Sometime I have to look at "both sides now" to distinguish one side from the other. Otherwise they look like the same thing. I was born just after sunset. Like anybody else born at sunset, the Ascendent sign will be the opposite sign of the Sun sign. I was born just after sunset in zero degree, two minutes Taurus, then my Rising sign has gotta be early Scorpio. It's the same dynamic that comes into play at any of the cardinal points of the zodiac. Ascendent; Midheaven; Descendent; and Nadir. In my case, that spectrum of opposites resolves to the angular aspect of opposition.
My lifetime goals and my mundane daily goals are indicated by a polarized spectrum located 180 degrees apart by sign in Taurus and Scorpio. Money is the keyword to the spectrum between these fixed power signs. Taurus represents a person's own money, and Scorpio represents a person's relationship with other people's money. The real opposition in my natal chart is the opposition between my dual goals. My life goal is what is represented by the Sun being just inside the first degree of Taurus, and located in the Sixth house just below the horizon.
The Ascendent sign in all natal charts is the sign found at the Eastern point of the horizon at the exact moment a person is born. In my natal chart it's the 6th degree of Scorpio. That's why it's said that my "rising sign" is Scorpio. The Ascendent sign and the Rising sign describe the same facticity in the zodiac. The characteristics indicated by the degree of the corresponding Ascendent sign is said to represent how the native of the natal chart will see the world, and how the world sees them. The Rising sign represents a person's personality. It's their mask they show themselves to the world through, and through which the world is filtered as it enters the plenitude to find what's possible for it there.
I was actually born about ten minutes after sunset all those years ago. The sun had disappeared below the horizon, but it's light still brightened the western sky and could possibly reflect off the ambient cloud formations to provide a mirage of goldenness in the approaching darkness that can give the sense of something extraordinary when the conditions are right. I was born in that twilight zone when that phenomenon is possible.
Whether a blessing or a curse, there was no "golden" ambience in the warm Spring air down in east Mississippi in mid-April, and nothing extraordinary was observed by competent witnesses and printed in the closest local newspaper (The Meridian Star) on that day of my birth. The quickly darkening sky was overcast with low clouds and it was sprinkling rain according to the research I did for 1939. I couldn't actually be sure it was raining the moment I drew my first breathe, but off and on rain was what the weather report in the newspaper said for the day before. Meteorology was such a primitive science at the time, that the media only reported on what happened the day before. Weather forecasting was still based on things like the length of the hair on a woolyworm and whether granny's arthritis was acting up.
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The statements below were written as a comment upon the current saying in the Gospel of Thomas e-mail discussion list. I like the way the comment concludes. What does that mean?
40. Jesus said, "A grapevine has been planted apart from the Father.
Since it is not strong, it will be pulled up by its root and will perish."
This saying, in my opinion, simply means that a domesticated plant such as a commercial grapevine that's planted where it's in the shade too much will not produce the desired characteristics in a wine grape, whether it's final product is put in new wineskins or old. No amount of tender, loving care nor the aid of exotic plant foods or thoughtful pruning will replace what sunlight does to grapes in bringing them to fruition.
Is this the polar opposite of the saying that warns about putting your light under a bushel?
Maybe this is a comment on how to deal with the various abstract ideals we fall in love with from time to time, that we eventually wanna let fade into the woodwork when they lose their initial usefulness. Cold turkey is one way of doing it. Yank it outta it's ground-for-being and expose it's root ideas to the open air of nothingness. Making THAT happen, however, is a horse of a different colour. All your invested hope and good intentions have to be abandoned just as surely as for a grapevine carelessly planted in the valley of the shadow of death.
I do not attempt to tell the God's own truth here because I don't know what the truth is or hardly ever. I try to capture the drifting thoughts that randomly appear in my imagination for reasons I may not understand. I don't know if the content I capture with these words is true or false. The Comments settings are turned off to prevent me from having to defend what amounts to little more than fanciful, sometime crude speculation. Great moments in our lives never return.
