Egyptian Bounds

Egyptian bounds are used by some astrologers and not at all by others. There is a table on Wikipedia. This is a system of internal rulerships and what degrees of a sign. For instance Cancer has these lords,
0-6.999degrees Mars 7-12.999 Venus 13-18.999 Mercury 19-24.999 Jupiter and so on.
So it is my Moon is Cancer is at 6 degrees and the bound lord of my Moon is Mars. The Bound Lord reveals reality of the point in actual experience, rather than in theory. What is instead of what should have been. It appears to me this means that my Moon is subserviant to Mars in my chart.
A personal point for all of us is the Ascendant. You're supposed to look for the Bound Lord of this point to see which direction you should be going in life. Mine is at 0 degrees Sagittarius and my bound Lord is Jupiter. Jupiter is in Libra in the tenth house for me. Now Libra is an artistic sign and Libra rules the house of career so this would point me toward a career doing creative work.
My Moon is in the eighth house but it's bound Lord is Mars which rules the 5th house of creativity. Like a teacher who wants to make sure that you don't make mistakes, your birth chart will point out the same things again and again.
I used to wonder what career I wanted. I couldn't decide. I am interested in everything. I like science a lot and psychology. I wanted once to be a high school counselor. If I had gone to an astrologer then I could have been told that I was to be an artist of some kind, and now that I am much older I know it. It would've been extremely useful to have known that when I was younger. I think astrologer would be great for teens trying to decide on a career.

Degrees of a Sign

With astrology it seems there is always more to learn. I was surprised to learn that the degrees of a sign meant how far you were in understanding that sign and the house that sign rules.
They divide the 30 degrees of a sign into 3 parts 1-10 degrees represent astrological kindergarten, where you are learning
10-20 degrees represent the working degrees of a sign
20-30 degrees represent spirituality.
The planets in the middle are the ones you use in everyday life. I am a Sun in Sagittarius at 26 degrees and my Sun is spiritual and yet only a backdrop, a background. I have two planets at zero degrees and I know nothing about career or friendships, the houses that these signs rule. Yes I mean I haven't the foggiest idea about my 10th or 11th house.
Ourselves are mysterious, how great it is to finally have an explanation! The world makes sense again through astrology.
The only planet I have in the middle of a sign is Mercury. Mercury is the planet of communications. Every day I think about communicating and how to communicate, this is my focus. Even when very young I wrote things and was amazed at how the act of writing made me feel better and I didn't know why then and I don't know why now. It just works.
I wrote that my Sagittarius is only a background, but that could be due to it's conjunction with Saturn. Saturn puts the brakes on any planet it is next to. I do have Venus in the last 10, and beauty for me does move me spiritually and no, it is not in the background. So I think the loss of my Sagittarian nature is entirely due to Saturn's influence.
My planets in the first 10 degrees seem to express themselves in a wild manner. They seem to be a part of me that is instinctive and reflexive. Being not fully integrated into myself, they seem to be the thoughts that come to me and make me ask, "Where did that come from?" These energies are not something you make happen, they are something that happens to you. Pluto rules jealously and I can be suddenly and violently jealous. Jupiter rules optimism and I am optimistic even if I have just lost my car, my job and my boyfriend all at once. Neptune is the planet of illusions and I do tend to be pulled into dreams or into thinking that is just not real, not what really happened or could happen. These 3 planets in the first 10 degrees make me have to reason them out, 'cause they are illogical. These energies sometimes wipe me out and I don't even make sense. I am pulling nonsenical things out of the air.
So it is I guess that I work with creative projects, 'cause I couldn't be a jet pilot or a doctor for sure. I believe there is the job we are supposed to be doing, what God wants us to do. This is what we have these talents for.
We have a purpose in this lifetime, and part of it is figuring out what our purpose is.

The Saturn Freeze

Perhaps no one else has noticed this, but I have. When you read all the descriptions of Saturn by all different sources one thing becomes clear.

Saturn freezes.

Like Jack Frost the touch of Saturn is cold and pessimistic. If one lived a sheltered life perhaps your fears wouldn't lead you into Saturn's cold embrace. Saturn is connected with reality, with seeing things how they really are; so with a loss of innocence you fall into Saturn and he never lets you go. Not only that, but Saturn fills you with doubt wherever he touches your chart. You doubt yourself. Sarcastic and skeptical and rigid, Saturn is like the dirty old man you run away from 'cause he is such a pervert. Saturn represents law and order too. In my life, society has let me down. Society did not protect me and neither did my teachers and parents follow the rules I had to follow, which is unfair of course. Many people come to hate Saturn in their chart. I did.

Like the old man in pictures of Saturn, this planet resists change. It's safe the way things are this planet seems to say and if you change you might suffer and die. I suffer from too much Saturn of course in my chart and I wish for freedom from the jail of my own being.

Saturn conjunct Venus makes one have one relationship, sometimes a very bad one, and stay with it through thick and then no matter what. It makes one feel dutiful towards you partner when every other emotion is gone, even love. Saturn sometimes represents the father. I have a friend with Saturn conjunct Venus and not only is she stuck with a bad relationship her father also tries to control her every move. This conjunction is in the second house of money, and her father is always threatening to stop giving her money. Somehow she is doubtful of her financial ability, she thinks she cannot survive without her father giving her money. Saturn and self-doubt again!

Frozen time and time again, I am afraid to make a move in my life. I fear success and I fear failure. Saturn tells us it is best that things remain as they are, who knows what could happen if things changed? Saturn is the planet of constriction just as Jupiter is the planet of expansion. This planet is needed as a cosmic counterweight to the appalling excesses of Jupiter, the world could not exist without Saturn.

That doesn't mean I have to like it.

The 3rd House Mindset

Noel Tyl is an astrologer and you can Google his name and read his essays online, some of which were written for new astrologers but still interesting. I was interested in what he said about the 3rd house being our mindset. It is like the lens through which we look at everything else. The 3rd house corresponds to Gemini and is ruled by Mercury.

We are a bundle of contradictions and we interpert the planets in our own way. Our life's realities means a horoscope means different things. What is interesting to me is the simple declarations astrology makes to me about strengths and weaknesses. Things I knew instinctively are now articulated. It gives me self-awareness. This is who I am.

Noel Tyl makes a client's astrology chart like the one in the picture. He makes strong aspects clear by pressing the pencil down firmly on the paper, and less important aspects he does with a light line. I thought this a clever way to see the whole chart clearly. One thing he looks at is the sign on the cusp of the 3rd house, ruling that house, and that sign's ruling planet for your mindset.

For instance if the sign is Sagittarius then the ruling planet is Jupiter. Jupiter has a strong tie to education. You would be comfortable with learning and higher ideals and knowledge. You also look at Mercury's situation, the ruler of the 3rd house. Often when Mercury is squared by Saturn it make a person prone to depression, it gives seriousness and makes one hypercritical. Mercury rules verbalizations or talking about something and Saturn makes one critical and less emotionally moved. However much depends on the strength of Mercury in this situation. If Mercury is in a position of strength, (On an angle, in the signs that Mercury rules, peregrine, or at Sun/Moon midpoint) then there is this ability to succeed in spite of difficulties. A powerful Jupiter also helps Mercury, but then a powerful Jupiter helps everything in a chart.

What I want to share is what this told me about myself. It can tell you about yourself too.

Mars in the 3rd or a sign ruled by Mars makes aggression an okay expression for you. It is a placement of high-pressure salespeople. Saturn in the 3rd house or ruling the sign of the 3rd house gives a lot of seriousness. Clint Eastwood has Saturn in the 3rd. The Sun in the 3rd or in Leo (Leo is ruled by the Sun) gives one a large ego that rationalizes everything one does as alright. Cher has this placement. The Moon in the 3rd or in Cancer, (Moon rules Cancer), makes a person prone to emotional excess. The Moon rules emotions and there is this tendency to feel rather than use logic. My 3rd house is in Aquarius, ruled by Uranus. Uranus represents the rebel, and there is this need to sustain rebelliousness. There is this belief that you have to rebel to maintain your individuality.

My mind-set then is Aquarian. Aquarians are great humanitarians and great friends. They are the most unusual people, Uranus rules the unusual and the unexpected. In fact what house Aquarius rules tells you where you yourself are most unusual and that is quite something. I would be unusual in the way I communicate.

There are echoes in a chart that hit the same trends again and again. I don't know why. My unusual thinking processes is echoed by a peregrine Mercury. A peregrine planet is one that has no major aspect with any other, a planet isolated but made stronger because of it. It is called wild. A wild peregrine planet will act in unusual ways, so I have an unusual planet echoing my unusual Aquarian mindset. People often have aspects in their chart that say the same things over and over strangely enough. Pope Benedict has Jupiter peregrine, the planet of high ideals.

If it were not for other aspects in my chart I would be blurting out unexpected things off the top of my head all the time. A chart is curbed, re-routed or stopped in it's tracks by the opposite planet. Nevertheless my 3rd house is a part of me anyway, even if it is a part of me that people seldom see. I want to be that one voice that disagrees with what everyone else is saying and I think that is what makes me myself. I see myself as the one breaking all the rules even if I am following the rules to make my life easier, I am a rebel in my heart.

Quintiles

There are 360 degrees in the circle that is your astrology chart. When two planets are 72 degrees apart this is called a quintile. What is interesting about this aspect is that it tells you a talent that you have, a talent that you were born with. I think I have something to add because I know my quintiles so very well.
I have one between Mercury and Neptune. Mercury is the planet of communication, it tells you how you think. Neptune is the planet of dreams and illusions. This quintile makes one a fiction writer because you can easily put yourself into an imaginary world and imagine being someone else. It lends a magician's abilities with your ability to communicate. This is straightforward for me and easy to understand. I find that I am easily drawn by reading into the world the author creates too. Reading has always been a great pleasure for me, a wholesome and dependable pleasure.
My other quintile is between the Moon and Neptune. The Moon is our emotions and our heart and all about our feelings. This is an aspect of muscians, but I have no musical talent. What I have is an intense enjoyment of music. When you combine the magic of words with music then the effect on me is quite indescribable. I can be lifted up in spirit to the highest mountain and the amazing thing is how inspired I am. I can't articulate how rich these experiences are or how deeply music moves me. It sounds stupid to say it the way I am saying it, I cannot tell anyone how great music is to me. It is a great gift.
Often people will talk to me about lovemaking and how great and mind blowing it is, but I can truly say that is not the greatest thing in the world. I would tell these people to listen to some music like the 5th Symphony or to read a great book like Watership Down and that it would be better but they would not understand or agree. I understand that I have these gifts and I was born with them. The gifts a quintile gives to you is as natural to you as breathing. I am sorry that I cannot share them or even explain what I mean.
Go to astro.com and see if you have quintiles, 144 degrees apart is a biquintile. This is the most amazing astrological discovery I have made.

Free Floating Ideas

I get writing ideas all the time. I just don't do anything with them. I thought I'd share a few, a view of the flowers in my mind.

In Star Trek the Vulcan Mr. Spock would elegantly place the tips of his long fingers on your face and remove painful memories. I always thought that an amazing idea and wanted to do that in a book. Once memories are removed that you can't get over, a person could start again. I had an idea of a rogue psychiatrist on a private island doing just that for a woman crippled with anxiety and fear of leaving her home. This new experimental treatment would remove memories but maybe they went too far...maybe she becomes so robustly new that the guy is knocked out by this transformation and falls for her. This, of course, is a romance. Who has not lost much needed confidence and been drug down by abuse or loss and sure we survive but we're not the same. If we could start anew there would be this innocence and this love of life that children have I believe. A whole new world, surely.

What if the world economy did collapse? Would we return to a life of small farms and growing our own food? It might be a better world. Our ancestors had more free time than us, once the harvest was in and winter arrived it was a time for games and stories and people visited one another. It might be quite nice.

What if women ran the world? I don't think that women want to do that but they certainly could. I think men and women work best in partnership, maybe that is the way it's supposed to be. If women recieved some sort of power that elevated them into leadership, they would do what they had to do of course. I just wonder what sort of world it would be. In Ursula LeGuin's book, "The Left Hand of Darkness" people on a planet named Winter could change genders. Man and woman in the same body, what a concept! I think what she meant was that just as light is the left hand of darkness, so women are the other side of humanity. We are polar opposites and we are supposed to be equal, even if society says we are not. Male and female, like right and left, light and darkness or yin and yang. She doesn't really lecture about equal rights, she just tells this story and you draw your own conclusions. I like the power of stories to do that, and she is no slouch at world building either. The Dune books also remind us of the power of the female sex, the Ben Gesserit that the author modeled after his own wife. What a great woman she must have been! The great point in this book was "Revenge is for babies". I had to think about that before I got it. What I think Frank Herbert meant was okay, somebody did something to you and you want revenge but it is immature. If you deviate from your life plan to chase after revenge then you have wasted your valuable time and damaged yourself in the process. A mature adult realizes this and does not chase after revenge but picks himself up and continues. I think that is what the author meant. It is true. I think this is one of the things I like the most about books, these nuggets of knowledge that you pick up like golden coins in the sand. Women were very important in the Dune books, and they were the teachers of the men. In this fantasy world, the women could and did fight in hand to hand combat and it was balance and knowing your opponent's next move and being focused that mattered, not the male's superior strength. These books are heady stuff, impossible to describe really, if you have not read them. If I started to describe them I would be blogging for an hour or more. I think these books are so famous that most people have read them I guess, I don't really know. My library, who isn't big on science fiction has them at least.

A lot of romance books has the couple hating each other, it is like almost tradition or something. In a way, I am drawn in as always but I long for something new. Paranormal is dominating the market right now it seems, who knew vampires and werewolves would be hot? People do fall for each other and my hubby himself claims he loved me at first sight. Romance is not my natural reading material, rather I find myself reading it because there is just so much of it around. I'm told half of all books sold are romances and that is a lot of books. I like these books very much sometimes and sometimes not so much. Maybe it's me, but I don't understand some of them. I have no desire to be dominated by another, even if that other is totally beautiful and handsome. What I want is someone to talk to who doesn't mind laundry. Friendship and love together would be so much fun, I think that is what I want.

Asimov

It was perhaps Asmiov who first got the idea that aliens would be more advanced than us and his idea is the one that prevails today. Asimov is no longer with us but he left a lot of books being one of the most prolific authors ever. He has a PHD in Chemistry but I guess he is known best for his robot books. He makes writing seem simple. He has said that the only thing he asks of his writing is that it be clear. His autobiography is not one but two books, "In Memory Yet Green" and "In Joy Still Felt". I read these books very fast, there is nothing to slow you down when you read Asimov because he does make himself so clear. He is so clear in fact that people think writing like he did is easy, that is until they try to do it. It is this that makes a struggling writer so frustrated, that everyone thinks it is easy. They don't think that way about other professions, I guess because everyone can put words on paper they think that anyone can do it. Writing has infinite paths and I think that is what confuses new writers so badly, how does one know what one wants to write about? You don't. Stephen King wrote 3 books before Carrie, it's like these first books are your education. It's an investment in time and it is working for nothing. What one does write is making future writing easier, as hard as that is for me to understand. I thought that if I had talent I could write a book quickly, and that it would be right the first time I wrote it. Where does one get these ideas? Why is it I was so convinced of all the wrong things about writing?

Writers want to be understood so they make it easy for us. They gently remind us along the way of things we might have forgotten that is important to the story, they tell us what someone is thinking when they do something. It is like a window into another person's mind because really and truly writing begins and ends with oneself. Yourself is all you know really. Intuition can take you a long way to understanding but it must have some sort of similiar thing going on in your own head, if you get my meaning. It was C.P. Snow who said we are alone, totally alone. I can't get my mind around it, but I just intuitively know it is true. That isn't something I want to feel anyway, alone. Writing joins us to a larger community because in writing we are putting forth a lot of ideas in a compact form. A first time writer is trying to express a lot, with a lot of hope and with a lot of hard work behind it, all the time making it appear easy, if they are any good as a writer that is. Then there is the entertainment value, when maybe you're writing some heavy stuff too. This is tricky to me, what entertains? Why do people read tragedy and horror? How can I know what other people think? How is the unspoken spoken to you?

I am a fan of Star Trek. What impressed you always was the love these people had for one another, their broadmindedness. They had made a world I wanted to live in very much when I was growing up. When I thought of things unspoken I thought of Star Trek. Here we have this Vulcan, this alien who is struggling with his human half. There is this feeling of so much love with these characters, who help each other and at the same time maintain space for each other to grow. This is evident clearly in how they handle Spock, telling him it is okay to feel emotions when his emotions get the better of him. When Spock is under the influence of a drug and turns human suddenly, Kirk is so funny trying to think of the right way to handle Spock as he is so changed. I don't watch the new Star Trek in it's many forms, being so impressed when young with the original. There was nothing like it on television. My twelve year old mind understood it perfectly though these concepts were adult concepts some of them, to love and lose, to face death bravely, to try to understand aliens who could care less and make them care. I think sometimes that my mind has been "programmed" by Star Trek, that this is what I want out of my writing, that this is the template by which I write. Okay, so many writers may have a book that started them out and charted their course, I have a television show. The guy who wrote Lonesome Dove was heavily influenced by "Don Quixoite" so it is interesting that such things happen, that one book influences an entire career.

The best advice may be simply to write every day and do it anywhere from half an hour to 2 hours. Many writers only write 2 hours a day I was suprised to find out. Your mind already has a template, you just don't know it yet. Deep inside, you already know how you want to write.

What Hillbillies Like

(1) Hunting season.

(2) Squirrel and Dumplings

(3) Hats with pictures of trucks on them.

(4) Beagles who chase rabbits and run in circles and get dizzy when it is not deer season. Is funny.

Is not funny when it is deer season and dogs chase rabbit.

(5) When cars bounce in ruts in driveway, everyone knows you should drive a pick-up truck.

(6) Baths, so hard to take but okay when over.

(7) Soap and shampoo, same thing.

(8) Guns, guns and did I mention guns?

(9) Outside better than inside, don't like being surrounded by walls. Is dangerous.

(10) To see how many directions hair can point to, lotta fun.

(11) Camouflage.

(12) Foglights on top of truck. Cool.

(13) Family is great. Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth and Seventh cousins all same. All cousins.

(14) Food in beard good, some for later.

(15) Country music is only music in country.

(16) Everclear is Windex. Clean windows. Yeah mine are dirty, so what?

(17) Pee on tire makes tire go farther.

Aries point Again!

This is a Hubble picture of the stars at the very center of the galaxy. In astrology it is thought to be an important point at 26 degrees of Sagittarius but I am writing now about the Aries point. I am writing about where I read elsewhere and by no means am an expert!

The Aries point is a solar node, the nodes of the Moon are well known. The north node of the moon being what your purpose is in this lifetime, or what lesson you are supposed to learn. The Aries point is the very beginning, and is said to be "where the spirit enters reality". It can be anywhere in a chart. You ask, what house is my Aries point in? This is your eternal beginning for your birth chart never changes. I found this an exciting idea.

Mine is in the 4th house of home, and how I cling to my home and how I do love it! It seems I cannot write anywhere else, which is a bit of a downer. I can't concentrate well away from home.

When a planet or point conjuncts (is in the same place as) the AP then the nature and energy of that planet has the added thrust to express collectively.

Like, this is what you are remembered for.

Like, this is how the public knows you.

A point would mean the angles of a chart, the first, fourth, seventh and tenth houses.

I am known as a homebody. I never go anywhere.

I would rather be known as "Goddess and Legendary Writer" but never mind.

I am talking now about zero degrees of Aires though it's said zero degrees of any cardinal sign would come into play if conjunct a planet or point. The cardinal signs are Aries, Cancer, Libra, and Carpicorn and they correspond to the beginning of each of the four seasons. Aries is Spring. If we can know where we begin then maybe we can understand ourselves much better and maybe this will help us become who we want to be.

Bob Dylan's birth chart

Bob Dylan was born Robert Zimmerman in Duluth in May of 1941. He is a Gemini.

Moon in Taurus

Mercury in Gemini

Venus in Gemini

Mars in Pisces

Jupiter in Taurus

Saturn in Taurus

Uranus in Taurus

Neptune in Virgo

This is an example of what is called the final depositer in a chart.

Mercury is at home in Gemini, in the sign that Mercury rules and is Mr. Dylan's final depositer.

Right away you can see that he has no planets in fire signs and only one in a water sign, his Mars in Pisces. He would deal with life through his mental abilities and his heart and emotions would be extremely stable in the earth sign of Taurus.

It is easy to find a final depositer in a chart because it will always be the planet in the sign that the planet rules, if your chart has one.

Mercury is the planet of communication and it is Mercury that is the key planet in understanding Bob Dylan.

Sometimes a planet will "run away" with a chart because it is conjunct a fixed star. Sometimes a planet does this by being the only planet in an element such as Mars being the only planet in an water sign.

Career is often indicated by what planet trines (120 degrees) the midheaven. Dylan's Venus trines his midheaven which leads one to think of an artistic career. His Moon is in the 5th house of creativity. The Moon is said to show where our heart is and Mr. Dylan probably enjoyed his career.

I think it was something that I would expect that his final depositer would be Mercury.

Are People Good or Bad?

My parents always thought that only the police and the consequences of society frowning on you kept people from breaking loose and doing all sorts of horrible things. I'm not sure why they felt this way but clearly there must be some traumatic experiences behind their beliefs. My father used to comment that people were aggressive and you had to protect yourself constantly. In spite of their low opinions they often socialized and were very good at it. People liked them and respected them. My mother when they were first married would tell neighbors my father would fix their cars, their furnances or their plumbing. My father was very talented at fixing things. She wanted people to like her, like a little kid giving all his toys away so the other kids would be his friend. My father liked it when he gave people the impression he was intelligent. They clearly wanted things from other people. There is a curious sort of blindness that people have when it comes to other folks. People do not like you because you do things for them, though I expect they feel obligated to be quite friendly. My father would say often that he didn't care what anybody thought about him, but the fact was, he thought about it all the time.

Poor Anne Frank who perhaps wanted no one but herself to read her diary made history by writing that she believed people to be "basically good". This pulls at the heartstrings. The Germans were painted with a brush so black that the German people are still reeling today. The Germans are people just like ourselves I believe. What they did, any people can do. When the German people were starving no one lended them a helping hand and they ended up going to war. I don't see this written about very much, the suffering of the German people and how nobody helped them. It brought out this terrible side to human nature I think.

A friend who was watching the aftermath of Katrina on television told everyone how this policemen said, "It's everyman for himself." This got me to thinking that society, any society could break down if people do not have the means to survive. I thought it funny that all these cameras were down there filming people with relish, getting all that good footage with very expensive equipment when people didn't have water safe to drink or a place to live or food. I found it touching when I heard of people who filled their car with groceries and drove down there. I kinda felt that the newspeople were so excited that so many people were watching them that they had quite forgotten that a tragedy had happened. This was just an impression of mine and just my opinion of course. They did nothing improper. It is rather a feeling I had based on nothing, perhaps it is me believing that people are bad just like my parents.

Because it does come down to belief doesn't it?

I know a churchgoer who tithes. She always gives the church money. However, she owns rental property that is quite dangerous for the people who live there. She throws them out if they can't pay their rent. Is it only me who thinks this is wrong? Well-respected and made much of by the community, her renters are the lower classes and no one thinks much of them. I rather think that these renters believe what she believes, that they are not worthy. They seem to think so. I think belief is very powerful. It makes me think of the Beatles.

The Beatles were quite upset with their fame and fortune. They had wanted to make music and they had wanted of course to make enough money to have a house and one day raise a family. They came from Liverpool and this city was working class poor. John Lennon even remarked that they were too famous and it shouldn't be that way. He remarked that they were more famous than Jesus and had people burning Beatle's records from coast to coast in protest. He didn't mean it they way people thought. He thought that their music was okay, pretty good, but he hadn't expected this wild insane craziness and these huge amounts of money. I think anyone would be a little disconcerted. The Beatles were not rocket scientists, though they had great intuition and wonderful minds they also had innocence. They would greet each other with secret handshakes and code words just to get over the embarrassment of seeing each other. I thought this fact adorable. They were quite vulnerable to the press that came to interview them. I think his words were twisted and they got a much needed lesson that you have to watch what you say. John Lennon was simply saying they were too famous. I was amused to see George Harrision in a television interview before his death stating that the Beatles, "were not that good". This was their belief, that they were pretty good but not that good.

Over the years John Lennon came to accept the idea that he was a musical genius. Their later music was not as memorable as their earlier music to most people though. I think that their innocence had been lost. I read that John put down his guitar for 6 years. I am a fan and I think this a great tragedy. Not only that but he was only 40 years old when he died. In this big bad world there is nothing more precious than innocence, they brought so much happiness to others. I was so excited to see Paul McCartney, just to see him. No one can get over how simple his songs were and yet how much they are loved and remembered.

Their beliefs were to change as people constantly contradicted them. The world is having it's effect on you whether or not you like it or even believe in it. It may be that they still thought of themselves as not that good, people often say what will please others and perhaps John Lennon was tired of the whole subject. It is a testament to them that they didn't believe for so very long what other people told them, they have this integrity and this basic decency. Fame and fortune didn't turn their heads and make them think themselves wonderful. Kudos to the Beatles!

In "Tuck Everlasting" the question is asked "Are people good or bad?" and the reply was "Both".

I think that pretty much sums it up.

Mars the Red Planet

Mars doesn't actually look red, kinda orangey though. Mars is our drive and energy and it rules the Sign of Aries. There was a scientist who once found something called the "Mars Effect". After compiling a whole lot of charts he found that Mars was often close to the angles of the birth chart of career athletes. It was stated that this guy sort of hurt his career studying something as goofy as astrology. Well astrology is kind of hard to pin down and yet kind of obviously true too, ya know? There is a scientist in Australia who is getting a lot of press with predicting the final scores of soccer games but I can't remember her name though. I do remember she claims about a 70 percent success rate which is quite good. She claims that, with a lot of study of patterns in a chart, that she can predict when you will get lucky in Vegas. I wonder if proof of astrology looms on the horizon?

I think astrology will be like ghosts, belief being a matter of personal preference. I mean it is that way now anyway. Lucky for me I am not a respected scientist and if I did like astrology I would buy a hat and stick it under it. People say I'm a Leo so I have to have a lot of attention or something and I just cringe a little. Yeuw. I wonder why those who are interested never follow that interest, with the internet you can learn a lot. I'm the only nut in this tree I guess. Oh well, I'm bigger than the squirrels.

Mars may be the war god but Mars is much more. How do you go after what you want? The sign that Mars is in should tell you. If your Mars is in a water sign such as Pisces, Cancer or Scorpio then you like to swim or boat or vacation near bodies of water. If Mars is in a Earth sign it may be you're too busy making money to swim or anything else. If Mars is in an air sign you get mental abilities but a Mars in Gemini can't focus on one thing. Gemini can't stop jumping around with different ideas. I am Mars in Aries and my energy level is high 'cause Mars rules Aries. Mars is in the 4th house of home and it is at home I seem to get into arguments. Oh yeah, Mars is you asserting yourself and telling people not to mess with you. Transits of Mars are often predict when accidents may happen, I mean like falling down and breaking your leg. Mars in Aries means I'm always getting hit in the head, the signs indicate parts of the body too. If you had Mars in Sagittarius you'd always be getting bruises on your thighs I suppose. Mars is considered a malefic or bad news a lot.

And yet Mars is necessary and is ever renewing and rules the Springtime. Here at home is where I put my energies with my Mars in the 4th house of home. Mars is the drive to live and the desire to live and those things that drive us that we cannot stop doing. Mars is also the masculine principle in a chart.

If a man has Venus in Leo, then he will always be attracted to Leos. If a woman has Mars in Gemini, she will always be attracted to Geminis. I am always attracted to Aries, though I must admit I am often afraid of them. Aries bulldozes over other people and takes the lead and will not let go. Aries doesn't mean to, it's just that an Aries is ruled by Mars and Mars is about that part of us that is like a baby. A baby only knows itself. It knows when something hurts it but a baby doesn't know when you are hurt. Aries can be so remarkably selfish it quite takes ones breath away. Mars will have what it wants and everyone else will be pushed out of the way. What makes our blood sing that we must have it will have our Mars taking over! It is what makes someone work hard and long to achieve a goal, this drive, this unrelenting I will never give up no matter what, this will of ours to be ourselves, this eternal spring in which we grow flowers of our own making are just Mars asserting himself.

Strangely, Mars is also a nocturnal planet although Mars is masculine and all things masculine belong to the daytime chart. It is thought that someone made a mistake somewhere, to put Mars in the feminine night. This is called Sect, an ancient form of astrology in which Mars, Venus, and the Moon rule anyone born at night. The other planets will stay on the sidelines and not be very important if you are born at night.

Astrology has been handed down to us sort of piecemeal, we have lost a lot since ancient times. I tend to think that Mars is exactly where it should be, a night planet. It is like how do they know that people born in winter will be a fiery and extremely happy-go-lucky Sagittarian? We just don't know. Mars belongs to the night just like it belongs to our darkest and most secret desires.

The Aries Point

There are four cardinal signs in your chart, Cancer, Libra, Aries and Capricorn. These are the signs who start things. These signs represent where we begin projects. Where Aries is in your chart seems to be particulary important. Aries is Spring and the first sign of the zodiac. For example Aries rules my 5th house, the house of creative projects. This is where I begin projects. I am not so good at finishing what I start I'm sorry to say.
The Aries point is zero degrees of any one of the cardinal signs. There are lots of famous people with planets at this degree. When I got ready to blog however I could not locate any chart except my own chart with a planet on the Aries point. If you have a planet on the Aries point there are those who say you have mystical powers, that you express this point to the world. Another place that expresses itself outward are the four angles in your chart. The dark lines that cross in a chart represent the angles of a chart, these are called "wide open doors". Any planet on this angle is expressed strongly and most purely. I can tell you of a celebrity with a planet on the Ascendant and that is Angelina Jolie. She has Venus as the planet in the sky when she drew her first breath, and Venus in the first house gives beauty both inside and outside.
As you can see I have Jupiter in zero degrees of Libra, and this is what I am supposed to be all about. It is supposed to give success and though I am not successful I think I kind of am in a way. A powerful Jupiter gives one an almost magical attraction for you from those in power, your boss will do all sorts of things for you and like you for no reason at all. I have been lucky that my superiors always seem to think I am great, to the point I feel a tad guilty. A great chart like mine, it seems, has influence but I think your mother and father are even more important. For those who say astrology says what must happen-think again!
I would say your chart has an influence of like 40%. There are those who overcame a very bad chart. There is an example, Patton. This military general has an awful chart! A good chart doesn't automatically mean success, in fact criminals often have very good charts. It is thought that things come too easily to them and so they never learn how to work hard for what they get. Oprah Winfrey has a chart often studied, she has a locomotive chart and the "steam engine" is Jupiter. She also has planets conjunct fixed stars. Jupiter is the planet of blessings and if Jupiter has aspects to all your planets, then you have luck in all areas of life. Oprah Winfrey has a great birth chart, and astrologers like to say success was guarenteed for her. Maybe this is so, I don't know, but I do know that she was raped when she was 12 and that she did suffer poverty and her life has not been easy. You could say she has been lucky now but she hasn't always been so. I think that the planets and stars have a sort of influence that is hard to pin down, it is here one day and the next day it is not. I would call it the study of opportunities. It is more like this "might" happen than what will.
What is more certain is the study of personality. I have a friend with Aries in the 7th house of partners and she is always starting a new romance. You will find Aries always where people begin things over & over again. In the 10th house you will always be starting a new career. This sort of thing can be relied on more than any assurances of success. My hubby however has Aries in the 12th, and this mystical house contains everything in the universe and you never know what he is going to start! Aries and the Aries point is not about success it seems.
What I do know is that Jupiter defines me. Jupiter in zero degrees of Libra is who I am. Libra is ruled by Venus, it is a social sign and a sign that wants to please others. Libras are the people who have the best parties, a party brings out the best in Libra. They want soothing environments and soft music and flowers, they want a world filled with beauty. John Lennon was a Libra. When people come to my house I work so hard that their visit will be a good experience, I bring out my best food and my best conversation. I want to make them happy. No matter what this desire is always with me, no matter whether I personally like the guest or not. Jupiter tends to make everything it touches "bigger" and I want to please more than a Sun Sign Libra. I think that sometimes people wonder what I want from them! Why am I being so gosh-darned nice? I think I give the impression I am such a lonely and needy person when I fact I love solitude and I have to be alone at some time during the day! No one entertains as much as myself in fact. I love to be alone to read and to write and to think. I love to think about astrology for one thing!
I read that some Nazis have the Aries point, that the zero degree can also be one of insanity. It is unstable and wild to have a planet at the Aries point. Whew! Also possessed by serial killers. This is when the Aries point is badly aspected and even then it doesn't make you a serial killer. It can also be a point of great creativity and success. It is a point where you can be famous and make a very strong mark onto the world. The Aries Point is good and bad, depending.
Do you have a planet exactly between your Sun and the Moon? This planet is a blend of your ego and your emotional side and is the perfect expression of you. Eleanor Roosevelt had Venus at this point. Needless to say, she was much loved by the public. When a planet hits this point by transit this can make for a very interesting day! Venus and the principles of love and beauty were what Mrs. Roosevelt was all about.
My Jupiter is at the midpoint between my Sun and my Moon. I guess you can see the narcisstic draw of astrolgy for me, my chart seems to have a lot of the important aspects astrologers talk about all the time, aspects of the rich and famous. I have a chart with so many aspects, an enormously complicated one. I started as most do by looking at my own chart and it gave me hope. It gave me hope that, in spite of all the odds, I might be someone that other people respected. I cling fiercely to this hope, that somehow I can escape a life that has few things to look forward to. The more I found out that astrology was true then the more hope I was able to hang onto. It made me believe in the impossible. It inspires me. It makes my future look bright.
No wonder I like astrology.
There is another way to look at your chart. The father represented by the Sun or midheaven, and the mother by the Moon or the bottom of the chart. My mother was a Cancer and my Moon is in Cancer. My father was a Virgo and I have a Virgo midheaven. As I have a square between Mars and the Moon there was tension between my mother and I. The Arabic part for mother is the same degree as my Moon. As the Sun and Pluto are trine in my chart so it was that my father and I had this great love for each other as soon as I was born. My mother was quite jealous of how much my father loved me. My Sun and my Moon are in opposition with each other, and my father and mother were openly opposed to one another. They fought often and in public. Looking at my chart, I think I was born with the purpose of bringing these two together. With my Moon in Cancer I would be attuned to my mother's emotional needs, and with a Virgo midheaven I would understand my father's needs for order and attention to detail. Instead my mother became violently jealous of any attention my father gave me and said that my brother was "her" child and I belonged to my father. My father was always gone and when he did come home he didn't want to interact with us, I understand that his job as a mathmetician was very, very difficult. He was old-fashioned and believed my mother should do everything for me, but she didn't want to do anything for me. This left me virtually parentless. My mother was always telling me I "did" something to her and that one day God would punish me. I always thought I was punished enough by not having a mother. God is perhaps punishing me for this mysterious deed I committed when I was a baby that I cannot remember. The hysterical meaness of my mother cannot be understood, least of all by me. Mars square the Moon is an aspect also of those whose mothers died when they were very young. My mother had a very low I.Q, one degree above retardation and you could say she could not help it. She had very little intelligence. She had been brain damaged by a violent fever at the age of twelve and appeared to be "frozen" at the age of twelve. I noticed my mother liked children at that age and had a lot in common with kids in that age group. Needless to say, I am not for the rights of the mentally retarded to have children that you hear about sometimes in the news. Then again, twelve is a strange age. I wouldn't want to be 12 my whole life. This is when my mother's brain stopped growing and the overwhelming emotion I have for my mother is pity. Anyway, I am wandering away from the subject at hand. I wanted it to be understood that my mother could not help the things that she has done. I have always loved her regardless.
At any rate the Moon rules my chart and perhaps that is why my mother is the greater influence on my life. As my Sun is drug down by the dark influence of Saturn 9 degrees away so has my father been drug down by depression and insomnia. My chart is so much aligned with my life it quite takes my breath away. My brother's name is Walter. There is an asteroid named Walter at the same degree as my sun, and so it is that my brother has always obscured the light of my Sun. So many coincidences I find in astrology! Are they coincidences or are the stars writing the story of our fate? That is one fascinating question.

The Aries Point

Clouds in My Coffee

If you are from my generation, you will recognize clouds in my coffee as a line from "You're So Vain", a song by Carly Simon. There is book out now about three of the biggest women songwriters of my time, Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon and Carole King. I find it suprising how these women's songs were so achingly familiar to me, how much their lyrics were in my head and how much these songs had shaped me. What was suprising to me was that their lives were like so far from perfect.

Joni was born with the name of Roberta Joan to a mother who was quite strong. She had so many fears that her career would be taken away from her, she'd been lucky to have been able to meet people who helped her out along the way. I guess I thought everyone just saw talent and fell all over themselves to sign her on, but that is not what happened. In fact it was Joni's first husband Chuck who saw to it that her songs were published by her own publishing company at a very young age. It was David Crosby who insisted that Joni has creative control of her recordings. Only by luck do we have this fantastic body of work by this great artist.

Carly Simon was a girl who had suffered so deeply in love affairs and yet she still kept on trying to love and trying her best. Carly was a rich kid, but she was turned loose with a small amount of money and forced to get a job in New York. Her successes sometimes happened with years in between of no hit recordings suprisingly enough. I guess I thought that she'd had a perfect life.

Carole King I know almost nothing about I'm sorry to say, to me the emotional pull comes from Carly and Joni.

For in losing they also won, they moved on to new loves and were loyal to their friends. They lost people that they loved and went on to love again. I didn't know how difficult things had been for these women that I used to wish I was like. I wanted to be them. The men in their life of these women that you think of as so very strong were so important, and yet it seems that often they were left to fend for themselves. Maybe that is how gifts are, fleeting, a light in the night that disappears with the sun, so delicate that it is quickly eroded by time.

Medicine

I've often been puzzled by my doctor's inability to prescribe pain medications. It seems that people abuse these medications and so we can't have them if we need them. This seems sad to me. On the other hand, I've become very anxious about my health wondering if I will get any worse. It is quite funny to me that my doctor will give me all sorts of powerful anti-anxiety medications that have all sorts of reactions. I have been addicted to one, Zyprexa, because my doctor gave me free samples and no prescription. I did not know I had one of the most addictive drugs that there is, I only knew that it relieved my symptoms of anxiety though it did make me hungry. One day after taking 3 of the free bottles I ran out of these capsules. I did not think it a big deal. Soon, my hands started shaking and I couldn't stop it. My head was spinning with all sorts of wild thoughts and my stomach was churning with nausea. Somehow I knew what I needed was my medicine.

I called my doctor of course but I was told that I could not have an appointment for 2 and a half weeks. I told her about my symptoms and that I believed that I needed this medicine and she told me that the doctor had other patients besides me. She became very cross with me. I started to cry. My husband also told me that if the doctor gave me this medicine without a prescription then all of my symptoms must be hormones or pms or some other female hystera. He told me that the doctor would not give me something so dangerous without a warning. But he did. When faced with everyone's disbelief, I just started repeating myself over and over again. I looked up the drug on the internet but no one would look at the articles, telling me that you "can read anything on the internet". Soon however, as I spent time walking back and forth so much that I got terrible shin splints in my legs and I kept crying and throwing up so much that even my husband began to think I might truly be ill.

Finally, in desperation, my husband and I waited outside the clinic for my doctor to come to work. We were going to grab him before he entered the clinic and explain to him I needed this medicine or something to help with withdrawal if I couldn't have it. It was unreasonable to expect me to wait for an appointment for a couple of weeks when I was in such a state. The doctor was very nice and understanding and I was so glad that finally someone seemed to feel I wasn't crazy or lying. He validated that what was happening to me was what did happen to people after they took this drug for this amount of time. At last! I was so glad that my terrible experience was going to be over. When we went inside, the lady who makes appointments had such a fit I was very embarrassed! If I could I would've left right then I was so mortified. "She can't do that." she kept saying. She was so angry that I had met the doctor outside and she gave me such horrible looks. The doctor had to calm her, she was yelling that his whole schedule was ruined! I hated to ruin anyone's schedule with my health problems!

What was funny about that was, unknown to me, my period of withdrawal was just about over. When I got a prescription for Zyprexa it no longer worked for me at all, it just makes me tremendously sleepy. Zyprexa is a drug that changes an entire area of the brain, they often give it to anorectics because a weight gain of 10 pounds or more is common. I read in Andrew Solomon's book how he tried unsuccessfully for years to stop taking Zyprexa and takes it even now today. He wanted to stop because he would suddenly become so hungry that he fled his apartment in the middle of the night to get more food. The area of the brain that this drug works on happens to be next door to the hunger mechanism of our brains. It made him carry all this extra weight and he didn't want to be fat, but the withdrawal symptoms were so terrible that he always started taking it again!

I don't blame my doctor, my husband loves free samples and is like a kid in a candy store sometimes asking the doctor constantly for them. He likes free! When this new drug Zyprexa came out the doctor had a lot of free samples and perhaps he didn't know very much about the drug himself. It was funny that he would not give me pain meds because they are so addictive and then he gave me Zyprexa!

My step daughter uses a great deal of sarcasm. She said that it is okay if they mess you up, as long as you don't enjoy it.

I think that if someone had believed me and I had gotten a prescription that Zyprexa would have kept on working. Somehow going through withdrawal made Zyprexa a drug that will never work for me. This is sad as my symptoms of anxiety have gotten so much worse and there is this medicine that will help that I cannot take! I find it a hard cross to bear that people do not believe me. I do believe in strange things like reincarnation and astrology and karma and people mark me off as a flake. I quite like to think that we will live again, what a horrible world it would be if this was the one chance we got! So many people who are forced by circumstances to only suffer and die, all those who die young, and all those people who've lived horrible lives and we are supposed to think they may go to heaven and then they may not but anyway one life is your one chance? I hardly think a loving God would do that. My version of reality might be different from most peoples, but that doesn't make it wrong. (I do keep a great deal of what I think to myself these days) My family came from little towns in Alabama, where poverty was so bad that my father often only had wild berries he had gathered for himself to eat. (His father spent every dime the family had on whiskey) My mother became very ill during the Great Depression and doctors were only seeing the wealthy and so she almost died! My father was brutally raped by another man when he was very young, and he felt as though the whole world hated him and wanted him to die. No one was taking care of my parents and they hardly knew how to take care of children when I and my brother came along. We grew wild, we hit the front door early in the morning and didn't return until nightfall. We played in the woods from dawn until dusk and spent as little time in our own home as possible. If there is one thing I know it is how to endure, I can take a great deal of pain and a great deal of people being mean to me. In fact, all that is just normal. Still I wonder why the world has to be this way for me, now I am an adult and I pay my doctor bills and I have health insurance and I am still no better off than before. When pain does get bad I use medications to sleep through those bad days, I really like Nyquil cold and flu medicine!

The point I am trying to make is that it is a good idea to educate yourself about the medicine you take. We can no longer depend on our doctors. I once read "I'm Dancing As Fast As I Can" about a woman who was told by her doctor to throw her pills in the toilet! She was going through withdrawal but had no idea that was what it was! She, like me, understood that the medicine she was taking had caused it, but she foolishly did what the doctor told her to do. We should understand withdrawal and the body's need for a drug that your body had grown accustomed to. Later she was told that if she had taken just one pill, it would have helped her awful symptoms a whole lot. She suffered needlessly, and she suffered even though she had wealth and a college education and paid a great deal of money for a doctor. She was addicted to Valium. Nowadays you cannot get valium except from a psychiatrist. When a new drug is introduced, sometimes it is a while before doctors know everything about it. I don't understand how this happens, I only know that it happened to me.

I went to the doctor and asked for something for pain just last week, and he told me that these drugs were much too addictive for him to prescribe for me! Is that funny or what??!!!!!!

Uranus

Uranus is the planet of the unexpected. Uranus points to where we rebel. Uranus, quirkily enough, also rules insanity. (When badly aspected) I understood Uranus with 2 keywords, purpose and genius.
Whatever talents you may have are ruled by Uranus, and I call that important. Sometimes we are so used to being ourselves we don't understand that we have a gift at all. A genius doesn't know they are a genius until they finally come to understand that other people can't do the stuff they can, or they are taking much longer to get to the same conclusion. Sometimes, you just don't know. Everyone is a genius at something, and sometimes it isn't so easy to figure out what that something is. Stephen King started writing and no one was jumping up & down and calling him a genius, we had to find him through a circuitous route and now we recognize him. Maybe you are a great organizer or a great mother or a talented conversationalist or someone who makes other people feel good about themselves. You have a purpose and you have a talent. For most of us, this is the same thing.
For me I have to reach for it and work for it. For some of us it doesn't come easily. Once upon a time I thought that if you had a talent you just did something without having to work at it. I was wrong.
I have to write to reach my writing talent. I have to stop mid-work and sometimes mid-sentence and think hard about what it is I'm reaching for. In my tweens and teens I wrote millions of poems for myself. I would write something and then later try to figure out what it meant. It is just that way for me. Understanding comes after I've written something out of the blue that doesn't make sense and then I make it make sense. I wonder sometimes if anyone else does this, or if I'm as rare as a ghost orchid after they've built the malls and gas stations. People go through miles of dangerous mucky swamp to see this rare flower bloom. They say it glows. To me writing is like that, you've tried and tried and at the end you have something rare and of value only because it is beautiful. It's not supposed to glow but it does. It is worth more than the sweat and tears you've shed to get there. To me, the goal is to know.
Some people may have the goal in life to be noticed. Some may want to be important. Some may want to spend idle hours at some seashore working on the perfect tan. Some may want to be well thought of by others, my hubby wants this. I want to know things. There is nothing I want to gain from knowing, I just want to know. I want to know secret things, I want to know every thought someone thinks and exactly what they think about all the time! I've always felt the stain of being different, freakish, outside the norm. I think that is why I have something to contribute as a writer, because I've dug deep for secrets. I dug with some vague hope that I could reinvent myself to be like everyone else. I would learn to talk as everyone did, and do the things that everyone else did and in so doing fool everyone into thinking I was part of the group and not an outcast. I could make myself normal.
It didn't work but on the way I've realized I am not so different. Where I am different is the huge amount of thinking and studying I've done of people. Things happened to me to make me different that were beyond my control and now it's done. I'm me. This is what I focused on. This is my Uranus. My Uranus is this private study of people and the many meanings of words. If you use a word differently it suprises you and throws you off track. It is how poems work. Books work in much the same way, you want to know what will happen as the words disappear and you allow yourself to forget the fiction, the cleverness of the writer, the sleight of hand of the magician, and let yourself forget that it is not real. They call this suspension of reality. Still I think fiction is more real than reality, I'm adding here as a sidenote. Fiction writers often have very good memories and huge chunks of novels are literal truth. The people just have different names. I've come to learn this as I've studied writers along with what they wrote. The very best writers can make you forget you are reading at all, with simple words. They say, cut the adverbs on all the writing sites. They mean for you to achieve this leaness of prose, to imitate what successful writers do. I maintain that these writers probably just wrote first and asked questions later. Stephen King has said he didn't articulate how he wrote for years. Still I am told that writing is something that you can learn how to do, but I cannot fathom anyone taking that much time at writing unless they loved it. It's impossible. Writing requires so much, Mr. King says it is like crossing the Atlantic in a bathtub.
How do you express your talent? The answer is supposed to be the Sign your Uranus is in. Mine happens to be in Leo. Leo happens to be very important in a chart, Leo is ruled by the Sun and the Sun represents us. Leo is where the vitality of the Sun is. Leo is our inner child, here is where we play. My talent is in fun and there it has always remained. I know it is different for other people but somehow I can't grasp this fact. If I am not having fun then work is like a trip to the dentist. Ask any of my former employers. If I am at all sick or even slightly unwell I find it tremendously difficult to work. Even the mildest of marital spats has left me unable to write at all, which makes me highly agreeable to my husband. When I am happy I will graciously work until I drop, I'm sort of unreliable though. I find that I must be optomistic or I shall soon die. I must always think the future contains great & wonderful things. If I become bitter at life I will be as difficult to be with as a person who has just quit smoking & craves a cigarette. I must think in a certain way. My chart is mostly fire, and fire represents inspiration. Leo is the sign of show business and is dramatic and so is my writing. This, I believe is my talent and my purpose.
Uranus rules the unexpected, and I'm told that I obtain luck through change. When Uranus is powerful you can expect the unexpected. Because Uranus is in my 9th house of long distance travel I am lucky in faraway places and foreign lands. Everyone has luck, all of us would like a clue as to where to find ours.

Lilith

They say before Eve that Adam had a wife named Lilith. I guess that wasn't in the King James version of the Bible I grew up reading. There is a connection to the Moon in astrology, and no less that 3 Liliths. One is called the Black Moon, and one is a point in space exactly opposite your Moon on your chartweel and there is an asteroid named Lilith. She is the feminine energy and is often characterized as evil or jealous and the woman scorned. In the world us females may feel weak, but in astrology and in the cosmic world feminine is equal to masculine and in fact just as powerful. I grew up in a household in which females had little power and I was taught this was the way things were meant to be by my mother. Once when I was 18 she told me a great big secret, men have a powerful sex drive that they cannot control and makes it almost impossible for them to think clearly. What a lesson! Women, she said, were the people in the world who had sense.

While my mom was teaching me the superiority of men she was believing privately in the superiority of women!

Lilith's meaning may not at all be clear yet, astrologers are discovering her just as they discovered Chiron in the seventies.

For me with Lilith in the 3rd house of communication and daily activities I read that I have a messy house! I do indeed but is that the meaning of Lilith? Is she nothing more than bad luck?

Lilith does seem to show us one of our weak spots, my hubby has Lilith in the 7th house. He seems to have gone through life arguing and fighting constantly with the women he is involved with. The 7th is about our romantic partners and I am perplexed by this man who seems to think women cause all the problems in the world. Lilith is the woman who doesn't do what he wants her to do and yet at the same time he will have no other kind of woman than an independent and strong-willed woman. (His Venus is in Aries) I guess I was born for the purpose of teaching my hubby about women, because his ideas have changed radically over the years. I no longer think much about his education, I've drawn lines in the sand and he knows not to cross them with me. There is only so much you can do I've learned. I know things. I can tell you what I know, but your experiences have made a deeper lesson than any words can teach. For instance, fear is something you might read about constantly in books and see in movies, but you don't know fear until you're running through the woods away from a hatchet murderer. Your cells remember. What my hubby remembers is that women have hurt him and that I cannot change.

The 3rd house is the house of communication, it's opposite is the 9th house of higher education and publishing. Gemini is the natural ruler of the 3rd, Sagittarius rules the 9th. I believe Lilith to be a lot like Pluto. It is a point of strength and a point of weakness.

Lilith is where I am strong, and that is in communication. I can make complicated things clear and make simple things complicated, it must be a sort of talent but it's one that people don't seem to want to hear. Rather it seems people want to hear what they expect to hear-no wonder that people get bored! Maybe that is why people get drunk at parties, they can say the unexpected and blame it on the Tequila or the Jack Daniels!

I realize that there are more people than in my little corner of the world and hopefully things are different elsewhere, farmers do seems to talk of nothing but the weather!

Lilith is the wild feminine principal, she will protect her children with her life and not think twice about it. She is dark and capable of vengefullness and sarcasm and make someone's life miserable if she chooses but she is not evil. She is us, everyone of us.

10 Things I Hate About You

!) You lie sometimes and don't even know it. A person should at least reach consciousness.

2) You may push me around and feel better for an hour or so but superiority has nothing to do with power - you just are or you aren't.

3) When you say you love me, don't make me slap you.

4) Everytime I bring home a dog I get a lecture about the cost of dog food and then you end up loving the dog so much I have to steal said dog away from you.

5) It's this way in this situation when you are in it, another way when you are not. This is not logical!

6) There are other things to eat besides french fries.

7) You talk to the television. The people on T.V. cannot hear you.

8) You never believe me unless it is what you, also, believe

9)You tell me to save money when you never do so yourself.

10) I can't owe you money if I am married to you.

Hubby does not read blogs, in fact, he doesn't do computers at all but will watch you across the room and feign disinterest as soon as asked about this.

How To Write?

Wanna be writers are always asking published authors how they write, when they write, how many pages a day, and on and on and on. It seems we are seeking some secret formula, some kind of path to follow. Listening, I see there is no way to do it and that's that. I am still mightily interested in how someone does it, such a marvelous thing to do and how do they make it real what is mostly fiction?

If anything Stephen King seems to be somewhat down to earth at times and at others someone kinda wonderstruck himself. He has said many strange things, or what I would call strange. He has said that in writing something he makes it impossible to really happen, he has said that he has this freakish thing in him. Well I guess if you suddenly find yourself in possession of 3 million dollars in 3 years, you might be a little disconcerted. If I can put in my own 2 cents I would say it is precisely that he writes for himself that is the reason for his success. Can I do it? No, I'm saying that is what he did, that he had this mindset, this shy and reserved personality, and he found he could write and he did it and nevermind what anyone thinks. Horror was dead when he arrived but it is as old as time and campfires. Anyone, approaching from a new direction, can make new what was old in writing I believe. Wasn't the horror in Carrie really that fact that people are so awful to a few in school? Who hasn't known such people during their own school years?

It's interesting to note that there seems to be more writers writing in the morning than there are night owls. There are writers who have written entire books and never mailed them out, now that is interesting. There are writers who are combining genres and I think what comes of that is bound to be interesting. It is amusing how many books have been written on yellow legal pads (got to try that). It is amusing how older writers cling to their old typewriters. It is amusing how many How To Write books are written by those never published, and it is interesting how many writers go for a walk when they need an idea. Writing is a creative endeavor, and you don't need a high I.Q. to do it. Paper and pen and you're in business. I love that. Anyone, anytime, can try to do it. Here it is the 4th of July, and what can be more democratic than that?