Thursday, November 11, 2010

Scorpio

I still don't feel well, but I have good reason to feel blessed today.

 Nice thing about Facebook, lots of birthday greetings.  Carrie Cann sends me a lovely Jacquie Lawson animated e card I watch three or four times because subtle things happen in the background or off to the side.

I'm not a religious believer in astrology. Rather, it's like what an artist friend says about standing by the ocean: She knows where she is. In Jersey, there's the ocean, the land, beach stretching off north & south, & the Sun rises unobstructed  exactly where & when it's supposed to. The great mountains of the far west unsettled me until I reached the Pacific. Then I knew where I was, & I was comfortable from Oregon all the way to San Diego.

Astrology is a place to stand. You have your Sun Sign, your birth place & time, & all the myth & symbolism of the planets arranges itself exactly for you to interpret. You could probably pick a date at random & still learn something about yourself. When someone tells you their Sun Sign, they're giving you a certain view of them that's usually helpful if you give them plenty of wiggle room, because Sun Sign is broadest, most generalized of astrological personalities.

Much of what makes me seem "Scorpio" is probably attributable to this season in this part of the Northern hemisphere. It's the beginning of a 5th season here, Fall fading, less sunlight, many years it gives way in early December to damp, cold, drizzling days. So if your birthday is now, you look back at summer & won't see farther ahead than Christmas, which gradually brightens up the season as we approach it (if you like Christmas). Additionally, I was born on Veterans/Armistice Day, Martinmas (after St. Martin), so war - specifically the aftermath of war, affects my birthday as something America ponders on this day, though not with the depth of Memorial Day. It's a minor holiday, but important enough to close schools.

My Scorpio "taste" for vengence is more likely from being the youngest of four siblings.  Revenge usually had to wait, had to be schemed, & indeed it often tasted best "served cold." The moodiness was inherited from mom, the temper from dad. It adds up to Scorpio.

Scorpio was ruled by mighty Mars. Pluto was assigned to us after it was discovered, puny ball of ice.   Maybe we're Mars again now that Pluto is no longer a "planet."

Scorpios are represented by a stinging Scorpion (as the lower less evolved  order of the sign) &  soaring Eagle (as the higher).   I choose to be represented by the Horseshoe Crab, an inoffensive living fossil that scours the bottoms of our bays, moves to deeper water in Winter, then, in May, comes ashore by the many thousands for a week-long orgy of fornicating & egg-laying.  The most desirable females are big, old, & encrusted with barnacles. Birds time their migrations to be in Jersey at Horseshoe Crab time, there are so many tiny eggs to be consumed.   Many Crabs don't survive, more killed by the sun than by birds, who don't find them very tasty, maybe it's the blue blood & that they're mostly shell, not much meat. Then the Crabs return to the water & you don't see them again for another year, only molted shells & the occasional casualty of tide or age.  They aren't even crabs, but are distant relations of spiders. Horseshoe Crabs are not what they seem to be. The "stinger" tails are not stingers but tools for levering themselves off their backs when waves turn them over. They might pinch you by accident. Blue Claw Crabs do it to hurt you;  I've seen people jump out of boats to get away from pugnacious Blues. I go nuts when I see beach strollers mistreat Horseshoe Crabs.

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