Category Archives: Lynn’s favorite posts

Saturn and Neptune and the boundaries of compassion

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reposted from February 2007

Last night I watched part of a Dog Whisperer episode that I missed about Howie, the (adorable) rescue dog that lived at an animal hospital in Atlanta because he was “unadoptable.” Howie had been terribly abused before his rescue, and while his body had healed he was still terrified and growled whenever anyone new came near him. The ladies who cared for him were very protective of him and did all they could to keep him safe. He lived at the animal hospital for two years before Cesar Millan came to help Howie become adoptable.

When Cesar arrived, he found that Howie had been indoors for two years. Because of his abuse, his foster moms had been afraid to put a leash on him for fear it would bring back memories of the terrible times. They felt he had been through so much, and they just wanted to keep him safe and loved. Cesar always says that dogs live in the moment, and that if we keep living in the past and reinforcing that for them that they will never heal.

Chiron teaches us that our desire to heal others often stems from a wound within ourselves. In the highest form of this “Wounded Healer” archetype, we wait to heal others until we ourselves have been healed. Once we have walked into the fire and shadows of our own wounds and the energy held in the cellular memory has been released, we then experience the empathy to be able to help others heal. However, there is a shadow side to the Wounded Healer in which the wounds of the patient activate the wounds of a healing provider who has not yet fully healed. Jung called this phenomenon “countertransference,” and in this circumstance the patient and healer become locked in a drama from which neither can escape without outside help. This is likely what happened with Howie the rescue dog and the ladies who rescued him.

Those of us (myself included) who rescue animals or who otherwise have rescue fantasies are sensitive souls who have been wounded and who seek to heal ourselves through healing the animals we rescue. This is a Neptunian experience, since Neptune bestows boundless compassion, sensitivity, and an empathy which causes us to experience the suffering of others as if it were our own. While these are beautiful qualities, without the boundaries and discipline of Saturn we become codependent and unable to be effective in either our own healing process or the process of others. Cesar Millan’s famous refrain “rules, boundaries, and limitations” is the Saturn influence that, when combined with the Neptunian empathy, creates a truly effective healer.

I have had to learn this the hard way. With Saturn on one side of my Sun and Neptune on the other, it has taken me a lifetime to learn to balance the two. For years I tried to rescue myself by rescuing others, and finally realized that until the work on myself was closer to completion I would never be able to help anyone else. In the story of Howie, his rescuers were so overcome with grief and compassion at the plight from which he was rescued, they were unable to perform the simplest act that would complete the healing process: put a leash around his neck and take him for a walk. It was evident that Cesar felt compassion for Howie when he gently encouraged Howie to take his first steps outside. But the boundaries that he maintained in not falling into the pool of Howie’s pain helped him to truly heal this dog.

In the same way, those of us with strong Neptunian influences (planets aspecting Neptune or in Pisces and the twelfth house which are ruled by Neptune) need to cultivate the influence of Saturn in order to function effectively in the world. Cesar Millan’s pragmatic approach to dog psychology teaches dog owners this balance, but his lessons are valuable for anyone who lives on Planet Earth.

Here is an update on what happened to Howie.

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Sunday inspiration: Butterfly transformation in the collective

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Thanks to Beth Owls Daughter for this link about the phenomenon of “imaginal cells” in the metamorphosis of the butterfly:

After a caterpillar buries itself inside its cocoon, it waits to morph into a butterfly.  The caterpillar does not simply shrink a bit and sprout wings.  Instead, it sort of disintegrates into a puddle of ooze within the cocoon.  If we were to open the cocoon halfway through the process, we would not find a half-caterpillar half-butterfly type creature, but a blob of goop.  The goop is made up of a bunch of individual cells that are all basically the same type of oozy cells.  For whatever reason, after the caterpillar has turned into ooze, a new type of cells start appearing.  The original ooze cells are NOT changing into these new cells, but rather the new cells seem to come out of nowhere.  They just appear out of thin air so to speak.

These new cells are called imaginal cells and they are so completely different from the original ooze cells that they are thought to be a virus or some other form of enemy so the ooze cells begin attacking the imaginal cells.  However, even though the imaginal cells are being killed off for not fitting in, they still keep showing up, more and more of them.  Eventually, the imaginal cells begin to find each other and cluster together.  Like attracts like, and the clusters begin to join up with other clusters.  The original ooze cells still keep attacking them but the imaginal cells continue to multiply and cluster together.

Eventually, they become a large community and they switch gears from simply being a group of like-minded cells into the programming cells of the butterfly.  Some imaginal cells start changing into wing cells, some start changing into antenna cells, some start changing into digestive tract cells, and so on.  They are no longer imaginal cells but become butterfly anatomy cells.  As we all know, if left alone to do his thing, the butterfly eventually emerges as a completely new entity from the original caterpillar.  Do they hold the same memories, life lessons, and consciousness?  Who knows?  One would think that for survival of the species, the butterfly would still retain whatever knowledge the caterpillar had learned before entering into the cocoon state.

imaginal cell transformation

This is a new concept to me, so I began to do some research.  The metamorphosis from caterpillar to butterfly has always fascinated me because it so closely mirrors my own experience of personal transformation in which we begin as an ordinary caterpillar, and then are forced into a chrysalis by a transit of Saturn, Pluto or Chiron.  The chrysalis is actually a protective device to protect us as we complete the transformation process.

Transformation goes  beyond the personal, and once we have made the metamorphic leap ourselves we can begin to serve as “imaginal cells”  for the transformation of the communities in which we live.

This process isn’t easy.  Like the imaginal cells in the metamorphosis of the butterfly, those of us who serve as transformative forces in our community are not always recognized as a positive influence and this will be especially true as the force of government power (Pluto in Capricorn) squares off against the force for revolutionary independence (Uranus in Aries).  But just as in the story of the butterfly, as we join forces, sharing the resonance of a new vibration and new information, we can become forces for positive transformation that will reverberate around the world.

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