this house represented what he had spent years of his life saving and working towards, the prospect of that loss was painful for him.

And even though both of us tried to focus on what was the most important - we had each other and we would have a baby and we would always have somewhere to live - the effects of stress were undeniable and the free-floating anxiety and anger and pain reached out to touch my son as well and coloured the world into which he was born.

My family has a legacy of loss. So many of us have fought for our lives and run and hidden. My hope was to protect my child for this, but he is the one who gets to choose, not I. And he chose to be firmly connected to that inheritance.

My son was born with a fourth house Moon in Libra as the apex of a tight t-square with Pluto and Mars. Natally he is plugged in to a collective drive for survival and the fear/memory of the world as an unsafe and threatening place. Furthermore, his Moon conjuncts my Mars and his father's Pluto so in our interaction the natal T-square is being constantly activated.

My son was born into a world that was falling apart. Shortly after I had him, I also had a substantial haemorrhage so within 15 minutes we were snapped from a lovely Libran thing into a more existential state of hospitals and ambulances and then after a lingering anxiety about renewed bleeding and long-term weakness while my body recovered. Furthermore, within a week of his birth we had two deaths in the family. It was a strange, intense time, when our nerves were strethed as thin as the boundaries between worlds and in the dark hours of the night love and sadness and bitter rage vied for attention.

The world into which my son was born welcomed him and loved him, but it reinforced his perceptions that it was fundamentally unsafe. And he reacted with all the terror, wrath and despair his lungs and tiny flailing fists could muster. There was no language. He couldn't tell us what he was terrified of and we couldn't reassure him. If his need wasn't recognised or met instantly it was like it was never going to be met. And if his need wasn't met within a particular window of time then he'd have a complete fit of frustration which would need to be calmed before anything else could be resolved.

We spent a lot of time holding him, and rocking, and soothing and pacing up and down while he bent his back like a bow and screamed in our arms rigid-bodied and scarlet-faced. He was so peaceful in sleep and generally inconsolable when awake. I remember feeling pushed to the end of my tether and then pushed again - to breaking point and then past it as I struggled to please him and to contain the waves of frustration and tiredness and anger that surged in me like the sea.

Growing and experience have mellowed him. At some point what we offered became enough, and having remembered that his needs were met yesterday, and the day before , and the day before that he has become more patient, more able to wait. But memory and cognition are a double-edged sword and now he has taken to waking at least once per night screaming with fear or some terrible dream.

Each night is a separate world, a dark sea we navigate by stars and instinct alone. Each night is an undoing, replete with the phantoms and monsters of our past. The lost dreams of my father and the ongoing legacy of war and death and loss. I don't know what my son sees which terrifies him, only that his dream journeys lead him to places of which he is terrified. His racing heart tells me that, and the nature of his cries.

I am his mother, and I have a Scorpio Moon. I know the shadow and the dark. So each night when he cries I reach out for him and he snuggles in my arms and I hold him. He presses his cheek against my skin, sobs his ragged breath into my neck. And I kiss his hair and stroke his face and hum solaces and lullabies.

I tell him: I am here. I am always here. I have walked the shadow-places. And I love you. And I will protect you. And I am not leaving, and I am not afraid.

He may not know all my words yet, but he knows the beating of my heart and he knows the flavour of my thoughts, just as I remember knowing my father's (who had a Scorpio Moon conjunct mine).

In those nights, he is often there with us, my father. Neptune is part of the legacy. I have it in the fourth. My father was a Pisces rising with a Sun-Neptune opposition. He was a singer and musician who died when I was a child. However, the veils between worlds are thin. Love is what connects us still. And sadness. And music.

My whole life since he died I have heard music in my mind so vividly I spent years making a mistake of thinking that someone had the radio playing.

In the dark as I hold my son, I also am held. I feel his presence. I hear his voice and the song he sings.

Your Bruised Heart, Courtesy Of Pluto In Capricorn

So. It's been a while. Astrology Blogging with children is even harder than blogging while heavily pregnant and fully employed, who knew?
Anyway.

So, Pluto has entered the Earth Sign of Capricorn and all the (Jupiterian) over-extended and happy-go-lucky irresponsible investing and lending of the Pluto in Sagittarius era has given way to more sombre outlooks. The credit has crunched and the real estate prices have fallen and people are talking about the economy with frowny faces.

Fiscally, things are tight and grim. (This is the first December in my memory that I have seen so many sales and so many slashed prices before Christmas).

Emotionally, it hasn't been a barrel of laughs either. Personally speaking this is
an intensely challenging time (and if you feel the same, which I know many people do, then I feel for you; Hang in there). Essentially, it feels like the entire Universe has turned into Boot Camp and pleading with it to be merciful simply ends with it sneering in your face before kicking you in the stomach, while it calls you a sissy and says nasty things about your mother.

I think in the current climate all you can do to get through is just grit your teeth, stiffen your upper lip and apply yourself. This is the time when all of us, are being challenged on a global and personal level to work hard and eliminate the unnecessary from our lives. Although you can, if you choose, sit there and feel sorry for yourself this is unlikely to advance your situation because Capricorn (being an Earth sign) wants things to be manifested, created in the real world. Instead of debating Why Me and Why Is Everything So Unfair it is probably more productive in the long run to take responsibility for past mistakes and future possibilities and work to change this.

Pluto in Capricorn feels to me like a personal trainer. One that knocks on your door at the bleeding crack of dawn and just stands there and the longer you ignore it the more precarious your position becomes. On the other hand if you accept its offer it may make you cry and curse (and keep crying and cursing for a long while) but you'll have fantastic abs at the end of it.

Pluto in Capricorn is similar to The Devil and The Tower cards in the Tarot. It's about Truth and it's about Change, and although it's about as welcome and cuddly as taxes it's unstoppable. Often it is both hard and painful because it reminds us that no one is safe as all that we have built and achieved gets hauled out to be tested for strength and weakness and validity.

Schocking things happen. Painful truths come out, although how painful they are is in correlation to how much work on them you've done before. If the thing is sound, it holds. (Sometimes things turn out all right. The Ark floated, the razed cities were rebuilt, people survived and other people realised that facing down the tough things only made their marriages stronger).

I have a personal take on this since the last three generations of my family have spent significant portions of their lifetime being prosecuted and running. I was born with these memories - hard-wired into the collective drive for survival. We hid. We ran. We hung in there -sometimes for years- we fought sometimes, we defended what we could and ran with what we could carry and we started over.

In this a Pluto transit is an incredibly creative force, a bit like riding a wave. You can't control the wave, and you can't oppose it, but you can use it. Each difficult time you face is like your soul shouting at you Who Am I? and you decide what kind of person you want to be, what you want your actions to say about you.

You have skills and resiliences and kindnesses you may not even know you have. Pluto will show you that. It may push hard and relentlessly but when the dust settles you usually feel it was of benefit.

So by all means, be wary. But don't be frightened because breakdown and breakthrough go hand in hand and panic doesn't serve anyone in a crisis.

x