Day 12/100
Tricia Hersey's Rest Deck + Grand Cross Part 2/4
Today is Day 12 of The 100 Day Project! For my intro, see 100 days of creativity.
I’m taking a pause on the crochet squares today because I’m away from home for a couple of days and I mistakenly forgot to bring one essential color with me! Oops. Instead, I’m drawing a card from Tricia Hersey’s (The Nap Ministry) Rest Deck. Tricia Hersey has been a very big inspiration for me. Here is the card I drew for today:
Amen! Onwards…
Grand Cross Part 2/4
Today we’re looking at another part of John Coltrane’s Grand Cross. Yesterday we looked at the modality (fixed) and the houses (cadent). Today we’ll start tackling the actual planets and signs, starting with one of the two oppositions.
As you can imagine with an opposition—two polar opposites—there’s a tug of war. When it’s a T-square, you get one tug of war plus two squares. But when it’s a grand cross, you get two T-squares for the price of one! Uff! Intense.
Coltrane’s two oppositions involve one personal planet (Mars), both of the social planets (Saturn and Jupiter), and one transpersonal planet (Neptune). Today we’ll tackle the one with Mars and Saturn.
Mars in Taurus in the 3rd house opposite Saturn in Scorpio in the 9th
Mars, the planet of action, opposes Saturn, the planet of limits and restriction. I once read that when these two come together in one of the tense aspects such as a square or opposition and it isn’t handled constructively, it can feel like a car crashing full speed into a tree. The internal tug of war here is like one side wanting to push on the accelerator, while the other side wants to push on the brakes.
Mars in Taurus is a less “fiery” Mars than say Aries, so the Taurus earth energy will ground the Mars into a more stable and thoughtful type of action. Saturn in Scorpio brings an intensity to emotional control: Saturn wants to regulate and structure, and Scorpio wants to go deep into the hidden realms of the interior life and bring about transformation. The 3rd/9th house opposition puts the tug of war between local and international, between daily learning and higher learning, between daily communication and expansive higher-purpose communication.
What questions is this opposition trying to get Coltrane to answer? Here are some possibilities:
How do I take action (Mars) to communicate (3rd house) lasting beauty in the world (Taurus) when I feel hesitant or fearful (Saturn) to expose my deep, hidden truths and intense inner emotional world (Scorpio) on a more expansive, possibly global stage (9th house)?
How do I structure (Saturn) my philosophical/spiritual ideals (9th house) and need for personal transformation (Scorpio) in order to take action (Mars) to communicate them (3rd house) in a way that feels grounded and practical (Taurus)?