Manganvesuvianite – the Manganese-rich form of Vesuvianite, named for the Volcano that decimated Roman Pompeii. Vesuvianite symbolizes the Mother Goddess, Creator of All That Is, and her Power to Heal “Miraculously.” It appears as a Miracle to the Limited mind; it’s everyday to the Goddess. The Manganese clears away Confusion so we can see the Growth that’s hiding behind it and Embrace it.
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A reader asks…
“Can you talk more about those of us who have a planet squaring the nodes?”
Which is an excellent question. It’s a similar situation for folks with planets Conjunct either Node.
A “Square” is two planets that are separated by one fourth of the Zodiac; they’re near the same Degree but three Signs apart. A T-Square is two Squares connected end-to-end, or two planets Opposing one another with a third planet halfway between them. Both mean Mastery through Challenge, the T-Square’s Challenge being more Challenging than a single Square’s Challenge.
First though, let me address another reader comment…
“That discussion of squares/Tsquares got me – depressed – no, actually, I recognized that feeling as despair when I read it. Your writings have taught me to recognize that feeling – despair. And unconscious despair. I never knew what that darkness was. It’s been interesting to note where, when, how often it comes. That’s helped clear a fair amount of it to an extent…just recognizing it for what it is. That post brought it on. Condemnation. I always thought squares were Mastery Through Challenge. So there is no ‘never.’ Mastery comes. Not just ‘getting it’ but MASTERY!! I feel like they should be called Infinitely Perpetual Challenge then. Give it up. You ain’t getting anywhere.”
Well, Infinitely Perpetual Challenge isn’t far off – till you Change your Objective. Let’s take any of us that have Squares to Mars or Venus for an example – that’s timely, with Mars Initiating Venus and Wabi-Sabi Stationary. We don’t even need a Square between Mars and Venus, just some other planet Squaring Mars or Venus. Those movie scenes and ads about Perfect Romance and Perfect Bodies and Perfect Faces are irresistible to us. Pant, Pant. And that’s the whole idea – it ain’t Real, it’s a Trance. I’ll wager that every Relationship you’ve ever been in had some positive feature. If you cut out each one of those boons and pasted it on your Ken or Barbie doll, you’ll witness your Mastery first-hand. You just haven’t put them together all at once.
That’s actually a great way to move toward What You Want – list the pieces or characteristics of your Desire, check to see which ones you’ve already Manifested, and then work on the others. When you get most of them checked off, list all the combinations – A+B, A+C, B+C, etc. and start working on those – you can Plan and Execute, or PIAVFA, or both. Then if you need to, work on the triplets – A+B+C, A+B+D, B+C+D, etc. – and the quadruplets. Sound too complex? Hmmm. Maybe it’s your Desire that’s too complex. Maybe you need to Prioritize a little.
Let’s try a thought experiment. Think about your unfulfilled Desire. Now pick its two most important characteristics. Just for the sake of illustration we’ll call them Passion and Security. Sound contradictory?
That may be part of your Frustration. Contradiction exists only in the mind, not in Reality. In Reality it’s Both/And; in Real Life it’s called Paradox, not Contradiction. If we’re striving for two Paradoxical qualities that we Believe are Contradictory, we will be doomed to Infinitely Perpetual Challenge. It’s very difficult to Manifest what we don’t Believe – this is part of the Powerful “Placebo” effect. So the first thing we may need to PIAFA is that we Believe our Desire is Possible.
Back to Passion and Security. Ever feel Passion toward your Desire? If not, Imagine it (Feelize or Visualize or …). Shake It Off, take a drink of Water, and then think about the times you’ve felt Security around your Desire. You may not have met any of your other requirements, but you felt Security. If you haven’t Experienced Security around your Desire, not even for a few minutes, then Imagine what it’ll feel like when you do. (If it’s a Relationship Desire, think Friendship.) Then Let It Go, Dance a bit, another drink of Water, then recall or Imagine Manifesting both Security and Passion around your Desire. Add Belief if you need to.
Feel good? Or are their Yesbuts squeaking in the background – or shrieking in the foreground? Yesbuts can feel Frustrating, but they’re just information about what else your Desire needs. A frequently Unconscious Yesbut is whether or not you Deserve to Manifest Your Heart’s Desire.
Virtually all of us went to the same Obedience School, where we were given a biscuit if we got the right answer, and if we’re very lucky only fingerwagged when we got the wrong answer. Lots of folks would consider it Sociopathic if you Believed that you just Deserved things without having to Earn them. Well, you do Deserve to Manifest your Heart’s Desire, right or wrong. If your Heart’s Desire is punishable by Life or the Chair, so be it, you’ll just have to face the music. But that’s not about Deserving; it’s about what your Culture permits and how well you finesse it.
Okay, you’ve Shaken It Off and Let It Go again and danced around the Fire, and now you’re sitting there feeling what it’s like to Believe in and Deserve to Manifest Safety and Passion around your Desire.
I know, they’re still Yesbutting you, but Imagine that Belief, Deserving, Security, and Excitement are all you Want, that they’re Enough.
Ahhhhh! – Wonderful, isn’t it!
No? Well, that’s it then.
Desire is indeed an Infinitely Perpetual Challenge. The basic problem is that Desire is misspelled. It’s really spelled M-o-t-i-v-a-t-i-o-n. Now there has to be a Balance between Motivation and Satisfaction, or else we’ll never feel good about Life. So what to do? Well, we certainly don’t need to give up our Desire, that would be the equivalent of Death. We might need to dial it back a little, and approach it one piece or characteristic at a time, or set intermediate and achievable Goals that we can Celebrate along the way, so we can enjoy the Journey and not just the possibly hallucinatory Destination.
But the real key to Enjoying a Square or T-Square is shifting our Objective from Desire to Learning. We’re always Learning, so we can Celebrate some quantity of Learning (even if we don’t understand yet what it is) from every Experience. So a Square or a T-Square is about Learning about our Desire. Once we make that shift we’re free to Play. Learning is usually Surprising – otherwise we’d already be Learned. So we’re open to Surprise as well as Success. We really can afford to Play with it, because when Learning is our Objective, the bigger and faster our failures, the more we Learn.
That is MASTERY. You’ve actually experienced it in your Life, around lesser Frustrations, like Spelling or Story Problems or DiffyQ or Asking for a raise or maintaining your Health.
And in fact, with a Square or T-Square, you are a Master, because you’ve always been Motivated to Explore the Edges of your Infinitely Perpetual Challenging Desire. Take Music as an example. If you’re Mozart, you were a Master at Birth. If you’re Salieri, you’ve been working your butt off all your Life, and he gets all the contracts. But suppose you’re Vivaldi, and you’re trying to figure out whether you want a minor or major key for your concerto about Spring. Mozart could tell you in a flash. But Salieri would be able to tell you why you need a minor key.
If you were depending on Mozart you’d need to ask him again for each Season. The answer you got from Salieri would allow you to figure it out on your own. So who’s the real Master – Mozart or Salieri?
This is Real, it’s not a rationalization or a PR trick. You may need to start your process by Believing that it’s possible to shift your Objective from your Desire to Learning about your Desire.
Conjunctions and Oppositions are similarly Heuristic. Oppositions Challenge us to escape Duality by recognizing that while the Heads and the Tails distract us from what’s really happening, focusing on the Coin will trigger our Intuition. Conjunctions Challenge us to Accept that just because our Perspective on the World isn’t popular, that doesn’t mean it’s wrong. In fact, the more unusual our Perspective, the more Powerful. You may end up writing things that won’t be understood for 200 years, or that only six people on the Planet will grok, but the Value in that is immeasurable.
Squares and T-Squares are members of the Fourth Harmonic, which is basically Mastery or Dominion; the Emperor. But it’s the Fifth Harmonic that’s about Learning, so we must be wrong, eh? No, we Master each Harmonic by adopting the Perspective of a higher Dimension. The First Harmonic, Conjunction, is about Self. The Infinitely Perpetual Challenge about Self is Other, which is introduced by the Second Harmonic, Opposition.
The Challenge of Self “versus” Other is resolved by Love, the Third Harmonic or Trine. The Infinitely Perpetual Challenge about Love lies in resolving Codependence, via Healthy Control or Dominion, the Fourth Harmonic – Squares. We resolve the Frustration of the Fourth Harmonic by using the Fifth, Learning, the Quintile. We resolve the Paradox of Inequality between the Student and the Teacher by moving to mutually respectful Partnership, the Sixth Harmonic or Sextile. And so on.
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Squares to the Nodes
Okay, finally we get to the original question. But I think you’ll agree that the detour was useful.
We’ve been equating the North Node to Desire and Mission, and now we’re talking about Squares as if they represented Desire. These are two different flavors of Desire. A North-Node Desire is hardwired in. Moving in the direction of a North-Node Desire produces the sense that we’re on the right track, even as Satisfaction avoids us. North-Node Desires evolve without much Frustration; we don’t recall how different our current North-Node Desires are from our picture of it five or ten years ago. The basic sense is one of Progress. A T-Square Desire on the other hand is an unachievable chimera that we set up to Motivate ourselves. It’s a picture of Perfection. It probably hasn’t changed substantially since we were five or ten years old. The basic sense is one of Frustration.
So, if we put them both together, Progress with Frustration, gradual evolution with our Perfect Pictures, the whole process can be very Confusing. And we may not remember that Confusion is the first stage of Growth. That’s probably the key we need to resolve a T-Square to the Nodes – remembering that Confusion is the first stage of Growth.
Note that since the Nodes by definition Oppose one another, a Square to the Nodes is always a T-Square.
There are a couple of productive processes for dealing with Confusion. We can acknowledge it with Gratitude. “Omigosh, there’s Confusion! Thank Goddess I’m Growing out of that dilemma! That’s Exciting!” And Curiosity. Unlike the programming we got in school, real Learning is always Surprising. If we had any idea how a real Life dilemma would be resolved, it wouldn’t be a dilemma. So acknowledging Confusion as the first step of Growth almost automatically inspires Curiosity. And Curiosity, like Love, is Goddessly, as both eschew Judgment. We don’t want to strive for Curiosity about how our T-Square will be resolved – because we’d get stuck to our Perfect Pictures again. Curiosity about what we’ll Learn next about our Desire fits perfectly, however.
We come to the difference between Desire and Fantasy. Suppose for instance that we crave Acknowledgement. If as ankle-biters we weren’t Valued for who we really were, we’ll spend our Lives craving Acknowledgement. We have a picture of how that might happen. We might be “Discovered,” for instance. That’s a very nice alternative to Earning Acknowledgement. Once who we really are is Discovered, everything else will fall into place, and it will all be easy. That’s how we know it’s a Fantasy – everything else becomes easy. Fantasy is a Manifestation-killer.
When we detect Fantasy we need to substitute Curiosity. We don’t know what it will look like when we’re Acknowledged – we’ve never been there. We know the Perfect Picture we daydream about, but our Desire is behind that Picture, not in it. When that Picture arises and we recognize it (how can we not? – we’ve been daydreaming it all our Life!), we need to pull the cord next to it so it rolls up like an old-fashioned window-shade. Behind it there’s a Wilderness, and it’s Delightful and Dangerous and Exciting and very Compelling. You can’t Imagine what’s in there! But doesn’t it inspire Curiosity!
So let’s take some examples. Suppose Saturn, which represents The Most Important Thing, Squares our Nodes. It’s never this simple, because many other influences are afoot – such as the Sign of our Saturn, and other Angles to it from other planets. But we could have a Lifetime Frustration about knowing what’s The Most Important Thing. Is it Learning new Skills or collecting boons by using the Skills we have? Is it Love, or is it Power? So we need to find a reliable way to move from Confusion to Curiosity around The Most Important Thing.
In Psychic School one of the first tricks you Learn is “What if you did know?” When Duality wants you to do Either/Or and you aren’t in touch with your Intuition enough to understand how Both/And might work in this circumstance, you can Ask yourself, “What if I did know?” Chances are you will have already rejected at least one answer to the question, and that answer will probably pop back into Consciousness. There’s a danger here. This is an exercise for developing your Intuition, it’s not your Intuition.
The answer you get is an excellent trial balloon, and a great first guess about what’s The Most Important Thing. It’s worth trying. But it may only work for a few steps. West might be the correct direction for the first three strides, but you need to be alert for when Confusion arises again, and Ask again. The next four might be North – or West again. If you decide that one direction is Most Important forever, you’re likely to end up in a swamp. After you practice this for a while it will become your Intuition, and you’ll develop the habit of recognizing Confusion and shifting immediately to Curiosity. Eventually you won’t even notice the intervening steps, you’ll just Intuitively know what comes next.
But it’s still a Square; you can never sit on your laurels. It will always be evolving, and you’ll always be Learning more about how to define The Most Important Thing, on more and more subtle levels, till you finally realize that there’s no one you can compare notes with, because no one else knows as much as you know about it – you are the Master. It Squares your Nodes, so knowing it is The Most Important Thing in your Life. When you Celebrate your Certainty about knowing the Most Important Thing, you’re about to step into the muck. Celebrate Learning more about how to discern The Most Important Thing instead.
Now, think back over your Life. How many times have you repeated this dance, and how many different ways have you Learned for dealing with it? Include all the ways you’ve forgotten that you Learned (what if you did remember?). In truth you’re the Master of this Process. There’s no one better than you to teach it to others, because you’ve Explored all the blind alleys and discovered all the thoroughfares. And more important, you know how to find the mainlines that haven’t been discovered yet.
The primary characteristic of any Square is a shortage of Self-Acknowledgement.
That’s another process for resolving a Square in any given moment – moving to Gratitude – make a list of what is working for you.
Or Jupiter – what if Jupiter Squared our Nodes? Jupiter is about Fortune, Expansion, Amplification. When Jupiter dances with your Nodes, your Mission is always foremost in your Attention. That’s fabulous, as no one will ever be able to accuse you of not immer strebend. But it’s never Enough, is it. Jupiter’s the Great Benefic, but Never Enough is a bummer. So Self-Acknowledgement of your Enoughness has to become your mantra. You’ve beaten it practically to death, but Enoughness is your Mastery. Now you need to Master Not-Quite-Enoughness. Your Challenge is to Learn to feel good about Performing at 90%. When you get pretty good at that you can try 80%. You’ll be More Than Enough at 50% – you can spend the other 50% having Fun. You’re already doing this, aren’t you. That’s MASTERY!
We just can’t Acknowledge that we’re actually Manifesting the Power to Serve Effectively when we’re the Victim of our own Unconscious Motivation. Dominion requires the Ability to Respond to “threats” to our Healthy Control. As long as the Power to Serve Effectively is our Goal instead of Learning to Use the Power to Serve Effectively, Frustration follows, because Life is a moving target and “those people” – who really are less competent and less dedicated than you because they don’t have Jupiter Squaring their Nodes – are your Teachers, Unconsciously of course. You’re underemployed, but you won’t be able to leverage yourself into a position where you also have the Authority and Responsibility to Serve Effectively – and the rewards, until you Learn to Honor yourself.
There’s still time to remember all of the little and big Successes along this course, and Celebrate each one. They’ll feel burdensome until you reframe them from Frustration about Failure, to Excitement about Learning. Buy three big sheets of gold-colored cardboard and a “Sharpie” permanent marker. Take an hour each week, choose one of your historical Frustrations, fully Embrace your Grief about how your hard work was unseen and unacknowledged and even actively thwarted, and then Ask “What did I Learn from this?” If what you Learned feels negative, Ask “What was the positive function of that?” “What was one positive thing that came out of it?
When you feel good about that Learning, cut a trophy honoring yourself for that Success out of the gold cardboard, and give it a title and an approximate date. As you process each historical Frustration there will be too many trophies (it’s Jupiter after all!) to keep on your mantle or altar all at once, so keep the extras in a box. Each morning choose one trophy to put back in the box, and replace it with a new one chosen “randomly” from the box. Spend a minute remembering the Frustration you felt as you climbed that mountain, and find the Relief you felt when you Learned that Lesson.
What about Venus? Venus stands for our Values, so you’re probably often at odds about which Value of yours to follow. Having multiple Values is fantastic – no danger of becoming a Zealot, eh? But boy, those Zealots sure look Satisfied, don’t they? Compared to my Confusion, that looks like a Blessing! What if being Multifarious was the Blessing? It’s a Square, it’s always a moving target. I think of a Spiral, where we revisit the same issue over and over again but with slightly different circumstances. A friend and reader uses the metaphor of “an elevator which stops at identical floors, but different things happen depending on where your head/vibes/frequency is.”
But the constant about is this is Constant Learning. Your Values are Universal, but for every moment a different Hierarchy of Values applies. If you’re anything like the rest of us, you’ve been programmed to apply the Values that were handed down by your family heritage in every moment. You’ll be Learning how to stop and reconsider every moment, so you can apply the Values that work best in the circumstances. You’ll know when you got it right because there will be a short burst of North-Node Satisfaction, the sense that you’re on the right track. Till the Square’s Never-Quite-Right Energy butts in again. No worries, it’s just Confusion, the first stage of Growth. Isn’t that Curious! I wonder which Values apply here – Growth or Certainty?
The Centaur Nessus Squaring the Nodes? Confusion over Action, how to meet one’s needs with finesse rather than force, and how to replace that Confusion with Curiosity and Self-Acknowledgement. Passive Pacifism isn’t worth much. A Pacifist who knows how to Embrace and Master their own need to Dominate is a Teacher of Value.
The dwarf planet Ceres would tie us in knots over what’s Sustainable, and beg us to replace our Preaching and Self-Abuse about it with frequent PIAVFAs about how to make it stick.
The poster child of dwarf planets, Pluto? Sorry, your Life Path is intense, and you won’t bargain your way out of it. You’ve probably already been in and out of Addiction, as there’s no faster way to understand Control. Your Hero’s Journey is the Heroin’s Journey, figuratively or literally. So what if no one listens to you – you see the Future, and they don’t. Let them stumble; it’s their Learning Experience. Your Certainty is a hindrance, though. See if you can reprogram your Trance to seek Curiosity instead – you’re the Master of Trance-Re-Formation after all, even if you haven’t Recognized it yet.
If it’s the Centaur Hylonome Squaring your Nodes, Grief is your constant companion. She’s just over your left shoulder. Don’t push her away any more; Embrace Her. Once you let Her swallow you like Inanna was swallowed by the Sun, over and over again, you’ll emerge Surprisingly quickly, each time having gained deep Insight. Be Curious about where Grief will lead you next, as it’s a deep service to Humanity and to the Planet.
Inanna’s symbol is the Grand Octile – the Eighth Harmonic is where we go to resolve the puzzles presented by Magic. This Ouija Board Uranus-Pluto Cycle is about Magic, and you know what comes next. You are a Visitor from the distance Future, come to try to steer us away from impending disaster. Embrace that Perspective without succumbing to Certainty or rejecting your constant Grief about being Unrecognized. Grief is your greatest Tool.
Ah, Lilith. It feels Confusing only because you’re ahead of your Time. The World is moving toward Yindependence – Universal Respect for Self-Sovereignty – and you’re the advance guard. Let yourself be Curious about how you can best help move the Planet forward. The Hero’s Journey is well documented; it’s up to you to document the Heroine’s Journey for us as well. Starhawk’s Truth or Dare is a good starting place for you.
Then there’s Uranus! Yes, there are deep mists between you and your Soul, and many false profits. You can’t dispel Confusion with Certainty, it must be Embraced. It’s all Metaphor, Both/And. What will happen if you Surrender to Confusion?
Anyone else wanting to come forward?
