Astrologer tells the Poet...

"All poets need to wander
Through the bramble and the bush
Through the labyrinths of city streets
Lost and listening
In a foreign land
Till they find themselves
Cast up—
Upon the ragged edges
Of some blank
And questioning page.

All poets need to wander
The untrodden routes
And unclocked byways
Of memory
Till they’ve shaken off
The familiar ways
And unexamined life
The way a dog
Shakes off his sluggishness,
Then bounds back
Into the scent of a place,
A time, a story.

All poets need to wander
Through labyrinths of lines
Saturating their pages
With cries and shouts and sounds—
Raging against the sorrows
That have no voice—
Bestowing meaning where
There once was none,
Bestowing blessings
Upon the luminous
Yet ravaged landscapes
Of our lives.

All poets need to wander
Through blackened pages
Of spilled wine and words
Till finding themselves once again
Kneeling and kissing the ground—
They find the words that
Allow us to hear
As if for the first time—
The sound
Of our one true voice.

All poets need to wander
Till they hear themselves say:
“And this is how it was for me”
Then listen to hear how others too—
Have also caught the way:
How light has entered their lives
And then left; how night comes,
And morning follows…
How different and yet the same
Held together by
This one uncommon life.

All poets need to wander…."

Elizabeth Spring July, 2008
elizabethspring@aol.com

Saturn-Neptune Disease

"The tip of my pen paused over the sign of Saturn and then moved like a hand on a ouiji board across the chart in a direct line to Neptune and stopped. Damn! I stopped breathing. The pen circled the rim again looking for something else—Jupiter, Venus, Uranus—what else was happening? Coming around full circle it hovered over Saturn, quivering there on the line-- the cusp between the 5th and 6th houses, between health and illness. My mind quickly calculated the 90 degree square to Jupiter, and froze. My hand lost its grip on the pen; paralyzed. I didn't want to see that, I didn't want to know.

I've been studying astrology for thirty-eight years. Eighteen years ago I started charging money for my services. But I'm not the kind of astrologer who traces her chart daily—in fact, I've always been a little dense when it comes to understanding my own chart. Or maybe I just resist looking. But this morning, after seeing Dr Haverstein I just had to look closer. Besides, maybe I would see something there that he had hadn't seen. So when I got home, I opened my computer and pulled up my chart.

I have always felt that the more information we have the better choices we make. Yet the more we know, the greater the array of possibilities. Naiveté is seldom a good position for making choices, but neither is fear. But how much is it helpful to know? I see myself as one who likes to delve beneath the surface of things to find out what's really happening—and yet, I question--does it really do any good to have a glimpse into what could happen?

Ancient astrologers have always proclaimed that character equals fate, and therefore as we change our character we change our fate. Sounds reasonable, but these subjects are so much more fun to debate over a glass of wine than over the lens of anybody's x-ray.

I'm scheduled to have a Cat scan on my lungs tomorrow. If cysts are found, there will have to be an operation. And if the liquid from the cyst spills into my lungs it could kill me. But the doctor said he has medicine for that. They can stop the infection. Don't worry, he said, I'm sure you'll be fine.
Right now I'm looking at my astrological x-ray of the psyche. This cat-scan shows a Saturn-Neptune opposition; a classic signature of disease. But it's occult; hidden. With Neptune one can never see clearly—it could even be an illusion—not even there. And there's also Saturn squaring Jupiter, hinting at a certain lack of luck or grace. I will have to use my own medicine here; my own way of seeing the larger picture overlaying the smaller picture. And with Neptune, there will be layers of meaning and metaphor here; perhaps an illusive prognosis, or lost pieces of information. Don't worry I tell myself, I'm sure it will be fine. It shouldn't be so hard after all, it's the work I do--it shouldn't be so hard. "

This journal entry was something I wrote awhile back, and it was interesting for me to find it again today and to see that what I believed to be an almost life-threatening disease--a Saturn/Neptune disease, having to do with a parasite I picked up in Mexico--was really FEAR of the disease. I may actually have the disease but it is occult, hidden, and not treatable. A Neptunian disease for sure...and it never caused any problems once the transit passed!

Elizabeth Spring www.elizabethspring.com

*Painting is by my grandmother, Elizabeth English, done in 1904. It's called "The Fortune-Teller".
Elizabeth Spring

North Node: What You Don't Want to Know About Yourself

The North Node:

What You Don’t Want

to Know About Yourself

Or maybe you disagree—you think you’d like to know everything about yourself—or maybe you think you already know everything there is to know. Perhaps you’re curious to see what others know about you and you don’t? We often think we want to know all about ourselves, but I don’t think most of us want to know what we’re lacking or don’t see, or what the Jungian psychologists call the “inferior function.” However if you’re looking to find the answer to the Greek axiom: “Know Thyself” then you might want to know what this North Node is all about—this shadow part of your psyche.

Simply put, the North Node is where our Soul is yearning to go towards in this life, and the South Node is where we are moving out of, or growing away from—it shows the qualities we would be best to leave behind. South Node qualities and habits are what we acted out either earlier in this life or in a former life if we believe that. It’s what we are familiar with; our world view and our habitual way of responding. And the lower, or reactive expression of this South Node surely carries with it “shadow” or unconscious material, but so does the unconsciousness of the North Node. However, if we would be open to exploring our personal “North Star” the North Node, we would find that it “smells” much better than the South Node, because the South is the area we’ve been mired in, in the past, and failed at to some extent. The North Node is fresh—it’s new territory. It’s a call to try something new.

However, as an astrologer and therapist, I find that most people simply don’t “hear” what their North Node is suggesting. It’s like a blind spot. They’re more likely to recognize their South Node because it’s their default pattern and represents both the gifts and liabilities they came into this life with. We know our gifts---and even most of our sins and failings, even if we don’t want to admit it. We know our South Node. But when confronted with the North Node sign and house and aspect patterns, there’s usually a silence in the conversation. The information is trying to settle in, but it feels unfamiliar, and almost---wrong. “No, that isn’t me,” I can almost hear my clients saying.

But it is. It’s the qualities, traits and areas of life that we are most unfamiliar with, and it’s the particular arenas of life we try to avoid. “ Must I really go there?” we ask. “Do I really need to be more that way?” they respond with a slight look of distaste. We have an innate antipathy to this region of life. Yet if we are to be truly whole and healthy, we would be wise to do as Carl Jung suggested: integrate the shadow---integrate the North Node and the whole Nodal story.

How does this fit in with the rest of the chart? Well, if you were to ask: Who am I?---and then describe yourself in terms of your Sun sign, in most cases—not all—you would be recognizable in the traits of your “sign.” But people are paradoxical and complex, and a description of your obvious personality traits alone does not define you.

How do you perceive the world? What’s your style? How were you seen as a child, and what’s your persona or mask? This is your rising sign, or ascendant. It’s also a hint of what you might look like—Virgo rising? You look younger than your age. Aries rising? Do you have something red in your appearance—a face mole or a red undercolor in your hair? Do you wear red a lot? The ascendant is about how we appear, and how we present ourselves.

The Moon gives us hints as to what makes you happy and sad. Do you love a challenge? Do you love to be a little feisty and dare to “feel the fear and do it anyway”? That could be an Aries Moon. Or would you describe yourself as being both introverted and extroverted? Are you happy cleaning out your closets one moment and then ready to dance by the light of the moon on the beach the next day? This could be a Cancer moon….especially if you were to tell me how much what your mother did and didn’t do for you while growing up affected you. So, the Moon represents our emotional nature.

Each sign describes another part of us. We are complex creatures, and the astrological chart tries to describe so many things--- how we respond to authority and discipline (Saturn), how we are rebellious or not (Uranus), how we feel about spirituality, getting high and boundaries (Neptune), where we are lucky and gifted (Jupiter), and even how we experience and handle life’s toughest moments (Pluto)
.
The chart is a fascinating yet inexact map of the territory of our lives. The wild card is that we have free will to play out the signs and aspects. We can bring consciousness and energy to them, or we can play on our strengths and go for an easy ride. We inherit a family karmic inheritance that predisposes us to certain ways of behaving that are not as easy to change as our hair color. And at every moment of our lives we have an assortment of different challenges and moods--- what astrologers call “transits and progressions.” A good astrologer can trace the pattern of particular challenges and opportunities and help you prepare for and accept the stage of life you’re in at the moment.

So when you have an astrological reading done, the astrologer will tend to describe you in terms of all the different facets or signs, and then look at what is happening to you in the present moment by looking at the patterns of transits and progressions. However, there is always the big picture. And the big picture is the Nodes: the North Node representing what our Soul longs for in this life, and those qualities we would be wise to integrate into ourselves, no matter how foreign they may feel. And then directly opposite it is the South Node, representing the gifts and liabilities we’ve come into this life with--- and especially what we haven’t handled skillfully. The South Node represents what we’re bringing in to this life with, like our gender and race, but it speaks in terms of our family and soul karmic inheritance. It’s useful to know. However, we can only look so long at what we didn’t get right. The North Node is a fresh breath of divine wind: why not breathe it in---try it out? You might be very pleased indeed. © Elizabeth Spring www.elizabethspring.com

South Node Seventh House House

South Node Seventh House (Libra), North Node First House (Aries)

The house description of the Nodes always tells us in what area of our life things are happening, and where attention is needed to be paid. In this aspect, with the South Node in the Libra ruled house of partnerships, marriage, and one-to-one relationships, we see that the default pattern which the Soul wants to leave behind involves being in close relationships in an unhealthy way. It often points to too much enmeshment or co-dependency with another or any kind of unequal relationship which is not a win-win situation.

The North Node in the First House, which has its normal ruler Aries, reflects a soul desire to independence and individuation—to taking care of our own needs and desires first, and putting emphasis on surviving and fighting for what we believe in. The first house is about the individual rather than the group, family or couple, so the individual needs to comes first, before a healthy relationship with others can be achieved.

Yet this Libra/Aries polarity from the seventh to the first house is ultimately about the balance between you and another person, between I and Thou, between Mars and Venus being in co-operative relationship with each other. Even though the Nodes always show an imbalance, they also show a fascinating inter-relationship—and this time it’s between the male and female parts of our nature. And here, it’s saying that the assertive, male, independent qualities are calling to be further developed, and yet there is gold in the wisdom of the receptive, interdependent female side of ourselves. That is the “gold in the shadow” or the gold of understanding that we came into this life with---so now, we need to use that assertive, goal-making part of ourselves to become all we can be, and not to let the process of relationships through us off balance. Sometimes easier said than done! But there is nothing healthier than a good balance of these two Nodal energies.

For more information or to inquire about a reading using the Nodes as well as your transits and progressions for the coming year: http://www.elizabethspring.com/