Jan 31
Pruning Thyme
It’s become difficult to cut away activities that I love doing for those that I know are aligned with what I want to do.
At first, it’s easy to prune away seedlings you know will not make it. But as the plants become heartier you have to choose which stems will go, which budding leaves will be pinched for the stability of the structure. One plant cannot produce all of the fruit. It is obvious which can stay and which need to go, but it is still difficult to make the decision; to commit the act. To cut away that which no longer serves us, even if it isn’t necessarily bad for us. We have to make room for our lives to be filled with all things that serve us.
Grandpa went to the hospital the day before yesterday. He was feeling dizzy and couldn’t get out of bed. He agreed to let my grandma called the ambulance. When he got to the hospital, he immediately regretted it and demanded the nurse discharge him. She refused and told him that if he left then insurance wouldn’t cover the cost of his ambulance ride and every test they’d run at that point. He ended up staying two days while they ran tests. He just got back home last night.
When I think about his perspective, I imagine he was really mixed up. We (the women of this family) have created a safety container for grandpa. We allow him to be a menace. Everyone just blames his child-like behavior on his dementia. We pretend he is not insane and driving everyone else insane. But it was a noticeable shift in energy with him finally out of the house; it felt more relaxed. I haven’t spoken with grandpa to see if he is shell-shocked or perhaps even a little more self-aware. The optimistic side of me hopes that he got out of the experience that other people are not going to play his games, so he better appreciate how patient everyone is with him here. Another part of me is concerned that the whole thing just made him angry and now he’s going to make life even more hellacious.
The Astrology
When I look to the astrology, I see Venus well-dignified in the sign of her exaltation. I see Mars in Gemini still struggling to pick up speed and put all of the thoughts together. There could be conflict on the horizon, but Venus will push out of this aspect very quickly. Mars square Venus can also be described by my pruning example of earlier. We long to find peace and harmony but it’s also necessary to pull out the clippers and cut away the thoughts, feelings, emotions, or actions that no longer move us toward that goal.
We also have a Full Moon coming up which is all about letting things go. In the sign of Leo there is a theme of self expression that is being illuminated by the ideal of serving the collective. With the Sun in the sign of Aquarius, the sign of the humanitarian or the water-bearer, we may begin to notice how letting go of our fear of self-expression can be a benefit to the collective. All this time we’ve held back for fear of rocking the boat but maybe everyone is waiting for the person that’s going to finally step up and say what needs to be said.
Square to Uranus in Taurus
Something is coming through for me about “channeling the muse”.
This full moon in Leo is self expression through creativity. Adding in a square to Uranus in Taurus, which for me, is in the 12th House, feels like following the muse. Maybe something innovative or shocking comes up.
Today I was called to the story of Oidipus. This was a tale that was passed down for generations, but seems to be an iteration of a tale as old as Father Time. There are hints of the myth with Ouranus and Saturn, in which the son kills the father and there is subsequently a shift in the natural order. That’s something Uranus is associated with is paradigm shifts, plot twists, and shocking revelations.
There is also a loose trine to Chiron, which relates back to the story of Oidipus as the adopted child. Chiron became the wounded healer, ultimately sacrificing himself for Prometheus. Oidipus was a little more hot headed with his approach to life. He fulfills the prophecy of killing his father and marrying his mother by trying to avoid doing just that. The stories of our past reflect something of the nature of the mind during the time and culture within which they were written.
“It would not be too much to say that myth is the secret opening through which the inexhaustible energies of the cosmos pour into human cultural manifestation. Religions, philosophies, arts, the social forms of primitive and historic man, prime discoveries in science and technology, the very dreams that blister sleep, boil up from the basic, magic ring of myth.”
Greene, Liz. The Astrology of Fate (p. 166). Red Wheel Weiser. Kindle Edition.
Originally written in Collective Journaling at The Stoa
