A dear diary kind of share for #DignityBabes. This week we talk about the overwhelming and exciting journey of learning astrology. And how this informs what we put out in public & how we interact with creators.
Truth be told, I struggled to formulate my thoughts during this soupy Mercury Retrograde in Pisces. What had me engaging in a rebuttal and defence re Essential Dignities was my knee-jerk reaction to public figures and their clout. It feels vulnerable to say that I am invested in creating a certain level of professionalism and collegial relationship within the astrological community (btw Professionalism is one of our topics next week!). IMO, if you're someone who puts out any kind of content, you are engaging with the public period. And because of this, I've personally projected my own ideas of the responsibility that comes with this reality. It's a personality trait I try really hard to manage. I find my desire for a certain standard of "knowing" as my strength and downfall. It's both admirable and insufferable. My Sagittarius Midheaven with the South Node is showing 😓 (translated as I can be such an annoying know-it-all and righteous jerk).
Thankfully, the incredible #DignityBabes online conversation campaign took me out of my uppity-snobby spiral. It has grown so beautifully over the last 2 weeks. My co-conspirators have written brilliant think pieces and excellent references all about Learning Astrology:
@astrologywithcello, @ddamascenaa, @etshipley, @kelseyrosetort, & @justjogleason.
Absolutely gifted astrologers!!! I'm so in love with them. Follow them and follow the hashtag. People are putting out such fantastic work. I am learning so much.
All week I wracked my brain thinking of what to write about. And as I tried not to get too lost in the Mercury Retrograde Pisces ocean, I surrendered instead by reading more of John O'Donohue's poetry. His work feels like an elder's hand on my shoulders, gently telling me to be quite. Because I am fussing too much.
He says:
"Humans are new here. Above us, the galaxies dance out toward infinity. Under our feet is the ancient earth. We are beautifully molded from this clay. Yet the smallest stone is millions of years older than us. In your thoughts, the silent universe seeks echo.
An unknown world aspires towards reflection. Words are the oblique mirrors which hold your thought. You gaze into these word mirrors and catch glimpses of meaning, belonging shelter. Behind their bright surfaces is the dark and the silence. Words are like the god Janus, they face inwards and outwards at once.
If we become addicted to the external our interiority will haunt us. We will become hungry with a hunger no image, person or deed can still. To be wholesome, we must remain truthful to our vulnerable complexity. In order to keep our balance, we need to hold the interior and exterior, visible and invisible, known and unknown, temporal and eternal, ancient and new together."
John O'Donohue, Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom
Thank you, John. It struck me. Part of the challenge for this week's writing has been about being more vulnerable publicly. There is a part of me that firmly believes that to be credible & valid, one must show evidence of competency. This need for proof mirrors the science obsessed culture we live in. This kind of society values rigour in studies. One must dedicate hours of research to be taken seriously. One must put in the effort to be considered worthy. It's rigid and limiting. It's all very Saturnian. It's a struggle for me to explicitly divorce and balance my macro & micro-level conditioning.
On the same breath, my desire for structure is why I fell in love with studying Traditional Astrology in the first place. Interestingly, as I dug my toes more into this path, I indeed found myself more perplexed and in awe. I find the initial impression of the fatalistic language of Traditional Astrology gives way to esoteric worlds. I am often left thinking, how can I even speak of what I understand now when the more I study astrology, the less I seem to know?
And the vulnerable part is that I suffer from the need to be right. This comes from a value my family modelled. And the paths I've chosen puts me in a position where it's sometimes critical to be right. My experiences working in the western medical-industrial complex were all about Best Practices Guidelines & Evidenced-Based Care Models. I love them, tbh. The structure helped me be good at my job.
On the opposite end of the stricture/structure, I find solace in the mystery of surrender. This spectrum is where I often vacillate. It's a continuum I try very hard to navigate. I believe that studying astrology requires a sound foundation. And I also wholeheartedly believe that from this place, one can ripen their understanding into a completely new form. This is where surrendering to what you don't and can't know makes the holistic journey of learning astrology that much more life-changing.
The saving grace from my tendency towards rigidity has been my equally strong desire to strike down the massive borders I build for myself (Uranus conjunct my MC). Mind you, I don't hold people to the same standards as hard as I do myself. But I'm a messy human, and I'm sure I make (and will forever continue to make) mistakes.
Jo Gleason, aka JOpiter, the generous and smart astrologer and writer than she is, articulated this experience so beautifully in her article, The Secret of Learning Astrology - The Shift. She also wrote a no-nonsense "listicle" of How To Learn Astrology - Top 5 Tips, Books & Resources. This is where I mostly land these days. I navigate the rigid and the soft in my studies all the time. The human experience is hard to encapsulate. Impossible even. When I see clients for consultations, it's genuinely challenging to summarize a life in 2 hours.
But you see, the Structure enables me to do so, and the Surrendering of it all is what allows me to be humble. So for me, learning astrology is like a devotional practice. One must study hard. And one must live and be open just as much. It's essential to have a connection to a sound framework. And it's equally important to have reverence for the divine and mystery of life.
How and Why are you studying astrology? Join our conversation:
