For Beloved Neni

Today my beloved grandmother, was buried. Yes, that's her as a young woman in the photo above. I was not by her side as I had hoped to be, but far away across an ocean in another country. Nonetheless, she had been constantly in my thoughts and I know she is now both at peace and watching over the family like an angel. I loved her so much and she me. I know she loves me still, as I do her.

She died a day after the exact Saturn-Uranus opposition on February 6, her Virgo Sun weighed down by the great malefic, and opposed by the liberator in Pisces. Meanwhile, Jupiter was bearing down on my mother's own natal Aquarius Moon, so I had known for some time that Granny's death was a distinct possibility this year.

The last six-and-a-half years had been an endless torment for her, leaving her bedridden and utterly dependent after a heavy stroke - a stroke that had reduced this elegant, always gracious and self-sufficient lady to a withered husk of herself, covered in weeping sores from the terrible skin condition she developed in the last two years of her life, her left hand shrivelled into a permanent sickle shape, both it and her left leg paralysed.

Now she will no longer slur her words, or endure long hours trapped in her bed or sit hunched in her wheelchair; nor will she have to brace herself for the daily ordeal of eating, brushing her teeth, or having her hair untangled from its knots.

Instead, I know the celestial door has opened to her soul and she, once more a beautiful young maiden, is free to step across the threshold into the light and ageless love that has been waiting to welcome her back from the day she was born. I know this not in a sentimental way, but as a simple truth of my heart.

Darling, immortal Neni, I love you and I know you will never leave me again.

Venus Trine Neptune: the Piscean M.O. for Lovin'

I used to think everyone experienced that breathless, dumbstruck, shaken-to-the-core sensation when it came to love.

Then I found out that Pisceans are rather pathetic when it comes to matters amorous.

And even later than that, I discovered that, irrespective of whether one has the Sun in Pisces or not, if one is born with one's natal Venus trine its higher octave, Neptune, then falling in love is an event so momentous, it feels like whole worlds are being formed and destroyed at the mere thought of the beloved. It feels like being dropped in the heart of the sun and rejoicing at the annihilation. It feels like being ripped apart by a thunderous, rapturous wave - the perfect one surfers wait for - except you don't ride it, you let if fall upon you like a heavy, white mesh of bliss and surrender to being wiped out.

Er, before we get too carried away, that is my attempt to articulate what the experience symbolized by a Neptune/Venus trine might feel like. My own natal trine between those two planets is in the element of fire - Venus in Aries, Neptune in Sagittarius, and boy have I willingly burned whenever the lovebug's bit.

Why did I happen to choose this topic to post on? Because I've been musing about a lot of things, of late, including trying to identify where my own source of creativity comes from. A friend asked me two days ago something along those lines, and I burbled out an inarticulate reply that it required "a brush with love".

But really, that's what it is. What I feel when someone strikes me as beautiful and desirable and lovely, is that same exultant feeling I get when contemplating what strikes me as a great story to tell, or a dizzying bit of drama to act out. I feel like I leave my body and soar somewhere, not entirely certain of the geography.

Apparently, there are people for whom such transportation does not occur. I'm not entirely sure I should feel sorry for them. The highs bestowed on you by the almost transcendent, spiritual love symbolised by a Venus-Neptune trine are more than matched by the lows when the beloved one is seen through the inevitable perspective of the mundane. Or dear old Saturn comes to call by transit or progression, tearing down the pedestals we've built in our adoration and showing us exactly what we've sworn undying devotion to. Not quite as beautiful when seen through the Saturnian goggles, and absolutely no flying of any kind allowed. It's more like enduring, accepting, forgiving.

Perhaps a more positive way of putting all of that: Saturn helps give form to the ethereal, almost protean (and near sexless) nature of the Venus-Neptune trine, which, in its desire for immaculate, pure devotion, is less inclined to bring true carnality into the mixture. That's for Mars and Venus (and Pluto) to sort out on some other level.

I know that I still - very rarely now, but from time to time - see the apparent image of my first love - my long dead biology teacher appear before me, just before an important creative experience is about to dawn. She's usually walking just a little ahead of me, as lovely and as out of reach as when I first met her. She's always 28, the year she died. For me, she is an precious innocence, a remembrance of adolescent yearning that no amount of weariness, human frailty, age and cynicism can take away.

So love (and creativity) for me, is this, in essence: an idealised longing for a union where two melt away into some sublime self-negation. Which is, as far as I can make out, about as good an interpretation of Venus trine Neptune as a Piscean Sun can probably put it.

Pisceans. Tsk. They're so wimpy and soft. So sappy, gushy, wishy-washy, airy-fairy, arty-farty. Bleeding their hearts all over the carpet. Then crying because the carpet was the only thing you had to remember your dear departed old grandmother by.

Good thing bad boys Osama Bin Laden and Ariel Sharon (and Rupert Murdoch) have proved just how badass they can be. But then, to my knowledge, none of them is afflicted by a natal Venus-Neptune trine.






The image above was taken from this site.