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Post by tom on Jul 1, 2008 2:30:51 GMT
i hadn't even considered calling the mean BML eve. something about it... ----> eve is derivative of adam, and so calling lilith's mean motion eve seems somehow not to work for me. but i'd love to hear more reflections from people here on the mean BML-as-eve, perhaps you can suade me (even with all my sagittarius stuff and saturn in the 9th!).
hmm, yes, where IS adam?? i've actually spent today working on that. there's a blind spot here because we don't consider adam & eve to be mythic figures - they're key, opening figures in our sacred texts. given that many consider them to be the literal words of the deity, calling them mythic figures would put them in the same category as the greco-roman myths, which i feel are treated by most to be nice little stories for picture books. i think it would offend many who defend monotheism as a greater level of evolution than the greek and roman religions - which of course won't stop me from doing it!
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Post by ariesmoon on Jul 1, 2008 6:49:44 GMT
There is an asteroid called "Adams" but it doesn't feel right. I would imagine it's quite deliberate that not only are there no asteroids named specifically after Adam and Eve, there are also no other names in the list which might be considered sacred to other religions.
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Post by Aphrodite on Jul 1, 2008 11:13:31 GMT
I agree about the blind spot. I don't know that much about the personalities of Adam and Eve. However, between Eve and Lilith we get the message that women are BAD! We are all tainted because of a woman. This thought is deeply ingrained in our society. So I think the myth is worth examining.
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Post by tom on Jul 1, 2008 17:06:23 GMT
aphrodite, i totally agree - that's ultimately what my lilith book is about, taking apart the myth to show it for the tool of social instruction that it is, and not actually reflective of human/feminine nature.
to get at the personalities of adam and eve, you just start with genesis. there's a fabulous book called Hebrew Myths by robert graves and raphael patai that i've been using. they present a translation of the biblical text, and then offer commentary from others on it, and their comentaries, not only framing the texts historically but also elaborating on their meanings in an objective way.
but adam and eve are not that personality-full! they're bland. boring. milquetoast. and intentionally so - they're the models of compliant man and woman we're supposed to strive to be. if a man will only do what yahweh says (and not dissent like samael/lucifer), he can have all sorts of power. and if a woman will only do what a man says (and not demand equality), she can have all her earthly needs taken care of. it's pernicious and stomach-turning, but has been fabulously successful as a tool for social conditioning.
when i'm standing there looking at them as archetypes, they're not only bland, but also missing too much, which has lead me back to look at them with (true black moon) lilith and samael/lucifer (asteroid 1930) - the latter two being the rejected feminine ("don't assert equality!") and masculine ("don't challenge the word of yahweh no matter how damaging or illogical!"). take all four together and you have a picture of man and woman based in reality. what i'm doing with looking at lilith without demonizing her is what i've been doing with lucifer for over three years - they seem to be revealing themselves as tied together. so much so, that i'm wondering if the lilith book needs to have the lucifer material i'm working on added to it - they go together.
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Post by ariesmoon on Jul 1, 2008 20:34:17 GMT
Tom, if you felt guided to put Lilith and Lucifer together, I think that would be very powerful. And they seem interwoven to me. I've started looking at Lucifer since we corresponded about my Lilith report, and they are conjunct in my chart, Lucifer at 17 Virgo and true BML at 21 Virgo. Understanding one is helping me to understand the other. They seem to be allies, in my chart at least.
What I'm finding is that I'm turning away from the notion of God that was around me as a child growing up - not in any intense way or with any pressure applied, it was just "there" in the background as being the "right" thing to believe in. At least on my mother's side. I never quite bought into it, it never felt comfortable, and dismissed it on the surface as illogical, but I never rejected it outright, my conditioning telling me that I "ought" to believe. And I know now that I wanted to believe in something greater than myself, I just didn't know what, or who.
What I'm turning to, and the more I find out, the more it resonates, is a much freer, more feminine energy and an openness to discovery about goddess religions, and connection to the Earth. It really is about finding a part of me that glories in a feminine creative energy. It's gone through two distinct stages - the first being a powerful realisation - a revelation - looking at beautiful countryside that it didn't get there by accident, that there had to be some grand design. And from reading voraciously about goddess religions, and joining a reiki and drumming circle, to realising that this is where I feel "at home" and where my faith in a grand design can feel comfortable. I could never have voiced this before.
Questionning that childhood religious conditioning - which has been passed down through generations of one side of my family -seems very appropriate to the Lucifer energy. And tuning in as a result to feminine creative energy seems very Lilith. As I said, they seem to be working together. Only by that deep and uncomfortable process of questionning, can you discern which elements of your belief system are on solid ground, and which aren't. On Sunday evening this week I sat in my parents' house reading a book about the divine feminine, with a Christian service playing on TV. It felt odd, I was bucking the system. Something I haven't done too often!
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Post by Aphrodite on Jul 1, 2008 21:01:44 GMT
This is a very interesting project you have embarked on. Can't wait to see how it turns out! take all four together and you have a picture of man and woman based in reality. what i'm doing with looking at lilith without demonizing her is what i've been doing with lucifer for over three years - they seem to be revealing themselves as tied together. so much so, that i'm wondering if the lilith book needs to have the lucifer material i'm working on added to it - they go together. Yes! They are all tied together. It takes all four to complete the picture. Adam and Eve were very compliant, but it got them nothing. The message I get from their story is that we, as individuals, will never be good enough. We can never measure up. We can give and give and give of ourselves and never overcome. (I hesitate to post the rest of this, but what the hell! Maybe it is useful to you or someone else.) That was exactly the message I got from my school, church and family as a teenager. The more I devoted myself, the harsher the criticism. I went to the Christian high school at my church, sang in the choir, taught musical instruments and played in the orchestra, went to bus ministry on Sat morning, bible study Sat night, Sunday school and church on Sun morning, prayer meeting and church on Sun night, Tues, Wed and Thurs nights were all taken up by chuch, as well. Always criticism by each group (11th hs) that I wasn't doing enough or that I wasn't pure or pious enough. My mother would also criticise. I could bring home a report card with straight A's and get questioned as to why I did not get 6 A pluses! How come a single A minus? More, more, more! But never anything for me. There was not one single person in my life at that time that did not try to take every penny I earned or use up every moment of my time, with no appreciation in return. It only got worse when I tried to go to college. Everyone was opposed to it because girls didn't need to go to college. The only reason I was allowed to go was because we would lose my father's pension if I didn't continue in school. So I worked full time for money for the family and went to school full time, too. I had no right (or perceived that I had no right) to say otherwise. What I wanted did not count. I wanted to be a CPA, but was told that I could study to be a book keeper or secretary. Oh, if I wanted professional training, then it would be okay if I became a teacher or nurse. If I was to be a real lady, then I should be thinking about getting into a "finishing school" to better prepare me to be a good wife and mother! This is why I see Eve in opposition to my moon and square mercury. What the hell? Maybe Adam is there with her (and my Lucifer is also not far away in Virgo)! Despite their compliance, Adam and Eve made one mistake and we will all be punished for an eternity because of it. Similarly, despite all my efforts to martyr myself (yes, I admit that Pisces moon can be a bit of a martyr! ) in exchange for love and acceptance, all it got me was rejection. Eventually, I threw in the towel and joined the Army, which was a vast improvement in my life! I voluntarily left the safety and security of home, family and community. No one could understand why such a sweet, innocent girl would want to leave such a pampered life. Just the idea of it met with more criticism. People I barely knew would come up to me and say things like, "I thought you were a nice girl" or "I didn't know you were that way" or "why would you want to do that?" [glow=red,2,300]Things are not always as they appear. Perhaps Lilith recognized the futility of her life and fled? Remember, she didn't just leave Adam, she left the garden of Eden! What would it take to drive someone from a place perceived as Utopia into a life of hardship? [/glow] What did it take to drive me from my "pampered" life towards the rigor and discipline of the military? Was Lilith really wrong? Was I wrong? Aphrodite
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Post by tom on Jul 1, 2008 23:51:26 GMT
aphrodite - you weren't wrong, you did what you had to do to maintain your relationship with yourself. that honoring the self above the collective is not understood/encourgaged has nothing to do with you! it's a piscean-age collective thing.
the thing with these stories is that what we've heard they're about is only part of the picture; we get angry at being a protagonist in these stories but we have to listen into them to uncover the actual stories - the archetypes as opposed to the myths we've inherited. we have to understand why they were shaped the way they were, to what social ends - what social behavior they're meant to teach us about. i'll be working on this a lot more in time, stay tuned...
ariesmoon, i'll agree that lucifer conjunct the true BML is a key for you! you'll hear about it in the reading i recorded for you this afternoon...
peace to both of you, tom
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Post by ariesmoon on Jul 2, 2008 20:56:58 GMT
Tom, I've mailed you separately about my report, just to say having listened to it, I'm more than ever convinced that Lilith and Lucifer work together!
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Post by ariesmoon on Jul 3, 2008 17:01:35 GMT
"Bland, boring, milquetoast" - and, from Tom's site, "watered down, opinionless and submissive". I'm glad, on reflection, that there's no asteroid Eve. I'm not sure I'd want to find her in my chart. (Probably because I'd recognise elements of her in the person I used to be in my previous career..) I'm more than happy to discover Lilith!
Any thoughts, anyone, on true BML in Libra? It's come up looking at someone else's chart. I would have thought she would feel comfortable with Libran balance, harmony and equality in relationships, and the loving element of being ruled by Venus, but might find the diplomacy and fabled indecision difficult to live with! Having said that, Libra is a cardinal sign, and Lilith was a woman of action, so it might suit her. I'll not put the details up here because they're out of context. I'm just curious to know how Lilith energy might manifest there.
Any thoughts too, on synastry connections? Using Kim's image of people as permanent transits, I would have thought that Lilith energy touching others' personal planets or the Vertex might be very unsettling, depending on how close the connection is, and how comfortable (or not) the other person is with Lilith energy. It might serve to uproot some very deeply repressed energies - which is no bad thing!
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Post by DigitalChi on Jul 4, 2008 15:02:19 GMT
I haven't posted in a-g-e-s but just had to reply to Ariesmoon on this one! I have BML in Libra in the tenth, conjunct uranus -- I can relate to wanting equality in relationships, and also the cardinal decisiveness/action. I must say I haven't experienced the indecisiveness or diplomacy, but I think that is largely because my Venus (in philosophical Sag) is part of a mentally aggressive/analytical T-square involving Mercury, Mars (T-focus in the 3rd house), and Saturn. In synastry (and I've been trying to figure this one out and watching to see how it manifests): My Lilith is exactly conjunct my lover's descendant (Libra) His Lilith is exactly conjunct my IC (Pisces) It is TOTALLY the uprooting of repressed energy. My experience of it: I had avoided relationships after a particularly bad one which ended four years ago. I felt totally sealed off emotionally. He had resigned himself to being in an emotionally and physically distant relationship. Speaking for self, I fought very hard not to let him in emotionally, tried to keep it an intellectual connection (our mercuries are exactly conjunct). But it's very hard to hold out on a man who doesn't run away or back away nervously when you're having an ugly cry It strikes me now that holding off seemed like holding back the sea - the Pisces energy maybe. For him, I don't know. I certainly shook him out of being resigned to his relationship - quite dramatically, with my BML/Uranus conj on his descendant! People remark that he has changed dramatically in his interaction with the world since we became friends - lighter and happier and playful and less aggressive and more giving. I have never experienced a man to show vulnerability so openly with me (and this after other people have described him as "impenetrable" and "emotionally spastic"!) The energy played out as follows: instant physical attraction on meeting; intellectual and emotional relationship built over the space of a year of non-stop talking but always aware that there was an underlying phyical buzz; and finally getting it together very recently - after some discussion! Now I'm not sure how much of this is the Lilith to the angles connection, and how much is the strong water house connection (his sun, moon, venus in my 12th; my sun, mercury, venus, jupiter, neptune in his scorpio 8th, and my moon/descendant on his cancer IC). There are no other huge WOW! contacts in the synastry. I can only describe it as a relationship with sharing at its core, but is that Lilith?
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Post by ariesmoon on Jul 4, 2008 15:26:33 GMT
What a great post DigitalChi! Sounds like a great relationship too - you were probably the shock he needed (Uranus on his descendant, a real bolt of lightening). What are the Saturn connections in your synastry? They may not immediately strike you as "wow" but they do provide the "glue" that keeps people together. I'm sure there'll be something - it sounds like you have a very strong foundation in friendship. I love what you said about getting together after some discussion - those conjunct Mercuries!
So Lilith does help to uproot repressed energies - I thought so. (Can I just check - are you using the True BML or the Mean?) I hadn't thought about it on the angles but it does make sense. They're very sensitive points especially the IC. It sounds like he makes you feel very safe (your IC) expressing Piscean emotion. And that he feels safe with it too.
I have astonishing synastry with a guy I encountered recently - I use that word deliberately because we're not together, I know his birthday though, and we just watched each other across a room. The timing was all wrong and it may never come to anything. But boy was there a connection. In True BML terms, his is conjunct my Vertex and mine is conjunct his Moon. Both within a few degrees, and BML seems - from my limited observations! - to work in a fairly wide orb as it is quite eccentric. There's also a 2 degree Venus/Mars conjunction in Taurus so that might have been "it" - so might Eros trine Eros (exact). Could be all of them. But whatever "it" was, it's uprooted a great deal that was repressed in me. Fear, passion, jealousy (a new one for me!). If I'm ever struck by lightening then hit by a truck in quick succession, I'll know what to expect because that's what happened there! We also have Mercury sextile Mercury - exact to the minute - mine in Gemini his in Aries. So we could both talk!
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Post by DigitalChi on Jul 4, 2008 17:51:28 GMT
Hey AM I'm using True BML too. No huge Saturn contacts -- no, I lie. My Saturn (which is my chart ruler) 0 degrees 2 min trine his Mars (his chart ruler). His Saturn is very loosely (8 degrees) trine my sun and moon. But that's it. It's a hugely talking relationship Sag mercuries, so it's everything under the sun ;D AND we have mercury conj sun in the 10th close-ish to the MC in composite! I can totally relate to the "lightning then truck" feeling! I had the additional instant sledgehammer of "I CAN'T do this again, I can't be in a relationship again" - it was the wierdest thing, actually feeling my mind trying to knife my feelings with all the self-protective reasons why-not. He was sneaky tho (And this so plays into your observation about safety at the core of one's being with the Lilith-IC connection) He knew I was running scared, and that I had been bruised, and that I was thinking that there were huge reasons to stay away from a deeper relationship. He invested a lot of time and effort into letting me know that I could trust him, and open up to him. Very patiently, but very determinedly. Who would have expected such patience: he's Sag with Sun-Moon-Venus in the 9th! One never knows what could happen out of an encounter. Ours was all wrong in terms of timing and everything else: he was married, we work together. But it happened anyway - after a discussion over five days after a year of being in each other's pockets every day! Hehe we also have Eros sextile Eros exact, my Eros in Scorpio in hard aspect to his sun-moon midpoint, and his Psyche conj my sun/moon. I remember saying annoyedly to a friend at the beginning "That bloody man has no idea of boundaries" and now I think "what heaven to have no boundaries" Cheers Chi
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