Capricorn 15° (January 5)
A repeat on the sleep front (there wasn’t much of it), but I am chalking this up, in part, to the political climate and events, there, unfolding, plus the domestic situation with El Fuckface. On top of those things, the dietary shift I’ve made with my resolute New Year, is probably leaving my body wonder where the relief and impetus to rest is now coming from. So I slept in and had just about enough time to doing the morning chores before setting off food shopping—tonight will be our usual salmon, avocado, stewed tomatoes and spring green salad—before meeting with realtor and seeing our first house together. The house was perfect butt the location was a non-starter, down a dirt road, at the end of a cul de sac, crowded with other homes, passed ’76 style American flags and Mary statues on a half shell. But we have the ball rolling and that is the important part. I had a chunky, curried sweet potato soup awaiting us upon return; and I decided that I would do some physical work, early spring cleaning. The beauty of this time of year is the short three months of darkness before equinox, the best time to get some major work done and to clear out one’s body of toxins and the like, and then the advent of Spring which is so motivating and inspirational. Lent begins this year on February 17, and lasts forty-six days, ending April 3 (did you know that Lent doesn’t include Sundays? I didn’t). But I’m a lapsed Catholic, so…. Still, at lunch I believe it was, I had mentioned that I cross myself pretty much on the reg, which is apparently something we, in this household, share. I had some back and forth with Ci T, who is full of excuses and deflection, so I will let that now be. I suppose it is validation enough to know that these Vermeuels have always been stuck-up and self-mythologizing. Good to know.
So after lunch I did some more emptying out of the basement and there was a hand weight on the work bench that rolled off and onto my left foot and I was convinced I broke something but things were able to wiggle so it seems I have avoided that fate. Oh, what I meant to say is that as we left the house today, El Fuckface glared at us. He has been doing that and I am fine with him doing it to me but I really take offense that he is doing it to S. and it is menacing and not okay. I will have to address tomorrow and I’m no longer waiting for counsel to beam in. People have to step up or they are going to be given the boot. I’m tired of always making allowances for others.
The following blocks of text are exceprts from my first year of Blagues, nos. 1396-1400. 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.
Brad will be over today and I will have been under the misconception that I had more time to focus on what required it. I’m not really sure what went down. All I know is that I wasn’t very much dealing with reality today and rather ran and hid from the work at hand. I did quick trip to the shops then just sat by the fire, slowly easing into this day back into writing and other obligations. I did reach out, I don’t know if I mentioned, to see if JCM might comp us for his show, in which case we will go back up to Boston Saturday. I feel that some of my old injuries might be coming back to haunt me and I am no longer longing but aching to get back to my ocean or at least bay beach walks. We are definitely checking a lot off the list this week and I feel myself in overall preparation for clearing any number o decks. I know I spent the morning feeling that feeling of there being something missing; and I know that I have a tendency to what to fill those empty spaces; but I have learned, am still learning, to let these feelings pass. To let them move you to another place. If you just placate them you end up steps back from where you need be.
So I can do things like rearrange the budget. Word some emails to folks, Matt and Tim B. especially. But also someone like Rick. And to Barry too. I can also tell stories about Juliana and playing characes or Kip and our daytrip to Walden pond or the bleak feeling of moving to New York and how I never really shook it. I can get all the grant work underway. I can dill in the slots as best I can for next festival. I can also start to word my outreach to the existing folks, to the missionary folks, to the hotel folks, to the realtor folks, to the performers I’d like to ask for help. For the individuals I need to make up my Sparkler audience. All of it. It can be fun overall me thinks. If I can just let the pieces fall into place where they may. Healing is true happiness. And to that end I shall continue to make some good food this week. I am a little tired of doing so much of the cheffing and schlepping but such is my life. Until it changes. Which it very well may do, and on a dime. I am no longer married to any outcomes. I don’t have any family to keep me anchored and friendships I feel have become one-way streets for the most part. Is it just our generation or did people always become best friends with their grown children to the near total exclusion of everything else.
I have resentment, clearly. The result of not putting myself first in this life, for which I only have myself to blame. But every day provides a fresh opportunity and today I’m going to take it. I know I have the power to reel in all the external nonsense in my life. For starters you will not find me visiting certain “relatives” any longer. This year has proved that trying to relate to these people has become the crazy you do when you expect different results from the same old actions. And anyway, the energy vibration is so low that I simply can no longer survive it. I am going to hold out for Parigi when it comes to the next local, going through all the things that need spring cleaning and flinging. Does one really need to be a part of LinkedIn or are all the emails I get about people (friends?) doing stuff there just part of some propganda campaign to get me to post there?
All is propoganda. We are living in the Orwellian midst of it. The animal farm is formidable. The poetry of the day, profound. We find it in ourselves to change the conversation. We are not powerless; we push back.
Knowledge, philsophies, belief-systems all belong to the Sagittarian estate. “Knowledge is Power,” said Auntie Mame, a modern emanation of the female archetype, the sister-wife of Jupiter, Juno (Greek: Hera) who was goddess of women, but of power and knowlege too (as e’er this particular twain shall meet?) as it was her divine gift to bestow omnipotence or omniscience (or both) upon Paris who didn’t choose her best-in-show in his eponymous Judgement. Supreme power is what makes Jupiter/Zeus and Juno/Hero the couple to beat on Mount Olympus. And like Jupiter who can shoot lightning fire from his finger tips, Juno, too, possesses the ability to radiate outward from her entire being in such brilliance that it blinds and sometimes completely combusts those who behold her thus beaming. And speaking of knowledge: Historically, Sagittarius women in the greatest number comprised the list of most successful, world-renowned women writers to achieve global recognition. Austen, Dickinson, Cather, Wharton, Sand, Alcott, Emily Bronte the list goes on and on, proving how the proliferation of knowledge, to be an author who catches like wild fire at a time before the telegraph, and not that long after the printing press, is tantamount to greatest power and influence over the minds of many. And how else could a woman become a global sensation but to radiate outward in the expression of her creative intellect. The sign shares an “opposite” axis with Gemini, the buzzy mutable air sign of information which feeds into said Sagittarian knowledge. It also takes the dual energy of Gemini and combines it into somethint tertiary—again, that mark ‘twain.
One such person Hera burnt was Semele, the pregnant mortal mother of Dionysus. But she didn’t have to do it herself this time; instead she tricked her into asking Zeus to revel himself in full glory, which had the same combustive result; and Zeus had rescue the unborn Dionysus, sewing him into his own thigh (the body part ruled by Sagittarius) to finish his gestation. The thigh is the body part ruled by Sagittarius and the myth speaks to the struggle for power between the sexes, too. Jupiter gives birth to his own son, now, usurping the most feminine power to bring forth life. And Juno detests Dionysus more than any other god. Her dislike for him symbolizes the uneasy power strugle between the traditional ancient force she embodies and the would be usurpation of this power by the patriarchy whidh is personified by this “new” male god, inheritor of Jupiter, or his own youthful (re-)incarnation.. Dionysus is a most Sagittarian archetype in his own right, being the god of extremism in a number of forms. He is the ecstatic god of the orgy and, of course, wine, the classic drug of choice for expanding ancient minds, debatably associated with disorder.
We do see his character in famous outré male figures like Nero, Blake, Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, Ludwig van Beethoven and of course Twain who came and went with Haley’s comet. There is something of the wild man in every Sagittarius, a nod to being the sign of the Centaur, thus half beast; while Dionysus represents nature asmale, he is god of ritual madness and religious ecstacy, a liberator and rule breaker and the only Olympian god to have a mortal parent. He isn’t pre-civilization wild, but rather embodies liberation from the restraints of existing society, the return to a natural state. Thus his rites entailed the drinking of his wine and frenzied dancing, opening up the consciousness to altered arguably higher states while recapturing the wild animal state of being as well and a return to primordial nature. Though it mightn’t have appeased Hera, Dionysian cults and rites were mainly associated with, and driven by women, along with slaves, outlaws, foreigners and the otherwise marginalized. The rites included dancing to rhythmic beats, flinging ones head back, so to break on through to the other side. Sagittarius is the energy of lightning flashess of genius, where it borders on madness, blowing ones own mind. We still see this same triggering of ecstaticism in evangelical churches, in voodoo practice, and in native american rituals. Sagittarius is the sign of the jazz, rock ‘n roll and the Beats (itself a combined duality of being beaten down and also beatific, raised high, all at the same time).
What dreams may come. Two clients today. What I’m realizing is emerging as an overall client theme this year is pulling triggers. It’s time. A. and K. each in their own way are ready, willing and able. I will drive to Orleans and speak to Darry. She has a chilling Boston Marathon terrorism story to tell. I notice if I don’t concentrate on what I’m writing I may write words that are similar to those I’m stringing together, first, in the narrative in my head, mostly sound-alikes, but they might be strange ones indeed. I do not have longevity in my family and on my nervy Irish side especially the minds tend to burn brightly but extinguish early. That may just simply be my fate. We shall see. Get thee behind me eight ball. En route to creating new memories, I dissolve myself in the forceful soup, enough, purified by detachment (Aquarius) and free to roam the particle landscape, pixelated. I dreamt of little boxes containing various sized tiny balls, bellets, colored the palest robins egg blue each collection of miniscule spheres could be put into some kind of projector where it they translated, all together, into a single film. I had about a dozen of these collections. Some of the smallest pellets, like dust, were getting lost and I wondered what ill effect it might have on the short motion pictures they equalled and generated. The actual date of this dream was morning of Mardi Gras some several days hence. Why I feel it’s important to say that currently beats me.
Capricorn is a correction itself to the excesses of the previous sign of Sagittarius. I write a single sentence and then stop. It is the cardinal earth sign one translation of which is a mountain, a cone, offering containment, singularly, or in a range. My arms often sieze when i write, energy bottling up. It’s not even eight in the morning. I don’t actually have to do anything. I set myself deadlines, the nearest of which is the start of the astrological new year. That’s just the way it is going to be. From this day forward, friends, let’s see the humor and get ourselves back on track. We all have different means of finding some meaning and some relief. I realize that I am triggered about personal life issues all the time since the start of this administration. Woe it is to all of use. I wish I could help “the base” (play on words?). There is no reason to make excuses. I look for reasons for being a lazy git but there aren’t any. So what I’ve decided to do was just shut up and figure it all out and forge ahead as best I can and I will have produced something, anything.
Beginning tomorrow I must start the new routine. I must read for at least hour per day. Television, such as it is the winter entertainment will be relegated to the back burner by spring in anycase, despite the premier of GOT third season. My goal is not to watch any more series otherwise. I’m a doc queen, always have been always will be. I will feel so good about myself if I just focus on what positive thing at a time. So I will feature a book a day from my library while reading at least one a week. Maybe do a cosmic book club theme per week. We are making all of the websites fertile and exciting. All the words I have to say about the festival will be posted on those pages. I will share old shots from the archives, one a day on Instagram. I’m happy to be returning to the Marlton. It will be wonderful to book ten clients over, say, five days, working in the mornings. It is one of our homes away from home that’s for sure. Otherwise we are Eliot queens of the first order. I am always feeling this close.
Oh, right. I have no clients today. So it will be a day of catch up on other fronts, which is fine and fun and a long time coming. I’ve asked E.H. to join our board. A friend is divorcing another friend. And I am the luckiest man alive (sometimes I feel). Although that feeling is more fleeting than it should be. I will be asking future favors from my friends and I will be casting quite the large net in the process. Anyway we might agree that I am doing my best. I might be able to sneak out of here and get one last bit of hurrah on if possible. That is to say if I do two more fruitful timed writings. I have a lot out there spinning now which is great. Some thoughts I had on simplifying things: We developed a unique philsophy of twenty-four basic personality types based upon the archetypal power of each of the binary gender sun signs. Now we are going places with it. This is our strength. We are mystics, you can modify it with the word modern if you want to.
Capricorn is a correction itself to the excesses of the previous sign of Sagittarius. It is the cardinal earth sign, one symbolic interpretation being a mountain, something conical offering containment with alone or in a range. The horn too, akin to a mountain (the Matta Horn, or mother mountain), as befits this sign of the goat. Capri-corn literally means goat horn, the cornucopeia, or horn of plenty and the container of said bounty. Coming off the sign of Sagitarius which is expansion, growth, more, more more. Capricorn says enough is enough (Donna Summer is born under the sign). Capricorn is the energy of containment and restriction and thus of preservation. Mountains symbolize permanence if not the eternal itself. This fits the sign’s rule over the astrological tenth house which rules traditions. The planetary ruler is Saturn, named for the deposed god of the good ol’ golden age, (Greek: Cronos), who carried a scythe or sycle, with the planet symbol itself, even, recalls; he’s the prototypical old father Time, his Greek name linked to the chronological. His wife Rhea (Cybele or Ops, mother of the gods) is the mountain goddess in her mountain fortress, her diadem a turret; and she took god form, as Amaltheia, the mythic goat whose horns contained ambrosia, which she fed to her infant child Zeus, whom she hid away, so he might escape the fate of his elder five siblings who were swallowed at birth by Saturn who had a prophecy of usurpation by his offspring eternally hanging over his head.
Rhea means ease and Cronos is a deposed god, now, over the hill. Capricorn energy is retiring, retreating, restoring, reserved. It is the power of restraint, one such superpower Capricorn people possess. Capricorn is quality over quantity, a mountain of personal reserve. Talk about staunch character. The golden age which the Titans Cronos and Rhea ruled was thus called because it was a paradise, an arcadia devoid of any vice or lack where gods and men lived together, the latter for a monumentally long time. There was no ambition as the world was endlessly bountiful and provided. At their best Capricorn people embrace a similar mindset, refusing to struggle, though nobody works harder. Their emotional landscape is steep and rocky and not without some major landslides, but this inspires their development of sure-footedness and stamina. Endurance is the Capricorn way, which is the true metaphorical take-away of the sign’s grand-parental energy. We save up for retirement, just as we keep our reservoirs pure, whether real or symbolic of own resources, or those of our cultural tradition.
The Capricorn motto is I use which is to day I don’t waste, neither time nor energy, or fritter away that which is worth preserving on that which doesn’t take, but might only get, one higher. The goat is built for the ascent……
The eight dwarf is Snore-y. I haven’t seen my wife at night for the last two days because I am apparently a machine-gun earthquake at night these days. Today was strangely fun. We had a favorite client in the a.m. and then I did some yeoman’s work around house, mainly the kitchen, and drove to the dump and such. I have to say these are the things I actually love the best: don’t tell anyone. E.H. wrote to say she is joining our board and I’m so excited. I finally got outside and cleaned off both cars (otherwise I wouldn’t have gone to the dump where I sometimes wish I could stay, if that make sense). We are expecting a dumping of snow tonight and already going to Boston tomorrow to see JCM looks bleakish. We are troopers, so if there is any chance we can make this happen you know we will. I got really riled up working with a client. Sometimes it’s so hard not to empathize and take on all their pain and that’s what I feel I confronted today. As I’m writing this i just got this weird sense of relief in my neck; either that or I’m having a stroke because it felt a lot like a clot suddenly releasing into my bloodstream. Then again I do have quite a vivid imagination. So far so good!
The Capricorn motto is I usewhich is to day I don’t waste, neither time nor energy, or fritter away that which is worth preserving on that which doesn’t take, but might only get, one higher. The goat is built for the ascent but here’s the rub: Capricorn is the Sea Goat, and it has this fishy bit, which carries paradoxical meaning. Water sybmolizes intuition something Capricorns have in abundance, it also signifies emotion which we hope will fuel the Capricorn, not drag them down. The Sea Goat is also the perfect being to inhabit a metaphorical moutain-lake environment, the reservoir formed by restrictive power. Shan-gri-la, like golden-age Arcadia, where nobody ages. Just as the cardinal-water sign of Cancer, the axis-sign opposite Capricorn, is the source, Capricorn is the resource; and just as Cancer is associated with the archetype of Cinderella, so is Capricorn personified as the fairy god mother, a female personification of one’s higher power. Capricorns, whose birthright energy is faith, tend more than others to be one and the same with their higher power. And on the male side, we associate going to the mountain with, among other archetypes, old Moses, who let’s himself go grey via the experience, just as baby Moses, going from mother to mother along the (cardinal-water) river, is associated with Cancer, ruled by the Moon, the mother principle in astrology. Just as the fairy godmother comes with strict instructions (the sign of Capricorn at the very top of the Zodiacal wheel, at twelve o’clock, the stroke of midnight) so too does Moses receive and thus deliver a list of rules and regulations, restrictions—shalt nots!—to lay on us, ten to be exact, the number associated with Capricorn. God also told Moses to build his tabernacle out of goat hair, one might guess, because of it’s enduring, eternal qualities.
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. Get your HAUTE ASTROLOGY 2020 Weekly Horoscope ebooks by Starsky + Cox.
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