Saturn Tag

September 22, 2016 In Astrology, Relationship, Self Growth By Ingrid Hoffman

Wings

brad-pitt-and-angelina-jolie-mr-and-mrs-smith Amidst the unrelenting scrutiny of the media’s Cyclops eye, amidst the vaporous flurry of voyeuristic speculation from those who will never know any of the back story, Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt have uncoupled.

Power struggles in relationships have soared to new heights of psychological sophistication with easy access to often dubious “self-help” offerings on the internet. We can diagnose our partner as being a Narcissist or having signs of Asperger’s syndrome. We can play Victim, Rescuer or Persecutor in the tawdry soapie of our own lives. Labels, like headache pills, can be an easy way of dealing with the symptoms, but not the cause.

“Toxic relationships can sneak up on almost anyone. And controlling behaviour on the part of a partner knows no boundaries—people of any age, gender, sexual orientation, or socio economic status can be in controlling relationships, playing either role,” writes psychologist, Andrea Bonior in Psychology Today. I disagree. Toxic relationships don’t sneak up like thieves in the night, robbing us of our joy and our autonomy. We create them all by ourselves. Adult power struggles resemble “the terrible twos”. We use avoidance, manipulation, verbal and very often physical abuse to get our own way. We stamp our feet and sabotage moments of tenderness or connectedness. We withhold or demand sex. The old Berserker brain takes charge. Reason, compassion and wisdom fly from the bloody battle fields.

The September, autumn (or spring if you are in the southern hemisphere) equinox is marked by the Sun’s passage into the zodiac sign of Libra. Traditionally associated with the ritual of marriage and the ethics of contracts and spoken agreements in our relationships. Every relationship we embark upon requires a negotiation of boundaries: what is mine and yours, what is ours, and what we both agree to share with our friends and families.

268621642-290x290 The anatomy of love and desire requires boundaries and structure whether it’s the ritualised control and submission of bondage and sexual play; or the intricate web of rules that we weave around ourselves when we become a couple. What do we share and what do we keep private? Do we stay friends with our ex on Facebook? What do we share and what do we withhold? Do we spend our holidays together or apart? Does honesty always nurture trust and intimacy? How do we come together and stay present for one another amidst the distractions that trip-wire closeness? How do we soothe and repair those bruised silences that hang like dust motes above our sensitivities? Sex therapist, Esther Perel believes, “relationship boundaries are not a topic that you negotiate only once. Your personal and couple-dynamic boundaries may change based on your relationship or your individual preferences at varying stages of your life. The most successful couples are agile, and allow this to be an open and ongoing discussion. ”

Artist, husband and father, Eric Pickersgill’s series of photographs, Removed, depict the wings-7 phantom limb of our treasured devices that signal our busyness and unapproachability. This invisible addictive force that splits our attention and takes us away from those who are physically present.

Life imitates Art for Hollywood’s Power Couple. Transiting Neptune conjunct his Chiron, transiting Saturn opposing her Sun, transiting Neptune Square her Sun. They very publicly perform their final role: the intractable stand-off and ultimate catastrophic exit that is divorce.

hypnosis-1 Borders and barriers have been a feature of the Saturn Neptune square over the past months – 26 November 2015, June 18, and September 10, 2016. This aspect was also triggered by the September 1 eclipse. The refugee crisis in Europe. Brexit. The machinations that are more like a tacky reality TV show than politics in the US. The beginnings of another property bubble burst, and the slow realisation that without jobs, people will not longer be “consumers” .

The sense of being in “a fog” (Neptune) or feeling that we are lodged between the proverbial rock and the hard place (Saturn). Too much Saturn and we atrophy. Too much Neptune and we escape or seek redemption through something or someone who takes us away from the harsh reality and limitations of the drab burnt out ends of our lives. Asks speaker and author, Brené Brown, “What boundaries need to be in place for me to stay in my integrity to make the most generous assumptions about you?”

Connection is an energy. It manifests when we feel seen, heard, and validated. When we draw nourishment and strength from our relationship. When we feel like allies not foes. When we find our own wings to fly between the spaces and the coming together. When we can tolerate the Mystery in one another and gaze upon each other with loving eyes.

Birdy – Wings

July 13, 2016 In Astrology, Relationship, Self Growth By Ingrid Hoffman

Hypnosis

Disney's "MALEFICENT"..Princess Aurora (Elle Fanning)..Photo Credit: Film Frame..?Disney 2014

“Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love,” wrote the poet Rainer Maria Rilke.

The great centrifugal shifts in world politics mirror the shifts in our personal lives. The eruptions and schisms that speed up our spiritual growth. The unexpected events that detonate habits and behaviours that have petrified the flow of our lives. Inner peace amidst the babble of social media and 24-hr news loops requires focus and wholeheartedness. This week, Jon Bachman’s iconic photograph of Leshia Evans facing two heavily-armed policemen in Baton Rouge reverberated across social media. A reminder of past passive confrontations with the armoured might of The Establishment, echoing other responses by groups and individuals during the last Saturn-Neptune conjunction in the counterculture of the ‘60s.

stay 1 Neptune is associated with illusion and delusion. It’s glamour and aspiration. It’s the will–o‘-the-wisp of political promises…

Neptune-Saturn energy has a sacrificial essence. In June 1989, Neptune and Saturn were once again in conjunction, this time in Capricorn. Tank Man was the unidentified man who stood in front of a column of tanks on June 5, 1989, the morning after the Chinese military had suppressed the protests in Tiananmen Square.

With Saturn now in Sagittarius and in square to Neptune again, we are supported to make conscious choices about what wolf we choose to feed, where we place our focus, our energy, what we want to nourish and manifest in our lives and in the world around us. Saturn’s first station in the sign of Sagittarius (March 14th) spotlighted the integrity of our life-structures on many levels – our permeability or resistance to change, our fears and doubts, our resistance to the flow of life. Astrologer Melanie Reinhardt says “the more deeply we can attune to what we are actually experiencing, in all its manifold layers, the less likely we are to feel blocked by unconscious Saturnian energy as we reclaim our energy from the intrusion of the Superego – the shoulds and oughts which keep us complying with introjected authority figures.” This does not mean that people won’t harm us, nor does it mean being oblivious to commonsense and discrimination that guides us. Longfellow wrote: “if we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man’s life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.” Perhaps our hearts don’t need to be so armoured by beliefs that obscure the “secret history” of another’s suffering or that shut off the possibility of mutual understanding and care. beautiful young woman

Mars is still in Scorpio and simmering feelings of discontent could erupt into acts of violence over the next few weeks as Mars picks up pace to square the Moon of the American birth chart on July 21^st. The Saturn-Neptune trance of separation, the “them” and “us” loses its force when we find refuge in the experience of another person, when we listen deeply.

Anger can draw out the Warrior in us all, it can take us to the edge, beyond our civilized comfort zone. We can re-claim our power, embrace our eccentricity, emerge from the darkness of a depression, or find the strength to make a stand. We can also objectify and dehumanise one another. “Anger is only partly an emotion,” writes Thomas Moore. “It has an intellectual component and helps you make sense of your life.” Compassionate listening to another person’s story is the capstone of healthy relationships. Writes spiritual teacher, Thich Nhat Hanh, “our fear-based beliefs trap us in the trance-identity of an insecure self that is hypervigilant in managing life. We rationalise, we justify ourselves, we defend, we blame. Our will, our capacity for conscious, purposeful action is commandeered by a frightened ego.”

Lasting, meaningful change starts with each one of us. “Victory is about taking off the armour, showing up, and engaging,” says Brené Brown. alexandravalenti-via-mysticmamma-com-290x290

The Saturn-Neptune square still symbolises for some a great deal of stress and difficulty. We may feel confined, or blocked by our circumstances. The way through, as we seem still not to have learnt from our human his-story, is not through guns or bombs but through seeing the humanity in a stranger’s eyes, the divinity in her soul. Then the light of the uni-verse envelopes us and we remember, we are not enemies we belong to the human family.

Flag photograph by Alexandra Valenti

Film Frame from the Disney’s 2014 MALEFICENT

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_eXw47qb4U0

June 20, 2016 In Astrology By Ingrid Hoffman

Sacrifice

sacrifice 1 Make America Great Again. It’s a call to action that offers the promise of something tangible amidst the vague rhetoric and mud-slinging in America’s House of Cards. Pluto has been opposing the Sun of the American chart all through 2014 and 2015. The Titan Nation is approaching the end of a cycle with its Pluto Return in 2023/2024 and all that is rotten, untenable for the evolution of America will be pruned over the coming years.

Who will tend to the Garden? To some, Donald Trump’s appeal is crazy. With his fly-away corn-yellow hair secured beneath a baseball cap, the ageing billionaire steps up to the podium and delivers a message that entertains some and baffles others. He’s the Jester, the Comedian, the Wizard of Oz. He offers to a population fed on a banal diet of Reality TV and processed food a message as feel-good as a bucket of KFC. American author, David Eggers, writes, “Is it more troubling, or less troubling, knowing that no one in the audience really cares what he says? And could it be that because Trump’s supporters are not all drawn from the lunatic fringe, but in fact represent a broad cross-section of regular people, and far more women than would seem possible or rational, that he could actually win? ”

For more astrology listen to this week’s podcast:

imagesX0JLUBI0 America’s back yard is a tangle of weeds. From the outside looking in, we can glimpse the wood, not the trees. Neptune and Saturn have been in square aspect since last November. These three squares symbolise what is going on collectively in a world where young men die as they dance and in Europe, refugees in threadbare clothing risk their lives in flimsy boats. The middle square occurred on June 18^th when Saturn was at 12 degrees Sagittarius and Neptune at 12 degrees Pisces. Those of us with planets or angles at these degrees will be sensitised to the opposing energies of these two planets as we confront a choice between whether to be in Fear or to have Faith in a world that seems poised on the brink of madness.

The final square will be on the 10^th of September this year when both planets are at 10 degrees of their respective signs and it will be interesting to see how things play out on the political stage in November. Saturn calls for realism and practicalities. Neptune reflects a facet of the collective consciousness that calls for some kind of sacrifice. With Neptune there is an irrational emotional identification that sweeps us along in a swirling murmuration. Trump may represent the distracting delight and glamour of Neptune as he says inappropriate things into the microphone and Elton John’s Tiny Dancer heralds his arrival at rallies with lyrics that have absolutely no relevance at all to the gravity of political office.

Blue jean baby, L.A. lady, seamstress for the band
Pretty eyed, pirate smile, you’ll marry a music man
Ballerina, you must have seen her dancing in the sand…

Trump’ s birth chart resonates with the chart of the USA. Trump’s Gemini Sun squares Neptune in the US chart and there’s an interesting Mercury Venus/Jupiter/Sun contact. He is a mouth-piece for the collective psyche at this point in American history. The US chart has Sun square Saturn and Trump has Saturn conjunct Venus, a painfully self-deprecating aspect that builds a defense as thick as the soon-to-be-extinct rhino’s hide against rejection, feelings of inadequacy or vulnerability.

Yet, with Saturn-Neptune contacts there tends to be a blind spot which contains the seeds of sacrifice of some kind. If we look back in history to previous Saturn-Neptune contacts there is a sense of a collective sacrifice involved.

Saturn square Neptune in 1909/1910 heralded the Suffragette hunger strikes, the Saturn square Neptune in 1944/1945 birthed the Atomic Bomb and the V1 V2 rockets that reigned terror and destruction on Germany.

In 1963 the square manifested as Vietnam and the Counter Culture. In 1979-1980 we had Thatcher and Reagan and in 1998/1999 the seeds of the Financial crash were sown by the internet stock boom.

Neptune is an outer planet. It’s not personal. Astrologer, Liz Greene once referred to Neptune as death by drowning… an intoxicating woman at grave pull into something bigger than ourselves that envelops us into something that is beyond our individual understanding. The numinous quality of Neptune may draw us into situations where we lose our sense of clarity. We believe the promises of redemption offered by self-appointed Messiahs posing as politicians. And then perhaps these Messiahs themselves must be sacrificed, engulfed in Neptunian waters to atone, to redeem something deeply off-centre in a world where there is so much polarisation, so much disconnection from Manley’s “ the dearest freshness deep down things.”

sacrifice 2 Neptune is the silver screen, the make-believe world of film and television. Neptune may dissolve or distort our sense of reality or expose our sense of personal inadequacy which is Saturn.

The show is not over. When the last Saturn – Neptune square in September lifts the green curtain… The Tiny Dancer will sing.

So at this time of the Solstice, let’s take a moment to pause. To stand still long enough to allow clear vision and courage to anchor us amidst hype and confusion. In the words of poet and mystic John O’Donahue, “May your prayer of listening deepen enough
to hear in the depths the laughter of god.”

Elton John, Sacrifice

Neptunian Ocean by Pierre Carreau

June 1, 2016 In Astrology, Relationship, Self Growth By Ingrid Hoffman

When You Believe

Forever is composed of Nows. Emily Dickinson’s Power of Now is a recurrent theme in metaphysical thought. Yet so often we torment ourselves with worries about things that may never happen. And even the Now we inhabit is made up of the drama of “the news” as desperate immigrants risk their lives in flimsy boats, and Europe braces for Brexit.

Our lives are nuanced with shadows, complicated with opinions that may be facile interpretations or moralistic judgments lacking deeper thought or imagination. As we weave threads of innocence and ignorance, hope and despair, our divided selves are mirrored this month by the polarity in the Heavens. In early June, our challenge may be to keep centred, to stay in the Now. The planets reflect polarising forces, the tension of opposites, in global events and in our personal lives.

people walking Jupiter, Neptune and Saturn with the Sun and Venus complete what is called a Grand Cross. This Grand Cross is in Mutable signs, so think fluid, think changeable, think the elements of fire, water, and air and what they would look like in nature if whipped up by a strong wind. With this kind of energy there’s a sense of spinning around, bouncing off walls of resistance and spinning around again as our thoughts, or the circumstances we perceive, hit an immovable obstacle – what Yeats describes in the chillingly prophetic poem, the Second Coming:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold…

On June 5^th Neptune and Saturn are both at 12 degrees of their respective signs – Pisces and Sagittarius. This is the second exact hit in the series of three with the third square coming in September – remember that squares hold tension and opportunities for change and growth. So take up the challenge when there are interlocking conflicts or a block that seems immovable or intractable – Jupiter is involved here and Venus too as they separate from the Grand Cross. Jupiter and Venus were known by the old astrologers as The Great Benefics. They bring blessings and good fortune. Allow your heart rather than your mind to guide you deeper in.

waves Neptune pauses in the sky on June 14^th. We say that Neptune stations. Stations tend to add emphasis to a theme, they highlight a particular planet. So Neptune will be more of a prominent theme for us personally and globally as we find hope in negativity, light in the darkest of days. This beautiful planet represents the ineffable, the numinous – it is other-worldly, not of this world. Neptune may bring a sense of giving up. That hopeless, helpless feeling when we must sacrifice something or surrender to a force that is bigger than us. Neptune is about loss and longing and a wave of energy that engulfs us like a tsunami. Neptune seeks redemption.

refugees

Saturn represents the opposite – Saturn is about boundaries, barriers, structures, defenses. Saturn could manifest as our personal resistance or psychological defenses but could also be about patience and perseverance. Saturn is the inner critic; the wall, the block. Neptune is boundless. Neptune is intangible, mystical, non-ordinary and seeps through the realm of the meta-physical. Those of you who subscribe to the marvelous literary offering Brain Pickings by Maria Popova may have read her recent post about the “Tussle with two polarizing forces ripping the psyche asunder by beckoning to it from opposite directions — critical thinking and hope. Critical thinking without hope is cynicism. Hope without critical thinking is naïveté.” This describes the walls of Saturn as the waves of Neptunian idealism crash over the political stage and the old order crumbles to make way for the new. Neptune is the ocean that threatens to dissolve the status quo. Saturn represents fear and resistance, the voice of caution, the protectionist posturing that bulwarks us against the natural impulse of evolution as the political pendulum swings and the walls that were destroyed are built again.

Walls 1

We imagine our lives into existence and if we are mired in facts, rhetoric, slogans, judgement, tick boxes, we imprison ourselves in the walls of Saturn. Perhaps we must face not the polarity of right and wrong but the paradox of this life here on earth. When we take things too seriously, too literally, we label ourselves and others and miss experiencing the moment, feeling “real”, truly being in the Now. A Course in Miracles offers a choice: “The world is full of miracles. They stand in shining silence next to every dream of pain and suffering, of sin and guilt. They are the dream’s alternative, the choice to be the dreamer, rather than deny the active role in making up the dream.”

So, if we attune to the uni-verse, observe the symbolism of the Grand Cross, we can revive our imagination, restore and refresh our hearts and minds. When we believe that the world is full of miracles, we take responsibility for making up the dream. Then in this marvellous miraculous process of change and evolution, we can stay anchored in the Now and know that like the planets in the heavens, here on earth, things are in continual motion. In the words of Rainer Maria Rilke, “Let everything happen to you. Beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final.”

When You Believe – Mariah Carey and Whitney Houston

Photograph – Long Karoo Road by Jeanne Thompson

October 18, 2012 In Astrology, Self Growth By Ingrid Hoffman

Just show me how to love you

Sex is so often the first casualty on the battlefield of a committed relationship. Celibate couples live side by side, enslaved by their fear, their anger, and their hurt. Some slight, a rejection, a misunderstanding, a mistake in the past sentences them both to a marriage that is contains the pain of their disconnection devoid of touch, of carnal pleasure. Marriage is an initiation into the trials and tribulations of true intimacy. Alchemy within a marriage may require a period of mortification – those dark times, those catastrophic experiences that leave us stumbling through a nuclear wasteland, soul naked. Mortification means “making dead” and it may require a ritual slaying of some aspect of our personality where we cling white knuckled to our fears, our need to control, prescribe, to be “right” and oh-so-perfect. Many psychological models focus on the trauma and pain of being human. We talk of our “childhood wounding” and our “fear of abandonment”, seldom the triumph and the resilience of the human spirit, the ability to change, to grow new synapses in the brain. We focus on what is wrong with our relationships, our sex lives, seldom celebrating what is so damn deliciously good. We go round in circles. Blaming, shaming, subduing our soul’s urge to stretch and grow through the gridlock. And when the pain of being relentlessly honest with oneself gets too great, our knee jerk response is to separate, divorce. To tear our lives, our families asunder.
Like our inevitable death and the certainty of taxes, sex is a perennial part of this human experience. Collectively we are still removed from the deeper mysteries of alchemy to fully comprehend the subtle Mystery of human sexuality. We die many times in one lifetime. Relationships end, children move far away from home. A health crisis brings the curtain down on life as we know it. With every death there is a rebirth, as one form dies, and our hearts break open, our wounds are cleansed and purified by salty tears. Death, like sexual intimacy demands an exchange – a coin to pay Kharon to ferry us across the river into the Underworld. Most of us can only comprehend what we can literally see and touch. The subtle dissolution of death and la petite morte of orgasm are still distant frontiers, explored by very few who can contain these enormous energies within the slow vibration of our dense corporal form.

With Saturn’s ingress into Scorpio from October 6th until December 2014, we may experience, collectively and personally, the profoundly destructive, healing, regenerative energy of The Serpent. This is a time of initiation into an often painful stretching of the heart and the imagination. This is a time of re-visioning our relationship with life, death and intimacy in our sexual experiences, and in the psychic space that lies in between us in all our relationships. We must recognise that out of each apparent accident, crisis, obstacle, there is something deeper to be explored.

Saturn’s placement in our birth chart symbolises the areas in our life where we feel thwarted, inadequate, fearful, crippled. Where we must endure painful circumstances. Where we must push against obstacles and grow through self-awareness into our completeness. Saturn’s sojourn in the sign of Scorpio may excavate our buried loneliness, our fear of intimacy, our guilt, our terror of death, our obstinate resistance to change the thoughts that create our external “reality”. In Scorpio, we re-enter the cave where Hekate dwells. It is within the hallowed temple of intimate relationship that we must confront our self-deception and dredge the murky swamp of our own unconscious fears, our dark longings. Here we must push against the barriers of our self-isolation, must renounce our unhappy martyrdom. We must go down into the obsidian darkness of the labyrinth and engage fully with the silent inner experience. The old excuses just will not work any longer; the glib lies, the seductive stories we tell ourselves to sedate the Wise Woman and Man within us all.

The only person we can change is ourselves. We are responsible for our own sexuality, our own pleasure, our own joy as we open our hearts to love. Porn exults sex with our genitals. Intimate relationships require sex with our hearts, connection with our minds and the wet succulence of our bodies. Saturn in Scorpio’s wisdom is that in authentic union with the other we will experience the intense transformation and the renewal we crave if we excavate the deep knowledge from the gold mine of the unconscious. We are our own Magician. We already have the unction for our own healing.

Says sex therapist David Schnarch: “people have difficulty with intimacy because they’re supposed to. It’s not something to be solved and avoided. Problems with sex and intimacy are important to go through because this process changes us. These are the drive wheels and grind stones of intimate relationships. The solution isn’t going back to the passion of early relationships because that’s sex between strangers; it’s about going forward to new passion and intimacy as adults.”

Proust once said, “the real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.”

So today, let us with new eyes gaze with gratitude and acceptance at what we have manifested for our lives. Let us open our hearts and celebrate what is right in our relationships. Let us give thanks for the enormous courage of that special soul who has chosen us for his or her soul mate. Then just show him how to love you.

Art by Gerda Wegener – Lovers.
Sarah Brightman and Jose Cura Just Show Me How To Love You.

March 5, 2012 In Astrology, Relationship, Self Growth By Ingrid Hoffman

If not now?

Behind the proscenium arch of the Greek stage, a tragedy of calamitous human suffering is enacted as government officials quaff cognac and puff at phallic cigars. In this modern day drama, the chorus are ordinary men and women. For many, suicide is the catharsis to loss of livelihood, shelter… and hope, as bloated politicians overstep legal boundaries, and machismo businessmen arrogantly avoid tax payments. This is not really a play about inflated subsidies and debt bingeing of the last decade. Behind the curtains of the euphemistically-named “austerity measures” which darkly ripple across the landscape of so many lives is a far more sombre enactment of a terrible crime.

To the ancient Greeks, Hubris was the greatest crime of all. The outcome, when mere mortals challenged the gods and their laws, overstepping the boundaries, was never without repudiation. There was no escaping the fated denouement. The ancient Greeks had two phrases that encapsulated Greek thinking, and are still relevant today: Know thyself. Nothing in excess.

The glare of the spotlight illuminates the Greek stage, yet in countries, boardrooms, factories, schools, and homes all over the world, misuse of power is a fatally flawed fractal design.

Today, the word Hubris is imbued with a sense of over-confident pride. Only with quiet contemplation and vigilant self examination can we acknowledge where we overstep the boundaries in our ignorance or self-righteousness. Only with scrupulous honesty can we hollow out behaviours that arrogantly assume our entitlement to friendship, or love, or money, or recognition, when it may be we who did not fulfil our side of the bargain. Can we truthfully claim we are owed something when it is so often we who were not present, diligent, honest, or loving? Can we slouch flaccidly in the hammock of our own self-absorption, meting out judgements and criticisms that make others wrong, ourselves right?

All cultures have a code of ethics for thoughts, words and deeds that do not violate ourselves or other living things. In Sanskrit, for instance, Ahimsa means kindness and non-violence towards all living things. In Latin, Primum non nocere means first, do no harm. Some codes take time to crack, and the best we can do is to cultivate the humble awareness of our connection to all living things and to do no harm. “An authentically empowered person is humble. This does not mean the false humility of one who stoops to be with those who are below him or her. It is the inclusiveness of one who responds to the beauty of each soul… It is the harmlessness of one who treasures, honours and reveres life in all its forms”- Gary Zukav.

Since late 2008, when Pluto entered Capricorn, financial and business structures have splintered. We have not yet seen the full trajectory of the Global Recession nor the full implications of misuse of power in government and big business. Recovery will be excruciatingly slow and desperately jobless. The irrevocable sweep of trans-formation (changing form, which always implies a dying) will impact the lives of each one of us in some way. Sombre Saturn, slowly retracing its orbit until October in ethical, judicious Libra, is a stern celestial marker pointing our attention to the necessity for responsibility, realism, and reason, and maturity in our personal lives, in our communities. Austere times require the wisdom of new governance, new law. If not now, then Uranus (until May 2018), dancing a gypsy dance through the sign of Aries (the incendiary energy of rebellion, uprisings, or self-immolation), will shake the flimsy foundations of “civilisation” as we have manifested it.

The fatal flaw in our society is our inherent arrogance. Our collective hubris that has brought Homo sapiens and the plant and animal species on our home planet to the chasm of annihilation.

Bullies and tyrants hold a convenient hook for all that is unacceptable and shadowy, too appalling to own in our personal lives and collectively. Be vigilant for the convenient human tendency to seek a Sacrificial Scapegoat… heavy-handed autocrats, the captains of sunken ships, the boss, ex-husband or wife, the querulous neighbour. It falls upon each one of us to commit to acts of kindness that expand our capacity for love and generosity that open our awareness to our interconnectedness as living creatures on our beautiful home planet. If not now, then when?

Tracy Chapman,If not now, then when?

November 11, 2011 In Astrology, Relationship By Ingrid Hoffman

Another Day In Paradise

For most people on this planet, 11/11/2011 will be just another day of routine chores. The commute to work, the myriad modest tasks that call for our attention. We will hasten about the minutiae of our daily lives, not pausing to gaze skywards at the glittering stars or to marvel at the moon tonight, as she spreads her numinous milky shawl, bringing magic and mystery to the landscape.

For most people on this planet, this new day will involve finding sufficient food, water, a safe shelter before nightfall. As a world financial crisis looms, this day many people will face bedrock fear about physical survival.

11/11/11 has been heralded in blogs and movies as a day of foreboding, as we indulge our perverse addiction to drama and the horror of death and oblivion.

For others, today is a day to meditate, to pray, to acknowledge that this day has special significance for our planet.

Many of us live divided lives. Longing for fulfilment in our work, more passion in our relationships, more depth in our friendships, more money, love, and eternal youth. We strain against what IS. We neglect our own natures and yearn for some ideal of perfection, somewhere over the rainbow….Modern psychology and allopathic medicine attempt to redeem us from the messiness of our lives, to fix, cut out, remove those things that cause us pain. Those unhealthy compulsions, painful choices that make us fully human, in all our complexity and in all our suffering. So maybe today we can be fully where we are. Working at our daily tasks no matter how mundane and humble they may be, entering our Fate and honouring the ebb and flow of our emotions, so that we can fully savour our brief lives, in the dappled light and the terrifying shadows.

The astrological chart for 11:11am in Cape Town on November 11^th 2011 places the Lord of Karma, stern Saturn, ruler of the Ascendant conjunct the Midheaven. This represents a pinnacle, a time of responsibility and duty, a culmination of what has come before. In other places, the event chart will reflect a different sky story. In the microcosm of our personal lives, this might suggest that 11/11/11 is a day to reflect on our life direction and the choices we make from moment to moment. The Full Moon in the sign of earthy Taurus yesterday, trail-blazed a solid grounded, realistic energy that echoes my feeling that today we need to honour the simple things in our lives. Come down to earth in some symbolic way. Perhaps we might see the beauty in the smallest things that make this world a paradise of delights if we choose to perceive it in this way. So you may wish to take some time today to marvel at a jewel dewdrop on a blade of grass, or breathe in the fragrance of a flower. And “to see a world in a grain of sand, and a heaven in a wild flower, hold infinity in the palm of your hand, and eternity in an hour,” as mystic and poet, William Blake inspires us to do.

Our ancestors were star gazers, who observed the cycles of the planets and the Sun and Moon. Astrologers use these celestial time markers to track the unfolding of our lives and world events. Pope Gregory XIII is credited for the reformation of the Julian calendar back in 1582. We use the Gregorian calendar in most parts of the world today, a system that marks time, in a linear manner. So 11/11/11 is just a number in a man-made system of ordering the passage of time. We can choose to give it meaning, or not. “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.” Freud is purported to have said. So, for some, 11/11/2011 will be just another day in the wheel of the year, in the saga of an individual life, in the colourful tapestry of human history, as “we come spinning out of nothingness, scattering stars like dust” (Rumi).

If we choose to be in this moment, in this precious day, today will be like a birthday, an anniversary, a holy day, to celebrate in the knowing that long after our bones have disintegrated and we are without form, there will be an unceasing pulse of life in this vast universe, in a timeless space without beginning and without end. “The clouds preceded us… there was a muddy centre before we breathed. There was a myth before the myth began, venerable and articulate and complete,” writes the poet Wallace Stevens.

Rumi said that “only from the heart can you touch the sky”, so in gathering together to pray or meditate, or to light a candle as a ritual to set a heart-felt intention, there will be, as Noetic scientist, John Hagelin, describes a profound shift in a field of pure, unlimited, creative potential. This will ripple through the quantum field and influence our individual lives and our planet in powerfully positive ways. So today, I will honour the brevity of life here on earth, the miraculous joy of a synchronistic meeting of a kindred spirit, and the comfort of knowing we are never alone.

Gone “viral” on the internet – watch and be inspired! Murmuration: http://vimeo.com/31158841

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_f7WyUnf_A8 Phil Collins sings Another Day In Paradise.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sghNjGaDbJ0 Johnny Clegg, It’s a Cruel, Crazy, Beautiful World.

July 27, 2011 In Astrology By Ingrid Hoffman

Hey Hey My My – A girl called Amy

As I walked out into the new day, a double rainbow arched luminously over the soft curve of the waves in the sparkling bay below our home. And as I walked, I thought about Amy Winehouse. A young woman I never even knew, and yet in her few years of fame and notoriety, she touched my life in some inexplicable way through the power of her intense, soulful voice.

Who was this person whose bright trajectory of fame and scandal imploded so publically? Who was Amy Jade Winehouse, behind the beehive hair, the tangle of tattoos, the artificial breasts, the outrageous young diva, hurriedly hurling through her one wild life, crying fuck-you all ? A plethora of musings and assumptions, judgements and accolades reverberate in the after-shock of her death. It’s better to burn out, than to fade away...Like the mythic gods and goddess of ancient lore, she now takes her place in the firmament. Out of the Blue and into the Black.

The press have dubbed this constellation of shining bright stars the Tragic 27 Club. Requirement for membership: Youth. Reactionary behaviour. Exceptional talent. Extraordinary beauty. Brilliance. Bravado. Hubris and naivety fuelled by an insatiable thirst for opiates and intoxicants… so that they all tripped the light fandango by the age of 27. Astrologically, this is when the secondary progressed moon makes one full cycle in the birth chart, shortly followed by the Lord of Time, stern Saturn. This is a new cycle of growth and maturity. We assimilate the lessons of childhood, integrate the experiences of the first 27 years of our life time.

These glittering rock star gods and goddess are significant astrologically, and collectively. For one brief, tremulous moment, they capture the zeitgeist. They carry something wild and primal in the Collective that perhaps is too large and too potent to be embodied by one mortal. Their time on this earth is a brief budding before they ignite and are immortalised, forever young.

Popular “sun sign” astrology, which has very little validity, in my opinion, would describe Amy’s Virgo Sun sign as presenting her with the attributes of a sensitive, practical, grounded young woman, perhaps someone rather demure, who would prefer to work efficiently behind the scenes and be of service in some way. Amy was and would have been a hard worker, very driven and highly successful, had she grown into her full wisdom and maturity.

I have not been able to verify an exact time for Amy’s birth, but she was born with a Virgo Sun and a Moon either in late degree Sagittarius or early Capricorn, suggesting that these last four or five years would have been especially intense and often traumatic for a sensitive person like Amy. Her birth chart holds the seed of her creative genius, as well as the numbing shadow of her eventual self-destruction. The siren’s call of alcohol and narcotics grew louder and louder, I imagine, especially from 2007. My interpretation of her birth chart suggests that the real Amy behind the petulant Diva Mask she wore was soulful, highly intelligent, highly keyed and very fragile. It was perhaps the self-punishing self talk around being good enough, and her intense sensitivity and nervous energy, that only the numbing oblivion of booze or opiates could quell. Her Virgo Sun is squared by Neptune, a planet that dissolves boundaries of mundane reality, and also gifts us with enormous creative impetus. There can be great difficulty in creating healthy boundaries and also confusion about a sense of identity along with a yearning to transcend this earthly coil, to seek escape into oblivion. Neptune conjoins her Moon, enveloping her emotional and psychic sensibilities with extraordinary creative talent, yet also a great difficulty in staying grounded and focused. Amy’s Venus and Mars are conjunct, in passionate Leo, amplifying an enormous need to be seen, adored, admired as The Diva. Her fiery energy and flair for the grand gesture is counterpoint to the Virgo’s humility and drive for self expression through work and service. To me, it is her Chiron in Gemini, that really taps into the pain and wounding of the Collective. It sounds through the often dark lyrics of her songs, and the heart-rending rise and fall of her beautiful voice. Jupiter and Uranus oppose Chiron, this small planet, a refugee from the Kuyper belt, that symbolises the Wounded Healer Archetype which came into Collective consciousness only in the 70’s.
With this challenging aspect to Jupiter and Uranus, Chiron symbolises a deep psycho-emotional wound that doesn’t heal, but which will, in time with conscious awareness, guide us to heal ourselves. Amy’s Chiron wound is around her ability to express herself to others. Chiron and Mercury in Retrograde in her birth chart suggest that her wound runs painfully deep. The opposition of Chiron to Uranus, not uncommon in those of us born between 1955 and 1985, has a well-documented tendency to evoke addictive behaviour because of its intense effect on the nervous system. The term, Indigo Child might best describe this wild child, who was too sensitive to survive the rigours of life here on earth. Exploding across the skies like Icarus, she rests now with Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Brian Jones, and Kurt Cobain, who never lived long enough to experience the first return of Saturn. “My greatest fear is probably dying with no one knowing of any contribution I’d ever made to creative music” Amy Winehouse is reported saying seven years ago. Her Spirit lives on, gone but not forgotten.

With thanks to Neil Young:

My my, hey hey

Rock and roll is here to stay
It’s better to burn out
Than to fade away
My my, hey hey.

Out of the blue and into the black
They give you this, but you pay for that
And once you’re gone, you can never come back
When you’re out of the blue and into the black.

Neil Young