Saturday, January 17, 2015

Preparing to climb: notes from and for The Goat (Capricorn and Wood Goat)

"Saturn conjunction Jupiter: Weather forecast

Mid-February 2015 until mid-November 2015: This influence can represent different things to different people. It can be an opportunity for very careful sustained growth through patient endeavor. Or it can be a period of extreme restlessness and impatience.

During this time you may expect any of the following: a change of residence; a change in financial status, often for the worse; withdrawal from others in order to work; fondness for solitude; industry and perseverance..."

 
 
A good pal sent me an email the other day, she was checking on me because I've been absent from my blogs and not showing up at my on-line writers group. I told her I was recovering from exposures and was doing a lot of reading but not much writing. It's the truth. When I go through the recuperative process it can get messy. Maybe it's the Capricorn (Saturn ruled) Sea Goat traits or just the thing that can happen as my senses and my internal navigational devices (synapses and soul markers) are recalibrated after absorbing too many smells. Maybe, put more simply, my backpack's been dumped out and the recouping bit means I must get my bearings again; check to see if the stuff I have is what I really need/want; repack; and keep climbing. The thing is ... we Goats don't have a choice about having to climb. It's what goats do. It's genetic, soul-bounded commitment.
 
Timing-wise the Solar New Year has begun, our calendars tell us it's mid-January 2015. Parties and cookies, and Solstice have marked an old year completed. It's still the dark season, still dark and wet and cold but still there's that mountain to climb.  
 
Lunar New Year, February 19, 2015 ... Year of the Wood Goat
 
The astrological weather forecast from Robert Hand that I use to open this post gives me something to set my course, or understand my current threshing. Saturn is newly into Sagittarius. "Slow and steady" is the password for navigating this two and a half year journey. I consider the password, attune to the itchiness I feel and recognize the tug and pull of wanting new territory, new friends and a bigger landscape. But, the journey will have to be done by this real life goat with spindly legs. Ever notice? Goats' legs are spindly.
 
I'm not sure about how goats 'feel' about their destiny as climbers. But I'm not going to try assigning human values to a great four-legged beast, or a Sea Goat who is half-mammal half-fish for that matter. What I am trying to do is to express the slowly dawning awareness and feelings within this Capricorn (Moon). The New Lunar Year begins in just over a month's time. By reckoning of time according to my Chinese ancestors, the sun and moon have equal input as far as the new year goes. Winter Solstice (when we on Earth experience the shortest Sun light) is one marker. Two New Moons (when the moon is in the sky during the day, and 'invisible' at night) following Winter Solstice marks the Lunar New Year. Around this time of year I admit to fumbling or juggling way too many balls in my mind. My dreams are epic; I visit the past; I am visited by the dead; I close my eyes to go to sleep and am way, way, way too awake to sleep ... to let go. Here at the keys I am attempting to clarify: Solar New Year. Lunar New Year. I sift through the astrology and find one of my favorite posts from Elsa Panizzon about Sun and Moon, "Live you Sun, Satisfy your Moon."
 
" Your Sun, its sign, its house placement, and its aspects show what you have to do to feel vitally alive. Your Moon sign, its house and its aspects, show what you need to feel nurtured. Your emotional state. Together they are a natural pair...The Vedics (Indian astrologers) consider the aspects to the Moon to be more important than the sun. The Sun is an afterthought in compare. They judge the quality of a life by the Moon because they do not think a life is worth much if you have to live it feeling like crap even if you are rich, or hugely successful in some way..."
 
To satisfy my emotions I do need to feel secure on my feet, my spindly legs tingle with anticipation. Grateful to have my cozy den of a vardo I hunker down, pull an old favorite book under the covers with me and re-read the story of tall and spindly marmalade-haired Elfrida Phipps as she ventures to the North of Scotland. For fourteen years I have read this book, carrying my own version of the paperback from Kuliouou Valley back on O'ahu imagining the possibility that I could reinvent and create a secure and stable home from the termite eaten childhood home I found myself occupying at fifty. That book, and those years of trying to satisfy my Capricorn Moon allowed me to build a life that would change significantly over and over again. Funny how the Universe, the director of potential, lays out the odd connections. The book I have carried, or found again, at our local library is WINTER SOLSTICE by Rosamunde Pilcher. I allow for the seeping of osmosis to claim the pieces of myself that fit the characters and plot of favorite territory penned by a writer. There is comfort in all of it, all the art of story. I satisfy my moon's needs.
 
The ghosts and the choices I made since first I read WINTER SOLSTICE in the bedroom that was my girlhood bedroom, they come to be with me in dreams. In the dark nights they swirl and tamper with clarity. It is not yet time for the light. It will come, but, not quite yet. That is the thing isn't it. It is not about forcing the light to come, even as we who live with the conveniences of a light switch and hot water heaters believe we are entitled to immediate satisfaction.
 
The Capricorn Goat Moon (mine) is partnered with a Scorpio Sun sign. In many ways the two are complimentary. Deep and Serious describes them both. As I age, and am given one more day, another night, a week, a month, a Lunar New Year I come to appreciate the long time it takes to learn to love more. To love the sh*t out of every moment. One last bit of astrology demands attention as I clamber to the shaded hillside of this ramble. The Chiron placement. For me, Chiron (the bridge between the outer and inner planets) is in the 10th House in the sign of Scorpio. The 'wound that will not heal' that is one way to describe Chiron's signature, is conjunct the way I communicate, and the way I 'shine' as my sun is also in Scorpio. I glean more and more understanding about my Chiron placement. And for those who may find Chiron beckoning to you, I recommend reading Satori's posts here, and here for insight.

Back to Chiron and a final note from and for The Goat. The ancient wound that I carry has to do with my Career or Reputation (10th House). In 1997 when Pete my husband and I returned to my home of origin the house was badly in need of repairs. It was 'wounded' and eaten by many termites, and it was our choice to repair it and live in it. By this time my career as a corporate teacher/trainer/facilitator was ending. But, it would be a few years before I completely stopped working 'at it.' Full-time corporate though was slowly and steadily becoming a past life. That year 1997 was my Chiron Return. My path would become one of climbing the mountain of a more spiritually infused commitment.

My public reputation as the girl who used to live in this house would be challenged. My health would start to deteriorate, losses would mount, and by 2004 Pete and I had done as much as we could to rebuild the old place. I sold the home in the spring of 2004 and the wound of Chiron has challenged me with little conscious awareness on my part. It is now, more than ten years later, that I appreciate and consider the 'superpower' bit that Satori wrote about here:

"It was Superman’s alien physiology that made him “super” but what was his wound? It was being an alien among humans. He would have just been an average Joe on Krypton. Batman was frightened by an onslaught of bats and traumatized by the murder of his parents; he put these together and manifested his superhero greatness. Spiderman was just a nerd till he was bitten by a radioactive spider. If you want to know your superpower, look no further than your Chiron placement. Once you figure that out you can work with it and enhance your superpower rather than sitting around in your metaphorical wheelchair bemoaning your wound..."

I mourn the loss of my girlhood dreams not satisfied, but reflect appreciatively on the clambering Goat path that brought me back to that girl's dream. I brought help with me (a Cancer Sun with a Libra Moon) and my Ma's ghost checked him out as he finished remodeling her kitchen. He will never forget that meeting!The grief and the loss is real, the wound real too. I wished so hard to be able to live in that house for the rest of my life. I know I couldn't and didn't.  I bleed. I know I am vulnerable to the smells and chemicals that cannot be prevented wholesale. But as I wrap up this post, it feels like a new bandage anointed with the elixir produced from that Chiron wound prepares me to clamber on.

We have a heaven's worth of markers to guide our personal clambering. The myth, the story, the cookies and the bandages make for a unique passage from here to there. I appreciate my dear friend's concern, I've milked an expression from the breast of a she-goat and put it here. For what it's worth I love that it comes as the first New Moon after Winter Solstice approaches (January 20, 2015) leaving me another cycle of the moon to prepare for a Lunar New Year Celebration where my husband and I open the doors of The Safety Pin Café and welcome The Year of the Wood Goat. We have pinned together a life of wounds and blessings. And count them all as the real life being lived.

Thank you jt!
 

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