Uncertain Truths

“As above, so below, as within, so without, as the universe, so the soul”
Hermes Trismegistus

Certain Uncertainty:

One thing that growing older has taught me is that going forward in life is so much easier when you are uncertain about things.  You don’t hold so solidly onto beliefs that you can’t be sure about. We want to be dogmatic about things, because it makes us right and others wrong; it brings a certainty to life that we feel enables us but we are constantly caught in its restrictions.  We don’t take into account why we believe the things we do, or the lives that others have lived. It is so easy to go through life with blinders on, refusing other points. One must examine their own feelings and thoughts to understand the feelings and thoughts of others.  We throw out what is wrong with them and push up what is right with us, but don’t realize we have thrown out the baby with the bathwater.

When I was growing up, my family and myself thought the whole idea of astrology was bonkers. Although living in the country we plainly saw the effect the moon had on animals.  It makes them more vocal and daring. Raccoons walk up and sit on the porch with me. Wild dogs sometimes run erratically through my front yard when the moon is bright and full. The moon has a plain effect on their habits.  How do we forget we’re animals, too?

Moon Truths:

After working in a school for three years, I can plainly tell you that kids are crazier when the moon is out in full, the nurses and others in helping professions I know report the same.  If the moon has such a pull that it is responsible for the tide in our oceans,why should we think we are above that? We are 60% water (I thought it was more to).

I am not saying this to imply the moon controls everything, or that our egos aren’t strong enough to prevent us from going through a neighbor’s trash and then howling outside my window all night so I can’t sleep.  What I am saying is that there is more going on than what we see. If we attach ourselves to one belief system so strongly that we can’t pry ourselves away to see the other side, we are going to get bowled over.

Being dogmatic about anything in life is more than risky; it must, by design, eventually fail you. Everything changes, nobody and no belief system has it all figured out, and none will. We can’t blame the people who espouse one belief over all others, we’re designed to find answers, but a complete theory of everything will not be able to fit everyone perfectly.  We are not able to process our subjective needs so objectively. A part can’t see the whole. Or maybe someone has seen the answers, but we are unable to understand their part correctly and how it applies to our life. We’re not meant to! We’re meant to discover it on our own.  Grow into our own truth.

Sky Truths:

Last year was a thoroughly rough one but so much, including this blog, came out of it.  Someone last summer told me they were going through a Saturn return, the time where you actually grow up between ages 28-32, and I probably was going through that, too. Never having put much stock in astrology, but realizing there’s a lot I don’t know, I thought I’d investigate and had an astrologer and fellow training analyst check out my dates. I found that I was not in a “Saturn’s Return”, but a “Pluto Transit”, which is an 18 month period of time that is “unequivocally, the hardest and most likely worst time of your life.” The weird thing is that it was the hardest and at times, the worst time of my life. I was miserable, and while I had been miserable before, finally knowing that I was capable of so much and still being depressed and feeling alone only amplified my feelings and took me to the darkest places I’ve ever been. It was not that there was nothing I could do, I had to adapt, to both cling to and find the strengths and truths in me.  That adaptation and growth saved me and helped me not only find but believe in myself. I can say that even with that it was one of the bleakest and most inescapable periods of my life. Now I am in that Saturn’s Return and am definitely having to grow up more than I thought I was capable of all of my life, and delighted at who I’m becoming.

Our Truths?

The timing is extraordinary, but I don’t take this to mean that everything in astrology is applicable to me.  You can find contradictory horoscopes easily, and many of those esoteric truths have warped over the years. To say that we cannot learn anything from planet formations is as much nonsense as saying the moon has absolutely no effect on us. It is something we might not want to believe because we feel we are so much smarter and more evolved from groups that have believed them, modern and ancient. At the very least staying open-minded will allow you to look at your life in a more meaningful and mindful way, which opens more doors to hard problems than rationality ever could.


That does not mean that  we can take everything from a certain belief system and depend on it to give us all the answers.  Nothing outside of yourself has all the answers for you, but that does not mean it cannot guide you into discovering something valuable. Total blind belief will always fall short.  This is not to mean that there is nothing of worth to be found in belief systems, there is not just general but explosive, life-expanding and necessary truths in so many different practices. Some are weird and mystical and often misunderstood, and others are common and sociable and often misunderstood. I think and believe that the reason we are attracted to all these beliefs is that we can intuitively see the sometimes disguised truths within.  I believe that astrology, or religion, or any movement or belief system that can show positive change is not the end of your journey, but the means.

Pics by our resident Gentleman