with so very many things to become enraged, terrified and generally upset about. I tend to focus on my own life and feelings in my writing, with exceptions of course.

Like when I wrote the post, ‘my little plan to save the world‘, sometimes I do feel inspired to add my writings to the massive, seething cauldron of words already written attempting to address the Big Picture and to fix the glaring and species-threatening issues we face.

With a Virgo Ascendant, part of my personality programming is the assumption that I’m merely one little teeny cog in an infinitely large machine, and what can little me do to affect anything? This shrinking self-image is squared by a Saturn-Mars opposition which is determined to try, hopeless though it might be; I’m a bit of a don Quixote archetype. Yet I often run out of momentum before I even start, because the underlying feeling of hopelessness behind the determination (twelfth-house Pluto) is all-pervasive.

Yet hope springs eternally, and expansive, faith-full Jupiter falls in my first house of self and ‘how I see the world’, keeping my optimism balloon rising even as the dark cloud makes it all look pointless. I, like most, am a creature of paradox, fumbling to make my way in a paradoxical world full of contradictions and things to feel hopeless, terrified and hopping mad about.

I use astrology to illustrate my examples here because I am an astrologer, and that is one of my paradoxes: that I am often shy to mention what I do for a living, let alone attempt to apply it publicly.

I know what you’re thinking! Who, me? Shy? With six planets in fire signs? Sadly, it’s true, another paradox. I have very often hesitated to offer or even mention the services I have studied so hard to develop because of that dang Virgo Ascendant, the shrinking violet part of me that trumps everything else, saying, ‘what, little ole me? Surely someone else can say it better, do it better? Why, look at how many people are out there, all claiming to know things, what point is there to my adding my voice to the clamour? I would only get in the way, complicate things, etc etc etc ugh.’

You see, Virgo is the background on which everything else is painted, and tends to be the colourless servant who puts things in order when we’re not looking, but we take for granted that it will happen. We trust Virgo to take care of the unglamourous jobs, and somebody with Virgo Rising (like me) doesn’t tend to inspire confidence as a risk-taking leader. With exceptions, for there are always exceptions, sometimes so many that the rule seems silly.

That is because there are so many possible combinations of archetypes and elements that each person, each chart, is unique, and the particular form in which the person’s life unfolds is going to be unique as well.

There is no conflict between fate and free will; Astrology doesn’t map out our fate. It merely illustrates the range of options from which we are empowered to choose and the particular arenas of life in which we are going to be called upon to make our choices. Knowing the map and gaining a rudimentary understanding of the language are not necessary, simply extremely helpful in deciding which choices are optimal for growth.

Astrology is an unmatched tool for self-understanding, and more than that, it is a living language, the only true universal language, which if applied properly rather than being denigrated, belittled and blacklisted by the established authorities, might actually serve as a light in the darkness to lead us out of this mess.

The trouble is, there is so much infighting in the astrological community about which system is ‘the right one’, and so much sneering outside the community about how it’s so obviously baloney, that it’s nearly impossible to actually do much good with the amazing tools I and other astrologers have to work with. But the media blackout and social stigma around astrology are like a big black suffocating blanket which snuffs out any attempt at reasoned explanation.

I wrote the following last year:

The funny thing is, all the skeptics like James Randi who go to such lengths to disprove astrology to the masses are never well researched. They learn just enough to figure out ways to make it look ad fake as they already believe it to be. Like the famous experiment where a so-called ‘thorough horoscope’ is given to a group of people, and they are asked to rate its accuracy. Of course, everybody finds it ‘extremely accurate’, only to have the debunker triumphantly reveal that everybody actually received the same horoscope (collective gasp). This absolutely beyond the shadow of a doubt proves the nonsensical tricksiness of astrology (which is always lumped in with all other forms of prognostication, such as palmistry and psychic divination).

I buried that post in a long piece that began with a rant about the weather. Why? What, this little ole me, what might I have to say of importance? I just needed to spew some random bits and pieces. Don’t mind me.

Recently I read an article in The Mountain Astrologer about the uses of astrology as a cure for depression, and that lit a bulb for me. It’s true; astrology played a central role in my personal cure. I began to study astrology within a few months after I had been diagnosed (and hospitalized) with acute clinical depression. At the time, I was told that I should resign myself to repeated bouts of hospitalization for the rest of my life. I was (apparently) suffering from a chemical imbalance in my brain and the only treatment for that was drugs.

Instead, I discovered a meaning for my suffering in the map of my natal chart. I learned that Saturn on my root, squaring my Ascendant, combined with Pluto in the 12th (and many other factors, but these were dominant) predisposed me to a gloomy outlook and an emotional feeling of heaviness. I also learned what the positive side of this configuration was; the development of deep emotional inner resources and the reclaiming of lost and hidden powers from a state of dormancy.

Astrology became a light in the tunnel for me and helped me to craft the story which serves to describe my life’s purpose. It’s a complex story, and it can’t be boiled down to a simple formula or even described in English, for above all else, astrology is a language and like any language there are certain concepts which cannot easily be translated.

I am primarily a fiery creature, Aries Sun and Leo Moon, grand trine in fire, Gemini Mars on the Midheaven striving to trumpet confidently. And all that has to filter through that little, self-effacing Virgo Ascendant. Oh the pain! So instead I trumpet what I can, always with a frisson of ‘oh, I hope this is okay,’ and the topic that I feel empowered to hold forth about is me (self is Mars’ purview) rather than laying out the benefits of what I have to offer, because that’s simply the compromise I’ve adopted.

But it’s not a sustainable compromise, and it’s become time to expand out of the shell. Virgo is mutable earth, and that means change, evolution, adaptation. Finding what needs to happen, and doing it. Shift happens, and even Virgo can step up to the plate when it becomes obvious that it’s time has come.

Things are shifting in my story now, as my progressed Sun makes its stately and slow (only one degree per year, taking three hundred and sixty years to go around the whole circle) way across my Midheaven this year. This reflects a shift in confidence, a time when I will be more comfortable teaching what I know and offering what I do. And glory hallelujah to that.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 18th, 2009 at 12:09 pm and is filed under about me, astro*logic, truth and strangeness. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.