The Sun Square Uranus: The Myth of Wholeness

Hey everyone, this is Adam Elenbaas from Nightlight Astrology, and today I will be joined by my wife Ashley, who will be here to talk with us about the Sun square to Uranus. We're going to take a kind of unique approach to talking about the upcoming square between the Sun and Uranus. This is following on the heels of talking about Venus's square with Uranus, which we've done a bunch of as well. But now, as we mentioned earlier in the week, we're going to have a switch of Venus and the Sun hitting Uranus and Jupiter.

So in order to prepare for that transit, which is coming next week, we'll flip up the real time clock and show you in a second, we're going to talk about the Sun square Uranus in an interesting way; we're going to talk in particular about I broadly called this the myth of wholeness, which, interestingly, the Sun and Uranus can, as a combination, defy any kind of mono myths about wholeness or oneness. Sun Uranus combinations can bring up in really interesting ways psychologically and philosophically.

So we're going to look at that today, and we're going to talk a little bit about planets and plants, and we're also going to talk about a book that Ashley and I have been reading together, which I think I might have mentioned to or alluded to in a previous talk this week or last. So anyway, that's our very unusual and interesting agenda for today.

Before we get into as always, don't forget to like and subscribe, and share your comments and reflections in the comment section. Especially if you've read the book that we talked about today, I would really love to hear from you guys and what you think about it. If you want, you can find a transcript of today's talk on the website nightlightastrology.com.

I'm also going to encourage you, later in the show, to check out Ashley's work @skyhouseherbs.com and her Instagram and YouTube channel, which I will float up later in the show today, and you can find that information though in the transcript, or in the description of the video today as well.

Be sure to go over to our website, nightlightastrology.com, to check out all of our readings and courses because they will be on sale from the 14th through the 21st. That's a whole week starting next week, and included in that sale is the course that Ashley and I teach together, which is a monthly Moon circle that meets twice monthly. We work with planets and plants through each of the moon cycles of the year. That's called Roots and Spheres. That program is going to be on sale for 2024.

If you want to join our moon circle starting in January 2024. For the year ahead, you can pick that up on sale this week, and hopefully, hearing more about what we have to say about planets and plants today will inspire some of you to check it out. Okay, well, any questions that you have about whatever you find on the website, feel free to email us by the way info@nightlightastrology.com. On that note, welcome back, Ashley.

Ashley
Hey, good to be back.

Adam Elenbaas
I'm happy that we have a chance to talk about the book that we're reading right now. Because I feel like, I mean, we have been reading some really interesting books since the spring. But this one has really stood out, and so I'm really excited to talk about it and try to wrap it into one of the transits in the sky and some of our work, you know, with both astrology and herbs.

Ashley
Yeah, me too. I do. I really do feel like this monomyth concept is so applicable to the way we think about plants too. So yeah, I think it's going to be a really rich conversation.

Adam Elenbaas
Yeah, for sure. Well, on that note, let's take a look at the real time clock. So we can look at the transit that we are covering today, and then we'll get into it and can't wait to hear what Ashley's going to add to the conversation as well. So you can see where we stand today, we can see that the Sun is coming through the square to Uranus, and I just want to speed this up a little bit so you can see that that square is going to perfect Tuesday, August 15, into Wednesday, the 23rd.

But what's so interesting about this is that this square between the Sun and Uranus picks up the new moon in Leo. So this is officially coming a new moon in Leo with the Sun square Uranus. This is a theme that we're going to talk about today, the one of many that are possible for a Sun-Uranus combination is one of the most interesting philosophical themes that I see coming up in the lives of my clients when Uranus hits their Sun by transit, and I think it's an angle of the Sun, Uranus dynamic that is not often talked about because it's so philosophical, and it can be hard to go from the philosophical level of an archetype to the practical.

I think we're gonna make this practical today even though the premise of how we're looking at the Sun-Uranus is sort of philosophical to start with, so hang with us as we go because I think you're really gonna like where we take this before we get into looking at the Sun Uranus, which is, you know, we're going to be experiencing not only next week, but it's already in the works right now, and then we'll be toning the entire next moon cycle.

The way that we're going to go about looking at this is in terms of; it can be broadly speaking, they're sometimes called mono myths. But we're going to apply this more loosely because sometimes mono myths will be used to talk about, you know, monotheistic religious traditions and or mythologies that represent a monotheistic worldview. We're going to expand this beyond monotheistic religions and think about a kind of monomythic thinking in a more broad sense; it doesn't. It can be broader than just religious and other just religious thinking, in other words.

The way that we're going to get into this, though, is about we're going to talk about a book that we're reading first, and I'm gonna read you a passage from this book. So the book that we're reading is called No Bad Parts. Ashley and I are reading this every morning. Among some of our other things, we read a little bit of Mary Oliver, we read a passage from a book on Taoist philosophy, we kind of have a bunch of books that we read, and then this is usually our longer passage of the day, from a book like this.

So this one's called No Bad Parts, and it's called Healing Trauma and restoring wholeness with the internal family systems model. Now, some of you may be familiar with IFS or internal family systems. Actually, a lot of modern psychological astrologers have incorporated elements of the IFS paradigm into the way that they read birth charts, and it can be really valuable. In fact, I learned about this approach to looking at birth charts before I even knew what ifs was or had ever read this book. As soon as I started reading it, I went, Oh, now I can see how Liz Greene and so many astrologers that I cut my teeth on that were clearly aware of this model, and it may be incorporating elements of it; I did some astrologers are clearly incorporating it more directly, because they may be trained or certified in ifs as a form of therapy.

Anyway, if you have never heard of it before, the idea basically summarized is that our minds or our psyches feature a community of parts, that rather than thinking of ourselves as one individual, we are an individual comprised of many voices, personalities, and parts. I think that's probably something. I mean, have you ever heard of that idea before? Ashley? Was that, like, anything you would ever heard of?

Ashley
No, that was called schizophrenia, or like personality disorder, you know, years ago when that kind of talk would come up.

Adam Elenbaas
Right. I mean, like, I think there's, there's definitely, like, at some point, this went to being more accepted, at least, because the place I had heard it where this became normalized. Well, if I'm completely honest, you know, the first time that this ever occurred to me that this was a thing was through psychedelic experiences. Yeah. Because in a psychedelic, yeah. You've had them too.

Ashley
Yeah, well, I mean, you just start to see that, that there is personality and life to so many different things and, you know, I just remember experiences, especially I had a lot of psychedelic experiences outside camping or in the woods and you know, you'd be thinking something and observing something, and then you would observe yourself thinking and observing that thing, and you could go into like meta-levels of observing the observe the observed, and even noticing how one part of you would kind of go on a train this way, but then there'd be another voice that would have to chime in, and you're like, that's a different voice.

That's a very different perspective of where this perspective is and then, but then there's the self, that overarching voice that is also co-present among all of those different parts. So I just remember that from being out in nature and having those really psychedelic experiences, and just sort of watching the banter going on in my head and being like, this is a full house.

Adam Elenbaas
That's a good way of putting it. Yeah, I mean, I would say my early ayahuasca experiences, in particular, helped me to understand that, you know, some of the inmates were running the prison like that; there were parts of me that were very dominant, and there were other parts of me that were maybe needing to come forth a little bit more.

There was no, as far as I'm concerned, this isn't just a paradigm. This is sort of just how it is like I wouldn't say that it's an idea; it seems to me to be just a very plain observation about how we operate and that there is the sort of wise sense of a have an overarching self that's there to feels like the wise part of us that can somehow hold space and mediate, among and with and through the parts.

But the parts aren't; they also are not self. They are elements of or aspects of; it's a little bit like saying that there within the way that we operate as individuals. It's a reflection of what so many mystics have said, that God is, is one in many simultaneously. That God is getting to know itself through its as its various aspects in conversation. There's something like that going on within each of us as individuals on a micro level within the larger divinity of the universe or something. It's very psychedelic territory. But I think that one of the things that's really refreshing about this book is how simply and beautifully and almost like cosmically the information is conveyed. Like, it's very easy to follow.

Ashley
You know, I think what's so helpful about this way of thinking, too, is that there's no shame in having voices that are troublesome, you know, it's like, you know, and what I love about it, too, is that every voice has a reason for having that voice. So there's no shame, like, if we have a very self-critical voice, or if we have like a very, you know, a voice that is very afraid or doesn't trust, it's not like, those are bad parts and like, I love that about the book, like, there are no bad parts, there are no parts of us that need to be getting, you know, you don't, we don't toss that part out.

We welcome we bring a safe part in to have a conversation with that part to try to figure out what was the wound and how did that part become so defensive? And, and so then, you know, it's sort of like reclaiming those parts into their own individual space of happiness and their own sphere of health and wellness, and I just love that because it feels it's so inclusive, and it's so welcoming to the healing process. Without this sort of puritanical, like, you've got to rinse and purge it all away.

Adam Elenbaas
Yeah, exactly; as the title of the book indicates no bad parts. This is your first of all, you're looking at the community of parts and voices that are you that comprise you, and you're looking at, you're looking at them in terms of, you know, which voices have been activated, maybe become extreme through trauma and how do we bring compassion to those parts, rather than how do we get rid of or cleanse or purge or, you know, and so this is, in my mind, there's a lot of overlap between the way that we look at a birth chart, the way that herbalists for 1000s of years have looked at the psyche in relation to plants.

I want to read you guys just a little passage, and this is going to tie in now to why we're doing this at the Sun Uranus Square. Here it goes. This is Parts aren't Obstacles. The motto mind paradigm can easily lead us to fear or to fear or hate ourselves because we believe we have only one mind, and then in parentheses, he says full of primitive or sinful aspects that we can't control. We get tied up in knots as we desperately try, and we generally generate brutal inner critics who attack us for our failings.

Since most psychotherapies and spiritual practices subscribe to this mono mind, view their solutions often reinforce this approach by suggesting we should correct irrational beliefs or mediate them away because those beliefs are seen as obstacles emanating from our one mind. Many approaches to meditation, for example, view thoughts as pests and the ego as a hindrance or annoyance, and practitioners are given instructions to either ignore or transcend them.

In some Hindu traditions, the ego is viewed as working for the god Maya, whose goal is to keep us striving for material things or hedonistic pleasures. She's considered the enemy, a temptress, much like the Christian Satan, who keeps us attached to the external world of illusion. Buddha's teachings use the term monkey mind to describe how our thoughts jump around in our consciousness like an agitated monkey. As Ralph Delarosa notes in the Monkey is the Messenger quote, is it any wonder that the monkey mind is the scourge of meditators across the globe? For those trying to find respite and contemplative practice, thoughts are often regarded as an irritating nuisance, a primitive agitator sneaking in through the side door.

In meditation circles, some unintended consequences of the monkey metaphor prevail that the thinking mind is a dirty, primitive lower life form of no real value to us. It's just a bunch of garbage on repeat. De La Rosa is one of a number of recent authors who challenged the common practice in spirituality of vilifying the ego.

Another psychotherapist Matt Licata writes, The ego is often spoken about as if it is some sort of self-existing thing that at times takes us over some nasty, super unspiritual ignorant little person living inside causes us to act in really uninvolved ways, creating unending messes in our lives and getting in the way of our progress on the path. It is something to be horribly ashamed of, and the more spiritually we are, the more we will strive to get rid of it, transcend it, or enter into imaginary spiritual wars with it; if we look carefully, we may see that if the ego is anything, it is likely those very voices that are yelling at us to get rid of it.

The collection of parts that these traditions call the ego are protectors, who are simply trying to keep us safe and are reacting to and containing other parts that carry emotions and memories from past traumas that we have locked away. So he goes on to talk about this more and more, but I don't suspect that this author is anti-meditation, anti-spirituality because he, in other portions of the same book, he talks about mindfulness and meditation and how it can be used constructively.

So I want to make sure that people don't misinterpret that passage. But I think what he's getting at is that there are some very common myths that we have about how we ought to be in order to be healthy or happy, and these fall in line with the Sun square to Uranus; these myths fall in line and tend to get amplified with this transit, and we also tend to call them into question under the exact same transit.

For example, let's say you have Mercury square Saturn transit; one of the things that you can do under a Mercury square Saturn transit is you could become incredibly focused and disciplined mentally about something. But the exact same transit could call into your awareness the tendency that you have to be overly rigid or too disciplined in your thinking.

So archetypes are really funny in the way that they can come in, and they're the amplification of the archetype can pull us into something very unconscious, a shadow of the archetype. On the other hand, sometimes, the very same transit will bring our awareness to the shadow. It's incredible how it can work, and it really has to do with where we're at in our lives in our consciousness.

Well, there are three myths that Sun-Uranus squares tend to bring in remember; the reason for this overall is that the Sun, as it represents clarity, luminosity, a clear heart, and a clear sense of purpose, that we have a trajectory for our life that is just as bright and vivid and easy to spot as the Sun I'm going to do this, I'm going to become this I'm going that way. My purpose is clear; it's heroic, and I can't be stopped. That's the Sun sort of at its best.

Well, what is Uranus? Uranus also contains within it a similar desire for progress, innovation, revolution, experimentation, for going outside of the box, and for revolutionizing our lives. So when you put the two together, you will often have the amplification of the desire for all of the things that the Sun represents with a kind of charismatic zeal that gets really loud and intends. At the same exact time, the very same values of the Sun-Uranus can amplify can become so exaggerated that we suddenly become aware of their shadows. There are three of them that I want to just briefly mention, and I'll have Ashley pitch in with me as we go.

Now these three mono myths, if they become too extreme, we can forget that we, in fact, are a community inside of us, that there is there's a community of voices and parts that need love and that they need understanding. So the first myth is that we aim for wholeness. I like wholeness. I like the sound of it sounds pretty good to me. I feel like there are many times in my life where I would describe what I'm looking for, feeling, or achieving as something like wholeness.

But at the same time, haven't you ever felt like there's this kind of zealous, almost like a fundamentalist paradigm out there, and it lives in us that lives around us, and it says, you should take all of the disparate parts of yourself, and they should be built into one thing, and that means your whole once you take all of the different things, they become perfectly integrated, and you're just operating seamlessly as the same person without, you know, feeling confused or off your center or whatever, then your whole then you're happy.

Ashley
Yeah, well, isn't it interesting that often when we get and maybe this is all my areas talking, but there's a there when you hit that groove, there's a part of you that says, screw this. Something different, and that's the Uranus to it. You know, it's like, well, that was fun for a little while. But, you know, we need to spice this up a little bit.

One thing that I was thinking about you with wholeness, and sort of the mono idea, is like mono crops, you know, even in herbalism. You know, we can see that if you try to just grow one, like fields and fields of one plant, yeah, you can grow acres of soy and acres of corn, but then you're gonna have acres of the same pests and then you're going to need acres and, you know, tons of chemicals to spray. But if you do biodynamic gardening or if you grow different plants together that work harmoniously, they each have their own strengths. They each have their own weaknesses. But when you diversify the environment, your growing environment, it actually strengthens everything, and everything can thrive even more than if you're trying to create that mono-crop, and I feel like that's, yeah, that's like, part of this reevaluation is, do you really want to be a field of soy? Or would you rather be a field of wildflowers? Do you know what sounds like more fun?

Adam Elenbaas
I remember when we were at the, we were at the herbal conference in Colorado, where I almost died of altitude sickness. Oh, well, we were there, and you know, I think it was maybe it was you that was talking about this; we were talking about how a plant will the remedy for a poison will grow really close to the poison. Like there'll be okay, this thing gives you poison. You know, Poison Ivy grows close to another plant that could be rubbed on the skin to alleviate the immediate burn or something like that.

Ashley
That's right. Yeah, that was a class I was teaching on beebalm or monarda fistulosa, and yeah, like one of the things is that you know, if you have something like poison ivy and Jewelweed is a plant that often grows near it. It will be, you know, it'll be the remedy, and Tis Mal Crow, who was in Muskogee herbalist, who was a teacher of Matthew Woods, said that you know, even better is the closer the plant medicine is to the poison, the stronger the antidote. Yeah. So they can exist together.

Adam Elenbaas
Yes. Well, I just wanted to dovetail off from what you're saying, really quick to say. I think that that is, you know, in the monomyth, it's like, you, when everything has to become one thing, we forget how rich it is to live lives where one voice in us might be sort of toxic. But if you pay attention, that voice is closely related to probably another voice that has the exact medicine for that voice. Their friends, they know each other.

I think about, for example, my grandmother, this is a memory that I have of her, and I wish I could remember exactly what she would say. But it would always be like, she'd be starting to get irritated with my grandfather, and it was always in the kitchen around meals because that was like her territory. She was very much the kitchen general, and she's a Cancer, and I was born on her birthday, by the way.

Anyway, I could tell I just have a memory of this pattern where she would start to be like, her irritation, her voice of irritation with my grandfather would start to rise up and become dominant and extreme, and she'd have this way of like, leaving just being like some other part of her knew.

That part was starting to get extreme; I better go take a walk, or I better leave the kitchen, or I better just take a moment, and then she'd be like, fine, and I always just remember just the kind of sly little smile as she knew like, I better exit right now. I understand that. Now just reflecting on this. Those are her parts talking.

You know, they're having a dialogue, and there's the poison and the medicine have this little bond that they're close to one another, and what is poison in one moment might only be poison because one part is becoming extreme as a way of protecting us or has become extreme over time because of trauma. But often, if we pay attention, there's such a rich community within us that the medicine or the friend that can sit down and talk with that voice is also there inside of us.

Ashley 24:39
Yeah, I love that. That's beautiful, and yeah, and I think you know, too, it's like you might have to weed out or, you know, in the book, he talks about, you know, when you're trying to get to that part that's released, screaming out and making a fuss. You might have to tell this part. Okay, you're trying to protect him. Let's just have you step to the side and, oh, boy, see you too. You're right there. Can you give me just a minute with this part and it's kind of like, you know, when you're in the garden, and you're our garden is like so old, it's just overflowing with abundance, you have to kind of like, go through like levels, to get to the tomatoes that are underneath America that are underneath the cosmos, it's like, you kind of got to go through it, to find what it is you're looking for and it's often the tenderest parts are often the most hidden.

Adam Elenbaas
I think it's amazing how the Sun-Uranus will tend to emphasize this myth of wholeness now, you know, trying to, if you feel like I'm confused, I'm a mess, I don't have a clear light and a sense of purpose. Okay, Sun-Uranus will help you with that. But it can also be almost like an angry refusal or denial of the fact that you are diverse, you know, and you'll find Sun-Uranus described in many texts as states of mania that come up where people become obsessed with a singular vision of what has to happen.

That's the Sun-Uranus dynamic. I think that's kind of like saying, like, we just lose track of the fact that some degree of, like, life is a cacophony, and if you step on the wholeness pedal too much, you know, you're going to crash. So no, no, that's, that's number one.

Number two is we aim for integration, very similar; it would be to say, well, I have all of these different voices, and I'm looking to integrate them; it's another word that can sometimes be like a code word for lack of tolerance, interest, curiosity, with parts or with a communal sense of identity or reality.

Ashley
Yeah, and, you know, it's like, again, this sort of like, doesn't honor the individuals as having their own necessary voices, you know, that they don't have a reason to be there that we have to blend them all together and, you know, in herbal medicine, sometimes, you know, for me, if I can find one plant, that will take care of all the patterns in a person, then that's the goal for me. But most of the time, what ends up happening is you need a bunch of different herbs to blend into a formula, and it's through those unique voices of the plants that create a medicine that's going to be effective for addressing all of the different needs, and so it's not necessarily the interim mean, yes, it's the blending of them. But we don't want them all to be the same, you know, we don't want to make them, we don't want to dilute them. So that they actually don't have their own individual potency.

Adam Elenbaas
What I love about herbalism is that you also seek the identification of which plants to use based on a symbolic system of correspondences, sometimes called the doctrine of signatures. But just broadly speaking, what you're looking for, is a match in personalities. It's not just a match of analytical chemical, neurological systems, or mechanisms of cause and effect, or it's personality matching, which speaks to the idea that you're trying to create a blend that can go in and speak to the ecology of parts.

Ashley
I taught a class at the confluence about how to make an effective formulation and like, the way that I think about it is you have like the lead, herb, and then you have the supporters, and then you have a balancer, and then you have n, and then you have an integrator or a synergist and so each of those, you know when you're making a formula to figure out who's going to be the leader of the pack, and who's going to be the synergist, who's going to kind of bring everyone together on the same page and those are all the different voices.

I mean, that's how I formulate and how I was trained to formulate, and it works. Like if you can get all of those pieces in place based on the energetics based on the doctrine of signatures based on your understanding of chemistry like it really does work. But often, it's interesting because, yeah, sometimes a client will be like, that formula works, but I really liked whatever it was that was bitter, and they'll be able to pull out from the blend the individuals that really were helpful.

Adam Elenbaas
Right, and the word integration. It's not we're not, you know, definitely don't want to demonize the word. There are so many appropriate times in life where you may describe what you're experiencing as integration. Well, there was one part of me, for example, that felt like it didn't have a seat at the table. It does now, and so it's been integrated.

I think that's a perfectly acceptable use of the idea of integration. I think what we're really trying to get at is this idea that when integration becomes part of a mono myth and inflates the sense of one thing only, which can then be about intolerance toward diversity, we can differentiate the concepts a little bit wholeness and integration aren't enemies either, you know, Yeah, but yeah, integration would be another one.

Number three is we aim for balance. I feel like what you tell me; you start this one off? What do you think about this myth that's out there?

Ashley
I think balance is interesting because, in physiology, balance is death. You know, I remember taking classes in female hormonal health and reproductive health and learning that if all the hormones are imbalanced, you're dead. Like, that's not the goal. It's actually the flow, and it's this ebb and flow of levels of estrogen and progesterone and testosterone and cortisol; it's the flow that creates life and also, what's interesting is if you look at the human heartbeat, and you see these rhythms, and you would think that a balanced rhythm, one that's very consistent equals a healthy heart, but it's not. It's actually these, these very interesting, no dips and peaks that are not balanced, that create a strong and healthy, adaptable heart because it's an adaptation that allows us to survive and to adapt to changes. So I thought that I think that's really interesting physiologically that balance is really not an ideal situation.

Adam Elenbaas
Yeah, it's interesting that, like, in the, you know, the ancient astrological cosmology and philosophy. You know, there's a lot of debate about this, this idea of, you know, eternity versus the time bound world of forms and as a kind of duality that set up in Platonism, for example, or even in Vedic cosmology, both the big pillars of ancient horoscopic astrology come from these, these two sort of worlds and they probably have a lot of overlap, too.

But the Sun would represent something like the platonic ideal, right, and the world that we're in, the embodied world, would be like the world of coming to be and passing away, the world of transience of change, and in this world, according to that philosophy reflect something of this eternal, ideal world. But the goal of some of the mystical traditions, and these would mostly be mono traditions, philosophically, or monus traditions are sometimes called, would be to transcend this world of forms and to merge into the oneness of the ideal.

Some traditions would say that that's the goal, and then oneness is valued above and beyond multiplicity and diversity; the differentiation of forms is seen as less than in that kind of paradigm; in a way, it's Maya it's illusion, like that. Not all traditions are like that, right? But that broadly represents one category of religious and spiritual traditions and how they would look at the ideal as opposed to the material world.

What's interesting is that some traditions also would say that you have to have both at the same time; if you only have the ideal, that's death to the material world. So it's just exactly what you're saying when you say that perfectly balanced hormones mean death; some perfectly ideal state means we lose the flux and flow that is a life that is the material world. Plato also said time is the moving image of eternity.

So there's some way in which, you know, in order to experience life, we accept that we actually can, some traditions would say, to shoot for an ideal that leaves behind this world is death, and that's actually an illusion. Just like the book said, the part of us that wants to kill the ego is probably more problematic, you know, the part of us that wants to leave this world behind because our feet are not walking on perfect rectangles but on uneven terrain. That is, at times, a very problematic part of us. Now, I think you know, archetypally speaking, there's a time in life where we shoot for an ideal like, if you're building a skyscraper, you better have those architectural plans that are based on the ideal mathematics, the ideal physics, you know, there's like a place for shooting for ideals and reaching toward the Sun.

Uranus, of course, stole the fire from the gods, so he's an aspiring character and is often compared to Icarus, who flew too close to the Sun and then fell down. But that's the thing the mythology also tells us if you shoot too far to the Sun, you burn your wings, and you fall, you fall down.

I think that, at worst, the mono myths of something like Sun square Uranus they be perfectly balanced. Well, that's not life. You know, that's not the case, and if you try for that, that perfect balance, you fall, isn't it interesting that the Sun was classically said to be in its fall in the sign of the balance. There's something very deep and esoteric about that; that's Libra, by the way.

So anyway, this has been a really interesting conversation, but we want to take it into a practical space just for fun. I think our thesis here is that the monomyth is something that's interesting to be aware of and that Sun square Uranus can be something that can actually draw our attention to the communal nature of things. Because it will tend to amplify our insistence that there's only one way, and we have to visit that as a shadow. The natural antithesis is that you're a part of many, that you're part of a community.

Planets and plants have always been about a communal paradigm and a relational approach. In a birth chart, we see who we are through a congregation of planets, houses, signs, and aspects, and the planets were said to behold each other; they would look at and testify to each other, and there was actually in a language of the texts, the ancient Greek legal paradigm was used to imply that the chart was like a cosmic courtroom, where different voices were testifying and saying different things about the life, and then we come to understand those voices and testimonies as aspects or parts of who we are. I think the plant world is very similar. Could you speak to the way in which herbalism has always encouraged us to have this view?

Ashley
Yeah, I was just thinking as you were talking, you know, as above so below, and you know, I think a lot of the great astrologers were also herbalists, you know, this was they work together because they saw the way these patterns were reflected in the plants and how they grew and their coloring and their shapes and, you know, yeah, it was certainly, you know, in the diversity of the plants, that their medicines became more apparent.

So, I do think, I remembered a friend of mine, Adeleta, who would talk about her internal itty, bitty, shitty committee, and so she'd have to, you know, and then she'd have to, like, sit down with, you know, and be like, Okay, you all need to be quiet, and then she had her board of directors, and Oprah was on her board of directors, and she had, like, you know, Beyonce, she had some, like, really powerful women on her board of directors and, you know, I think as an herbalist, it's sort of similar.

It's like, you know, who are your allies? You know, who do you you know, and you might have to, like, tell the itty, bitty shitty committee like, you know, like, you need to like, it's time to step to the side, or, Hey, take catnip, you know, you knew you need to work on this pattern, you know, take this, take this herb, but I think we can address all parts of ourselves with plants, because they work on so many different levels, you know, from the physical to the astral to the emotional. Yeah. So there's, I think there's a definite correlation.

Adam Elenbaas
I think in my own chart, for example, we were coming up with some ideas about what we could share from our own charts, like I have Mercury square to Saturn. It's also square to Jupiter. But just as far as the Mercury Saturn piece of that aspect in my chart goes, there are times when I get really stuck and sort of rigid and worried about things, and I have a very suspicious kind of cynical voice.

There have been so many plants that Ashley has used over the years, as I've asked for help, or she's been like, let me give you some, but either way, like the first example, when I get in a place where I'm sort of stuck and worried and anxious. Chamomile has been an incredible helper. I think skullcap has been another one that we've used, and it's funny because I've just always taken for granted that the certain characters in my psyche that show up are that I can understand that because I have the language of astrology, and I'm like, Oh, that's my Mercury-Saturn part, you know, and the Mercury-Saturn part might actually have like five or six different voices, you know? Because they're like mandalas that the aspects are they have maybe have many voices, but the but then Ashley has always been able to say, oh, like describe the part for me, so to speak, and then you should check out this herb. So we've always been able to communicate like that.

Ashley
I think, you know, some of the plants, they're like the intermediary where they're like, you know, let me help that part of you just calm down and relax a little bit, and then you know, another plant can come in and be like, quit the nonsense you need to sit down and shut up. Different plants that can interact with the different parts depending on what's needed in the situation, and I love that about the plants and about understanding patterns in the psyche because that's really when I think the herbs are at their best.

Adam Elenbaas
Well, you have Mars-Pluto opposite in your chart, and you mentioned the other day how sometimes you'll use catnip because you can have a tendency to hold things in until they blow, and that's a Mars-Pluto pattern, and you've used catnip for that.

Ashley
I do. Yeah, I'll be walking to the backyard, and I'll be like, let me just even prophylactically take a little catnip to keep keep the top of the lid, you know, bubbling open with seeing rather than just blowing all the way off.

Adam Elenbaas
Yeah, what are some others that you would could you reflect on any others?

Ashley
I mean, I think I have a lot of planets in Aries. So I've got my Mars, Venus, Mercury, and Aries. So yeah, there's I like to keep moving, and I like new things, and I don't like to sit still. It's that's always been a challenge, and so I think for me skullcap has been an herb that's been really helpful and just sort of like, you know, chill out, sit down, you know, it's all going to work itself out and then rose has been a really good medicine for all that, Mars, because roses, so cooling, and it's such a heart medicine, and it just, you know, reassures again, that everything is going to, you know, everything will be okay, and if you stay in your heart, you'll feel better while you're getting all the stuff done.

Adam Elenbaas
I think the simple point that we wanted to make today was that there Sun-Uranus could bring up these mono myths; we've been reading an amazing book that sort of challenges the mono myth paradigm when it comes to ourselves, and this idea that we are a community of parts. Sometimes the parts need healing, sometimes, they need to shift how they talk or relate, and they can develop in the way they do through trauma.

But we can work with parts; we don't have to eliminate them as we strive for wholeness, merge them because they're problematic unless they're all one thing is an integration or perfectly balanced so they're all just perfectly even somehow, and instead, we can understand maybe the impulse of the Sun-Uranus as if we think about ourselves as a community, then the desire for wholeness that the Sun square Uranus presents us with might be about bringing greater clarity or understanding to a part that we haven't spent enough time with, or that we're getting to know.

Integration could be understood as something that has to do with giving different voices who tend to get squashed by other voices a chance to speak more, that might be a way of thinking about what integration looks like, and balance can be thought of not so much as a perfect evenness between parts, but rather, flow and communication, some ability to sing and talk together with greater ease. Maybe that's a different way of thinking about balance, and plants and planets have always been a language. The point is that it can assist us in this kind of work.

Ashley
Yeah, and I think too, it's like, you know, if we find ourselves really swinging in one direction, you know, know that life is good, and it will, you know, gently correct us and bring us back, but we don't have to, you know, we don't necessarily have to do that blindly. You know, we can do that with the support of elders and astrologers, and herbalists and you know, people who, who can speak a language that can give some context to where we are.

Adam Elenbaas
If we think of plants as elders as well, right? Absolutely. I mean, it's it. I know when people say that, it might sound a little cheesy, but if we stop and think about how young we are as humans on the planet compared to plants.

Ashley
Four hundred seventy-five million years younger than right, I looked it up. I was like; I want to know. So that's, I mean, again, you know, this is, but that's the best estimate is that you know, the first plants they've been on this earth, adapting to this planet adapting to these forces for 475 million years before the main entrance.

Adam Elenbaas
Yeah, in the most technically astute language that our kids use. They're super duper old. Superduper superduper, old. Ashley, thank you so much for being here today and enlightening us with your presence. As always, I want to tell people where they can find more of your work which is fantastic.

First of all, check out Ashley's YouTube channel Skyhouseherbs. This video and sometimes videos like this will have a crossover on both of our channels. But you're also going to find a ton of unique content on Ashley's channel about herbs, the doctrine of signatures, and herbs to work with for all different kinds of things, and these are herbs you can pick up at your co-op or even you know forage. You can find Ashley on Instagram at @skyhouseherbs as well. Follow her there for great regular content on herbal medicine and glimpses of the mayhem that is our life with kids. No, I'm kidding, and then Skyhouseherbs.com, of course, if you want to check out Ashley's work and get updates there as well.

Ashley
Thank you so much for having me. This was a great conversation, and yeah, here we go going right into the Sun.

Adam Elenbaas
Yeah, yeah, this is gonna be good. We'll tell us what you guys think about today and what kinds of thoughts and, you know, stories come to your mind. We'd love to hear from you guys, and we hope that you will have a great day and we'll see you again soon. Bye, everyone.