Some Capricorn melancholy
and a little preview of the chapbook
We’re approaching the end of the calendar year, but we’re also approaching the beginning of the “last” cardinal sign, Capricorn. The Sun moves into the sea goat’s sign at about 4:20 AM ET on Saturday. It’s a sign marked with a lot of responsibility. Saturn’s nocturnal home. An earth sign tasked with initiating, with planning, with directing, and with inspiring. Capricorn (like all signs) gets a bad rap, but it’s important. In the Northern Hemisphere it is responsible with ushering us forward into the back half of the coldest months, motivating us onward as the days are just barely beginning to return. Not an easy task, but, like I said, Capricorn is reliable.
Once Capricorn season starts, I always feel we’re in the final miles of the marathon. The finish line is in sight and we can begin to think about what the future might bring. It’s the kind of preparation we need before Aquarius and Pisces, those signs of utopian visions and dreams.
What’s the point of symbols and thinking about Mary in astrology?
What’s the point of wondering about Catholic stories and historical myths and astrology? What’s the point of squishing them up against today’s politics, today’s social upheaval? Is it anything more than, at best, entertainment and, at worst, navel gazing?
I don’t have a concise or complete answer, but I think, yes, probably there is value in it.
At its best, I think rumination and waxing poetic helps to keep our brains limber and to prevent the ossification that comes with aging. Talking to my friend Valerie while she stayed with me in Philly this week, we considered the ways that aging, reaching the milestone year of thirty, has made us better at not jumping to anxiety and fear, but, if we aren’t careful, we can become too reliant on our past experiences to understand things. If we aren’t careful, we live in short hand.
Generalizations start to feel more fair and less risky the more frequently they are proven right. So, we do our best to challenge them. We appreciate the work that went into those lessons, but we don’t treat them as sacrosanct. We invert them, question them, look for the fraying places and patch them up. When I spend time flipping my ideas around, rearranging them, tearing them apart and then sewing them back together, the metaphoric quilt of thoughts is much more beautiful and much more useful (quilts keep you warm when you need them) than anything I started with.
On the other hand, sometimes waxing poetic is distracting and makes you feel like you’re taking action on things that you’re really not. Silly to pretend otherwise. It can make you feel productive when you’re spending time adding words (fuel) to an already bloated Internet (WMD). It doesn’t help anyone to pretend otherwise.
Womp, womp, sorry, I don’t mean to be such a downer at the end of Sagittarius season and on the cusp of the Sun’s movement into Capricorn!
I could blame the lack of sunlight in Philadelphia, and I’d definitely be a little bit right. This year has given me more of a taste of what it means to plod through a Northeastern winter season. But the real reason I’m being a downer is because there is a lot to feel down about.
Luigi Mangione is being charged with terrorism, which, aside from being an irrational use of the charge, will have very scary ramifications for our right to protest and our ability to make our voices heard in this country. Gaza continues to suffer. Trump wants to (once again) gut the US Postal Service. Climate collapse. Yada yada. I’m just not feeling as cheery as I wish I were!
Still, I do my click clack job from 9-5. I spend time with my friends. I read Simon Critchley’s book Mysticism (get ready for much referencing). I entertain my cats, Oliver and Pear, the needy one and the sweet one. And I do my little projects.
Talking with my mom about Mary the other day, looking to understand her connection to the woman who gave birth to Jesus, I was overwhelmed with appreciation (gratitude?) for the people in my life.
As much as there is a lot to be sad about these days, I find there are always still reasons to be happy. Reasons that I could not have even thought to ask for just a few years ago. I know it’s not a given, I know that many people do not have the support in their corner that I do, and that’s part of what drives my gratitude. But I also know from so many friends’ experiences that in most times and in most places there is something worth celebrating. The Sun will rise, even if only for a few hours, the Moon reflects, and the stories we’ve relied upon all this time, as long as people have been walking upright, are still there.
So, the question: What’s the point of wondering about Catholic stories and historical myths and astrology? What’s the point of squishing them up against today’s politics, today’s social upheaval? Is it anything more than, at best, entertainment and, at worst, navel gazing?
I think the point is that one certainty for us all here is that we have the life we live and we have our interpretation of it. These are two guarantees, that between birth and death we get to live and we get to interpret our life. There’s no reason, I think, that the living and the interpreting are separate or are more or less meaningful.
Per my friend Max’s tip, I began a foray into some basic Jung, starting with Man and His Symbols. I’ve only read the first essay, the one written by Jung, later in his life, but one idea struck me. On the question of where dream symbols come from, he says: “Meaning and purposefulness are not the prerogatives of the mind; they operate in the whole of living nature. There is no difference in principle between organic and psychic growth. As a plant produces its flower, so the psyche creates its symbols. Every dream is evidence of this process.”
What is the purpose of flowers? Biologically we need them to help propagate future generations of a plant. I think, biologically, we also need them as manifestations of beauty, manifestations of what it can look like to exist and do the work of playing our part in an ecosystem. Is that too far of a reach? I don’t think so.
I think, like the flowers that grow throughout the year, attract pollinators, fruit, die, and lay the groundwork for the next generation, our ideas, conscious and unconscious, symbolic and concrete, are meant to do that multifaceted work. I think we’re meant to follow them to their ends and then see what we can do with what’s left. And if we aren’t meant to, I don’t see any reason we shouldn’t anyway.
Admittedly, today’s little blog is not the most incisive. This one comes mostly from wondering that has spun out as I’ve drafted the chapbook that I’m releasing in two days. The officially release is on the Solstice this year. Between social time and limping across the fall semester finish line, a wobbly little blog is the best I could offer today. Still, as a little preview of what’s to come, here are the essays from this chapbook project:
Mary and the cycles of the moon
The Capricorn Moon and Mary of Nazareth
The Virgin's Story
Throughout the book there’ll be some fun digressions/diversions and pieces of art. I hope it’ll be interesting, thought provoking, and a pretty object to have in your home. Thanks again for reading <3
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.