Capricorn 10° (December 31)

OK so today I’m going to make 2 days worth of meals the plan for tonight’s menu is my version of flounder with gluten free bread crumbs and cow and I’m going to make homemade fried well I’m going to make freaking French fries. The night won’t end well and all too early. It’s a struggle this holiday crap for me it’s not just about family long gone dead are strange it’s about the pain I feel in the happiness for others that’s the real kicker sometimes. Libra is the most verbal of signs Venus tourists voice Venus Libra oration. That’s a very good point that I need to remember for somewhere else so I’m going to cut paste that below. Sometimes when I say the word Venus it gets blocked out by my prudish dictatorship because it thinks I’m saying *****. I keep digging for the new sensation and tourists really is about being sensation and being sensational I suddenly need a pen it would be fantastic if dictation had a personality like Siri as if she had a personality or Alexa he seems to do much better . There is a thin line between sensation and being sensational. Today I feel very fortunate from my upbringing . Even though I was born in a tiny apartment in Jersey City NJ which was no great shakes from which we moved from where we moved in 1972 to Wyckoff NJ into a new development just off the highway barely clinging to some semblance of Superman permanence superiority? We weren’t there for longer than eight years and fine older sibling never got a foothold really except for with a bad crowd always that never changed but I being the youngest I think tried to or just naturally was motivated to become part of the world in which I was living but no one else in my family was. We created a very sort of deep chasm there I wanted to like bring my family along for my ride or I wanted them to be something they weren’t not in an overt way I didn’t know I was doing that or feeling that it wasn’t doing anything but the fact remains I just felt like there was this other level of not belonging based on the backlight family didn’t participate in anything that had to do with the town or any of that . For one season the first year we were there my father coached Little League and obviously I was on the team that was the one and only time and even that scenario revealed something about his personality that was going to remain true for the rest of our lives which was that he gravitated towards the lowest common denominator. Our Little League but it’s made up of 4th and 5th graders in the spring of 4th grade my father coached my team that wins. On our team was 1/5 grader called Sam brain. Same brain was the biggest over Brown bully in our grammar school he was if you had to take upole the worst young human within The George Washington school. And of course he was on our team . And of course he drew negative attention constantly being the rambunctious pre diagnosed whatever mental illness bouncing off the walls bully was. And of course my father thought he is the one for me . He’ll be the one then I’ll give all my attention to . As if my father was like slumming it patronizing indulging some savior complex being comfortable with those who are less than all at the same time block block 

The following blocks of text are exceprts from my first year of  Blagues, nos. 1371-1375. 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.

Whereas Aries is objective and Taurus is subjective energy, Gemini combines the two, we have an energetic two-way street, input output, transmission. The energy of Gemini is literally electric and, moving our way down from Aries-ruled head and Taurus ruled throat and neck, Gemini rules the lungs, and also the arms (wings) while Mercury rules the nerves which  you might say is the electrical system of the body, along with the wiring, those neurons firing into synapes, in the brain. Gemini people are surely nervy and they most easily get pushed to the exhaustion point on that score. Like Mercury, the mind is a trickster and it is literally formed by whatever thoughts are prevailing in our immediate enviroment as we are growing up—the third astrological house of Gemini rules early childhood conditiong as well as our sibling and sibling-like relationships that of our boon companions, such associations forming us the most during these formative years when, if we have the proper rearing, we might have the right choices made for us.

Peter Pan who eschews the word of grown-ups, needing both the company of other lost boys, his mini mob or gang, to reinforce his position as mercurial ring leader and, by the same token, he needs to infiltrate the minds of these other individuals, manipulating and forming their frames of mind to match his own hinged, as it is, on not wanting to grow up, living in a place that won’t recognize the passing of time, the ticking of that clock (inside the croc), forever wrestling with his shadow side which is determined to get away. Perhaps the shadow side of this dual figure is his repressed desire to face aging, death, morality, determined as he consciously is to keep on whistling in the graveyard; perhaps this is the only way he can fly, soar in his ambitions, via the power of positive thought, which can ill afford the entertaining of any limits, even inevitably natural ones. Gemini prefers to live by their wits and can be something of a rogue, a word that combines the good and the bad, into something hopefully benevolently badass. And it can get a little ugly, just as it might hit the heights of experience. The individual who wrote the poetry of Walt Whitman or the person who sang the songs Judy Garland did might possess such divine insights or gifts that are beyond their human ability to bear them.

You’ve know doubt heard of Kubler Ross’s five stages of grief—denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance; well, the whole of Gemini’s life is number three: something of a bargain (as it is for all of us but, again, Gemini people personify this point along with other Gemini experiential points) which needs negotiating, both two sides of the bargaining table comprising the Gemini personality. Gemini is forever making deals with themselves—rationalizing, letting the ends justify the means, allowing for a little hell, some guttersniping, so to reach intended heavenly stars. As such, Gemini’s are the most immersed of all people in the happenstance of human existence with it’s endless interpersonal interaction, details, to-do lists, dealmaking and minutae; and embracing this street-level, well, level of life (instead of struggling with, or feeling dogged by it, like many of us do) they actually elevate the experience of so-called quotidien existence to a more exalted state-of-being. Which begs the question: why do we label these certain aspects of life to be that of mere or banal existence? Compared to what? Why aren’t the workaday elements of life viewed as something sublime if not spiritual; for that matter why do we not view the entireties of our lives as spiritual existence. How did we get the idea that the workings of this world are happening on some solely physical plan devoid of the divine? Well, the answer is simple: The messaging stems from the Judeo-Christian story of that fall from grace, that boot from Eden, (and associative myths world-wide) which the sign of Gemini represents as a metaphysical and metaphorical snap-shot.  The point is we only know this life, we cannot be sure that another one awaits us, so why not approach even the most prosaic elements of it from the perspective that it is all part of the divine choreography we are dancing? The classic gods, with their super human characteristics, lied and cheated and raged and fell into depressions just as we do, chief among these being Mercury, a god of petty mischief and pranks, and yet a divine being all the same. Gemini’s apple doesn’t fall very far from that tree.

Rabbit Rabbit. I’m up at the crack today finishing up a few Gemini thoughts, moving into Cancer, using a recent script, actually, from a show as some inspiration. Now that I’ve stop-started and I’m finally in a groove with all of this it is beginning to feel quite natural and I might be able to speed the plow through this process more readily than I imagined. February, for the most part, must be dedicated to all my theater projects and getting things of that nature up to speed. I’m in fairly good shape on that score. March will be dedicated in large part to putting together drafts for next year’s Haute Astrology books; and then, if all goes as planned, we will take a real journey, the embarkation of which will be ritualized to empower the new metaphoric journey we are also about to take. Then a blissful summer built to last from May through October with an apparent little side voyage to Greece in August. All of this is just around the corner so if I feel in the least stymied or procrastinative, or even productinative (productinating is a word I made up to mean the doing of other things which do need doing instead of the thing you’re “supposed” to currently be tackling).

So I’m moving into the sign of Cancer….If the first (cardinal-fire) sign of Aries is big-bang creation and (fixed-earth) Taurus is the garden, Eden, and (mutable-air) Gemini is a snapshot of  munching that apple, consciousness, the Fall, the Cancer, cardinal-water, is the Flood to wash it all away, to re-create and recover, flood myths promising passage, deliverance, simple change, and promise itself. Moon-ruled Cancer is the energy of Hope without which there can be no possibility. Water symbolizes emotion and intuition. The process of recovery is an emotional one—the Cancer motto is I Feel—one that involves getting to the source of our human emotional being, which is where we tap into our higher power (represented by Cancer’s so-called opposite sign of Capricorn, not actually opposite at all but a higher septave, the relationship between the two providing mountains of metaphorical and metaphysical wisdom to be mined.

Hope floats they say; and we venture to guess that whoever they are, they unknowingly tapped into a Zodiacal understanding; although that Zodiacal understanding might just possibly be of our own tandem (Starsky + Cox’s) inference of its once revelatory, now obvious  (to us) indicia. Back to recovery, which is something we are all in all the time, Cancer people personifying this concept: Noah was a drunk, so recovery to him is personal, microcosmic, just as the world of all humanity is in a Fall (this one exactly mirroring the more intimate, though no less devestating, one which Adam and Eve experienced). The whole thing about putting animals, two by two onto an Ark, itself, needs unpacking: Here we see images of re-pairing, the response to the previous sign of Gemini’s call for duality and division. And what is another word for ark, like in that of the covenant? It means promise.

In recovery we decide what we want to retain, recover, about ourselves, and that which we wish to be washed away, typically elements of self that block or undermine that which we are determined to take on our journey. The fourth astrological house of Cancer is a mysterious one because it rules both the home you come from and  the one you create for yourself; it is, in this way, a verb, a sign of action and movement as befits its cardinal status. Cancer people, as a snapshot of the sign’s energy, are on a journey from birth to mete out that which they want to leave behind from that which they want to characterize their future promise, their early conditioning from their own self-providence. On a less personal level the Cancerian experience is what we collectively pass on—customs, mores, folkways—which is no way divorced from the notions of putting things to rights. In the Greek flood myth, where the pairing of Deucalion and his wife Pyrra, alone, withstand the entire wiping out of humanity, it is the goddess Themis who appears to them, having made it to the other shore, at the point of recovery, to instruct them on what to do next.

Themis is a mysterious Titan goddess whose name literally means “to put in place.” She is the incarnation of the will of the gods, the divine law and order of things, and what must be put in place, in our human experience, to adhere to this mandate. All flood myths are hinged on humanity displeasing (the) god(s), after all; so it follows that those who (have been chosen to) survive are ones who will live in compact with this divine will. Themis knows the future—she created the Oracle at Delphi and was its first oracular diety.

Gosh you know I just need a few minutes to get started here. I am doing double duty by trying to drum up new ideas, or new takes on old ones, sign by sign by sign. Everything is moving as well as it should in the right direction. I think I see other people making great strides rather effortlessly, but nobody even knows the truth about anyone else in actuality. I noticed a rather famous friend unfriended me on Facebook. I take everything personally, I’ve always been that way. What’s changed is how that effects me, which it does at this point extremely little. And anyway, I’m sure this friend has gotten so big now that he isn’t even managing his own social media so I can’t really take it as an affront in any stretch of the imagination. It’s part and parcel of the larger emotions I’m lately feeling. The truth is I feel expansive. And very happy to make and have made myself scarce these past years, moving the many mountains I’ve been doing from deep under and inside them. Meanwhile making appearances, when required, giving no clue that my full occupation of late has been: mole man.

Oh and I know what I was going to say. I was going to say that the sorts of things I’m coming up with anew, that I’m writing in the present tense can actually be the evolutionary philosophy of the new project. Anyway, this is just a reminder to myself to express this thought to S., as cryptic as it might be to you.

After the duplicity of Gemini, Themis separates fiction from fact, demanding open honesty, something even the ancient gods thought made the best policy. Themis is a Titanesss, belonging to a pantheon older than the Olympian gods, with Zeus/Jupiter as their king. Zeus’s Titan father Cronos/Saturn ruled the golden age when there was no vice of any kind and perfect bounty and humans remained youthful, living hundreds of years. Zeus was her only consort—and remember it was he who ordered the flood—and among their children are the Horae, a trio of goddesses, meaning: the right moment, embodying the correctness of order unfolding in time. And Cancerian people do seem to ultimately flow with the go more than the rest of us, though they may perhaps at first struggle, more than we do, too, to float on the everunfolding, specifically in their earliest years. Cancerian typically experience a sense of being held hostage by their childhoods emerging with a sort of Stockholm syndrome brand of affection for their parents whos lifestyle tends to run counter to the Cancerian’s natural order of things.

Speaking of being rhythmically attued: The Moon of course rules Cancer and it represents the mother principle in astrology and myraid other esoteric disciplines. Mother is the source of life, deliverance and nurture; Cancer’s cosmic energy of cardinal-water (cardinal is initiatory and forward moving) echoing that gurgling fountain, spring, source of the rivers running to the sea. Likewise the Moon rules the tides, natural, ordered, ebb and flow, oe’r the estuaries of our existence, the same natural unfolding and right order that Themis and her progeny prescribe. And Cancer people are the most capable of sinking into those natural or cosmic rhythms, as they are one with the same, synching with the process of life and the expectation of its right unfolding. Where the mental sign of Gemini might employ the power of positive thinking or other such tricks as befits its clever and mischievous Mercury rule—manipulate, bargain, wheel and deal, if not pull a few fast ones—to ensure certain successes, Cancer people picture that farther shore, the culmination of goals and fulfillment, meanwhile digging in, in Crablike fashion, keeping their head down, letting time and tide take them to the next correct moment along their journey, content to let it be a cumulative one.

Ironically, as much as the Cancer digs down into his tasks at hand, in the here and now, the rate at which a Cancerian’s outer circumstance changes, in the main for the better, tends to outstrip other sign’s trajectories. To boot, the Cancerian might do the exact same job for eons, their usual routine altering little for decades, success finding them in their own, often very private process of making their dreams come true, seemingly on their own terms. One might argue, the Cancerian themself, that it’s much the opposite—that they live life on life’s terms, taking what it gives them, day to day, making hay while the Sun shines, and lemonade out of any lemons. They rarely chase success, nor do they overthink or strategize—they plot a simple course and patiently tack their way.

I keep having to remind myself that the work I’m doing is great; and that it’s even more amazing that I have the drive and the will to forge ahead the way I do, day after day. Sometimes there is magic but only if we create it. For the past fifteen years I’ve been playing the same theatrical role on the stage of life. The character’s name is Quinn Cox and the show has been running twenty-four hours a day all these many years. I wake every day trying to figure out the next design for living, meanwhile I’m living this present formula, but I’ve always been like that. There is always some new paradigm calling me but I can’t quite articulate it to myself. I get flashes of this reality or that one, but I never get the full picture and I want it pretty badly. And just because said vision has never come clear, I believe it may be about to, as I plow through the stuff on my to-do list (that I want to do the least) during these winter months. Since the Solstice and through the holidays I have managed to make some major headway already; but I’ve also been having extinction bursts of holiday revelry—now, however, I feel deep into what you may have heard me call “second semester” a traditional time of spartan living, acetic thinking and a kind of early lent if you will.

The cardinal-water sign of Cancer, with its associative flood myths (symbolic of recovery), is followed by the fixed-fire sign of Leo, which is about the re-establishment, or restoration, and self-creation, metaphorically and metaphysically speaking. The fire element symbolizes spirit and the fixed quality speaks to a concentrated, stationary, magnetic quality. Fittingly, the ruler of Leo is the Sun which is the fiery center of our planetary system whose creative energy is life giving. One body part ruled by Leo is the heart, which is the center of our being, and it’s etymologically linked hearth is that which offers warmth and protection, gathering others to it. The sign of Leo is a cosmic snapshot of this energy and Leo people themselves are personifications of it. Where Cancerian emotion (that sign’s motto is I feel) moves us toward change, promise and deliverance, the sign of Leo is the promise delivered, fulfilled—Leo’s motto is I will. The inspiring emotion of cardinal-water now gives way to fixed-fire, which is strong and steady burning passion, the eternal flame that burns within all of us, in effect that which we do with the cardinal-fire of Aries (that spark of life within us, our purpose). Leo is the creation, the building upon, the edification of our self-perceived purpose fueled by our will. Aries might be what we want, Leo is what we are willing to do to bring about its full realization. Another body part ruled by Leo is the spine, thus our backbone, our might of will. Not surprising, the Strength card in the Tarot features the lion, king of beasts.

Leo does comprise our ability to rule the lesser, more beastly attributes of our nature. It symbolizes the divine right of kings (and some pretty fierce queens) that burns within all of us. To further delve the meaning of the rulership over the spine: Leo is about standing to your fullest height, embodying the energy of pride, a word that also comprises a group of lions. Leo is where our nobility lies, and as embodiments of that fact, Leo people never let their own majestic compartment slip. We liken cardinal-fire Aries to big-bang creation; and fixed-earth Taurus to the garden, Edenic bliss; Gemini, mutable-air, is the heady consciousness that charcterizes, the fall; and we said Cancer is the flood and also Exodus, the parting of the waters. Leo, it follows, is the age of miracles, the biblical book of Kings like young and gleaming David (and Queens like Bathsheba, associated with feline energy, Sheba being a de rigeur name for your pet kitty. Remember, we all have all the signs (and sign energies) in us; people of a particular sign are simply the best distillations, personifications in identity of, poster children for, that particular energy.

In Greek mythology, Helios is the Sun god-king; and as exalted as that might sound it’s a heavy responsibility. Like his sister Moon, Selene, does every night, he must drive his fiery horse-drawn chariot every night, maintaining a steady course, bridled with heavy responsibility. So is the life of a truly good monarch, the paradox being that they are at once the pinacle ruler but in complete devoted service to their subjects. This helps us understand the default frame of mind of Leo people in the main. They are divinely endowed with a healthy ego and yet they rely upon others loyalty and very audience to maintain it. Authority is a primary watchword of the sign, which goes beyond its face-value meaning of simply being in charge. It is more precisely about authorship, which links to Leo’s astrological fifth house of creation, or more precisely “co-creation with god.”

Leo people are best at giving themselves license, authority, here, adding up to a simple green light. Leo’s have pride in themselves because their main objective is to make themselves proud. If that Cancerian flood myth spells promise (ark, in both senses of the word) then Leo is the keeping of it, the fulfillment of the compact, a word one associates with the rules, say, of a new settlement, which is the perfect metaphor for the Leo experience. The fifth astrological house is that of legacy, and Leo people more readily set upon building their “keep” as it is a signature pledge they make to themselves. Whereve they fix their fire, their passion, they will then build their world around it, seeing that it will provide, too for others on whom they in turn rely to help build their castles, lest they rest on sand.

I’m feeling very much interested, today, in the continuation of the clearing-out that I’ve initiated. In our winter stay-at-home world we have been indulging in a few guilty pleasures, like Friday nights cracking open a bottle of organic red wine and watching Drag Race, you know, life’s simple pleasures. But I’ve become so accustomed to the deep, childlike sleep I experience with nary a drop of even a healthful draught in my system, that it’s more important to me than any fleeting buzz the slightest imbibing might impart. There is such benefit to being a clean liver, the greatest one being the knowledge that you’re doing it. Things like this: they are good for your body of course, but they are all the better for your mind by virtue of the fact that doing right by yourself becomes a kind of silent, incessant prayer. It’s all about energy and it’s fun to change it up on an alchemical level which is what changes in lifestyle actually do.

I need to pick up my yukelele and drop off my boots. I need to learn botany and read everything Robert Graves. I clicked Like on an Aleister Crowley Facebook page and the second I did it I felt sick so I Unliked it straightaway. I am intrigued but I’ve never let myself go there. I studied Theosophy as a senior in college. I brush up agains the occult all the time, but I never quite go there. I want to rearrange all my books and decide how and where to ultimately house them. I want to go bathing suit shopping. I want a VW bus, forest green maybe. I want to make potato pancakes and eat them with sour cream and apple sauce. I’d like to get stoned without feeling edgy and watch a series of old movies. I would like to lie for hours in a hammam and then sip fresh oysters. I’d like to have a lot of mates in the English vernacular and disappear for long weekends to Ireland to fish. Adult male relationships are terribly hard to make unless you wrap it around a sport it seems. I suppose I could work on my piano and play but the notion of being in a dad band frightens me to death not least of all because I am not a dad. I’d like my hair to go white and grow down insead of up or out; and I’d like to wear little suits that still felt roomy.

I wonder: Will it be possible to do all I want to do where I want to do it. And to move around at will like I’ve been doing. To get some kind of residency thing going so even if I have to leave every three months I know that I can come back. I’m excited that things are not too long awaiting, that we are close to the edit on this old life. My brain needs a break that much is for sure. I also needn’t push or torture myself on a daily basis. Peu à peu.

So I’m moving on to thinking about Virgo today.  Whereas Leo is fueled by pride, which is an imporant positive energy until it isn’t, Virgo’s superpower is humility which, by logic of the upward spiral that is the dynamic (not static flat circle) upward spiral of the Zodiac, is stronger than pride. We’ve said it before but the planetary ruler of Virgo is somewhat in dispute; traditionally it falls under Mercury’s rule, which also governs the sign of Gemini; while others believe it is ruled by Chiron, once a planet which was pummeled by asteroids and “disabled”; and others still believe there is a planet Vulcan out there…or rather inthere, orbiting between Mercury and the Sun, and therefore near impossible to detect. Wigned Mercury, the trickster, messenger god, is a perfect match for the mutable-air sign of Gemini; and it’s fitting for the mutable-earth sign of Virgo too, in a sense: Mercury embodies the two forms of magic—the tricky sleight of hand brand that matches Gemini’s mercurial and prankish nature, but also the more substantial form of alchemy which is the primary watchword of the sign of Virgo. Alchemy is akin to medicine, in both cases ridding the substance/body of baser elements; and Mercury’s staff, the Caduceus, is, to this day, the symbol for the medical profession. Mercury was called Hermes by the Greeks and we speak of hermits (alchemists working in secrecy) and all things hermetic, meaning: relating to an ancient occult tradition that encompasses alchemy, astrology (hello!) and theosophy. Chiron, too, the wisest of the centaurs who alone among them rose above his beastly nature was taught by Apollo the art of medicine and herbs and is credited with the discovery of botany and pharmacy.

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.