If you have no idea what the Iron or Pearl Pentacles are, you might want to skip this chapter or buy my book Circling the…
The Three Centers: The Heart Center
Over the past several years, my spiritual and personal practice has become more organized around the energetic structure of the three centers in the body—belly,…
Astrological Aphorisms
Three battles that cannot be won: forcing a Gemini to commit; compelling an Aquarius to change their mind; demanding a Libra pick a side.
Three unpardonable offenses: failing to remember an Aries; offering mild praise to a Leo; boring a Sagittarius.
Three utterances never heard: a Capricorn admitting defeat; a Taurus conceding your point; a Virgo saying, “Yeah, that’s good enough.”
Three great mysteries: the true opinion of a Pisces; the reason that a Cancer is mad at you; a Scorpio’s entire personality.
The Three Centers: The Belly Center
The Trials of the Magician
“When you’re being the Magician, it’s easy to see everyone around you as a dupe you need to keep entertained. But in this gesture, there is a way out: to show those who admire you their own power. To renounce the need to be special and indestructible and instead take your place in the community of animals. To share all the burdens and responsibilities you are carrying, and to lay some down if you cannot tend them all.”
You Don’t Have to Work So Hard
“A part of me still has internalized the Catholic injunction to become a saint, an exemplar of virtue who shows humanity what it is capable of. When I was younger, I felt my failure to become a saint was a sign of my intrinsic awfulness. At this stage in my life, I now appreciate that saints are rare because that life is incredibly taxing. I further appreciate how many saints could only accrue the spiritual and internal force necessary to hold that virtue by renouncing other paths such as marriage, family, career, or living in the society of their time.
There is a spiritual path of living in the world and cultivating one’s soul and being, and it’s been known in many religions and cultures. Gurdjieff called it the Fourth Way, but I think of it as the path of the Red Mage—in the original Final Fantasy video game series, the Red Mage had some skill in fighting and some skill in general magic but mastery of neither.
That is the path I walk, and in walking the path I find these moments of feeling the costs of not committing to one or the other. A part of me dreams of the monastic life of solitude and devotion to spirit and my awakening, while another part of me wonders what would have been possible if I’d dedicated my considerable discipline and willfulness toward accruing money and power in this world.”
Poem: A God Offers the Choice of Three Paths
A poem about the paths of will, desire, and longing.
Crab Season
Astrology is one of my hobbies of study, something I find fascinating and rich but not enough to make my profession. From an archetypal, depth perspective, the wheel of astrology offers a clock of the movement of energy and themes that rise up in our personal and collective experiences. Currently, the sun is moving through the sign of Cancer. Each of us has every sign in our natal charts, so Cancer is within some domain of life, and the sun invites us to look at how these themes play out and could transform within the house that Cancer rules for you.
We Must Remember to Advance
“Every time we felt alone in suffering, or learned to survive hardship, waits for us to be capable of returning to witness that pain. Our suffering deeply longs to be felt and understood fully; that’s why it seizes upon us in our weak moments when we don’t have the strength to push it away. Or it lashes out at loved ones, hoping they have the strength and capacity to hold it for us. But when we are too vulnerable to give it the caring attention it seeks, we only feel mired more deeply in it, and caught in the battle of those parts of us desperately trying to keep it hidden.”
For Love’s Sake
A Victorian-style poem about embracing the totality of light and dark.