DIGGING GRAVES FOR YOUR PAST SELVES  - An example by Monique Leurink
June 2022

EXAMPLE 

Let's dive a little into the chart of a 56-year-old woman who says she has been depressed all her life. I will not expose her chart but just mention some themes. She feels there ‘must be "more’, but she doesn't get to it and she doesn't know how. Mercury, Venus and the Sun are in Pisces. Moon in Taurus. Both Pisces and Taurus are difficult to bring action and change.. Taurus can work very hard, but has difficulty with transformations. Pisces can easily become a victim of circumstances and stay in the swamp. It can take a long time before he gathers the strength to change those circumstances himself. He simply bounces on the waters of life, even if those waters are murky. Also with the Ascendant Libra there is a great tendency to adapt to the circumstances rather than to put your own stamp on the environment, even if this meets with resistance. 

Overall, she thinks her life is rather okay. A good job, two beautiful daughters who give her a lot of love. But it bothers her immensely that she smokes way too many cigarettes and, moreover, she thinks she is way too fat. As a child she had a latent but constant feeling of dissatisfaction and unease. And especially in recent years it has become so strong that she is now depressed.

Of course, you could explain some of this with her Moon's exact opposition to Saturn. But the Sun's sparkling trine with Uranus should take quite a bit of its depression away in that case. And the square of Mars to her Pisces’ Sun will give her the necessary dynamics not to just swim into a lifelong trap without willfulness and never get out again. In addition, the Sun square Jupiter tends to see life from an overconfident sun side rather than from a deep pit. It can lead to laziness. 

DEPRESSED 

There is a powerful truth in the word 'depressed'. 'Press' comes from 'pressure' and the prefix 'de' means 'under' or 'down'. Being depressed means that something important is being pushed down. So essential that it takes away the real joie de vivre. 

When I ask 'what more that should be' is, she says that she feels trapped. And of course we come directly to her Black Moon. The Corrected Black Moon is exactly conjunct her Libra Ascendant and the Mean Black Moon is just 12 degrees further in her first house. The Black Moon right on the Ascendant basically blocks the access to the outside world of the whole chart. And that is exactly what she feels: a Berlin wall between her inner world and the outside world. People with the Black Moon in the first field often feel a sharp division between 'inside' and 'outside'. The outside world is the free and unexplored world of Aries. People with this position know deep down that this primordial and unexplored territory of ‘a thousand and one possibilities’ is the only and absolutely necessary possibility in which they can begin to dis-cover their True Selves. They are inextricably connected with this outside world, which is blank to them and needs to be filled with their own actions coming from essence. This is not visible for anyone but very much alive in their own universe and an existential reality. Here lies the source of life, for they are connected to it from their essence. The further the Black Moon zone (also called the Cosmic Birth Channel) is in the first house, the more space it gives to keep a small passage to the outside world. But with the Black Moon zone right on the Ascendant, the door is completely locked. And with that, the entire content of the chart is also pushed down. 

TUNNEL AND BRIDGE 

Let's see how the liberation of the Black Moon here can work. People with the Black Moon in Aries or the first house can experience this as if they have to go through a tunnel to get to the outside world. From the dark to the light. From oppression of being able to breathe freely to fully deploy their pioneering spirit in an unexplored and - for them - new world. The key must be forged in their own soul. How? 

For this woman, this came down to her owning the right to exist that was denied from birth by the bloodline. That means eliminating the identification with negative conditioned patterns inherited by her parents. And then by owning and manifesting the source wisdom and Creative force that comes from the Black Moon.. Entrepreneurship, action, courage, guts, decisiveness, independence, going out - literally and figuratively.. High Aries qualities that are locked up in her inner universe and that need to be turned into … action. Get things moving. In this way she can dis-cover her original dynamics. For she is essentially an Initiator. She must not only see and find herself in her own origin, but her great strength is that she sees everything and everyone around

her in their own originality. Eliminate the negative conditioning from the bloodline, releasing the expectations for approval to the bloodline and connect with her True Self. 

By staying locked up in her inner world, the entire content of the chart remains locked up. Of course that makes you depressed. She makes her way out through the tunnel by becoming aware of her essence and no longer needing the approval of her relatives. Because it won’t come. People with the Black Moon on the other side in Libra or the seventh house don't feel so much that they have to dig a tunnel, but that they have to build a bridge. They are not the other or themselves, but they are mainly the bridge between them. They are both. The connecting element. They are bridge builders to the one-to-one contact. Their strength lies in their extraordinarily brilliant sense of relating. They are masters of relationships but need to re-acquire their mastery. 

Not living from the essence can eventually make you depressed. Negative family conditionings can get in the way if they don't become conscious and released. 

Kahlil Gibran wrote something that appeals to my imagination: 

"And today I'm going to dig graves for my past selves."