Note deep background for everybody’s story right now: wild, unpredictable Uranus has entered stubborn, earthy, grounded Taurus, and all hell is breaking loose.
I spent 24 hours in bed yesterday, “laid low” by a resurgence of a chronic jaw infection that periodically rises to the surface, and this time completely wiped me out energetically, besides being quite painful. This followed a week when I had been working to deflame an extremely strange and I would say dangerous insect bite, probably some form of spider, that bit the back of my right thigh where I couldn’t see it. But from reports of my housemate Dan whom I enlisted to periodically apply a paste of bentonite clay to the approximately four-inch wide area, it was not only extremely red, but held a two-inch wide hardness underneath, with of course a pustule center where the insect had taken hold. It reminded me of the South American volcano that has just exploded in a huge way, not to mention the ongoing fiery lava rivers of lava from Kilauea.
The insect bite (now mostly subsided, after about ten days!), I have a sense, took so much out of my immune system that I had nothing left to fight the chronic jaw infection which has been there, in one way or another, for decades.
So, with the upper right jaw swollen and inflamed, and the insect bite still inflamed and itching, I finally decided to take things in hand, and deal with it.
Oh, but first, guess what? And of course, I should have known: there were not one, but two astrological indications that I would be dealing with something serious during this period of time.
One of these transits I had already paid attention to: transit Saturn, which, since February, has been crossing my natal Venus/Mercury conjunction (itself at the pointed end of a yod formation with Saturn and Pluto, and square Neptune/Midheaven — OUCH!). Saturn’s long cycle ensures that this conjunction “happens” only every 29-30 years, but when it does, look out!
I had been activating Saturn consciously, working especially with its triggering of natal Mercury (the mind, language, communication), by dedicating myself to what I have named as “the recapitulation project,” recovering and sharing hundreds of old essays, both published and unpublished, from the past 30 years, and archiving them as AK Reader on this site. Fittingly enough, many of these essays revolve around the theme of personal relationships (Saturn to first house Venus), as well as my public persona (Saturn to Neptune at the midheaven), and describe how this complex and difficult personal/spiritual alchemy plays out over time to teach me lessons I have needed to learn.
Not that I’m done, believe you me! However, this new cycle of Saturn over Mercury/Venus/Midheaven/Neptune seems to be operating at a “different level,” as if it really is true, that as we grow older, and if we attend to being and remaining conscious, noticing, aware of our experience, then we really do find ourselves spiraling through time, rather than marching in a straight line. In this manner, we meet the same issues again and again, at both ascending and descending levels of the spiraling cycles of each of the planets. Saturn’s 30-year cycle makes whatever it does crucial, since it happens so rarely, and each node sets up a new crossroads.
So, as I said, I was aware of one of these transits, namely Saturn. But the other one! Zowee! It took be by surprise. Not sure why. After all, I did see transit Mars in early Aquarius, in my second house of self-worth. And at some point it did fleetingly cross my mind that wow, it’s going to oppose my early Pluto in Leo in the 8th house! But since Mars moves quickly, I hadn’t paid much attention to the transit. Not until the insect bite, that is. And even then, since it was on the back of the thigh where I couldn’t see it, I had been scratching it for some days before realizing that it was not getting better (as would a mosquito bite), it was getting worse, significantly worse.
That’s when I started with the clay packs, to draw out the poison. Then, three days ago, when the chronic jaw infection, always an issue during this Saturn-dominated year (besides skin (the bite!), Saturn also rules teeth and bones), became so powerful and inflamed that I couldn’t sleep, I looked at transit Mars again. And discovered: Mars in early Aquarius (and still only two degrees from opposing my natal Pluto), will turn around at 9° Aquarius to go backward on June 25, for two months, passing directly opposite my 7° Pluto again, and then when it turns to go forward on August 25th, and climbs back over Pluto for the final time in early October, I will have been working with this difficult retrograde period for slightly more than four months.
I always look to see how often a cycle repeats to decide just how seriously I should take it. And it looks like this Mars Rx in early Aquarius has never happened before in my lifetime. Which means that this, for me, is a once-in-a lifetime opportunity to address the original issue of how I work with both Pluto and Mars, 8th and 2nd houses, and all that they connect to (together the Mars transit completes a harmonious six-pointed grand sextile star pattern (transit Mars, with natal Mars, Neptune/Midheaven/Pluto/Saturn/Uranus/Eris/IC with transit Chiron) in my natal chart, so ultimately, this could be a good time, a time which draws together most of my energies into one overall harmonious pattern.
Here’s what I decided to do: working in concert with my friend and intuitive healer/blogger Laura Bruno, I decided to get serious about remineralizing my teeth, since on a physical level, I presume that is the original cause of the bacterial infection that has plagued me for decades and gets worse as I get more “long in the tooth” with age (75 years now). To this end, I have ordered the book Cure Tooth Decay, by Ramiel Nagel, and started a regime that Laura says he will recommend: bone broth (I have done this off and on for years) and goat milk (I have never even tasted it: delicious!).
And, I have ordered Blue Ice cod liver oil, and am about to order some special vitamin supplements this morning as well, as per Laura’s advice.
Looking back while still at the very start of this process which will take most of the rest of this year (Saturn doesn’t leave early Capricorn until mid-December), working with two very difficult planets (particularly for me, given their original locations in my chart) — Saturn so serious, requiring definite decisions, plans, projects, structure, and Mars impulsive, wanting quick action, and a surplus of which, unused (going backwards), can torque into anger, frustration — so, notice, the two are contradictory? Mars insists on doing something, Saturn wants to stop and figure things out. Both — at once.
Well, I’d say that until my body insisted (with the help of nature, thank you Spider!) and the flare-up of the chronic jaw infection, and insisted so powerfully that it took me down, sent me to my bed for 24 hours with no food and only goat milk to drink, I had been pursuing my usual stubborn course, thinking arrogantly that of course I was in tune with my body (after all I do two hours of “physical culture” each day, right? and brag about it!), but I was not. Not enough. Not nearly enough. So I thank my body for its insistence that I stop, now, and pay attention to what is really happening on this 3D level, within my own corporeal form.
Of course these transits have multiple implications beyond the body, but these will have to wait until my healing process on the physical level proceeds.
