Seeing Ourselves As Others See Us

C.E.O. Carter, well-respected 20th century British astrologer, writing about the ascendant or rising sign ~~

On the Ascendant as a Mask:
Recently we have heard a good deal to the effect that the rising sign, and in particular the ascending degree, is a mask which the native wears before the world but which conceals his true self.
As I have stated in the Lodge, this proposition does not seem self-evidently true. It seems to derive from the practice, in Alan Leo times, of correlating the Sun with the 'individuality' and the Moon with the 'personality', using these words in their well-known theosophical senses. 'Personality' is further derived from the Latin persona = something one makes a noise through, hence a mask such as actors were wont to wear, with a wide-open mouth. Then, apparently, this idea of a mask was transferred to the ascending sign...

I suggest that it is not the rising, but the setting degree, that is more truly a mask, for it is through this that we contact other people, and unless we have very strong personalities (in the usual, not the theosophical, sense) we do modify our demeanour according to the man or woman who confronts us..." [From an Editorial in The Astrologer's Quarterly, September 1951]

Mr.Carter's theory makes a lot of sense to me. Some other astrologers have said that the descendant indicates "what we need", in a partner, or in life. I like Carter's idea much better, and it seems to work in all the charts I've been able to check so far. Admitedly this is not a large number, because times of birth have been elusive in many of my close connections throughout life.

My own descendant is in Capricorn. I've been told more than once that I come over as too serious, solid, reliable = Capricorn. This makes my revolutionary Aquarian Sun bristle! As Mercury lies in Capricorn in my chart I've usually blamed the impression I seem to give on that placement. Capricorn is not the real me, but it could easily be what others see first, when they don't know me. I seriously doubt that anyone sees my rising sign (Cancer). I'm anything but motherly. I've never been a mother, not domesticated (I am house-trained, but barely!) I am ultra sensitive and sentimental/emotional but few would perceive that - unless they knew me very well.

I tried Mr Carter's theory on the husband's chart. He has Leo ascending, Aquarius on the descendant. He has told me, many times, that when he was young he always tried to be original and different, not to conform with the fads of his contemporaries - in the way he dressed, his hair, his taste in music, the way he spoke. That says Aquarius to me, not Leo. Matured now, less avant garde in most things, but still his Leo remains well hidden, just a part of the mix of his real self, his Moon is there too. When I first stumbled across him on the internet, the impression I had was of a school teacher or some such academically inclined mortal. It turned out that he wasn't, but his demeanor was definitely more Aquarius than Leo. His eldest daughter has a similar ascendant, these remarks could apply equally to her.

I believe that Charles Carter nailed this. His theory is something worth keeping in mind.

To calculate an accurate rising sign it's necessary to know the time of birth - as nearly exact as possible. It's a stumbling block for people in Britain where times of birth have not always been routinely recorded. Parents and grandparents can often help with, at least, information on an approximate time of birth - knowing whether born during day or night for example, then narrowing it down. Astrologers find any such rough guide helpful, when they use a calculation process known as "rectification" for a client. They need dates of important events in the life of the person in question, these help establish a rising sign and likely degree.

Below is a list of the zodiac signs with their opposites, as rising and setting signs:

When Aries is rising, Libra is setting
Taurus rising - Scorpio setting
Gemini rising - Sagittarius setting
Cancer rising - Capricorn setting
Leo rising - Aquarius setting
Virgo rising - Pisces setting
Libra rising - Aries setting
Scorpio rising - Taurus setting
Sagittarius rising - Gemini setting
Capricorn rising - Cancer setting
Aquarius rising - Leo setting
Pisces rising - Virgo setting.

We were not in Kansas anymore....(no astro today).

We returned home Monday evening, sooner than originally planned, having decided that it would be best to leave our detour into Oklahoma City as a separate trip for a couple of nights next week. There are so many bits and pieces we want to do in The City, as well as visit the "Occupiers", that it felt like too much of a good thing to tack on to our Kansas trip. It means, too, that we still have something to look forward to (always preferable in my book!)

A few photographs follow (mainly husband's) with notes on our Kansas explorations.

Grain elevators are a common part of the scenery in this part of the US, almost every town has one - some in Kansas are extra-huge. (A grain elevator is a tower containing a bucket elevator, which scoops up, elevates, and then uses gravity to deposit grain in a silo or other storage facility.) Nearly one-fifth of all wheat grown in the United States is grown in Kansas. Photos below show a large elevator in Salina, and a small older one with some new ones in Ellsworth.






It's amazing what one can find in the most unlikely places. We'd decided on making Salina, Kansas our base, and didn't really expect much in the way of surprises. Salina was my husband's place of birth and hometown for his first 18 years. But nearly all the nearby places we explored were new to him. There are "secrets" hidden everywhere for anyone with time and inclination to search! Map shows the area we explored, around Interstate 35, a busy-busy road we avoided whenever possible in favour of more peaceful highways, and, on occasion, unpaved roads.




We couldn't leave home until after noon on Wednesday, due to a medical appointment, so broke the journey and made a stopover in Wichita, Kansas. Wichita is called "Air Capital of the World". From the second decade of the 20th century several aircraft corporations made Wichita their home base: Cessna, Learjet, Airbus, Boeing among them. Our main interest in the city was a couple of antique malls, where husband found a goodly haul of old photographs for his collection.

Around 90 miles north of Wichita is Salina, a city of just under 50,000 inhabitants, twice as big as our hometown. Salina still retains that small-town feel, beloved of people in these so-called "fly-over states" (an unfair, quite undeserved, sneer).

Let's see, what did we do in Salina? A wee bit of shopping in their well-maintained main street. Later, on Saturday evening, we sampled their Arts Cinema - a newish small movie theater in centre town established especially for showing those weird "art films". Such films are often a struggle for me to understand, but they tend to gather acclaim from critics - leaving yours truly well and truly puzzled. Anyway, the film on offer was "The Future", poster has the word split: FUT with URE beneath; I'll remember the film as Foot - Ure....(an ancient disease of the feet?) It wasn't as obscure as some other art films I've had the misfortune to watch, but it was certainly more than a little weird. It wasn't exactly about the future, in the usual sense; it tried a little too hard and self-indulgently to be arty and quirky. (Being a Sun Aquarian, I ought to know all about trying to be, or not to be... quirky!) Still, it was an interesting experience.

We visited nearby Ellsworth, a small town (you can tell it's a real small town when there's music piped into the main street!) We found a surprise in a room above an establishment called the Village Mall (mix of flea-market booths and fancy goods). Upstairs is a rather grand ballroom - the remains of the masonic centre originally housed in the building - those masons are everywhere!! This grand room also houses a lovingly restored pipe organ, in the pic I'm trying to discover how it works.





From Ellsworth we took an unpaved road (as directed by a leaflet we'd picked up) and found Mushroom Rocks in a 5 acre area now designated as a State Park, having been donated to the State by the landowner.

The strangely shaped rocks are formed from sandstone from the Dakota Formation, deposited along the edge of a Cretaceous sea about 100 million years ago. Over time, circulating water deposited a limy cement between the sand grains, creating harder bodies of sandstone called concretions.

Concretions, such as the cap of the rocks shown here, are often spherical. The softer sandstone of the stem has eroded more rapidly, creating the mushroom-shaped rocks.











A further short trip took us to Abilene, another small town, this one with claims to fame. Dwight D. Eisenhower grew up, and is buried there. Abilene houses The Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library and Museum.



And...Wild Bill Hicock was the town's marshall for a time in the 1870s. The Greyhound Hall of Fame is located in Abilene, the town also has the honour of being Greyhound Capital of the United States.

From Abilene we drove to Manhattan, medium sized town, housing several colleges, but nothing to hold our interest. The countryside around here, Flint Hill country, is hilly, wooded, very pretty - quite unlike the boringly flat-forever Kansas stereotype....Un-Kansas, I called it. Some trees were starting to get their gold on. It's not quite Fall yet, but getting there. A couple of nights with temps below 32 degrees, promised for the coming week, and Fall will be presenting its full glory.

On Sunday we drove the ten miles or so to yet another small town, Lindsborg, known as Little Sweden: the town's original settlers, in 1869, were Swedes. Lindsborg retains, and emphasises, its Swedish roots, for the benefit of passing tourists. A pretty, and on this October Sunday, very peaceful town. Tree-lined residential streets, well-maintained and attractive houses, a pleasant central street, all with an air of mid-20th century. I reckoned that those characters illustrated so beautifully by Norman Rockwell must have lived in a town just like Lindsborg.

Lindsborg's adopted mascot or logo is a carved wooden horse known as the Dala Horse, symbol of the crudely carved horses whittled long ago beside Swedish firesides during horrendously cold winters. A store in town makes and paints replicas of these on-site. Prices were outlandish though, so none came home with us! Large versions of the Dala Horse are scattered around town, all painted in different styles.




A friendly passer-by offered to take our pic together, with a Dala Horse:



We'd hoped to visit the memorial gallery of artist Birger Sandzén in Lindsborg, but found it was closed for renovations intil 2012.

Those early Swedish settlers had a hard time of it. From directions in a leaflet we'd picked up we headed for something called the Hoglund Dugout: a pit, 6'x12', lined with large chunks of stone, constructed in the summer of 1868 by Gustaf and Maria Hoglund, a young couple from Fernebo, Sweden, as their first home. Their wagon would have been parked over the top of the dugout for protection from the elements - and wild critters. There are no signs leading to the location, one has to watch for a break in the trees, then walk for around 50 feet east to find it.





We had a lunchtime snack at The Swedish Crown restaurant , which wasn't nearly as grand as its title, but plain and homely. I sampled a Swedish speciality, meat and potato sausage in a sandwich of toasted marbled rye, garnished with beetroot - very tasty indeed! Husband settled for a plate of grilled fresh veggies.

From Lindsborg we drove up to a popular picnic place, Coronado Heights Park, on a hill named for Francisco Vásquez de Coronado, who explored the area in 1541. Here the result of another of FDR's 1932 Works Progress Administration (WPA) projects can still be seen: a stone castle, stone picnic areas, restrooms and stone front gate. Presumably the WPA workers also cleared the road up to the hilltop, but it has never been paved. Nearer to our Oklahoma home there's evidence of a similar WPA project -a paved road up to the summit of Mount Scott - still not a mountain, by any stretch of the imagination, but much higher than Coronado Heights.




We left Salina on Monday morning around 9.30, arrived home in the evening at 6.30, having stopped for a sandwich in Caldwell, and a look around the junkiest junk shop I've seen, anywhere, ever, in Kingfisher Oklahoma. I found some worthwhile VCR tapes there though, for $1 each, and a Fall/Thanksgiving wreath for our front porch for little more:

Try, Try, Try Again....

Heading out later today. This time northward, for a change, into Kansas, my husband's home state. We're hoping this trip, unlike our last two attempts, will prove to be trouble-free.

In other news: the long drawn-out Oklahoma/Texas drought and run of unusually high temperatures came to an end at the weekend. We had two or three days of continuous, heavy rain, with more storms and rain last night. YEEHAW!!

And....

“Whose streets?”

“Our streets!”

And with that chant, the occupation of Oklahoma City began early Monday evening when approximately 150 people gathered at downtown Kerr Park to demand economic justice and fairness in the face of growing wealth disparity dictated by our corporate-controlled political system.

The group, Occupy OKC, a spinoff of the Occupy Wall Street protests in New York, have a three-day permit to camp at the downtown park, which is primarily concrete and decorated with fountains, and it has even brought in bathroom facilities. (See HERE and HERE)

OKC!! Who'd've thunk it? Well done them! Some sources put the numbers present on Tuesday as 300. Three days won't be enough - but they'll at least begin to raise awareness, and perhaps be able to find another location to "occupy".

If they're still around in a few days, when we're on our way home, we'll make a detour and go find them, offer support, stay in the City overnight.

Back in a few.

Wine, Medicine, Gods, Goddesses.....

On this day, 11 October, the Romans would celebrate yet another festival (they did love their festivals!) Meditrinalia: one of several celebrations linked to the vineyards. This one gave the workers a chance to sample the new wine. It was customary when doing so to pronounce the words vetus novum vinum bibo, novo veteri morbo medeor ("Being old, I drink new wine, and cure the old disease with the new"). Wine was believed to have healing powers. Today the same belief persists - old Russian proverb: "Drink a glass of wine after your soup, and you steal a ruble from the doctor". It has been found that wine opens up arteries and increases blood flow, and that, taken in moderation, wine can increase your levels of HDL cholesterol 9that's the good kind which assists in getting rid of the bad kind).

The festival's name honours the goddess Meditrina, whose family tree varies according to where one reads mythology. Some say she was daughter of Apollo, others say daughter of Ascelpius, God of Healing and son of Apollo (who in turn was son of Zeus - ruler of the gods). Mythical Meditrina was, then, either daughter or grandchild of Apollo, and, some say cousin of Cupid, who was son of goddess Venus and god Mars. One enterprising wine mercant advertising today quips that Meditrina is "the yin to Bacchus’s yang."

Mercury (Hermes) & merchant approach disapproving Asclepius (Physician) and the naked Graces (Meditrine, Hygeia and Panacea)
Asclepius dealt with patients - merchants make deals with clients.
Asclepius is linked with a constellation of idealistic medical ideas.
Hermes is linked with hermetic occultism.
Mercury is identified with mercantile mercenary views.
(Engraved from an original in the then Museum Pio Clemens in Rome
Galerie Mythologique, Recueil de Monuments by Aubin Louis Millin, Paris 1811.)
SEE HERE).

Ascelpius, Meditrina's father(?) was taught about medicine and healing by the wise centaur, Cheiron aka Chiron, aka in astrology as "the wounded healer". He became so skilled that he succeeded in bringing one of his patients back from the dead. Zeus felt that the immortality of the Gods was threatened and killed the healer with a thunderbolt. At Apollo's request, Asclepius was placed among the stars as Ophiuchus, the serpent-bearer.....Ophiuchus - wasn't that the dreaded 13th zodiac sign someone keeps trying to foist upon astrologers?

Meditrina's name might well link to our word "medicine":

Medicine comes to English from the Latin, "medicina" and refers to the art practiced by the "medicus" or physician. The Latin word itself may well derive originally from the root "media" referring to a middle way, or balance, since in classical Greek medicine (that which was known and practiced in the Roman world) health was a matter of balance, and disease was understood as an imbalance of the body (or of the bodily fluids, called "humours"). This balance could be restored by a "medicus" who would use herbs or prepared drugs to do so. However, in classical texts "medicus" can also refer to a surgeon. As an interesting corollary, "medicus" is also the word for the fourth finger of the hand. According to one explanation, this finger was used by the medicus for mixing potions, etc.
SEE HERE.

All of which meanderings about wine and its celebration remind me of a quote from my favourite piece of poetry: Edward FitzGerald's translation of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam,

I often wonder what the vintners buy
One half so precious as the goods they sell.

Music Monday ~ Midge Ure ~ Bert Jansch

A Scottish two-parter today ~

Happy Birthday Midge Ure ! His real name is James/Jim Ure, "Midge" being Jim backwards, phonetically. He was born on 10 October 1953 in Cambuslang, Scotland at 8:30 am (Astrodatabank).

He's an all-rounder: pays guitar, keyboards, is both vocalist and songwriter. He co-wrote, with Bob Geldorf, the famous charity hit Do They Know It's Christmas, to raise money for relief of the famine in Ethiopia in 1984.
He has done a goodly amount of charity work in the UK and Africa, co-orgainising TV charity specials Band Aid, Live Aid and Live 8 with Bob Geldof, and acting as trustee for the charity. He also serves as ambassador for Save The Children.

Ure has played and sung in several different bands from the 1970s on, best-known : Visage, Thin Lizzy and Ultravox. When Ultravox disbanded he pursued a solo career.

A recovering alcoholic (par for the course, I guess), he still tours solo, or occasionally with a band. Lives in the south-west of England with second wife and their three daughters.








Sun, Neptune and Saturn close together in Libra the sign ruled by Venus, planet of the arts. Neptune's creativity and imagination feeds into his songwriting ability, Saturn includes discipline enough to balance Neptune's dreaminess and potential for addiction of some kind. His Saturn in this position will strengthen his resolve to remain a recovering alcoholic, and never to slip "off the wagon". Venus and Mars conjoined in Virgo is another indication of a love of order and discipline, which, along with his natal Saturn placement will have helped him to stay sobre and overcome addiction.

Scorpio rising, with Moon and Mercury in that sign in first house of self indicates a passionate, emotional and determined personality, not easily swayed from his goals.

His good works probably link back to his Libra Sun. Libra loves balance, his charity work is his attempt to bring some sorely needed balance to the under-privileged of this world.

Last week, commenter Sabina asked me to feature Bert Jansch, Scottish acoustic guitarist, who died last week on 5 October, aged 67.

From a Washington Post obituary:

He was quiet, modest, uncomfortable in the spotlight — not looking for No. 1 hits or commercial ditties. But when Bert Jansch picked up an acoustic guitar, people listened, often spellbound by his subtle innovation and mastery.....a virtuoso, hailed by the likes of Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page, Canadian rocker Neil Young and Johnny Marr of the Smiths as a force to be reckoned with, and learned from.

Bert Jansch is acknowledged to have influenced and inspired a generation of rock guitarists, has died at the age of 67, it is announced Wednesday Oct. 5, 2011. Jansch was a founding member of the influential folk-rock group Pentangle with whom he gave his last public performance at the Royal Festival Hall in London in August 2011. Known for his gentle eloquence on the acoustic guitar, Jansch died in London Wednesday after a long battle with lung cancer...... He was at the center of the British folk revival of the late 1960s and early 1970s at a time when British music — led by the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and the Who — dominated much of the pop world.
“I don’t know anyone who had less of a sense of celebrity. He was always very self-effacing and critical adulation was completely irrelevant to him,” Houghton said.
Folk singer Eddi Reader called Jansch “a gentle, gentle gentleman.”

From Rolling Stone

Without Bert Jansch, rock music as it developed in the 1960s and 1970s would have been very different. You hear him in Nick Drake, Pete Townshend, Donovan, the Beatles, Jimmy Page and Neil Young. There are people playing guitar who don't even realize they've been influenced by him one step removed.

This isn't one of those "obvious" charts where something immediately stands out as representing what we know of its owner. Sun and Mercury in passionate Scorpio connect to parts of Bert Jansch's nature of which we perhaps were not aware. The Bert Jansch as described above, by those "in the know", is more identifiable from his quietly capable Capricorn Moon, and Venus (planet of the arts) in perfectionist Virgo. Moon and Venus in Earth signs seem to match the musical genre to which he was drawn - folk. Folk music is earthy - isn't it?

There's a Yod (Finger of Fate) in his chart with its apex at Moon in Capricorn, linked by to 150* aspects (known as quincunx) to sextiled planets: flamboyant Jupiter in Leo, and a rather serious, disciplined Saturn and Mars in lively communicative Gemini. A blend of opposites - flamboyance and discipline - being chanelled through solid, reliable, Earthy Capricorn.

RIP Bert Jansch.

Here he plays Angie - said by a commenter at YouTube to be "a tune which was very popular with guitar players on the folk scene in the 1960s. If you could play this you were a 'made man' "

and with Pentangle: Light Flight in 1970 - then later..

Why Has It Been So For So Long ?

Before I'd even arrived on these shores I'd become puzzled about an aspect of life in the USA. Having chatted to several Americans online, I'd noticed a recurring theme: problems arising from lack of universal health care. One person with whom I chatted regularly had had their own small construction business, a home and small amount of land adjacent. Cancer struck. The insurance wasn't sufficient to cover all expenses, first for removal of one eye, then one kidney. Home, land and business had to be sold, in favour of living in a rented trailer, on whatever money odd jobs would bring in. How, I wondered, had a country with such glitteringly gleaming PR: Land of the Free, American Dream, Leader of the Free World, Greatest Country in the World....etc. come to this? Why hadn't the people risen up to object? Why hadn't they voted out the bums who had allowed this state of affairs to continue? My online friend was just one of thousands, perhaps tens of thousands in the same situation.

That was back in 2001/2. Having lived in the USA since 2004 I still found no sure answer, other than making the assumption that a general apathy about the fate of their fellow-men had brought about the status quo here. A couple of pieces appearing at Salon recently has thrown some light on the matter:

Paul Nevins : Why Are Americans So Docile?

After reciting details of the current situation he asks:

So how does one explain the deafening silence from the legion of unemployed, underemployed and impoverished Americans who, by virtue of their status and their enforced leisure, surely now have the time to take to the streets, to organize politically and to make their voices heard ? Why, given the emergence of what former Nixon political strategist Kevin Phillips has described as the "new indentured servitude," has the growth of plutocracy in been largely met with silence or grudging acquiescence in contemporary American culture?

A good comment from one al loomis which I'll copy here~ Mr loomis does a kd lang - uses no capitals, so I shall leave his comment in that mode :

..........americans are docile for several reasons: there is no need for political education in a nation where 535 people have almost all the power to direct national affairs. knowing nothing of practical politics, they ascribe god-like power to the people who fight their way into office, and can't imagine resisting them. americans have no experience or training in creating citizen initiative in the federal sphere. so they remain isolated and conscious of their impotence to change things acting alone.

perhaps most important, they grow up in a society that is awash in self-congratulation. schools and media daily inculcate the notion that america is as good as it gets, and any point of apparent inadequacy is the result of personal failure, not social. when all else fails, americans are reminded that life at the top is so good that poverty at the bottom is acceptable, that losers deserve their fate. the american dream remains that of medieval society: to escape the lower class, to join the elite.

so alienation and shame keep them quiet, cowering alone and hoping no one will notice when they have to start dining behind restaurants in the dumptster.

al loomis
September 30, 2011 06:20 PM

Mr loomis later went on to expand on the matter himself in
Why Not Democracy
Excerpt:

i often wonder at the passivity of the american electorate, they watch the nation lurch into periodic convulsions, putting millions out of work and out of their homes, and they don't say, "let's stop this." why not?

they watch the nation attack other nations for reasons that are bad to begin with, and turn out to be utterly false as well, and they do nothing. trillions wasted on war, hundreds of thousands of foreigners taught to hate america, and the american electorate just watches, and does nothing. why?
.......................................
concentrating power created a weak point of the nation. a few hundred politicians could be bought and controlled by personal and corporate wealth, so that the application of a trivial part of the nation's wealth to the owning of congress resulted in a nation that, no matter how it voted, any party or independent, the result was under the sway of money.

the founding fathers aimed for stability, got inflexibility, and are continually one accident away from ruining the nation, long after they are dead and their slaves freed.

at the same time, there is a psychological aspect to the 'why' problem. it's simply this: a child raised in a wheel chair will never be a good runner. indeed, if every child is raised in a wheel chair, even the prospect of walking will inspire panic and flight, rather as though someone suggested flapping your arms as you step out a high window. in politics, americans are raised in a legal wheelchair. they do not participate in the management of the nation. they are told it's too hard for them.

so the answer to 'why' is simple: americans have no legal machinery to direct the state, and they do not have the character to create the machinery. like the wildebeest they mimic, when asked: "why don't you turn together on the political hyena pack, and stamp them into the ground?"

the answer is, "we always have run away, it's our nature."

And a comment from old new lefty, with an optimistic ending:

Unfortunately, part of the American disease has to go back to the Pilgrims. The idea of America as God's gift, the black and white standards of morality, and the outright, pure, unadulterated materialism of the USA all combine to make the rest of the world scratch its head and wonder how so many passive morons could be produced on a particularly large part of the North American continent.

But these very qualities also have properties much like a computer dip switch. Once it's switched into the "on" position, the force becomes a wave. I believe that the era of American passivity is quickly coming to an end, very quickly.

The fervent hope is that passivity IS now coming to an end. The efforts of the Occupiers of Wall Street, and similar protests popping up around the country could well be the avant garde of a massive turn around in public attitude.

Arty Farty Friday ~ Another Sun in Libra painter with a sad story: Simeon Solomon

Searching for another arty Sun in Libra birthday I found the name of Simeon Solomon.

(Photograph from the album 'Portraits of Many Persons of Note', Frederick Hollyer, 1866.)

Simeon Solomon was born in London on 8 October 1840. He is described at Wikipedia as "an English Pre-Raphaelite painter". Huh? I thought I knew of all of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, and have mentioned them more than once in posts over the years. (See HERE for example). I love their art: William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, also John William Waterhouse, William Morris and others. But Simeon Solomon? Why haven't I come across him in the past?

Answer - he was gay.

In Victorian England, to be homosexual was an uncomfortable situation indeed, and one which resulted in Solomon's "disgrace", after being arrested on more than one occasion in situations akin to those in which George Michael was discovered more than a century later. I've often said that George Michael deserves a dope slap for putting himself in such a predicament when it was surely quite unnecessary to do in public what could have been done in private, considering his wealth; much the same applies to Simeon Solomon. He was born into a prominent and wealthy Jewish family, all with artistic tendencies. He studied and later had his work exhibited at the Royal Academy. He had access to "all the right people", could have been equally as famous as any of 'em.

And what did he do? Get caught in a public urinal doing unmentionables with a gardener. He didn't even learn his lesson then. He was caught "at it" again in Paris, resulting in arrest, imprisonment, and disgrace among his peers. He fell into alcoholism and poverty.

After Solomon's death, in 1905, in abject poverty in a London workhouse, his work began to be shown and appreciated; for that, at least, we can be thankful.

A look at his natal chart, then examples of his work:



Sun in Venus-ruled Libra in harmonious trine to Neptune in Aquarius is a good start for an artist - Venus is planet of the arts, Neptune connects to imagination and creativity.....and to another side of Solomon's nature: his addictive trait (sex addiction?) Planet of the arts itself, Venus, is in passionate, erotic Scorpio, along with Jupiter.

There's a "chain" of linked planets here: starting at Sun 15 Libra - Jupiter 19 Scorpio (semi-sextile) - Saturn 17 Sagittarius (semi sextile Jupiter, sextile Sun - then Neptune 12 Aquarius (sextile Saturn, trine Sun) - Uranus 17 Pisces (trine Jupiter etc. quincunx Sun) - Pluto 19 Aries (trine Saturn...and so on). The "chain" sets up harmonious sextiles and trines, and mildly helpful semisextiles but also includes some challenging aspects - it's not all "beer and skittles"! I think chains such as this one have to indicate the coordination of positive and negative at some level.

Let's see, here we have Sun (self) "helped" by Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune. But Uranus, eccentric planet of the the unexpected sits uncomfortably in quincunx (150*) to Sun, though is in harmony with the excesses of sexy and erotic Scorpio Jupiter. That might well connect to events that led to Simeon Solomon's downfall.


A Young Musician



The Sleepers and One Who Watcheth



Mercury




The Moon and Sleep



The Mother of Moses



Head of Medusa



A Prelude by Bach




Dante's First Meeting With Beatrice Portinari



Babylon Hath Been a Golden Cup



Fanny Beaton

Not in Kansas an English park anymore.....(no astro).

We've been dog-sitting Casey the Jack Russell this week, while her master re-builds a humungous fence in their backyard. She seemed to grow tried of walking our local parks, giving us her "Im bored" look now and again. So yesterday we drove the 10 miles to Marlow, small town nextdoor, where there's a pleasantly spacious walking park: Redbud Park. Casey seemed well-satisfied.

In mid-park I got the odd feeling I could be back in England. Sky was partly cloudy, coolish breeze ruffling the leaves of plentiful trees. Only when I stopped to examine some of those leaves did I notice a difference. Oak leaves here are "pointier" than those of their English cousins.



Pecan trees were shedding their fruit - something not often seen in English parks, as I recall. Then, something else told me, in no uncertain fashion that I was not in an English park.

Marlow's claim to fame (outlaws) is recorded here and there in the small town. The Marlow Brothers' story was inspiration for the movie The Sons of Katie Elder. The five brothers Marlow, who it is said led a semi-nomadic life as frontier plainsmen, eventually became outlaws. Their love for each other, and their mother, a descendant of Daniel Boone, amounted to a passion. In the middle of Redbud Park I found a wooden shelter bearing this sign -



Marlow, like our hometown, lay on the Chisholm Trail, scene of early cattle drives and later where cattle trains halted for overnight and rest stops.

Story continues at website Marlow's Colorful Past

The sign and marble monument stand at the park's entrance.





(Photographs from husband's camera. Thanks husband!)