The Astrology of Self-Discovery: An In-Depth Exploration of the Potentials Revealed in Your Birth Chart
314
The Astrology of Self-Discovery: An In-Depth Exploration of the Potentials Revealed in Your Birth Chart
314Paperback(Revised)
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Overview
Marks' experience as a psychotherapist and spiritual teacher has enabled her to synthesize her knowledge of psychology with her astrological work to elucidate a path of deepening personal awareness and cooperation with planetary energies. The unique insights in The Astrology of Self Discovery give fresh, new life to the practice of astrology.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780892541362 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Nicolas-Hays, Inc |
| Publication date: | 03/01/2008 |
| Edition description: | Revised |
| Pages: | 314 |
| Sales rank: | 305,446 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.00(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
THE ASTROLOGY OF SELF-DISCOVERY
An In-Depth Exploration of the Potentials Revealed in your Birth Chart
By Tracy Marks
NICOLAS-HAYS, INC.
Copyright © 2008 Tracy MarksAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-89254-136-2
CHAPTER 1
THE MOON: REPARENTING THE INNER CHILD
How connected are we to our basic instinctual and emotional natures? How well do we integrate the receptive and nurturing feminine principle within us which enables us to give and receive nourishment? To what extent are we capable of maintaining contact with the deeply feeling and intuitive energies of our inner child, while also functioning as adults and adapting to external reality? In what ways do we experience our lunar nature and express the energies of the Moon in our daily lives?
The Moon in astrology indicates our deepest emotional patterns and needs, our sensitivity and responsiveness, and it shows our relationship to the internal feminine or anima, as well as to female influences outside us. Our rootedness in our being, in our families and personal past, in our homes, and in our community and larger environment is a function of the Moon. The Moon also influences how we form attachments and how we seek to secure and protect ourselves. It shows how we care for and parent ourselves, our children and other people who are important to us. Becoming attuned to the energies of the Moon and to our own individual lunar needs, as suggested by the position and aspects of the Moon in our natal charts, is essential if we seek to befriend ourselves and to create relationships which nourish and sustain ourselves and others. Yet such attunement is exceedingly difficult when the attitudes, institutions, and requirements of society are at odds with the lunar principle.
The Reawakening of Lunar Consciousness
We live in a world in which lunar consciousness has been repeatedly denied and devalued. From the beginning of patriarchal religion, with the worship of the Sun god followed by the Hebraic father god Jehovah, humankind has ardently battled against the Great Mother of early matriarchy and all she represents—the irrational in contrast to the rational, oneness rather than separateness, the yin qualities of being, containing and nurturing instead of the yang energies of active achievement. The vital, potent, life-giving energies of mother goddess figures were appropriated and distorted by patriarchal religion, leaving only a disembodied powerless Virgin Mary to represent the virtues of the feminine. Pagan religions were extinguished; witches were burned. After the discovery of the Sun as the center of the solar system, heliocentric consciousness began to glorify science and to lose its moorings in religion. Religion by now had begun to degenerate into lifeless formalism lacking the heart-centered and gut-centered aliveness which results from attunement to the life force. Mind existed in opposition to rather than in cooperation with feeling, instinct and intuition. The vast impersonal forces of science and technology began to dissolve the personal and communal satisfaction which had provided a secure foundation for many centuries.
If we consider the disintegration of lunar consciousness from a psychological perspective as well as a collective perspective, we are face to face with the reality that a male-dominated world implies that the emotional issues and developmental tasks of males are bound to have a far-ranging impact upon the attitudes and institutions of society as a whole. Boys, in order to separate from their mothers and establish their individuality, have to denigrate the female principle more than girls do. By disdaining all that is soft and sensitive and reminiscent of the early symbiotic bliss of the womb and infancy, as well as by identifying with their fathers and the assertive self-sufficient male principle, boys begin to establish firm identities apart from female influence.
Once masculine identity is established, males in adolescence begin to reunite with the female without the terrifying danger of losing identity by regressing into symbiotic oneness. The female, rediscovered in adolescent girls and young women rather than in the mother, is valued once more. A new kind of emotional and sexual union is sought and experienced, one which preserves rather than destroys identity. If male development is to proceed positively, the feminine principle must be slowly reintegrated into the psyche, so that "female" qualities may now be experienced and expressed without the loss of ego, and woman may become a cooperative partner rather than a mere vehicle for recovering disowned and projected qualities.
Our male-dominated society has indeed been stuck in one of the developmental crises of male maturation—that of reowning and reintegrating the feminine principle. The hero mystique of Nazi Germany, disconnected from feminine values, may have shocked us collectively into the dawning realization of our shadow and the vengeance of the repressed feminine. Mother Nature now rebels against our rape of the environment; women rebel against the concept of male superiority. Although a man rather than a woman first stepped onto the Moon, the first lunar flight of 1969 did create a new bond between Earth and the Moon, one which may be opening a channel for the recovery of lunar consciousness. Edgar Mitchell and Jim Irwin established the High Flight Foundation after their Moon journey, a result of their moving experience of "God's presence" on the Moon.
In addition to physical exploration of the Moon, we witness in the second half of the twentieth century a revival of interest in many domains which the Moon represents—women's liberation, natural childbirth, natural foods, holistic health, witchcraft, communal and country living, ecology and genealogy. Psychology, with its focus on human nature, has developed new offshoots which are even more lunar in orientation than Freudian psychoanalysis. Jungian psychology has become popular, as have primal therapy and rebirthing. The discovery of Eastern religions by the Western world has led to shifts in attitude which have even brought meditation into the business world. The split between science and religion begins to heal as contemporary physics affirms ancient truths of mystical and matriarchal consciousness. The mystic arts enjoy a resurgence of interest by a public disenchanted with the constricting and desolate inner worlds created by technological society.
The reawakening of lunar consciousness is necessary for both physical and emotional survival. Dissociated from the nourishment of our instincts and our spirit, without attunement to inner and outer nature, we destroy ourselves and the world around us. As Carl Jung wrote, "Whatever one has within oneself but does not live grows against one ... Anyone who overlooks the instincts will be ambuscaded by them."
When the Moon goddess is not worshipped, literally or figuratively, her dark side is released. The more we reject our primal mother, the more distorted she becomes, degenerating into such lower archetypes as the stone cold Saturnian spinster or the dark devouring Plutonian goddess hellbent on devastation rather than creation. As fairy tales have taught us, forgotten goddesses seek revenge; the witch who was not invited to Sleeping Beauty's christening cursed her with the curse of unconsciousness, requiring that she spend twenty years in lunar realms before meeting her prince and uniting with the masculine principle. But when welcomed, the neglected and embittered witch goddesses within transform into fairy princesses, spirit guides who reveal to us inner treasures we may not know we possess.
When we disown our lunar being, we may suffer from a variety of emotional and physical illnesses which drain our energy and prevent us from discovering our true sources of nourishment. We develop stomach or reproductive disorders; we become compulsive about food, overly dependent in our relationships, constantly in search of external satisfactions which promise to fill us but instead numb us and prevent us from awakening to our true internal resources. We develop neuroses and psychoses as we project our unmet Moon needs outward upon persons, substances and experiences which only give temporary respite from the gnawing inner emptiness. The empty vessel of the Moon goddess cannot be filled or nourished from without; we must burrow deep within, through the pain and anger of this mistreated goddess, in both her child and adult manifestations, and discover within that pain and anger the sustenance which can heal us.
Maternal Deprivation and Nurturance
If we as children suffered from maternal deprivation, if our mothers lacked attunement to their own and our own needs and feelings, we most likely internalized a "bad mother" who is in many ways anti-life. Once outside us, she now exists within us. She fears the aliveness of instinct and emotion; she insists upon perfection and self-sacrifice; she uses anger, fear and guilt to compel us to obey her. Whenever we make contact with our true feelings, we experience anxiety at betraying her. Yet unless we separate and discover our own nature apart from her, we are doomed to live a desolate and fearful existence.
Frequently, the internalization of the "bad mother," a distorted form of our feminine archetype or anima, is accompanied by a likewise distorted animus or male energy which seeks to compensate for what is lacking by driving us relentlessly toward achievement and perfection. Together, they function in a devouring, compulsive, wolf-like manner, driven by greed to satisfy the inner hunger and escape from the terrifying pain of unmet need. If we were unable to relax within the bodies of mothers dissociated from their instincts, we are unable to relax in our own bodies and instincts. We seek refuge in our minds and erect walls against feeling. We lose our enthusiasm and creativity. We drive ourselves toward goals which will not fulfill us even when we attain them.
An alternative pattern is that of identifying with the passive, altruistic feminine mother or role model, the female archetype which validates the softer yin energies and devalues the primal potent energy of the Mother Goddess or Earth Mother. Becoming the embodiment of yin apart from yang, we attract exaggerated yang qualities, which are dissociated from yin softness and gentility. We project our animus outward and draw to us overpowering animus people who dominate and exploit us.
One common indication of having internalized the "bad mother" as a result of not having received proper nurturance is compulsiveness in regard to food. When we carry inside an insatiable hunger, food may easily become a mother substitute which we devour and/or reject. Eating may be an attempt to satisfy many needs apart from physical hunger. We may be seeking to nurture the deprived infant within us; we may swallow our anger toward mother and loved ones who fail to nourish us; we may use food to gain contact with our bodies, to dull the screaming pain of unmet needs, to quiet our minds and surrender to the unconsciousness of the digestive processes. We may even be trying to feed a deep soul hunger, a yearning to connect with our essential nature, which we may have unsuccessfully sought apart from the body.
The Moon revolves around the earth and is dependent upon the earth in order to maintain its orbit. Our lunar feelings are likewise dependent upon our earth bodies which house and contain them. Owning or reowning our bodies requires us to accept our wounded instincts and to experience our anger toward those who failed to meet our needs, while slowly learning to relinquish that anger in order to commit ourselves to the task of being our own mothers and our primary source of nourishment. No one but ourselves can heal the wounds of the past; the waters which nurture us now may have to be the waters of our tears as we mourn what we have only minimally experienced or what we have lost. We must decide to recover our feelings and be true to them, even when they carry the distorted emotional charge of unintegrated past experience; we must awaken to our female archetype or internal goddess figures; we must ask ourselves repeatedly what our real needs are, experience them, validate them and restructure our lives so that we may meet them as fully as possible.
Those of us who have internalized more of the "bad mother" than the "good mother," or who have otherwise lacked attunement to life-affirming lunar energies may need to descend into the chaotic realms of infantile feeling and instinct to recover our life source. In contrast to the spiritual quests which look upward and seek to ascend into mystical or heart-centered realms, we may regain our lost spirit only by journeying down, descending into primal realms. Such a journey is a dangerous one and needs to be consecrated to a divine purpose if we are to transmute the often untamed and convoluted energies of fear, pain and anger rather than be overwhelmed by them. The Moon goddess which we have denied for half a lifetime or more may have become a raging Gorgon, a Medusa whose anger is often too terrifying to face; the wounded child within us who has been slapped and silenced ever since infancy may emerge from beneath our defenses and expose us to pain greater than we can endure. Surrendering to our lunar nature must be a conscious and sacred act if it is to serve us. To be repeatedly taken over by emotion and instinct without conscious awareness and choice may lead to madness—lunacy. But when we choose a little madness in order to recover the deeper sanity at the core of it, we unite consciousness and unconsciousness and begin to become whole.
THE MOON
POSITIVE EXPRESSION
NEGATIVE EXPRESSION
(qualities related to early (dominant, distorted, repressed
nurturance resulting in or undeveloped qualities)
attunement to feeling and
instinct)
1. basic trust in self 1. absence of trust in self
and others and others; distortions in
trust/ mistrust patterns
2. rootedness in own 2. lack of Internal and
being and instinctual bodily rootedness; at
nature mercy of instincts or
disconnected from them.
3. attunement to 3. overly emotional;
feelings; emotional emotional instability;
depth and stability emotional repression
4. sensitivity combined 4. oversensitive; taking
with a healthy degree everything personally;
of self-protectiveness insensitive; excessive self-protection;
lack of self-protection
5. receptivity and 5. overly solicitous; overly
responsiveness to sympathetic; lacking
others' needs; empathic empathy; unaware of and
others' needs unresponsive to
6. nurturing and 6. overly protective or
maternal attitudes and smothering; martyr
behaviors tendencies; denial of
nurturing and maternal
qualities
7. capacity to receive 7. dependent upon others
nurturance; balanced for nurturance; unable to
pattern of giving and give or receive
receiving
8. capacity to nurture 8. self-indulgence; self-neglect;
self lack of self-nurturing
behaviors
9. ability to experience 9. denial of need and
and satisfy needs in dependence; meeting false
relationship without needs and neglecting true
loss of identity and needs; dependence
independence
10. closeness and 10. overly dependent upon
separateness family of origin; lack of
coexisting within familial bonds
family of origin
11. capacity to form 11. forming symbiotic
close relationships relationships; avoiding
without sacrificing closeness and intimacy
Independence or
separateness
(Continues...)
Excerpted from THE ASTROLOGY OF SELF-DISCOVERY by Tracy Marks. Copyright © 2008 Tracy Marks. Excerpted by permission of NICOLAS-HAYS, INC..
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Introduction
Part I: The Moon & Its Nodes
1. The Moon: Reparenting the Inner Child
2. Moon Signs
3. New Moon, Full Moon
4. The Lunar Nodes: Our Life Purpose
Part II: The Outer Planet Transits
5. Transits: The Next Step in Our Becoming
6. Neptune: How to Swim Through Cosmic Waters
7. Pluto: From Darkness into Light
Part III: Astrology and Self-Development
8. Principles of Depth Astrology
9. Misuses of Astrology
10. Beyond Fate and Free Will
Conclusion
Appendix: Eclipse & Lunation Tables by Zodiacal Degree
Selected Bibliography
About the Author