Astrology by hand

Thanks to CJ Wright of Auntie Moon for this free Vintage chart.  Click here for the download.

I was flipping back and forth between websites and astrology charts yesterday reading a new solar return report for my blog Makua o'o (it will celebrate 5 years on January 5, 2014). My husband walked in and stood behind me, "Wow imagine doing all that by-hand!" Yeah, I thought about that. Astrologers (some) can and still do that. But not so much any longer with all the tools available on-line. I depend on astrologer to navigate my life with Sun in Scorpio, Moon in Capricorn, Mars and Saturn conjunct with Pluto all in Leo, with Uranus in Gemini for quick turns and Jupiter conjunct Venus for luck and expansion. Many of my readers on this blog come for the astrology posts, I am surprised by that, but glad to see how the charts, angles and insights of astrology pros must have something that continues to feed you. I am far from being a astro pro. What I love is the depth of study possible with a committed interest to the art; there's always more to discover and new insight on an old issue.

An elder in training is a lifetime journey, some believe it is lifetime after lifetime of labor, and not work.  I love what Lew Hyde writes when he distinguishes between "work" and "labor" in his book fittingly titled The Gift. This excerpt comes from the chapter The Labor of Gratitude.

..."Work is what we do by the hour. It begins and ends at a specific time and, if possible, we do it for money...Labor, on the other hand, sets its own pace. We may get paid for it, but it's harder to quantify." Hyde goes on to make the connection between labor and being in A.A. " "Getting the program" in AA is a labor...Writing a poem, raising a child, developing new calculus, resolving a neurosis, invention all forms--these are labors. When I speak of a labor I intend to refer to something dictated by the course of life rather than by society, something that is often urgent but that nevertheless has its own interior rhythm, something more bound up with feeling, more interior, than work...A gift that has the power to change us awakens a part of the soul. But we cannot receive the gift until we can meet it as an equal." Hyde's discussion includes his analysis of the fairy tale-fable of The Shoemaker and the Elves, an analysis that both recalls a story from a long ago familiar setting (as a girl reading the tale) and now at 66, an artist and elder in training who appreciates the labor of life, and art. I highly recommend reading the book and reading Hyde's artful way of using tale/fable to highlight his point of view. Hyde says, "We therefore submit ourselves to the labor of becoming like the gift. Giving a return gift is the final act in the labor of gratitude, and it is also, therefore, the true acceptance of the original gift."

"We can't predict the fruits of our labor; we can't even know if we'll really go through with it." Like astrology, the gift juggling and considering potential in your genetics or your natal chart point to the labor involved in our decision to become a human, on Earth. The gift, the labor persists in the daily and cyclical navigations and crossings of a life; seeing how the challenge of a secretive Scorpio might soften without dissolution; or, affirming the best use of a Capricorn moon is to feed it in solitude. A blank chart is beautiful to look at, but it is in the living that turns something beautiful into a gift.  

E ho'a'o no i pau kuhihewa. Try it and rid yourself of illusions. - 'Olelo No'eau