Illnesses are our repressed passions
“Or was [she]…revived by the fire, relieved of her old crusty skin, leaving this earth on a fiery broomstick like the witch in the story my mother told me?"”
—Jerzy Kosinski, “The Painted Bird.”
The way I see illness is as a death-current running beneath, undercutting our conscious hopes and plans. It runs as a counterpoint, a mirror, asking to be reflected back; illnesses ask that something previously not recognized break through the 4th wall and into consciousness. Sometimes we let fears, paranoias, or blocks condition how much we will strive for, and we may not even be aware of them, but if these are indulged long enough they become illnesses. Astrology can help by shedding light on the most powerful and vulnerable parts of ourselves (aspects of conjunction, square, and opposition in the birth chart) which must be honored for they are where all our passions and fire for life dwells. That’s why reading charts is a form of revelation—you uncover the holy grail of yourself, what you really want embedded deep in your body like a seed. Such a mystery is the key to the joy of total embodiment, the attainment of which flushes the body with health. Still, life is not static; we ebb and flow in embodiment. Ironically, many of us only reach it after the road of illness, which ignites cracks all through our system so, groveling, cut down, we journey towards our core, the base of mysteries. “Know thyself” is the key to the first door, and then one may saunter down into specifics, as to what specifically an illness is trying to say, and what making space to listen to that illness will teach you. The questions are surprisingly simple really. If your hands get cold, ask yourself what hands symbolize. Are they not used to feed yourself? In what way have you atrophied your ability to feed yourself? What nourishment are you missing, that is as noble as the dignity and mastery inherent in warm able hands? Or, if your bones ache—what are you aching for, over and over again, that cannot any longer be ignored? Illnesses are of the body, so after the questions are asked, the answer must be given in body: your body has to meet and be transmuted by an earthly cure, an individual act or new ritual.
We have illnesses all backwards, the way I see it. While rest is necessary, as sleep brings more wakefulness, illnesses are sirens to act now. To listen to the secrets your body whispers to you, and take a path no one else but you can see. We have to trust that all wavelengths lead to the center, that joy is the end road; then you might relax enough to trust and listen to your body. That’s deeper medicine than all the herbs and pills in this world. But—also—of the two, herbs are the more powerful for they are from the whole plant rather than the concentration, and thus closer in origin to the deeper symbolic keys we need to unlock consciousness. But any cure, just like the curl of the poison, takes time. Sometimes the harsh ‘cures’ of our modern world are so swift and so drastic, we miss the time we sorely need to roll with what the illness means and is trying to tell us. The miracle of healing and rebirth is real for the individual who finds their light, comes into their ‘Sun,’ their power.