Weekend Entertainment Guide 9/20/24
When Boundaries Betray Us; Ohio cat controversy continues
It has indeed been a wild week. Although there’s plenty of fresh excitement to cover, I also came across a book from the 1990s that potentially contains themes relevant to the coming Saturn-Neptune conjunction.
Book review: When Boundaries Betray Us
This week, I went to a physical bookstore in my town and experienced an old way of discovering new books. I didn’t find the book by James Hillman that I was looking for, but Carter Heyward, whom I had never previously heard of, turned out to be alphabetically close to Hillman in the psychology section. Heyward’s book When Boundaries Betray Us: Beyond Illusions of What is Ethical in Therapy and Life (HarperSanFrancisco, 1993) provided an irresistibly disruptive premise — could therapy work without what’s thought of as standard professional boundaries?
Heyward was among the first eleven women to join the Episcopal priesthood in 1974. It’s never easy to be a trailblazer — and she was openly lesbian to boot. It’s understandable that the stress of all that led her to begin therapy in 1987, and it’s understandable that she looked for a therapist who was also a lesbian because she wanted someone who got what she was going through. In the 1980s, it was probably harder than it is today to find a therapist capable of competently and sensitively handling LGBT issues.
Heyward found such a therapist, identified pseudonymously in the narrative as Elizabeth Farro. The therapeutic relationship then went off the rails and ultimately ended due to Heyward’s obsessive insistence that they become friends. Farro did not want to have a social relationship on the grounds that therapists are typically taught to avoid socializing with their clients. Heyward, however, just kept pushing.
Heyward has the Moon in Aquarius broadly opposite Pluto in Leo (time of birth unknown), and I can see how an obsessive attitude toward friendship is one way that an afflicted Aquarius Moon could play out. As I read the book, I often exclaimed aloud in shock at the things Heyward admitted to doing. However, I have a Moon-Pluto conjunction in Scorpio myself, so I could relate to the vibe on some level. I’ve done a few stupid things in my life — I just haven’t specifically fixated on friendship with a therapist.
In my own experiences as a therapy client, I’ve always had a therapist who was at least 15 years older than me, and I’ve found that age gap helpful in setting a comfortable tone of containment. I imagine it might be easier to unwittingly view a therapist closer to my age as a peer or a double for myself and blur boundaries.
Heyward and Farro were about the same age. Both women also had doctorates, as noted in this exchange about how they would address each other:
“Five years ago, I would not have permitted a patient to call me Elizabeth, but I’ve changed. You may, if you wish. And what would you like me to call you?
“As long as I can call you Elizabeth, you’re welcome to call me Carter,” I responded.
“And If I had asked you to call me Dr. Farro?”
I raised my brow. “I’d ask you to call me Dr. Heyward.”
Heyward was then in the thick of her midlife crisis transits. Everyone has transiting Uranus opposite natal Uranus around age 42. For Heyward, who was born with a Mars-Uranus conjunction in Gemini, transiting Uranus in Sagittarius opposed both her natal Uranus and her natal Mars at that time. The sign of Gemini is associated with sibling relationships, and Heyward often used the word “sister” to refer to the type of connection she wanted and didn’t get from Farro.
Siblings are well known for bickering over any minor unfairness between them, but the intention is typically that they’re supposed to be on an even footing. In contrast, the relationships indicated by Gemini’s opposite sign, Sagittarius, have an acknowledged imbalance of power, like teacher-student relationships. As a priest and a professor of theology, Heyward probably had quite a bit of experience with the Sagittarian type of relationship — from the position of power and authority! Renouncing that power and authority enough to participate in therapy could potentially have been difficult for her.
Like I said in a recent past post, I haven’t had a lot of worldly power and authority to renounce during Pluto’s transit through Capricorn, so I at least haven’t had that getting in the way of my own therapy sessions. I do find it helpful if a therapist briefly admits to having had a life experience similar to what I’m discussing, along the lines of, “Yeah, I didn’t get established in my profession until I was 37 either.” However, I know I’m not there to get deep into the muck of the therapist’s life experiences, and that seemed to be what Heyward wanted to do with Farro.
Prior to the current Saturn in Pisces transit that began in March 2023, Saturn was last in Pisces during the mid-1990s: first from May 21, 1993, to June 30, 1993, and then from January 28, 1994, to April 7, 1996. Gael Johnson pointed out in Impossible Dreams: Hopes, Fears, and Expectations for Saturn in Pisces that mental health is a topic commonly visited during Saturn in Pisces transits. I’m not sure whether Heyward’s 1993 publication date fell during the narrow slice of 1993 that had Saturn in Pisces, but Googling the book reveals that it attracted a fair amount of discussion after it was published, and that discussion continued into the 1990s Saturn in Pisces transit.
Potentially more relevant here is the Saturn-Neptune conjunction of 1989. As Neptune is the modern ruler of Pisces, a Saturn-Neptune conjunction could have similar energy to Saturn in Pisces. In both cases, Saturn represents structures, and Neptune represents the dissolution of structures.
Heyward’s therapy with Farro happened in 1987 and 1988, and Heyward was chewing on it at least until her book was published in 1993. At one point in the narrative, Heyward mentions watching news coverage of events related to the fall of the Berlin Wall, the major historical event associated with the 1989 Saturn-Neptune conjunction.
The 1989 Saturn-Neptune conjunction took place at 11° Capricorn, close to Heyward’s South Node at 8° Capricorn. This also squared Heyward’s natal conjunction of Chiron at 3° Libra and Neptune at 4° Libra. Neptune in Libra might idealize egalitarian partnerships to begin with, but the square from transiting Saturn and Neptune in institutional Capricorn brought Heyward into confrontation with societal structures that threatened her ideals. Heyward’s natal Jupiter at 29° Virgo is close to this configuration, and it potentially played into the rules-lawyering quality of her quest to prove that she was right.
As we approach the next Saturn-Neptune conjunction in 2026, similar themes could emerge. This time, however, the conjunction will take place in the sign of individualistic Aries. Institutions may not be the focus in the way they were under the Capricorn influence. The more likely problem is that one individual might simply have desires that conflict with those of another individual.
I personally see it as a credit to the Episcopal Church that it has been more open than many other Christian denominations to the inclusion of women and LGBT people in leadership positions. Compassion and empathy are great. Still, I think everyone involved in the situation would have been better off if the bishop described below had given Heyward a different sort of guidance:
Before leaving for Maine, I wrote Elizabeth a letter. Though she had asked me not to contact her again, I was hoping that time, and my own sense of connectedness, would enable her to open a little toward me. I told her of my work with Marjorie McClure and invited her, again (as I would every eight, ten, or twelve months into the future), to meet me, as a sister, to explore together what had happened, perhaps with a third person to help us, someone we could choose together. Before mailing the letter, I asked Barbara Harris, my good friend and bishop, to bless the letter and to bless me as its sender and Elizabeth as its receiver.
“May God strengthen you both and keep you open to all possibilities for healing, reconciliation, and forgiveness,” Barbara prayed as she stood with me, a hand on my shoulder.
God gave people free will — and this challenges caring liberals every bit as much as it does strict conservatives.
Hot on Substack
, Virgo/Pisces as Controlled Demolition: Koyaanisqatsi & The Pruitt Igoe MythFearnley provides an excellent history of the Pruitt-Igoe housing projects in St. Louis, Missouri, using their demolition as a metaphor for the recent Lunar Eclipse conjunct Neptune in Pisces. She points out that their architect, Minoru Yamasaki, also designed the twin towers that were destroyed in the 9/11 terror attack: “That’s two Yamasaki designs whose explosions have resulted in toxic dust. I need his chart.”
Yamasaki has Mercury and Jupiter in Sagittarius opposing Pluto in Gemini late in the signs, forming a grand cross with the recent Lunar Eclipse at 25° Pisces.
, Ripley, Daenerys, Cersei, Skyler: the Matriarchs of Moon-PlutoAnderson finds Moon-Pluto archetypes in Aliens, The Lost World: Jurassic Park, Game of Thrones, and Breaking Bad.
, The Eclipse, the Equinox & the PolycrisisDale weighs in on the World Economic Forum’s map of the polycrisis and the way things have gone just plain crazy lately:
Checking my phone, I’m inundated by memes from last night’s presidential debate. You know, fear-mongering statements like “Illegal transgender aliens in Springfield, USA are eating people’s pet dogs and cats” and stuff like that- words that most of us could never imagine hearing from a presidential candidate a decade ago that are now just unsurprising eye-rolls.
Stefanie Andrzejewski via
, The Pisces Full Moon Lunar Eclipse - Whispers of the Celestial VeilAndrzejewski writes on harmonizing our three brains: head, heart, and gut.
, Stepping OutsideThis post on an August 23, 2011, earthquake that damaged the Washington Monument was interesting to me on a personal level — I don’t remember the earthquake, but I remember starting to write what became Booby Prize: An Astrological Novel on August 28, 2011.
Free online events
Henry Seltzer will speak on “The Astrology of 21st Century Planets: Eris, Haumea, & Makemake” via Kepler College on Saturday, September 21 at 10:00 am PDT. Register here.
Suzanne Gerber is offering a free Lunar Love Leadership Retreat on Sunday, September 22, from 10:00 am to 2:00 pm EDT. Speakers will cover subjects including astrology (
), breathwork, EFT tapping, and nourishing the nervous system. Register here.Clarity on cat-eating claims
Last week when I commented on the controversy over alleged cat-eating in Ohio as mentioned by Donald Trump in the September 10 debate, I wondered about the lack of Leo placements surrounding the ruckus — even Mercury was in Virgo by the time of the debate. I would think something would have to be in Leo for a controversy centered on cats because a lion is a big cat, right?
A USA Today fact check relayed on Yahoo! News uncovered that Allexis T. Ferrell was arrested on August 16, 2024, in Canton, Ohio, but said: “The Canton woman charged with killing and eating a cat has no known connection to Haiti or any other foreign country.” The conclusion of the fact check was therefore that the false rumor about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, likely grew out of this actual incident in Canton that did not involve an immigrant.
The Repository, Canton’s local newspaper, elaborated:
Canton police arrested Allexis T. Ferrell at 10:45 p.m. Friday night in the 1100 block of 13th Street SE. She is accused of killing a cat by "stomping its head" and then eating it in a residential housing complex. Multiple people saw the incident.
With a time for the arrest, it’s possible to construct a chart for the incident. Sure enough, the Sun and Mercury in Leo are square Uranus in Taurus! That’s more like what I would expect for a bizarre incident involving a cat. The Moon is conjunct the Midheaven, potentially reflecting that the incident became very public. Retrograde Mercury forms a quincunx with Neptune in the 12th house, perhaps accounting for the confusion created by the incident.
For me, the ruckus won’t be complete until someone makes a parody video of “Ohio” by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young about cats. Is anyone ready for their Nina Jankowicz moment?