In the Aries Newsletter, I wrote:
“Spring has obvious symbolism about new beginnings, although this witch would argue that spring only comes because seeds were planted in the winter so really, that’s why Samhain is the new year for me and a lot of witches. But, still, I can see the argument of winter as a time of preparation for the new working both ways. I just like the idea of starting the year at Samhain because it severs the link between rest and productivity. To rest at the end feels like there’s a need to earn it, but for me rest is the World and the Fool in the Tarot”.
Fully intending to honour that conversation, it sat in my Notion among random notes that come up as thoughts not fully formed, and then I wrote the Scorpio newsletter and went in a whole other direction. Then I heard, I believe it was on the Beauty by Design podcast (I’m a photographer, does it surprise you that I’d be lured by something woo for the Beauty industry?), that “being fully committed to something with our hearts doesn’t mean we have to lose ourselves in it” and it struck me. I’m writing a weekly Scorpio newsletter for a change, I can still explore this idea.
Recently, as a result of sharing about this newsletter, I had a conversation with someone who took it upon themselves to give unsolicited advice and gave me a warning about not seeking happiness in things outside of myself. The thing is, I didn’t when religious either.
For me being within the religious community had 3 functions:
🖤 a sense of self-worth (it’s fair to say it was dependent on big-g god and the “loved into being” narrative, but the dependence ended there);
🖤 belonging, because I had a place to go to wherever I was in the world (since it wasn’t strictly dependent on a specific religious community, with the Church being Universal);
🖤 people who cared about me (and they still appear to do), and from all of these things a sense of purpose, like my life wasn’t in vain and it mattered that I was alive.
But I never really saw big-g god as an external source of happiness. In a way, that was one of the struggles I had. For years I would be riddled with guilt and shame whenever people would talk about how they’d sprung into prayer first thing in the morning, when I’d be reaching out for my phone in hope the blue light from the screen would kick my brain into some semblance of awakening, and the idea of prayer felt more like a chore than a connection to a loved one (and let’s not think about how much worse it became when I started playing the now defunct Shining Live game…).
A key theme of my life according to the language of Human Design, which places my Capricorn Sun in the Gate of Struggle (38), is a quest for purpose. In fact, I appear to have the matching Incarnation Cross to my ex’s one, if there was any further need for proof of how much of a trauma bond designed to trigger each other we were. I told another friend that I don’t mean to bypass the pain of the situation when I say I’m okay: I have made peace with the idea that if not him, someone else. The pattern is evident in the people I used to attract before 2020. Life forced me to face it for my soul’s evolution, and I am grateful because of what’s going to be like in the rest of my life because I have looked at this wound and stitched it, instead of letting it fester.
I mentioned last week that I’ve been meditating on the Gene Keys as some sort of secular mystical writings. Gene Key 38 is another one with a deep Christian symbolism, as the book quotes John 15: 13 (always my favourite of the Gospel writers): Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.
As I type this, a notification on my phone highlighted the screen, showing a snapshot from the Hakuoki anime on my phone screen. Ironically, one of the Shinsengumi members who did not die in battle, but that’s a story for another time.
It’s funny it took me a year to actually make true to the promise of musings on Hakuoki, but one of the themes of this gate is the honour of a warrior. In the Shadow frequency you have a rebel without a cause, but in the Gift you already begin to see the perseverance of someone fighting for something bigger than themselves.
If you’re unfamiliar, the real history behind Hakuoki is that of the rise and fall of a group of underdogs as the age of the Tokugawa shogunate came to a close, and the restoration of Imperial rule and the opening of Japan to the rest of the world ushered the modern age. This version of the story itself paints the mythology of the group in a specific way. A number of the captains were of samurai origin, but it is true that the group as a whole rose from being little more than a reviled local police to making the history of the country.
Historical fiction takes liberties, and in many ways it tells us a lot about our own culture when we look at what agendas it has in what it changes, or how it changes it (often the lack of sources leaves the author no choice but to fill in the gaps). One thing where it consistently does not take liberties with the Shinsengumi is how Hijikata Toshizo was famously good looking, and how he wrote haiku.
And, of course, a warrior writing a death poem was not even a thing that was only true of those who wrote poetry in their spare time. The fact I have not turned this newsletter into a newsletter about his poems is a testament to my own self-control, I’m telling you. Anyway, his death poem, allegedly, reads (in translation) as follows: “Though my body may decay in the land of Ezo my spirit guards my lord in the East.”
For context, he was by then fighting what was obviously a losing battle. Slightly more hopeful circumstances surrounded Nakano Takeko, a martial arts instructor who died in the battle of Aizu the year prior. Alongside her mother, sister, and about other 20 local women, she took up arms against the Imperial army in what would become a month-long siege leading to surrender. They were not an organised unit, and fought alongside some that were, and a remnant of the Shinsengumi led by Saito Hajime, one of the captains who survived the Boshin War.
Her death haiku was attached to the handle of her naginata: “When compared to the ranks of warriors’ stalwart hearts; I cannot enter into their number, despite this body of mine.”
I can’t help but wonder what sentiment she was trying to express, since she was a samurai (the naginata is a sword designed specifically for use by women), and born of two samurai families, albeit minor ones. And she died on a battlefield. Her body and her heart clearly belong to the ranks from which she humbly counts herself out in the poem.
I was reminded of them as I pondered the idea of my soul’s imprint being that of a warrior, too. One of the first drafts of my memoir included parts where I talked about how watching Scorsese’s Silence and playing a route in an otome game that involved another fictionalised version of a real samurai had shown me how shallow my faith was, at least compared to the standard I felt I had to meet.
Most of my OCD I talked about before, stemmed from that fear that, ultimately, I did not have it in me to be a martyr. Of course, I suspect so many of the people self-aggrandising with talk about how they would never understand the very human need for self-preservation that leads to blasphemy in the face of death would, in fact, renounce their faith if they were facing real persecution. If they wouldn't, like some of the modern-day martyrs we have proof haven’t, I hope that there is indeed the eternal glory they sought waiting on the other side.
Ironically, a rainbow just appeared and went out of the window I’m facing as I say this. In a number of traditions, this phenomenon represents a message from the divine. In Greek mythology, the goddess of the rainbow, Iris, often appears with messages related to war.
For all of these themes of war and fighting, the gate in Human Design forms the channel of Struggle (Purpose in the Gene Keys), which is part of the Individual Circuitry, sub-circuit of Knowing (Stream of Creativity in the Gene Keys). Connecting the Root to the Spleen in the Gate of my Moon sign (28), this is a channel about my own self-actualisation and empowerment.
A devout Christian would argue that true empowerment would be to follow Jesus, but we have to agree to disagree here. I will, however, concede that it took me a while to find a purpose when I lost the neatly packaged Good Catholic Girl version with clear boxes I could just tick. The idea that one’s purpose doesn’t have to be something for the collective was so foreign to me at the start of this journey.
But one thing strikes me about the two death poems I mentioned is how mundane their sense of their place in the grand scheme of things was. Even Hijikata, who was a minor figure in the government of a whole new republic, fighting for its self-preservation, in his last words he declared his role as still defending the shogun.
Perhaps my purpose in life is far more mundane than being a soldier in the battle between good and evil, and perhaps many people would deem my current preoccupations extremely selfish. In a way, something that I took with me from all the time I spent preparing for marriage, is that one of the biggest honours you can have is to help shape up the next generation. All the appreciation for mothers in the ministry of Pope John Paul II, which is partly related to the Theology of the Body I have already mentioned.
Yesterday, after getting rid of the first two bags of my ex’s stuff, I redecorated my flat. I haven’t bought anything new, although I’m considering a soft mat and low table even though a real kotatsu would cost me as much as a first class flight to Japan. I just moved the furniture around, closer to what it looked like when I first lived here on my own, except I hid the sofa so I have more space to exercise. It felt right to pull VIII of Cups today, as I keep moving on, waves of grief for my younger self coming through as memories of incidents I brushed under the carpet at the time come to mind.
I’ve become more Tauran in the months since my ex has moved out. When we first met, he had painted himself as wanting the same things as me, which was a more equal partnership. Over the years, I have found myself having to take care of the house on my own, him adding to my mental load rather than detracting from it, despite his claims that he supported my career. The resentment built up. My mother never understood why I couldn’t “just do it” since I was at home anyway, but it’s a matter of principle and of valuing my work, time, and energy the way the same things are valued in people who run their businesses from an office.
I have skipped a Virgo house in Placidus, and my Mars in Aries falls in the 5th, but in Whole Houses Virgo would fall in my 10th house of Career, and Aries would fall in my 6th, so astrologically speaking I wasn’t designed to serve a husband no matter how you look at it. And in spite of all the Warrior themes surrounding my chart in Human Design, it looks like I’m here to serve myself. Perhaps service as servitude isn’t a consideration at all.
The etymology nerd in me went looking for how long we have framed service in this way, since in the Middle Ages it was very much a concept tied to religious devotion (specifically the celebration of religious rites). And this is what I found: “Also in Middle English, service was "the devotion or suit of a lover" (late 14c.), and "sexual intercourse, conjugal relations" (mid-15c.; service of Venus, or flesh's service)”
Perhaps that was my problem all along. Not only it was not reciprocated, but rather than a lover, I felt like a maid and underpaid therapist. While Venus is my benefic, and she rules my Sagittarius 2nd house, I have Jupiter in Taurus. I can easily see it in the kind of people I am attracted to, as I need to surround myself with people that expand me, but lately I have realised how much of that Taurus energy I bring to one on one settings. I also have Libra in the 11th and 12th houses, so Venus is in domicile in 3 out of 12 houses in my chart.
But Taurus is the one that interests me the most, since it’s on the axis of my Ascendant and my Moon sign, and this reflection is an offshoot of a chapter on the Hierophant in my book. “Traditionally”, by which people mean “according to the Golden Dawn”, the Hierophant is the Major Arcana that corresponds to Taurus.
As I finish this draft that has been in Notion for weeks, Mercury is transiting gate 23 in the Ajna, while Uranus is in gate 43 in the Throat. It’s one of the channels where the programming partners are the gates in the channel itself, and it’s about the ability to translate ethereal concepts. The inner knowing that has no logic. It’s, to me, a beautiful image of what the Hierophant is about.
Far from being a special gatekeeper privy to something that we cannot access on our own, it sits at the threshold of the other realm, translating the divine for the world to grasp for themselves, like a radio picking up the frequency so we can hear the music.
I’d love to say I was born too late for the age of the warrior but it’s hard to do with multiple wars going on, although the dreadful kind we wage in this day and age feels far removed from it too as we merely drop bombs on the innocent, the people attacking not even risking their life for something they believe in. Lateness has nothing to do with my calling not being in the military. But I am waging another kind of war, a spiritual one, against the old paradigm that devalues people instead of celebrating our humanity.
And to that end, I am committed, to death.