Carducius Plantagenet Ream ‘Dessert No. 4’ c1865 {{PD}}

Your weekend sampler, featuring a too-long cake metaphor, a slice (again!) from the article on sibling relationships, and a little glimpse ahead, but just a crumb–have a great weekend!

Today’s image (for the 18th) is a pink cake box, like the kind you get from the bakery, containing a crushed cake and discarded on the freeway on-ramp. This is a sad image; who is so angry or unhappy or spiteful that they moosh a perfectly lovely cake and throw it out the window of a speeding car? Someone who doesn’t like the good things in life, that’s who, someone who is not willing to accept pleasure–and they don’t want anyone else to have any enjoyment, either. Is there someone like this in your life? If so, consider that they may ruin everyone’s cake out of deep sorrow, perhaps out of a belief that they don’t deserve life’s cake. If you find it in yourself, you may want to offer them a slice, and let them know that they really do deserve it–all we have to do is be alive to deserve it!–and we can all have our cake, after all.

Anything posited in the 11th adds layers to the interaction, and typically focuses major attention in 11th House matters. The Moon here, for example, may suggest we see our own mother, those who seem maternal to us, or those with whom we empathize as friend material; an emotional connection may be essential to viewing an individual as a friend, with this placement, and could dominate interaction. So how do our sibling interactions influence our later interactions with friends? Even if there are no other connections, Whole Sign Houses give us the same element in both 3rd and 11th House—and further, we get the same element on the 7th of Others, with all three Houses offering both personal and group or ‘other’ related viewpoints for the chart individual. This implies that the way we relate to friends and groups is very much like, even modeled on, sibling relationships and early childhood experiences (which also fall in the 3rd). With the elements connecting the Houses, we can’t help but translate our experiences in the matters of the earliest part of life (the 3rd) into later events and experiences as our horizons and contacts widen.

19 July are our relationships or finances not fitting smoothly into our reality, or must our reality modify itself to accurately reflect the Truth of our relationships or financial situation? That’s the question we’ll wrestle with all day. (Perfecting today: Venus sesquiquadrate Saturn)

20 July sees us discover the down side to our expansion attempts, our social role, or to knowing what we know; somehow we are seen as responsible for darker elements that are in reality way outside our control. This brings a form of public judgment, an episode where the social circle makes a pronouncement about us—and there’s nothing we can do about it. Just know that what’s communicated is more revealing about the thinking of those making the assessments than it is about you or your choices. Too, our own thinking is influenced by things we’re not aware of—and pushes us in directions we might not anticipate, to undetermined effect—and that could be the same influence that’s causing others to make those judgments of you. (Jupiter contra-parallel Pluto, Mercury semi-square Sedna)

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