The Past Revisited

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“If you want to know the past look to the present. If you want to know the future look to the present.”*

The best way to appreciate the influence of astrology in your life is to observe how you react to the events in your life. It often feels like the events in our lives are happening to us but astrology shows us that we are the creators of our lives and that our reactions to external events depends on how we perceive the event. One of astrology’s greatest gifts is helping us understand why we perceive as we do, and as a result, why we behave as we do and make the choices that we do.

Yesterday, I had a reaction to an event in my life that reminded me that the insight gained from astrology is shockingly direct and any temptation to dramatize the significance of the stellar happening isn’t necessary and can even obscure the understanding astrology brings to human experiences. In astrology there is something called a “recurrence” which happens when transiting planets are in contact in a similar way as natal planets. For example, yesterday, Venus and Pluto made contact and because I have Venus and Pluto connected in my natal chart I experienced a recurrence of what that contact felt like before I had the necessary language skills to verbally express my emotions.

When we enter the Venus dimension of ourselves we experience intimacy and when we enter the Pluto dimension of ourselves we experience power and control. When these two planets are in dynamic contact at birth there is a good chance that the earliest experiences of intimacy were shadowed with feeling deprived. In my case, Venus and Pluto are in dynamic contact and it’s not surprising that the recurrence I experienced with transiting Venus and Pluto had to do with my mother and sharing food.

I was invited to share a salad with my mother and her partner and before her partner came to the table my mother said that she had eaten more than her share and that she was concerned that there wasn’t enough for her partner and asked me not to have any. I felt the familiar wave of resentment and anger swell inside my heart. This is an old story in my life and over many years I have reacted in different ways but always with destruction but yesterday I had enough emotional detachment to recognize the astrological significance of my experience and soften my reaction. In quiet acceptance I made myself something else to eat.

I am not suggesting that astrology miraculously erases the past, on the contrary, astrology accentuates the contours of the past so we can integrate the past with the present and achieve a more holistic experience of ourselves and our lives. This is one reason I welcome next month’s Solar Eclipse, albeit with trepidation, when I am given another illuminating event involving Venus and Pluto. Did I mention that my natal Venus and Pluto sit at the apex of a fixed T- square with Moon and Mars opposing Jupiter, or that my natal Venus is 17 Leo and in direct opposition with the Eclipse?

*Buddhist proverb