Can you escape fate? Fate is defined as the development of events beyond a person’s control. In the Greek myths, the Moirai or three Fates spun the thread of a person’s life, measured it, and cut it. Philosophically, fate seems very disempowering. It suggests you don’t have say over your life but the idea has an interesting side effect. If fate is in control, then you can let go. “Praise the god of all men. Drink the wine and let the world be the world.”
The 12th house is where we face fate. The collective stream. We know we don’t control it. It is only our own experience that generally shapes our view as to its character. We tend to think of it as good or bad based on how we have experienced it. Does it have character, I’m inclined to think it doesn’t. As the house of mutable water, it’s nature allows it to take on the essence of its constituent parts. Those qualities of those constituents determine the character it seems to have. We can act in this environment but we can also let go. For the most part, we can escape fate because we can act but there are larger currents that are bigger than our ability to act and we can’t escape those.
Transit Neptune conjunct my Ascendant was fate. It was the development of events that I couldn’t control but I could act to escape this particular current. Neptune though won’t easily be evaded. When the siren call comes, you find yourself in front of a looking glass with Neptune’s world beyond. Deep inside you are enticed by a whisper that something magical and perfect lies beyond. Just step inside but then you are lost.
I have a Gemini Jupiter in the 6th house. I was enticed by the name of the God of the Bible. Jehovah. Among many things, the Gemini zodiac sign is about names and words. Jupiter is the planet that represents God. Gemini Jupiter. The Name of God. Through my looking glass lay a rigidly disciplined, legalistic, and paternalistic world. The transit Capricorn Neptune beckoned me in. My Capricorn Ascendant jumped in delight. On the face hardly anyone would describe their magical world in those terms but I was fatherless. Parents divorced with no memories of them being together. In that religion, God was my father and he was everywhere. As a Capricorn Ascendant, I fathered myself and the religion taught me how to do a better job.
Within a month after Jehovah’s Witnesses visited, my mother and I had agreed to accept a Bible study and were attending the Sunday meetings weekly. Then another group of missionaries came and offered us another Bible study. We had a neighboring family up the road whose head was a Mormon bishop and two new lady missionaries came to stay in some of the renovated ordinaries outside his plantation house. They stopped by and mom and I decided to accept their Bible study too. We even went to one of their Sunday meetings.
In the spring, we got up early and boarded a chartered bus and rode up to the Washington temple. I had always been interested in this temple because we drove by it to visit my mother’s family up north. There was a golden angel on the top and I would always be looking for the first sight of him on the trip. He was one of the three sights that interested me the most. My mother and I stayed at the visitor center while a stream of women kept disappearing while leaving their children in others care. If you weren’t a member, you could not go in. Something was strange. However, I knew something else. Some time before I had come across a young adult book misshelved in the biography section of the local library that was about a young girl and her horse. I checked it out and read it. The girl was tricked by another young girl who she thought was her friend and she chose to travel with her and her “parents” out west. Only after she left her own family was it revealed to her she was now the third wife of a Mormon family. Although it was difficult, she eventually escaped using her wits and her horse. Surrounded by lots of very nice women and a small army of children and only one man, I decided that maybe all these people might be one family. A family that we weren’t going to join. I didn’t tell mom my suspicions then but when we got home, mom and I spoke and we agreed we shouldn’t continue with them and so she broke off the study.
Two cults in one month. The 12th house currents had a decided religious cult essence at this time in my mom’s and my life. We acted and avoided one fate but went along with the the other. My mom made a major attempt to get me out and then gave me the tools I would need later to go forward without the group. On July 6, 1996, I was baptized for the second time in my life and almost immediately I began to feel detached from the group. Something had been building inside but I was determined to follow through and join and I still believed they represented God.
There was nothing too spectacular that day just a regular astrological weather day. Pluto was completing its transit of Scorpio but it would not complete it on this day. The glyph of Persephone (♇⚳) is present so you would expect the archetype of Persephone to also be a major theme of the day. She was the kidnapped daughter of Ceres who would become the abductor Pluto’s wife. Persephone became a master of the depths. Pluto is at retrograde 30° Scorpio (0° Sagittarius) and Ceres is 2° Sagittarius. The cusp of Scorpio and Sagittarius could be interpreted as religious cult. The karmic nodal axis creates a T-square to retrograde 12° Capricorn Jupiter pointing to a paternalistic god.
Now see what fate looks like.
I do not know what this chart pattern is. It appears to be three pales, or possibly some sort of saltire impaled. The pale is a sign of great military defensive strength. It related to a fence pale and is usually shown as one vertical bar. The saltire is a symbol of endurance of hardships or involvement in a cause. A bend and bend sinister might suggest military command or illegitimacy. My intuition tells me this chart pattern is about holding the line and advancing defensively as part of a shield wall. Joining the religion was no longer about parenting myself but instead was about standing firm in the face of the pressure from society and the group to conform. It was about learning to advance against the censure of society and eventually the group.
This chart pattern rhymes with my Taurus Mars conjunct Algol ruling my Aries Moon conjunct my south node and my retrograde Scorpio Uranus conjunct my Midheaven. Later, in my career, I would successfully stand against the entrenched policy of my state, its corporate backers, and then the Governor and his administration and I would take the lead to advance and hold the line so a small cadre could successfully construct a very special work. Damn the consequences. There are things bigger than us, our reputation, our property and even our lives that we have to fight for. This fight to construct something important was not for anyone but for everyone. Some ground is already heavily defended and so you first must hold the line and then advance defensively in the shield wall to seize this territory. The strength and staying power of the Taurus Mars conjunct Algol is immense. It is so powerful that it requires tremendous discipline. Inexorable is the only word to describe Taurean motion. Fixed earth does not move rapidly when it moves at all but it cannot be stopped or resisted. Connect that to the most malefic star in the heavens and you have a recipe for the trinity nuclear test. The connection to the past through the Aries Moon and Aries South Node shows that the meaning in your life may not be new growth but instead may be about past mastery. There is no need to dismiss the South Node as some kind of anchor. The South Node is the place where the simple intake of new materials at the North Node is turned into complex products.
Escape from fate to where? The 12th house is all around us. You can run but you can’t hide. The baptism horoscope was about me joining a group that would stand separate from the larger society. The ability to stand up for a belief against strong pressure started as the rather mild censure of my peers who thought not saluting the flag or celebrating Christmas a little odd. The real pressure came from within; the members of the group try to dictate almost every aspect of your life. Pushing back against the constant judgement on how close you are conforming to their current ideal, the guilt pushed on you, the requirement to confess that leads to an uncomfortable forced discussion of intimate details with old men about your sexual life where if you refuse they will require your family and friends to shun you, the constant pressure to witness to others, the constant pressure to be better than the basic standard so you can be considered good association, the dictates to stop speaking to former members, the direct censure for not commenting at meetings, and the direct censure for not coming to meetings. Learning to be disciplined while living in a tyranny. It helps to know this was all in the service of something meaningful. All stories must come to an end and this one is firmly in the history books.
Escaping fate, not so much, but finalizing fate will be the third and final installment of the series.
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