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Friday 22 January 2016

Irish Artists: Harry Clarke





















I've been researching irish art and poetry recently, trying to find some inspiration for a painting on 1916 which I've been assigned for a competition. Politics and political art is not my forte, so I decided to go hunting those parts of irish culture that do thrill me.

And I was looking again at Harry Clarke, who lived at the time, and his fantastical illustrations and stained glass windows.  Harry was a Pisces Sun with a Virgo Moon. I knew there had to be Virgo in there somewhere, given the level of detail and precision in his drawings, and what a beautiful expression of Pisces his art is.

Pisces rules the realm of archetypes, of fairy tales and mythology, spirituality, dreams and the unconscious, everything and all that lies beyond and moves human life. It's colours are the deep blues and greens of the sea. Pisceans often get lost in the enormity of the currents moving their life, but in Harry's case his Virgo moon drove him to craft something tangible from those currents.  To bring heaven down to earth. So how apt that he is probably best known for the stained glass windows he designed, not just for churches, but for secular buildings too.

He was also a celebrated illustrator of fairy tales by Hans Christian Anderson and Charles Perrault, and the tales of Edgar Allen Poe.  Interestingly,  the work for his first commission of illustrations, for The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, was destroyed during the Easter Rising.

So, I have a beginning.


Tuesday 19 January 2016

Saturn in Sagittarius - nailing your feet to the floor


'Settle to your life now, where certainty abounds'.


St Sergius the Builder,  Nicholas Roerich


I spend a lot of time wondering and worrying about the future. With a Sagittarian Venus in aspect to Jupiter that's hardly surprising, but it's only recently I realised how much stress it actually causes. Saturn is currently in Sagittarius and has recently transited both those planets. All of  a sudden I began feeling calm, settled to where I am and what I'm doing, such an alien experience I had to sit down and work out why.

The boundless optimism and horizon scanning of Sagittarius actually takes up a lot of energy. And when so much of one's energy is projected into imagination and potentiality it leaves little for the everyday mundane tasks that are, let's face it, the foundation of our lives. We miss what is right under our noses because we are constantly plotting and planning and searching for something better, new or more exciting.  (Also one of the reasons Sagittarians get such a bad reputation in matters of the heart.) And while we are busy looking for what's coming we don't see our life going by without us.

When Saturn transits Sagittarius it places boundaries on that sign's expansiveness. And the house of your chart which contains Sagittarius is where you will feel it. If you're used to bounding ahead, prepare to be slowed down. If you resist the process all you'll get is frustrated and stressed. Take a while instead to consider the beauty and the benefits of what is here, now, all around you. Yes, the mountains out there are beautiful, but so is the garden here.

If it's your 3rd house, instead of wishing you were living somewhere else, stop and appreciate the place you are in now. See what can be manifested here, instead of longing for pastures new. In your 7th, it's about the friends and relationships you have now and what you can contribute and commit to them, rather than searching for new ones. In your 10th, firm up your career responsibilities and see how you can work smarter, instead of expanding or moving on. And so on.

If you can do this, in whatever area of your life this transit is happening, once Saturn moves on to Capricorn in two years time you'll find your life expanding for real, building on what you've been able to put in place now. Get your foundation right, and everything else will follow.