By Cal Garrison a.k.a. Mother of the Skye
This week’s horoscopes are coming out under the light of an Aquarius Moon. Last week, while I was outlining some of the aspects that show up in my readings, I mentioned the asteroid Lilith, and talked a little bit about what happens in charts where she sticks out like a sore thumb.
To really get a grip on how she operates it will help to talk a little bit about the Lilith archetype. It might surprise you to know that Lilith was Adam’s first wife. If you read the Zohar and the Talmud you will find out that back in the time before time Adam and Lilith coexisted in a state of wholeness. Here in duality, together, the two of them held space for the Divine. Adam was God’s male aspect and Lilith was exalted as the feminine face of God.
Over time the ancient texts got altered and the Bible got rewritten. The Old Testament stories were heavily edited at the Council of Nicaea about 325 years after Christ died. During the first rewrite, the bishops decided to replace Lilith with a gal named Eve. This created a bit of a problem because they couldn’t just dispense with Lilith; she had been a big part of the story for far too long. Instead of 86’ing her completely they turned her into a demon witch, stripped her naked, exiled her to the shores of the Red Sea and wrote her up to be a baby killer who invaded the dreams of decent men in their sleep, tempted them with lustful desires and prompted them to be unfaithful to their wives.
In astrology, the Lilith archetype has many different faces. The fact that she wound up going from the feminine face of God to playing second fiddle to Eve, endows her with traits of rejection, rivalry, jealousy and competition. While Eve seduced Adam with the apple and may very well have had her faults, she was Little Bo-Peep compared to Lilith. In a horoscope, whether it be natal, transiting, or progressed, regardless of whether we are talking to a male or a female, a strongly accented Lilith produces themes that color the experience of the individual with themes of rejection, rivalry, jealousy competition, and all forms of third-party interference.
This is interesting because of course, in our culture infidelity and everything we associate with it are huge no nos. We barely speak of these things above a whisper, when in fact the business of cheating on each other, or of having someone on the side has existed in epic proportions since the dawn of time and certainly since the Nicaean Council decided to replace Lilith with Eve. Looking at charts on a regular basis, in hard aspect, Lilith’s placement makes it easy to see that the native either grew up surrounded by infidelity and rejection or that at the present moment, they happen to be caught up in issues that revolve around the need to make important choices in their relationships. Let me give you just one example.
I did a reading for a woman whose Lilith aspects made it clear that her parents were involved in a triangular situation of some kind. I could see that she had been raised in the middle of a lot of third party complications. She came to me in her early 40’s. Her transits and progressions showed that she was involved in a love affair. Being married with three kids, her questions revolved around what to do about this triangle.
What was interesting about this story is that this woman was the daughter of her father’s mistress! She grew up as an outsider, wanting more than anything to be the chosen one; wanting more than anything to be the real daughter. Her marriage and her need to maintain that commitment was rooted in the need to not turn into her parents and to create a familial scene that would shield her kids from what for her was the stigma of being a bastard, from a broken home.
What we don’t realize is that everything happens as a means to teach us what we need to learn. In this case, the woman spent the first 40 odd years of her life trying to correct things that had wounded her as a child, not realizing that, there was nothing wrong with what went on between her parents, and hence, nothing wrong with her for not being the real daughter. Her own love affair materialized at 40 to give her an opportunity to not only see this, but to find herself in her parent’s shoes and forgive them for loving each other enough to step out of bounds and give life to her in the name of love.
In general, outside of the realm of her extramarital/infidelity/green-eyed-monster impact, Lilith produces a host of other issues. Conjunct the Ascendant she causes the native to feel rejected as a total person – from birth. This complex often shows up in the charts of people who were adopted – because the initial separation from the mother registers as rejection, of not being good enough, and of having to ‘compete’ to deserve love and recognition.
The Midheaven is the “career point” and when Lilith is conjunct that point, it means that the person is extremely competitive in the career area. Since the Midheaven is also one end of the parental axis, Lilith’s placement on that point implies that there was unfaithfulness in the parent’s relationship. There are times when it implies that as a child the native played the Lilith role with the parents. You see this in situations where Mommy was jealous of the daughter’s relationship with the father, or Daddy was jealous of the son’s closeness with the mother. Lilith in hard aspect to the asteroid Apollo says that the individual repeatedly finds themselves in situations where they are bound to be rejected. One could say that they waltz right into those types of situations and basically ask for it.
It’s interesting that regardless of what the church did to make Lilith go away, 2,000 years down the road she still runs us from within. My experience has shown me that her fingerprints are everywhere; so much so that it boggles my mind that we do whatever we can to close our eyes to her presence and pretend she isn’t there. I am pretty sure we’d be better off if the Nicaean bishops had left well enough alone, and allowed Lilith to keep her position as the feminine face of God. If that had been the case perhaps we would never have forgotten that both the male and the female are equal and that each polarity has its place or its part to play in the creation of Unity and Oneness. It’s definitely food for thought, so let me leave you with something to chew on and invite you to take what you can from this week’s ‘scopes.
