Everything looks a little different this morning.
Mercury is retrograde in Cancer.
Chiron, the Wounded Healer, is in Taurus. Mars entered Gemini the other day and is cruising towards a conjunction with wild Uranus.
This could be a roller coaster week. Or not. You may have slept extra under last night's Full Moon. I sure did.
The other BIG news: Jupiter is now in Leo, which is my 12th House. I'm here for the spiritual expansion. I'm here for the hiding place.
What House is Leo for you?
The saying goes that Jupiter will promise and not deliver, and after all these years of being an astrologer and tracking my own transits, I've found this to be true a fair amount of the time. We expect roses and diamonds and we get... not parched landscape but a dose of Saturn. Reality. So it wouldn't surprise me if this week was more squeak than scream but we'll see.
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My work with astrology and tarot clients all these years (since 2011) has in some ways well-prepared me for working with patients as an analyst in training. Just because someone books a reading doesn't mean they don't have a personality that may be challenging at times, one on one.
After all these years I think there have been less than a handful of folks that I refused to read for and never spoke to again. Everyone else got through. But now I see, for example, narcissistic traits more clearly and have words for it, theoretical fine points (not that I say these things out loud to them), whereas before I would have "just a feeling," which was usually the feeling that I was in the presence of something... that I needed to handle with care.
And yet we all need to be handled with care, and anyone is this field needs to be a bit of a lion tamer. There's so much unconscious activity all the time -- from them to me, from me to them. It seems to have worked most of the time. I trust my instincts.
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From McWilliams: "Narcissistic patients do have strong reactions to the therapist. They may devalue or idealize in powerful ways."
The other day I was talking to a new friend. I noticed that I started to feel anxious around chatting with them again. I had a thought, then, a thought which I'd never had about anyone before, at least not, well, consciously and not in these words. I thought to myself: I'm feeling like they want me to... manage their anxiety? It was a distinct feeling of being recruited to manage, and it was a job I had not applied for.
McWilliams writes, in the same chapter, "To be used for a self-esteem maintaining function, rather than perceived as a separate person, is disconcerting, even unnerving."
Mind you, this wasn't a patient or a client, but a new friend, and yet it's always useful to ask oneself what role am I being cast in? Who do they want me to be? Who am I in their inner object world? Persecutor? Longed-for punisher? Someone to be bested? Someone to teach? A helpful guru? Mama? Savior? Consciously and unconsciously. And often it's a combination that reveals itself differently at different times. I could see and feel such things long before I began training.
Some folks are so... terrified of being or seeming vulnerable that they cover themselves in thorns. If you touch them (metaphorically speaking) you will bleed.
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What does this have to do with the sky? This week's Jupiter Chiron square -- squares are tension -- throws our self-esteem in the toilet.
Alternately, you may be the healer, the laying on of hands.
Chiron takes a heavy axe to Jupiter in Leo's puffery. We want SO badly to feel pride. The saving grace is that this aspect perfects on Wednesday, and then will start to separate and fall away.
My recommendation is to look at it while it runs through the sky. Look at what appears to be your soul in ruins. Sort through the ruins. If you feel like the Ten of Swords then you feel like the Ten of Swords. It's okay. The mood will pass soon enough. Feelings are always like clouds in the sky, visitors passing through. You don't have to invite them for tea and cake.
Okay that's all for now. Keep passing the open windows xo
