Urania's Well: Astrology for Changing Times


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Spinning the Wheel of Time: Trauma and Healing in Astrology

b2ap3_thumbnail_astro-clock-italy-sm_20121115-220151_1.jpgIt’s an  oft-repeated truism in the literature on Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder that it never goes away. I’m a big believer in the plasticity of the brain and the strength of the human spirit, so I’ve always felt that it was possible to fully heal, just damned difficult. Part of the problem is that trauma affects everyone differently, depending on a number of factors — genetics, environment, parenting, the ages at which trauma occurs, etc. — which means everyone’s path to healing is different. Sometimes it can be hard to see where the next step is, much less where the path leads.

I’ve had plenty of people tell me over the years about their special one-size-fits-all “cure” for PTSD.  Along with various psycho-therapeutic methods and magical and shamanic techniques, I’ve been urged to try EFT or acupuncture or any of a gazillion other different treatment modalities — and I probably have worked with most of them. But in my experience and that of many people I’ve spoken to in my work as an astrologer and tarot reader, you pick up some healing here, and some there, and a bit more over there, and pretty soon you’re talking real healing. But it takes time, it takes support, and it takes a willing heart.

It also helps to have a way of finding the path ahead — a way of conceptualizing and understanding the crucial truths and lessons inherent in a traumatic situation, putting them in a spiritual, growth-centered context. This is the blessing astrology offers to those who are willing to take the time to learn its language. The birth chart is the itinerary of our soul’s journey in this lifetime. Like any itinerary, it can be changed or ignored, but knowing where you are and the best way to get to where you want to go is a lot easier than wandering around asking random strangers for directions and a place to stay. This cosmic itinerary is particularly useful in giving us a somewhat objective way of dealing with trauma by revealing a path to healing that is tied to our life-lessons and soul-level plans and desires.

My own life has recently offered some sterling examples of how astrology can aid healing, and some of my “invisible friends” (yes, good polytheist that I am, I talk with gods and spirits — it makes finding a supportive therapist a bit more difficult) have suggested to me that sharing some of my process through recent events would be of help to both students of astrology and perhaps some trauma survivors. Learning how to look at your chart from the perspective of life-lessons and spiritual alignment is valuable, and you don’t need to know much more than the basics to begin to do that. Here’s a bit about how I was able to use my chart to get myself back on track after getting triggered into a very destabilizing PTSD flashback.

The Setup

As the Uranus-Pluto square chewed its way through my chart over the last few years (first aspecting my Sun, and now my Midheaven and other planetary placements) I had my share of challenges, but felt I was handling them pretty well and pro-actively. I was making a number of profound changes in my life on many levels, some of which were painful, but not overly or unexpectedly so, and many were liberating. In general, things were going along pretty smoothly. I thought I had this Uranus-Pluto thing handled. But Uranus and Pluto, two planets that epitomize trauma and its aftermath, weren’t done with their work yet.

Just as the last exact square between the two planets was forming, I was triggered into a PTSD flashback by a confluence of events, and because of the situation, I had no chance to retreat into the solitude I needed to deal with it — and “dealing with it” had always meant wrestling with some of my personal demons until I got them back in the box where I kept them locked away. (N.B. This is not a recommended method of healing.) Because I couldn’t handle it in my usual way, I crashed and burned emotionally. I did my best to hide what I was feeling, but internally I was a mess, and functioning on auto-pilot.  This psychic earthquake, with a number of aftershocks, exposed the fact that my life was teetering on a foundation laid over a pit of still-unhealed fear and trauma that dated way back to my childhood. I knew the challenge here was to excavate that pit, then fill it in, and repair any damage to the foundation. Though I’ve substantially healed from that crash, I’m still working the process, and the astrology is very clear about it. 

While every planet and sign can be involved in traumatic experiences, in a chart we can particularly suspect trauma if there are difficult aspects between personal planets (particularly Sun and Moon) and Uranus, Pluto, Saturn and/or Mars. An emphasis on the signs Aquarius and/or Scorpio also tends to correlate with traumatic experiences.

To illustrate from my natal chart, you’ll see a T-square — Moon oppose Pluto with Mars as the focal planet in Scorpio. This aspect was specifically affecting me over the past couple of years, because it had progressed by solar arc to aspect another core cluster of natal planets in an Aries/Libra opposition.

(Now, don’t let solar arcs scare you off. It’s a technique that is useful for ongoing insight and prediction throughout a person’s life. You can think of solar arcs as similar to transits (the current placement of planets in regard to their placements in a natal chart.) For more information on solar arcs, read this. If you’re an astrology student, get this book.)

In 2013, solar arc (SA) Pluto opposed my natal (N) Mercury, while transiting (T) Pluto was squaring N Saturn. Mercury is the natural ruler of the third and sixth houses, and also rules those houses in my natal chart, as well as the 2nd. Saturn is the natural ruler of the 10th, and also rules my natal 10th. So I knew that issues of finances, career, how I presented myself to the world, work, and service would be front and center, and I’d also be looking at the third house considerations of my personal mindset and second house issues of self-worth.

For many, many years I had lived in a state of almost constant high anxiety due to previous traumas that I had only begun to heal during the past 20 years or so. In 2013, almost in the blink of an eye, an entire background layer of anxiety just dropped away. Yes, I’d done a lot of work to make that happen, but it had still been an ongoing struggle to keep my head above the roiling waters of my subconscious fears. When the anxiety disappeared, it was like a gift, a touch of magic in my life. Particularly with Saturn and Pluto, if you do the work, you get the gifts — and they are lasting gifts. Mercury often brings a touch of sudden magic. As Pluto approached Mercury and I knew my daily mindset would be up for review, I had upped my practices of magic, meditation and mindfulness.  The sudden breakthrough came because my chart let me know where to focus my energies.

The Crisis

I was well aware that I would probably find this last square of Uranus and Pluto particularly challenging, because I also had SA Pluto coming up to conjunct N Neptune, co-ruler (with Mars) of my 12th house of the subconscious and spiritual matters, at the exact same time. This is an aspect that Noel Tyl describes as “enormous intensification of sensory sensitivity; possible loss of the frame of reality”. I would describe it as akin to the Descent of Inanna — except what’s being taken away are your treasured illusions and stories. My flashback occurred within a few days of the exact aspect.

One of the best descriptions of a PTSD flashback I have heard is that it “strips away time”. In other words, the area of your brain that has to do with raw survival hijacks almost all the other brain resources, because it is convinced — usually for an erroneous reason — that there is currently some extreme danger of the sort that it had previously experienced. This flings the survivor back into the exact same brain state they were in at the time trauma occurred as though no time had passed at all. Yes, it is possible — though not easy — to control your reaction to this attempted takeover of your brain by its most primitive systems. It’s possible to act reasonably normally while someone is yelling at you, or a car backfires, or you feel trapped, even though a big and powerful part of your brain is screaming at you to run and hide, berating you as an idiot, and often sounding just like your abusers. If asked, you could tell someone it is 2015, not 1960 or whenever, but convincing your lizard brain of that fact is a whole ‘nother matter.

The Healing

Once I was able to burrow back in to the safe refuge of my home, I pulled out my chart and meditated on some of the archetypes that were highlighted in my chart at the current time. Because I had known these aspects were coming, I had expected that some kind of event would challenge my personal development. Since I knew my chart well enough to be intimately familiar with the karmic themes, I was able to quickly identify what was happening and what needed to change. Then I began to sort it out and make some sense of the disruption in my inner landscape.

Pluto was very much in the picture, of course, and, in my chart, Pluto never travels by solar arc without Mars and Moon in tow, and those three planets, particularly with Mars in Scorpio, are the poster gang for emotional — and physical — abuse.  They had progressed by solar arc to first my MC, then Mercury, and now were moving on to my natal Jupiter-Neptune opposition.

I asked for more understanding and some guidance in healing, and was led to several books that helped me sort through the difficulties of my early life, and stop trying to avoid, repress and minimize them. To understand that, yes, it was "that bad". In fact, it was even worse, now that I was able to look at it with fearless subjective recognition and the objective assessment of age and distance. My acknowledgement of those hard facts validated the child and adolescent who experienced them and needed to have their pain heard instead of minimized and repressed. It also allowed me, as a functional adult, to reassure them that we were safe now.These books and some conversations with a friend helped me think objectively about the experiences (Mercury), excavate the emotional realities (Pluto, Moon, and Neptune), then compost those experiences into nourishing food for my further growth (Pluto, Moon, Mars).

Looking at my natal chart, I could see how these experiences fit into some of the overall main themes of this lifetime — cultivating emotional strength, compassion, and depth of understanding, awareness of the ties between victimhood, survivorship, spirituality, and pseudo-spirituality, and balancing self-expression with group connection and personal relationships.  This awareness helped me put a stop to painful, repetitive thought patterns, and finally surf my emotions to shore instead of getting rolled in the wave.

While these insights helped me strengthen my emotional foundation and get my life back on track, healing is more of a process than an event. There is still work to do. But it’s a process that is immeasurably aided by 45 years of studying the patterns of the planets, and the insight that knowledge gives me into my own way forward, my own healing. I’m also able to see when key times in my life are coming up, and prepare for them.

While an expert astrologer’s opinion is always of value,  I encourage people who are serious about personal and spiritual growth to learn a bit about astrology themselves, enough to decipher their own chart and those of loved ones and friends, because the insights your chart offers can be deep and life-changing.  Yes, just like therapy, it takes some time and focus, but probably not as much time as you think. I’ll be starting an online class for beginners soon, specifically oriented towards gaining self-knowledge and insight from one’s own natal chart. I’m calling it “Chart and Soul: Astrology for Yourself”, and if you’d be interested in taking it, be sure to like my Facebook page and/or sign up for my mailing list. I’ll let you know as soon as I’m ready to start registration.

If PTSD is something you have to deal with, either in your self or a loved one, here are a couple of books I can recommend. Both have good bibliographies:

The Evil Hours: A Biography of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving: A Guide and Map for Recovering from Childhood Trauma

Do you have some other recommendations, or some thoughts on healing from trauma? If so, feel free to chime in in the comments section! (You'll need to have an account and be logged in to comment or read comments)

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Diotima Mantineia began studying astrology in 1968, taking classes from Zoltan Mason in New York City. For the next 22 years, she practiced astrology only for herself and her friends, continuing her studies while watching an increasingly humanistic, psychologically oriented, modern astrology blossom through the work of leading astrologers such as Noel Tyl, Liz Greene, Rob Hand, Marion March, Stephen Arroyo and Howard Sasportas. In 1986, Diotima began her study of Wicca and started reading Tarot, discovering that she is a gifted intuitive. In 1991, she began practicing both astrology and Tarot professionally. She majored in plant and soil science both in college and grad school, and grows much of her own food and "materia magica" on her land in the mountains of western North Carolina. Diotima’s personal spiritual path is rooted in the Western mystery traditions, the principles of Yoga, and a profound connection with the natural world. Wicca gives structure to her spiritual journey, and she utilizes shamanic practices for healing and to live in harmony with Nature. Over 15 years of studying Chinese martial arts has given her a deep appreciation of Taoist thought which has strongly influenced her magical and personal philosophy. You can find her at www.uraniaswell.com

Comments

  • Wendi Lynn Wagner
    Wendi Lynn Wagner Thursday, 07 May 2015

    I find this an interesting subject. I have complex PTSD receiving treatment 7 years ago which dealt with the nightmares and flashbacks.The issues I continued to deal with the inability to balance my life. This last year I started a daily lunar horoscope as a part of my yearly research projects. I am finding this blog is providing a structure in which to learn balance... I would be curious as to your thoughts on this.

  • Diotima
    Diotima Thursday, 07 May 2015

    Wendi, I'm glad you are finding the blog helpful. I think life balance is an issue for everyone in this highly technological culture that is so out of tune with Nature. My suggestion would to be remember to be gentle with yourself, and that walking is a process of losing your balance and gaining it again. As long as you are managing to stay upright, you are probably doing ok. :-)

    I've always found Desiderata an inspirational read, particularly when I am feeling out of balance. You can find it here; http://allpoetry.com/Desiderata---Words-for-Life

  • Wendi Lynn Wagner
    Wendi Lynn Wagner Friday, 08 May 2015

    Thank you the poem is beautiful! Being gentle with myself is my biggest challenge. I too think that our tech heavy society takes us further and further from the natural world. I grew up a midwestern farmers daughter, the past 30 yrs I have lived the life of an urbanite and it has literally burned out my mind, body and spirit. I hope to find my way back.. thank you for your insightful writing

  • Amy
    Amy Saturday, 09 May 2015

    Thank you for sharing this--lots of food for thought here. I have been excited about taking your astrology class ever since you first mentioned it. I'm looking forward to it!

  • Diotima
    Diotima Sunday, 10 May 2015

    You are very welcome, Amy!. Yes, I'm slowly but surely getting that class together. Stay tuned!

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