It’s been interesting watching the solider land here. People have their natures and within 24 hours I could see he was plotting his empire and his various operations and we have had a big fight about this.

At one point he wanted me to plan with him. This was his move cross country specifically and I tried to indulge him but every time I offered an opinion he had a better angle.  It did not take me long to see it would always be this way so I wound up telling him to count me out.

Continue reading Oppositions In Astrology And The Division Of Labor In Relationship

Dear Elsa,

I know. Another sex topic but you can’t say I’m not consistent. Plus Scorpio moon is coming.

What common aspects in our charts would signal meeting a new lover?

All the yearly horoscopes say for Virgo’s this is the year for you to find new love etc. How do they know that? Obviously not everyone in that sign is going to fall in love. So.. it must be certain planets knocking boots with other planets and passing over your chart right?

Wondering Virgo

Continue reading Open Question: Why Do Astrologers Say All Virgos (Insert Other Sun Sign) Will Find Love In 2008?

On the drive to New Mexico, I was thinking about Kate (Kate Mulvey Can’t Get A Date And It’s Because Of You!) and trying to fathom her and people like her. People who project their shadow onto others, that is. How do they get that way? Better yet, how do they stay that way?

How can a person be faced with overwhelming evidence there is some problem (such as every man they meet runs for the hills) yet continue to deny any culpability or wrongdoing? This is baffling to me. And it made me think of when I was a kid, playing cards.

I used to play cards like crazy when I was a kid. I played with adult men and I was fiercely competitive and ambitious. I wanted to win everything, every time and played those cards with every cell in my body. And here’s the thing about projection:

When I lost a hand, I did not imagine it was because the person across from me was inept in some way. Or better yet, that everyone at the table was flawed!

But this is what Kate and people like her do. And maybe via this analogy you can see if you do this, it is going to be absolutely impossible to progress. You simply have to deal with yourself.

We all project to some extent all the time. If you have oppositions in your chart (especially to personal planets) you are going to be far more prone but no one is immune. We all have a 7th house which is routinely projected. And if we’re talking about the shadow… well that’s Pluto, but any energy can be projected. Your anger for example and even your desirability!

What do you project? What’s in your 7th house?

The opposition in the soldier’s chart is apparent here, as is the opposition between out two Mercury’s…

“I know you’re going to complain about the food,” I said, on the phone last night. “There is too much food.”

“Well, P, I am not going to complain. But I have enough food here to feed the Chinese army. If they show up hungry, I’m going to tell ‘em no problem. I can feed you guys. Here, eat! Have some of this!”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“Well I admit, sometimes I do wonder what could P have been thinking?”

“I am thinking this: Every time you say you’re hungry, I go to the store and get some food. It’s my nature! You’re hungry, I will feed you. And it makes no difference anyway because no matter what, you’ll complain.”

“I do?”

“Yeah. If I were to bring you a whole chocolate cake you say, blah, blah. The Chinese army. But then you eat the whole thing and call me up to say, P! P, I’m out of cake. I’m out of cake here. Boy, I wish I had some of that good cake you brought me that time!”

He laughed.

“Yeah, so hearing that, I go to the store and get you some cake. And if I don’t see you for awhile, those cakes stack up, I admit. But there is no way to win. You’re either going to be starving or fed and you’re going to complain either way so who cares? Eat the cake or not, I don’t care. It’s not like I’m going to check on you! Did you eat that cake? I could care less. I only care you have the choice and you say, P! You’re trying to kill me with all this food!” I wailed. “Next day you tell me, oh, P. You must love me. Look at this food you got me. So as you can see, you are crazy. This is irresolvable - End of story.”

What is irresolvable for you? Do you have an opposition in your chart to match?

I have no idea what you all will take from this, but I will tell you one of the main things I see. This is the difference between someone who has a bunch of trines in their chart (me) as compared to someone with hard aspects (him). The soldier and I:

“Well it is hard for me to understand,” I said. “You tell me no one can get near you. That’s what you say.”

“It’s true. I don’t want anyone in my body space, P. Get in my body space and I’ll hurt you.”

“Yeah, I understand that but I can’t see it. Not now and not ever. You have always been completely open with me. I could or would never imagine you have any sort of issue with this. I am near you all the time and you are completely relaxed.”

“Well that’s the phenomenon, isn’t it? I keep telling you, P, no one affects me like you. You completely disarm me. I turn to mush the minute you’re in the room. I always have and no one else has ever affected me in such a way. I don’t like it you know.” Continue reading Astrology and Life Experience: A Chart of Trines vs A Chart Of Squares and Oppositions

Whenever there is an opposition in the sky or in a chart, you can see it play in relationships. Someone is on one end acting one energy and the other person acts the other end. With the current Saturn Neptune opposition this has been wildly apparent not only in my life but in the lives of everyone around me and it looks like this:

The Neptune person disappears or becomes incapacitated in some way. Could be mental illness, could be addiction… could be any number of things but for whatever reason this one person leaves the scene and becomes inaccessible.

This leaves the Saturn person confused and feeling rejected. They may try to control the Neptune person which causes the Neptune person to become even more evasive which causes the Saturn person to feel depressed and accept (un)reality… that is, that they suck and the Neptune person hates them.

But then the tide turns!

Now the Neptune person is back, typically oblivious to the Saturn person’s duress but so bewitching the Saturn person shrugs and says “Oh what the hell…” They let the Neptune person back in. And is this a mistake?

Hard to say. We aren’t going to know until this opposition breaks apart this summer. Until then, if you’re feeling sorry for the Saturn person, don’t. They are learning from Neptune. They are learning their boundaries are penetrable! They may swear this person off and try to block them out but their feelings melt their walls. Turns out they are human, capable of compassion after all.

On the flip, Neptune is learning from Saturn. Because Saturn keeps going. Drunk and beaten bloody, left in a heap on the side of the road, Saturn is still going to work and don’t think Neptune doesn’t notice. “Jeez, man. Maybe I ought to get myself out of bed and do the right thing like Saturn over there…”

Now here’s another story about people who on separate sides with something in common.

Genius and criminal mind, Arie, joined Special Forces as a teenager. He retired after one term (or whatever you call it) and went to work for San Francisco Police Department for the next thirty years. One day he got a call.

Apparently some person or persons was in a gas station restroom, creating some kind of problem for the other customers. The owner of the station called the police.

Arie responded… he banged on the door of the ladies restroom and when there was no response, he opened the door and entered the small room.

He knew there was someone in one of the stalls… apparently he could see some of their clothes hanging down, because the woman, a whore, was standing on the toilet.

“I was just going to ask her to shoot up elsewhere,” he said. But when he pushed the door to the stall open, this gal was standing on the toilet with a gun pointed at him and before he could speak, she fired it!

The bullet hit him in chest. It hit his breast bone, specifically and being highly trained he immediately emptied the bullets in his gun into this gal’s head and that was that.

Now this is an example of people with very different lives but it’s hard to believe they don’t have something in common, when they both wind up in a toilet with a gun pointed at another person at close range… and then they both shoot to kill!

And I think this is akin to the signs that oppose each other in astrology. They relate and that’s all there is to it.

Have you ever two people face off like this?

Dear Aquarius,

This is for you and everyone else with planets at the mid to late degrees of the Fixed Signs (Taurus, Leo, Scorpio, Aquarius). GIVE UP. Give up trying to hold on to some piece of ground because you are not going to be able to manage this. You are alllll being impacted by the current Saturn Neptune opposition in the sky and these are forces outside your control.

All you can do is try feel the currents and move with them. It’s like the tide. The tide comes in and it goes out. When the tide is in, you know what you’re doing. You’re in the flow. When the tide is out, you’re bereft! You’re lost. You’re scared.

And what this does is force faith. When the tide goes out, you simply must move forward the best you can, trusting that your mojo is MIA rather than left the building never to return. Faith, see! This is what you are supposed to be learning.

And at times you are going to be disabled. Seriously! (A Saturn joke.) So just get that into your head (Aquarius), your heart (Leo), your groin (Scorpio) and your stubborn position (Taurus)! You are not your usual self. And you’re not going to have any clarity at all prior to summer 2007. I guarantee this, so you may as well embrace the reality.

My friend satori is a Pisces (Neptune ruled) with a Capricorn (Saturn ruled) Moon, so she has a natural affinity and understanding of these energies when they combine. She put it best when she equated this to teaching a child to swim. You put them in the pool and get all tense and frightened. And you have to get them to relax! You have to get them to believe… to have faith that if they just lie back in the water, they’ll float!

So this is what you need to do. Lie back into the water and trust the universe is taking you exactly where you need to go because it is. And so sorry for the waves, but it’s nature, yes? So what do you expect?

Good luck.

~~
Have a question? Need advice? Ask here!

LB - Part One

So anyway, I met LB every morning and started bringing breakfast in for us. I’d bring a muffin or something that could be heated in the toaster oven which was all that was available. LB would brew coffee a few minutes before I got there and we’d post up to eat and laugh and listen to Devo’s “Whip It” on the jukebox. I don’t think there is a funnier song on the planet. We both thought that song was stupid and we’d play it each day just to laugh ourselves into oblivion. And the one day it was pouring rain.

It was cold too. It was winter. And all I had was a motorcycle so I drove it year round. It doesn’t rain that much in the desert but when it does, it stings when you drive through it on a motorcycle, never mind you get drenched. Eventually I got smart and tucked a change of clothes into my clothes, because I would get to work with my teeth chattering, frozen stiff.

Rainy season, LB would be waiting at the door to usher me in. It was his idea; I bring my bike into the bar on rainy days so I didn’t have to get off work and have it not start or something. He also didn’t want me to have to sit in water, seat soaked in the rain.

“That’s a good machine you have there. You should take care of it,” he said.

It wasn’t that often, but on rainy days I would pull the bike inside the bar and park it by the jukebox. I’d get to ride it through the bar when I go off work which is kind of cool if you think about it. I’d weave through the pool tables, being seen.

So on this day, I pulled into the parking lot drenched, and drove up to the bar. I had stop to lift the bike onto the concrete slab in front and then over the threshold of the front door. No problem.

Once inside, I drove it to its spot by the jukebox and then something happened, but I have no idea what. Instead of stopping the way I always had before, I kept going and I hit the stage at the edge of the dance floor with my front tire which popped up and then CRASH! I laid down my bike. First time. Only time.

But it was worse. The gas cap popped off and the tank emptied onto the floor. It just gurgled and poured out, a full tank. Two gallons I think, spreading in a pool.

LB did a little snicker, but I was mortified. OH CRAP. What have I done?

“I’ll get my mop,” he said. He was smiling. He opened his mouth to say something else but changed his mind and just chuckled. He walked into the back room as I turned beet red from embarrassment and started stammering and making excuses.

Basically, I babbled but LB was eighty-something. What the hell did he care? He didn’t.

“This is no problem Elsa. I had that floor clean but I’ve been mopping this floor for forty years. One more time isn’t going to kill me. Besides. I believe it’s worth it just to see the look on your face.”

I was speechless. Well almost. “I’ll clean it up,” I said.

He shook his head with a big smile. “No you won’t. This is my job.” He tried not to laugh at me because I really was traumatized. “You take care of your bike. Pick it up. Put it in Judy’s office.”

“Why?”

“Well you don’t want people to find out your drove it into the stage do you?”

I didn’t.

“Put it back there. Do you need help, or can you lift it? This’ll be between you and me. If anyone asks where your bike is, tell them you left it home. Tell them I drove you today because it’s rainin’ out. Tell them it’s none of their business.”

I picked up the bike. I was listening.

“Then when you get off work, go back to Judy’s office, get on your bike and go out the back door instead of the front. No one will know,” he laughed. “But you best go straight to the gas station. I think you need some gas.”

That did it. He could no longer hold it. He stopped to laugh and laugh, and laugh. So I laughed with him. What the hell?

“Do you think you can make it to the station? Those things don’t use much gas do they? $1 a week, you say? I don’t know what gas you’ve got left. Maybe just fumes. When I get this mopped up, I’ll be done cleaning and I can go get you a gallon. I have a can in my car.”

“No, LB. That’s okay. I’ll make it.”

He smiled. “Okay, Elsa. I believe you will.”

“I believe that too.”

“Then it’s decided.”

He swiped his mop through the pool of gas and rainbows appeared. 15 minutes later, the bar opened and the drunks arrived.

The gas was gone. The bike was gone. It’s stashed in the back room, but the SMELL. Ohhhhhhhh man, the smell…

One of the customers asked, “What is that? Smells like gasoline.”

LB saids, “What smell?” and I laughed.

“That smell! That fuckin’ gas smell. Can’t you smell that?”

“No. I don’t believe I can,” LB said. “Gas? I don’t smell any gas. I’m using some new cleaner on the floor. Maybe that’s what you smell.”

I snorted

“Doesn’t smell like cleaner to me. Smells like gas. I know what gas smells like.”

“Well it smells just like the regular cleaner I use on the floor, everyday, to me. I know what that stuff smells like.”

I beamed as LB winked at me, then left for home. The rest of the day, people came in. “Do I smell gas?”

“Nope. It’s cleaner,” I told them. “I sure hope they don’t keep using it. I hope LB goes back to the other, because this one smells like gas,” I said.

End of the day I got off work, went into the back room to count the register and then got on my bike and drove out the back door.

We were never found out.

(((((LB)))))

~
Keep reading -> Psychic Pisces Clues Me In…

Here’s a Saturn Neptune story. It’s an interlude for pure entertainment. It ia Saturn / Neptune related because it’s about a Saturn ruled Capricorn obscuring (Pisces) reality. The reality (Saturn) of leaked gas (Neptune) of all things. ::shakes head::

Look for magic, because so often this is what it is.

LB Meridith

LB was an African man who cleaned the bar where I worked from the time I was 19 until I was 21. I don’t know the whole story, but I do know he cleaned this bar in the middle of the night for 40 years.

The owners were good people. There was major relationship between them and LB, deeply respectful in both directions. LB owned his home free and clear and indicated if not for one or two things they had done on his behalf many years prior, this would not have been the case.

He didn’t clean the bar because he needed the money. He cleaned the bar because he was a Capricorn and if Capricorn quits working they’re dead. Similar to Henry who started digging a hole for his underground house at 79 years old… with a shovel!

Anyway, he’d come in the bar after closing around two in the morning, to clean after everyone had gone home, and he did this seven nights a week. He liked it.

“I like to mop this old floor. I feel like it’s my floor, Elsa. This is my floor to clean.”

I didn’t argue. He was in his eighties and he’d know. I came in at six in the morning to open the bar. Yep. Six AM.

I’d heard of “LB” but I’d never met him because he was done cleaning before I got to work. Then one day he was sick. He was terribly sick and the unthinkable happened (for Capricorn). He showed up late to work and we collided.

I had a key to the bar and I unlocked the door and found him in there cleaning. He startled me.

“You must be Elsa,” he said introducing himself. “They’re not kidding. You’re young, all right.”

I was the first person ever hired in this bar that was less than 50 years old. Long story. But anyway, I don’t remember much what we talked about, but when it was time to go he said “I believe I like you.” And I answered him back, “I believe I like you, too.”

Next thing you know, we moved our hours. He started coming in late and I started coming in early. We only had to shift our schedules 15 minutes or so and this was long enough we could have a visit before anyone showed up for a drink. By 6:05 I would have several customers in the place and he would head home.

LB talked about his life and I talked about mine and we both laughed ourselves stupid. It was just one of those things. It was a phenomenon. There was an inexplicable bond between us, observable by anyone. Well, astrology explains it, but you know… I would go as far as to say I have never liked anyone in my life more than I liked LB. And he may have very well felt the same way about me.

Keep reading -> LB- Part two