Star
Children:
Wheels
Astrological Stories by Juri
Viktor Stork
 Sometimes
I sit in front of our old house, imagining how people
might have lived here in the old days. How they grew
their vegetables, cut wood in the forest or followed some sort
of craft or trade.
No light switches, no hoovers, no showers, no aircraft noise,
no telephone calls from some marketing enterprise during meal
times. And no cars. No droning engine noise, no hooting, no
rat-run
traffic, no maniac who races up our street at 100 mph at eleven
o'clock at night, no ladies in four-wheel drives with
bull bars at face level, no suicidal actions under a lowering
swing barrier. No such dangers for playing children. Car
drivers behave autistically, completely unaware of what is going on
around them (yes, I drive a car myself).
Moses, the son of our neighbours Vivian and Rolf, is a great
car lover. He's hardly four, but already has an impressive
collection of 76 toy cars, three Buicks, 16 trucks, one Matchbox
race course with a loop-the-loop, a figure-of-eight race course
with two remote-controlled Formula-one rocket and a radio-controlled
VW Beetle with a droning engine and a signal-horn. Vivian
assured me that
his first word wasn't "Mama" but "car".
If I believed in re-incarnation, I'd be certain that Moses
would have been a car dealer or racing driver in his previous life.
But as an astrologer I suspect he is one of the rare cases
of a "Mercedes"
Ascendant.
 Our
son Leo is completely different. He also has a few toy cars,
but they are confined to a miserable existence in some
bedroom drawer. Driving is boring. His toy tractor was used
mainly as a stationary power shovel in the sandbox. For a long
time, he wouldn't ride his bike - he found two
wheels too unstable. He wasn't bothered that his same-age
or even younger friends had been riding their bikes for ages.
He had no such ambition whatsoever. With his Sun-Saturn opposition,
he is careful at expanding his territory.
Rafaela, one and a half years younger than Leo, and whenever
possible faster than her brother, didn't trust the two wheels
either. Tricycle, scooter, inline skates, skis - no problem.
But riding a bike was a challenge she avoided.
Although we practised a lot last autumn, the two of them
put their bikes back into the garage. I admit that I would
have liked them to succeed. Their failures are also mine. And
even though I know that development can't be forced, I found
it hard to leave it at that.
 Astrologically,
personal development as well as technological progress belong
to the domains of Uranus, Aquarius and the eleventh
house. In my horoscope, I have Saturn in Aquarius on the midheaven.
Saturn is the brake, the structuring force, "hard reality".
I'm always worried that things don't go the way they should,
I try to have all developments under control. A real astrologer
...
Ah, you think my children and I may have some themes
in common? Well, let's see: Leo's Sun is in the eleventh house
("doing things one's own way", "following one's
own path")
... Rafaela's Mars is in the eleventh ("living one's
own strength")
and her Jupiter and Uranus in Aquarius ("sudden developments")
... Yes, that somehow rings a bell. I remember my red
scooter, and the really bad fall on the gravel road when the
frame couldn't take the weight of a ten-year-old boy at full
speed anymore... Actually, when did I learn to ride a bike?
 Rafaela
told us at the breakfast table on Easter Monday that she'd
had a dream: "I got on my bike and rode away, just
like that!" "Why don't you try it", I encouraged
her. She went and got her bright yellow bicycle, got on - and
rode away.
Just like that. Of course, this put Leo under enormous pressure.
He also got his bike - and to his own surprise and delight,
it worked. At first still a bit clumsy and shaky, both of them
soon rode as if they had been born on a bike.
By the way, the astrological interpretation of the automobile
is another story: the engine with its controlled force of the
fire is definitely uranian. Getting from here to there expresses
the mercurial principle, while the traffic rules and regulations
are
linked to
Saturn. I suppose, putting down the accelerator when overtaking
and hooting at an annoying cyclist is pretty Martian, the choice
of design and make of the car Venusian. The petrol consumption
reminds
me of the excessive side of Jupiter, the regular traffic breakdowns
of Neptune. And the destructive consequences of car traffic
for our planet are quite Plutonian.
 But
when I'm in my car by myself, enjoying the landscape and listening
to music, the car appears to me like the epitome of
lunar energy: as if I was travelling in a womb, I feel strong,
safe and comfortable. Actually, this might be the key to the
fascination
cars have
on people, and to the uniquely autistic attitude which seizes
all drivers once they're in their car: "Mama" is
not far away at all. Is she, Moses?
The Child's Horoscope
by Liz
Greene
© Juri
Viktor Stork /
Astrodienst AG 2004
Translated by Karin Hoffmann
* All names have been changed for reasons of confidentiality. |
My
daughter Rafaela is sitting on the bed of one of our
neighbours' children. Sword in hand, a helmet on her
head, she shouts at the top of her voice "...Hohoho,
and a bottle of rum!" Three boys are glaring at me
with wild eyes and decide to take me captive. I try to
walk into
the room without stepping on anything sharp, sticky or fragile,
and invite the crew to have a snack. "What do
you have?",
my sweet-toothed pirate daughter wants to know. "Doughnuts",
and the shouting stops immediately and makes room for a many-voiced "Mmmmh,
fine."
But
for the children, this house really is like a huge ship which
sometimes floats on a calm sea, sometimes crosses stormy
waters, and now and again takes off for a flight into new dimensions.
They try themselves out as pirates, witches, sewerage workers,
and confectioners. Nothing is solid, everything is in flux,
even their relationships with one another.
I
am a Sagittarian (fire) with a Gemini Ascendant (air), and
my only planets in earth are Uranus and
Pluto in Virgo. A garden to me is something wonderful - beautiful
flowers, fresh vegetables, juicy fruit. And they all grow
by themselves, just like that. Nature is really doing a
great job. It provides us with space for meditating or
lying in
the
sun, and it provokes wonderful thoughts. Sometimes, I even
feel like cutting the grass. When I'm sitting on the garden
bench, I can feel the charm and mystery that our garden radiates.
My
wife sows, plants, weeds, tells me about crop rotation, organic
fertilisers, and other esoteric
methods of gardening. Being an Aries with a Virgo Ascendant,
she has a talent for looking after overgrown beds with
a pioneering spirit, for patiently pulling out weeds,
planting systematically
and with fervour, and even reaping what she has sown. Fascinating!
Our housemates Vivian and Rolf are also often seen in the
garden. They do interesting experiments with natural selection
processes: can cauliflower
survive, if the weeds haven't been pulled out for
months? Even our neighbour Hannes has had a go at gardening.
Heroically, he planted sweetcorn, leeks, lettuces and cress,
and then went for a three-month holiday. All this gives
Annina a chance to activate her pioneering spirit every spring
and free her overgrown bed from the accumulated weeds. Everyone
in the house can fulfil their potential.
Wilhelm,
the 9-year-old son of our neighbour Barbara, is a Taurean,
a really practical child. It's just that, with Neptune
on the Descendant, life can be quite spooky sometimes. But
being a Taurus, he has found a very earthy strategy to deal
with this: if he shouts really loudly and throws
things around all over the place, it might make an impression
on the creatures from the invisible world. On his venture,
he strides
heroically through the garden and grasps a long stick which
he uses to knock down unripe apples from the tree. He bets
Leo that he can throw the apples at least as far as the wall
of the house... Leo takes a few too, eats the nicest one,
and
throws the others. Earth children!
Chewing
intensely on a piece of salami, I tried to find a comprehensible
answer. My wife Annina, who had reproached me recently for always
having an answer to everything, looked at me sternly and said: "This
is one of those very important questions that many people ask themselves."
I grumbled: "And those who have found out won't be able
to tell you." Of course, my wife is right. "Children need
the question, not the answer," she said forcefully, "the
question itself will lead them to the answer." Yes of course,
I know that from my own experience. I love questions, they lead me
directly to the answers, and sometimes
I'm really surprised about the ones I find. Would you like to
ask me something?
And
- believe it or not - the best chart to fit into the family system
was - the prognosticated date. The only thing I had to do now, was
to inform my client about the inherent harmony of Mother Nature. I was
annoyed about
myself and my own thoughtlessness. Of course, I know that children
don't just come into existence, but are conceived, grow in the womb
for about 40 weeks, and are born whenever the time is right. We as human
beings cannot influence which chart the child is going to choose
for itself. But I had the fixed idea that I could find a perfect
birth time! Isn't that called hubris, or in plain language "arrogance"
or "presumptuousness"? Life seems to organise itself well
enough without my interference, probably even better.
