Libra 22° (October 14)

I am doing my best not to freak out. And I shall continue to do so. We will not only get through this but we shall also find a way to make this the best outcome that ever might have been. My computer had just froze up pretty badly and now my space bar is acting up. I have to be my most fearless now and my strongest self in the face of all this abuse because really it isn’t fair. We will not only survive but will thrive in the face of all this. I will make darn sure that we will move through this and that, when push comes to shove. I didn’t really keep it together but feel down a bit of a rabbit hole. I need to get it totes back together. I will make important changes.                      

The following blocks of text are exceprts from my first year of  Blagues, nos. 986-990. I am reading through all of my Blagues, five per day, and posting some samples here. Now, in my sixth year of writing this Blague, by the time I get to my seventh, I will have journeyed through all the daily Blagues of my first five years. If that’s confusing I apologize. Year seven, I’ll only have to read through year six, once a day.

Sagittarius is the mutable-fire sign. Ruled by Jupiter, named for the chief lightning god (Greek: Zeus), the sign is associated with genius flashes of inspiration and the ninth astrological house of the higher mind. The Centaur is at once a high-minded seer and a savage beast, connecting an ordered conscious (Libra) with a carefully mined subconscious (Scorpio) into a stream-of-consciousness cum superconscious. Sagittarius men try to ride that point between—the mark ‘twain—Samuel Clemens of course, being of Sagittarian stock—questing after the extrinsic, expansive, exotic, exploratory and other exciting, not to mention ecstatic, experiences. In the process of growing third eyes, they may risk ultimate burnout. Jim Hendrix begged the question “Are you experienced?” His fellow psychedelic Sagittarians have nodded in agreement:—Nostradamus, Walt Disney, Charles M. Schulz, C.S. Lewis, Jean Genet, Andrew Carnegie, Beethoven, Winston Churchill, James Thurber, Little Richard, William Blake, John Milton, Gustave Flaubert, Andre Gide, Jim Morrison, Frank Zappa, Keith Richards, Ozzy Osbourne, Billy Idol, Uri Geller, John Malcovich, Brad Pitt, Jake Gyllenhaal And, hazy or no, purple is the color of Sagittarius, a royal hue, dating back to antiquity, associated specifically with the god of wine and supposed disorder Dionysus, the natural inheritor to father Zeus/Jupiter.

Dionysus was called the thigh-born because, when Hera-Juno in all her radiance (see Sagittarius woman above) revealed herself to Dionysus’ pregnant mother she burned; and Zeus grabbed the unborn child and sewed him up inside his thigh—the body part associated with Sagittarius—to complete the baby’s gestation. Thus we have a male born from a male, suggesting natural patrilineage; and indeed Sagittarian males are natural inheritors of their own fathers’ traits, characters and attributes, rarely at odds with father the way many males can be. Indeed Dionysus embodies Nature (typically feminized as) “herself” as a masculine force. And in combining the Apollonian (Libra) energy of ordered outward appearance—symbolized by column-straight oaks and laurels—and the Chtonian (Scorpio) energy of the unseen underworld—portrayed by random, chaotic, gnarly roots—the Dionysian (Sagittarius) experience is symbolized by the (god of the) vine which is just as random and gnarly as roots yet grows upward and outward along those ordered trees. Dionysus (Roman: Bacchus) might have created a disorder via his bacchanals, but he always remained a calm and knowing presence, couched on his dais, holding his staff topped with a pine cone, a nod to the conical pineal gland, the Cartesian “seat of the soul” and the expansive third eye which actually produces calming melatonin. Dionysus is all about expansion through pleasure, the mind and experience.

Akin to the wildly expansive vines associated with Sagittarius’ imagery are the wildly branching lightning flashes—Sagittarius is the sole mutable-fire sign. Planet Jupiter is named for the lightning wielding god. In our human experience, mind expansion is often experienced is through humor—laughter being the release of the shock of breaking through existing boundaries—something which opens us up, frees us from constraint, providing relief. The planet’s namesake chief god Jupiter loved to laugh; he is also called Jove, from whom we get the word jovial. What we as a culture find funny is something, typically absurd, yet right under our nose, that is pinpointed and uttered for the first time. It is that electric connection between the blatant truth of a matter and its fresh realization that inspires bolts of explosive laughter. It requires keen intelligence to observe (Sagittarius’ motto is: I see) then communicate existing elements in our experience that instigates such shocks we humans call humor, which at once open our minds and bring catharsis. Lest we forget that the mythic Centaurs were both sages (wise ones) and shamans (healers). Let’s hear it for the wise and witty wonders of the zodiac: Mark Twain (an invented name speaks to—the mark between— that point of connection!) James Thurber, Charles Schulz, Woody Allen, Billy Connolly, Richard Pryor, Jon Stewart, Ben Stiller, Judd Apatow, Jonah Hill, Rodney Dangerfield, Sam Kinison, Jamie Foxx, Ray Romano, Frank Zappa, Ted Knight, Red Foxx, Fred Armisen, Dick Van Dyke, Andy Dick, Gary Shandling and Bill Hicks.

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We often opine on of the extreme nature of Sagittarius. The sign rules all the exes: excitation, experience, exoticism, exposition, exhaustion of the senses, and so on. The extreme dynamic of the sign is archetypically linked, for women of the sign, to the supreme queen of the gods, Juno (Greek: Hera), who represents womanhood in both its mother aspect—she rules marriage and motherhood—and in it’s most potent aspect—she is also goddess of power and influence. (In her maiden form she is Hebe, and in her crone aspect, the anagrammatical Rhea.) She is a most emphatic deity, if not always an empathetic one, the exhibitionist peacock being her totem animal. Her symbol is an asterisk on crossed stick, denoting her signature radiance. The ride of Lady Godiva—goddess-diva—is a display of her über nature. As in this medieval tale where she puts out the eyes of “the peeping Tom”—Juno/Hera’s favorite form of retaliation was blinding, or fully burning, those who challenged her, the natural consequence of getting too good a glimpse of her sizzling supremacy. It’s a rather ironic nod to Sagittarius’s motto: I see. The image of a naked Lady atop a wild mare is indeed the very image of the female Centauress, proudly displaying herself in all her glory. Sagittarian woman are inheritors of Juno’s power. They often exhibit a glamazonial stature, or have a wide and brimming expression; they make scenes, take stands, whether in public or personal protest, or in celebration of self or something universal. (On the flipside of the theme, they can be just as skittish of attention, often audacious and wary, in turns.) As a rule, though, they will not be overlooked. If anything, they risk overexposure. Sadges designed to dazzle or otherwise cause a stir: Jane Fonda, Ellen Burstyn, Daryl Hannah, Kim Basinger, Judi Dench, Kaley Cuoco, Tyra Banks, Anna Faris, Susan Dey, Liv Ullman, Sarah Paulson, Agnes Moorehead, Billy Jean King, Sarah Silverman, Amanda Seyfried, AnnaSophia Robb, Katherine Heigl, Honor Blackman, Julianne Moore, Natascha McElhone, Ann Coulter, Katie Holmes, Milla Jovovich, Lucy Liu, Christina Applegate, , Bette Midler, Tina Turner, Mayim Bialik, Sinead O’Connor, Vanessa Paradis, Taylor Swift, Miley Cyrus, Britney Spears, Nicki Minaj. Pow!

As Sagittarius is ruled by planet Jupiter, named for supreme ruler of the gods (Greek: Zeus), it follows that Sagittarius women draw on the Juno archetype, the aforementioned and undisputed queen of heaven and goddess of women and power—as ever the twain shall meet—akin, as it is, to knowledge, the major attribute of the higher minded ninth astrological house corresponding to the the ninth sign of Sagittarius. Don’t you just love the notion of power being personified in a female deity? Surely, it’s a power that has been a target of suppression. And yet, of all the female signs laboring under a patriarchal paradigm for centuries, Sagittarian women managed most to distinguish themselves, wielding force and influence on a global scale, in probably the only way historically afforded them: by way of publishing, another major attribute of the ninth astrological house—along with philosophy, belief systems, higher education and all means of mind expansion and genius. An otherwise isolated world of disenfranchised people, women especially, would never have experienced the brilliance—Juno’s blinding radiance—of Jane Austen, George Eliot, Emily Dickinson, Louisa May Alcott, Willa Cather and others whose inheritors include Madeline L’Engle, Dawn Powell, Joan Didion, Rita Mae Brown, Sarah Silverman and, by extension, artist Marina Abramovic. Fittingly, the powerful Sagittarius female writer has often penned work along themes of the the female estate, or the power of higher-mind consciousness, or both. Don’t get us started on Ellen Burstyn—have you read her autobiography Lessons In Becoming Myself? And let us not forget the authoress of I, Tina whose autobiography is hinged on her personal struggles against male oppression. Tina herself is a hinge pin of the Sagittarius archetype, being something of a showgirl and a showboat. For Sagittarius power isn’t just expressed in expository writing, its exhibited in an overt brand of talented expression that rarely shies away from over-exposure. And in that tradition we give you, along with Cyrus, Minaj, Swift, Spears, Aguilera, Turner and Midler: Betty Grable, Maria Callas, Nelly Furtado and, without so much as singing a note, Anna Nicole Smith.

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Just don’t call it a comeback: In many ways the trajectory of the Capricorn man can be a cautionary tale. Unlike his slow and steady sister, he tends to peak early then backslide, a literal dissident, falling from favor, only to climb his way back into public awareness or celebrity. The Capricorn totem is only half goat, remember. The Sea Goat boasts a fish tail which makes sustaining a climb rather tricky. Like the goat god, Pan, the original mood-swinger who would frolic wildly, then turn on a dime, running and wailing for cover and comfort, Capricorn man can get caught up in a frenzy of worldly status, delights, certain hedonism and over-exposure, resulting in an often visible personal fall. He’s complicated. The word tragedy actually means: goat song. Goat deities were culture gods who brought sophistication and certain decadence into the world—historically, we know these dynamics go hand in hand: Culture actually enriches during the downfall of a society. The Sea Goat is the very image of a being emerging from the primordial soup, like an actual culture growing from the germy world of a petri dish, even the most advanced forms of life having originated from the slime. And so you can never really keep a good Capricorn man down. He’s complex. He always seems to grow back even stronger and more enriched by his personal downfalls or minor tragedies into the most enduring and thoroughly more seasoned a character. Though we’ve yet to see the return of a Mel Gibson or, even, a Nicholas Cage, we would happily embrace and applaud the reconstituted, self-redemptive Capricorns likes of Jude Law, LL Cool Jay, Anthony Hopkins, Jared Leto, Bradley Cooper, Ralph Fiennes, Ricky Martin, Jason Bateman, Jon Voight, Patrick Dempsey, Rod Stewart, Ted Danson, James Earl Jones, Muhammad Ali (G.O.A.T. i.e. greatest of all time), Jared Leto, Danny McBride, Dax Shepard, Tommy Morrison, Robert Duvall, Frank Langella, Shawn Hatosy, David Caruso, Julian Sands, Oliver Platt, Desi Arnaz, Jr., Dave Grohl, Howard Stern. Apparently even J.D. Salinger is yet to have another peak in his career own posthumous career as his stash of unpublished rolls out into the public light this year.

The Capricorn male Goat is the male archetype of the winter season (surely, the new-born babe in Christian lore wasn’t a Capricorn but a Pisces as would befit a Jesus Fish): Capricorn is ruled by Saturn (Greek: Cronus), named for the old Titan king of the gods, since retired. He carries a sickle, prototype of Old Father Time, who, with and his sister-wife Rhea, ruled the Golden Age, when peace and harmony prevailed and nobody had to work to eat as the earth provided in abundance and when people lived to be hundreds of years old with a youthful countenance, dying peacefully in their sleep. Ah, the good old days. Saturn’s namesake Satyrs are, of course, goats, saturnine (gloomy) and saturnian (excessively lustful) which does speak volumes on the Capricorn man’s character. In the Canaanite mythos, Baal is the goat-god prototype of Moses, that mountain climbing geezer whom god commanded to build a tabernacle out of goat hair. Now there’s an idea. Capricorn: tenth sign. Moses: ten commandments—rules to live by—the Capri-corn is the goat horn of plenty signifying the cosmic energy of containment, preservation, resource, restriction, structure and stricture. Moses isn’t hippy dippy like Jesus. Moses has conditions. He is the grand-father authority. The original middleman. Church and religiosity as opposed to direct spiritual connection. Structure and discipline make Capricorn men sticklers for all things comme il faut. They feel a responsibility to hold the (goat-hair) fabric of life together. Tradition! And it explains the need to impose rules in a world where, one skeptically suspects, few folks are moral. Capricorn men do It right, which is adorable when applied to social etiquette—how to serve a cocktail, what weight cloth to wear in what season, or on which pinky to place a signet ring. They can be flawless in worldly doings. But, on the shadow side, practicing what they preach proves difficult; and just as their aesthetic includes a golden-age decay their desires can be likewise decadent. Only half cloven with a fish tail, the sea goat loses footing and backslides, dissident, toppling from Sinai or Olympus, allowing themselves to be scapegoated for a multitude of sins. In effect, Capricorn are at once the most exalted and most human of all beings. And while they may not be perfect, they can be the hottest, most interesting, grandest daddies of them all: Cary Grant, Danny Kaye, David Bowie, Bradley Cooper, Orlando Bloom, Denzel Washington, Ryan Seacrest, Kit Harrington, Michael Stipe, Steven Soderbergh and arguable fall guys Jim Carrey, Andy Kaufman, Elvis Presley, Richard Nixon, Tiger Woods, Phil Spector, Gerard Depardieu, Jim Bakker, J.D. Salinger, Rush Limbaugh, Mel Gibson, J. Edgar Hoover, Martin Luther King, Jr.

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As the sole cardinal-earth sign, symbolized by a mountain, Capricorn is as initiative, directive and pioneering as the other cardinal signs of Aries, Cancer and Libra. But, being in the element of earth, we aren’t subject to any fiery aggression of Aries or emotional urging of Cancer or ideological instigation of Libra. Rather, Capricorns scale, or move, mountains, slowly, quietly, over Time, with little regard for notice, let alone, notoriety. Capricorn woman is her own authority, looking to herself, and her own growth and achievement. On the shadow side, if she’s not tending to her own success and fulfillment, she will embody melancholy, elevating it to monumental status. A daughter of Saturn, old father Time, she isn’t lamenting but she does draw on the past, the golden days of yore, whether her personal own or universal ones. She thus projects a timeless, classic quality—not one prone to trends or obvious taste or behavior. She is an elegant creature disposed of an unapologetically self-contained character. You go to the mountain—she doesn’t come to you. Thus Capricorn has gained the reputation of being haughty, high and mighty; which is rarely the case. She merely personifies an ascended state of being that isn’t subject to scrutiny or censure, especially not by any patriarchy. She inhabits a private and rarified emotional retreat that serves her need for self-preservation; and while other signs might find her modus operandi too lonely-making to adopt themselves, she cultivates an enduring quality of self-reliance that trumps any need for outside validation or even support. Like a creature in hibernation, a nod to this winter sign, she conserves her energy for both the time and the travel ahead. She knows where she’s going, but is in no rush to get there. Her pace may be off-putting to others, but she is as sure-footed in her ascent as her symbol goat, a sea-goat actually, with a long fishy tail, symbolizing the store of emotional insight and intuition she carries with her and continually draws upon in her singular life journey, which she can be reluctant to share with, not to burden, others. Ah, those iconic Capricorns: Janis Joplin, Susan Sontag, Ruth Wilson, Diane Keaton, Dolly Parton, Kate Moss, Christy Turlington, Carla Bruni, Helena Christensen, Sade, Joanna Newsom, Marianne Faithfull, Mary J. Blige, Patti Smith, Pat Benatar, Annie Lennox, Marlene Dietrich, Stella Starsky (born the same day as Dietrich, no big stretch there), Ethel Merman, Imelda Staunton, Gypsy Rose Lee, Dame Maggie Smith, Dame Shirley Bassey, Nigella Lawson, Zooey Deschanel, Tippi Hendren, Dina Merrill, Holland Taylor, Sienna Miller, Mary Tyler Moore, Betty White, Maureen Dowd, Simone de Beauvoir, Ava Gardner, Sissy Spacek, Susan Lucci, Katey Segal, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Eartha Kitt, Tracy Ullman, Nichelle Nichols, Anna May Wong, Betsy Ross.

Nichelle Nichols.

It’s from the grand mother goddess Rhea Cronus that we derive the word crone, the wise woman, the goddess in her wizened third aspect. Rhea is the Titan mother of the Olympian gods who saved her son Zeus from being gobbled to death by her husband, Cronus (Saturn), taking goat form as Amalthea to feed him from her horns o’ plenty. She also bequeathed her estate of orgiastic rites, leopards and wild retinue to her grandson Dionysus, Zeus’s heir apparent. The noisy cymbals are named for her as she is also called Cybele. She is the archetype of preservation, the personification of Capricorn’s cardinal-earth energy, emblemized by the aforementioned mountain—indeed, Rhea is the mountain mother who made her home on Mt. Ida. Capricorn women—Parton, Spacek, Fanny Bullock Workman—do love their mountains. The zodiac’s Mrs. Beasley—gunnysacks and granny glasses not withstanding—the Goat woman rarely thinks of herself as The Second Sex, despite it being the ironic title of Capricorn Simone DeBeauvoir’s tract. She naturally wears what might be traditionally considered men’s clothing. Enter Annie Lennox, Marlene Dietrich, Paula Poundstone, Patti Smith, Diane Keaton, Susan Sontag and even Mary Tyler Moore who fought a network to be able to sport her aptly named Capri (Goat) pants.

Capricorn woman makes no apologies for herself, neither explaining nor complaining. She is endurance incarnate who achieves over time. But she’s no mere climber—she personifies the astrological super power of ascension, for she is not a subscriber to struggle. She rises to the top of her achievements—the crème de la crème—via an outsized faith in her inner resource and the slow, steady outlasting of others who, by comparison, seem like flashes in the pan. They do, as the above list of Capricorn icons suggests, boast career longevity and often have their greatest successes later in life.

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Aquarius is Leo’s so-called opposite on the cosmic wheel. Leo is associated with our Sun, while Uranus-ruled Aquarius is likened to a distant Star, the Tarot card of the same name depicting the wondrous Waterbearer. Likewise, the legendary archetypes of the signs are related. For instance, whereas male Leo draws on the brazen Sun-king Arthur, Aquarius men expresses the visionary character of Merlin who, incidentally “lives backwards”, coming from the future, an attribute of the Aquarius-ruled eleventh house of the Zodiac. In simple terms: the Aquarian can seem alien, out there—in truth, he’s given glimpses of what is to be, to which the rest of us aren’t always as privy. In his best light, he is ahead of his time—a progressive, liberal, egalitarian with a scientist’s mind bent on freeing humanity from passé conventions that bind. This can see him being held up as some kind of guru, a power that can sometimes go to his egg head. He can be as emotionally distant as the future and as surprisingly unpredictable as a sudden mutation— he is a personification of that very quirk—which, if you know your biology, creates a new, evolutionary path that ensures the survival of the species. Think about it: Charles Darwin, Nicholas Copernicus, Wolfgang Mozart, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Edison, Galileo, Abraham Lincoln, Lewis Carroll, Grigori Rasputin, William Burroughs, James Dean, Paul Newman, Charles Dickens, Peter Gabriel, Ashton Kutcher, D.W. Griffith, Langston Hughes, Bertolt Brecht, Anton Chekhov, Federico Fellini, Phillip Glass, Huey Newton, John Travolta. Oh, and did you ever notice how many of your Aquarian male friends have bat-like teeth? Hello: Michael C. Hall, Eddie Izzard, Robbie Williams, Christian Bale, Eddie Van Halen. No really, it’s a thing—check it out.

The classic Greek male Aquarian archetype is Ganymede, a beautiful shepherd boy whom Zeus, in eagle form, whisked up to Olympus and immortalized as his cup bearer. As a youth, the Aquarian male is likewise open to being taken under the wing of older and wiser mentors who promise a more exalted existence. But who’s zoomin’ who? Under this fixed-air sign ruled by Uranus—the Sky God of the Universe—Aquarian men do seek a more heavenly, other worldly rather than earthly, experience of life; whether that translates to living a utopian vision; a rarefied lifestyle; being held up as some sort of guru, demagogue, demigod; or getting lost in futuristic, scientific dreams and visions. The Aquarian is naturally detached—one might argue that they are thus the most healthy, emotionally, rarely falling prey to codependence; although they tend to breed it in others, and in spades. The Arthurian Ganymede would be Galahad, pure enough to reach the grail and receive the manna therein, which is really what is happening with Zeus elevating his beloved boy to Olympic heights. Grace and Truth are the provenance of the sign of Aquarius and men born under it are poised—free from excess restraint of human interaction—to be completely open to, er, receive, and be taken up, by these principle-energies. Eternally youthful Aquarian love objects with a strong calling, or those who play the part or simply look swell in a Speedo: Mark Spitz, Greg Louganis, Steve Reeves, Lorenzo Lamas, Dane DeHann, Freddie Highmore, Cristiano Rinaldo, Elijah Wood, Jeremy Sumpter, Harry Styles, Chord Overstreet, Joseph Gordon Levitt, Taylor Lautner, Justin Baldoni, Andrew Keegan, Nick Carter, James Dean, Justin Timberlake, Casey Spooner, Billie Joe Armstrong, Matt Dillon, Brandon Boyd, Ashton Kutcher, Neal Cassady, Burt Reynolds, Tom Selleck.

To view the original Sabian Symbol themed 2015 Cosmic Blague corresponding to this day: Flashback! The degree point of the Sabian Symbol may at times be one degree higher than the one listed here. The Blague portrays the starting degree of for this day ( 0°,  for instance), as I typically post in the morning, while the Sabian number corresponds to the end point (1°) of that same 0°-1° period. There are 360  degrees spread over 365/6 days per year—so they nearly, but not exactly, correlate.

Typos happen. I don’t have a proofreader. And I like to just write, post and go! Copyright 2020 Wheel Atelier Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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