I was born with Pisces, the sign of the spiritual seeker, on the cusp of my 4th house (the house of home and family). Home is my sacred place. The search for peace and quiet, for a gentle place of order and contemplation, has always been my first priority in choosing – or creating – a place to call home. Although my husband and I haven’t realized our fantasy of living in a church, our little bungalow is quiet and private. Two large trees shield the front of the house, the miracle of Caller ID protects us from unwanted phone calls, and uninvited visitors will find we don’t even have a doorbell. Inside, flickering candles and contented cats lend an atmosphere of relaxation.

Visitors often tell us that our house feels especially peaceful, but it wasn’t always so. When we bought our house, its recent tortured history (a divorce, discordant renters) seemed to linger like barnacles on the bottom of a boat. We had checked out the neighborhood carefully before buying, trying to avoid noise; but the very day we moved in, renters pulled up next door with a U-Haul truck and a pitbull whose barking kept us awake all night, every night. This was only the first of the challenges we’ve faced here, and it’s taken an enormous amount of spiritual work – negotiating with the universe through ritual, and (more tortuously) with neighbors – to create the sanctuary we enjoy today.

Wherever Pisces falls in your chart, you seek to create a sanctuary into which you can retreat from the rancor and agitation of daily life. But as anyone who has lived in a monastery can tell you, retreat and sanctuary don’t exempt us from working on our issues! In fact, I think the areas of life symbolized in our birth charts by Pisces are sacred not just because they’re places where we can retreat and regroup, but because they describe where we meet the issues that stand between us and true inner peace.

So at this new Moon I invite you to find Pisces – the sign of the sacred – in your chart, and consider how these areas of your life serve as both your retreat and your spiritual classroom. Here are a few real-life examples to prime your imagination:

• A friend with Pisces rising finds her sanctuary in physical exercise, especially yoga. But she was born with curvature of the spine, and working through her physical limitations was the spiritual work she faced in reaching this point.
• Another friend, with Pisces on the cusp of the second house, has a love of gardening and of treasured antiques. Unfortunately, he’s had trouble clearing a financial path to the prosperity that would help him enjoy these passions.
• With Pisces on the cusp of the third house, a serious, businesslike Capricorn-rising client found tranquility in writing poetry and making music with friends.
• My Pisces fourth house church/dwelling fantasy aside, many who have Pisces here pine to live near – and in the case of one man I know – on the water (he lived full-time on a houseboat!).
• I once knew a woman with Pisces on the fifth house who was not remotely religious, but who adored artwork with a sacred focus; one entire wall of her house was covered with crucifixes. With Pisces on the fifth house cusp, you may consider music, art, other creative pursuits, or time spent with pets or children as your sanctuary.
• I’ll always remember a co-worker with Pisces on her sixth house cusp. For several years she had held a well-paying position that forced her to work in an awful basement office with no windows or natural light. In desperation, she finally took a demotion just so she could move out of the basement! While she had the same standard-issue prefab cubicle we all bemoaned, hers was irresistibly serene and zen-like, complete with a trickling fountain and Japanese scroll. She made her workplace into a sanctuary.
• A client with Pisces on the seventh house cusp found sanctuary in a series of lovers who were artists, musicians, and spiritual seekers – and ultimately married a man who is strongly religious.
• One friend with Pisces on the eighth house cusp was an avid devotee of Tantric yoga. The eighth house is a  house of sexuality, but also any intimate or emotionally intense relationships with others. Pisces offers an element of spirituality to these connections.
• A woman I know who has Pisces on the ninth house has been known to sigh, upon entering a library or bookstore, that “books are all I know of heaven.” Come to think of it, she would probably love to buy a church and turn it into a bookstore!
• A writer who had Pisces on the tenth house cusp once told me she did her very best work once she rented an office above a local church.  But if you have this placement, you just need your career (tenth house) to in some way reflect spiritual as well as material values.
• A sensible Taurus rising man with Pisces on the eleventh house cusp found soothing refuge in his friendships, which included his Alcoholics Anonymous cohorts, numerous musicians and artists, and at least one priest.
• One woman with Pisces on the twelfth house cusp used to sleep as much as possible; when awake, she drank a lot. When she eventually got sober and found love and religion, her faith became her sanctuary.

Reconnecting with your sanctuary

Each New Moon offers opportunities to “reboot” our energy and approach to a particular area of life, and we often use ritual to focus this process. But when the New Moon falls in Pisces – and especially this year, with the Pisces New Moon conjoined with Neptune – it’s essential to revitalize your own personal sanctuary and reconnect with the sacred part of yourself.

If you’re new to spiritual practice, Lara Owen’s book Growing Your Inner Light offers a simple, common sense approach to incorporating the sacred into your daily life. Begin, she suggests, by cleansing your space – cleaning it, but also cleansing it spiritually with sage, salt, or water. Build an altar, as simple or complex as you like, to serve as a spiritual “safe place” where you can give thanks and ask for guidance. To invite spirituality to take root in the soil of your everyday life, institute a daily ritual such as lighting a candle, burning some incense, and playing sacred sounds such as chimes.

We who incorporate lunar cycles in our spiritual practice often add an additional element to this simple formula: our New Moon intentions. What do we want to grow in this lunar month? We write the intentions down and invoke them in our New Moon observances. Most of us perform New Moon rituals inside our homes, and I’ve found Simone Butler’s Astro Feng Shui system extremely valuable in helping me work with particular themes in different parts of my home each month.

However you like to approach ritual, the intention at this Pisces New Moon is to find a way to breathe clarity, compassion, and surrender into your inner sanctuary. Empathize with the barking dogs that are spoiling your tranquil home, and they will often disappear. Surrender to your curved spine and it becomes easier to work around it. Recognize the unhappy job situation that imprisons you, and you can release it to make room for a peaceful working environment.

Where is your sanctuary? Where are you called to create an oasis of peace and tranquility in the midst of life’s often harsh landscape? At this New Moon, find the Piscean sacred space in your life. Clear it physically and symbolically, anoint it with incense – and maybe a little Murphy’s Oil Soap – and transform it into your dream home.

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© April Elliott Kent. All rights reserved.

Here’s a conjuring story of my own. Some few New Moons before I met my husband, I decided I was truly ready to find a partner. Since relying on my own flawed judgment hadn’t gotten me very far, it occurred to me that perhaps a benevolent universe could do better job of match-making; and so I composed a ritual. It began with a step I think was the most powerful: creating a list of the five essential qualities I wanted in a mate. That took some doing; it’s probably the first time I had stopped to really think about what I wanted, rather than what I didn’t want (which my many failed and, occasionally, tragic romances had made abundantly clear to me).

I don’t remember exactly what I wrote. I know I wanted someone honest – a quality that had been utterly lacking in many of my previous romantic forays. To that I probably added: someone sane (ask any Leo: we tend to gravitate toward our opposite sign, Aquarius, and in doing so we often veer into the “batsh@t crazy” end of the Aquarian spectrum on our way to “brilliantly quirky”), someone hard working, someone who made me laugh, someone who really wanted to be married. I folded up my list and tucked it under a dish with a lit pink (Venus’ color) candle on it. In a small pink handkerchief, I wrapped a tiny cloth doll of a man (which I had picked up for some reason at a Renaissance fair, years before). “This is my mate,” I declared (briefly wondering whether to add “is a full-sized human person” to my list), sealed the cloth with some of the wax from the candle, and left it on the my little makeshift altar until the candle burned all the way down.

The next day I stowed the little figure and the list in a box somewhere and completely forgot about them – until about a year later, when my (honest, sane, hard working, funny, committed, full-sized human) soon-to-be husband and I were packing up my apartment for my move to San Diego to get married. We had started out as friends, and it look awhile for me to recognize him as the person with whom I wanted to spend the rest of my life.

So, you know – successful conjuring! That said, I’m sort of an agnostic on the subject of ritual. I don’t really believe there’s anything magical about lighting a candle or reciting an incantation or even the phase of the moon. I think what manifests results in our lives is pretty simple – readiness (more about that in Jessica’s book),  intention (showing a willingness to engage in the process of getting what you want), and attention (so that you recognize it when it shows up). The beauty of ritual is that it helps us clarify what we want.

Happy Valentine’s Day, then.  And if you find it as miserable as I used to, use this day to shift gears from misery to clarity. Make your lists, burn your candles, sing a song, clap your hands, or do anything else that helps you focus on what (or who) you want, so that you are more likely to recognize it when it shows up – even if it’s wrapped in a package that you weren’t expecting.

Chalk it up to a Leo-heavy birth chart, or simple introversion: I tend to feel uncomfortable in a crowd. But when my progressed Moon passed through Aquarius a couple of years ago, I became downright gregarious. After years of dragging me kicking and screaming to social events, my sociable Libra husband was flabbergasted to find me planning parties and initiating outings with friends.  For awhile, all this socializing actually catalyzed my creativity. But eventually the progressed Moon moved on, leaving my energy and creative juices depleted. It felt as though I’d been trying to jump-start my battery with the jumper cables attached to the wrong terminals.

At this Full Moon, the Sun and Mercury are moving through Aquarius, the sign of friends and social networks. Each year when the Sun leaves diligent Capricorn for the friendlier pastures of Aquarius, the temptation is strong to replace a work-jammed calendar with more social engagements than usual. But even if you’re naturally extroverted, filling your days and evenings with appointments, phone calls, emails, and parties may eventually cause your vitality to flag. We all need time on our own to “re-create” – to feed the Solar/Leo self. For some, it’s relatively easy to recognize the signs of social fatigue and take happy refuge in the studio, the kitchen, or whatever space we’ve carved out for creative ventures. But some of us are not so lucky and have a hard time finding the way back to our own creative hearts – may not, in fact, have ever discovered them in the first place.

Even the most well meaning parents may neglect the playful, creative side of their children, focused as they are on preparing their kids to succeed in an increasingly competitive world. And for all children, peer pressure and the desire to fit in can dampen creative expression. Where my husband comes from they call it “Tall Poppy Syndrome”: anyone who tries to stand out from the crowd gets cut down to size. For women, in particular – naturally attuned as we are to lunar rhythms – tapping into the Solar self can be difficult. Everything in our culture urges us to master the arts of relationship and attraction rather than pursuing the independent path of a creative “tall poppy.”

Become the artist you want to date

When I was younger, I watched many women project their Solar selves, their creative, intellectual, and even spiritual urges, onto men. I had friends who would only date artists or musicians – even when their gifts were accompanied by drug use, financial irresponsibility, or infidelity. During my years as a musician I saw a lot of women like this, hanging around backstage waiting to meet the guitarist or the drummer, and they baffled me. Partly it was because having worked with so many musicians, they held no romantic mystery for me. But it also seemed that women who were obsessed with artists were missing out on something special: the thrill, validation, and power that come from creating and performing art themselves. I couldn’t imagine that romantic involvement with musicians, writers, or athletes would be nearly as satisfying. Better to feed your own creative Leo lionness, I thought – to become the musician, the writer, the athlete.

But my dirty little secret was that I’d become a musician not just for the satisfaction of self-expression, but because I was a social misfit without a lot of other options. Unlike the girls who hung around backstage at the clubs where my band played, who traveled in tight, homogeneously attractive groups, I didn’t fit in. And to be honest, I envied – still envy – women who “fit in.” Even now I often feel out of place at a bridal shower or girl’s night out.

Those of us with untapped Aquarius energy wander through life feeling as though we missed school on the very important day when social networking skills were taught. Humans are social animals, and it’s threatening to be unable to find a place in one’s pack. We’re hard-wired to crave the very Aquarian experience of belonging. But if fitting in means surrendering the ideas, gifts, and self-expression that are uniquely ours, our Leo selves insist that it’s too dear a price to pay.

Finding Your Place by Standing Out

As it turned out, not fitting in has proved to be one of my greatest blessings. I remember thinking early on that if I couldn’t fit in, I’d damn well make the best of standing out. So I gave myself over completely to music and later to writing, and in the end, a wonderful thing happened: By standing out, I somehow managed to find my place – to find love, acceptance, and friendship on my own terms.

Every now and then, the odd Uranus transit or progressed planet in Aquarius gives me a taste of what it’s like to simply, effortlessly, belong – to take enjoyment and energy from social connections. But when the transit passes and I return to the social wilderness, I don’t mind. There are creative treasures to be found there. I find myself there.

During the Sun in Aquarius season, collective identity and common purpose are energized, to the extent that your Leo self may be feeling a tad undernourished. At this Full Moon in Leo, painful memories of creative, romantic, and social hurts may be stirring. Rather than pushing these unhappy memories hastily to one side, perhaps there’s something to be learned from them.

At the Leo Full Moon, we’re asked to meditate about the kind of fuel that powers the engine of our hearts – and to seek our place in the hearts of others. If you’re feeling tired and stale, schedule some time alone for creative play. If you’ve been feeling as though you don’t belong anywhere, maybe it’s because you’re trying to fit yourself into shapes that don’t suit you. This Full Moon is an opportunity to step back for a moment and get reacquainted with your passions – to make your own kind of music, as the old song says – and to trust that they will unite you and the people with whom you truly belong.

© April Elliott Kent. All rights reserved.

My friend Alice called me late last Friday afternoon. “I thought you’d be on your way to Happy Hour,” I said; it was her usual Friday post-work ritual to go for drinks with her co-workers. “Nah,” she said. “Ramona will be there.” Alice and Ramona had once been close friends, but the relationship soured when they became rivals for a coveted sales position in their company. In a twist that proved fortuitous for Ramona, Alice had been reprimanded (falsely, she insisted) for making a costly mistake. The sales position went to Ramona. Alice strongly suspected her rival had undermined her, but eventually decided to let bygones be bygones.

“I thought you’d sorted all that out,” I said.

“I thought I had, too. But lately, every time I look at her, all I can think is, ‘I hate her!’” Alice chuckled. “Hey, it’s bad enough that I have to work with her everyday, I’m not gonna drink with her, too.”

The January 23, 2012 New Moon falls in Aquarius, a sign that represents casual friendships and group affiliations based on shared interests. We shake Aquarius’ convivial hand when we head off for Friday night drinks with co-workers, serve on the board of our local astrological organization, or bake cookies for a fundraiser. Some of us are “group” people – Aquarian by nature – and some of us are less so. But few of us can escape the web of sociability altogether.

At each New Moon in Aquarius, in the dark and cold of midwinter, our fraternity of friends and associates normally provides a source of joy and sustenance. This is typically the time of year when we celebrate the simple, friendly connections that knit us into the fabric of society. But Mars, the planet of competition, war, and aggression, has been slowing down in recent weeks, getting ready to station and turn retrograde, which it will finally do soon after the New Moon. So during this Aquarius season, in order to keep our Aquarian connections vibrant and satisfying, we’ll have to pay alms to Mars as well.

Group conflict

When fighting Mars collides with fraternal Aquarius, groups speak with a warlike voice. Perhaps you’ve found yourself embroiled in some nasty Facebook disputes, had testy interchanges with co-workers or customers, or – like Alice – found some old anger hidden deep in a dark corner of your psychic sock drawer. The embers of old disputes are often rekindled during Mars’ retrograde times, and the resulting conflagrations tend to emit noxious fumes. Mars may lately have taken hold of some group to which you belong, stirring a bubbling cauldron of harsh language and bitter rivalry; even if you manage to rise above the fray, trying to call a halt to the nastiness, you can find yourself in hot water.

But in-group fighting doesn’t have to mean the end of valuable alliances. From time to time, all groups need to clear the air. Tensions build up; misunderstandings are swept under the rug; resentments fester. Just because traditionally “Aquarian” relationships tend to be optional ones doesn’t mean that they’re not important, or not worth the effort of working through the occasional rough patch. Mars’ retrograde periods (this one will last until April 13) reopen old business, offering opportunities to settle some scores and to close the books on enmity once and for all. But to do this well requires that we harness Mars’ best qualities – courage, and commitment to a fair fight.

Social movements poised to intensify

With a series of square aspects kicking off between two slow-moving planets, radical Uranus and paradigm-shifting Pluto, social movements have been emerging and gaining strength throughout the past year. Now, Mars’ slowing reflects a feeling of enormous pressure, like a boiler getting ready to blow. This New Moon, with the Sun and Moon in a sextile (opportunity) aspect with Uranus, offers fertile ground for collective action. Some of these actions will be relatively peaceful, like the recent online “blackout” protests against internet censorship and the resurgence of the Occupy movement, back in the headlines with a protest and arrests in San Francisco. But with Mars retrograde lighting a fuse, group actions characterized by fury and even violence are very likely in the weeks ahead.

At this New Moon in Aquarius, we celebrate, as always, ties with our like-minded compatriots.  But it’s won’t be an easy, uncomplicated Happy Hour, or a sunny and congenial Saturday morning bake sale. To get to a place of goodwill, productivity, and happy times, Mars demands that we first clean out the dark corners of these relationships, to address any conflicts that keep us from working together as a strong, cohesive group. When a group is stronger on the inside, it can achieve broader goals on the outside – so be brave, clear the air, and fight fair.

© 2012 April Elliott Kent

Confession: “No” is my first response to most new, unfamiliar, or spontaneous situations or suggestions. If the suggestion is, “April, please have some more Cheetos” – a snack I’ve enjoyed with regularity and satisfaction since birth – my reaction would be an enthusiastic “Sure!” But if the suggestion is something like, “Hey, let’s go to lunch and hit the zoo together tomorrow,” my knee-jerk reaction, even if (and this is key) I like both you and going to the zoo, not to mention lunch, will probably be “No, thanks.”

Why is this? Well, I like my little routines. I feel safe in them. The more I can contain and control my surroundings and schedule, the happier I feel. And I had planned to work too hard and have soup for lunch tomorrow. There is no room in those sad little plans for socializing, sandwiches, or gazelles.

The planet closest to your Ascendant, usually in the first, second, or third houses, is called the rising planet. I also call it the “first responder” planet, because it’s the planet that is first on deck to handle anything new that comes your way. (This should not be confused with the “chart ruler.” That’s the planet that rules the sign on the Ascendant. In this chart, since Aries is the sign rising on the Ascendant, its ruling planet, Mars, is the chart ruler.)

In my chart, the first responder is Saturn. I react to anything new or unexpected with an upturned palm and the facial expression of someone who detects a nasty smell.  This is complicated by the fact that friendly, spontaneous Sagittarius is my rising sign (the sign on my Ascendant) – so I seem like exactly the kind of gal who’d be up for a last minute drink, cup of coffee, or shark-hunting expedition. And I’d like to be. That’s why I cultivated that persona. But underneath it all, I’m just not. Signs may indicate personal style, but planets set the agenda.

What’s your first responder planet, and how does it describe your initial response to the new and/or unexpected? If you don’t have a planet in the first, second, or third houses, play with the first planet counterclockwise from the Ascendant, regardless of its house placement. And if you have nothing in the first, second, or third houses but do have a planets in the 12th house within, say, a few degrees of the Ascendant, that probably works like a first responder.

Planets as First Responders

Sun:  You look for a way to stand out and be noticed, and you’re good at formulating creative responses to new situations. You always seek ways to make situations more fun, and usually succeed – hence, you’re probably pretty popular. And your charisma makes you a natural leader.

Moon:  You monitor the emotional temperature of each situation and of the people around you. How’s everyone feeling? Does anyone need help? You’re naturally empathetic, but can also become worn out easily if you don’t devise some strong boundaries.

Mercury:   Easily bored, you enjoy new situations. You ask questions, try to find out what’s interesting or novel, and you tell good stories. You never enter a new situation without quickly formulating a getaway strategy in case things get boring.

Venus: You’re generally courteous, charming, and probably a bit flirtatious. I have known some surprisingly aggressive people with Venus rising, though. That’s because you’re a strategist; you figure out the mood of the situation and strike a tone that will even things out.  Sometimes that calls for a sweet approach, sometimes for something more forceful.

Mars: You make things happen! Things need to be moving, and moving quickly, to keep you happy, and while you don’t naturally want to lead, you are not a follower. You probably have a quick temper, or at least people perceive you as angry, sometimes even when you aren’t. You likely have good reflexes and instincts in emergency situations.

Jupiter:  Like Mercury rising, you generally like new situations, seeing them as an adventure. You make people laugh, often at your own expense. You take a philosophical approach, and where Saturn says, “No!”, you’re inclined to say instead, “Sure, why not?” If you’re in an insecure mood, though, you may switch into “know it all” mode in new situations.

Saturn: Your inclination is to put on the brakes and erect a barrier until you feel safe. You’re very cautious in new situations, and reluctant to get into them in the first place.  You are better in unfamiliar situation when you’re in charge.

Uranus:  You tend to put people a bit off balance, which you secretly (or not-so-secretly) enjoy.  You rarely feel that you really fit in – and usually, you’re okay with that. You’re unpredictable rather than spontaneous; what seems to others like a sudden, spontaneous decision has usually been building for awhile.

Neptune:  You’re open, receptive, taking in everything around you. Like Moon rising people, you tend to have weak boundaries, so you have to make an effort to take good care of yourself emotionally and energetically. Weirdly, you have the ability to become invisible in public. In fact, sometimes you have to fight to be noticed.

Pluto:  One person on Facebook with this placement said, “First I have to figure out if I love it or hate it.” If you love it, you’ll go with it 100%; if you hate it, you’ll make the person/situation wish they’d never crossed your path. You project a very powerful, often sexual vibe that is alluring to some and off-putting to others. You’re very good at handling emergency situations, and are happiest when you feel you have control over a situation.

# # #

Since lunar nodes are not planets, I don’t count them as first responders. And I don’t work with the asteroids (including Chiron), so while I’m sure you could make an argument for them as your first responder (feel free to do so in the comments section), I don’t really have an opinion about them.

What about you? What’s your first responder planet, and how does it operate in your life?

© 2012 April Elliott Kent

It’s been a chilly holiday season here in San Diego. Not when compared to anyplace with real weather, of course, but the discomfort is real enough to us. Cold is a relative thing, and when a place that seldom sees daytime highs below 65 degrees experiences a string of days in the 50s, folks around here get a little testy.

Of course, we’re testy – scared, really – about a lot of things, not just the cold snap. Just as the real estate bubble of recent years inflated home values in Southern California to the point of morbid obesity, the popping of that particular bubble has had an equally exaggerated effect in the opposite direction. Many, many houses in our neighborhood are for sale, few of them are selling, and foreclosures have skyrocketed. And I’ve lost count of the number of friends who have been looking for work for what seems like years – bright, hard-working people who’ve held full-time jobs for decades. These are scary times, full of chickens coming home to roost and unpleasant realities being dumped unceremoniously at our doorsteps. Hard times. Capricorn times. Saturn’s children, we hold ourselves rigidly, as if preparing to take our punishment from a harsh father.

Caring is what binds us together

In the midst of this cold, bleak month, one of my neighbor’s cats began having seizures. I’ve always been especially fond of this cat – a brash, contentious tuxedo with chewed-up ears and a swagger in his walk. While his owner was away last summer, he suffered a broken jaw; he had maintained a good appetite and behaved fairly normally, so it took my neighbor awhile to realize that something was seriously wrong. He had surgery to repair the jaw and then, a few weeks ago, surgery to remove the wire. And that’s when the seizures started – constant, pathetic convulsions complete with gnashing of teeth and falling over.

About a week into this situation, a sensible vet prescribed medication. Within a few days the cat was groggy but stable, with the seizures fewer and less severe. My distraught neighbor debated canceling a long-planned getaway for two days after Christmas, but since we’re used to looking after each other’s cats and I wasn’t going anywhere over Christmas, I agreed to supervise the invalid. For two days I spent hours with the shut-in, coaxing pills into him, keeping him from harm during the seizures, watching him pace restlessly on wobbly legs. After a seizure he’d look up at me, bewildered. And I’d gather him up and bury my face in his neck, and we’d sit together for awhile, waiting for the next one.

The morning my neighbor was to return, I visited my charge, fed him his pill, cuddled him for a bit, then came home, sat down, and cried. I cried on and off for a couple of days, and I still cry sometimes, out of the blue, just thinking about the bewildered look on his face and the weight of his furry head on my shoulder. It’s a bit of an overreaction, probably. It’s not even my cat. But a couple of days of looking after this cat has made me love him. It seems that taking care of things binds us to them. And then losing them breaks our hearts.

I always suspected this, which is (mostly) why I never wanted to be a mother. I doubted whether I could cope gracefully with the constant fear of losing a child, or of watching her suffer. Basically, I never wanted to be so enslaved to love. Of course, I haven’t been able to avoid it altogether. I love my husband, my family, and many of my friends with the same intimidating passion I sought to avoid by remaining childless. Even the occasional cat can slink under my radar and reduce me to tears.

Nothing From the Outside

This Full Moon (Jan. 9, 2012, 2:30 am EST) falls in the sign of Cancer, the sign of motherhood and of the bonds that tether us to those people and animals and causes that we care for. Our love for them represents our tender white underbellies, our Achilles Heels, the terrible vulnerability that can bring us to our knees. There’s a passage in the novel “Gone With the Wind” in which Will Benteen eulogizes Scarlett O’Hara’s father, a once-vibrant man who lost his mind after the death of his wife. The upshot of the eulogy is that nothing from the outside, not even war and sudden poverty, could have brought down Mr. O’Hara, but that losing his wife effectively broke his heart, mind, and spirit. And I think that’s true of many of us; hard economic times can’t break us, though they increasingly come as a shock. No, for most of us it’s only the passionate attachments we form with others that have the power to bring us down, from the inside out.

But the same attachments that threaten us are, conversely, the ones that give our lives meaning and sweetness. I recently listened to a radio interview with Temple Grandin, a leading designer of livestock facilities. Grandin herself is autistic, and social interactions with her fellow humans are extremely trying for her. She has chosen to forgo the common attachments, such as romantic relationships, that most of us consider essential. But a genuine warmth crept into her voice as she described the pleasure of interacting with animals. Pets in particular are so appealing, so innocent, and such a delight that they manage to form connections with even the most isolated among us. Grandin’s latest book is called Animals Make Us Human, a title I can’t disagree with. And for those who are a lot braver than I am, I imagine caring for children has the potential to make us superhuman – capable of such a depth of love, attachment, and terror that they are our best hope of transcending humanity altogether.

What keeps us from turning to stone

In the heart of a cold and brittle winter, even in normally balmy and relaxed San Diego, Saturn’s wolves are howling in the distance. They howl warnings about the collapsing economy, the deteriorating climate, and the fearsome calamities that threaten us – joblessness, poverty, homelessness, starving, illness. Hard times can, in turn, harden us, but caring for each other – though it breaks our hearts – is what keeps us from turning to stone.

I don’t relish the hard times ahead, and yet I have a weird optimism about the potential for our shared difficulties to make us whole. Taking care of things – and people – binds us to them. And in hard times we’re called upon to comfort each other in our suffering, dry one another’s tears, feed each other’s hunger. My hope is that our Cancerian caring will bind us to one another with a force as strong as the earth’s gravity, in a loving embrace that can’t be broken – at least, not by anything from outside of us.

© April Elliott Kent
All rights reserved

It is Summer There.

My husband was born in the southern hemisphere, and the fact that their seasons are opposite ours has always fascinated me – stories of Christmas spent at the beach, for instance, as we might celebrate our major summer holiday, Independence Day. Pondering this seasonal quandary, I once asked him whether January was called winter or summer in New Zealand; it seemed like an intriguing question until it flew out of my mouth and immediately hit the pavement like a dodo, finding out the hard way that it’s a flightless bird. And extinct. “Duh!” I hastily answered myself, but Jonny is kinder than I am. “No, no, it’s a good question,” he assured me.

And in a way, I guess it kind of was. Anyway, I can see what I was getting at. What does “summer” mean if it includes Christmas, with its residual secular connotations about the return of light and so forth? And astrologically, what does “Capricorn” mean if the sun’s journey there corresponds to hot, languid days, so antithetical to Capricorn’s stiff-spined reputation?

The way we practice astrology in the west is based on the seasons, with Aries and spring marking the beginning of the seasonal cycle, the starting point on the wheel. It is a system that speaks to the truth of our northern/western orientation: Aries happens to be the sign that ushers in spring, and we feel spring, in our bones, as a surging, sappy call to action and enthusiasm. The sign Cancer feels like summer to us, hot, endless days lying on the beach, the coconut stench of suntan lotion, romantic longing. Libra is the crunching leaves and tingly air of autumn. And by the time we reach Capricorn, it is winter here, our energy contracted into layers of clothing and short, cold days. The light is thin and weak, and that’s exactly how we feel – out of energy, our light fading, like the moon at its last quarter.

So this uncomfortable, contracted, low-energy experience is what informs our mythology of Capricorn. We make him Scrooge, all wiry and dour and pitiless, the taskmaster who drives his employees to work even on Christmas day; we fear him, and his ruling planet, Saturn, like we feared our dad on a bad day. They are, like winter, mean and harsh, and only the hardiest survive their tyranny.

But while it is winter here, it is summer there, down under. The days are long, the temperatures are warm, people are drinking cooling beverages with ice and straws. The pace is languid; people go on vacation, not – as here – because they simply can’t bear another gray day in the workplace, but because it’s summer, and the sap is rising and they feel they will burst out of their skins if they don’t have a little fun.

Well. How to find Capricorn in all of this?

A summer place

When it is winter here, it’s summer there – and it’s all called Capricorn. Even when it’s coldest outside, somewhere in the world, deep below us, there is a warm place to tap into. And just below our dry winter skins, if we could slough them off like a lizard does, we would find rosy, touchable flesh, aching for the surf. We would stretch out, barely dressed, on the sand and let its heat rise up and iron us flat. Our minds would be empty, completely empty of all ambition and drive, of the need to be somewhere else, somewhere in the future, different and better people leading exemplary lives. We would just… be.

The beauty of Dickens’ Christmas Carol is its eloquent retelling of the Capricorn myth. Scrooge, a dry and brittle man who seeks only material success, is transformed by an encounter with the spirit world (Capricorn, symbolized by the sea goat, has a little-vaunted spiritual side). Confronted with spectral visions of what he is, what he has been, and what he will be if he keeps going in the same direction, Scrooge “sees the light” – it is, after all, a solstice tale – and opens his heart to the true wealth of friends. He recognizes, at last, that the poorest of his employees is the wealthiest of men, because he has a loving family. Seeing that the only way to find real success is to be part of a tribe, Scrooge unbends like a rose in late June and stuns his friends with a sudden warmth to rival a summer bonfire on the beach.

We don’t know exactly what happens to Scrooge the day after Christmas, but I like to think that he learns to take it a bit easy and not work so hard. My imagination straps him into a 747, then dumps him out onto Bondi Beach where he stretches out, soaking up the sun, drinking Australian beer and redefining the whole idea of summer – and Capricorn.

Winter solstice: the time of reckoning

At winter time, the artificial constructs of time decree a new year is about to begin. But our seasonal hearts experience winter differently, as the apex of an energetic cycle begun in the spring. In the cold, weak light of winter, November’s incantations are realized, and all is revealed for what it truly is. We are either rich enough to buy holiday gifts and leave extraneous lights burning throughout the house, or we are not. We are happy because we have chosen to be so, or angry and unhappy because that was our choice. Winter solstice is a time of emotional reckoning and self-examination; like Scrooge, each of us must confront his or her own ghosts of the past, present, and future. In the long, dark days of winter, there is a lot of time to brood about what went wrong in the past and what might go wrong in the future.

Our fourth house/Cancerian selves are the foundation on which all happiness is built. It’s why Bob Cratchit, with his loving family, is wealthier than Scrooge, who has a lot more money. But we can also learn from Capricorn that money and success are not synonymous with souless selling out – unless we create that false dichotomy. Sometimes what’s needed is simply to redefine success.

When it is winter here, it is summer there. And just below the surface, toward another pole, is exactly the thing that we seek. Somewhere in the South Pacific, right now, a young child – just beginning her summer vacation – is kicking her bicycle and whining “I’m bored!” All she needs is a little bit of Capricorn’s winter persona, to add a drop of happy direction and structure to her days. And you, wondering how you will get through the cold, dark days ahead, need only reach out and touch the warmth and light of Capricorn’s summer side. Invite him into your home by lighting every candle you can find, singing at the top of your voice, and filling your house with delicious food and drink and people who make you laugh and who understand your heart. Because like Scrooge after his transformation, I’ve never met a Capricorn in my life who didn’t love a good party.

© April Elliott Kent | All rights reserved

In Gemini, the Moon finds comfort in language – in the reassuring hum of parents’ voices down the hall as their children fall asleep; in the soothing mantra, the dog’s welcoming bark, delighted laughter, a favorite poem. Even, when the time comes, in the sensitive eulogy for a loved one, delivered by someone with keen powers of observation and a lyrical tongue.

Eclipses of the Moon reveal unconscious processes that we take for granted. Most of us can happily assume that when we open our mouths to speak, intelligible sounds will emerge. That if we want to write something, our brain and fingers will help us translate concepts into symbols and record them. We take for granted the ability to reach just about anyone at just about any time, something that would have seemed like a magical power only a couple of generations ago. Through technology, we can live far from our loved ones and still see them and talk to them at a moment’s notice.

This Full Moon in Gemini is a lunar eclipse, when the Moon slips into the earth’s shadow and is hidden from view. It reminds us that even in the age of constant information, constant contact, there are moments when the Gemini gifts we take for granted can be taken away, when the world’s comforting voices diminish into unsettling silence. When, having quarreled, the parents lie in chilly silence; the normally voluble relative’s stroke leaves him quiet and withdrawn at the Thanksgiving dinner table; the beloved pet slips away, mutely, with labored breaths. The phone forgets to ring. The heartfelt email receives no reply.

Sometimes, we have to do without language in order to recognize what is still left to be said. Doing this intentionally becomes more and more of a challenge. Anyone who has practiced meditation quickly realizes just how difficult it can be to disengage from Gemini, to still the mind’s chatter and locate what lies in the heart and the solar plexus, in the parts of us beyond words. For some of us, even losing our cell phone and being out of contact for a couple of hours can practically cause an anxiety attack. And just try spending an evening among people who don’t speak your language. Words are not the only way to communicate, but they certainly make things easier.

Estrangement from Gemini’s world is sometimes unintentional, and occasionally permanent. Imagine the disorientation, the frustration of suffering an injury or illness that takes away speech. Or the sadness of being unable to talk to a loved one who has gone for good, when it’s not longer an option to ask the important questions or to say the thing that so desperately needed saying. (I remember talking about this with my sister, after our mother died; it felt something like claustrophobia, we agreed. The inability to speak with her felt like walls closing in around us, like we couldn’t breathe.)

For most of us, though, the eclipsing of Gemini will be temporary. The lost cell phone will be returned. The parents will mend their quarrel. The relative will recover most of his speech. A new pet will join the family. We’ll be reconciled with friends. The meditation class will end.

And in the initial, heady return to words, we’ll eagerly spill out all the contents of our heads and hearts. We’ll find that there is so much more to say and that it’s all richer, more substantial than the words that used to fill the vacuum of our days. While the Gemini Moon rested in the shadows, we may find, we went to the place beyond words. We filled the well. We found our voices.

© 2011 April Elliott Kent | All rights reserved

What will the upcoming eclipses mean for you? Order my exclusive eclipse report, “Followed by a Moonshadow” - three years worth of eclipses for only $35! Read more here »

Violinist Itzhak Perlman was crippled by polio in childhood and walks with the aid of braces on his legs and a pair of crutches. At a concert on the night of November 18, 1995, at Avery Fisher Hall in New York City, one of the strings of his violin suddenly snapped during the performance. Stunned, the audience held their collective breath, expecting Perlman to stop and leave the stage. Instead he paused, then continued playing – adjusting, creating, compensating as he went along, and when he put down his bow at the end of the concert, a mighty roar of applause filled the hall. When it had died down, he spoke to the audience: “You know, sometimes it is the artist’s task to find out how much music you can still make with what you have left.”

Excerpted from Gardening for a Lifetime. Copyright 2010 by Sydney Eddison.

Sabian Symbol for the Moon at 19 Gemini: In a museum a large archaic volume reveals a traditional wisdom.

This lunar eclipse reflects many of the same issues as the solar eclipse two weeks ago – the square from the Sun and Moon to Mars, especially. We’re not done fighting, competing, struggling for territory – but with the Sun and Moon in good aspect to Saturn, we’re resigned to the idea that consolidating our empire will take time.

Meanwhile, Venus’ trine to Mars speaks of alliances recently formed, but its square to Saturn reminds us that it’s a time for reinforcing serious bonds with people who really understand us – not people whom we think may help us achieve short-term goals.

Hot degrees: This eclipse will probably be especially significant for you if you have planets of angles (especially the Sun, Moon, or Ascendant) between about 15 and 23 degrees of Gemini, Virgo, Sagittarius, or Pisces.

Past years in this cycle: Since 1990, eclipses near this degree have taken place on:

December 9, 1992 (lunar)

June 10, 2002 (solar)

An essay about this eclipse is coming early next week – and if you’re interested in finding out more about what this eclipse will mean for you, order my exclusive eclipse report.