crabbullshit-blog - Tumblr blog

crabbullshit-blog · 6 years ago

Text

astrology & language

Feb 18th - hi pisces season :~)

what i love about astrology is: the more i learn the less i know. this is my favourite way to proceed in any situation, but it doesn’t bode well with people who care about knowing the most. who care about knowing more than you. who feel especially threatened if you want to learn about something they don’t, or cant. once, after a reading i did, during which i read a poem with astrological content, an acquaintance approached me and asked me why i would bother writing a poem & then “include such a pre-established system in it”? (i’m obviously paraphrasing here) i didn’t know how to answer this, partially because it felt like an especially unnecessary question, an especially inopportune moment to ask it, and an especially absurd premise to begin with. but this is always how it goes - the person who approaches you after your performance is almost never the person you want it to be - it’s someone who wants to poke a hole in you, ensure that you don’t feel too proud, or happy with yourself. on the night in question, i not only fielded this inquiry from my peer, i also dealt with an older man who followed me around, cornered me, told me he “loved my delivery” and then reached inside my shirt. once i lost him the first time, he pretended to leave the event but very conspicuously circled around my friends & i, presumably waiting for me to be alone again.

it was a difficult question to answer because it wasn’t untrue, it was just. a strange place, in my opinion, to draw a line. when i’m writing, or making art of any kind, i’m always operating within, borrowing, enlarging, minimizing, and amending systems that already exist. this is so true i don’t even know where to begin taking inventory of them. language itself is a system. & one that exercises incredible control, very insidiously.

language is what makes astrology feel resonant, or asinine. recently, a friend of mine asked me to write to her about her “houses.” (a treat!!& very daunting) all the reading i’ve done suggests that houses are incredibly difficult to grasp, and crucial to understanding the scope of a natal chart. according to everywhere, it “can take years” to understand them well. & there is no shortage of interpretations available.

when i started looking into them, the sheer amount of information was overwhelming. there are a lot of contradictions & it was a challenge to connect the houses, & their respective (and occasionally overlapping?) meanings, which, for some reason felt important. as it turned out, paying close attention to language is what allowed me to start parsing their significance, and their relationship(s) to each other.

very crudely put, the first 6 houses, which fall beneath a chart’s horizontal axis, speak largely to activities that take place within you, & between you & those (human & non-human) who are closest to you. the last 6 houses, 7-12, pertain more to how you move thru & engage the world in a larger sense. so far, the idea i’ve found that appeals to me the most is: houses as impulses. in this schema, the houses are broken down like this:

this diagram is from: https://iordanus.com/misunderstanding-the-astrological-houses-means-misunderstanding-important-parts-of-your-personality/

like all systems, this one leaves something to be desired, (built upon) but it gets me thinking in new ways that i appreciate. (can u figure out which sign “rules” which house, based on the affirmations?) something i really like about this wheel in particular is how easy it is to see the relationships between the houses(& signs, & planets) especially those that oppose one another. it is clear that there is a distinct relationship between:

the 1st house, (Aries) “I am” & the 7th house (Libra) “I collaborate”

the 2nd house (Taurus) “I have” & the 8th house (Scorpio) “I doubt”

the 3rd house (Gemini) “I think” & the 9th house (Sagittarius) “I evolve”

the 4th house (Cancer) “I feel” & the 10th house (Capricorn) “I understand”

the 5th house (Leo) “I want” & the 11th house (Aquarius) “I share”

the 6th house (Virgo) “I control” & the 12th house (Pisces) “I transcend”

admittedly, the affirmations for the 2nd house & the 6th house really leave me cold.

let’s consider the 2nd house briefly, just to illustrate the difference a word can make. my most cursory search revealed that the 2nd house has to do with: money & possessions. (the “i have” above seems in line with this.) but it felt, if not incorrect, then incomplete. how can the house that follows my 1st, my ascending sign, my chart ruler, the source of my individuality, be concerned with money? is that what follows the inception of the self? maybe it is now, in 2019, but was it always? i kept digging and came up w/ the words “resources” & “values.” which felt better, but still off. then, eventually, i read the word, needs & a little click. after i am born, and breathing, the first thing i know is what i need. money & possessions are needs, can & do make the difference between life & death, but they are not spiritually relevant, though they do sustain & enhance life. to me, it was important to assemble a definition that takes into account the nature of needs that are not only material, but psychic, emotional, intellectual, et all.

so astrology is a system, but surely the issue isn’t whether i (or we) use systems, but which ones i use, & how. astrology unfurled when i started relating it to the ecosystem. permit me to talk about a potentially contentious sign, to illustrate this. in contemporary astrology scorpios are perhaps most known for their sexuality, but (apparently) in ancient astrology this was not the case. they were merely associated with the unconscious. with what is dormant, repressed, or underneath. this, of course, can encompass sexuality, but isn’t exclusive to it. overt sexuality was more closely associated with the 5th house, and with its ruler, leo, and its exuberance & playfulness.

since sexuality has been so diligently buried, denigrated and hidden, it doesn’t surprise me that it would become so associated with certain planets, houses, & signs, but i think that may have more to do with our current moment, than the cycle astrology attempts to elucidate. now, when i think about signs, i think about what is happening around me during that time of year: so what’s happening during scorpio season? most of the growth we’ve spent the spring & summer caring for & luxuriating in is expiring. we r at the zenith of its decomposition. leaves fall off & litter the ground. stems and stalks shrink and their colours change. their textures change. yes, it can look bleak, even alarming, when everything returns to the dirt. it may look less beautiful & less abundant than the seasons that preceded it, but if we could lift up the soil like a blanket, we would see that that couldn’t be further from the truth: how gorgeous & complicated it is that all the nutrients return to the whole.

brussel sprouts come into season (roughly, & depending on where you are) during sag season, but they, & certain other brasicas (turnips, cabbages,) which can & do grow during other times of the year supposedly taste better (or differently) after harsh frosts. (brought by sag & cap season) i can’t help but revel in finding out things like this, coveting them, holding them, building off of them before anything else. it inevitably reminds me of barthes, in his chapter on (love?) objets, called The Ribbon, in which he writes about the japanese poetic form, the haiku, which necessarily contains the kigo, the season word. amorous notation, he writes, retains the kigo. one word, at least, that speaks to the natural conditions love grows in. in my unprofessional opinion, astrology is nothing short of amorous notation. accounting for our bodies, what happens inside them, between them, around them, above them.

Remedios Varo, Naturaleza muerta resucitando (Still Life Reviving). 1963. Oil on canvas, 110 x 80 cm.

0 notes