Waiting for Rain in a Drought
After having learned electional basics from the lovely Kira Ryberg, or the study of choosing the most auspicious time to initiate actions based on the aastrology, I more able to appreciate that the current astro weather doesn’t feel very nice. There’s not an acute issue— Mercury and Venus retrogrades are over, eclipse season hasn’t started yet— but it just seems to be a time of little itches and scratches, leaving me exhausted after a day of not doing much of anything. Joy still persists, meaning, and art, but the little things grind. Just a few nights ago, I was interrupted from my homemade banh mi prep to hear my carbon monoxide alarm begin to chirp. I scrambled to my parents’ house only to drive back with my mom to let a gas technician in, who tells us it only needs to be replaced. It obviously could have been so much worse and I’m grateful I haven’t experienced something like it before but certainly a stressful interruption to a tranquil night.
It’s been harder to find parking. There are few good movies in the theaters. Spicy emails have been sent. It’s apt, perhaps, that I have also been spending the past few weeks spending time with my inner 12-year-old. People talk up inner child work which, sure, yes, definitely, but for me the real gauntlet has been sitting with my inner tween. I can’t speak in universals but the period between 5th and 7th grade was one of the nastiest times of my life. Heck, even 8th grade. Have you spent time with kids that age? It’s the perfect mix of adolescent self-consciousness and childhood mean spirit. I have pretty tender memories of myself during that time and, having gone back to read my diaries, it was somehow worse than I remembered? I feel so deeply for this girl who didn’t feel seen, respected, valued. She is me too.
But my therapist did not assign this excavation just to focus on her pain, though feeling that too is important. She invited me to look back to see her as more than the way she was treated by people who didn’t really know her. When I read that diary, I see someone who certainly didn’t let herself be defined only by these negatives. She wrote excitedly about her friends, crushes, the food she ate, what she celebrated. I saw someone hyper-observational with a quick wit, even if she didn’t always express it out loud.
My therapist asked me how I would find out more about her and I said that simply setting an intention to meet her would bring clues and memories out. No coincidence that this is the week I get back into the Goo Goo Dolls, and Jimmy Eat World, who both have songs on the A Cinderella Story soundtrack. Can I tell you that that 2004 Hilary Duff movie was my life? Jennifer Coolidge playing a bimbo evil stepmother. Chad Michael Murray as the football player Prince Charming. Lots of flip phone texting and unbelievable dialogue. I lived for it.
So, this afternoon, I am going to get my 5th grade self something sweet and watch it with her.
How are you checking in on yourself today?
Snakes
Another big theme of my current period of time is snakes. I haven’t seen some in person for months, but my work has led me to them multiple times. I see signs of them when I am driving with friends. In my research for my latest newsletter on the decans and stars, I learn of the ancient connection between daimones in snakes. In Egyptian lore, each decan, or 10-day division of the year, had daimones, or tutelary deities, assigned to them to carry out their will. From my essay:
In Egypt, they associated serpents with “protection and fertility as well as death and destruction,” mirroring their role as pharmakon; both poisoning and containing the antidote to said poison. Snakes are often connected to fate, much like the manifest powers of the decans. In the tomb of the Pharaoh Osorkon II (ca. 850 BCE), a snake is depicted stretched out over a symbol for earth and marked “living ones of fate,” which Greenbaum explicitly connected to living out one’s decans, as well as the stars attached (source)
Daimons, like snakes, like our fate, contains the whole spectrum of healing and harm; joy and misfortune.
But snakes are also a source of power. I reflected on this fact when rereading my essay on Alphard, star of the serpent’s heart, to prepare for a fixed star consult:
According to the Dictionary of Symbols, snakes have long been “symbolic of energy itself—of force pure and simple; hence its ambivalence and multivalencies”.
We see this entwined duality clearly in the use of snake venom to cure the very sickness that venom can cause: poison becomes cure. The symbolism of Alphard is similarly one of power that can be used a wide range of ways, though not without struggle.
Do we humans not, also, struggle to fully grasp the power of our own fates and all the fear, and fallout, that may come with living in our truths?
We can learn what fat this is, dance with it, through the decans and stars activated in our charts. My books are open if you want help navigating and bringing them down into your earthly life.
For now, I leave you with this recommendation, now that fall is here. Cozy up with a blanket on a couch or porch. Watch the leaves and the rain. Put on Tom Petty’s Wildflowers and consider your day productive.
Until next time,
Love,
Chloe
I have a spotify playlist for the year 1996 that my 13 year old self loves 💖