Integrity
THE CAPRICORN NEW MOON
Saturday, December 24, 2011 at 10:06 am PST
The Moon and Sun Conjoined at 2.34 degrees Capricorn
Last summer I stupidly got embroiled in an asinine exchange with a fellow astrologer after he posted an article full of misplaced concern about astrology's reputation, in particular the "terrible problem" of astrologers mixing it up with such "sordid" New Agey concepts as the Mayan prophecies and 2012.
While I understood his concern, and he was, of course, entitled to his opinion, he took his opinionated, dogmatic little sermon to an inappropriate and unethical extreme by publicly singling out a particular group of astrologers — a group with whom I am affiliated — as a case in point of this "crime" against astrology. His blog post was titled: "Do Not Associate Astrology with 2012," and in it he cited my affiliate group's campaign to make 2012 The Year of Astrology. Publishing both the group's name and logo prominently along with an inaccurate, insulting portrayal of the group's intention, something about which, incidentally, he had not bothered to competently investigate, basing this public renunciation on a flawed assumption.
Clearly a character-assassination piece written by a horse's ass, as he could have easily made his point without pointing his finger at anyone, the piece also, in my opinion, violated the ethics of the professional association to which he belongs. But most interesting of all, posted prominently right underneath his very own blog masthead, on the same page, flying in stark hypocritical contrast to his plea directly below to save astrology's reputation from crazy New Age, Mayan-calendar-worshiping, nut case astrologers, were the following Google ads:
When I told my husband about the incident later that day, he immediately laughed, which was not exactly the reaction I was looking for, and said it reminded him of two patients in an insane asylum arguing over who's crazier. Save astrology's reputation? My Gemini husband shook his head, "to most people, you are ALL crazy!"
In retrospect, now that some time has passed, I wish I had not wasted my time getting so worked up over an obviously self-centered, immature and insensitive person. What other possible outcome could there have been with my getting involved, but more mudslinging, this time directed right at me? Here's an example of just such back-biting that took place on the guy's Facebook page, trashing and making fun of me personally, a page on which many of my other colleagues were able to see and read. I've redacted it here minus the names and faces, a courtesy that was not afforded to me:
From my perspective, this astrologer's blog post was a whole lot more potentially harmful to astrology's reputation because it was unprofessional. But this kind of thing happens too often in the online world — a kind of troubling, dog-eat-dog accepted norm, the denigrating of others to prop oneself up.
I guess it is just way too easy for "Hyde" to emerge when one is home alone with keyboard as sole companion, interacting in relative anonymity with others who, in all probability, one will never meet in the real world. Even back when I first ventured online in the mid-80s, I saw this same kind of troubling behavior on those text-only message boards and discussion groups. Way too frequently, threads devolved into mudslinging contests for people with no manners and colossal egos. I thought of it as a "revenge of the nerds" kind of weird anomaly, but it seems to have proliferated, rather than diminish, over the years. The nature of this binary-based "social media" itself seems to cultivate, to self-sow this kind of disturbing, mean-spirited, anti-social behavior.
Of course, there is probably no better place to observe this phenom than on Facebook.
Some of the blame lies with the Facebook vernacular itself which encourages comparison, sizing everybody up, that "eye on the meter" mentality and an over-emphasis on quantity rather than quality, all of which tends to diminish one's humanity while increasing machine mentality, and the feeling that one must market oneself almost constantly. It's not all the time and with everyone of course. I have had mostly lovely experiences with social media, able to "meet" people the world over I could not have otherwise, and for that I am very grateful. Still this is happening inside a milieu that is based on competitiveness. Even those who try very hard to steer clear of slipping into that quantitative state, and begin "courting applause" or tailoring and editing the self too much for effect, for results, we are all still operating in a structure that propagates and feeds off of this very competitiveness. Adding to it, in Big Brother-style, Facebook of course "watches" everything we say and do, and provides this information about us, bits of ourselves we reveal, to advertisers, and makes beaucoup bucks doing so.
And the whole thing, not just Facebook, but the whole schizoid side to the online experience, for me evokes John Trudell's chilling discussion and cautionary tale of the mining of the human spirit. Trudell, a Native American poet/activist, takes the concept way deeper than just the mining of personal data, but states that the human spirit, our humanity, our soul and spirit are being mined. Here's an excerpt from one of his lectures:
"The 'being' part of human is being mined. It's being mined by a perception of reality; and the people who enforce that perception of reality by indoctrinating it into every generation of human beings that is born. See, so to me one of the purposes of this technologic perceptional civilization is that we are the fuel that runs it. And the poison, the toxic that is left over from the mining of the being part of human through the human, though the intelligence of the human, are all the fears and doubts and insecurities that we have in our lives within our own personal reality about who we are, the things that others don't see, that's the pollution and the toxic left over from the mining of the being part of human. That's the pollution that's left over, see because in that kind of a haze see we don't see ourselves clearly. We don't see and recognize clearly who we are, and we're never encouraged to."
[...] whoever we are today, we carry the genetic experience of our lineage from the very beginning. It's encoded in the DNA, it's like genetic memory. It's something about the experience of the journey we have it in us. But somewhere within our genetic memory, somewhere hidden in there, we all come from a people; each of us comes from a people that knew they lived in a spiritual reality. And because we lived in a spiritual reality every one of our ancestral peoples understood we have a responsibility. We were responsible for the past, the future and for the present. We understood that all things had being. So we knew who we were, we understood what we were saying and we knew where we were: we knew our purpose. And this reality lives in our genetic memory. As human beings, whoever we are, whatever individuals we are know. That experience is there now. It's that ninety percent of our brains that they say we can't use. So they're using it.
— excerpts from Trudell's audio CD, DNA: Descendant Now Ancestor
Our spirit, the very essence of our being is mined, according to Trudell, and the more we participate in "the machine" the easier it is to mine us. Our fears, doubts and insecurities are fanned by the experience and render us much more vulnerable. This handing over of life, this fragmentation becomes very evident when we truly look at the extent to which none of us is "home" much of the time. In this age of instant connection, people aren't really connecting very well. We're talking on our cell phones, listening to music through tiny earbuds, hunched over laptops in cafés, or fiddling with some handheld device, our consciousness spread out in a million different directions trying to keep up with everything that is always going on. It is increasingly a rare experience to find someone actually present in an undivided way, just walking down the sidewalk, or sipping coffee with a friend, or shopping for groceries without having to call someone at the same time. We are in danger of becoming mere facets of ourselves. When was the last time you gave your undivided attention to something, or someone, over sustained, uninterrupted time? Being distracted by several different things, each vying for our attention, is now an almost constant normal state of life. We are saturated with stimuli and it tearing real connections to shreds, and ripping the fabric of being right out from underneath us.
Someone who really gets at the heart of this fragmentation/loss of self and spirit, loss of humanity is Kenneth Gergen. A writer, social psychologist and professor at Swarthmore College, Gergen was amazingly prescient, totally saw what was coming down the computerized pike, when he wrote WAY back in dinosaur days of 1991, in his book The Saturated Self, Dilemmas of Identity in Contemporary Life:
"This fragmentation of self-conceptions corresponds to a mulitiplicity of incoherent and disconnected relationships. These relationships pull us in myriad directions, inviting us to play such a variety of roles that the very concept of an "authentic self" with knowable characteristics recedes from view. The fully saturated self becomes no self at all."
Capricorn, the sign of tomorrow's New Moon is, along with its ruling planet Saturn, associated strongly with issues of honor, integrity and wholeness. The New Moon comes with a number of compelling aspects including a potentially unsettling conjunction to eruptive Pluto, which can bring, especially when conjoined as it is with the emotional Moon, a volcanic upsurge of ancient emotion, old feelings, old memories — all of which could be buried very deep, tucked away long ago, and for very good reason. Pluto's ideal purpose is to nudge us, sometimes forcibly, to deal with what we are neglecting to face, stuff that's working us anyway, perhaps even more powerfully, below the surface.
Added to Pluto's effects, is a tense square from this Saturn-ruled New Moon to Saturn's nemesis: liberating, unconventional, wild man Uranus, the planet strongly associated with authenticity and non-conformity. One of Uranus's many functions is to tear down those musty old structures that are no longer needed (structures erected by Saturn), but behind which we still like to hide out a bit too much. Structures we may be addicted to in some way. So over the next month, you may be presented with a choice, most likely in the form of a dilemma, a test even, that prompts you to take a stand, and perhaps come clean about some aspect of life in which you have been hiding, lying about, or selling out. Somewhere at some time, you made a choice to sacrifice some part of yourself in exchange for something else of value: acceptance, money, security, affection, love — and it is time to be honest with yourself about that exchange, and begin to stop treating yourself as if you are only some kind of market commodity that can be traded away.
We all need to make compromises in life, of course. And we all need to make a living doing something. Our jobs are not always what we would pick if we had total power to choose; yet there is a line over which we should never cross, where compromise becomes death, and too much of our soul and spirit is traded away. It is very important to know where that line is.
Uranus' reputation as astrology's unpredictable, wild card, I think to a large degree stems from a disturbing lack of respect for our individual personal integrity, the basic need for autonomy, our beautiful uniqueness and shining differences. We live in a world that is all too often bent on rules, convergence, compliance and sameness, where people commonly take refuge in silently going along with wherever the current is flowing. And the idea of just simply being your honest self, to live from that core set of values, is often mistakenly seen as an act of defiance and willfulness, as troublemaking and lacking in "team spirit." But that strikes me as a defensive and controlling judgement from the limited prospective of the status quo which has an inherent dislike and often downright fear of change, along with a rather dangerous intolerance for differences.
Saturn, by the way, rules the rigid bone structure of the body, along with any form of solidifying, petrification (including its allegoric meaning of being frozen with fear), fossilization, stagnation, and inflexibility. Essentially anything that slows you down, or holds you up — and in the more extreme cases, stops you dead in your tracks — comes under the auspices of Saturn. Sometimes being stopped in our tracks is a beneficial thing, sometimes it is most certainly not. Saturn is Father Time too and isn't it interesting how, as we age, over time our bones become less and less flexible? Elastic cartilage which is widespread in the infant skeleton, is replaced by hard, calcified bone as we grow. We need our Saturn bones, our structures and supports in life absolutely, there is no doubt about it. But we also need to guard against, to be wary of, these very same structures which can all to easily become traps. As Robert Frost wrote in his poem, "Mending Wall," which tells the story of one man's "Aquarian" questioning of why he and his neighbor must repair the stone wall that divides their farms every spring:
"Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out."
Frost, who I wrote about at last summer's Capricorn Full Moon, possesses such a Saturnian name and is well known for his deceptively spare and unpretentious writing style, employing simple language not unlike the stark beauty of winter. His uncomplicated writing functions like the tip of an iceberg however, using sentence structure and vocabulary that even a child could understand, yet on another level conveys such deep meaning. Frost is a lovely example of Uranus working in harmony with Saturn, his own writing style as well as the theme of questioning tradition in Mending Wall. Frost had Saturn in opposition to Uranus in his natal chart, both favorably aspecting his Aries Sun. An unconfirmed birth time places Capricorn on Frost's midheaven, which is the career and vocation sector of the natal chart. Apparently he was able to work out the dilemma inherent in this natal opposition of two planets that are themselves so wildly polarized in function and purpose.
Integrating difficult chart elements is itself an exercise in integrity, in bringing together disparity, somehow blending profound differences. When difficult natal elements are finally resolved, finally integrated, they often "gift" the native with an amazing outflow of released energy that had been previously locked up, calcified in conflict, tension, and stress. The integration can also result in a strikingly brilliant and unique creative outflow as well. The self is no longer fighting itself, no longer denying one part of the equation in favor of the other, which is what commonly happens with difficult chart elements. All aspects of the self are honored and in balance. That's what integrity is all about. Just humbly, unpretentiously being yourself, down to the smallest bits.
Uranus, squaring the New Moon, rules the sign of Aquarius, which Venus just entered a couple of days ago, and will be forming a "nothing in common," semi-sextile aspect to the New Moon. The semi-sextile is an aspect involving two adjacent signs that bear no astrological element, mode or polarity in common. The semi-sextile also represents the need to somehow creatively integrate completely diverse elements, and so this aspect from Venus further highlights this New Moon conundrum of Capricorn materialism and ambition vs Uranian-Aquarian idealism, aspiration and individualism. Venus in Aquarius has enormously eccentric tastes and loves the new and different. Dusty old books, drab browns and ossified, defensive positions have no space in her life. Venus in Aquarius values uniqueness and freedom, honors differences, and is relentlessly compelled to be her own individual, quirky self. Even if that seems abrasive to some, even if that rocks the hell out of Saturn's heavily ballasted, musty old ship.
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Related Essays
Mending Wall — The Capricorn Full Moon (2011)
The Shape of Each Soul — The Aquarius Full Moon (2010)
Tightrope Walkers — The Aquarius New Moon (2010)
The excerpts above were transcribed by me from John Trudell's audio CD: DNA: Descendant Now Ancestor
The image of the internet troll is from this website that covers the 18 distinct types — collect them all!
© 2012 Elaine Kalantarian, all rights reserved