“The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of those depths.” Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, who gave us the five stages of grief, shared these wise words. I thought of Kübler-Ross’ work as I was learning about Rayne’s life and the depths she’s already traversed. On September 6th, 1990, at 4:45 am Pacific daylight time, Rayne began her life in Hayward, California. Her destiny mapped in her lunar nodes with south node in Leo in the 12th house, a house that carries the symbolism of suffering and loss, and her north node in Aquarius in her 6th house pointing to some selfless humanitarian type of work that she will find as part of her service to humanity. South Node is in Leo at 6 degrees and 50 minutes retrograde, 13 degrees from her Ascendant in Leo at 19 degrees and 04 minutes. Her South Node and past life experience is framed in the context of the ruler of the South Node, her Sun at 13 degrees 37 minutes in Virgo. Her self-identity is framed in service-minded Virgo. A Virgo Sun appreciates the finer details and shares their gift of discernment with others. If operating on the shadow side of Virgo, the person can take a critical approach to their own identity in their desire for perfection of themselves. An unhappy Virgo Sun person has to learn the difference between self-loathing and humility as they strive to improve. This person can also have a genuine appreciation for nature and natural health. Virgo energized personalities love to take care of others –it’s part of their selflessness in motion. Acts of service are ways of communicating their love as well.
Pluto is in Scorpio located in Rayne’s 4th house of home and family. Pluto at 15 degrees 28 minutes is square to her lunar nodes by about 9 degrees. With Pluto positioned in an angular house and within 3 ½ degrees of her 4th house angle I knew that something in Rayne’s life would be radical in her transformation and in her family. An illness, perhaps a Scorpio themed dark experience or even the ultimate transforming event of death, loomed in Rayne’s Pluto placement. I asked her to share more about her family experience as a child to understand what this experience was for Rayne and how it may be transforming her life. When Rayne was about 12-13 years old, her mother had an aneurism. This event put her mother into a coma state and unable to communicate, yet she was conscious. She was placed into a facility that could care for her. Rayne’s aunt stepped in to help her and her brother. She experienced some further challenges with her father after her mother had her aneurism. His dating life with women he met online put a deep emotional strain in her ability to connect with him. He was unpredictable on a few occasions which put Rayne’s life in danger. She learned later that on the night of her mother’s funeral, years down the road, he was doing meth, which taught her more about his behavior. Rayne also has had her own experiences with drugs. After moving in with her aunt at the age 14, she tried marijuana and ecstasy with a new group of friends. She notes that she dabbled in them for a few more years.
Rayne suspected that her father’s escape into drugs was hard on his health, which eventually led to his fatal heart attack. As time passed, Rayne said that her mother, while an invalid, was never told the truth of her father. It really upset Rayne that Rayne’s aunt never listened to her regarding the situation of her mother. The years ticked on and it wasn’t until Rayne was 21 that her mother was finally taken off life support and passed away. Sadly, she spent almost nine years in a coma and her death was prompted by the closing of the care facility. With Rayne’s moon in Aries, she had to deal with her anger with her aunt about this situation. Rayne urged her aunt to do the right thing regarding her mother being on life support; Rayne felt the way her aunt was handling her mother’s invalid status was unethical and inhumane. Rayne mentioned that her Mother was a Virgo Sun with Cancer Moon, and that her aunt was a Cancer Sun with Libra Moon, I think Rayne shared this detail as a way to understand her aunt’s and mother’s personalities within the context of their relationship.
Managing her emotions with her Moon in Aries will be a life-long awareness challenge for Rayne. She found that meditation and chanting have been great tools for her in her effort to slow down her reactive emotions to a more manageable level. Rayne’s Moon in her eighth house symbolizes unconscious complexes and projections back and forth with others, however with work and healing she can bring forward to heal. Eighth house also speaks to death, taxes and the occult. Studies in the occult will support Rayne in her individuation.
Looking at the Solar Arc of her South Node to her Ascendant, we see her mother’s aneurism and her father’s heart attack when Saturn in transit entered the sign of Leo, making a tight conjunction to her South Node at age 14. At age 17, her natal planet Neptune had stationed direct by secondary progression on December 19, 2006. Only seven months prior, at age 16 on May 28, 2006, her natal Saturn had stationed direct in her secondary progressions. This highlights the shift going on for Rayne with respect to her self expression and ego. This is also when she was talking at length with her aunt to get her mother off of life support. She says the only thing she recalls about this time is coming into maturity and smoking more marijuana. However, she also notes that she had been growing through all of these events. Even in their death, her parents are teaching her, and her life is framed from that perspective. Rayne feels that both her parents have taught her deeply about life, beauty, and death. Note that her 10th and 4th house signs Taurus/Scorpio and her prominent Venus in Leo reflect these areas of life in her relationship with her parents.
Rayne’s Saturn in Capricorn is at 18 degrees 55 minutes just inside her 6th house. It sits in opposition to her natal Chiron in Cancer in the 12th house at 24 degrees 28 minutes, ruled by Rayne’s Moon in Aries in the 8th house of death and isolation. Her moon in the 8th house also is about learning to build trust, as it has been damaged in her early life. Intimacy in relationships will be an area of growth for Rayne as she moves into maturity. During her Saturn return in the next few years, Rayne’s experiences will be related to her work, daily habits, her health or health issues, and her co-workers. Her current work has her in a technical position where she is part of the safety team at a social media company where she monitors postings that show signs of abuse, which often are against women and children. The company uses technology that uses photo-DNA for some of the more difficult situations. The work is not just technical; it includes a lot of detective work to identify those at risk. A job perfect for Rayne’s Scorpio in the 4th house and her Aquarian North Node in the 6th house, it symbolizes work that is a selfless service for the greater good, though quite difficult for anyone. She really likes the work and it makes her feel that she is aligned with what she likes to do. She noted that she used the law of attraction and her interest in Buddhism to land this job, which is something she’s always wanted to do. We can see how her Pluto in the 4th house is operating in an empowered function, transforming her and her detective work and protecting others from a hidden place behind a monitor. She is learning a tremendous need for objectivity in her emotions as she does this work. It requires her constant vigilance to her need to take care of herself, especially when difficult emotions arise. She hopes her job will go from contract position to a full-time employee position in the next year.
Rayne’s Sun and Mercury in Virgo are assets to her identity, especially when she is out in the world working on projects that require not only acute attention to detail but also her discernment for when to take action and to understand what the moving parts are that others may miss. She has a need for perfection that she will work with throughout her life. She may have to watch out for her own inner critic with Mercury in Virgo. With the Sun and Mercury in a trine aspect to her natal Saturn, Rayne has no problem getting the job done. Work is where she finds herself empowered and growing. Rayne shared that her work performance was recently assessed and that she was the only one out of five to pass the assessment, and she was recognized at a meeting with staff in early January. She notes that work is becoming easier for her and where she gets to shine but that her personal life is where she experiences more of the chaos of the unexpected. Speaking of unexpected chaos, Rayne’s Uranus in Capricorn is located in her 5th house of life pleasures, creativity, and self-expression at 5 degrees 37 minutes retrograde within 6 degrees of Neptune in Capricorn at 11 degrees 52 minutes retrograde. Uranus in Rayne’s 5th house symbolizes her unexpected gifts she may find when she gives her creative mind space to play. Uranus is widely trine her Ascendant in Leo at 19 degrees 4 minutes lending to her working in technology (ruled by Uranus) and squares her moon in Aries at 1 degrees 58 minutes showing the difficulty with processing emotions and her resulting potential anxiety.
Looking at Rayne’s more personal relationships brings insight into Rayne’s learning about her Venus. Venus is the queen when it comes to discerning who she befriends and to whom she offers her heart. Rayne’s Venus is located in Leo in her first house and is the planet rising in her chart to her Ascendant at the time of her birth. Venus is square to her Pluto in Scorpio, though widely by 13 degrees, but definitely by sign. With the square tension we’d expect drama and power issues in relationships with a high intensity and sexual energy. Her Venus rules her 10th house of public persona, reputation, and career and her 3rd house of communications, siblings, and local community. Her relationship house for love affairs is the 5th house (Jupiter rules from Leo within 3 degrees of her South Node), which indicates that short love affairs are likely to bring her karmic relationships that may bring her two steps back from where she wants to be to take steps forward. Her house of committed relationships is the 7th house ruled by Uranus (and Saturn co-rules), so her committed relationships need a flair of the eccentricity or to be on the edge of the traditional norms of society. Her 7th house ruler, Uranus, is in her 5th house in Capricorn and is also retrograde. It may be through a lover relationship that she grows into a committed relationship, or her committed relationship sets her free to enable her self-expression in new and unbounded ways. The co-ruler of Aquarius is Saturn and is the key for the Saturn return period located in her 6th house at 18 degrees 55 minutes and retrograde. The retrograde also indicates in her natal chart a symbol for challenges with her father either from abuse or from a difficult time in connecting with him on an emotional level as a healthy authority figure.
In 2011 Rayne met a man named Andre when she was visiting one of her friends in Oakland. Within a couple weeks Rayne and Andre were intimate and tripping into the escape of drugs. Each time they met they indulged their bodies and tripped out their minds by dabbling in ecstasy and cocaine. She began to associate doing drugs with her love for him and became obsessed with him. Throughout that relationship she was placed into weird and dangerous predicaments that she knew was not a place that was healthy for her and knew it could not continue. She had a deep entanglement with him and an obsessive love that led her to believe she may even want to marry him. She knew the risks from the drugs and was feeling insecure. Andre was arrested twice during their relationship, and she learned he was arrested for possessing and using meth, which made her very upset because she connected that drug to her father. The arrest happened in 2014 and she felt then the relationship dwindling from its previous force and intensity. They were going to meet again in July 2017 and she was planning to break up with him. However, that meeting never happened; he never called and Rayne slept angry that night and dreamt of him. Her dream had black dark imagery with black wings and the image of him holding and protecting her. She noted that the dream felt so real because of the dream’s intensity. The next morning when she woke from the dream, she had a feeling of déjà vu. She had gotten a call from a random number, but it turned out to be Andre’s sister telling her that Andre died the day before from being shot by the police!
After Andre died, she learned much more about him through his sister. He was not only seeing Rayne for three years, but he was also with another woman for six years who he would beat up and abuse terribly. Rayne noted that she did experience Andre hitting her one time during the relationship, and felt that she had dodged a bullet. He wasn’t able to have children, yet he told Rayne that he wanted children and led her to believe that he was able to while Rayne stressed over her own fertility while in relationship with him. Upon reflection, Rayne sees this as a strong karmic relationship, but it has illuminated several important facets of her own shadow and the healing she has from where she is in evolution. When she came into awareness of evolutionary astrology, she wondered about this relationship as a skipped step, or even the Jupiter in Leo on the South Node in the 12th house. However, Mars in Gemini speaks of the potential for a male in her life that reflects a dualistic nature in square to her own Sun in her first house of identity. Mars rules Rayne’s 9th house of beliefs but also as a co-ruler to the Scorpio of her 4th house that has Pluto conjunct Black Moon Lilith within 2 degrees to Pluto on one side and 2 degrees to her 4th house angle on the other side. Rayne recognizes that his death had a significant impact on her, and she reflects on it and the dreams and feelings she had when she felt like giving up. With her Moon in Aries in the 8th house, I also think this relationship ties into her moon in this placement and its impact on her emotional self. She was betrayed more than once, a Scorpio and Plutonic theme, and yet she feels quite connected to this soul who was in her life for three years. Our emotional entanglements are often what we repeat, we know these in astrology as karmic relationships, and part of the healing journey is to unravel their deeper purpose and meaning as they relate to our Pluto sign and placement and south node and south node ruler. No doubt her connection with Andre is illuminating something for Rayne about her painful house of family and even her own identity. She imagines him as a guardian angel now. Perhaps during Rayne’s Saturn return she may experience another relationship, but it may be that work is more of her focus and where she has more responsibility placed upon her shoulders.
This summer we’ll explore more of Rayne’s present life experiences and what questions come for her during her Saturn return, a significant cycle in her developing into her mature life. I wonder what new people may come into her life during this time and what will she learn about herself as she seeks to enrich her life in studying astrology, the law of attraction, and Buddhism.
#UPtheMountain_Rayne
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