Rick DiClemente’s

Astrology Newsletter

Volume 57, October 2010

(Download a printable .DOC version here)

“It’s only castles burning”

Neil Young

Recently, a Libra client came to me for a reading with a remarkable story to tell. He had gone through a significant transformation in his life which matched his planetary story so well. Afterwards, I invited him to write his story in his own words for the next newsletter. It is presented below in its entirety with a few notations from me [in brackets]. Here is his story which he wrote on the day after my reading.

His natal chart

In his own words:

It’s Always Darkest before Saturn Enters Libra

September 2, 2010

Anonymous

Although I was born in September of 1961, my life began, really began, on October 29, 2009. That was the day Saturn entered Libra. Up until a few hours ago, I had no knowledge that event even occurred, but what I have known since last October and I mean know as in knowing in the deepest depths of my soul, is that on that fateful October day my life changed forever. A shift took place of such profound measures that it opened up access for me to a new universe and a new way of existing. Quite simply, I for the first time since walking the planet (this particular incarnation) could see everything clearly. Within one 24-hour period I moved from darkness into light, from suffering into enlightenment. It was a transformation of biblical proportions, and at the same time one that I believe with my whole heart is waiting to take place for each and every one of us, waiting for us to allow.

What I learned just a few hours ago, as I sat for the first time in the authoritative and loving presence of astrologist Rick DiClemente was that he had full knowledge of my transformation. Even though the man up until today had never met me, nor had any knowledge of my existence he was able to convey with quiet directness the exact date my shift took place and then went on to tell me why.

What I write next I offer with the utmost sincerity, not as a way to wallow in a past pain, or to allow the ego its significance in story, but as an example of the pure power of allowing. Less than a year ago I had come to a point, a crossroads, a place where I believed that suicide was the only way away from my dense emotional pain and suffering. Death, in my clouded, ego-fueled mind, was the only way to peace. I planned my demise and waited for inner strength to carry out my egoic plan. But God, my creator, the Universe, my higher power had other plans for me. I would come to realize that God’s plans are the only plans that really matter. Once you allow yourself to hook up, align with Universal intention, the will of God, life gets, oh so amazing.

I am born of the sun sign Libra. I am 48 years of age as I write this, and I had just turned 48 then I was shown the plan of the universe, the Grace of God. I was born to a mother who was a Scorpio, and a father who was a Capricorn. If you were to look at my astrological chart, even to the novice astrologer, you would see that astrologically speaking the mother symbol rules my birth chart. The symbol of the mother sits as a [handle] of a [bucket] that carries the entire cosmic concoction that is me. My mother, the mother that I asked the universe to give me, was a true [shadow side of] Scorpio. She was all of the traits we know to be Scorpio traits at their worst; these traits that were left unchecked, and without the benefit of enlightenment caused me great emotional pain. I suffered to the absolute extent that only a soul who chooses such suffering will. I was born the most sensitive of children to a mother with no boundaries, with little sensitivity to others, with only ego, narcissism, and a need to covet light that she did not have herself. This was my preordained fate. Needless to say the lessons ensued.

By the time I was an adult with many years of psychotherapy and astrological and spiritual guidance under my belt, I moved away from her. And I never returned. I had been educated enough to understand even then when I pulled away, and have come to know now at my most spiritual center that I chose this woman to be my mother, and she chose me. I have learned over the years and have come to accept, and really know that we are all here for a reason. We are placed here to teach, to learn, and to use one another for one purpose. And this is the tricky part --the purpose is always the same. Although the circumstances may be different, the endless varying circumstances, the purpose we are here is always the same. We are here to learn the lessons needed to shift us into alignment with the Universal plan, to get closer to God, to bet back to our creator, to live the God that is in each of us. We are here to become God.

Even though I had removed my mother from my physical life, the influence of her Scorpio energy clung to my being, continuing to maneuver me. I was challenged to endlessly engage the same types of people, to invite the same energy that she generated over and over in attempts to this time beat it, to win over it, to replay it until I rose victorious. Year after year, relationship after relationship I chose those who helped me repeat behaviors that created that familiar feeling of self-hate. Of course in the egoic haze of non-enlightenment I had no idea this was what I was doing. I was simply caught up in the illusion of ego and life. Why do I keep attracting losers? Why is everyone so horrible? Poor, poor pitiful little me! UGH!!!! I had removed the perpetrator but had not yet understood why I had created the challenge to begin with. What would become clear soon enough was that I was here to learn to love all, even those who had done me unjust.

One of the most difficult lessons for me to learn in this life has been that there is a Universal plan. Plants know this and they don’t resist, animals know this and they don’t resist, the planets know this and they don’t resist. They all allow. It is only humans and our over-evolved egos that resist the Universal plan, God’s plan, and thus make life on earth a living hell. I chose the mother I chose and she chose me so that we would have a better chance to move forward in this lifetime toward enlightenment. It was a contract signed with God’s blessing before we entered even this life.

All through my life I have looked for teachers, mystics, astrologists, therapists, etc., but what I didn’t realize was that the true power was always in me. The act of aligning oneself with God is not learned, nor is it an act of assertion. Alignment with God’s plan is truly in the act of surrendering. The first step to getting closer to God’s plan is to surrender your own plan, which is to surrender your ego. The secret of life is to allow.

The last Scorpio I had located, invited and seduced into my life to recreate the familiar situation of self-hate and to cause me deep, deep pain was my business partner. He, unbeknownst to me when I met him and even when I asked him to become my business partner, was also a Scorpio. He actually, believe it or not, shared the same birthday as my mother. How precise we can be in generating duplicate scenarios until we learn our lessons. A few months after meeting him I was once again smack dab in the same familiar territory I experienced as a child. I used him to generate self-hate, suicidal thoughts, despair, depression, sadness, and every negative emotion known to man. And he, as the truest of true Scorpios, was more than happy to use his bag of tricks to lie, deceive, manipulate, and drain all light from me, over and over again, until my only option, I believed, was to die. He and I were the perfect match. I didn’t learn what I needed to learn from my first Scorpio teacher, so here he was sent by the Universe to bring me round two of the Universe’s lesson plan. I was on my way to ending it all, well my life this go around, when God intervened in the form of planet Saturn.

It was October 30, 2009. My business partner and I were returning from a business engagement, a dinner party at a client’s. The part to of the story I neglected to mention before was that my Scorpio partner had also promised me on many occasions that he and I would become a romantic couple. He loved to dangle the carrot of a life happily ever after. I had lived my life as a gay man. He had lived his life as a straight man. But two months after knowing one another he declared his love for me and then spent the following five years causing as much suffering as he could. To what ends? Ask any astrologists worth their weight, or any psychologist for that matter, and they will tell you it was so he could feel self-hate and deep shame, the feelings that came from devastating those around him. His food and sustenance was shame. He would do whatever he could to feel it, so causing pain was his daily MO. That October 30^th as we were parked in front of my home he again began the manipulation, the lies, the promises of a life together as partners, as a couple, of never leaving me, of it being him and I against the world, him and I for eternity. As I got out of the car he said to me, “I don’t care what happens to us as long as we are together forever.” I remember thinking, “wow, that is a lie. I won’t be deceived anymore.”

I never saw my business partner again. Almost five years together and I never laid eyes on him again after that night, after that last lie. God intervened in the sense that at that moment as I walked away from his car never to see him again I realized that I was of God, and this relationship was not of God. This relationship was wrong. It was of deception and it was time to move from it toward the light.

I woke up the next day and clearly understood the simplicity of life. From that day forward I used my emotions to gauge my proximity to God. When I was riding the wave of the Universe, if I was flowing in the river, if I was aligned with God’s plan then life was easy, my mind was clear, my emotions enthusiastic and joyful. When I was out of alignment with the universe then I would feel anxious, angry, sad, or any of the other thousands of negative emotions we as humans endure. I learned over the next few months that it was my ego that had made the plans for me in the past and if I was to be at peace I needed to remove my ego from any future agendas. I learned to live only in the present moment and to bring enthusiasm and love into every present moment without expectation of outcome, and from there I learned the most important lesson of all, that I was of God, a child of God, and that God would always provide.

I went to see Rick DiClemente on a lark; a friend of a friend of a friend recommended that I see him. You know the chain of coincidences that are not coincidences. I am going to begin to see clients of my own, not for the purpose of astrology but to help others make the shift from ego to inner peace. I wanted to see how another professional set up his office, website, etc. I contacted Rick to see how a true professional helps people change their lives.

When I told Rick that my entire life had changed last year in the course of one day, literally overnight, he said to me, “Yes, and I can tell you the exact day.”

Of course having not given him any tangible information to be able to make such an assertion, I challenged him. He said simply, “It happened on October 29, 2009; that is when Saturn moved into Libra.” He went on to explain that Saturn was the planet that ruled the truth, that ruled what was right, that was about making decisions based on fact, was about getting the answers answered that needed to be answered, and that on that day Saturn had entered Libra [which it does every 29 years]. Libra he went on to tell me represented relationships and partnerships. He told me that at that moment, as Saturn entered Libra, I could no longer be in any relationship built on deception, manipulation, slithering and poison. And of course Libra is my Sun sign.

That is just what the shift felt like for me. Year after year of being stuck, of hearing the same deceptions and believing them, of being hopeful, of having false hope and the POW [Saturn] --in an absolute moment of clarity I thought, enough is enough, I will not be lied to again. It was as simple as it had been complicated for the five years prior.

Today when I left Rick’s office I pulled up my Google calendar, just to be sure, just to affirm for my ego, my mind what my heart and soul already knew and sure enough there it was the date October 30, 2009. The appointment stated, dinner with ….

Much has happened to me spiritually since that fateful day, since the shift took place. I have done much work to make sure that I stay close to God. I have studied the works of Eckhart Tolle, Hinduism, meditation, and chakra balancing. I have devoted myself to a Swami in India. I have volunteered to sit vigil at hospice. I have studied Reiki and have graduated to the second level. So much work has been done.

Today I have a very practical way of living, where love is what I try to bring to every interaction, every present moment. Each and every time I meditate I send Reiki to both my beautiful Scorpio teachers-- to my mother and to my ex business partner in appreciation to them and the Universe for bringing them both into my life. After all they brought me closer to God. It is for them that I know God.

I laugh when I think it took the mere movement of the planets to get me to see the light, to awaken me to the God inside of me. Trust me, if it can happen to me, a wretched sinner from way back, it can happen to anyone. I do want anyone reading this to know that you are of God. We are all of God. Love and let what will be, be.

--- END OF STORY ---

Many thanks to him for sharing his inspiring story.

My notes:

This man’s story is remarkable, mainly because he is remarkable. It’s not about his planets. It’s about him being ready to go through the spiritual doorway that he had spent years opening. The main reason that he “made it” is because he gave up seeing himself as a victim (Neptune.) Libra commonly finds their identity via reflection off of their partners. After failing at this for many years due to codependency, according to his Leo North Node, he finally found himself within - just as he stated.

He was born with a many strengths, but his main one comes from Chiron. His Chiron seeks spiritual answers and higher purpose in the eighth house in the sign of Pisces and aspects almost every planet in his chart:

· Squares his Moon

· Inconjuncts his Sun

· Conjuncts South Node and opposes Uranus, Pluto, and Venus (his ruler)

· Trines his Mercury, Mars, and Neptune

His strong Moon in Taurus gave him persistence as it trines the exact midpoint of his Jupiter-Saturn conjunction in Capricorn. This is where he got his the good fortune to be aware that he was creating his own reality once he gave up being a victim.

He was mainly ready to put the pedal down on his consciousness search in March of 2003 when Uranus entered Pisces and awakened his Chiron. Boom! In the last few years, transiting Jupiter, Neptune, and Chiron have all entered his eighth house at the same time, home to his Chiron. This remarkable triad of astrology’s 3 spiritual planets in Aquarius called him to come home. But, he had an evolved set of ears – he could hear what they were saying (God.)

They brought him the faith and hope that he could overcome his past and represent the reason his change has been so all-encompassing. When Neptune answered his chart’s “promise” by squaring his Moon (bucket handle) recently and coinciding with the time we met, he used it to find God. This he accomplished instead off of getting more and more lost in “his own story” or, “history” which had previously been the case. His illusion.

It takes most of the planets to hit at once in a chart to cause the

enormity of such a life-altering transformation. Not just Saturn.

Saturn did not cause his liberation. It triggered the other planets which were already in place and had been working on him for some time. Like Easy-Off. This is how I knew. I merely had to pick the date that Saturn energized the entire sign of Libra which occurred on the date he spoke of.

In 2008, when Pluto entered Capricorn and started to make a square to his early Libra planets, the transformation was set in motion. He could have tried to bury his head in the sand instead, as many people attempt to do, but it doesn’t work. The story of his grueling emotional pain is common (Pluto conjunct Venus?) - his breakthrough however, was exemplary.

One must keep in mind that he was already so inclined towards spiritual Neptune since he was born with it next to his natal Mercury and strongly square to his critical Leo ascendant.

His natal Moon controlled everything; that I knew right away since it sits at the top of his chart with all the other planets forming a bucket pattern to it, shaped like an umbrella. And the Moon, often symbolizes the mother figure and/or codependent relationships. So, I went to work inquiring about his mother and their relationship. There are other “mother” symbols in his chart, mainly his Neptune sitting on his nadir (bottom of the chart.) This can represent a fuzzy, confusing upbringing that could have in fact been built upon deception. Kind of like building a life on quicksand. This was also paired with Neptune and Mercury in Scorpio: someone not being “straight” with him – or abandoning him to a confusing set of boundaries. All of this was happening in the fourth house of upbringing. He had chosen to be planted in soil full of spiritual challenges. Why? So he could see the futility of self-direction. Lower-case “s”elf.

I did not have “full knowledge” of his transformation as he said. You see, those types of transformations do show up in a chart but, only few people are wise enough to recognize them for what they are. Being trained in the West is not always the most advantageous. Followers of Eastern thought tend to show much more adherence to inner guidance. Those with strong Neptune placements seem to lean to the East. Not only dead fish go with the flow, Sarah.

When he spoke of “coming to a point and wanting to die,” it coincided with Pluto’s powerful effect it had been having on Librans. He did want to die. But, it wasn’t “him,” it was his ego, as he said. And, when you’re all ego, it feels like it’s you that is dying. Then, as he said, “God intervened in the form of Saturn.” How true. How true. And to that, I add the Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Chiron, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto.

On October 30 of 2009, he literally couldn’t take any more lies. It would have killed him. Saturn has a very strong reputation for bringing abusive energies to a flat out stop - if, and only if we are ready to deal with the ramifications – which he was. It gave him the inspiration to sober up. Saturn’s ingress into Libra triggered Pluto which had been working on him unconsciously since 1/25/08; he was ready. This same story is happening now to all of us in one way or another. The new Pluto era is screaming at us to let go of our stories too.

If we get out of our own way, a similar type of transformation is awaiting

This story is common however in terms of how a person syncs with one’s chart. This is not wishful thinking or self-actualizing promises. Planets act as we do – we act as they do. I have no idea how it works, really, but, I can tell you it works 100% of the time. The best reason I can give you is because it is God’s work, somehow. Simplicity is His method.

Recently, I read where one of Chiron’s keywords is the “way-shower.” Isn’t that we has done for us?

So why is his story “coming to light now?” As I finish writing this story, Jupiter and Uranus are sitting atop of his 12^th harmonic chart (destiny chart) in Pisces, his progressed Moon is precisely conjoined with his natal Chiron, and it will be his birthday exactly… in one hour.

10/7 New Moon 14°d24’ 2:44p – Watch this one closely as it appears exactly on the USA’s Saturn. Economic issues will prevail with a concentration upon conservation. New laws will stun much of the public as it learns that the government is serious about new regulations and restrictions. Political parties are going to go to new extremes all throughout October. You have never seen the lows that some politicians will sink to during this phase. There are simply too many tensions among the planets for anything else. It’s going to exaggerate the traveling T-square with Pluto, Uranus, Saturn and Jupiter.

10/8 Venus goes Retrograde 3:06a – Who’s going to even notice? However, as time goes on, we will find ourselves closely examining how we disperse our affections during the next few weeks.

10/22 Mars squares Neptune 11:37a – Coinciding with the Full Moon, Mars will stimulate the close conjunction with Neptune and Chiron in late Aquarius. Many people will feel extra-inspired to work for causes. The urge to serve mankind will be paramount now as will be all environmental issues. Aquarius rules our desire to help one another via group activities.

10/22 Full Moon 29°^33’ 9:37p – Even though the orbs are wide, this lunation will stimulate the Cardinal T-square too. With the emphasis in Libra and Aries, identity will become the issue. In other words, the Cardinal T-square, or as some are calling it, the Cardinal Cross, is stirring up everything you can think of. We have never been through any period like this in history, and it’s just starting. With Cardinal energies, our focus is on how we can be ourselves or how we are being “blocked.” “Something has to give” is the broad message of Pluto. With this intense focus in Aries, we will be feeling like, “I just have to let this or that go…. I simply cannot carry that load anymore.” The time is up.

10/23 Sun enters Scorpio 8:35a – Scorpio, being ruled by Pluto, is not going to cause any friction with the overall theme of Pluto. Usually we notice the transition into Scorpio clearly each year as the 23^rd of October is typically the heaviest day of the year. Not now. Since we have been filled up with heavy Pluto energies, the beat simply goes on. Yes, things are heavy – this means we have to make big decisions and realize that the time is here to do so.

10/28 Mars enters Sagittarius 2:48a – A bit of relief will come by as the Martian energies enter the sign of the Jester. Play. Fun. Enjoy. Remember?

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May the planets be with you as you find your Starself!” - Rick

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