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?
Showing posts with label scorpio moon. Show all posts
Showing posts with label scorpio moon. Show all posts
Tuesday, 16 December 2008
Friday, 12 December 2008
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.
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.
Monday, 3 December 2007
The good, the bad and the retrograde - how I came to astrology
As part of my World Dominion Plans and leisure time afforded by sweet, sweet maternity leave I hope to spent a lot more time blogging(because the ideas they are always there; I just didn't fare so well on the actual turning-on-computer-when-I-could-be-sleeping-angle).
My first experiences of astrology were uniformly terrible ones. Readings so bad, that if they were not in the so-horrifying-they-are-quite-amusing category I would have banished the entire thing from my memory.
They were extremely useful though, in some respects. Firstly, I'm quite thick skinned and filter opinion with a healthy handful of salt so I didn't feel personally damaged by the readings no matter how often my mind went 'I can't believe you're saying this. Or this. Or that.' Secondly, it was an excellent tutorial in What Not To Do As A Practitioner Unless You Have A Hankering To Lose Clients And Alienate People. Thirdly, it made me take up the study of astrology just to satisfy my inner intuition that the astrologers in question were talking out of their asses.
So, for the purposes of amusement and education here are some extracts from those astrology readings reproduced verbatim.
Astrologer 1:
[upon placing the birth data of the person I was seeing at the time in her ephemeris, cries out in disguist] A Taurus! With a Sagittarius Moon! This is the worst sign and the worst moon placement a person can have. I'll tell you something for free: stay away from Taureans. They are cold hearted psychopaths who would ply you with flowers until they get you into bed and then reject you. Their hearts are made of stone. And as for the Sagittarius Moon... that my dear is the very worst partner placement for you.
She did not mind you extrapolate on why a Saggi Moon was such a bad thing for me to have in a partner. Or contemplate whether there might be a way of actually making a relationship with a Taurus work. Or view as anything but hostile my response that plying people with flowers until they get them into bed might be more of a feature of the Y chromosome than a Taurus Sun. She did however go on to regale me with further gems.
Your will fall in love with an artistic man who lives in a different country from you, an artist or musician of some kind who is a little bit famous. He will be your greatest love. But you won't last and you'll never love anyone the same way again.
Leaving aside the question of what constructive thing comes from giving someone a prediction like that, and that indeed distant loves and pining are not unusual expressions of my Venus-Neptune, I'm still not sure what alchoholic binge she was getting her information from. Happily she was blatantly wrong on all counts, and while my marriage isn't founded on the hopeless romanticism that gave rise to my previous relationships it's certainly in no way diminished by that (in fact, the opposite).
Your natal Mercury is retrograde and your Mercury sextiles Saturn. Unless they are scientific, your writing endavours will all come to naught.
An interesting perspective, and one that would have afforded much mirth to my MSc Supervisor, considering how little he thought of the quality of my written scientific work. In fact as a Mercury in Cancer fiction always came fairly easily to me, as did communication.
Astrologer 2:
Started off consultation with:
I can see from your chart that you are opinionated. Too opinionated. And that you talk too much. In fact you should shut up.
Skimming over all the ironies inherent in that message, it was certainly a novel approach to establishing a connection with a client.
And you're promiscuous. It's all sex sex sex to you. You flirt too much, and choose your lovers badly. You'll never be able to stay faithful to one person. In fact, you kind of have a deceitful nature.
The promiscuity bit came from the fact that I have a Scorpio Moon which was mostly a demonstration of shoddy astrology and the dangers of imposing a personal value system on a zodiac sign. For Scorpios it's less about physical sex and more about intimacy and deep connection. I did find her vision of me as a raging nymphomaniac rather comforting though, considering that at the time of the reading I was single and hadn't had sex with anyone for over a year. And if we interpret 'ability to have perfectly satisfying sex with people without being in a loving, long-term relationship sanctioned by priests' then she was correct and I was a Jezebel. On the other hand if we interpret it as 'having sex without much thought' then she is wrong since Scorpios worth their salt are not only extremely adept at self-control but also choosy about where they invest their energy.
Although my Venus in Gemini was affronted by the idea that there was a thing as 'too much flirting' and aware of the ability to love more than one person at the same time (oh mental sluttery!) I still fortunately didn't feel the need to scrub my thoughts out with soap (no doubt a product of my deceitful nature). And although my single status at that point made my ability to stay faitful or not an interesting academic point, I would have still liked more input into why I choose partners badly and what could be done about it none was forthcoming.
I'm not sure where in my chart it said "Won't sue for libel" but it was pretty much the most accurate interpretation that came out of it.
Part II to follow. If anyone has particular experiences of readings (whether good or bad) which they'd like to share, don't be shy and drop off a comment.
My first experiences of astrology were uniformly terrible ones. Readings so bad, that if they were not in the so-horrifying-they-are-quite-amusing category I would have banished the entire thing from my memory.
They were extremely useful though, in some respects. Firstly, I'm quite thick skinned and filter opinion with a healthy handful of salt so I didn't feel personally damaged by the readings no matter how often my mind went 'I can't believe you're saying this. Or this. Or that.' Secondly, it was an excellent tutorial in What Not To Do As A Practitioner Unless You Have A Hankering To Lose Clients And Alienate People. Thirdly, it made me take up the study of astrology just to satisfy my inner intuition that the astrologers in question were talking out of their asses.
So, for the purposes of amusement and education here are some extracts from those astrology readings reproduced verbatim.
Astrologer 1:
[upon placing the birth data of the person I was seeing at the time in her ephemeris, cries out in disguist] A Taurus! With a Sagittarius Moon! This is the worst sign and the worst moon placement a person can have. I'll tell you something for free: stay away from Taureans. They are cold hearted psychopaths who would ply you with flowers until they get you into bed and then reject you. Their hearts are made of stone. And as for the Sagittarius Moon... that my dear is the very worst partner placement for you.
She did not mind you extrapolate on why a Saggi Moon was such a bad thing for me to have in a partner. Or contemplate whether there might be a way of actually making a relationship with a Taurus work. Or view as anything but hostile my response that plying people with flowers until they get them into bed might be more of a feature of the Y chromosome than a Taurus Sun. She did however go on to regale me with further gems.
Your will fall in love with an artistic man who lives in a different country from you, an artist or musician of some kind who is a little bit famous. He will be your greatest love. But you won't last and you'll never love anyone the same way again.
Leaving aside the question of what constructive thing comes from giving someone a prediction like that, and that indeed distant loves and pining are not unusual expressions of my Venus-Neptune, I'm still not sure what alchoholic binge she was getting her information from. Happily she was blatantly wrong on all counts, and while my marriage isn't founded on the hopeless romanticism that gave rise to my previous relationships it's certainly in no way diminished by that (in fact, the opposite).
Your natal Mercury is retrograde and your Mercury sextiles Saturn. Unless they are scientific, your writing endavours will all come to naught.
An interesting perspective, and one that would have afforded much mirth to my MSc Supervisor, considering how little he thought of the quality of my written scientific work. In fact as a Mercury in Cancer fiction always came fairly easily to me, as did communication.
Astrologer 2:
Started off consultation with:
I can see from your chart that you are opinionated. Too opinionated. And that you talk too much. In fact you should shut up.
Skimming over all the ironies inherent in that message, it was certainly a novel approach to establishing a connection with a client.
And you're promiscuous. It's all sex sex sex to you. You flirt too much, and choose your lovers badly. You'll never be able to stay faithful to one person. In fact, you kind of have a deceitful nature.
The promiscuity bit came from the fact that I have a Scorpio Moon which was mostly a demonstration of shoddy astrology and the dangers of imposing a personal value system on a zodiac sign. For Scorpios it's less about physical sex and more about intimacy and deep connection. I did find her vision of me as a raging nymphomaniac rather comforting though, considering that at the time of the reading I was single and hadn't had sex with anyone for over a year. And if we interpret 'ability to have perfectly satisfying sex with people without being in a loving, long-term relationship sanctioned by priests' then she was correct and I was a Jezebel. On the other hand if we interpret it as 'having sex without much thought' then she is wrong since Scorpios worth their salt are not only extremely adept at self-control but also choosy about where they invest their energy.
Although my Venus in Gemini was affronted by the idea that there was a thing as 'too much flirting' and aware of the ability to love more than one person at the same time (oh mental sluttery!) I still fortunately didn't feel the need to scrub my thoughts out with soap (no doubt a product of my deceitful nature). And although my single status at that point made my ability to stay faitful or not an interesting academic point, I would have still liked more input into why I choose partners badly and what could be done about it none was forthcoming.
I'm not sure where in my chart it said "Won't sue for libel" but it was pretty much the most accurate interpretation that came out of it.
Part II to follow. If anyone has particular experiences of readings (whether good or bad) which they'd like to share, don't be shy and drop off a comment.
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