Grabbed Episode One: The Planets as Companions

Transcript:

0:01
Hi everyone, this is Acyuta-bhava from Nightlight Astrology. And today I am going to finally share some stories with you. And actually these are your stories that you've been sharing with me over the course of the summer. So most of you know that earlier in the summer I started a new series called grabbed by the planets. If you have had a story about any of the transits, I have instructed everyone to use the hashtag grabbed and put the planetary aspect at the top and followed by a concise story about how the planets have shown up in your lives. The planets in the Indian tradition are sometimes called gras haws, which means grabbers or seizers, the difference between being grabbed by a planetary transit unconsciously and sort of being dragged along, or grasping, what we've learned, really comes down to whether or not we're able to reflect on the planetary motions in a meaningful way. And so this series is also designed to really give a platform for people out there who listen, to share their stories and community and to receive some feedback. And basically by sharing our stories, we know that we're not alone. We know that astrology is something that's working on us. And it's like, a muscle that we have to develop the interpretive eye of the astrologer is not just there to predict things or describe things. It's also there to accompany us, when we can see the gods in our midst every day, when we can see the planetary motions moving through our lives, whether it's in really small things, or they're really big stuff. That's when astrology really starts doing its work on the souls. We're going to talk about that today as well. But what I'm going to do is I'm going to pull up the real time clock as we go along, and sort of show you some of the transits. And I tried to pick a variety of different transits that I think really illustrate two different points. One is that astrology can happen in small things and sort of funny, everyday things, for everyday frustrations and joys and funny moments, as well as really big, big life moments. So, after we get done sharing some of these stories, today, we're going to reflect a little bit on on what it means to make the gods into companions. How do we develop planetary companionship in our lives.

2:35
So I know that for some people, you know, this series is not going to be unpacking the transit of the moment, but I really urge everybody listening to watch these because we need astrology to be something more than a cosmic Weather Channel. That's just as much you know, a part of our worldly existence as the regular weather. We don't want that from astrology. I mean, astrology is meant to help us kind of navigate our everyday life. And that's fun. But this weather is meant to teach us and help us to heal and transform. And so I hope that these stories, help you with that and help you get some good laughter and help you hone your skills in terms of being able to see them and experience them in your everyday life. I'm also going to give you some tips at the end for how to share these. A lot of what I had to do and sifting through so many different stories to come up with this first episode really boiled down to people not necessarily writing in the most concise sharing their stories in the most concise and helpful way. So I'm going to give you a few tips for sharing in the future if you want to as well. So people who put hashtag grabbed or wrote to us grabbed@nightlight astrology.com these stories, I'm not using names, but I'm reading what people wrote directly to us. And I'll illustrate the transits.

4:06
So, this one, this first one that we're going to read showed up earlier in the summer, while Mercury was opposite Saturn. I just want to go back in time a little bit and show you what this one is like. So if I go back in time, Mercury was opposite Saturn here between August 1st and 2nd. And so this is the first one that we'll look at. I'm going to be bouncing around a little bit. And there it is, there was mercury opposing Saturn. And there were some some really funny stories that came in but I liked this one because of how small and how basic it was. So this person wrote and said, with the hashtag grab and said I am waiting for a book to come in the mail. At the exact minute of Mercury opposed to Saturn this week, I received an email from the publisher that it was not going to be coming because it was still not available. And then she wrote, I cracked up. So I love this example because it's really simple. Here you have Mercury, a book hitting Saturn, something like a blockage, a delay and negation or a no. And astrology can be that simple. You can be waiting for something Mercurial, Mercury can hit an opposition to Saturn and the universe goes, it's not ready yet, you can't have it. So a really good example.

5:40
Another one that came in, and this one rides the wave of the New Moon. Or let me just make sure I've got this right here. Let's see pulling it up. This was the next one was a Pluto Full Moon, if you remember this, so I'm going to share this one with you. And so if we go back a little bit further, we can see that the Full Moon which was right around July 23, here was the full moon as it was getting ready to rise it can join Pluto and then oppose the sun as the Full Moon was made. So I did a video called Full Moon with a Dose of Pluto. And we got some really good responses from that one as well. There's just a couple of them. I'll just read one of them. "So I got grabbed by Pluto, Full Moon energy around family and home, my husband just found out his payment on life insurance lapse, because he didn't realise a payment did not go through on his policy, this insurance is required legally, he is considered high risk because of age and health condition. I was grabbed by fear and insecurity, I thought that I had moved through feeling incredibly vulnerable with thoughts going down rabbit holes of what would go wrong if he would die before this is resolved. And punishment in terms of unaffordable costs from a simple mistake, ugh, of course, he is working on resolving this. But just being aware helps me to keep perspective without getting overwhelmed by anxiety and fear."

7:22
There it is, there's a very plutonian quality around a Full Moon. When you have that moment of fear, anxiety, something that feels like the rug is getting pulled out from underneath you a really pivotal moment that could have all of this high cost associated with a mistake, right? A Full Moon first of all can depending on where it lands in your chart can amplify feelings of fear and overwhelm tremendously. But the feeling especially with Pluto of the rug being pulled out, and suddenly like looking down into the void and being like I thought I thought everything was okay. subterranean energy coming up and grabbing you. And then having to work through the fear. And having to in a sense, survive the fear. We come out the other side, especially when we know the astrology is there. We can come out the other side wiser. The main thing I've noticed around plutonian energy is that you can't just walk around this sunny world forgetting that those underground energies could come up at any moment and, and seize you and grab. And so knowing that we walk around, it's not that we don't have joy, it's that we walk around, like all tentative. But there's just a little bit more humility, and just that touch of sacred anxiety that Pluto can give when we go through such experiences. So thank you for sharing that one.

8:53
Now, here's a few from Venus moving into Virgo. I'm going to show you this on the screen. This happened, you know a little little ways ago, was right around the same time we see right here on about July 21. You can see Venus transitioning into Virgo, so July 21 into the 22nd. And I asked people to share stories about what they noticed from Venus's Ingress because Venus is going into its fall, which can mean that especially when it first ingresses into the sign, you might see some difficult things around Venusian topics. So here's a couple of stories for you guys. Around the Venus fall Venus moving into fall in Virgo. Venus had moved into this woman's second house which is going to be the place of money and finances. And she wrote that she has to have a major dental procedure that is going to be a major cost. But it will be a relief to take care of. So here's something that pertains to your hygiene, your health, cosmetic and your appearance. It's a major cost, it's a major difficulty to repair something. Interestingly, you know, and Venus entered Virgo. That was something that I found that I had to do too. So this person might have been noting the similarities as well between what I was going through with some dental work at the same time. I thought that was a really good example though, because if you look carefully at the house placement in your chart, Venus ingresses into this person's second house. And there's a major cost associated with hygiene, health care, appearance, beauty, cosmetic dental work. Now, here's another one Venus into Virgo.

10:49
"My children have been rehearsing for months for a musical theatre show at the local theatre, which is starting at this time. My 17 year old son has a leading role. And it's also likely to be his last show, having joined the group at 12 years old. So a long time to be, you know, with the theatre group. So it's a big deal. It's also the first show the theatre has put on since March 2020. That would be COVID, and has a cast of 50 spanning the generation, some of whom are only in town to do the show. I watched the opening performance. Thankfully, it was wonderful. And my kids were brilliant. But yesterday, my parents were arriving. And just as they were arriving, my son who is a Virgo rising, which means venus moves into its fall in his first house of health, did the home COVID test and got a positive result throwing everything into chaos. After much serious discussion by the group's managing committee, it was decided that for the safety of the cast, last night's show should be cancelled. We have yet to discover whether it can go ahead at all. But unless my son gets a negative result from the official test his part, and my daughter's has ended. The announcement for the cast didn't mention any names. But somehow everyone knows it was him. So he's still the centre of attention. But now for all the wrong reasons." So sorry, that's a really challenging story. Here you have Venus moving into its fall in the first house of your son's chart. And you know, he's the lead in this play. It's a culminating experience for him probably toward the end of high school. And he has a positive COVID test, and he can't perform. And he's now the centre of attention. But for reasons that, you know, he probably wouldn't like to be. Wow, that's a really good example, though. A really good example of Venus moving into its fall.

12:47
Typically, you're going to see, people might say, Well, why is it so extreme in some instances, but not as extreme and others. And usually, that's going to have to do with things like profections or zodiacal releasing, or transits. In other words, there's other timing factors going on in your birth chart at the same time. Anyway, let's move into another one. I'm going to bounce around a little bit, but I let's go back to the Sun moving through the opposition to Pluto. So the sun's opposition to Pluto came right here, about July 17. See the sun moving through an opposition with Pluto. So I've got maybe one or two stories for from this one. So yeah, this one's pretty tough. "This time, the transits hit very literally, my father died early this morning. Because of astrology, I knew this might be one of the pressure points where he could leave us, so I was able to schedule a trip to be with him recently for a visit, it makes all the difference. This is the best use of astrology to prepare to prepare us for whatever may come."

14:11
Yeah, very powerful example. Of course, one of the manifestations of the Sun opposite Pluto can be challenges around father figures or authority figures, karma related to dad, the son being that symbol that often represents the father in the birth chart. Man, that is a challenging one. And thank you for sharing it with us. And you see, that's the thing that I love so much about astrology is it can be the publisher said that the book, I'm not gonna have the book, my son, you know, took a had a positive COVID test and can't do the play. And it can be as big as my father passed. Isn't it nice that, you know, while we're dealing with whatever we're dealing with, we know that the gods, their hands, their their work is in our lives and they're somehow guiding us along a path that we can't fully understand. But we can trust, because astrology helps us to build that trust. So let's go on to the next one. The next one is Venus enclosed. So you guys might remember in July, that Venus was enclosed for a little bit by the malefics. I'm going to go back and show you what this one looked like. So you can see this right here. I'll just show you. So here's Saturn beaming its ray to 11 Leo, and here is Mars at 18 Leo. So you have the ray of Saturn and the body of Mars enclosing Venus. That's a technical consideration that ancient astrologers paid a lot of attention to in terms of when things could get really rough for a planet when it was enclosed by the malefics. Some of these are rough. Someone wrote, hashtag grabbed, "Hey, it's me with the breast cancer diagnosis during isolation and long term employment unemployment." So that's, that's intense, you know, here we have Venus and closed, you have Venus, the goddess, a symbol for anything pertaining to to women, it will often pertain to anything related to women. And here's someone who's already been in isolation, long term unemployment gets a breast cancer diagnosis. That was while Venus was enclosed by the malefics. So our prayers out to that particular individual, and thank you for sharing it with us, hopefully the plant knowing that the planets are there even in the most difficult times. I mean we hope that you're going to move through this and, and be in recovery. But the truth is that, you know, all of us will have an astrological signature involved with all of the difficult events of our life. And even the moment of our passing, one of the things that ancient astrologers did was to, they had many techniques that were used to understand which planets in the chart likely pertained to our eventual passing. But they they also had the perspective of eternity, knowing that we sojourn in one body and then another, and we have previously sojourned in other bodies. So astrology helps us to remember that perspective. And hopefully, if we can remember that in the most difficult times, when we're dealing with our mortality, our health, our bodies, our minds, our love life, then we can have a little bit more peace. But thank you for sharing that we pray for your quick healing.

18:08
Another one, Venus enclosed and this one, you know it to me, this one lightens the mood a little bit, and it gets out again, why astrology can be so fun. "We were supposed to spend the day at the pool today, but, but my daughter got her period, so we had to stay home, where the cat puked multiple times all over my nice carpets. No fun in the sun." Bleeding, scrubbing and gagging. Sounds like fun. So that that is a hilarious story. And by the way, she says Taurus rising, which puts Venus in the enclosure in the fourth house of home and family. So literally got enclosed in the home when the goal was to go out into the sun. So sorry, that one really sucks. And in a funny way. All right, let's go on. There's a few more I want to show you guys. And again, what I tried to do is pick both the big stuff and the small stuff. I found that some of the most profound stories actually came from Mercury's square to Neptune. So Mercury's square to Neptune happened earlier in July. You'll notice here's mercury squaring Neptune around July 6, that was a transit we talked about in the month of July. And I want to share with you guys a couple of stories that came up around that one. So this one says, "I was thinking about my best friend who is in the final stage of COPD. When he called normally I call him later in the day. Even though he struggles to breathe. We had an inspiring conversations spiced with astrological shop talk or chat left me feeling at peace with his impending death." Love that one I'm thinking about someone and they call very Mercury Neptune. Mercury being communication Neptune Mercury can be almost like psychic communication. He struggles to breathe, he's getting ready to pass over. In this deep conversation that was very synchronistic and psychically connected leaves him at peace about his friends impending death. What a beautiful example of the transits.

20:34
Mercury square Neptune. "At the beginning of this week when this was exact, my friend discovered that her 70 year old father, who had been straight laced his whole life, has been a secret meth addict for the last year. Now he's being forced to go to rehab although he is still in denial." Wow. Here's another one. "I was supposed to go on a first date with someone yesterday. We had planned it a week ago and he gave me his number. I text him a few times over the weekend didn't get a response. He wrote to me yesterday only to discover that we had a tech issue interfering. I had been this close to cutting off contact but we ended up having a really nice talk after I accepted that it was not purposeful and it had been a mistake." So you know the case of the missing disappearing text and can I trust this person can I not trust this person - Mercury Neptune.

21:41
"The first time that Mercury squared Neptune back in May, my brother took his own life. He struggled with alcoholism for most of his life and everything culminated for him and May" Remember this Mercury Neptune transit had been back and forth a number of times due to Mercury's retrograde so she wrote in, "he decided to leave the planet and note to his children 13 and 10 years old read. 'If I can't help you on this earth, I will take care of you as an angel.' His Natal Mercury is conjoined with Neptune. The Moon was squaring that placement in his chart on the day that he died." I'm so sorry for your loss. And that is a really good example of the astrology, Mercury Neptune, otherworldly communication, the mental and emotional turbulence that a person can go through, not feeling like they belong to the world or not wanting to be in the world any longer. So you can have a missing text. You can have a synchronistic psychic experience with a friend, you can have find out a secret about someone being a drug addict. Or you could even have a suicide letter. These are so powerful, it's so powerful to witness each other's stories. This is what brings me back to astrology every single day. This is why I do it. This is why I love it.

23:15
When I was in my 20s I studied memoir writing in graduate school. What I realised was I really just love stories. And astrology gives me the ability to hear stories and tell stories, but to also see them reflected in the cosmos itself into the very fabric of reality. It makes me feel like I can trust and love any story whatsoever. Doesn't matter if it's smaller, big, good or bad. That somehow it's beautiful and it's true. And I think we need that in our lives every day. Just yesterday we talked about Venus opposing Neptune Venus is in Virgo right now opposing Neptune. I won't pull it up on the chart. But I got this last story to share. "I've been feeling very sad about my romantic life lately. Yesterday, I cried while thinking about my love life. But after speaking with my partner, I feel a lot better about everything. I had a panic attack, I haven't had one in months because I was feeling undervalued. I've been feeling sorry for myself as well as sort of worthless. I know I'm unique and I'm a compassionate person. But I feel like no one appreciates me for who I truly am." So this person was led to then have a talk with their partner about how they were feeling in order to express these feelings of insecurity questions about self worth, about personal value. And they needed to speak those things in order to hear back from their partner that they're loved and valued. And I just thought that was a very simple, everyday example of Venus opposite Neptune. You're sort of flooded with the Eeyore, you know, like I'm not loved. I'm worried. You know, you're flooded by the melancholic dimension of Venus opposite Neptune, and then you're reassured you're you're loved, you're, you're told that you're cherished, and it helps you to feel better. It's a simple example.

25:16
So what are the takeaways from these stories today, and we'll be doing these episodes, you know, here and there to remind ourselves of what we're doing and why we're doing it. And to know that wherever you are, when you listen to these forecasts, and however they might be applying to you, doesn't it help to step back and hear how they're affecting other people, to hear how the gods show up in other people's lives. This is every single day all over the world. These transits show up in small ways that remind us there are sparkly, you know, divine gems laying all around, no matter what's going on, no matter how mundane it might seem a missing text message a No from a publisher, kid that can't go to his play, or finding out that your seventy year old dad has a secret drug addiction or that your brother takes his own life, or that you have a breast cancer diagnosis. Every day we we need to know that the story that we're living is sacred, it's beautiful, it's sanctified. And that were held not you know, we're and because if we're not, then we're grabbed, then we're grabbed and we're always trying to get control over something that's inviting us to let go of the control game altogether and just open ourselves up to experience our our destiny.

26:50
So a few things to say about planetary companionship today, one the God, the gods are in our midst. CS Lewis wrote some interesting things. And one of my favourite books that he wrote, which actually was recommended to me, originally by Becca Tarnas, who is a friend of mine colleague, you may know also her father, Richard Tarnas, who wrote the book Cosmos and Psyche, she recommended to me this book Till we have Faces. She said, she said you'd really like it, I read it loved it. Here's something here's some quotes from Till we have Faces.

27:27
"The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing to reach the mountain, to find the place where all the beauty came from my country, the place where I ought to have been born. Do you think it all meant nothing, all the longing, the longing for home, for indeed, it now feels not like going. But like going back." After my own astrological experiences, and when I reflect upon them, I'm struck by how, in every moment of my life, everything that I seek, and all of the responses that I get from the universe based on whatever I'm currently seeking. That at the at the core, it all has to do with the desire to go home, to go home spiritually to be in a place of a feeling of knowing my place in the cosmos, Cosmos By the way, the word cosmos, we also get the word cosmetic from. And it means an arrangement of well placed things. So to know, my place, in the well placeness of reality, that's going home to me. And these transits if I reflect on them, whether they're good or bad, they're always helping me feel like I'm knowing my place that I have more of a sacred connection to my placement in reality, and it feels like going back, it doesn't feel like I'm finding something it feels like I'm going back to something whenever I have that connection.

29:12
"It was when I was happiest that I longed most the sweetest thing in all of my life has been the longing to find the place for all the beauty came from." I love that quote as well. So, he also wrote this and this is one of my favourite quotes from the same book, which is about the Cupid and Psyche method I talked about in yesterday's episode. "Holy places are dark places. It is life and strength, not knowledge and words that we get in them. Holy wisdom is not clear in thin like water but thick and dark like blood. Three that when again, holy places are dark places it is life and strength, not knowledge and words that we get in them. Holy wisdom is not clear and thin like water, but thick and dark like blood." I love that because the next quote that he that I'm going to read you goes right along with it. "Are the gods not just? oh no child, what would become of us if they were" I loved that quote so much are the gods not just, oh no child what would become of us if they were?

30:33
As far as I can tell, doing this for a while now. The soul really doesn't mind. If we go to dark places, if we go to complex, sophisticated, confusing, mysterious, dark or even shady places where there is complexity challenge, mystery struggle, I don't think the soul is minds at all. You have to remember that, according to the ancients, the soul isn't an eternal, unborn and undying being. I think that what the soul is bothered by is anything that keeps us on the surface, that keeps us sort of safe, but unaware of the depths, the enormity, the mystery, the pain, the challenge. So, James Hillman wrote about this a lot as well that the soul is is offended by attempts to keep it safe from reality, the soul is offended by attempts to keep it overly protected from its own nature, from its own vastness, and from the vastness and depth of all things. And so I love these quotes from CS Lewis, for that reason, holy places are dark places, it's life and strength, not knowledge and words that we get in them. Holy wisdom is not clear and thin like water, but thick and dark, like blood, are the gods not just? Oh, no child, what would become of us if they were. The gods may not always feel just to us. In other words, some of these transits, you hear them and it's like, it's hard to hear some of those. But the thing is, is that the soul, the eternal, immortal, unborn undying soul, loves them. Because the soul is here to experience all of these things. And so if we can remember that that's what's actually going on, then, even though these experiences can be so challenging, so overwhelming, they become beautiful to us, they become true and beautiful and good. And it's a practice that we have to get in, in order to understand that these seasons and these moments are exactly that: they're soul making. They're the soul in the process of revealing itself to itself. These experiences are the fruits of the soul coming into its own divine nature, which there is no rush in to get there. There's no rush to get beyond the question marks the mysteries and the difficult things. There's no rush to make everything happily ever after. And the more that that dawns on us, the more we suddenly feel, at home, in our souls, and like we have a place in the cosmos in eternity itself. This is what ancient astrologers were teaching us if we had the guts to listen on this level, to what transits actually are, not just what happens to but why they're happening.

33:58
Last but not least, one of the things that I think transits do for us and these stories do for us is they teach us how to make big things small, and they teach us how to make small things big. And it's not that big things aren't big things. And small things aren't small things because they are, but we also have to have the ability to flip it around. I loved that there was a kind of dark humour with the woman who shared her breast cancer diagnosis. Not that you have to stay there and make light of things. I love that there was wonder and awe in the simplicity of the publisher saying no, you don't get your book when mercury opposes Saturn. So if we can take the small things and make them you know, the grain of sand becomes like heaven. And if the really big thing can also become like a grain of sand. That's when eternity really starts opening up and the soul is made so happy by those exercises. Look at those small things in my life filled they're they're just filled with wonder because I have astrology in my life. Look at the big things and reflect on them as though they are just the same that almost the same level of significance because I'm an eternal being as the, the, you know the missing text message or whatever. Can't say that we're able to do this all the time but astrology helps us to do these things. And when we do these things the soul stands forth and that's that's really what makes the soul glad.

35:54
Thank you everyone for sharing your stories with hashtag grabbed, I really appreciate it. Remember, as I'm unpacking transits in the videos, I'll always make a call in the comment section, but hashtag grabbed. My advice for you in terms of developing a practice of reflecting on the transits at home or sharing them in the chat box is do it really concisely and don't involve too many technical details about your own birth chart. Just put hashtag grabbed Mercury square Neptune, a couple of sentences, a short paragraph describing what happened. Keep it really concise. Don't involve tonnes of other aspects happening in your chart. Maybe you add something about the house placement of a transit in your chart, but keep it really simple and concise. It's a good practice to develop for tracking the transits at home. And it's certainly helpful for me in terms of, you know, kind of going through the huge amount of stories that we have shared can also always share with us by emailing us at grabbed@nightlight astrology.com. Alright, thanks so much for listening, everyone. We'll see you again tomorrow. Bye.