THE DARK SIDE OF THE SUN (Part 1)

The Sun is the single most significant planet in the chart, because it is by far the most imposing body in the sky. If you face the Sun, and you listen, you will feel the particular shaping flavour of the stars behind it. At your back, what you cannot see, are the opposite set of stars, the 'darkstory' of the Sun. That which you will need to unearth, in the case of your own sign, to become a balanced human being. If you don't, then as Jesus said in the heretical Gospel of St Thomas, it will destroy you. You will be possessed by it, and may not recognise your own destruction. What may appear as your demons may be your unlived strengths.

So what follows in this 2 part post will be something on each sign by shadow. I will do them in opposite pairs, because that is the way they work. What I will be saying is today's version, because there are many ways of putting it. A chart reading is also like that: I will tell you slightly different stories each time you come to me.

ARIES: Your strength is your freshness and certainty of vision. It is excellent for decisive action. But life isn't usually that simple. You need to learn to listen to others. To do that well, you need to learn to listen to yourself first, otherwise you will only think you are listening to others. You will find you are a more complex being than you imagined. When your complexity interests you - when you can turn from astronaut into psychonaut - then other people's complexity will also interest you, and it will be natural, rather than a practice, to incorporate their world view. The journey into your own complexity takes many years, and probably some rude awakenings along the way. But once you have learnt to relate to it, you can bring a powerful integrity to the process.

LIBRA: Your shadow lies in your naivety about other people. An unwillingness to look realistically at the dark motivations of others, which have been delightfully summed up in recent years in the form of the Dark Tetrad: Machiavellianism, psychopathy, narcissism and sadism. You are idealistic about people and about your relationships. This means you can bring harmony. It is your gift. You see the best in others, but with it comes an unwillingness to look clearly and truthfully. Your lack of judging is also a strength, but you can be very judging of others if they speak critically of people. So there is a hidden hypocrisy. Get over the feeling that it is wrong to acknowledge elements of the dark tetrad in others. Get over your need to please others, and learn to live with your guilt when you say something that is uncomfortable for them. Become the feathered arrow that flies straight to the mark with grace and beauty.

 

 

TAURUS: Your gift is your infectious love of life – food, beautiful things, art, sex, the natural world. But it can also be your shield against deeper realities. You can be too attached to the things of this world. However much you have, it will never be enough, because you are looking in the wrong place. If Taurus is Life, then Scorpio is Death. You need to live close to the veil between the worlds for the perspective it gives you. Loss in some form may be the awakening gift from Spirit you need at some point. It may dismember you, leave you feeling destroyed, taken down: but that can be exactly what is needed to leave room for new life to emerge. It is usually a slow, deep process. Cultivate emotional depth: it cannot be taken away from you. How do you do that? Be completely honest with yourself at all times. No feelings are shameful or a judgement on you. They just are what they are.

SCORPIO: I feel for you: you are seen as the bad guy of the zodiac, you carry the shadow. But that is because you are true to yourself, and that unsettles other people. You are friends with your demons, you do not judge them, and that can make you whole. But you can get stuck in the dark, inward place, like a frog in a well. And judging others accordingly, so that they feel boxed and unable to escape, because you have emotional power, like Medusa.

Your gift lies in the power and reality of the instincts, the animal, that humans think they are above, but are ruled by regardless, and you know this. Your salvation – your route out of the well – lies in the joy of the instinctual life. Be animal, shapeshift, delight in your senses, be absorbed in this world. Lighten up. That is not a superficial thing. You need an anchor in nature and its simple joys so that the deep alchemy which is central to your nature has a vessel, an orientation.                       

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I offer astrology readings on a donation basis. Contact BWGoddard1@aol.co.uk. My offer also remains open indefinitely, that if you buy and rate at Amazon my astrology book Surfing the Galactic Highways, I will give you a free reading.

 

             

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GEMINI You have a dual nature, the light and the dark twins. It is your ongoing experience that there is something uncomfortable to be lived, lurking outside the colourful mind-bubble that you magic into being wherever you go. Your glittering, capable, likeable self is your refuge from the deeper realities. You move rapidly from one interest to the next, you have 6 different threads going in any one conversation, you are restless, pursued by that haunting Sagittarian voice that asks you what does it all mean?

You need to stop and ask yourself that question several times a day. Meaning is a feeling. You are the Air sign that takes ideas least literally. They slip like sand through your dextrous fingers. You know that words are not realities. You know that the real place is outside your everyday mind. Dare you go there? What you fear in that unknown place is not monsters but boredom. Observe and enjoy your mind from a detached place in your heart. And from there let yourself be pulled towards that which calls to you, that which gives meaning. Keep your life in that place, don’t slide too readily into the 100 other things that beckon. Then you will find joy instead of mere stimulation. The joy of the marriage of light and dark.

 

SAGITTARIUS Spiritual bypass. That is the name of your game. Living for God as a way of avoiding mere earthly life. You love the deep, abstract ideas that point towards ineffable Reality itself. You protect yourself with your beliefs, which you view as so profound, but which your Gemini opposite dances around, tweaking their toes while you’re not looking.

Gemini is facts and information, by which you can test the validity of your beliefs. This is probably the most difficult challenge in the entire zodiac. “A man convinced against his will, is of the same opinion still.” Sagittarius is big on ethics, and it is a matter of personal integrity that you can stand to one side of your beliefs in the interests of discovering what is true. Very few people can do this to any extent. For mosr people, their beliefs are realities, and argument consists in finding evidence that supports those beliefs. Can you be honest about your political bias, and give the other side credit where credit is due? Once you understand that your beliefs are emotionally rather than rationally held – that you believe what you WANT to believe about nearly everything – then and only then do you understand humanity, and you can be the teacher that is the destiny of your sign. There are very few real teachers in this sense.