Through The Doorway

In the mid-Sixties, a bunch of guys began to jam together.  They had different musical styles, so it took awhile for them to get it all together. But they began a process of turning several separate musicians into one tight knit band.  It has always reminded me of the caterpillar, spinning a coccoon, and transforming into something that bursts forth with beautiful wings taking immediate flight out into the world. 



So it was very appropriate to me when, in 1966, the lead singer and keyboard player of the band, Doug Ingle, named hs new group “Iron Butterfly”.  He wanted a name that spoke of both beauty, and having it all together…solid….strong.   (Everyone knows the rock classic that came out a couple years later, “ In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida”)



I was searching for a metaphor to describe what I am going through of late, with all the Pluto energy in my life.  Pluto is known for ruling death, but some people forget that it also rules rebirth as well.  The process of entering into a coccoon, and going through a metamorphisis, is in effect the death knoll for the caterpillar.  But if the universe looks upon him with favor, he comes alive as a whole new creature….so different from the caterpillar that it boggles the mind that one begat the other.



I’ve been a caterpillar for a long, long time.  Like the little creeping insect, I’ve been bound to the earth, my very emotional nature keeping me from soaring.   I’ve clung to an emotional need to be loved the way the little guy clings to the plant’s stem as he crawls across it. 



I grew up shaping  my self-image based upon the attention I’ve gotten from others….most notably members of the opposite sex.  Whenever the woman of my dreams dropped me from her life, it hurt so bad because I only saw myself as having worth if I was loved.   And what is worse, I would compare myself to other males who got more attention than myself, and then suffer intense pain because I lacked whatever it was they had. 



And when I was hurting….the rest of my life would suffer.  I couldn’t give my projects the attention they deserved, and the only creativity I was able to show was in writing poems and songs about how badly I was hurting.  (That is, when I didn’t play all those sad, sand songs over and over again written by other people.)



Pluto’s come around to me now, though.  I’ve grown increasingly tired of the hurting.  I’ve begun to enter my coccoon, and watch the old me begin to die. At first, I held on tightly to the old me, because it is the only me I’ve ever known…..it might have been responsible for putting me through emotional hell over and over….but at least it was familiar, at least it wasn’t an unknown.



But finally, I’ve come to the realization that I want the old me dead…..because it was never really me.  It was a simulcrum, a construct.  Finally (after dealing with Pluto smacking me aside the head, and the heart, sevreal times), I looked at the god of death straight in the face and said, “I’m ready.  Strip me naked. I want to stand before you totally vulnerable….but with nothing  here that is not me.  Show me who I am, and midwife my birth into the real Zane.”



And the tears inside of me welled up one more time.  They wouldn’t stop. For hours.  Every hurt over love lost….every pain over not being ‘good enough’….flashed before my heart one more time.  I’m glad you weren’t here to witness it….it must have been a horrible site.



But then, the last tear fell, and there were no more.   I tried to bring back the pain of being told that she loved someone more than me….and it wasn’t mine anymore.  I felt sorry for him, that he had to suffer.  But I didn’t feel his pain as my own. 



The change is not complete.  The metamorphisis is not finished…..but already I can feel the wings pushing up against the top of my coccoon.  And I know I’ll have no trouble bursting free when the time comes…because Pluto is not just turning me into a butterfly (beautiful, able to soar…but still very vulnerable.)  No, Pluto is turning me into an Iron Butterfly……powerful wings to soar higher than I ever imagined, and a solid sense of self, no longer dependent upon the attentions of others.   I won’t be indestructible…..but now I realize that no one can ever hurt me again unless I give them the power to do so….and I’m going to be too busy exploring the world for the first time in my life to ever hand someone that type of control again.

THANKS TO EVERYONE

After my last blog entry, I had so many friends telling me that they didn’t want me to leave Tribe, I couldn’t go.  (I even had one person tell me, in no uncertain terms, that I was NOT to leave. OK, you can put the whip down.  I promise….I’m staying!)

I also received a few posts from friends who said stuff like, “Hey, I always reply when you write to me!”  And that’s true….some of my Tribe buddies are wonderful that way.  I’m sorry if it seemed like I implied that no one was answering my notes. 

The truth is, though, that there ARE several people that I really care for who never answer my posts anymore.  I see them posting on various tribes, they are still part of my network, but any notes I write to them might as well be lost in space.  It would be different if I didn’t care for these people so much….  If they’d at least drop me a brief note, or even msg me on Yahoo, I’d be a much happier camper.

So anyway, I guess you all are gonna be seeing me around Tribe, discussing astrology, flirting with the ladies, and in general looking for what mischief I can get into.  I’ll keep on moderating my tribes, too:

Intensity

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Triple Fire - Aries/Leo/Sagittarius

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S.L.U.T.S.

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Zee Tribe


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Tinas Nibbilicious Tribe

And as long as I’m mentioning this tribe, I want to say that, even though Tina and I did not work out, I think the world of her, she is a wonderful, very special lady, and I hope to always be able to call her friend.

Pluto is slowing down to a standstill….at least it appears to be doing so…..reaching its station tonight at 1:46 am EDT….21 Sagittarius 49.  I’ve been feeling this for days, but it is most intense today, when I woke up in super depression.  If it hadn’t been for some very good people who have been there for me…people who showed me that they really care for me, really love me….I think I would have called in sick today and spent the day with the covers pulled over my head.

For me, this Pluto transit is very personal. I have my MC (Midheaven…..top of the chart…cusp of the 10th house…..life’s focus) at 22 Sagittarius 00.  This means that the station is sitting right on my head, so to speak.  Or in my head, rather. 

In case you are not astrologically savant, when Pluto makes a station right on an important part of the chart….it is like EVERYTHING that has happened to that person for the past year or so comes to the conscious mind, and must be thought about.  Every change (positve or negative), every stressful event, every traumatic incident, every major loss, everything that makes the person different today than they were a few years ago. 

I’ve been through a lot of stuff since Pluto first touched my MC in 2004.  And I’ve got it all on my mind now.  No wonder I woke up depressed.

And I just noticed that Mars is squaring my natal Pluto now too….so this is a double whammy.  It will be exact on September 3rd, but I’m sure I’m feeling it now.  Mars adds fire to whatever it touches….stirring passions, passionate feelings, passionate memories, making one want to take action, sometimes wanting to fight something, anything….. In my case, I’ve got a cauldron brewing…I hope I don’t get into a fight I’ll regret later….

On top of all of this is my progression.  For the past year and a half, my progressed Sun has been moving closer and closer to my natal Pluto…and this will be exact on September 13.  But with progressions, it is a longterm thing, so the exact date is just the center point.  Let’s just say that this entire month, I’ll be feeling on one level or another that I’m dying to the old self, and that I’m going to be working to remake me into someone truer to my core.

This last aspect has made me at times want to get rid of everything….and I mean everything….and stand totally free, far away from the world I currently inhabit.  I don’t plan on abandoning my possessions and running naked in the woods…but believe me, the urge has been present more times than I care to count. 

What it comes down to, I guess, is that I’m coming to terms with who I am, what I am, where I’m going, and what’s important for me to keep…what I want to take with me…and what I need to leave behind. 

So I take my mouse,
“Send a message” to click,
And hope that the dot
Isn’t some type of trick.

15 minutes after I finish writing this, I’ll be heading out the door to wait for the taxi to the airport.  And before too much more time passes, I’ll flying nonstop to Las Vegas, where Tina will be waiting for me when I walk past the scanners.

I don’t know if there is a ‘Richter Scale’ to measure excitement, but if there is, I must be measuring well past 10.5. 

At the start of the year, I knew my life was going to change completely before 2005 ended.  Lots of things have happened since New Years Day.  But meeting Tina online, and now in person, has got to be the most life-changing event I’ve ever experienced.

Astrologically, September holds two events for me that are interlinked…. First, transiting Pluto goes stationary direct conjunct my MC.  Second, my progressed Sun will exactly conjunct natal Pluto.

I’ll write more when I return….but let’s just say that Pluto is rebirth….and with Tina, I am born anew.

I’ll be back, God-willing, early Monday morning, and try to post another blog entry before Monday is over.

Today, I made a momentous decision:  I plan on moving to Atlanta, Georgia, next year, some time after I get my income tax refund (assuming I don’t come into an unexpected windfall before that.)



Why Atlanta?  To explain that, I need to give a little background first.



I’ve been contemplating moving for quite a few weeks now, and talked of a lot of possibilities.

I used astrology as one of my tools, relocating my birth chart to see how life would be for me in each of the cities I was attracted to, such as St. Louis, and New Orleans.  I joined several tribes on  tribe.net, one for each of my possible choices, and asked people there to tell me about their homes.



And I talked with my good friend and favorite astrologer, Debbi Kempton-Smith, who proceeded to make arrangements to have a very special astrological chart done for me called Cyclo*Carto*Graphy.  And it was this last that helped me to make my final decision.



(Debbi, by the way, wrote my favorite astrology book, Secrets From A Stargazer’s Notebook.  If you haven’t read it, you really should! It’s got lots of great info and it’s fun too.)



This chart is an extenstion of something called Astro*Carto*Graphy, designed by Jim Lewis.  In laymen’s terms, it is taking our birth chart and seeing where your planets fall around the world to see how happy or unhappy you might be in different cities and coutnries.  In the Cyclo version, you also look at the current planetary positions and progressions to see how happy you would be moving to each area NOW.  



Anyway, Debbi knows how to read these things far more easily than I do, so I bowed to her expertise, and she came up with two places that would truly feel like home for me now and in the future.  The first is in Northern California….and I’m not interested in that.  But the second is around Atlanta.  So that was the deciding factor.



Of course, it doesn’t hurt that I have a wonderful friend there name Beth, and so I would not be entering a new world blindfolded.  (By the way, Beth has a son named Zane.  No relation to me…but we met because one day, she had put her son’s name in a search engine and found my astrological website, contacted me, and we grew to be friends before we even realized it was happening.)



Anyway, I’m not taking any action today, with Mercury still retrograde.  But once it goes direct, I’m going to begin to explore the job market in Atlanta.  And, the universe willing, I will be picking up a Southern Accent before the end of next summer.



I told Tina that she’d be happy there too, and that I’d love it if she decided to move there.



Many years ago, I was in Atlanta for a few days.  But I didn’t get to see much of it then.  I plan on getting to know it real well after I get there!