posted April 14, 2007 12:17 PM              

Aggression
Depression
Quest for the Sublime

posted April 14, 2007 12:19 PM              

I think that there is a basic predisposition toward the experience of depression in certain signs. I have already talked a little about this in relation to Capricorn, Scorpio, Gemini and Sagittarius. Each sign has its own special way of viewing life, and expresses selective vision- that is, one sees what one sees best, as Jung put it. It is as though we look out at life through lenses tinted with a particular coloration, and therefore we interpret life in very selective ways.

Sagittarius for example, perceives through the lens of Jupiter-Zeus, so that, given the enormous range of experiences available in life, Sag will focus selectively on the meaningfulness of those experiences, the lessons inherent in difficulties, the higher purpose behind why things happen. The event is not as important as what it has to teach. Somewhere in the psychic background is a feeling that life has meaning and is moving somewhere, and that there is a beneficent deity of some kind who infuses things with teleology, with purpose. Therefore, if something bad happens, Sag reacts by asking, "What am I supposed to be learning from this? Why has this experience happened to me? How is it connected with other experiences, and for what purpose?" So Sag selectively perceives opportunities for growth, and will often not deal with the immediate negative feelings which a bad experience provokes. The negative feelings will cloud the intuitive perception of the meaning....
.....Because of this particular way of responding to life, there is often a backlog of difficult emotions tucked away in the basement of the Sagittarian psyche. That is why, if one finds aspects such as Venus-Saturn or Moon-Pluto in a Jupiter dominated chart, they are red flags for depression, because when these configurations are triggered, all the lost feelings come to surface-or, at least, will try to come to the surface. Sagittarius, however, is a good long distance runner, and can succeed in avoiding depression for many years.

On the other hand, Capricorn's perceptions are just as selective as those of Sagittarius; but the god who stands behind Capricorn is not Zeus; it is Kronos. Capricorn is not predisposed to see a world full of inherent meaning pointing toward some profound spiritual goal. It is the mortality of the world that Capricorn sees- its limitations, its inherent struggle, the very fragile nature of life, and the extreme vulnerability of the human animal. For Capricorn, one cannot expect grace from heaven; life is hard, and one must work doggedly to achieve any foothold in the midst of reality's constrictions. Human beings are always at the mercy of their own bodies, no matter how advanced the technology and how sophisticated the intellect. So Capricorn's selective perception does not register the inner meaning of an experience; it registers the experience as a confirmation of the human condition. This is an essentially pragmatic and melancholy perspective. It is an embrace of immediate experience rather than an intuition of the implications of the experience; and the sensation function, rather than the intuition, is the primary tool of adaptation and adjustment. Facts are registered, rather than teleology.

Therefore you can see that depression in a Sagittarian will have rather different roots from depression in a Capricorn. Depression of a kind is there all the time in Capricorn; the individual lives with it because it is built into the way he or she experiences life.......

Sagittarius becomes depressed, in contrast, because the individual more often than not has crashed into the limits that he or she did not wish to believe were there. The discovery that one is not immortal and special and exempt can be quite crushing to Sag. So too is the realization that one cannot have everything one wants, and that the finished product on the earth plane will always fall short of the brilliant possibilities that were initially envisioned by the intuition. This depression is quite different, because it is not part of Sagittarius' world-view; it arises when the world-view is challenged too harshly by life itself.

If both Jupiter and Saturn are strong in a chart, through the placement of the planets of through emphasis in their signs and houses, then I think a major life-dilemma is described, and there is often a strong up-and-down movement with depression and a kind of manic defense alternating in the cycle of the individual's moods. One way of viewing manic depression is that it is a complex expression of the pain of accommodating a naturally imaginative, intuitive and romantic temperament with the limits of stark reality-inner and outer- and I can think of several cases of this problem where Jupiter-Saturn polarity appears strongly in the birth chart. Jupiter and Saturn together form two sides of what is essentially a religious problem. That dimension of depression which has its deepest roots in struggling to formulate a viable world-view has its astrological reflection in Jupiter and Saturn, Capricorn and Sagittarius. The meaningfulness and boundlessness of it perform a constant dance in both these signs, which are peculiarly prone to depression; and the personal losses, disappointments and separations which occur from the childhood on tend to feed into that basic and essentially archetypal conflict.

posted April 14, 2007 11:46 PM              

Why read quote when you can get the book? http://www.geocities.com/wilsontctc/Author_list.htm

Linking,

posted April 15, 2007 03:00 AM              

Oddly enough, splitting is characteristic of Gemini and Sagittarius as well as being characteristic of Scorpio and Capricorn. These pairs of signs are wildly opposite in nature, and they tend to do their splitting in reverse ways. Usually I have found that Scorpio and Capricorn tend to take on the bad side of the split, although as I have said, there are exceptions, particularly in the religious and esoteric field in the case of Scorpio, and the sociological and political fields in the case of Capricorn. But usually Scorpio and Capricorn will cheerfully identify with the chap on the black horse, and will sit in deep depression for long periods of time because the good bits are still being projected outside. The exceptions behave very peculiarly, and I sometimes feel that when a Scorpio or Capricorn projects the darkness outside then I am meeting someone who behaves like a fake Gemini or a fake Sagittarius. More frequently these signs will accept the dark end of the bargain, and look with bitterness and envy at other people who seem to be so much healthier and nicer than they are. But Gemini and Sagittarius will usually project the darkness outside, onto other people, or onto society, or onto the body. All four signs have a propensity for this kind of splitting, perhaps more than other signs.

........more to come........

posted April 15, 2007 11:42 AM              

You asked:

quote:

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I just found The Mars Quartet -- do you have it in your collection??

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No, I don't...I'm trying to keep my astrology books to two shelves!

Limiting the books,

posted April 15, 2007 01:16 PM              

AHHHH. Thanks for posting this. It's a good refresher for me.. I have a ton of Sag (Sun, merc, uranus, saturn), a Gem Moon, venus and Pluto in scorpio,, mars and Jup in the 8th house..

posted April 15, 2007 02:34 PM            

quote:

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...I'm trying to keep my astrology books to two shelves! Limiting the books, Tim

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posted April 17, 2007 02:26 AM            

Capricorn Sun and Jupiter in Scorpio-ruled 8th house
Singleton (Water & Fixed) Mars in Scorpio
Sag Mercury, Venus, and Neptune
Gemini Ascendant and Saturn

posted April 17, 2007 02:33 AM              

i dunno why i dont hv the cappy kind of depression described here, tho. more of the sag kind. wonder if it has to do with the 'gemini splitting' of my moon. also, i have jupiter conj saturn. looks like jupiter was able to overpower saturn in my case !