Consultation with James Jarvis (8/4/11)
By Tara McKinney
This is the fourth in a series of Notes from the Editor in which I share personal reflections on astrological readings I have been very fortunate to receive from each of the gifted consultants on Inner Sight/ILE’s new Astrology page. By the way, I just need to say that it’s part of my job description to do stuff like this, so how great is that?!
For this installment, I will be sharing the highlights of a consultation I had with James Jarvis. James is one of the most fluid and versatile astrologers I know, in that he is equally well-versed in Western and Vedic Astrology (including the Ayurvedic perspective on health issues) and has a knack for mining the gems in both of these astrological frames of reference through a skillful juxtaposition of the two charts. With a master’s degree in Transpersonal Counseling and certification as a Career Coach, he is especially gifted at the use of astrology as a counseling tool, flowing with great ease and insight through the sometimes murky waters of intra-psychic and interpersonal dynamics at the intersection of psychology and spirituality.
Bringing all of the above talents to bear, James was able to help me shed light on some issues that had been more or less on the periphery of my awareness until recently but are now front and center stage thanks to the momentous event of Saturn currently crossing my Ascendant and my second Saturn Return arriving shortly thereafter. Actually, as James explained, Saturn is retrograde right now, just hanging out on the twelfth house side of my Ascendant/birth moment, teaching me some of the finer points of patience, which isn’t one of my strengths, by the way.
Saturn crossing the Ascendant and returning to its natal position in your chart is like a slow-moving freight train pulling into the station. It may take a long time to arrive, but you can feel the rumbling on the tracks for a year or so before it does. I’ve been feeling the train approaching for a while now and the best way I can describe it is like being turned inside out or having your skin peeled off without benefit of an anesthetic. Everything that was previously on the inside and in the shadows gets revealed one way or another, and the more you resist this process the messier it gets.
The good news, according to James, is that my real self is represented by all the benefic planets together at the top of my chart, with the Goddess Venus in the middle of the Finger of God formation. My real self is the Divine Feminine poised to fulfill my destiny, to embody and express and articulate the sacred marriage of masculine and feminine principles. With James’ bifocal perspective, encompassing both Western and Vedic astrological systems, the sacred geometry of the Finger of God gets fleshed out in some very enlightening ways. Instead of the Western view of five planets in Cancer in the ninth house with a Venus ruling planet activation point directed at my North Node in the third house, in the Vedic system I have five planets in Gemini in the tenth house with a Mercury ruling planet and Venus activation point directed at my North Node in the fourth house. Suddenly, I go from a chart that’s all about the love and compassion of the Divine Feminine finding creative expression through my writing, to one that’s about the clarity and discernment of the Divine Feminine finding her true home in the temple of the Goddess. I get two charts in one and they complement and balance one another, ultimately showing the way to the sacred marriage I seek. It’s a both/and situation rather than an either/or.
Concerning the situation with my Ascendant and first house, on the other hand, James offered his sense that Neptune and Saturn there do not represent the real me. They’re my mask self, the self I present to the world, like a karmic knot in my sense of identity centered around the theme of feeling abandoned by my parents as a child and subsequently being forced to abandon parts of myself. This, James surmised, may be the root cause of the deep pain that has fueled whatever addictive tendencies still reside in me. With his help, I was able to understand this as a fractal pattern that has played out throughout many lifetimes and even become encoded in my ancestral DNA, tracing back to the Irish Famine and beyond, all the way to the primal birth moment of the human species.
I have a strong Saturn according to James, so all of the Saturnian challenges before me are doable. YAY!! I may just survive my Satunian rebirth experience and live to write another day! Needless to say, I highly recommend James for his psycho-spiritual insights into whatever challenges you may find yourself facing at the present time. In the Hero’s Journey of life, he is very well equipped to play the role of trusted ally.
(For a more detailed and personal version of this piece, please see my blog: Astrology and Transpersonal Psychology: The Marriage of Spirit and Psyche.)
