Jewel of Scorpio ~ Topaz November 10, 2009
Posted by cjwright in Planets and Signs, Scorpio and Pluto.Tags: astrology, auntie moon, cjwright, november birthstone, scorpio, topaz
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Legends about the miraculous properties of stones and precious gems abound. I place that kind of info in the “magical lore” category and find that it can offer a real boost if I’m using the symbolism to strengthen a particular thought in my head. I have quite a collection of crystals and stones. I used to use them for meditative purposes, but now they are an often neglected collection that occupies a large bowl on the coffee table in my office. My alpha cat, Spanky, placed both his front paws on the bowl and was using them as a meditative tool just the other day. He meditated himself into a trance that lasted for a couple of hours. He looked like he was sleeping on them, but you have to watch cats. They’ll try to trick you. I’m sure he was focusing on the law of attraction trying to bring more Friskies into his life.
I’ve always enjoyed the beauty of crystals, stones, and rocks, and remain curious about the various healing properties associated with them. I love their lore and symbolism. Gems are quite essential in Vedic astrology as aids to mitgating negative effects of the horoscope. It would take one heck of rock pile to fix mine.
Here are some of the legends and myths about the Topaz.
- The ancient Egyptians saw in its golden glow the radiance of Ra, their sun god.
- The Greeks felt the Topaz strengthened them and warded off sudden death.
- Topaz is said to make its wearer invisible in times of emergency.
- A Topaz will change color in the presence of poison.
Those last three sure could come in handy! I wonder if Bin Laden is wearing one? (He’s a Pisces, btw.)
In her book Stone Power, Dorothee L. Mella has this to say about Topaz’s abilities,
Ancient lore claims great healing powers for this stone, especially the power to control angry passions and to balance diseases of emotional origin.
If the topaz is mounted in gold, these properties are supposed to be enhanced. This is lore, though, and I wouldn’t recommend a topaz to replace proper medical guidance in controlling any emotional disease or rage.
Here are a few qualities that create a symbolic bond between Scorpio and the Topaz. The keywords for Scorpio are in bold lettering.
- Because of its association with gold, it is used to bring or enhance the wearer’s gold and money gathering abilities.
- Wearing topaz is said to bring friendship, better and deeper relationships, and enhance one’s ability to give and resurrect love.
There are lots of variations on which stone applies to which sign and Topaz is often listed as a stone belonging to Sagittarius. Rex E. Bills assigns it to Scorpio in The Rulership Book. J. Lee Lehman lists the stone falling under the rulership of the Sun, Mercury, and Jupiter in The Book of Rulerships. There doesn’t seem to be any disagreement among jewellers that the stone is the November birthstone. If you have a Topaz, enjoy it no matter when you were born.
If you like Topaz but it isn’t in your budget, you can substitute Citrine ~ which is one of my favorites. You can find Citrine cystals that range from white to yellow to smokey brown. Quite beautiful.
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Photo courtesy of NYPL Digital Editions.
Scorpio ~ America Recycles Day November 7, 2009
Posted by cjwright in Scorpio and Pluto.Tags: america recycles day, astrology, auntie moon, cjwright, recycling, scorpio
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November 15th is the official America Recycles Day and is a day dedicated to encouraging us to recycle and buy recycled products. I was surprised to learn that 2009 is ARD’s 12th year. Thank goodness someone has been watching out for us. I love the ARD’s motto: “It all comes back to you.”
Yep, recycling is a Scorpio event.
I live in a community where recycling doesn’t seem to be a high priority. Unlike many communities, we aren’t obliged to recycle. We aren’t required to separate plastics, cans, and newspapers from our regular garbage. The sanitation department doesn’t provide bins for curbside recycling and will throw everything into the landfill here. That includes pesticides, old medications, paint, and all kinds of toxic materials. Our landfill has some kind of super liner that allows this kind of dumping. Apparently, when it reaches capacity, they’ll put a supercover over it, and throw a bunch of dirt over it. And then what? This landfill has won a couple of national awards, so I suppose it’s progress, but it still creeps me out.
Regardless of what seems to be reckless abandon, the head hauncho at our landfill assures us that plenty of the county residents are doing their part to recycle. The county has even gone into partnership with a paper mill and uses their unused warehouse to sort and store all the plastics and newspapers collected at bins placed around the county.
Did you know that if you pull out your recyclables and separate your composting materials (all kinds of uncooked food except meats, fish, and dairy), that you’ll reduce your trash to about a third? It’s kind of like having a clean trash compactor. Gardeners are very knowledgeable about the merits of composting and how it’s a magic elixer for your soil. I’ve made the switch to organic gardening. It’s not always as easy as it was before to get rid of weeds. I can’t just spray them away anymore, but conscience overrides comfort. This is my first house. I want good dirt and happy little wild critters, you know. If I poision them, I poision myself.
Plastic bags are a huge problem. The stores will put one item in a plastic bag, and you wind up with 30 of them before you know it. Reduce the problem by getting yourself some reusable bags for shopping and keep them in your car. If you’re in an area where you don’t need to drive to the store, keep them someplace handy enough to grab on your way out. They’re great for all kinds of other purposes, too. I use them to move books around the house from one room to another. Speaking of books ~ when ordering from Amazon, I get as many used books as possible. They’re always in great shape and I save money.
Boils faster!
Here’s a tip from Arm & Hammer that came as a surprise to me when I read it this morning ~ get water to boil faster by putting a lid on the pot. Wow, who knew?! How does that help the world? It saves time, therefore putting a tiny bit less stress on our natural resources, therefore saving us money because we use less electricity, gas, or propane. I’m sort of psyched to check it out. (OK, I’m easily amused.)
If you haven’t taken the first steps toward recycling, try just one little thing to start. Buy one reusable bag, or don’t buy water in a bottle for a week. Teach your children. They’re going to have to put up with an even bigger mess on planet Earth than we do.
Scorpio ~ Clean Up Your Bathroom November 5, 2009
Posted by cjwright in Planets and Signs, Scorpio and Pluto.Tags: auntie moon, bathroom renovation, cjwright, scorpio
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Early Stage of Renovation
About this time last year I started renovating my bathroom. Actually, I’d peel a little bit of the 35-year-old wallpaper off a spot and then stare it for a few days. Then I’d repeat the process in another spot ~ peel, stare for days, peel, stare for days. That went on for several months, and then one day I peeled off almost an entire wall. I had committed. An ugly peeled-off wall meant there was no going back. I had crossed the Rubicon. Transformation was eminent.
Okay, so…what does all this have to do with Scorpio? Well, a few things. Scorpio and Pluto rule bathrooms, toilets, urinals. Pluto holds the sceptre over plumbing. Scorpio is a water sign. The organs of elimination are related to Scorpio. That all makes sense. So, renovating your bathroom is a Scorpionic transformational event. It certainly was for me!!
The whole house and part of the garage was a huge mess during the renovation. I knew that would be the case ~ which I why I spent so much time staring at the wall instead of doing anything about it. Stupidly, I started this mess around the Thanksgiving holiday and it dragged on into the New Year. That’s not a particularly good time to have your house torn up, but it eventually paid off.
I scraped, I sanded, the toilet paper went missing. Dust was everywhere. Little snippets of old gooey wallpaper jumped out from who knows where to stick to the oddest places on me. The floor was gross because I didn’t cover it before I started scraping the old paper off ~ even though I had the thick brown floor paper made just for that purpose! It’s still rolled up out in the garage. Scrubbing out the corners of a bathroom floor covered with old wallpaper paste is not fun. Put the paper down.
Sometimes you have to make a mess to clean things up. And that’s certainly the story of my bathroom renovation, any renovation actually. In many ways, that’s the crux of a Pluto transit activating a point in your chart. A lot of nasty stuff has to get demolished and hauled off so that the corners of life get a little cleaner.
I have to stop here and say what a great job my husband did on making it into a beautiful room. He’s a very talented carpenter and painter with a discriminating Virgo eye, and without him, I would probably still be in the throes of the mess trying to decide what to do next ~ stuck forever to my own gooey-pastey wall, like a human fly-paper trap.
Oh! And to make things a little more difficult for us, we had to replace the drain under the bathroom basin while we were in the middle of the renovation. It decided to dissolve before our very eyes. Nice, huh?
If you’re wondering what all this has to do with you ~ simple. First, and least important, clean up your bathroom. Second, don’t just stare at what needs to be renovated in your life. Pluto is waiting heavy-handed with a wrench and hammer. If you don’t take care of the do-it-yourself renovations you need to make ~ in your bathroom or anywhere else in your life ~ he’ll step in as your contractor. And that’s a bill you don’t want to get.
Scorpio ~ Hey! Watch Where You’re Going! November 4, 2009
Posted by cjwright in Scorpio and Pluto.Tags: auntie moon, carelessness, cjwright, pluto, Portia Nelson, scorpio, There's a Hole in My Sidewalk
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Have you ever stumbled while walking down the sidewalk because you weren’t watching what you were doing? Maybe you stepped right into a big gaping hole?
If you’ve been keeping up with the news about Saturn’s entry into Libra and the current Pluto in Cap square Saturn, you’ve been alerted to the strength of these placements and the caution you need to take to make them work for you instead of against you.
Pluto square Saturn
To err on the side of caution, this is to alarm you to watch where you’re going! There’s an open manhole with your name on it. The manhole pictured here looks a little too much like an open toilet seat to me, and that’s exactly where we don’t want to end up ~ down the toilet!
I hope you’ve kept up with Donna Cunningham’s incredible 3-part series, The Pluto-Saturn Preparedness Kit on Skywriter. You can see the whole list of articles in the series by clicking here. Read them. They’ll really help you get the cover back on that manhole.
If you read this blog regularly, you know I’m a huge fan of astrological symbolism. You can find an abundance of it just by looking around the very room you’re sitting in right now. Sometimes we need factual information to understand what’s happening in our lives. The cold hard facts are necessary to get a clear perspective on the all too obvious pitfalls that surround us. Being a lunar type, I automatically hone in on the feelings that accompany an issue or situation. Symbolism and metaphors help me process the facts and feelings as a whole.
Portia Nelson is the author of a poem that really seems to symbolize the Pluto/Saturn square, as well as Saturn’s transit through any house or by its contact with any of our natal planets. This poem is a warning based on life experience, and I’d bet all of us can recognize ourselves in her words.
There’s a Hole in My Sidewalk:
Autobiography in Five Short Chapters
by Portia Nelson
Chapter 1:
I walk down the street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I fall in.
I am lost…
I am helpless.
It is not my fault.
It takes forever to find my way out.
Chapter 2:
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I pretend I don’t see it.
I fall in.
I can’t believe I am in the same place.
But it isn’t my fault.
It still takes a long time to get out.
Chapter 3:
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I see it there.
I still fall in…It’s a habit.
My eyes are open.
I know where I am.
It is my fault.
I get out immediately.
Chapter 4:
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I walk around it.
Chapter 5:
I walk down another street.
As observers, we stand back and watch people fall into holes over and over again. Sometimes it’s hysterical and we just stand back and laugh. The hole was so obvious! How could they miss it? Other times, we might try to warn someone ~ Watch out! ~ but our warning is too late or they don’t hear us, and in they go.
Sometimes it’s us that takes the fall. It was never on purpose, was it? That doesn’t really matter. The key is to learn from those pitfall experiences so that we don’t continue to make the same mistakes again and again. We walk down another street. But we’ve still got to keep our eyes open.
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Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
Astrological Picture Book ~ The Death Card and Scorpio November 2, 2009
Posted by cjwright in Astrology and Tarot, Planets and Signs, Scorpio and Pluto.Tags: astrological picture book, astrology, auntie moon, cjwright, death, judgement, judgment, scorpio
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The astrological associations of the tarot are open to lots of debate among authors and readers. The tarot is a symbolic system that holds personal meaning for the individual readers, so there’s lot of room for interpretation. I assoicate the Death card with Scorpio, and will investigate the sign of Scorpio, the 8th house, and the issues that surround them when this card is drawn. I associate the card Judgement with the planet Pluto. Together, these two cards represent the cycle of endings, transformational power, and new beginnings.
Death becomes the Teacher Card when you realize that coming to terms with death is true liberation. You can then die to those rules that constrict your freedom of spirit. ~ Mary K. Greer, Tarot Constellations
If you have some experience with tarot, you’ve most likely been taught that the Death card is not the harbinger of physical death. It’s a scarey looking card ~ and death tends to scare the patootey out of most folks ~ but no one has ever died when I pulled this card. Death does, however, represent the natural end of things ~ work, projects, relationships, and believe it or not ~ even the end of bad habits and hardships. Everything is cyclical, so all things end. Even long-term commitments end through change or by evolving. At least, we can hope that they change because the only alternative is stagnation and, ultimately, true death. Rotting, non-evolving, never ending, eternal stagnation. The last rut.
How long can you hold onto something that has no life of its own or that sucks the life out of you as you try to keep it barely alive? Do you just keep trying to revive it again and again? Sooner or later, you’re going to have to loosen that death grip and let go.
Here’s some good news about the Death card. It’s in the middle of the Major Arcana cards (#13 of 22) because Death is not the end. Based on the meanings of numbers, the card has the base number of 4 (13=1+3=4). 4 represents solid foundations, stablility. The skeleton shows us that ~ even when everything else has been stripped away ~ we are left with our basic foundation, our core. We can survive if we find the strength and a sustaining way to rebuild.
The number 1 is the unique spark, the urge toward birth, and the desire to survive. It’s the Sun. 3 is the ability to express oneself and expand ~ Jupiter. 4 is Saturn, the earth, stablity, foundation, continuum. And that means growth. Growth is the only alternative. Whatever it is that the Death card is pointing at, craves new life.
There’s a little white thingy in the upper left hand corner of the BOTA Death card. It’s a seed, ready to be planted, carrying all the potential of whatever you will have it become. It’s a seed from the Tree of Life. As long as there’s a seed, a spark, we can go on.
You have to make room for abundance and the only way to do that is to get rid of all the rubbish that’s holding you down. All things end. Go ahead and grieve for what you have to let go. Hold on to what you need to. Bury your dead. Clean house. It’s time for something new. So much more is waiting for you.
Judgement shows us that we will all be called forward again, and not necessarily in “the next life.” It could be today. As Pluto, Judgement insists that we make major changes in our lives so that we may live again.
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See more quotes on Death as Scopio at The Quotable Tarot.
The cards in this post are from the BOTA deck which you color yourself. You can find all images from the deck here. You can order a deck or print the images on heavy card stock. The cards in this post are the ones I colored.
Suggested reading for the Death card is Hajo Banzjaf’s chapter on Death in Tarot and the Journey of the Hero.
I’ve always taken a great deal of comfort in Dylan’s song, Death is Not the End.
