Looking at church in the chart, pt. 2

when devotion collides with the ecstatic

Venus Cazimi New Moon: On Monday I sent the first month ahead horoscope I’ve ever written. Turns out it is challenging to write several thousand words about how the shifting lights in the universe will interact with twelve different natal chart structures! But it was also a lot of fun and I’m already planning ways to make the next email send better. If you have any questions or feedback, feel free to leave a comment or email me directly. 

This week we see a Gemini New Moon that plays out against a Venus Cazimi. This moment of initiation pulls in all the ideas that Venus offers, relationships and love and balance and harmony, and incorporates it into the story of the Gemini lunation. We’ll see that story play out over the next sixish months, but you can prepare yourself by looking at where in your chart Gemini falls and beginning to reflect on how your relationships play into that part of your life. 

Chasing that neon rainbow, living that devotional dream.

“The bond of unity in a church is not a shared belief but a shared worship. Worship (worth-ship) is an act of reverence for what is regarded as of great, or supreme, worth. In the ultimate analysis this is but another way of capturing the real meaning of love. What is of real worth to us, in the full sense, we cannot help but love. Love is reverence for life, to use Albert Schweitzer’s phrase, and reverence is a mode of worship.” - Phillip Hewett, Unitarian minister [added emphasis]

I’m trying to remember the first time I was devoted to something. I was devoted to theater in high school, an International Honor Thespian, an obsessive who believed that the human experience could only begin to be understood on stage. I will never beat the Gleek allegations, by which I mean I was also obsessed with the cursed and tragic Ryan Murphy project. Something in the way those superficially written characters took the stage seriously was resonant. It didn’t hurt, also, that even the suggestion that a Blaine (Darren Criss, cultural gay) could be out there was enough to keep me upright and breathing for the years 2010 - 2013. 

In those years, I frequently made the case to lots of adults that my “church” was really at rehearsal with my theater friends and not so much in any of the actually sanctified places where I was expected to be for mass and then for youth group¹. I believed that I could only skip real church to go to some other kind of church, something else that brought “glory to God”. 

As much as I was motivated to be on stage (lol) I was also motivated to be so busy that no one could demand me to be somewhere I didn’t want to be, which often meant at real church. At the time, I was uncomfortable on principle to be in a place that was philosophically opposed to me.² I was uncomfortable because I thought I was defined as a good devout Catholic boy and on the inside I felt fraudulent. So I began to play with the language, to see if I could talk my way out of things. I began to say that theater was in fact church. 

This manipulation of language is something I have felt adept at for along time, something that I think most little gay kids are adept at.³ It’s why so many of us were good at church. We could read and we could reframe and we could interpret and we could spin the story. Queers have a leg up when it comes to exegesis because we’re told early on that we are a paradox—try to reconcile God’s love with people screaming that you are evil and you’ll learn about symbolic interpretation quickly.

The thing is, I was deeply committed to the bit. I began to feel more spiritually motivated as a thespian and artistically motivated at church. I picked Saint Genesius for my saint name when I got confirmed, the saint from the end of the third century AD who went from making fun of Christians to dying for their cause. After experiencing a sudden conversion miracle he refused to denounce “the true faith” and was executed. This is a person who was both devoted and dramatic. I assume, with whatever cultural adjustments that we need to make, we could say Genesius was a f*g. Or, as Pope Francis would say, a frocioggine.⁴

There are lots of ways to think about devotion in the natal chart. A few to get you started: where is Saturn in your chart? Does he teach you something about where your determination plays out? What about your Midheaven, your MC? Is there something about that highest point in your chart that reflects the direction in which you march? Or we could consider your luminaries, your Sun and your Moon, or the Lot of Fortune, one of the mathematically derived points in your chart that brings together the solar and the lunar. Each of these factors gives a distinct and necessary window into the idea of devotion in the astrological tradition of reading a natal chart. Devotion in the chart requires (and creates) context.

There are, of course, also lots of ways to think about devotion in life, in different contexts. There’s dedication, there’s discipline, there’s obsession. You can be devoted to your children, to an ideal, to a partner. Each of these shares something with the idea of devotion and carries with it some unique baggage. What makes your devotion belong in church, versus belonging inside yourself, private except for what you choose to share? 

One of the ideas I like about church is that it’s a place where some kind of devotion collides with some kind of worship, which is to say something consistent collides with something ecstatic. Maybe this is self-serving, but I believe this because the only word that even begins to describe my experiences at Neon Rainbows at Cheer Up Charlies in Austin, TX is church. How many times did I turn to my friend Kate and yell “this is church!!” while a drag queen twirled on stage to a Faith Hill song? Many, many times.

Recently at a party in a refurbished warehouse in north-central Philly, I felt completely disconnected from the whole scene. The space didn’t feel right, the performers didn’t seem connected to the crowd or to each other, and the music was impersonal electronic on loops.⁵ Judgmentally, drunkenly, I DM’d Brigitte Bandit, frequent host of Neon Rainbows. I jammed my thumbs against my iPhone screen, telling her how special my time at her shows was in Austin. She kindly responded with a heart emoji. A gift, attention from a prophet. 

Something about those experiences in Austin was religious, something about those nights left me ready to proselytize. It makes me wonder about religious people who organize around what they hate and it makes me wonder how they see themselves. Is there something ecstatic that they’re missing, something they wish they could reconnect to but they’re too far gone, flung out of reach? I can see how that would be hard, but I can’t see how it would make me hateful. Is it really all about avoiding hell? Are they sustaining their habits, their devotion, with that fear? That’s miserable.

I spend a little time wondering about all that and I just come back to the way it feels to arrive at the gay bar for Neon Rainbows. I think about the joy of seeing a crowd of queers gyrating to Toby Keith and Martina McBride and Taylor Swift and Brad Paisley. Two stepping and line dancing and hopping up and down. Lots of lost, far flung babes who took it upon themselves to find each other. 

These experiences are the moments when the potential energy of devotion butts up against the kinetic energy of worship. You scream and you laugh at yourself for screaming and you smile. Some other time we can talk about the complicated ways that alcohol and other substances weave in and out of these moments, but for now it’s satisfying to close my eyes and imagine the crowd. Let’s spend longer on this image than an editor would probably allow...⁶

Think about it. Think about the bodies sweating in Texas and their released heat rising into the sky. Think about the gravel underfoot and the water stations and the cigarette butts and the giggling. Think about the friends holding hands. Think about the kisses. Think about the pulsing crowd, again. That’s what I’m trying to get at, with this idea of church and this idea of Neon Rainbows. The symbiosis of that place is what makes it church, really. Kissing takes two people. Even if you count the kisses you gave the inside of your elbow in high school, there’s you and the you that you’re imagining. That’s what I mean by queer devotion, by queer church, the kiss of kinetic and potential. 

I mentioned this idea last newsletter and in our first monthly horoscope of the cadent houses. I find myself consistently drawn to these houses in the chart, to spend time with the parts of life that are out of the spotlight, places of recuperation and reflection more than action. I could point to my Saturn in the Twelfth and his relationship to Jupiter in the Ninth and their relationships to the Moon in the Third to explain this draw I feel and while I do think that holds up, astrologically, I also want to acknowledge and have gratitude for how being gay made me appreciate the cadent houses. My experience of being queer has underscored and affirmed my belief in a “church” of some kind or another more than it’s undermined it. Connecting worship to community seems ingrained in church, seems ingrained in being queer.

My astrological interpretation this newsletter was admittedly scant. What I hope you’ll take away is the value of questioning where your devotion collides with your ecstasy. We can look for this in the chart by asking how Saturn interacts with Jupiter or how the Sun and the Moon interact or any number of other relationships, but the thread that ties all these factors together is the way you experience yourself lighting up and feeling a sense of worship. What is worship for you? What draws reverence out of your body? What can you not help but love? These are, in my opinion, good questions to ask. These are good questions that your chart is asking you, somewhere or another. 

an assortment of very good memories from various neon rainbows over the years

Always a lot of credit goes to the people who have been my teachers, both directly and through their freely shared knowledge, and so many books.

P.S. Send me your Enneagram and astrology and random questions why not?

1.  We called this “spiritual formation” rather than youth group. The branded name was “LifeTeen™” but there were a variety of flavors of this kind of offering out there. Ultimately, in preparation for confirmation, we stopped going to LifeTeen™ and started doing classes that were specifically designed for our age and stage. These were the classes that I managed to slither my way out of first by choosing a confirmation sponsor who couldn’t attend any sessions (my oldest sister) and then because my time was occupied between preparing for my role as John Proctor in The Crucible and my memaw’s declining health. 

2.  And, in fact, opposed in policy. The anti-homosexuality perspective is codified in the Catechism with the statement “tradition has always declared that ‘homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.’ They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved.” Some time I’ll write a longer piece about this complete entry.

3.  I’ve always had a flair for religious language in non-religious settings. I think about the song Lovin’ is Bible by The Aces (also queer) and how the lyrics arc straight into my soul. 

4. Who’s going to do something about all those frocciogines??

5.  Of COURSE so much of this is not knowing these places yet. Of course as I continue to carve out my spot in Philly I’ll notice where my roots settle in and where there is nourishment. I don’t mean to dog on Philly night life too much, I just really miss Neon Rainbows!

6.  I have no editor xoxo I have my impulses and the planets and whoever reads this. It’s a letter, lest we forget.