Only a few more days of 2012

We are off to spend three weeks in Spain with our family in Spain. I'm so happy to know that our friends will be enjoying a creative retreat in our home, in the company of Master Leo. We'll be back for a few days, and then off to San Francisco to visit our family in SF.  I will be glad to be away. These past few months have been hard.

Our first-year student was rewarded with straight A's for her hard work and creativity in her first semester. I'm happiest about how much she enjoyed all the new things she tried, and how much she learned that wasn't on the tests.

I am eager to read the papers by my freshman class; they were at terrific group, and I'm only sorry that I wasn't able to say goodbye to them in person during the last week of class.

During these weeks, I will be meditating on the New Moon in Sagittarius post by Katie at Empowering Astrology. I have been finding these writings extraordinarily apt for my stage of life right now. "Head home" is a phrase that emerged, and the idea of rebalancing the feminine. What does she mean about Uranus going direct? Here are some questions to ponder:

So ask yourself, as this new moon begins to wax, as we head towards the much hyped solstice in 8 days, what does “head home” mean to you? How are you integrating and releasing your shadow? How are rearranging the parts? How are you rebuilding a better you? Uranus is about to turn direct. The alarm clock says it’s time to wake up.

Monday's Scorpio New Moon Eclipse

A new moon is a time for planting seeds, and the new moon in Scorpio means we have the chance to dive deep and work through our deepest truths, to be reborn like the phoenix from its ashes.
What would this mean for you? What does it mean for me?

Monday's total solar eclipse intensifies this moment; the sun, the moon, and the earth are aligned.  The last such eclipse in this series was 18 years ago, within days of my child's birth and my own birthday. It was a moment of profound transformation, birth and rebirth. Now she is 18 and has moved out of the house, on her own journey as an artist and student and a young woman. I didn't realize how profoundly this would affect me, but after some hard struggle I am moving through, opening myself up to this moment of transformation.

The Scorpio archetype calls to mind Persephone's descent to the underworld, which she must do to detach from her mother Demeter.

Kelly Rosano says: be a conscious creator.

At Empowering Astrology,  prepare yourself  "To boldly go where no man has gone before".

Molly Hall suggests some Scorpio New Moon Tips

• Avoid obsessing on "what ifs" -- gravitate to activities that make you feel hopeful.
• Take a long bath with special salts or oils. (I went to the sauna at the Y)
• Minimize the rushing around, in favor of some empty space on your day planner.
• Sage your space, and invoke spirits of protection, if necessary.
• Recall your energy from bad investments, and feel it concentrating around you.

Detox and purge. Surrender and feel all the feelings, then let go of them.

Today I listen to Lucinda Williams's song "Get Right With God"

I would risk the serpent's bite
I would dance around with seven
I would kiss the diamond back
If I knew it would get me to heaven

(Chorus:)
'Cause I want to get right with God
Yes, you know you got to get right with God

I would burn the soles of my feet
Burn the palms of both my hands
If I could learn and be complete
If I could walk righteously again

I would sleep on a bed of nails
'Till my back was torn and bleeding
In the deep darkness of Hell
The Damascus of my meeting

I asked God about his plan
To save us all from Satan's slaughter
If I give up one of my lambs
Will you take me as one of your daughters?

Roiling waters

Susan Miller's Astrologyzone forecast for me for the month of October is feeling very potent right now.
 
Free Will Astrology's Scorpio Horoscope for week of October 18, 2012:

Sometime soon you may dream of being naked at a public event like a class at school or a committee meeting. I think this would be an excellent omen, so I hope it comes to pass. It would signify that you're ready to shed the disguises that have been making it problematical for you to reinvent yourself. Who is the New You? Stripping down to the bare essentials in your dreams will help you see raw truths about your waking life.

So, it turns out that my sun sign is Scorpio, but my rising sign and moon are both Aries.

Sneaker wave

Poor lonely blog! I have been spending too much time with Twitter and Tumblr, so I have neglected you!

Some of my energy this year has been invested in working on wellness, always a precarious balance for me. But I signed up for a phone coaching thingie through my employer's wellness program, and one of their people called unexpectedly tonight. As we talked, I was able to look back and recognize that I have made real changes, and my back pain has really diminished. Yay! It's kind of strange to have a conversation about your health with a total stranger who is working from a script, albeit unobtrusively, but it does give you a chance to say, "what are my goals? how am I doing? what is getting in the way, what is working?" without going to see a therapist.

So. Up until this past week, I felt as if I had been having an exceptionally good year.  Accompanying my daughter through her high school graduation, college acceptance, and moving out to start her studies has been such a wonderful journey. So many long-term plans, so many past uncertainties, so much joy.  I'm so happy to see her so happy. My goal has been to give her what was given to me: the opportunity to study without taking on debt. What was relatively easy for my family has now become a much more daunting enterprise for a middle-class family, but I'm grateful it is still within reach for us. I feel a sense of satisfaction and accomplishment that I've been able to manage to meet whatever needs are left over after her talent and hard work helped her achieve her goals.

I also initiated some long overdue action to improve my working situation this year.  This, unfortuantely, has not come to fruition the way I had hoped, and I have been more disappointed than I expected to be. In fact, this weekend and in the past few days I have experienced one of the worst bouts of acute depression I can remember in many years. It seems to come out of nowhere, like one of those sneaker waves that makes the west coast beaches so dangerous. Never turn your back on the ocean, they say. So I did something I have often failed to do in the past: I reached out for help until I found it.



Could it be the energy of the so-called "monster moon", the full moon in Aries of Saturday night, that my horoscope warned me would be so hard for Scorpios?  I thought I was safe until Sunday night when I broke a toe. Bwah! But cosmic energy can also be channeled by intention: What will I choose to make of the message that I received today, an offer of support that I experienced as a threat?
 

Periwinkle

Rob Bresny (Free Will Astrology) offers these words to Scorpios this week:
"Earth Island Journal says scientists have discovered natural ways to clean up old munitions sites. If you plant periwinkle and parrot-feather plants in soil that's been bombed with TNT, they'll soak up and neutralize the noxious stuff. Likewise, pondweed absorbs and transforms nitroglycerin in land where explosives have been detonated. I urge you to find the metaphorical equivalents of periwinkle, pondweed, and parrot-feather plants this week, Scorpio. It's a perfect moment to detoxify the places in your life where past battles left behind toxic debris."

So, I should think about the psychic equivalent of phytoremediation. My favorite crayola color was periwinkle when I was a little. I confess that I am dismayed to find that Crayola has retired "thistle".

luna lunera, cascabelera

The Moon passed in front of the sun today. This partial solar eclipse was photographed from South America. It wasn't a total eclipse; because the moon was far enough away from the earth that it could not completely block the sun, it looks as if the sun makes a ring around the moon, so it's called an annular eclipse. NASA's "Astronomy Picture of the Day" site has a wonderful photo of a similar event from last year. It's easy to search their archive.

Looking for images of moon goddesses, I came across this post on Moleskinerie with an image of Ixchel, Maya goddess of the moon. The post was actually about a fun site called the Godchecker! ("your guide to the gods"). You can search for gods or goddesses by topic or by pantheon.
Moleskinerie is a treasure trove; it also had a post that led me to the The New York Public Library's Digital Gallery . What a gorgeous collection of hundreds of thousands of images from their holdings, Here are some from a Japanese book called "100 Aspects of the Moon", woodblock prints by the artist Yoshitoshi. .