Renewal, Return, and Rebirth

I’ve been away from this blog for a while. Which means this post is likely to be a long one. Better sit down with a cup of tea and get comfortable… 😉

For those who don’t know me, since 2005 I have been the Creative Director and Logistician of the TempleCon retro-futurist gaming convention, which eats up vast quantities of my life between September and the actual weekend of the convention in early February. This year was the convention’s tenth anniversary, so there was a monumental amount of stress and details to be attended to beforehand, and with the convention itself sandwiched between two snowstorms some difficulties with load-in and load-out as well, but the actual weekend of the convention was far less stressful than in previous years, in large part due to the efforts of a very dedicated volunteer corps and an amazing new-to-us sound and light crew and stage manager.

For most of the past ten years, status-post TempleCon I tend to be pretty useless for weeks on end, thoroughly burnt out by the months of pre-con preparations. Even with this year’s convention going off remarkably well, post-TempleCon downtime stretched out for weeks afterward. It’s a combination of exhaustion and the depression that follows the end of any huge undertaking, as I reconfigure my daily habits to fit the kind of normal living that flies out the window during convention season. I sleep for 12 hours a day, knit, draw, sleep some more, study, plan for any shows that I will vend at in the summer and fall, visit with friends neglected during convention season, and sleep-walk my way through the shop on the days that I work there. Did I mention sleep? 😛

Given my post-convention need for rest and a mental reset at this time of year, it’s also the time that I like to work at setting new habits, just like many people set New Year’s resolutions at the beginning of the calendar year. The perfect time to get back to blogging. 😉 However, that process has been somewhat impeded this year by a whole slew of health problems that chose this time to come crashing in, no doubt thanks to Neptune and Chiron transiting Pisces in my 6th house of work and health. Still, while my writing efforts have mostly bogged down, a new form of expression for me has taken off, in the form of little daily 6″ x 8″ drawings based on the astrological aspects of the day. Since my old scanner died a painful death shortly before the convention, I have recently ordered a new one and am waiting impatiently for it to come in the mail so I can start scanning these new drawings in and sharing them here.

At the same time, I’ve been looking into putting together a Patreon page to help fund my divinatory art efforts, so once that scanner comes in I’ll be getting that up and going as well, and of course I will announce that and link to it here. 🙂

Finally, I’ve been looking into the possibility of creating astrology videos to post here and on YouTube. One may well ask, if you do blog updates so infrequently, why plan to do videos? The short answer to that is that it’s a way to change up my methods of expression, and hopefully post more frequently as a result. With the transiting North Node about to conjunct my natal Uranus/Ascendant, I’ve got a fateful feeling about finally tying in together all of the myriad changeable ways that I present myself to the world, and among other things that means bringing the experience that I’ve already had in front of the camera into the service of my divinatory practice.

The longer answer is that my natal North Node in Pisces (saw that three times fast!) in the 6th house being conjoined by transiting Neptune is emphasizing my need for a spiritual daily life and livelihood that both flow (mutable water), yet my natal Saturn in Taurus and natal Pluto in Virgo still emphasize my need for a daily routine. With a predominantly nocturnal chart and a Moon/Uranus opposition along the Ascendant/Descendant axis with Chiron in the 6th house conjoining the Moon, I experience Delayed Sleep Phase and Non-24-hour sleep-wake issues. I’ve always known that I was nocturnal (some of my earliest memories involve lying awake in the middle of the night), but growing up in a rigidly-scheduled household that had no tolerance for tardiness due to sleep-deprivation, I didn’t really understand the N24 component of my sleep cycle until recently – it ensures that trying to adhere to a precise schedule from day-to-day is an endless losing battle. For me, the key to managing the issue without drugs appears to be just as in improvisational dance (which is my forte), where I need to hit certain milestones within my day, but the exact time I hit them is inconsequential, and I need to be free to change the order and even drop steps entirely should that particular day call for more flexibility.

The problem with blogging for me has been that it has rarely fit into what I am doing from day-to-day – not simply scheduling the time to write, but having what I am writing about fit the feeling and flow of my day, the topics aligning with what’s on my mind and in my environment in a coherent way. I have been too concerned with “is this going to be of use to anyone else?” to discuss astrology, divination, and the creative process as I live them, and too intimidated by my own vulnerability to be willing to turn this blog into a confessional. Yet my work as an astrologer has been born and grown primarily out of the process of methodically dissecting my own chart and the charts of friends, family, and business associates – the people and groups that I interact with on a daily basis – before I ever began to apply it as a profession, and using astrology as an tool for both immediate and long-term understanding every day is still the mode in which I work with it best. There is something intimate about using astrology in this fashion – not predicting the great cycles of society, not speculating about impending wars or economic upheavals, but focusing instead on little day-to-day struggles and victories. It becomes a means of building and understanding relationships, increasing sympathy, empathy, compassion, and social bonding, both individually and in community.

In this six-month disseminating cycle of the recent lunar eclipse, the need for me to reassess my relationships is being reinforced, combined with the North Node in Libra inching its way toward a triple-threat rendezvous with my natal Uranus, Ascendant, and Pluto over the course of the next few months. Along with transiting Saturn conjoining my natal Neptune, and transiting Neptune trine my Midheaven, both spiritual and material matters are loudly clamoring for my attention and neither is willing to give an inch to the other. So for the sake of both sanity and survival, I have to follow my natal North Node’s karmic imperative and combine the two as best I can. But in that relationship reassessment of the eclipse, which tapped into the last of the seven Uranus/Pluto squares that have been such a disrupting force in the lives of so many of us with 1st and 2nd decanate Cardinal placements (Aries/Cancer/Libra/Capricorn), there is a powerful emphasis on the need to change how I step up to the plate, to relinquish that which no longer works, cut away that which is no longer healthy, and bring Uranian insight into a more social sphere in a way which is less isolating, less distancing than the usual Uranus mindset.

With my natal Chiron at my Descendant opposite my natal Uranus at my Ascendant, that has been a lifelong challenge for me. But in combination with the Piscean North Node imperative and current Saturn/Neptune challenges, the solution now seems to me to be one of immediacy, tapping into my day-to-day musings in whatever form they take, whether writing, drawing, painting, video, brewing, or design. There is a lunar feel to this solution that seems in-keeping with the lessons of the eclipse. Lunar astrology in particular has guided planting, harvesting, fishing, and so many other human endeavors for thousands of years. Why not let it guide my blogging as well?