Poetic Prosey Musings
(this article is also available as a podcast episode if you’d rather listen)
It is not lost on me that during this, the third pass of Saturn exactly conjunct my natal Sun and my Descendant, I am once again in isolation. Last pass was ‘cuz of Covid. First one was ‘cuz of work. Total isolation.
This time, it’s the Aquarian freeze that’s got me relegated to the realms of my ice princess self. A better metaphor for one side of my Aqua-Sun, Scorp-Moon you could not find. Who needs wrath when you can become the Queen of Swords?
This current round of isolation is less imperative and enforced than the last bout.
That last bout, I tested positive for Covid for 12 days. Covid proper... I wasn’t that sick. But still. Clear, blue line. Or was it pink? And who wants to even slightly risk giving anyone else that shit?
Don’t answer that.
This round of Saturn saturnizing my already somewhat Saturn-y Sun... it’s my ankles, you see. Another Aquarian cliche. They won’t support me on slippery surfaces, and the ground outside has been a slushy icicle mix all week. My body has been broken, battered and bruised so many times that I’ve become highly avoidant of things like, you know, falling.
For the week of this last Saturn super exact conjunct my Sun phase, the parts of my ankle bone that had broken off in other falls were like fractured diamonds threatening to slowly fray the remaining ligaments. Docs had told me I might feel them someday. They were right.
It wasn’t as bad as it sounds. I’m just loving imagery right now.
So yes... due to all my prior issues with ankles (the first round of which came when I was 5 playing softball in a field), I tend to freeze when faced with unstable footing. I stare looking at the slushy icy patch, which more confident humans would easily run full speed across... and I freeze. Which means that when the hill outside my door is covered in snow... I spend lots of time alone.
But I don’t like humans anyway. Who needs them? Two years of Neptune square Neptune culminating now, pouring all that cosmic disenchantment right into my esophagus, where acid reflux has taken root for the first time in my life. Humans are the acid. They’re terrible and painful. Save for the ones I like.
Neptune stationed today. The square is exact. At the same time that fucking Mars retrograde exactly trines my natal, currently Saturnized Sun. I’m cranky and sleepy and want to move to the woods so my mind can float in the treetops...and rivers... be embraced by the rose garden I’d clearly have there... be alone because of my choice to remove myself from civilization -- not stupid city circumstance.
Earlier today I sighed out a digital collage of a woman stepping through an oceanic pyramidal portal, drenched in waterfalls of light. I wanted to float in the ocean and watch her go. I would hope some dolphins would join me and I’d shape-shift to feel myself gliding freely through waves.
I’ve been thinking so much about isolation as a Cappy-Aquarian epidemic. Super cappy lockdown in early 2020. Reinforced by Saturn in Aquarius. And in 2022, a mental health epidemic that in my language is Saturn in Aquarius square the nodes... but in the “Real World” seems to just be something to cover up.
Those with money ignore those without. Those with helpful immune systems ignore those without. I can’t place blame, honestly. Navigating active empathy that is backed up by behavior is a straight route to shame for most folks, and we are not well equipped to deal with shame.
The system has betrayed us. And oh, how my heart breaks. Even though I can’t blame individuals, I do feel frustration. Sometimes anger. Mostly just grief.
Looking at timelines for Pluto’s ingress into Aquarius this evening, feeling a heavy dose of “hooray, something new!” Followed by the grimace of... “I’ll be HOW OLD when Pluto finally leaves my sign?” followed by... *sigh*
And then back to pondering what the period will mean for innovation... empowerment and disempowerment of the people. Other glimmers I dare not speak. Being a seer is also isolating.
Power to the peaceful, I pray. I remember being 24 or 5, at a soundcheck in Golden Gate Park. High on weed brownies, listening to Spearhead soundcheck a song with that line floating through the breeze over and over. Wanting to give little love licks and bites to all the humans I was sharing the experience with... Oh, how I long for frolicking in the grass without thinking about money and virus and pain and ethics.
Uranus has been exactly opposite my Moon.
My emotions become interactive visions
stored in my body
prancing around my field
and from them
I make art And I share it, of course Or at least I will at some point
Cuz Leo Rising But also Uranus is also conjunct my MC So these revelations are part of the story.
Isolation, isolation, isolation...
But what would I do without “my work?” I lean on it so hard. Not just the client work and teaching, though. I’ve spoken frequently about ways client work has been my main vessel for sublimation and sanity over the last few years.
Right now, it’s different. My work is saving me because when I’m alone and restless, I can create and think and read and write. This time, as a friend so aptly put it earlier today, it’s my intellectual curiosity that makes me good at what I do. And what I’ll add now: it’s my intellectual curiosity that sustains me. The fascination of: so how is humanity gonna work its way out of THIS mess? Or even at a lesser level... I can put on a lecture from my coursework or a podcast or grab a book, and... my whole system feels soothed.
I’m two-thirds of the way done with a two year psychosynthesis coaching training that has brought me back to one of my one true loves: Jung & Depth Psychology. I typed that and got a shiver. Some relationships really do endure and grow more magical with time.
And this morning, I got to witness a “socially relevant salon” through The Salome Institute, which I name drop here because I have waited ten years to see someone taking up the mantle of a social justice informed tribute to Jung’s work. The topic of the salon? Trans Ways of Knowing. The next one? Disability Justice. Or something like that. I type that and want to cry. So grateful.
And I recently learned that my primary mentor in grad school -- a man who just happened to have lived in Hiroshima, working with the dreams of survivors and their descendants... who curriculumized my immersion in depth psychology and soul work while being the first adult I’d ever met who did not greet my concerns about the future of our earth with “oh, just lighten up” but instead gave me validation and tools and acknowledgement of grief...
....and rituals and ways to create my own rituals...
...and reconnection with a spirituality, my own sacred spirituality...
...who introduced me to The Great Turning and Joanna Macy and who made me sweat in a lodge, forehead to the cool earth while my entire being poured out of my pores and I wept and groaned and died a little... while he acknowledged “amanda...who showed up asking for wisdom and did not turn away when I placed apocalypse in her arms”...
...has reshaped the local, formerly stuffy, local Jungian Society into a vessel for community trying to navigate the great turning. The website even has a social justice commitment now. And I have a level of faith that that commitment is not just words.
These are the communities I need now.
But back to that Mars ret... Someone told me the other day that Mars trining my Sun SHOULD feel full of potential and possibility! But I’m only receiving its severance qualities.
I keep severing relationships. I keep opting out of communities that were once so important to me... although not without months of careful consideration. This is strategic severance. I have to conserve my life force.
I keep learning about resistance, and the war of art, and the power of shame... I think about Mars retrograding through my 11th and that theme of severance, even as I recognize that my natal Mars, retrograde in Virgo, is also activated... as I pick, pick, pick at the literal skin I am in. TikTok tells me that’s a stim. it IS comforting.
And Jupiter has stationed on my Venus in the midst of all this. The part of me that KNOWS that all is love. Venus in the 8th house in Pisces, man. That love muffin has gotten me through it at the same time as she has made so many things so rose-colored glasses difficult.
But that part of me knows that love is the most important thing there is. That part of me ** believes**, even in the dark. Even when I’m under threat of bursting at the seams while everyone I love is thrown into their own shit and unable to be there for me. Even when I look around and see so much suffering...
That part of me is so grounding and grounded. And ultimately...sane.
I wonder what it might be like to experience that kind of transcendent transit without all the other shit going on.
*
Amanda is a queer astrologer healer person based out of Seattle. To support her work — and get rad incentives like monthly Full Moon ritual guidance, astrology classes and one on one sessions, check out her Patreon.
Image by Amanda
