Dana's Blog

Take the warrior to the temple

Dana — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 17:38:27 +0000

New Agers proclaim that New Ages are launching all the time. I confess I’m a little skeptical at the flurry of emails each week, proclaiming how Great Cosmic Forces are opening Windows, or spiriting us along like Soul cattle across some Mystic Prairie. But this year I can’t deny it. Yes… what you’ve been sensing is true. Things have been moving faster. The karma you’ve been sending out is bouncing back with lightening speed. Everyone’s issues have been rising up with a greater-than-usual intensity. It’s time to get on with it. We’re embarking on a spiritual revolution that’s very personal and immediate. Over the next three years, Pluto and Uranus, joined by Jupiter, Saturn, and Mars, will be triggering the contractions that birth a new world.

Before the new world comes, there’s always a “clean-up” period, preparing us for the future we might be sensing but can’t quite see. The bumpy ride of the past few weeks has hopefully scoured some of the rust off your armor. You’re being called up for a starring role in a new and personally relevant epic. Mars is finally direct. Trust your desire to get moving. Feel like a warrior with a sturdy jeweled sword. Sense the moment when this sword is in your hands and you know exactly what to do with it. But before that, remember that great warriors always take their strength from the higher forces they serve. Preceding the Aries adventures coming this spring, the Pisces New Moon calls us into our temples first, to commit ourselves to a higher purpose and to strengthen our faith. This is the month to get right with yourself.

Olympic Retrograde

Dana — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 05:38:34 +0000

Mars rules athletics and competitions. So when the Winter Olympics is held during a Mars retrograde, one might expect the difficult and strange. The crash and death of the Georgian luger, Norda Kumaritashvili, made for an unsettling beginning—echoed symbolically by the fourth leg of the Olympic cauldron failing to rise. Lindsey Vonn, arguably the best female skier in the world, suffered a serious shin injury, a fall, a broken finger, and dashed hopes for five golds. The phenomenal Dutch speed skater Sven Kramer was on his way to gold when his coach sent him to the wrong lane and disqualified him. Small bumps cheated a few South Korean skaters out of their medals. Canada lost to the US in hockey. And curling, of all things, has been drawing a huge audience.

And why not? Watching men shout and slide stones into painted circles as their pals furiously sweep the ice is oddly comforting. The retrograde has thrown pauses, frustrations, and challenges at many of us, which may be why NBC’s coverage is enjoying such huge ratings. We’ve heard you Mars: we’re sitting things out and watching other people push themselves until it’s time for us to go cautiously forward again (on March 10).

Mars rules my third house of communication. I’m no athlete, but I’d hoped to do a little metaphorical skating and soaring in my writerly life. Instead I suffered a long string of third house computer difficulties. After several problem-filled weeks, I’ve found my computer macho. I’m feeling good, strong even, braver and better than before. I can now download a new operating system, install a new modem and wireless card, trouble-shoot wobbly software and a recalcitrant printer, and find the answer to almost any technical question on Google. It’s nothing that would earn me a gold medal; still I count my new learning as a definite prize. I hope you won something good during Mars retrograde too!

Venus Evening Star Rise

Dana — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 23:43:05 +0000

This week Venus reappears as the Evening Star, in the sign of her exaltation (Pisces) and conjunct magnificent Jupiter. I would expect nothing less, as she’s been kicking ass during her recent underworld journey (which began just as Tiger Wood’s furious wife took a golf club to the cheater’s SUV). In my Oregon town (often called “land of a thousand goddesses” for its many bright and talented single women), a sudden string of sexual attacks brought out angry marches, attended by both women and men. Here in Ashland, Venus was not trembling in fear. From many of the Super Bowl ads it seems that men may be the ones trembling today, hoping to reclaim their grunting authority from the powerful Venuses in their lives (or maybe that was just the retrograde Mars). At the Grammys, Venus divas dominated: Beyonce, Lady Gaga, Pink and Taylor Swift, all reminding us how much fun it is to be a girl. We’re halfway through this current Venus cycle and it’s worth recalling how it began: when Venus emerged as the Morning Star, so did the breakout popularity of Susan Boyle, who showed us that even a middle-aged Venus in a frumpy dress can be a diva. Boyle’s song was “I dreamed a dream.” Now as an exalted Venus rises with the sky god Jupiter, it is perhaps time to live our dreams too.

How I Spent My Solar Eclipse

Dana — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 00:29:42 +0000

My hard drive crashed on the solar eclipse—just as Mercury was stationing, directly into the Saturn/Pluto square. The next day, the hard drive on my new laptop–the one I’d purchased in December and had just taken out of the box–also crashed. There was no receipt in the box. I’d bought it online and my only record of purchase was on the other crashed hard drive. My feeling of being awash in rubble and utterly helpless was nothing compared to the horrific devastation of the Haitians, and yet I felt a kinship. So this was how the archetypes were visiting me. My loved ones were still alive, my house was standing, I had a warm place to sleep and food to eat, but my psyche was running helter skelter through the streets of Pompeii. Aaaaaaiiiiieee! I work with symbol, intuition and soul as an astrologer, but the nuts and bolts of my profession are all computerized. I was panicked; for days I was too emotional to fully learn what I’d backed up and what I’d lost.

Of course this was a gentle disaster. I’ve heard from many in real difficult circumstances this past month. The massage therapist living in her car, unsure about whether to give up her cat in order to enter a woman’s shelter. The mother whose son has disappeared. The widow who is materially doing fine, but wanders lonely and without purpose through the rooms of her large house. I cannot watch the news anymore, the stories are disappointing and sad. As Saturn and Pluto square, I sense a lot of us standing at the pebbled wall of destiny, running our fingers over its cold stones and wondering… so this is where we are? Yet when we can peel the gloom away from it, there is something else: the very mystery and awe of what we’re being called to do. For if we are to pray properly to the archetypes of Saturn and Pluto, we must remain open. We must awaken and respond to the very structure of reality, however it appears right now. Even if it’s beautiful.

I discovered I’d been clever enough to back up most of my data files, but not clever enough to have invited a smart techie into my life, so the business of setting up my computers again has been mostly left to me. I am not good at this, so it goes slowly, with many hair pulling moments when what is supposed to work just doesn’t. Am I blessed? Absolutely. Between Saturn/Pluto and the Mars retrograde, I’ve been utterly slowed down. I am fully here. Not even wondering what comes next.

Take Down the Should Master

Dana — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 22:37:19 +0000

It’s crazy out there. The traffic jam of transits, retrogrades, and eclipses make this the wrong time for pushing your little boulder up the mountains of the world. But the Capricorn New Moon is an exquisitely appropriate time to rearrange your inner world–dynamically, dramatically. It’s an especially fine time to take down your inner know-it-all. Capricorn is home territory for your inner “should” Master, the one who knows what you should and shouldn’t be doing, the one who cares what other people think and keeps your personal rulebook up to date. Sometimes this is a good thing, a wonderful thing. My poet friend calls this voice “the coach in the head,” and sorry are those lacking a strong one. They never wake in the morning to do a hundred sit-ups or recite 108 mantras after a half hour of meditation; they always leave the last knob unpolished on the rail; and they never close the big deal or in any way dazzle the boss or co-workers.

Since we’re in late degrees of Capricorn, you may have been hearing from your inner coach these past few weeks. Ask to see the rulebook he’s been clutching. Take a good look. The Capricorn New Moon is an annual event, which means that every year it’s worth reviewing the rules you use to judge yourself. Do you really need them all? What I’m proposing is the opposite of a New Year’s Resolution. I suggest that the Capricorn New Moon is the perfect time to review your expectations and toss out all the ones that have been ruining your happiness. They’re irrelevant—if, like me, you’re not anywhere near the life you thought you’d be leading when you first dreamed them up. This is not about failure. As Byron Katie says, “Reality is always kinder than the stories we tell about it.” My New Year’s Resolution for 2010? Just one: To get rid of all those negative stories I’ve been telling myself for far too long.

Slowing Down

Dana — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 23:13:10 +0000

Ten years ago, along with several hundred other pilgrims, I took a retreat with walking-meditation master Thich Nhat Hahn. We learned to walk very very slowly, mindful of every step, with little concern for our destination. All that mattered was just the rise and fall of each foot, one at a time. This past week that education has really paid off. With Mars and Mercury both retrograde, and the collective jittering with the lunar eclipse, there’s no going anywhere fast. I keep reminding myself of that as cars inexplicably slow in front of me. I hear Thich Nhat Hanh saying “I breathe in, I breathe out,” as every grocery store or theater ticket line I choose moves like molasses in winter; the people ahead of me all seem to be having complicated problems. When there’s no moving quickly, there’s just this delicious choice: Become impatient and frustrated–or deepen one’s appreciation for life. That’s the rich offering of this strange astrological time.

In fact my mother (who lives in Slovakia) emailed much the same message this morning. She wrote: Last year I fell on the ice when I was carrying in an armload of wood. Some logs landed on my dogs and I laid there frozen in place, trying to figure out a way to get up amongst the dogs licking my face. I just began to laugh hysterically while I worried about a possible broken hip and fear of not being able to get inside my house or anyone finding me. Obviously I did manage to right myself unscathed and not repeat my episode that winter. Yet the memory looms as I again set out with armloads of wood and the fear perched relentlessly on my shoulder. On warmer days I make 2 or 3 extra trips inside with enough wood to carry me over for the times the ice man wags his finger and tells me “Not today!”

Mercury goes direct on January 15 (just after the solar eclipse). Mars is retrograde until March 10.

The Wrath of the Feminine

Dana — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 21:14:40 +0000

The Moon rules women–mothers, daughters, wives; also one’s own emotional seas and tides. It rules the public too, whose affections can storm, ebb, and flow with the passion of Mother Nature. Tiger Woods knows this intimately now, as Uranus, strengthened by its direct station, recently squared his Moon, liberating sordid images of the feminine from his underworld and splashing his public persona with embarrassment and shame.

At the same time, a celestial event went largely unnoticed by astrologers: Venus disappeared from the sky just as Tiger’s wife smashed his SUV with a golf club. Or rather Venus slipped behind the blazing presence of the Sun, a condition marked by astrologers as being “under the Sun’s beams” which means to lose power. I’ve often wondered about the truth of this judgment, having met a few individuals with Sun/Venus conjunctions who visibly shine with feminine grace. Certainly this year it’s clear that Venus does not go quietly into the underworld. She’s taken a powerful man (the Sun) down with her. And with less fanfare, she’s given us other images to ponder. During the week that Venus disappeared, Oprah (that media priestess of the divine feminine) brought us an incredible love story about a powerful man who actually served and honored his mate! Edward Kennedy’s courtship of Vicki is a fine counterpoint to Tiger’s more disposable view of the feminine. Oprah also showcased one of this season’s most important books: Half the Sky, with its unblinking, heartwrenching portrait of contemporary gender inequality.

Venus will be out of our view for about six weeks, as she transitions from Morning Star to Evening Star. It is a significant turning point in her cycle. May it bring a new turning point in our culture’s regard for the feminine. When Venus emerges as the Evening Star (at the end of February), she’s considered to be more mature, more harmonious and wise. May we all be so as well. As for Tiger, Uranus is approaching the cusp of his partnership house, about to oppose his Ascendant. Life will not be easy, but he will change; how is up to him.

Surrender when stuck

Dana — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 20:02:29 +0000

Here’s a moment that best sums up my experience of the Pluto/Saturn square: I was stuck in a car with an emergency break that wouldn’t release—as a speeding bus headed toward it. “It’s going to hit us,” my son yelled. In that slowed-down time of impending doom, I was oddly comforted by the realization that I had absolutely no control over what would happen next. I relaxed and the bus stopped within an inch of my rear fender. I’ve had other Pluto/Saturn challenges this month—as have many clients and friends, our country too. The world is heavy with these two planets, accelerating us towards impasse, sudden losses, or situations so out of control even strong wills can’t fix them. With Pluto and Saturn, what is broken must eventually shatter and be remade. But what do we do in the meantime? What is being asked of us?

I was trying to hurry out of town the night my emergency brake stuck. After I called AAA, hopelessness and self-pity readied their voices for a familiar dark song against my life—when I was touched by grace. I was moved to do and think nothing. I just sat. I watched my son texting to his friends. The cell phone I rarely use was in my hand. “Can you show me how to text?” Soon we were texting back and forth. Like a small gift sent by a secret admirer, it was an unexpected joy. I’ve faced bigger problems these past two weeks—my partner got laid off, my father is ill, my dog is sick too. But it has helped to remember that night’s simple teaching: At an impasse, just sit and surrender to the place of not knowing. Not knowing what will happen, what you should do, or even who you’re becoming. Wait until your eyes get used to the dark. You’ll see the one small step that comes next.

From Breakdown to Breakthrough

Dana — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 20:54:01 +0000

I remember an exquisite moment after the World Trade Center Towers fell. The international outpouring of compassion and grief grew so strong, it seemed we might suddenly ascend and enter a whole new era, one in which the forces of love and peace became stronger and more viable than the forces of violence and hate. Sadly, the moment quickly passed and the US leadership drove us in the opposite direction. Still, creating a new and better world is just the kind of the spectacular potential that’s available whenever Pluto—planet of transformation—meets Saturn—planet of the status quo. In 2001, Pluto and Saturn were in opposition. Now and through 2010, they are in square, in fact, exactly so as we approach this Scorpio New Moon. It’s important to look at current events in this light—particularly those experiences of violence and grief, like the recent massacre at Fort Hood. We should wonder about the shooter’s motives, but more deeply, we should wonder about the insanity of war itself. Is such institutionalized mayhem really viable? What does today’s world gain from killing so many innocents and maiming the ones who live?

Pluto/Saturn transits represent a strong invitation to transform our world. All great transformations begin with sacrifice. When there is a sacrifice, but no transformation, we’re left with just meaningless violence.

Jupiter’s Direct Station Pranks

Dana — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 01:08:46 +0000

I know. There’s way too much media exposure for this ridiculous balloon boy drama. But what do you expect from a gas giant? Jupiter brings luck, opportunity, and optimism. Also inflation, excess, and irrational exuberance. When Jupiter stationed direct last week, the Dow hit 10,000. The very wizards who ruined our economy announced handsome profits and awarded themselves fat bonuses. Meanwhile the country was transfixed on a runaway helium balloon–with a helpless boy on board! Or so it was believed. The bulbous spacecraft was a perfect costume for Jupiter in Aquarius. “Keep your eye on the shiny object,” he cheered. And we did. Partnered with Neptune, Jupiter sent us a hoax, which is likely also true of the stock market’s optimism and the idea those guys deserve their bonuses. Here’s my latest bumper sticker: “The finance wizards ruined our country and all we got was this pathetic balloon.”