Capricorn: Use and Conservation

The archetype of Capricorn exists on a spectrum of use and conservation. It speaks to the governance of resource and intentional management of time, space, and goods. The archetypal opposites that depict the spectrum of Capricorn, the modern capitalist banker, willing to cultivate capital wealth based on a precarious and unsustainable value system at the expense of the environment and future generations on the one hand; and the purposeful indigenous ancestors who planted seeds generations ago, knowing they were creating sustainable wealth for the future based on time tested wisdom that honors the sacred land on the other. The legacy is what matters to ambitious Capricorn, and the lessons of this cool, boundaried, and powerful archetype are focused on whether it’s all worth in the end.

When there’s nothing left but your name, what will it mean?

Capricorn is the archetypal embodiment of economics. The root of the word economy leads us to the original meaning that signifies management of the home or clan. This is where the practical nature of Capricorn shines bright; a great deal of responsibility and pragmatism must go into maintaining the stability of the home, its structure and resources, over time. This means a strong understanding of what is valuable, what is “worth it” must be cultivated to make sustainable choices. It means understanding the needs of the collective and maintaining enough distance to make hard choices that are required of a leader. It means holding space for all of the emotional complexities of the home and supporting healthy boundaries that are the foundation of healthy relationships.

Capricorn is a cardinal sign that is oriented toward initiation of action and the competitive desire to achieve. It is also an Earth sign, making it materially and tangibly inspired and motivated. The Earth, moved by the cardinal modality initiates purpose and meaningful action toward efforts that will last. Capricorn creates structural integrity out of generational wisdom and ancestral tradition to forge a purposeful foundation stable enough to hold the future.

The constellation of the Sea Goat has a number of origins including the goat nymph that raised Zeus in hiding to protect him from his father. Amalthea, the goat nymph was rewarded for her service to Zeus’ Mother, Rhea by being put into the sky for eternity. Another Greek myth tells the story of Pan, Amalthea’s brother, half man and half goat who was turned into a fish so he might survive the waters and escape the rage of Typhon. Some myths go farther back to Babylonian times when the God Ea climbed out of the rivers he ruled in a cape of fish skin. No matter the story, there is a strong connection to Saturnalian as the ancient holiday of debauchery, gluttony, and sexual abandon fell during Capricorn season and celebrates the same God (Saturn) that rules the sign of the Sea Goat.

The ruling planet of Capricorn is Saturn which is the embodiment of time, structure, discipline, authority, boundaries, and maturity. Saturn reinforces the systematic techniques of the intentional steps used to create a lasting of Capricorn. The Saturn cycle marks our path to maturity and responsibility, taking a full 29 years to complete. Saturn is the slowest moving planet of all that can be seen by the naked eye and is also therefore the last planet that can be seen without technological support.

In our body, Capricorn rules the shins and all bones, our joints, skeletal system, and our teeth. The hardest parts of us that provide structure and perhaps remind us of the passage of time the with particular persistence.

Capricorn speaks from purpose.

The etymology of purpose describes the tension between action and intention that Capricorn must learn to articulate and embody. The urge to take action and the need to understand who, what, where, when, why, what for of it all, are at odds. As pro/por indicate the forward action of cardinality, the pauein/pausis/pausa/pausare/poser indicate the need to hold back, take pause, to place before losing track of the goal or target.

Knowing when to end calculations and take action is a lesson of Capricorn. Understanding which actions are worth taking and which costs cannot be avoided is a lesson of Capricorn. Coming to terms with ends justifying the means is a lesson of Capricorn. Balancing the urge to move into the future and hold on to valuable traditions of the past is a lesson of Capricorn.

Boundaries

The archetype of Capricorn teaches through boundaries. It can be challenging to calculate our boundaries and be discerning when it comes to how and when we spend our resources. Often we are taught lessons of boundaries by failing to hold them or by setting such impossible boundaries we must choose not to enforce them. We may learn what too much looks like by missing the indication we have gone too far by hitting our limit and facing harsh consequences. We may learn what not enough looks like my allowing ourselves to be overworked and exploited only to hit a wall of burnout too taxing to ignore. Whatever the context, we learn lessons of boundaries and limitations through the sign of Capricorn and its Ruler Saturn.

The planet Saturn is the symbol of boundaries and demonstrates as much through the structure of the planet with its rings of spinning rocks hurtling through space in an exceptionally organized format. As individuals we must learn to hold onto our own structure to protect us from being forced to conform to a shape that is inauthentic to our systems and values. Boundaries are the structure that support engagement; they are the foundation of any healthy relationship as they allow relating while upholding enough structure that all parties are able to maintain their own authenticity. By developing healthy boundaries, we conserve our own and other’s values and resources and we maintain sovereignty.

Remember:

Boundaries are the distance I can love you and me simultaneously.

We need not treat our boundaries like a series of brick walls that surround us to keep everything out. Instead, we can treat them more like a lovely home with fine doors and windows with secure latches, that is designed to invite folks in when the time and resources allow and keep out whatever or whomever depletes our resources.

Capricorn Keywords

Empowered: ambitious, paternal, pragmatic, developmental, structural, lessons of sustainability and legacy

Disempowered: elitist, high and mighty, unfeeling, singleminded, power-hungry, dissociated

Libra: The Divine Lessons of balance

How do we describe Libra?

The divine lessons of Libra invite us to collaborate and cooperate. The trick is to avoid conjoining, losing the tension that creates the limitations required for creative success. In any good collaboration, there is true divinity in asserting individuality as much as making room for commonality. Harmony is not made beautiful simply by similarity, but through the divine tension between alignment and variance. The best collaborations allow both voices to be heard, both messages to be sent and received, both creators to be challenged, inspired, and admired in connection to a whole that is greater than the sum of either of its parts.

Libra is a love scholar that teaches us through the spectrum of individuation and cooperation. She is the most magickal when she can embody mutuality and independence in one breath.

Libra teaches us lessons of balance.

Very often we learn through the inverse; we may be taught to be gentle through experiences with roughness, we may be taught generosity through selfishness, and we may learn to value connection through lessons of isolation. Libra lessons often come from moving too far in one direction only to have the pendulum return so quickly it’s momentum carries it again, too far in the other direction.

I often witness and experience the lessons of codependency and interdependence in this same swing of the pendulum or struggle to balance scales, to add a new metaphor. For those who were challenged with parentification, who became care takers far too young, the urge to take care is now likely just as strong and the urge to reject care for ourselves. Then, as awareness and healing repair the wound, both the urgency around caring for other and the readiness to be cared for become easier, more available, and less likely to generate activation and reactivity. As things become even more balanced in the healing process, the willingness to allow others to suffer the consequences of their actions begins to expand, and new cycles in the spiral that is healing and balancing are discovered.

What does Libra look like?

She is a gallery, refined, thoughtful, full of tasteful art and reflections of aesthetic symmetry and creativity of the highest value. She is the mark of civilization, of things made legible, clarified, defined and named beautiful for their purity.

What does Libra feel like?

She is most empowered with clear and healthy boundaries. She is most exalted with structure, discipline, limitations, and a clear ethical code. She is dignified in devotion to diplomacy, cooperation, and collaboration. She if soft to the touch but cool and balanced by her careful restraint. Libra feels like the satisfaction of justice.

What does Libra taste like?

She is mild, likeable, even, and appealing. She is a well-balanced wine, refined with time. She is a perfectly ripe fruit at the balance of the equinox.

What does Libra smell like?

If Libra were a perfume she would be gentle, soothing but heady. She would be a scent that is hard to forget but never challenging. She would be clean, pure, and decisively ripe without ever becoming overpowering or unfairly assertive.

The Mythology Connected to the Libra Constellation

The constellation of Libra is considered to be the Titan Goddess Themis who was sister to Nemesis and second wife to Zeus. She is the goddess of justice, legislation, divine law, and harmony with nature. She carries a sword to cut the truth from the lies, and her scales are the symbol of the justice she upholds. Themis is the Goddess of peacemaking, balance, seeing other’s point of view, along with divine awareness, and social graces. If disregarded, it is her sister, Nemesis, who punishes. Nemesis is the consequence of failure to regard Themis and her Libra qualities.

This narrative again conjures the awareness of collaboration and balance. The Libra Titan herself does not operate alone, but she is still quite individual. She is interdependent, offering her magick in divine cooperation with her sister.

The same could be said of her relationship to Zeus. Through this collaboration she birthed the three Horai and the three Morai. While the Horai governed the measure of time, the orderliness of divine law, the Morai determined the path of fate, the purpose and the process of divine law. Even her offspring cooperate to create a sense of order, of fairness, and of divine balance.

Astrology without Causation

Coincidence and coincide…

go ahead and say each one *out loud*

When we say coincidence, it sounds like it’s something that happened by accident. But when we say things coincide the magick of the synchronicity seems more obvious, even undeniable.

Then when we look at the etymology, we can see that the word was born of an expression of agreement. The root of coincidence speaks to multiple entities occupying the same space and affirming aligned messaging. Coincidence is feeling less and less like a fluke and more and more like a significant agreement between distinct entities.

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I feel a little embarrassed when people say that a particular planet is on their side, or that they are receiving something special from a certain celestial body. What does resonate for me, however, is the thought of praying to a particular deity. As someone with Sagittarius rising, I am ruled by Jupiter, and I offer my life and devotions to Zeus. I believe that I receive support through his magick, not because he is my ruler but because I offer my awareness and intention to him and his archetypal presence. Of course, I offer my attention to Jupiter/Zeus because he is my ruler but as someone who lives with high hopes and low expectations, I intentionally reject the practice of centering myself and humans in the cosmic web.

…but that’s a whole other can of worms…

Though I am discomforted by, even afraid of determinism, astrology demands we consider and contend with the possibility that all things are predetermined. I resist this; my bias urges me to seek more evidence so that we might yet have access to free will.

The option I prefer to explore suggests that all things happen within the parameters of the context, meaning the space-time must be correct for a particular thing to occur.

Psychological and behavioral observations and studies suggest that the context of our behavior is more predictive of outcomes than who we identify as. While I believe most of us would like to think we act as we do because of who we are, our behavior is far more likely to be defined by what is within our contextual capacity. We cannot fly a plane to Lagos if we do not have a plane, do not know how to fly one, and don’t know the coordinates to Lagos.

Simply put, we do what we do based on where and when we are more than who we are.

Another example, in a train station, we are able to board a train and travel, it is the setting, the space, the context, that predicts and defines our behavior. Without the train station and train, there is no access to travel, the behaviors we enact in a train station are specific to that space, that environment. We are not simply traveling because we identify as travelers but because we are in the space that permits and determines our capacity to travel.

Just as the space is more predictive of behavior than the person enacting the behavior, it seems that the position of the stars, the celestial bodies, and the ecliptic are determined by space. The planets also must contend with the parameters of space. They then, in turn, provide data points that speak to the context of human existence and experience. This brings us to the archetypal signification of the planets and how that information can be used to contextualize ourselves within our own cultural mythologies.

Let’s use a real astrological example:

It feels far less likely that Pluto’s ingress into Aquarius is causing a shift in the collective relationship to technology but instead that it is a symbol of the inevitable shift that occurs on a technological level when the collective has reached this particular context/space-time.

The technologies available at the particular era of the Pluto ingress into Aquarius are more data points that contextualize our behavior. The environment of the current era permits women to behave in ways they were not permitted to when Pluto was in Leo in the 1940s and 50s. Pluto, with its almost 250-year cycle, represents ancestral lineages and power, because those archetypal values take significant time to manifest this is the appropriate planet to symbolize heritage, power, and spiritual influence. Astrologers use Pluto to mark generations because it takes between 12 and 24 years for the planet to move through each sign. The last time Pluto made this ingress into Aquarius was April of 1777…chew on that for a moment… the context of Pluto speaks to the historical duration of empires.

It feels to me that the spinning and expanding of the galaxies, of the universe, was always going to end up with Pluto ingressing into Aquarius during 1532, 1777, and 2023 (just to name the 3 most recent times). This is promised and this is where things get particularly deterministic.

Let’s use another real astrological example:

The conjunction of Pluto on my partner’s 0° Aquarius sun was always going to happen, from the moment he was born, even before that I suppose. This transit is not a coincidence, it was always going to coincide with the end of his Saturn return, with his 30th year, with all the elements that exist at this moment in the space-time that is his context. The shape of the space-time that he acts within. Fortunately, he was not born when Pluto was in Leo, he has not been bound by the context of the late 1930s to late 1950s, forced to contend with the context of that era as a Black man. The context of the current space-time has completely different implications and determinations of what behaviors and technologies he now has access to.

To think that Pluto is offering him something special feels dangerously close to the spiritual bypassing of #luckygirl and individualistic manifestation. I have little patience for it. However, I do believe that my husband’s experience through this transit will be well described by the same vocabulary that is inspired by a Pluto conjunction with a natal Sun. It is likely to be transformative, powerful, intense, and may have much to do with his identity and ego.

I do not make predictions because I reject any opportunity to interrupt another person's self-actualization and self-determination.

The transits are always going to keep transiting and we now live in a context with the benefit of generations of archetypal language to describe feelings and experiences that coincide with these transits. To say that we are being hurt by a planet or healed seems indulgent and self-centered in a way I cannot abide. What I am curious about is how context impacts each of us collectively and as individuals. Our experience is coinciding with the planet's position and vice versa but this does not mean it must be a causal relationship. What does appear to be a causal relationship is the space-time and available behaviors. I cannot write these ideas on my computer except in this space-time where a personal computer exists, when I have the resources to access my computer, when I have the available time to ponder these ideas…

At birth, we are all initiated into our unique yet collectively felt contexts. Our contexts are predictive of our behaviors, more so than our sense of self despite our deepest desires to access free will.

The fact of the matter is, we cannot board a train when there is no station, nor train to board. We must live in a time of trains, enter the station with enough time to board the train and have the capacity to do so. Natal charts are a way to describe and explore the unique contexts that we act within. That our lives demonstrate archetypally synchronized patterns with the celestial bodies has more to do with the contextualization of our space-time than the causation.

The Aquarius Archetype: Understanding The Water Bearer

Why is Aquarius the water bearer but an air sign?

Does understanding this peculiarity illuminate how we understand the Aquarian archetype? Let’s find out.

I was pondering this matter in preparation for Aquarius season and in honor of my husband who is born right at the very beginning of Aquarius season. Suddenly something clicked when I considered Mark Solms’ latest discoveries in neuropsychology. I highly recommend watching the linked video but the abridged version is, neuroscience has long considered the cerebral cortex to be the seat of our consciousness, however, new evidence suggests it is the brain stem, the emotional and primal locus in our brain, that is the seat of our consciousness.

It is not, as Descartes would have us believe “I think therefore I am.” But instead, it is I feel therefore I am.

Consciousness and what it is, where it is, and how we define it, is a great debate, one that has been discussed since the forums of ancient times.

Since modern science has long considered consciousness to reside in the cerebral cortex, the distinctly human part of the brain, it could be argued that this line of thinking has contributed to the human propensity for exceptionalism and even elitism. This line of thinking has been used to perpetuate eugenics and other racist theories along with distancing human beings from the rest of the animal species that occupy our Earthly habitats. In my undergraduate thesis, I posit that it is in part this exceptionalism and the language that has developed around this construct that has cost especially white folks, particularly those in America, their sustainable relationship with the environment. In an effort to distinguish white folks and whiteness from the Other and from animals, religious and political voices promoted exceptionalism and distinction from the Earth and the natural world. Today it has proven to be a convoluted challenge for white folks and many Americans to take responsibility for their impact on the environment and practices of sustainability.

In this vain, I often ask, how conscientious is the animal that destroys its own habitat?

So what if we consider Solms’ findings? What if we assume his discovery of consciousness as residing in the brain stem is correct? First, we must recognize that many many other species share this part of the brain, and next, we must consider the nature of the impulses that emanate from our brain stem. It is an emotional, instinctive core, and dare I say, an intuitive center. Suddenly it is not our intellectualism that proves our consciousness but our emotionality, our intuitive nature that confirms our consciousness. “Raw feelings are the fundamental form of consciousness,” says Solms, later explaining that this is a survival tactic. The ability to feel allows us to react appropriately to danger. If we were unable to feel suffocation, we would fail to at least attempt to remove ourselves from a burning building, for example. We do not intentionally process the notion that we are gasping for air, we feel the urgency and need to escape danger and return to the kind of breathing that requires none of our attention.

Consciousness is often associated with presence and awareness. With this and Solms’ findings in mind, I agree that feelings and our emotional experiences are our most conscious states.

It is a presence described by our responsiveness to the current moment.

Now let’s consider the elements of water and air along with their archetypes. Water represents an emotional, intuitive, and feeling archetype. Air is a cognitive, intellectual, and communicative archetype. Aquarius is an air sign, and the zodiac that is archetypally associated with systems of ideas, higher consciousness, and collective communications. For Aquarius to be a water bearer but an air sign, is, as we have established, somewhat curious if not mystifying.

So what if we consider Aquarius the water bearer, the archetype of intellectual innovation, systemic psychology, and collective understanding, the structure by which consciousness, Solms’ emotionally defined consciousness, can be contained? Without a vessel, consciousness is another ingredient in the primordial soup. But with the vessel of the Aquarian, the emotional consciousness can be carried, contained, and sustained. It is not at all that the Aquarian is an emotional archetype but instead that it is the one that offers a container for emotionality, thus giving space and form to our collective consciousness.

As a symbol of consciousness, of communal understanding, and mass communication, Aquarius forms the vessel, to bear the water of emotions, of consciousness.