Madness

I haven't been writing for a few days because on Tuesday I had an operation on my big toe to remove a spur of bone that was interfering with the joint. It was more a matter of managing something than solving it, and this was reflected in the astrology: Mars (cutting) at the apex of a yod. A yod has 2 inconjuncts, an aspect that cannot be resolved in the sense of getting 2 planets to work harmoniously together: a compromise is usually necessary. At the base of the yod was Jupiter (nice) in Pisces (feet) and Pluto (getting to the root of a problem) in Capricorn.

My Scorpionic homeopath has her own take, that the trouble with both my foot and my knees (arthritis caused by years of flat-footedness) express a need for a greater connection to the earth, where my power lies. It's a relative thing, because I'm pretty practical, but at the moment Pluto is starting to conjoin my only personal earth planet, Mars in Capricorn, and part of the symbolism of that is the power (Pluto) of the earth (Capricorn). Capricorn, of course, also rules knees.

I dreamed the other night that Michelle Obama had gone mad. I think this dream came out of a combination of influences: reading American Wife (recommended), a fictionalised account of the life of Laura Bush; a discussion in which I’d noted that in relationships, one partner often unconsciously compensates for, and can thereby exacerbate, the imbalances of the other; and watching ‘A Woman Under the Influence’, a 1970s film about a housewife who is a good mother but nuts, and what makes it worse is everyone’s well-meaning attempts to make her ‘normal’. Also in there was Barack Obama’s recent comment that he could do with more time to reflect on his job.

Dreams are Neptune’s realm, and you can see how separate elements become combined and related in his watery domain, where the usual separating barriers (which we need for day-to-day life) are broken down.

Michelle Obama, as far as I am aware, has not gone mad. She’s a sturdy Capricorn. Mind you, if she was born after 11.30am, she would have Moon in Pisces opposite Uranus. So she may be going quietly mad under the apparently solid surface, doing it for Barack, who has Moon in double-sided, light-and-shadow Gemini square to Pluto and square to Michelle’s Moon. The man is so together and self-possessed under ongoing extreme pressure, and seems to have no safety valves like interns and cigars, or mass slaughter in a foreign country. With 12th House Saturn (conjunct Michelle's Sun), he’s not going to let the madness in easily. The way in 2008 that he cast out his mentor Rev Jeremiah Wright, a dispenser of unhoneyed truth, was pretty revealing. It was politically necessary, but nonetheless showed a compartmentalised psychology reflected, perhaps, in his Gemini Moon.

Speaking of madness, I know 2 people who once tried to commit suicide, and in both cases they were ostracised by most of their friends; in one case, they were Glastonbury ‘spiritual’ people who did the ostracising, it was like a whole herd of self-appointed ‘elders’ turning against one of its members. It was quite shocking, and quite an eye-opener as to where many ‘spiritual’ people are at when something real happens for once. They can’t handle it, because their so-called spirituality is an escape from their own darkness and irrationality, which they haven’t come to terms with. How would we cope without scapegoats?

A few years ago I went to a Liz Greene Seminar on God in the astrology chart, and she began the day by asking quite directly who in the audience considered themselves to be ‘spiritual’? A load of hands went up, and I sat there unsure. A friend who is an unlikely Buddhist told me he hadn’t stuck his hand up. I realised later that I don’t consider myself to be ‘spiritual’ because I don’t accept the split with ‘worldly’ that is implied, or the idea that people are anything other than people.